#there isn't anything bad about reducing screen time if anything i say go for it

[silvershayde]

Sharing cus tbh I feel lonely rn and I'm very confused? Feeling s bit uninspired

So today (last day of classes before mid term break) I had an eye appointment and they said my eyes produce less tears, Haven't read up on it but they also mentioned technology and how it causes headaches

I'm almost done with school so I actually have soooooooo much free time sans the studying I gotta do, but I also wanne reduce my technology usage cus I have a crippling dependency ever since I had to revise my other hobbies to not get out of track with classes, but just thinking of picking up those hobbies again feels daunting and like, I won't be able to feel the love I had for them which makes me sad :(

I already crochet and have books to draw in, but writing for fic has always been online cus it's just easier to save and preserve my writing that way (plus more secure in my case) than to write ideas in a book and run the risk of them getting lost. But I really wanna cut down tech usage so instead of just writing out the plot in full I'll use paper and pen to write out the outline of my story plots and then make notes of the misadventures or side quests the characters go through and the characteristics of the characters

Honestly, I'm talking about this to someone else cus I kinda want an alternative perspective? I realised that school has made me so dependent on someone telling me what to do and I hate it, so I wanna try and practice independence more, especially planning how I wanna do my hobbies

okay, so as someone who has written stories both online and physically in a book, i was more productive writing it down on paper. sadly i did lose the book, but that was more because i did move around quite a bit when i was younger and it was hectic and not because of negligence on my part (then again i am also known for losing things but usually i eventually find them. and i actually don't know if i would read it back or not i was like 12 when i wrote it lolol)

I don't know too much about less tears can do to your eyes other than your more prone to have irritation and straight up scratches on the eyeball (i know this because my optician told me i had this but then didn't tell me what to do about it - still haven't done anything about it but i know eyedrops help)

honestly do what you truly think is best for you. if you're struggling with what to choose i suggest doing a pros and cons list and put em side by side. that's what i do when i'm truly indecisive and other's opinions don't really help. but! i will say that even if indecisive and asking others opinions, usually you lowkey know deep down what you wanna do and all it takes is someone else's thought process to know if you would fully go for it.

if you wanna cut down tech usage, instead of going cold turkey and making it harder for yourself, use night shift/night light (or whatever is your device/phone's equivalent) so you can reduce blue light at night. I know that androids have this black and white thing that gets enabled at a time for you. ALSO!! i cannot stress this, disable notifications. You'd be surprised about how much less you'd go on apps and stuff when notifs be off. But this is all the stuff that's worked for me personally, you can try these out to see if they work.

eye strain is a very real thing. technology/screens/whatever are usually what causes this and even looking away from a screen and doing something else can make it worse if it gets that bad. when you start to get that annoying thing at the back of your eyes or you feel a light ache around your eyes, know your slowly starting to experience eye strain and you need to relax them. having dry eyes i think make it worse because of the scratching/irritation it can cause and because if your eyes are dry enough, your ability to BLINK would start to get affected. and that's just a long day

about your other hobbies, i get it feeling daunting if you havent dabbled in a while, i feel it whenever i get back to drawing after a long while. all i can say to that is slowly ease yourself back into doing it. start small, because if you go in acting as if there has been no time between the last time you've participated in your hobbies, you could start being overly harsh on yourself if it isn't going as smooth as you wanted. but trying it out, is better than not at all. and it'd help reduce screen time

[windvexer]

Hello!

I've seen you talk a few times about the dangers of over-warding, which I can certainly see the sense in; at the same time, wards can also certainly be useful things. I'd like to ask you: in your opinion, what is the most sensible amount of wards to have? Does it make sense to ward (oneself, one's home, whatever) at all if you don't have a reason to expect attacks or infringements?

Good morning!

We're at least in reference to this post.

The silly answer is, but I promise to explain it so that it's useful, the most sensible amount of wards to have is however many cover your needs.

I think the topic of warding is often framed in relation to attacks and retaliation, which it certainly relates to. But I think that also gives it a bit of a crusty patina, if you will: "I don't have main character syndrome; I'm not one of those witches who's so paranoid that everyone is going to attack them, and I don't mess around with spirits, so warding isn't for people like me."

Which is all well and good, but the idea of warding in and of itself is that it's just a barrier that stops things from coming through.

Wards can hypothetically block out anything: malifica and spirits, sure, but also unwanted guests, solicitors, debts, poverty, stress, illness, spam phone calls, and spiders.

"Attacks" may not be common, but tangles of unhelpful energy, the Evil Eye, and blustery storms of ill-effect aren't all that rare. Just because someone didn't aim at you and pull the trigger doesn't mean that your life will remain void of deleterious energies.

Spirits living their lives will infringe on you, not because you're the main character or because they're malicious, but because the two of you live in the same reality and sometimes your lives intersect in unwanted ways.

And you can accidentally infringe, and then spirits can be offended and decided to make it your problem.

So in a certain sense, not having wards because you don't expect attacks or infringements is like not having house rules because you don't expect your room mates to ever do anything upsetting:

On the one hand, it's perfectly fine to wait until something is happening before you deal with it.

On the other hand, some people prefer to say, "welcome to the house! Please don't invite your friends to stay the night without checking with us first."

Another confounding factor is whether or not you tend to draw spirits to you, as some people do; and whether or not you live in an area with very high spiritual activity. If you live in a paranormal activity desert, baseline wards might not be useful at all, whereas someone who has sensitive psychic perception and lives in an old converted mortuary might need lots of baseline protection just to feel comfortable.

But perhaps the most important deciding factor is whether or not you want to deal with it.

Early on in my education I heard a witch of great experience say, "the more experienced you get, the less wards you need. You get to a point where you can just deal with things as they arise instead of needing to stay walled in all the time."

Which is technically true. However they may manifest on the astral plane, the functional effect of a ward is like a bug screen: it's likely to stop or mitigate whatever it's meant to hold out.

The real question then becomes, what things would you prefer to never deal with, and what things are you comfortable dealing with as they arise?

Wards should be for that - the things that you would just like to not ever have to deal with, even if you don't particularly expect them to darken your doorstep.

Wards can be useful because they are proactive and preventative. A ward to stop bad energies and stress from your workplace following you home can help reduce the need for more regular spiritual hygiene. A ward against uninvited spirits can help stop you from getting distracted from the magical work you actually want to be doing.

So a ward is like a wall. Does it make sense to build a wall around your farm, even if you never expect a raid from the neighbors?

I don't expect raids from my neighbors. I still build walls.

[orangepanic]

50 Random Character Asks: Asami Sato

You're lucky I love her.

1. Canon I outright reject

That she and Korra are soulmates. I think that was in a comic? Anyway no, after a few months of trying out a relationship in their early 20s they realize they want different things and break up more or less amicably.

2. A canon or headcanon hill I will die on

Asami is actually bad at stuff! She's not perfect at everything all the time!

3. Obscure headcanon

As fearless and caring as she is Asami is also a bit squeamish and is not great with sick people because she's a sympathy vomiter.

4. Favorite line

"Why would there be fence posts but no fence?" Girl for a genius you were so close.

5. Best personality trait

Selfless without being a doormat.

6. Worst personality trait

Gets angry when she's hurt instead of admitting how she really feels.

7. Age/height/weight headcanon

She's 18-22 in canon, 5'9", 140lbs or thereabouts mostly because she's tall and all muscle.

8. Unpopular opinion about them

She's interesting and loveable all by herself without being Korra's girlfriend. She went four seasons without dating Korra but most of the fandom is only interested in her as part of a pairing that wasn't even in the original material. If you ever look up "facts about Asami" more than half of it is about her dating Korra. It's infuriating. She's a person on her own! I hate that the franchise and the fandom have reduced her to the "and girlfriend" tag along of the main character when she has so much to give just as herself.

9. Scene that first made me love (or hate) the character

Her standing up to her dad in The Aftermath. As someone who also idolized a dad who turned out to be a misguided asshole I can tell you that shit is hard. She should get a medal and a hug.

10. Best moment on screen (or in the book)

I love everything about this.

11. Faceclaim for the role

Arden Cho

12. Crack headcanon

Asami is a slob. She might look put together but her house is a mess and she's always losing stuff amid the jumble of things in her handbag. She grew up with a cleaning service and it shows.

13. Dumbest thing they’ve ever done

Trying to get with Mako again in Book 2. No. What were you thinking? You're so awesome, go find somebody, anybody who isn't the guy who ghost-dumped you for his "friend" six months ago! (eh HEM I even have a suggestion)

14. Most heroic moment

I was going to say standing up to her father in B1 or flying a biplane in combat conditions in B2 or kicking people in the face on top of a moving train or flying a basically untested piece of mecha onto a robot colossus, but I actually think it's this:

It's really hard to forgive someone.

15. Worst thing they’ve ever done

Nothing, Asami has never done anything wrong in her life and I'll fight anyone who says otherwise.

kissing Mako in B2

16. Deepest darkest secret they won’t even admit to themselves

Asami is scared that she won't know how to be a mother when the time comes because she didn't really have one. Her dad mostly had staff to do the childcare parts of being a father but she doesn't want that for her family. Asami does want kids, she's pretty sure, but she never quite knows what to do with them and has no idea how she'll balance that with her own interests and ambitions. She's not interested in a stay at home role and finds herself attracted to people who are also as ambitious and dedicated to their interests as she is. She looks at people like Pema or even Korra who seem like such natural moms and then at people like Lin who are all about their career and doesn't see herself in any of them. Asami is desperate for a role model of a strong career woman with a loving family who can tell her how to have it all. Izumi

17. Quotes, songs, poems, etc. that I associate with them.

18. What they’d go to see a therapist about

Having her mother murdered at home. Having her father and idol try to kill her before being sent to prison for treason for funding and then leading an effort to overthrow the government right under her nose, then being murdered after she decides to try to forgive him and have a relationship again. Always coming in second place after the thing the person she loves loves more than her, and always being relied upon to put her own needs aside for the greater good. Being treated as a hot chick by everyone who meets her but rarely engaged intellectually. Asami Sato, half ATM, half meat slab.

I think Asami needs a lot of therapy tbh.

19. Vices/bad habits

She drinks too much when she's sad.

20. Scars

One on her collarbone from when she broke it riding her motorbike at 16.

21. Drink of choice (not just alcoholic)

I think she'd be into flavored fizzy waters.

22. Best physical feature

Um, all of her? Have you seen this girl? But if you ask her she'd say her hair.

23. If they were a scented candle, what would they smell like?

Lavender and engine oil.

24. Most annoying habit

She chews on the ends of pens whether they're her pens or not.

25. 3 things they’d want to take with them if they were dropped off in the middle of nowhere

Utility knife, a bunch of snacks, duct tape. She'd be fine.

26. What they would do if stuck in an elevator with [insert character of your choice from the same fandom]

It doesn't matter who she's stuck with because she fixes the elevator.

27. Their guilty pleasure

Sneaking chocolate into the spa so she can eat it while soaking in the hot pool.

28. How they feel about [insert character of your choice from the same fandom]

Can't answer this without a victim but Asami generally likes anyone unless they've crossed her, in which case watch the fuck out.

29. Eating habits

Asami cannot cook to save her life but generally tries to keep it healthy, which means a combination of salads, instant soup, and takeout. These are all things she can make. She finds it weird to keep a cook just for herself. Once she's married she happily lets her partner or hired help do the cooking.

30. Sleeping habits

Night owl, heavy sleeper, stomach sleeper under a big pile of blankets. Her partner sometimes checks to make sure she's still breathing.

31. If the had a tumblr what would it look like?

Just pictures of hot cars and the occasional Taylor Swift quote. I think she's more of a gamer geek than a fandom geek.

32. Something guaranteed to make them smile/laugh

Asami's feet are quite ticklish. Tickle her feet and she'll laugh whether she wants to or not.

33. Something guaranteed to make them cry

Being dumped.

34. How they react when they are feeling X emotion (sad, angry, excited, scared, etc.—can specify as many as you like)

For a very social person Asami saves her strongest emotions for more private moments. She gets a big smile and will do group hugs when she's excited but in canon we almost always see her turning away or leaving the room when she's upset or scared rather than seeking comfort. The only exception I think is in book 1 where she opens up to Mako about her mom. So I think if she was in a loving relationship she might get a cuddle if she's sad.

35. Their idea of a perfect day

At the beach with a group of close friends, alternating between swimming, games, and sitting under an umbrella with her sketch pad and a pretty little fruity drink. At some point there are massages. She magically doesn't get sunburned. She ends the day tired and happy and feeling loved and relaxed.

36. Their favorite season

Summer. It's the best season for racing and cute outfits.

