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votederpycausemufins · 3 years

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another chapter of the ‘we summoned Tommy and now we found out Grian’s family” fic. this chapter is very long.

also warning, there are some references to sui//cide, but it’s never directly mentioned by name.

Phil tried to ignore the way his chest hurt at the name that had been said. Sure, biologically Grian was his son, but it had been years since they had seen each other, and he had grown up with different people who became a new family for him. And he understood that, but it still hurt that the avian thought of someone else as his dad.

“Er, not quite.”

“Oh, okay,” Grian spoke, matter of factly. The two of them stayed quiet for a few moments before he spoke again. “You found me ‘gain.”

“That I did.”

“You didn’t stop lookin’”

“Nope.” Phil replied, though he knew it was a lie. Of course he always wanted to find his son again, but he had given up actually looking a number of years ago. It wasn’t worth focusing on one child and ignoring the others. But he supposed that’s sort of what happened anyway with him and Tommy.

“That’s what I thought. It kept me goin’ on th’ really bad days.”

“Am I allowed to know what those bad days were?”

Grian was silent before shaking his head. “Hurts too much…”

“That’s alright mate. How about you talk about some other stuff.”

And so Grian did. Talking with Phil about some of the things he had done over the years. Eventually, Stress arrived and helped out, getting the bots up there with Grian and Phil. At that point the stories stopped and Grian focused on his kids, who were glad for all the attention. Mumbo returned with Tommy shortly, also bringing Tubbo along, and soon Grian’s nest was filled, making him quite happy.

“He’s looking better.”

“Yeah, I think it was your admin who gave me the gist of things. He was tired and using his Watcher stuff which made him loopy.”

“Yeah, that would do it.” Mumbo shook his head.

“Hey, you know what that means?” Tommy asked, smirking and focusing his gaze on the bots. Jrumbot smiled and pulled out some pumpkin seeds, which Grian quickly pounced on and started eating. “That part of the bird stuff is great.”

“And what part isn’t so great?” Philza asked, though for a moment he regretted it, thinking the teen wouldn’t respond and just stay quiet or get angry.

But instead he just crossed his arms and gave an over-exaggerated pouting face. “When he gets all mother hen or whatever and is super overbearing. The other shit is fine.”

“Tommy!” Mumbo huffed but the teen just waved him off.

“Oh come on, they’ve heard me say it loads of times. Jrum won’t risk saying anything cause you’ll just take some of his diamonds away.”

“Yeah! I won’t say stuff like that!” Jrum agreed, before suddenly Phil jumped and looked to see a few of his remaining feathers now in the small robot’s hands. “How much would I get for these Tommy?”

“I’m sure if you meet the right people you can get plenty for those. He’s like, trillions of years old, and not many people have them.”

“I’m not that old!” Phil complained, trying to grab the feathers back. He managed to pull one out of Jrumbot’s hand, but the rest ended up disappearing into whatever the kid had for an inventory.

“You’re right. You’re older.” Tommy taunted. “Old as shit. Dinosaurs are younger than you and they’re all dead.”

Philza glared at Tommy before his gaze fell on Grian. The other avian was still out of it, but getting better. Then he looked at Mumbo before rolling his eyes. “Alright Tommy, maybe so. But it means I’ve got more experience.”

Tommy paused, not used to the hardcore player agreeing with him about something like this. He looked over at the bots, who shrugged. It wasn’t like they had grown up with him. “Says the guy who let two mobs get the best of him.”

“Hey that was one time! And that was also years ago!”

“I’m gonna ‘gree, that’s pretty lame.” Grian spoke up, giggling a bit still. “I’m still alive af’er uhhh…” He started counting on his fingers. “I dunno! Lotta years with Sam!”

Mumbo, Tommy and the bots immediately froze up, looking between each other nervously. Tommy moved a little closer to Grian to make sure he had the avian’s attention. “Hey G? You sure that’s okay to talk about? I know normally you-”

“Pfft, it’s fine! Not like I died! ‘Stead I just hurt a lot, killed some pipul, selled some drugs, stuff like that!” Grian looked over to Philza, who was starting to regret staying around when everyone else arrived. “Ya know, almost didn’ make it. But I didn’ wanna disappoint you by giving up. Mmm… plus Gareth freaked me out too much ‘n I didn’ wanna be like him.”

“Okay Grian! I think you should really get to sleep now! We can talk about this more later! But don’t you want to uh…” Mumbo trailed off.

“I can get the jukebox once you’ve slept!” Tommy continued for Grian who seemed to really like that idea. He finally laid down and before long he fell asleep.

It was still quiet for a bit, no one sure how to react to all of that at first. Phil and Tubbo were the quietest since they had little to no context. Because of that, they easily jumped when Tommy finally shouted and broke the silence. “Okay Mumboli, when the fuck were you going to tell me about that part of all that shit?!”

“First off, that would be something Grian would need to tell you, not me! Second off, I didn’t even know about that!” The anger on Mumbo’s face quickly turned to some sort of melancholy. “He didn’t even tell me. I mean, he had made some jokes, but I assumed that it was just from the situation. It does make sense he would think of… but…” The redstoner became quiet, his normally pale face much paler than before.

“Daddy?” Grumbot spoke up, making Mumbo look at the bots. Jrum was shaking a bit and Grum didn’t look quite so well himself. “I think Jrum and I should leave.”

“R-Right. Let me help you down.” The redstoner picked Jrum up to help him down the ladder, Grum still well enough to go down it himself. Before he left the platform though, he got Tommy’s attention and nodded towards Tubbo and Philza. “Try to fill them in. If Grian wakes up before I’m back, tell him what he did. He deserves to know.”

Tommy nodded, waiting for Mumbo to leave before saying anything. “So… Grian kinda got stuck in a fucked up place for a number of years. He’s told Mumbo a lot of stories and me some as well, but not everything of course. Basically, he had two friends. If he was me, one of them was like you Tubbo. But uh… the other guy was like Dream. Like, Dream’s an admin and all that, but this other guy was for the most part just a fucking normal guy around my age but he went off the deep end. G and the other friend escaped, but not for a long time. That place was a hardcore world, but they didn’t have potions or healing or whatever the fuck. I mean, there weren’t any mobs either, so death wasn’t at every corner. I mean I guess it was for G because the one guy was a psycho and murderer, but whatever.”

“Wait, are you telling me that this guy just lived with someone potentially worse than Dream for years?!” Tubbo asked while Philza was trying to comprehend it all.

“Uh, well they didn’t live with each other all the time, but yeah. But ‘cause it’s probably good for you guys to know, his main triggers are wearing blue as well as rabbits. If someone else is wearing blue, it’s fine, but if he’s wearing blue it freaks him out. With the rabbits thing, some of them being around are fine, but white rabbits especially freak him out ‘cause the guy was a hybrid.”

“Alright, noted.”

“One of the people most frustrated about it is Grumbot because, well you know how he just suddenly knew who you were, right Phil? They kinda first built him to help with the election here- long story, talk about it another time- and he’s able to look into a lot of stuff, but only based on political stuff. There wasn’t really anything like that with G’s first world. I mean, he gets fragments since Grian’s been a campaign manager before, but all that really comes up is empire stuff.”

“Uh, he had an empire? Was it anything like-” Tubbo timidly asked, glancing to the unconscious avian.

“Nah, basically he just built a big thing in the middle of the ocean and decided he would become the Grian Empire. The only other member was his friend- the good one- but he went off and made his own place pretty quickly. The worst he did is the TNT there was really volatile. If you so much as touched it after placing it, it would explode. He’s told the TNT shop story a number of times where he built the shop out of it and made the stock the walls of the shop.”

“Was that the first time he did something like that, or did it never go anywhere?”

“No that’s the thing!” Tommy started laughing. “He did it so many fucking times and someone still fell for it! That’s why it’s such a great story.”

From there, Tommy continued to mostly tell lighthearted stories Grian had shared with him. He talked about the prank war and following civil war from the Hermits’ previous world. The hippies against area 77, the time machine, the build height battle. After that he brought up the head games, which freaked Phil and Tubbo out when he suddenly pulled out what at first appeared to be a severed head but was actually a very accurate mask. From there the election was talked about like Tommy had promised, and then the following turf war and its minigame battle.

“I showed up right after the turf war which I’m really glad about because it freaked me out enough just hearing about it. I can’t imagine having to learn what wars here were actually like while in the middle of it all. Instead when Grian visited me when I was holed up in his old place, he just kept talking about the mole people. Around then’s when I really started opening up, especially when Zed showed up.”

“Who’s that?”

“Sheep hybrid that makes contraptions instead of redstone. He made me a bed that just kills me instead of what it should.” Grian spoke up, rubbing the sleep out of his eyes. He was still slightly groggy from just waking up, but the three SMP members could tell he looked rested and more lucid than earlier. “Where’s Mumbo and the kids?”

“He had to take them away.” Tommy answered, covering Tubbo and Phil’s mouths before they could say anything, even though they weren’t going to. “Grian, you were like, super out of it earlier.”

“Oh oof, how bad was it?”

“Well,” Philza pulled Tommy’s hand away from his mouth. “You mistook me for some person named Martin and asked me to swear loyalty to your empire. Then you called me some name resembling your admin’s name.”

“X eye sooma void?”

“Exactly.”

Grian laughed a little. “Yeah, a number of the hermits call him some variation of his name so I took it to the next level when I first showed up.”

Tommy put a hand on Grian’s knee and the avian looked over, smile falling from his face when he noticed the serious look on the teen. He immediately sat up straighter, worried for his brother. “Tommy what’s wrong?”

Tommy noticed the way Grian’s hand moved like it wanted to grab a weapon, something he had seen constantly when the two of them were alone at night and the avian was being overprotective of him when he could take care of himself. Well okay there was the factor that all the mobs here seemed to be stronger, but that wasn’t too bad. Grian asking Tommy’s name again pulled him from his thoughts and he immediately stopped Grian who was now actually reaching for a weapon. “No! No it’s nothing that bad! You’re going to freak out Big T if you do that!”

“Then what’s going on?!” Grian huffed, crossing his arms, mainly so he wouldn’t try that again.

“When you were really out of it, you said some things. Specifically from your high school stories.”

Grian looked a bit uncomfortable from that, but didn’t look too worried. “Okay. I- was I screaming? Did I scare the boys from that?”

Tommy shook his head. “No. You said something new. It- god G, not even Mumbo knew about it at first.”

Now Grian looked worried, eyes flicking between Tommy and the other two and he pulled his knees up to his chest. “Wh-which thing did I say?”

Tommy stood up, being the only one standing adding to his already tall height. “You mean there’s more shit you haven’t fuckin’ told anyone about?! Grian what the fuck?!”

Tubbo tried to pull Tommy back down, but the blonde teen resisted for a bit before falling back to the ground. “Tommy please. If it’s been this long and he doesn’t want to talk, it's obviously really bad.”

“No, you don’t know some of the shit Grian’s talked about. There’s nothing that could be that bad!”

“Tommy that’s enough.” Philza spoke coldly, making him and Tubbo freeze. “Grian’s not you. He decides what he’s going to talk about. Maybe to most people the stuff he talks about is worse than the stuff he hides, but obviously it’s different for him. So you’re not going to fucking yell at him and make him even worse.”

Tommy frowned angrily, but stayed quiet and slumped back. Tubbo tried to help calm Tommy down while Phil did his best to do the same with Grian. “So… can you tell me what I said? Grian tentatively spoke up, looking to Tommy, but Phil answered instead.

“You mentioned someone named Gareth and not wanting to be like him. Obviously Tommy and Mumbo knew what you were talking about, but me and probably also Tubbo don’t know anything and are still pretty clueless. We just know that it’s something bad.”

Grian let out a quiet ‘oh’ as he pulled his knees even closer to himself. “Um, after I disappeared, I ended up in a different world and made friends with some people named Sam and Taurtis.” Philza tried not to react as he recognized the second name. “At some point in high school I moved in with them, but before that it was just the two of them. They had a teacher named Gareth. He um… his wife was found killed and a lot of people thought he did it. He… got fed up with it and uh..” Grian shook his head. “The classroom was closed up when people found his, uh, body. They took that away but left… left behind what he used. There was one time I snuck in and thought about… you know. But his ghost showed up and freaked me out so I ran.”

After that, it was quiet, no one really knowing how to respond to that. Grian just ended up letting his feathers puff up and he hid in his wings, Tommy being able to wriggle his way in there. The wings ended up muffling a conversation the two had in whispers, though Tubbo and Phil could both hear a few curses from Tommy. Mumbo finally came up the ladder while they were doing this and was greeted by the two SMP members with a finger to their lips. The redstoner wasn’t planning to be loud since he didn’t know if Grian was awake again or not, but he still of course complied. He moved closer to the avian before putting a hand on one wing, Grian moving said wing out of the way to see who was there.

“Mumbo. A- How are the bots?”

“They’ve gone to bed. They seem like they’ll be fine.” Mumbo replied in a soft voice. “You can go back to what you were doing, I just wanted to let you know so you weren’t worried.”

“N-no, it’s fine. I… Hey Tommy, why don’t you show off your base.” When Tommy looked like he might refuse, Grian spoke again. “Please?”

“Alright, but not my fault if a war starts up!”

That earned a smile from the avian. “Wouldn’t have it any other way. Remember to bring scaffolding with you. I’m sure you can find some in the chests in the basement.”

“You mean the storage system, or the fucking chest monster.” Grian smirked an evil little grin. “Fuck you. Alright come on you two. You gotta see Cobble Tower.”

The two other SMP members each gave Grian a look of sympathy before going down the ladder behind Tommy. He led them down to the fireplace that was centering the main hall, but specifically to one side of it. “Alright, this is the quick way up and down.” The teen opened some trap doors revealing some sort of donut-shaped object. “There’s one on the other side, but this is the elevator or whatever the heck Zed called it. You sort of lie down in it like this.” Tommy climbed in, lying down in the small structure. “Then you just hit that button and-“

Redstone activated and suddenly Tommy was lowering out of view. He quickly pointed towards the other side of the fireplace before pulling his arm in so it didn’t get crushed. It took a few moments, but an identical mechanism appeared there, ready for Tubbo or Phil to get into. Tubbo was the first to get in and was soon following behind Tommy. Philza, on the other hand, took more time getting situated, trying to be careful of his wings so they wouldn’t get caught or pinched on anything. He was mostly sure it would be fine since this was Grian’s place and he was an avian, but at the same time, the hardcore player could never be too sure.

When he reached the bottom, Tubbo was busy freaking out over all the items filling the chests. And there were plenty of them. There seemed to be a storage system lining the room, but also plenty of extra chests strewn about. “Hey, Philza Minecraft! Help us look for scaffolding, or at the very least some bamboo and string!”

The avian rolled his eyes before helping the pair, the three of them gathering enough for each of them to have at least two stacks. From there he led them out of the mansion’s basement and around the back of it in the direction of his own base. “Okay, so I haven’t been here as long as the other guys, so my tower is still in progress, but it’s got a couple floors. I mainly stay at the hobbit hole that’s back the other way.”

Both of the SMP members expected to just see a pillar made of cobble, but instead, standing tall in the distance, was a mostly completed tower that looked like it belonged to part of a larger castle that was nowhere in sight.

“Mate what the fuck is that?” Phil stared at the tower. There was no way that was Tommy’s. Or at the very least, he hadn’t built it. He had been close to Grian and they had all just been at Grian’s mansion which was a feat on it’s own. Obviously the avian had been building this for Tommy.

“I said we were going to my tower. And that’s it.” Tommy gestured to the tower before he continued talking. “I gathered all the cobble myself but bought a lot of the wood. Yeah some of it I got myself and I got gifts here and there, but I got a pretty good business venture so paying for it is easy.”

“Business venture?” Tubbo asked.

“Yeah. Speaking of which, I think Bdubs said the shop was empty so I’ll need to refill. Once I show you guys around, I’ll probably fly over to do that.”

“Could I come with you?”

Tommy paused to look at his friend. “I don’t think that’s a good idea Big T. Everyone’s at the shopping district like all the time, and they fly everywhere too. They aren’t all avians like Phil and Big G, and they don’t use tridents all that often, so instead it’s elytra, and those use fireworks to work. I don’t know how you’ve been since I left, but I’m guessing you and fireworks still aren’t on the best of terms.”

Tubbo crossed their arms. “I can use fireworks when I need to. You know that.”

“Yeah, you can use them fine, but you get jumpy when other people use them.”

Before Tubbo could respond, a voice from further ahead piped up. “Hey Tommy my man! Who’re your friends?”

“Hey Ren!” Tommy ran over to his neighbor. “This is my dad and my friend Tubbo. They’re sort of visiting.”

“Nice to hear.” Ren lowered his sunglasses slightly to look at the visitors. “I’m sure X knows about them?”

“Yeah, I sorta got half kidnapped while hanging with Grian and they followed us back.”

Ren inhaled sharply with a wince, his ears folding back as well. “Oof, how bad did Grian scare them?”

“Phil got freaked out cause he did some shit to piss off Watchers in the past.” Tommy smirked while Philza rolled his eyes. “He kinda tried taking me back again as well as the bots. I seriously thought Grian might kill him until Grum kinda shouted at us.”

“Yikes, how bad did it get for him to do that?”

“We kinda kept interrupting him while he was trying to tell us something important.” Ren winced again from that comment. “Fortunately it helped calm things down a little in the violence department.”

“And in the other departments?”

Tommy pulled Phil over closer to Ren. “So Phil isn’t just my dad.”

Ren nodded. “Yeah, you said you had some brothers.”

“Yeah, he’s also Grian’s dad.”

Again, Ren nodded. “Okay, yeah that-” the wolf hybrid completely froze. “Grian’s dad?! But he’s your dad!”

“Yup.”

“But also Grian’s?!”

“Yeah.”

“So the two of you are-”

“Brothers, yup.”

“You know this explains so much my dude.” Ren ran his fingers through his hair as he stared at the avian with his new knowledge. “Who else knows?”

“Right now, Xisuma and Mumbo. Haven’t really gotten the chance to tell many others.”

Ren nodded in understanding. “Does this mean you two aren’t coming to triple H?”

At this point Tubbo finally spoke up. “What’s that? And also it’s nice to meet you. Tommy said your name was Ren?”

“Yup, Ren Diggity Dawg at your service. And it’s Hermits Helping Hermits. We try to meet up once a week to help out one hermit.”

“You say that, but we haven’t even done it once yet Ren.” Tommy piped up, making Ren frown.

“Well that’s how it’s going to work. Hey, if you want, these two could come along.”

“I dunno. There would probably be lots of flying.” Tommy shrugged before slightly gesturing towards Tubbo.

“Tommy! I don’t need you acting so concerned for me! A few fireworks aren’t going to freak me out! Plus aren’t there unlimited lives here? Even if I do die I’ll just come back!”

Before Tommy could say anything in response, Tubbo took the elytra that were on Tommy’s back and put them on their own back. Ren seemed to be on Tubbo’s side, because he handed them some blank fireworks. He immediately lit one, which made them flinch just a little, but the next one didn’t cause them to have the same reaction. The only problem was while he was using the fireworks, he wasn’t getting into the air at all. “Uh, how exactly do these work?”

