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shihalyfie · 3 years

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About the Adventure: reboot, the likely reason why it exists, the question of target demographic, and whether I would recommend it or not

I think this reboot has been kind of a strange outlier in terms of Digimon anime in general, in terms of...well, just about everything. I also feel like everything surrounding it has kind of been giving us mixed signals as to what the intent and purpose behind the anime is -- well, besides “cashing in on the Adventure brand”, but looking at it more closely, that might be a bit of an oversimplification.

I’m writing this post because, having seen the entire series to the end for myself and thinking very hard about it and what it was trying to do, I decided to put down my thoughts. This is not meant to be a review of what I think was good and bad, but rather, something that I hope will be helpful to those who might be on the fence about whether they want to watch it or not, or those who don’t want to watch/finish it but are curious about what happened, or those who are curious as to why this reboot even exists in the first place, or even maybe just those who did watch it but are interested in others’ thoughts about it. I'm personally convinced that -- especially in an ever-changing franchise like Digimon -- how much you like a given work is dependent on what your personal tastes are to the very end, and thus it’s helpful to understand what kind of expectations you should go in with if you want to watch something.

With all of this said and done, if you want to go in and best enjoy this series, I think it is best to consider this anime as a distinct Digimon series of its own. The relationship to Adventure is only surface-level, and by that I mean it’s very obvious it’s doing things its own thing deliberately without worrying too much about what prior series did. Of course, I think everyone will have varying feelings about using the Adventure branding for something that really isn't Adventure at all, but we are really talking about an in-name-only affair, and something that’s unabashedly doing whatever it wants. So in other words, if you’re going in expecting Adventure, or anything that really resembles Adventure, you’re setting yourself up for disappointment. But if you’re able to approach it like yet another distinct Digimon series, and the other aspects of it fit your fancy, you’ll probably be able to enjoy it much better. And, conversely, I think it’s also important to remember that this series seems to have a writing philosophy with a fundamentally different goal from most Digimon series, and since it’s understandable for most long-time Digimon fans to have their tastes built on those prior series, it’s fine and completely understandable that this reboot may not be your cup of tea, for reasons that probably don’t actually have much to do with whether it’s an Adventure reboot or not.

There are no spoilers in the following post. (Although I use some emphatic language for the duration for it, these are mostly just my personal thoughts and how I see the series and the overall situation.)

On what exact relationship to Adventure this series has, and why it’s an “Adventure reboot”

If you ask why they did an Adventure reboot, the easiest answer to come up with is “Adventure milking, because it’s profitable”, but that’s kind of an oversimplification of what the issue is. This is especially when you take into account a key fact that official has been very well aware of since as early as 2006: most kids are too young to have seen Adventure, and therefore have no reason to care about it.

That’s the thing: Adventure milking only works so well on today’s children, and Toei and Bandai know this. This is also the reason that the franchise started going through a bit of a “split” starting in around 2012 (after Xros Wars finished airing), when the video game branch started making more active attempts to appeal to the adults’ fanbase with Re:Digitize and Adventure PSP. (Although they were technically still “kids’ games”, they were very obviously aimed at the adults’ audience as a primary “target”.) The generation that grew up with Adventure and other classic Digimon anime was getting older and older, and targeting that audience would require tailoring products more specifically to them -- ultimately culminating in 2015 and the solidification of “very obviously primarily for adults” media in the form of both games (Cyber Sleuth and Next Order) and anime (tri.). Note that Appmon ended up getting its own 3DS game, but since it was targeted at kids, it seems to have been developed by a completely different pipeline/branch from the aforementioned adults’ games, so even that had a split.

So if we want to talk about full-on nostalgia pandering, that’s already being done in the adults’ branch. In fact, Appmon development specifically said that they felt free to not really care about the adults’ audience because that was tri.’s job. Of course, the hardcore Digimon adults’ fanbase is still keeping an eye on the kids’ shows, and it’s good to not upset them -- and, besides, even if we’re all suffering under the hell of capitalism, people who work in kids’ shows still tend to be very passionate about the content and messages they’re showing the kids, so they still put an effort into making good content that adults can enjoy too. But, nevertheless, adults are still the “periphery demographic”, and a kids’ show is not a success if the kids (who have not seen and do not care about Adventure) are not watching it or buying the toys. Appmon ended up being extremely well-received by the adults’ fanbase, but that all meant nothing since the kids didn’t get into it.

Most kids are not super incredibly discerning about so-called writing quality (it’s not like they don’t at least unconsciously know when something is good, but they’re much less likely to be bothered by little things adults are often bothered by), so there’s a certain degree you have to get their attention if you want things to catch on with them. Critical reception does matter a lot more when we talk about the adults’ audience, but for the kids, the more important part is how much you’ve managed to engage them and how much fun they’re having (especially in regards to the toyline). Moreover, there’s the problem of “momentum”; Digimon’s sister shows of PreCure, Kamen Rider, and Super Sentai have sometimes had really poorly performing shows (critically or financially), but have managed to recover it in successive years to avoid getting cancelled. Digimon never managed to get to that point, with sales nearly dropping to half with Tamers and again with Frontier. So in essence, Savers, Xros Wars, and Appmon were all attempts at figuring out what was needed to just get that “kickstart” again -- but things just never lined up for it to work.

So if kids don’t really care about Adventure, why would they do Adventure nostalgia pandering? The answer is one that official has actually openly stated multiple times: they want to have parents watch it together with their children. Both Seki and Kinoshita said this in regards to watching the reaction to Kizuna, and it was also stated outright as a goal for the reboot, but, believe it or not, there’s reports of this having been stated back as early as Savers (followed by an admission that maybe 2006 was a little too early for people who grew up with Adventure to be old enough to have their own kids). So the little nostalgia references in Savers, Xros Wars, and Appmon aren't really meant to magically turn the series into Adventure as much as they’re supposed to be flags waved at the parents to get them to pay attention, so that they can introduce their kids to Digimon and watch it together with them, until the kids eventually take an interest on their own and they don’t need to rely on that kind of standby as much. (I say “as much” because of course PreCure, Rider, and Sentai all are still very indulgent in their anniversary references, but they’re not nearly as reliant on it to the point of life-and-death.)

This is also why Kizuna’s existence and release date two months prior to the reboot is a huge factor in this. The reason tri. wouldn’t have done it is that it never actually reached a properly “mainstream” audience. It’s a huge reason I keep emphasizing the fact that tri. and Kizuna are two separate things with completely different production and release formats, because tri. being a limited OVA screening released in six parts over three years means that, although it was a moderate financial success that did better than the franchise’s other niche products, in the end, it didn’t actually reach the “extremely casual” audience very well. We, as the “hardcore Internet fanbase”, all know people who watched all six parts, and the difference between tri. and Kizuna’s release formats doesn’t hit us as hard because of international distribution circumstances, but even on our end, if you talk to your casual friends who barely remember anything about Digimon except what they saw on TV twenty years ago, you will almost never find anyone who got past Part 1, maybe 2 at most. (That’s before we even get into the part where a good chunk of them got turned off at the character design stage for being too different.) Sticking with a full six-part series over three years is a commitment, and if you’re not someone with a certain level of loyalty to the franchise, you aren’t as likely to put aside the time for it!

Kizuna, on the other hand, was a full-on theatrical movie with full marketing campaign that was aimed at that extremely casual mainstream audience, including a lot of people who hadn’t even heard of tri. (due to it being too niche) or hadn’t bothered to commit to watching something so long, and thus managed to “hype up” a lot of adults and get them in a Digimon mood. (Critical reception issues aside, this is also presumably a huge reason Kizuna isn’t all that reliant on tri.’s plot; Adventure and 02 both averaged at around 11% of the country watching it when it first aired, but the number of people who even saw tri. much less know what happened in it is significantly lower, so while you can appeal to a lot of people if you’re just targeting the 11%, you'll lock them out if you’re overly reliant on stuff a lot of them will have never seen in the first place.) We’re talking the kind of super-casual who sees a poster for Kizuna, goes “oh I remember Digimon!”, casually buys a ticket for the movie, likes it because it has characters they remember and the story is feelsy, and then two months later an anime that looks like the Digimon they recognize is on Fuji TV, resulting in them convincing their kid to watch it together with them because they’re in a Digimon mood now, even though the actual contents of the anime are substantially different from the original.

So, looking back at the reboot:

There’s a huge, huge, huge implication that the choice to use Adventure branding was at least partially to get Fuji TV to let them have their old timeslot back. Neither Xros Wars nor Appmon were able to be on that old timeslot, presumably because Fuji TV had serious doubts about their profitability (perhaps after seeing Savers not do very well). This isn’t something that hits as hard for us outside Japan who don’t have to feel the impact of this anyway, but it’s kind of a problem if kids don’t even get the opportunity to watch the show in the first place. While there’s been a general trend of moving to video-on-demand to the point TV ratings don’t really have as much impact as they used to, I mean...it sure beats 6:30 in the morning, goodness. (Note that a big reason PreCure, Rider, and Sentai are able to enjoy the comfortable positions they’re in is that they have a very luxurious 8:30-10 AM Sunday block on TV Asahi dedicated to them.)

Since we’re talking about “the casual mainstream”, this means that this kind of ploy only works with something where a casual person passing by can see names and faces and take an interest. This is why it has to be Adventure, not 02 or Tamers or whatnot; 02 may have had roughly similar TV ratings to Adventure and fairly close sales figures back in 2000, but the actual pop culture notability disparity in this day and age is humongous (think about the difference in pop culture awareness between Butter-Fly and Target). 02, Tamers, and all can do enough to carry “adults’ fandom” products and merch sales at DigiFes, and the adults’ branch of the franchise in general, but appealing to the average adult buying toys for the kids is a huge difference, and a big reason that, even if they’re clearly starting to acknowledge more of the non-Adventure series these days, it’s still hard to believe they’re going to go as far as rebooting anything past Adventure -- or, more accurately, hard to believe they’ll be able to get the same impact using names and faces alone.

This advertising with the Adventure brand goes beyond just the anime -- we’re talking about the toyline that has the involved character faces plastered on them, plus all of the ventures surrounding them that Bandai pretty obviously carefully timed to coincide with this. One particularly big factor is the card game, which is doing really, really well right now, to the point it’s even started gaining an audience among people who weren’t originally Digimon fans. Part of it is because the game’s design is actually very good and newcomer-friendly, but also...nearly every set since the beginning came with reboot-themed Tamer Cards, which means that, yes, those cards with the Adventure names and faces were helping lure people into taking an interest in the game. Right now, the game is doing so well and has gained such a good reputation that it probably doesn’t need that crutch anymore to keep going as long as the game remains well-maintained, but I have no doubt the initial “Adventure” branding was what helped it take off, and its success is most likely a huge pillar sustaining the franchise at the current moment.

Speaking of merch and toys, if you look closely, you might notice that Bandai decided to go much, much more aggressively into the toy market with this venture than they ever did with Savers, Xros Wars, or Appmon (Appmon was probably the most aggressive attempt out of said three). They put out a lot more merch and did a lot more collaborative events to engage the parents and children, and, presumably, the reason they were able to do this was because they were able to push into those outlets with the confidence the Adventure brand would let them be accepted (much like with Fuji TV). Like with the card game, the important part was getting their “foot in the door” so that even if it stopped being Adventure after a fashion, they’d still have all of those merchandising outlets -- after all, one of the first hints we ever got of Ghost Game’s existence was a July product listing for its products replacing the reboot’s in a gachapon set, so we actually have evidence of certain product pipelines being opened by the reboot’s precedent. (The word 後番組 literally means “the TV program that comes after”, so it’s pretty obvious this was intended for Ghost Game; in other words, the reboot’s existence helped ensure there be a “reservation” for this kind of product to be made.)

I think one important thing to keep in mind is that Toei and Bandai have as much of a stake in avoiding rehashing for their kids’ franchises as we do. Even if you look at this from a purely capitalistic perspective, because of how fast the “turnover” is for the kids’ audience, sustaining a franchise for a long time off rehashing the same thing over and over is hard, and even moreso when it involves a twenty-year-old anime that said kids don’t even know or remember. Ask around about popular long-running Japanese kids’ franchises and you’ll notice they practically rely on being able to comfortably change things up every so often, like PreCure/Rider/Sentai shuffling every year, or Yu-Gi-Oh! having a rotation of different series and concepts, or the struggles that franchises that don’t do this have to deal with. And, after all, for all people are cynical about Toei continuing to milk Adventure or any of the other older series at every opportunity, as far as the kids’ branch of the franchise goes, this is only capable of lasting to a certain extent; if they tried keeping this up too long, even the adults and kids would get bored, and there is some point it’ll be easier to try and make products directly targeted at the kids’ audience instead of having to rely on the parents to ease them into it.

So it’s completely understandable that the moment they secured a proper audience with the reboot and finished up their first series with this, they decided to take the risk with Ghost Game right after. And considering all that’s happened, this is still a risk -- they’re changing up a lot (even if not as much as Appmon), and there’s a chance that the audience they’ve gathered is going to shoot down again because they’ve changed so much and they no longer have the Adventure branding as a “crutch” to use -- but they’re taking it anyway instead of going for something at least slightly more conventional.

Which means that, yes, there’s a possibility this will all explode in their face, because the Adventure branding is that huge of a card they’re about to lose. But at the very, very least, Ghost Game is coming in with the “momentum” and advantage that Savers, Xros Wars, and Appmon all didn’t have: a brand currently in the stage of recovery, all of the merchandising and collaborative pipelines the reboot and Kizuna opened up, a fairly good timeslot, and a premise somewhat more conventional than Xros Wars and Appmon (I’m saying this as someone who likes both: their marketing definitely did not do them many favors). There are still a lot of risks it’s playing here, and it’s possible it won’t be the end of more Adventure or reboot brand usage to try to keep that momentum up even as we go into Ghost Game, but it’s the first time in a long while we’ve had something to stand on.

Okay, so that’s out of the way. But the end result is that we now have 67 episodes of an Adventure “reboot” that actually doesn’t even resemble Adventure that much at all, which seems to have achieved its goal of flagging down attention so it can finally going back to trying new things. This series exists, we can’t do anything about the fact it exists, the period where its own financial performance actually mattered is coming to an end anyway, and we, as a fanbase of adults hanging out on the Internet keeping up with the franchise as a whole, have to figure out how each of us feels about this. So what of it?

About the contents of the reboot itself

One thing I feel hasn’t been brought up as a potential topic very much (or, at least, not as much as I feel like it probably should be) is that the reboot seems to be actively aimed at a younger target audience than the original Adventure. It hasn’t been stated outright, but we actually have quite a bit of evidence pointing towards this.

Let’s take a moment and discuss what it even means to have a different target audience. When you’re a kid, even one or two years’ difference is a big deal, and while things vary from kid to kid, generally speaking, it helps to have an idea of what your “overall goal” is when targeting a certain age group, since at some point you have to approximate the interests of some thousands of children. Traditionally, Digimon has been aimed at preteens (10-11 year olds); of course, many will testify to having seen the series at a younger age than that, but the "main” intended target demographic was in this arena. (Also, keep in mind that this is an average; a show aimed at 10-11 year olds could be said to be more broadly aimed at 7-13 year olds, whereas one aimed at 7-8 year olds would be more broadly aimed at something like 5-10 year olds.) Let’s talk a bit about what distinguishes children’s shows (especially Japanese kids’ shows) between this “preteen demographic” and things aimed at a much younger audience (which I’ll call “young child demographic”, something like the 7-8 year old arena):

With children who are sufficiently young, it’s much, much more difficult to ensure that a child of that age will be able to consistently watch TV at the same hour every week instead of being subject to more variable schedules, often set by their parents, meaning that it becomes much more difficult to have a series that relies on you having seen almost every episode to know what’s going on. For somewhat older kids, they’re more likely to be able to pick and pursue their own preferences (the usual “got up early every week for this show”). This means that shows targeted at a young child demographic will be more likely to be episodic, or at least not have a complex dramatic narrative that requires following the full story, whereas shows targeted at a preteen audience are more willing to have a dramatic narrative with higher complexity. This does not mean by any shake of the imagination that a narrative is incapable of having any kind of depth or nuance -- the reboot’s timeslot predecessor GeGeGe no Kitaro got glowing reviews all over the board for being an episodic story with tons of depth -- nor that characters can’t slowly develop over the course of the show. But it does raise the bar significantly, especially because it prevents you from making episodes that require you to know what happened in previous ones.

The thing is, the original Adventure and the older Digimon series in general didn’t have to worry about this, and, beyond the fact that their narratives very obviously were not episodic, we actually have concrete evidence of the disparity: Digimon has often been said to be a franchise for “the kids who graduated from (outgrew) a certain other monster series”. Obviously, they’re referring to Pokémon -- which does have the much younger target demographic. That’s why its anime is significantly more episodic and less overall plot-oriented, and Digimon wasn’t entirely meant to be a direct competitor to it; rather, it was hoping to pick up the preteens who’d enjoyed Pokémon at a younger age but were now looking for something more catered to them. This is also why, when Yo-kai Watch came into the game in 2014, that was considered such a huge direct competitor to Pokémon, because it was aiming for that exact same demographic, complete with episodic anime. When Yo-kai Watch moved to its Shadowside branch in 2017, it was specifically because they had concerns about losing audience and wanted to appeal to the kids who had been watching the original series, but since they were preteens now, they adopted a more dramatic and emotionally complex narrative that would appeal to that audience instead. So you can actually see the shift in attempted target demographic in real time.

Adventure through Frontier were aimed at 10-11 year olds, and here’s the interesting part: those series had the protagonists hover around the age of said target audience. We actually have it on record that Frontier had a direct attempt to keep most of the kids as fifth-graders for the sake of appealing to the audience, and so that it would be relatable to them. You can also see this policy of “matching the target audience’s age” in other series at the time; Digimon’s sister series Ojamajo Doremi (also produced by Seki) centered around eight-year-olds. Nor was Seki the only one to do this; stepping outside Toei for a bit, Medabots/Medarot had its protagonist Ikki be ten years old, much like Digimon protagonists, and the narrative was similarly dramatic. The thing is, that’s not how it usually works, and that’s especially not really been how it’s worked for the majority of kids’ series since the mid-2000s. In general, and especially now, it’s usually common to have the protagonists of children’s media be slightly older than the target age group. This has a lot of reasons behind it -- partially because kids are looking to have slightly older characters as a model for what to follow in their immediate future, and partially because “the things you want to teach the kids” are often more realistically reflected if the kids on screen have the right level of independence and capacity for emotional contemplation. Case in point: while everyone agrees the Adventure through Frontier characters are quite relatable, it’s a common criticism that the level of emotional insight sometimes pushes the boundary of what’s actually believable for 10-11 year olds...

...which is presumably why, with the exception of this reboot, every Digimon TV series since, as of this writing, started shifting to middle school students. That doesn’t mean they’re aiming the series at middle school kids now, especially because real-life 13-15 year olds are usually at the stage where they pretend they’ve outgrown kids’ shows (after all, that’s why there’s a whole term for “middle school second year syndrome”), but more that the narrative that they want to tell is best reflected by kids of that age, especially when we’re talking characters meant to represent children from the real world and not near-immortal youkai like Kitaro. In fact, the Appmon staff outright said that Haru was placed in middle school because the story needed that level of independence and emotional sensitivity, which is interesting to consider in light of the fact that Appmon’s emotional drama is basically on par with that of Adventure through Frontier’s. So in other words, the kind of high-level drama endemic to Adventure through Frontier is would actually normally be more on par with what you’d expect for kids of Haru’s age.

But at this point, the franchise is at a point of desperation, and you can see that, as I said earlier, Appmon was blatantly trying to be one of those “have its cake and eat it too” series by having possibly one of the franchise’s most dramatic storylines while also having some of the most unsubtle catchphrases and bright colors it has to offer. Moreover, one thing you might notice if you look closely at Appmon: most of its episodes are self-contained. Only a very small handful of episodes are actively dependent on understanding what happened in prior episodes to understand the conflict going on in the current one -- it’s just very cleverly structured in a way you don’t really notice this as easily. So as you can see, the more desperate the franchise has gotten to get its kids’ audience back, the more it has to be able to grab the younger demographic and not lock them out as much as possible -- which means that it has to do things that the original series didn’t have to worry about at all.

Having seen the reboot myself, I can say that it checks off a lot of what you might expect if you tried to repurpose something based on Adventure (and only vaguely based on it, really) into a more episodic story that doesn’t require you to follow the whole thing, and that it has to break down its story into easy-to-follow bits. In fact, there were times where I actually felt like it gave me the vibes of an educational show that would usually be expected for this demographic, such as repeated use of slogans or fun catchphrases for young kids to join in on. That alone means that even if the “base premise” is similar to the original Adventure, this already necessitates a lot of things that have to be very different, because Adventure really cannot be called episodic no matter how you slice it.

Not only that, even though the target audience consideration has yet to be outright stated, we also have interviews on hand that made it very clear, from the very beginning, what their goals with the reboot were: they wanted the kids to be able to enjoy a story of otherworldly exploration during the pandemic, they wanted cool action sequences, and they wanted to get the adults curious about what might be different from the original. Note that last part: they actively wanted this series to be different from the original, because the differences would engage parents in spotting the differences, and the third episode practically even goes out of its way to lay that message down by taking the kids to a familiar summer camp, only to have it pass without incident and go “ha, you thought, but nope!” Moreover -- this is the key part -- “surprising” people who were coming from the original series was a deliberate goal they had from the very beginning. They’ve stated this outright -- they knew older fans were watching this! They were not remotely shy about stating that they wanted to surprise returning viewers with unexpected things! They even implied that they wanted it to be a fun experience for older watchers to see what was different and what wasn’t -- basically, it’s a new show for their kids who never saw the original Adventure, while the parents are entertained by a very different take on something that seems ostensibly familiar.