37. What they really think about themselves

Asami knows that she's pretty and smart and successful. There's no false modesty there. But sometimes she wonders if that will ever be enough for someone or if there's something wrong with her because she keeps being left behind all the same. It takes a lot of steady unflinching love to get her over that final insecurity.

38. Favorite holiday

All of them! Asami loves holidays and celebrations of all kinds. Especially the ones that come with cookies.

39. Favorite game

Assuming auto racing is not a game, kuai ball. She would have said pai sho but she beats most opponents so fast that the only people she really enjoys playing with are Commander Bumi and General Iroh. She and Bumi have a standing game the first Sunday of the month right up until his death.

40. Favorite book

Asami doesn't have a single favorite book and rarely re-reads, but she's very partial to the kind of edge-of-your-seat gory sci-fi thriller that usually involves a lot of people being eaten. I also peg her as a horror movie fan; the more ridiculous and bloody the better.

41. If they could have lunch with anyone in the world (living or dead, from any fictional universe or the real world), who would it be?

The easy answer is her mom. Barring that, everyone tells her she would have loved Sokka so I think she'd be curious to meet him.

42. 3 comfort items

Warm food, warm blankets, and the smell of her workshop.

43. 3 favorite foods and 3 they despise

Love: sesame sticks, pork and chive dumplings, pistachio ice cream. Despise: Gommu's street gruel, tomato carrots, anything served with the head still on it.

44. Their happiest memory

Asami still vividly remembers her first pro-bending championship game. Her team won and she screamed herself hoarse before going to get victory ice cream with her friends.

45. Their favorite celebrity

Korra

46. The person they most admire

I think she'd really admire female world leaders like Suyin or Firelord Izumi. Maybe even Kuvira up until she decided not to step down.

47. Their dream job

Stock car racer or pro-bender.

48. Scariest moment of their life

Being ejected from the hummingbird suit.

49. Favorite toy as a child

She had a doll named Yina who she took everywhere. Yina wasn't her baby but rather her pretend sister.

50. A memory they’ve blocked out

Asami was home when her mother was killed. She called the police using the number her parents had shown her but she doesn't remember it.

50 Character Asks

[problemswithbooks]

It all feels like a retcon starting from the first look at toga’s backstory because it doesn’t sync up when you put all her actions together. I thought maybe hori was trying to say toga’s quirk became unfortunately linked to arousal after years of suppressing it and it being triggered by her feeling of admiration for her crushes. But yeah that would have been too mature to tackle for my hero though I could maybe see it with chainsaw man. So I don’t know get what’s going on right now except toga’s mentally ill because of her parents and society and he keeps trying to make last minute parallels between toga and touya.

I think the issue is that Hori never spent as much time or effort on Toga as he did with Shigaraki and Touya. Even now her backstory is rather limited in comparison. We got full chapters worth to explore what happened to Touya and Tenko but Toga's is a couple pages or panels here or there with everything being rather vague.

Hori likes using her for sexy pictures and drawing suggestive stuff with Ochako, but she ultimately isn't given as much thought as her male counter parts. Which given the already bad implications of her character has only made her even worse.

Take this latest chapter. We get this page for Quirk counseling.

It's just 2 panels that are honestly really vague. It also comes after her drinking blood from a bird her parents think she killed. Toga says it fell on the ground but that doesn't mean she didn't kill it (baby birds are often on the ground until they fully can fly, or it could have been injured), so that's not helpful either. On top of that it makes sense her parents would find the behavior bad regardless because it either means she killed an animal or picked up an already dead one and proceeded to eat it. Neither of those are great and both are harmful to her.

We just don't really get a good look at how the Quirk counseling worked. They say that they'll make her 'normal' but that doesn't mean they abused her. They could have just explained why it was wrong for her drink blood, like the health issues it could cause. On top of that Hori drops the 'it happens all the time in our current society' line, but we have never seen anyone else like Toga. Not even Stain was ever hinted at being like Toga despite their similar blood based powers.

This is like if we reduced the Touya chapters to a black screen with Enji commenting that he can't train him anymore and we didn't get to see how much Touya struggled with what he perceived as rejection, or how Enji completely ignored him afterwards. Or if we cut Shigaraki's father's abuse to just him yelling at him in black panels before he accidentally killed his family.

Then we get this. This honestly makes Toga look worse, not better in my opinion. We see that she drank blood from someone before she snapped at school. She says they got hurt so she kissed it better, but if you look at her, she is covered in quite a bit of blood. Maybe her friend did get hurt but they were either really badly hurt and bleeding a lot and Toga did not help them and instead started licking them, or she might have even made their injuries worse to get the blood she wants.

If Hori cared more about her character he would have been shown what happened here. Or in the very least put less blood if any on Toga, which would show she didn't hurt this person or ignore helping them with a serious injury because she can't think of anything but blood.

As it is we have no idea if her friend got really badly injured and Toga ignored helping to just feast on them, or if her friend told her to stop, or if she made the person's injures worse. Yes, her parents are wrong for saying Toga's not human, but if she's attacking injured friends that's a huge problem.

One of the biggest issues with Toga is that she is both portrayed as so obsessed and desperate for blood she can't comprehend why anyone might not like her shoving a straw in their neck, but at the same time she was and is at times able to be perfectly fine. She can't understand why Ochako or Izuku, in desperate situations caused in part by her might not be happy with her, but can also turn around and comfort Twice and understand that he feels responsible for the death of a team mate.

It's impossible for me to feel bad for her because when I read her chapters I just see a drawing of an offensive stereotype that does what ever the author wants them to do. Toga just doesn't feel like a person at all. She's nothing but the sexy shell of a teenage girl that Hori doesn't seem all that invested in past her being cute and giving him an excuse to have two girls being all touchy and hot.

[otrtbs]

Nat is back with thoughts™️ on the Van Gogh soup incident and now the Monet 'Mashed Potato' incident.

I know some of you have already asked me what I thought about the protesters throwing soup on the Van Gogh painting, but I am back with more coherent thoughts in light of the new but similar Monet incident.

I was reading a post by Pulitzer Prize winning NYT Art Critic, Jerry Saltz (which I will quote from frequently in this rant of mine) and wanted to further comment because I'm just so frustrated and need a place to vent.

First to talk about setting a bad precedent, this is exactly what I was worried about back in May when climate protesters threw cake on the Mona Lisa. Then the Van Gogh incident earlier this month and now the Monet incident a few weeks later.

If the first two 'protests' proved anything, it's that these forms of activism are not successful nor remotely beneficial to the cause.

"They're gaining exposure! The point is global attention and they got it! It's successful because everyone is talking about it!"

I think it's important to focus on what exactly everyone is talking about. The art. Obviously the art world is focused solely on the art, but every media outlet is focusing heavily on the painting and possible damage and adds the protesters message as a byline, if they add anything about what the protesters hope to achieve at all. All it takes is one scroll through twitter to see that the general public sentiment is outrage towards the protesters and even, towards the cause at large.

It paints climate activists in a negative light. As destroyers of culture. As people willing to turn to iconoclastic methodologies of the past to prove a message. In this case, all media attention isn't good. Furthermore, outrage has gone so far that other climate activists on social media have accused the women who threw soup on the Van Gogh of working for big oil companies. (If this is true, I wouldn't be surprised. If it's not, their message was utterly lost by the actions of their 'protest' and there is minimal public support to be found on either side of the climate issue.) The general public knows about climate change! These forms of activism only serve to paint those working to fight climate change in a negative light.

This is because, as Saltz says, the general public is:

"...against this form of protest. I am against the destruction of the Earth. I am for all forms of beauty. Two things can be true at the same time."

Secondly, we have to consider what the rise in these forms of protest mean for museum and gallery spaces! It means more distance between you, the museum goer, and the painting. You'll have to stand farther away than before. It means more preemptive protective glass casings and screens over more works of art (Inhibiting your view of the meticulous paint details even further). It means more extensive and harsher policing of museum patrons in gallery spaces by security which is already a significant contributing factor in keeping POC and the younger generation out of art museums. Our access to art will be hindered and reduced out of fear of damage and destruction. That is the impact these protesters had/have with this particular form of activism.

Thirdly, we have to think about what happens when the art that gets damaged by these protests is art that isn't protected by glass. Or when protest measures go a step further to actually destroy and maim a piece of artwork. To quote Jerry Saltz:

"I believe that this will inevitably lead to the actual destruction of art. Iconoclasm in protest is as old as our species. Maybe 1% of 1% of 1% of 1% of all the art ever made survives. All the plays of the Greeks- except the few we have- were destroyed as Pagan."

It is possible that we are witnessing a rebirth of an iconoclastic era that future generations will discuss. The impact of these protests have the potential to be catastrophic for art and cultural history and past iconoclastic movements in history have proved that multiple times over!

Finally though, Saltz talks about something I think is really important to remember. We are all at the hands of banks and oil companies, and governments, and industries in power that destroy the Earth. He says:

"These entities tell us to compost, save the environment, don't use straws...while their own ways go unchecked as they make more profits."

These powers that be want us fighting amongst one another. They want public outrage and backlash against these protesters because as long as we continue pointing fingers at one another, no one will point fingers at them. Which is maybe why so many headlines are focused on the shock value of destroying art. We are not any different than the protesters at our core. We're all suffering under the same system that is causing harm. I think it's important to remember that while we shouldn't condone the protesters actions, it's easy to be extremely harsh on powerless people trying to lash out at a suffocating system of power.

I agree with Saltz in that both lines of thinking can be true. You can disagree and be pained by their methods, while understanding to a certain degree why these forms of 'protest' keep happening.

[the-lincyclopedia]

A mark of privilege that I don't hear people talking about much is being, like, institutionally trusted. This goes along with a lot of axes of privilege/oppression--white people tend to be more institutionally trusted than people of color, men more so than women, etc.--but I think it's worth addressing as not just a manifestation of racism, or a manifestation of sexism, or a manifestation of some other form of prejudice.

I'll define what I mean by "institutionally trusted." I mean doctors believe you about your symptoms and don't assume you're seeking out drugs. I mean your boss believes that you're doing your job and doesn't micromanage you. I mean you aren't stopped for "random" extra screenings every time you pass through an airport.

Now, obviously anyone can be institutionally trusted, and anyone can be institutionally distrusted. Anyone who works can have a micromanaging boss. Anyone who sees a doctor can have the bad luck to wind up with a doctor who's a jerk. This isn't something that one group of people experiences 100% of the time and that another group of people never experiences at all. Few things are that binary, in my opinion.

But I do think that in general, on average, privilege puts people in places where they're more institutionally trusted, and belonging to a marginalized group (or several) reduces the amount of institutional trust you receive (again, in general and on average).

And I think it's worth talking about as one thing that happens across types of oppression and across settings and situations. I think a large part of why it's worth talking about is that being regularly treated as untrustworthy can really mess with your head and your sense of self and confidence in your own perception of reality.

I think about this a lot in relation to my experience in high school.

Now, I'm quite privileged in some ways, and the ways in which I'm not were less apparent when I was younger (i.e. before I realized I'm queer and got my autism diagnosis, etc). I'm white, I can pass for cishet, I'm mostly able-bodied, and my parents have money.

But I went to an underfunded inner-city public high school that was about 70% students of color, and although I certainly was treated differently and more favorably from my peers of color in a variety of ways, the policies of the school as a whole were very punitive and treated the student body in its entirety as probably being up to no good.

There were no mirrors in any of the bathrooms, and the story was that students had smashed mirrors to make shanks, hence the mirrors being removed (though I'm guessing it was probably actually just a matter of not being able to keep the mirrors clean). There were, similarly, no paper towels; the story there was that students had been lighting them on fire (this feels more believable to me).

I can't imagine having an open campus lunch policy--the only two places we were allowed to eat lunch were the cafeteria and the music hallway. We were most certainly not allowed to leave or return during the day. I genuinely can't wrap my head around what it would have been like to be trusted to go off-campus midday. We didn't even have plastic knives in the cafeteria.

And again, I was a white, cishet-passing student from a family with money. I was absolutely treated better by the school than many of my peers were. And I still felt thoroughly distrusted, pretty much constantly. And me being me, I concluded that this must be because I really wasn't trustworthy. It took five or six years after finishing high school to start believing that actually, I could be trusted after all.

Obviously there are people in the world who will game systems and take advantage of loopholes, and there are also situations where people need supervision, not necessarily because they mean to do anything bad but just because a situation is dangerous or they're inexperienced/impulsive/etc. So I'm not saying we should trust everyone at all times without any checks or balances.

I don't have a perfect solution, but I do know that "assume people of color and other marginalized folks are lying in most situations, because better safe than sorry" is definitely NOT it.

