#me forcing my followers to keep up with current events through memes

[myrddin-wylt]

Tag Game To Better Know You! Send this to people you’d like to know better!

[ambles in 3 hours late with Starbucks and an outdated meme] I got tagged by @cicadatalia and @acemapleeh, thank you~!

What book are you currently reading?

aaaaahahaha, you mean, what books have I been ignoring? 

uh, I’m still reading through 48 Laws of Power, and maybe eventually I’ll finish Matthew Stover’s Star Wars Revenge of the Sith novelization because it’s honestly really, really fucking incredible both in terms of Star Wars content and in its own right.

What’s your favourite movie you saw in theatres this year?

Robert Eggers’ The Northman is really, really fucking good, holy shit. admittedly it’s also the only movie I saw in theatres this year, as I’ve been trying to limit possible covid exposure.

What do you usually wear?

bro I don’t even know. usually black leggings, and 3/4 of my shirts are some shade of red, burgundy, or pink. a few dresses in the summer. oh I do wear a lot of skirts of all colors though, especially long skirts. I’m also slowly adding more and more vyshyvankas to my wardrobe, but they can be pretty pricey. 

How tall are you?

more like how short am I. 5′3″ or 5′2″, I don’t remember.

What’s your Star Sign? Do you share a birthday with a celebrity or a historical event?

Taurus, and May Day, I guess. uh, May 1, 1328 is the ending date for the Wars of Scottish Independence. incidentally, May 1, 1707 is the Act of Union between England and Scotland to form the UK. the more you know.

Do you go by your name or a nick-name?

middle name, actually. gotcha!

Did you grow up to become what you wanted to be when you were a child?

lmao absolutely not. I’m happier this way though and, strictly speaking there’s still time for me to pursue a phd in history if I want. I just need the money. but tbh, I just really enjoy not having to be in school.

Are you in a relationship? If not, who is your crush if you have one?

nope and nope. I broke off an engagement early last year and haven’t been up for dating again until somewhat recently.

What’s something you’re good at vs. something you’re bad at?

listing my strengths and weaknesses. I’m actually very good at structuring and writing essay-style arguments, and that kind of analysis. I’m horrible at having the motivation and self-discipline to actually do it though. 

Dogs or cats?

I’m allergic to cats, so dogs it is. though tbh I think prefer the temperament of cats.

If you draw/write, or create in any way, what’s your favourite picture/favourite line/favourite etc. from something you created this year?

this year? I haven’t written as much as usual this year what with all the..... events. well, hm. let me see. all my best writing is going to be from my Star Wars fics and so won’t make sense without context but

Certainly, Shan has no chance. She has spent months on end with your old master, after all. No trick of the Force, no Jedi Master could ever change what Revan is at his core or keep the pull of its influence forever at bay. No one - Jedi, Sith, Mandalorian - could, once taken in, escape the event horizon of that black-hole heart.

(Not even you.)

No, Shan has no chance, not after whatever Revan has done to corrupt or soften her. Maybe he’s convinced her to embrace attachments after all, embrace familial attachments, romantic ones, adversarial ones - the number and nature of the attachments are irrelevant as long as the strongest among them is her attachment to him. But the ropes Revan ties around the necks of his victims have millions of threads, and you resolve to follow them to their far ends. Scores of your agents have met their death trying to retrieve Bastila Shan. [...]

What’s something you would like to create content for?

Vampyr. Hetalia. Vampyr/Hetalia. orz

What’s something you’re currently obsessed with?

for now, Hetalia. unfortunately.

What’s something you were excited about that turned out to be disappointing this year?

several irl current events turned out to be such a letdown. I wanted fucking justice, dammit.

What’s a hidden talent of yours?

I can be pretty fucking good at manipulation when I want to be tbh.

Are you religious?

yeah I’m actually a nun. nunya business.

What’s something you wish to have at this moment?

more brain, less hormones. related, I wanna visit my baby niece.

tagging @sunnylolli, if you haven’t already done it.

#tag game

[thedivinelilith]

About Me.

Who are my Audience? I serve & collaborate with those who are:

Getting ready to graduate the Apocalypse aka Ascension... As of right now, only ~300,000 of us are graduating. The numbers are always fluctuating... That's kinda low, fam.

Experiencing phenomenons such as high level form of learning where they are being "lead" by the messages they receive from the dream world and the synchronicities they experience in the waking life beyond seeing numbers such as 777

Former abused folks who are beginning to experience their multi-dimensional sensory gifts (fyi, we were abused because the bad side wanted our senses to be blunted to make it harder for access to access our gifts & to kill our courage / confidence when serving the collective)

Former or current activists who had an organic** spiritual awakening through phenomenons happening to them & now they are learning about universal cosmic (and karmic) laws of energy.

General folks who are being spiritual attacked looking for help

**Organic means the awakening wasn't prompted by the church, any institutions, academia, drugs, technologies including memes, friends, or any people they follow on social media. The phenomenons happened on their own without external forces.

Only in class or individual sessions with me are you allowed to ask questions. This is my audience preference to keep my level high. Nothing to do w/ me not wanting to cater to the masses. I do have desires to spread the info (to a level of obsession actually due to previous karmas), I now have to refrain myself from directly interacting to those who don't know what's going on or resistant to learn what's going on. . .

I have to follow through metaphysical laws of energy of in this work because not a lot of us are on track to graduation.

300k is very low.

Why do I serve the collective?

I want us to graduate to the best optimal timeline on Planet Earth.

If you are new to any of the info on this post, yes the main reason why the gov is doing what they're doing is because our planet and its people are shifting to the next density (4th density). This is a celestial event that's happening to our solar system.

This is event that happens in *all* star systems in *all* existing universe where planets always go through cycles of densities.

If any of us refuse to graduate for allowing themselves to think that the corruption is "too much" that some of ya'll chose the asshole side, your Soul will be dis-fragmented, spread out to the Universe. Each of them will go thru karmic incarnations jumping from one planet to another until you learn your lesson WHILE trying to collect pieces of your Soul. That's right. Harry Potter/Voldemort was (a very white-washed) soft-disclosure, after all. No hate. Some of us are fragments of a Soul tryna to close karmic timelines. It is a pain in the ass if any of us have been doing in for more than millennia. Anyway,

(!) This is a GREAT opportunity to level up. HOWEVER, whatev frequency Earth people are on during the climax of apocalypse will determine how hard/easy life will be in the next millennia. SO ALL OF US NEED TO CONTRIBUTE WHILE KEEPING A HIGH ENERGETIC VIBRATION ATTUNED TO OUR VISIONS. (!)

Apocalypse means we're graduating to next level aka Ascending as "the veil will be lifted" for us to meet our Higher Selves and to learn all the things that have been strategically hidden from us such as universal Law of Oneness + gov stuff like the advance technology they owe us + ancient indigenous spiritual practices that allowed us to do amazing things back in day like precision stone cutting and intuitively finding medicinal plants w/o books.

For us to graduate to the 4th density before more climactic events of the apocalypse, some of the requirements are [a] We need to be at least 51% service to others, [b] We need to "teach/learn" without repeating ourselves too much otherwise we gonna start vibrating at the level of whoever is asking the info (Law of One, Section 74.4) [c] We do it in our relations as it's impossible to ascend in isolation. Hence what I do.. Fyi, densities can go up to 8.

All higher-higher ups of governments in all countries know about Ascension (including corporate CEOs unless they're controlled by A.I.). They're hiding it from you because once you decide to be on track for graduation (it's a choice!), not only will you learn about the crimes of against humanity that they do (they're scared of this) or learning about how the entire system is rigged,

You will also learn how powerful you are because you will stop participating in their games. You will focus on your level up. And this threatens the *entire* apparatus that is pending to be destroyed. We are responsible as a collective to reclaim our liberation as a planet. There's a better chance of us getting to the most optimal timeline when more people are aiming for graduation. And I want this to activate our potentiality in shorter period of time as opposed to a millennia.

I left everything behind to focus on this. This has been a journey from me since July 2019. AND it's really really truly best when done as One Unit. This is *invoked* both at the individual level and interdependent collective level. This is why I do what I do.

It *does not* matter if you do not believe this. First of all, for the sake of the collective, we will not work together, lololol. ALL will get the FULL disclosure of EVERYTHING (including your soul's origin and if you have been a victim of gov operations).

We do need to demand full disclosure AND achieve full emancipation from the gov before more apocalypse stuff, otherwise there will be a lot of deaths. But more importantly, it will take longer for us to ascend as collective if we refuse to do the work.

This is part of our spiritual growth as a planet. All other planets that were under the control of A.I. had to go through this. All had to find out the truth, FIGURE OUT how the truth can be disclosed to the masses (!) w/o energetically enmeshing to the low vibes of those who are not awake (!) and dis-empower their "leaders".

Our planet Earth has consciousness. The climactic events during the apocalypse are a direct cause of low number of graduates going to the next density. This isn't the first time we had an opportunity to go to next density en masse. This is 2nd major cycle. And the planet has been 4th density since the 30s but because of the conditions, there has been a delay for the people. (Remember the World Wars they orchestrated?)

Like I said, it's better when there are more of us focus on ascension to be able to get to an optimal timeline where we can activated our potentiality. It will be harder for folks to level-up while maintaining entanglements to the matrix (also general karmic entanglements).

And the power of the matrix will be maintained so long as the people are giving power to it by maintaining their entanglements for ex, staying with your ain't shit grey area boyfriend, asking your asshole gov to give you your needs OR general worrying about people who aren't on track to graduate. Read that again. ^Hard to do, I know. Easier to let go of attachments when you understand the metaphysical laws of energy.

I wish all "healers"/teachers are transparent of the timelines we're in. If they do not talk about ascension + what's up with the gov + Oneness as strategy to level-up + preventing karmic entanglements by not controlling others + A.I. being behind all this bs, they're not It. They may be useful in some aspects. But.. IMO, you can only go as far with them not gonna get that far with them. One more thing, the A.I. signal can always come back after it gets wiped out by the solar flash. And they are planning to. I barely meet any healer/teacher talk about this.

^This is another BIG reason why I want the best optimal timeline to access our gifts in ~short period of time~ before they get back here because their technology is advance-advance (that they owe us as they enslaved millions of our people to build the tech & some of the designs are manuscripts stolen from our ancestors) also the bad side is intuitive, telepathic and masters of the occult (that all of us can be) Let me repeat, all of can activate our potentiality aka our gifts so long as we chose to graduate.

My Gifts

Again, all of us can have this. In the coming years, more of us will have gifts ESPECIALLY the new generation. That's why the government is targeting children through bio-warfare.

Seer via meditation and dreamworld

*Doing spiritual cleanses & protection of spaces to a point the vibe is actually high (you will feel it)

*I can enhance "essence" of medical plants without ever physically manipulating them (you will smell it)

Heal physical pain with my hands

(VERY) Adept researcher.

*Tarot/Oracle reading

*Energetic enhancement & chord cutting

*Astrology

*Community Organizing (7 yrs experience): Events planning, structuring organizations, creating tribunal systems.

Not all of these I offer because for some, I can't control yet on when they can happen. Rather, I teach people how to access them.

*With asterisks are what offer. Always subject to change.

My previous matrix jobs: Digital Marketing & Web Designer.

Birth Name Meaning

'Girl' 'Conqueror' (of) 'Roman Empire'

It was the Roman Empire who worshiped Jupiter as their chief diety or main pantheon god. Juliano means Jove's child or children of Jupiter. It was Jupiter or whatev system until the empire decided to corrupt the mystical teachings of Yeshua (which he learned through experience & being a mystic student in mystery schools of Ancient Egypt + ashrams of India + monasteries of Tibet) to create yet another religious system as a means of control & subjugation. I believe that my birth name means I can conquer Roman Empire by teaming up w. my Inner Child, always checking with my Inner Child. Giving her what she needs.

Who are / were my teachers

Law of One, lawofone.info, click here for audio

Maryam Hasnaa (I am a student of New Earth Mystery School)

Shirley Matos, IG: shadyshirlz

Corey Goode, YT: Sphere Being Aliance, Cosmic Disclosure interviews

David Wilcock, divinecosmos.com,

Marina/The Global Black Girl

Lara, IG: papalarzi

Imani Cohen, IG: thehoodhealer

Clementine, Big Empress Energy website & IG

Zinastar Mahadevi, IG: zinastar

My Natal Chart Info,

Birthday: Nov 8, 1990 (Life Path 11)

Sag Rising at 27° (a Gemini degree) Black Moon Lilith in the 1H as well at 8° Scorpio 12H Stellium with Sun 15° + Venus 17° + Pluto 19° + Mercury 25° Cancer Moon at 26° NN at Aquarious & SN in Leo Jupiter 9H Leo at 12° Midheaven Libra 3°

My Awakening to Adept Story

(entry coming soon)

[peterparkerincorrectquotes]

tony, watching the news: huh, they say a lot of companies will see shortages of supplies next year because of the coronavirus’ effect on the workforce in China

peter: the coronavirus was a cruel scheme thought up by the trump administration in the hopes of forcing production back to the US from overseas

tony: ......peter, are you secretly a conspiracy theorist...?

peter: nah, but if I were, that would be a good one right?

