#the last third of that is probably the worst thing I've ever put out. in my life

[batmanisagatewaydrug]

reading roundup: May 2024

you guyssssss you guys you guys you guys I've been reading so much this month :)

sometimes my brain gets the itch to just DEVOUR books and it's really been on me, probably thanks to the burst of energy + free time that comes with the semester ending and summer getting started! the days are longer, the last of my season depression has been kicked to the curb, and I can spend hours reading on the porch every evening. the ideal!

right now, as the month ends, I'm feeling a particular hankering towards nonfiction and juicy new summer novels; I reblogged a Lit Hub roundup of new books the other day that got my brain buzzinggggg with excitement for the coming months. we'll see if that ends up manifesting in the June roundup, but for now, here's what kept me busy in May:

Paris Daillencourt is About to Crumble (Alexis Hall, 2022) - this month I read two romance novels picked by my beautiful patreonites; I did a compare/contrast between the two over on Patreon and I'll leave the majority of my thoughts there, but suffice to say that I am not a fan of Paris. definitely the weakest of the three Alexis Hall novels, and a real disappointment since I found the other two delightful. the story is straightforward enough and has some potential for sure, but Paris as a protagonist is a sodden mess who I found just insufferable. thumbs down from me, gang.

Chef's Kiss (TJ Alexander, 2022) - hi, it's the other romance novel. this one is a lot goofier than Paris Daillencourt, which is fitting since it's BA Test Kitchen rpf starring a bisexual Claire Saffitz and a nonbinary Brad Leone. it's frustrating because the story is definitely stronger than the one in Paris but the romance is piteously undercooked, although I was at least fine with the protag and her love interest getting together - they were boring but unobjectionable, unlike Paris and his love interest who I really thought would have been better off as friends. now that I'm thinking about it, you might get a perfect queer cooking show romance novel if you somehow mashed the two of them together. they're both, like, so close to working, but ultimately fall flat.

Delicious in Dungeon Vol. 4-6 (Ryoko Kui, 2018) - I don't even know what to say except that I'm still loving everything about Dungeon Meshi. the craft and thought that Kui puts into every facet of the world, from the big picture politics between fantasy races to the individual thoughts and feelings of each character, shows so much love for the world without ever being overbearing; it never feels like exposition is being hammered down my throat so much as little details are being tastefully arranged to be enjoyed at whatever speed and to whatever extent the reader likes. the world is getting bigger with each chapter and I'm looking forward to exploring more, especially now that Falin's hottie monster form and that good good catgirl have entered the chat.

Earthdivers Vol. 2: Ice Age (Stephen Graham Jones, Riccardo Burchielli, Patricio Depeche, Emily Schnall, Joana Lafuente, 2024) - once again I've done the worst thing that you can do as a comics fan, which is get invested in a series that's just starting out and is still releasing individual issues. the third trade paperback won't be out until December, so I guess I'm either going to have to go on hiatus with Earthdivers or start chasing down new releases on comic pirating sites, which feels shitty - that's how I read Batman comics that are the same age as me, not new stuff from authors I actually want to support! but Earthdivers might just be worth it. the second installment takes us to a wildly different setting than the first, Columbus-killing collection, dropping fearsome mother Tawny in a prehistoric North America. but while the setting changes, the series is still grappling with the question of what its protagonists are willing to sacrifice and who they're willing to become to change the past and save the world. we're starting to see bigger hints about how much history can be altered and catching some clues about the series' antagonist (???); I gotta know what happens next.

Prairie Fires: The American Dreams of Laura Ingalls Wilder (Caroline Fraser, 2017) - here it is, the book that got nonfic so powerfully on the brain! this is a riveting history whether you grew up on Little House on the Prairie or not (I didn't), tracking Laura Ingalls Wilder from an impoverished girl constantly imperiled by life on the prairie to a beloved icon of American propaganda. for me, personally, this hefty book really picks up when it gets to the endlessly complicated and frequently nasty relationship that Wilder had with her daughter when said daughter was grown; Rose Wilder Lane is a FASCINATING figure in her own right and I'm kind of obsessed with what a shithead grifter girlboss she was. fascinating stuff all around.

The Brides of High Hill (Nghi Vo, 2024) - Vo's series of Singing Hills novellas has always woven from one genre to another, exploring new types of stories just as our protagonist, the cleric Chih, explores new lands. this installation takes us straight into a gothic horror that pulls out all the stops: an isolated manor, an enigmatic madman roaming the grounds, the strangling snares of social conventions, and a blushing bride who isn't exactly what she seems. I read it in one sitting, it's delicious.

Superfreaks: Kink, Pleasure, and the Pursuit of Happiness (Arielle Greenberg, 2023) - a poppin' primer for anybody who wants to learn more about the world of kink and what the fuck is going on out there. at one point I did catch myself thinking that I was a little underwhelmed and that Greenberg wasn't really putting forth anything that radical, but then I realized that speaking extremely candidly about and validating interest in basically any kink or fetish imaginable, and yes I do mean straight up any of them, is actually A Lot for many people to handle. so, yeah, good book, check it out for a friendly and enthusiastic intro to the wide world of kink.

Sex Criminals Vol. 2: Two Worlds, One Cop (Matt Fraction and Chip Zdarsky, 2015) - the first volume of Sex Criminals left me feeling a little meh, but I decided to keep going because Matt Fraction's Hawkeye run was lifechanging and I know this series is pretty widely acclaimed, so I want to see where we're going with this. (plus it's free via the library, so what do I have to lose?) this volume really sold me on the series and particularly on Jon, who I was pretty lukewarm on initially. he really stole the spotlight in this one, and I like the way that the story is ratcheting up the stakes.

The Stone Sky (N.K. Jemisin, 2017) - GOOOOOOOOOD what a book! what a trilogy! in a series shaped by empires and natural disasters, the story ultimately ends with a quit confrontation of clashing ideologies, a young daughter determined to end the world and a mother equally determined that one of her children should live. and that shit hurts! I read the series a couple of times when I was younger but I was never before able to fully appreciate the work Jemisin does in crafting Essun and Nassun, showing us the way cruelty and fear have shaped both of them into the people they ultimately are and the choices they make. absolutely masterful, a legend.

From Here to Eternity: Traveling the World in Search of the Good Death (Caitlin Doughty, 2017) - this was another reread, and while N.K. Jemisin was blowing my mind, Caitlin Doughty was giving me a warm hug. I don't know what to tell you, reading about the ways that people all over the world care for their dead and take comfort in their memories makes me feel all warm and fuzzy. death can be really beautiful and comforting, if you're not a coward.

The Big Reveal: An Illustrated Manifesto of Drag (Sasha Velour, 2023) - listen, I'm not really a Drag Race girlie. I first heard about this book when Velour was a guest on Nicole Byers' podcast, and while I was very charmed by her I was not expecting to be blown away by her book. it's just a little cash-in for a Ru girl, right? all she needs to do is slap together some cool pictures of her in drag and a few platitudes about being yourself and boom bang, that's a book. but readers, I owe Sasha Velour an apology: this book was so much cooler and smarter than it needed to be! Velour brings an impressive eye to forces of colonialism and capitalism that shape art and conceptions of queerness, and keeps this framework firmly in place while keeping the tone of the book bubbly and lighthearted. she also goes out of her way to spotlight a huge variety of drag performers and gender nonconforming figures throughout history, celebrating all the different means of expression that make up the tapestry of contemporary queerness. a great read, and one that I've already shelled out for. a friend and I are working on a documentary exploring the nuances of queer style, and I know I'm gonna want to pull heavily from Velour's thoughts and the history she's curated.

[spaceorphan18]

More thoughts on XM97 - because of course I have more thoughts...

Doing some more reflection, because this is what I do during hyperfixation, apparently.

It helps to write things down and get them out of my head, I suppose. Honestly, it'll be nice to get past the last episode, because then I can compartmentalize and just push the thing away until season 2 (if the finale gives me any reason to want to come back).

DeMayo went on another tweeting spree (I just keep an eye on these things because I get curious) and during this particular bout, I feel like I've got somethings clarified. And I think my own personal frustrations come down to - the ideas of writing and creating vs fan expectations.

Overall, I do think that XM97 is a solidly good (or at least entertaining) show. The animation is good. The voice cast is good. And the ideas they are using, in theory, are more adult and mature and nuanced than the original kids' show ever was (which, I'll give TAS some credit - dug deeper a lot of times when most kids' cartoons of the time didn't).

One of the biggest issues for me has been execution. First of all, the show is way too short for the amount they're trying to pack in here. It almost feels like they wanted to do everything on their wishlist because if they didn't, they wouldn't get the chance to do it. And it feels, muddied... They really needed a full season to unpack a lot of this.

The thing about Rogue and Gambit's story.... I get the 'kill your darlings' strategy of writing. In fact, I agree that good stories are messy and have conflict and you should always put your heroes through the worst. I feel like there was a better way to do the story (I believe) they're telling.

I don't think Magneto needed to be a part of it at all, and the triangle just feels... forced in a lot of ways. I understand that they went there to give Remy some heartbreak along the way, but I truly believe the two of them, with their own issues, and the two of them being in an undefined relationship with complicated issues over touch -- still could have resulted in compelling TV, and still would kept the devastation of Gambit's death.

Episode 5 is still my favorite, and despite my distaste for the whole Magneto side of it, I think the writing there was top notch, and still the best this show has been. I get, though, that they wanted to have Rogue and Gambit "break up" for the impact to hit harder, for Rogue to feel much more guilt once he died, for that last line to be even more heartbreaking.

So, the easiest route was to add the Magneto of it all. Episode 5 is brilliant in a vacuum. But in greater context there are other ways you can get there. And, no, Magneto wasn't ultimately needed. Rogue still could have had regrets, there still could have been heartbreak, there are always things you just don't say before a tragedy.

The thing about it, had they set this up correctly, and in a way that was more satisfying and didn't involve third parties? You may have gotten way more of the Rogue and Gambit fans on board. (And I'll get to the fan side of this in a second.)

See, TAS flirted with Rogue and Gambit's romance but never pushed it too far. Not only was it a kids' show, but Rogue probably would have never had her powers under control and it just was never going to go that far. Meanwhile, the comics have moved way beyond where TAS was. Rogue and Gambit's relationship has evolved a lot in thirty years - way past the tragedy, past the will-they/won't-they, past the break ups and reunions, and in the comics, Rogue and Gambit are a relatively healthy (for a comic book couple) couple of best friends and old marrieds. They're story is so far beyond what they once were that going back to TAS feels... odd.

So, the show starting in this place where TAS left off feels awkward in a lot of ways. There's a lot of expectations layered onto this show, but the show -- being limited by external factors, can't really handle all of it.

I don't think the first few episodes of the show did enough to show the sheer strength of Rogue and Gambit's connection and relationship. And part of that was time and part of that is because it's a sequel to a show set thirty years ago and part of it is time compression and part of it is the writing wanting to leave some vague open-endedness to the relationship so that Episode 5 could work.

And thus Episode 5 feels a bit jarring. It's way more a mature script. There's much more going on in those relationships that we haven't seen set up. Not really. And it's almost relying too much on - things that were mildly set up in the original and the heavy history of the comics.

Which leads me to what has happened afterwards. I think that in a world sans the Magneto of it all, you still get a Rogue who is absolutely heartbroken over the loss of her love. She would still go dark. She would still seek vengeance. She would still wrap herself up in that trench coat and wreck havoc on everyone until she ultimately succumbed to her own grief and eventually dealt with it in one way or the other.

(The part that I just don't agree with -- besides giving up the trench coat, which I know is symbolic in gesture -- is her running off to play Colossus in Fatal Attractions. Which, again, is why they did add the Magneto of it all, but I'm digressing.)

Anyway, this leads me to the fan expectations, and why it does feel so raw for a lot of us. Rogue and Gambit have never really had their time to shine. The films are full of mischaracterizations and limited (very limited) appearances. The other TV shows never let the relationship shine. And even in the comics it felt like forever for the X-Office to take them seriously.

This TV show felt like an opportunity to start fresh. To be excited about something. To get behind the characters we love and celebrate them. We can still break their hearts. We can still even kill them off. But give us a reason to care!

But instead of building that relationship with us fans, it went a different route. And now we feel heartbroken and angry, instead of just heartbroken. Gambit fans - who get shit on so often - get one bright of moment of glory before a death that feels somewhat hollow when you start to realize it was in purpose of someone else's story. Rogue fans - have the internet hating her with a passion. It feels like once again - being set up only to fail.

It feels hurtful, even when, I truly believe, that was not the writers' intentions. Make your characters go through hell - yes, but you have to have your audience on your side to make it impactful.

I don't really know where the show goes from here. There's either going to be closure or a cliffhanger. What I'd really like, though, is some sort of hope.