[marciabrady]

How would you rank the Disney fairies (Cinderella’s godmother, the three good fairies, Maleficent, Pinocchio’s blue fairy, Tinkerbell) from most to least favourite?

As annoying as this might be, when I really love things- and I mean really, really love things- I can't possibly rank them because if I put something over the other, then it's like reducing the impact or power of the merits it has. Idk if that makes any sense but I just love all the fairies you listed so much, there truly isn't anything I dislike about them or could be improved upon imo, like they're all such beacons of light to me that, while I can't rank them because they're all number one in my heart, I can certainly list what I love and what I feel is special about each! In order of their respective debuts on the silver screen (also I'm doing this off the top of my head, so there's so many more nuances to these ladies and things I love about them that I probably will forget to list because I'm doing this on the spot):

The Blue Fairy: THAT VOICE. She's the definitely of ethereal in every way, from the way her design has her to be slightly transparent, to the heavenly beam that radiates from her core, and how stunning she is. This is when animated characters still had realistic proportions and a mature vibe to them (a huge cry from 3d). I just love how realistically she represents, what I believe, to be the distinction between the higher powers and us mortals. Not to get too deep, but I've met far too many non-spiritual people and atheists who hate any type of belief in...anything, really, because they're world-weary and believe, if a higher power/s existed, than why do bad things happen? I think they conflate how perfect that higher civilization is said to be, or something like heaven, to how flawed us mortals are and how many bad things happen on earth but one has nothing to do with the other. We have free will and just because certain people do bad things or have bad judgement, that isn't a reflection on whether or not a smarter or higher power or whatever exists, or whether an afterlife does. Like...if a pope does something bad, that's because he's a bad person, but that doesn't mean we have to banish any religion that has popes from the face of the earth? I'm not sure if this makes any sense but I feel she represents this and I love it so much. She's there and she exists and we have her on film, yet she feels so indicative of that unattainable star that's just out of reach, that we see every night so there's that familiar, but the distance from getting intimate that makes us filled with wonder and awe at it. I love how she grants Gepetto his wish and does have powers to change things, but she ultimately wants Pinocchio to go through life on his own, and she gives him the resources to accomplish the goals that he has set for himself but she's not going to do the work for him. ALSO LET'S TALK ABOUT HER VOICE. Just such an unbelievably perfect casting that's so unique and mature and deep and I...I know the actress performed Shakespeare and could you imagine those otherworldly tones reciting medieval dialogue that's stood the test of time and speaks directly to the human condition??? 10/10!

The Fairy Godmother: There aren't enough good things I could say about the Fairy Godmother. Again, like the Blue Fairy, she exists as proof/signal of the Great Beyond and is so human- she's forgetful, she's warm, she caresses Cinderella and displays such an understanding for her experience that's so validating- but she's also in the film so minimally and comes at such an integral moment, she's still special and otherworldly and that glimpse into greatness that we so badly would love to capture more of. I love how funny she is too- and how she mirrors Cinderella. She provides Cinderella with a dress just as Cinderella provides the mice with clothing. She's kind and comforting, like her Goddaughter, and just as funny and tasteful and interested in design. Also, just as Cinderella chases Lucifer with a broom to "teach him a lesson," the Fairy Godmother isn't mad at all at the fact that Lucifer gets scared and runs off- "serves him right, I say." I love how there's limitations on her magic too- how it ends at midnight. She's so sensitive that she didn't want to put a damper on Cinderella's mood, but still needed to tell her the limitations- and the way Cinderella responds in turn is so heartwarming, on both parts. A seldom known fact is that Ilene and Verna were actually very close friends after the making of Cinderella, Verna was the only person Ilene kept in touch with iirc though she did autograph signings with the other voices in the 1990s, and that always heightened the dynamic, too. Also the song is sooo clever and fun- anyone could sing it! Also, not to fixate on voices, but if Verna Felton didn't knock this one out of the park, she never would've been brought back for Flora so another 10/10 (though all the entries on this list are lol)

Tinker Bell: She was animated by Marc Davis- that in itself is good enough to propel her to stardom! I love her personality- as most people do, it was literally the basis of a franchise. But I love the live action reference model, who is still with us and has built a cottage industry of maintaining a public bond and connection with this very special character. My favorite part of her is the walk she does, patting herself on the bun, after Peter reveals her motives in killing Wendy. I love her character arc and how she's allowed to be flawed- even though she was dead wrong for the way she approached things. Her love for Peter and what she sacrifices to keep him safe is so lovely though. There's so many other things to say but the song of Tinker Bell is anything but unsung so I feel that this will suffice lol

Flora: OK BUT LET'S TALK ABOUT UNSUNG everyone is a Merryweather girlie- and I get it, really I do, but let's also not ignore the icon, the moment, that is Flora? For starters- let's get this out of the way- I'm team Pink and have always been. I actually used to watch the VHS tape as a child with the belief that it wasn't stagnant- that, perhaps if I yell at the TV hard enough this time- that Flora will keep the dress pink or Merryweather will forget to turn it blue before Aurora comes home to the cottage to tell them of Phillip. So, the fact that Flora is the originator of that pink hue? Massive points right there, alone. But also I'm someone who loves beauty and is very drawn to aesthetically pleasing things and the fact that she gives the gift of beauty in itself is so astoundingly captivating to me- beauty in so many things, spirit, and walk, and talk, and character and- it's so much more layered and nuanced than people think. Also, Flora is the leader of the fairies, which I love. She has a level of leadership and autonomy and she's the perfect balance, I think, between Merryweather and Fauna, that the plot is able to continually be propelled because of her. She isn't weighed down by spite or slowed down by being...slower lol she's such a great force. Another incredible job by Verna Felton, and I just love the name Flora so much, in general. Let's also not forget she gave us the most iconic quote from the fairies- "that's because it's on you"- and she delivers the very important speech to Prince Phillip about the tools he'll need on his road to true love. I love her so much and I might venture to say she's my favorite of the three good fairies, though I love them so much I could never choose

Fauna: I LOVE FAUNA! The scenes of her baking the cake is pure asmr and I just love how she's this blend of Billie Burke and Rose Nylund. There's something so human and earthy to her, and I think Aurora is defined by her relationship to song, and that all came from Fauna so she can't possibly be underestimated in that regard. In my person life, I really get frustrated by people who play the middle or devil's advocate or can't choose a side when it comes to things because, in my opinion, it always feels like they're trying to be something or play the contrarian or be all things to all people- but Fauna is genuinely so drawn to the earth and so rooted to her natural temperament, that her ability to soften the blow of other's words and the gravity of a situation or even the conflict is genuinely PERFECT because it's so fundamental to her character and who she is that she could never be accused of being anything but genuine. I love how excited she is at the prospect of taking care of a baby- and her voice in general is just so unique and wispy. I love that she displays fear in a healthy way, like when they get back to the cottage and she hides behind Flora, but how she's still brave enough to go against this fear to venture to the Forbidden Mountains. While she may not be at the helm of creating the plans or being the one to set the action into motion, she's such a ride or die that it's hard to do anything but love her. Such a great character- more like her are needed, though she's so special that there will never be another quite like her

Merryweather: I know I previously said Merryweather was the most popular and everyone was sleeping on the other fairies, but that doesn't mean I think this fairy being the most in vogue isn't deserved! Merryweather is such a sparkling personality and so funny and I love how thoroughly she thinks through things. She's so ready to fight and be physically combative, aggressive, and sharp of tongue, but the very interesting thing that distinguishes her from other characters who are in this mold, is that it genuinely comes from a place of love for her. Her desire to fight Maleficent doesn't come from her hatred of the fairy, but in wanting to protect Aurora. I love how strong she is and bitter and how her pettiness leads to her downfall, in certain instances, but how she's also so human and anything but a Mary Sue that's capable of doing anything she sets her mind to, even with magic- for instance, she stutters when the other fairies bring her forth to soften the blow of the curse. She doubts herself and that's something that's so interesting in a magical creature. Yet, she also thinks she can do the job better than anyone else- as we see her wanting to make the dress and bake the cake over Flora and Fauna. She's also the first to tear up at the prospect of this being their last day with Briar Rose- and she was team ship! Briar Rose + nameless peasant boy (I don't see why she has to marry any old Prince!) and that's SO CUTE to me considering she knew Phillip but still genuinely was so involved with Briar Rose that she could only ever root for what made her happy, even if it was at the destruction of the allyship between Stefan and Hubert's kingdoms. Also who wasn't happy that she turned Diablo to stone LBR a legend who will continue to be appreciated for generations to come

Maleficent: here's the gag- I never thought much of Maleficent until probably the last five years. Growing up, I never considered her in the film and it's almost as if I was unaware of her entirely. I had no opinion- even as a child. I liked the huge fandom she incurred though, as it brought attention to Aurora's movie, but I definitely wasn't one of the people who was obsessed with the Mistress of Evil and I didn't really know where other people were coming from that were, but all the same, it made me so happy it gave a new audience to the film. However, she's a character I love very much now as she's totally tied to one of my best friends in the world who's found a home in her. It's difficult for me to see her, now, without thinking about our friendship so my feelings toward her are happy ones. Another one where the design work couldn't have been better, the vocals were out of the park, and the writing for the character is unrivaled. A queen befitting her throne and perhaps the only other character in the film to match Aurora's sophistication

[lacependragon]

God, sometimes I have really complex feelings about my love of Symphogear.

Like, Symphogear is without a doubt one of the best shonen anime I have ever seen. It's wonderfully built, takes itself completely seriously in the best way possible, and actually asks a lot of questions that I feel are often overlooked in magical girl anime.

It has one of the greatest endings I have EVER seen (and yes I AM including FMA:B).

Not to mention, the cast of main characters is all girls and swells up to six of them - one of them an adult! - after the first few seasons. They all have distinct personalities, and arcs, and emotions, and backstories, and the way each one interacts separately, and the fact that so much of the show is driven by their motivations, is just brilliant.

But god I have to put so many disclaimers on this show.

The costumes: the camera sexualizes the fuck out of those Symphogear costumes. The costumes themselves, and the transformations at times, aren't terribly appropriate. I'm not trying to deny that, or argue it.

The only thing I will say in its favour: no one in show who we're supposed to like ever sexualizes the girls. No one makes comments, or stares, or anything.

The (first season only) assault: The first season features two on screen assaults! One is small - an ear bite - and the other is not. At all! Both are between a fully grown woman and a teenage girl. I do not like EITHER of these scenes. To me, they are the worst part of the show. What frustrates me even more is how unnecessary they are. And how much they exist just to push the "predatory old lesbian" trope.

Thankfully it seems the creators agreed, because that never happens again after season one. And all adult female characters after that are much, much better.

Well. Okay. There's a weird creepy relationship between an adult man and what looks like a younger teen girl in season five, but she's literally a freaking puppet, and they're literally the bad guys, so I think we have better things to argue about.

The boobs: Chris in particular is awful for this. Her chest is massive and the show puts a lot of focus on how "cute" she is, which means a lot of close-ups around her face and *ahem* assets. This is creepy! Not arguing this.

The characters in show aren't weird about it though? And she's not reduced to them either. Chris isn't "the boob character". She's actually a deeply fascinating young woman with abandonment issues, a drive to protect others no matter the cost, and a fear of opening up and being vulnerable. No one really ever brings up her boobs. They're just... there. And animated exactly how you think they are. But like, just there.

I love Symphogear. I love it so much. I want to emphasize how deep these characters are, how incredible their arcs are, how the show actively has five season long character development arcs for the main three. How the entire show hinges on proving there is no greater power than love and song and holding hands.

Hibiki's entire fucking arc is LEARNING HOW TO BE SELFISH after becoming the most self-sacrificing person you will ever meet. Tsubasa learns what it means to be a hero with or without her family's name behind her. Chris learns how to create a new family of her own choosing.

It's queer. It is EXPLICITLY queer and not in just the weird shonen way they sometimes do with girls. Shirabe and Kirika are explictly in love and dating. Hibiki and Miku explictly have feelings for one another. The love one girl has for another (romantic and platonic) is the key to saving the world. Two. Two separate relationships between two sapphic women.

Then we get into coding. Because holy shit - both Maria and Tsubasa have some fantastic gender things going on that work so well into transness. I doubt that was the intention, but it's fantastic nonetheless.

Tsubasa's entire story with her family is so steeped in gender, gender roles, expectations, and the like, but not in the way you'd expect from a traditional family in this sort of story. She wants to step out into the world as feminine, as a singer, while her father wants her to only be a weapon, which he sees as masculine (though actually Tsubasa spends most of season one on her father's side, due to events in the first episode, but the majority of the series, this is her conflict). The use of singing in fighting in Symphogear is often stated, by traditional men, to be a weakness, a silly joke, and ineffective, despite evidence to the contrary.