On top of that, the head writer directly cited V-Tamer as an influence -- and if you know anything about V-Tamer, it’s really not that much of a character narrative compared to what we usually know of Digimon anime, and is mostly known for its battle tactics and action sequences (but in manga form). In other words, we have a Digimon anime series that, from day one, was deliberately made to have a writing philosophy and goal that was absolutely not intended to be like Adventure -- or any Digimon TV anime up to this point -- in any way. And that’s a huge shock for us as veterans, who have developed our tastes and expectations based on up to seven series of Digimon that were absolutely not like this at all. But for all it's worth, the circumstances surrounding its production and intent don't seem to quite line up with what the most common accusations against it are:

That it’s a rehash of Adventure: It really isn’t. It’s also blatantly apparent it has no intention of being so. The points that are in common: the character names and rough character designs, some very minimal profile details for said characters, Devimon having any particular foil position to Angemon, the use of Crests to represent personal growth, the premise of being in the Digital World and...that’s it! Once those points are aside, it’s really hard to say that the series resembles Adventure any more than Frontier or Xros Wars resembles Adventure (which are also “trapped in another world” narratives) -- actually, there are times the series resembles those two more than the original Adventure, which many have been quick to point out. The majority of things you can make any kind of comparison to basically drop off by the end of the first quarter or so, and trying to force a correlation is basically just that: you’d have to try forcing the comparison. The plot, writing style, and even the lineup of enemies shown just go in a completely different direction after that. So in the end, the base similarities can be said to be a marketing thing; if I want to criticize this series, I don’t think “lack of creativity” would actually be something I would criticize it for. (Of course, you’re still welcome to not be a huge fan of how they’re still guilty of using Adventure’s name value to market something that is not actually Adventure. We’re all gonna have mixed feelings on that one.)

That they don’t understand or remember Adventure’s appeal: Unlikely. All of the main staff has worked on character-based narratives before, which have been very well-praised while we’re at it. The producer, Sakurada Hiroyuki, was an assistant producer on the original series, and I would like to believe he probably remembers at least a thing or two about what they were doing with the original series...but, also, he’s the producer of Xros Wars, which definitely had its own individuality and style, and, moreover, was more of a character narrative that people generally tend to expect from Digimon anime. (Still a bit unconventional, and it has its own questions of personal taste, but a lot of people have also pointed out that this reboot has a lot in common with Xros Wars in terms of its writing tone and its emphasis on developing Digital World resident Digimon moreso than the human characters.) All signs point to the idea they could make a character narrative like Adventure if they really wanted to. It’s just, they don’t want to do that with this reboot, so they didn’t.

That they misinterpreted or misremembered the Adventure characters: There’s been accusations of said characters being written in a way that implies misinterpretation or lack of understanding of the original characters, but the thing is, while I definitely agree they have nowhere near the depth of the original ones, there are points that seem to be deliberate changes. (At some points, they’re actually opposites of the original, and certain things that operate as some very obscure references -- for instance, Sora complaining about having to sit in seiza -- seem to also be deliberate statements of going in a different direction.) The lack of human character depth or backstory doesn’t seem to be out of negligence, but rather that this story doesn’t want to be a character narrative to begin with -- after all, we’re used to seven series of Digimon that are, but there are many, many kids’ anime, or even stories in general, where the story is more about plot or action than it is completely unpacking all of its characters’ heads. In this case, this reboot does seem to have characters that are taking cues from or are “inspired by” the original, but, after all, it’s an alternate universe and has no obligation to adhere to the original characters’ backgrounds, so it stands to reason that it’d take liberties whenever it wanted. (Again, the head writer outright stated that he based the reboot’s Taichi more on V-Tamer Taichi than the original Adventure anime Taichi. He knows there’s a difference!) Even more intriguingly, the series actually avoids certain things that are common misconceptions or pigeonholes that would normally be done by the mainstream -- for instance, the Crest of Light (infamously one of the more abstract ones in the narrative) is fully consistent with Adventure’s definition of it as “the power of life”, and, if I dare say so myself, Koushirou’s characterization (emphasizing his relationship with “knowledge” and his natural shyness) arguably resembles the original far more than most common fan reductions of his character that overemphasize his computer skills over his personal aptitude. In other words, I think the staff does know what happened in the original Adventure -- they just actively don’t want to do what Adventure did, even if it’s ostensibly a reboot.

That it’s soulless or that there’s no passion in its creation: Well, this is subjective, and in the end I’m not a member of the staff to tell you anything for sure, but there are definitely a lot of things in this anime that don’t seem like they’d be the byproduct of uninspired creation or lack of passion. It’s just that those things are all not the kinds of things that we, as Digimon veterans, have come to develop a taste for and appreciate in Digimon anime. That is to say, there is an incredible amount of thought and detail put into representing Digimon null canon (i.e. representing special attacks and mechanics), the action sequences are shockingly well-animated in ways that put most prior Digimon anime to shame, and the series has practically been making an obvious attempt to show off as many Digimon (creatures) that haven’t traditionally gotten good franchise representation as they can. Or sometimes really obscure “meta fanservice” references that only make sense to the really, really, really, really hardcore longtime Digimon fan (for instance, having an episode centered around Takeru and Opossummon, because Takeru’s voice actress Han Megumi voiced Airu in Xros Wars). If you follow any of the animators on Twitter, they seem to be really actively proud of their work on it, and franchise creators Volcano Ota and Watanabe Kenji seem to be enjoying themselves every week...so basically, we definitely have creators passionate about having fun with this, it’s just that all of it is being channeled here, not the character writing.

So in the end, you can basically see that this series is basically the epitome of desperately pulling out all of the stops to make sure this series lands with the actual target demographic of children, dammit, and gets them into appreciating how cool these fighting monsters are and how cool it would be if they stuck with them even into a series that’s not Adventure. The Adventure branding and names to lure in the parents, the straightforward and easy-to-understand action-oriented narrative so that kids will think everything is awesome and that they’ll like it even when the story changes, and the merchandise and collab events booked everywhere so that they can all be reused for the next series too...because, remember, they failed with that during Savers, Xros Wars, and Appmon (I mean, goodness, you kind of have to admire their persistence, because a ton of other kids’ franchises failing this many times would have given up by now), so it’s a bit unsurprising that they went all the way to get the kids’ attention at the expense of a lot of things that would attract veterans, especially since the veterans already have a well-developed adults’ pipeline to cater to them. This does also mean that this series is more likely to come off as a 67-episode toy commercial than any previous Digimon series, but it’s not even really the toys as much as they’re trying to sell the entire franchise and the actual monsters in the hopes that they’ll stick with it even when the narrative changes.

Nevertheless, here we are. The series is over. Ghost Game -- which, as of this writing, is looking to be much more of a conventional Digimon narrative, complete with older cast, obviously more dramatic atmosphere, and pretty much everything surrounding its PR -- is on its way, presumably thanks to the success of this endeavor. It’s hard to gauge it; we have it on record that they also intend it to be episodic, but remember that this doesn’t necessarily prevent it from having an overall dramatic plot or nuanced drama (especially since the abovementioned Appmon and Kitaro were perfectly capable of pulling off this balance). Nevertheless, it seems to be a lot more of the conventional kind of Digimon narrative we usually expect, so, as for us, adult long-time fans of the Digimon franchise (many of whom don’t have kids anyway), what exactly should we make of this? Well, as far as “supporting the franchise” goes, you’ll get much more progress supporting Ghost Game than the reboot; I highly doubt view counts and merch sales relative to an already-finished series will do nearly as much for the franchise’s health as much as the currently airing series, and, besides, it’d probably do us all a favor to support the endeavor that’s actually new and fresh. So when it comes to a “past” series like this, it’s all just going to come down to a question of personal preference and taste: is this a series you, personally, want to watch, and would you find it entertaining?

For some of you, it’s possible that it just won’t be your cup of tea at all -- and since, like I said, the majority of us here have based our expectations and preferences on up to seven series of Digimon that were not like this, that’s also perfectly fine, and in that case I don’t actually recommend you watch this. Of course, I’ve never thought that it was ever fair to expect a Digimon fan to have seen all of the series released to date; the more series we get, the more inhumane of a demand that’ll become, and I think this franchise becoming successful enough to have so many series that most people won’t have seen it all is a good thing. (It’s actually kind of alarming that the percentage of people who have seen it all is so high, because it means the franchise has failed to get much of an audience beyond comparatively hardcore people who committed to it all the way.) But I think, especially in this case, with a series for which adult fans like us were probably lowest on the priority list due to the sheer amount of desperation going on here, it’s fine to skip it, and if you’re someone who lives by a need for character depth or emotionally riveting narrative, the fact this series is (very unabashedly and unashamedly) mostly comprised of episodic stories and action sequences means you won’t have missed much and probably won’t feel too left out of any conversations going forward. That’s before we even get into the part where it’s still completely understandable to potentially have mixed feelings or resentment about the overuse of the Adventure brand for something like this, especially if Adventure is a particularly important series to you.

But for some of you out there, it might still be something you can enjoy on its own merits. I’ve seen people who were disappointed by the limited degree of Digimon action sequences in the past or the fact that the series has gotten overly fixated on humans, and had an absolute ball with the reboot because it finally got to represent parts of the franchise they felt hadn’t been shown off as well. “Fun” is a perfectly valid reason to enjoy something. It’s also perfectly possible to be someone who can enjoy character narratives like the prior Digimon series but also enjoy something that’s more for being outlandish and fun and has cool Digital World concepts and visuals -- and, like I said, it does not let up on that latter aspect at all, so there’s actually potential for a huge feast in that regard. I think as long as you don’t expect it to be a character narrative like Adventure -- which will only set you up for disappointment, because it’s not (and made very clear since even the earliest episodes and interviews that it had no intention of being one) -- it’s very possible to enjoy it for what it is, and for what it does uniquely.

#digimon #digimon adventure:#digimon adventure reboot #digimon adventure 2020 #digimon adventure psi #shihameta

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edettethegreat · 3 years

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Review of Romeo X Juliet (the anime adaption of Romeo and Juliet, VERY loosely based off of the original play)

Well I think it’s gonna be kinda long, so I’m gonna put a cut right here.

OK.

What it got right/ what was in there that was in the actual play:

Romeo and Juliet are from two opposing families (Montague and Capulet). They fall in love with each other. There are some other characters who also exist.

What was in there that was NOT in the actual play:

Literally everything and anything else. This is not an exaggeration in the least bit. Juliet grows wings at some point. And maybe turns into an actual tree.

So. What’s Romeo X Juliet about?

The basic Premise:

Montague (not the whole family- just Romeo’s father) is the main antagonist. He kills out the entire Capulet family when Juliet is a child, but somehow Juliet is rescued. Juliet spends the next like 13-14 year of her life pretending to be a boy by the name of Odin to hide from Montague, and also does vigilante work, because life isn’t so good under Montague’s rule. Oh yeah, Montague’s like. The king or something.

There are also characters from other Shakespeare plays there. And Shakespeare himself is a character.

The Characters:

Characters who aren’t from Romeo and Juliet (but are from other Shakespeare plays):

Shakespeare himself- he’s literally just Shakespeare himself. Just chilling, watching the whole plot go down.

Emilia- an actress in Shakespeare’s acting troupe

Regan- a servant girl working for Shakespeare’s mother’S family.

Cordelia- I think she’s like. A servant to the Capulet family? Who got away with Juliet when Montague killed them off? Anyway she’s Plot relevant. She marries Benvolio.

Ophelia- oh boy. Where do I even start. OK you know what? I’ll get to this when I get up to Escalus. Just. Scroll to where I talk about Escalus.

Petruchio- he’s pretty irrelevant- he only exists for one episode, and then he dies a tragic death

Hermione- the girl Romeo’s engaged to.

Characters that are actually from Romeo and Juliet:

(In the order of easiest to explain to hardest to explain)

Juliet- Ok. She’s the main character. She does vigilante work until she can’t anymore.

Romeo- literally just Romeo. Exactly what you’d expect from Romeo. He doesn’t do anything mind blowing. I mean, he does try to kill Montague, but everyone tries to kill Montague because he’s basically a dictator.

Lady Montague- I think she went off to become a nun or something, because she didn’t like that her husband was basically a dictator who goes around murdering people. She’s nice. I liked her.

Benvolio- not the brightest guy. Really. He and his family gets exiled because his father disagreed with something Montague said. Ends up marrying Cordelia.

Mercutio- one of the antagonists, but literally the worst one. He decides to betray Romeo and join Team Antagonists because I think he wanted power or something? It wasn’t entirely clear. He then betrays his father to Montague, and Montague kills his father. Then Montague tells him that he’s totally better than Romeo and he could totally replace him as Montague’s son. So you’re probably thinking “hey that sounds a lot like that one part of Edmund’s arc”- BUT IT’S NOT- Mercutio is about 0% dedicated to any of this and is a huge coward. Then he tries to kill Romeo. That doesn’t work out. Then he kills Montague and goes mad. I don’t know why he does any of this. I don’t think he himself knows why he does any of this. Also he’s *really* annoying. (Literally just go watch it- you’ll see- he’s *so* annoying.)

Montague- OK SO. This fellow here has actually a tragic backstory that motivates his evilness. Listen to this wild ride of of a story: So. Capulet (not Juliet’s father- her grandfather or great grandfather or someone else related but not her father) had a affair with some lower class lady, and MONTAGUE WAS THE RESULT. YES. THAT’S RIGHT. I HAVE ANOTHER TRAGIC SAD LITERAL AND FIGURATIVE BASTARD TO ADD TO MY COLLECTION. Anyway. Montague just wanted to kill out the whole Capulet family as revenge. Sounds fair enough. So he gets adopted or something by the Montague family, kills out the people ahead of his until he’s the heir (I think?), and then goes on a killing spree with the Capulet family. Then he becomes. Like. An evil dictator. That lowers his coolness by a large percentage. He was pretty neat before, but I’m not so pro-evil dictators.

Tybalt- HOLD ON. IF YOU THOUGHT MONTAGUE’S STORY WAS COMPLETELY UNNECESSARY BUT GREAT NONETHELESS, THEN BEHOLD THE STORY HERE. Ok so. He’s introduced when he suddenly appears out of nowhere being super mysterious. Juliet was doing some vigilante work, and it looked like she was about to get caught, and he swoops in and saves the day. And Juliet’s all like “who on earth are you?” And he basically says “the name’s Tybalt- I’m loyal to the Capulet family- that’s all you gotta know”. (He might also tell her that he’s her cousin- idk). Anyway. He spends most of the time being mysterious and kinda emo, and hating Montague. Until his tragic backstory is revealed. BASICALLY. You know how I mentioned Montague was climbing the rankings in the Montague family? So at that time, the Montagues and Capulets weren’t really enemies or anything. So they hung out. And while climbing the ranks, he ended up courting a Capulet- Juliet’s mom’s sister. THAT’S RIGHT. TYBALT IS THE SON OF MONTAGUE AND A CAPULET. ANOTHER BOTH LITERAL AND FIGURATIVE BASTARD. I HAD NO IDEA THERE WOULD BE ONE, LET ALONE TWO. YOU ALL KNOW THAT’S MY FAVORITE TYPE OF CHARACTER.

Me, when the Montague and Tybalt reveals happened:

And onto the absolute craziest change made to any character ever-

Escalus- He’s. He’s a tree. A physical tree. I’m not even kidding. I wish I was. He’s a physical magical tree, that magically sustains the world. Ophelia (remeber I said I’ll explain her when I explain Escalus?) is the magical guardian of this magical tree. The tree is sustained by the women of the Capulet family occasionally sacrificing themselves to merge with the tree or something? Towards the end of the show the world starts literally collapsing around everyone, and Ophelia is like “hey Juliet the only way to save the world is for you to sacrifice yourself and come merge with the tree. If not the everyone will literally die.”

And Juliet’s like “yeah sounds fair”. But Romeo’s like “NO! I love you! You will not merge with a tree!”

And Ophelia’s like “um. Literally everyone will die if she doesn’t.” And Romeo’s like “But at least we’ll die together!!”. So Ophelia and Romeo fight each other and they both kill each other. Then Juliet’s like “welp since romeo’s already dead, i may as well die too.” And (I think??) merges with the tree? Also she grows wings. Anyway. That’s that. That’s the show. Thank you for coming to my ted talk.

OTHER THINGS- Mainly about Tybalt because I love him (more specifically- I love emo vigilante Tybalt, but the play version of angry rich boy Tybalt)

-When Romeo finds out that Tybalt is kinda his brother, he’s like “oh cool! You’re my brother now!” And Tybalt is like “huh. Yeah, I guess you’re right”- and from there onward they are 100% committed to being brothers.

-There’s this one scene where Tybalt, Romeo, and Juliet all simultaneously decide “yup Im gonna go kill Motague. I have the biggest right to kill him. He’s for me to kill”. So Tybalt gets there first and is like “PLOT TWIST I’M YOUR SON!” And draws his sword. Then Romeo enters and is like “YOUR REIGN OF TYRANNY IS OVER!” And draws his sword. And then Juliet comes in and is like “I AM JULIET OF THE HOUSE OF CAPULET!”. And then Juliet decides not to kill him, because Mercy (TM). And then Mercutio comes in and stabs him, because (here’s a bit of the plot I forgot to mention) Montague sent him to hold off the rebellion (The Capulet’s team+ most of the citizens), and Mercutio epically failed. So he was like “the citizens will kill me if I go to them. And Montague will kill me if I go to him. Welp. I guess I have to kill him.” Then Mercutio goes mad. Because why not.

-Benvolio and Mercutio have literally nothing to do with each other. I don’t think they ever even speak. What

-everyone rides around on these dragons with wings called Dragon Steeds.

-Also instead of it taking place in Verona, it takes place in Neo-Verona. A floating city miles above ground.

-I think that’s it

#romeo and juliet #Romeo X Juliet #shakespeare #Anyone who isn’t familiar with my regular content is gonna be very confused with my reaction to Montague and Tybalt #So to the random dude scrolling through the Romeo and Juliet tag:#this whole account is just me talking about Benedetto from tcomc and Edmund from King Lear #that’s the context

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omoi-no-hoka · 4 years

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Hello! I'm sorry if this has been asked before, but how do you become proficient at handling conversations in Japanese/handling grammar very well? I read your post on the JLPT, and it addressed issues I have been tip toe-ing around--indeed, passive actions such as listening or reading are easier than the active ones. How did you go about that? Did you write a bunch of sentences daily? Did you have a conversation partner? What would you rec. to someone who lives outside Japan? Thank you!

This is an excellent question, and one that I get asked a lot irl by Japanese people in particular. Let’s talk about gaining fluency and the ways we can go about it!

How to Gain Fluency in Japanese (and Other Languages)

Speaking Fluency versus Accuracy

Language proficiency is divided into two separate categories:

Fluency: Although there are no widely agreed-upon definitions or measures of language fluency, someone is typically said to be fluent if their use of the language appears fluid, or natural, coherent, and easy as opposed to slow, halting use. In other words, fluency is often described as the ability to produce language on demand and be understood.

Accuracy: Correctness of language use, especially grammatical correctness and word choice.

By the above definitions, a “fluent” speaker may make grammatical mistakes, but they can speak without having to stop and think too much about conjugations, word choice, etc.

An “accurate” speaker can speak with nearly zero grammatical/word choice mistakes. However, the speed of their utterances isn’t generally taken into account, so it could take an “accurate” person twice as long to articulate the same idea as a “fluent” person.

Ideally, you need to strike a good balance between these two qualities when speaking. I have a boss, God bless him, who is 100% fluency and 0% accuracy and…man is it hard to understand what he’s saying sometimes, but he can generally get his point across just barely. I have another coworker who is 100% accuracy and takes about 3 minutes to form a sentence because he wants it to be perfect.

How to Increase Speaking/Writing Accuracy

First, let’s talk about the easiest thing to improve, which is accuracy. It’s also (in my opinion) the least fun thing to improve, because it means grammar books and vocabulary memorization.

You can only use a language accurately if you know what is correct and what is incorrect, and you can only learn that by studying grammar and vocabulary (or if you’re a native speaker and picked it up innately, you lucky bastard).

So here’s some things you can do to increase your accuracy:

For example, if you’re having a hard time using the passive, you need to review that part of your textbook and find some exercises to drill it into your head.

Say the correct thing aloud. Lots. Sometimes I just walk around my apartment and narrate everything I see/do like a crazy person, but that’s good practice.

Write example sentences using the grammar you’re struggling with and say them aloud too.

There’s a bunch of cool apps that connect you with native speakers that can help correct you too! I used to use HelloTalk, I think.

If you’re a creative soul, when I was studying for the JLPT, I took 1 grammar point and 5 vocabulary words from my JLPT study books and used them to write a 2-page short story about the adventures of ネギ, a stray black cat that smelled like green onions because she napped in an onion field. Then I had a Japanese friend check it over for me and mark mistakes. I hand-wrote them to improve my abysmal handwriting at the same time. It was really fun! I sometimes think about doing it again just for funsies.

When someone corrects you, don’t feel like your entire life is over and you’re a failure and you’ll never get it right haha. I’ve seen people fall into that hopeless mindset, and that’s just nonsense. It’s a good opportunity for learning and nothing more! Say the correct thing you’ve just been taught out loud, then write it down if you can. And, if possible, find a chance to use it in conversation asap.

How to Increase Speaking/Writing Fluency

Now this is the hard one. Especially for those learners who do not have native speakers nearby.

I’m going to be dead honest with you. I started formally studying Japanese at uni, and I had a Japanese roommate/best friend since year one. I had a 4.0 GPA in my Japanese classes (and only my Japanese classes lol) because I was and still am a MEGA NERD about it.

...But it wasn’t until I studied abroad in Japan my 4th year of uni that I gained fluency.

There are a lot of things that can hold us back from fluency. An interesting thing I’ve noted is that Foreign Language is perhaps the only subject in which a student’s personality can directly affect their progress. To gain fluency, you have to go forth and speak, but if you are naturally a shy person, that is going to hinder you. If you are the kind of person who takes mistakes/failures poorly, you will be less likely to take risks and try to say harder sentences. In contrast, you can get full marks in math regardless of the above personality traits.