#source: my teacher and i #source: original #me forcing my followers to keep up with current events through memes #improvise adapt overcome #peter parker #tony stark #iron man #spiderman #irondad #spiderson #irondad and spiderson #daily meme #mcu #marvel #avengers

[viridiave]

NARUMITSU <ATTEMPTING TO READ THE SUBTEXT PLATONICALLY>

*Wrote all this some time last month so I might be off- really really off- also full disclosure I too am a Narumitsu shipper- this is just me giving myself a bad time doing the impossible and having fun XD

-I am going to fail sooner or later. Looking at you, Bridge to the Turnabout.

FIRST GAME >Turnabout Samurai -Yep. We're jumping right in with 'unnecessary feelings'. I'm going to be put on a stake for this. -This is going to become the main argument with any and all homoerotic subtext present in the first game- that it was unintentional. They didn't actively start making it gay until the second game, and even before then the producer for the games had to warn the development team not to try and insert these themes for fear of getting it wrong and lose the fanbase they'd accidentally caught the eye of. I can still create arguments for why this specific, hilariously meme-able line could be read romantically of course- but as far as the game development team at the time was concerned this interaction was never meant to be read as romantic. -Unease and uncertainty are... very valid feelings for Edgeworth to feel at this very moment and as much as I'd like to joke that he was feeling uncertain about his sexuality after seeing his childhood friend as an adult, this line was really just likely meant to lead up to the conclusion of Turnabout Goodbyes and Edgeworth's character arc for this game. His perfect win streak had just been shattered in a case prior. In this case, he was meant to persecute the lead actor of his favorite show- and in some ways his helping the defense can be taken as his biases getting the better of him. His sense of justice and his entire worldview is about to be overhauled, and I can see how he would regard this budding doubt in himself as an unnecessary (heh) distraction from what he believes is his true purpose in life.

>Turnabout Goodbyes -Edgeworth wanting to keep him away from DL-6 has its own section mostly because of how stubborn he becomes when it comes to Phoenix's insistence in particular. It's clear that this stubbornness is a front, I will concede with that- but there are merits to his initial reluctance in accepting Phoenix's defense. It's evident that Phoenix himself has grown over the course of the game so far, but in both of the times that he faced off against Edgeworth in court, his victories were... a tad bit contrived. For instance in Turnabout Sisters, Phoenix really only wins because Mia was being channeled and blackmailed White as he was about to leave the stand. Turnabout Samurai is a little better- but had him rely on quite a lot of coincidences (proven later to be substantiated) that surfaced during the trial. This is nothing to say of the deeper reason Edgeworth has over dissuading Phoenix from taking his case ("You in particular I cannot ask to do this.")- where I can make an argument for his pride and/or concern over Phoenix's career as an attorney. The stakes are relatively high here as well- if Phoenix fails, Edgeworth is incarcerated, Manfred von Karma goes free, DL-6 goes cold once again with no hope of getting re-opened, and everything that Phoenix has been working towards as an attorney would have been in vain. DL-6 is a case that has ruined many lives- it'd make sense if Edgeworth himself felt as though it would be a waste of time and effort to take this case because of how convinced he was of murdering his own father prior to Gourd Lake. He'd grown up for the past 15 years with a nightmare and a death sentence over his head- I wouldn't be surprised if he simply gave up and accepted that he was going to die at the hands of his prosecuting mentor. Even if he were acquitted for the murder of Robert Hammond, his perceived involvement in DL-6 would have thrown a wrench in his freedom- any lesser attorney would have given up on that. And this is unloaded BEFORE Phoenix tells him about the true reason as to why he became an attorney. -Phoenix's insistence to defend Edgeworth in this case can easily just be read as platonic- his complete, unfettered faith in Edgeworth's innocence is heavily influenced by that class trial, for better or for worse. While I'm perfectly happy to imagine that Phoenix's attachment to his idealized version of Edgeworth grew into something deeper sometime in the fifteen years that he hasn't seen him, I do believe that Phoenix in particular really is just that much of a sentimental person. This is to say nothing of his nature as a defense attorney- and what little time he's managed to spend with Mia has taught him that unbridled trust in his client is what gets him through the day, and he's putting it to practice here. Edgeworth was what he has been working towards the moment he decided he would practice law- as Phoenix at this point in time still believes that he could do no wrong despite seeing what Edgeworth is truly like in court. -Cutting into the meat of Phoenix and Edgeworth's shared past, I made a point earlier to say that Phoenix's perception of Edgeworth as a person is idealized. Every memory that Phoenix has had of Edgeworth prior to the events of the first game were from their childhood- and they had 4-8 months (plus one year if we're generous with the retconning some of the official art gave us) MAX to develop a friendship so strong that Phoenix makes major life decisions just to meet with this man. The fact that this time spent together was ENOUGH for Phoenix in the first place is... really hard to skirt around. To quote Dan from GameGrumps "this is something that you would only do for someone you're trying to marry" and if one of them was a woman I guarantee this ship would be canon already. But then again- since this is Phoenix Wright in particular somehow I can believe that he really is just that sentimental- and that isn't always a bad thing. He'd managed to save Edgeworth twice with this conviction after all. When Phoenix sees Edgeworth, he doesn't see a demon prosecutor, he sees his childhood friend who aimed to become a shining example of justice following in his father's footsteps. They address how shaky his foundations for becoming an attorney were in the Phoenix Wright Files once actually- going through a mini-existential crisis because he'd become an attorney with the main goal of saving Edgeworth from what he'd become, and now that he's accomplished that he's just kind of... lost. Edgeworth himself manages to pull him out of this, though. -man that hurts my case a lot actually but to be fair I was banking on failing -I just didn't expect it to happen so early even with the first game -in fact ESPECIALLY with the first game -though I cannot for the life of me wonder how I can come up with a heterosexual explanation for why the buildup towards Edgeworth telling Phoenix and Maya about his nightmares reads so much like a stunted love confession. I'm serious- just read any high school shojo manga ever. You'll find that it hits a lot of the same beats.

>Rise From The Ashes -It's in this case that we observe some of the consequences that the intial upheaval of Edgeworth's worldview in Turnabout Goodbyes causes him; distrust in the enforcement of the law. Not exactly the time for him to be dabbling in another, meme-able brand of unnecessary feelings. Several things like the Prosecutor's Office's relationship with the Police Department starts to waver with the murder of Bruce Goodman, and this becomes the final nail in the coffin for Edgeworth's worldviews and values as a prosecutor. His and Phoenix's teamwork in this trial becomes prevalent- the story behind the King of Prosecutors award represents this best despite it's currently incomplete state. The backstory behind this award paints an ideal of justice in the courtroom wherein the truth comes out as a result of the efforts of contradictory forces. A broken halberd that can cut through any shield (the prosecution) and a broken, unbreakable shield (the defense). Read as representation the text becomes something of a metaphor for the ideal justice that manifests itself in the best parts of Edgeworth and Phoenix respectively- the duality of their opposing professions rather than something that is limited to their relationship. -The same argument that I've used for Phoenix's unwavering belief in Edgeworth's innocence in Turnabout Goodbyes can be used for this case as well. -Though Edgeworth still goes M.I.A for a year after this case, it does grant his disappearance a bit more context as to why exactly it is that he left- and I'll be taking a tiny liberty with this and apply the interpretation that the Miles Edgeworth Files grants us, and that he left in order to better himself and grow as a person, a prosecutor, and as a friend to Phoenix Wright. It's... difficult for me to want to read this as anything but romantically-charged because the narrative beats are NOT lost on me (the dialogue makes this especially hard. send help.)- there's a possibility that Edgeworth at this point in time realizes the value in having a better, more functional dynamic with the one defense attorney who he considers a true equal in court. This dynamic will allow for less chances to encounter missteps and errors in any verdicts handed down in court, and if Edgeworth is to pursue his ideal of justice- Phoenix Wright is undoubtedly essential to this endeavor. The aftermath of Rise From The Ashes is indicative of this newfound goal of his- the symbolism behind the old King of Prosecutors award and the two halves of the evidence list certainly helps this case. -<"It seems all you do is worry about me." -Miles Edgeworth, Rise From The Ashes> For good fucking reason Edgeworth. You were accused of murder and have implicated yourself on the stand for DL-6 just a few months ago- and if the Investigations games are anything to go by, you're more of a danger magnet than PHOENIX is. I had to say it. The first Investigations game takes place over the course of 2-3 days and the sheer amount of shit that Edgeworth had to deal with in between that interval truly makes me wonder how Phoenix Wright ended up with the title of danger magnet. And THIS time- Edgeworth's car becomes a crime scene because his corrupt superiors needed a convenient way of transporting a corpse. There's VERY good reasons to worry about the livelihood of Miles Edgeworth. -Okay I... can't believe I forgot about the chessboard. Here's the kicker- the one we see from his office isn't even the only one he owns. I... legitimately cannot give you ANY purely heterosexual, platonic explanation for why Miles Edgeworth has THREE (THREE. I CANNOT OVERSTATE THIS. HE HAS T H R E E OF THESE FUCKING THINGS. GOOD GOD. HE CAN'T BE ANY MORE EXTRA.)(there exists a similar, portable set in the Investigations games- and he has a new set by the time of Dual Destinies) sets of custom-made chessboards with personalized, highly-specific red and blue designs made purely to depict his rivalry with Phoenix Wright. I fold. I give up. I forgot about the chessboards I wAS NOT EXPECTING TO FAIL THIS E A R LY- -You know what the real kicker is with Rise From the Ashes? The main argument that I have introduced back in Turnabout Samurai does not apply here. Rise From the Ashes was made as a DS-exclusive case and did not exist in the original GameBoy version of the Trilogy. Which means if there is homoerotic tension written in for this case (and there happens to be a lot. the chessboard is proof enough.), then we can safely assume that the writers at this point were well-aware. So yeah- maybe don't feel TOO bad about the unnecessary feelings line- because ever since then the writers have been playing off of that and it SHOWS. -Is there really a point to this I'm just- everything is stacked against me tryna interpret this platonically -Like I know I make a point to say that a romantic relationship isn't the end-all of all relationships because this franchise LOVES pushing the Found Family dynamic and I'm an absolute sucker for that -good god by the time Dual Destinies rolls around I'll probably just give up and happily say they're happily married -that's literally what they act like don't even pretend

#narumitsu #wrightworth #ace attorney #gyakuten saiban #phoenix wright #naruhodou ryuuichi #miles edgeworth #mitsurugi reiji #i'll probably write more once school blows over #so have the first game for now #trust me i tried #maybe i'm just not an anti-shipper and that's why i failed #uh feel free to set the comments on fire #but like civilly #we're all here to have fun okay #even if fun means shipping

[wickedgamesoyaoya]

With the darkness of the night claiming each inch of the island, the atmosphere of happiness begins had altered. Earlier, the presence of the sun appeared to have nullified the visibility of the shadowy figures that travelled the land freely. But with the moon now asserting reign over the sky above, a comfortable yet eerie aura clouded the area.

The pathway connecting the villas to the remainder of the resort was framed with lanterns that shimmered with warm lighting. An instrumental track swept through the air, stimulating and welcoming the wandering souls who were defenceless to its influence. Strangely enough, the second you passed the gate separating the general and adults only designated areas, the melody switched in volume, and intensity. Perhaps the difference was merely a product of your imagination, you were on edge with the disappearance of your grandmother’s necklace. Sensitivity to music could easily be chalked up to a symptom of panic. Homura, who had accompanied you halfway to your destination, had suggested that you take someone with you. Assaults are frequent at resorts, she had reasoned. But your concern was never your physical safety, rather it was the loss of an irreplaceable item that had your heart in a mess. Squinting at the scene ahead, you absentmindedly toyed with your charm bracelet, before inhaling a breath. You were seconds from stepping past the boundary line when the presence of another forced you to halt.

“Oh, lookie who it is.” A flirtatious grin was presented on the brunette’s face as he leaned casually against the wooden sign that hosted a resort map.