And Maria is a sister who stepped into the role of her fallen sister, someone she saw as much more beautiful, and pure, and worthy than her. So much of Maria's arc in her initial season is learning how to be her own person, how to find out who she wants to be, and that carries forward. Maria's struggle to find her own identity in a world that seeks to strip her of one was extremely familiar to me. I love that.

Look I know that Symphogear has its problems, okay? I know. I know. It's got too much male gaze and it's a little too weird with its underage characters sometimes and you can literally see Shirabe and Kirika's butt cracks in their first costumes. But I'm telling you that the story beneath those problems is fucking amazing. I'm not excusing them! All I'm saying is that they weren't enough to stop me from enjoying the story.

I just wish it was easier to recommend.

[tokiro07]

I actually managed to finish medaka box after a while of putting it off because of you mentining it, and it was, weird to be honest? Some of it in a good way, but there were many parts that just, didn't really fell like they click all that well. There are stuff that just hasn't aged well and were annoying but mostly sometimes it really fell like who made it didn't really had much idea in what direction they wanted to take it or how to get there in a satisfying manner. It wasn't really bad overall, I stick with it to the end after all, just like I say, weird. (Hope you don't take this the wrong way, just wanted to share my thoughts since you are the only one I know of who read it).

That's a shame, but it's not for everyone. I've never really thought of Medaka Box as a perfect masterpiece that would appeal to everyone

That said, it is definitely up for debate where a lot of its flaws come from, whether they were from the Jump editorial department, translation issues, or Nisio Isin just being Like That

A lot of Nisio Isin's opining about philosophy comes off as pretty obtuse a lot of the time, like the whole thing about Medaka "killing her father" and it turning out to be that Fukuro a) wasn't her dad, b) killed himself because Medaka's personality was too extreme for him to handle, and c) wasn't even actually dead. Ajimu and Medaka both jumped through some pretty serious hoops to reach the conclusion that Medaka was at fault, but Nisio Isin is also the same guy who wrote a story about a disease that curses you to die at age 12, meaning that you're immortal until you hit 12. That's really just the kind of ridiculous logic this man uses, and I had three full years to get used to it while reading it during its original run

I do think there were a lot of points that Nisio Isin wanted to go a different direction, though, or where he wanted to expound on certain concepts a bit more, but wasn't able to because of the pressures of the editorial department. While the table of contents isn't a reliable indicator of popularity, it's undeniable that Medaka Box was consistently closer to the back of the magazine, averaging at 14th across four years, so it seems pretty likely that it was a heavily divisive series among fans, which could result in things being cut or trimmed just in case of a sudden cancelation. The final arc in particular feels like it was missing a lot, as multiple fights either occurred off-screen or were ended instantaneously (i.e. Medaka vs. Kakegae or Tsurubami vs. Fukuro), and the ones we got to see often had their explanations reduced or completely omitted (i.e. Torai being an artificial Abnormal without us ever learning what her Abnormality even was or Nienami telling Medaka that she's using Styles incorrectly without actually explaining what's wrong with her approach)

Again, though, a lot of what Nisio Isin has to say is difficult enough to parse in Japanese, so god only knows how much is lost in translation. I personally caught CXC making mistakes constantly, and the group currently translating the full-color version is, admittedly, not much better. Sentai Filmworks' subtitles were fine, but that was also the first two seasons where things hadn't gotten too out of hand yet, as Kumagawa hadn't even shown up until the last episode

The best advice I can give is to remember that Medaka Box is, at its core, a deconstruction of a lot of popular Shonen Jump tropes. It becomes more obvious once Kumagawa and Ajimu start literally talking about Jump, but once you know that, even the early chapters are clearly themed around that concept. Most notably, the Flask Plan and the differentiation between Normals, Specials and Abnormals are an indictment of the Jump ideal of "Effort," stating that anyone can achieve anything if they put in the effort, only for most Jump protagonists to have some kind of advantage like being the secret descendant of a deity or the spiritual host to a powerful monster or some such nonsense that automatically makes them different from the everyman. Medaka herself is meant to be almost a parody of the typical Jump protagonist, while Hitoyoshi is the Jump ideal, brought to its logical extreme when he is given the Devil Style Skill to completely erase any benefits he could receive from fate or luck, forcing him to rely solely on his own efforts and ridding him of the ability to make any excuses should he fail

Of course, Medaka Box being so parodic of Jump does beg the question: was the ending what Niso Isin intended? Medaka Box ended much more neatly than most Jump properties get to, but its relatively sudden conclusion would also feel right at home among all of the other "the story goes on" or "well that sure was convenient" or "whoa that's a lot of information to take in all at once" style endings that you so often see in canceled series. Was Medaka Box actually canceled and forced to rush its conclusion, or did notorious mad lad Nisio Isin construct the perfect simulation of a rushed ending? It's absolutely something he would do, especially when you consider that there weren't too many dangling threads or unanswered questions, just things that the fans would prefer to see given more focus

To address your point, I am absolutely certain that Nisio Isin knew exactly where he wanted the story to go, the main question is whether or not he was just unable to overcome his own Nisioisms, if the editors wouldn't let him do what he wanted, or if the translators just found a way to botch his intentions. Maybe it was a little of everything, but we'll most likely never know for sure

[theunicornsystem]

This week has been eventful! We got 12 inches cut off of our hair and it's still past our shoulders! This was partly because we wanted something new, and partly for the littles, so they could wear certain littlespace hairstyles without it looking weird from our hair being so long. We also got a pink bunny costume type thing and it has a hood with bunny ears. It's mainly for the littles but it's also going to be our Halloween costume. We had practice for the preventing bullying and youth hate crimes government run virtual symposium, and the panelists were blown away by our answers and writing. We're really proud, especially since there are going to be over 2000 people watching.

We had our first meeting for the anti-vaping program. As soon as we walked in, this girl smiled at us and she just was really welcoming and approachable. We sat next to her, she introduced herself and Everett introduced themself and we made small talk. Her friends were there too. She and her friends go to a different high school. It was really super nice to get to talk with genuine people. So many people who go to our school are just braindead screen addicts. We know that might sound harsh, but really, they don't care about anything but their phones, and they always prioritize social media over actually talking with people. We often feel alone in our classes despite going to such a huge high school because no one in our classes really talks to each other, they just care about their phones, unless they're like best friends and in that case they only care about their phones and each other. Since coming to high school last year, we've always tried to form real connections with people who also genuinely care about making connections, but it's really not easy because of how few people care about anything other than their phones. Anyway, our point is that we were very glad to meet that girl and her friends and we look forward to talking with her next meeting. We feel like she's an actual real person who cares about people and things instead of a screen zombie. During the meeting, we learned about how our program's goal is to reduce youth vaping in Minnesota by 30% by 2025, what that process looks like, and how nicotine is dangerous and harmful.

We had our first official meeting for DECA, the entrepreneurship program we're in. Again, our goal is to qualify for the state competition. We're really excited to be a part of this.

Everett had a dysphoria-induced breakdown and it was really bad. They hadn't fallen asleep until past midnight the previous night because they felt so trapped and suffocated and disgusted by our body and they've been misgendered a lot lately. They texted their friend about it and their friend supported them so well; it was amazing to have those caring words and we're so grateful. We don't know where we'd be without this friend, she's helped us in many ways. Then, two days later, our mom asked Everett why they use they/them pronouns and they spent three minutes pouring their heart out explaining. They told her it's because those are the pronouns they identify with and the pronouns they feel comfortable using and they feel seen and heard when people use those pronouns for them because every time someone calls them she they're showing them they don't care about who they are they don't hear their voice they don't hear their pain. She says isn't that just wanting to be gender neutral and they say no it's not about that look at me do I look gender neutral no I look like society's image of a girl but I am non-binary that's what it's about I am not a man or a woman I am not a boy or a girl and she says but you have two X chromosomes and they say it's not about what you're born with it's what you identify as trans girls have XY chromosomes and they are not male they are female gender isn't defined by chromosomes and she says she doesn't understand and walks away. That felt horrible and triggered them very badly and they were crying for a long time. They tried to reach one of two of our friends but they weren't able to support us. In the end we got through it, we always do, but it was just a really ugly experience.

Something we've noticed is that our system switches have become a more noticeable shift in our mind. We sometimes switch to certain people when we don't want to and struggle to switch back, so we made a list of switching triggers for each person. Switching triggers are things that trigger a person out of the headspace, they are not trauma triggers and they're not necessarily bad.

We were watching a documentary in our world studies class and goofing around with our classmate because the documentary was in another language and they had the translated subtitles and then the subtitles that were in English that were trying to guess what the words were saying even though he was speaking in another language. There was a man speaking and the automated subtitles said "I need a husband hotel, I'll invite custard in Christ anoxia vinegar fold the envelope" and we and our classmate were laughing.

We had a job interview for a server position at a nursing home and we got the job! We're very excited and proud of ourselves for saying the right things! We start next week.

Thank you for reading, and have an amazing weekend!

-Sara and Everett

[ayotocorp]

The No-FPS Game

I had a thought (ironically in the shower) about games and FPS. Typically you want higher FPS in games since that means it's more responsive: each frame is a potential point for player input, which means at 120 fps you have 4x the number of inputs being read compared to 30fps, which feels better and (of course) looks smoother. But what about if you go the other direction? Is it possible to lower FPS and make it feel more responsive somehow?

I don't mean stuff like Saint's Row 2 which flat-out breaks at higher framerates, or like the weird instances in DS2 or RE2/the RE VIllage DLC where physics and other bits of game logic are tied to framerate for whatever reason. I'm also not going to go all the way down from 60 to 0, because there's a lot of considerations to be made at every step and for many different genres, which would turn a small blog shower thought post into a full-blown article or paper.. To simplify it, let's just say that at different ranges of FPS we have to reduce the amount of action in the game to compensate for the reduced amount of inputs. At 60+ everything works, at 30 action-heavy games start feeling the burn, at 15 those same games are pretty much unplayable and even games like Pokemon (where the most action is menu-ing and walking around a grid) start feeling bad, and so on. At extremely low FPS, let's say 5, doing anything that requires more than one button press to accomplish feels burdensome. All of these can be theoretically designed around, though targeting and building for low FPS feels like a dumb idea most of the time.

Let's talk about 0fps. At 0fps you have a static image. It's a frozen image, and for all intents and purposes it's completely non-interactive as there are no frames being updated due to inputs. It's the equivalent of loading a jpg up on your computer and blowing it up to full screen. But I'm going to make a slight, perhaps cheaty adjustment here, since a real 0fps game would be purely visual with no interactivity whatsoever. Instead I'll call 0fps something that does not update independent of player input, and I'll explain my reasoning

Just for sake of example let's say we have a 0fps "game" which is at true 0fps, as in once the game is opened it will accept no player input within the bounds of the game itself (so you can still close it out or move the window or whatever). However, just because the game isn't updating the screen it doesn't mean it can't run game logic on its own clock in the background. This is normal for games that don't have programming tied to framerate. We also have a point of player interaction present: the opening of the game itself. Theoretically you could have a game that, upon being opened, generates an image, then creates a modified copy of itself that will in turn generate a slightly different image in addition to a further modified copy, and so on. If you want to do something like a CYOA, it could generate multiple copies that then further splinter into further copies. It's a 0fps game as it won't generate new frames on its own, but player input will cause them to generate instead.

So now we have a functional game running at "0fps", but how do you make it feel good, or more importantly can you make it feel better than a higher FPS game? Well, at the very least you can hit parity. Rogue for example is the closest thing to this 0fps game that we have right now. The graphics don't change on their own, and actions and updates only occur on player input and simultaneous to it. Running at 0 fps or infinite makes no difference in this case. Making it feel more responsive is trickier and significantly more awkward as it would lead to a weird lack of feature parity at different framerates, but let me go through my thought here.

In Crypt of the Necrodancer, there's a character by the name of Bard. Unlike every other character in the game, Bard has the ability to ignore the music beats, turning the game into Rogue. You can move as fast or as slow as you like, and the game will only respond when you act. The important part though, is that the animations will also slightly break if you start moving quickly. And that's my idea: a low-FPS game cam feel better depending on the animations occurring. This is another hypothetical, and in this case there's a direct design decision being made that would intentionally lead to this issue at higher framerates.