I’m not saying that you have to be an outgoing explosion of a human being in order to gain fluency. But what I am saying is that you have to be willing to seek out conversations, and you have to be willing to take chances. Get out of your comfort zone. Use that new word you picked up the other day. Try to explain something that is difficult for you.

My problem was that, while I lived with a native speaker who would have happily taught me anything I asked, her English proficiency was much higher than my Japanese proficiency. And when I struggled to say something in Japanese, I’d fall back onto English. And when she told me something I didn’t understand in Japanese, she’d repeat it in English instead of Japanese, because that was easier for us both. The same thing happened when I was in Japanese class as well. I always had the assurance that I could fall back on English.

But when I elected to study abroad in Japan for 3 months, I knew that this was my big chance. So on the host family form in the “other requests” area, I wrote that I specifically wanted a host family that could not speak English. I was setting fire to my crutches, and I was scared but excited to see them burn.

By the end of my three months in Japan, I had gone from “Chotto matte kudasai” and needing a minute to form my reply, to “Okay, yeah I see that movie too and I liked the action scenes, but I didn’t care for the story little.” (I’ve underlined mistakes that I would have made in Japanese, to show you that I sacrificed some accuracy to obtain higher fluency.)

So, in short, the easiest and quickest way to increase your spoken fluency is to throw away all the crutches you can and use the language as much as possible. Every single day. Even if you’re just having an imaginary conversation with yourself! And like I said, there are a bunch of cool apps that connect you with Japanese people who want to learn English and you can do language exchanges with them. I had a lot of fun with those in the past.

As for increasing writing fluency...well. That’s a tough question with Japanese, because I can type Japanese at like 100 wpm, but my Japanese handwriting fluency is at a 10/100. I can read and type at the level of a native Japanese high school student, but I can only write the kanji that 7 year old can write. That’s no exaggeration.

The big reason for that dichotomy is that my work is paper-free. 100% of my work is done on screen, so about the only time I have to write out something is when I’m filling out a form, which includes my name (katakana), address, and maybe occupation.

If you want to increase your Japanese handwriting speed, just keep on writing. Write those little short stories about ネギ like I did, or find some writing prompts (I just started a side-blog with writing prompts yesterday btw) or keep a little diary. Make opportunities to write.

How to Have Nice Handwriting in Japanese

Okay, full disclaimer: I am the absolute LAST person qualified to talk about this, because I have awful handwriting in Japanese.

Unless you have prior experience with a different language that uses kanji, or you lack the keen eye of an artist, you will likely struggle to develop neat handwriting.

Personally, I really like using this app called Japanese Kanji Sensei. It’s on Android (not sure about iOS), and if you pay just a few bucks you can make your own kanji sets and stuff. Anyways, it will show you how to write the characters prettily. It gives you a good frame of reference for what nice, pencil/pen-written characters (versus calligraphy characters). It has hiragana and katakana on it too!

I get a stylus and write out the characters on this app for the muscle memory, so my hands remember the sensation of writing a certain character. (The muscle memory is different if you only use your fingertip.) This muscle memory and repetition is how Japanese people learn how to internalize kanji as well. I really enjoy and recommend this app. I’m sure that there are others out there like it too.

Summary

TL;DR: Review your textbooks, take risks, use every resource available or make your own, and just have fun with it! 💗

#Anonymous #ask me anything #Asks are open #study japanese #learn japanese #japanese language #nihongo #japanese fluency #second language acquisition #jlpt #studyblr #langblr #japanese langblr #japanese resources #kanji #study kanji #learn kanji

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popculturebuffet · 4 years

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The Casagrandes Reviews: Operation Dad

In my first look at The Casagrandes, We meet Ronnie Anne and Bobby’s dad Arturo as Ronnie tries to get him to start working in the city to be closer to them.. and when a genuine honest appeal dosen’t work, shenanigans will have to do. Dad stuff under the cut.

This is one i’ve had in the works since my labor day catchup binge of shows, but kept getting pushed back either due to regular coverage or specifically timed things like the bi visalblity day review of “What Was Missing. And with Halloween next month, my time to cover this is running out a bit and I feel it’s a great place to start covering this show so, pitter patter. The Casagrandes didn’t really hook me in at first: It did have two things going for it: An intresting premise A blended family coming together, with our heroine and her big bro being fish out of water in a new family situation. Wheras with the Loud House Lincoln, and by extension most of his sisters, is used to how his house runs, knows the score and knows how to manuvre around it, Ronnie Anne was being dropped into a new situation, with people she KNEW, but only likely from seeing them breifly. It’s one thing to see your cousin once or twice a year, as I did with mine at that age, it’s another to live with them. It had a lot of potential. The other thing was Bobby Santiago, Ronnie Anne’s brother, and one of my faviorite characters across both shows, an endlessly nice guy who while suffering from a terminal case of dumbass, is utterly likeable, helped by his VA Carlos PenaVega, with the spinoff and i’ts build up only fleshing him out more by giving him his job at the Mercado, and showing he has serious buisness acumen in addition to his many other talents.

But what made me wary was the lead: Ronnie Anne didn’t get the best intro on the loud house. You know this, I know this. We all know this. No sense beating around the bush: She was a bully, who had a crush on lincoln and masked it by pummeling him. And this was seen as okay by the show which isn’t as suprising in hindsight as Chris Savino clearly has messed up views about women and harassment, and is thankfully no longer part of this. She did get slightly better once she actually showed up, getting genuine chemstiry with Lincoln and being shown underneath the bully exteriror was a pretty nice kid who shared his intress. Granted it wasn’t perfect as the show madei t clear he was terrified of her, but it did at least also make it clear he no longer had a reason to be, and while she’d prank her boyfriend, or assits his sister during her dark time once a year in doing it, and if your wondering if i’m ever going to watch or cover the april fools episodes .. yeah i’m just waiting you know.. for april fools.

My point is it was kinda mixed and their solution was to soften her up a bit but also act like she and LIncoln weren’t intrested in each other all of a sudden instead of you know, dealing with her past actions and having her make up for them. It was sloppy is what i’m saying and the character while not bad wasn’t in the best positoin to tkae the reigns of her own show. They did add some intresting depth with the move though, showing that Ronnie Anne and Bobby were often on their own, and that Maria moved them to the casagrande household simply because she felt her daughter would be happier NOT having to be the strong one or take care of herself all the time and actually have someone look out for her instead. It was a good emotional reason for hte move and both casagrandes showed up ocasoinally, mostly Bobbi whose still with Lori to this day as seen in the season 5 premiere. It was an okay foundatoin but it would depend on what they did with her character.. and i’m glad to say.. they made it work. The show still has rough edges, mostly having the same problem ducktales and the loud house itself had during season 1 of juggling such a large cast: Most of them outside of Ronnie Anen and Bobby have only gotten 1 episode, and even then CJ feels underutlized despite being amazing, while the adults outside the grandparents feel underutlized. Buuut the show is funny, intresting, has good pacing and unlike the loud house, having already learned that lesson, while Ronnie Anne does get more episodes than the rest of the family, it does feel more like an ensemble show and the focus on her feels less like the show not knowing what it has and more like easing the viewers into the rest of the cast by using her as a viewpoint. Ronnie herself is better, the bully aspects gone. She can still take care of herself, and is still fairly indpentent and clever, but she’s got a sharp sense of humor and a clear love of her family and the fish out of water aspect I hoped for, while not used a ton, still comes up in intresting ways. Overall i’d say the show is off to a good start.. and it has Melissa Joan Heart and Ken Jeong as a married couple and let’s Ken play a diffrent role for once: A dorky, kind dad instaed of any degree of lunatic. That being said given his character her’s last name is Chang, I can’t help but think this and community are in the same universe and that the Changs have just had to put up with whatever insane phase Senor Chang was going througha t the time every time he visted. I mean i’d love to hear Sid tell ronnie anne the time her uncle came over in a napoleon outfit and revaled he’d taken over his community college with the help of a bunch of children. But i’m getting off topic, I gots an episdoe to cover and out of the ones I watched this felt both like a great re-introduction into the cast and was easily one fo the best with a great emotional core and great jokes and LOTS to dig into. So i’ve jawjacked enough, pitter pater. Again!

It’s with this episode we properly meet Arturo Santiago, Ronnie Anne and Bobby’s father, Maria’s ex, and owner of one hell of a beard. Ronnie mentioned him back in friended aka the pilot because fuck that airing structure but not the time or place for that moving on.

We see he video chats his daughter once a day, though today she made hte mistake of doing so on a crowded subway while with her best friend and future wife Sid. NOW we can talk about Sid. Sid was introduced in Friended! over on the loud houd house as part of that mini arc I keep yelling about and will again and again. Sid is Ronnie Anne’s clyde: A best friend whose there as her sidekick, emotoinal support and resident goofus, being a bit of a weirdo and given i’m a giant ass weirdo, you can see why I like her/want to keep her safe from the nightmare that is at last half this fandom. Plus she and ronnie anne are adorable together and have more chemstiry than she and lincoln did.. thoguh the two do have OT3 energy together in his one episode, but that’s for another time.

Anyways as Sid helps her rangle wifi by them by doing the mecha shiva we soon find out Arturo is coming home! Home lord he’s been off in Peru for too longggg. Point is Ronnie Anne is excited, Bobby is excited, everyone’s excited except for Hector who hates him.. and honestly I can see why the contrast. For everyone else, Arturo is a charming, friendly guy who genuinely loves his kids and only is away from them because he has a lot of important work to do and even with that is still an active part of their lives. Buuuut Hector likely sees it diffrently and is likely homing in more on the fact Arturo is barely there in person for his kids and left Maria to do all the raising them by herself, with her own demanding job. It’s not a black and white situation is what i’m saying and.. I genuinely love that. It’s a complex thing to deal with: A parent who isn’t there for his kids but it’s hard to say if he’s being selfish or not. He’s not david from roseanne doing this so he can feel good about not wanting to deal with being a father or the death of his brother, Arturo genuinely just wants to help those who need him, even if he has to sacrifice a lot to do it. Ronnie Anne naturally wants him to move here though and convince him during his visit, and her plan nicely shows off the duality of her charcter: She’s clever and can easily think things through, as his originzation has it’s home office in Great Lakes City so he could still help those in need, just more from the organizational end, as well as i’m assuming GLC’s own homeless and needy. But she also has an 11 year olds understading of complex issues and thus thinks the easiest way to convince him is to take him on a fun daddy daughter day that will make him love the city. Bobby is less optimistic about the plan though.. and that’s because he’s been through this with Arturo already. Granted his job for him was at weenier on a stick because it’s bobby, the boy is a peach of a human being but has the plkanning skills and common sense of a basset hound on qualudes. He just sugest she enjoy the time. And this says a lot about BOBBY too: He’s used to his dad being out of his life, he’s probably been gone for most of it and while he loves him, he’s had ot get used to the fact he’s probably never going to be regularly in his life and while he understands why his sister’s trying this he wants to spare her the pain he went through. It’s interactions like this that to me show the series at it’s best and what it could be: deeper character interactions that really let the characters and voice cast shine, that still mix well with the usual nonsense. Arturo arrives and everyone loves him.. and again it’s easy to see why: he’s kind, friendly and to the kids, he’s their cool uncle who lives in another country and as someone with one of those, It does feel neat. Hell he was my cool uncle when he just lived in chicago or seattle, but somehow he had to top those by moving to fricking ireland. So I get where they come from and really relate to it.. I mean I met mine in high school, my family tree is complicated, but still. So while everyone but Hector is happily remeetinmg their uncle Maria shows up. And it’s awkward, the two not knowing how to greet each other, but it’s very obvious Maria and Arturo are on good terms, it’s just hard when theres so much history there. Speaking of Maria let’s talk about her since this is one of her only scene’s this episode. Maria is one of my faviorites. She isn’t used a ton, but this is more excusable than it is with the Casagrande parents, as the whole point of Maria uprooting her kids to Great Lakes City was to give them company and someone to take care of them while Maria worked the long and varied hours of being a nurse. She’s a good parent, who just picked a rough career, and made the hard decision to uproot her kids, not for her sake, as it can’t be easy living with both your elderly parents, your sister and her husband not to mention 5 kids, a giant adorable pupper and an obnoxious parrot, but so they’d be happy.. which given Ronnie Anne went from having no friends and largely having to be the rock in the house, to having a sizeable friend group plus her cousins, as well as generally being happy while Bobby went from bouncing from job to job to running the family buisness and planning to expand it when he gets older. She’s a good gentle person who still makes time for her kids, and I wish we saw more of her with her spotlight episode, which was about Ronnie Anne trying to spend more time with her, being one of my faviorites so far. I also like the fact that for once in a cartoon a parent with a time sink of a career isn’t demonized for trying to put food on the table and rather than just quit or have a mean boss or the usual cliches, Maria just found a way her kids wouldn’t be alone. She’s awesome. Ronnie Anne first tries showing him how great the city is with home cooking and a warm bed, but the first while nice is something he still gets, and the latter in a nice touch is just.. too soft for him. Ronnie meant well, but understadably he’s just not used to it and makes a cot under the stars instead.. he’s not trying to be ungreatful, he’s just sued to it.

Anyways Ronnie indeed takes him on a montage, with some cab headbonks beacause why use an uber that’s cheeper and safer huh? Anyways our father and daughter do have a montage, and hector gets beaten up by a luchadore because this promotion apparently dosen’t get not to attack the crowd. They really need to stop booking that guy.

Ending on our article image, which is really sweet and a real beautiful shot, Ronnie Anne finally gets to her Ronnie Plan. First Arturo cycles through two diffrent assumptions about what she’s asking him about. He first thinks she’s about to tell him about a special boy or girl in his life, his exact words. He backspaces to include that. She says no which.. I guess okay you have other things in mind but you can’t put off him meeting Sid forever. That aside I do think it’s a good indication Ronnie Anne might be bi, and both her parents just easily accepted it which is great. I could be reading too much into this, and I probably am, but I’ve thought I was before on nickeodeon and look how legend of korra ended.

The next is just hilarious as Arturo tries to let her down gently that he’s not getting back with maria which Ronnie Anne agrees with and was not remotely her point, but I do like as it shows their well and truly done, and it’s nice to see that sort of dynamic with a divorced couple in fiction where it’s not because of lingering sexual tension or anything, just that their apart but have kids to think about and presumibly the split was amicable if again still awkward. Finally Ronnie asks him.. but he gently refuses, since the people he helped need him as much as he wants to stay.. but part of what makes Arturo likeable, especially since he’s in the REALLY throny situation of not being in his kid’s lives in person despite having the opprountiy now, is that he genuinely tries to compromoise, saying he’ll try to up the calls to two a day, and he’ll visit more often. Ronnie Anne sadly and half heartdly says it’s fine and walks off. So Ronnie Anne vents to that girlfriend she apparently dosen’t have that he cares more about her patients than him and Sid sidgests that part of that is simple: He dosen’t feel she and bobby need him since, as I pointed out earlier, their doing better than ever. So Ronnie Anne intitates a second Ronnie Plan: to convince him she’s a troubled youth and get him to stay and reasssmbles her cousins to help. Before we move onto this plan that’s totally a good idea and not a borderline Zach Morris evil scheme, let’s talk about those cousins real quick. Quick fire: CJ is really great, a sweet kid and I wish they’d use him more and generally do nto get why they don’t, Carlota is fine but not all that defined at this point but Alexa PenaVega tries.. and why yes it is kinda weird Carlos PenaVega’s wife and the former star of spy kids is playing his sister. And Carl.. I don’t likes him. I just don’t. He did give me a really good episode, which we’ll be covering next month, but he’s just a little asshole with out the charm of fellow little asshole Louie Duck, who alsos cams people but actually gets consqeunces more often.

That quickfire done Carl does a forgery which depsite me being eh on him, clearly, is a funny bit, to make Ronnie Anne look like she’s failing, but that fails as you’d expect when he can help her with that from Peru. So it’s on to the actual plan: Which really boils down to this.

I mean.. that’s essentially the plan convince him she’s running with a dangerous crowd and is breaking bad, dressing up in punk clothes and making a scene at breakfast. She also gets a really neat new haircut, similar to luna’s but spiky which.. why isn’t this her normal hair? and why dosen’t she at least keep the cool leather jacket? I always get annoyed when a character’s temporary costume change is even better than their default design and htey fail to realize it but whatever. IT starts to work a little but clearly a breakfast tauntrum won’t be enough so Ronnie Anne enlists Sid.. who is frightend,d osen’t recognize her and dosen’t want to get shoved into a locker. .. who hurt you.. tell me.. I have a box to deliver. Just let me pop a quick H on there real quick.

Anyways, once Sid realizes “Oh that’s not a bully come to shove me in a locker that’s just my girlfriend in the middle of a zack morris grade elabroate manipulative scheme”, which happens once a week their fine, she comes up with one last plan: Have her friends, who are neat but need more filling out, dress up like punks bullying her friend sameer. This plan.. makes no sense. For one she was already a bully back home.. granted it was because she liked the kid, which no just no, but it’s heavily implied she did the same to the rest of the lincrew too. .which aside from Rusty isn’t a good look. I mean his face is punchable and he mocked hte idea of them being together despite next season hitting on Lincoln’s sisters, there’s a 1:1 chance he hit on her and she shoved him in a locker as is the natural response to anyone getting asked out by that goober. No matter how hard the show tries to pretend that didn’t happen it did. If her bullying kids didn’t get him to move home back in royal woods it won’t work now.

So they had behind the fish market for their plan, Arturo is directed there.. and sees through it. I mean she’s probably sent him pictures of her friends, he knows who they are and no amount of costumes is going to fix that. I mean you really only changed Nikki’s hair. Why not just have a dance fight. i’m legitly asking dance fights are rad and this reminds me of the venture bros episode where hank, to impress his date, has billy and white pretend to be a street gang to impress his date. Just do that for sid instead of trying to gaslight your dad into staying. But no while he pulls her into the car, Arturo knows this was a stunt and asks why. When Ronnie Anne tearfully reveals she just wanted him to stay.. he hugs his child.. and agrees. He realizes that if she’s willing to go to these lengths to get him to stay, she must REALLY miss her papa. So he plans to call the office to transfer. But then while helping her dad unpack, Ronnie Anne finds something and we get another emotional scene: Ronnie Anne finds the letters he got from the various kids he’s helped, and is moved to tears. Props to Izabella Alvarez for her performance here as she reads the letter and realizes just what her dad’s work does ,and why it means so much to him. He truly helps those who need it and she decides she can’t take that awy from it: Sure her dad won’t be around.. but other kids need her dad more. She has a big family, she misses her dad.. but she can live without her dad. They need a doctor.

So Arutro heads out with a tearful goodbye and Ronnie Anne leaves him a scrapbook of their time together. We then cut to the Santiago sibs playing cards, and being sad about their dad and all that.. when Arturo calls.. and then shows up in person. He took the Headquarters job after all, though a close friend of his we met earlier in the episode but I ddin’t mention will be taking over in Peru, and from earlier clearly wanted to get back out in the field, so it all works out. And it’s a nice character moment; Arturo realizes while his work is important, and as mentioned he does make sure a compient replacment will continue it.. his family can be too and it’s okay to think of himself and them for once. As I said he’ll still be able to help just in a diffrent way and there are probably needy kids who need him here too, if not in the same ways obviously as a doctors without borders type project. So eveyrone shares a group hug and even Hector bursts into tears. And Maria comes in wondering what she missed whiel Sergio asks who wants to tell her. oh sergio.. why didn’t you stay away when you ran away in a future episode. Final Thoughts: Not much more to say. It’s a well done episode with high emotinal stakes, great acting and some great jokes I didn’t get to, and while the plot of “Make absent parent stay by pretending things are bad’ isn’t new, it’s done well enough here. Overall just a really good episode that shows what this show can do and why it’s unique family setup makes for intresting stories a lot of shows can’t tell, and validates this spinoffs existnace. The episode also really fleshes out Ronnie Anne’s character, and givne Arutro’s been gone since the divorce if not longer, it’s resonable to supsect her earlier bullying might have been lashing out at her parents divorce. It’s just good stuff. Keep an eye peeeld to this blog for my regular loud house and ducktales coverage , and some more casagrandes this october. ANd until then, Go Team Venture!

#the casagrandes #ronnie anne santiago #arturo santiago #bobby santiago #maria santiago #sid chang #cj casagrande #carl casagrande #carlota casagrande #the loud house #reviews #animation

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yelenasdog · 4 years

Text

unknown desires (spencer reid x russell holmes) (i’m so sorry BFRHEKRB)

really all i have to say about this is what the fuck and why the fuck. I DESERVE NO RIGHTS. enjoy i guess??? if u found this while searching for some reid x reader there’s plenty of that on my account!!

i’m deleting this bye ok-

btw it’s set at the end of s9 ep18 and then ends probably around s13?? idk. also listen to billie eilish’s “i love you” to be extra sad bc this is lowkey kinda angsty and lowkey a mess but im throwing it at u ok bye!

🂦∙🂦∙🂦

“Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary”- Edgar Allan Poe’s The Raven

Spencer shouldn't have been so drawn the first time he saw Russell in person. He shouldn't have been drawn at all.

He was a victim, someone who the young doctor had stared at a photo of for days while planning his rescue.

Although he didn't feel the initial electricity, he was far too buried in the case to think about Russell's kind puppy dog eyes or plump, rosy lips. Yes, far too busy to even fathom thinking of the way his raven locks that Edgar Allan Poe himself would be jealous of complimented his ivory skin, even for an inkling of a moment. He couldn’t bear to do such a thing.

But then, there was after the case, that day at the hospital. There was loss, it was hard to see. But yet again, he saw it every day.

His brain was fuzzy, and he seemed to be more heavily affected by this case than any previous endeavors. He wasn’t sure as to why.

It had him lost in his own thoughts, swimming in a pool of unknown desires.

So lost in fact, so drowned in his daydream, that he was barely aware of the person that had been wheeled over in his general vicinity.

