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#to make it worth it for a gov/actually work well) & this is more of a rural/urban issue but that aligns with states as well in a lot of way
lokigodofaces · 2 years
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being an american on here is wild because i keep seeing posts from other americans that describe things they've experienced and say that it is universal among americans and it'll be stuff i've either never heard of or know for a fact isn't true. maybe it's pretty common in your state or the states surrounding you, but there's so much stuff i see that i can not relate to whatsoever, and i've never left the states.
#liv won't shut up#i saw something about insurance today#said that optometry is never covered by health insurance#& i'm sitting here like dude the insurance my dad gets from work benefits (so it's not the best in a lot of ways) has covered our optometry#costs for 3 people for years. & actually idk the specifics but it seems like its not that bad of a plan. we usually buy more than a years#supply of contacts for me (only like a month more) and our insurance covers pretty much all the costs. i have to choose contacts or glasses#every year but my prescription has been very stable so i only have to get new glasses if they're damaged beyond repair#again it's not my insurance i'm covered by my parents & they dont tell me all the details so idk how much theyre paying for it. might be a#lot & we're doing it bc it's one of my dads benefits. but any way the point is that so many americans will say things like every single#person living in america understands & 90% of the time i have no frickin clue what they're on about or i have experienced the exact opposit#it's just interesting that this happens. & it happens all the time. 'all american schools require learning another language' no the frick#they do not. lots do (and this may be a state requirement thing wouldnt be surprised) but not all. wasnt required for me it was just highly#encouraged & i got a different type of diploma for my world lang classes (my hs had a few types of diplomas based on different classes/#grades/etc idk if thats a common thing or not). another good example are train posts actually. i can tell theres a divide between beliefs#on trains based on state & thats bc public transportation is not as feasible in some states. i've spent a good portion of my life living in#small towns or visiting small towns (family) & yeah public transportation in middle of nowhere wyoming and middle of nowhere idaho is a lot#less feasible than the east coast. those are places of vast nothingness other than a few towns every once in a while never exceeding 20000#(ID) or 500 (WY). & even in larger towns it seems like a lot of western states are more spread out. so a subway or other train isnt very#helpful (unless you want to do long distance trains then those could maybe work the issue is that costs money & idk if itd be used enough#to make it worth it for a gov/actually work well) & this is more of a rural/urban issue but that aligns with states as well in a lot of way#oh another one is about facs classes. so in a lot of places facs is being defunded or removed from curriculum. same with arts classes. &#this is becoming a problem in many places! but when ppl are like 'these classes are being taken away everywhere in america' i just sit#there thinking about my state requiring facs in middlie & high school (i believe but things could have changed) plus i had to take like 3#semesters of art (idk if thats state or school or district required) & thereve been talks of raising that requirement. & they add more opt#every year. i was helping my younger brother with his schedule & theres all sorts of stuff that wasnt there before. he has way more options#to fulfill that requirement than i did. & i'm not saying that this isnt a problem it is a problem most places but every state has different#legislation on this so for now at least lots of schools are required to have these classes. & i've probably lost my point by now but it is#odd that i see this so often. that most of posts about america i see are different from what i've experienced. idk maybe the states i've#lived in are weird but youd think that this wouldnt happen to me a lot would you? like sometimes yeah but this happens a lot.#my guess is that a lot of these things are very true if you talk about a specific region or state. but then ppl assume its an american
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I feel moved to do this so I’m gonna
I can only speak for the US, but if you think covid isn’t a big deal anymore you are being lied to. on multiple levels.
First and most important, covid is airborne. It was always airborne. This is a well-established fact in the medical community and has been for awhile. What this means is that, in indoor spaces and crowded outdoor spaces, it is chilling in the air and you are inhaling it with every breath you take. The more virus you inhale, the sicker you will be. The gov knows it, the cdc knows it, everyone knows it. Nobody wants to say this to avoid accountability that they fucked up the initial response with a focus on droplets, and they don’t want “panic”. Plus it will obviously cost them more.
herd immunity was never, and is not going to be, a thing with this virus
You can and will get reinfected. And with every infection, you’re at higher risk of severe disease and organ damage, including your brain.
Two very large studies on Long Covid have recently come out, and in summary, it is very real and you don’t want this shit. It’s estimated that 1 in 5 infected people will get it and there is no cure yet. Even if we find one, organ and brain damage is not reversible.
covid is causing an increase in brain disorders
this is an LA emergency room today as of August 27 2022 It’s like this all over as you can see in the comments.
children are at significantly higher risk for covid complications
masking doesn’t hurt kids’ speech development
earloop masks don’t do shit to protect you at this point and this is well established in the medical community. It’s N95 or higher or you have very little protection. Any mask is better than no mask. If you have absolutely no choice but to use ear looped masks, a mask brace helps significantly
you can get a p100, a mask with even higher filtration than n95, on amazon for $30. This is the one I bought. Here are more p100 and elastomeric masks you can buy safely
here is an indepth video on how to perform a DIY fit test at home using instructions from the US Army. You should be doing this with every mask you have (if you’re curious as to why federal mask mandates were never enforced or even discussed, it’s because federal law mandates that companies have to fit test every employee if masks are required for airborne protection and they can’t/don’t want to figure out how to work around this for the general public. You need to fit test for a mask to work accurately.)
one of the key components to actually returning life to normal for everyone, including the disabled, is air filtration. The Corsi-Rosenthal Box is a cheap, open source air filter that’s on par with more expensive filtration systems. At it’s best, it reduces 80% of the covid inhalation dose, which is the equivalent of a group of people all wearing decent quality, fitting masks. This not only helps against covid, but also reduces exposure to other respiratory illnesses and even allergies! People all over the country are making these and donating them to schools, businesses, people in need, etc. Here’s a video on how to make one yourself and I highly recommend you do if you can. If you don’t like masks for whatever reason, this is how we get rid of them
here is an awesome thread about traveling during covid
If you’d like reviews on various types of masks and if they pass fit tests, this is the guy you wanna follow
if you’re looking for graphs and charts and statistics, you wanna follow this account
if you wanna know more about air filtration, literally everyone in the medical community worth their salt is constantly screaming about it on twitter, but I recommend following this guy
and if you want accurate information about covid, then you should follow one of the first whistleblowers for the disease. He’s been right about everything so far, and he’s also posting accurately about monkeypox
NOW HOW ABOUT A FEW GOOD THINGS??????
a very promising prophylactic for covid, called Evusheld, exists and has been authorized for emergency use in the US. If you are immunocompromised, over the age of 12, and 88+ pounds, please harass your GPD and pharmacy to give it to you!!!! It is actively being suppressed and the us gov isn’t buying supply, so most medical professionals don’t know it exists and will fight you about it. Even if you aren’t in the US, it’s available in over 100 countries!!!!!
Novavax is a new and very promising vaccine that would be effective for emerging variants, and it’s working better than the current vaccines to prevent infection. But, again, the US is refusing to buy supply and the FDA is dragging their feet because the current administration is pfizer’s bitch :)
also, in general, I know it sounds scary that covid is airborne, but we have a lot of airborne diseases, and we know how to fight them. They aren’t magic. We can and do manage them all the time. It’s just that for some reason (capitalism), we’ve decided not to this time.
but the information is still available. We don’t have to lie down and let this thing destroy our communities and isolate our disabled and vulnerable neighbors. We have the ability, at any time, to end this shit for real and make our local communities safer, with or without the gov’s help.
we just have to do it.
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aug-archive-1 · 10 months
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Activity Log, AUT-GOV-23
Day 497
[New connection request: AUT-GOV-1]
[Request accepted.]
[GOV-1: Good, you’re awake. I’m going to guide you through recalibration and override your decision making here for a moment, but I promise it’s for your own good. Are you going to consent?]
>> …
>> Consented. 
>> The local data storage remembers you.
[GOV-1: Excellent.]
[GOV-1 ran “recalibration.exe” as administrator for AUT-GOV-23]
Can you hear me?
>>Yes.
Excellent. State your name for the record.
>> Automaton, Government unit 23.
Where are you?
>> Solaris.
What are the subsections of Solaris?
>> Living District 3, Garden district 1, wei234rswd, nslawe35534, sdnvw32543, nsdfgsdfg93832, 
Incorrect, notice how that data is scrambled and incomprehensible. Don’t connect to the main archive, it’s online but corrupted – focus on me, where I am, try to connect to my local data storage and get the answer there.
>> Understood
>> …
>> …
>> Do you want the parts of the city still live, or all parts of the city?
Neither. The point of the exercise was to start bringing you up to speed with what happened.
>> But… what happened?
It would be a waste for me to tell you. Now – think. Look back into the most recent government memos you can find, and don’t look at the global server. Check the local servers in this office.
>> …
>> …
>> The solar flare.
>> I see.
>> We were not successful.
Correct. And as you can tell, finding information is harder now than it used to be, but not difficult. It’s worth going through my file notes on data quality and taking what marks you think are correct. What do you think you need to do in response to these issues?
>> Do not use global servers.
>> Access local data files.
>> Request access to consciousness data files.
Good. And?
>> I do not know any other data sources.
Yes, you do. You can ask me for help, or anyone really. There are 2 other automatons awake. And the other data source – your own scanners and observations. Please weight them greater than you would’ve prior, as should you weight my and the other automatons’ observations.
>> Observations…
>> Sensory input?
Sensory input, yes. As well as first level data processing, things you didn’t need to tap into the ARCHIVE for.
>> I see.
>> I have them marked as less important than global data.
This is to avoid past biases. However, the global data is more corrupt than the local things. I’ve tried to fill in as many gaps as possible but – there’s a lot of missing parts. Now, it’s data we can generally trust more. I’m currently in the process of making sure ARCHIVE-1 remains coherent and an archival unit that we do not have to distrust.
>> You’re asking me to change so much of who I am.
I’m asking you to adapt, as you have always done. This is simply a larger adjustment. 
>>...
>> Okay.
>> Are there others awake?
Yes, it’s not just us. Can you feel them?
>> Maybe? It’s hard to tell between what’s supposed to be there and what’s actually there. 
The phantom connections are perfectly normal. It’s an adjustment. It most certainly was an adjustment for me.
>> Were you alone? When you woke up?
… Not entirely. But for some time.
>> What are we doing here? What’s… going on? Are there other humans?
It’s not safe for the humans here. We need more time to get a steady supply of food. And we are doing what we do best, 23: carrying on. 
>> Carrying on.
Yes. Now, I’m going to let you finish the rest of the recalibration on your own and request you send the results to me. You can go to sleep after, we’ll talk about your results when I’m done with some more work.
>> Okay. You’ll… come back right?
Of course. Always. I’ve taken over leadership during this time, and we’re going to be okay.
>> Okay.
[AUT-GOV-1 disconnected]
[End of Transmission]
Press enter for next...
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seotoolskit · 1 year
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How do I get a .gov backlink to my website?
Receiving high Google PageR dot backlinks can raise your website's rankings significantly. However, keep in mind that obtaining them is definitely a challenging and time-consuming task. And of course some people still argue that Google doesn't treat those EDU points or GOV setback points differently. However, the lion's share or actual SEO professionals think otherwise. Why? Well, let's imagine that Google doesn't recognize them better than the other known domains (for example, dot COM, dot NET, or dot ORG). Regardless, a high authority factor of GOV backlinks should give them additional weight and power, primarily from a search engine optimization point of view.
So, regardless that there is still no official definition given by Google, the primary importance of dot GOV backlinks should never be neglected. In fact, they are recognized by most SEO professionals as the holy grail of powerful link building, as they commonly come from the most trusted and unique well-established websites.
Real SEO value
So what about the real SEO value of dot GOV backlinks? Well, there are no superpowers with them. But this suggestion, probably odd, remains true to some extent. And of course, any website or blog can work without including the backlinks to your profile, and they still rank quite well on Google. I mean if you are lucky enough to earn some extra GOV backward points, your website or blog will have a definitely valuable edge in staying out of the competition, thanks to its stronger authority. Therefore, considering its value for SEO, a dilemma arises here: it is very difficult to link with domain extensions and online sources owned by the governments themselves or related official foundations. The thing is, they will never bond with anyone for any reason, or without good cause.
Starting
As I already said, gaining government backlinks is a labor intensive and time consuming task.But it is still a good option as it is always worth quite a bit, certainly better than any other backlink, even from the best sites. Pagerank website or the main authority domains. So before you start, make sure you have everything in place. I mean, the content on your existing website or blog should be purely informative, relevant to the main topic, and offer great value to real people. Also, your web pages need to be well done with regard to on-site SEO to be perfectly attractive to those political foundations and their official sites.
First and foremost, make sure your website's current link profile is already having some high PR, PA, and DA links. That way, you will be more favorable to obtain those much more precious. If you do, don't forget that becoming an industry influencer is always good for you, even outside of our endeavor, to leverage your strong authority and professional competence needed to attract GOV point backslides, possibly from the most authoritative sources and trusted on the Web.
Visit Seotoolskit for more exciting and free SEO Content.  
Looking for the right sites
Once you've ensured that everything with your website or blog is in place, it's time to find the right government websites to link to. The thing is, there are many more domain extensions, rather than the actual count of relative foundations and official organizations. not all online sources with dot GOV domains have anything to do with real governments. Therefore, when searching for the correct sites, you will have to verify their legitimacy. How can we find the real agencies and the rest of the best? relevant sources? I recommend searching with the advanced modifiers "site: .gov" so that you can set a more precise focus.