Because I get real life sucks. And I get that we often reflect in our fiction that it does. But we're talking about a cartoon about superheroes. We're talking about escapism at its finest. I love complicated and messy and nuanced and sometimes even heartbreaking stories -- but I also want something that makes it all worth while.

There is still one episode left, and I'm curious as to where it's going to go. Because at the end of the day, X-Men has always been about hope, too.

[fastcardotmp3]

Thinking about Eddie and how it probably takes him some time to figure out what he wants from life after having his whole worldview sent toppling and very nearly dying in an alternate dimension.

Like after he gets his GED it's odd jobs and moving town to town looking for a place that isn't put off when they do a background check and find out what he'd been accused of (no matter that he was cleared of all charges) and it's changing his last name and just surviving for a while rather than chasing down any sort of passion projects.

Maybe he tries the music thing out a few years in, figuring people probably care less about who's playing a gig so long as they know their way around a guitar, but he's still young and stupid and traumatized and it becomes very clear to everyone putting in the effort to stay in touch with him that he's about to be taken majorly advantage of by the industry so that's kind of a bust. He gets out as fast as he can, can't face the reality of his name ending up in the press anymore than it already has for Wayne's sake as much as his own.

And it's hard. It's messy and it's survival and it's just a lot for a guy who never really planned to still be alive this many years after that guitar solo in the Upside Down but he has to stop running around the country at some point and hey, Chicago's as good a place as any right?

Robin's working on her Master's out there and Nancy's at the Herald kind of kicking all kinds of journalistic ass. Steve just finished up his degree after floundering a bit like Eddie for a few years there when all the head trauma caught up to him and chronic tinnitus finally started turning into hearing loss and he's working at a school for HOH and Deaf kids now, genuinely actually thriving.

And Eddie feels a little bit like he's still the third-try senior at Hawkins High because what has he done? Lots of false starts and changed minds and spontaneous moves cross-country because he got too restless being in one place for too long, what has he really done?

He moves to Chicago, though, gets a job at a bookstore which is really far from the worst gig he's had in the past five or six years and it also just so happens to only be a handful of blocks away from the Art Institute where he happens to know one of the top undergrads.

The first time Will Byers comes in it might as well be because Steve is dragging him by the ear, because Eddie's only lived here three weeks but Steve has spent every day of that time making sure Eddie is getting settled and acclimated and has people. Almost like he's worried about Eddie leaving again.

Almost like he wants Eddie to stay.

And he drags Will Byers into the bookstore, eggs them into catching up outside of the Monster Hunter Reunions Joyce tries to make happen around major holidays. And then he does it again. And again.

It's Steve and Will bringing him lunch or bringing him coffee when it starts getting cold in the windy city and Eddie is loathe to admit it, but it's nice. It's not some big revelation, it's not Eddie's chance to change the world or anything, but he's got people around who keep making him aware that they're around and he's more settled than he's maybe ever been.

And then one day it's--

"Hey, Byers, you tell Ed about that thing you've been working on?"

If Eddie's hands weren't busy designing a killer fantasy display (if he does say so himself) he would be noticing the sly smugness in Steve's shoulders. He would know this was a set-up. He would just know.

The thing Will is working on is a graphic novel.

The thing Will is working on is a fucking metal ass premise of a graphic novel, taking no shortage of inspiration from the kid's quite frankly too insane for fiction experiences while still somehow putting so much of his own voice into it and Eddie is obsessed, Eddie is enthralled, Eddie is--

"Would you mind giving me feedback sometime? It's just-- I've got all these ideas, but I never know how to streamline them. You were always so good at that as a DM-- making everything make sense, you know?"

On that day, Eddie is mostly just honored that Will sees him for more than a guy without any formal creative writing education and trusts him enough to look at his work.

A matter of weeks later, Eddie is somehow not just giving feedback, he's basically a co-author. They use the big empty wall above Eddie's couch in his tiny studio apartment for storyboards and beat notes and it's on accident, the way Eddie finds this thing he loves.

Except for the fact that it's only an accident for him.

"You're such a fucking meddler, you know that?" he says to Steve over beers at Steve's apartment one Friday afternoon after gushing over Will's new art drafts for the book for approximately 45 minutes straight.

"I have no idea what you're talking about," Steve smirks, not even trying to hide it.

"Oh, come on. Will told me he came to you asking if you thought I'd be interested in helping out and you came up with this elaborate slow-burn plan. The gig is up, Harrington, I'm in your head."

Steve just telegraphs his movement as he reaches up and shuts off his hearing aid, "Sorry, I can't hear you, man. Maybe if you wrote it in a book for me, drew some pictures--"

Who would really blame Eddie for kissing him on the mouth?

Someone needs to shut that guy up every once in a while.

[wishiwaskidding]

Here is about 400 words of something I've been working on for just. at least 3 years. Really want to finish it, but I haven't touched it in about six months. Maybe posting a little here will give me some motivation. I'm maybe one-third to halfway done with it.

Another high school Duncney AU.

Duncan doesn’t know why he’s wasting the last week of summer break at the fucking high school, but it’s 4:45 PM the Thursday before school starts again, and it’s the third day in a row that he’s been here.

Wait. That’s a lie. He knows why.

It’s her fault, just like it always is when he’s caught up in some scheme he doesn’t quite understand and takes a lot longer than he’d like. It’s his fault, too, for not being able to just say “no” to her.

Courtney likes mysteries, has for as long as he’s known her. Likes solving them, too, and has a penchant for finding them. She always, always drags him along. Ever since they were five, she cracked the case of missing the missing cookie jar. The mysteries have only grown in scale, and this is apparently the biggest one yet.

“I’ve stumbled upon a conspiracy.” She’d told him, sitting cross-legged on his bed last Saturday. “I’m so close to putting it all together, but unfortunately I’m going to need your help.”

She had said it as if it pained her to ask him for anything. It was the same tone she always used. He knew it didn’t, knew it never had. It didn’t when she was five and asked (ordered) him to help her up on the counter because a few things on top of the refrigerator were out of place, and it didn’t now.

He’d said “yes,” like the idiot that he is. The idiot that he’s always been. Because after 12 years of this, he really should have learned that it always got him into shit he didn’t need to be in.

Too bad he couldn’t say “no.” Tried it once when they were 11. She iced him out for two weeks, and it was the worst two weeks of his life. He helped, in the end, with a promise to never leave her alone again. Probably for the best, too, because that one ended up with their assistant principal getting fired for something he still doesn’t totally understand.

Duncan didn’t know what made him a bigger idiot: the fact that he came along, always, or that he was in love with her and had been since at least 14. Probably both. Maybe neither.

[snek-panini]

Book time! This is On the Subject of Nests and Happiness by Nonesensed. I don't typically go for nesting fics, they tend to get a little silly for my taste, but this one is an old favorite. They put some very nice worldbuilding into it and I really liked their OCs, which is kinda unusual in fandom, at least for me. So I wanted to give it the book treatment, and it turned out really well! The cover is cardstock, with book cloth on the spine, neither of which were actually bought for this project but they looked so good together that I couldn't resist. The title is HTV and it was an absolute nightmare to get all those tiny letters to stick properly. Worth it, though. More pics under the cut!

Endpapers are scrapbook paper, also not bought for this book, but just. Look at them. They look so good. I had actually intended to make my own end bands on this project, but they fought me so hard that I gave up. And I already had these black-and-white checkered ones that matched, so it's not so bad. You can kinda notice my tendency to make covers too deep in this shot. I used to think that was a flaw but as I go on I'm kinda liking it. I get more wiggle room when casing in, and they feel nice when I read the books. View from the top shows how thick this one is. It's the longest word count I've done at this size and I want to do more like this. The textures and proportions make it very pleasant to hold.

Have some interior shots:

Title page, first page of first chapter with summary, and first page of actual chapter text. All the images came from rawpixel with minimal manipulation on my part to make the one in the third photo. I don't like working with images, I've never been that kind of artist, but I do very much like how things turned out. It's got three chapters and they all have a first page with the wreath image and short summary, then the actual text of the chapter starts on the following page.

This fic has so many footnotes. More than any other fic I've set type for so far, and some of them are very long. I discovered in the process of formatting them that footnotes are a pain in the ass to typeset. Again, though: totally worth it, they look so good even if they do make the line spacing a little weird. I think a lot of my frustration with them comes from trying to make Word do things it was not intended to do. It won't stop me doing more footnote-heavy fics in the future, but at least now I have a better idea of what I'm getting into when I do them.

Fun thing about this: I waxed and burnished the cardstock before I attached the cover, and the last thing I did after casing in was the title. I have a cricut mini press, which is shaped like a tiny iron, and when I was pressing the HTV it left an iron-shaped dark patch on the front cover. Cue panic. It looked so stupid, and it was already cased in so I was stuck with it. I think what happened had to do with the wax coating? Thankfully, pressing it again all over (instead of just where the title is) covered up the dark patch, but the result is that the front is a slightly different color than the back. Whoops. I may go back later and press the back too, to get the color even, but for the moment I actually kinda like it? Shows me what I'm learning. Another fun fact, thankfully less visible than the last one: while I was making the cover, I gave myself the worst papercut ever while working with the cardstock. There was actual blood, and right on the tip of a finger on my dominant hand. I had a mark there for weeks.

I'm very proud of this one. That's probably why the post got so long and ramble-y, but I just keep coming back to it. Colors, textures, size, nice sharp groove where the spine connects to the front. I'm just really proud of it.

[whywoulditho]

the zionist lie: "muslims hate jews"

let's talk about it.

it's always baffling to talk to zionists because they are so confident when they tell you that muslims hate jews, that they've always hated jews, they teach their kids the same kind of hate they have and they want all the jews in the world dead. and when i, a muslim who was also born in a conservative muslim household and have gone to religious schools all throughout my teenage years, tell them that that's not true, they look at me like i'm insane.

the first time i heard about israel was in third grade, we were doing presentations on various world news and when i asked my mom about what the news about gaza were all about she explained to me that the israeli government was bombing them. i remember being so surprised because i had thought that bombs and wars were something of the past, that it was history. i felt sick, i was probably too young to learn about it. but i remember distinctly that the narrative was "israel is bombing palestine", not "jews are bombing muslims" i didn't even know that israelis were mostly jews and palestinians were mostly muslims. because either the news nor my mom painted "jews" as the villain. it was israel, a country, a state.

fast forward to middle school, sixth grade, last week of school before summer break. the teachers mostly leave us be because there's not much to learn anymore especially since our exams are already over. we asked this one math teacher to let us watch a movie and he said he had one in his usb driver, he put it on the board and we watched the boy with the striped pyjamas. that was the first time i ever learned about the holocaust, (for a little context, in turkey we learn WWI in much more detail than WWII since we only fought in the first one. especially in middle school level history, we don't get into the second one yet. that's why i hadn't heard of it before) and me and my friends bawled our eyes out to that movie. it was heartbreaking. we didn't understand how anyone could do such a thing.

i went back home and told my mom all about the movie and asked if she knew that jews had gone through such a thing. she explained the nazis and their concentration camps to me. i was shocked, i asked her how could that have ever happened. she pressed her lips together and told me it wasn't the only time it happened, and there are similar things happening in the world even today. we talked about africa, and the uyghurs and finally, palestine. i've never felt more speechless than at that moment when she told me the same people that went through the holocaust were responsible for the mass murder of palestinians. she quickly explained to me that not all jews are israelis, and certainly not all of them are zionists. that zionism is an ideology that makes people believe they have the right to kill others if it means they get the land they want.

we only ever talked about this genocide in context of the nature of human, greed, colonialism. it was never about religion. it was never "jews are the worst", it was never "jews are killers". it was always about a colonialist state, a colonialist system, the west supporting israel for their own gain from war and chaos. once again, no one painted "jews" as the bad guys.

as i said, i went to religious state schools, but the point of the school course we were taking wasn't to make everyone muslim, rather it was to teach us what Islam was. we all knew that we were free to choose whether to believe it or not after we learned it. i know some of my formerly muslim friends left Islam after high school. but while we were in school, we did all these extracurriculars where we researched about world issues and started campaigns to help those in need. some of you may not know this but the BDS movement existed back then as well, so senior students in my school would print lists of brands to boycott and hang them on the bulletin boards. the title would say "israeli products", not "jewish products". we understood that a whole market could not logically belong to the believers of a religion, it belonged to a certain state and we didn't want to endorse it because we knew it was killing innocent people. i started boycotting in seventh grade.

in high school, i had a world's religions and history class. we had to learn the basics of every common religion in the world. their beliefs system, their rules, their culture. it was all done from an objective point of view too. it wasn't like "these are the beliefs of the kafeer who will go to hell!!". our teachers would tell us if we want to be educated muslims we had to learn the basics of other religions so that we could compare and contrast, and be able to connect and debate with the believers of other religions. we had to learn so many things about judaism i don't even remember some of it. our finals test was on christianity, judaism and hinduism. they literally wouldn't let us graduate until we learned the basics of those religions.

i've seen my mom reading books like anne frank's diary, my dad would talk about his visits to churches and synagogues, he would encourage me to go visit different religions' worship places too. he would say it's important to understand them. to not be alienated from their world views just because we're muslims. growing up we always had holy scriptures of them at home too. a couple of different variations of the bible and torah. both in original script and translations. we had so many books about different religions, and my parents always encouraged me to read them. i haven't always been a muslim, there was a time when i had a lot of questions and skepticism about Islam as well. even then my parents would research with me, we would compare the holy books of different religions and see what they said about the same topics. in the end i decided to be a muslim, but not because i was conditioned, oppressed or forced into it. i was always taught to be respectful to other religions, and those who didn't believe in anything at all. i don't remember anyone telling me all jews needed to die or that they were all going to hell.

i explained all of this because i want any zionists who might be reading this to ask themselves, how many muslims have they known? have they ever read the Qur'an? have they ever studied Islam? have they ever been to a mosque? had their parents have books about Islam in their house? or our holy book? have they ever watched movies about us? have they ever learned out culture?

i want them to ask these to themselves not because i think they are obligated to do any of these, but because i need them to understand they don't know anything about the people they think hate them. they're so confident in their ignorance, they hear all these rumors about how intolerant and hateful muslims are but they never ask a real muslim, "hey, do you hate us? do you hate us because we're jewish?"

because as a muslim, i can answer from the bottom of my heart i don't hate jewish people. my stance against the state of israel does not equal hate for jews. i wish i could make you see this. because i do believe that there are some zionists who completely fall victim to this propaganda. so i hope someday you can see that the world doesn't hate you for your religion, or where you come from. they hate you for killing innocent people. it's really as simple as that.