It was him. His pink pout (that was more of a smile) was busted, no doubt, and his porcelain skin had cuts littered among it, but god, it was him.

He should have been disgusted, scared even. The man had rabies! And this was doctor Reid we’re talking about, the biggest possible germaphobe. But he couldn’t bring himself, he was too infatuated. Not that he would admit to it, though.

And he apparently had heard about Spence and his displeasure with even slightly unsanitary situations, as he chose to greet (and simultaneously say goodbye) to the doctor with a simple wave and bashful smile.

Spencer returned it in the same manner. The interaction was quick, too quick. It also warmed his heart to a full extent.

Russell was whisked away by a nurse, looking back reluctantly at the three agents that had saved his life, specifically a certain brown haired doctor, wanting to encapsulate his stunning image in his mind.

Spencer stuck to a cycle. Save, move on, repeat. It was easiest to do so rather than deal with any tag along, unwanted, painful emotions.

Because that’s all love was.

Crude and abrupt pain. But despite this, he found himself asking Garcia for Russell's current home address. His own actions confused him, but nonetheless, he held his head high as he exited the batcave towards the light, clutching a paper with the info in his hands.

He knew he didn’t need it. But he refused to face the (impossible) possibility to forget this information, to forget Russell.

The paper was wrinkled and dampened from his gorilla grip by the time he had arrived. He flattened it out with shaky hands, grabbing a fresh piece of parchment.

“Hello, I'm Doctor Spencer Reid.”

No, no, too formal. He erased it.

“Greetings, I’m Spencer Reid.”

What was he, an alien? Even though many members of the team thought so, he decided against giving Russell Holmes that opportunity. And then it was gone in the wind with a few swipes from his pencil eraser.

“Hi! I’m Dr. Spencer Reid, I was one of the agents that assisted on your case. I hope this message finds you well. I’m just checking in to see how you’re healing.”

Spencer scoffed at himself out loud. “just checking in”, his ass. He continued writing and with very low expectations, he sent off the letter.

------

“I'll be just a minute, Mom!” Russell hollered through his home as he went to go check the mail. He walked down to the mailbox, limping ever so slightly, still in recovery. He flipped through the various envelopes, doing a double take when he saw a certain name.

Doctor Spencer Reid

Apartment 23A

Wilcox Road, Quantico, Virginia, 22134

He tore into the message immediately, a growing smile resting on his face as he read.

“Hi! I’m Doctor Spencer Reid, I was one of the agents who assisted on your case. I hope this message finds you well. I’m just checking in to see how you’re healing. How's your mother been since her surgery? I hope she is doing well, too. If you need anything don’t hesitate to write back or call the number at the bottom of the page. Yet again, I'm glad we could get you home, perhaps to your boyfriend/ girlfriend, or wife/husband.

Best regards, Spencer.”

He was off the walls with excitement. There was a newfound pep in his step as he made his way up the driveway, no doubt planning on writing back.

“Dr. Reid, I appreciate you checking in on me. I do not regret informing you that there is no boyfriend or girlfriend here, just my mother and I while we both recover...”

-----

Glee and bliss. Those were the two things that could no doubt be used to describe the relationship between Spencer Reid and Russell Holmes.

Although it was nothing too formal, exchanges of news about mothers or about how work was going was going on either side soon became much more deep, bringing the two closer than imaginable, even from 689 miles apart.

Never meeting again in person, the situation reminded him all too much of Maeve, but nonetheless, to him, Russell was worth it. So they talked, and talked, for years and years on end.

They both felt a warm fuzzy feeling in their chest, quite able to place the cause on one another.

Then one day, they stopped.

Spencer had gotten home from a long case, and was very much so looking forward to an uplifting note from his distanced lover. But to his surprise, there was nothing.

Although he found it odd, he blew it off, considering the possibility of getting lost in the post, running some stat to calm himself. Pulling out his cell, he dialed the number that he had saved of Russell's if for some reason the letters were to become inadequate. Voice mail. And voicemail again, and again, and again. Spencer tried for days and weeks, but to no avail, he was met with radio silence.

Until one day, if it was fateful or not is up to you.

It was sunny in August, and Spencer Reid was not a fan.

After sweating around all day (he wasn’t sure what it meant either), he made his way to his apartment. He stripped down to his slacks and undershirt, waltzing around his apartment with a water bottle in hand.

knock knock

He squinted his honey eyes, confusion flooding his body. He cautiously approached the door, keeping his revolver in his peripheral vision, compliments of his paranoia.

Another two knocks sounded, but before a third could ring out, he swung the door open.

He gasped, his jaw water bottle falling out of his hand and rolling into the hallway.

“Russ?”

“Hi, Spence.”

He wanted to hug him, he wanted to kiss him, God, he wanted to-

“I felt like I needed to tell you in person.”

His heart dropped to his feet as Russell's own shaky hand presented itself, in it, a white envelope, similar to the one that started their not-so extravagant rondevu.

“W-what is this, Russ?” he opened with nimble fingers, sliding it from its encasement.

Join soon to be Mr. and Mrs. Russell and Jane Holmes-

He didn’t read the rest, he didn’t need to, and couldn't. Tears made their way to both men’s eyes, threatening with such a fierce hostility to spill.

“I’m so sorry, Spence.”

This warranted no response from the doctor. He looked blankly behind Russ, his mind running a million miles a minute. With his head hung in a terrible shame, Russell turned to leave.

He was shocked when he was stopped by Spencer grabbing him by his blue and red plaid shirt, pulling him back.

“Wait.”

He turned, his hazel eyes just barely meeting Spencer's own of the same color.

“Do you love her?”

He pondered for a moment, before nodding slightly.

“Yes, I,” he paused. “Yes.”

Spencer bit his bottom lip briefly, before making a choice he knew he would regret.

He gripped him by the collar of his shirt, smashing their lips together for the first time and the last.

It should have been sweet, it should have been everything he hoped for and more. It should have been a reunion as glorious as they both could have imagined.

But instead, it was a mixture of salty tears, as their lips moulded together like they were made for each other. He pulled away, trying to maintain a strong facade.

“Good.”

And with that, he took one more look, before committing him to a memory, and nothing else.

He shut his door, sliding down against it and silently sobbing, pulling at his curls as tears racked his body. He heard smaller footsteps pad up the staircase, stopping next to where he left a dumbstruck and emotion ridden Russell.

“Hey, sweetheart, is your friend going to be able to make it?” She rubbed his shoulder lovingly, so incredibly oblivious and unaware of the previous happenings.

He put a remorseful hand on hers, watching how her engagement ring shimmered, even in the dim lighting.

He put on a false smile for his future wife he thinks he loves. “I think he’s a bit busy, he said he needs to review the date.” He spoke loudly, hoping Spencer could hear him through the thick door.

She frowned, nodding in what was her understanding of it all.

“Well, I hope he can make it, he must be important if you came all the way here to deliver this for him!”

He smiled genuinely, thinking of all the letters sent and hours spent.

“Yeah, more than he knows.”

It wasn't until after he heard their steps retrieve, and their car start up and go, that he picked up the card to finish reading it.

He ran his finger over the gold raised trim, the feeling giving him goosebumps. He read the front and flipped it over, seeing an all too familiar hand writing underneath the date that the supposed union was to be held.

I'm sorry, I love you.

🂦∙🂦∙🂦

literally what the fuck was that ffwbfbfbkfw what do i even tag this?? im so sorry. also this is my first character x character be nice

#spencer reid #dr spencer reid #cm #criminal minds fanfic #criminal minds fanfiction #spencer reid fanfiction #boy x boy fic

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yndigot · 3 years

Note

For the 'fanfic writer asks' all the questions ending in 0!

10. What is the line you’re proudest of from [Fanfic Name]? Eff. I tried to find a good fanfic line to share since it didn’t have to be from a specific fic, but I’ll be honest -- the way I write fanfic tends to be very stripped down and bare bones, so I don’t get a lot of pretty lines out of fic, at least not lately, and I’m not sure how good or funny any of the lines tend to be when they’re out of context. (I think my original work tends to have a higher rate of return on nice lines that stand up out of context, but I also haven’t done much of that lately.)

Have a small exchange from an Avengers accidental baby acquisition fic that I thought was funny. Hopefully it’s amusing out of context. Probably funnier if you’ve been around little babies with a Sophie.

"You need Sophie," Scott said.

"Is she a nanny?" Tony said. He had to raise his voice to be heard over James's whine, but the raised voice only upset James more. "Because whatever she's making now, if she can get him to stop crying, I'll double it."

"Sophie's a giraffe," Scott said.

Rhodey coughed up a bit of his coffee. "Come again?"

20. What feedback makes you the happiest to hear? I really like when something I wrote makes someone want to have a conversation about character or motivation. Don’t get me wrong -- I’ve got reviews that were just happy emojis and “I like this,” and even lovelier -- ones that pointed out lines they enjoyed etc. But the feedback I always really want is someone like ... spilling their headcanons that I made them think of. Or asking about the motivations of a character and why I wrote them that way. Or anything that starts a longer interaction. That’s what I have trouble with in fandom -- starting longer interactions. So my favorite feedback is always going to be something that invites that. That’s also, when I manage the energy, the sort of comments and feedback I try to leave on meta and fic. I try to say something I hope might start a discussion. (Low rate of return because I don’t think most people approach feedback that way, but I’ve really enjoyed some of the conversations I’ve managed to start by commenting on people’s work that way. I enjoy fandom most when it feels like a community, which is not something I feel very often these days.)

30. Do you write down all your ideas? What makes you decide to write one versus the other? I do probably write down most of my ideas that stick with me for more than a day or two. I have a lot of documents full of notes of ideas for fic. I tend to jump between them depending on what’s coming easiest at the moment and what feels like it takes the least energy to make progress on. That can be kind of a problem because it means I rarely have the focus to put enough energy into something to get it to completion. What kept my attention used to be driven a LOT by a particular friend who would talk through ideas with me, so her interest often drove what I stuck with. These days, my brain feels like a bag of rats, so there’s very little rhyme or reason to what I stick with. The last thing I finished only got finished because it was very short.

40. What area of writing do you want to improve in? The ability to finish something longer than a few thousand works instead of abandoning it 10K words in when I struggle to focus.

#ask meme #221expressions

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the-bjd-community-confess · 5 years

Text

DoA megapost (22 confessions)

Mod: So https://true-bjd-confessions.tumblr.com/post/189300138511/mod-due-to-excessive-offtopic-arguing-in-the

All you guys’ pending DoA confessions presented in no specific order, before we move into the hold, as announced above.

To be clear: I think this is a feature DoA should have yesterday. It’s completely inappropriate to force people to use deadnames and names which are related to traumatic life experiences, or be banned.

However, *weary sigh, gesturing at the multiple 70+ reply confessions on this topic* people told me they were finding the rapidly escalating discussion to be upsetting and offputting, and that’s not my goal for this blog. ❤️

I am exceptionally weary of all the DoA hate over the person who got banned over making a new account after not being allowed to change their user name. DoA isn’t the only doll forum out there. If you don’t like their rules, don’t join. I for one find their rules about on- and off-topic dolls to be unfair and arbitrary as hell, but in the end it comes down to their house, their rules. Move on.

~Anonymous

Us: Sure would be nice to maybe be able to change your name on DOA.

Some of y’all: Are you asking for anarchy?? If we allow this, what’s next?? A reasonable review of outdated rules??? The rules are there for a reason!!1! The reason may be antiqued because technology has updated and changed since then, meaning there are better solutions available, but it’s still a reason so we DEFINITELY should NEVER change!! Change is too scary for me. :( You’re bullies who want to be special :((( Stop that :(

~Anonymous

I love seeing people get so offended at anon saying “bigots”. How do you know it was about you ? Guilty conscience? DOA could allow name changes if they really wanted to. There are other hobbies where they forbid certain people from entering forums while still allowing name changes. It’s not hard if you really care.

~Anonymous

Honestly the way people fall all over themselves to defend DoA against any sort of criticism (regardless of how you personally feel about the validity of said criticism, reader) makes me glad I never got into the community aspect of this hobby. It's just... stressful.

~Anonymous

The transphobia in the comments on this blog in particular are so gross. Being a bigot makes your dolls instantly hideous. And no, I’m not saying everyone who is defending DOAs decision is transphobic. I’m talking about the one who thinks trans people transitioning is wrong and their friends. You’re gross and so are your dolls.

~Anonymous

scammers can & will get around DOA's no name change policy, it's really not that safe. also, DOA isn't the only website which allows the sale of high-value items.

~Anonymous

First it's "if you want name changes coded in DoA, offer to do it yourself!", then it's "why tf would DoA accept some rando to help code their site?" make up your goddamn mind, your argument is falling apart.

Also when did this issue become "DoA vs trans people"? Like, I like DoA yet I also recognize it should be more accessible and updated for the modern userbase. I want it to become as good as it can be because I like the community and would hate to see it die out like so many other forum sites do. Yes, it has flaws- and believe me, the folks who get extremely upset about the idea of admitting that embarrass me- but I liked the format since I was new to the hobby. I just wish it was more inclusive!

~Anonymous

girlisav3rb: "this isn't about exclusion or leaving anyone out". Also girlisav3rb: "I'm just kicking your punk ass off [obvious metaphor for DoA]" yyyyiiiiikkkees

~Anonymous

The DOA username debate is really starting to feel like 4 people's personal beefs against each other. It isn't really about dolls and I wish it wasn't dominating all the confessions here. I don't really care about watching pomoaples, pupkinspce, aigisthewlve and tellmeifthursday make fools of themselves daily.

~Anonymous

10.

Say it louder for the people in the back: IF YOU INSIST ON NAME CHANGES FOR DOA, THEN VOLUNTEER YOUR CODING EXPERTISE. Don't know how to code and are just squawking about something you can't directly contribute towards? Then shut up or offer up money so the mods can hire a computer programmer to make the changes you're DEMANDING from a FREE service.

~Anonymous

11.

God it's so painfully obvious to see how many of the people defending DoA on the grounds that name changes would destroy the integrity of the website have never ever worked on or even been part of a forum or really any website of any kind in their lives. Seriously arguing that "the database" would break if you changed a name like?? No??? Have you ever seen a server backend before? You can automate this shit, you know, keep a log of former names, just... it's not some big huge challenge???

~Anonymous

12.

I don't have a horse in the trans name change race but calling DoA one of the friendlies communities around is abject bullshit lmao. There's not a more elitist, paranoid, abusive community this side of comic books -- but that kind of goes for this hobby as a whole, let's be honest.

~Anonymous

13.

THE RULES ARE IMPORTANT WE CAN't cHANGE THE RULES IT WILL LEAD TO CHAOS IF WE CHANGE ONE RULE WHERE WILL IT END THINK OF THE CHILDREN!!!!!!!! In my town it used to be THE RULES that POC have to go to separate schools and use separate bathrooms, but sure, the rules are the most important thing, not the people. And before anyone says cOmPaRiNg DoLlS tO rAciSm, 1) shitting on trans people IS a form of prejudice you smoothbrains, and 2) my ass is POC and I call it like I see it. Check yourselves.

~Anonymous

14.

I personally think DOA should just.. go away? It’s been around for years, most people use it as reference rather than a community anymore. Everything is on FaceBook and Instagram now, DOA is pretty much just a glorified Dolly Dictionary at this point. Besides, if they aren’t going to change an Incredibly simple, easy thing to change just to accommodate transitioning people, it’s not the best place to be.

~Anonymous

15.

I mean about the whole rules is rules is rules thing about doa: the thing is, some rules are there for a reason and obviously do need to be respected whether you agree with them or not, like don’t block fire exits, murder is bad, etc. but some rules eventually become outdated and need to be changed to keep up with society, and that doesn’t make the people pointing out that they need to be changed evil or entitled or spoiled. Imagine if we all still had to drive 10 mph everywhere because when someone pointed out that car technology had improved since 1915 and the speed limit should be increased accordingly everyone had just shouted them down with “BUT TEH RUUULLLEESS!!!” You’d be pretty interested in getting some of this “special treatment” yourself so you could get to work on time, huh?

~Anonymous

16.

Honestly the easiest solution would be let people change their names only once and have it trackable.. as a trans dude its NOT that deep.

~Anonymous

17.

I notice that the unrelenting attacks on DoA are now even using the same phraseology along with the name-calling and implications of sinister motives. These are textbook bullying tactics. Next is the boycott, except that most of these people already say they don’t use the forum because they are just too “21st Century” for it.

Luckily this is just a confession board and no matter how many folks you manage to rile up here, it’s not going to affect DoA. Now, this is why I love DoA–you can’t go on their own site and spew this nonsense. They have Rules. They are Strict. They attempt to avoid drama, especially off-topic drama, and they don’t allow meanness, vulgarity or obscenity. If you’re looking for a pleasant, safe space, it’s your best bet.

~Anonymous

18.

Easy to lay bigotry, laziness, stupidity and worse on DoA mods for not just accepting tales of trauma and pasts to erase. But the internet has always been full of lies by people trying to get their own way or escape consequences. Not just pro scammers. People who cry things like illness, trauma, disaster, family or pet problems over and over to get sympathy for demands or as all-purpose excuses. Recast ownership lies. People who never got a no before, and don't like being turned down no-how.

~Anonymous

19.

I just realized that no one understands the people saying DOA can allow name changes are the people who have actually modded forums before, most forums unless they’re running a totally outdated system use user id numbers that are linked to display names, which can be changed, and you can write a simple string of simple-baby-code to show old display names on a profile, to explain it in simple terms.

~Anonymous

20.

Honestly I think that the anti-name change people are mostly just shilling for DoA because they can't believe that their precious forum with its volunteer mods could be anything but flawless. Or something like that, given how indignantly these people have *always* reacted to confessions criticizing DoA, even before the trans controversy was a thing. There have definitely been some obvious transphobes as well though, whose bile is really more suited to conservative FB pages or something. Go away!

~Anonymous

21.

the DOA mods can obviously change people's usernames because it's 2019 and basically every other site in existence can do it. they might have to change the site slightly to accomplish this. maybe there are reasons for them to choose not to do that, but let's stop pretending it's some technological impossibility.

~Anonymous

22.

How about this: Implement a system on DoA that indentifies users by a unique code and allow users to have a changeable display name. Changing the display name could become a paid feature to pay for the technical changes. Think of a system like discord has. It's a win-win situation. Thoughts?

~Anonymous

#BJD #ABJD #TrueBJDConfessionz #BJD Confessions #DoA #Just let people change their damn usernames

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the-online-marketing-alliance · 4 years

Link

How To Write an eBook in 7 Steps15 min read

Ebooks are a great way to start selling your ideas, skills, and experience online. It’s often the gateway to creating a complete online information product or membership site. They’re also an excellent way to grow your email list, by offering an ebook as a download in return for subscribing to your list, it’s called a lead magnet.

Whenever I talk to people and ask them what’s stopping them from writing an ebook…they tell me it’s the design, or the cover, the layout, images or technology.

The reality is that’s the easiest part, which I’ll cover at the end of this article.

The hardest part is actually the first part of the process…the writing. I don’t mean the typing – what I mean is producing something that actually works. Yes…something that people will actually read, get hooked on and engaged until finally you get them to take the next step. Which is when they will buy something more from you.

This article has 7 Steps: Step 1 to 6 is Creating the Content and Step 7 is Producing the Ebook.

What’s great about this method is it also helps you lay the foundation on how you will sell your ebook…or at least incentivize people to download it.

Table of Contents

How to Write an Ebook Ground Rules

Step 1) Make sure there is a market for your ebook

Step 2) Define your Avatar/Persona

Step 3) Devise the hook

Step 4) Create your ebook outline

Step 5) Fill-in the blanks

Step 6) Editing your ebook

Step 7) Convert into an ebook

Conclusion

What should I write about?

What is the ideal length of your ebook?

How long should it take to write the book?

Is there search traffic for what you’re writing about?

Is the keyword trending, declining or seasonal?

How to identify Personas

Persona template

How can you find and add hooks to your ebook?

Here are 3 methods to inspire your hook title or subject line:

2) Using Buzzsumo

The outline formula explained

Introduction

Who are you?

Describe the problem, outline the solution, paint a picture

Repeat above 5 times

Summarise what you’ve learned

Add Call to action for more information

Ebook best practices

Make it concise and review any reiteration

Checking for grammar, spelling, style and structure

The 5 Step Method

How to Write an Ebook Ground Rules

First of all…some ground rules.

What should I write about?

In the steps below, I’ve outlined a formula for getting results…but it’s useless unless it’s a topic you know something about, or you enjoy it and you have some interest in it. This is important because when you’re writing if you have no interest, you’ll get bored. Combine that with an online world that’s specifically designed to get your attention – your project will live a short life.

What is the ideal length of your ebook?

People won’t read a 500-page ebook, your readers cannot digest it and they’ll get fed up. You should plan to produce between 10 to 100 pages.

If its a lead magnet, then 10 pages is enough – it should get the key points across clearly and efficiently.

If you’re selling it as an information product…then it should be closer to 100 pages, because you will need to provide more examples to support your points.

Overall, the quality is what matters…so don’t add fluff or filler content.

Here is a book I put together with the For Dummies brand. It’s 48 pages long. It covers the key points of content marketing. Provides a framework to follow. Plus, it leads on to a course and software that we sell to help make content marketing easier.

It’s positioned like this.

It’s a 48-page ebook to wet the appetite, grow the list and get the key framework points across.

The book promotes our marketing course PICASSO, which is video and example-driven training. The PICASSO course then, in turn, promotes our software tools Kudani, Designrr and Headlinr.

How long should it take to write the book?

As fast as possible. The longer you take…the longer it exponentially takes to complete.

This means you need to focus less on getting it perfect and simply get the words on paper…or into Evernote, Google Docs (my preference) or Word.

This means you should start NOW…and take MASSIVE imperfect action.

Forget about grammar, spelling, layout…complete sentences, etc.

Get as many words down as quickly as possible.

Switch off Facebook/Email/Phone to stop yourself getting distracted. (Hint: Install Facebook News Feed Eradicator – and you’ll gain 1 hour a day back into your life.)

https://designrr.io/NewFeedEradicator

Get in the zone…and focus.