Tommy looked like he wanted to shout, but Ren spoke up before the teen could. “Elytra wings open up on descent, so you have to jump first. I’d say we get you some platform to test with before you try launching from the ground itself. Not even every hermit can do that right since you need to hit the sweet spot. Tommy’s pretty good at it though, but he’s got a good teacher.”

Tommy just rolled his eyes when Tubbo and Ren looked over at him. “Grian doesn’t use elytra, he uses his fucking wings.”

“He had to relearn how to fly in season six when he was still hiding his wings.” Ren pointed out and Tommy rolled his eyes again, though the sentence had caught Phil’s attention.

“Why was he hiding his wings?”

“Someone’s in parent mode.” Ren chuckled, which caught Phil slightly off guard. “I’ve heard that same tone plenty of times from X. Usually around the full moon.”

“Wait, so are you-”

“Werewolf, yeah. I know, most people just assume hybrid, and I kinda am. Anyway, to answer your question, he had apparently already gotten used to it in his older worlds. Even hanging around other hybrids didn’t help. He just had them hidden for so long that his standard was no wings. Iskall was the one to really get him with his wings out.”

“Iskall is Mumbo’s sibling, right?”

“Nah, unless we have another case of a surprise family connection. They had a business venture with Grian and Mumbo last season and the three have been really close ever since. They’re not officially related, but at this point they’re essentially all family.”

“I see, well what did he do?”

“They made a shop for hiring them as a hitman since they did that in the past. Someone ordered one on Grian and he got a plan ready and everything, but it involved outflying Iskall.”

“Good to know. I’ll have to meet with them at some point.” Phil nodded and Ren gave a barely noticeable wink at the avian correcting himself.

“Well, I’m sure I've held you guys up enough. If Tommy gives you any more trouble with flying, just shoot me a message.” Ren looked at Tubbo with his second comment, then he waved goodbye and headed off the other way.

Over the course of the next hour and a half, Tommy briefly showed off his tower, but for the most part it was Tubbo learning how to fly with elytra. Tommy was giving out pointers, but mostly was just freaking out whenever Tubbo did something that seemed even slightly concerning. Phil was doing his best to give tips, but wasn’t completely sure how elytra worked seeing as how he was used to just his own wings and hadn’t had access to elytra since they had been damaged.

By the end of the hour, Tubbo was flying pretty well, and Tommy was following nearby. When he had first gotten into the air, it had made Tubbo jolt, but before long, he had gotten acclimated to the firework’s initial sound with no following explosion. Tommy also ended up getting out a third pair of elytra for Philza to try. It wasn’t enchanted like the ones Tubbo wore or the backups on Tommy’s back, but it would do fine for a quick trip to the shopping district.

“Alright, you can explore the place as much as you want as long as you don’t go stealing anything. Otherwise I’ll have to pay for it.”

“You? Telling us not to steal?”

Tommy crossed his arms. “Yeah, no one does that here. I did a bit at the start, but you don’t really fucking need to. Even if you could just pay for shit at the shops, if you really need something, someone’s gonna show up to help you out.”

“Got it.” And with that the three of them flew over the ocean and to the island in the middle of it all. The place was littered with builds that surprised Phil and Tubbo. “These are all just shops?!”

“Yeah. You saw how big Big G’s mansion is. Just about everyone works at that scale. Even if they don’t fucking need to. You get used to it after a bit, it’s why my place is so big. You’d lose your minds if you saw Cub’s place.”

“I don’t even want to know mate.” Phil replied as they landed, sounding slightly exasperated at the thought.

“Right, well that’s my place over there.” Tommy pointed to a shop that looked more like a skyscraper and was near a number of similar buildings. “Most of the land in the actual shopping district is claimed, but Aquwu town still has lots of property.”

“What the fuck did you just say?”

“Aquowo.”

“Stop.”

“Aquwayway.”

“What’s the place actually called?” Tubbo piped up, making Tommy stop the joke.

“Just Aqua Town, but no one pronounces it like that. Even Scar, and he built the place. He normally calls it Aque Town.”

“I’ll be using that.”

“Suit yourself.” Tommy then walked towards his building. “You guys take the diamonds out and I’ll restock the place, okay? You can even keep a few of the diamonds.”

There were some nods of agreement and the trio went inside. Tommy put down his shulker boxes filled with stock as Tubbo opened the first chest, eyes going wide at the amount of diamonds in them. “There’s twenty-seven diamonds in this chest!”

Phil looked up surprised before looking in another chest. “This one too.”

“Well they said the place was all sold out.” Tommy responded as he opened up one of the shulkers and started pulling stacks of cobble out of it.

The avian noticed just what Tommy was grabbing and stared at it. “Mate, are you actually selling cobble for diamonds?”

Tubbo’s head whipped around to look away from the chest where he too saw Tommy pulling out cobble. “Not just cobble. There’s that, normal stone, andesite and granite.”

“And they buy that?”

“Yeah, at first I thought it was out of pity, until one day I got there to stock up and Bdubs was in there and was happy I was there. They all like building, but when they mine, none of the hermits bother to pick up all the stone since they normally fill their inventories with anything else and let the rest disappear. I make sure to go down with plenty of chests and put everything away, so when they need stone and shit, I’m the one they buy from.”

From there, Tommy and the other two stocked the shop. No hermits showed while they stocked, but one did show up just as they were leaving, Tubbo jumping back a little as the two of them nearly ran into each other, the wide eyed look of the hermit adding to the surprise. “Hey Keralis. Just stocked up so you’re good to go.”

“Why spank you Tommy. Who are your friends?”

“Tubbo and my dad Phil.”

“Will they be staying long?”

“Yeah, but Big G’s got them covered with housing.”

“Ah, Brian does have a good place indeed. But if they need a place to stay, I have plenty of room.”

“Almost too much. They’d be like me the first time I saw your place.”

“All the more reason for them to visit!”

“Right, see ya later.” Tommy followed behind Tubbo and Phil who had already slowly gotten ahead. He pulled out his comm and sent a message to Grian and Mumbo about where they were and where they were heading. Mumbo sent a reply that they would be coming over there soon with the bots, and Tommy put his comm away again. “Alright, I have a bit of land on a different part of the island, but it’s not really a shop. It’s more something I sort of brought over from the SMP.”

Tommy led them through the roads before they reached another area near the shore. Sand had terraformed the nearby land and various tables and chairs and other items were all over the place. But right next to the shoreline was a familiar piece of furniture that had Tubbo tearing up just a little. “You built the bench.”

“Yeah. Made it feel more like home sometimes. The rest of it is based on the beach party I held back in exile.”

Tubbo flinched slightly and looked down at the ground. Tommy was slightly confused and looked at Philza, who just gave a slight nod and wandered off. Once he was gone, Tommy led his friend over to the bench. “What’s up Big T?”

“Your… Your beach party. I- I’m sure you had fun.”

“Not really. Didn’t go the way I planned. Especially since you weren’t there.”

“I didn’t think you wanted me there. I never-”

“I sent an invitation, Tubbo. Ghostbur was supposed to give everyone in L’Manberg an invitation. But no one came. I thought it was cause you all fucking hated me. I mean, I did kinda ruin everything. I remember how mad you were.”

“Tommy…”

“I still thought that when I got here. Starting making friends out of spite instead of because I needed them. But then they made me realize some things. I don’t… Ghostbur wasn’t the most reliable, so I thought maybe he just didn’t manage to get the invitations out. But Grian said since Dream was messing with me the whole time I was there, he probably did something. Made sure you didn’t come.”

“Really? He’s been helping out. With you gone he’s become an ally to L’manberg.”

Tommy essentially growled in response to those words. “He’s not a fucking ally to anyone. He plays mind games and fucks everything up. He lies and tries to make you trust him so he can stab you in the back later. He was trying to make it so I’d only trust him. Unless you’re saying he told the truth when you immediately burned your compass for me.”

Tubbo’s hand immediately moved to hold where he had kept his compass, but it stopped midway there. “I… No. I kept it with me all the time.”

“Kept?”

Tubbo started tearing up a little before forcing the tear back. “I sort of got killed by a creeper and the explosion or something destroyed it. Tommy… I’m so sorry. I didn’t want to lose it. I didn’t want to lose you. But-”

Tubbo was cut off from Tommy hugging him. “It’s fine Big T. We lived in a fucked up place, and now we don’t have to. It’ll be you and me again. I’ll build you a tower for yourself. I’ll-”

A loud sound suddenly rang out along with an explosion. A second and third pair of the noises quickly followed. Tommy and Tubbo jumped up from the bench and looked towards the source of the noises to find three withers in the middle of the shopping district.

“What the fuck?! Why are those there?!” Tommy was immediately pulling out his comm and sending a message in the main chat.

Tubbo, on the other hand, squinted as something that seemed to be standing behind the boss monsters. They quickly shot open as he realized what he was seeing. “Technoblade?”

#hermit!tommy au #hermit!tommy #grian #watcher!grian #avian!Grian #grian xelqua #tommyinnit #philza #tubbo #rendog #mumbo jumbo #grumbot #jrumbot #YHS #tw suicide

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maevesdarling · 3 years

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Take me home tonight

Sooo, I decided to post chapter 1 of the story @unicorn-cloud and I have been cooking up for a while. This plays post series in an alternative universe. There’s mentions of gore and canon typical violence in both this and the second chapter, basically Walt is not dealing with things as good as he thought... I’m not sure how many chapters this story will have, probably around 3 to 4, also please be kind to me it’s been a long time since I uploaded my works to Tumblr, thx!

Chapter 1: The Call

Later, after he put his gun and badge down and moves further away from the border, Walt gets a call from an unknown number. He contemplates not picking up. It's been years since Kiki's death and operation Leyenda. He thinks, for a moment, that it could be Miguel Angel, calling him from his jail cell to taunt him, but no, he's not important enough to that man and besides, Miguel Angel doesn't wield as much power as he used to.

There are others. New players in this fucked up game, Walt knows that. He saw them rising on the horizon like a looming thunderstorm, ready to destroy the earth in it's path. But for now, he decided to enjoy his peace. His back's been bothering him more as of lately and he's got a few more grey hairs. He quit smoking about a year ago, after his doctor told him to do so. He's had a few setbacks since then, a half finished pack is always hidden underneath his kitchen sink, just in case he needs a fix. But overall, he's trying to stay away from the cigarettes and eat more healthy, even though the microwavable dinners at the supermarket look damn tempting, especially since it's only himself he's cooking for.

He's up in Colorado these days. The DEA was kind enough to leave him with a nice sum of retirement money, probably to shut him up after all the shit he pulled of during his career and to be fair he doesn't blame them.

He buys a nice enough house on the outskirts of town, with some additional property, a rundown barn and an old apple tree orchard that he has no plan on using. The weather's less hot, and there's a few lakes where he can fish, but otherwise, it's pretty much like any other town he's lived in. The dark red sandstones dotting the farmland remind him of Mexico. Of sitting in the hot sun and watching a small airfield in the distance, with a pair of binoculars in his hand. Sal's voice next to him asking about their next move. It's nostalgic in a way.

The first day, after he finished dropping off his stuff in the small, rundown house, he sets off to drive around, get familiar with the place. He finds a shabby bar, a small supermarket, a post office, a family owned diner and a few farms, with cows and hundreds of chickens roaming the surrounding fields, that sell local products. Over time, he ventures out further and discovers some more bars, supermarkets and, to his surprise, a gay club.

It's well hidden, two cities over, wedged between an antique bookstore and a barbershop. It looks nothing like a club from outside, and from the inside, it's hardly distinguishable from any other bar Walt has ever set foot in. But he knows where to look, it's something you learn over time.

The first time he orders a drink, his eyes fall on a guy sitting on the other end of the bar. Dark hair and dark eyes, with a bristly moustache. He's wearing a black cowboy hat and a jeans jacket, it's not what he would have worn. Plus he only looks a slight bit like Sal, his face is much older, more weathered from years of hard work in the sun, but it's enough for Walt to give in to his yearning.

He buys Not-Sal a drink and they fall into an easy chatter. Two hours later, Walt is driving him back to his house. Not-Sal is more experienced than Walt had thought when he starts undressing him with steady hands, his fingers touching in all the right places, he's already prepared, as if he'd been expecting this to happen, and doesn't mind it when Walt accidentally let's Sal's name slip at the height of his pleasure.

They lie together afterwards, sharing a cigarette between them, neither of them ready to leave yet. Walt is slowly falling asleep to the feeling of another person combing their hands through his hair. When he wakes up the next morning, the house is empty. There's a note on his kitchen table, a short thank you message, that's it. Next time he's at the club, Not-Sal is gone. He finds someone else. A different man, with dark hair, dark eyes and a friendly face, and then another and another. Some of the men he brings over are kind, they'll stay the night and sometimes even the morning, to share a quick meal with him before they move on, others leave almost immediately after they finish. Some of them yell out Walt's name as they come, others don't. And some yell out another man's name, but that's okay because so is Walt.

He's careful with the company he keeps. Always making sure that no one sees him leaving the club with another man, driving different routes back home and of course he's always stocking up on enough condoms because he's not stupid, he knows how important protection is.

Even though he's had a few men over, none of them return for longer than a couple of times. Its fun, to fill the mornings with senseless chatter, and to fall asleep in another person's arms. But they're not Sal.

He's longing for him. Even after all those years he's still longing for him. It's been three, almost four years since he last heard from Sal. He was moving to San Francisco. The DEA wanted someone new up there and Sal was growing tired of the shit hole they had placed him in after Mexico. They had called each other almost everyday, sometimes they would even meet each other, for a quick chat and an even quicker fuck. There was never enough time.

Sal wanted to call him back, he promised, once he was in San Francisco, to call him every day. Write a postcard. But nothing came. The telephone was silent for two whole months and Walt was desperate. First, he checked the newspapers for any missing or recently deceased people, when that search came up empty, he started to search the phone book for Sal's new address but of course that came up empty as well. He kept buying new phone books, just in case and by now, there was a small bookcase filled with old phone books in his house, and not a single one held an address for Sal Orozco. It was almost like he never exited. Only Walt's memory kept him from going insane. The fading photos on his wall, the one he kept in his wallet, next to a picture of Greg and his family. One of Sal's shirts he forgot in Walt's apartment in Texas, it had long stopped smelling of him, but nevertheless, Walt would pick it up and inhale deeply, thinking that the ghost of Sal's smell was still there, etched into the fabric. He slept with the shirt, on those nights when he woke up drenched in sweat, screaming and with a thundering heart. He wrenched his eyes open but he saw them anyway, Amat, Ossie, Danilo, sometimes even Kiki. He saw them die, he saw their bodies, bruised, burned, riddled with bullets, standing in front of his bed, he could hear them calling out his name. "You killed us, Walt." They'd point at him, blood dripping from their fingertips onto his bedsheets. Those nights were the worst. Sometimes they could only be stopped with an entire bottle of whiskey.

The dreams had gotten better since he found the dog. The dog didn't have a name. He was a stray, with dark, golden fur and dirty white paws. He picked him up on his way home from an unsuccessful night at the club, the dog was covered in ticks and fleas, one eye had been badly bruised and he was tied to a tree by the side of the road. Clearly abandoned. He expected the dog to bark at him, or worse, bite him, when he kneeled down beside him to untie him, but instead, it sat down in front of Walt and started wagging it's tail, as if he'd known Walt all his life. He took the dog in and gave it a bath, making sure that no ticks or fleas survived, before driving him to the vet the next morning to check out his eye. The vet couldn't save it and so Walt decided to take him in, just another broken thing keeping his company.

He put a collar on the dog and called him his, they slept in the same bed and sat on the couch together, watching football games and stupid action movies. The dog went fishing on the lake with him, even though he was no big help in catching the fish, he also liked to run around the orchard and sit on the front porch to sleep, and Walt liked to sit beside him and think, scratching behind his fluffy ears. Sometimes he wondered if Sal liked dogs. What he'd say if he met his dog.

The other animals were intentional. Walt bought a couple of chickens to sell their eggs at the local farm, and to keep himself busy. Then he renovated the old barn as best as he could and bought three goats to sell their meat, but once he saw them in their pen, he decided they weren't going to the slaughter house and kept them for their milk instead. He also fixed up the orchard as best as he could and started collecting the apples. Soon the onslaught of apples was too much for him to handle and so he collected them in a few boxes, along with the chicken eggs and sold them to the nearest farm. Surprisingly, the people around town started knowing him once he started visiting the farm more frequently. He would have regular conversations with some of them and at some point, even started looking forward to see them. He didn't go to the town hall meetings, or to Sunday mass, and the people had been weary of him, but once they saw him with his dog and the boxes of apples in his trunk, they warmed up to him.

He enjoyed his new life. It wasn't luxurious, but that wasn't what he wanted for himself anyway. He was no Miguel Angel. He didn't need a fleet of private planes and a couple of hotels to be happy.

The phone rang again and reminded him of his current situation. The dog had stopped wagging it's tail on the couch beside him and was looking at him with his one eye, almost as if he was saying "what are you waiting for?"

And so Walt picked up the phone, fully expecting Jamie or Ed or someone else from the DEA to yell at him to get his ass back to Mexico.

"Hello... is this Walt Breslin?" The phone slipped from his grasp and fell, he caught it in his suddenly sweaty palms, pressing the shell back against his ear. Three years silence could not erase the memory of that voice. Hushed conversations between them, hiding behind a parked car as they watched over a suspect, a gasp and then a low moan, while Walt kept hitting that one spot inside him, that set Sal's body on fire, a chatty conversation over two mugs of steaming coffee in a diner that ended with both of them laughing hysterically. Walt had enough memories for an entire lifetime with that voice, he would recognize it anywhere.

"Sal-" He breathed, rearranging the phone against his ear.

"Is- Walt is that you? Oh my god- fuck- I found you!" There was a short pause on the other end of the phone and for a moment Walt thought he was imagining things, then Sal's voice returned. "I- I'm sorry, Walt. I'm so sorry-" He sobbed, apologizing over and over.

"Sal- How did you find me? Wh- Are you alright? Is- do you need help?"

"No, no, I'm fine, Walt. I am. I just- fuck- I missed you so much. Where are you? I called you're old address so many times- I thought something happened to you…"

"Shh, I'm okay. I'm in Colorado. Small town near Denver. I'll give you the address… That is… If you want me to…"

"Yes! I mean... yes I want- I want to see you. If that's okay. I need to- need to know you're okay."

He contemplated with himself wether to ask this or not, but in the end, Walt did it anyways. "It's been three years, Sal. Why did you never call? What's changed?" Another sobb from the other end of the line. "I'll tell you. In person. Friday? Is that okay for you?" Walt squinted at his calendar. Friday was in two days, he needed to clean the house, buy some groceries and pack the car for Sunday's apple delivery.

"Yeah, Friday works."

"Alright. I'll see you on Friday… Walt… I missed you."

"… Missed you too Sal."

He put the phone down slowly, feeling like he was still in a dream. The dog had noticed something was off about his behavior and was staring at him in concern. " 's alright bud, I'm just… surprised, is all. We'll meet a friend of mine on Friday. I hope you'll like him…"

Lost in his thoughts, Walt began his evening routine, closing the chicken pen, checking on the goats and refilling the dogs food in case he got hungry during the night, only when the brown cibbles hit the kitchen tiles did he notice his thoughts slipping off. The only thing on his mind was Sal. Sal with his kind face and the warm, dark brown eyes, Sal wrapping an arm around his hips and pulling him closer, Sal whispering into Walt's ear. A hushed love confession neither of them dared to talk about. So, so many memories they shared between them, how was he supposed to wait any longer to see him again?