Here's the idea. Let's say you have a 60fps animation that lasts for 2 and a half seconds. 150 frames of animation. And let's say the game is coded such that there are specific "key frames" that have to be hit during the animation. Any of the frames between the key frames aren't actually rendered, and at the end of the animation any frames after the final key frame can just be skipped. At 60fps, let's say 100% of the frames are treated as key frames, so nothing is skipped. At 30fps, 50% of the frames are treated as key frames, alternating, so the final frame would be skipped in the animation. At 1fps, the only frames used are at 1, 61, and 121, which throws out the extra half a second. It might look like a slideshow, but it technically would respond to inputs better than 60fps, as long as you get your input in during the exact 121st frame (or have input buffering do it for you). With good input buffering and proper knowledge of how the timing works, you could theoretically speedrun a game more effectively even if you're more or less doing it blind. And then finally, at "0fps", we render 0% of the key frames. The animation is entirely skipped, we simply have a beginning state and an end state reached instantaneously. It's not pretty, but technically speaking it's more reactive to your inputs.

[i-like-eyes]

Wrote this out of boredom uhhhh

For years I've just kinda ignored metasusie because I thought it was dumb more than anything, but seeing the new wave of fans latch onto the first straight ship they see it means I'm seeing it flood my timelines and I'm forced to think about it. I don't even subscribe to the MK has robot PTSD theory so much as I think it's just a bad read of both characters. I think people should be allowed to make and consume what could be considered problematic media as long as they still think critically about what they are doing and understand the effects their creations can have on people. But I'm not seeing that here. Listen if this was just a bad read of the characters I wouldn't make an elaborate post on it unless someone asked about it oop There are a lot of headcanons I think are shitty reads of the characters, but that's all they are. There is no point to take a fat dump on them other than I was bored and wanted to complain.

But metasusie isn't just that, it promotes harmful ideas rather the people that like the pair realize it or not. If the gender roles were switched more people would recognize that there was an unfair power balance and how icky the whole situation is, and if it isn't undermining MK then Susie is reduced to a sexy mannequin devoid of personality to look pretty next to the cool guy. I have never seen a ship that both completely disregards the media's message in order to exist and is so sexist for both characters involved; and I'd never thought I'd have to say that for a bloody Kirby ship.

I know I'm not changing metasusie fan's minds because they are very stubborn. After scrolling on Twitter too much it's clear that metasoos fans know their ship is problematic, and instead of reflecting on themselves they try to divert attention by bullying gay people or smth. I've seen them try to argue that metadede is the more problematic pairing, and as someone who does not like metadede, *bruh* it is as inoffensive as stock images lmao. Rather I'm writing this so that people that get there is smth off about the pairing but can put to words what they're feeling. Because if you so much as poke at the arguments supporting it, they immediately shatter they're so haphazardly put together.

And knowing what posting this will entail; please don't harass anyone over this, it won't help your point. I don't think that liking smth yikesy automatically makes someone a bad person, some people just legit don't know better. I think what matters more is how the respond after the fact, and to be patient with people because you can't expect anyone to change overnight. That said some people won't change their minds ever, and no amount of trying to cram the idea in their heads will change do that. Hell constantly poking someone about it when they have shown they don't care about the topic, even if you think they are wrong about it that's just bullying. If you can't change someone's mind they aren't worth the time.

So, the big point everyone has seen. Susie ripped MK of his humanity. When you say you "remodeled" someone and give them a new robot name you have dehumanized them. There is no getting around that fact, and this is a thing that happened in the main story not even as pause screen lore.

How she describes him before the second fight is particularly degrading, calling him a product and referring to him as "it". The line about the upgrade enabling him to work for 24 hours is definitely commentating on long works hours lol

People will argue that MK doesn't seem all that bothered by it so it's okay, I'd argue that isn't the case but let's go with this take anyways. Even if MK himself was okay with being reduced to a company's asset, the act of mechanizing someone against their will is still an irresponsible thing to do on Susie's end. I'm pretty sure 80% of metasusie fans didn't actually play Planet Robobot, but just so that we are on the same page, the plot of that game is that the entirety of Planet Popstar is robotized by the Haltmann company and Kirby has to save the planet from being taken over by comically over-the-top capitalists. Meta Knight is one of the many, many victims of robotization and the fact that the galaxy's greatest warrior was even taken over by the company is how the game raises its stakes. Whispey the tree becoming company property is bad enough, but the Haltmann company is just so damn powerful that not even Meta Knight could fight them off. This is the part where the player goes "oh shit! Not the badass Meta Knight!" The whole game is critique of capitalism, that the system reduces those at the bottom (the robotized) into cogs of a wider machine that serves to maximize profits that benefits only those at the top (the Haltmanns). Doesn't matter how good you are at sword fighting, that can't fight off an economic system man. And this game's critique of capitalism, while still simple because all ages game, doesn't get enough credit. That line about being able to work for 24 hours isn't just a joke about how hard a job is, under capitalism the people in charge wring out as many hours out of their employees as they possibly can. They'd like it if we were all just mindless robots because more hours means get more work done in a week meaning more profit and faster. Even if you are 10 and have never heard of capitalism, it's still clear that the bad guys are doing their bad guy thing by taking over the good guys. My point is by excusing Susie robotizing Meta Knight and saying it wasn't all that bad, you are excusing the rest of the planet being turned into a hellscape and its inhabitants being ripped of their humanity. You are saying that the game's message does not matter, that the game's entire fucking conflict meant nothing. After all, if MK being robotized wasn't so bad then why would Kirby need to save the whole planet? Some people really will ignore a whole game to justify a ship god damn.

Some people instead claim that what Susie did was awful, but she can improve as a person and MK can forgive her. There are a handful of things wrong with this mindset let's break it down.

First off, Susie has never shown a willingness to change. "But she helped Kirby at the end" technically yes, but was it out of the kindness of her heart or because she was already in danger and recognized that he was the only way to ensure she'd survive? Going by her dialogue it looks more like the latter. "I'm not going to stand here be be destroyed by some crazy machine!" You got to work on your optics girl.

Compare and contrast this with Taranza helping Kirby in the end of Triple Deluxe. Taranza was blasted away Team Rocket style by Sectonia; he just had his best friend whom he was still loyal towards despite her changing for the worse finally betray him. He is literally blasted miles away from the big boss fight at this point and probably dealing with a lot of confused and built up emotions. And despite that, he goes to back to help Kirby and DDD defeat her having realized that she can't be saved. He could of stayed behind away from all the action, but he went back to do the right thing. Both Susie and Taranza would of died in their situations (Secc eventually becomes a ginat flower and starts to cover the planet) but Taranza was the one that put himself into more danger by going back. That's why he looks more selfless than Susie does. Not saying Susie didn't do a good thing either, nor that you can argue even Taranza might of had selfish motivations for wanting to survive because don't we all. But, because of the situation her motivations seemed more selfish in nature whereas Taranza put himself in more danger to save others.

Perhaps the intention was to have Susie be as admirable as Taranza was. I get the vibe the devs wanted Susie to be the next Taranza, but I don't think they captured what made him special. Yeah they both had sad backstories, but that doesn't excuse their bad actions. Rather they have to show them working to better themselves, and they had Taranza at the end helping DDD and Kirby back to Dreamland while Susie fucks off to space in her mech. If the intention was to make Susie nicer, then she should of been shown helping others more. Or maybe that wasn't even their intention, and Susie is just supposed to be a bad guy. Taranza and even the Squeaks in the infamously underwritten Squeak Squad make up for their actions at the end of their respective games, if they wanted Susie to reform they could have. And Magolor shows that if they change their minds on smth they can just retcon what happened in their next game appearance! So did they do that with Susie?

We would see her again in Star Allies, so if we get a plot follow up of sorts then it would be there. In it she's a Dream Friend; playable characters whose inclusion in the game are canonically dubious, but the information here is still significant because it's the closest thing we'll get to official media commenting on where the characters are after their own titles. It has been confirmed that there is no clear timeline, but it's fair to say that KSA takes place after all the other games because it references those, and how else would Kirby know all these people anyways? Ultimately the most common take is what you see is canon, and what people see is Susie helping Kirby and the game referencing the events of PR. Each playable character has a little blurb in their pause screens explaining why they are in the game. It should be noted that the people that translated the game were seemingly given like two days to complete it, so yes I will be bringing up the differences in versions, but the vast majority of people that played the English version only know about the English text. While the Japanese text is the "original", that doesn't make the English text any less valid no matter how bad you may think it is. In the English version Susie's blurb reads:

The company he built... I will bring it back!” Cool and collected, Susie from Kirby: Planet Robobot is all business. Following in the footsteps of her employer, she uses science to advance her mission—mechanizing new planets and peoples.

I don't think I even need to explain how this version of Susie is repeating the same villainous acts from her debut game. This is how most English players view the character rather you like it or not. Moving on to the Japanese version:

“His company…I’ll show that I will rebuild it!” Brushing aside a loose strand of shiny hair, the beautiful secretary Susie that inherited his will from Planet Robobot has taken action! A harmonious family, and a happy life, are offered with the power of science… I’ll exterminate the savages under such principles!

I've seen Susie fans say that her JP description is nicer than her EN one and proof she's changed for the better which. Okay mechanizing planets and people is arguably worse cause that's larger scale, but the JP version literally says she is killing people she decides are degenerates lol. And what she considers savages are the people of Popstar by the way, she isn't actually helping anybody. Even if she was killing obviously bad people, "exterminating the savages" is still a really blatantly evil way of wording things. That kind of language is used by colonizers when they take continents, or in the Haltmann's case, planets. Big red flags here, is the American education system that bad???

In order to justify killing an entire population to take their land, the colonizers convince themselves and others that "well the inhabitants are just savages anyways they wouldn't understand." This is what she means by "A harmonious family, and a happy life, are offered with the power of science… I’ll exterminate the savages under such principles!" Killing "savages" in the name of science is straight up some eugenicist shit I'm not kidding. And capitalism is associated with advancement of technology which means getting rid of what is outdated by capitalists standards. Such as a planet and its people lacking in hi-tech department for example. She isn't helping people y'all this is still the same capitalist from the previous game, just look at her dialogue in the second screenshot: "You natives need to be taught manners!"

This still is a bad localization, but unlike other parts of KSA I at least understand what the mindset was. "Okay she wants to exterminate the savages.... and those savages are the people in the way of her colonizing planets..... oh so she's colonizing planets." That's still a different meaning from the og text, but even the person that were given what seems like 30 seconds to translate this at least understood the wider implication.

All that said, ultimately this dialogue is just set up for a punchline. Consistent in her writing is her complete and utter lack of empathy and juxtaposing her cherry attitude with her bad behavior. In the first dialogue blurb I reference she acts as if her turning MK into her slave was her doing him a favor and she thinks this completely unironically; she is crazy and that's the joke. Bad people never think they are the villains; Susie thought she helping people when really she's killing innocents and that's the joke. This game series is inherently silly I don't know how people can miss this.

Then there is the menu animation thing where MK runs away in fear and Susie chases him. These are even more canonically dubious but it's the one example of the games referencing the two together after Planet Robobot. If they were supposed to both be on good terms you'd think the one time they can comment on their relationship status that then they'd be all buddy-buddy. But that isn't what they went with, the animation is there to say that MK (and even DMK) is afraid of Susie.

I'd like to point out that while it's easy to completely dismiss this as a "cute reference", there was still thought put into this. The people that created this had to think about what makes the most sense for these characters based on what information we already know. They didn't come to that conclusion based on nothing.

Alright the big question; does MK forgive Susie at the end of Robobot? Or ever? The end of the game has MK fly his ship near Star Dream where Kirby and Susie happen to be, nods to Kirby, Kirby nods back, and then they fly away leaving Susie behind. Some people have took this as MK forgiving Susie because. Uh. He doesn't acknowledge her? What is that the mindset here, that because he doesn't got out of his way to say "Susie you suck" that means they are on good terms? No, what's happening is there is a giant computer about to take over the galaxy, and MK doesn't acknowledge Susie because the evil murder robot is more important at the moment.

A problem with the series recently is that its had pretty ambitious story telling with little time to tell it. We probably won't figure out if Taranza moves on from Sectonia's death because *when* could they tell that story? TDX2? lol that was scrapped. Taranza certainly isn't popular enough to show up in a game collection to elaborate on his game's ending. We don't know if MK forgave Susie or held a grudge because the game doesn't have time to explore that unless it wants to ruin the pacing of the gameplay. The nature of the series is that after every game Dreamland basically resets, this is so that you can hop into any entry without needing context from previous titles to enjoy the current one. At most there will be references for older fans to gawk at, but the characters themselves live like they are in an episodic tv show. Next week all will back to normal to make a clean canvas for the next game. We can't have a game that follows up on the after effects on mechanization because we can't expect everyone to have played Planet Robobot. Plus the games barely have any time to properly establish the new story and characters, you think it has time to recap previous titles? We won't find out what the likes of Bonkers and Whispey think about the whole being turned into a robot thing because of this.