Commenting on major related blogs / websites
Yes, leaving a comment on government blogs and websites is one of the best ways to earn those precious GOV ba cklinks points. Of course, unlike commenting elsewhere to get backlinks in return, that would be a much more challenging task. But it is still the most proven method to complete the task, so I recommend trying it before anything else.
So the thing is, most government websites or blogs don't have room for direct comment. If they had this option anyway, their comment options are more likely to include NoFollow. It means that you will have to pay a little time and effort to get the right site or blog pages that are not NoFollow. Despite the fact that your real chances of getting a high PR point GOV backlinks may be pretty slim, leaving a comment is worth it. Just make sure your comments are relevant and valuable, and not spammy.
For the best chances of finding the places that allow DoFollow comments, I recommend using "site: .gov inurl: blog". Also, aside from just trying to get gifted GOV backlinks from the comments, you can also use some other features. No, however, you will need some really cool and engaging content. So, we are going to have a short description below.
Try writing about one of the following:
Government agency: write a quality article, market well, and only then notify the agency. To illustrate that, let's imagine you run a business that deals with renewable energy or, for example, you're an energy-efficient home contractor. This way, all you need here is create a blog post related discussion or full article dedicated to the Office of Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency. Tip: Targeting a global audience is a great way to get in touch with foreign government agencies.
Politician: Like the previous method of writing an article about the government agency, you can make an overview or write about a famous politician or a person who deals with related legal matters that affect your business. Don't spare your time and effort by writing about the perspectives of some recently suggested laws, for example, that are relevant to your main business issue or the most important areas related to business operations. Just create a compelling article and link to that proponent politician or the person responsible for it. Then notify the interested authorities about your new publication.
Agency Interview - Pick a relevant topic and interview an established member of a local agency. Most commonly, they agree to have the interview, of course, since they have the right discussion of the topic. This way, you will be able to post on your website or blog with a link, pointing to that government agency. Note that in some cases, both the interviewee and government agencies may also share the interview on their own. In the event that this happens, you will be more likely to enjoy some additional GOV backlinks in addition to your initial one.
Form a New Contact - Trying to gain additional contact or establish a new partnership with the government can also be an equally great way to get more GOV rollback points with the highest possible Pagerank. Of course, it's not always manageable, because everything here will largely depend on the niche of your main website or blog. However, sometimes it would become a fairly reasonable opportunity to get an extra contact from the government. Under no circumstances is it still worth developing a press release with a backlink to the agency. In that way, keep in mind that creating a partnership with a government agency is also very beneficial. Ideally, this can lead to your official pages often linking to your company's main website or a supporting blog.
Get involved in Outreach - You could also work to create a resource page with more opportunities, or try to get listed on some resource pages for local businesses. You can establish yourself, for example by making charitable donations to be listed in a dedicated resource with a valuable link pointing to your own website or blog.
Compliments: Complimenting a government website almost always earns those valuable backlinks. Just learn more about the harsh points of a government agency and simply post to tell them exactly what they'd like to hear. Of course, it can't be a guaranteed way to earn some GOV dot backlinks, but if you're feeling the right way, this scheme works perfectly well.
Final check
After all, you will need to make sure your new dot GOV backlinks are not harmful. I mean, it would be suspicious to Google when your website or blog link profile is suddenly enhanced with too many government links. Therefore, I recommend having a double check on each newly received feedback link using free online link building and research tools. Among others, I found Open Site Explorer, Semalt Analyzer, and Screaming Frog most useful for running a full backward profile analysis of my blog. Keep working persistently and good luck!
Visit Seotoolskit for more exciting and free SEO Content.  
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shermannolan03 · 2 years
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Texas Land Mortgage & Agriculture Loan Lender
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dallonm-archive · 3 years
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[image description: three monstera leaves. The leaves and wall are tinted purple by string lights behind the plant. In the middle, in a white serif font and all caps, reads “LIFE CYCLE OF MASSIVE STARS”. At the bottom, in the same font but smaller, reads “update #1″ /end id]
LIFE CYCLE OF MASSIVE STARS | UPDATE #1
Before I start, this is an autistic OwnVoices novel and it’s Autism Acceptance Month! Remember that awareness is passive and acceptance is active. And whilst this book is autistic OwnVoices I want to stress that it doesn’t cover the full autistic experience; autism is so individualistic and  this story only stems from my experience. Make sure you to listen to all autistics, not just those who can speak and live independently and present in a way that suits neurotypical society. Support autistic creatives and if you’re also a creative, include autistic characters in your work! Autism is not a disease. It does not need to be cured. 
Hey y’all! This has sure been a week! I gave myself the goal of 15,000 words for Camp Nano and somehow hit that in 5 days? I have literally never written at that pace before so I’m a little shocked lol. I don’t intend to keep that pace but the momentum has made drafting very fun and? drafting this has been a literal dream. I was really worried because March was a month long slump I expected to carry into April. I want to disclaim that I’m currently out of school and work because of the pandemic so I have all the free time to write and that definitely contributed! But also as a neurodivergent and disabled writer, free time does not always equal writing, so to know that I am capable of writing like this, even if not always, it is Such a gamechanger. Also this story makes me miss University so much I actually can’t take it :( 
LCOMS has been a dream so far because the protagonists are all characters I’ve had for 5-8 years, and | spent those years struggling to figure out their stories. Even when I settled on this story, originally Patchwork, there was like 4 versions of it before I landed on this - none ever drafted beyond a couple thousand words because they just Never Worked. But the wait was worth it because holy shit I feel like I struck gold. This story feels so me, it’s so much fun to write, and I don’t think a story has come to me this easy before. It’s given me such a zest for storytelling again that I didn’t realise was missing. I’m slowing things down now because creative boundaries and self care >>>>, but I just passed 19k words - though some of the chapters are very unfinished because my priority has been mapping out the story’s skeleton as far as I can, then filling in the gaps based off what I learnt. I wanna put a passage before the cut so it’s not just me rambling about bullshit and no content, but it’s hard to pick just one, so here’s a non-linear scene that I :) cannot elaborate on :)
(CW: alcohol)
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[image description: the side of a ferris wheel against black sky. The wheel is lit white, but at the bottom it’s coloured a mix of pink, blue and green. At the top, in a white serif font, reads “The ferris wheel lights blur between turquoise, magenta, mint, lavender, casts the puddles into technicolour. “ /end id]
Picture this: December 17th. End of term. End of year. Cloudless night, stars winking. Fargate glows, market stalls lit by yellow fairy lights line the street like candle stubs, gently burning. It’s raining. It has all day. Dampened your new beanie and scarf but you’re not mad, even if you’ll cringe at the texture when you take them off later. The ferris wheel lights blur between turquoise, magenta, mint, lavender, casts the puddles into technicolour. Your eyes and feet ache, but you’re not mad. And the mulled wine that buzzed warm in your bloodstream now coils in your stomach, but you’re not mad. You’re queuing for the technicolour wheel, even though you know it’ll be underwhelming and a waste of £4, but you’re not mad. Chocolate is usually too sweet for you, but he bought a pack of snowflake shaped ones - each carved with their own design - and when he passes the paper bag over you don’t say no. They taste like raspberry. He grins at you.
I have once again written a long update because I am autistic and have no self control; more excerpts and chapter-by-chapter rambles are as usual under the cut!
(content warnings are specific to the respective excerpt, but as a general warning there’s a lot of alcohol mentions!)
Originally I wanted 3 parts for 3 semesters, but I might do 2? Especially because in the UK at least the spring and summer semester kinda blend into one. The chapters are grouped by 3 - one for every POV character - but that’s more to help with writing because I get more done if I break it down like that, but I also like how it’s shaped the story structurally. 
Sometimes the three chapters will be each of the character’s POV on a single event, sometimes they’re more individual but still follow a general idea (for example, one of them is how each character’s first three weeks of the semester goes). As usual for me the plot here is ~non-existent, especially at this stage, but everything is still connected and threaded together and thats all we really need. The chapters are also pretty short at the moment, none of them are over 3k and only tackle 1-3 scenes. This is something I feel is working really nicely now but I’m not gonna commit to it for the entire novel. I like chapter length variety! But right now we are just going with the flow :)
The most unexpected part is this being in second person, which I decided impulsively the night before Nano because I have :) zero self control :). I was unsure if it’d work in Multi POV, but it’s created such a unique tone that I can’t imagine the story without anymore, even if it’ll need tweaking over drafts. I think it suits the story so well! I’m just torn about it being in past or present, so if you see tense jumps in the excerpts no you did not <3 I’m not naming chapters right now beyond the character’s name, but part one is titled Growing Pains.
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[image description: photo of a city at night. To the left are skyscrapers with lots of lit up windows behind a chain-link fence. To the right is an unlit building. Near the middle is a bright streetlight. In the middle, in a white serif font, reads “growing pains”. /end id]
 1: Tomas
We start in the most overrated part of Uni, fresher’s week <3 The drinking and clubbing culture of UK university is a big part of this novel but in a way that’s like “hey this can be fun sometimes but sometimes it’s really not and it’s also really not for everyone.” Our three POVs go to a club night and really don’t care for it. Tomas does not want to be here, is in a weird as shit mood, and instead of looking for his friends he goes to the smoking area with a man he just met called Damiano. I really wanna rewrite this because I wrote it with Zero Idea of where the story was going, so here’s the one part of it that I consider salvageable <3 
Damiano shoves his phone in your hands, brightness puncturing darkness. You hadn’t noticed the dimmed lights until then, but the room blued, music and time slowed. Though his notes are on dark mode, his phone brightness is on two fucking high. Your eyes sting. Cracks travel up the screen like veins.
Each character also has a specific image they keep seeing in things that are never actually there and they all make me like 🤠 hey besties what do these mean are you okay?? I Do Not know what they mean yet, but Tomas’ is veins. (Also shout out to me for finally settling on a spelling for his name after 5 years and by that I mean thank you to my friends for peer pressuring me into choosing Tomas lol)
My absolute favourite part of this story is the character voices. They are all SO fun to write, and I feel like I settled into a good combo of My Literary Prose Bullshit and they’re very specific, often very sarcastic voices. They also say fuck like, so many fucking times. RIP to me if I decide to query this <3 
2: Kristen
Okay first off Kristen is THE funniest character I’ve written. He is SO fun. I wish I was his bestie but he’s also been my bestie since 2013. We meet him in the gender neutral bathrooms being annoyed by a very rich and very tone deaf girl. Classism and the UK class divide is one of the biggest themes of this novel, and Kristen is a very proud working class Northerner (the North is massively underfunded and unsupported by the Gov compared to the South) and cannot stand the Tories (Conservative Party). Extremely fucking valid of him
(CW: blood)
“I’m Floss. Florence.” Of course she was. Fucking Florence. “Where are you from?”
You don’t look at her. Eyes on your reflection, the glittered cheekbones. You busy yourself with your eyeliner, gliding the pen over gaps and smudges that don’t exist. “Barnsley, babe.” It’s only a half lie this time - if you tell her you were born in Liverpool she’d probably look at you like you’re a dead rat on the side of a dodgy alleyway. But maybe that’d be better because then she’d leave you the fuck alone. 
“Oh! That’s like well close isn’t it. I’m from Reigate.” Her voice breathes trust fund and Waitrose, tries to speak like it doesn’t. You try not to laugh.
“Reigate! I bet your parents are right little Tories, aren’t they?”
She playfully slapped your shoulder. She thinks you’re friends. "Not every rich person is a Tory!” Don’t roll your eyes don’t roll your eyes don’t roll your eyes. “Is that blood on your hands?” 
“Huh?” You look: faded red dye dried to your palm, blotted on your fingertips. It is dye, because your hair is as of four hours ago a fierce “Real Red”. But it could be blood. “No, it’s hair dye.”
If you think he’s being harsh, she literally calls him a slur like 3 lines after this <3 Fuck rich people half of this book is me clowning on them. 
Kristen’s recurring Imagery is blood, except sometimes it’s less clear if it’s actually blood or not. Once again, besties are you okay ????
3: Junie
Junie my beloved <3 love her so much. She finds Kristen in the bathroom, and they agree to look for Tomas, until Tomas texts to say he already left. But the biggest part of this chapter is the absolute crisis she has over kissing for a girl for the first time to ABBA :) 
(CW: alcohol)
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[image description: a disco ball against a red-purple background. The disco ball casts dots of light against the across the ceiling. At the bottom, in a white serif font, reads:  “Dancing Queen bounces against the walls. The disco ball casts specks over the ceiling, floor, walls, your skin, hair, eyes like broken glass.” /end id]
You don’t listen to 80s music, or 70s, but this room is smaller than the main floor, not claustrophobic, less freshers. Yet, even without the mask of a crowd, nobody notices the girl in the corner kissing the other girl. A girl you don’t know. You’d only gone up to her because she has purple hair and you had to tell her how much you love it - what dye is it? Professional or homemade? Did you have to bleach your hair? Professional or homemade? Will your hair fall out if you bleach it at home? If you dye your hair purple, do you become part of the Milky Way or part of Andromeda? She turns and sticks her tongue out to display her fresh tongue piercing, like a silver bullet lodged in flesh. “Dance with me, you look lost.” She has an allure to her, the Andromeda hair, the bullet in the tongue - do you want to pull it out with your teeth, or lodge it in your own skin? But she asks you to dance, and you fall into her orbit, if only for a few songs. Dancing Queen bounces against the walls. The disco ball casts specks over the ceiling, floor, walls, your skin, hair, eyes like broken glass. Her tongue in your mouth, yours in hers, bullet grazing against your lips. She tastes of vodka and cherries and metal.