Set a timer for 40 minutes to focus and do nothing else.

Stop and walk for 10 minutes…then get back and restart timer.

Even if you do just 3 iterations of 40 minutes – you’ll find you’ve accomplished more than you probably do in a whole day.

With all that done, let’s get into the meat of this method.

Step 1) Make sure there is a market for your ebook

Sounds obvious but it’s probably the biggest mistake people make. If there is no market – no-one will buy or download your ebook. For example, let’s look at the diet niche. Should I focus on Paleo or Keto diets?

To establish this, you can follow some of these techniques:

Is there search traffic for what you’re writing about?

You can measure this by going to Semrush.com (Free registration required) and typing in the top level keyword for what you’re writing about. For example: “Keto Diet”

Obviously, a huge volume market with over 1m searches worldwide. Paleo Diet produces 368,000 volume, so still a great market to write for, but Keto is clearly the biggest right now.

Is the keyword trending, declining or seasonal?

To check this – go to Google Trends.

With this tool, I can actually compare values Paleo vs Keto.

And all diets have some seasonality as shown here, but the overall trend shows Keto is the one to go for.

Step 2) Define your Avatar/Persona

Put simply – who are you targeting this for? You’ll want to be able to relate with your target audience to meet their needs and help find solutions to their problems.

An avatar is a representation of your ideal customer. Take some time to understand and define this, so when you put your book together you can write in a way that they will understand. Using marketing personas makes websites 2-5 times more effective and easier to use by targeted users and drive 18 times more revenue than broadcast emails.

An example for Keto could be:

A Mom, aged 35-45, who needs to lose 50 lbs quickly and has been struggling with diets that are difficult to stick to. She’s busy with her family and has little time to cook.

Focusing like this on the avatar also helps define your hooks and design style. For example, a feminine color scheme would work better than a masculine black.

I often give them a name, which helps you focus even more. Let’s call her Susan.

How to identify Personas

The easiest way to identify the persona, if you have a website already, is looking at Google Analytics for data. You can identify where your visitors came from, what keywords were used, and how long they stayed on your site. Plus, demographics such as age, gender, location, interests, etc. Learning about your current visitors just became a lot easier to create personas for.

Here are a few more effective methods you can use to identify your Persona:

Monitor social media talking about your brand or keywords

Spy on your competitors and see what they have done

Identify complaints, comments, compliments

Questions on Google Search

Questions on Quora or Reddit

Persona template

It’s easier to write an ebook about someone you know. If you already have an idea of who you want to write your ebook for, great. If you don’t have an idea, I hope that this persona template can help paint your persona picture better:

Persona name: (example Susan)

Job title

about their company (size, sector, etc.)

Details about their job role

It could also be a family role (mom, dad, brother, sister, etc.)

Demographics

Age

Gender

Salary or combined household income

Location

Level of education

Family size

Goals and challenges

Main goal

Secondary goal

How you help your persona reach these goals

Primary challenge

Secondary challenge

How you can assist in resolving these problems

Values and fears

Main personal values

Common objections during sales process

Add images and color

Use an attractive color scheme that’s indicative of your persona’s characteristics

Icons and graphics can help in understanding who they are

Of the persona: it can be a photograph, a cartoon or a sketch – create a non-bias image

Psychographics

Behaviors

Attitudes

Opinions

Motivations are what make your personas human

Brands

Help provide great insights into the user’s likes and hobbies, which may even include competitor brands

Last but not least, understanding where your persona is at in the buyer’s journey. Here’s an example of what a buyer’s journey might look like:

https://venngage.com/blog/user-persona-examples/

This will help you fine tune your ebook and create a targeted objective to where you want your readers to end up.

Step 3) Devise the hook

The hook is what forms the title, headline or subject line. It’s designed to catch the reader’s attention by promising a result for the reader. Think of them as cliffhangers. They give readers a powerful sense of what they’ll get out of your ebook without giving away everything.

How can you find and add hooks to your ebook?

Go through your ebook, and note down every solution your book provides. Then ask yourself: What is the big problem you’re trying to solve and what are the pain points of your audience?

What will your reader’s life look like, or what will they be able to do, when they implement your solution? You want your readers to say “Yes, that’s me!”. If you can create that sense of identification, relation, you’re already close to securing the sale.

Now we have our avatar defined, this step starts to become easy.

We said that Susan needs to lose weight fast and has little time to cook with a busy family. She has also struggled to stick to diets previously, probably because she’s demotivated.

So the hook should focus on words like:

Quick, fast and easy to implement methods

Quick results so you’re motivated to stick

For busy people

Here are 3 methods to inspire your hook title or subject line:

Use Amazon Advanced search, and order by bestsellers to search using your core keyword. Look at the titles that are in the top 3-5 places.

Look at the results and analyse the bestsellers:

Using ‘Keto’ as our example, the titles that appear at the top are:

Simply Keto: A Practical Approach to Health & Weight Loss with 100+ Easy Low-Carb Recipes

The Complete Ketogenic Diet for Beginners: Your Essential Guide to Living the Keto Lifestyle

Keto Diet: Your 30-Day Plan to Lose Weight, Balance Hormones, Boost Brain Health, and Reverse Disease

The Easy 5-Ingredient Ketogenic Diet Cookbook: Low-Carb, High-Fat Recipes for Busy People on the Keto Diet

Keto Diet Cookbook For Beginners: 550 Recipes For Busy People on Keto Diet (Keto Diet for Beginners)

KetoFast: Rejuvenate Your Health with a Step-by-Step Guide to Timing Your Ketogenic Meals

What are the key things that standout for you?

Best selling titles:

Use numbers. These always work well in titles as they indicate that there is an end to the information. i.e. There is only a number of things people need to know.

Use Words like Easy / Simple / Step by Step / Cookbook / Plan. All these words say that there is a simple process to follow.

Are Benefit driven. (For Busy People / to lose weight / boosts brain health) – How does your title help or solve a problem for the reader.

While you are on the Amazon page, look at the 5 and 1 star reviews for specific information that people are looking for. Here are some examples:

It’s clear from the above that the author didn’t deliver on the title’s promise and needed to put more photos in the book.

2) Using Buzzsumo

Buzzsumo is a great tool to analyze what’s currently out there and the sentiment of what’s performing well. You can search your key term in Buzzsumo for free.

Here are some tips to help you:

Analyze top performing headlines

Competitors headline

Filter based on content type

Type of words and phrases people use

Create headlines that:

Tell readers why they should care

Make a clear promise

Hook readers’ emotions

Provoke curiosity

Provide explanations

Appeal to a tribe

3) Ask questions of your customers and/or your email list

Join a Facebook group – and create a poll.

Title it: “Hi, I’m creating an ebook for XYZ, and I want to make sure I’m on point. Can you help?

What are the 3 Biggest problems you have in doing XYZ right now?”

One or two sentences for each solution is plenty. These are your hooks, and you’ll use them later when writing your book description, title, headlines, chapters, etc.

Step 4) Create your ebook outline

In this section it’s important to be concise yet provide enough information to illustrate your point.

Remember you don’t want your ebook to be too long.

The outline formula explained

Try and cover the top 5 key problems and solutions. If there are more…that’s ok too.

Introduction

Outline what the reader will learn. Tell your story and use the pain points identified. Reveal your secret right away. When you start big and reveal that one secret right in the intro, this will make your readers trust you and expect even bigger results.

Who are you?

Why should people listen to you?

Tell a story on how you came about this knowledge.

Position yourself as an expert.

Describe the problem, outline the solution, paint a pictureRepeat above 5 timesSummarise what you’ve learnedAdd Call to action for more information

Critical – Most people forget this step

Step 5) Fill-in the blanks

Once you have an outline, you’ll want to start filling in the blanks to help expand and explain your ebook. Simple way to explain how to do just that is to:

Make it a “You and I” and just write. Use the persona to have a normal conversation and explain to Susan about your thoughts on keto diet.

Don’t stop to correct, instead get everything out of your brain. You’ll want to dedicate a separate time to correct any grammar and spelling errors later. Put your focus on getting your ideas down.

Ebook best practices

Once you’ve added all your thoughts into your ebook, you can start adding more insightful information. Some of this consists of:

Adding quotes

Adding images

Importing and highlighting stats, relevant sources, etc. (Great source is Statista https://www.statista.com/ )

Place appropriate calls-to-action within your ebook

Curate paragraphs from other sites and sources to strengthen your points

Step 6) Editing your ebook

After you’ve filled in the blanks with every idea you have, you’ll want to trim, add, and edit your ebook. One of the most important parts of your ebook is to constantly add value and engage with your readers. Creating a successful ebook is to make sure not to reiterate. Being concise and to the point rather than exhausting your readers. You’ll want to review some of your explanations to see if you can create snippets of information.

Make it concise and review any reiteration

With the paragraph above, let’s see how we can make it concise and optimized for engagement.

“Once you’ve filled in the blanks with your amazing idea, you’ll need to trim, add, and edit your ebook. Focus on creating snippets and watch out for any reiteration. Read your ebook to identify what might make your readers stop reading. It’s all about creating engagement after engagement.”

You can always reread and see if there are ways to make it shorter, concise and to the point.

Checking for grammar, spelling, style and structure

This is where you can spend your time correcting spelling, sentences, style and structure. However, instead of trying to fix everything, there are two rules to follow:

Focus on the big picture, so you don’t get overwhelmed.

And then the details like typos, tweaking sentences and grammar.

Seeing the big picture will help you spot things you’ve written in Chapter 3 that shows up in Chapter 1. During the first phase, you might make the introduction shorter, remove a whole chapter, merge two chapters into one so it feels cohesive with the rest of your ebook.

Using grammar tools like Grammarly is a life saver. However, be cautious when you replace every single error, because it might try to correct that one word rather than the whole sentence structure. No tool is perfect, so read your ebook out loud so you can notice poorly worded sentences or even check the tone of the sentences. If all else fails, there are proofreading services that might save you some time.

Whatever the path you want to use, be sure to not leave this up to the reader! So make sure to check off these:

Check spelling and grammar.

Check the length of each chapter, ensure the description flows well.

Brush up the voice and tone.

Step 7) Convert into an ebook

The 5 Step Method

Part 1: Import using Designrr

Designrr can import and create ebooks from your blog, Microsoft Word, Google docs, Medium, another PDF, Facebook, or even an Audio or Video file, including a YouTube link.

In this case we’ll be using a Google Doc.

Grab the share URL from the Google DOC. (Make sure is accessible to ‘Everyone’)

Import the link into Designrr using the ‘Import From URL’ option.

Alternatively, you could also use the ‘Import Manually’ option.

Just copy and paste your Google Doc into the draft editor.

Part 2: Choose a Template

Then choose a template. There are literally 100s to choose from.

Part 3: Tweak, Customize and Tailor Your Look

Start by checking that the layout is ok – and that there are no grammar mistakes or typos.

Then begin the design process.

Adjust fonts, colors or style of your book:

A table of contents is generated automatically:

Change the template colors, headers and footers, cover image, or even add more images from your computer or the built-in library of thousands:

Select one for a new cover:

Then click ‘Publish’:

You can publish to PDF, Kindle, ePub or to your blog.

Once your ebook is created – you can also add a 3d thumbnail to use on your website to encourage people to download it.

Conclusion

Writing an ebook can be a lengthy process if you don’t know where to start or understand the steps you need to follow. We went over how to identify if there’s a market for your ebook idea and that creating personas can help fill most of your content. Knowing what to write about is one thing, focusing on one person and engaging with that persona is another. Creating the actual ebook itself, making it beautiful, is the easiest part when using a software like Designrr.

If you received value from this post please Like & Share this post so that we can serve and help others keep and build their business, income, so that they can sustain with the tools necessary to make an impact during this time.

Yours In Knowledge - Peace & Wellness

The Online Marketing Alliance

#ebook #how to create an ebook #how to build a email list #lifepreneur #chris record #how to get more customers #designrr

3 notes · View notes

xxwritemeastoryxx · 5 years

Text

Fall On Deaf Ears

Author: xxwritemeastoryxx

Pairings: Marcel Gerard x Reader

Requested by: Anon- 76 & 96! From this prompt list

Word Count: 1.6k

Warnings: A bit of heartbreak, but that’s most of it.

Author’s Note: There wasn’t a specific ship listed for this request, so I went ahead and chose one that I believe would fit well with it. Of course the prompt selections will be in bold. If you guys would like to see more of Marcel, please let me know.

Your fingers tapped on the surface of the table you currently sat out. Your mind had been clouded with new thoughts that had been playing through your mind since last night.

It was the hopeful thoughts that this wasn't happening again. It was the fearful thought that if this was in fact happening again that things would be changing. And then there were the thoughts about confronting the problem in the wrong way that would make matters worse. It had left you a mess that you had hardly gotten any sleep.

The sound of the front door opening and closing had caused your head to turn in the direction of the door. Even though there was a wall blocking your view, you still looked that way. Your ears picked up on every movement from the boots being kicked off, a set of keys being tossed on the side table before the sound of shuffling feet filled the air.

"Y/N?" His voice had sounded rough and it made you shake your head slightly.

"In the dining room." You called out, but you never moved from your seat. It was the moment he rounded the corner that you heard him sigh as he took in the scene before him.

The table had been set beautifully. Place sets had been out as well as the glassware that hadn't been touched. Candles, that had been lit hours ago had now been melted halfway and put out. His brown eyes had ran over you, taking in the way your Y/H/C had been styled to the nice, light blue dress you had been wearing. He hadn't missed the way the make up that you had put on had been smudged. Or even the way your Y/E/C eyes had been surrounded by red, letting him know you had been crying.

"Tell me I'm wrong, Marcel." Your voice was quiet, but you knew he could hear it just fine. "Tell me that you didn't forget. That you weren't out there choosing to fight the Mikaelsons again."

Another sigh passed Marcel's lips as he took a few steps towards you. He knelt down beside you, placing a hand on top of the hand that was still occasionally tapping along the clothed cover.

"I won't lie to you," He said as he looked up at you. "I had forgotten about tonight. Klaus killed more of my guys and I couldn't just sit here and do nothing."

You shook your head as you looked at him. "The moment he banished you to this side of the river, you said you'd stop. That it wasn't just your life being threatened anymore and that we'd be able to start a new life." A humorless laugh passed your lips. "You say you'll stop, but then you keep doing it."

It wasn't a lie. Months had passed since you had followed him after Klaus had banished him from the city. You had feared for his life every time he went back into it. You knew Klaus would kill him the moment he laid eyes on Marcel, yet that stubborn man of yours still found himself drawn back into it all.

"I can't just stop." Marcel said with a shake of his head. "They had taken everything away that used to be mine."

"That was my home too." You said as you watched him. "Yes he took everything because he is a Mikaelson. They always get their way and you are stubborn enough to keep challenging them."

"I can't just stand by and watch." His hand squeezed yours. "I thought you of all people would understand that."

"I did understand it." You said with a nod. "I understood what it was you wanted to do up until I almost watched you die several times by their hands. Now I can't stand the thought of you walking out that door to play out some plan of yours that you've thought up and there being a possibility of you not coming back."

"When have I ever not come back home to you?" You both knew the answer to that question. No matter what mess he had gotten into, he always made it back home to you.

"How many times have you come home bruised and with evidence that one of them had held your heart in their hands?" You asked without answering his question.

Again, you both knew the answer to that. He didn't need to voice it to you. He didn't need to remind you of how many times you came close to losing him. It was clear that you knew from the look of worry written all over your face whenever he had came back home.

"What would you have me do?" He asked knowing that the two of you weren't going to get anywhere with the current path of conversation.

You sighed softly. "I'd ask the same thing I always do. To have you stop this and just for us to be able to move on from this. But I know now that isn't possible." You thought for a moment. You knew what was about to happen was a possibility when your mind had first filled with the thoughts it had earlier. "I'm leaving New Orleans. I-"

"Y/N/N-" He tried to stop whatever it was you were about to say but you shook your head, cutting him off just as he had done with you.

"I need you to make a choice." You said as tears began to well up in your eyes. "You can come with me and we'll go off on some new adventure, or you can stay here and continue on the path you are on. But I can't stay and watch you possibly die at their hands."

You watched as Marcel had stood up. He brought a hand up to run it against his face. He knew that he should just drop everything and say he'll go with you. But there was a part of him that felt like he couldn't do it.

Standing from your seat you walked over to him, placing a hand on his shoulder. " I know you, Marcel." You said softly. "You have a war going on in your head now at this choice. I love you and have loved you for the last several decades. So it's not a choice you need to take lightly."

He looked over at you, his eyes widening as he did. "I'd rather if you didn't leave at all. But you, Y/N/N, have never been one to hold back once you've made a decision."

He brought his hand up to bush his knuckles along your cheek. You leaned in to his touch as your eyes met his. You could see the tears that threatened to spill from them. "Then come with me. Tonight was supposed to be about us getting ready to move on with our lives. Let's do that by leaving."

The way Marcel shook his head slightly made your heart drop. You took a small step back. As Marcel's hand reached out to you, you moved out of the way. "Don't do this."

"I can't watch as you get yourself killed." You said with a shake of your head. He had been right. Your decision had been made. No matter how much you wanted to forget about it and just stay by his side, you couldn’t handle the pain he put himself through at the hands of someone else.

You looked around the room for a moment. Trying to find the right words to say next. But there was never any right words to say goodbye to someone. Even when you have loved Marcel for as long as you have, what you had in mind would never be enough to get him to see your side of things.

Sighing, you looked back towards him. "I'll be leaving in two days. I'll be at the hotel right outside the city limits. If you aren't there by sundown, I'll know what your choice is."

Marcel watched as you walked over to him before gently pressing your lips to his cheek. In the blink of an eye, you were gone from sight.

The rental car sat just outside your room door two days later. You had packed what you wanted to take and had it in the trunk of the rental. Everything else was replaceable. When you are over two centuries old, it was easy to buy new things. It was also easier to start over if needed.

As you leaned against the car, you watched as the sun began to set. The sky painted with a mixture of blues, pinks and oranges made it beautiful to see. But slowly the shades of orange were gone, leaving the pinks and blue behind before they began to fade themselves. It was just as the sun began to disappear with in the city lights that your phone came to life with the notification of a message.

Your heart sank once more at the noise. You didn’t even need to see who the message was from, you could tell by the chime itself who it was. The proof was in the unread message that it was Marcel. But you couldn’t bring yourself to look at it.

With a shaky breath, you opened the car door and slipped it. You knew that this was best for you. Even though as you started up the car and wanted to go back into the city, you knew that things would never change.

Pulling out of the hotel had been the easiest thing for you to do. You held yourself together for the most part. It wasn’t until you pulled out onto the interstate, with New Orleans in your review, that you let the tears flow freely.

Always & Forever Tag: @rissyrapp20 @taylordrunkonwhiskey @thewolf-and-thesheep @wayward-dan @neeadinghugs @hawaiianohana15 @fafulous @vibhati123 @cassienoble2000 @kenmen02 @elizamonet @dora-the-grownup

The Originals Tag: @zillahvathek

Bold tags mean for one reason or another I cannot tag you in this. Please let me know if any changes have been made so I can update the tags! If you would like to be added to, or taken off, the taglists, please let me know!

#The Originals #Marcel Gerard #Reader inserts #Marcel Gerard x Reader #Fall on deaf ears #one shots #prompt requests #drabble prompts #oh look! someone thats not already on my masterlist

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swafena · 4 years

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Why Start Shopping Online?: 5 Steps To Safe Shopping From Sketchy Social Media Stores

After Instagram added the Instagram Checkout payment tool these sketchy Instagram stores that pop up in my ads became even more irresistible. Just while seeing my friend’s Insta story of him dancing like crazy last night these bags pop up in my ads . Am I crazy or I’ve just became in a desperate need of a new bag? If you don’t know what I’m talking about you are not using Instagram the right way. Then again, excuse my previous judgment, you might be a guy and the Instagram Bags store might not be targeting you! Anyhow, whatever Instagram stores are targeting you, aren’t these ads so seductive. I don’t even have money and they still lure me in to buying their things. Having said that, Instagram Stores sometimes can be somewhat untrusty. I don’t want to give out my banking details to someone in India that is just waiting for my stupid ass to purchase that fake bag. I know the bags are persuasive but I kind of don’t want to get robbed from stupidity. In this article you can find

But First, why you should start shopping on Instagram?

Let’s be honest, 21st century is all about standing out and Instagram stores are exactly the place where you can find those unique fits.

I personally have come across such exclusive brands through pop up ads. I am always am left shocked by how I’ve never heard about their products previously. In particular my favorite discovery was the brand “Motel Rocks”. They offer exceptional designs that make your figure out of this world. I know that they’ve recently attracted quite a lot of attention but I’ve ordered some pieces from them even before the huge hype only due to pop up adds.

Let the Algorithm work in your favor

If we forget for a moment of how every platform just waits for us to search for something so they can start bombarding us with adds, the algorithm can actually work in our favor. In reality, Instagram shows you only the adds that you’ll be

interested in. Take advantage of that! How to do that? - you ask, well it’s pretty easy. For instance, this one time I wanted to buy myself some distinctive jewelry and I typed jewelry store in the search section of Instagram. Sadly, I couldn’t find anything that really appealed to my style. I kid you not, literally two minutes later some rings popped up in my suggested page. The more I deep dive in to the jeweler world of Instagram, the more jewelry adds started following me. After only few minutes I wasn’t the one looking for rings and necklaces but the brands were seeking me as a client. This really helped me find the perfect jewelry designs even though I was not even putting effort but was just paying attention to my suggested adds.

Read the Reviews, Please!!!

Instagram is such an accessible platform. Everyone has a profile and it’s easy to review something. It’s even easier to comment your opinion on one of the brand’s posts. Therefore, for us the clients, reading the reviews becomes even simpler. In particular, I was looking at this store that offered swimsuits.