But the people that worked on Star Allies had the opportunity to at least comment on the effects it had on MK, even if it was in the form of a simple easy-to-miss animation. They had to think to themselves what do we know about these characters and in this one opportunity we can comment on what their current status is, how would they react. Thought was put into this.

Well, MK just isn't a very open guy for one thing. Like, him being quiet and mysterious is his whole gimmick. Even if the games were more story heavy, MK isn't the type to waltz into a room and announce how he's feeling. He's also normally in a high position of power; be it leading the Halberd or defeating the likes of Galacta Knight. He fights back the possession during Epic Yarn, and afterwards infamously says "Kirby, forgive me! I blame the yarn!" He is very clearly embarrassed by the ordeal lol. By KATFL he's so sick of being possessed that he just escapes Fecto's grasp through sheer will. In PR he's shown to be very stiff and lifeless in his Mecha Knight animations, devoid of any personality. We don't see him struggle like in Epic Yarn, but the fact that the mechanization has that strong of a hold on him that he can't fight it back is much scarier than the yarn thing. He would be at least a little shook from having that power suddenly taken from him, and he has been established to not like being mind controlled. And we know the guy is stubborn, he will not admit he's losing a fight and stick to the very end. Even if Susie tried to get on better terms with him, he'd hold a grudge for having bested him. In KF2 he still holds a grudge against freaking Kirby for always beating him for Pete's sake. This isn't proof the guy is traumatized or whatever that title goes to Zan, but he is said to have an ego streak in Star Allies, and the whole turned into a cyborg against your will thing would bruise your ego. So yeah, I think it makes complete sense that MK would try to avoid Susie. Go figure the people that work on these characters for their job understand them inside and out.

Now even ignoring all of this, I see people say well it's so open to interpretation what happens that I just hc Susie as getting better and MK forgiving her anyways.

Okay, prove it. Where's this story you have where this happens. Where is this content. I have not seen a single metasusie fan commit to this slow burn growing for the better and learning to forgive narrative, they just hop right into the romance. I have seen stories where Susie tries to better herself, sometimes MK forgives her and sometimes he doesn't, and none of those were done to justify shipping the two. They were stories that existed to explore the character (hell the only one with shipping had FranSoos) While I have argued here that Susie has never shown the willingness to change at all, at least the people that disagree have made some impressive art expressing why they think otherwise. The fact that I haven't seen metasusie fans actually do that and instead charge straight first into generic married couple shit tells me they don't actually care about the narrative where they grow as people and just say that's what they hc as a justification for the ship. You aren't exploring these characters you just want fluffy shit, and if that's all you care about just say that.

"Why can't you just let people have fun."

fffffffffffffff The main reason why I made this thing despite keeping quiet on other shit in this fandom I don't like, is because this pairing pushes sexist ideas rather the shippers intended this or not (and the vast majority of the time they don't). Making the two a happy-go-lucky couple downplays the abuse MK endured, and by extension rips Susie of her agency.

I am not saying MK suffered the equivalent of real world domestic abuse, he is literally a blueberry man that was made into a cool transformer when he didn't want that. But, there is more evidence to support that MK didn't like being robotized than there is saying he was okay with it. If the game explicitly supported the idea that he is fine and even forgives her, that would be a different story. But as established he's either indifferent at best or scared of her at worst. What is happening is that the media says that he suffered a bad thing, and people react to it by showing him fine and dandy despite that. Let's play a game. It's called "a man kidnaps a woman and forces her to do everything he says rather she wants to or not; is this scenario fucked up". If you answered yes then congrats you won the game, if you answered no, welp. I don't what to do with you man. It's incredibly telling when I see people react viscerally to others that headcanon MK's experience as having went worse. The same people I see say "just let people have fun it's just hc" in regards to their fluffy owo metasusie ship freak the fuck out whenever they see an angsty MK was hurt by Susie hc and try to argue how wrong it is. If your headcanon that MK is okay with the robot thing is valid, then what makes the angstier hc's any less valid? What is wrong with people that sympathize with MK being stripped of his anatomy and forced to work for someone else and exploring that story? Taking the theming of dehumanization and further exploring it? I thought you just wanted to let people have fun! Gonna go out on a limb here and say some people don't like the idea that men can't take more abuse than women; that they have a double standard and seeing that take makes them reevaluate their minset. And also that headcanon conflicts with the idea that he can date Susie. Mostly the later, but smth smth no one is free from biases and those can show up anywhere even in depictions of anthropomorphic spheres.

Back to Susanna, a problem with the games with that she suffers little repercussions for her actions. She can't really grow as a character if she doesn't find out what she did was wrong. But if they wanted to just play the villain thing straight it's still kinda boring to see she barely struggles to get what she wants, wow she sure is quick to brush off losing Star Dream so quickly after all her hard work. This is reflected in fan work as well, people don't seem all that interested in discussing why what she did was bad unless it's among the lines of "she is evil incarnate and deserves to die". Very productive guys. Because the games never properly punish her for her bad deeds, and the fans jump straight into the romance shit without writing that character arc where she grows as a person that the games lack. And the end result is Susie is never punished for her actions, rather she's rewarded with the same man she dehumanized. No amount of "well I hc this" will change that, all you ever draw is shippy stuff, never the character growth, and what people remember is the visuals not your written hc's. All people will see is fanart of a villain who never learns and is even rewarded for her bad behavior. MK's tribulations are ignored for the sake of her. Again, if the games actually had her pay for her mistakes then everyone's understanding of the character would be that of someone that actually understands what is and isn't wrong, then the pairing would be less icky. But that isn't the case, and the fandom isn't going to change that perspective anytime soon because it doesn't have the influence the official media nor does it care all that much about that narrative to begin with.

I've seen some defenders of the ship say that it only gets so much hate because people are weird about Susie. Now the people that say this will lump together actual haters with people who have legitimate criticisms, but yes as referenced above people are very weird about Susie. Like some people just despise this fictional woman, and she's clearly a bad person but she's a villain that's the point? Calm down. I know it might seem like *I* hate Susie because I've written 1000 words detailing why she's an awful person, but actually that's why I love her. All that dialogue I used to argue why she's awful? That shit is funny as hell! I'm sorry the hero of the story is boring; I'd much rather watch a villain giggle in glee, wine in hand from the comfort of their spooky castle as they watch the city burn underneath them. Susie would post a picture of her posing next to her latest victim with the description "feeling cute might delete later". She's that meme posing in a pool with someone drowning in the back. I don't think she's particularly well written, her backstory doesn't seem to have any affect on her and the game itself can't decide rather she's a straight up villain or morally ambiguous, but damn she's still so much fun. What she lacks in clear morals, she more than makes up for with plenty of personality! And seeing a horrible character suffer no repercussions for their bad actions and instead are congratulated with given a hot bf is obnoxious. But making a fun character boring? One of the worst sins you could commit. No I'm joking, but it is also super fucking telling that a good chuck of metasusie shippers are really just MK fanboys that only ever bring up Susie in relation to MK. And they ignore her war crimes to make her a sexy lamp that flirts with him and seemingly has no other ambitions. Like hating women is one thing, but women are people and people can be awful therefore women can be awful and let women be a bad bitch like Maleficent dammit. What I mean to say is; Susie isn't like some feminist icon, for one of like barely 10 plot important female characters she plays into a lot of basic stereotypes and the devs seem hesitant to actually punish her for her actions or have her grow to the extent of her male counterparts. But she's still an incredibly active character that can outsmart anybody (exception being the evil supercomputer which is fair) and takes matters into her own hands. In order to make Susie shippable you have to make her nicer, but this comes in the form of removing her smarts and her go getter attitude so that she becomes the ideal wife, and not only does she no longer resemble Susie, that's incredibly demeaning.

(Edit: I forgot to mention a lot of people will argue that depicting a female character as villainous to be an inherently bad thing. While it is true that there are some creators that hate women so much that every woman they write is some sort of evil temptress or whatever, this obviously doesn't mean that every fictional bad lady ever is inherently sexist for being evil. No not every depiction of Susie being mean is a result of someone that hates her, you can't deny that she's mean in canon at least at *sometimes*. Let women be bad bitches.)

TL:DR, The ship is bad. Planet Robobot makes a stance on the negative effects of capitalism, that because capitalism favors those at top it dehumanizes those below them. Meta Knight is a victim of this, and by saying it wasn't a problem you ignore the game's message for a ship. Susie isn't a particularly well written character, perhaps she was intended to be more sympathetic but the series doesn't do enough to show her trying to change for the better. The fans don't make up for this and treat her even weirder. If it was just those issues then it would just be a lame pairing, but the pair also emphasizes how the abuse men receive is undermined and how little people care about Susie being her own person. Also by posting this I lost a lot of followers lol

[bangtaninink]

You have me saved on your phone as what?! With Koo please!

#immaspamyouwithrequests

DRABBLE NUMBER......... 007 MEMBER............................ jeon jeongguk (jungkook) AU......................................... hybrid

"i'm hungry," taehyung whines, rolling around on the grass, ears twitching under his newly dyed blue hair, orange and black striped fur stark against the strands.

"so... go eat?" jeongguk suggests, eyebrows furrowed; you chuckle quietly, not lifting your head off his lap. "correct me if i'm wrong, but when you're hungry, the best solution is to go get food and eat it, correct?"

"that sounds right to me," you say, the warm summer breeze tickling the fur of your tail. "can't think of anything more logical."

"why can't you two let me complain in peace?" taehyung says, sighing and sitting up, tail laying flat on the grass. "better yet: why do i let my twin sister date a rabbit?"

"what's wrong with me dating jeongguk?" you sit up, frowning.

"have you forgotten about all that 'prey-predator' mumbo jumbo? we're tigers, in case you've forgotten."

"...you're literally dating a squirrel!"

"yeah, but... hoseok hyung is cute."

"are you saying jeongguk isn't cute?! i will rip you to shreds."

"hey, hey, hey," jeongguk coos, chuckling softly and stroking your hair, fingers brushing against your ears. "don't kill your brother."

pouting, you sit back against the tree with jeongguk, arms crossed over your chest as you shuffle closer to him, letting him drape his arms across your shoulders while you glare at taehyung.

"better work on your attitude, sis," taehyung jeers, smirking.

"better watch your back, bro," you retort.

"there is so much bad energy in the air right now."

all of you turn to see hoseok approaching you, jimin and yoongi not trailing far behind.

"why does it feel so tense around here?" hoseok asks, nose twitching as he takes a seat next to taehyung, scratching the back of his ears with a smile.

"your boyfriend was being a dick to my girlfriend," jeongguk says, scoffing.

"i was not!" taehyung cries.

"you better hope hoseok oppa lets you sleep over at his place tonight because i will--"

"please don't finish that sentence," jimin says, laughing. "i know a majority of this group here right now are cats, but we don't need the finer details of how you plan to murder your twin brother like a gazelle."

"speaking of gazelles: where're seokjin hyung and namjoon hyung?" hoseok asks.

"their busy doing some shopping for their wedding," yoongi answers, stretching out along the grass on his side with a yawn, ear twitching as the sunlight warms his back. "again."

"i can't believe they're getting married," taehyung says, smiling. "feels like it was just yesterday that namjoon hyung was tripping over nothing on his way to give seokjin hyung some flowers."

"that was yesterday."

"who do you think's gonna get married next?" jimin asks, rubbing yoongi's back as he starts to doze off.

"me," you and taehyung end up saying at the same time.

"please," taehyung scoffs, rolling his eyes. "you're high on jimin's catnip if you think you and your bunny are gonna get married before me and hoseok hyung."

"wow. just for that, you're not invited to our wedding," you say, scowling.

"how dare you."

"stop trying to fight me. i know me and jeongguk are gonna get married before you and hoseok oppa because i have jeongguk saved in my phone as 'future husband, bunny emoji', while you only have hoseok oppa saved on your phone as 'seokie hyung, squirrel emoji, heart emoji'."

"wait, wait, wait. you have me saved on your phone as what?!" jeongguk asks, eyes wide as a disbelieving laugh slips from his lips.

you pull your phone out from the pocket of your shorts, scrolling through your phone contacts until you reach jeongguk's number, turning your phone his way to show him your screen.

all of a sudden, jeongguk is laughing heartily, one arm still around your shoulders, his other hand pressed to his stomach. when he settles, laughter reduced to just breathless giggles, he takes out his phone, blinking through the tears to scroll through his own contacts to find your name, turning it to show you.

completely overtaken by endearment, you look at him with wide eyes and a pout, forgetting entirely about the rest of the group.