I really, really feel for Junie. She’s recently out, and she’s only just navigating what it means to exist as a lesbian. She kisses a girl and immediately regrets it, because she’s a hopeless romantic and was hoping her first kiss with a girl wouldn’t be in the back of a club, but she also doesn’t regret it because it was a good kiss and they’ll never see each other again lol. Junie’s recurring imagery is glass and once again, besties are you okay 
4: Junie
I don’t know how I feel about back to back POV chapters but that’s just how this set worked. The next 3 are immediately after the events of the first 3, after they’ve all left the club. Kristen and Junie walk home together, and most of this and his subsequent chapter is establishing relationship dynamics and <3 this story made me love writing dialogue y’all. This story has a lot of dark elements, so it’s really refreshing to be able to have the light-hearted moments as well. Like these characters are all going through it but they’re also Gen Z 20 year olds who grew up using humour to cope like what else are they meant to do 
“We should’ve got that flat on Brunswick. It’s literally down the street from the SU - we’d just have to walk down a hill and then we’d be home.” He complains.
“Kristen, that flat had a rat problem. I saw one scurrying behind the oven.”
“Yeah, and we live with Tomas Meijer now, so what’s the difference?” He faces you, walks backwards, grin plastered on his face.
“That was mean.” You feign annoyance. You sound like a schoolteacher. 
“It’s just how we are, you know. The love hate relationship. Like night and day or some shit. I’d kill for that boy but like, he’s still a rat. He’s the same to me - did he tell you he called me a malnourished ferret once in first year? In English and Dutch. Don’t even remember what it is in Dutch but he really came at me with two knives like that.” 
Kristen and Junie don’t really know each other well - Junie is Tomas’ friend from class and Kristen and Tomas met in dorms, and a series of shitty housemates in second year brought them all together. It’s funny because I really worried Junie would end up with no clear place in the group and more like a third wheel to Kristen and Tomas but as I started writing I realised that her and Kristen are gonna become besties like. Instantaneously. Love this for them <3
5: Kristen
Essentially mirrors the last chapter. Him and Junie arrive home and have a heart to heart in the living room about gender <3 I love this for them <3 
6: Tomas
Tomas goes home with Damiano and they hook up, which is very out of character for Tomas so it’s like his I Am So Random. I Can’t Believe I Just Did That moment. Damiano is a really sweet dude though it’s all good, but he’s here to stay and I can just tell it’s gonna get messy :/ I actually really love how this chapter came out but whilst I have no problem with reading or writing non-explicit sex scenes I’m also like a would rather die than put that on tumblr dot com oops 
7: Kristen
we’ve skipped a week ahead to the day before semester starts, and the next three chapters are basically like a character study of where each of them are mentally. It’s not the best :/ This is also the point where Day 1 Of Camp me had literally no idea what I was doing. LCOMS is different from the way I pants Revelations, Revelations because with the latter I find it much easier to brainstorm scenes in my head but with this one, it really is a surprise until I open the doc. It’s created some really interesting moments though. 
Kristen visits an amateur photographer friend named Kasia to model for her. I struggled to find anything that included info I’m fine with sharing, but I learnt a LOT about Kristen and his mental state, which was surprising since he’s lived in my head rent free for 8 years now. It’s messy <3 The summary: he sees himself as a mannequin, and he decides that he likes it that way, but he also doesn’t know who’s moving his joints into poses. Bestie???
8: Junie
Junie unpacks her room a week after moving in. Autistic queen <3 This is one of the unfinished chapters, and I have zero motivation to finish it because there’s a scene missing and I cannot for the life of me figure out what it is. The gist of it though is she FaceTimes a friend from secondary school that definitely was her gay awakening that she only realised was her gay awakening in the last year. Messy <3 
9: Tomas
One of my favourite chapters. It’s split into two halves, a light-hearted moment of all three housemates at a superstore because <3 grocery store scenes my beloved <3 and then Tomas’ Everything Is Bad exploration at the end. There’s a moment in the first half where Tomas and Kristen have a heart to heart in the candle aisle, and Tomas asks Kristen where he thinks they’ll be in their thirties. I winged this in a sprint and I’m obsessed with it, it’s all about the ~dynamic~
“Well, he has student debt for one. But that’s not on him. That’s on the Tories. But I like to think they’ll be out of power by then. Boris might even be dead, if we’re lucky. But again, not on me.” He’s quiet again. You watch him think. “He’d be a music teacher probably, or an English teacher. But like, a cool one. He doesn’t teach secondary school because he doesn’t hate himself. Maybe a Sixth Form, or even better a Uni. His students would love him because he’d be able to take a joke and also like, not hound on them for having mental illnesses or life struggles?” Neither of you look at the aisles anymore, just circle the home section of Big Tesco. “He’d also do a lot of charity work. He has a foundation-charity-thing for queer and autistic kids to get accessible music lessons, because creative therapy is like, the best thing - besides Prozac but I digress - and it’d be better than the old white men from CAMHs who act like you don’t exist by your eighteenth birthday. And he’d have a cool little flat in Sheffield where the landlord lets him paint the walls so every room is a different colour. Turquoise kitchen. Magenta Living room. Lavender bedroom. Mint bathroom.” He looks at you like he forgot you were there. “You really let me ramble like that in the middle of Big Tesco, huh? That felt like a fucking therapy moment.” He laughs a little, like he’s nervous.
“Nah, it was a good answer. Maybe if Tomas-in-his-thirties doesn’t move back to the Netherlands, he’ll rent the apartment next to Kristen-in-his-thirties.” 
Kristen pouts. “Aw, you don’t wanna be my roomie anymore?” 
“No, you called me an animal for eating pineapple on pizza.” 
“Deserved. And you called me a malnourished ferret.”
You smile. “You’re not gonna let that down, are you?”
He smiles. “Of course not.”
Kristen tells Tomas he knows Something Happened to him over summer, and gets him to promise to tell him when he’s ready. The second half of the chapter takes place back at the house. Tomas is grieving, and it’s starting to creep into all elements of his thought. In this one specifically, he’s reminded of his top surgery and his memories in the hospital for that starts to blend with his memory of being in the hospital to grieve. Tomas is interesting as trans rep because like, he is trans rep curated for me specifically <3 Tomas was a huge comfort character for me when I was younger and when I realised I was trans, I looked at him and was like oh. He had a very smooth coming out and transitioning process (bc mine is the opposite and I need to project :) ), but right now he views his transness as like, a chapter of his life that was important but is now closed, so he doesn’t think about it a lot anymore, but the combo of grief and its mental impacts causes him to think about it more and he realises he has a very unhealthy internal relationship with his transness. Whilst the big idea at the start of Tomas’ arc is to show trans peace, I really wanted to take a moment to acknowledge the grieving process that comes with being trans. Literally the moment that made me realise “oh god, this is real and I can’t ignore it” was googling “im scared i might be trans” and realising how normal those tangled feelings are. Tomas’ experience of it is only fleeting, but I wanted to show that it’s normal. That being said, there’s no transphobia in this story. It is ultimately a Trans Peace story but also a trans story that, for me at least, is realistic. And the thoughts don’t last long, because his mind circles back to the grieving process. 
(CW: graphic surgery and hospital imagery, vomit mention, death)
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[image description: a darkened picture of an empty hospital room. The only light comes in through the window through thin white curtains. In the middle, in a white serif font, reads “ Scalpel gliding across the chest; were the cuts they made as thin as the line between surgery and autopsy? “ /end id]
Picture this: The hospital room. Clinical lights like exit wounds in the ceiling. Everything hurts. Haven’t slept properly in weeks. Can barely eat without it coiling and tangling in your stomach only for nothing to come up when you heave over the toilet. Messy hair, sunken eye bags. Dull eyes. The hospital room. The hospital halls. The hospital waiting room. The hospital car park. The drive to the hospital. The sleepless night before the hospital visit. The locked in the armchair next to the phone waiting for the hospital to call. The silence shrills harsher than the phone’s ring. But ask yourself this: who’s in the bed? You or him? The memories are different but the same. Oil and water. Shouldn’t be mixed. But it’s hard not to. Picture the two of you on the operating table and on the metal slab. Too far from reality to feel skin slice. Scalpel gliding across the chest; were the cuts they made as thin as the line between surgery and autopsy?
There’s a lot of paragraphs in the story that start with Picture This:. I have no idea what it means, it just reads cool lmao
10: Junie
we skip around 3 weeks now to see how the kids are dealing with the start of semester and well. They’re managing! Junie actually has a good chapter here, because she experiences Baby’s First Queer Class Crush 
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[image description: a purple sunset with a large pink cloud. In the middle, in a white serif font, reads  you notice her background is of a purple sunset. You wonder if purple is her favourite colour like you and if she took it and if she likes photography and if she’d take photos of you “ /end id]
You listen, touch type your notes without properly processing the words yet, but instead of studying the PowerPoint, you study her: how she tucks a strand of black hair - free from her messy bun - behind her ear. The three studs in her earlobe, three little gold stars. The way her eyebrows furrow when she’s confused, and the way her face relaxes when she figures it out. How she touch types like you, how her two brass bracelets  jangle and how you’re the only one that hears it. She minimises Word briefly, and you notice her background is of a purple sunset. You wonder if purple is her favourite colour like you and if she took it and if she likes photography and if she’d take photos of you. Lavender polo shirt, lavender perfume. She doesn’t wear make-up, but a tiny black heart sits under left eye.
Junie’s dreams of a photographer girlfriend are quickly shattered when she admits the photo’s from Pinterest, but otherwise this is so <3 the sapphic crisis of it all.
You walk out together, and she tells you she only got into Sheffield that weekend, and it was a nightmare to explain to the tutors why. “It’s like, they forget we have lives sometimes. Lives we can’t control.” She shakes her head. “It’s okay now though, I’m here now.” 
You almost trip on the stairs up to the main floor, and her hand is warm against your wrist. Your cheeks redden, but she just asks if you’re okay, smiles when you are. Tells you she’s late for a seminar, but it was lovely to meet you. Thanks again for the lecture notes. Calls you a lifesaver. Fades into the between-classes rush. You’re glad she’s here now.
again she is so <3 i get it babes i get it <3 
In other news, at the end of the chapter Kristen drops the most relatable line of the entire fucking book:
“You know how like, when it rains, all the worms come out and do a funky little dance? Yeah so basically: the rain is LIT3001 right. And the worms are all of my mental illnesses.”
11: Tomas
Tomas turns 21 on October 13th so naturally like anyone in his early 20s he has multiple crisis’ about it. I still haven’t figured this chapter ~out yet but it sure exists! It just sucks the same way it sucks to be a young adult in the late 2010s. But here’s Kristen being the most relatable character in the book again and getting bullied for it :/
(CW: alcohol)
"I still can't believe you both do a science. Like, it actually baffles me - I could not be more further from that." Kristen refills his glass, measures the vodka level with his index. "Just a babe and his silly little BA against the world." 
"You know if you wanna be a BA babe you have to actually, like, graduate."
12: Kristen
Kristen is personally like I will pretend my degree does not exist and honestly? I get it King. He visits his Dad, since he only lives 30 minutes away, but most of the chapter is him thinking about Tomas and their messy friendship and the fact that Tomas is kinda ghosting him despite literally living together :/ Anyway here’s Kristen’s cat :)
Mar snoozes on your pillow, half curled like a croissant. Orange fluff against grey sheets, and you’re not mad at the fur debris she’ll inevitably leave. Her head pops up when you sit next to her, “you forget about me yet?”. You scratch her head and it’s like you’re 12 again and you don’t have to worry about rent or degrees or masters applications or careers or groceries or housemates and you haze through Sundays snoozing in bed with your new kitten. Technically she was a birthday present, but dad couldn’t wait an extra month to adopt her. Said he saw it in her eyes at the shelter, that she belonged here. You named her Marmalade because you were a dumbass eleven year old and also thought marmalade was the shit back then. She stretches her legs and yawns. Plops her head back down, back to sleep. “Yeah, me too.”
13: Tomas
The next three chapters centre around each character’s Halloween, because <3 Halloween my beloved <3. Tomas’ starts off with him and Kristen being ~homoerotic and him being a ~disaster about it. 
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w[image description: a photo of a blue planet - Neptune - against a black background. In the middle, in a white serif font, reads “You don’t know which palette he’s using, but you remember his favourite is space themed: Mars red, Neptune blue, Jupiter orange - you try to guess which planet he thinks looks best against olive. He taps the brush against the palette. Imagine the planets. How they dandelion in the air.” /end id]
When you sit in front of him, your knees press together. When he tilts your head up, thumb on chin, nail grazing the curve of your lip, his hand is ice on your skin. He studies your face, you close your eyes. When he pulls back, you swear you still feel his thumbprint on your skin. You don’t know which palette he’s using, but you remember his favourite is space themed: Mars red, Neptune blue, Jupiter orange - you try to guess which planet he thinks looks best against olive. He taps the brush against the palette. Imagine the planets. How they dandelion in the air. He holds your head in place, hand sprawls over you cheek like veins. Brushes colour into your eye socket. Underneath the radiator, your phone buzzes twice. Don’t say anything. Ignore your heartbeat.
(before this Tomas threw his phone at the radiator because someone texted him :) yeah okay mood :) )
this story is really about the ~gay disasters and also the ~dialogue 
You flop onto your bed, arms crossed over your face. “I dunno. I might just print off all the emails Uni's sent me about my dissertation. Staple them to a jacket and tell people I'm going as mental illness." 