[retropobor]

Screw it, I'm an art blog now, have some more art (UTY pacifist Route Spoilers for part of it, also there's a lot of text you have to read in order to have this thing make sense)

This is my most recent work, made just last night. It's not perfect, but I'm proud of how it turned out, Although I feel as though pretty much everything needs an explanation here, especially if you feel like you recognize someone here.

For those of you who don't know (AKA pretty much every one of you other than maybe @yaboi88900) I run a DnD campaign. A very very poorly balanced DnD campaign. With a mix of heavy amounts of homebrew, and an inability to get anything playtested, I have my fair share of monsters who have almost resulted in a TPK, so I decided to put them all in an artwork to memorialize them.

Left and right: Blood elementals

A while back I was watching a a dungeon dad video about a creature known a blood elemental, and I thought they were cool, so I added a combat encounter against them. I was expecting quite a few people, so I thought 1 per person in the 4 person party worked out, and made a combat encounter against 4 of them... 2 people showed up, and as it turns out a CR 5 Blood elemental is actually pretty dangerous against a level 5 player, so even after killing 2 off, it was still a brutal combat session. There wasn't much else to say about it though. In my opinion, it was rather forgettable.

Middle (Bottom): The Cabinet Man

Ironically the blood elementals weren't the worst encounter of the storyline. Again 2 people showed up for the session, because during this time, we were struggling on player count. Basically everything after the blood elementals was this whole Lemon Demon based plotline with the BBEG being the main character from No Eyed Girl/When He Died, and the quest giver being the main character from Touch Tone Telephone (I can go more in depth in another post if y'all want to know more about it). As you are probably beginning to realize that fine figure in the center is based on Cabinet Man. He's one of if not the first stat block I ever made, which means he's not balanced in the slightest. I'll save the details of what this Cabinet Man can do for a different post because there's a lot on him, but for now know that he's never met a foe he couldn't kill before his second phase. Also he gave my players a crippling fear of arcade cabinets.

Background: The Demon Core Golem

I never actually ran this one because it's too late game for any campaign I've ever ran, but even without running it, just about everyone who's seen the stats has an innate fear for this thing and for good reason, because this thing is strong. It only has a few attacks, but all of them deal a lot of damage, and as expected for something named after the demon core, this thing is highly radioactive, meaning it deals massive amounts of unblockable poison damage if you get near it, and it can give out radiation sickness (CDC accurate radiation sickness at that). Survive all of that, and it does the job its father could only dream of, and becomes a literal nuclear bomb, at which point pretty much all you can do is run. Yes it is as powerful as it sounds. No I don't know what I was thinking when I made this.

Middle (Top): Ceroba Ketsukane, Defiler of Pacifism

This one's the most recent of the lethal encounters, having the related plotline finished tuesday. So Undertale Yellow came out, and I absolutely loved it (if you couldn't tell already), so I decided to adapt bits of the game into a plotline in the campaign (albeit with some lore and plot edits to fit the world, and because total plagiarism just ain't my style). Well if you know anything about the pacifist route, the final boss is Ceroba who dons a mask and becomes incredibly powerful* The party was sweeping through Ceroba's first second phases, and most of the third phase with ease, so I decided to quit sugar coating it for the second half of the third phase. When I was making the stat block for Ceroba I gave her an aoe attack, and perfect for her, all the players were grouped together in one place, so I decided to use that AOE attack, and in one round, I accidentally reduced the entire party other than the sorcerer in the backlines to hit point levels ranging from death saving throws to 4 at the best. Safe to say I re sugar coated it after that. And for anyone wondering, Ceroba was spared, and is now safe and sound in Ketsukane mansion, and she may or may not become a quest giver for some more side quests, Idk yet.

[spider-xan]

It's quite jarring to see how much love and passion was put into msm1, and in msm2 you can FEEL Sony breathing down on Insomniac's neck. It's not the worst AAA game, I've seen other triple A titles that ended up way worse due to corporate meddling. And all things considered, msm2 ended up being good despite the obvious flaws in its execution, compared to other titles that had a similar fate. Still, doesn't mean it's not a shame that they didn't have more creative control over the project. I'd love to see a director's cut. pc port maybe? Ghost of Tsushima got the director's cut treatment for the pc port despite the game having a positive reception

Yeah, this is exactly how I feel about MSM2, esp in comparison to MSM1 tbh - it's definitely not the total disaster that is the worst Spider-Man thing ever like the fanboys are arguing (and their arguments are like, ridiculous and not actual problems), and overall, it's still quite good and I like most of it, all things considered, but it's a shame that there was obvious corporate meddling that put undue pressure onto the creative team and developers to get the game out before it was truly ready to be released and forced them to cut a lot of content to make the deadline; I absolutely feel like the last third of the game especially felt really rushed and like it jumped from major event to major event and went around in circles without any breathing room, and outside of all the time devoted to Harry and Peter at the beginning, a lot of characters and relationships felt undeveloped compared to the first game, and I don't think it had to be that way.

Like, I definitely didn't expect, say, Peter and Curt's relationship to get the same level of development as Peter and Otto, but I expected more than a quick intro where they barely talk before Curt disappears for hours of gameplay until the Lizard plot, and it's frustrating knowing that Curt had a bigger and more active role in the early script outline that also addressed some of my issues with him in the final game, ie. barely doing anything for the symbiote plot despite being the symbiote expert outside of some phone calls that go nowhere versus originally actively researching the symbiote to help Peter and proactively keeping it out of Oscorp's hands and helping create the Anti-Venom suit with Mister Negative.

But yeah, it's a shame bc I absolutely would have rather waited for longer to get the truly finished game the developers wanted to release than the rushed by corporate one we're stuck with and isn't their best or intended work, through no fault of the creative team, bc yeah, unless they do a director's cut, this is all we're getting bc it's too late to redevelop the entire game through updates and patches; like, it's not just the major writing and gameplay issues, it's also frustrating that they dropped things like the social media feed, character bios, podcast archives, etc. that made MSM1 fun and developed.

That said, I feel like Insomniac really wants to move on from MSM2, which is probably also partly due to the leaks as much as corporate, bc yeah - no DLCs so far or even announcements about them, updates that have mostly been weird suits no one likes, the weirdness of giving into fan demand for a Venom game bc they bitched so much about Eddie Brock not being Venom and wanting Lethal Protector shit (like, I'm not a fan of Insomniac's Venom bc it seems like they didn't know what they wanted to do with him exactly, but come on, let it go at this point), the art book being delayed and not having as much textual content, no script book, etc. - it feels like such a stark difference from the energy around the first game, and I hope corporate steps back for the third and hopefully final game after what happened here, but I doubt Sony will have learned their lesson.

[a-colorless-fighter]

IMPORTANT UPDATE (PLEASE READ)

Hello readers, I know you were hoping this update would be a third chapter, and are wondering why I last updated in a LOOONG time, so I'm here to explain that.

PLEASE READ ALL THE WAY, I KNOW IT'S LONG BUT IT'S A VERY IMPORTANT UPDATE!!!

TW: Discussion of real, life-threatening injuries and death

Over two months ago, I woke up to my dad frantically trying to call me and my mom with a text saying "CODE RED! EVERYONE PICK UP YOUR PHONES NOW! AND ANSWER MY PHONE CALL!"

My mom's phone was dead and my younger brother's phone wasn't working, so we called my dad back on my phone, put him on speaker, and braced ourselves for terrible news.

We were informed that my older brother, whom I will call James (Not his real name), had a 6-minute seizure and is currently in an ambulance being sent to the hospital.

6 minutes is classified as a severe seizure.

It happened out of nowhere, he was just playing soccer with his buddies when suddenly he got the worst headache ever to the point of crying. He walked over to my dad and then suddenly started seizing.

We found out he had a knot of veins in the center of his brain that bursted.

He had a brain bleed, they had a tube in the top of his head to drain some of the blood, and they had to take out part of his skull to allow the swelling to not cause any more brain damage from pressure.

I don't want to get into too much detail about the two months he was in the hospital, but it was the scariest thing I've gone through.

I was constantly worried he was going to die.

And even if he would be alive in the end, there is a high chance he wouldn't be the same.

The reason this connects to why I was unable to work on this fanfic is because my fanfic is about that topic, it's about a character (Leo) having a brain injury, and not being the same person anymore.

Even simply thinking about this project put me in a depressive state.

The good news is that James is alive, He is ok. And you guys do not need to worry about him at all.

We had a lot of miracles happen and I am more than happy to say that he is still the brother I knew before this happened. He has recovered remarkably fast and well since he is young and healthy.

He is EXTREMELY lucky to ONLY have a few vision problems and just be a little weaker on his left side, he is taking PT (Physical therapy) and luckily the doctors said he won't get any worse, whether or not he will fully heal, we don't know.

But I don't care I don't care that he has vision problems and is weaker on his left side,

HE IS FUCKING ALIVE!!!

and that's all I care about.

If this happened to him literally ANY other time, he would have been dead. if he was in his room alone, he would have been dead, if it was nighttime, he would have been dead. But luckily he was in an area where a lot of people were watching him, and there were people there to help carry him to a safe place to wait for an ambulance.

I've had a LOT of time to hang out with him and mentally recover from what happened.

And I've decided... I still want to continue this Fanfiction.

It doesn't pain me to work on this at all anymore because I know my brother is ok. If anything, this work can be used as a way to vent my emotions from the incident. I can't change the fact this happened, but I can try to look on the bright side of it. I mean- Having this experience will probably make my writing better, at least for Leo's brother's side of the story. I understand how they feel on such a deep level and want to keep writing this because it's a healthy way to vent emotions.

I do want to take a moment and thank you for all of your guys' support. I read EVERY SINGLE COMMENT and it makes me SO happy to read about what you think of my work. I cannot express how much it boosts my motivation and mood when I read a new comment. I have a LOT planned for this series and I want to continue it and make it better than before!

Also, IDK if anyone noticed, but NAME CHANGE! I'm going by "UnknownStripes" now on AO3, (which is actually a reference to future events in this series *wink *wink...)

ALSO! EXCITING NEWS! I have been re-writing the previous two chapters! I noticed a LOT of mistakes and parts that frustrated me, so I will be re-writing them. The same stuff will play out, it's just going to be written better with some dialogue changes, plot-hole fixes, AND CHANGE THE FUCKING WEAPONS THE EPF USE TO TRY TO CAPTURE THE TURTLES LIKE WTF WAS I THINKING?!!!!???? WHY THE HELL ARE THEY USING ACTUAL FUCKING BULLETS TO TRY TO CAPTURE DONNIE AND LEO WHEN THEY WANT THEM ALIVE?!! HOW THE FUCK DO DONNIE AND LEO JUST GET FUCKING SHOT AND THEN BRUSH IT OFF LIKE ITS NOTHING LIKE- BRO- AHHHHHVBSDBVOSNONCOIWBVONKSZNV!!!!! So yeah, I'll be fixing that. But having them use tranquilizer darts would affect how I wanted the scene to play out so I've been stuck on that, but I FINALLY FOUND A PLOT-HOLE FILLER!! WHOOOOOO!!! So you'll just have to wait and see!!! I'm actually almost done re-writing the first two chapters! I worked on it a LOT BEFORE the incident with James went down. I just have a few more things to edit and then they will be ready to post! As for the third chapter... I am about 1/3 done. Idk when I'll be able to post it but I will be working on it a lot in my free time! You guys deserve it for having to wait so long, but I also want it to be good, so I ain't gonna rush it.