Friday couldn't come soon enough.

#narcos mexico #walt breslin #sal orozco #My writing #fingers crossed I find the time to finish chapter 2 soon

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hermitcraftheadcanons · 4 years

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Pirate AU Masterpost

Different ships captained and crewed by different hermits, maybe some could be normal sailors too? Or maybe even some could be sirens? There could be a pirate ship, a pirate hunting ship/law-keeping ship, some random shipping vessels, some sirens or sea monsters, or whatever else! I envision Doc as a pirate captain and Xisuma as the law enforcement captain, but it's open to whatever changes! (@-shadeswiftdraws.)

Headcanons to start us off:

-Bdubs is a fruity sailor.

-Cub and Scar sell things to both pirates and the law enforcement. They only take the aide of profit.

-DocM threatened Bdubs into joining him. Whether it worked is up to the 'what gets popular' Gods. If not, he probably just holds Bdubs hostage or something.

-Hypnotizd's bandana has a skull and crossbones on it, as does Etho's headband.

-False is feared by Doc.

-Grian has a parrot that always sits on his shoulder. Doc keeps telling him to get rid of it but Grian refuses.

-Iskall wears an eyepatch.

-Hypnotizd has scurvy.

-iJevin makes maps and sells em to pirates to keep them off his back. Did he bury the treasure? I dunno.

-All of ZIT collectively own a boat. They like to pretend its a yacht and have fun. Sometimes they just use it to relax, sometimes they just go fishing. Sometimes they scare each other with stories of pirates and massive storms.

-Joe Hills is scared of the water because he nearly drowned as a child. But when he ends up accidentally stowing away on the ZIT boat, his worst fears happen.

-Keralis is Xisuma's second in command.

-TFC is a retired sailor that knows too much.

-VintageBeef and basically all of the NHO are with Doc.

-XbCrafted grew up by the beach and likes to collect shells. One time he found a fossil of a dinosaur. What will he do? I don't know. His childhood friend, Hypnotizd, left to be a pirate. Xb hasn't heard from him since (he promised he'd write letters,) and fears the worst.

-ZombieCleo is a dead zombie captain. Her and her crew (the gals, and maybe some co,) are out to get their revenge on Doc. Her second in command is Stress but her main muscle in False.

-Mumbo is usually the one who works maintenance on the ship. (He's with Xisuma.)

-Rendog got stuck on an island he's called 'Loser Island' and has been there for at least a year. He's found by Doc.

-Stressmonster makes people fear her through her name, but they usually laugh when they see her because she's really unintimidating.

-Welsknight hoardes cool swords.

-Everyone underestimates Stress when they see her but those who have faced her in battle have realized their mistake. She is slowly but surely gaining the reputation as one of the most feared pirates of the seven seas. She’s still very sweet if you get to know her tho - 🌙

-At some point while attempting to leave the ZIT crew's yacht, Joe somehow ends up with Cleo and the gals in the middle of the ocean, who take pity on him. Because they help him with his fear and take care of him on the way back to land, he decides to stick with them for good. The Navy and a lot of other pirates don't believe that Cleo can be the captain of such a feared vessel or that False can be that deadly and decide that Joe must be doing it all. He takes joy in deferring to Cleo whenever he can, and the whole crew gets a laugh out of his combat attempts. He mainly handles navigation and stuff, though he does record their adventures and anonymously submit them to newspapers and/or publish his accounts. (Don't want to skip the Joe+ZIT stuff, just love him and Cleo and need that dynamic :-) )

-Half siren/merman grian? - Frost Anon

-Different anon adding to the Merman Wels idea, he's a siren but instead of stealing your life he steals your swords and shinies. Some pirates may be on good terms with him and gives him swords occasionally and ask for directions or just hang out with him and be nice (I'd think Ren would sing with him and Jevin would hang out and steal shinies with him landing both their crews on good terms with him. He may even follow them around as it can be lonely in the ocean)

-Mumbo never meant to be a pirate. There was just a mutiny of the last captain he was under and everyone liked him enough to keep him around.

-Some loser thinks that joe is the muscle of the group and asks for a duel. cleo decides fuck it and just pushes joe into a fight with them because thats how she be sometimes. (False is on standby so joe doesn't get creamed)

-https://hermitcraftheadcanons.tumblr.com/post/619926302710956032/another-take-on-the-pirate-au-concept

- At some point, Cleo's ship begins picking up stray orphaned children. They are kept safe below deck during battle and are taught by the crew how to run a ship and fight, but Cleo also teaches them stuff like how to read and do math. The crew is very protective of the young'uns and the ship eventually becomes known for the fact that they take care of kids. Most other ships, upon learning this, respect that and don't attack them. If a ship does, they will find that the Rotten Corpse is viscous, and has many powerful friends who will back them up. If Doc or X come across Cleo's ship, they will give the kids gifts and stay close for a bit to provide protection. As the kids grow up some go back to shore and build legitimate/legal lives (including opening an orphanage) but a group of them go off and become their own pirate crew! Their ship's name? I don't know, I'm not clever.

-In a tavern someone's just like "im gonna sail to this island." Tfc, sitting nearby "you wont find anything" a little while later that ship goes missing. No one actually knows what tfc found in his sailing days. But my god does he know where to avoid

(All above in red are from our community's lovely Anons!)

-The ZIT boat is a bit of a disaster because each person always thinks it's the other people's turn to maintain it. Joe probably saw it on an evening beach walk and thought it was abandoned, decided to explore it, and accidentally fell asleep in the hold. He wakes up to the ZIT boys arguing about what to do with him.

-Xisuma has a reputation for being strict and disciplined and running a very tight ship, but if you're actually on his crew you'll know that's a front for intimidation purposes. In reality he is organised but extremely forgiving, and he will often sit down with crew who are new or going through something stressful and talk it out with them.

-Iskall is with Cleo's crew, he appears just as driven as the rest of them but he's mostly just there to make sure Cleo and co don't go too overboard with the revenge thing. He just doesn't want them to do something they'll regret....

-Wels can be a merman! He hoards cool swords as souvenirs of the surface world and dreams of two-legged adventurers and explorers.

-The "incident" that put Cleo on the path of undead revenge was partially accidental. Doc's goal was to raid the ship and get away with no casualties, but things escalated way too quickly. He is haunted by what happened, but Cleo doesn't know that and is determined to hunt him and his crew down.

-Pirate singalong nights! Doc's ship definitely has a singalong under the stars every night, where everyone can gather together and relax and let loose. It's fun to think about who would be good at it, and who would be bad at it but sing anyway ☺️

-Grian starts off on Doc's ship (with his parrot), but he gets washed overboard in a storm. Siren!Wels rescues him and gives him siren magic.

-I got tired of referring to "Xisuma's ship" and "Doc's ship", so: X's ship is called the Voidrunner, and Doc's vessel is the Black Goat. (Cleo's is The Rotting Corpse -Anon.)

-(I did a submission mentioning ConPost earlier, so look at that for context) The ConPost boys don't sail, but they're very knowledgable about sailing supplies and even ship repair. Cub does bookkeeping and negotiates big deals. Scar likes to wander the docks checking stock levels, with Jellie napping in piles of rope or following close behind.

-https://hermitcraftheadcanons.tumblr.com/post/619819577428279296/for-the-pirate-au-cub-and-scar-own-a-supply

-Xisuma is feared and respected by pirates because his ship is one of the first/only steam powered vessels at the time. Mumbo is his engineer; he maintains the mechanics and is constantly testing ways to make the ship faster and more efficient.

-If you ask Iskall why he wears an eye patch, you will get a wild tale of adventure and heroic battle that may take an hour to relate. However, the story is different every time. He actually lost his eye in a completely non-pirate related accident as a child. It just sounds cooler the way he tells it 😂

- About Joe moving from the ZIT crew to Cleo's ship: Joe really wants to be taken back to shore, and the ZIT lads understand his fear of water and try to take him back as soon as possible. However, they get caught in a storm, and the boat isn't in great shape to weather it. The boat is not quite wrecked, but badly damaged, and Joe is washed overboard. Cleo's crew finds him and pulls him aboard to save him (maybe siren!Wels helped bring him to her!)

-As a pirate Etho is known for his skill in boarding enemy ships. It doesn't matter how many ropes you cut, how many pirate grappling hooks you throw into the sea in an effort to keep them from your decks. Even if there's no possible way across, Etho will just sort of.. . End Up on your ship, and you will end up in Davy Jones' locker. (Based on the creepy teleport thing with Grian, and just Etho's general cryptid-ness)

-The sea spray and the general ocean humidity is horrible for Doc's arm. Ren helps him keep it as clean and rust-proof as possible, but it still probably squeaks a lot and stiffens up sometimes.

(-@shadeswiftdraws.)

-ZombieCleo's gal (& co.) crew includes Iskall. [More info pending for when I finally get around to watching s6 and see the infamous Iskall & Stress duo in action] (-@basaltdragon.)

-Inspired by shade: Cub is an ex-sailor, and Scar grew up in a family of fishers. Cub was really good at ship maintainence (he just got sick of the politics), and Scar loved keeping stock of the fishing nets and what sort of fish were caught, how much they might sell for, though he's not as good at repairs.

-For the Pirate AU, Mumbo telling Siren/MerGrian stories of the surface world and (secretly?) making a way for Grian to see it for himself. (-@shiniestumbreon.)

-Pirate au: one day there is a really bad storm that destroys all of the hermits boats except for one of them. So now all the hermits are all on one boat that’s really far away from land. (Angst part) some of them went over board (I’m thinking the captains maybe) so the remaining hermits are either grieving them or looking desperately hoping that their crew mates are still alive and clinging to wreckage. Who they find, if they do find any of them is up to the reader for now. (-@lookitsspacekween.)

- Mumbo, being the spoon he is always forgets where he buries his treasure. (-@xxpzmistxx.)

-Mumbo, as the Voidrunner's engineer, has so much to work on that Xisuma will sometimes take over the maintenance so poor Mumbo can get some sleep. This leads to the hunt for a secondary engineer and maybe that's how Mumbo and Iskal end up meeting. (-@my-cat-is-a-bastard.)

-A cat scratched out Iskall's eye as a kid, and he's too embarrassed to tell anyone. He's still a bit afraid of cats, so you'll always see him keeping a close eye on Jellie when he's at the dock. (-@12u3ie.)

- i dont really know much about pirates but ima try!! ok so, cleo is human, but she gets the nickname "zombie cleo" because she faked her own death. people thought she drowned, and her old crew along with her. most of them went to live normal lives under different names, but cleo missed the sea and eventually returned to being a pirate, eventually becoming the capitain of a new ship. (i hope this makes sense lol) (-@bakubakunyanyaa.)

-Pirate headcanons! As someone said before Ren and Wels are friends and like to sign together. I can imagine Wels telling the Black Goat that there is a treasure burried in Loser Island to get Ren rescued. Also! People think Ren is halve siren/has siren magic as he is really good at singing and the melodies he hums are similar to the ones sirens are said to sing, turns out just a bit of siren magic and Wels singing style rubbed on Ren during all the time they spent together singing.

-More pirate hc cause i have no self control and they are not a lot of them: Doc gives shiny stuff to Wels in exchange of him warning them when X’s crew is on a port. Iskall is also a great engineer and is working to make the Rotten Corpse Steam powered too. He insist Cleo to let him take a peek on the Voidrunner to see if he can copy Mumbo’s work, the gals agree this is the most dangerous idea Iskall has.

(-@ivi-prism.)

-Ship AU! Hypno originally joined the ship's crew with his friend, Jessassin. They became a swashbuckling duo, and still sometimes work together, despite Jessassin's inactivity from pirate duties. (-@calmshejaguar.)

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bearseokie · 4 years

Text

Working Other Occupations | GOT7

got7 m.list | navi.

Mark: Gas Station Clerk;

knows everyone because his store is so busy

the store has two checkout lines, but his is always the longest

knows the best brands in the stores, constantly recommends them

gets frozen yogurt every day, collects his spoons

never leaves the slushie machine alone, his tongue is always red or blue

hates cleaning the bathrooms

prefers the night shift over the morning shift

blasts music

begs people that buy cigarettes to try quitting by chewing gum

steals energy drinks

pays for people's items when they don't have enough to cover it

smiles at everyone for no reason

found a stray cat behind the store, named it and deemed it the gas station kitty

stands at the counter, refuses to sit down

raps to songs playing while he restocks

runs around the counter to open the door for elders

challenges himself to see how long he can stand in the freezer

befriends the cook that makes hot food so he gets free meals

pumps gas for his friends and elders so he knows they get taken care of

hoodies

Jaebeom: Mechanic;

works on vehicles part time

gets stuck somewhere almost every day. once it was his hand in the exhaust pipe. once his entire body got stuck between the bottom of a truck and the creeper. it was a funny call for help.

wears a black jumpsuit and boots every day, loves that his name is embroidered onto his uniform.

blasts alternative music in the shop

thinks his job is like math

all of his co-workers are buff dudes with tattoos, and he admits he looks out of place

long hair that gets caught in Everything

sits on the creeper and rides it around when he's too lazy to stand up

is actually really good at his job, and has never had a complaint

women stop by to request that "he must look at their car because the check engine is on" but it's just a glitch, he gets their number anyways

always offers to buy food for his co-workers when they've been working long hours

always is on coffee duty

keeps a jar of lollipops for the client’s kids

got pranked by his co-workers once, hopes it never happens again

they asked him to get into a car to check if the steering wheel was even, then they lifted the car. he was in the air, stuck for almost an hour while they worked on it because "it would be a waste of time to bring it back down to let him out", he still appreciates them though

knows a lot of the rich people in the area specifically because he works on their cars

loves working on Ferraris and Lamborghinis

got to drive both to test run them, he was in love

is always covered in grease and oil, smells like them too

rough hands

Jackson: Workout Trainer;

always wears black tank tops

goes into the gym to do his own workout before his client shows up

brings extra water

gets way too excited when his client wants to do another workout

has a personal connection to all of his clients

will treat them to meals and give gifts to support their hard work

all of his fits match

wears insoles for extra support and asks his clients to get them too so they won't be as sore

is naturally loud but is quiet when he works out / when he is watching over a client

real bike rides & hikes

always makes clients start off with the basics, the smallest weights, shorter movements even if they are familiar with the workout / equipment

wears sweat bands like they're actual accessories

messes around from time to time by "running" on the gazelle, skipping on the treadmill, swings from the pull-up bars

acts like he's done more than everyone else when they aren't paying attention

pretends he can't lift a heavy weight when his client tells him they don't know if they can, so they feel inspired to try and be better than him

the best spotter

gets angry at other people in the gym when they are checking out / flirting with his clients, tries to explain that they are focused

protein shakes that smell okay and taste awful but he considers them a necessity

headbands like he's in an 80's workout video

always bouncy and excited, even when he's tired

Jinyoung: Dental Receptionist;

holds his index finger up at people when he's in the middle of something

types very fast

will hang up on you if you're rude to him

is friends with all of the dentist's in the building, and constantly chats with them even if people are waiting for their appointment

dentist still hasn't come back? they're talking to jinyoung

has a jar of mints on his desk, never offers them to anyone

is only nice to kids

bought new toys for the kid's waiting room because the old ones were boring, now none of them make noise but are enough to busy them

will purposely shred important papers just to give people a hard time

hates his desk chair

plays generic stock music in the office

goes through pens like crazy

hates check-in calls to remind people of their appointments, so he doesn't even do them most of the time and just hopes for the best

no insurance? sucks for you now you have a bill in your name

staples aggressively

plays solitare

makes the waiting room freezing while he's perfectly fine

gets up in the middle of someone checking in to walk around doing nothing until he feels like coming back

shows no emotion unless he hears a kid laughing

waves goodbye instead of telling people to have a good day / evening

Youngjae: Librarian;

shushes people that shush others

sneaks up behind people when they are focused

laughs way too loud and bothers everyone

the scanners hate him so much that they will glitch and shut down the entire computer

wears plaid pants and comfy tees, pushed back hair and glasses, never wears his contacts to work

brings his own lunch / snacks but still buys things from the staff room's vending machine

plays music in his earbuds when restocking and reorganizing

puts his own name down for newly released dvds so he gets to watch them first

carries a backpack of random stuff for when he gets bored

doesn't actually like books that much

accidentally sings at full volume to the music in his ears

buys stickers to give to the kids when they check out their books

runs up and down the aisles when no one else is around

recommends the same four books to everyone

writes in his notebook for half of his shift

when the kids get lost from their parents, he holds their hand and lets them hang out with him at his counter while he calls over the intercom

thinks there should be a bigger music section

wears a watch but still stares at the wall clock

bad sleep schedule so he's always dozing off

loves decorating the library with themes

Bambam: Retail Employee;

very sassy

wears brands even his own store doesn't sell

is actually the nicest person ever to work in retail

fingertip length organized racks

perfectly folds Everything because he believes presentation is one of the most important features of anything

will change a mannequin while people are shopping if he hates the fit enough

rants about how more people should thrift clothing instead of buying new things every time because it's better for the environment to recycle and benefits & supports local thrift stores

holds up clothes when people are checking out and compliments their taste

actually enjoys comfy clothing over designer, but will never admit it

takes a whole shift just to choose one pair of shoes to put on display

loves when kids ask his opinion on what they should get

spends his breaks looking over the jewelry section

steals candles

hates when people mess up the t-shirt section because he always has to fix it

electric shopping cart races

always has his long sleeve uniform shirts rolled up to his elbow

has knowledge of the best makeup brands in the store

severe hatred for the low-quality tees with weird quotes on them

loves all of the jeans with rips in them and always recommends them to customers

can make the floors so shiny he sees his own reflection in it

Yugyeom: Roller-Rink Employee;

part time dj, part time employee

puts on his favorite beats and skates around until he has to switch songs

kids try to climb him because he's so tall

has multiple pairs of skates for different days of the week

skates backwards

big shirts and ripped jeans

usually the leader of kid's birthday parties

held one of the parties and became the special guest because all of the girls loved him so much, they made him their prince for the day

loves watching people hold on to the walkers because it's funny

teaches old people how to skate safely by holding onto the edge of the rink

has to make the girls that flock around his booth find another activity to do

aggressively competitive lazer tag player, always gets his vest on first so he gets a head start

drinks monsters like it's water

doesn't buy the food they make inside, just steals it

hates being on rollerskate duty, always has to clean them and restock them properly because the high school kids place them in random spots

dyes his hair a different color every month

thinks the blacklight is the coolest feature of the entire rink

has so many high scores on the old arcade machines that kids cry trying to beat him, he buys them candy so they stop being upset

decorates the dj booth with neon colors

once got stuck putting his arm into the claw machine trying to get a toy that he wanted for himself

#got7 #got7 scenarios #got7 reaction #got7 imagines #got7 au #jackson wang #mark tuan #im jaebeom #choi youngjae #bambam #kim yugyeom #park jinyoung #got7 headcanons #kpop headcanons #kpop au #got7.headcanon

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hard-reset-with-a-hammer · 4 years

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The world certainly loves to get my attention in interesting ways. More often than not, the methods used to do so are only a means to an end in order to piss me off, but this time I'm genuinely amused.