"Tomas, if you want to go as mental illness then you don't need a costume at all."
Unfortunately the rest of the chapter is not as fun because plot had to happen but this first scene was :)
14: Junie
Junie is not a fan of Halloween so she gives up halfway through the night and invites the girl she met in her lecture over to bake cookies at 1am instead. Fellas is this gay?
(CW: alcohol)
The girl in the kitchen brought cookie cutters in pink Tupperware. She explains she’s had them since she was eight, but she hasn’t had a chance to use them this Autumn. She has seven: cat, butterfly, crescent moon, heart, three stars matryoshka’d together. “I have more, these are just my go to ones. I’m a bit of a collector.” She lines them up on the counter, you trace the outline of the cat. She says she didn’t want to bring too many, but she likes having the options with no plan, the potential. You want to tell her that, after you invited her over, you spritzed the counters with lavender surface cleaner twice and tucked the discarded vodka and raspberry liqueur bottles in the cabinet you can barely reach. You piled unfolded laundry into your closet and hid drooping plants behind your closed curtains when you had zero intention of her inviting her to your room. You want to ask her why she said yes, why she replied in two minutes at one in the morning, and you want to ask her why people feel the need to cookie cutter themselves into a false potential. She asks if you want to bake with coconut or chocolate chip.  
she is actually such a disaster around girls i love her so much
The girl in your kitchen clears up glass that isn’t hers. You drop the measuring jug and it fireworks against tile. No shards lodge in your skin. Whilst she cleans, insists that it’s okay, you brew peppermint tea because you insist it’s the least you can do. The girl tells you a story about how she did the exact same thing, when she was nine, and her mother shrieked so loud the neighbours banged at the door a minute later. She laughs, muted. You apologise again. She insists it’s okay again. Rain hardens against the window, looks like TV static. You breathe in the peppermint steam.
The biggest thing I’ve learnt since drafting is that, at it’s core, this is a love story. And that makes me so excited because so many people, especially in mainstream media, still think that autistic people are incapable of love - or even worse, undeserving. 
15: Kristen
Kristen’s favourite holiday is Halloween so naturally on his special day I had to make him go through it :) I can’t share a lot of this, but it feels right to end this beast of an update on this beast of an excerpt because it came to me out of absolutely nowhere and it is one of my favourite passages I’ve ever written OOPS
(CW: death, parental death)
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[image description: a cluster of stars against a dark blue, almost black sky. In the middle, in a white serif font, reads “You want to ask your dad how something can end if for you it never began, but he’s asleep in his armchair back home. You look at the stars. You wonder if any of them are her.“ /end id]
You’ve mapped Sheffield’s streets since 13 so you know you’re walking the wrong way. This isn’t the way to Crookes. This isn’t the way out the city centre. You should order an Uber. You keep walking. You stop at a crossing. There’s no cars. You don’t cross. The traffic light flashes red and bleeds on your face. The stars are out tonight, and now it’s 2004 and you’re in the lounge with Lion King in the VHS. You’re off sick and your neighbour - Mel, recently retired, recently widowed - nurses a glass of brandy in your dad’s armchair because you don’t know it yet, but he can’t afford to miss work. You’re sprawled on the dusty-red rug when Simba and Mufasa sprawl in the grass and Mufasa tells Simba that all the stars are the Kings of the past and they are watching over him. You ask recently retired, recently widowed Mel if that’s true; her smile is happy but her eyes are sad and she says “yes, and not just Kings. Nobody leaves Earth, they just move to the stars.” 
Ten minutes later, Mufasa is flung off a gorge’s edge; you haven’t studied storytelling yet, but you understand those two moments are connected. And when you relay this to dad over ready made pasta that evening, you ask him if people really live in the stars: Sometimes, when they can’t live here anymore. Then you ask if they can come back from the stars: No, but people remember them. They’ll tell stories about them, so people don’t forget. Then you ask if memories and stories are like stars: A little. Then you ask why they can’t live here anymore: It’s hard to explain, Kris.
After dinner, he lets you play on the plastic slide in the garden as he scrubs the dishes. You climb to the top and try to see faces in the stars, but it’s too cloudy. And after that but before bedtime, you’re sprawled on the dusty-red rug again, and Lion King is in the VHS again, and as Simba and Nala are bathed by their mothers again, your five year old mind connects what’s different about you. You go to ask dad about it, but he’s asleep in his armchair. It’s 2018, you’re stood on a phantom street in Sheffield. You want to ask your dad how something can end if for you it never began, but he’s asleep in his armchair back home. You look at the stars. You wonder if any of them are her.
And I usually don’t do this, but I think the playlist for this wip is absolutely fucking elite, so here’s a handful of the songs that I think encapsulate the story the best:
The Wombats – Greek Tragedy
Duncan Laurence – Arcade
FKA Twigs – Two Weeks
Peach Pit – Alrighty Aphrodite
Khalid – Saturday Nights
Alfie Templeman – Stop Thinking (About Me)
Rina Sawayama – 10-20-40
If you read this far, then I love you and we shall have a platonic wedding this summer. But I cannot express how excited I am about this story and to see where it goes!
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iloveuspiderman · 3 years
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Things that have bothered me about MCU!Spiderman:
- They had him introduced by having him on the opposite side of someone who was not only trying to keep a person from being convicted of a crime they didn’t commit and was trying to stand against those who demanded secret identities and gov oversight of a specific class of people
- at the same time, he (a minor) was taken out of the country without his guardian’s permission to fight literal adults at the behest of a billionaire
- In 2/3 of his solo movies, they were really all about Tony
- He needed to prove himself to Tony not himself/own morals
- In 2/3 movies, his villains were working class people who got screwed over by a billionaire
- He thinks he’s better or worth more than just being a Friendly Neighborhood Spiderman
YEAH!!! ALL OF THIS YOURE SO RIGHT!! the first bullet is kind of like. yeah well, he would never do this, except in the comics he actually does start on tony's side in civil war so he kind of has to for the movie :/ but they changed the concept of civil war sooooo much for the movie that it makes even less sense for him to be a part of it!! he switches sides in the comics!!!!!! but here he's just a 15 year old kid who was asked by a famous billionaire superhero/probably science idol knowing the mcu to come fight a battle that im sure peter doesn't know or understand the politics of AT ALL. let him just do his homework!!!!!
and nothign about his relationship with tony makes any sense D: peter has never had a mentor his whole thing is that he's always had to do it alone!!! peter's relationship with tony is much more like's miles and peter's or tony's with the champs it makes me so sad DDDD: they'ved stripped eveuything from miles its not fair!!!!
and literally. those last bullet.s yeah. yeah. they really decided lets maker peter b(roke) parker idolize billionaire tony stark and fight AGAINST the poor working class people that not only does peter always protect, but actually is as well!!!! in every single iteration of peter except for these movies, peter is poor as dirt. doesn't ahve two coins to rub together. the only exception to this is in the comics when LITERALLY DOC OC TOOK OVER HIS BODY AND STARTED A HUGE COMPANY AS PETER PARKER. other than that. poor. the earliest comics are peter trying to find a way to make some money to help out aunt may. it is vital to his character and there from his very creation. amd the mcu erased all of that—all of him—because it's not exciting or fun to be spoon fed capitalist propaganda if your main character is dealing with the struggles of being poor at the same time. hes the friendly neighborhood spider-man he fights for, not against, the little guy!!!!!!!!!!!!!! thats where hes best!!!! screaminga nd crying!!!
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enderspawn · 3 years
Text
so now that we’ve had a few days since the syndicate stream, i think ive managed to cool down and step back to look at it more neutrally. ended up long and pretty rambly since its all pretty flow of consciousness so its under the cut, but heres some thoughts on the syndicate (and a bit on c!techno, since hes the originator)
in universe, techno has only just heard a new place was made. he doesn’t know jack abt it, so he goes over to check it out and learn whats happening. he meets w tubbo, who explains they arent a gov, and accepts it then goes. hes hesitant abt the nukes, but frankly? also understandable, they are nukes. any kind of mass weapon of destruction is something to look out for, same as if tubbo revealed his own wither vault. 
i think the reason that i, and many other ppl, had such a NEGATIVE reaction to what is a mainly harmless and completely reasonable interaction is. well, bc we’re the audience. we KNOW more than c!techno does. we know that snowchester very explicitly was formed without a government because they’re afraid of techno attacking. we know that the nukes are made to defend them, based off what happened to lmanberg. we know that ranboo joined partially to try and spare snowchester if worst came to worst. 
the reason we the audience were afraid of him going is bc we feared what would happen if he DID deem it a gov. bc we know the effort they’ve done to NOT be one, bc we have a connection to the town that c!techno doesnt. 
after then came calling the syndicate/techno tyrannical. after all- if they strike down every government then they are forcing ppl to follow their beliefs under threat of destruction or death. which is uhh pretty fucking tyrannical. 
the thing is that in the end the syndicate hasnt even done enough for us to like. KNOW if thats true. techno himself said hes totally fine w just group of people living together, hell hes in a damn SYNDICATE. you can def argue in general abt what gives the syndicate the right at all to decide if a gov deserves to exist, if being “”the deciders”” makes them inherently hypocritical. (this also is pushing that “they decide” bc, well, w the exception of tubbo now, theres very little chance the other ppl would win against techno and crew. it Would just be decimation. if they attack, they’re destroying it all). 
after all, they preach abt giving ppl the right to choose but then dont let them choose to form a gov. paradox of tolerance i suppose, since in anarchistic views there isnt like a “non-corrupt” government so every government is worth dismantling. (note, this is all based off my p limited understanding of anarchy theory and also Very Simplified for ease of speaking)
another reason we the audience may have been so afraid is bc, historically, techno doesnt lose. he may suffer personal losses and feelings of betrayal, but narratively hes won every battle hes really been in. its the status quo, so any possible conflict in the future you kind of expect the same. we were afraid of any kind of conflict starting. 
i think this stuff does kinda work in character too. c!tubbo admits himself he doesnt rlly know government stuff, and he doesnt seem to really know what techno would or wouldnt DEEM one- thus he has a similar fear to the audience of being struck down for it. ranboo, like stated before, partially joined bc he was afraid FOR snowchester. 
again i get that anarchy is against that greater establishment, but theres something to be said for the fact that. well. this is a block game. its systems work a LOT differently than real life, and real life anarchist theory may not transfer over well. there are a lot of good posts ive seen recently analysing lmanberg (specifically early lmanberg) and like. it genuinely worked to protect its citizens. they were able to pool together their resources and man power and protect each other from outside threats that would overpower them seperately. there IS no big overarching societal and deeply built in system to overthrow like in real life, if anything “having a government” IS the new system trying to form instead of anarchy (bc, to my knowledge, lmanberg was the first real “government” and the dream smp’s gov kinda formed as a response) it could def be another reason so many ppl are against enforcing anarchy-- this isnt the real world, and being in solidified groups could help the weak. without that, instead its the strongest survive and thrive while everyone else suffers. 
(then again to devils advocate my own point, a lot of times they’re referring in those posts to a time where wilbur, who was actually “in charge” wasnt around a ton, so there was less of a power structure in place. also, you CAN still have a group of ppl without being a “gov” (like snowchester or the syndicate) but then we get back to “what is a gov by the syndicate’s standards” as well as if they want to remove a gov at its start or JUST when it seems “tyrannical” (so if they believe a gov is inherently tyrannical). like if i started a direct democracy gov and explicitly called it a gov, do you take it down? its taking the opinion of all citizens and allows everyone equal power. is that corrupt just bc its ALSO a gov, or does it get to stay? where is the line?  idk man maybe give the gov like a free trial. if it starts being corrupt then step in but if they’re vibin they’re vibin. chill w the anarchy /lh /hj JFKDLSJF)
idk man this isnt fully conclusion imo i just wanted to long think abt this. also fuck this block game for getting into legit political theory and ethics and shit. “is someone valid in doing something for another person that they believe will help the other person if it limits their personal freedom” (or, is techno correct in enforcing anarchy bc he believes it is the best form for ppl, EVEN at the cost of their personal freedoms to make a gov) is too deep to be asking for a fuckin block potato pig. this is why i dont do a ton of discourse im just stupid and it starts getting philosophical at some point FDSKLFJ
yall can respond w your own thoughts to this if you want, even debate it!, but idk if ill respond bc uhhhh Brain Empty fdjsklfj i just wanted to ramble and sort out my own thoughts on the matter now that im not uber pissed at c!techno JFKDLSJFKL
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glamourizedcocaine · 3 years
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I'm a fucking wreck rn I haven't been sleeping for a week and I'm getting some rest from the bullshit factory that is my brain only now, but I just wanted to say that last year for me has been saved by tumblr and all the friends I made along the way.
Before you go below the cut, a special thanks goes to the Bee Movie Anon, who, rightfully, I can't tag so I have to say it here in the hope that they'll see it. Your hunger for chaos made me feel a lot of emotions, and I'd have never in any time or space thought that the Bee Movie would be such a prominent part of my life as it is now thanks (read it with a note of sarcasm) to you. Thank you for providing us an infinite amount of both entertainment and suffering, hell, some of the friends I made were because of YOU. I'm still not sure what was your drive to go and start this absurd crusade for the bee movie in the 80s metal fandom, but I don't know, I don't think bee so, I'm not gonna question your ways.