ALSO! I am an artist, You may have noticed the cover art I made and added to the first chapter. I'm happy to announce that I will be adding MORE ARTWORK to the chapters to help with visualization, and to give my lovely readers something pleasant to look at. I will also be posting the artwork much earlier on the Official ACF Tumblr, along with extra sketches that aren't going to be used in the actual chapters. I also want to give more frequent updates there too, plus I am open to asking questions and doing polls! So if you want to see any of that, GO FOLLOW THE TUMBLR PAGE! (AKA THIS TUMPLE PAGE IF YOU ARE READING THE TUMBLR VERSION OF THIS UPDATE)

I'll make an announcement like this when I post the re-written first two chapters,

Love you all SM! <3

-UnknownStripes

A Colorless Fighter - Chapter 4 - UnknownStripes - Rise of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (Cartoon 2018) [Archive of Our Own]

[thessalian]

Thess vs Upcoming Elections

Both the US and the UK are coming up on elections this year, and the usual notifications are coming up - hell, I've posted them myself - about how people are going to try to convince you that there's no point in voting because both parties are the same, and that it's a psyop by the Republicans / Conservatives, etc. And in the US, that's probably true. But I did want to say something about the whole deal in the UK, because I actually live here, and there's one problem with that theory.

That theory doesn't hold true when we're hearing it directly from the Leader of the Opposition.

Those of us in the UK have heard Kier Starmer saying, time and again, how he will fall into lockstep with the Tories on so many issues. He's spoken in support of teachers outing transgender kids to their parents. He's refusing to condemn the genocide in Gaza. He's going to continue to 'bolster the NHS with private contracts', which basically means stealth privatisation of the service and already cost us billions during the early days of COVID. Just about every nasty policy the Tories have put out there the last few years, Starmer has more or less agreed with. I'm not sure where he stands about this stupid Rwanda thing, but he is a lawyer so I'm pretty sure that at the very least he's wary of breaking international law.

The worst part is that it feels like we're damned either way. If we don't vote Starmer, our not-two-party-system-BUT is arranged in such a way that the Tories will probably win again. This will bolster the far right element and things will get worse for us. However, if we do vote Labour ... well, Starmer's going to go on about "See, that's how you win an election" and carry on with his Tory-With-A-Red-Tie mentality, and the Tories will go, "Well, obviously we need to go further right to win the next one", and get absolutely fucking feral about it. And the Tories probably will win next time because the absolute mess the Tories have made of the economy and everything else is impossible to fix in five years, and everyone will blame Labour for it because they have the mental capacity of goldfish.

I mean, I'm going to vote Labour anyway. My borough is one of the safest of safe Labour seats, but I'm going to do it anyway. People keep saying, "Vote Green!" but ... I'm sorry, no matter how important that one issue is, I will not vote for a one-issue party. The Lib Dems have become basically wallpaper at this point, and there aren't a lot of other political entities in my borough. I mean, the absolute best we could do by voting third-party is to force a hung Parliament, but I mistrust that kind of thing ever since the Conservative / Lib Dem coalition in 2010, which was the start of this whole mess.

Anyway, I'm going to vote Labour even though I know what they are and what they're doing because I cannot imagine aiding and abetting the Tories at this point. I can hope that Starmer, who has been very cagey about his manifesto to stop the Tories from spending time during Prime Minister's Questions trying to use it as ammunition against having to actually answer the man's questions, is further to the left than he appears. Then again, we live in a capitalist hellscape and I would guess not? But at least he doesn't want to send refugees to Rwanda. Maybe. Maybe he'll actually respect international law. And maybe he'll even get rid of the idiotic voter ID laws which Jacob Rees-Mogg admitted was deliberate gerrymandering on live television and no one batted a fucking eye. In fact, Rees-Mogg said, "We just have to do it more effectively" and then there were even more draconian laws put into place around postal votes, and again, no one seemed to care.

It's sad when all the hope we can cling to in these cases is "Maybe the other guy won't be a literal criminal" ... but I guess the US knows that one too.

[fizzingwizard]

work n stuff

This was crunch week at work before graduation. I usually stay late to do stuff, but boy, did I stay late this year haha.

First off we have one teacher who's had to leave for the rest of the term for very valid personal reasons. On top of that, one of her coteachers is being sent to another campus for half or all of every day for reasons I don't actually know. So in her class it's kind of just her third co-teacher. But fortunately the company had time to anticipate for that and they put a leader in her class to train some new teachers while helping the class. So things aren't normal for them but they're stable.

For me things were normal until Wednesday when my coteacher called in sick. My other coteacher was also noticeably sick though she came to work. I was sick last week, and took Monday off. The rest of the week I felt so crappy, mainly just full body exhaustion which is rough when you're on your feet with demanding little ones nipping at your ankles all day. Fortunately I've been fine since Sunday.

On Thurs the same coteacher was still too sick to come in, and my other coteacher ended up going home around noon. Then another teacher went home at the same time because her daughter had a fever. There were also some part-time subs calling out during these days as well. So we were suddenly extremely short-staffed.

Thursday was the worst because no one had anticipated so many teachers being out, especially with my class, and all the help had already gone to other classes. The teacher whose daughter got sick had to leave her class with one coteacher and a sub. Until noon, I had my sick coteacher and a rotating round of subs coming from our other school. They have their own job at their campus and can only stay for an hour at a time and honestly are not helpful. They're good people and teachers, but they don't know our kids or our routine and they're used to older children. I hate getting them for subs except when they were former teachers at our school first.

After co-teacher went home, I had the rotating subs, and... a secret third person! no really. No one knew who was supposed to cover for my co-teacher. It was the admin assistant for a while, until she suddenly said "A visitor is here, I need to go." She would be coming back so I said okay and we would just power through what time she was gone for.

But like five min after that the rotating sub said "I'm supposed to be back at my campus now" and no one had come to cover for her?? The admin assistant was with a visitor, and the manager was also with a visitor! There was no one even to talk to and I had my ENTIRE class in the hallway basically by myself. I couldn't tell this sub she could leave because it would leave me alone with all these two and three year olds IN THE BATHROOM. I don't even have Nanny iPad to help bah.

So I called for the visiting leader, who ran out to help. Then another class teacher said "Oh, so and so from my class is supposed to help you now, and I was going to send her, but no one came to cover in my class for her." So while I was dealing with my own kids, the leader, the manager, and that class teacher were standing in a circle in the hall talking for what felt like forever about what to do. That was one of the most stressful ten minutes I've ever spent at this school x'D or probably anywhere tbh! I have "the difficult class" this year and they're hard enough to manage with all three of us regular teachers there and healthy. Now it was just me!

Finally something got decided and you know what I don't even remember what it was in the end. The point is we survived the day somehow. It was really nuts. Really nuts. The leader though now knew my situation and she kept checking in and helped with lunch clean up and putting out the futons for nap time.

Her being there was a good thing for me, because she kind of validated my feelings about these crazy times. She even went to the manager and asked her to figure out what would be done in the event both of my coworkers were out sick on Friday too and to tell me ahead of time so I could have some idea and not just be surprised by it. To some extent that's not possible because people call in sick in the morning of the day they'll be out. But when you can plan in advance, you should, I think was the message, which is one I really agree with. It seemed to make the manager think about me a little. I had to stay even later than I'd planned, because since my coworkers were gone, I was the only one there to organize all the kids' belongings that they need to take home after graduation, which is a big job: they have a lot of stuff. The manager came in at one point and helped me sort some crafts.

Then, on Friday, both my coworkers did call in sick, so I was on my own again. The teacher with the sick daughter was also still out, and of course the other two teachers mentioned in the first paragraph were still gone. Being so understaffed, I thought for sure I'd lost prep time in the morning to cover their shifts. But I didn't, and I found out it was because the manager did it instead. I think that this was probably due to how crazy a week I'd had especially Thursday, and looking at a crazy Friday too... She took pity on me xP

Friday was easier even without both coteachers because I had finished almost all of the graduation-related stuff, and my two subs were people who are used to our school and know our kids. It wasn't the same but it was much smoother. (Also Thursday was a school event day so it was a little extra craziness on top of all the rest.) I am disappointed that I haven't been able to enjoy my last days with my kids. Normally I'd take it easy and just do fun stuff with them. But I have too much work to do so I'm constantly doing things instead of playing with the kids. I gave everyone hugs and did my best anyhow.

Grad prep this year was especially difficult because the whole staff changed this year except me and two other people, one of whom was one of the teachers out sick, so it was just the two of us actually plus the manager. No one else was familiar with how to wrap up the year. There was a bit of confusion but I am lucky that everyone I work with is a hard worker and helpful to others, so it seems we got everything done. Not as wonderfully as we'd have liked but good enough. I still have some work to do next week but then I have a little break before starting to prep for next year.

In sum, while this week was kind of a nightmare, I'm lucky that I felt really healthy during it so I didn't struggle as much to pick up the slack. And I'm grateful the leader was visiting and validated my stressed out feelings. I'm kind of proud of myself too because I got three teachers' work done with only a few mistakes (still make a few though ;_;) and I did my best to help other classes too, because mine was obviously not the only one shortstaffed and rushing around all week hahaha.

Fell asleep as soon as I got home every night. Now I just wanna veg and play games this weekend. Gotta do some cleaning too though. Cheers to the new term... lol

[caluski]

Few days ago @ikonofilizm tagged me to do the "put music player on shuffle and list 10 first songs" thing Thank You my dear I loooooove doing this shit 😁😁😁 let's get to it

1. Lucky to get him by Aly and AJ - revisited this album recently, it's really nice and chill, I like the direction they're going in now as adults. I was never really into Americana, but maybe theyve kinda changed that with this release.

2. Another life by Jadu Heart - god, this was the first song I've ever heard of them, such a throwback!!! I remember walking thru the city at night time, walking back from a party I think? Alcohol leaving my body and I just stared at the starry sky. An unbelievably beautiful track. Since then the duo became one of my favorite bands atm.... Please give them a chance, especially their last EP.

3. Liquid air by Temples - one of my favorite tracks from their new album. Talked about them more than a healthy amount of times recently; really good neopsychedelia if you're into that stuff, a 10/10 album for hot summer days.

4. DYNA by PEEL - some more neopsychedelia! It's been a while since I listened to it, but I used to have it on repeat so much.

5. HAUNTED by Isabel LaRosa - ugh, i remember when it came out and I discovered it in like one of those spotify playlists. It had like a thousand plays maybe!!! And I loved it so much, I added it to my midground playlist and had it really high up on my wrapped for that year, and then I checked back a few months ago and it became like a tiktok sound or something with like a billion plays :((((( I guess good for her but mannn my pretentious soul was hurting LOL

6. Assumptions by Sam Gellaitry - some house...ish dance track, i guess. It's fun and I like that vibe of sort of city pop it has going on, but the fucking high pitched sound at the start is the WORST. So fucking annoying. Every time it comes on, even though I actually like the song, the noise just pisses me off and I cant help but skip it!!!! Who thought it was a good idea to START with what sounds like fucking tinnitus.

7. Upside down by Sacha Rudy - ohhhh throwback... I used to love every single track this guy would put out since like 2019. And then he released that EP last year and other than "upside down" I really just couldn't get into it. Felt like a mess. And now he's disappeared since! Can't help but hope he'll come back with something as good as "be a man", because that was my most listened to track that year. So good.

8. Lamb's wool by Foster the People - HEY that's my song!!!!! Oh no wonder it's coming up on shuffle when I've listened to it so much again this past few weeks. This time it's the original and not the Poolside version. One of my all time favorites, like, ever, and if you can only listen to one of the songs I've listed, please make it this one. Who DOESN'T love tracks about how terrifying death is??? I'll hold you so you're not alone 🤓

9. Blessed by August Charles - people who listened to my dinner party/cafe playlist probably heard this one. Ugh it makes me so melancholic. Really good tho. No wonder it's his most listened to track.... I should probably check out his other works bc I really like his voice.

10. Theme of Re:Served by Re:Served - instrumental track with So Few listens that it doesn't even have the count visible on spotify! I remember being obsessed with them back in 2016, when the way I would discover new music was by downloading random japanese experimental albums from my favorite site. This is honestly just like runway music. I love runway music with good bpm. This one is good. You should listen to it and become their third monthly listener with me.