The most recent happening that has garnered my attention is the big stink going on with Hedge Fund concerning $GME and a handful of Redditors who bought the hell out of GameStop shares. A lot of people don't understand what this means or why so many of the wealthy and empowered are making a big deal out of it, but your ever helpful Uncle Fuck Off is here to educate you on things.

So let's start at the beginning. What is Hedge Fund? A Hedge Fund is an alternative investment that is designed to protect investment portfolios from market and certainty, while generating positive returns in both up and down markets. Hedge funds are financial partnerships that use pooled funds and employ different strategies to earn active returns for their investors. These funds may be managed aggressively or make use of derivatives and leverage to generate higher returns. Basically, it's a way for a select, limited number of very wealthy people to get even wealthier by buying stocks and trades at a low price, then waiting for the demand of these stocks and trades to go up in order to sell them at a higher price. Here's an example; Imagine a loaf of bread at any select store cost $2.00, and the supply is limited. Now imagine buying all that bread at $2.00 a loaf, completely emptying the county supply of bread. Then, directly afterwards, you turn around and start selling that bread at $3.50 a loaf, garnering a $1.50 profit.

It's kinda like that, but on a much, much larger scale, often resulting in the spending of millions/billions, and making a profit of half that after accounting for purchase.

So now that we've explained that, let's move on to the next chapter.

So what's going on with GameStop stock? Well so far, over the last 6 months, GameStop stock price has seen an 8000% increase, which is insane by any standards. The more complex answer is that it's stock has become a central gamepiece in a financial power struggle between a major hedge fund, Melvin Capital, and a group of amateur stock traders who yell on the internet.

So how is GameStop tied up in all of this? Well, Like many companies that are in rough shape, GameStop was the subject of what's called short selling, in which professional investors borrow shares of stocks to sell and then buy back later so they can return them, which lets them pocket the profit if the stock price goes down. They're basically bets that the company will fail. GameStop was one of the most shorted of all publicly traded companies. Other companies on the list include AMC Theaters, Bed Bath & Beyond and even the most defunct Blockbuster. And then GameStop became the source of a "Short Squeeze". I won't even get into explaining what a Short Squeeze is, it's a long and complicated subject. I'll just leave it at; A Short Squeeze means investors bought at a high price and bet the price would continue to fall, and when it didn't, they were left with millions in stocks that they had to sell at a much higher price.

Moving on, a handful of ametuer investors on the Reddit page r/wallstreetbets decided to throw 100% of their portfolios into $GME once they saw the shares rising, causing those who run WSB (r/wallstreetbets) to temporarily switch the community to private with the excuse that they were "Experiencing technical difficulties based on unprecedented scale as a result of the newfound interest in WSB.", which I think means the bean counters tried to intervene with us normal people making more money than we're supposed to.

This is where things get a little complicated and a bit more unclear. Shares in GameStop ticked up on January 11th after it named three people to its board of directors as part of a deal with shareholders who had been agitating for change. That caused some short sellers to abandon their positions, helping to drive the stock up more in the following days. The stock traded for about even for a few days, but things really began to change on the following Friday.

CNBC data showed that the volume of shares traded - a closely watched indicator of activity around the stock - spiked on Friday. Increased volume can indicate a short squeeze, meaning people who had bet against the stock either chose or were forced to give up and take losses. and while WSB had gotten some media attention in recent days for its GameStop boosterism, a boom in coverage of GameStop and WSB helped bring the story out of the financial world and more into the mainstream. GameStop shares would go from trading at around $43, already significantly more than it traded at the beginning of the year, to as much as $380, becoming one of the most traded stocks on the market along the way. This alone has Wallstreet shitting themselves, as it could potentially cost them tens of billions of dollars.

So how will the market be different if this continues? There is some belief that WSB signals the arrival of a powerful new force as large numbers of retail investors find influence by acting in concert or following one another into a big trade. That may serve as a check or balance on other large forces, such as hedge funds, which are used to throwing their weight around without ordinary investors affecting a price. As for how it couldn't affect us normal people, right now, the speculation activity is only around a few companies, which isn't that uncommon. But the broader concern comes when what are known as retail investors - amateurs buying stocks for their own personal gain - become overly exuberant and inflate stock prices, sometimes by taking out loans to buy shares. and some skeptics point to the situation around GameStop and other companies as evidence that the stock market has reached a dangerous level of enthusiasm and speculation.

Now, very often a short squeeze ends in a price falling back to where it was before the drama started. In 2008, when Volkswagen was in the middle of a trader tug of war, it briefly became the stock market's most valued company, but it's price settled down eventually. History suggests that no stock can go up forever, and over time, stock prices generally reflect the expected future earnings of corporations. But long shots can go on for extended periods if the players have enough resources to risk. Tesla, for example, would need 1,600 years of profits to justify its current price to earnings ratio, according to a calculation this last year.

So far, there's no evidence that any of this is illegal, although NASDAQ CEO Adena Friedman has said stock exchanges and regulators need to pay attention to the potential for schemes fueled by social media. While Reddit didn't answer questions this past Wednesday about whether it's in touch with regulators, it said it prohibits posting illegal content or facilitating illegal transactions. In a short statement, a Reddit official stated "We will review and cooperate with valid law enforcement investigations or actions as needed".

Of course I personally find this all to be bullshit. In my personal viewpoints, this is just another way for the very rich and wealthy to strongarm us normal people into being complacent, as they cannot make money off of us if we continue to make more and more money. Many investors and Wall Street members have stated that this could very well impact the fragile Trickle-down Economy, however, this again is absolute bullshit. Let me explain why.

Trickle down economy works exactly how it sounds, except it doesn't work at all. The long and short of it is investors and very wealthy people make a lot of money and they believe that eventually that money will make its way down to us normal and poorer people, however it never really does as most of the time, and in very, very many cases, these investors and wealthy people will more often than not square it away in a bank account or throw it back into stocks where they can make more money to put in their bank accounts. Trickle-down Economics only works the other way around, where us normal, poor people make money and buy stuff to put that money back into the economy where it will eventually make its way back to the wealthy making them far wealthier. Now I will agree that not all of that money goes back to the rich, but a good portion of it does. Most of the time that money will go back to paying employees, paying for equipment, and paying for materials used, but whatever else is left will go back to the rich. So you can see why this GameStop shit has Wall Street's panties in a twist.

Now, keep in mind that even if these amateur investors do win in this stock trade and cost Wall Street billions in US dollars, it is very unlikely that we of the current generation will see any of that money come back to us. The reality of the situation is that it would take years if not several decades for the money that Wall Street "loses" to circulate back to the normal person.

And that's what going on in this fucked up problem child of a country. Anyway, hopefully some of you actually paid attention to all of that, because I'm sick of explaining that the only side I'm on is my side. If you've got legitimate points that you'd like to make, I'd gladly listen to them and debate them, and I'll even concede defeat if I am wrong, but stop blowing up my inbox with half baked arguments because I have no patience to argue with someone who has little more intelligence than a water flea.

#gme #gamestop #stock market #wall street #reddit #news #perpetually pissed off

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gayenerd · 4 years

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The Band You Love To Hate By Tom Lanham of RIP (There’s no date on this but I would say 1995 or 1996?)

Eyes wide as a barn owl's. Spines stiff with anticipation, like a hungry scorpion. The two teenage girls sit stock-still in their booth at a posh Berkeley diner, practically bursting with excitement, but without the faintest clue how to handles it. Clueless, you might call them. A few feet across the linoleum aisle--with his back to them, oblivious to all the oh-my-gawd facial expressions--sits the object of their adulation, dressed in unassuming black jeans, black T-shirt, shredded black Converse, and a beat-up black baseball jacket. But even with his once-green dreadlocks tamed to a short black business cut, Billie Joe Armstrong--yes, the snaggle-toothed MTV ragamuffin from megaplatinum neo-punkers, Green Day--is as easy to spot as Michael Bolton at a Rogaine convention. Although the kids want to leap up from their seats and race over for an autograph or a jittery hello, they don't dare. Instead, they're forced to deal with their seething emotions as if they were eating post-tonsillectomy ice cream: a lot of numb gulping and a quick pain chaser. This is the blessing of being Billie Joe Armstrong. Alas, it's also his curse. By the time you read this, the irascible little rocker will have turned 24. And exactly two years ago, he and his wacky bandmates--drummer Tré Cool and bassist Mike Dirnt--lolled around the trashy basement flat they shared, getting stoned and sneering at the idea that Dookie--their just-released "sellout" on big-time Reprise--would ever amount to more than a nice drink coaster. Fame? They were more preoccupied with their bong collection, stacks of rock 'n' roll bubblegum cards, and a thriving sea monkey tank displayed prominently on a window-sill. Most of their furniture had springs poking through--they didn't care. Armstrong regularly picked boogers from his gold-ringed nostril and then flick them onto the scary shag carpet--what did he have to worry about? Too bad he couldn't have foreseen the all-too-near future. Green Day happened to be in the right place at the right time. The three-chord slam-a-rama Dookie--a pop-edged return to decade-old punk ethics--became the surprise hit of '94, going on to sell over 11 million copies. Armstrong, accustomed to frenetic club performances, began translating the group's infectious energy to larger and larger venues. Demand continued to grow at a staggering pace; Green Day fought back. They turned a satellite MTV Video Awards performance into a "spit-cam" fest by urging the crowd to gob any camera lens it could ("[The cameramen] tried to make it look like it was cool, but it wasn't"). Last October, Armstrong and company issued their 32-minute follow up, Insomniac, almost as an afterthought, with little promotion, a visually offensive video (for "Geek Stink Breath") and--at least initially--a strict no-interview policy. Simultaneously, they ditched their high-powered Cahn-Man management team and are now virtually managing themselves. Along the way, Armstrong married his long-time sweetheart Adrienne and last March fathered a son, Joey. In typical down-to-earth fashion, the couple spent their honeymoon a few blocks from home at Berkeley's prestigious Claremont Hotel, not on some exotic island. Beginning to see the problem here? How does a street-smart kid from humble beginnings skyrocket to world-class notoriety and yet--with his music in millions of homes and his privacy suddenly a right that needs defending--still adhere to the simple ideals, the simple lifestyle that spawned him? Is "successful punk" an oxymoron? Insomniac provided few clues--it was more of the same slacker-ennui sentiment, more defeated, disenfranchised grousing set to speedy, memorable hooks. Or, as Armstrong barks in the aptly-dubbed "Walking Contradiction," "My wallet's fat and so is my head...I'm a victim of a Catch-22." And that, in essence, was the topic this tortured artist wanted to discuss at the diner. The old "be careful what you wish for" adage. The classic "problem with success is finding someone to enjoy it with you" truism. Armstrong, who takes occasional sips from a vanilla milkshake, but mostly stares morosely at the floor, seems to be dealing with superstardom in a relatively normal way. Don't be fooled by the steady stream of negative vitriol that follows; he's analyzing it, breaking it down, figuring out ways to disconnect his kinetic career. Or at least turn down the volume for awhile.

RIP: We know what's going right. But what's going wrong?

BILLIE JOE ARMSTRONG: Lots of things, really. Actually, when I came here today, I said I didn't wanna talk about anything good, because I don't really have anything good to talk about. Goin' on tour pretty soon--don't really wanna go. Just because I've been kinda torn. I wanna stick around at home. I don't like playing arenas, and I realized I didn't know what I was getting myself into on the last tour, but I went into it being positive and getting excited about it. But I didn't realize that I was the kind of person to whom it's too much of an event and not really a personal thing anymore. And I started to realize how much I liked being the background music to this scene at the club. And now it's.... I dunno. People expect so much. It's cool and stuff, and it can be a lot of fun, a really good experience. But when you play that many arenas.... The first time we ever played those big kinds of shows at the Shoreline (Amphitheater in Mountain View, California), there was weirdness--we were playing for a lot of f?!kin' people. And I hate to say it, but sometimes it just feels like another gig. We played every day, 50 gigs this last leg, and it just wears on ya. There's all these people, and they think "Alright. I paid my $15--you better impress the f?!kin' shit outta me right now!" And I realized that for Joey, the rock and roll touring life is not a good atmosphere for a kid. I tried to make it to where it would be, bringing lots of his toys out. But there are no familiar surroundings for him. And he likes all the attention--people come up and say hello to him every day, people who are on tour with us. But he doesn't have his own room or a home to go to every day. So, no more touring for Joey.

RIP: Turned on Regis and Kathie Lee this morning to find their gossip columnist dishing dirt on Green Day. How Insomniac didn't do nearly as well as predicted, how it was a disappointment to the label. A failure, supposedly.

BJA: Well, it's like, we didn't set up this record. We didn't. We didn't do any promotion beforehand, we completely quit doing interviews, and basically we just wanted to go on into it. We weren't even sure if we wanted to do a video. And then when we did a video, it got yanked from daytime rotation because people were getting grossed-out by it. So I think we did alienate a lot of people. So that was expected, that it wasn't going to sell a lot of records.

RIP: NOFX have taken it one step further. They refuse to talk to press, make videos, pander potential singles to radio. They don't want to get any bigger.

BJA: I dunno, maybe I'm just getting jaded or something. But I just got cable again and I can't stand anything. Six years ago you could hear something that was different and know that it was different. So it'd be "alternative" or whatever. But now it's like you get this Joan...Osborne? With the ring in her nose, waving the alternative rock flag, when she's just...not, ya know? And I'm thinking, I hate all this music that's coming out now--the past year was just hell for music. But people are buying it, so then I'm thinking, Maybe they're the ones that are good and I'm the one who sucks? I just don't know if I really wanna be involved in the rock world anymore at all. Period. I don't necessarily have anything against a big record company or people who what to join up with a big record company. It really is right for some people, but more and more, I don't think that I'm really meant to. And I hate to sound like that, because I don't like taking things for granted. I don't like to talk about my problems when there's some kid struggling in his garage somewhere saying "F?!k him! He's just taking it for granted. Shit, I wish I could do something like that, but I'm just stuck here in Biloxi, Mississippi, and I can't even get a gig." I'm so confused right now.

RIP: It must be odd to know that, with all those millions of albums sold, drunken frat boys are probably staggering around to your music right now. Your audience grew far beyond your control.

BJA: Oh, totally! We became what we hated. Which is, the people I despised in high school--and now--are buying our records. We initially became a trend, so there was no way I expected to sell as many records with Insomniac as with Dookie. That's one of the biggest-selling records of the decade. We get slagged by the punk rockers, and it's like, I don't blame them. If you draw that much attention to yourself, that's what you're gonna get--attention--and it's not personal anymore.

RIP: Ever think about giving it all up?

BJA: There isn't a day goes by in the past year and a half that I haven't thought about quitting. I went to this party on New Year's Eve, and this band Juke, and another band, the Tantrums, played in a friend of mine's backyard. And a lot of my old friends showed up, and everybody was just dancing. And I was dancing, and getting really muddy, and I was having a great time. I can't remember the last time I sat down and listened to a record from beginning to end and felt this incredible spine-chilling music. And it's because I haven't been able to go out and watch bands play at my free will. I'm not gonna live in a closet, I'm not gonna vegetate myself.

RIP: But it has to be difficult, when tons of kids know your face. You're on your way to Michael Jackson-dom, where you have to wear a disguise in public.

BJA: If you think about the Beatles, at that time all people had to go by were the photographs on the records and every now and then a television appearance. So when they'd come to town, people would just flip out--it became this huge public event every single time. Whereas now, everything is so saturated kids don't even have to leave their home to go to a show anymore. They can sit in the comfort of their living room, and your favorite rock star is gonna be entertaining you while you sit down and have your microwave burrito.

RIP: The Milwaukee cops weren't pleased with aspects of Green Day's Milwaukee show last November. Why were you arrested?

BJA: I dropped the pick and--actually, I even forgot about it--I just mooned the crowd, which is pretty harmless compared to what I've done before. And I wasn't even thinking about it--I just went out and started playing again. Then I went backstage and was hanging out with Adrienne, and this guy Jimmy who does security for us goes "Come on--there's a car waiting for you outside right now. You've gotta get out of here!" I said "What's wrong?" and he said he didn't even know. So we get in the car and all of a sudden about ten cops come walking over, fully surrounding the car. So the guy puts the cuffs on me, throws me in the car, and I get tossed in the holding tank for two, three hours. I wasn't in the bullpen--I was in with the other ones, the not-so-bad ones. They made me take all my jewelry out. And my shoestrings, so I wouldn't hang myself or something. I dunno. I just don't know how to fit into rock music anymore. I don't know what I like about it anymore. I don't like anything about it anymore, to tell you the truth. To tell you the real truth, I'm a pretty miserable person right now. I'm totally depressed, and my wife can vouch for that because she's around me. In fact, she's the only person who's really around me. I dunno, the whole thing with the mainstreaming of punk rock. I just feel lost in the whole thing...I don't really know...I don't wanna...I dunno...It's miserable, it really is. It's f?!ked up.

RIP: For every original voice that comes along, there will be countless mad signing dashes for any and all sound-alike artists, with no thought given to the artist's longevity. Just throw the record out quickly and hope it sticks.

BJA: The thing is, a lot of musicians have gotten so comfortable with this big so-called "Revolution in Rock Music" over the past decade. First it was like, "F?!k the corporations! F?!k the corporations!" And then people just sorta got cozy with that, and forgot that these bands are getting lost in the shuffle. And I'm talking about the ones that never get noticed at all and just get kinda bitter. The 15 minutes of fame is getting shorter and shorter. And now music is totally going backwards--the first half of this decade, there were a few things going on that were interesting. It wasn't my favorite kind of music, but it had a sensibility about it. If you think about Nirvana and Pearl Jam and that whole Seattle scene, and even the Offspring--there was this thing going on that was more honest, in a lot of ways. It wasn't like, beer, drugs and pussy, like what went on through the '80s with all the hair bands. But now what we've got is Hootie & the Blowfish....

RIP: Who are probably a lot like you. They seem like nice, regular guys who--through no real fault of their own--are suddenly assimilated into pop culture.

BJA: Yeah, but that's the problem, is that they are nice regular guys. And they're totally comfortable with that, and they sort of put that out, to where they don't really have...I dunno, there's a certain amount of attitude that, say, someone like Cobain or Vedder has that they don't have. But it's becoming way not...real anymore or something. Maybe not real to me. It's just turning back into what it was in the '80s. It's like, "Hey, everyone! We're Huey Lewis and the News!" I dunno. Maybe nobody knows what the f?!k I'm talking about anymore.

BJA: I get so irritated by people. I think I'm more bitter than I've ever been in my whole life, to tell you the honest truth. I think Insomniac is much more of a bitter record than Dookie. And I think the older people get, the more they kinda get angry. I think a lot of people feel like they get cheated by lief somehow--no-one is ever completely satisfied. There's maybe a few. But I mean, I'm in a place where I don't really wanna be. It's like, sometimes I feel like we're losing our passion for playing music. And that's the f?!ked-up thing, when you lose passion for what you love, then it's like, Is this marriage headed for divorce or what?

RIP: Theoretically, you can fight back a couple of ways. Like Cobain, you could make a record almost calculated to offend all the bandwagon-jumpers. Or take as much time off as you'd like. Who says you can't go live on a desert island for two years?