I loved the designs but I wasn’t sure about the legitness of the company because they didn’t have a big following. For the purpose of me getting the perfect summer fit I had to turn on detective mode which is why I started deep diving in to their comments section. That was useful to some extent, yet I would personally recommend going through their tagged photos. This is where you’ll see real people wearing the real products. Not only that but many vloggers will review small boutique products or make big clothing hauls for huge brands. Therefore, you might even see an actual rough video and an actual rough opinion of the thing that you want to purchase.

Check Prices while scrolling through their feed.

Literally, having an Instagram store is equal to having a website these days. You can get access to all the information you need just while scrolling through photos. Isn’t that the best? I can spend so much money without even realizing. Putting aside the fact that I’m soon to be broke, I honestly enjoy the simplicity of using the platform. I don’t even have to go to the actual website and I can check the prices of fits that I desire. It’s convenient, especially in the cases where brands are extremely overpriced and I can’t afford them. It takes me only one tap to feel the disappointment but it saves me so much time.

Secure your bank details by Using Virtual Cards

Needless to say, one of the biggest cons of Instagram stores is that some of them are very untrustworthy. They might offer compelling products but at the same time you have no grantee that you will actually get your products. That’s why trusting them is not the easiest task. The number of data breaches around the world was up by 33% since last year and the total number of exposed reports have doubled. This has made everyone online be hesitant about giving their personal data to unreliable online store. I personally would never give my bank card details to any online store. The way I shop online is by using virtual cards. First and foremost, these cards could be linked to an alternative account than your primary and provide additional security features. I can top them up whenever I want to and I can freeze them as easily. My personal favorite thing is that I can distribute my budget better. For example, If I haven’t spent anything on clothes last month, I could top up the account that my virtual card draws money from. Thus, I’ll be able to have a specific portion of my budget for my online shopping. It’s perfect because this stops me sometimes from overspending too much on online shopping. If you want to have a variety of Virtual cards like I do, you can use “iCard”. The app sadly operated only in Europe. I’ve tried similar applications but it never worked out in my favor. I like “iCard” because I can actually distribute my budget in a more secure and proper way. On the other hand, I like their stylish products like the NFC Keychains - keychains through which you can make contactless payments. Amm, excuse me, if am going to spend my entire salary on pointless purchases at least I could do it with style.

So, now that you know how to securely spend your money on the Internet, go and get something new to walk around your house in. The pandemic might have made us feel sad and lonely but you know what they say – “Whoever said that money can’t buy happiness, didn’t know where to go shopping!” Enjoy!!!

#online #shopping #online shopping #instagram

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worryinglyinnocent · 5 years

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Fic: Pure (11/14)

Summary: Belle wanted to wait until marriage before she had sex for the first time. It was the one thing that still stuck in her mind after leaving her small town upbringing steeped in religious doctrine and abstinence culture. When her wedding night comes, however, the purity ideals of Storybrooke’s sex education are hard to shake off, and making the transition from virgin to sexually active is more difficult than she anticipated. With the help of a patient husband, Belle begins an intimate journey into understanding her body, her desires, and her identity as a woman.

Rated: E

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[One] [Two] [Three] [Four] [Five] [Six] [Seven] [Eight] [Nine] [Ten] [AO3]

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Pure

Eleven

If Belle was being completely honest with herself, then she didn’t know why she hadn’t sought out therapy sooner. She supposed that it was because she was trying so very hard to pretend that she was fine, and that even though she’d had a somewhat strange upbringing, she’d still come out of it all right; it hadn’t affected her, she was perfectly well-adjusted. The trip back to Storybrooke and the fallout from that had proved beyond a doubt that she was not perfectly well-adjusted and that she was going to need help.

It had taken her a long time to admit that to herself and then to Aiden and then to Dr Hopper. In a way, having to seek out help made her feel weak. There must be thousands of other women in her position all over the world who were living in similar or worse circumstances to hers, and they didn’t have access to therapists. They just had to get on with their lives. It was Ruby who had made her see sense in the end, telling her in no uncertain terms that Belle refusing to seek out help and continuing to struggle wasn’t going to help anyone less fortunate than her in any way; that what Belle did about her own mental health did not have the blindest bit of difference on anyone else, and that if she wanted to make a difference to other people’s lives, then she first had to get her own life, thoughts and emotions in a healthy way first.

So, she had taken the plunge and sought out Dr Hopper, as recommended by Ruby. Certainly, she had never used him in a professional sense, but as soon as Belle had met him, she understood why Ruby had taken so much of a shine to him whilst they had been dating. He was kind, quiet, listening to her carefully without the slightest hint of judgement. Belle felt comfortable in his presence, and that in its turn gave her the confidence that he would be able to help her in the end.

The first session had been awkward; she’d been so unsure of what to say and how to phrase her worries, overly conscious of coming off as hysterical, constantly apologising for taking up so much of his time when he no doubt had other patients with far worse problems than being neurotic about sex.

But Dr Hopper hadn’t made her feel like she was wasting his time at all. He had been genuinely interested in what she had to say, and what he could do to help her, suggesting that for the first session, they left the crux of her problems aside, and she just told him a little bit about herself and Aiden. The words had flowed a lot more easily after that. Belle loved talking about Aiden; she just wasn’t quite as good at talking about sex with him. Or talking to him about sex. She was only just beginning to realise that communication was definitely her biggest problem. When they had first started having sex and Aiden had been encouraging her to set the pace and vocalise what she liked and disliked and what she was comfortable with, they had managed to make easy and comfortable progress. Things tended to break down when she wouldn’t talk to him, and things had started getting worse after the visit to Storybrooke when she had once more begun to think that bedroom activities weren’t something that should even be discussed.

Hopefully, talking to Dr Hopper about her feelings towards sex would help her talk to Aiden about the act itself.

During their second session, Dr Hopper had steered her gently towards talking more about her father and her childhood, and the strict purity ideals that she had been brought up with. He had asked her how she’d felt about those ideas at the time, and how she felt about them now.

“At the time, I didn’t really think all that much about them,” Belle had said. “I didn’t have any kind of reference frame, so I didn’t know any different. I just accepted it all as the status quo. It was only once I got out of town that I started realising just how messed up their views had been. And now…” She had sighed, picking at the threads on her jumper, and Dr Hopper had just waited patiently for her to go on. “Now, I hate them. I hate what they’ve done to me and I hate the way they make me feel. I feel like they’ve hurt me, sabotaged me from leading a happy life with the man I love. But at the same time, there’s still a sense of loyalty there because that’s my entire childhood; I don’t want to disparage it. I can’t help feeling that if I really hated that culture I’d been brought up in so much, I wouldn’t have any problem with completely going against everything that it stood for; which makes me think that maybe I don’t actually hate it and subconsciously I actually support it and believe it.”

It was a lot to unpack and Belle knew that she wasn’t going to have results instantaneously; but being able to talk about it with a professional was definitely helping. She knew that she could talk about it with Aiden, and with Ruby and Mulan, and that they would not judge her, but ultimately, they could not really offer her any advice. All they could do was offer sympathy, whereas Dr Hopper would be able to offer, hopefully, strategy.

By the end of their fourth session together, they had begun to cover the heart of Belle’s problems – the way she felt about sex, and intimacy in general, and why she felt that way. They had not yet reached any conclusions for how to stop her feeling that way, but she was sure that would come with time.

This time, Dr Hopper had given her homework to do. Whenever she found herself feeling guilty or shameful about sex, she was to write down how she was feeling and what had triggered that feeling. When they next met, they would review her notes, and try to work through why she was feeling this way, and what techniques she could use to try and break the cycle of shame.

She looked down at the notes she had taken earlier in the day.

Feeling lousy. It’s a slow day at the library and I started having a nice little daydream about Aiden coming in and surprising me with kissing and fingering behind the issue desk, and then immediately had to cut the thought short when this little voice in my head gave a shocked gasp and started yelling about ‘scandal!’ ‘have some decorum!’ ‘have you no shame, you harlot!’

I mean, it was only a daydream, I wasn’t even doing anything, and I’d been enjoying myself up till that point.

Am beginning to think that maybe exorcising all sexual thoughts from my head is the only way forward.

It wasn’t, of course, she knew that. Sometimes it just felt like the easiest way to cope.

She flicked back a page to the last entry, yesterday morning.

I had another weird sex dream last night, very like the one I had in New York on the honeymoon. Well, it wasn’t quite as weird as that one. Aiden and I were in some kind of cabin in the middle of nowhere having sex in front of the fire, and I was sitting on his face. I was wet when I woke up, and I was desperate to touch myself, but I didn’t, because I felt too embarrassed about the whole thing.

“Are you ready, Belle?” Dr Hopper called her into the consulting room, and she stuffed the journal back into her handbag. Even though he was the one who had told her to start keeping it, there was still something in her that didn’t want him to see it. He’d already said that what she wrote down was private in the details and they would just be talking about the feelings that went with the thoughts; he was not expecting her to show him her homework, so to speak, but all the same, she still felt embarrassed by it, like she’d been caught reading something she shouldn’t have been.

She paused in the doorway. What a wonderful way to illustrate the entire point of why she was coming to therapy in the first place.

They went over the usual preliminaries, talking about life in general and the weather, a nice easing into the more difficult topics.

“How have you been finding keeping the journal?” Dr Hopper asked presently.

“It was hard at first,” Belle admitted. “I felt like writing all these thoughts down made them worse somehow. It made them permanent; it was proof that I’d been thinking these things and I couldn’t pretend that I hadn’t been. And after the first couple of days, I looked back at all the notes I’d taken and I thought that I must be a sex maniac with the amount of times I’d thought about sex and then tried to stop myself thinking about it, but I think that perhaps it’s like thinking of pink elephants, you know? If you try not to think about something, then you just think about it even more. So, I think it helped me to realise that trying to prevent myself from thinking about sex isn’t going to work.”

“Do you think that there are any patterns in the things that you’re thinking about, or more specifically, in the things that you’re feeling when you’re thinking about them?”

Belle took out the notebook and flicked through the last few pages, feeling her face begin to flame as she looked over some of her darker desires. In doing so, she found her answer.

“A lot of the time it’s embarrassment,” she said. “Even if I’m on my own, but especially if there’s someone around at the time. Even if it’s Aiden and I’m thinking about being with him, I still feel embarrassed about it. And guilty, like I’ve been caught with my hand in the cookie jar. And then I feel angry about feeling guilty and embarrassed, because I know that there’s no reason for it.”

“I don’t think that’s strictly true,” Dr Hopper said. “There is a reason that you’re feeling guilty and embarrassed. You aren’t feeling these things out of nowhere. By identifying them like this, it’s the first step to identifying that reason and being able to move past it. You may not think that the reason is logical, but that doesn’t matter. It’s still valid, so there’s no need to be angry about it.”

“I am angry though. I’m not just angry at myself for feeling these things when there’s no reason to – well ok, no, we’ve just gone through that. I’m angry at everyone else for contributing to that reason.” She paused. “I think that the person I’m most angry at is my dad. It was the Mother Superior who said the most hurtful things and who made me question everything, but the more I look back at it, I think that she was really just the straw that broke the camel’s back.”

It felt good to be able to talk about it to someone who wasn’t Ruby or Mulan or Aiden. Dr Hopper had no vested interest and wouldn’t interrupt her or threaten to go and throttle her father. Her friends were rightly horrified by what she had been through, but their judgement of the situation was always going to be skewed in a way.

Dr Hopper didn’t say anything. He didn’t even make any notes in his little book. She didn’t like it when he made notes, it made her feel like there was something wrong, and she was pleased that he’d been making fewer and fewer over their last couple of sessions. It was as if now that they’d got down to the real crux of her problem, letting her talk it out was the easiest way of getting through it.

His silence was an invitation to continue, but Belle didn’t speak for a while, trying to get her thoughts in order.

“I’d been so worried on the way back to Storybrooke. I’d been so worried about how the town would perceive me now that I was no longer the virgin that they’d all been proud of. It felt like such a huge part of my identity had been stripped away; I didn’t even know who I was anymore. And then when my dad started to treat me like a stranger, that just compounded and confirmed my fears. I didn’t have an identity without my virginity. I was no one; I was a stranger in the town that I’d spent eighteen years of my life in. My sense of self was so closely linked to my perceived purity. I hadn’t felt it so acutely when I was here in Boston because I was surrounded by people who knew me for me and who valued me for things that really mattered. Back in Storybrooke, virginity was the only thing that mattered, and I no longer had it. It wasn’t so much that I was no longer special as that I was no longer, well, anyone. I wasn’t just ordinary; I was a non-person.”

It had taken her a while to come to the conclusion, but now that she had, it made sense.

“And I couldn’t get back that identity. I couldn’t suddenly be a virgin again. I’d lost it forever; I’d lost my relationship with my father forever. A part of me felt terrible. I’d sacrificed my relationship with my father because I wanted to have sex. I felt so selfish that I’d put my relationship with my husband above my relationship with my father – after everything he’d done for me, provided for me for eighteen years, raised me by himself after my mother died…”

Dr Hopper offered her the box of tissues from the coffee table.

“I just want to make sure that I’ve got this straight in my head,” he said, once Belle had blown her nose. “You say your father no longer saw you as his daughter after you got married.”

“Yes.”

“Belle, something that I come across a lot with relationship counselling is the idea of relationships being conditional. I think that this can apply to any kind of relationship, not just romantic ones. I mean, there are some conditions that are reasonable. We expect to meet people halfway in a relationship; we expect both people to do an equal amount of work to maintain that relationship. But no relationship that places conditions on your very identity is a healthy one.”

“Wait, are you saying that my entire relationship with my father was based on my being a virgin?” Belle could feel the panic rising in her voice. She didn’t know why, because all Dr Hopper was doing was rephrasing what she’d already said to him just a minute ago. She took a deep breath. He wasn’t saying anything that she didn’t already know, that she didn’t already regret.

He had said something very telling though.

No relationship that places conditions on your very identity is a healthy one.

“You’re saying that my relationship with my father is unhealthy.” Well, she’d come to that conclusion already, it was just taking a long time to sink in. “Because he would only accept that relationship if I never lost my virginity. If I never stopped being his little girl. If I never… changed.”

“All people change, Belle. No one is the same person at thirty that they were at eighteen, or twenty-five. All relationships have to take into account the fact that no one ever stays the same person for their entire life. People change, and they grow, and they become more rounded as people. To expect someone to remain the same way forever is to stunt their growth as a human being, to clip their wings and take away the most fundamental part of their life – change.”

He smiled, and it was a warm smile, a smile that Belle could trust.

“You’re not the same person that you were before you got married. Your identity has changed; I don’t think that anyone can pretend that it hasn’t, because you’ve entered into a new and exciting phase of your life now. The point is: that’s not a bad thing. That’s not something to worry about; or feel ashamed of or embarrassed by. It’s not something to lose relationships over. You are different, and that’s the way it should be. That change and growth from new experiences is perfectly normal. It’s one of the most natural things that humans can do. It’s one of the things that makes us conscious beings in the first place.”

What Dr Hopper was saying made a lot of sense. Her relationship with her father had always centred around her being his little girl: she had always been his child, and he had continued to view her as a child even after she left home and began her adult life. Up until the moment when she got married and ‘became a woman’, having sex for the first time. Then he could no longer view her as a child; he could no longer reconcile her being an adult in her own right and being his child at the same time.

And that wasn’t Belle’s fault. Change was natural, growing up was natural, there was nothing she could have done to change that process. She could not remain an innocent child forever just because her father could see her no other way.

Her having sex had not ruined her relationship with her father. The relationship had already been unhealthy.

It was such a momentous revelation that Belle could not help but gasp at it. Things made so much more sense now. There was still so much more to unpack, so much more that she would need Dr Hopper’s help to get through, but this was a first step, a turning point. She couldn’t repair her relationship with her father until he accepted that she had changed, that she was no longer a child and that she could never have remained one. She had not done anything wrong.

“Change is inevitable,” Dr Hopper continued. “It can be scary, certainly, but it should never be suppressed. Your identity has changed and will continue to do so. This time next year, you won’t be the same person as you were when you got married. What are your feelings towards that?”

“Terrified,” Belle said, “but there’s not a lot that I can do about that. I think that maybe before we had this conversation that I would have been afraid of what Aiden would think of me, of me no longer being the same person that he married, but I guess, he’s going to change too, and I won’t feel any differently about him, so why should he feel any differently about me?”

“Exactly.” Dr Hopper smiled. “I think that you’re making excellent progress in the way that you see yourself, Belle, and I hope that we can keep working on this in our next session. But speaking of Aiden, how would you feel about inviting him to your next session?”

Belle was somewhat taken aback, and Dr Hopper went on.

“As we’re talking about the way you perceive yourself and your identity, it might be helpful for us to explore the identity that you have in Aiden’s eyes. Also, one of the things that you’ve mentioned to me is that you have trouble talking to him about the things that you’re talking to me about, so I was wondering if it might help you to begin that conversation here, in a neutral environment. Sometimes it can be hard to talk about these things in our own home because of all the associations that we have there; talking about difficult things can make a safe space no longer feel safe. I feel like Aiden might benefit from the session as well; it could help teach both of you the tactics you need to be able to communicate confidently with one another. You said that you didn’t seem to have this trouble when you were first married, so maybe this session could help you rediscover the easy communication that you had a few months ago.”

Belle nodded. Things had been so much easier back before her identity crisis, and she did desperately want to get back to the way it had been before. She missed it; not just the sex but the closeness, the intimacy, the idea that she knew what Aiden was thinking and how he was feeling without the need for words.

“Yes. I think that would be helpful.”

Their time was up, and Belle got up to leave. She felt exhausted, like she’d just run a double marathon, but it was a good kind of exhaustion. She felt like she was getting somewhere, and the thought gave her hope anew that she could come out of the other side of this a stronger person, with a stronger sense of her identity – one that was not, and never should have been, centred on her virginity.

#rumbelle fic #rumbelle #Belle French #Mr Gold #Fic: Pure #The angst is over!

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super-success-core · 4 years

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Tips for Living the Life of Your Dreams

When I ask this question, I'm not inquiring why you are in the location you're in, or why you are in the city you're in, or even why you are in whatever country you're in.

I ask the question, because I'm wondering why you exist at all?

In the fall of 2003, I released a book I wrote called The Why Are You Here Café. It is a fiction story of a man who wanders into an all night café and is surprised to find three questions on a menu. Why Are You Here? Do You Fear Death? Are You Fulfilled?

I am not so arrogant now to think that I have the answer to how anyone except for me should live their life. I do know though, that there are certain things I've learned that help me think about life in a different way. There are things that I wish I had learned earlier in life, things that I reflect on often and that continually give me a boost and help me on my journey to achieve the life of my dreams.

My hope is that in sharing those things with you, they will in some way assist you on your journey to live the life of your dreams.

1. Know your Purpose For Existing (PFE), or at least be looking

Your Purpose For Existing is exactly what it says. It is the reason you exist, the reason you are alive. It is the answer to the question I asked you at the start of this article. Why Are You Here?

Your PFE is like your own personal compass for life. Should you go to New York City and become a commodities trader? Go back to your PFE. Why are you here? Should you travel the world as a peace corp. volunteer? Go back to your PFE. Why are you here? Should you stay in a relationship you've been questioning? Go back to your PFE. Why are you here?

In addition to taking a great deal of the stress out of decision making, it also takes a lot of the anxiety out of everyday life. You don't have to justify to yourself or anyone else why you do what you do. You know the answer. You meet someone and they say, "Hi, what do you do?" You respond, "Oh, I teach yoga," or "I'm an insurance salesperson," or "I'm a chiropractor." "Interesting," they say, "what made you go into that line of work. "Well, it helps fulfill my Purpose For Existing," you respond. Wow! That is a powerful statement. You do what you do because it helps you fulfill the exact reason you exist. It doesn't get much simpler, or more powerful than that.

2. Fear is a terrible thing; don't let it control your life.

Someone once told me a great quote about trying something new. He said he had been battling with fear for a long time until one day his friend told him, "Listen, realistically what's the worst that could happen." I think that is great comment to remember. We are often paralyzed into non-action by the concern that something drastic might happen. But the reality is that almost any decision we make or action we take can be changed if we don't like the outcome.

We can almost always go back to whatever it was we were doing before we tried something new. Furthermore, what are the odds that the "worst thing" will happen? It probably isn't likely at all, and yet that remote chance keeps us from doing the things we want to do.

My major "Aha" moment which enabled me to get past my fears, came one day when I suddenly realized that there are very few things that have not already been done by at least one, and probably thousands of people. Certainly everything I was attempting, other people had already tried and succeeded at. Well heck, I thought. If they could do it, so can I.

It is likely that whatever you are trying to accomplish in life, someone, at some point in history, at some spot in the world, did it, and proved it could be done. If they could do it, so can you.

3. Either we can live as a speck of meaningless existence, or we can live a life of meaning

Have you ever been somewhere on a very clear night when you could get a great look at the stars? You were in a place nice and dark without any local lights distracting your eyes. How many stars do you think you could see with your naked eye when you looked across the whole sky? It seemed like millions I bet. The sky seemed just packed with stars. Well, the reality is that the immense quantity of stars you see on a totally clear night when there is no outside light is actually about 3,000.

To put that number in perspective, keep in mind that in our galaxy alone, there are 100 billion stars. Now, our star, which is the sun, has 9 planets and 54 moons that rotate around it. Using our star as a proxy, that means there are 6.3 TRILLION stars, planets, and moons floating around in our galaxy. So what you see on a perfectly clear night, that immense amount of stars and space, is around .00000005% of everything in our galaxy. Amazing isn't it. Now consider this. That is just our galaxy. Do you know how many galaxies there are? Scientists estimate there are over 500 million of them.

So with all that as perspective, how important are our individual lives in comparison to the entire universe? It is pretty easy to see how someone could think that they are just a speck of meaningless existence. Certainly we are all just specks in the big picture. But suppose we aren't meaningless. Suppose there is a specific purpose that each of us is here, a reason that we exist right now that goes beyond just sperm met egg and nine months later out popped a little you or me.