“So, you’re trying to upgrade from stranger danger to my stalker now, huh?” Casting your attention away from your targeted destination, your eyes naturally widened at his chosen evening attire. You knew he was attractive – that much could be ascertained the moment you laid eyes upon him. But your mind somehow failed to consider the possibility that somehow, he could seem … dare you say it… hot?

“I’ll be your stalker if you’re into that.” Oikawa exhaled the counter dramatically, adding a heavy sigh at the end. The involuntary reaction that his presence elicited had gifted him a confidence he was lacking prior to your interaction.

“What else will you do to earn my affection, stranger danger?” A single finger was tapped against your cheek in thought as a mischievous smile fixed upon your coloured lips. The male had presented you with an opportunity to test his limits, and the excitement of playing with him had suspended your concerns for a moment.

“What do you want me to do?” In a fluid movement, he thrusted his weight forward, and placed his hands into his pockets. His actions showcased his absence of fear, and the snicker vibrating in his throat communicated a challenge for you to do your worst.

“Search the ocean for my necklace.” As your fingers brushed against your bare neck, the slightest tilt was given to your head. The request was incredibly unreasonable for two reasons. One, the temperature of the water was far from ideal for a night swim. Two, it would be inconvenient considering the fact he was currently dressed in semi-formal attire.  

“Uh… like right now?” The inquiry was accompanied by a low chuckle, a piece of him knew you would use the opportunity to ruin his cleaned-up appearance. Well… if that was what you wanted; he would happily comply. “Okay. Yeah. Fine. Easy.”

“You won’t.” Your denial of his resolve was met with a provocative wink, an action that initially stunned you. He could not be serious. There was just no way.

“Watch me, Miss Flash.” The athlete immediately broke into a run, with a chorus of laughter erupting from within him. He did not bother to ascertain whether you were following him, by contrast, he elected to focus on the waves that thrashed ahead of him. It was only when he reached the shoreline did, he notice the bewildered expression animating your features. Slipping out of his dress shoes that were now loaded with sand, he began unbuttoning his shirt leisurely, while purposefully keeping his gaze away from yours.

“You’re bluffing.” He had to be bluffing – but … why was he was stripping in front of you then? Maybe he was merely putting on a performance, an attempt to fluster you?

Oikawa rolled off your refusal to accept his commitment with a shrug as he discarded his socks and pants. “I don’t need you to believe in me, Miss Flash. You’ll know I’m telling the truth soon enough.” The disinterested response was conveyed softly, and without spite. He was just preoccupied measuring the distance he would be sprinting before he dove into the merciless waters. After counting thirty inches away from the shoreline, he slapped his palms together in a sign of satisfaction. “Alright, here I go.”

“Oh my God, he’s serious.” The admission was confessed under your breath when the reality of the situation had finally registered. “shit, shit shit…” Glancing down at your palms for a solution, your heart completed a flip. A groan left your lips once you understood what needed to be done. With Oikawa commencing his race to the ocean, you initiated a mission of your own. Thankfully, you were lighter on your feet and were able to complete your task without much strain. Launching your body forward, you tackled the male onto the sand, landing perfectly on top of him.  

“Wow, okay. There was some real technique behind that move.” Despite being captured and shoved to the ground, the brunette was laughing openly, prompting his eyelids to flutter shut.

“I can’t believe you were going to do it.” Artificial irritation tangled with your tongue as you glared down at him. But the thrill of event had your body flushed with exhilaration. Did you accidentally just have fun?  

“At least now you know I’m serious.” Your reaction had fuelled his teasing from start to finish. And out of every expression he was able to draw out his favourite was the concern flickering to life when you thought he was potentially in danger. It was cute.  

“Yeah, whatever.” Rolling your eyes, you smashed a palm over his face to silence him, before lifting yourself up. “Come on, stalker boy. I still need to find my necklace.”

Fun Facts: 

⇻ Sakusa found y/n and Oikawa digging through the sand, so no. He did not see her on top of Oikawa. ~

⇻ The necklace is the only “sentimental” item y/n will bring with her on a “job” 

⇻ Bokuto knew what y/n was talking about but he wanted to be a little shit, so he pretended he didn’t know. 

Can you keep a secret - necklace

Masterlist - Previous - Next

A/N: mans crazy am I right 🤣

Taglist:  @haikyuufairy @newfriendjen  @lvoejimin @moonlightaangel @gyozaaaaa @byun-nies @thevillagehiddenintheinternet @graykageyama @bloody-bella @amberalisa @yourstarvic @swoonhui @rajablast @chaichai-the-weeb @dreamstormings @namyari @elianetsantana @chibishae34 @momoinot  @volleybloop @melonmayhere @cuddlesslut @haikyuusimp91 @pastaforhandsidk @prcttylittlcthing @halparkebitch @lilacshouko @kac-chowsballs @helloalex80 @4fterh0urs @aquariarose @sempiternal-amour @stfucanunot @athenarosaline @idiot-juice-enthusiast @nerdynstoned @yamayoomi @memes-and-money  @its-the-aerieljeane @coconut-dreamz @tsumume @miss-rocketeer @atria-avior @tsukkismamagucci​ @mismatched-loves 

Bolded UN’s I cannot tag, sorry!!

#oikawa smau #oikawa x you #oikawa x reader #oikawa x y/n #oikawa scenarios #oikawa imagine #haikyuu smau #sakusa x you #sakusa x y/n #sakusa x reader #haikyuu sakusa #sakusa scenarios #sakusa imagines #sakusa smau

[starrysupercell]

Second paternal-centric piece, centered on the highly dramatic Graveyard Fam! The patchwork family <3

Do I put way too many serious thoughts in things? Maybe. But I am a storyteller.

Heavily headcanon based that I've mentioned before.

Warnings: mentions of formerly living in a toxic and neglectful environment, and a current abrasive and struggling relationship between Mortis and Frank.

Ask to tag.

~

🧟‍♀️📱 Picture Perfect 🦇🎧

Emz awoke naturally, opening her eyes, and blinking away the sleep. She stared up at her ceiling blankly. What a good day's sleep!

She pulled her arm from the tightly wrapped blanket around her and slipped it under her pillow to grab her phone.

She held it above her face to replace the ceiling as the point of interest in her line of sight. It was around 1:30 pm. What have people talked about ever since she went to sleep earlier that morning?

She began to scroll through posts, ready to begin her morning regime of giving only a few hearts to a handful of posts, and maybe even one or two coveted comments from her. (It was best to leave them wanting more!)

However, she froze in her browsing when she quickly noticed a trend in today's posts. A long winded paragraph by some random of how lucky they were, a meme about single mothers, grilling pictures.

Oh, today was no day to lay in bed for half an hour before beginning her day! It was Father's Day. Emz twisted around, trying to roll out of her bedsheets.

"Ogh, stupid covers--!" She grumbled despite the fact that she loved twisting herself up in them. It helped her sleep at night.

The zombie rolled too far one way and gave a cut off yelp as she fell clean off the bed and landed on the ground painfully on her stomach. How embarrassing, she huffed, peeved. She slapped the ground in frustration and pushed herself up with the same palm. She sat on her knees and leaned on her bed, fixing her hair with her other hand. Okay, fail, but at least nobody saw that.

Absent-mindedly, the teen brought her phone up again and unlocked it fluidly. She scrolled through a few posts and ended up giving the first like of the day.

"Wait, no," She said, looking up. She had a plan for today and everything! Emz stood up and slipped her phone into her back pocket. First up, the gifts!

She bounded over to her closet and opened it. There they were. Two gift baskets for today. One for her Uncle, and one for Frank. Emz smiled. They were handmade of course, because premade goodie bags were absolutely lame!

As if she would settle for giving anything less than perfection. No, she hand picked what would go into each basket, decorated and placed it to be aesthetically pleasing, and wrapped it up with a gorgeous ribbon. She's even refrained about bragging about any of this online, to keep it absolutely secret. Man, was she just amazing or what? That was rhetorical, of course. She knew she was flawless already.

Like an instinct to survive, Emz had her phone out of her pocket and in front of her once more, camera open. She winked and stuck her tongue out with a smile, and took a picture. She grimaced.

Ugh, she had to go through her morning routine first and then take another picture afterwards. This was a terrible excuse for a selfie. With that thought in mind, Emz stretched properly, and strolled to her bathroom.

~

"Talk to me, Franklin. You know it's a mutual effort." Mortis said, poking Frank's cheek. He was leaning over the back of the couch where Frank was sitting at. The big guy tilted his head away with a grunt. His eyes were trained on the television as he tried his best to tune out the vampires.

"...Is this still about the dishes?" Mortis decided to guess since he refused to answer. "I'll have you know that I got started on them the other day. But then I got a call that simply couldn't go unanswered." Mortis paused and studied the lack of change in grump level in Frank. Okay. Maybe not that. "...If this is about my bats, I am not making them sleep outside. They like it in here. Only Robata likes it outside." Still no answer. Mortis tapped on his chin. What else could possibly be on his spouse's mind? It was already hard to believe that Franklin was mad at him, but he was just not budging in giving any hints. (Yet again!)

"Ugh," Frank grunted. "It's not just about the dishes or the bats." He started to explain quietly. Mortis leaned in attentively with a small smile on his face. Oh, it was such a rare treat now when Franklin opened up to him. Even if this was about an argument, Mortis adored the fact.

"It's about the fact that you still make excuses for your laziness." He finished.

Mortis frowned. Except for when he spouted spiteful lies and insults! "They aren't excuses! I'm telling you what happened. You know, you're not the only who lives here, Franklin. There's a thing called--"

"Good afternoon~!" Emz called out, stepping down the staircase with flourish.

Mortis ruffled Frank's hair and lowered his voice. "Hold that thought." With a pirouette, he shot a cheerful grin at Emz. "Poisoned Apple! Good afternoon!" The gravedigger greeted. Frank was annoyed, but he held up a hand to wave at Emz pleasantly. With his other hand, he turned the volume down on the show he was watching.

"Hi!" Emz said, stopping right before she reached the bottom. She was using the railing to hide the baskets. "You guys know what today is, right?"

"....Sunday?" Mortis questioned happily.

"I guess so, yeah," Emz said, "But beyond that."

Frank blinked and shook his head lightly.

"It's..." Emz paused for dramatic effect, and then lifted the baskets into view. "Father's Day! Look what I made!"

"Ooh," Mortis smiled, fangs glinting. He held his arms out as Emz walked forward to hand him his basket.

"This is for you and--" she moved on to Frank. "--this is for you!"

Mortis marveled at the items he could see, and turned it to see it from a different angle. The plastic wrap crinkled as he did this.

Frank smiled at her as she passed it over to him. With just a glance, he could already see some of his favorite things in there, he placed it aside and stood, prompting her for a hug as he walked around the sofa.

Emz was wrapped and lifted up in his large stature, pleasantly smiling. "I'm glad you both liked it." She laughed, muffled.

"Naturally," Mortis remarked, "Your craftsmanship is to die for!"

Emz was finally let go by Frank, landing on the floor. "Oh, tell me about it," she smirked. "I stayed up a couple of days ago finishing those up and they turned out perfectly!" She flipped her hair with an obvious flourish. "You can go on gushing," she said, only half jokingly as she brought out her phone to idly glance through any messages.

Mortis laughed in amusement. Frank smiled patiently. Emz was sharp around the edges, but she was endearingly so. As long as she didn't go too far...

"Oh, yeah!" She put her phone away. "You should both, like get dressed up. There's an event on the beach later on tonight, and I was thinking we could go out today. Like... my treat."

"You?" Mortis voiced for both he and Frank. "You have money?"

"Yeah? I save up. Don't you?" She asked haughtily. "Or do you just not want to go?"

Frank gave short laugh, and patted his stomach in jest. Mortis shrugged in amusement, catching on to Frank's joke. "Well, if you think you have enough for Frank, we'll be your guests, sweetheart."

~

"Oooh, futuristic," Mortis marveled, taking off the wide-brimmed hat he wore as the Trio walked inside. They were at the Zero-Gravity diner. It was a part of Starr Force's attractions.

A bored-looking feline straightened up in attention as the doors slid open. "Welcome, Civilians!" She greeted from her silvery podium. "Feeling low on energy? If you want to help out Colonel Ruffs in his quest against the Dark Lord, you should fill up while you've got the chance." She recited in character, "Luckily, you're safe here, and we've got plenty of foodstuffs that'll fill you up! So, how can I help you today?"

Emz scoffed. Did Kit not recognize them or something? "You could have skipped the spiel. Like, you know that we're Brawlers, right?"