BJA: That'd be nice. I'm just not enjoying life right now. I'm really not. I'm so cluttered, I can't even speak. Yeah, I do feel like I'm getting old, and I'm kinda bitter about that. I'm not excited about being onstage anymore, and I was really trying to convince myself that I was. Really. Before we did this last U.S. tour, every time I did an interview--I don't know if you read the last Rolling Stone piece--I was like "Yeah! I'm excited! I wanna play these arenas!" and stuff. And then just every night, it started sucking, it felt like a routine or something. It felt almost choreographed in a lot of ways. And I was yelling "f?!k you!" to people, but I didn't know who I was yelling "f?!k you" to anymore.

RIP: Last time we spoke, you said you went out of your way to change every single show, make each one different.

BJA: Well, I think it's just the stress of getting up in front of all those people all the time, every day. It's like, "Do I really feel like downing another f?!cking pot of coffee and a bottle of wine before I walk onstage to do this again? Just to get myself ready to go?" You know, for all those people. And every night I always do something different and stupid. But at the same time, it'd be really cool to just say "F?!k you!" to people and like, walk off. And then they'd get it. It's like, "I'm really telling you to f?!k off this time! Time to pack up and go home." It'd just be so nice to start from scratch again.

RIP: In many ways you can. That's the music-making system trying to program your behavior. And obviously you've broken quite a few rules already--you don't even have to be talking to me right now, actually....

BJA: Oh no. I really wanted to do this interview, just because the last interviews that I've done, I've been miserable, and I was pretending not to be. I really was, I was lying. Not to the reader, not to the person I was doing the interview. But I was lying to myself, convincing myself that I was really happy with how everything is going.

RIP: So you always knew what you wanted, and now you've got it, in spades. You're having trouble figuring out what's next?

BJA: I didn't even know what I wanted back then. I really didn't. I didn't know if I wanted to be huge, totally successful. I never knew that. I was struggling so hard even to sign that f?!king contract--when I was sitting there, I was contemplating, "Should I just run outta here right now? Am I making the biggest mistake of my life?" A lot of people say, "You're totally disillusioned with what money can do for people," but money never meant shit to me. There's something very passionate to me, very romantic, about living on the street in a lot of ways. Just because I really like my lifestyle back then. I was totally content, in retrospect. A lot of it has to do with the fame. I dunno, I'm trying to talk right now and just totally stuttering.

RIP: It's not like you chose music--it chose you, and you can't help it.

BJA: Yeah, it's cool when people really get it. But what a lot of people don't understand is that we're a band that's been around a lot longer than people know. And that's the thing. The difference between this and what happened between Kerplunk and Dookie--in a year, I got married, I had a kid, and I sold 11 million records worldwide. That can do something to ya, ya know?

BJA: Sometimes I think it'd be cool to just hang out with my friends, drink beer, smoke cigarettes. The more I think about it, the more I'd be really happy with that. I don't think that we're feeling quite like a band anymore--that's one problem we have. There was this certain rock 'n' roll underdog think that we always had--we always drove for something, always drove from town to town in a small van. And you know, I f?!kin' like touring like that--it's like culture shock, really, driving around in a van, setting up my amp when I get there, and playing. That's rock 'n' roll, that's what it started out as. A bunch of sweaty pigs in some tiny f?!kin' bar having a hootenanny, that's what punk rock was to me, that's what drove me to it. I love rock music in its simples, rawest form. And I think we're the only band, really, that plays rock 'n' roll.

RIP: Has all this put a strain on your old friendships? Do your pals treat you a little differently now?

BJA: When I come up to friends I haven't talked to in a while, there's a weirdness. And the ones who are really close to me don't really bring up anything, but that thing is still there; it's still in the air. And sometimes I'll just not say anything the whole time we're hanging out. I'll be totally quiet, because the only thing I'll have to talk about is my band, and I get so sick of talking about my band and myself. So I'll just be quiet, since that's the only thing there is to me, except for my son and my wife.

RIP: Pretty soon, you'll be boring everyone with slide shows--"There we are at Yosemite!"

BJA: Ha! Adrienne was telling me the other day, "When you were in there dancing with all your friends, while the band was playing, you were so happy because you were so in your element." And I've even gone as far as saying we're not a punk band anymore. But no matter what, that's still gonna stick with me forever, because I love the music, I love the energy of a new band coming out that creates this sense of urgency about 'em. I'll never be able to kick that habit. I love hangin' out with my friends who have small fanzines--kids just writing their guts out about whatever the hell's bothering 'em, and putting it on a Xerox machine and then handing it out for a quarter apiece at shows or at a party. All I wanna do is just try and work it out. I was sitting there the other day, counting all the records that the Replacements put out, stuff like that, Dan thinking how [Paul] Westerberg totally came across to his audience and did everything, everything that the wanted to do in music. He wasn't extremely successful for it, but the guy has influenced people, and a lot of 'em don't even know that they are influenced by him. All I wanna do is just write good songs and stick to it. I wanna develop--not being experimental--but go into different styles, go across my boundaries of the two-and-a-half minute punk song with a three-and-a-half minute jazz song, or maybe get into a little bit of swing or rockabilly.

RIP: With such staggering success, you could walk into Reprise and tell 'em you're doing an album of saxophone solos and they'd allow you that creative luxury.

BJA: Well, I never wanna be that experimental. I don't wanna get into synthesizers and shit like that. The thing that was cool for me with Insomniac was that I think we definitely set a foundation for ourselves, because we put out our hardest record to date, totally in-your-face all the way through, and now we're able to go anywhere we want. We can do that now--we do have that going for us. That is, if people are still interested. Which is kinda weird for me to say....

RIP: Your craft will always remain the most important thing of all, even if you're just writing for your own amusement.

BJA: Yeah. No matter what, I'm gonna be writing songs for the rest of my life. I mean, I already have a shitload of new songs right now. But I just wanna do some other things with it. We've sold a million of Insomniac so far. But I definitely want to be respected as a musician. Well, more as a songwriter than as a musician. I wanna be f?!kin' normal, is what I wanna be. The thing is, I've seen so many freaks and so many weirdos and crazy punk rockers and drunks and junkies. But for a lot of those people being weird is easy. It's so easy to be strange--the hard thing is to try to be normal. There's no such thing as normal, ya know.

RIP: How's your mom feel about all this?

BJA: She's kinda worried about me. She doesn't know what to think of everything. We have a hard time communicating with each other, just because I don't like to talk about it that much. So she feels like she has to walk on eggshells around me all the time.

RIP: You buy her anything cool once the money started rolling in?

BJA: Nah--she doesn't want anything. I've asked her. She's been living in the same house for over 20 years, and she's content living there. But I did give her a trip--she went to Hawaii, her and her boyfriend. And I think travelling is really good--if you paid for someone to travel, so they can go and explore and see some things they've never seen before. But I think that's probably where I get it from. I get so content with not having much. And then you get all this stuff, all this attention, and you don't really know what to do with it. You don't know how to channel it.

RIP: Most outrageous thing you've bought for yourself?

BJA: I got my car primered! And one thing I did do was build a home studio. So I've been recording all my friends' bands for free. I produced this band called Dead and Gone, and Social Unrest, Fetish and the Criminals. And I have this side-project called Pinhead Gunpowder--nothing's up with it right now, but we played at the beginning of '94 a few times. RIP: Sounds like you've got more than enough pressure valves to let off the steam. Still, do you worry about death?

BJA: Yeah, I do. But I have too many reasons to stick around. One is my son and my wife. And I don't feel like I'm finished yet. I'm not done, ya know? And the beauty of it is that death is forever and your problems aren't. And that's why I'm talking about my bad shit, because you vent that, you get it off your chest and you can move on to something else. There's gotta be a positive side to all this--so you just sort of try and dig it out. Get rid of all the bad--out with the bad air, in with the good air.

RIP: You said about Green Day that you think your "bandwagon is coming to a close and all that's gonna be left is just a band. Hopefully." So then will you start writing happy songs?

BJA: I thought about writing a totally sarcastic song called "I'm So Goddamn Happy," just talking about how happy I am. Actually, I'd like to put out a double record--I'd like to put out tons of music. But I never wanna become an egomaniac. I just wanna keep things down to earth, so I think it's really important for us to take a long break after all this stuff. We just put out two records back to back, one year after another, and now we can sit back and work on ourselves as people again. So we don't parody ourselves. And it's so hard to be a father and a musician at the same time. If I get into one thing and I pay close attention to it, like if I'm with Joey and I start neglecting my music, then I feel like I should play more often. So I start playing my music, and then I'm going, "Am I neglecting Joey?" So it becomes hard to do everything at the same time.

BJA: I wanna create a very mellow and sound atmosphere for him, because I don't wanna make any mistakes for him--I want him to be able to make his own mistakes. And even when it comes to swearing--I don't cuss in front of my kid. I'd rather him get it from some dirty-mouthed kid at school. Then at least I'd know, I could go "Thank God--my kid is in a real world and he's learning these things from his surroundings." That'd be a good thing. Because the best things you ever learn are the things you learn in kindergarten.

Finally, after more than an hour worth of gut-spilling, Armstrong suddenly observes four brace-faced girls, each no more than 12 years old, idling over by the cash register. They're there on the pretext of getting change. In reality, they just want to ogle punk icon and pin-up darling Billie Joe, stare at those caterpillar eyebrows and chiselled cheekbones up close. Another oh-my-gawd event. "I gotta go--it's gettin' weird," the reluctant rocker whispers, literally leaping up from the booth. "I can feel eyeballs all over me already...." And as fast as that, he's gone. "Was that...was that...B-B-B-B-Billie Joe?" stammers one swooner. "No," says the waitress, with a subtle smile. "That was just some guy who usually eats here alone, nobody famous at all. You know, just an average guy." A little white lie to herd the young 'uns out. But nevertheless the truth.

#i know it wasn't healthy for him #but i miss when he would use interviews as free therapy #the discussion about how he hates playing bigger shows is interesting #obviously he figured it out because i think he genuinely likes playing arenas/stadiums now #i wonder how he did that #like did he get tips from other rock stars #or did he just work thru his emotional baggage about selling out #article #interview #articles

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i-write-hurt-not-comfort · 4 years

Text

Pandora Hearts characters when they're on lockdown

sooo by reasonably popular demand, here they are! needless to say, this is a modern AU kinda thing. i had fun making these and projecting on everyone with my obsession with tiktok.

warnings: mentions of drugs, coronavirus related stuff

Oz-

• spends hours watching coronavirus tiktoks

• makes tiktoks all day

• learns every tiktok dance

• goes on really long walks for his exercise

• living off pot noodle

• takes up one of those treehouse recovery projects in his garden; uploads the whole thing on tiktok

• gets bored if he isn't doing something for even 5 minutes

Alice-

• literally hasn't left the house since lockdown started

• "someone else can use my one exercise per day because i don't want it"

• doesn't get up until 2pm

• watches Netflix all day

• living off takeaway because she can't be bothered to go out and buy food

Gilbert-

• isn't very good at staying inside all day but also gets anxious to go outside for too long in case the police tackle him for staying out too long

• doesn't go out to buy food until he literally has nothing left

• learns how to cook every dish in every cook book

• doesn't sleep at any point

Vincent-

• no one knows where he is

• "fuck the lockdown"

• finds creative excuses to go out a see people

• probably a drug dealer

• cuts up dolls when he's bored

• he's the one hoarding all the toilet paper, sells them for £20 a roll

Break-

• is the one making tiktoks which make fun of the 'one exercise per day' rule

• despite that, he doesn't go out

• dyes his hair a new colour every three days

• bakes really extravagant cakes and just lives off them

• can't leave the house due to a weakened immune system so forces Reim to do all his shopping for him

• stocked up on booze before the lockdown, and is now getting drunk every night

Reim-

• somehow gets more stressed out by working from home

• covers for Break on all the conference calls bc Break is still asleep

• has strict routine

• goes out for a run every day, within the allocated exercise time

• only goes out shopping for the absolute essentials

• keeps 5 types of hand sanitiser on him at all times

Sharon-

• life proceeds as normal

• is totally chill about everything

• calls Break daily to make sure he's still like... alive

• brings Reim and Break care packages and leaves them on their doorsteps

• goes on walks every day and starts a photography account on Instagram

• converts her conservatory into an art room and takes up painting

Elliot-

• lives with Leo because i said so

• gets super stir crazy and goes cycling or running for the max allowed time

• re-reads the whole of Holy Knight like 5 times

• gets into writing Holy Knight fanfictions because he has nothing better to do

• has to do all the shopping because Leo refuses to leave the house

Leo-

• spends all day reading

• refuses to buy a kindle so the Amazon delivery guy has to bring a new parcel of books to their house every day

• makes all the coronavirus memes

• honestly he is perfectly fine not having to leave the house

• would be living off pot noodle and coffee if it wasn't for Elliot forcing him to eat real food

• is definitely vitamin D deficient

The 100-years-ago Baskervilles squad (Levi, Oswald, Levi, and Jack, all living together)-

• they all become tiktok famous

• basically having a laugh the whole of lockdown

• open their own private pub in their kitchen

• stocked up on booze and pot before the lockdown

• get stoned every night

• constantly play drinking games and board games

• play Pandemic board game every afternoon; have yet to win

• one of them is the designated shopper each week

• they go on walks every few days, but are pretty good staying indoors most of the week

• Oswald and Jack have one (1) argument per day

~~ stay safe and stay indoors! :) ~~

#pandora hearts #ph #pandora hearts headcanons #my hcs #lockdown headcanons #quarantine #tw covid 19

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3monthsineurope · 3 years

Text

May 21, 2021

I’m heading to upstate New York! I woke up around 6 at Mom and Dad’s on Camano Island. I drove down the night before so Mom could take me to the airport. I washed my face and Mom got everything ready for her day of biking and kayaking after dropping me off at SeaTac. We went down to the store and got gas and said “hi” to Dad. I put a new macrame hanger up for sale, and we were on our way!

I was hoping to not be anxious, but alas, around Smokey Point I definitely started feeling anxious. We stopped twice, just so I could get out of the car and have fresh air. I ended up getting sick in the car (don’t worry, I have sick bags for this reason, hahah). I almost immediately felt better. It makes sense that I was feeling anxious, I was going on my first plane since July—so 10 months had passed! Mom is absolutely amazing when I’m anxious. She rubbed my back and talked me through the anxiety. I did my easy makeup routine of brows and mascara and then we arrived at SeaTac! We had no traffic—woo! Mom took the express lanes.

I got all my stuff together and hugged Mom; I really don’t know what I would do without her! I went into the airport and dropped my bag with Delta. I was going to visit my friends Lauren and Eli, a married couple. I went to their wedding a few years ago. You might be wondering why I was checking a bag, as I usually just carry on. Well, Lauren had a special request. Apparently, they don’t sell Jaunita’s chips in New York? So she paid for me to check my bag, so that I could bring some chips for Eli—they’re his favorite! So I bought four bags of chips and put three in my carry on (so that’s super light!) and one in my checked bag with all my stuff. Eli was going to be so surprised!

After checking my bag, I went to security for TSA Pre Check. It’s a perk I got with my Global Entry card! Last year I had to have an interview with Border Patrol in Blaine, to make sure I wasn’t a threat. I was through security in under five minutes. We had left Camano around 7:15, and even with the two stops we made, we arrived before 9 at the airport, so I had some time to spare. I found my gate, then headed to the Delta Sky Lounge. It was my first time in the lounge—it was the biggest one I’ve been in, yet! I get to use lounges around the world for free with my American Express Platinum card, which is so awesome! (I had to cancel my Chase card when they wouldn’t refund me when our airline to Mexico went out of business. I think I definitely upgraded with the Amex!)

I hung out in the lounge for over an hour. It was huge, the lounge had an upstairs! I downloaded some songs and podcasts so I was stocked with music, podcasts, books, shows, and movies, so I wouldn’t be bored on the plane. I had a bowl of Cheerios (shaped like hearts!), a mimosa, and a breakfast sandwich, all for free!

Around 10:30, I went to my gate. I paid for a basic ticket, so I had my seat assigned to me. I was given seat 30A, a window! It showed the flight as being full, but I ended up having an empty middle seat, which was so nice! The guy sitting in my row was a southern guy, heading back home. He got annoyed when the flight attendant told him to pull his mask over his nose, ugh.

Not surprisingly, I slept a lot on the plane. For about three hours I snoozed. At one point a man nearby yelled because he was watching live sports, haha. I didn’t even get the first snack or drink. It was really bright outside, so the cabin was dimmed and almost everyone had their windows closed, so it was perfect for snoozing. For the rest of my flight to Atlanta (about another hour and a half), I played around on my phone. I played a geography game, and signed into the Delta wifi to text Ingvar and Haley. We landed before 7, which was nice, because my next flight to Rochester was scheduled to leave at 8. Did you know Atlanta is the busiest airport in the world, based on the number of travelers who pass through it. We deplaned, and I took a train to terminal C. I called Ingvar and I explained to him how to mist and water my plants. I have an app that tells me when to mist, water, fertilize, and care for my plants. I usually need to do 3-9 tasks a day to keep them happy and healthy, so Ingvar was going to need to step up and become a plant dad on this trip, haha. I have 26 plants in the house! It was good to talk to him, because he wasn’t awake when I was anxious or at the airport. Thanks for your help, babes!

My seat was assigned for the next flight at the gate. I made it to my gate and saw I was assigned 19B. I walked on the plane to find it a smaller plane—two seats on the left, and three on the right. So my B seat was an isle, not a middle, woo! Also, I was assigned a exit row, so extra room! I didn’t have time to get a snack or anything on my layover, but at least I made my flight! My seat mate was a nice, older man. He was hard of hearing but told me he was seeing his family for the first time since pre-covid! We saw the sunset out the window, which was so nice! On the flight I talked to him a bit, and also wrote some for my blog.

We landed right before 10. Woo, I was in Rochester! We deplaned and I grabbed my bag from baggage claim. Lauren and Eli live about seven minutes from the airport, so when I got out, Lauren drove up and got me! I hadn’t seen either of them since they moved to New York two years ago. Lauren drove us to their place. Eli was doing chores me waiting for us. It was so nice to see them! I opened my bag and Eli was so surprised with all the chips I brought! Shout out to Lauren for the chips idea!

We chatted for a bit and they gave me a tour of their apartment. Their place is much bigger than Ingvar and I’s place. We made plans for the next day to go to Niagara Falls, then decided we should go to bed. We all got ready for bed and I got cozy on a nice air mattress in the huge living room. It was only around midnight in Rochester, but 9pm in Seattle, so I wasn’t toooo tired. I did fall asleep, but needed to use the bathroom around 2:30 am. The bathroom is in their bedroom, so I snuck in there. I didn’t want to wake them up, so on my way out of the room, I didn’t turn on any lights. I ran right into the edge of the door. It actually hurt so bad! I have a bruise on my boob! I accidentally woke up Eli, but told him I was okay. Woops! I slept pretty well the rest of the night. :]

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lanaisnotwool · 4 years

Video

youtube

407 Dollar Cost Averaging Is a Lie

http://moneyripples.com/2020/07/13/407-dollar-cost-averaging-is-a-lie/

Chris Miles, the "Cash Flow Expert and Anti-Financial Advisor," is a leading authority on how to quickly free up and create cash flow for thousands of his clients, entrepreneurs, and others internationally! He’s an author, speaker, and radio host that has been featured in US News, CNN Money, Bankrate, Entrepreneur on Fire, and spoken to thousands getting them fast financial results.