Thank youuuuuuuuu for tagging me!!!!!! Sorry its so long tho!!!! I love talking about songs I love!!!!! Tagging back: @moldavite , @slavicafire (i know u never do these but hope dies last!), @ferdydurke , @jurajurica , @kotikonnut , @skrzynka , @nocylipcowa , and everyone else who listened to at least one of the songs 😁😁😁 let's have a lovely Sunday afternoon everyone mwah

[randalsgrave]

Sweetness and Light: Part Four

Holy absolute shit you guys. I definitely didn't think this would take as long as it did, but uh... 3 months. Yikes. Anyway. I seem to be on this trend of increasing my page count with each chapter, because this one totaled out at 20 pages. I don't think I've ever written that much for one chapter of anything in my life. On the plus side, though, it's pretty much entirely Bob and Katie goodness so THAT'S a vibe👌

Week one starts off about as gracefully as you'd expect it to at TOPGUN. The week, of course, isn't without its bright spots.

BobxFemale!OC. F/C: Kacey Rohl

Word count: 7.3K

WARNINGS: colorful language; not beta-read (we die like men); minor editing

Recommended soundtrack: Turnin' On the Screw - Queens of the Stone Age

***

Week one of training begins with all the grace and elegance of a first-time pilot - that is, to say, rather abruptly and artlessly. Everhardt isn’t there to coddle them with flowery words of motivation and compliments; he’s there to train them, to turn them into the precise, dead-eye warfighters the Navy needs them to be. 

Still, no one’s expecting him to throw them into the fire the way he does.

It’s simple, he says - there will be four areas of instruction, with three weeks of focus dedicated to each one. The first block will focus on air-to-surface; the second on section; the third on division; and the fourth on basic fighter maneuverability, one-on-one sorties - dogfights. 

The last block is what has the class raising a collective eyebrow. Everyone’s read up on the curriculum, researched the course of TOPGUN at one point or another; BFM is the first component of the course, the first thing everyone is expected to master in their time at North Island. 

Everhardt, however, doesn’t see it that way. “The likelihood of you ever winding up in dogfight situations… You probably have better odds of being struck by lightning,” he explains one morning during lecture. “BFM is the exception, the ‘in-case-of-emergency’ set of skills you are expected to have - but likely not going to use. You learn this last under my instruction because, if all else fails, you still have your skill as a pilot to fall back on. However, we’re not here for ‘if all else fails’; we’re here to learn, refine, and master, as much as it takes to perfect ourselves, so that we don’t wind up in those situations.”

And with that, Everhardt not only introduces the class to air-to-surface tactics, but he sets the pace and the tone for the next 13 weeks. We are here to learn, refine, and master. 

And they do. For 12 hours a day, they split their time between class lectures, labs, and hops in their fighter jets (and even then it’s sandwiched between pre-ops and post-ops debrief), working in that endless loop of learning, refining, mastering. Sweating. Straining. Struggling. And that’s not even including PT three times a week, or any of the other trivial Navy bullshit they deal with regularly. It’s just work, on and on and on. 

It’s unlike anything they've done before. Katie - and everybody else, no doubt - looks back on the hardest shit she’s been through, and it all just pales in comparison. OCS? Basic flight training? SERE? It doesn’t hold a candle to TOPGUN, to the paces Everhardt is already putting them through. Two days into the course, they’re already zooming thousands of feet above ground, “dropping bombs” and zeroing in on targets with a precision that’s expected of them in 20 years’ time, much less 20 hours. 

And it’s done, over and over and over again, with this team and that team, in a seemingly-endless cycle of exhaustion and brain-ache, and goddamn, if they all aren’t frazzled by the time they’re halfway through week one. Hell, even Melendez is gassed three days in, and that’s saying something. 

Still, they all know the hardest, the worst, is yet to come. They’re practically hanging on by the seat of their pants, waiting for it to hit them. 

They’re here to learn, and by god, they will learn - but there’s no doubt they’ll get their asses handed to them in the process. 

And every single one of them would be lying if they said that they weren’t nervous.

***

It’s Saturday, the first training-free day they have in North Island. For many, today is a day of rest and relaxation, a day of recovery after the paces Everhardt has already put them through. 

For Katie, it’s the complete opposite. 

While the sky normally calls to her, today, it’s the mountains that do it. She’s up and moving by 07, fresh-faced and bright-eyed for the day of adventuring before her. Coffee’s already racing through her veins like lightning, her hair is double-braided and headbanded, and her backpack is stocked with water and enough granola and trail mix to last her a full day. It might be a little overkill for someone with her level of hiking experience - but given what she’s planning on hiking, she might well need all the snacks she can get. 

The only thing that’s missing now is someone to hike with. 

She grabs her phone off its charger on the nightstand, fires off a blast text. It’s nothing spectacular - a quick blurb reading “Hey, it’s Sand Trap. Planning on driving out and hiking Pyles Peak soon. Anybody wanna tag along?” With how early it is and how much of a beating they took on yesterday’s hop, Katie’s not expecting much of a response, if any. 

At first, she’s right. Her first reply is from Fanboy, a brief “Gonna pass, too tired. Thanx tho.” Her second reply isn’t even a reply, really - more of a notification that Halfpint’s left her on read. After that, it’s one response or the other from the few other classmates she’s gotten phone numbers from. 

Fuck it. Clearly, no one else is up or interested. Looks like Katie’s on her own for this. 

And then her phone dings with another reply. 

It’s from Bob. “Sure,” his response reads. “I’ll need a few minutes because I just woke up, but I’ll go.”

Well, how about that. There are signs of life. 

Katie smiles softly as she picks up her phone to reply. “All good,” she types. “Can meet you downstairs if you’d like.”

“Sounds good. Should I bring/pack anything?”

“Water, for sure. Snacks if you got em, but if not I have plenty of trail mix and granola.”

“Okay. Yeah, I don’t have anything so I’ll take you up on the trail mix offer.”

“No worries. I’ll see you in the lobby in 5.”

“Okay.”

And just like that, Katie has herself a hiking buddy. Even better, it’s Bob. She’s been meaning to interact more with him; he may be more on the quiet side, but he still strikes her as someone with a lot to say - and honestly, she wants to hear what it is. She’s already looking forward to this immensely. 

She shoulders her backpack, grabs her keys and sunglasses, and heads for the lobby, palms drumming an absentminded rhythm on her thighs as she rides the elevator down. She wonders if Bob is as avid of a hiker as she is, wonders if he’s looking forward to this hike just as much as she is. Curious, indeed. 

Downstairs, she’s the only one in the lobby who isn’t staff - but not for long. Two minutes after making herself comfortable on one of the couches near the front desk, Bob appears in her line of sight, wearing a loose gray t-shirt, gym shorts, running sneakers, and what looks like a Camelbak swollen with water, looking for all the world like he’s still trying to wake up - and good lord, if Katie doesn’t find that just the tiniest bit adorable. 

“You weren’t kidding about just waking up, huh?” Katie asks with a chuckle. “You look like you’re still half-asleep.”

Bob groans, removes his glasses and swipes a hand across his eyes. “I definitely feel it,” he replies, voice deep and heavily laced with sleep. “The hike’ll help. At least, I think it will.”

“It will. You’ll probably be tired afterwards, but at least you’ll be awake during it.”

“I’ll take it.”

“Awesome.” Ignoring the semi-awkward pause in conversation, Katie lets her gaze drift towards the breakfast bar in the back corner of the lobby, curls her bottom lip thoughtfully. Food-food sounds like a good idea… “You hungry? Wanna eat before we head out?”

“I’m good. I’m rarely a breakfast person to begin with, but it’s even less so this early in the morning.”

No pre-hike omelet for her, then. Oh well. 

“You ready to go then?”

“Yeah. Whenever you are.”

Katie only grins before nodding to the door and in the direction of the parking lot, a silent “shall we” that cues him to follow. 

And follow, Bob does. Katie feels less like she’s walking with a friend and more like she’s leading a pet along for a lap around the neighborhood. He’s still reserved and guarded; that much is obvious. 

Hopefully, this hike with her will help him break out of his shell. 

She glances over as they’re walking through the parking lot to the 4Runner, takes note of the two cartoon-style lightbulbs on Bob’s t-shirt with a smirk on her face. “Nice shirt,” she comments. 

Bob looks down at his shirt, almost as if he forgot what he’s wearing, then smiles. “You like Queens of the Stone Age?” 

“I only know a couple of their songs, but I like the ones I’ve heard. Guessing the lightbulbs are from one of their albums?”

“Yeah, they’re from Era Vulgaris. It’s one of my favorite albums by them.” He pauses, seemingly contemplates whether or not he should say what he’s thinking. Katie has to resist reaching out, resist putting a hand on his shoulder and urging him to speak. C’mon Bob, talk to me. 

Thankfully, he sucks in a breath and goes for it. “I’ve got it downloaded on my phone. We could listen to it on the way. Only if you want to though, I don’t wanna impose-”

“I’d love that. Let’s do it.” 

“Oh. Um, okay then. Cool.” Bob’s looking straight ahead with his brows furrowed - and hell, Katie can hear the wheels in his brain turning, whirring. He clearly wasn’t expecting that reaction from her - and now he’s looking like he’s not sure where to go next. 

There has to be a reason for that. 

“You seem kinda’ surprised,” Katie observes as they climb into the car and she turns the key in the ignition. 

“Hm? About what?”

“That I said yes.” 

Bob blinks, purses his lips. The wheels in his head are turning again. Spinning for a reply.  

“I dunno,” he finally answers with a shrug. “Usually I get laughed off or brushed off. Your reaction’s kind of a first for me.” 

Well. There’s something she wasn’t expecting. 

“I find that a little hard to believe.”

“You’d be surprised,” Bob replies simply. 

There it is again - the gnawing in her stomach. The hurt she feels for him. It’s strange, she thinks. She’s known Bob for a grand total of a week; why she’s feeling her heart bleed for him like this is a mystery to her. 

Her mouth twists and she contemplates for one, two, three seconds as she maneuvers them out of the parking lot. “Well… fuck ‘em then,” she says after a moment. “I wanna hear what you got, so…” Her lips curl upwards in an encouraging - if not slightly daring - smile. “You gonna throw that album on or what?”

Bob’s eyes immediately flash. Before she knows it, he’s got his phone hooked up to her bluetooth, and the opening notes of Turnin’ On the Screw are beating forth from her speakers, setting the tone for both the album and the half-hour drive ahead of them. It’s punchy, off-beat, and bold, definitely not the shoegaze Katie regularly listens to, but who cares? The sound of this is different and she likes it. 

When she tells Bob as much, his eyes light up like a Christmas tree. 

“Yeah, they’re kind of mad lads with their sound,” he explains, blue eyes practically sparkling behind his glasses. “I don’t know anybody besides Josh Homme who can make an out-of-tune guitar sound good. It’s actually pretty nuts what he’s capable of.”

And he’s like this the whole drive to the Pyles Peak trailhead. Bob is practically a subject-matter expert on this band, from the original lineup and album release order, right down to the history of each song and hell, even the meaning of all the lead singer’s tattoos. Anything and everything there is to know about this band, Bob knows it. Katie’s impressed, to say the least. She can’t ever think of a time where she was able to recall several dense bits of information in a small time frame. The fact that this guy can… Hot damn. 

It’s more than that, though. Bob’s just… talking. Engaging. Suddenly he’s a far cry from the socially pained introvert she spent lunch with on Monday. He’s at ease, comfortable. Hell, he’s animated, voice louder than normal and the gestures of his hands speaking just as much as his words. No doubt the choice of music is playing a part in that, but in any case it brings a small smile to Katie’s face. She likes seeing this side of him. 

They make it through the first five songs of the album before they arrive at the trailhead, the sun brightening and cresting over the mountain sightline. On one hand, Katie has half a mind to have Bob continue the album on his phone as they hike; it’s been a rollercoaster of new sounds and she’s not quite ready to get off it yet. On the other hand, though, with her life and current day-to-day goings being as noisy and busy as they are, the thought of peace, of nature-induced quiet, makes her almost breathless with anticipation. 

Nah. Queens of the Stone Age can wait for a bit. Right now, she just wants her, Bob, and the sounds of the mountain trail. 

Speaking of Bob… He’s out of the car, fumbling to loop his arms through the straps of his Camelbak, blue eyes following the snaking path of the trail. “So this is it… How far is it to the summit?”

“Last time I looked, I think it was a few miles one way. Once we hit the halfway point, we can stop and figure out if we wanna keep going or call it.” She readjusts the pack and straps bearing on her shoulders with a breath, then looks back at Bob. “Ready?” 

“Yeah.”

It’s all the go-ahead Katie needs to begin their long, slow, arduous trek up the trail and into the mountains. She steps off, steps measured and slow enough for Bob to keep up, hands on the straps of her backpack and eyes roving left, right, left, right, taking in the scenery around them. The plant life is low to the ground and scrubby, pale green and dusty brown - quite unlike the mythical forests of her home state, or the woods of the east coast. 