The cat blinked slowly, resisting the urge to roll her eyes. "Okay. What do you want then?"

"I've got a reservation for three, under Emz."

Kit shifted her focus to the high-tech screen right beside her. It was see through. From the perspective of the Graveyard Trio, the images, texts and buttons were flipped.

Kit pressed through a few buttons, navigating through menus, and then confirmed Emz's arrival. "Alright. If you'll follow me." She picked up three devices from her podium, and began to lead the way through the restaurant. Her tail swished as she walked along.

When they got to the table, Kit waited until they were seated and placed the devices in front of the three. "Press the blue button to activate your menus." She said.

Mortis pressed it, and a holographic screen flashed into view, akin to Kit's own screen at her podium. He laughed. "This is spectacular! We should add a horror-themed restaurant to our section. It would be a hit!" Mortis exclaimed. "What say you two?"

"Ooh, that'd be sooo cute! I can run it." Emz said.

Frank grunted, and pressed the menu button. It didn't spring to life like Mortis' did, so he pressed it again, and then once more even rougher. It broke under his strength.

"Oh," Kit reached over. "Sorry about that. You can hand me the pieces, and I'll get you a replacement menu. I'll be right back." Frank did so, a bit embarrassed.

As soon as Kit was out of earshot, Emz laughed. "Our place won't have cheap stuff like here though."

Mortis grinned. Frank was less than amused and gave a shrug. It was simply an accident, and they shouldn't be rude about it.

Kit returned and activated the device before handing it to Frank. "Here you go. While you look through that, what can I get for you to drink?" She asked, readying a tablet.

"I'll have a peach iced tea." Emz told Kit.

"I'll have a glass of Merlot." The mortician decided.

Great. Now he'd have to drive. Frank rolled his eyes, and looked through the sodas.

Mortis looked over at him. "What would you like, Franklin?"

After eyeing the selections, he pointed out his choice. Mortis made a face and looked at Kit. "He'll just have a Coke."

"Okay. I'll get that to you. A waiter will be right out to get the rest of your order." Kit said. She departed from the table.

Emz hummed and stood up. "I'll be right back. Remember- order whatever you want! I'm paying." She reminded, smoothing out the cute dress she wore and then walking off towards the restroom.

Mortis watched her go, and then moved aside the menu device.

"Okay, Franklin. Let's talk." he interlocked his fingers like this was a business deal.

Frank ignored him, swiping through the menu.

"This is a fancier restaraunt. Emz is treating us, and you can tell how important this is to her, can't you? I hope you do."

Mortis paused for any telling gesture or expression, but Franklin remained quiet. The mortician continued. "Well, it'd be great if you'd drop the pettiness, if only for tonight. This is between us, not Emz."

Frank glowered at Mortis. Pettiness? Him? The big guy shoved aside the device now. He was tired of Mortis' tone and habits and everything.

"Don't even think of causing a scene here, Franklin," Mortis tensed up. "Think about Emz!" Frank frowned.

"Here are your drinks, Sirs." the black cat returned. She either didn't notice or chose to ignore the quiet tension at the table as she put the drinks down and then left.

Frank grumpily put his face in his hand. "Fine. But you're being a dick." Frank said.

Mortis was offended. "How!?" He asked indignantly.

"Drinking without even asking me, nitpicking what I want, and those are on top of the bats and dishes. And I bet you're ready with some excuse now too." Frank listed.

Mortis clamped his mouth shut. He was going to point out that it was only one, and that plain old coke at a more fancy place, really? But, that would just prove Franklin right. "Well," he struggled on what to say for only a second before finding a string. "You always keep things to yourself! How am I supposed to guess what you're thinking? You wait and get mad and then out of the blue, you just attack me!"

Frank furrowed his brows and looked aside, feeling a bit guilty.

"Hey!" Emz arrived and sat down, and scooched up in her chair. "You guys are being an itty bitty loud, you know? I'm sure you don't want people staring."

"Uhh..." Mortis said. "I suppose not. So... Franklin." He said awkwardly, trying to think of some different topic. "I think... our Brawl Ball strategy should change." He sighed, disappointed in himself. How weak of a subject.

Emz was puzzled and looked like she wanted to say something. So, of course, she did voice her thoughts. "Weren't you guys talking about, like being mad or whatever?"

"No....?" Mortis said. "Nobody's mad here. Am I right, Franklin?"

"Uh. Yeah." The big guy shrugged.

Emz pursed her lips. "Right... So this afternoon too?"

Mortis gave a tight smile. "This afternoon?" He pretended.

Emz was merciless in completely demolishing this lie. "This morning, when I walked downstairs, Frank was on the couch with the T.V. on. It wasn't muted, even though you were beside him presumably chatting. That's some weirdo way to talk if you weren't mad at someone." She said, matter-of-factly. "You think I don't know body language?"

"...." Mortis was stunned. Frank laughed at the absurdity. She had guessed it perfectly!

Emz crossed her arms though. She waited for Frank's chuckle to die down. "So, what gives? You two are going to start lying to me all of a sudden?" She looked between the two, waiting impatiently for an answer.

".....No." Mortis said finally.

"Then?"

The vampire faltered. "It's just that... well, you know. The discussions Frank and I gave, ah, doesn't have to do with you? So... why involve you?" Mortis managed.

"Okay? But, like, why lie about it." She repeated. She had an inkling about it now, given both of their awkward glances and fidgets. Her sharp tone softened, and she sighed inaudibly. Guess it was sappy truth time.

She looked down at the table, focused on the closed menu device. "I know you two argue. Like. Duh. That's normal. And, I'm guessing that you want to pretend like everything's peachy because you don't want to remind me of... well, you know who already!" She shook her head. "But I'm okay, really. I actually wake up on my own and not from endless yelling, and I'm not picked up hours late from wherever because you never agreed on whose turn it is to pick me up.." Emz paused, feeling quite at unease from sharing this, but pushed through. This was just another step at breaking her own tough shell. "What I'm trying to say is, simply arguing isn't going to remind me of my 'parents.' You two are leagues better, okay? I know you actually care about me. So you dont have to lie to me. Bicker and argue all day until your jaws fall off. You wouldn't be my Uncle Mortis and Frank without it." She smiled up at them.

Mortis had his upper face covered, just about already to cry. "Emz... I don't know what to even say..."

Frank leaned to her and gave her a kiss on her head. "It means a lot, sweetheart..." he said genuinely. Maybe he still had things to learn... He glanced over at Mortis who happened to look up then from his heartfelt pause. "I think I speak for the both of us."

They exchanged a soft smile.

"How about a picture?" Emz asked as she held her phone up.

"That sounds grand," Mortis sighed contentedly. Frank nodded with a smile.

The graveyard family bunched in together to fit into Emz's screen that she held up for all of them. On their way to posing for the perfect picture, their glasses were knocked down. The mixture of the three drinks short-circuited the menus, stained the white tablecloth and started to drip on the floor. Kit was walking by at that moment to check on another table when she saw the damage. That troublemaking team. Her tail swished around dangerously. She pulled a communicator out of her pocket and held it up to talk into it. She never took her eyes off of the Graveyard Trio. "Colonel Ruffs. This is MerXanary Special Agent Kit. Over."

"Roger!" He answered. There were squeaks in the background. No doubt the new Private was fooling around.

"There's Brawlers here giving me trouble. I'm requesting backup at the Zero-Gravity Diner. I'm going in now. Over."

"Willco." Colonel Ruffs confirmed. Kit pocketed her radio transmitter, and readied to Brawl.

Emz's camera flashed, capturing the moment.

#Brawl Stars #Mortis #Frank #Emz #Graveyard Fam #Mortis/Frank #Fortress #Neglect #Toxicity #struggling relationship #ask to tag

[bwprowl]

Me vs. The Mitchells vs. The Machines

The Mitchells vs. The Machines is a really cool movie. Seriously! It’s the Spider-Verse crew continuing to be at the top of their game, doing their damnedest to elevate and evolve 3D film animation in a way apart from the ongoing Disneyfied edge-sanding seen elsewhere. Several sequences, especially the final fight scene at the end, are absolutely jaw-dropping. A lot of the writing of the movie is also genuinely clever, with some cool tricks of weaving in Chekov’s Guns that you don’t even realize WERE Chekov’s Guns until they’re deployed, but then make perfect sense. And I also just have to say there’s something oddly heartening about a movie that does a lot to target Millenials in terms of nostalgia, but not so much via our shows and movies and music the way other project might go about, but specifically by tapping the internet meme culture of the early-00’s that’s so media-unique to that emergent generation. There’s some genuine heart visible in so many of the levels of how this thing was made that I can understand its touting as an instant classic and the waves of praise and popularity that have followed its release.

Unfortunately, I can’t so unilaterally praise this movie, mostly because I can NOT stop thinking about how poorly-implemented and mis-framed its central familial conflict is.

Oh yeah spoilers for this movie I guess

So I’ll need to detour at first and talk about A Goofy Movie, which isn’t much of an issue for me since I fucking love A Goofy Movie. And watching The Mitchells vs. The Machines my initial takeaway was a pleasant observation that someone had basically grafted A Goofy Movie to The World’s End, which could have made for an extremely fun time for me. A Goofy Movie, so it goes, centers on the conflict between a father and child trying to understand each other, spurred on by the father conscripting the child into an impromptu road-trip which the child initially resents but eventually leans into as a vehicle for understanding as the family members open up to each other and end with a greater appreciation for their familial bond as well as healthier, more open lines of communication. There are comical misunderstandings, dramatic misunderstandings, and escalating Wacky Adventures that keep the trip feeling suitably cinematic in scope. And as The Mitchells vs. The Machines continued on, I kept finding myself rounding back to that comparison and asking “Why am I not getting into this as much as I do A Goofy Movie?”

It turns out to be a point of motivation, actually. In A Goofy Movie, Goofy dragooning Max into the cross-country fishing trip is immediately borne out of his (however misinformed) desire to keep his son from going down a wrong, potentially delinquent or criminal path. Goofy has concerns about the lessened connection and communication with Max, sure, but that’s a symptom of his inability to communicate his actual worries about Max’s behavior to him, not the sum total of the problem he feels needs fixing. Goofy is under the impression there are genuine problems Max is going through, and while he’s got the actual particulars wrong, he’s not really that far off, since Max still IS the kind of kid to elaborately hijack a school function or make up extravagant lies to get attention from the girl he likes rather than just talking to her and asking her out like a normal human-dog-person. Goofy’s objective is firmly centered on helping Max for Max’s sake, and he’s only taking up a few weeks out of Max’s summer and causing him to miss a single party in order to do it.

I lay all that out so you can try to understand my headspace coming at critiquing The Mitchells vs. The Machines and negatively viewing its own take on a plot concept I ostensibly love by default. The problem, as said, is one of motivation. In The Mitchells, Rick’s dissatisfaction with his relationship with his daughter Katie is purely that: Dissatisfaction with their relationship. Katie herself is, by all accounts, doing spectacularly. She’s got a healthy relationship with friends and other family members, she’s gotten accepted into a prestigious film school, and her YouTube account seems to pull pretty keen numbers (With all the tech jokes in this movie it’s a wonder there’s never a riff on her shilling NordVPN or Raid Shadow Legends). The conflict between father and daughter is purely a case of them growing apart in her teen years demonstrably because Rick has no understanding of her current passions and makes no effort to do so, which leads to him having consistently questioned and doubted her ability to succeed in her field. The film frames the impromptu road-trip as his attempt to ‘fix’ the issues between them, but the only thing broken by the presentation of the story is Rick’s approach to parenting in the first place. He could easily have made Katie warm to him on the way out by replacing or paying for the laptop he broke and throwing her a subscription to her YouTube channel, but then the movie would be shorter and we wouldn’t be able to pretend the conflict was anything other than his own pursuit of self-centered actualization.

That’s the other issue, of course, the way The Mitchells vs. The Machines consistently rounds back to the point that Katie is somehow shouldering half the responsibility for the father/daughter communication breakdown. But as stated above, it really has hardly anything to do with her. Katie’s succeeding on her own terms, and the only outreach she would theoretically need to do to her dad would be to make HIM feel better, something he could do himself if he’d only actually pay attention to the cool videos she keeps trying to show him and not constantly deciding that HE knows that SHE will fail. It’s a fundamentally one-sided conflict from what we’re shown, and yet the other members of the Mitchell family continuously treat Katie like she needs to accommodate her father’s personal whims and not hurt his feelings despite the fact that he’s the one who went behind her back and canceled her flight, even forcing her to miss her first week of college (!) simply because he felt sorry for himself that they didn’t like the same things anymore. Again, Katie’s doing great, it’s Rick that decides to make his problem the entire family’s problem, and while I’m going to hesitate to refer to this behavior as out-and-out abusive, it is still absurdly selfish and pointedly poor parenting. 