Listen to our Podcast here:

https://www.blogtalkradio.com/moneyripples/2020/06/10/407--dollar-cost-averaging-is-a-lie

Shoot me an email at:

[email protected]

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

Hello, my fellow Ripplers! This is Chris Miles. Your Cash Flow Expert and Anti-Financial Advisor. Hey guys! Welcome you out for a wonderful show. A show that's for you and about you. Those of you that work so hard for your money and you're ready for your money to start working harder for you. Now! You want that freedom. That cash flow. That prosperity. Today! Not a bazillion years from now, but right now. So you can have that life that you love because you work because you want to. Not because you have to. Be with those you love. Doing whatever the heck you want. But see guys, you want more than just your own comfort convenience, because as Ripplers you want to create a ripple effect in the lives of others, because as you prosper, you can help others do the same. You can show up stronger, more confident and relaxed. And you have the resources and the means to bless more lives.

And guys, that's what I'm here to do. And guys, it's not just about showing you how to make more money, right? That giving you money does not solve your problems, but showing you how to prosper, how to understand those principles of prosperity. That is a ripple effect I'm trying to create for you guys. And I appreciate you guys being a part of this movement, creating a ripple effect in your lives, which allows me to create a ripple effect through you too. And we just keep making this world a better place.

Here is a reminder. Check out our website, MoneyRipples.com. There's blogs on there. It's got videos and we've got even, you know, our Beyond Rice & Beans e-book. You can download for free. So check that out.

So today guys, I want to just express some gratitude and teach a very important concept with everything going on. One, I appreciate those of you have been reaching out to me. Especially because just almost every time you guys reach out, it's someone I can actually help. And this is exactly why I kind of came out of retirement again. Right? This is why I never fully retire because you guys give me meaning you guys give me this ability to keep doing more. And yeah, I love doing the infinite banking stuff with you guys too. Like that's amazing. And I love that I can bring something unique and powerful there that even other infinite makers aren't doing. But on top of that, when I get some of you guys that say, Hey, I think we're a perfect fit for you right now to help take our money or do something with the assets we have and make something of it to create passive income. And man, like you guys have been reaching out almost every time.

It's like, yeah, I can serve you and make a massive impact in your life. And it's awesome! So I appreciate you guys that have been reaching out. As a reminder, if you think you're in that position where you say, Hey, I've got at least a hundred thousand sitting around, or maybe I got a ton of equity in this house. Or maybe if you got a lot of depts. And you say, I've got some resource here, but I'm not sure how to make this all work. Shoot me an email. [email protected] and let's check it out. See if there's something you can do in your situation.

But today I want to get into Concept of Dollar Cost Averaging, right? And this is going to be heralded as, dollar crisis energy is going to be already been heralded as the hero for investing, right? I heard this months ago and I've even brought it up again in another podcast episode that we did. About, you know, how a dollar cost averaging is a lie. And I want to go into that and even just emphasize it a little bit deeper because the whole concept in cost dollar cost averaging is, they try to play off the whole buy low sell high. Which by the way, that is a true principle. Like you do want to buy low, sell high, or I shouldn't even say that's true principle. That's more of a strategy than a principle. But overall it does work, right? You do want to buy something at low. And of course you're going to sell it, sell it at a higher price. Right? But here's the thing is that when they tell them a dollar cost, averaging, they say, Hey, the market is going down by more.

Here's the flaw. When the market's going up, what are they telling you? Buy more. Now this is never, Hey, you know what, right now the market's going up. Don't buy anything. Right? That's the fundamental problem is that this is a sales tactic. This sales tactic has been used for you to basically get into the largest Ponzi scheme in the world, which is also known as the stock market. Right? And why do I say it's a Ponzi scheme? Because people say, well, come on there's assets. First off, you really don't have any assets. Yeah. You have shares of a company that already went public. That already made their money off of selling it off. Right? They keep their own shares that just right off of your off, you know, basically they, they they can increase in value too, based on investors and what they're doing.

But essentially you're kind of making more money because more people throwing money into it. Which is also a Ponzi scheme does. People throw money in, right? And you basically get paid from investors money. That's one of the common traits of a Ponzi scheme is that you're not making money because the assets paying you, you're making money because people are throwing money into it. Guess why the stocks go up? Not necessarily because the company's anymore valuable. Because people are throwing money in. Right? Another problem is that, you know, do you really have an asset? The truth is no. I mean, even though you might say, Hey, I got this piece of paper. It says, I have something. You really don't have squat. How you really aren't a very, you're not as significant shareholder in the first place. You think you're a little bit of, money's going to make a difference in that company?

Not at all. You're just gambling with money. You are purely a gambler when you have your money in the stock market. And so I know that's the common thing. And I know it's a sacred cow for a lot of people, but the truth is the stock market is not the place to be. And dollar cost averaging is actually the very concept to also prove that. Hey, here's, let me show you now, those either watching this video, you'll want to watch this right? If you get concepts, you know, you can create images in your mind, this will work. But I have this sheet and I showed this before. In another video. This sheet is the sheet I showed to my clients back in my traditional financial advisor days. Now this was a very useful sheet, especially in Y2K, which is when I came in, right?

Because the market was tanking. Especially 2002. That was the year I came in and that was the biggest losing market. And so we would show people, listen, when the market's going down, you want to buy more. You don't want to stop buying and jump out of the stocks. You want to buy more of this. And so I show this example. So this one, the first there's three different graphs. The first one shows you putting in $200 a month. This shows you just what kind of demographic I was dealing with. Back in those days, you're just throwing in $200 a month and their stock price started at $10, right? Or the mutual fund price start at $10 a share. So at $10 a share, you bought 20 shares because 200 divided by 10 20 shares, right? The goal of this concept is to try and buy as many shares as possible.

And then the, hopefully the price goes up right? Now, the next month you buy it at $12 a share, basically over the course of six months, he goes from 10 to $20. You bought $2 increments per share along the way. In the end, so it's $200 a month. It went from 10 to 12 to 14, to 16, to 18 to 20. Over the six months you bought 85 shares. Now 85 times $20 a share because it jumped, it doubled in price in six months puts you at 1700 bucks. Now here's the concept that I show people and say, look, now if the market was at $10 a share, but then it dropped to $8 the next month, and you're still putting in 200 bucks a month. Then down to five. Then it's set at five for another month. Then went back up to eight. And they only went back up to 10, only broke even.

Now, after doing all of that, you ended up buying 170 shares. You bought double the amount of shares of the one that was going up in price. Why? Because you bought it at a discount, right? Here's the thing. If the value was 1700 bucks, same exact value as the one that doubled in price. So even though the price stayed the same overall, you still made as much money as if it had doubled. Right? In an upward trending market. The last one, the last one of course is the most impressive one I'd show people. And this was a huge seller during Y2K. The last one shows that it started at $10 a share, right? You bought $200 a month or $200 a month. You put $200 to $10 share you buy 20 shares. The next month went down to eight. So now you're buying about 24 shares or 25 shares.

Then it went down to $5. You're like, whew, I just bought now 40 shares. And then it went down to $1 for two months in a row. So basically went down 90%. So you're buying a $1 a share. That means you buy 200 shares in one month, 200 shares again the next month. And then it only recovered up to $4, which means you still bought 50 shares. So in total now instead of 85 or 170 shares, you bought 535 shares. Now time's up by four bucks. You have 2,140, which is over 400 bucks more than the other two examples. And again, like, it's easier to see this on the video. If you're visual, the point is you bought at a discount, right? That's the thing. Here's the problem. Here is the big problem. Because again, if you're going to teach a concept, make sure it works.

Make sure that you're going to actually question what you're teaching here. Because what happens to stock market overall? Which of these three graphs is the stock market over time? Generally speaking right now, it goes up and down all over the place. Generally speaking, the market goes up over time. This is like graph number one. Sure. Doubles in price. But the truth is over time, you're really just buying on an up market. Meaning it gets more and more expensive all the time. You are not buying low. You just keep buying higher and higher. So your money actually buys less and less over time. In the other example. Yeah, sure. It goes down and comes up. Now this might look like the last four months, right? If you go from February to now, June, now these four months, it's done almost exactly this. Like the markets now come back up to where it wasn't about late February as of right now.

Right? So people are getting really excited. They said, see, Chris dollar cost averaging works. I was able to buy it when it got down cheap. When it went down like 30%, you know, when the market went down 30, almost 35%, the low, right. So I bought on sale. So look what happened. It would have been just like the market went up, but no, I've actually bought some for cheap. That's true. But here's the thing, guys. The more likely scenario at least you're looking in the next few years is actually looking closer to graph number three, when the market keeps going down. Sure. Short term, we see this little bounce going up, but guys, just the other day they announced. They announced that the, that we're in a recession. Like it's official. We are in a recession. Why did the market go right back up to where it was?

Doesn't that seem fishy to you? Why is it that, you know, we've had massive unemployment, right? We have, so think of February. February, we just heard about corona virus being out there. Like it was starting to show up a little bit in New York state. But for the most part, it was, there was a Chinese, remember people were calling it the Chinese virus, right? And then people were saying, that's rude! You shouldn't call it Chinese. Like it's not a Chinese virus. Okay. Whatever! It was a virus that we heard, first heard about starting in China. Right? So in February, just four months ago, this was hardly even a topic. It was, it was just like news of something out there. The market was about where it is now. It was even a little bit higher than it is now barely higher. Right? But now we're in a place where there's massive unemployment. People aren't quite going back to work.

Like we had hoped. Now people are starting to go back to work, but there's a lot of people not. Or worse yet. What they didn't put an emphasis on reporting is that, wages didn't go up over the last year. Wages actually went down 0.1%. So even though people haven't been hired back, they're not getting hired back, making more money. And over time you need that to happen. Or we're in big trouble because if wages go down, that's a big issue. So if we're not seeing wages go up and in fact, even they start to go down, sure. You might have a job. If you're not making enough to make ends meet, you start cutting back everything. And that affects all the other companies too. And they all make less money as well. Again, whatever stops money from exchanging is what's happening. Now, the government's trying to artificially boost it up by throwing money at you and at companies and everything else, keep people afloat. Which, cool!

I see that short term making a difference. You know that they're trying to just like a plane that's crashing. They're trying to slow the crash down by saying, Hey, let's put a little parachute on this thing as it's coming to the ground, you know, maybe it won't crash as hard. But it doesn't stop the fact that, for the most part, these are still monies that have to be paid back that are going to cut into future profits. So all this is happening. We're actually in an official recession, but still the market's bounced right back up. This should be concerning to you. Now this could be an opportunity because this could be saying, Hey, at least I made some of these losses back. If you have money in the market, right? At least you could say there's a silver lining. But I can tell you this, is that it makes zero sense for the market to stay up or even go a lot higher than where it is now.

Now some people will say, if Trump gets reelected, maybe it will. But again, we don't know. We don't know what's going to happen. We don't know. At what point will investors say, cool. We just made a bunch of money by, they actually did do this very thing, right? They did this dollar cost averaging, but in a different way. They looked at it from a very short term perspective, getting out short term. Do you think that there are people out there both in, you know, successful investors, right? And that, and now when I talk about investors, there are people that actually buy into companies that are real investors. If you're just gambling in the markets, you're not really investor, you're just gambler, but there are very experienced gamblers out there. I know because I, I taught people to gamble in the markets. I actually taught people how to trade stocks and options at one point for several years.

Here's the thing is that I would be also be telling people like if, if profits coming back up watching for any sign to sell out right away to take out profits. Like if you're doing a swing trade, you know, when you talk about swing trading, short term, hold on to a stock framework from a few days. And they worked for two weeks, right? Not much more than a few months. You're gonna start taking your money out and cashing it out now. And then waiting for things to shift and figure out where the trend is actually going in the market. There's a lot of uncertainty going on. You don't want to be trading on news and things like that. And a lot of news is affecting what's going on in the markets. So guys, there's a lot of reason to sell out of the market right now.

In fact, everything that's talking about buying, it seems a little bit, doesn't it seem a little bit fake to you? Doesn't it seem like it goes against, our actual common sense? And yes, there'll be people out there say Chris, but here's the thing. People are turning off emotion. What they foresee in the future. They see us making this V-shape recovery. They see this and that. Sure they do. But guess what? Even the feds don't even have that optimistic of a view. Maybe, the news and the hype they're trying to use is a great way to make some profits and then take their profits and run while you're left holding the bag. As you watch your money, disappear into oblivion. Do you think that's possible? Here's the real point. Either way, you have no clue what's going on. You are just gambling with your money.

When you keep it in the market, you might try to hold on to it. But here's human nature. Human nature says even when the market is going down, just like you probably did a few months ago and the markets are going down on March. Did you bail out? A good chunk of you? Some of you did. I know cause I talked to some of you, but a good chunk of you, didn't, some of you guys wrote it. You wrote it down 35%. I'm thinking, well, it's got to pop back up. Cause that was ridiculous. Yeah, you're right. That dropped way too fast. Right? It's an unlikely for something to drop that fast and not pop back up a little bit. They even call it a dead cat bounce. You know when there's no reason, it's just because it falls too fast. Just like if it goes up too fast, it has to pop back down.

There has to be balance. Same thing you probably held on to that whole wild ride. Didn't you? If you did, you're going to do it again. I guarantee it. You're going to end up saying, well, it might come back up again. You never know, like, Ooh, that came down pretty fast, but you know, it might come back up. And that's what every person has said in every recession. They said it in Y2K and they watched their retirement money disappear. And then they had to wait for their money to come back. And then when it came back. Almost came back. Then we hit the next recession, the great recession. Right? When they're like, okay, my money's almost there. Oh, I got hit again. And it wasn't till about 2015, 2016 that you finally said great. The money I had in 2000, if you didn't contribute anything to it, right?

You just let it ride. Finally. By about 2016, you said, I got my money back. That's like over 15 years guys, that you're waiting for your money to come back. That is ridiculous. Okay. Now again, I'm not saying you'd go and sell off everything. Again, I'm not going to give you those kinds of recommendations on the air or even off the air necessarily. I just want you to be fully aware of what human nature does, which is human nature does not want to sell when things go down. Human nature wants to hold on and hope that money comes back. Cause they'll, cause you'll always say the lie. You'll still lie to yourself saying, well, I don't lose money until I sell. That's true. And yet that's the very deception that keeps people losing money. Secondly, you think you're buying cheap when you buy it when it goes down. The truth is you don't. Because the best thing you could have done in this example here, right?

Is not keep buying when it goes down. If you actually knew it was, you knew what you're doing in the market, you would wait until it hit $1 a share, Hey, maybe it was even $3 a share. Let's just use that example. Let's just say that you save it for money for three, four months, right? That $200 month, you did not put in the market. But then you said I have 800 bucks now over four months, I'm going to buy a $1 a share. That's the a hundred shares. Even if you didn't do anything else and you just did that. And then maybe you bought the next month. He was like, woo. All right. It's awesome. So you bought no 200 shares. Now you're at a thousand. And then you pocket it 200 bucks. You just left it there. He said, Oh, it's coming back up.

Maybe I'll buy. But maybe I won't. Well, let's just say you did buy. Let's just say you did $4. You bought 50 more shares. That's 1,050 shares. Times four bucks. You're now at $4,200. More than double the little bounce. If you just followed it. Or get really just yeah. More than. Yup! Double. Double of what you would have done. If you just kept buying all the way down. Guys, buy low, sell high. That means you don't buy when it's tanking. You wait until after it's tanked. And everybody says the market's bad. That's when maybe if you're looking to buy in the market, that could be the time. Understand that opportunity happens. When usually people say don't buy this. This is a bad idea. That's usually the best time to buy. When everybody's saying, Hey, stay in the market. It's the best time to be in it.

That's usually the time not to be in it. You know, now there's, there's definitely voices saying, Hey, we don't know what's going on. Here's why the market's going up. Because again, they already factored in everything that's going on right now. They expected this. That's the point guys based on expectations. That means whenever there's weird, crazy news that comes out. There's no, almost no time to react. That's when they're going to buy or sell. So if there's news, that's unexpected, right? Then people buy in the market goes up. When there's news, unexpected, that's bad. Like not just good news, unexpected, but bad news unexpected. Then it goes down. We don't know what the heck is going to happen. This is the thing you are gambling. You have no clue. This is why every financial advisor, and I was taught to say this as a traditional financial advisor was, do you not buy anything?

Right? Like don't, don't try to time the market don't do any of that stuff. Just keep putting money in the market. Blindly. Just keep doing it on a regular basis. Cause you don't have the time, the training or the temperament to understand it. So just keep pulling the money in trust us as advisors, trust us that we'll guide you along the way. Guys. This is how you lose money. This is why middle America is still broke. If you want to be like everybody else and say, man, I haven't really made as much as I had thought I would in the market. And you probably have already been saying this for years. You want to keep doing that? What's the definition of insanity? Doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result. Guys. I hope you understand that dollar cost averaging. Hell has a half-truth and those are the biggest lies.

The truth is buy low, sell high. The lie is that you should be buying all the time. And remember the market goes up over time anyways. Why would we keep buying what's more expensive? Why don't we want to wait? So like you're deep into a recession before you buy anything? Save up your money, then buy. If you're going to do that philosophy. If you're to trust actually what advisors have been saying. Buy at the bottom. Or buy near the bottom, when everybody's been selling out like crazy. Then maybe, and that's usually takes by the way, at least a year or two before it hits bottom. That's usually the case. It's usually takes at least a few years for you hit bottom. Just like I said, a few months ago, don't think we've hit bottom. Don't think that little dip of 35% was bottom. That was just a test.

The test is, did you win or fail? Did you hang on rationalizing? If you did and you failed. You failed the test cause you will do it again. It will be more costly the second time around. So guys, I hope this is enlightening for you. I hope this opens your eyes and gets you that at least ponder and think about what you're actually doing because there are many, many better ways to be able to create money and create better passive income than just gambling and something that really no one knows what's going to happen. No one knows how it's going to happen. What it's going to look like a wind is going to be. If we had a crystal ball, Awesome! But guess what guys, this is not back to the future. You do not have morning Mcflys, a little book that he bought in the future to be able to gamble and make money. You didn't have that guys. You have day to day. Are you going to gamble your wealth even to the point of possibly losing it all? Or are you going to actually go for something that's certain that's been proven for years and years? That is my challenge to you guys. Again, if you have questions, shoot me an email, [email protected]. I hope we make it a wonderful and prosperous week. And we'll see you later.

#Chris Miles #Anti-financial Advisor #Cash flow #Cash flow Expert #Debts #Entrepreneur #Financial Freedom #Money Ripples

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0poole · 4 years

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Bloons

Honestly the entire Bloons series has been some of my favorite flash/other-than-flash games out there, and I feel like it’s worth bringing it up since I just crossed the 365 day threshold for BTD6. Maybe in the past, but nowadays I definitely don’t feel like I ever play a game daily for a year straight. Chances are it was a little desperate when I first started playing, but as of now literally every single day I open the game up and play the daily challenge just for the sake of it. Plus, since the chest technically resets every 9 hours or so instead of 24, I could’ve cheesed it a bit, but I didn’t. That’s a pure 365 days of playing the game.