“It’s so dry,” Katie comments to no one in particular. 

Drifting close behind her, Bob chuckles. “Welcome to SoCal. The scenery here is pretty much opposite of what we all grew up with.”

“Yeah, you’re telling me… Where are you from, anyway?” 

“Kind of all over the place.” 

“Lemme guess - military brat?” 

“Oh yeah. 12 years of moving here, there, and everywhere before dad finally retired and we settled down.”

“Nice. Where’d you guys wind up?”

There’s no missing the slight glower on Bob’s face when Katie turns to ask him. “Middle of nowhere Georgia, unfortunately.”

“Ah.” The smallest hint of a smirk tugs at Katie’s lips. “That explains the twang then.”

“Oh god, I hope there isn’t a twang. I fought picking up that accent so hard.” 

Katie snickers, pinches the space between her thumb and her index finger. “There’s a tiny bit of a twang,” she grins. “Just a liiittle bit.”

Bob returns the grin - sort of. It’s heavily tinged with exasperation. “Guess I gotta work on that some more then.” 

“I mean, there’s nothing wrong with a Georgia accent. I think it’s kinda’ nice, actually.” 

“Well, I’m glad you do,” Bob grunts as they begin their climb up a steep incline. “I personally don’t like it. It makes me think of all the backward-ass pricks I went to school with.”

“Fair enough; don’t wanna be associated with them.” 

“Yeah. Besides,” he continues, “I think of myself as being more from Washington, anyway.” 

“Yeah?”

“Mm-hmm. Most of my dad’s family is from the Walla Walla-Prosser area. That, and I was born at the Naval hospital in Bremerton. It’s felt more like home for me than anywhere else - which is weird because I haven’t lived there since I was a toddler, and I don’t really have memories of it, aside from, like, fuzzy images of trees and a dog and my dad in his winter blues and… I dunno… I…” Bob’s face suddenly flushes red and he just stalls, the words dying on his lips as his eyes dart down to his feet, bashful, embarrassed. “I’m sorry. I get carried away sometimes, and the last thing you’d wanna hear on a hike is me babbling for no good reason.”

Make that three times this week that Bob Floyd has made Katie’s heart twinge. 

Her head shakes vigorously. “No, no! Don’t be sorry! You’ve got nothing to be sorry about!” She pauses, considers her words carefully, finally settles for a soft smile that reads ‘please trust me’. “I like listening to you talk.”

Bob blinks. Really?”

“Yeah. The stuff you’re talking about is interesting. You also sound relaxed and comfortable. It’s nice.”

And god damn it, I mean it. 

Another pause, right before Katie purses and quirks her lips to one side of her face. A subject change might be in order. 

“You do a lot of hiking, Bob?” 

There’s a momentary glimmer in his eyes, one of relief. The attention’s still on him, but it’s a little less intimidating than what it was a moment ago - and based on what his eyes did just now, this is a topic he’s much more comfortable talking about. “Uh, yeah, actually. I only really started doing it when I first got stationed at Lemoore, but I try to do it every weekend.”

“Sweet. Where do you go? Or where have you gone, I guess.” 

“Well,” he starts, “I’ve already been to Yosemite and Kings Canyon, plus all the stuff close to base.” His brow furrows for a second. “Technically I’ve already been to Big Sur, but there are so many different parks and trail systems down there that I can’t really consider myself ‘done’ with it.” 

“Oh man, Big Sur… That whole area is on my hiking bucket list. Like, between the mountains and the redwoods and all that…”

“Yeah, it’s beautiful. Definitely one of my favorite places in California.”

“Honestly, I might see about sneaking up there one of these weekends. Bring along some camping gear, hang out in the trees…”

“Lemme know if you do,” Bob says. “I’ll probably go with you.” 

Man oh man, Katie would be lying if she said that the thought of that didn’t make her heart stutter. 

“I’ll, uh… I’ll keep you posted.” She coughs, pushes ahead, puts distance between the two of them so he can’t see the flush creeping across her face. Where in the hell is that coming from?

“Please do.”

“Promise I will. Now c’mon, we’ve got a mountain to climb.”

***

Three miles in, Bob and Katie are standing atop Cowles Mountain, in equal parts admiring the view sprawling below them and deciding whether or not they want to continue on. Whatever decision they make, Katie is ultimately glad she thought to bring two bottles of water; there’s been a lot of up-and-down movement on the trail, and the sun is hanging high in the sky, pounding down on the two of them. This is just a bit rougher than she thought it was going to be.

She tosses a handful of trail mix into her mouth, contemplates. “Y’know, we are standing on a mountain with a nice view. We totally could call it good right here.” 

“But…”

“But… I did promise Pyles Peak, which is supposed to have an even nicer view. So” - Katie looks back over her shoulder at Bob, who’s currently wiping away the sweat on his brow with his sleeve and sipping water from his Camelbak, quirks an eyebrow at him - “whaddaya wanna do?”

He takes another long pull of water, ponders, shrugs. “Well… I’ll happily take whatever I can get, but if you wanna keep going, then I’m happy to tag along.”

Power of decision goes back to Katie. And as beat as she may be from the first half of the hike, she knows what she wants. 

She smiles, reshoulders her backpack. “Let’s keep going, then.” 

Bob nods wordlessly before coming up beside Katie and matching his pace to her slow, easy one. “How far is it to the actual summit now?”

“‘Bout two and a half miles,” Katie replies. “The trail has a bunch of rollers before it goes into the summit incline. It’s a little rough-going at the end, but all the reviews I’ve read about Pyles Peak say that it’s worth the rough stuff. Sounds like some of the Appalachian trails I’ve hiked, if you ask me.”

“Oh, I don’t doubt it. Appalachian Trail anything is brutal.”

“Yeah.”

They fall into a nice, easy silence, their focus on the ever-dipping trail and the footsteps they take. Left foot, right foot, left, right, left right left, slow and steady. At this point in the hike, it’s about all either of them can really concentrate on. 

Until…

“So, uh… Why do they call you Sand Trap? If you don’t mind me asking.”

Katie’s face splits into a beam. Stupid as the story is, she loves telling it. 

She clambers over a large cluster of rocks, pushes upwards and onwards with a single labored breath. “You remember Pensacola, right? How that place was a massive breeding ground for stupid antics?” 

“I… guess?” 

“Did you ever go to Flora-Bama? Or Seville’s?” 

“Eh, not really. Wasn’t my thing.”

For a moment, it seems like that’s all Bob’s going to say - and damn if that doesn’t throw Katie off just the slightest bit. She’s never met a pilot or NFO who didn’t engage in some form of Floridian stupidity. How the hell is she supposed to explain this now? 

Her silence and the stumped look on her face must do a number on Bob; suddenly he looks panicked, like he screwed up real bad, and his mouth goes off running a million miles a minute while he tries to salvage the conversation. “I knew a lot of people that went, though!” he all but blurts out. “I heard all of their stories about how crazy it was!” 

“Oh… Okay then, that works.” Boy, she’s learning all kinds of things about Bob Floyd today. “Well…When I was in basic flight training, me and some friends hit up Seville’s and Flora-Bama in one go one night. Drunken fuckery happened. Like, a lot of it. So much, in fact, that I woke up hungover, in a sand trap, on a golf course the next morning. No clue how I even wound up on a golf course.” 

“Oh my god, really?”

“Yeah, really. Classmates never let me live it down.”

“That is… Wow. That’s kind of awesome, actually.” 

“Mine’s not even the craziest,” Katie continues with a snicker. “We had a guy in our class get stuck with ‘Lord Farquaad’ as his callsign. He, uh, had a tendency to sacrifice wingmen. Totally didn’t help that he was the shortest guy in our class, too - like, five-four short.”

Bob juts his chin out and makes a face that Katie can only describe as pompous. Oh boy, she can already tell where this is going. 

“Some of you may die,” he says in a grandiose voice, “but that is a sacrifice I’m willing to make.” 

He’s a walking music encyclopedia AND he can quote Shrek on command. Katie knew he’d be a good one to be friends with. 

“All right, my turn.” 

“Shoot.” 

“Why is your callsign your name? Seems kinda’… uncreative.”

Bob visibly stiffens, and Katie isn’t sure if it’s because she’s caught him off-guard or because it’s a touchy subject. Both, probably. Shit, please don’t clam up on me, not now. 

“…Is it okay if I ask that, or…?”

“Yeah no, it’s fine, it’s totally fine. It’s… it’s kind of a long story.”

It’s the same reaction from day one of instruction - not rude, not at all, but… closed off. Almost dismissive. This is something he’s not comfortable talking about with her, not yet. Katie can only hope that he eventually reaches that level of comfort with her, but until then…

He must sense the inner whirring of her mind, because he glances over at her with a small, tired but reassuring smile. “It’s not you, it’s just… It’s a lot.” He pauses, tilts his gaze skywards in thought. “I’m sure it’ll all come spilling out some other time.”

And that’s that; that’s all he’s going to say on it for now. Katie’s heart sinks a little bit at the realization, but she shrugs it off and presses on. Whether or not he wants to talk about it is ultimately on Bob, not her. He’ll get to it when he gets to it.

Hopefully.

“You good to step up the pace a little bit?” she asks, effectively ending the conversation before it has a chance to turn awkward. 

“Uh, yeah. That’s fine.”

“I’m sorry; normally I like taking my time on hikes but it’s starting to get hot out here.”

“Hey, no complaints from me. It’s your hike; I’m just here for the ride.”

���Yeah, well, I’d still like to not bust you up in the first week.”

“You won’t. Trust me, I can handle it.” 

“If you say so.” Her stride lengthens and her steps quicken, just the tiniest bit - not enough to blitz ahead of Bob, but enough to step up the pace and really get them moving. Just get to the top, that’s all she wants now.

She’s willing to bet that Bob isn’t far off from that sentiment, either. 

She sucks in a long breath, forces it out with a single exhale, and pushes on. 

Time to climb this rock. 

***

It’s half ‘til noon when Bob and Katie finally reach the summit of Pyles Peak, out of breath, sweaty, and sufficiently red-faced. The sun is hanging directly over them now, without a cloud in sight to break up the beams beating down on them. Katie has no doubt that she’s going to come out of the hike sunburnt as shit, but right now, she couldn’t care less. They made it up the mountain. 

And oh boy, is it worth the suffering. 

In her 27 years on earth, Katie has seen some pretty spectacular views from high places. Virginia has offered panoramas of the Appalachians in ways she never would’ve imagined - and Oregon? Good god. Her home state has arguably the best views in America and she’s gotten to experience every single one of them in their prime. Few things - very few things - can top the vistas and sheer glory she’s witnessed. 

This one, however, comes pretty close. 

On top of Pyles Peak, it’s a whole other world. The entirety of San Diego is laid out before them, gently rolling suburbs and grid-like urban areas, stretching and fading into the vastness of the Pacific Ocean off in the distance. It’s tranquil, peaceful - and undeniably awe-inspiring. 

“Would you look at that,” Bob murmurs, the reverence clear in his voice. “Can see the whole city from up here.” 

“Beautiful, innit?”

Bob nods, then chuckles to himself. “Can almost see my house in Lemoore.”

“Har har.” With a rather unceremonious grunt, Katie all but flings herself onto one of the boulders in the middle of the outlook, legs dangling haphazardly over the front of it. “God, it feels good to sit.”

Bob doesn’t quite collapse on the boulder the way Katie did; he seats himself quite neatly beside her, arms pillared on either side of him to keep himself upright - but his back rounds, sags even. When he exhales the long breath he’s apparently been holding, it sags even more. Clearly, this hike has taken just as much out of him as it has out of Katie. 

“You’re right,” he says, “that does feel good. Oh man…”

Katie snickers, digs through her backpack for her water and some granola. “Told you.”

“Wonder what the return trip’s gonna be like.”

“Eh, let’s not think about that right now, yeah? Let’s just process that we’ve climbed two mountains today.”

“Yeah, fair enough.”

The conversation soon dies away, and for a while, silence stretches between the two of them, comfortable silence, save for the sipping of water and the quiet crunching of granola. It’s silence that Katie appreciates; she now has an opportunity to put her brain in neutral, to let it wander. 

It’s a rare moment, being able to just sit and ponder. With her line of work, it’s always do, do, do, always go, go, go. For as much as she loves what she does, sometimes Katie wishes that it didn’t have to be this way. Hell, it probably couldn’t be this way; she can’t think of anyone who could permanently sustain that level of constant motion. 

But, if she’s not doing this for the rest of her life, then… What is there?

Maybe that’s why she asks the question that’s started floating in her head. 

“You ever think about what you’d do if you weren’t in the Navy?” Katie asks, eyes on the expanse of land below them. 