The movie seems to nominally strive for balance in the conflict, not making it entirely Katie’s job to fix her dad’s hurt feelings, and indeed having a whole sequence where he realizes what a Big Jerk he’s been about not trying to understand or support her passions, and resolving to actually Make An Effort moving forward. The problem is that this is still framed as one half of the equation, as Katie supposedly gets to understand where her dad is coming from, which...makes her feel better about all the times he said she would fail and so she should rely on and appreciate him more? And the reason that’s a fundamental issue is annoying, because it means we have to talk about Rick’s Stupid Fucking Cabin.

Look, I hate doing this. I personally try very hard to keep in the mindset that stories are stories and things happen in them because they are stories. I am loathe to attempt picking apart the points of particular plot points, but the problem is that this Stupid Fucking Cabin is positioned as the heart of the humanity of the entire movie, yet it hinges on a sequence of decisions that no actual human being would ever come by. First off, do you have any idea how long it takes to BUILD a home like that, let alone as one guy apparently doing it himself? Rick spent the better part of his twenties building this big Fucking Stupid Cabin to fulfill his lifelong dream of ‘Living in the woods’, only for his wife to get pregnant once it was finished, leading to him just dropping like that? Was there no planning in this family? Was Katie an accident that Rick immediately was this endeared to? I mean, he totally seems like a pro-lifer. But then why do they need to sell the Stupid Fucking Cabin on account of a kid coming along? How were Rick and Linda planning on living out their lives there if not with resources that could support them as well as a kid or two? Rick could have just raised his kids in the woods in his Stupid Fucking Cabin and they would have stood a better chance at turning out like little duplicates of himself and his own interests like he clearly wanted. That’s to say nothing of this sequence of events being framed as a ‘failure’, despite that fact that Rick handily succeeded at what he set out to do, only to turn around and abandon the thing he succeeded at himself on seemingly the same sort of impulsive whim that leads to him dragging his whole family on a road trip because he doesn’t understand YouTube. There are motivating factors to these decisions he made that could inform the whole context of this supposedly tragic backstory, but we aren’t privy to anything resembling them, and the result is a plot point that seemingly only exists to make Katie (and the audience) feel bad for Rick in the third act of the movie.

The real answer is the ultimate assertion of this thing by the finale, that Katie should be ‘grateful’ to Rick for his ‘sacrifice’ of his dream that supposedly allowed her to be in the place she is now. Except Katie had no part in Rick’s bizarre impulsive choice to build a Stupid Fucking Cabin then sell it as soon as a kid popped out so he, I guess, could feel some sense of important familial contribution. That’s to say nothing of the point about parental figures who make grand, sweeping gestures nominally for the good of their kids, but are effectively and emotionally unavailable in the day-to-day engagements of their lives. Because unlike Goofy in A Goofy Movie, Rick isn’t actually doing what he’s doing for Katie’s sake. Her motivation for most of the movie is to move away from home and go to college, a completely normal-ass thing that children do. Any of Rick’s outreach or efforts to ‘fix’ relationships and situations are purely for the sake of his own hurt feelings, and the way Katie’s mother and brother consistently push her into going along with them only highlights the overt way this whole family’s problems are hung up on the insecurities of of this single stubborn jerk. But then, that’s my other major misgiving with The Mitchells vs. The Machines: Its expected exaltation of the default biological family as some hallowed unit for which it is a tragedy to fall into any degree of dysfunction. This is with pointed dismissal towards the idea of Found Family, seen as a distraction, an obstacle to Katie realizing who her TRUE people are, and coming around to a sense of fulfillment because she managed to massage her dad’s ego for long enough that he stopped being totally dismissive of the things that brought her joy. You see, Found Families are fun, but they aren’t REAL or SPECIAL because they already accept and appreciate you for who you are, unlike these people you’re biologically obligated to share living space with for 18+ years whom you have to forge bonds with through varying degrees of communication breakdowns and compromises in self-agency.

With all that in mind, it highlights some of the smaller issues in the movie’s setup as well. This is perhaps petty, but jeez was I annoyed with the film’s framing of The Mitchells as this ~craaaazy~ ~weeeeiiiird~ family which included such outlandish quirks as ‘Dad who doesn’t understand technology’ and ‘Young boy who really likes dinosaurs’. And the wishy-washy tone of the familial conflict is echoed in the ‘The Machines’ part of the plot, which mostly led to me sitting on edge throughout the whole film as I wondered how it was going to come down on the subject of those kids and their darn smartphones. It ultimately doesn’t go full anti-technology, which makes sense given how much of Katie’s character revolves around using the stuff, to say nothing of the predilections of the people who actually, uh, made this movie. But the most it can manage is a halfhearted “Maybe unregulated big tech bad?” which even then is undercut, mostly I assume because of the various big tech companies involved in producing and streaming this thing. Don’t get me wrong, I’m overall glad it doesn’t go full "durr hburr technology is bad fire is scary and thomas edison was a witch", but a lack of any insight or ideas on that front means that the familial relationship element is the only conceptual element it really has to stand on, and I just spent over 1800 words breaking down why that fundamentally didn’t work!

It’s an aggravating situation, because lord did I want to love The Mitchells vs. The Machines. It’s gorgeous, it’s got some clever bits in the writing, and it can honestly sling a punchline like nobody’s business, there are some KILLER jokes in there. But it just became impossible all the way through the end for me to engage with the heart of the movie, its central connective conflict, on the terms it wanted me to. Now it’s admittedly possible that, perhaps like Rick Mitchell, that’s my problem. I’ve seen a lot of love for this movie from my peers, and it does make me question my own projections: I don’t want to get TOO personal on main, but I admit that it’s entirely possible that people who’ve enjoyed an actually functional fatherly relationship would better engage with the emotive connections this movie wants you to make. But even with that caveat, I was able to find my own way to resonate with the similar stakes of A Goofy Movie just thanks to the more effective way that one was framed, so if this one couldn’t hook me, maybe it was The Mitchells vs. The Machines’ fault after all.

#the mitchells vs the machines #the mitchells #movies #criticism #rant

[alannah-corvaine]

the big ‘so you’ve found my blog’ post;

So. The follow button has led you to me, and now here you are with me on your dash. I assume you’re here for one to three reasons: the ffxiv content I post and reblog, my character(s), and/or the aesthetic content. Possibly also my riveting commentary on why ffxiv hasn’t added a sidebraid hairstyle yet. You’re all valid and welcome here. 

Maybe you’re curious about me and my OCs, but you don’t want to go digging through my blog and the absolute mess of tags I’ve amassed over the years. I’m here to present a half-assed solution to your curiosity instead of fixing my tags in any sort of meaningful way.

                                   WHO RUNS THIS BLOG?

I’m Alicia, I run this circus.

she/her pronouns, I’m cis.

I’m 31 years old at the time of writing this post.

This blog is 5 going on 6 years old.

If you see @alannahcorvaine​ that blog is also me but I don’t use it anymore, as it’s a sideblog and I moved over to this blog years ago.

I’ve been playing FFXIV since 2015.

I also play Elder Scrolls Online and World of Warcraft and have separate blogs for related OCs, content, and aesthetics.

I’m a cat person but I also love dogs.

I have a five year old black cat named Kilala who keeps me in line.

I’m not much of a people person, I’m made of anxiety and paperclips.

I yell into the void a lot, the void being my blog.

I don’t really RP outside of spectacularly outstanding circumstances these days, but character and world building are my jam.

Even if I don’t RP, I’m always down for character connections and relationships. I’m totally up for brainstorming and bouncing around headcanons.

Most of the time in game you’ll find me either standing around my house or out in the world taking screenshots. My mailing address is gpose.

I have a full roster of 8 characters on Balmung, but currently only 3 are active. You’ll probably see screenshots of the others too from time to time.

                                                    THE OCs

                                      A L A N N A H  C O R V A I N E 

Your first assumption on seeing my blog name is that it’s probably the name of the titular OC that this blog focuses on. You would be correct. All of my OCs have their own blogs, however I am infinitely lazy and just end up posting screenshots of everyone here because this is where the followers are and the sideblogs end up being used as aesthetic warehouses. Anywhoo, here’s some need-to-knows about Alannah.

Alannah has two main verses: Warrior of Light and Non-WoL.

Her non-WoLverse is actually the primary one, but with Shadowbringers I’ve been focusing more on her WoL story. 

I also have an infinite amount of AU verses for her based on various media but nobody has time for me to list all of those.

In both verses she’s a White Mage, a capable healer, but focuses more on offensive elemental spells (wind, water, earth).

Alannah is my only OC with a Warrior of Light verse.

She’s 23 years old.

She has severe allergies to  grass, pollen, dust, dander, and certain foods.

Her allergy reactions are largely kept at bay by a delicate chain diadem made and blessed by padjal. It also helps correct her shitty vision, magic is great.

Her deepest fears include deep water and phurbles.

She has four older brothers: Faron, Ean, Davon, and Brennan.

Family issues. Just so many family issues. That’s an entire post on its own.

Her hair is dark brown, not black. I cannot state this emphatically enough no matter what my edits look like.

The white streaks are magical scars, the cause of them vary by verse.

Non-WoL Alannah is married to Nine Outway, they have a three-year old daughter named Aislinn.

Warrior of Light Alannah (hereafter known as WoLannah) I ship exclusively with dead ghost boyfriend Ardbert.

Deep-seated anger issues buried beneath a placid and friendly exterior.

Her aether is just irreparably borked and highly chaotic and is controlled via her staff and arcane symbols painted onto her arms in aether ink.

Her childhood dream was to be a powerful thaumaturge, which didn’t work out with her aether control issues. 

                                R E B E C C A  “B R I N A”  C R O S S                                               ( @thesilentcygnet​ )

26 years old.

Born to a moderately wealthy Limsan merchant family.

2 older sisters: Pippa and Lacy.

Jacke Swallow (of rogues guild fame)  is her best friend (and secret love) since childhood.

Her entire family was murdered when she was 16 because her father made shady deals with the wrong people and owed them money.

She’s been mute since the day of the massacre after witnessing the murders while hiding in the cellar beneath their feet.

She’s been staying with Jacke and his cohorts in the Dutiful Sisters of the Edelweiss since then, though he’s the only one that knows her true identity.

A long chain of events has lead to her being kidnapped from Kugane, shipwrecked off the coast of Othard twice, sucked into a magical whirlpool, and left stranded on the First.

Will she ever get home? Perhaps, when I’ve finally decided that her ridiculous journey has been Odyssean enough.

                                           K H I A R N A   K H A                                               ( @khi-tastrophe​ )

29 years old.

An incandescent ball of unquenchable rage, probably for valid reasons.

The daughter of the khan of a minor offshoot of the Kha tribe.

Had a twin sister named Khiela, who pretended to be kidnapped by an aggressive suitor and lead Khiarna on a wild goose chase across Eorzea in an attempt to find her.

Khiela and her lover conspired to and succeeded in murdering her father.

Khiarna returned to Othard and murdered the shit out of both of them in retaliation for killing her father.

She was then unanimously chosen as her father’s successor and currently reigns as khatun to the nomadic merchant tribe.

While traveling across Eorzea in search of her errant sister, Khi was involved in a relationship with a pathological liar, which has severely damaged her ability to trust people (on top of her family drama).

Currently in a relationship with Sidirahg of the Sixth ( @sidirahg​ ), who has the patience of a saint with her issues and also might be a masochist.

Khi is a shaman and uses a mix of conjury and pugilism in combat. 

She covers her fists and feet in a solid layer of rock and then lights them on fire, using a combination of speed, flexibility, and disorienting blows to fell her opponents.

                                    COMMON TAGS I USE

#alannah aesthetic - aesthetic tag.

#screenshots - tag for unedited screenshots of my characters.

#edits - tag for screenshot edits done by me.

#drabbles - tag for writing done by me.

#about alannah - tag for character profile memes, ask replies, relevant quotes.

#art of alannah - tag for art i’ve commissioned of Alannah.

#commissions - tag for art i’ve commissioned that also includes my other OCs.

#lanna things - tag for posts relevant to Alannah.

#9 - tag for posts related to Nine Outway.

#familial faultlines - tag for all of Alannah’s family issues.

#benedictions]&[bulletholes - ship tag for Alannah and Nine (contains screenshots, quotes, and aesthetic inspiration).