And even apart from that, the entire Bloons series has been in my mind since the first one and my middle/elementary school Coolmath Games days. Even though the puzzle, pure form of Bloons wasn’t as much in my interest, the staying power of the Tower Defense version is crazy. Flash Tower Defense games are plenty, and yet the one with the stupid monkeys throwing darts at balloons was the best.

I went back semi-recently and played a round of each BTD, and I gotta say, it was fun seeing where everything came from. 1 is absolute garbage, forcing you to just spam Super Monkeys if you want to get anywhere, but a good starting point obviously. I honestly know nothing about the people creating these games, but obviously it wasn’t made by a AAA crew, so you can’t expect everything to be put in place in the first iteration. 2 and 3 feel much better, but obviously not much after being so used to the modern stuff, and 4 and 5 are the ones that really shine the most, apart from 6 obviously.

I definitely was one of the types of people who initially reacted poorly to the artstyle change of 5 and 6, but I’ve definitely turned over. I don’t know if the whole BTD community rioted at that point, but I at least was like “ew, they’re cute now” when I first saw it. Thankfully I turned over, and realized the current designs are the absolute best out of the entire franchise. Also, I love their cuteness, as I love cuteness in general, so basically just call it character growth. Even though 2D art always is more interesting for games than 3D in general, the entire art direction of 6 is genuinely really good, being so bright and cartoony (at least before the fifth stages of upgrades) really fits the cartoony idea of monkeys popping bloons. 5, and the entire franchise before it, really is proof enough how horrible a pure top-down perspective is. On the title screen, you can see what the monkeys are supposed to look like, but in-game they literally look like weird blobby scorpions. Even though in the back of my mind I knew what they were supposed to look like, the pure top-down perspective completely ruined the image. Not to mention the OG designs for the monkeys was really weird and bad anyway. Even if you wanted a goofy fat kind of monkey, there are a million better ways to achieve that than how it used to be. Again, of course, they weren’t exactly AAA game-level quality, so you can’t expect such perfect character design.

But, oh my god. One of the things about this game that must’ve kept me through 6 was the character designs. If you know anything about me, it’s that I love a good character design, and 6 is full of them. It’s so interesting to see how they extrapolate the main concepts of each tower into their three different paths. The generic Superman-based monkey can turn into a Batman-based monkey, a Terminator-based monkey, and a fucking ancient god of the sun. The seemingly chill Druid can smite people with the power of Zeus, become the much more expected forest-based type, but also turn into this completely out-there being of pure wrath. I could go on and on about that, but needless to say for so many of them look and are designed so great. I think the tower with the coolest level 5s of the game is the Ninja. It’s hard to explain, but they all just look really cool while also not deviating too much from the cartoony-cute art style. I think my all-time favorite level 5 is the top path of the Wizard, mostly just because he looks really cool, but also because the parts of the path before it show him aging and growing out his beard. I also have to say the 2-0-3/4 Wizard also looks exactly my style, with the dark purply-ness and gold rims. Also, if you haven’t noticed, the Magic monkeys are my favorite type, and not just because their signature color is purple. That’s part of it though. Magic is also just cool in general. My main RPG-class of choice is almost always a mage/wizard.

Also, the heroes are also really fun. As someone who often creates species of aliens/monsters, I always feel like I want to create a dedicated character out of them no matter what, so I feel like the heroes are basically just that. And, of course they have good designs too, and of course as you can probably guess my favorite is Adora, basically being the same thing as the 5-0-0 Wizard with the Sun God aesthetic. Since she has her own stage and a special interaction with the True Sun God/Vengeful Monkey, I think she’s a pretty big deal anyway. I will say that I highly slept on Gwen, but then for Easter they gave her the Harlegwen skin and I fell in love. It’s insanely good stuff. Apart from looks, it does feel nice to have some sort of interchangeable tower that you basically just place and forget about, aside from using their powers. Plus, it makes a really easy type of thing to periodically add to the game to keep things fresh, even with the skins in general. It definitely is much better than the stuff they had in 5, where you had to use Monkey Money to buy each one, and you could only use them once per stage. Obviously 6 has the extra powers to help you out, but they feel much more optional and cheaper than the heroes of 5. Since I barely buy anything with Monkey Money to begin with, and since I’ve obviously had 365 chest openings, and AND since I barely use them to begin with, I’m completely stocked up. I only ever use the farmer and sometimes the tech bot if I get lazy. I did use the portable lake I got from my 365th chest opening after I got it, just for the sake of celebration. That’s literally how my mind goes.

6 does have the slight tinge of a mobile game artstyle, but in this case it’s really just better. I’m not into mobile games, and especially not the generic artstyle they have, but it is really pleasing to look at anyway. It did chase me off before I converted, though. That, and the fact you had to buy it now. Like a true gamer, I was put off by the fact that something that was once expected to be free now has to be paid for. But, then, I realized that the entire franchise has provided much more than 10$ worth of entertainment to me throughout time, so it was extremely fair to pay that. It is still kinda weird how 5 has to be paid for for mobile, when it is just free online, though. However, unlike a true gamer I think the microtransactions of the game are extremely fair. Considering they just give you things that you don’t need, and can get for free otherwise, I think it’s completely fine to have them. It sounds bad on the surface to have to pay for the game and have there still be microtransactions in it, but since they’re completely optional there’s no good reason to hate it. I think people assume that means that you have to pay for the game, and pay extra for different major parts of the game, and that sours their opinion on everything. Gamers are a strange, irrationally angry breed. I do hate using my phone for pretty much anything, though, so once I bought 6 on Steam I haven’t played it on my phone since. It’s just so much better in every single way...

I bought the game around the time of one of my family’s semi-annual trips to England because I thought it’d help when we were traveling between wi-fi spots, and it really did wonders for me then. Probably looked like some asshole teen to strangers who don’t know I barely ever use my phone for anything, since I was playing it so much. My sister even saw me playing it and bought it for herself, although I don’t know how much she’s played since then.

For the sake of stats, I have 235 hours played of it on Steam alone, and in game I’m level 115. My most complete map is Monkey Meadow with all medals except CHIMPS, which I put the effort in because it’s the default map, and definitely not because it’s an easy/good map because it’s just kinda bad compared to so many other ones. My Dart monkey has a total of 4 million XP, and the only towers that haven’t crossed a million are the Ice, Heli, Alchemist, Druid, and Spike factory monkeys/tower. I think the farthest I’ve actually gotten round-wise is 200 once or twice, but I don’t remember if I’ve actually beaten that level and continued on or lost there. I think I might’ve gotten past it once, but just sort of lost interest in micro-managing my powers and let myself lose. I probably got there once after that and lost on it. As someone who didn’t look up the optimal strategies for things until very recently, I think that’s pretty good. It definitely feels like the kind of game where if you know the best strategies, you can literally just replicate that over and over and win really easily, but that just sounds kinda boring. Since I pretty much only do daily challenges nowadays, it forces me to use a limited amount of towers, so I either go much farther because it forces me to build up less towers more, or it makes sure I can’t even pass round 90 because it just was made to get you to round 40 and that’s it. When I have the full range of towers to use, I feel like I try to get the instant satisfaction of getting a new tower to increase DPS instead of making the few towers I have/need reach their full potential, which seems to be the better option. I also don’t really sell anything when I don’t have a limited number of monkeys to place, which I think is also a good strategy if you can eliminate the major money loss in it, since it can give you a massive boost in cash to get you the better upgrades quicker. I may or may not try to learn the strategies to wipe the rest of the game clean eventually, but right now I’m fine with just doing the dailies.

But yeah, that’s like the whole thing with Bloons Tower Defense and me. Something something reject modernity, embrace monke, or whatever the kids these days are saying.

I will say that if I didn’t have so many OCs to work with and could just pump out animated shorts on the reg, I’d love to do some sort of Bloons shorts. They’d all lean into the ridiculousness of it all. Like, the first one could do the 2001 thing with the monkeys learning to use sticks, and as the main one is bashing the ground with one or whatever and throws it up, an ancient, leathery patchwork bloon flies overhead and accidentally bumps the stick such that it lands back on the main monkey’s head, knocking him out. Cue the monkeys around him to go berserk and start throwing other sticks at the ancient bloon, and once they pop it using a sharp stick, they realize what they must do. Cue a long montage of the different stages of war and invention using the monkeys finding better ways to fend off the bloons, with the whole idea being that the monkeys are getting irrationally angry at the bloons, who are just sort of around and not actually sentient, even though they assume they’re malicious because of their history and upbringing. Absolutely no political message in there whatsoever. Just comedy.

Other short ideas could include, for the start of the modern time story, it could be the backstory of some sort of chiseled veteran main character, which would involve a bloon floating into his town, and from the people’s panic someone knocks over a lamp post that sets his town ablaze, only for him and his people to blame the carnage on the bloon, causing his classic edgy character motives for fighting against the bloons. Another, much more golden idea, would be an interrogation scene, where a bunch of monkeys capture a bunch of bloons for interrogation purposes. They’d obviously do the whole “Silent treatment, eh? Well, we have ways of making you talk...” thing, except the “way to make them talk” is to strap them to a wall with one dart guy on one side to systematically pop them to try and extract info. But, of course, it would look and play out exactly like the classic Bloons puzzle game. That’d be the fun part. If not that, then it could be like the classic carnival game that likely inspired the idea of using darts to pop balloons. I really just think this weird world of monkeys and bloons is perfect for some good comedic content. Watching the monkeys severely overreact to the bloons sounds extremely fun, and I’d love to see someone do something with it some day.

#bloons tower defense #btd #6 #poole #rant #rambling #opinions #bloons #ninja kiwi #nk #flash

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rodentblood · 4 years

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rant time cause even tho I saw this video a while weeks ago it’s still bugging me and keeps popping up in my recommended and I just have to say something but I’m scared of saying something in video’s comments cause I’m scared their fans will come at me for criticizing them

but anyway

I know life’s been p rough for many of us and quarantine sucks and many many folks are in immense depressive slumps

but

that does not give you the excuse to decide ‘oh I’ll get an animal to make myself feel better! Self love uwu’

you should /never/ get /any/ pet if you are not in the proper mindset to care for them getting an animal on a whim is already bad enough but to throw in an unstable mindset is even worse

Always be in the right headspace so that you can care for the creature you’re bringing into your life. This is a life you are taking care of not just some decoration to hang up on the wall or display on a shelf and be like ‘yay ~aesthetic~’ It’s a living breathing animal and it deserves to be treated with respect and properly cared for properly

With that in mind it’s also EXTREMELY irresponsible to also go ahead and get an animal without doing the proper research ahead of time Many if not most of the things this person did as explained in their videos could have been so easily avoided had they done basic research on how to care for their new pet If you struggle with a learning disability and can’t take in a lot of info via reading cause it’s hard for you to follow along/absorb it all maybe... I don’t try using a /visual/ type of learning that makes it easier for you to understand and figure out! Maybe that method of learning is even readily and easily accessible on the same platform you currently host your own videos or heck maybe it’s accessible via one of the sponsors you promote in your own videos. Ok I don’t actually use skill share so idk if they have any videos about animal care or something but /still/ how can someone on youtube who can’t figure out how to take care of an animal through reading and research not think about just looking up videos? Like ok maybe it’s not 100% obvious but seriously it’s not hard to just type in the search bar ‘how to take care of x animal’ and be bombarded with videos and be able to reference check with other sources.

Hell I’m almost 100% certain you could even just reach out to the individuals posting these animal care videos and ask ‘hey I’m getting [insert animal here] got any tips on how to care for it?’ And if /they/ don’t know they might even be able to refer you to someone who might actually know! These people making animal care videos obviously care about people taking proper steps to ensure their pets are happy and thriving and I’m sure are more than happy to answer your questions or concerns when they have a moment to spare

I just...I don’t understand how this person could let the situation spiral so massively out of control like it did and just have people accept it and feel bad for them?? Like the majority of the comments on the video are just ‘oh you poor baby I’m sorry you went through that feel better soon! unu’ They did this to themselves, they’re a grown ass adult who willing decided to take in animals without knowing how to properly care or house them and let them fucking die because they had no self control Yes they were depressed and sad but that’s not an excuse!! You don’t get pets when you’re depressed cause this type of shit can happen.

No animal deserves to die like that and throwing shade at massive chain pet stores for not properly informing you about how to house certain creatures together/giving you incorrect information is not an excuse (I mean it’s not good on their behalf either but that’s an entirely different topic don’t trust big chain pet stores folks get your info from reputable sources )

It’s not some, likely underpaid, employees’ fault they have no idea if x animal can live with x animal they aren’t being paid to know this shit and aren’t being trained to know this shit either. They’re there simply to stock shelves, sell animals and animal care products while smiling that’s it

I’m still super mad this person just tells this entire story and people just seem to gloss over it simply because the animals in questions weren’t something ‘more important’ like a dog or a cat or a bird

It just really rubs me the wrong way and yea I know stuff happens but it seriously could have been so easily avoided This person still ended up keeping the same species of pet just a different breed which they’re doing better with from what they say in video but still I just.....it doesn’t sit well with me I guess idunno I’m not like super angry at this person or anything I just think their actions were not super great and while I don’t want them to like burn on a pike over it I still think people need to be a bit more critical and not just gloss over the situation as tho it was just an accident or entirely the chain pet stores fault which is how it’s made to sound like in the video

overall I hope they learn to not get pets when depressed and to do proper research when getting new pets and I hope that their current ones continue to thrive

always do your own research when getting a new pet, get them from reputable sources and never get a pet when you’re in a bad emotional state

ok I’m done.

#this has been a personal post #--rant #--long post #tldr; for the love of all that is good don't use animals like accessories/decorations/etc to try and make your depression go away #they're living breathing creatures and you need to learn how to properly care for and be in the right mindset #before getting one it doesn't matter what type of animal it is they all deserve respect and proper care

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vands38 · 4 years

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things i wish someone told me about coeliac disease (UK edition)

apparently some doctors are still not telling coeliacs what they actually need to know so here’s some fun facts --

*coeliac disease is likely to go undiagnosed if you don’t have digestive symptoms. for a lot of folks, their first symptoms are odd things like weight loss, bloating, mouth ulcers etc that take ages for doctors to correctly diagnose as coeliac disease. I know someone whose only sign was tingling in her fingers (nerve problems are a Thing sometimes). I don’t wanna freak folks out but check this list of symptoms and if you’re worried, ask your doc for a blood test to check for coeliac disease. I went in and out of my docs for years with various symptoms (mostly from the anaemia) and no one caught it until I was finally having noticeable digestive trouble.

* coeliac disease an autoimmune disease. not an allergy. not an intolerance. when you eat gluten, your gut just screams NOPE and throws everything out of there.

* this means if you keep eating gluten you will have serious long-term health problems because your gut can't absorb shit

* as I mentioned, anaemia is one of these associated health problems. a lot of people have this at diagnosis b/c your gut hasn’t been absorbing the nutrients it needs. it leaves you very weak and tired, and the longer it goes on, the worse it gets.

* long-term anaemia / malnutrition causes so many fucking health problems I can't list them all. basically, if your body sucks, there's a good chance it's a side-effect of your coeliac disease going undiagnosed. I got shitty joints and a shitty heart and shitty bones and godknowswhatelse and every time my doc is like "hey, guess what? it’s coeliac disease!"

* you know what a common side effect is? LACTOSE INTOLERANCE. this is because, once again, your gut hates you from all that gluten you've been killing it with, so it starts to muck around and kick out other things too. but good news! most of the time this is reversible!!! lay off any lactose for a couple of months, reintroduce it to your diet slowly, and you -- like me -- might be a-ok

*some folks with coeliac disease can’t digest oats either as they contain a similar protein. I found that I was kinda squiffy with them at first but as soon as my gut had calmed down I was a-ok with GF oats (this is good b/c 99% of good GF biscuits are made with oat flour, RIP to everyone that can’t eat them)

* so... your bones are probably fucked. if you were diagnosed early and your doctors are on it, you might be okay but for a lot of people it means osteopenia, and further down the line, osteoporosis (meaning it's v easy to break bones). you need to be eating, like, double the regular amount of calcium every day. most people are put on calcium tablets with combined vitamin D (to help absorb the calcium) but even on top of that, you need to be getting a lot in your diet. If you're still lactose intolerant then switch to lacto-free versions of dairy products or eat tofu like there's no tomorrow. It's super important that you get enough.

* relatedly, bone health!!! You should be doing MODERATE impact exercises like jogging to strengthen the bones but nothing high-impact like tennis. load-bearing exercises are good too. here’s some examples (in detail) given to me by the rheumatology dept

* people have different sensitivity levels. in the UK, certified gluten-free products have to be 20 parts per million or less, but in the US this is 100! marmite lives somewhere between these two and can cause some coeliacs to have a reaction. please be aware when you eat international gluten-free foods that they might have more parts per million than your body is used to

* because you're super sensitive to gluten, not only do you need to check the bold allergens on the ingredients, but the small print too. it might say "made in a factory that handles gluten" or "may contain traces of gluten" and that’s a no-go

* similarly, be careful in restaurants. Apparently it's still perfectly legal for restaurants to say a dish is "gluten free" and then put your nice GF bread in the same fucking toaster as regular bread and have you shitting your pants for days. Just because the ingredients are GF doesn't mean they're cooking it in an allergen-conscious manner. If its not a Coeliac UK certified restaurant, always ask about their methods. Is that milkshake made in a GF blender? Is your fry-up cooked in a separate pan? The first time I got glutened after my diagnosis it was because my GF naan bread shared a tray with a regular one. A lot of places won't even fucking think about this stuff.

* if you're in a gluten-eating household, you've got a big expense coming up. you need to buy a GF toaster at the very least and I would recommend also a separate baking tray (because pizzas, garlic breads etc stick to that shit like no tomorrow) and a saucepan (or anything else that regularly contains pasta/noodles/etc). You'll also need a separate bread knife and board. Separate butter. Separate strainer if you're the type to drain your pasta. Line anything suspicious (e.g.your sandwich toaster, a communal baking tray) with baking parchment. Don’t use bare rungs in your oven or hob. And buy separate spreads and condiments, unless your household is very well trained in not dipping their crumb-covered knives into those things. I've even got separate plates, kitchen utensils, and cutlery. It seems extreme but I haven't had a cross-contamination incident since. Just think: has gluten touched this? And if so, do your best to minimise the risk.

* living GF is expensive long-term too. GF bread costs twice as much as regular bread. Restaurants often charge extra for GF alternatives. I had to switch from having toast in the morning to cereal because it's much more reasonably priced. I eat more fruit than I ever have before just because GF snacks cost so much. I used to have breakfast bars lol say goodbye to that shit unless you wanna be broke

* things I didn't realise I couldn't eat: crisps (a lot of your standard crisps are made with ??? production methods), candied nuts (most of these are made in factories that handle gluten), soy sauce, strawberry laces and a whole bunch of fave sweets (contain wheat starch to bind them - check this list for safe sweets), marmite (you can buy a GF yeast extract that is only 50% worse than the original)

*good food you actually can eat: most cadburys but not most nestle, GF beer which tastes exactly the same, schar pretzels are actually the shit, so are their BBQ pringles and those little chocolate bars with hazelnuts, Morrisons free from frozen mini hash browns will cure your depression, M&S do these bacon tortilla rolls which... OH BOY. Quiche alternatives are pretty damn good but I've yet to find a pizza that doesn't make me want to cry.