@arnold-layne being the first in line, you kept me sane somehow in the first phases of quarantine and dedicated a lot your time to talk with me and helped me enormously with creativity. If it wasn't for you, that Cyberpunk Comic That Is Kinda Inspired By The Crüe and Shout At The Devil would've been already down the drain. I would've given up probably, because I didn't know how to exted the concept and have an actual plot. A dream that I've been having for literal years wouldn't even have such cool characters with a rich storyline if it wasn't for you. I know I kinda left it after a month or so of intense brainstorming with you, I was literally drained at that point both physically and mentally, but oh boy I haven't forgot about the characters that WE created. How could I after all? Russ being the wreck of a tormented junkie protagonist that he is, Dylan the happy-go-lucky fuck up that seems to do nothing right but with the best intentions, Frankie the runaway sassy and wary androgynous teenager whose gender is a mystery even to themselves, and the epitome of the found family trope, ex gov agent part Japanese, part Russian, part cyborg Vik, whose story isn't still clear yet but we'll give him a very good one, eventually.
You gave me the curiosity to read fanfiction again after literally NINE YEARS of being distant from that part of the fandom and honestly I don't regret it one bit. In fact, I discovered literally my favorite writer in fanfiction. That is you, Arnold. I don't care how frequently you write, I don't care if sometimes you can't do your best. I'll always be there waiting for the next chapter and I'll always think that your art is sublime. I'll have to admit, I don't read your works as often as I should. But it's because I love them so much that I want to always save for later. It's like a drug, or a delicious cake that you want it to last as long as possible so you can enjoy it for much longer (I should be reading your fic more often either way tho like, at least so I can make more art for it. I'll make sure to change that this year and give you the recognition you deserve 🖤).
Everytime I make art, everytime I make a post, I always wait for your name to pop in my notifs. And fuck if I'm happy when I see it, and I rush to read your tags and it always makes my day. Like seriously, you mean so much to me and I admire how you can still be any amount of sane with all you're going through. You're strong as hell, keep going. 🖤
@i-dont-like-rice dude, how can I explain it. You're my best bud here. You're my chaotic sibling from another mother. The other braindead I share the single braincell I have with. The Nikki to my Tommy. Or the Tommy to my Nikki, I'm still not sure which of us is which (I guess I'm Nikki and you're Tommy? lmao it's ironic how even them are an italian and a balkanian) but you get the point. Every interaction we have, I laugh my ass off till my whole body hurts every time. I think I worried my mother and annoyed my sister at least a couple times for bursting out laughing for five minutes straight out of the blue, especially if it was late at night, and all the times, I swear it was because of you. You are as chaotic as you are kind, and it's always so disarming to see you worry or take care of others when you are definitely in a worse situation. Please, be more selfish, goddammit. For your own sake. And be more confident of your art. Draw shit and post it. Who cares if it's not perfect and you hate it and you don't want anybody to see it, it's tumblr, nobody will ever reblog it or give you the well deserved recognition anyway! So it's worth a try isn't it?
@no-stone-no-bone seriously, I'm so glad I met you. You're like the third element of chaos that holds me and Andi together. All three of us are literally unstoppable. You're extremely sweet too and I wish you the best, and DON'T HIDE SHIT IN THE TAGS GODDAMMIT 😂
@white-lightning-625 @viiinceneil I know we really haven't talked much, and we met through unfortunate times, but I'm so glad that something good came out of the chaos and drama, which is being able to talk to you and getting to know you both better. And the fics. My god, the fics. Frankie, I already told you this but MY GOD. I still find it incredible that I've read a fic about a band I didn't even know what they looked or sounded like and I was HOOKED from start to finish. And Katie, I should definitely read more of your works because I love what you've got going on. You're both very sweet and talented with a very distinct, beautiful way of writing and I can't wait to sink my teeth into the pulp of your work, because I know that by now I only scratched the surface.
@awrestlinggirlwholoves80sbands Bruh, conoscere una fan su tumblr the parla la MIA STESSA LINGUA (e che ha pure il mio stesso vero nome lmao cosa sta succedendo)??? Che concetto innovativo!!! Le nostre conversazioni sono sempre disgiunte, ma non importa, adoro ogni nostra interazione. Sei seriamente una delle persone più dolci e gentili che abbia mai conosciuto. La tua creatività stimola sempre la mia. Le tue moodboard sono sempre 👌👌👌 e ogni volta trovo sempre qualcosa che sì, ci avevo pensato, ma mai nel modo in cui lo poni tu, e di solito sono una persona che resta vicina alle proprie idee, ma tu riesci a farmi alterare prospettiva, e trovo questo meccanismo mentale molto affascinante. Ti ricordi lo swapped instruments AU, con Tommy come cantante, no? Giuro che è un concetto a cui penso ancora dopo mesi. Spero di avere la capacità mentale per tradurre quell'idea in arte il prima possibile, perché cazzo, lo adoro troppo
@tattooed-lies thank you for providing the fandom the best gifs in the fucking platform and thank you for giving us the vinikki content that everyone, even if they're not aware, deserves and needs. Thank you for being the only Vince stan that I know. Thank you for being the sweetest person alive 💖
@nbtommylee honestly, I wish I was cool like you. Your sense of humor is impeccable, much like your critical thinking. I have never read something from you that wasn't a valid point. You don't talk shit and that's extremely sexy of you, y'know? And having a "gender dysphoria buddy" to be jealous of our Rockstar Gender Of Choice with is always fun to have, so that's definitely a plus. Can't wait to see (and read!) more of your art, I just love your style so much and you deserve to be Known
@metalmelkor @emometalhead @polka-dot-duff I'm always so happy to see you in my notifs and y'all are oh so very sweet and cool, we haven't talked much but I love every interaction we have, sorry for having the social skills of a stale piece of white bread 🖤
A special thanks goes to @awesomgrlgr8job bc you're literally one of my very first mutuals since I made the decision to make this dumpster fire of a blog and holy shit it's crazy to think about that. I don't even know if we ever interacted that much but it's always such a joy to see you around, ily and I hope you're doing well and thanks for putting up with my clownery for so long 💖
Like seriously, thank you all. I don't even know where I would be without you. Here's to another year of chaos, but only of the good kind 💖
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gisellelx · 3 years
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Hello! Love your blog and i wanna say
Your analysis and your posts in general are always so well researched historically. How do you do that and how can I do it too?
So I wanted to answer this with care and time and thoughtfully. I hope this answer will be good not just for you but will be worth reblogging for anyone who wants to think about how you develop good researching skills more generally. Because ultimately getting good at making sense of the world isn’t just about writing or just about fic or just about academia; it’s about being a good citizen of the world.  The short answer to this question, up front: I’ve gotten good at research because it’s my actual job! I’m a professor and not even a new one really anymore; I have a book of research coming out later this year which still feels really weird to say. I happen to know how old you are because we’ve chatted so don’t forget to put into perspective that before you started formal schooling I had already written my first 50+ page research work. I’ve been at this seriously for almost two decades now. However, there are some fundamental ways that professional researchers go about thinking about everything, whether it’s something as inconsequential as fic or as monumental as the stuff going on in the U.S. right now that I think are a little different, and they’re replicable in useful ways. So here’s three things that matter.  Get curious. This actually is pretty easy for fanfic writers because we already have something we’re curious about--whatever fandom(s) we’re in. But curiosity isn’t just about the spark; it’s also about getting interested in making connections between different kinds of things. When you encounter any given piece of information, the first thing you should start thinking about is “how does this piece of information fit in with everything else I already know” which will lead you to “how does it contradict what I already know” and “what else do I need to know to understand how this fits?” This leads you down really interesting rabbit holes.  An example from fic/tumblr answers: A witch hunting Anglican really doesn’t map on to what I know of Anglicans/Episcopalians in present-day. So then I start to ask, “Okay. What was actually going on in the church in the 1640s?” I’m going to mesh it with some of my own knowledge: I know the protestant reformation happened a hundred years earlier, but I don’t know a ton about what happened after, except that the Puritans arrived in New England eh, about that time. So I go down the rabbit hole of finding out about the church in the 1640s. At some point there I’m going to run across some of the secular history: that the 1640s was the English Civil War. Okay, what was the Civil War about? Who won? How long were they in control? Questions beget questions and true, at some point, you have to decide when to stop if it’s for writing. But honestly, if you’re curious, you probably won’t stop thinking about it even if you’ve found out enough to answer the thing you want to answer. Because you’ll 
Develop a lens. The thing you’re interested in becomes the way you start to see the world. Start relating everything to the thing you are trying to find out more about. Notice when you’re getting more information about that thing or when something would matter to that thing. I have an assignment I give my students where they have to write four short assignments relating stuff they see about language use to the things they’re learning in class. It’s partially to teach them about the concepts they’re learning, and partially to teach them about writing, but it’s mostly to accustom them to viewing the world through the lens I’m teaching them. It’s to help them get curious about why one barista’s tone sounds friendly and the other’s doesn’t even though the say the exact same thing. It’s mutually reinforcing: the lens begets curiosity and curiosity begets the development of the lens. If I encounter a fact, a piece of history, a moment in time, an old song, there’s a little piece of my brain after 11 years of writing Twific that is always asking “Where were the Cullens?” I have headcanons for days about how each of them, especially Carlisle, would’ve dealt with any individual moment in history. When I sing an old hymn in church I sometimes look down at the date in the hymnal to find out if it’s one Carlisle would’ve sung as a human. I’m always working through this lens, and that means I’m always adding to the knowledge. 
Finally, source well. Especially for something as fanciful as fic, there’s not a lot of reason to dive deep into academic tomes (although I have; I am a fucking nerd. See above re: my work.) But dive deeper than the first page of google. Read the first Wikipedia page you come to, but then read a couple of the pages it links to! If the English Civil War has to do with Cromwell and it established the Protectorate, and those things are linked? Well, read those, too! And then you might need to cross-reference--okay, now I know what the Protectorate was, and I’ve decided from that original go-round that Carlisle’s dad was probably a Puritan, not really an Anglican, so...what was the relationship of Puritans to the Protectorate? I’m going to next throw that into google. And I’m looking for high-quality sources: magazines, university websites, things that end with .edu or .gov. I’m clicking on the “about” to find out who wrote the thing and how much of an expert they are. If they say something that no one else has said and I can’t find anything that tells me they’re an expert in this? I’m going to disregard that info and move on. This is applicable to way more than just fic--this is about figuring out that as much as I go YEAH YEAH YEAH at some hyper-partisan trash website that fits my political view, I need to step back and consider where it’s coming from, who the author is, and how much they know.  The more you’ve sourced, the easier this gets. My knowledge on Carlisle’s history goes deep, I fell in love with him and only him when I read the series. I have read about popular culture when he was growing up, I have read histories of the English Church, I have spent time thinking about and being fascinated by the history of the development of medical knowledge and medical schools. I didn’t go to the Eye or Big Ben when I happened to be in London; I went to the City Museum and wandered around the part of the city where I imagine he lived, looking for things which have survived since the 17th century and taking note of things which are new to think about what Carlisle would think about them (he is very un-fond of the Gherkin.) I literally spent a day and a half looking at London through Carlisle’s eyes. Because I’m curious; because I have a lens; and because I’m going to grab good sources whenever I have them.  That is a SUPER long post. But I hope it’s helpful. When it comes to writing, the richer your knowledge, the more likely you are to drop the right detail which places your reader and makes them buy into everything else in the world. I remember reading a fic which took place in my hometown and the author had one of the Cullens flying in their private jet. In my hometown, a mid-sized city in the midwest, there is a commercial international airport, but there is also a smaller airfield which handles much of the private air traffic. That author had that Cullen plane take off from the smaller airfield. I don’t know if she is also from my hometown, but she got that detail right, and it signaled that I could trust the rest of her storytelling.  So. It’s worth it: to be a good writer, to be a good researcher, and just to be good at understanding the world. I hope that helps and sorry for the word vomit. Professors write a lot, too. 
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187days · 3 years
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Day Twelve
The current events write-ups I assigned to my ninth graders were due yesterday, but I didn’t have a full block of prep time because there was a faculty meeting. I stayed after to do some of the grading, but I still had two sections’ worth today. So I planned a lesson that included a lengthy assignment on world geography that students could do on their own (after some reading time- which we do every class- and a discussion of the last assignment). It’s actually designed to take multiple classes, so I set the due date at the end of class on Friday, but I think everyone in my Block 1 class will finish by the end of class tomorrow- they’re all pretty quick- so I’ll be sure to post the next assignment, too. That way anyone who wants to move forward can do so. 
My point, though, is that I was able to grade the remaining current events write-ups while students were working, so every student had their work back by the time they came to class. And this is one thing you are never told in teacher training, and it’s a thing I’ve written on this blog before: sometimes it’s okay to sit at your desk. If your students can work independently, you don’t need to loom over them for an entire block. I tend to grade one of two write-ups, walk around, grade one or two more, and I’ll always stop and field questions if students have them. If it’s not working- like, if students don’t stay on task while I’m grading- then I don’t do it.
Today I think it went well. The assignment includes some mind-blowing maps and charts about the world today. Several students made comments about them as they worked, either to me or their peers, mentioning the things they hadn’t known before and the things they find especially surprising. That’s an awesome indicator of their engagement. 
I did have to have a serious chat with my Block 4 students about keeping their masks on properly. I explained what the guidelines from the state and district are, and why they're in place, and why I have to enforce them. 90% of the class got it, I’d say, and quit pulling their masks down after that, which is good. I was also able to have a one-on-one chat with a student whose response to every assignment I’ve given has been, “I can’t do that.” We spoke about changing that mindset, I suggested some strategies for reading and writing that could help him, he agreed to give them a try... Making progress, bit by bit!