#the gravity of guilt - sub-B&B ship tag referencing events at the ruins of Nym.

#scars of nym - another B&B tag because I don’t have enough of them.

#otp: as one fool to another - ship tag for WoLannah and Ardbert

#AU: Warrior of Light - WoLannah tag.

#AU: Gloriana - tag for the AU in which Alannah goes power mad / angry at the world and misuses her magic to become an unstoppable force of destruction.

#AU: Dark Sunrise - tag for the AU in which Nine perma-dies and Alannah sells her soul to the darkness.

#keeper’s captain - ship tag for Brina and Jacke.

#boyfriend adjust - ship tag for Khi and Sid.

#tbd - tag for me yelling into the void that I pretend I’ll delete later.

                                             OTHER BLOGS

@eastofean - ffxiv aesthetic inspo blog for Ean Corvaine.

@aether-and-ash - ffxiv aesthetic inspo blog for Aislinn Outway.

@blacklacelullaby - ffxiv aesthetic inspo blog for Katja Iryut.

@cleric-stance - salty healer memes.

@sundownsanctuary - nsfw aesthetic inspo blog.

@lannahlearnsart - my hoard of digital art tutorials.

@halion​ - general World of Warcraft blog and inspo for my WoW OCs.

@veil-of-blades​ - ESO inspo blog for various Elder Scrolls OCs.

@theviciousnothing​ - my personal aesthetic blog.

                                           PARTING NOTES

You’ve done it, you’ve reached the end of this post. All of this is just a basic overview of me and my characters, if you ever have any questions about anything please feel free to drop me an ask or a DM any time. Thanks for following. ♥

#behind the blog #pinned post

[shinahbee]

Premonition of future events

Hello!

so I wasn’t going to post anything this week since i’m currently working on something for next week, but this has something to do with what I’m planning to post next week so i thought I would share my thoughts.

so as you may be aware if you have read my monthly favorites posts for a while that I have been delving into BL- yaoi manhwa/manga and have been recommending some in those favorites. one of which I have not discussed yet, mainly because I have been saving it for Feb favorites so look forward to that when it comes out!

and I have been following some of the manhwa creators twitter just to see upcoming projects and updates on the current manhwa I am reading, I follow the creator of this manhwa called “ pearl boy” on twitter and she drew something today that really interested me and I decided to break down the symbolism within the art piece. If you have not read this manhwa, none of this will make any sense to you, but i’ll explain it in detail next week when I finish my art.

I love symbolism and foreshadowing within a story and this picture she drew is just that, given the events leading up to this point and I really wanted to take this apart and see what I can come up with.

if you have read this than please bare with me, these are my thoughts only and how i interpret the art from the creator and has nothing to do with how she portrayed her art work, so just a disclaimer. I'm just doing this for fun.

i’ll link her twitter post here: 

https://twitter.com/inking_zoy/status/1363278273476579329

 and i’ll post the picture here, this is from her twitter so all rights belong to inking_zoy, the author/ artist of pearl boy

like i mentioned above, if you have not read the story then this will not make sense to any of you,but basically the guy in the left is named doshik, the guy in the middle is thier boss...i forgot his name..they both call him boss so we will keep it a that, the guy on the right is named Juha, so i’ll refer to them with these names. It is a little hard interpret this picture without knowing details about the story which is still not revealed yet, we see glimpses of the events through juha’s flash backs, so before that, the story starts off with doshik apparently running away from people looking for him cause he stole someones money and fled to the country side, he ended up having spent all his money and didn't even have any to buy food, he then stumbled across a seafood hot pot place and wanted to try eating and running, there in the shop was the owner “ boss” and juha who is working as a server and cook. the boss noticed him being weird and told juha to keep an eye on doshik cause he might bail from paying for his food, and that honestly was going to happen until juha confronted him and asked to payback with labor, it wasn't addressed as to what doshik did as a living before fleding to the country side but he did work at pub so i believe he was a host / sex worker or just a host that does sexual favors, so when juha told him to pay back the money he owed with his “ body” he thought he meant sex. There was a series of events both very terrible and unfortunate to serendipitous that happened between juha and dooshik in their entanglement with each other and with the “ boss “ as well. 

so it goes Boss ----> sexual abuse juha by making him work as a sex toy for old ugly bastards -----> juha has ability to produce pearls from his body...guess how. lol. i’m sorry this seems so absurd, but it is how the story goes, which the boss monopolizes him -----> juha can’t run away because he is scared and owes boss money ----> juha was about to be assaulted by the ugly bastards ---> doshik shows up and saves him a couple times and ends up working at the shop as a co worker---->  juha and doshik get to know each other after doshik saves him a couple times -----> juha asks doshik to have sex with him ( in order to produce pearls for debt payment) ----> doshik discovers juha’s ability but thought it was beads coming out of his body...LOL. he actually thought he had kidney stones and was genuinely concerned ----->  doshik had a pearl that he found at the beach earlier on and used it to compare to the bead that came out of juha and found out it as an actual pearl after getting it appraised by the bank person ----> juha met up with doshik and wanted to tell him he wanted to be sex partners cause he liked doing it with him ----> juha and boss confront each other and boss is angry he didn't show up meet his business partners that night that juha and doshik were together -----> juha says that he’s only going to pay it off by himself with his one partner, he didn't tell boss it was doshik, but i think he found out later. 

alright that seems good enough as to where we are right now, i hope my summary made sense for the most part. Now getting back to the drawing let’s take it apart, so there is a body of water that divides juha and doshik, with the boss being in the middle. The boss is holding juha tight and some people may interpret this as him having feelings for juha. I don’t think that is the case, the reason why i believe he is holding him and not letting go is because he wants to monopolize him for his self gain, not for the sake of feelings, but to make sure that he is the only person he will be able to turn to.  juha can produce pearls and he owes him money and he is using that to gain profit, that’s honestly all i see since his interactions with people strictly revolves around business deals, so once he found out that doshik might know of juha’s ability he began to come up with ways to remove them from each other, because he thinks if doshik knows the money that can come from the pearls he will use it to profit himself.

of course us as readers knows doshik is not like that and that he genuinely cares for juha. so Juha is separated by the boss holding on to him and it is symbolic to the events of his past being forced into a situation he can’t get out of. if you have watched any anime or drama , there is usually a scene where a person drowns, what do you think  happens then when you drown? the obvious, you can’t breathe, you get light headed, your consciousnesses slips away, you feel cold, your surrounded by nothing but silence and darkness the deeper you sink. The boss is like a rock pushing juha further down the abyss and drowning him essentially, he made a comment in the newest chapter saying that “ you can never get away from me no matter how hard you try”. which says a lot about his obsession towards juha. This probably made juha feel like he will always be alone and everything he did will always be hopeless. 🤬

But as we all know there’s always a person who comes and rescues a drowning person at the last second before they become unconscious, which is why in the drawing juha is not completely submerged in water and his face is still on the surface of the water. And as we see doshik is on the other side of that division and is symbolic of life and living, where as when you drown only death awaits you. Doshik is also affectionately kissing and holding juha’s hand as if to say “ i’m here for you, we will get through this together” and is the only thing that is keeping juha from letting everything go and drown in his situation. This can also be interpreted as doshik giving air to juha as well which makes sense in the context of drowning. You can also use light and darkness as symbolism to this piece as well, the light being the surface and doshik who appears on the other side and in contrast the boss being in darkness beneath the water. Need less to say there’s so much symbolism in this one picture and it made me want write how i interpret this from what i’ve read so far and how it relates to how this is portrayed. I also find it ironic that in the early chapters doshik did actually almost drown and it was juha that chased after him and got him out when he fell unconscious in the water...and this picture here makes me believe that doshik will in turn save juha from drowning in his sorrows in the upcoming continuation of the story.

well that’s all that I wanted to say, I hope what I wrote made sense and that you understood for the most part why i believe this is a premonition of whats to come. Most people who don’t know this story will just think its a picture of three dudes having a threesome and that is not it.lol. I’m curious as to how other people interpret this, i’ve read one so far and she had a similar analogy to how i interpreted the art, so i guess i’m not too far off. 

hopefully you all enjoyed reading this, it was fun for me, since I’m currently bleeding out of my ass and procrastinating doing other things and a little pissy from having certain stupid memes flooding my Instagram.  I hope you all are interested in reading pearl boy after this if you have not...obviously be over the age of 18 since it does deal with mature themes!

hope you enjoyed reading! give this a like if you want to see my fan art for this series next week!

see you all then.

sheena

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social media:

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Deviantart: she-be.deviantart.com

Instagram: shinb_art

Tumblr: shinahbee

#shounen ai #manhwa review #pearl boy #yaoi manhwa #bl manhwa #boys love #symbolism #korean manhwa

[missroserose]

Wednesday Reading Meme: Bathroom Grinding Edition

Sadly, "bathroom grinding" isn't half so naughty as it sounds.  Whatever the remodelers are doing downstairs, it sounds like they're vibrating the whole damn room apart.  But!  We're three days in and they've been consistently on time, our project manager has been communicative, and (to my admittedly untrained eye) they appear to be doing excellent work.  And they've been super courteous about wearing masks, too.  So really, I can't complain. What I've just finished reading Angels & Insects, by A.S. Byatt.  Confession time: I noped out about a third of the way through The Conjugial Angel.  There was some interesting cultural examination of the various social forces that gave rise to spiritualism (and the ways it allowed women of a certain age/lack of marital status to participate in society in a culturally-sanctioned way), but the farcical characters and lack of anything resembling a plot just Did Not Do It for me, especially when combined with Byatt's heavily-Victorian-esque writing style.  It didn't even have Morpho Eugenia's implied-incest subplot to add spice.   The Trouble With Peace, by Joe Abercrombie.  I forgot to write about this last week because I didn't think about audiobooks, and also because I'd been taking a bit of a break from it.  Joe Abercrombie is absolutely masterful at that style of writing where the bulk of the story involves setting up all the individual characters and their histories, connections, abilities, and motivations (overt and covert)—and then, in the third act, flicking one of the dominoes and watching everything fall.  It's satisfying as heck in the end, but can sometimes be a little long in the windup.  Still, Peace definitely fulfills its promises, and ends on that perfect kind of cliffhanger that I both kicking myself for not seeing coming and absolutely get why I didn't see it coming.  Related, I note that his major themes for this trilogy include the shifting of norms in the face of new technology, the breakdown of social institutions in the wake of increasing wealth stratification, and the dangers of fanaticism directly related to increasing polarization—definitely none of which have any resonance with current events whatsoever.  Definitely looking forward to the third book, and (at the risk of repeating myself) Steven Pacey continues to do an absolutely phenomenal job performing these books. What I'm currently reading One Day In The Life of Ivan Denisovich, by Aleksander Solzhenitsyn.  Straightforward almost to a fault, I'm not sure I have a whole lot to say about the story yet.  I get that it was a huge deal in its time, since it was one of the first truly honest portrayals of life in a Soviet gulag that was allowed to be published, but given that my previous exposure to Solzhenitsyn had been in the context of his more philosophical work, I guess I was expecting a little more philosophizing?  Still, there's some reflection around the edges; I note the recurring theme of "the guards are just as trapped in their roles as the prisoners are in theirs, and subject to many of the same privations", which feels very Russian.  Bureaucracy dehumanizes us all. I did note a passage in the Yevgeny Yevtushenko's foreword where he talks of Solzhenitsyn's disdainful attitude towards liberals, artists, and the intelligentsia, as none of their ideals or pretensions are of any use in the camps.  He goes on to note that without the aid of the intelligentsia, who rallied under its banner, Ivan Denisovich would likely never have been published, but appears to dismiss this as a "complicated relationship" without going much further into it.  Which struck me as more than a little odd; presumably, Solzhenitsyn had some artistic pretensions—you don't generally write a book, otherwise!—even if it was only to portray harsh realities that had been hidden from the general public.  I wonder if this is a Soviet cultural thing, wanting to prove Solzhenitsyn's bona fides at writing working-class characters by separating him out from the pretentious elites?  I should ask Ksenia about it. Gideon the Ninth, by Tamsyn Muir.  I nabbed this audiobook entirely on the basis of some chatter about it in my writing group, and so far it hasn't lead me astray—I've only really listened to the first sequence and a bit of the following backstory, but I really like the two major characters we've introduced so far.  (I'm not sure you're supposed to like Harrowhawk, but given that her name is the title of the second book, I don't think you're supposed to not like her.  And I admire her absolute ruthlessness.)  I admit that I'm a little concerned about the extensive Dramatis Personae listed at the start of the book—I have a mixed track record with high fantasy/sci-fi stories with large casts that I often lose track of—but if the book can keep up the strength of Gideon's voice, that'll do a lot to keep my interest. What I plan to read next Still looking forward to Tender Morsels!  After that, it occurs to me that I have the sequel to Naomi Novik's Uprooted, which I enjoyed immensely, sitting on my to-be-read pile...we'll see! Fanfiction Spotlight ancientreader's "Riddle Me This, Mr. Holmes" is a complete delight, both in its concept and in its execution.   Watson, traveling to visit family but concerned about his friend and lover's somewhat fragile mental health, takes to sending him lines of a riddle via telegram and urchin-enacted charade each day.  It's precisely the sort of thing you could see Watson doing for Holmes (no matter how you view their relationship); understated, thoughtful, and introducing just that little bit of extra chaos into the buttoned-up detective's life.  I was completely and utterly charmed, all the more so by their banter-via-telegram once Holmes cottons on.