I believe there is a reason. I believe we each have a specific Purpose For Existing, or PFE as I like to refer to it. My suggestions is, find that purpose. Fulfill that purpose.

I've had people say to me, "But what if you are wrong?" "What if I think I have a PFE, and I live my life like I do, but I really am just a speck of meaningless existence?" My reply to that is always the same. If we find what we think is our very purpose for being alive, our purpose for existing, and we live a life to fulfill it, then by default, we will have given meaning to our life. What has meaning, can no longer be meaningless.

4. Realize something is fulfilling because we decide it is fulfilling, not because someone else tells us it is.

There are a lot of people out there trying to get you to buy things, and they will tell you almost anything to get you to do it.

Do you know how much money was spent on advertising in the United States last year? The answer is a staggering $124 billion dollars. The goal of those expenditures is to get you and me to buy things, and advertisers are getting more and more savvy about how to do it.

For example, they have learned that memory and emotion are significant factors in whether or not a customer has brand loyalty to a product. So they review brain responses of test subjects who are shown advertisements, to see if a particular advertisement invokes a reaction from the emotion center or memory center of the test subject's brain. That way they can tell if the advertisement will stimulate long term brand loyalty for a particular product. Can't you just see that? Someone is walking down the street, they pass a billboard, and suddenly have this tremendous, compelling, yet unexplainable urge to buy lottery tickets.

Are we to that point yet? No, I don't think so. Will we get to that point? I don't know. The point is, marketers and marketing technology are, and will continue to, make it harder and harder to sift through all the noise so that we can form our own perspective on things.

The challenge is to realize something is fulfilling not because someone tells us it is, but because we individually determine it is fulfilling. Does love really come in the form of diamond earrings, which say "You love her and would marry her all over again"? Does self worth and empowerment truly lie in owning a particular automobile? I personally don't think so in either case, but don't listen to me anymore than you would listen to the advertisement. You decide.

5. Be thankful for and leverage the advantages that come from living in this country

We have some amazing opportunities at our fingertips simply because we live in this country. Now, I don't know about you, but all I did to get these opportunities was pop out of the womb in what turned out to be a very fortuitous spot.

Do you know how much the average college graduate in Myanmar (formerly Burma) makes? They make 10,000 Kat per month. That is about $12.00 U.S. How about the average college graduate in China? How much do you think they make per month? That number is 1500 Yuen, which is just under $200.00 U.S.

Now salaries of that magnitude are enough for those people to function in their country's respective economies. In all likelihood though, those people will never be able to travel and see the world. They just can't afford it. But we can. We have the financial benefit of a strong currency compared to the majority of the world.

In this country we can get an education, and we can go out and get a decent paying job. We think unemployment is really getting bad when it hits 6%. In places in South Africa it is over 40%.

As a country we have our fair share of problems. When you get outside the borders and travel to other places, you see things that make the U.S. look like paradise. We have freedom. We can say what we want, buy what we want, become what we want, travel where we want, and for the most part the only thing we did to get all this, is pop out of the womb in the right geographical area. We shouldn't take it for granted.

6. Look at the little picture, but with a big perspective

People often say, look at the big picture. I say look at the little picture, but with a big perspective.

Do you know what life is? Life is actually a day multiplied by about 27,500. Sometimes it is less, hopefully more, but usually around 27,500. The easiest way to make sure we have a life we enjoy is to make sure that each day we do something we enjoy. I'm sure this sounds simple to you. It took me decades to figure this out.

Doing something you enjoy each day is an example of looking at the little picture. But keep in mind the big perspective, which is what is your PFE? What is it that you want out of life? Why are you here?

Here is an example of little picture and big perspective. Do you do some form of work for at least 20 minutes each weekday? Do you go to a job, work from home, something? How about this. Do you wake up each weekday and stretch for at least 20 minutes?

Ok, different question. What is more important to you, health or money? Would you permanently trade the ability to walk up a flight of stairs in exchange for money? Would you permanently trade the ability to take a bike ride along the beach, garden, lift up a grandchild, play sports, or go fishing in exchange for money?

Then be careful about how you spend your time each day, because making the decision to head off to work 20 minutes early, or spending an extra 20 minutes at work, instead of taking 20 minutes per day to stretch, is a slow version of trading those abilities.

We have a propensity as a society to spend all kinds of time on other things, and when we are good and tired and barely have the energy to say hello, then we go interact with those who mean the most to us, or spend time on ourselves. This is the fast track to finding yourself feeling like a complete stranger with the people who mean the most to you, and yourself.

7. Seek out near life experiences

At the age of 28 I began to have near life experiences. Have you heard the term near death experience? That is when people survive a heart attack, or almost get hit by a car and they get this tremendous sense of lucidness about how short life is and how they should give some thought to how they really want to live it before they don't have a life to live.

Well, at 28 I started to have those revelations without the potential for a trip to the emergency room. I started to have near life experiences.

Near life experiences are the times when you are doing exactly what you want. You are enjoying life, you are having the exact experience you want out of life, and because of that you feel truly fulfilled with the life experience. Near life experiences (NLE's) can come from something as simple as hugging your significant other or as complex as achieving a particularly difficult goal you set for yourself. They come when you are fulfilling your PFE.

When you are having a near life experience, you are absolutely and completely happy. It is the most amazing feeling in the world.

Find those moments for yourself and figure out how to get more of them into your life every day. Experience so many of them that you get to the point where you insist on having a life full of them, a life where you fulfill your PFE.

Have them as soon as possible, because the fantastic thing about experiences, especially near life experiences, is that the sooner in your life you have them, the longer you have to reap the benefits. What you learn at 20, 35, or 50 can be applied for a lot more time and to a lot more situations than what you learn at 85. Even better, the experiences build upon each other. Once the insights start coming, they create this fantastic foundation of knowledge upon which everything else rests.

8. Choose your own metric of success in life

When you have spent time in other countries, and then you come back to the U.S., you realize just how strongly our culture equates success with money. How much do you make? What kind of car do you drive? How big is your house? These are all money based metrics.

If we choose that as our metric, that's fine, just so long as we make sure that we chose it. And when we are deciding what our metric will be, we should keep in mind that money is not the only one. The amount of time we spend each day doing what we want, our degree of fulfillment with life, how happy we are, how much love is in our life, and many others, are also metrics for success in life.

Evaluate them closely because the metrics we choose become the driving force for our actions.

9. Act like your life depends on your decisions, because it does

Have you ever been in a discussion where you were debating what to do, and someone said, "Well what would you do if your life depended on it?" It really puts things in a different perspective doesn't it? Now all of a sudden it is more important. MY LIFE DEPENDS ON IT!!!

Well, in reality, our life depends on the decisions we make every day. Whether or not we achieve and experience what we want out of life is entirely dependent on our daily decisions.

Have you ever heard the term "The Big Five"? The big five is something that you hear all the time when you are on safari in Africa. It stands for rhino, elephant, buffalo, leopard, and lion. People are always asking, "Have you seen the big five? How many of the big five did you see? Where were the big five?"...

I think we should adopt this term for our lives. The Big Five for Life will be the five things we absolutely want to do, see, or experience in our life. The things that on our deathbeds, we will look back on and go, yeah, I did my Big Five for Life.

Wouldn't that be a great conversation starter? "Hi, I'm John, and you are?..." "Nice to meet you. So, what's on your Big Five for Life list and how can I help you fulfill them?"

Although they can be, items on the Big Five for Life list don't have to be things that are one time events. For example, number one on my list is to have a lifelong loving relationship with my wife. It is something with a non-defined end date. As long as I am here, it is on the list.

The reason I think this would be so fantastic is because we often forget to act like our life depends on our decisions. We get into a pattern and pretty soon we have all these reasons why we can't go do the things we want.

Make your daily decisions as if your life depends on it, because it does.

10. Choose to work on things you are passionate about and you will always be passionate about what you are working on

Here is a statistic you may find shocking. It shocked me. In an average week, including the two days of the weekend, a person will spend over 52% of their awake life either at work, getting to work, or on work related activities at home.

Over half of our awake life is spent on work. Now that is something to keep in mind when we are making decisions about what type of work we want to do. "I am choosing to give half of my life to the pursuit of whatever this job is."

If you are going to spend 52% of your awake life on work related items each week, you might as well choose to work on something you are passionate about. I know this can be challenging. We live in this interesting world where people value experience at something over much more important skills like aptitude, general intelligence, drive and many more.

Nonetheless, think of it this way. If there is something else that you have always wanted to do, but lack experience in, every day you don't go do it is a day less of experience you will have. You might as well get started right away.

John Strelecky is the international best selling author of 'The Why Are You Here Café.' In its first 10 months his book had sold in 14 countries and set the world record for the fastest sales on all seven continents. Through his book, articles, speeches, and appearances on television and radio, he has positively impacted the lives of millions of people.

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dementedgnomicwizard · 4 years

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i want to cosplay tma but i haven't done much of it before and yours are incredible, could you suggest amy characters thatd be pretty easy to pull off?

OK THIS GOT A LITTLE RAMBLY BE WARNED BUT IM Trying my best with this very limited information and delightfully open ended question

well the really excellent part about cosplaying from podcasts is that most of the time the characters don’t have one “canon” design and are completely open to interpretation, which gives you a ton of wiggle room because the decision can be based less on “which of these canon designs do i think id suit best” and more on “which one of these concepts do i think id have the most fun trying to design and execute?” (which is the line of thinking that led me to start working on my jane cosplay, actually!) personally when i cosplay from podcasts the main goal that i’m shooting for wrt the finished product is recognizability since i’ll freely admit that there’s almost nothing like the dopamine release/validation of someone recognizing ur cosplay at a con, especially if they ask for a pic. so my advice is probably generally gonna be oriented towards how to make whatever costume u pick recognizable in hopefully the simplest and clearest way possible.

with tma obviously the human (or mostly human lol) characters are gonna be the easiest to tackle, both because they’re easier to nail down design concepts for (since they’re not the personifications of abstract concepts lol) and also because in tma the monsters/more monstrous characters tend to get pretty detailed descriptions as opposed to the humans who get virtually none.

for me personally, if i was going to start putting together a cosplay of one of the archival staff Right Now starting with things i have in my closet/room, i’d probably either go for daisy or melanie for two reasons. the first is that both in terms of what i look like and what clothes + materials i have lying around, i am (or could use said materials to make myself be) aesthetically closest to looking like my headcanons for them (wow i hope that made sense this is a weird concept to try to figure out how to word when you HAVE slept and AREN’T high so i’m Really struggling)

the second reason is that those are the two i think i (again given what clothes and materials i have on hand) could most easily make myself recognizable as.

aaaand i guess where id go from there is to think about my designs/personal headcanons for these characters. i’ve been trying to sketch my headcanons lately so they’re a little more solid in my mind than they would usually be.

here are the essential components that make a recognizable daisy when i see her in my head:

-short

-large jacket

-too-big clothing in general

-on that note, utilitarian/practical clothing

-boots

-occasionally i like to picture her wearing a shirt with a sign like one of those dog vests that says DONT PET I BITE

-i usually also picture her with some kind of facial scar or something, which as far as i can tell is pretty common in fanart as well

here are the essential components of melanie as she appears in my head:

-also short (tho not AS short, imo)

-mad as hell

-bangs

-messy (in a cool way) eyeliner

-big jacket/hoodie/sweatshirt

-dark lipstick

-ripped jeans/shorts and tights

-ghost hunt uk and/or what the ghost merch

-knife motif somehow incorporated (melanie voice whats uo with this knife motif do you have something against kniiiiiiiives)

-depending which part of the show chronologically ur pulling insp from, sunglasses/an eye bandage/scars/white pupils/etc something like that you get the picture

SO then i go through those lists/review whatever little preliminary sketch ive just done and pull out a second, shorter list which is “things from the first list that i could feasibly make happen using materials that i have or can easily obtain”

so for daisy that would be

-large jacket: i have a way-too-big army jacket i thrifted a while back

-too-big + utilitarian clothing: i have a huge pair of cargo pants and a sweater that have been waiting for this moment

-boots: i got em

-scar/s: i have latex, tissue, and a makeup kit; i can make this happen quickly and easily

and for melanie we’d have

-mad as hell: i can certainly make some faces! draw my eyebrows in a little angrier maybe even!

-bangs: recent development but i have em!

-messy eyeliner: doable

-big jacket: got plenty

-dark lipstick: got plenty x2

-ripped jeans/shorts over tights: happily, this is an essential part of my wardrobe as well as melanie’s

-knife motif: there are certainly subtler and perhaps more elegant ways to go about this but if i wanted to get in cosplay and leave the house in the next like hour.... well.... i mean we do have just like, knives! DISCLAIMER while real knives can be fun and cool for photos don’t take real knives to conventions

anyway yeah so given that i would then basically... gather the pieces needed to check off each item on the list and then get ready and hope for the best lmao.

have fun and best of luck!! im also happy to try to answer more specific questions if u have any, especially practical/technical questions (how-tos, the easiest/cheapest ways to make certain things, shortcuts, etc)

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bigskydreaming · 5 years

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I think i have adhd, my family doesn't believe me. They really support me, but they don't want to notice all the symptoms, i think because they think it'll be worst...

That sucks anon, and I’m sorry to hear that! I want to first caution you that I am ultimately just a random stranger on the internet and you should always back up or verify elsewhere advice you get that way before proceeding just on someone like me’s say-so.

But if you were looking just for ideas on where maybe to go from here….am I assuming correctly from your context that you’re still a minor or in school? If so, is there any kind of guidance counselor that you feel or would feel comfortable expressing this to, to ask their opinion on how to go about having a productive conversation about this topic with your family?

That would be my first suggestion, IMO….always seek out someone you can interact with face to face who specializes in helping with this very kind of thing (or whatever the problem may be). In order to get somewhere productive with anything like this, its really really ideal that you find someone to bounce thoughts off of who knows you personally, face to face, or can get to know you that way…that you also feel comfortable enough with that you’re not likely to give them misleading or half-answers to questions that are only helpful if they’re answered fully and accurately….and above all, you feel SAFE with them.

I can not stress that last part enough. Your safety in anything sensitive is paramount, and its really hard to make the most out of any situation if you don’t feel comfortable and secure with whomever is helping you through it. And something like this is a situation that really ultimately benefits the most from someone who can interact with you real time, in real space.

But back to your specific situation, since you said you do feel safe and supported by your family, which is really great and puts you in a really good position to find a positive resolution to this that you’re happy with….if its not a matter of being scared to approach them about this, but just having trouble coming across as credible….

Ultimately I think the best thing to do is just….keep trying to have this conversation. Try not to get too frustrated with them for not responding the way you really want or ultimately need them to, and when one approach doesn’t work….try again.

I know being ADHD that kind of trial and error thinking isn’t the easiest thing in the world to commit to, so if you truly do have ADHD like you suspect, it might be that you have trouble committing to that exact kind of approach and that’s the problem…..and so my advice there is just take a step back, breathe, and try your best to lower your stress and anxiety about this matter, because those things only exacerbate ADHD, just in my personal experience. Don’t put too much pressure on yourself to resolve this as fast as possible, even if (understandably) you really want to see progress on this sooner rather than later. As long as you’re in a safe, supportive environment….you have time.

Your situation may not be as ideal as you’d like it to be, compared to if you got your parents convinced to help you get tested and find a possible diagnoses and from their, potentially either medication or behavior/mindset tricks and skills aimed at helping ADHD individuals compensate for the ways our brains work even when medication isn’t viable….

But from the sounds of it, your situation also isn’t one where time sensitivity is actively worsening or threatening to worsen your situation. If I’m wrong about that, let me know, as a lot of this doesn’t apply then, or isn’t the best train of thought….but if I’ve assumed correctly there, the best thing you can do for yourself is cut yourself a bit of a break. Commit to not abandoning this and still seeking ways to convince your family to hear you out the way you feel you’re not being heard, currently…..but don’t put too much pressure on yourself to get that accomplished immediately or according to any kind of arbitrary deadline. You don’t need to give yourself more reasons to stress. You need to find yourself more room to breathe.

So even if your thought patterns make it hard to sit down and have a conversation with your family that’s as productive as you want it to be, or where you make your case as strongly as you feel you’ve made it to yourself…..the second you allow yourself TIME to work towards those goals without putting pressure on yourself to achieve them NOW NOW NOW…..you’ll be doing yourself a world of good.

If you have trouble saying everything you want to say in a conversation and tend to be hard on yourself afterwards as you only then remember things you wanted to say but forgot to….just remember its not too late just because you didn’t say them in the previous conversation….you can still say them in the next one you have. Also, try planning ahead. Don’t try and do too much at one time, just whenever you’re fairly relaxed, have nothing else weighing on you, and you’re thinking about this, jot down what you want to say for as long as your brain cooperates and you’re getting out the words the way you want them to get out…..and then when they stop flowing….just give yourself permission to stop.

You were still productive. You still accomplished something. You didn’t figure out everything you want to cover all in one sitting, but you don’t need to. Put your notes aside until the next time you find yourself in a similar spot of free time and cooperative headspace, start naturally thinking about this again….and pull out that piece of paper or open up that file, don’t even try reading or going over the whole thing….just refresh yourself on the last couple things you put down to help synch up your thoughts then with your thoughts now….and right down whatever comes to you as something you want to say while you’re thinking of it now.

Its okay if you write the same things twice or repeat yourself. You can always just delete one of them later when you review everything you wrote down before you try and have the actual conversation with your family. And its okay if its slow going. Its better to be thorough than to be fast, as long as urgency isn’t a factor, and instead of focusing on not getting as much done as you wanted to get done in a sitting, focus on the fact that you productively made progress, actual steps, closer towards getting you to where you want to be. That’s all that matters, ultimately. Once you reach your end goal and get results you’re happy and satisfied with one way or another, its not going to matter how you went about getting there or how long it took you.

In matters like this, the end goal, the destination, is really what matters most, and so don’t stress so much about what the road getting there looks like, so long as you can keep making steps forward, in whatever amounts and however often you can without wearing yourself out…and eventually, you’ll get there. Momentum isn’t important. Just that you keep going, period, and you keep moving in the right direction.

And as for convincing your family specifically…..obviously there’s specific things about yourself and your ways of thinking that make you suspect you might be ADHD….write down what those are. However works for you without also putting too much unnecessary stress or pressure on yourself, google ADHD symptoms, signs, find official sources online that say things about ADHD that coincide with the things about yourself you think match these specifics. Write down those links or print things out, have them with you when you ask your family to sit down and have a conversation about this.

Prepare ahead of time a list of examples of your own behavior or mannerisms that you feel match up to certain ADHD tendencies. If any of them are things your family probably has noticed about you or seen happen, all the better, because you can point them to something they already have a mental image of, connect that to a source saying this might be a sign of ADHD, and then ideally, link it back to something you’ve thought about that makes clear to them why you feel this is something you need to see addressed, and how you might benefit from getting diagnosed and seeing this addressed one way or another.

The more you can manage to prepare and gather together ahead of time, before you bring this up with them next, the more this is likely IMO to convey how important this conversation is to you and how seriously you’re taking this….and that, more than anything, is what’s likely to make them sit up and take notice, and hopefully get them to match your energy in ways that make you feel like you’re being heard now and they’re taking this and taking you seriously.

And try and keep in mind, if you’re having trouble convincing them to believe you as you said…..don’t jump to assuming the worst at any point if you don’t have to. Don’t assume it means they don’t take you seriously or don’t respect your opinion….remember that your parents and family are human too, and none of us are infallible, and we all have things we have preconceived opinions on. If for some reason your parents are seeming particularly resistant to the idea you might be ADHD….there could be a million different explanations for what’s going on in their heads that’s making them resistant, and its very likely that most of them don’t even have anything to do with you.

They’ve been around a lot longer than you no matter how old you are, lol, which means they have both a lot more experiences and a lot more things influencing them towards whatever beliefs they already have about this subject, before you even bring it up.

If worst comes to worst, it might be worth a try to shift gears and stop trying to convince them to believe you at all. Instead just focus on expressing to them that right or wrong, this is something you feel very strongly about and is very implanted in your head, and if nothing else, getting tested and an official diagnosis could suggest that you may not be ADHD or there might be another explanation for the things that made you suspect that, and being diagnosed in this direction could still be to your benefit, as it might open up more avenues for you to explore.

I don’t think this would be lying to them or misleading to them as long as you’re open….even though you’re convinced you’re right and a diagnosis will bear this out….there’s nothing dishonest about you simply expressing that regardless of whether anyone actually believes you’re right, you strongly believe this is something you need explored, and that’s worth attention in and of itself. As long as you feel supported and safe as you talk this through with them, that suggests that the basic matter of how important this is to you….that’s going to be important to them as well. If they care about the fact that right or wrong, you care very strongly about this….that can be more than enough!

They don’t need to believe you yet themselves, just to believe that it matters to you to see this explored, even if its to have your own belief refuted and given alternative explanations. I know its frustrating to be sure you’re right and can’t get anyone else on board with that - believe me, I do - but just keep in mind your ultimate goals! The successful outcome for you isn’t getting your family to believe you’re right, specifically….its getting your family to believe this is important enough to you to be worth exploring, no matter what the end outcome is. It’ll be frustrating to feel like they might just be humoring you, but as long as that’s still advancing you towards your ultimate goal of getting answers for yourself….you’re still being productive, you’re still getting closer to your goal.

It doesn’t cost you anything but pride to accept that they don’t need to fully believe or agree with you to at least cooperate with you in taking things to where you feel this conversation needs to lead. It might suck, but again, just keep your eye on your ultimate goal and what you feel you stand to gain from that. I think in the longrun, looking back in hindsight, any pride it costs to feel like your parents weren’t totally convinced by you and needed an official diagnosis to concede you’re right……like, that’s still nothing compared to the relief and improvement to your mental health and quality of life that you could potentially get from actual answers to your questions about yourself and why you do or don’t do certain things.