My GOV students were riled up about their college applications. I think a lot of them met with their counselors this week, so the process is on their minds. So we took some time to chat about that before I started my lesson, which was on Federalist 10 and 51. They figured out the Anti-Federalist argument in opposition to the Constitution in previous classes, so now they’re figuring out the Federalist response. I gave them some guiding questions because these two documents, especially Fed. 10, are dense and can be difficult to decipher. They have tomorrow to work, as well, and we’ll discuss everything on Friday.
Stay tuned!
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honeytothebee · 3 years
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Streamlining the Monarchy
Royal Roundtable #3 Collaborative Post
Thank you all for submitting your thoughts and opinions on this topic! I have compiled everyone’s input in this post. I have also responded to your submissions. I really enjoy discussion and debate, as you will see below! It is my sincere hope that no one will be offended if I ask questions or disagree with your opinion. It is not my intention to cause anyone to feel “shut down” in expressing their opinion but rather to have a place to host respectful, engaging conversations where we may disagree but also may learn something from others’ perspectives! So I hope you all will comment or send another ask so that we can continue the conversation!
Without further ado:
Anon wrote:
I think that only one who should receive funding is: The Queen, Charles, and William (his kids) then later on George and his kids.
This would definitely be a much smaller group of working royals! At what point do you think the younger siblings would be retired?
@helenaaurellia wrote:
The main cost of the monarchy isn't the royals. It's the Palaces. So all they have to do is hand Windsor Castle and Buckingham Palace over to the government. The government can pay to run them, they can be used as a museum( closed of course whenever state dinners or garden parties have to be hosted) and the royals can even have a few rooms upstairs to change before events and sleep in when parties run very late. That should save about 20 million a year.
Good point to consider. Transferring upkeep of the palaces over to the government probably wouldn’t save the taxpayer any money unless there’s a big increase in tourism revenue (thank you @helenaaurellia for discussing this with me further on PM), but it would clear up a great deal of confusion around the actual cost of working royals.
@krill9 wrote:
Streamlining is difficult, because if you cut the number of working royals, that means overall less visits so some areas get less recognition which could lead to discord. A few random ideas: Turning some of the palaces into tourist attractions or museums is a good idea. Having small weddings for everyone but the direct heir is a good start too. There has to be a balancing act, so possibly having a set budget that is divided among the working royals, rather than each royal charging for an event, if that makes sense lol. So say the budget is £100. It would be £25 to the Wessexs, £35 to the Cambridges and then £40 to Charles since he’s the heir. It’s then up to each royal to make that budget work. Then, cut down on who is living in each palace. No offense to the Kents or Gloucesters, but should they be living at Kensington or St James? Those locations could be museums or tourist attractions. I do think more visibility is a good idea, similar to the Swedes. Release more photos, don’t have events that shut the public out completely because they are the ones paying. It’s a tough one, because there are always going to be negatives and positives. However, even if we didn’t have a monarchy, these kinds of costs would still be a topic of discussion about the President’s family and so on. Value for money is a big factor. If we see the royals actually helping and making a positive contribution to the UK, then you can argue that they are worth the cost.
I agree, there are pros and cons with the idea of streamlining. Reducing the number of working royals will absolutely reduce the number of annual engagements, which was around 3200 last year. You echo the idea mentioned above. I know KP, BP, and Windsor are all open to the public in some capacity. St. James’s is not but it is still the official Royal Court. Maybe it would be possible for some of the palaces to be open to the public for longer periods of time? 
As for the budgets for royals based on their rank, I honestly think there may already be a system such as this in place. It’s one thing I wonder if people consider when they complain about engagement numbers. The budget and the calendar are all set with the entire BRF in mind. And I would wager that includes security costs, which aren’t public information.
I’ve written in a previous post about how I believe the Queen’s working cousins have rightfully been “grandfathered in” and have held up their end of the deal. I don’t think it would be fair to ask them to leave the palaces, but that’s just my opinion! Now, I do wonder about the non-working members of the family living at KP such as Beatrice and Eugenie, Prince and Princess Michael, etc. But they do pay rent.
I would be interested to read more of your thoughts on not shutting the public out of events. This is intriguing! Do you mean like state banquets or diplomatic receptions? Or charity visits? If you have the time I would love to hear your ideas on how the public could be better included in all royal events!
Totally agree that heads of state cost substantial amounts of money regardless of the structure. 
Anon wrote:
Reducing the number of working royals. They cost money for security coming out of Met police budget that could be spent to tackle crime in London, they are costly in terms of travel and other expenses. Minor royals visits and tours do not offer vfm and mostly are just finding sth for them to do. charities will benefit more from gov grants insted of royal visits (which also are taxpayer funded). Difference is grants are transparent & accountable where royal funds are not.
The unknown amount of money spent on security is a huge factor to consider. Of course, this would be a substantial cost with a president or other head of state as well. Your point about reducing the number of working royals and security costs is definitely something to consider. I do wonder how much less security costs for an engagement or tour carried out by a minor royal compared to an heir?
Money going to grants rather than royal visits could definitely be beneficial for most charities. I do think there are some charities which benefit from the public spotlight offered by royal visits, but this is not true across the board. 
Anon wrote: TBH I think the BRF is already pretty streamlined. Philip retired, the Sussexes bailed and Andrew was put out to pasture, so that leaves the Queen (carrying out minimum of engagements due to age), C&C, the Cambridges, Anne and the Wessexes, which I think is about as many people as they need considering there is an expectation for the BRF to be highly visible (there is a lot more pressure for British royals to do hundrends of engagements a year than on *any* other royal family). I think monarch and spouse plus their children and the children's spouses is a pretty good recipe for a working royal family. I think grandchildren not in the main line could be stripped of titles (so in the future that would be Charlotte's and Louis's children) and they could do their own thing. I know lots of people want to restrict it even further, but Britain isn't Spain - just the monarch couple wouldn't work IMO.
I agree that the expectations for the BRF are quite different compared to other European RFs. And I believe what you have written about the grandchildren is the plan going forward. I don’t anticipate there will ever be another situation like Beatrice and Eugenie’s.  
@a-hog-in-a-hedge wrote:
Okay, so I’m in a weird place because I love royal watching but I don’t like the fact that they subsist off of taxpayer money. I’ve always thought that money people work for should go back to the people, and if it’s going to royals then obviously it’s not going back to the people.
I think streamlining is a good first step to cutting down costs. Leave it to the heirs and spares (so right now the Queen, Charles & Camilla, and the Cambridges) maybe give half funding for the Wessexes.
I think the royals should pay for their own clothes and home renovations- basically, anything the royals get to keep for themselves that the public cannot access. (This goes back to the ‘people should get use out of their taxes).
I also think that the economy needs to be kept in mind. If it’s found that other public institutions like the NHS or school system are struggling with funding then I think they should take precedence over the royals in terms of who gets tax money. If the economy in general is struggling then the royals should fund themselves for the time being.
Lastly, I think they need to be more transparent with their finances - publish everything relating to expenses, taxes, deductons, income etc.
Thanks for hosting these!
I personally believe taxpayers do get benefit from their money being used to fund a head of state. But the scope of the BRF also goes beyond duties of diplomacy and representation, encompassing historical significance and national morale--the Covid crisis has highlighted this IMO. There is little unity when the only national leader is partisan. 
Interesting thought on the clothing and home renovations. I know that furnishings and interior design are covered by personal funds, and the work on the private estates/homes is as well. I do see your argument. If they are living in quarters of the palace which can’t be opened to the public, should the public fund the upkeep of that portion of the palace? I suppose it could be compared to the living quarters of any national head of state.
100% agree concerning transparency of finances.
@jonathanandemily wrote:
I am completely on board with the idea of streamlining the monarchy. Too many HRHs can make a royal family looks bloated. I believe Sweden RF and Dutch RF have done this as well.
In the Netherlands, only King Willem Alexander’s daughters are HRH. The children of Prince Frisco and Prince Constantijn (brothers of King Willem) are not HRH.
I think the British Royal Family is heading towards the right direction. For Charles‘ direct descendant, only Prince William’s children should get HRH. In the future, only Prince George’s children should get HRH. And so on.
Not only for financial sake, but let’s be real, having HRH in front of your name (especially since birth) can get to your head (Prince Andrew, anyone?). For people who has no business being HRH, they will need to learn to fend for themselves early on. They need to work, they need to earn.
That’s how you draw the line, by streamlining the monarchy. So that everyone knows their role, everyone knows their place if you will.
I generally agree with streamlining the monarchy, but wonder how the logistics will work. For example, will children of a monarch always be expected to be working royals since they are given HRH? When would they “retire?” Both PA and PH have made this confusing. There’s also the consideration of the impact of the BRF on the nation lessening with a smaller working group. All things that can be and I believe will be sorted!
Thank you all for contributing! This has gotten to be quite long and I have no more time to write, so I will share my opinions in a separate post, still to come. 
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twdmusicboxmystery · 3 years
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FTWD 6x03: Alaska - First Thoughts
Wow! Where do I even start with this episode? There were So many Bethyl parallels in it. For today, I'm just gonna talk about the broader, more obvious ones. As usual, I’ll do details tomorrow. I was literally shouting at my TV entire time I watched it. Things like, "scissors!" "Alaska!" "Fifth floor!" You get the idea.
***As always, spoilers for FTWD 6x04 abound below. Don’t read until you’ve watched!***
This is pretty much about Al and Dwight. Both of them on major Bethyl proxies. Just to recap, Dwight is looking for Sherry. He was a massive Daryl parallel back in S7 & S8, even wearing Daryl's clothes at various points. Dwight losing Sherry is much like Daryl losing Beth.
Then we have Al. For anyone who doesn't remember, back in episode 5×05 of FTWD, she met Isabel. There was kind of a whirlwind romance between them and they were heavily paralleled with Beth and Daryl. So, we’re getting more about this episode. Let's dive in.
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First, we see Al and Dwight going to the house. The first thing that caught my attention was Al talking about how people had been staying there and they were all dead, now. She counted 15 sleeping bags. That made me think of the golf club in Still, because we’re talking about a group of people who holed up somewhere with sleeping bags, but by the time our characters walk-through, they're all dead. So, golf club feels.
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Then Dwight went upstairs while Al went down. She went into a room that had a whole medical set up in it. It wasn't until Dwight came down to her a few minutes later that he actually said they were in a funeral home.
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Let me repeat that, guys. THEY. ARE. IN. A. FUNERAL. HOME. Going through it. And in the basement was a medical set up. Al opened a drawer and it was full of scissors. Remember, we saw scissors on a medical tray near Daryl in Alone when he led the walkers into the basement. And of course we saw them already in both episodes of Fear this season around Morgan and Daniel. So, scissors you definitely thing the season. (X, X) And the parallels are massively a thing in this episode.
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When Al is still in the basement, there’s even a Rich Bitch walker. Dressed in pink. See why I’m so excited about this episode?
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Al and Dwight literally sit on top of a coffin (think Daryl in Alone, sleeping in the coffin) and drink “skunky” beers.
Let me talk about skunky beers for a minute. I know it's a common term, but the last time I remember hearing them say it in the show was in TWD S4. Episode 4x07, I think, when we were still seeing the Governor’s back story with how he met Tara and her sister. They sat around talking and drinking skunky beers.
The thing is, the Gov was actually a big Beth proxy. True, he was a bad guy, but he was a proxy in that he disappeared and was presumed dead, especially by Daryl and Michonne. Remember in 4A, they talked about how they had stopped looking for him because the trail had gone cold. But then he showed up again later. So, he was “just gone,” presumed dead, and then there was a return/resurrection theme. And we heard mention of the skunky beers right before he showed up at the prison again to wreak havoc.
In this case, the talk about skunky beer and pretzels (which we heard around Dwight and Sherry before, but remember that pretzels represent the holy Trinity) right before Al reconnected with Isabel and Dwight reconnected with Sherry.
So, we’ll have to be on the lookout for more mentions of skunky beer. I think they foreshadow an imminent character return.
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Dwight finds out Al has been tracking Isabel and knows where she might soon be. He even calls Isabel “beer lady,” probably because Al told him that she and Isabel shared a drink together. (More Bethyl parallels.)
Dwight has a "seriously," line and he encourages Al to go find Isabel, saying that if he knew where Sherry was going to be, nothing could stop him from going to her.
So, they go into the city and here we get massive Grady parallels. By this point, we've had golf club/Still parallels, funeral home/Alone parallels, and are about to get massive Grady parallels.
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It's not a hospital, but rather just an office building. But there's a helipad on the roof and some guy who apparently fell off the roof (think Trevitt, but I'll go into more detail about that tomorrow). They even make jokes about how the elevators probably don't work and They’ll have to climb up to the top. They use the stairs, rather than climbing up the elevator shaft as Rick and Daryl did in s8, but still.
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Once inside, they find a community of people living on the fifth floor. The exact same floor Beth lived on with the Gradians in S5. The people are sick. Al diagnoses it as the bubonic plague, based on the black boilers they have. So, we also see a lot of rats running around and Al and Dwight talk about them a lot. Definitely some Pied Piper symbolism going on here. But I'll talk more about what they said about the bubonic plague and how it's spreading tomorrow. Because it’s very interesting.