#wednesday reading #bathroom remodel #angels and insects #a.s. byatt #the trouble with peace #joe abercrombie #one day in the life of ivan denisovich #aleksandr solzhenitsyn #gideon the ninth #tamsyn muir #ancientreader #riddle me this mr. holmes

[southern-belle-outcasts]

Rules- updated

Muses- Rogue (Marvel canon divergent 616 based), Nilza Valdez (urban fantasy OC), Farrar Kilpatrick (urban fantasy OC).Kaylee Starke (urban fantasy OC, Sara Lance- White Canary (Legends of Tomorrow CW/Arrowverse- ON HIATUS), Padmé Amidala (Star Wars canon- by request and hc memes or semi-plotted para threads ONLY. Memes you see CAN be used for this but I’m not responding unless we have a vague idea of where this is going as discussed). 

I don’t always follow. I try to keep my dash to things that spark joy. I reserve the right to not follow back or unfollow at all times, without need for explanation. If I am going to follow back, I will not do so until I can get the time to read your rules fully.

Blog is 18+ due to multiple facets of adult content. If I find out you’re under 18, you will be immediately blocked. No exceptions. I also do not ship with muses under 18. 

I do not tag all the possible triggers that exist. My content is pretty trigger happy- drug use, violence, language, sex, mental illness, death, pregancy and miscarriage, etc. If you truly have a trigger, hit me up and I can tag it for you, most especially for visuals but when it comes to my para replies with a partner that’s already cool with the content, I’m not tagging every little possible thing. Things I always try to tag: pregnancy, miscarriage, vomit mention, current events, politics, images of spiders. 

I do not require you to follow me to interact with me if any of this bothers you. 

I am a multi-para blog. One to three lines is not enough for me to work with and I will get both frustrated and bored. I have had enough years writing really short threads, I’m far more interested in having threads that give me details on your muse, their emotions, the setting, etc.

I respond with what I can get to at the moment and have the brain power for. I utilize rpthreadtracker and will try to get to the older ones when possible but this isn’t first come, first served around here. What has inspo at the moment is what’s getting posted. I don’t use a queue, I’ve tried, it never works. Feel left out, I really can’t help you there. I’m not half-assing a reply because you want me to kick you back a response the day of when I don’t have the words for it at the moment.

Reblogs/Likes: If you see that I’m utilizing a source blog, please reblog the meme/prompt from said blog. I understand when a source is deactivated, that I don’t mind. But I am not a meme source and will block if I’m being used as one.

Do not reblog an rp thread unless you are directly involved. Seriously. Don’t.

Fictions I have specifically marked reblogs allowed in caption or tag can be reblogged.

Liking here and there is perfectly acceptable. That’s normal. Mutuals please, by all means, don’t feel like you can’t like something I posted. However, liking every single post I put up clogs my activity. Please don’t, or you run the risk of being blocked. Definitely don’t scroll back through a ship meme liking ever post I’ve put up for the past three months. I think I burst a blood vessel that morning… Especially don’t like rp memes and not send. Just go to the source to like it if you’re saving it…otherwise you look dickish.

UPDATE- No NSFW will be written with muns below the age of 21, preferably 25+, otherwise will be a case by case basis for 21+

I do not roleplay for the purpose of shipping. I love my ships, I get involved with my ships, but I am NOT here solely for ships, and definitely not solely smut.

I do not require any sexual scene to be fully played out, you are more than welcome to tell me you want to fade to black. I’m not here for the sole purpose of writing smut.

I do NOT smut unless we thread regularly AND regularly interact OOC. NSFW threads are a means to getting to know my muse, and our muses’ relationship better. I don’t write it for the heck of it. I’ve made exceptions to this rule on occasion and it’s never left me feeling comfortable. As of 12/28/2020, any and all approval for NSFW is revoked unless you interact with me on a regular basis OOC and we have discussed comfort level. If you wish to plot further and get more interactions going, maybe an actual thread will evolve to NSFW content. If you have to rely solely on a meme on Sinday to elicit that kind of interaction, that’s your cue my muse doesn’t know yours well enough for a NSFW thread. 

Ships are unique to themselves, don’t expect identical interactions ever, and I do multiship. However, I have a few mains I will only ship with unless long time interaction provides enough chemistry to rule otherwise. I will only ship Rogan with @loganweaponx, and Matt Murdock/Rogue with @holyxdefender. I am not  limiting interactions to just those muses, ONLY the shipping aspect unless chemistry proves otherwise. 

While I only ship chemistry, you are welcome to yeet into my DMs and be like “hey fuckface my muse is crushing hard can we explore this?!” That does NOT mean the ship is guaranteed to pan out. Just because I agreed to explore this does not mean I mean I signed some contract on OTP status.

Do not come at with me with “I have a plot idea and it’s we ship our muses” or *throws smut meme in your inbox* and we never interact. Fast way to get ignored or blocked. 

UPDATE- unless you’ve cleared it with me, please do not make our rp thread interactions into your muse’s general canon. I did not sign up for that and it makes me really uncomfortable to think anything I write is being inserted into your muse’s canon and subject to critique in that manner. On that same note, I will not write with canon-inserts (forced oc child, parent, sibling, etc relationships) unless I have a means to not have it affect my own muse’s canon. I don’t even play canon ships until I’ve felt out our particular muse’s chemistry.

I do not have many triggers but I have a hardstop at m!preg (magical male preg), magical/spedup/otherwise exaggerated pregnancy, A/B/O, breeder, DD/l. I will not roleplay them, and if I see them on my dash I will immediately unfollow. Y'all are welcome to do as you want, but I’m not making myself uncomfy in my antistress zone. 

I will not use pregnancy/children as plot points but for a select few muse relationships where it is part of the natural flow of the ship and has been plotted as such, or our ooc relationship is good enough for you to know my stance on sending a pregnancy meme. 

If you have gotten this far, bless your soul. Have a chocolate chip cookie. Please send “room full of rocking chairs” to my DMs or askbox so I know I’m not chucking my words into the ether.

#;psa #;required reading #;rules #//seeing as the blog itself is getting a face lift it stood to reason that the rules themselves may as well get updated before being added #I know have an actual up to date rules page on top of the pinned google doc #so there should be arguably no more pretending like they don't exist- right??? #so if you just recently followed and read really the only things worth checking out are tthe sections labeled update

[snowdice]

Sometimes Labels Fail (Bonus Features)

Want to know what I’m blathering on about? Click below!

AO3 Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Part 6

Title in my Word Document: The Correct Label is Baby. He’s Baby. (Yes, I label my WIP’s with memes when at all possible. No, I am not taking constructive criticism)

Technical Writing Facts:

This fic appears in three different places in my documents. First it started in my Ideas word document, then it transferred over to a file called TSSS superhero (which has now become where I store things in this universe until they become their own stories or one-shots. Currently I have 13,746 unpublished words in this folder… most of it is piecemeal, but I digress.). Then I decided to rewrite parts of it and put it in the word document mentioned above.

I wrote most of the story during finals week. The last chapter was written while I proctored my student’s exams. Logan’s crack about being asked questions about his class by students at coffee shops was me venting over something that had happened recently. Please, do not come up to me with your laptop open in a public place. I just wanted a cup of tea.

Patton did not originally have a large role in this fic. Then I wrote the first paragraph and thought it was funny to have Logan being absolutely serious as he listed out the way he segmented his life and just input random not as serous things, and Patton convincing him to put jam in cookies came up and then the binder part came in and suddenly it wasn’t a joke and they’d been married for decades.

In part 2, Logan comforts Patton by hugging him, rubbing his back, and laying his cheek on top of his head. In part 3, you see Patton comforting Virgil in the exact same way. This is intentional as Logan observed this behavior from Patton over the years and emulates it.

I wrote the whole story before giving Logan and Virgil superhero names. Instead I just wrote (Logan) and (Virgil) every time so I could “control f” their names with parenthesis when I decided on something.

I couldn’t stop calling Virgil Shadow Crawler and I don’t know why. I kept having to go back and find and replace in my word document for it.

I immediately regretted calling Logan Bluebird. It was fine for his chapter and then I couldn’t stop laughing every time Virgil seriously called him that in his head.

Character Facts:

All of the sides + Emile and Remy exist and are sympathetic in this AU.

Logan:

Logan has a doctorate degree in math and physics. He double majored in both and went straight for a PhD in math after his undergrad. He picked the physics one up later. He also went and got a bachelor’s degree in biology. (No this wasn’t so he could understand Patton’s research papers better. That would be an irrational reason to get a college degree.)

Logan became a superhero out of academic spite because of course he did.

When Logan first became a hero, it was shortly after a scandal that happened where a major superhero’s identity was exposed, and it turned out it was the spouse of an important political figure. It was a very public and messy divorce. Logan swore to himself he’d never get into a relationship with someone who didn’t already know he was a superhero, citing it was a bad foundation for relationships. The catch 22 was that he refused to tell anyone his secret identity. Patton ended up figuring it out on his own. Logan had not accounted for this.

In fact, Logan at the end of this story, had never told anyone his secret identity. At the end of this story only three people knew: Patton, Virgil, and Remy. No one ever told Remy and they never discussed it with him. He just kinda figured it out and didn’t say anything. Logan knows he figured it out and also hasn’t said anything. Remy is a bit salty about this and likes to send subtle jabs at Logan about it. Both Patton and Logan know he knows. He’s known almost as long as Patton. It’s almost an inside joke between them at this point.

Virgil:

Virgil doesn’t know anything about his birth-parents other than his birth mother died in childbirth.

Virgil once stole something that was not money or food and it was completely accidental. He broke into a museum just to look as a 14th birthday present for himself. He got caught by a guard and panicked. For some reason, his panicked brain told him since he was a villain, he had to make it look like there was a villainous reason for him to be there… so he stole a statue. Yeah, he doesn’t understand it either. Yes, he ended up getting it back to them. What was he supposed to do with a statue?

Virgil plays the clarinet and is actually pretty good. He wasn’t able to get into any of the bands you have to audition for (he’s just in the general non-audition band at school) and was never able to really practice. Plus, his clarinet is one of those meh loaners from the school.

Virgil ends up majoring in biology with a minor in chemistry and attends the same college Logan teaches at.

I haven’t quite decided what Virgil’s going to do for his career when he grows up, but I’m leaning toward something in the medical field, though not a surgeon like Patton. Maybe a pediatrician.

Patton:

Patton was the one originally with the name Sanders. Logan took his name when they married.

Patton’s family life wasn’t… great in his youth. He had some unhealthy perceptions of relationships and his place in relationships he had to work through.

The café Virgil and Logan went to in the last chapter is where Patton and Logan first met! Patton almost poured an entire cup of coffee on him because he was exhausted after a shift at the hospital. He didn’t even notice that Logan used his powers to prevent an accident. Logan wasn’t sure if he was acting like he didn’t noticed and was plotting something. He decided to keep an eye on him. (Spoiler alert: he did keep a very good eye on him.

Patton saved the life of the current mayor. She had been the chief of police about a decade before this story. She was majorly injured in the line of duty to the point where basically she was a lost cause. Patton, though, saw her two elementary aged sons and went absolutely not. With the permission of her wife, he took her in for multiple surgeries (many experimental) and by pure force of will stitched her back together. She woke up half a year later. Will she ever walk again? No. Did she get to adamantly insist on carrying boxes on her lap while riding a wheelchair to help her sons move into their college dorm this past fall? Yes.

Because of the above, Patton gets invited to many high-profile events. Patton does not like going to these things alone. Which isn’t a problem until Bluebird is on the guest list.