"really?" you whine; jeongguk throws his head back and laughs at the look on your face.

"yeah. really," he replies, pressing a kiss to your temple.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

("wait. what does jeongguk have _____ saved as on his phone?" jimin asks, leaning up against the counter as he waits for the food.

"judging from _____'s reaction earlier, i assume he hasn't changed it from 'tiger emoji, wifey, heart emoji'," yoongi answers, rubbing his eye sleepily.

"that's... disgustingly cute. i might actually throw up on my fries. wait, what do you have me saved on your phone as, hyung?"

"'park jimin'."

[marchioness-caprina]

Swapped

{ Part 3 }

Read ; {Part 1} , { Part 2}

Pairings : Katsuki Bakugou x Reader

Warnings : Cussing

Writing style : 3rd Person

Word Count 1843

3rd Person's POV

" I thought we were going out to patrol again" Uraraka muttered and a majority of the class nodded in agreement.

They were supposedly going to the agencies they were training under to do their daily rounds of patrol but a sudden shift of their schedule got all of them gathered in Ground Beta for another suprise Physical Test Exercise.

" You were supposed to but unfortunately; a Villain attack happened near the train station and it caused damage on the tracks. It won't be fixed until Tomorrow. Meaning you're all stuck here doing 'Kiddy stuff' " Aizawa replied in his usual bored tone; hands buried inside his pockets as his shoulders sagged. The dark circle under his eyes were clear indication that he didn't get any sleep last night.

" Aww But sens--"

" Stop complaining. If you wanna be a Hero then you got to take it slow, Don't rush things. Plus... You don't see me complaining when I have to put up with all of you... " Aizawa Cut Sato off as he rubbed his temples " And dealing with all of you is not an easy job" He grumbled the last part and everyone picked up on his mood and just shut up.

" So... What exercise are we supposed to be doing today? " Momo questioned and everyone seemed to be interested in what their te aver had in store for them.

They were up for anything. As long as the penalty isn't an expulsion, the fear of their first day with their teacher still struck everyone with fear knowing how ruthless he could be.

" It's simple... Android Bots " Aizawa called out and from the entrance; loud stomping noises were heard, the stomping wasn't from just one but an army of Robots came marching out of ye entrance, stomping their metallic foot with in perfect harmony.

" Woah! "

Gasps of awe were heard from a few students as they stared at the bots with wonder.

" Let me guess... We're gonna be facing those junks here? " Y/n stated in a matter of fact. Katsuki who was right behind the female with arms wrapped around her waist and his chin resting on her shoulder just gave off a satisfied humm when y/n placed her hand ontop of Katsuki's own.

Aizawa who was too tired to give a sassy remark to his student's comment just nodded; and he won't even point out Bakugou's Clingyness seeing how the boy had reacted yesterday when he told him to minimize his Skinship with y/n. It didn't end well.

" This ain't cutting shit. Knowing you... There's a twist to this crappy test right? " Y/n countered and with a sigh Aizawa began to explain ;

" You're right Miss smarty pants. There's a twist. You guys will be judged individually, these bots can't do much damage but the bombs inside them are the ones you need to watch out for, if you destroy a Bot directly without dismantling the bombs first then... Of course you go Kaboom " Everyone flinched at Their Teacher's explanation especially with how nonchalantly he is as he did so.

" Ehhh!? B-but sensei... Isn't it a little bit too.... Cruel? " Mina interjected and aizawa shook his head.

" As a hero. You must always be prepared of every possible scenarios and surprises. Such as this, of course there are subtle indications whether a bot has a bomb or not.... So you gotta put your observational skills to good use and put that brain of yours to work. Spot the difference, dismantle the bomb and you're free to destroy it... Simple as that " Aizawa yawned as he waved off his student's shocked and terrified expression.

Everyone knew their team her isn't going to give them any more clues.

" He just wants to see us suffer.... " Jiro dead panned and everyone couldn't help but agree.

" You said we'll be graded individually.... So you're saying that we have to take out loud portions of those robots ourselves?" Y/n raised a brow when her sensei gave her a spine chilling smile.

" Yes, that's also part of the lesson. It's not everyday you'd get lucky to have another Hero to he paired with you... Sometimes you gotta work alone and most of the time The villain's you're gonna be facing won't be alone. So multi-tasking is the key... And since you're my 'favorite' student... You'll go first " Aizawa pointed at her lazily and she shot him a gentle smile.

A smile that seemed too gentle for this y/n to pull off. Something wasn't right with the way she smiled and everyone knew it.

" But... She might get hurt... I'll stay with her" Katsuki murmured tightening his hold around the girl.

" What? You think I can't handle myself? Get off me already loser. I need to release some stress and you're getting in the way. " Y/n without thinking much of how bad her words had affected Katsuki grinned as she pushed him off her roughly.

Katsuki tumbled back and he looked at her with a pained expression.

" Y-you think I'm a--"

" Get him outta here. He's fucking up my mood. " Y/n snapped as she jogged away from the group.

Katsuki who was fast to try and run up to her was pulled back by aizawa's scarf like fabric.

" Let her go Bakugou. "

" No! I Need Her! Y/n! " Bakugou whined and he had to be knocked out because he was starting to get aggressive.

"Everyone. To the Control room" Aizawa groaned and his students followed his command but go course they felt sorry for their classmate who was passed out cold.

_____________________

" Fucking Die! Hahahaha "

Everyone was silent as they stared at the screen; gawking at how monstrous their classmate could be. Was that even y/n? Because that screaming creature murdering those innocent robots while crushing them to pieces reducing them to junk was scarier than any villain they have ever seen.

" ..... Remind me to never piss y/n....ever" Kirishima gulped when 10 robots were sent flying off the ground with the girl wildly swinging a metal pole like a mad man continued her assault.

" S-she's doing a very accurate job at controlling that new quirk of hers though " Kaminari mumbled as he began thinking.

" But... That is not the opposite of her quirk... Unless.... Oh could it be? The quirk she has is a combined and mixture of mine and Bakugou's quirk ... I underestimated that villain's quirk " Kaminari began to mumble his thoughts out loud and it didn't go unnoticed.

" Well... What do we even call that quirk? "

Kaminari paused and gave a nod towards Uraraka " I suggest Electrical Combustion would fit the spunk" .

" She's doing a tad too good don't you think? "

" She's y/n. So it's no wonder "

___________________

Y/n slammed both of her hands on the ground creating an electrical current as well as a loud eruption of explosion to ensue underground sending the both flying before being completely engulfed and destroyed by either the flying debris, the roasting electricity or the destructive explosion.

With fluid like movement she shot out explosive electric bombs out of her palm that violently detonated when it came in contact with the robots.

She didn't have to worry about the exploding bombs inside the boys because she herself was more explosive than all of those bombs combined.

Her movements were accurate, powerful and spontaneous but her eyes showed how calculated and focused she was if people would ignore that sadistic grin spread out on her face.

She was merciless and with one final punch of the ground that sent a combined jolt of electricity and explosion that caused a mass breakage the fight was over. With no bots left standing at all.

The area was crumbling with ruined buildings and flying rocks and debris mixed with chunks of broken metal.

" Ahh... That hit the fucking spot " She grinned stretching her limbs after her little 'workout'

Meanwhile ------

Everyone was speechless at the display of power of their classmate. She was far too ruthless and she looked more like a villain---no monster from the screen.

And if you squint really hard earlier the students could see how the bots were running away from her instead of actually attacking her.

Y/n gained both the respect and fear of everyone after that bit of course they admired her for her brilliant performance meaning they didn't have to do the test because she destroyed all the bots in a blink of an eye.

" That..... Was so Manly! " Kirishima cheered and his cheer was joined by everyone else.

" Man! Who knew she knows some pretty sweet moves like that! I should ask her to teach me a few of those moves! " Sero commented punching the air.

" Well if you ask me that was rather terrifying.... The continuous onslaught of those poor robots was enough to petrify me for eternity. Not to mention she left us with nothing at all! " Iida sighed as he pushed his glasses up.

" Jeez, loosen up. She did all of us a favor " Jiro replied placing her hand on the slightly disappointed Iida.

Izuku on the side was vigorously writing down on his notebook with such intensity it made everyone pause for a moment to look at him; no doubt about it. He was taking notes about y/n.

Everyone was happy and Aizawa looked more like a proud father than an angry teacher.

But the same couldn't be said for Katsuki. He was sulking in the corner. Eyes dull and fists balled.

The little demon called jealousy was beginning to creep up again. He remembered the other day about Y/n wanting to be partners with Deku or Half and Half. And now that everyone saw how amazing his Girlfriend is, it made him sink deeper as his own insecurities began to swallow him whole.

" .... Do I even... Deserve her? " He mumbled to himself. Tears were already rolling down his cheeks while he pitifully sniffled.

His classmates were gazing at him. They looked inside of what they should do. They still couldn't get used to this new Katsuki.

Kirishima was about to approach and comfort his friend when suddenly Katsuki's body jolted from his spot before collapsing on the ground.

" Bakugou! " Kirishima exclaimed but another gasp was heard from the back.

" It's Y/n-san and Kaminari-san! " Izuku pointed out. Jiro was holding onto an unconscious Kaminari with the help of Tsuyu and on the screen it was pretty clear that y/n had also experienced the same thing and was now sprawled down on the ground.

Unmoving .

........ To be Continued.

[mysterious-foxes]

@womaninsidewater reblogging here because I'm not going to read your 7-10 dumbass memes (or subject my followers to it) that are no doubt full of misinformation and most likely have nothing to do with what I said.

So you're against abortion being legal, but you don't want it to be illegal? You do realize that there's not an in-between of legal vs illegal, right? Decriminalization means it's still illegal, but the charges are less (generally more like a fine, but you can't go to jail for it). Due to the 9th ammendment in the US, anything that is not specified by the law to be illegal, is legal. And obviously any specified by the law to be legal is legal. So you have to be on one side or the other (or not care about the legality at all). So if you're against abortion being legal, then you're for abortion being illegal and vice versa.

Simply making abortion legal doesn't mean the government is controlling someone's body. Like walking being legal doesn't mean the government is controlling your body. Heart surgery being legal doesn't mean the government is controlling your body.

I literally said that herbal abortifacients were one of the many things used. Those are included in concoctions 🤦🏻‍♀️ but just because they're herbal doesn't mean that they're safe.

PP's abortions are extremely safe. There's always a risk of complications. I hope that your friend's girlfriend has reached out to PP or her doctor because bleeding that heavily for so long is unusual after an abortion. But did you know that the total complication rate is at 2%? This means that medication abortion is safer than taking viagra. This also means that abortion is a LOT safer than continuing pregnancy, in which the high risk only complication rate is at 8%. Not to mention that for every 1 person that does from abortion, more than 4 people die from continuing pregnancy. This isn't to say that nobody should continue pregnancy and give birth. Of course they should if that's what they want to do. However, abortion is the safer option.

PP doesn't actually twist their statistics. Did you know that not all of their locations even perform abortions? PP doesn't even perform half the amount of abortions in the US every year. I'm sorry if propoganda has fooled you into thinking otherwise. I mean abortion is only 3% of what PP does. They do a LOT more than abortion. I know people who have found out they have cancer because they went in for a screening. People who have learned about sex and contraceptives because the state I live in doesn't allow those to be taught in schools. People who have gotten contraceptives for free. People who go there for pap smears because they don't have insurance and they can get it done for cheap (if not free).

As far as sex trafficking and PP goes, there have been a couple of cases. And when that happened, PP upped their training in general as well as made those employees go through even more training (if not fired them).

Yes, the people who went undercover got arrested because they broke the law. PP was also awarded $2.2 million in damages. This is because they weren't doing anything illegal. In fact, what they were doing was DONATING fetal tissue to science and would receive compensation from the government for expenses regarding storing and shipping the tissue.

Abortion isn't an industry any more than kidney failure is an industry 🤷🏻‍♀️ do you even know what an industry is? An industry is "economic activity concerned with the processing of raw materials and manufacture of goods in factories." In an abortion, they're not processing raw materials or manufacturing goods. In an abortion, they're providing healthcare.

Abstinence is a personal choice and you have no room to be concerned with someone else's sex life.

Personhood is a philosophical idea and has no room in the abortion debate, just like religion (I'm not saying you used religion at all to make your point, I was just making a point).

And yes, understanding how contraceptives work, how bodily autonomy and consent work, being able to afford to take care of yourself (let alone a child), being able to afford a roof over your head, etc will reduce abortion a ton. Too bad most people against abortion tend to also be against most (if not all) of those things.