Find your specific goal, focus on what you hope to gain from it, and just….keep your eye on that at all times as you move forward, and don’t sweat the small stuff along the way. In the end, once you get where you wanted to go, its all gonna be small stuff in comparison….you likely won’t even remember the specifics of how you felt at various stages along the way, and even if you do, it won’t matter compared to you feeling good about where you are by then, and how you’ve benefited from reaching that point.

I hope there’s something helpful for your specific situation somewhere in all that, and again, don’t just take my word for it, back up or even challenge anything and everything here with other POVs on this. Explore what makes the most sense to you, what feels the most actionable to you, and what is ultimately the most comfortable for you. And again, above all else, just prioritize feeling as safe and secure and supported as possible through all of this. Don’t underestimate the power of having a family you feel is actually supportive of you. As far as anyone I’ve ever met goes, people generally don’t feel confident about saying their family is supportive unless there’s reasons they actually feel that to be true.

Oh, lots of people might generically express they’re sure their family loves them, just on general principle, like, of course they do, that’s what families do, right?

*Shrugs* Regardless, you said you feel supported by them, and that was your word choice, and in my experience that tends to mean something. You wouldn’t have led with a word that specific if you didn’t have something in mind making you feel that was an accurate one word description of them…..so focus on whatever it is about your family that makes you feel that way, makes you feel that’s true, and just…..remember not to forget that at any point through all of this, even when you’re most frustrated or feel furthest from getting where you want to be.

But don’t underestimate the power of having a family who genuinely just wants what’s best for you - and in that specific context, don’t forget there’s a potential avenue to explore if you decide its enough that you convince them to believe this is really important to you, that you really need their support on THIS specifically, even if just to settle yourself and get peace of mind one way or another. Don’t make it about convincing them you’re right, if that’s not what it actually has to be about, to get the end results you’re most trying to reach. All of that can come later…..just focus on getting them on the same page as you in feeling this is worth exploring.

And btw, apologies if you’re not a minor, which you very well might not be. I figured it was safer just to assume that and approach this question from that specific context. I think all of this applies pretty equally no matter what age you are, I just wanted to make sure I didn’t leave out or overlook any angle that might specifically affect the situation in the case of a minor or a teenager still under legal age.

And again, just to reiterate the most important part of all of this:

I AM NOT AN EXPERT OR AN AUTHORITY. PLEASE DO NOT TREAT MY WORD OR OPINION ON THIS AS BEING EQUIVALENT TO THAT OF AN EXPERT OR PROFESSIONAL ON THESE MATTERS.

I’m just a random older guy on the internet who is glad to be of any help he can, but wants to make sure that you not only stay safe and comfortable as you go about this with the people in your day to day life….but ALSO that nobody gets in the habit of getting too comfortable with just trusting the word of any random tumblr user in terms of specific advice…especially with family matters or matters of health or mental health.

I’m honored you value my words enough to approach me about this and I hope my response treated this with the responsibility it deserves, but please always make a habit of running any advice you get from social media past a couple different sources. And don’t just look for repeats of what’s already been said….look for contrary opinions, challenge what someone told you to see if that knocks any holes in it….and decide what to believe based on what holds up best under the scrutiny YOU apply and YOU believe is more relevant to your situation.

Ultimately its your life, you have to live with wherever any advice you take leads, so the most relevant advice is still always going to be the advice that you personally trust the most….because that’s ultimately the only way you’re going to be able to take comfort with whatever else happens at that point, knowing that you at least did your due diligence, challenged the advice before acting on it, and went with the advice that you felt was strongest or prepared you best.

And I also just want to express to you and any other followers in general…..I do try and be as genuine as possible on here, and I do genuinely just want the best for anyone who sends me an ask like this….but I don’t want to encourage it and also I don’t want to discourage it.

By that I mean, I don’t want to say don’t ask me for personal advice ever…..because if something is weighing on you that you need someone’s opinion on and you honestly can’t think of anyone else you trust more to give you an answer you think will help….then I’d rather you ask me or someone else online than just not ask anyone at all. Because I know for a fact that not everyone does have people in their day to day life that they can trust with sensitive questions, and everyone needs some help or insight or even just a sounding board on occasion. Better you ask someone at all, rather than just shove it down and remain bothered by it, with no outlet.

BUT. BUT BUT BUT.

At the same time, please ALWAYS keep in mind when asking personal advice of a stranger on the internet….no matter how genuine we come across as, we are still ultimately strangers on the internet. That doesn’t necessarily mean the advice you get won’t be helpful or is automatically untrustworthy….it just means….consider whatever advice you get PURELY on its own merits. Look at simply in terms of what was actually said, and how that compares to other things you’ve read and heard, and how it might or might not apply or benefit your situation. Wherever and whenever possible, remove the tumblr user giving the advice from the equation….don’t make them and your overall impression of them relevant to how much weight you give to the advice. Don’t follow advice you ultimately don’t feel comfortable with just BECAUSE its a big name or popular tumblr user who said it.

Treat the advice as if you just found it written on a piece of paper that just appeared on the sidewalk in front of you, with no idea who left it for you or what their intentions in doing so might be…..and just weigh the words themselves. Where the advice you found online came from shouldn’t influence how much weight you give that advice UNLESS it came from someone or somewhere online that you can VERIFY as an ACTUAL expert or authority on the specific subject the advice is intended to address.

If the advice you get is solid, it should be able to stand on its own under scrutiny, regardless of who said it. If the advice seems flimsy or causes doubts for you at ANY point, to ANY degree…..seek additional advice and viewpoints elsewhere. Get a second, third, fourth opinion if need be. Compare and contrast, seek as many viewpoints as you can devote time to looking for.

And above all, guys, please stay safe. Keep in mind that however trustworthy I come across as to you, I’m glad for that, but just as a general habit and good practice (especially the younger you are yourself)….always keep in mind I’m a fair bit older than the average users on here, and that neither makes me an automatic expert or authority on anything, nor should it make me your first choice to discuss sensitive matters with. I would prefer anyone who does feel a need to seek my advice with questions like this….please stay anonymous, keep your privacy secure, and ask your question in ways that the answer will be helpful to you even without me ever knowing who you are. Keep this practice in mind with all adults you interact with on a personal level here.

There’s no reason for me or any tumblr user my age to need to carry on a private conversation with unpublished private asks back and forth on personal matters about your private life, if you’re anywhere under twenty. Not only am I likely not to answer those (because even a follow up anon question that sounds similar is likely to be from the URL I’ve already seen you use), they’d make me personally uncomfortable and set a precedent I don’t want to encourage, and for your own safety, I don’t think its a good idea to get too comfortable interacting with any older adult blogger in privacy, or approaching them privately. Same goes for direct messaging.

Anything like this, I am happy to help if I can and I’ll be honest about not being able to if I can’t….but any advice I can offer in situations like these will be just as relevant as a response to an anon ask published in public, as it would be in private. Just protect yourself and remove all identifying information you don’t feel safe seeing posted publicly even WITH you being anonymous…..and just ask whomever you’re seeking advice from on anon in a way that will help you even if they just answer in more general terms, directed to their blog audience as a whole.

Better safe than sorry, wherever possible. Your safety online is just as paramount as your safety in real life physical spaces. Above all else, always stick to spaces where you feel comfortable and secure, and like you have power and agency to protect yourself and remove yourself from any situation that makes you feel uncomfortable or anxious. Don’t make this a reason to feel you have to stay isolated and afraid to connect with others online at all - definitely not what I’m trying to say. Just….always keep in mind what you do or don’t know about another person, before deciding whether they’re the best person to entrust with various things you might want to tell them. Err on the side of caution.

Seek out peers in your own age group first, and ideally prioritize interacting with them first and foremost. Doesn’t mean you can’t have older friends….just….its okay to have different styles and different levels of friendship with different friends, relative to their different ages. Focus sharing your more age specific life experiences with other friends your own age. Just…all things in moderation, you know? You can certainly value the insight and words and friendship of someone much older than you, but don’t make them the be all and end all of your online social circles is all I’m saying. Have people you feel are at the same stage of life as you and going through the same kinds of things currently, who you can turn to or fall back on when you need to. Its important to keep people in your life that you feel are your clear peers in every way….who you don’t feel intimidated by to any degree because of them being older or more experienced or whatever. The most valuable friendships IMO are going to be the ones that not only can do the most for you, who give you what you’re seeking most in a friend or friendship…..but that at the same time, you have just as much to give them, offer them, in terms of what they’re looking for in a friend or friendship. Don’t ever underestimate the importance…the necessity…of feeling like an equal partner in a relationship rather than a junior partner. Its ideal to feel like you’re contributing as much to their life as you feel they contribute to yours. So you don’t feel dwarfed or overshadowed, and because its important to be aware of our own importance to other people. To feel that reassurance that we matter, we make a difference in someone else’s lives….that they are the richer for our friendship and we offer them something unique to our particular bond that they’re not going to get in the same way from any other friend.

Seek out and prioritize friends that make you feel like you’re worth as much to them as they feel they’re worth to you. And if you maybe feel this doesn’t characterize a friendship you have already, once you look at it in these terms….if this makes you uncomfortable once its in your awareness, that doesn’t mean there’s necessarily something inherently WRONG or BAD about that friendship or that friend….it could just be that you’ve realized that whatever that friendship is like now, maybe its not everything it COULD be. And if it bothers you to be aware of that discrepancy….there’s no reason you can’t try and change that to a dynamic you’re more comfortable with, as long as you make a point to keep their feelings and POV about all this in mind as well.

Anyway, I think I’ve wrung all possible blood out of this stone, lol, so that’s enough from me. Just….I get a lot of asks, but not usually ones as specific to individuals’ lives as this one is. So I don’t have a ton of precedence for this particular scenario, and I’m not saying that as a bad thing at all, anon, just FYI…..I just mean I didn’t want to answer this ask without also addressing the overall scenario and making sure I didn’t overlook or leave anything out.

Again, just one last time - I don’t want to in any way suggest or scare anyone into not seeking out advice or help or even just a conversation when they find themselves in need of help and have no one to turn to in their personal lives. If online acquaintances (I’m not talking online friends, mutuals, etc, those friendships are every bit as real and valid as offline friendships and I include these when I say “personal lives” and am talking about if for whatever reason they can’t help in the way you need either)…then yeah, absolutely reach out to anyone you feel can safely help you or give you a good starting point for actionable advice. I do not mean to encourage people to isolate themselves and NOT build bonds online just because its online.

I just mean….be safe, guys. And just….dot your t’s and cross your i’s, and don’t neglect to treat your personal safety and comfort as an absolute priority at all times. Its not just a matter of physical safety or overall mental health, its a self image thing….no one should fall into the habit of thinking that their safety and personal comfort doesn’t deserve to always be a priority, or that its ever something you should take for granted instead of always maintaining an awareness that the best place and way to challenge yourself, stretch yourself, grow, try new things, learn new things, experience new things….always, always, always comes from first and foremost, starting from a place of being safe and feeling confident in that safety. THEN do all of the rest, from that particular spot and state of mind, with it there as a fallback if stepping out of your comfort zone to any degree starts to make you feel actually unsafe.

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ambwimagines · 5 years

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Pocket Chocolate: Chapter 4, New Set of friends

*FLASHBACK* (5th grade, after school)

Mark: Y/N this is my buddy justin

Y/N: Ummm ?.... Justin?

Mark: Yeah, you know I thought it would be cool if we all could hang out together and maybe be friends.

Y/N: I don’t wanna be friends with him *sassily*

Mark: Why not?

Y/N: He’s not you

Justin: Umm... I’m just gonna go home...see ya Minhyung *waves as he runs off*

Y/N: *mocks him* see ya Minhyung. What is that ? Only I can call you Minhyung.

Mark: Everyone can call me Minhyung because its my name. You’re literally acting like a child.

Y/N: Why do you want a new friend all of a sudden, you don’t wanna be mine anymore ?

Mark: Y/N... Come on.

Y/N: Come on nothing, You don’t wanna be my friend anymore.

Mark: I never said that Y/N

Y/N: You don’t have to...

Mark: Are you mad at me?

Y/N: I should be.

Mark: I didn’t do anything, I just wanted to make us a set of friends.

Y/N: Yeah, A set of new friends...

Things were so much more simple back when you were kids. That same afternoon he invited you over to his house to watch movies and play video games. You looked up and it was 8:00 and you knew you couldn’t be out past 8, especially on a school night. You and Mark ran back to your house and he hoisted you to your bedroom window. “So we cool ?” Mark asked as he strained himself to look up in your window. “ Definitely” you responded smiling to him. He took his hands off your window sill that supported him and shoved them back down in his pockets as he went home. Moving his hands through the thought to be empty space he found a plastic-feeling piece of something. He snatched it out of his pocket and it was the wrapper from his piece of the snickers you broke in half an shared with him earlier that day. He stared at it for a while and then looked back at your house with your once illuminated window gone black in result of you turning off your lamp. It reminded him that you would always be there for him. He could count on you and you could count on him. As sure as you would share your piece of pocket chocolate with him.

*PRESENT DAY* (NCT Dorm)

5:30 AM

The blaring noise of the alarm clock awoke everyone simultaneously. The disheveled boys arise from each of their beds. Shoving covers blankets and pillows alike from their person. The slight shifts and shuffles coming from the boys slipping on their house shoes and dragging their feet across the hardwood floor. Some go directly to the kitchen Like Johnny, to make a cup of coffee or drink some water or just get something in their system. While others form a line outside of the bathroom door. Patiently waiting to groom or relieve themselves for the first time today. In the midst of all the sleepy, groggy people up and trying their best to start their day. There was still Mark. Wide awake, he still layed in his bed. He stared at the ceiling. Not because he was angry, not because he was happy either, he was just thinking. As he was thinking the youngest walked past his room but then stopped and walked in.

Haechan: Mark, huyng ? Are you okay?

Mark: Yeah, I’m okay

Haechan: Then why are you still in bed we have to get up, we have things to do today.

Mark: I’ll be up in a minute.

Haechan: Johnny Hyung!!

Mark: I'm up now. (Sits up and gets out of bed)

Johnny: What's going on ?.....Mark you were still in bed ?

Mark: No I-.....

Haechan: Yes. (Interupts mark)

Mark: (scowls at Haechan) I was thinking about something.

Johnny: Okay Mark, cause you know I don't wannna have to tell Manager- nim that means 40 minutes after practice for all of us.

Mark: (Hangs his head down)

Haechan: What's wrong now ?

Mark: You. You're whats wrong with me Haechan.

Haechan: Whatever mark (squeezes his cheeks together) (walks off singing Monster by Exo)

Mark: (looking up to the ceiling) why ?

While Mark prepared for his Schedule. You were in a race against the clock that teased and taunted you with It's hands seeming to move every two minutes and not every second. You scramble around the dorm looking for your books and loose papers from your notebook. Remembering some people borrowed those for notes. You would look up and it would be 8:30 you look again and it would be 8:32. You yell at the clock in frustration. Rushing to put your papers and books into your backpack. In your fuss you awake your friend Erin.

Erin: What are you going skitso about at 8:35 in the morning.

Y/N: It's 8:35 oh god I was supposed to be on the train 2 minutes ago.

Erin: Calm down you can still make time. Relax. You will make Mr. Jung’s class

Y/N: But he's back today. And every second I'm not there is a piece of information I don't get, and every piece I don't get is a missed question on my review, and every missed question on my review is a miss- ...

Erin: (slaps her in the face) you okay now ?

Y/N: Yeah I think, thanks

Erin: Good, now go catch the next train before you have a panic attack. We'll catch up.

Luckily you make the train, but you have 2 minute delay. The engineer saw sparks coming off of one of the wheels on the rear car. Once the Train reaches it's destination you shoot out the doors over to the building across the street as quickly as possible. Inside the bulding you are still running 140 mph down the hallway. And anyone in your way might as well lay down so you can trample them. Bypassing and almost knocking down tons of people you make your way closer and closer to your destination. Down the hall last door on the left. Unfortunately you run full speed into a poor unsuspecting guy. Both of you guys belongings being knocked out of each others hands.

Y/N: Oh,죄송합니다 (joesonghabnida)

Man: Oh, It’s totally fine. It’s my fault really I wasn’t paying attention

Y/N: You speak English ?

Man: You speak Korean?

Y/N: Well a little, I’m not quite fluent yet.

Man: I studied English in Luxembourg from my middle to high school career.

Y/N: Wow that’s interesting. I’m Y/N and you ?

Man: I’m Minjae, Song Minjae

Y/N: You have such a beautiful name. I love it

Minjae: Thank you, you know your name doesn’t sound so bad either.

Y/N: Oh thank you, well I have to get to class. See you around

Minjae: Wait, I’m gonna go grab a bite to eat after class. Would you like to come with me ?

Y/N: Sure after class

You get into class with at least a minute or two to spare. You take your usual seat sandwiched between two empty chairs reserved for your friends. Your friends come in seconds after you. They take their places beside you.

Valerie: Who was that hunk that you rammed in the hallway

Y/N: You saw that ?

Erin: Yes, another magnificent fumble from the tales of Spaz Master

Y/N: One more joke about my mental health and I swear (speaking through clenched teeth)

Erin: (mimics you) “Every second I’m not there is a piece of information I miss” wah wah wah

Y/N: Whatever, I won’t be going with you guys after class.

Erin: What gives ?

Y/N: I have plans.

Valerie: With the hunk-sicle you ran over before class?

Y/N: Maybe ?

Valerie: I want all the juicy dets when you get back.

Mr. Jung walks in and silence routinely befalls the class, as it should. Mr. Jung commands that kind of respect. His class is not the easiest to get in or stay in. So it pays to be very quiet and listen.

Mr Jung: Good Morning class, I trust you had a great day yesterday. Welcome back to Business and Marketing, There are only a few weeks left in the final semester which also means the deadline of your FFB project is rapidly approaching. With that your weekly assignment won’t be too strenuous. This week we will focus on the inner workings of marketing. and just how can anything be marketed ? In light of that I ask you to conduct an interview with someone who has a specific talent. May it be writing, singing, dancing etc. How is their talent marketable, if so how did they bring it to it’s final form of being marketable. For now I would like you to turn to page 380 in your BMT books (Business and Marketing Today) and complete the previous assignment, if you have look over your grade online and if you have any questions come talk to me. Do not wait until after class because I will not be here. i will leave the exact same time you do and I will not answer any questions.

While your friends worked diligently out of their books. You opened up your laptop you pulled out of your backpack. You go to the student portal on the universities website. You click under the grades tab and your grade is still the same. A steady 92% Soon you started to wonder. What if you don’t do the project. You get up out of your seat and walk over to Mr. Jung’s desk where he is engrossed in the newspaper. He peaks up at you from over the news paper.

Mr. Jung: May I help you Ms. (Your last name)

Y/N: Yes Mr. Jung I was wanting to talk to you about my grade is all.

Mr. Jung: Is there something wrong ?, you have an 92 % and you do the majority of my work.

Y/N: Yes I know, I was wanting to see how it would reflect on my grade if I didn't do the project.

Mr. Jung: Do you plan on not completing the project.

Y/N: Well...yes- but no-but also yes

*Bell Rings*

Mr. Jung: Ms. (Your Last name) I highly recommend you start and/or finish that project as soon as humanly possible. It is worth 25% which is a fourth of your overall grade.

Y/N: But I-...

Mr. Jung: *cuts you off * It is after class Ms. (Your Last name). Talk to me in the morning.

You walk out of class and your friends are waiting by the door for you. They take either arm and bombard you with questions about the guy you dodge rammed in the hallway.

Valerie: So Y/N !? tell us. what’s up with the guy you almost ran over in the hallway.

Y/N: His name is Minjae, Song Minjae.

Valerie: Minjae ? that has a nice ring to it.

Y/N: Yeah well I gotta go guys. I’ll see you later at the dorms

*3 HOURS LATER*

You and Minjae were sitting outside at a coffee shop near the Uni (university) sipping iced macchiatos talking over the assignment. You both came to a mutual agreement to interview each other.

Minjae: We could but that’s predictable almost expected we interview as classmates.

Y/N: Then what do you suggest ?

Minjae: I have a friend who works at SM as a talent scout and manager he has very close ties with all the groups and their staff. *pulls out phone* here’s me him and super junior, and me and him with EXO.

Y/N: Wow that’s impressive

Minjae: Sometimes it’s not what you know, but who you know.

Y/N: So you’re saying you could get me an interview with them ?

Minjae: Say the word Y/N and I have it.

Y/N: What’s the catch .

Minjae: No catch, just dinner with me.

Y/N: I should’ve seen that coming.

Minjae: Y/N you’re gorgeous. I just want to treat you how you should be treated.

Y/N: *stammering*

Minjae: *grabs you hands and looks in your eyes*

Minjae keeps you like this for a while you both just stare at each other and a slow but sure smile spreads across your face. You feel comfort in his big brown eyes. You didn’t notice Mark come in with Johnny talking and laughing until you catch him staring at the both of you out the corner of your eye. You immediately snap out of your daze with Minjae and pull yourself to usual. quickly getting your book and looking at it you decide to acknowledge Mark even though he has seen you first though.

Y/N: Oh hey Mark, come on over.

You signal towards him and he comes over there. You promptly stand up and introduce him To Minjae. Minjae stands up and shakes Mark’s hand.

Y/N: Yeah so what brings you here Mark.

Mark: You know Johnny has to have at least 3 iced Coffees a day

Y/N: *laughs* Mark you are so sill

Mark: But what about you ? what brings you here ?

Y/N: Oh me and my project partner Minjae have a project due we need some place fairly quiet.

Mark: Oh okay well have fun.

Mark thought of you and thought of life watching you be happy with someone else. It took him right back to that day in elementary. Someone else putting that smile he loved so much right on your gorgeous face and he couldn't bare it. For the second time in life he was .......

Jealous

I am far from done. I want you guys to get ready cause. I'm kinda gonna be turning these out like clockwork so if you really love this series then get ready for a marathon of chapters to read

Love

-Kayla

#ambw #nct #ambw kpop #nct 127 #mark lee #nct scenarios #kpop fluff #ambw fluff

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