*speaking of supermarkets... Morrisons stock a good range of stuff and tend to have everything in one aisle, M&S have many yummy (and expensive) treats, Sainsbury's has good own brand things including bread, Tesco's are fairly decent and stock a lot of baking things, ASDA are the king of GF cake, if you're still lacto-free then Waitrose sell LF cheese including halloumi, and check your your local hippy food store because I found the best goddamn bread in mine (Incredible Bakery Company - you are £4.50 a loaf but I have no regrets)

*party risks: if there's a BBQ, insist that your things go first or have a separate BBQ, or, if worse comes to worse, just eat cold snacks. (Beware of sausages! Many aren't GF!) If its a chip and dip situation, either everything has to be GF (easily done) or have your own dip. BUFFETS ARE LITERALLY OUR WORST NIGHTMARE. the amount of coeliacs I know that have been glutened at one are INSANE. even if those tasty treats are labelled 'gluten free' they've probably be contaminated. everything at a goddamn buffet is contaminated. Dinner party? Well meaning friends will want to cook for you but unless their kitchen is set up as above, it's safer to bring your own food -- if you're very lucky, you will have friends who take the time to learn about allergens and will clean every item in their kitchen before cooking and serving an entire GF meal. these friends are to be treasured -- nay, worshipped.

*fast food. there’s no good way to put this but you’re never having that guilty pleasure 2am burger again. mcdonalds fries are miraculously GF though. (a lot of takeaways recycle oil so even if the ingredients are GF it’s often not safe but mcdonalds always use a separate fryer for chips). indian takeaway is great as most dishes don’t contain gluten. on the flip side, you’ll only be able to have about 5 items on the chinese menu (soy sauce is in everything, yo) so be prepared to learn those 5 items by heart. dominoes do Coeliac UK certified GF pizza!!! (buuuuut not during covid). chains like pizza express have got our back and will even serve you GF doughballs

*coeliac UK are your best friend! most of the things I’ve mentioned are described in detail on their website. they also have a barcode scanner app that will tell you if foods are safe, and they have a restaurant guide, and useful things like translation guides for when you go abroad.

That's all I've got right now but hmu with any questions or corrections. Take care of yourself, folks. <3

#coeliac disease #celiac disease #gluten free #info post #allergens #i just could not see another incorrect comment on the coeliac uk facebook page without doing something #i'm sorry #i'm well aware this is of interest to approx three followers #but #someone might need to hear all this #because my god i definitely did when i got diagnosed #long post

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dalimoor · 5 years

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So I went to the Pokémon Center

Yesterday me and my bestie @runeandmoon made the journey to the pop-up Pokémon Center in London. It was one heck of an emotional journey, but it was so worth it in the end. Because of how far away we live from London, and the horror stories about the queues, we had to set off at 5AM!

Blurry car selfie because I couldn’t hold the phone straight when we were moving, but hey. I don’t think we look bad for that time of the morning!

The time was 8:48 AM. We joined the queue, absolutely stunned that we’d got there before it had started snaking outside the shopping centre. But since the shop didn’t open till 12 PM, were in for a long wait.

Tragedy! Somewhere on the Tube, the Z-Crystal on my Mimikyu ita bag had got broken. How annoying! I had to bring my ita bag, though. I am the Mimikyu Superfan. I only really wanted the giant Mimikyu plush from the Pokémon Center. Would I get my prize? Only time would tell!

Queuing was boring, but we had some great conversations with cool people in the line in front of us. These two dudes were awesome people. Thanks for making the unbearable wait less unbearable, guys!

The girl and guy here were also pretty awesome. Especially when we started to edge forward ever so slightly and it got more and more busy. The queue was closed off at 11:31 AM, a full half hour before the shop even opened. I was glad we got in before that happened!

It was around here that some guy got caught queue-jumping and was thrown out by security. Wild. All in all, the security were all pretty cool, even though they were very keen to pack us in as tightly as possible. Every time the tiniest gap opened up in front, they’d hurry us forward. One guy was like ‘c’mon, move up. Don’t you want to get into the shop?’ Too soon.

The first appearance of Dapper Pikachu! I wasn’t near enough to get a proper photo. :(

There it is! The legends were true. The first glimpse of the Pokémon Center. It’s there, waaaaay in the back of the photo, You have to squint to see it, but it’s there!

youtube

Dapper Pikachu came out again. I still wasn’t in the right place to film or photograph him properly. But check out the guy desperate for a hug! As we were getting closer to the Pokémon Center itself, we needed all the joy we could get. The tweets were coming in thick and fast of everything that they were selling out of. London Pikachu crest pins sold out within the first 20 minutes of trade. Keeping my hopes up for my Mimikyu...

Playing Pogo kept me entertained for the majority of the queuing. During the wait, I got enough coins to buy the new Mimikyu backpack which I had to own.

@runeandmoon was playing Pogo to pass the time, too, and got this cutie for her trouble. Lucky!

The final furlong! 3:19 PM. Just shy of seven hours later, we’d made it.

We did it! We got inside! There was still a lot of stock, but the lion’s share of the exclusive stuff had already gone. No Londonchu hoodies, socks, plushies or pins. Shelves and shelves of Ludicolo, though. Who even wants Ludicolo? We did overhear a small boy being absolutely thrilled they had Alakazam plushies, though, which was really sweet. Every Pokémon must be someone’s fav.

But to my absolute dismay, there were no giant Mimikyu plushes left on the shelf. The only ones were already in other peoples’ baskets, waiting to be purchased. The staff said they had no more. I was devastated.

I’m smiling, but I’m about to cry here. It’s crazy, but I’d been up since 4:30 AM, queued for an ungodly amount of time and seeing other people with the one thing I wanted and couldn’t have was just too much.

But then. A miracle happened. Just as I was queuing to pay, a member of staff came out of a side door. They’d just had a delivery...

MY CHILD.

I absolutely bolted out of the till queue, elbowed past the people standing around the shelf that was being re-stocked and was like ‘I’M SORRY I NEED this’. I took one from the staff member and marched back to the till with my prize held high, shouting ‘WINNER WINNER CHICKEN DINNER’ because I was so sleep-deprived and a little bit insane at this point. But look how happy I am!

The staff in the store were all really friendly and doing their absolute best to make people happy. When I initially asked about Mimikyu stock, the guy who said they had none seemed genuinely gutted I’d missed out on my chosen item. The lady who eventually served me on the till was particularly sweet and clearly loved her job. Everyone was clearly trying their best and I’m not sure how they could have done anything better with the way things have been set up. The people working there can’t control the stock deliveries or do much more to deal with the huge, huge demand. The only thing they could do is put a time limit on how long you’re allowed to browse in the store, but I suppose that would be hard to police.

The rest of my swag! Since a lot of the Dapper Pikachu stuff had sold out I had to get other things from what I initially wanted. I did want a crest pin for myself and a plush for a friend who had missed out on when he went, but neither were there. The only had one size left of these shirts, too. I hope it fits!

#TeamScorbunny.

How could I not? Scorbunny is super duper cute.

Was it worth it? Yes. It’s really weird how I don’t feel frustrated or upset about how long I queued. I did get a little bored, but not as much as I thought I would. I’m super happy I got my Mimikyu, so I guess that made it all worth it. Would do it again? Not this particular shop during the rest of its run, but a similar one in the future, sure. Because I’m apparently insane. I’d probably book a hotel the night before so I could go queue extra-extra early.

For anyone planning on going, I have some tips:

Get there as early as you can. The queue closes off well before the shop’s official closing time, often even before the shop opens. Unless you’re starting to queue at like 1 AM and you’re first in line, you’re generally looking at at least a six hour wait to get in. Basically, if you can’t get there early to mid-morning, don’t even bother.

Go with a friend. Company makes the wait so much better. Also, chat with the people in the queue around you. They’re stuck in the same situation, they’re Pokémon fans too and are probably cool people with interesting stories.

If you need the toilet, there ones near the queuing area. If you let security know, you’re able to leave the line to use the facilities. It’s even easier if you have the aforementioned friend to more easily keep your spot in line.

Bring snacks and drinks. It’s a long wait. You can slip out of the line to buy things, but the less you have to leave the line, the better. If it moves forward when you’re not in it, it’s easy to lose track of where you were.

Bring something to keep you entertained. Games console, phone, book, whatever. Again, it’s a long wait.

Watch the Twitter feed for the shop - they give a running update on stock levels, whether the queue is still open, etc.

And that was my crazy PokéCen adventure! Now I’m going to sleep for the next 3000 years.

#pokemon #pokemon center london #london pokemon center #mimikyu #pokemon mimikyu #dapper pikachu #london pikachu #scorbunny #pokemon scorbunny #hangingwithkayru #i love my mimikyu plush #it made everything worth it

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danurso · 6 years

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Dimensional friends AU

*RWBY, JNR, oscar, qrow and maria are walking down argus streets*

Ruby: so, how are we supposed to get to atlas now?

Maria: i don’t know, with that old devilish hag blocking the way i think it's going to be pretty hard.

Jaune: i...think i have a plan.

Ruby: really? What is it?

Jaune: i talked with a old friend of mine and he’ll take us there, but it's going to take some time for him to arrive so we should get our weapons checked before this.

Weiss: is this old friend trustworthy?

Jaune: yeah, totally.

Yang: who could guess we would be saved by one of vomit boy’s old friends, i didn’t even knew you have friends before us.

Jaune: ha...ha...very funny, but just like you, i have my past.

Ruby: but you never actually told us right? I mean, you know what happened with me and yang in the past and we all know what the rest got through, but you never actually told about your past.

Jaune: well, my past is not a big deal, so i never had much of a reason to tell you.

Yang: i imagine, you probably spend the days reading comics and watching anime right?

Jaune: *sheepishly* yeah, pretty much.

Blake: so, where can we get our guns checked.

Jaune: i know someone, lets go.

*in the shady part of the town*

Ruby: *nervously* jaune...where are we going?

Jaune: we need to check our weapons right? I know someone who can help us with that. *gets inside a building passing a pair of tall bulky mans and getting into a large store full of weapon parts*

Ruby: *with stars in her eyes* thats a modified muzzle for a vulcan mk.3!? Ohh and this is a stock for a ballistic 1190!? I thought you could only find these in the black market!!

Weiss: *staring at some components* these parts could really be useful, but how can someone sell these pieces legally in such a place.

???: *in a russian accent* that is because they are not legal.

Weiss: *turns to see a really tall and bulky man that seemed more like a wall, he was bald with a long black beard, a scar over his blind left eye and with a robotic left arm* err...g-good afternoon...?

???: what kids are doing in my shop?

Qrow: *sweating profusely* w-wait, i know you, you’re vlad, skullbreaker vlad or colossus vlad, leader of the biggest black market of remnant.

Vlad: *with a shivering scowl* you little man know too much, i hope you not with police, are you?

Qrow: m-me? N-n-no im not.

Vlad: *staring at the group* what about you? You do not look good for business, specially the schnee girl, me have my mens to take you out or me will crack your heads myself *cracking his metal fingers with a deadly look*

RWBY, NR, Qrow, oscar, maria: *sweating profusely*

Jaune: you’re not doing this with your best friend are you?

Vlad: *stares at jaune for a moment* ...jaune?

Jaune: in flesh and bone.

Vlad: *stares for a bit longer before laughing and pulling him into a crushing hug* GHAHAHAHA!! IT HAS BEEN A WHILE!! HOW ARE YOU DOING LITTLE FRIEND!?

Jaune: *breathless* i’ll tell you after you stop crushing my spine.

Vlad: sorry little friend *lets him go* me forgot how fragile you are.

Jaune: yeah, im so fragile that i saved your ass back in budapest.

Vlad: that was after me save you in hong kong.

Jaune: but you forgot that hong kong was after malasia, where i saved you not only once but twice.

Vlad: hahahahaha!! Me will give you victory this time little friend, so, what can this old man do for you?

Jaune: me and my friends need some new weapon parts for our next travel, think you can help us out?

Vlad: sure! Any friend of jaune is my friend too, take anything you want, it is on me this time, a little thanks for your help last time.

Jaune: *sheepishly* i said you don’t need to thank me for that.

Vlad: me insist, thanks to you i can lay back in peace with wife and daughter by the end of day, so it is only natural for me to pay back for favor.

Jaune: right, thanks vlad.

Vlad: *with a huge smile* no problems little friend.

*later on*

Weiss: jaune…

Jaune: yes?

Weiss: what was that?

Jaune: vlad is a old friend i met, we hung out sometimes to do some stuff and he owes me a few favors, nothing much.

Blake: nothing much? Your friend is the leader of the number one black market of remnant, not only that but on our way back you talked with several other dangerous criminals like it was something normal.

Jaune: well...i just got some things on my past that led me to meet them, nothing much.

Ruby: *hugging crescent rose* at least now we got some awesome parts for our weapons.

Weiss: still we-

*BRUMMM*

Ruby: what's going on!?

Oscar: look! *stares at a giant robot leaving the mountain and going directly towards a giant godzilla-like grimm followed by a horde of other grimms*

Yang: thats not good.

Ruby: let's go! We need to help them!

*on the edge of the city*

Qrow: *slices a grimm in half* shit, they’re already invading the city.

Ruby: *staring at the fallen robot and the still up giant grimm* and the big one destroyed the robot, what do we do!?

Yang: we can’t fight that thing, but we can’t evacuate the city in time, anyone have a plan?

Jaune: i do! Give me a second. *takes off his glove slashing his hand drawing some blood from it and reciting what seemed like a chant in a weird language*

Ruby: jaune what are you do-

*ground starts to shake and the skies start to glow brighter before a pillar of black fire comes from the ground and a pillar of white light comes from heaver, both side by side*

Weiss: W-WHAT IS GOING ON!? *the white pillar disappear to reveal a woman with light fair skin, wavy golden hair, cyan blue eyes, clad in white robes and with a pair of white feathery wings*

Yang: w-what the… *staring at the man from the black pillar with pale white skin, red slitted eyes surrounded by black scleras, two black horns, a pair of bat like wings and clad in black robes*

???: you called?

Jaune: schiffer, steph, i know its too sudden but i need your help, these grimms are invading the city and several peoples are getting injured because of it.

Schiffer: *grins looking at the grimms around* sure, it will he fun. *raises his hand summoning a pitch black sword and raising it opening several portals from the ground which released a horde of demonic creatures that attacked the grimms*

Steph: *nods with a gentle smile* i’ll help the injurieds. *raises her hand summoning a white staff and raising it to summon portals from the skies that released human looking creatures with white feathery wings that started to help and heal the civilians.* i will help as well *flies off to the city*

Schiffer: and i’ll join the action *grins flying off towards the grimm and punching the grimm with enough strength to make it fly back several meters*

Jaune: *sighs in relief* i think we’re safe now.

RWBY, NR, Qrow, oscar, maria: *with jaws on the ground* w-what the hell is going on?

*a few minutes later*

Jaune: *sheepishly* sorry to call both of you here so suddenly, i would have warned if i could.

Steph: its okay, we don’t mind.

Schiffer: yeah, and it was kinda fun as well, not too challenging but fun nonetheless.

Jaune: of course it wasn't fun, you sliced that thing in half five seconds after the first punch, what did you expected?

Weiss: CAN SOMEONE PLEASE EXPLAIN WHAT IS HAPPENING HERE!?

Jaune: oh right, sorry guys, these are my friends.

Schiffer: *with a small grin* i’m schiffer, the demon prince, nice to meet you jaune’s friends.

Steph: *with a soft smile* and i am steph, the angel princess, it's nice to meet all of you.

Blake: wait wait wait...demon prince and angel princess?

Jaune: yeah, they’re the firstborns of the kings of their respective races, they used to be in war since the beginning of times but things changed recently.

Schiffer: yeah *grips steph’s hand* thanks to jaune i realized that having steph in my life was way more important than the war we were fighting.

Steph: *with a bright smile and a light blush* agreed, i don’t think i can live without schiffer in my life anymore, all that thanks to jaune.

Schiffer: its thanks to him we’re married today, and that our races can now coexist in peace.

Nora: so that means fearless leader stopped a war from the beginning of times by making you two fall in love for eachother?

Steph: basically.

Weiss: wha-bu-an-w-that doesn’t even make sense!

Schiffer: maybe, but you humans are still too young to comprehend the elder races *turns back to jaune* so, is that everything?

Jaune: yeah, thanks for the help, sorry again for disturbing you two.

Steph: don’t worry about that, after everything you did for us this is nothing.

Schiffer: call us if you ever need out help again. *hugs steph’s waist* now if you excuse us, me and my honey have some business to take care off. *grins*

Steph: *blushing slightly* d-darling, you’re too naughty.

Schiffer: ohh, i know i am. *looks back at the group* later everyone. *disappear in a gray pillar of light*

Qrow: ....what the hell just happened?

Ruby: jaune...you have a lot of explaining to do.

Jaune: *staring at his scroll* sure, but we should talk about this later, my friend arrived, we can already go to atlas.

Blake: and where is he? *gets then covered by a shadow and looks up to see a massive ship flying above the city*

Jaune: *deadpaning* a valiant super heavy cruiser? Really?

???: general said it needed to be this one.

RWBY, NR, Qrow, oscar, maria: *turns around to see a tall man clad in green armor and helmet, holding a hi-tech rifle and with the number ‘117’ on the left side of his chest.*

Jaune: really chief? We’re only going to atlas, a small ship would be enough.

Master chief: general insisted that i should bring the cruiser.

Jaune: why? It's just a short travel, there’s no need for that.

Master chief: still, you know how the general is, he has you in high regards since you’re the one who settled the balance and peace between all the races of the universe, it's only natural that he would be carefull with you.

Jaune: *sigh* whatever, as long as we get to atlas i think it's okay, it's good to see you again at least chief.

Master chief: i could say the same thing, now let's go, the ship will leave in twenty minutes.

Jaune: okay, i'm right after you *starts to walk but stops and looks back at the group who is frozen with jaws on the ground* what is it?

Ruby: are these peoples space warriors?

Jaune: more like space soldiers, but basically yes.

Weiss: how do you know them?

Blake: and what does he means with you establishing the peace between all races in the universe?

Jaune: *shrugs* some things just happen and you can’t avoid it.

Yang: *stomping towards him and gripping his shoulders tightly with a deadly look* vomit boy, you’re telling us everything about your past on our way to atlas, okay?

Jaune: *sweating profusely* o-okay…

Yang: *deadly serious* is there any other friend we should know about?

Jaune: i-i don’t think s-

???: *teleports behind jaune* wha-? This isn’t king kai’s planet.

???: i told you you were doing something wrong kakarot.

???: oh, hey jaune, it's been a while.

Jaune: *nervously* h-hey goku, vegeta, could you come back later please, im a bit busy now.

Goku: *stares at a fuming yang emanating a fire aura* t-this ki is just like chichi’s *nervously* we’re leaving, see’ya jaune, good luck. *teleports away*

Jaune: *nervous chuckle* i'm probably going to have to explain that too right?

Yang: you just read my mind.

(Confuse? If so then my job here is done)

#rwby #jaune arc #ruby rose #yang xiao long #blake belladona #weiss schnee #nora valkyrie #lie ren #qrow branwen #maria calavera #oscar pines #dimensional friends AU

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