I literally agreed with you that fetuses aren't a parasite. Did you not read what I said? Along with that I said that ZEF's aren't infants, yet almost all anti choicers seems to think they are.

Next time, try to respond to what I actually said rather than repeating a claim I agreed with and leaving a bunch of memes (because that was the stupidest way to respond to an argument ever) that probably had nothing to do with anything. You wanna post those memes? Do it on a separate post rather than in response to me.

I don't know enough about Gloria Steinem, so if someone wants to confirm whether she was a rad fem or not, that would be much appreciated

[ifuckinglovestvincent]

Switching Lanes With St. Vincent

By Molly Young

January 22, 2019

Jacket (men’s), $4,900, pants (men’s), $2,300, by Dior / Men shoes, by Christian Louboutin / Rings (throughout) by Cartier

On a cold recent night in Brooklyn, St. Vincent appeared onstage in a Saint Laurent smoking jacket to much clapping and hooting, gave the crowd a deadpan look, and said, “Without being reductive, I'd like to say that we haven't actually done anything yet.” Pause. “So let's do something.”

She launched into a cover of Lou Reed's “Perfect Day”: an arty torch-song version that made you really wonder whom she was thinking about when she sang it. This was the elusive chanteuse version of St. Vincent, at least 80 percent leg, with slicked-back hair and pale, pale skin. She belted, sipped from a tumbler of tequila (“Oh, Christ on a cracker, that's strong”), executed little feints and pounces, flung the mic cord away from herself like a filthy sock, and spat on the stage a bunch of times. Nine parts Judy Garland, one part GG Allin.

If the Garland-Allin combination suggests that St. Vincent is an acquired taste, she's one that has been acquired by a wide range of fans. The crowd in Brooklyn included young women with Haircuts in pastel fur and guys with beards of widely varying intentionality. There was a woman of at least 90 years and a Hasidic guy in a tall hat, which was too bad for whoever sat behind him. There were models, full nuclear families, and even a solitary frat bro. St. Vincent brings people together.

If you chart the career of Annie Clark, which is St. Vincent's civilian name, you will see what start-up founders and venture capitalists call “hockey-stick growth.” That is, a line that moves steadily in a northeast direction until it hits an “inflection point” and shoots steeply upward. It's called hockey-stick growth because…it looks like a hockey stick.

Dress, by Balmain

The toe of the stick starts with Marry Me, Clark's debut solo album, which came out a decade ago and established a few things that would become essential St. Vincent traits: her ability to play a zillion instruments (she's credited on the album with everything from dulcimer to vibraphone), her highbrow streak (Shakespeare citations), her goofy streak (“Marry me!” is an Arrested Development bit), and her oceanic library of musical references (Kate Bush, Steve Reich, uh…D'Angelo!). The blade of the stick is her next four albums, one of them a collaboration with David Byrne, all of them confirming her presence as an enigma of indie pop and a guitar genius. The stick of the stick took a non-musical detour in 2016, when Clark was photographed canoodling with (now ex-) girlfriend Cara Delevingne at Taylor Swift's mansion, followed a few months later by pictures of Clark holding hands with Kristen Stewart. That brought her to the realm of mainstream paparazzi-pictures-in-the-Daily-Mail celebrity. Finally, the top of the stick is Masseduction, the 2017 album she co-produced with Jack Antonoff, which revealed St. Vincent to be not only experimental and beguiling but capable of turning out incorrigible bangers.

Masseduction made the case that Clark could be as much a pop star as someone like Sia or Nicki Minaj—a performer whose idiosyncrasies didn't have to be tamped down for mainstream success but could actually be amplified. The artist Bruce Nauman once said he made work that was like “going up the stairs in the dark and either having an extra stair that you didn't expect or not having one that you thought was going to be there.” The idea applies to Masseduction: Into the familiar form of a pop song Clark introduces surprising missteps, unexpected additions and subtractions. The album reached No. 10 on the Billboard 200. The David Bowie comparisons got louder.

This past fall, she released MassEducation (not quite the same title; note the addition of the letter a), which turned a dozen of the tracks into stripped-down piano songs. Although technically off duty after being on tour for nearly all of 2018, Clark has been performing the reduced songs here and there in small venues with her collaborator, the composer and pianist Thomas Bartlett. Whereas the Masseduction tour involved a lot of latex, neon, choreographed sex-robot dance moves, and LED screens, these recent shows have been comparatively austere. When she performed in Brooklyn, the stage was empty, aside from a piano and a side table. There were blue lights, a little piped-in fog for atmosphere, and that was it. It looked like an early-'90s magazine ad for premium liquor: art-directed, yes, but not to the degree that it Pinterested itself.

Coat, (men’s) $8,475, by Versace / Shoes, by Christian Louboutin / Tights, by Wolford

The performance was similarly informal. Midway through one song, Clark forgot the lyrics and halted. “It takes a different energy to be performing [than] to sit in your sweatpants watching Babylon Berlin,” she said. “Wherever I am, I completely forget the past, and I'm like. ‘This is now.’ And sometimes this means forgetting song lyrics. So, if you will…tell me what the second fucking verse is.”

Clark has only a decade in the public eye behind her, but she's accomplished a good amount of shape-shifting. An openness to the full range of human expression, in fact, is kind of a requirement for being a St. Vincent fan. This is a person who has appeared in the front row at Chanel and also a person who played a gig dressed as a toilet, a person profiled in Vogue and on the cover of Guitar World.

The day before her Brooklyn show, I sat with Clark to find out what it's like to be utterly unstructured, time-wise, after a long stretch of knowing a year in advance that she had to be in, like, Denmark on July 4 and couldn't make plans with friends.

“I've been off tour now for three weeks,” she said. “When I say ‘off,’ I mean I didn't have to travel.”

This doesn't mean she hasn't traveled—she went to L.A. to get in the studio with Sleater-Kinney and also hopped down to Texas, where she grew up—just that she hasn't been contractually obligated to travel. What else did she do on her mini-vacation?

“I had the best weekend last weekend. I woke up and did hot Pilates, and then I got a bunch of new modular synths, and I set 'em up, and I spent ten hours with modular synths. Plugging things in. What happens when I do this? I'm unburdened by a full understanding of what's going on, so I'm very willing to experiment.”

Coat, by Boss

Jacket, and coat, by Boss / Necklace, by Cartier

Like a child?

“Exactly. Did you ever get those electronics kits as a kid for like 20 bucks from RadioShack? Where you connect this wire to that one and a light bulb turns on? It's very much like that.”

There's an element of chaos, she said, that makes synth noodling a neat way to stumble on melodies that she might not have consciously assembled. She played with the synths by herself all day. “I don't stop, necessarily,” she said, reflecting on what the idea of “vacation” means to someone for whom “job” and “things I love to do” happen to overlap more or less exactly. “I just get to do other things that are really fun. I'm in control of my time.” She had plans to see a show at the New Museum, read books, play music and see movies alone, always sitting on the aisle so she could make a quick escape if necessary. But she will probably keep working. St. Vincent doesn't have hobbies.

When it manifests in a person, this synergy between life and work is an almost physically perceptible quality, like having brown eyes or one leg or being beautiful. Like beauty, it's a result of luck, and a quality that can invoke total despair in people who aren't themselves allotted it. This isn't to say that Clark's career is a stroke of unearned fortune but that her skills and character and era and influences have collided into a perfect storm of realized talent. And to have talent and realize that talent and then be beloved by thousands for exactly the thing that is most special about you: Is there anything a person could possibly want more? Is this why Annie Clark glows? Or is it because she's super pale? Or was it because there was a sound coming through the window where we sat that sounded thrillingly familiar?

“Is Amy Sedaris running by?” Clark asked, her spine straightening. A man with a boom mic was visible on the sidewalk outside. Another guy in a baseball cap issued instructions to someone beyond the window. Someone said “Action!” and a figure in vampire makeup and a clown wig streaked across the sidewalk. Someone said “Cut!” and Clark zipped over for a look. It was, in fact, Amy Sedaris, her clown wig bobbing in the 44-degree breeze. The mic operator was gagging with laughter. It seemed like a good omen, this sighting, like the New York City version of Groundhog Day: If an Amy Sedaris streaks across your sight line in vampire makeup, spring will arrive early.

Blazer (men’s) $1,125, by Paul Smith

Another thing Clark does when off tour is absorb all the input that she misses when she's locked into performance mode. On a Monday afternoon, she met artist Lisa Yuskavage at an exhibition of her paintings at the David Zwirner gallery in Chelsea. Yuskavage was part of a mini-boom of figurative painting in the '90s, turning out portraits of Penthouse centerfolds and giant-jugged babes with Rembrandt-esque skill. It made sense that Clark wanted to meet her: Both women make art about the inner lives of female figures, both are sorcerers of technique, both are theatrical but introspective, both have incendiary style. The gallery was a white cube, skylit, with paintings around the perimeter. Yuskavage and Clark wandered through at a pace exclusive to walking tours of cultural spaces, which is to say a few steps every 10 to 15 seconds with pauses between for the proper amount of motionless appreciation.

The paintings were small, all about the size of a human head, and featured a lot of nipples, tufted pudenda, tan lines, majestic asses, and protruding tongues. “I like the idea of possessing something by painting it,” Yuskavage said. “That's the way I understand the world. Like a dog licking something.”

Clark looked at the works with the expression people make when they're meditating. She was wearing elfin boots, black pants, and a shirt with a print that I can only describe as “funky”—“funky” being an adjective that looks good on very few people, St. Vincent being one of them—and sipped from a cup of espresso furnished by a gallery minion. After she finished the drink, there was a moment when she looked blankly at the saucer, unsure what to do with it, and then stuck it in the breast pocket of her funky shirt for the rest of the tour.

A painting called Sweetpuss featured a bubble-butted blonde in beaded panties with nipples so upwardly erect they actually resembled little boners. Yuskavage based the underwear on a pair of real underwear that she'd constructed herself from colored balls and string. “I've got the beaded panties if you ever need 'em,” she said to Clark. “They might fit you. They're tiny.”

Earrings, by Erickson Beamon

“I'm picturing you going to the Garment District,” Clark said.

“There was a lot of going to the Garment District.”

As they completed their lap around the white cube, Clark interjected with questions—what year was this? were you considering getting into film? how long did these sittings take? what does “mise-en-scène” mean?—but mainly listened. And she is a good listener: an inquisitive head tilter, an encouraging nodder, a non-fidgeter, a maker of eye contact. She found analogues between painting and music. When Yuskavage mourned the death of lead white paint (due to its poisonous qualities, although, as the artist pointed out, “It's not that big a deal to not get lead poisoning; just don't eat the paint”), Clark compared it to recording's transition from tape to digital.

“Back in the day, if you wanted to hear something really reverberant”—she clapped; it reverberated—“you'd have to be in a room like this and record it, or make a reverb chamber,” Clark said. “Now we have digital plug-ins where you can say, ‘Oh, I want the acoustic resonance of the Sistine Chapel.’ Great. Somebody's gone and sampled that and created an algorithm that sounds like you're in the Sistine Chapel.”

Lately, she said, she's been way more into devices that betray their imperfections. That are slightly out of tune, or capable of messing up, or less forgiving of human intervention. “Air moving through a room,” Clark said. “That's what's interesting to me.”

They kept pacing. The paintings on the wall evolved. Conversation turned to what happens when you grow as an artist and people respond by flipping out.

“I always find it interesting when someone wants you to go back to ‘when you were good,’ ” Yuskavage said. “This is why we liked you.”

“I can't think of anybody where I go, ‘What's great about that artist is their consistency, ” Clark said. “Anything that stays the same for too long dies. It fails to capture people's imagination.”

Coat (mens), $1,150, by Acne Studios

They were identifying a problem with fans, of course, not with themselves. It was an implicit identification, because performers aren't permitted to critique their audiences, and it was definitely the artistic equivalent of a First World problem—an issue that arises only when you're so resplendent with talent that you not only nail something enough to attract adoration but nail it hard enough to get personally bored and move on—but it was still valid. They were talking about the kind of fan who clings to a specific tree when he or she could be roaming through a whole forest. In St. Vincent's case, a forest of prog-rock thickets and jazzy roots and orchestral brambles and mournful-ballad underlayers, all of it sprouting and molting under a prodigious pop canopy. They were talking about the strange phenomenon of people getting mad at you for surprising them. Even if the surprise is great.

Molly Young is a writer living in New York City. She wrote about Donatella Versace in the April 2018 issue of GQ.

A version of this story originally appeared in the February 2019 issue with the title "Switching Lanes With St. Vincent."