Bob shrugs, takes a pull of water from his Camelbak. “Sometimes. Not sure what I’d do, though. This job is all I’ve ever wanted, really.”

Katie can understand that. Life as a fighter pilot just makes sense to her; it always has. Most days, she’s like Bob and can’t really imagine doing anything else. Up here in the mountains, though? She sees another life, another free existence. Up here, even when she’s tethered to the ground, she feels like she’s flying. This is home just as much as the clouds are. 

“I think I’d find a way to hike for a living, or be a park ranger or something.” Hell, anything to tie her to the land, to the trees and wilderness. Anywhere that she can’t be found easily. 

Anywhere that she can’t find her easily. 

“Park ranger would be cool. Where would you wanna work?” 

“...Probably Mount Hood. Or Crater Lake. I mean, any one of the national parks would be amazing, but… I think I’d wanna stick to the ones from back home.” Shockingly. 

“Mount Hood…” Bob’s eyebrows furrow, the name visibly tumbling, rattling around in his head as he tries to connect it to an unknown point B. “...Oregon?”

“That’s the one,” Katie smiles. 

“Never woulda’ guessed you’re from Oregon.”

“Surprise. Born and raised in Portland.” 

“Huh.” 

“Yeah…” Clearing her throat, Katie rolls up the right sleeve of her t-shirt, revealing a small, but detailed panorama of the Mount Hood sightline tattooed along her inner bicep. “I haven’t been home in years, but home’s always with me.” 

She makes it a point not to elaborate on how long ‘years’ is. The exact number is wrapped in truths and memories she can’t afford to dredge up, not now - and certainly not while she’s with someone as sweet and unassuming as Bob Floyd. Would he understand? Who knows. Katie’s not going to find out. At the end of the day, it’s all just drama, sob stories. 

And that’s probably the last thing he wants. Damn certain it’s the last thing Katie wants.

No one likes a drama queen, Katherine Mae, NO ONE. 

“...Sand Trap?”

“Hmm?” 

“Are you okay?”

A furrow of her eyebrows. “Yeah, I’m fine. Is there something wrong?” 

“No, just… You had this really intense look on your face all of a sudden and… I dunno, you looked like you were mad.” 

Katie’s heart lurches in her ribcage. Fuck. It seems her thoughts made their way onto her face just now. 

Defensive, now - “No no, not at all! I’m just…” Now her brain is turning somersaults, scrambling for a reply that’s equal parts honest and deterring. “I dunno, I’m…” Jesus Christ Garland, SPEAK - “I guess I’m just wiped from the climb up.”

There are lame excuses, and then there’s whatever the fuck Katie just came up with. There’s no way Bob’s buying it; the slightly furrowed look on his face tells her as much. Still, whether it’s because he’s too much of a gentleman to pry or because he wouldn’t know where to start or what to ask first, he doesn’t comment on it, something that Katie is deeply grateful for. She knows it’ll come up in conversation again and that there will be no avoiding it when it does - but she can at least avoid it for now. 

She diverts, switches subjects. “You okay with taking a picture with me?” It’s a bit of whiplash, but as far as she’s concerned, it’s the best course of action at the moment.

If it weren’t for the fact that they’re the only two people on the summit, Katie’s certain Bob would’ve glanced around in search of someone else. He doesn’t even need to speak for her to know what’s running through his head and across his face: “Me?”

“They’re keepsakes from the places I’ve been,” she explains, right before a wry smirk makes its way across her lips. “And, y’know, proof that I’m not a loser with no friends.” 

Bob opens his mouth to speak - no doubt to brush it off or to self-deprecate in some way. However, he surprises Katie when he closes it instead, and nods. “I could probably use my own proof too, honestly.” 

“That’s the spirit. C’mere.”

Bob complies, hopping up on the boulder and squatting behind Katie with a closed-mouth grin on his face, while she throws up a peace sign with one hand and makes a scrunched face. One tap later, the ascent up Pyles Peak is immortalized on Katie’s phone. 

“Started from the bottom, now we here,” she quips as fires the picture off in a brief text to Naomi. “Literally.”

“Aren’t those the lyrics to a song?”

Katie shrugs. “Probably.”

“Thought as much.” As Bob rises to his feet, a wince slips from his mouth. “Oh god, my legs - y’know what, I’ll definitely take you up on food now. This hike was rougher than I thought it was gonna be.”

“Thank god, I was hoping you’d say that…” Katie purses her lips together in thought, surveys the horizon from their perch atop the mountain. “You oughta know this - what’s the west-coast equivalent of Waffle House?”

“What is it with you and breakfast food?” Bob laughs. 

“No, it’s not a breakfast food thing! I just… I’ve been out in Norfolk for the last three years, and there’s always been a Waffle House close to everywhere I’ve gone hiking. Kind of a ‘post-hike’ tradition, you know? Bust your ass climbing up the side of a mountain and reward yourself with a bunch of carbs at the end of it.” 

“All right, you got a point there. Um… Denny’s, I guess?” 

Katie makes a face. “Bugh, Denny’s?”

“Hey, it’s low-cost breakfast food, and it’s probably cooked by a guy with a cigarette in his mouth,” Bob replies with a shrug. “What more could you want?”

“You do realize that you don’t go to Denny’s; you end up at Denny’s, right?”

“People ‘wind up’” - fingers crooked in air quotes - “at Waffle House, too.” He hops down from the rock he’s been perching on, turns to Katie with a smirk on his face. “I mean, c’mon, like any of us have never wound up drunk at Waffle House at 2 AM.” 

“Whatever happened to ‘drinking’s not really my thing’?”

“No, Flora-Bama and Seville’s weren’t really my thing. There’s a difference. Trust me, I did my fair share of drinking in BFT.” 

“Why Lieutenant Floyd, you troublemaker!” 

“Oh, I’m the troublemaker, miss ‘night of drunken stupidity’, miss ‘somehow wound up blacked out on a golf course’?”

“Damn Bob, you didn’t have to call me out like that,” Katie retorts with a laugh. “All right then, what were your chosen spots for weekend debauchery?” 

“Old Hickory, mostly. Sometimes O’Riley’s. Places where I was less likely to run into a bunch of rowdy E-2s and E-3s.”

Katie grins smugly. “Or rowdy ensigns.”

“That too. God, sometimes they were worse than the enlisted guys.”

Bob slips off his glasses to wipe away the sweat and grime around his eyes. Katie can’t help but stare when he does. He’s quite handsome, Bob. Not that he wasn’t handsome to begin with, but without the glasses to break up the lines of his face… Wow. If Katie didn’t know any better, she’d say she’s been hiking with an old Hollywood star this whole time. The wavy, windswept golden-brown hair, the bright blue eyes, the strong jaw… 

“You okay?”

Blink. Blink. “Huh?” 

“You looked like you zoned out.”

Oh god, he’d caught her staring. Christ, it’s a good thing her face is already red from exertion; she’s pretty sure it would be turning beet-colored if it wasn’t. 

“Sorry,” she mumbles sheepishly. “You kinda caught me off-guard there.”

“Oh?” He readjusts his glasses, perched once more on the bridge of his nose. “What do you mean?” 

Oh my god, this isn’t happening, is it?

“I mean… You look different without your glasses, is all.”

“Well… is that a good thing?” 

Oh, Bob. 

She lets a small smile creep across her face. “Yeah… Yeah, it’s a good thing.” 

Bob doesn’t seem to really react to the admission - not in any blatantly obvious way, anyway. Katie does, however, glimpse a slight puff of his chest out of the corner of her eye. And that? That really makes her smile. 

They loop around the boulders to the mouth of the trail, looking at it with a mild sense of dread curling in their stomachs. Doing almost five and a half miles in one direction is one thing - but doing it twice? Oh man. 

This is going to suck a bit. 

And it does. Funnily enough, though, the return trip goes by a lot quicker than the initial climb to the top of Pyles Peak. Probably because we’re desperate to be done with it, Katie muses to herself as they make their way back to the trailhead. 

Three hours and ten minutes later, they’re finally back where they started - and though they may be worse for wear and drenched in more sweat than they would’ve thought possible, there’s no stopping the grins from spreading across their faces at their accomplishment. 

“So, what do we think?” Katie asks as they walk - or, rather, hobble - their way back to the 4Runner. “Pyles Peak: worth the ass-kicking or not?” 

Bob wheezes out a chuckle. “Dunno. Can’t really decide if I don’t have a brain - and I’m pretty sure I left mine somewhere on the mountain…” 

That merits a snicker from Katie. “Means it was a good hike, then.” She pauses to fish her key ring out of the front pocket of her backpack, unlocks the car with a click of her button fob. “Of course, if you wanna make it a great hike, then you gotta have a massive plate of food at the end,” she says as she all but flings her backpack into the back seat area. 

“Oh yeah?”

“Oh yeah. Where I’m from, it ain’t successful unless you have the food at the end.”

“Well, I’m still up for Denny’s, if you are.”

“Oh same. I know what I said earlier about Denny’s versus Waffle House, but I’m absolutely starving right now, so I’ll happily take you up on Denny’s.”

“Good.” Bob pulls his phone out of his pocket, searches for restaurants in the nearby area. “There’s one 20 minutes out. It puts us a little further from base, but-”

“That’s fine with me; let’s do it.” She hops in the driver’s seat and starts the car up, slumping in the driver’s seat with a blissful sigh as cold air whirls through the car. She’s only like this for a moment, though, before she’s sitting back up, and maneuvering them out of the parking lot towards their designated food spot. It’s been a long day, and she’s gone long enough without much to eat.

She turns to Bob, smirk on her face as they hit the main roads. Time to pick up where they left off earlier. 

“Now then, where were we with that Queens of the Stone Age album?”

***

It’s closing in on 1600 when Bob and Katie make it back to the Navy Lodge, bodies and minds sated with carb-laden breakfast plates and good conversation. While the rest of the lodge patrons are getting ready for or are on their way to an evening of excitement and socializing, the two of them are ready to call it quits. Pyles Peak was a lot longer and more intense than either of them realized; even with the large post-hike meal, their bodies are exhausted beyond repair. Long rest is an immediate necessity. 

When Katie says as much during their slow - very slow - amble to the elevators, Bob nods wearily in agreement. 

“Gotta say,” he chuckles as they step inside one of the cars, “I’ve done some intense hikes before, but you? You’re hardcore. That was the longest hike I’ve ever gone on.” 

Katie knows Bob’s being good-natured about it, but she’s unable to stop her face from contorting into a wince. “I promise I wasn’t trying to break you - or me, for that matter.” If the dull aching in her legs is any indication, she came damn close to it. She severely underestimated that hike.  

“No harm done. I’m just not gonna have a good time at PT on Monday.”

“Make that two of us,” Katie chuckles weakly.

It’s a short ride up in the elevator. Within seconds of stepping on, it dings and jolts to a stop at the third floor. The two shuffle off, make their way down the corridor to Katie’s room, swaying, drifting close to each other. The distance is a lot smaller than the arm’s length they started the day with, Katie notes absentmindedly.

“Thanks for inviting me,” Bob says during the slow walk. “Pretty sure I would’ve spent all day holed up in my room if you hadn’t said something.”  

“Well, I’m glad you didn’t,” Katie replies, lips curled in a gentle smile. “I had a great time with you. You’re a good hiking buddy.”

“I try to be. Honestly, I should do it more often.”

The words hang in the air, open, inviting, tempting. It’s a golden opportunity for someone to jump on them and make a move of some sort. That’s not the surprising part. 

What’s surprising is how fast Katie seems to jump on it. 

“Well, I’m always up for it, so… anytime you wanna go, lemme know. I’m happy to take you with me.” 

The corners of Bob’s eyes crinkle as a smile spreads across his lips. “I’d like that.”

They’ve long since arrived outside of Katie’s room, and now stand opposite each other before the white-paneled wood door, looking, staring - and god, if it isn’t the strangest, but most intriguing thing. Today’s hike was only the second time they’ve spent time together, and yet, it felt like they’d been hanging out for years with how easy, how relaxed their interactions were. It felt… nice. If this is what it felt like after a week of acquaintance and two social interactions with him, Katie’s eager to know what the feeling’s like after another week or two, maybe three.

She’s gonna need to hang out with him more.

And one look at the blue eyes behind the wire-frame glasses tells her that he’s thinking the exact same thing. 

“I’ll, uh… I’ll see you later then.”

Yeah, you will.

“See you later, Bob.” 

“See you.”

Then, Bob turns, walks off down the hall, and disappears around a corner. 

And Katie? Katie shuts the door with a quiet click, and leans back against it, a tired, blissed out grin blooming on her face. 

It’s a grin that sticks with her for the rest of the weekend. 