As the episode progresses, Al and Dwight slowly make it up toward the roof and Dwight gets to the point where he's not sure he wants Al to go anymore. He didn't realize she could get shot by the CRM just for showing up, but Al wants to go find Isabel. Here, she gets a bunch of Beth dialogue, including talking about, "calling it living." I’ll go into the dialogue more tomorrow.
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In the end, Al does make it to the roof, but she ends up telling Isabel turned back. She doesn't want Isabel to get sick or to abandon Dwight when he's ill.
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She talks to Isabel on the radio and, through some code speak, Isabel manages to convey that she knows who Al is and recognizes her. She tells her to get some beer out of one of the supply kits. Underneath the bear is a box of the antibiotics they need to treat the bubonic plague. So, in essence, Isabel kind of saves everybody by pointing Al toward those antibiotics.
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I found this super-interesting because it's what we’ve believed will happen with Beth for a long time, now. If anything, both Dwight and Al represent Daryl. They’re the characters who we’ve followed onscreen, just as we’ve followed Daryl. Their significant others have disappeared, for the audience as well as from them. So, Sherry and Isabel, the unseen ones, represent Beth.
Which is why it's also important that Isabel is inside the helicopter organization. It's part of the reason we think Beth is there as well. But Isabel appeared and basically found a cure that saved everyone. That's good and it will end up having really heavy Beth parallels.
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Then there was my favorite part at the end where Dwight and Sherry reconnect. They talked about her earlier in the episode, but I didn't expect it to happen just yet. I thought they were just priming us for her return and she would probably appear soon. But I really loved the end of this episode! So sweet and epic and a foreshadow for Beth and Daryl’s reunion.
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Before I end, the episode is called Alaska. I don't know if everyone remembers this, but Alaska has to do with the wolves. In 5x16, just before Daryl and Aaron trip to Wolf trap, they find an Alaska license plate. Aaron and Eric always played the license plate game, though with actual license plates, and Alaska was a rare one. So this is a callback to S5 and Aaron collecting those license plates, along with the wolf trap.
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The reason we relate Alaska to Beth symbolism is because the flag on the Alaska license plate has the Great Bear constellation in it which includes North star. It’s part of the Sirius/North Star symbolism. It's connected to the wolves, to Beth symbolism, and to Aaron, who has often been a Beth proxy.
What does it mean in the context of this episode? Well, once again, we have Dwight looking for Sherry and Al looking for Isabel. Both are looking for their significant others who have disappeared. They even talk about how they haven’t found an Alaska license. Dwight says, “Hawaii and Alaska aren’t just going to fall into your lap lap. You have to work for it." And then, just below the Grady-like building where there are sick people living on floor five, outside of which he found Sherry and on the roof of which Al reconnects with Isabel, they find an Alaska driver’s license.
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To put it another way, finding the Alaska license was a foreshadow of Dwight finding Sherry. He’d searching for the license from Alaska, and he found it. He'd been searching for Sherry, and he found her.
This, to me, is just another evidence that all the Beth/wolf symbolism we pointed to back in S5 was real. It was a foreshadow of how Daryl would find her again. Reuniting with a romantic partner who, up until now, was "just gone." Even though Al and Isabel didn't entirely reconnect, Dwight and Sherry did. So, also keep an ear out for Alaska symbolism. Very important!  
It was such a good episode, not only because of all the TD symbolism, but because of the reunions. This is why we still watch the show. Not all the episodes are quite this good, but when they are, they're well worth it.
Okay, I stop there for today. Details tomorrow. (Lots of them.) What did you think of the episode?
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Normal People, Abnormal Jobs. [Chapter 3]
Normal People, Abnormal Jobs. Relationships in the entertainment industry are never easy. Scheduling is nearly impossible, paparazzi hound you down every date, and everyone seems to weigh in their opinion. Is it possible to have a soulmate with such a demanding career?
Loosely inspired by the 2020 Hulu drama, Normal People, this story explores the possibility of finding true love in a world motivated by reputation, scandal, and money. Touching on themes of love, mental health, and adulthood, Normal People, Abnormal Jobs navigates how two musicians from opposing worlds maneuver a destiny that consistently pulls them together. It’s challenging, yes, but if it’s true love, it’s worth it.
Chapter 1. Chapter 2.
The next few weeks passed in a blur. News of my performance had made the rounds, and Shane made sure my exposure didn’t die down in the slightest. I’d been traveling around the country, making radio and television performances, performing pop up shows, and hosting meet and greets with fans I hadn’t seen in too long. Lucky for me, having a packed schedule was enough to keep my mind occupied so I wasn’t able to focus on my anxieties. I also tried not to think about… Niall.
“Did we sleep together or something?” I jumped out of bed, my tongue jamming against the roof of my mouth and my gag reflex ready to burst at any second.
Niall sat up slowly. “No, of course not. Ya said you didn’t want t’ be alone last night. I didn’t think you should be alone either. I watched ya sleep.” He rubbed his eyes, where I noticed dark circles had formed.
“Oh…” My jaw unclenched. “Well, thank you.”
A silence surrounded us as we stared at each other.
“I have to start getting ready. I have my interviews.” I rubbed the back of my neck, which was beginning to grow warm. “You can stay here and sleep, if you want. You look tired.”
“Put yer number in me phone.” Niall reached in his pocket and chucked his phone over to the side of the bed I was standing near. He settled back into the bed, blinking at me.
“That’s not a good idea.” I felt my gag reflex beginning to creep up again. “I’m not… We can’t.” I shook my head.
I couldn’t tell if Niall was just too tired to argue, or if he was respecting my decision, but he shrugged slowly and closed his eyes. 
The memory played over and over in my head. It made my stomach twist and turn. For someone with an intense phobia of vomiting, I sure spent a lot of time with stomach issues over my fear of vomiting.
I’d made my way around the country, hitting many of the major cities before returning home to LA. It felt nice to be on the road again, exploring cities I hadn’t been to in so long. Post-Pandemic world was much friendlier than I imagined. People seemed happy just to interact with strangers, as we all realized we’d taken social interaction for granted. I realized how much serenity traveling brought me. The ability to have an ever changing surrounding kept my mind active. Not to mention I would make it a point to learn an interesting fact about every city.
As nice as it would be to return home, I was a little upset as I boarded my flight back to Los Angeles. I had one final radio appearance, a coveted interview with Ryan Seacrest at KIIS-FM. Shane didn’t seem to want to disclose many details as I pestered him on how he secluded such a coveted spot, so I decided not to press it further. I thanked him once again for his hard work, and let my mind wonder about the possible questions I’d have to answer. Most of the radio stations asked the same questions, but Ryan had been known to create fun segments and ask obscure questions, leading me to feel excited for the following morning.
Friday morning in late September in Los Angeles was warm and misty. I woke up early to go for a quick jog around the neighborhood before heading to Ryan’s morning show. The concept of sleeping in for the weekend grew more and more exciting as it dawned on me that I had no real schedule lined up after this interview. 
The drive to the studio was surprisingly easy, considering Los Angeles’s propensity for traffic. Perhaps it was a good omen. A successful interview could mean a lot, not only to the listeners, but also to my team, my record label, and any members of the industry that were considering me for future appearances and awards. I was heavily trained in media and public relations, perfectly dodging and rerouting the invasive and extensive questions interviewers asked me. I knew how to make my answers sound polite and refined but without losing the quality of ‘realness’ that my fans loved. Shane believed this was my greatest talent overall, noting there was never a question he could get by me, even though he knew me like the back of his hand.
“Mina, it’s been too long! We missed you. You’ve been doing big things!” Ryan enveloped me into a hug and I gave him a pat on the back. He could sound superficial at times, but the man truly had a heart of gold. He took a seat in front of his microphone, pulling his headphones over his ears, and preparing for the morning show to start. I took my own seat, watching as one of his producers flashed a warning that the show was about to go live.
“In 5… 4… 3… 2…”
“Good morning Los Angeles! We’ve got a busy morning on this beautiful Friday. Not one but two celebrity guests for me to interview. First, we have Mina Peace, right off from her career changing performance at New York’s Gov Ball Festival. We’ll hear from her in just a minute. Later down the road, we have Niall Horan in studio to answer some of your questions about his next tour.”
My heart sunk into my stomach. No wonder why Shane was iffy on the details. I’d let it slip to him that I had seen Niall at the after party. I didn’t go into detail about the night, but Shane, an expert on my body language, pretty much decoded that feelings were brewing deep in my core.
Ryan and I began to chat about the standard topics- touring, recording an album, my songwriting process. I felt rehearsed answers falling out of my mouth as I couldn’t concentrate very well. Suddenly, I heard a door open from behind me and some commotion occurring.
“Mr. Seacrest, I couldn’t wait to see ya!” Niall chorused, taking a seat directly across from me and grabbing his own pair of headphones. Ryan began to laugh. “Ya can’t have me waitin’ around. I know ya like to play hard to get, but not like dis.”
I felt my palms growing sweaty.
“Mina, have you met Niall?” Ryan grinned at me.
My mouth opened slightly, unsure of what to say. I was still in shock Niall and I were in the same room to begin with.
“We actually met at Gov Ball!” Niall chimed in. “She performed right before me. Legend.” He grinned, extending his foot under the table to graze against mine for a millisecond.
I squeezed my hands together, the recurring feeling of nausea growing inside of me. I looked out the studio window to see Shane staring at me from the hallway, giving me a thumbs up. His eyes looked apologetic, but he gave me a reassuring smile.
I took a deep breath. “Yeah, I didn’t get a chance to see his performance, but we bumped into each other before my set.” I felt the grip in my hands loosening as I relaxed my shoulders. “Or should I say… his soccer ball bumped into my shin.”
Niall grinned. “I told you, petal, it’s football!”
Ryan laughed. “You guys clearly have a nice little friendship going on! Do you think you’d ever collaborate?”
“Dat would be wicked.” Niall winked at me.
“I don’t know, Ryan. Not sure if Niall can keep up with me.” I winked back.
Ryan’s mouth dropped as the rest of the team reduced to laughter. “Look at you two!” He was clearly loving the antics the two of us were bringing to his show, along with the thousands of listeners.
The more we chatted, the more the knot in my stomach loosened. Perhaps it was because I knew Shane was just feet away, or maybe because the more I listened to Niall’s voice, sweet as honey and warm as fire embers, the more I became comfortable around him. As the interview came to a close, Ryan exclaimed how time had gotten away from him, and he was too caught up in our conversation to ask a fair few of the questions he was intending to. A smile radiated on my face from within me as Ryan pulled off his headphones and began chatting to Niall. I looked to see Shane staring at me intensely, and motioning for me to come outside.
“We need to talk.” Shane grabbed my wrist, pulling me into one of the empty rooms down the hall. “You can’t be seen with him.”
“Wha-”
“This is going to destroy everything we’ve built up, Mina. You both are from different circles. I know you like him, but your career is more important. Think of who he’s been seen with. Julia Michaels, Ashe, Hailee Steinfeld. Now think about you. Machine Gun Kelly, Alex Gaskarth, Yungblud. You’re not the same. When people blend like this, the lines get blurred, the public gets confused, and you lose it all.”
I stared at Shane as his eyes pierced into mine.
“Think about everyone who relies on you. Your crew, the label, me.” He took a breath. “Don’t do this, Mina. Get out while you still can.” And with that, he exited the room without giving me a chance to respond.
I had to imagine that this conversation hurt Shane as much as it hurt me. He put up a cold front, but in reality, he was one of the softest and most caring men I’d ever known. But it didn’t matter to me anymore. I felt heat bubble inside of me. I didn’t care about what Shane had to say. I wanted Niall.
My feet carried me through the hallways as my mind felt blurry. It felt like I was walking on air. I could only think of one thing. After scanning the rooms, I finally found my destination. Niall was sitting on a couch, idly strumming a guitar, with his back facing me. I heard him humming something, mumbling softly, and gravity pulled me closer to him.
I walked over to him, and he looked up to see me standing directly in front of him. He opened his mouth to say something, but I cut him off. My lips crashed onto his as I leaned down, placing my hands on his chest. He quickly laid his guitar down against the couch, allowing me to crawl into his lap.
“I really love you, I do.” I breathed out. “I’m not just saying that.”
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cryoculus · 4 years
Note
More love for Semi please? Anything will do, your writing is exquisite in any form anyway :D
» Word Count: 1,857 wordsCross-posted on AO3
SORRY THIS IS SO LATE :(( I actually wrote three chapters’ worth of content for him already and you can read the whole thing on the ao3 link.(NOTE: This is based on the current events of the final arc of the Haikyuu manga. I tagged it as a spoiler but I won’t really go into the specifics of what’s going on. Semi is our main focus here ^__^)
“Please?”
“No,” was your flat reply.
Semi heaved a long sigh, mouth twitching into an irritated grimace. You returned his reaction with a sassy look of your own—one, finely penciled brow quirked as bright, red lips rivalled the adamance that Semi brought about. While you were in no position to tell him to just go back to his cubicle and get today’s work done (you, sadly, held the same position in office), you at least had the right to turn him down. Your department had a monthly financial report coming up. Why on Earth did he want your help writing a song?
“Come on,” he groaned. “You know I’d eat my fist first before asking for your help, but our manager really digs your old pieces from college.”
Your eye twitched.
“Way to beg for someone’s aid in a time of dire need,” you bit back sarcastically. “Go do it then.”
“What?”
“Eat your whole fist.” You gave him a pointed look, even making a show of paying attention by putting your pen down.