@thestagsheadsblog @everything-i-love-in-life @luckyladycreator2 @docdetective

[filthforfriends]

I'm sorry to say this because I like you usually. But the answer you gave to anon is the worst I've seen on tumblr in a while because it sounds a lot like I want to save my ass but I won't admit I did something not nice here and will coin it on the other person. Please read the third paragraph again, that's a non apology, except for the last bit. It's going into the last paragraphs as well = "I understand that the language I used made you feel othered. The othering did more emotional damage than providing captions could ever outweigh for you." "I put captions not to target people with prominent accents" but you do exactly this with "thickest accent" and quite literally writing it out as targeting people with "prominent accents". It can be that you really can't see this because you want to be right over this at all costs, but I would have expected something better of you. Furthermore anon is right, I believe, that this isn't the first time, you have such a sentiment, if it be conscious or not, with how he talks and this is only ever present when it's about Thomas which might have even soured them more to actually sent this ask. It might have been looked at a lot different if it would have been the first time they noticed it. The last thing which I don't understand is the "inclusiveness". How is it inclusive when you only caption one part? People who for whatever reason have the captions on or the sound off aren't really helped when 2 minutes of an interview that's 30 min long are captioned? They don't just have that for Thomas then, so it doesn't make any sense. This is a genuine question as I really don't see any thought or sense behind this excuse.

I have been operating out of a giant blind spot in my privilege. I had no idea that that way I comment on Thomas’ accent is problematic that’s never even occurred to me. I absolutely do think that commenting on someone’s accent can be problematic. Even without malice it can be xenophobic, racist, ableist, or otherwise discriminatory. My thoughts were that none of the above apply to Thomas, and I’m doing so affectionately, so how could this be wrong? Clearly I missed the point.

When I read that ask my thought was “is this anon alerting me to a widespread issue or is this someone whose suffered a lot of discrimination and my careless use of language brought all that back?” I came to the conclusion that it was the second one and tried to approach with empathy. When I reread “the othering did more…” I cringe so hard. I was trying to be validating by showing I understood how they were feeling, but it came of as demeaning and fake which wasn’t my intent. I’m sorry to that initial anon for dismissing you. I recognize that from whatever intent I speak from, my words cause harm.

I absolutely have described Thomas’ and probably the others accents this way numerous times out of total ignorance. I’m so sorry for marginalizing people who speak English as a second language and making them feel unsafe on my blog. I’m going to run this blog differently.

I unfortunately can’t caption and upload the entire thing because Tumblr has limits on file size. I will make little montages for the other three. I know what’s not the point, but it was mentioned by other anons.

Thank you for everyone supplying me with new information♥️

[nerves-nebula]

I AM GOING TO EXPLODE WHAT WHAT WHAT WHAT WHAT EVEN IS THE MOVIE

LIKE IT IS SO FUCKING GOOD IT IS AMAZING LITERALLY STUNNING FASCINATING FACTUALLY AWESOME

BUT IT IS SO INTENSE LITERALLY EVERYTHING IS AIMING TO TEAR YOUR HEART OUT HOLY FUCK

I am going to sit here and process everything that happened and maybe watch it again later what the fuck what the fuck what the fuck. How do they start it with Mikey dying and then have Raph almost die and everything happening and LEO SACRIFICING HIMSELF?? DONNIE STILL PUTTING HIMSELF IN HARMS WAY TO PROTECT HIS BROTHERS EVEN WHEN HIS BATTLE SHELL BREAKS? DONNIE MERGING WITH THE SHIP, LIKE THAT IS AN EXPERIENCE WHAT. I KINDA THOUGHT IT WOULD LAST LONGER? PROBABLY BEST THAT IT DID BUT OOAOAOAOAERLKG

ALSO it's SO much darker than I expected )as you can probably tell aekrgmaelkrgm) but ALL THE BODY HORROR?? THAT IS LITERAL BODY HORROR NOT JUST FUNSY GOOP. THAT AIN'T MELTED PLAYDO THAT IS FLESH AND BLOOD AND GOOPIFIED CREATURES. I am with Donnie here that is LITERALLY my worst nightmare <- ever since I was 4 I've been haunted by nightmares where people melt in some fashion. IDK why but this triggered it in the wildest of ways (not negative?)

I am shaking this movie has fundementally changed me as a person. This movie is an experience that will separate my life from "before" and "after" watcjing this movie. I am going insane how DID THIS MOVIE GET OKAYED?? I AM NOT COMPLAINING IM JUST SO SURPRISED! Kinda wondering if they are having troubles making a third season because of the tonal shift of the TV series and this movie, like things were DARK here and there were even guns, blood, cartoony gore, like aeRLGMalekrmglakermg <- idk how to put into words but YEA

I'LL SEND SOME THEORIES AND STUFF LATER I AM JUST SO FERAL RN.

ALSO SIDE NOTE near the end of the movie when Donnie was left without his battle shell for a while my brain was like "HEY you know what would help our ptsd? a battle shell, because we hate the feeling of having no weight on our back/no level of protection" so I've mentally been planning (while fully immersed in watching the movie? brains work in weird multi level ways)

So ANYWAYS I've come up with a rough idea on how to make a battle shell contraption of shorts that doesn't require tech, just some skills and materials that theoretically are extremely easily accessible, I just need to do some research, measurements and a bit more planning and I think I know how you could make a lightweight makeshift moves-with-your-back-roughly back protector/shell of sorts. I'll update you on that if you want, just gotta check my thoughts on the flexibility vs durability balance

your making a fuckn!! battle shell??? i wish i had a battle shell ;_; thats SO COOL. good luck with that!

i can personally say that the entire time donnie wasnt wearing his shell had me on pins and needles i was sO TERRIFIED HE WAS GONNA GET HURTTT agAUGHAUH

I'm pretty sure the movie came out AFTER the show was cancelled/"paused" so I'm not sure if it had any affect on the cancellation, or if it was just darker cause it had to have more STAKES than the average rottmnt episode. OR if the show was just gonna go into detail about the krang later anyway (which was foreshadowed in the show itself im pretty sure) and it was always gonna be this uhhhHHHH SCARYYYY.

But so far Rottmnt has a tendency to make previous villains more monstrous (my personal theory is so that they can go HARDER with the fight scenes lol) like they did with Shredder who was basically a huge fucking scary BEAST. so I think the Krang being SO FUCKING BODYHORROR ASS SCARY is fitting. Still got spooked when Raphs shell got fuckd up tho!

[cryptidsurveys]

Monday, August 5th, 2024.

What song reminds you of being in middle school? There aren't any songs that remind me of being in middle school (as in the lyrics relate to what I was experiencing at that time in my life), but a song that I was obsessed with around that time period was Jumper by Third Eye Blind.

What was the first thing you learned how to cook? Probably eggs and bacon.

What does your hair currently look like? It's short, brown, and currently somewhat damp from a shower. I got home from the animal shelter not long ago and took one before making lunch.

Who's the worst driver you know? I don't know anyone who's an especially bad driver.

What are some wild animals commonly found where you live? Various birds (turkeys, hawks, doves, robins, crows, grackles, etc), deer, skunks, raccoons, porcupines, coyotes…and lots of feral cats (they've practically taken over the neighborhood).

Does it take a lot to make you cry? I guess I'm somewhat of an average crier. It doesn't take a whole lot, but I don't really cry all that often.

If the last dream you had came true, would that be a good or bad thing? BAD, lmao. The main portion of it involved a spider infestation in our family room. And there was lettuce all over the floor for some weird reason…? I was racing to clean everything up, thinking, "I really need to get to bed; I need to sleep because I have to be at the animal shelter in the morning."

Have you ever had a lucid dream? I've had quite a few of them.

How long did your last car ride last? Maybe 20-25 minutes. There was some construction on my usual way home, so I had to take a bit of a detour.

Isn't it disgusting when people chew with their mouth open? Yeah.

What's your most prominent memory from 2009? I had a partner at the time and his father died (possibly due to suicide) at the end of December. I remember going over to his mom's place - I believe it was the next day - as well as the funeral…which I think was also in December, but it could have been at the beginning of January.

Do you think there will ever be world peace? Naw.

What's your biggest problem at the moment? I don't really have any big problems at the moment. I mean, the animal shelter was a bit chaotic today, but as a volunteer, I'm kind of on the fringe of it all. I guess I could use this question as an opportunity to talk about it, though. I showed up at 7am and waited for Diane to arrive. I said "good morning" to her like I usually do, and she didn't respond…which is a sure sign that she's in a mood. I did my prep stuff - got laundry going, set up the kennels, started a fresh pot of coffee - then went back to cattery. When Diane came back, she was muttering about how there were "five people in cattery this morning, blah blah blah," and she was sort of slamming things around. I mean, it's typical of her when she's aggravated, but it was still somewhat uncomfortable.

Cassie, Kristen, and the brand-new hire Erika showed up around 8am. Diane got called back to the office to work there instead (I wasn't clear whether she didn't want to be back there because there were so many people or if she was mad because she had to go to the office, but anyway). Cassie was telling us that she might have to leave a week earlier than expected because of her cheer schedule, which upset management. They were like, "You're really putting us in a bad spot, Alex is going to have to work seven days a week, we don't want to burn her out, etc," and I was just like…no…? Minus Cassie, there would still be the three of us, plus Diane in cattery - so that's at least one day accounted for. Tuesdays would leave just me…but I'm sure they could find someone besides Alex to come in. It just seems like they aren't willing to delegate or rely on any other staff aside from her. Yes, Kristen and Erika are new. Yes, I'm just a volunteer. But we could figure things out. The whole place isn't going to go up in flames just because Alex isn't there for a mere two days. But it's not up to me, so…

Basically, tension was just running high today. Couple that with some cat Tetris… There are two kittens in ISO who need to go to the main room so they can be socialized, and there's a kitty with newly discovered pre-diabetes who needs a private kennel (or to be somehow housed with another one of our diabetic cats). We were trying to figure out where to put everyone and it was quite the puzzle because there are weight limits on some of the kennels, certain cats don't get along well with others, etc. They were still trying to work it out when I left. So yeah - it'll be interesting to see what they came up with when I go in tomorrow. But as far as problems go…I'm just going with the flow, I guess, lmao.

Has anyone ever told you you're too emotionally needy? Yeah.

Has an ex ever told you that they want you back? Yeah.

Have you ever turned down a job offer? Apparently, Leslie (manager) sent a text to Alex the other day, asking if I would work at the shelter again. Veronica (board member) came in yesterday afternoon and hung out in cattery for a while, and at one point, she was like, "You should work here, you should get paid for all of this." And Darrel, last night while we were in the back hosing things down, said that everyone is saying I should just work there. I'm like, "Oh, one day…one day…" My health just isn't quite up to the demands of the job and I'm afraid I wouldn't be as reliable as I would want to be. If I can get certain things figured out, then it would be no problem, but until then…volunteering it is! I'm still there like 40 hours a week, though. Y'all get me for free! What more do you want? Do you want me to carry a radio? Lead some cat adoption tours? Clock in and out? Carry a key? Etc…? Like, my dudes and doodlies, why buy the cow when you can get the milk for free? ;D

What's the longest hospital stay you've had? For what? 2-3 months. Eating disorder.

Do you know anyone who doesn't know the basics of using a computer? My mom isn't very computer savvy, but I think she at least knows the bare basics.

What was the last snack you ate? A granola bar.

What's something really basic that you're terrible at? Small talk. <- Same. I'm getting better at it, but it still doesn't come naturally.

Is it just me, or are tv shows/movies getting to be really dumbed down? Idk. I don't watch TV these days.

Do you know any same-sex married couples? Yeah.

What was the last appointment you scheduled? I guess it would have been with that resource center back in late May (regarding apartment voucher stuff).

Are you happy with the person you have become? Not completely, but I'm happy with the progress I've made and I'm excited to see where I go from here.

What year were you born? 1989.

What does your favorite watch look like? N/a.

Did you have one of those Tamagotchi things as a kid? Yeah.

What's your favorite kind of wine? I don't have a favorite kind, but I tend to prefer red wines.

When was the last time you felt lonely? Hmm.

Are your parents still together? No. They separated when I was a teen.

Have you ever been so broke you didn't know how you'd keep a roof over your head? No.

Do you know anyone who believes that vaccines cause autism? Idk.

What was the last piece of furniture you bought? I'm not sure.

What's a new skill you'd like to learn? Various things at the animal shelter. Not so much new skills as just more details of the actual job.

How did you celebrate your last birthday? I went out to lunch with my parents.

Do you have any great housecleaning tips? No. However, now that I'm a lot busier than I used to be, I could really use some tips for keeping up with cleaning. It was easy when I was a part time volunteer, but now that I'm full time, things are starting to slip a bit. I need some HACKS.

What's your favorite cocktail? Idk.

Did your favorite movie come out before or after you were born? Some came out before; some came out after.

Is there anything you need to do before the end of the day? C H O R E S. I'm so tempted to shrug them off and catch up on all the recent Amberlynn drama. God give me strength, lmao.