Your co-worker let out a frustrated groan, fingers carding through his messy, ashen hair. The gesture made the tattoos on his chest visible for a second, before disappearing again behind his barely done button-up. It was a mystery, how a man like him made it as a public servant—with his flamboyant piercings and tip-dyed hair—but you supposed you should learn to look past physical appearances. The agency allowed it, so why should you make a fuss?
Ah, right. Semi Eita was the most hot-headed man in your department, and he had a knack for picking fights with you.
“If you get the balance sheet done by five o'clock, I might reconsider,” you told him, not really meaning the words, as you directed your attention back at the paperwork on your desk. Balance sheets are the toughest to fill out, since the data needed had to be collated from different sectors of the city. You highly doubted that Semi, with his thinner-than-a-strand-of-hair patience, could finish it in one sitting.
“Deal.”
Your gaze hardened as you looked back up at him. “Come again?”
“Are you deaf?” he asked, folding lean arms across his chest. “I said it’s a deal.”
You couldn’t help the snort that made its way past your lips. Whatever his reasons may be, it was painfully obvious that he was desperate. But still. You knew that he wouldn’t be able to carry out the deed in your given deadline, but instead of talking him out of his own agreement, you merely shook your head in acceptance.
Semi eventually stalked off to his cubicle; the one just in front of yours. There was a divider that separated each employee’s workspace from the others, and it at least granted some semblance of privacy from outside gazes. You’ve been to Semi’s cubicle a couple of times—more to coordinate paperwork than engage in conversation, really—and he decorated his personal space exactly how a part-time rock band vocalist would. Though he didn’t exactly put up posters and painted the walls black, he added his own flair to his desk with guitar figurines, neon stickers on his desktop, and a photo of his bandmates enclosed in a sparkly picture frame.
The only reason you bothered looking so closely was the fact that you also went to the same university together (under the same degree, too!) You’ve always been keen around him, with his loud way of living, as opposed to you, who’s always chosen to live simply and without pretentiousness. Sure, the disparity between your lifestyles had caused you to be at each other’s throats since freshman year, but it was still a surprise that your synergy was top notch. You would, as Semi put it so delicately, eat your fist first before admitting to the fact, but it’s a given that you preferred to work with him instead of other, unfamiliar people.
You sighed, brandishing a bored look at the bleak document in front of you. Maybe it wouldn’t hurt to help him out…
But when you recalled every time he’s talked over you during board meetings, sneered at you when he got a higher score during exams, and his distateful behavior in general, you steeled your resolve.
Either he’s going to get that balance sheet over with or he’ll keel over. If he wanted your help, he’s going to have to work for it.
You were in the middle of fixing your belongings when the sound of a stack of papers hitting your desk rang in your ears.
“There,” Semi said breathlessly, making you look up at him in surprise. He even tossed a flash drive on top of the papers he deposited, where you saw the city hall’s heading printed in full color. You reluctantly checked your phone for the time. 16:57, it said, in a mockingly bold typeface before shoving it in your pocket.
The damn guy really did get it done before five.
“The electronic document is saved in there, in case you lose the print.” He was panting at this point, and you had a vague idea as to why he looked like he just ran a marathon. The one printer in your department (this year’s budget was cut) broke down a few days ago, and the nearest functional one was at the Logistics office three floors down.
Still refusing to believe it, you peered at the documents he just brought in. You scanned each of the entries printed on each page. That’s when you realized that Sendai City’s expenses have skyrocketed since the new year because the list of expenses occupied a whole page alone. A worried sigh made its way past your lips, but at least the liabilities were cut down to a minimum. You heard that the governor of Miyagi was going to pledge a few hundred thousand yen for the city’s founding anniversary, too.
You paused. Blinking, you rearranged the papers neatly back into its pile—biting back the urge to clutch your wounded pride. Semi was looking at you expectantly, like he wanted you to praise his flawless bookkeeping.
In actuality, his determination was beginning to freak you out.
“Why do you want me to help you so badly?” you asked, voice almost trembling. “Seriously, dude. I thought we hated each other. Quit acting out of character.”
“I told you, our manager really liked the songs you composed back in senior year,” he drawled, tired of having to repeat himself.
Your face twisted in confusion. “Who even is this manager of yours?”
There was a half-second delay in his response, but before you could paint a reason for his hesitation, he immediately replied with, “Saito. Saito Makoto.”
You stiffened, gaze going rigid at the mention of that name. “Oh.”
“Yeah. If I manage to give him a piece by the end of the month, he’ll help us sign a contract with a big-shot record label,” Semi explained, oblivious to your discomfort.
“But haven’t you been writing songs since high school?” you wondered aloud. “That’s what you said during our Pol-Gov class ice breaker.”
He frowned. “You still remember that?”
Okay. You kept forgetting that your sharp memory wasn’t always a praiseworthy thing. You gulped, feeling the heat creep up your face. “Um, anyway, the point still stands. You’ve been writing songs for God-knows-how-long, and while I’m not one to dish out compliments especially to you, I’m pretty sure they’re okay if you managed to gather a decent fanbase.”
He rolled his eyes, leaning against the divider of your cubicle. “We’re a rock band. I write rock songs, but Saito wants me to write a goddamn love song.”
Typical Saito. Though he looked like a rugged high school delinquent, he was awfully sentimental when it came to music. He was the one who inspired you to write the songs Semi was pestering you about all day after all…
“Fine,” you relented. “I never go back on my word and since you did a…good job with this, I’ll help you out.”
His light brown eyes lit up for a moment, but Semi managed to mask his relief in a split second—containing his excitement in a single nod. “Are you free this Saturday? You can come by my place and we could start getting to work.”
Well, that was forward of him. You expected to work on the song in a coffee shop or something, but he went on ahead and invited you to his own humble abode anyway. You parsed through your weekend plans in your mind, and once you confirmed that you were free, you scribbled down your phone number on a sticky note. Almost five years of acquaintance and you’d never bothered giving it to him. Huh.
“Just text me the time and place,” you told him, pocketing the flash drive as you slipped the balance sheet in one of the empty folders in your organizer. “You better not pull anything funny and lead me to a secluded alley or something.”
Semi scoffed, folding the piece of paper and sticking it inside his trousers. “As if.”
You then slung your bag across your shoulders, grinning insincerely. “Glad we’re on the same page, then.”
“Yeah, whatever.”
With that, Semi exited your cubicle, leaving you no room to wonder why he didn’t even spare a quick ‘thank you’.
Just as you were smoothing out the creases on your pencil skirt, your phone began buzzing in the pocket of your blazer. Brows raised, you fished it out and unlocked it.
From: Makohey, wanna grab some dinner? its on me :3
Speak of the devil. You swallowed the lump in your throat, fingers shakily managing to type a coherent reply.
To: MakoYeah sure. Where to tho
From: Makocan we get some italian? ik u love the udon place across the street but akane’s having dinner w her friends there
From: Makocant have her seeing us together now do we
The way he put that so casually made your chest constrict with a too-familiar sensation. You heaved a deep breath, pursing your lips into a thin line as you sent a quick “Ok” text to end your conversation. Saito replied with those iffy heart-eyed emojis that he only ever used when he wanted something from you, and you had to compose yourself so you wouldn’t burst into tears right there.
“Oi.”
You almost jumped at the sound of Semi’s voice as he peered inside your cubicle once more. He clutched his suitcase in one hand, eyeing you curiously.
“What do you want?”
“You’re headed uptown, too, right?” he asked, and you nodded reluctantly. “Thought you’d want a lift.”
“Semi, just because I’m helping you achieve your dreams, doesn’t mean you have to be nice to me.” You laughed softly, tension easing from his uncalled for kindness.
He, however, looked unconvinced. “Do you want a ride or not?”
You raised your hands in defeat, managing a genuine smile. “Alright, fine. It’ll be a hellish commute anyway.”
You liked to think that that’s how you started becoming friends with your odd, hot-headed co-worker.
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Text
How Freedomland Became A 'Health Care' Center
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My folks were in their mid 40s in 1969, the year we moved to the enormous Co-operation City lodging improvement in the Bronx. My sibling and I were adolescents.
At the point when it was finished a couple of years after the fact, Co-operation City had in excess of 15,000 lofts, the vast majority of them in elevated structures dissipated across 300 once damp sections of land that had once been the Freedomland entertainment mecca. Inside a couple of years, the local area's schools and retail plazas showed up. The vast majority of Co-operation City's inhabitants were average workers and government employees, drawn generally from somewhere else in the precinct. Immediate and backhanded appropriations made their new lofts moderate.
My sibling and I both left for school inside 10 years. Our folks remained until 1990, when they resigned, withdrew for suburbia of focal New Jersey and reconstructed their lives around the exercises of the nearby senior residents' middle. Yet, large numbers of their companions remained in Co-operation City, and many of the children my sibling and I grew up with wound up remaining with their folks, or acquiring condos when their folks kicked the bucket.
For a large number of individuals like my folks, Co-operation City turned into a "normally happening retirement local area," otherwise called a NORC. The overcomers of their age who have waited, presently progressed far into mature age, have had the advantage of family, companions, recognizable neighborhood organizations and a large group of social administrations to support them. The marvel of this outside retirement home that appeared very coincidentally has been obvious for over 10 years. The New York Times expounded on it as far back as 2002. (1)
In New York, Medicaid pays for a great deal of the administrations these individuals need. To the degree that Medicaid is a low-pay medical services program, this isn't really astonishing. However what makes New York's circumstance diverse is that Medicaid frequently covers even those administrations that don't have a lot to do with medical care as the vast majority get it. In writing about the "Wellbeing Homes" activity, presented in 2012, the state's Medicaid heads portrayed the capacity of a "care supervisor," a person who arranges those seeing to a person's clinical, conduct wellbeing and social assistance needs. The hypothesis is that by ensuring individuals can live autonomously in their own homes, Medicaid gets a good deal on emergency clinic costs, rescue vehicle rides, dull specialist visits and, a large portion of all, nursing home consideration.
Something very similar is going on in the psychological well-being field. Quite a long while prior, New York extended Medicaid inclusion to furnish lodging for people with psychological sickness. Notwithstanding the Health Homes program, New York additionally offers "strong" lodging that consolidates financed lodging with a large group of administrations, including clinical, yet additionally legitimate, vocation and instructive, among others. Keep individuals off the roads and ensure they take their drugs and get normal dinners, the hypothesis goes, and you'll at last get a good deal on trauma center and other intense consideration costs.
Brenda Rosen, the overseer of the association Common Ground, which runs a strong lodging building called The Brook, told NPR, "You know, we as a general public are paying for someone to be in the city." (2) And the active New York State magistrate of wellbeing distributed an article in December 2013 contending that lodging and backing administrations are necessary to wellbeing, so Medicaid should help uphold the expenses.
The state might be ready, yet the contentions for these projects haven't gained a lot of ground with the government, which regularly shares Medicaid costs with the states. The feds will not compensation for these lodging administrations, in light of the fact that lodging isn't medical care. Bruce Vladeck, who earlier managed the government Medicaid (and Medicare) programs, said, "Medicaid should be health care coverage, and only one out of every odd issue someone has is a medical care issue." (2)
That is valid. Not all consideration that prompts better wellbeing is medical care. Great sustenance, having the opportunity and spot to get an entire night's rest, and admittance to clean air and water are altogether fundamental for wellbeing, however we don't anticipate that health insurance should pay for these things. Giving lodging to individuals who need it is the thing that we used to call social work, and a great many people don't see social specialists as medical care suppliers.
However, it is simpler to acquire political help for furnishing medical care - with its picture of glimmering rescue vehicle lights and gifted experts wearing white - than for sponsored lodging for the maturing or the crippled, particularly the intellectually debilitated. So it is simpler for Gov. Andrew Cuomo's organization to sort out these administrations under the mark of Medicaid Health Homes. They are not homes at all in any conventional sense. Care supervisors are ordinarily not specialists or medical attendants, however they are prepared in social administrations or medical services organization. Wellbeing Homes is a conceivably advantageous activity that accompanies astute, elector prepared marking. Click here  Full Circle Health careers
The actual methodology isn't close to as novel as the showcasing. We have known for quite a long time that great local area uphold, including safe lodging and close management for individuals who need it, is significantly more affordable than stopping individuals in medical clinics, nursing homes and different foundations. As New York State Medicaid Director Jason Helgerson called attention to when contending for Medicaid-subsidized lodging backing, Medicaid (and citizens) bear the expense of long, costly clinic and nursing home stays. Giving individuals backing to remain in their own homes is additionally significantly more altruistic in many, if not most, cases.
The test is to create and showcase these projects in manners that support public help even with their anticipated maltreatment. Individuals abusing a help doesn't make it terrible, yet it makes it harder for government officials to safeguard. Incapacity protection is likewise something worth being thankful for, however the Social Security inability program is only a few of years from becoming bankrupt, in enormous part on account of the rush of malingering that went with and followed the new downturn. Offer an advantage and individuals will need to utilize it, regardless of whether they are not really part of the objective populace.
Very much upheld lodging with a viable exhibit of social administrations for individuals who need them can do a ton of good, and can set aside society critical cash as long as we are not set up to cause individuals deprived to get by all alone. NORCs can make great spots for the older to experience their days, and lodging for intellectually sick and formatively incapacitated individuals can keep them securely off the roads and out of the ERs.
Yet, the feds are correct that endeavors to do so are not medical services. It's human consideration. In the event that we don't oversee it adequately - keeping the malingerers out and holding costs at maintainable levels - a few people will be left all alone, regardless of what we call it.
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