Remy:

Remy has been working with Patton for basically forever. He’d been working for less than a year before he got swept up for an emergency surgery because he was the closest one around and it was a very high-profile case that needed to be dealt with right that second. That’s when he first met Patton and due to certain events, everyone in that room ended up with a certain tie to each other. He’s basically been Patton’s nurse ever since even when they just worked together in the ER. Everyone knew Remy was Patton’s nurse even though he wasn’t officially. When Patton stopped being an ER surgeon and became more of a specialist, Remy followed him right out the door and now works with him and two other doctors.

Roman:

Roman didn’t appear in this story, but he was mentioned and he’s around. He started going out in a prince costume when he was 17. (He is 3 years older than Virgil). He gets away with it mostly because everyone “knows” Roman’s too dramatic and likes to boast. The boy couldn’t keep a secret like that to save his life. So, what if that guy has superstrength like him? Look he’s sitting right there. Wait that’s Remus? …Nah, still couldn’t be him.

Remus:

Remus is Roman’s twin and has the same powers as him. He is not active during this story, but he will end up as a “villain.” He actually ends up working with a government agency to basically go undercover as a supervillain and helps bring down villains. He’s really good at it. His mothers know, but honestly, they kind of expected something like this. They’re just glad their other son is just a normal actor who has no interest in risking his life…

Deceit:

Deceit was actually mentioned (though not by name) in the first chapter. He is a vigilante and has been since before Logan was on the scene. Logan hates him. He probably would have gotten over being shot that one time, but then he made the mistake of needing medical care and kidnapping a doctor… He didn’t harm Patton at all, and Logan found him in like two hours, but none of that mattered. Logan was super, super pissed. The funny thing is, Deceit was not and still is not aware of Patton’s personal connection to Bluebird. He isn’t quite sure why Bluebird treats him with more disdain than he does most villains, but just figures he’s an asshole.

Emile:

Emile is a pretty well-known psychiatrist. He offered his services free of charge for people affected by the school shooting. He even extended the invitation to Bluebird, letting him wear the mask the whole time. Logan took him up on it because honestly, it was a traumatic situation and he figured he should deal with it now rather than later. Emile is currently dating Remy. He was not 100% sure why the superhero Bluebird seemed to be giving him dating advice at a party, but it worked out. (No, Remy is not aware Logan set him up.)

Feel free to keep sending asks about this story going forward. I love them and I have a lot more about this universe in my head that I didn’t put here either unintentionally or intentionally.

Click here for asks already answered in chronological order.

#sanders sides #logan sanders #patton sanders #virgil sanders #logicality #remy sanders #roman sanders #remus sanders #tw school shooting #tw medical #tw surgery #sometimes labels fail #bonus features #labeled universe #deceit sanders #emile piccani

[accioharry]

if the world was ending | peter & mj |  ch 2

Perhaps she could finally call him a friend, maybe even on the way to being her best friend. She couldn’t ruin that now, but she couldn’t watch him ruin himself either. She found herself at a crossroads, wondering what mattered more.

ao3 | read from the beginning 

chapter word count: 1.8k

They agreed to meet at a coffee shop near Central Park, a place Michelle frequented often on the weekends with her family. While she was gone, parts of the park had been turned into a memorial for the fallen; a memorial that was currently in limbo of whether it would stay up or not. She took note of the amount of families in the park, as though they were cherishing every moment they had together. She never thought she’d feel that way at her age.

She found Peter outside the Starbucks with a hot coffee already in his hand. Even though she mentally prepared herself, Michelle felt the ground sway beneath her as soon as she saw Peter’s face. He had a scar on his cheek as though stitches were there a few months ago, but what shocked Michelle the most was how exhausted he looked. He looked so stricken with grief, as though something awful had completely shattered him into pieces. 

He still looked the same with the unruly curly hair and the chocolate brown eyes that she caught staring at her more than once in decathlon practice. Except when he lifted his head to acknowledge her and she saw his eyes, the little sparkle of mischief was gone. In a way, she barely recognized him. 

“Iced latte with almond milk?” He nodded to the iced coffee on the bench next to him. She took it graciously, shock evident on her face as she sat next to him on the bench. Her words caught in her throat for a moment, as though she had no idea what to say next.

“Peter,” she tapped his shoulder and he turned to her. He winced as she examined the scar. “That wasn’t there before.”

“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you,” he shrugged, sipping his coffee. Michelle wanted to argue with him so badly, wanted to push him to tell her everything he kept from her, but she just couldn’t. Not when he looked so destroyed. 

“I think after recent events, nothing would surprise me,” she smiled slightly. It took everything in her to not ask questions –– his battle scars were so prominent, she wasn’t prepared for it.  

“Challenge accepted and noted for the future,” Peter replied. “Did you sleep well?”

“I wouldn’t say I slept great, but it’s gotten better over time,” she leaned back against the bench, tucking her feet under her. “It’s getting easier to be in the dark, even if…it was instant for us,” she muttered before looking up at him. He was staring straight ahead, as though his focus was the only thing keeping him sane. “Are you sleeping?” She already knew the answer. 

He sighed, sipping the coffee again before leaning forward on his elbows. “Would you believe me if I said I was?”

“Not for a second,” she wanted to confide in him, to tell him that she wants to be there for everything. The death of Tony Stark hit him like a train—she could see it in his eyes. He was still sixteen, technically, but he acted so much older now, as though he aged the five years in a matter of five minutes. It would be so easy to grab his hand and tell him that she was here, and wanted to understand. So why couldn’t she?

“This is the first time I went out of the apartment,” he admitted. “I’ve wanted to, but I spent the first few weeks––“ he cut himself off before he slipped up, “upstate. I was upstate, but May found an apartment for us, so we came back finally.” 

“I haven’t gone out much either,” she said softly. “Only with my family, but never on my own. It’s different now, for all of us.”

“Yeah,” Peter sipped his coffee again, and Michelle could’ve sworn he was holding back tears. “It’s different.” 

The two of them sat in silence for a long time, watching the world move around them. It was hard to tell who had blipped and who didn’t because from the outside, it looked as though society was rebuilding itself just fine. Michelle knew better than that, and also knew how easy it was for Peter to get lost in his own thoughts. She glanced at him. 

“Do you want to take a walk?” _______________________________________________________________________ She missed hearing Peter’s rambles about pure nonsense. 

He was reluctant to take the walk, but Michelle pulled him up by the arm until he finally agreed. Getting back in the world was hard, but having Peter by her side made it a little easier, she was certain of that. 

“So basically, they still made the last Star Wars film, and it’s been out for YEARS,” Peter huffed. “I can’t believe it, I knew they filmed already before the blip, but they could have waited until we came back.”

“Okay in the defense of Hollywood, they didn’t know that we’d come back,” Michelle smiled. “You’re just mad you didn’t get to see it in theatres.”

“I’m not mad about that, I’m mad that I didn’t get to go to the premiere. The freaking premiere! I missed it and it will never happen again,” he grumbled. “It’s rude.”

“How is that rude?” she laughed. “You’re so grumpy about this!”

“If it was a good movie I’d understand, but it was so bad MJ, you don’t understand.” He kept rambling, and Michelle’s heart did a flip hearing him call her MJ again. It’s been quite a while since she heard that nickname. 

“I watched it with my brother,” she cut him off before he could continue. “It…had it’s good moments.” She rolled her eyes at the look of disgust on Peter’s face. “It did!”

“You’re defending the worst film in the saga, I hope you know that.”

“Says the boy whose favorite character was Jar Jar Binks in sixth grade.”

“I still can’t believe Ned told you that, I told him that in confidence.”

“and now it is a small fact about you that I will cherish forever,” she grinned, elbowing him in the side. It didn’t seem to bother him.

“You mean you’ll hold it over me for the rest of my life?” Peter scoffed, dumping his empty coffee cup in a trash can as they walked. 

“Same thing,” she smiled, and Peter’s face lit up. 

“So what, ten years from now you’ll send me an outdated Jar Jar Binks meme from a blocked number, taunting me once again?”

“I would never do such a thing,” Michelle faked offense. “I’d mail it to you, obviously.”

It surprised her to see Peter double over in laughter. She didn’t realize she was being funny, but it made him smile, so she went with it. For a brief moment in time, all of his suffering was gone, vanished as though it had been blipped permanently. She willed her mind to remember the moment for as long it would allow her, because a happy Peter Parker was officially her favorite Peter Parker.

_______________________________________________________________________ It was an hour later when Michelle decided she had enough. 

Even if Peter smiled with her, it lasted for a brief moment before his face fell again. She could tell Peter was in pain, he looked so lost. His eyes never focused on anything, his sentences went unfinished when he got deep in his thoughts, and call it instinct, but she just knew. 

“Okay,” she huffed, and Peter turned back to look at her, not realizing she had stopped walking. “Sit down.”

He looked around. They were still in the park, but not in an area where many empty benches were prominent. “Where?”

“On the ground, where else?”

He opened his mouth as though he wanted to argue, but thought different when he saw the look of determination on her face. He followed Michelle off the path and into the grass. She sat down, patting the space beside her. 

Even though it was still summer it was an overcast day, which to be honest, really reflected the mood Peter was in. He knew Michelle suspected something, but was he ready to tell her?

“Hey,” she muttered after a period of silence. “Talk to me.”

“What do you think we’ve been doing for two hours?” Peter’s eyes weren’t focused on her, but on the grass he was picking with his hands. He was caught, and he knew it. 

“You know that’s not what I meant.”

The silence was deafening and actually made her uncomfortable. For someone who spent most of her school years avoiding crowds and sitting in the library, she felt almost claustrophobic in the current silence.

 She wanted to shake him –– to yell in his face that she knows and she wants to help him. If she did that, she’d scare him off and he would never trust her again. They had gotten closer in the past twenty-four hours than they ever had been before the blip, before anything really. 

Perhaps she could finally call him a friend, maybe even on the way to being her best friend. She couldn’t ruin that now, but she couldn’t watch him ruin himself either. She found herself at a crossroads, wondering what mattered more. 

“Peter, please,” she tried again. “Talk to me, I’m here aren’t I? I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t want to help.” 

“You don’t understand,” he shrugged, his head lowered. “You wouldn’t understand. I can’t just tell you, it’s not that easy,” he winced, as though the words caused him physical pain. “I want to, I wish I could tell someone but—” He trailed off. 

She didn’t know what to say. Her limbs felt heavy, as though the weight of the world had fallen upon her. A weight of guilt, for thinking she could fix everything by being there, for thinking Peter would easily open up to her just because she was there. That’s not how it worked and she knew that. She just didn’t want to believe it. Life was never kind enough to give her what she wanted.

 Perhaps it was the blip itself, a force of the universe that created a bond between the fallen, the ones who were brought back. Maybe she just wanted a friend, someone who went through what she did. But that wasn’t Peter. He had gone through so much more, and Michelle hated watching him struggle with his demons on his own. 

“I won’t force you to tell me anything,” Michelle said finally. “If anything, I just want you to know that I would never, ever, do that.” 

“I know,” he shrugged, his voice quiet. “I want to, I really do because I know it would help, but I can’t put that on you. I can’t ask you to walk this with me.” 

“Then don’t,” the sincerity in her voice made Peter turn his head towards her. “Don’t ask me, because I’m offering, whenever you’re ready, I’m there.” She bumped his shoulder with hers. “Got it?”

“Yeah,” he nodded with a small smile, but Michelle could see it in his eyes, he didn’t believe her.

#my fics #my writing #petermj fic #spideychelle #spideychelle fic #marvel fic #peter parker #peter parker fic #endgame au #far from home au #endgame fix it #fix it fic #marvel #avengers endgame #michelle jones #peter parker x michelle jones #peter x michelle #peter x mj

[nadiawrites14]

voice of gen z

word count: 2784

for english class. tw for school shooting and police brutality mention

AN INTRODUCTION.

“GEN Z is too afraid to ask a waiter for extra ketchup but will bodyslam a cop.”

Dated June 5th, on Twitter. Many of us sit holed up in our rooms, laptops resting in our crossed legs as we scroll through social media, or the blue light of a phone screen on our face as the world around us is sleeping. Many of us are also the ones organizing, the ones leading, the ones fighting. News spreads that in Dallas, Providence, and in many more cities, teenagers were the ones organizing, the ones fighting. Teenagers were the ones turning viral memes into protest signs, organizing protests and sharing methods of resistance through apps like TikTok and Instagram. It echoes the methods of the Hong Kong protestors, using technology to battle their government head-on. 

Teenagers who dance along to songs such as Megan Thee Stallion’s “Savage”, as well as teens who live in the world of ‘deep-fried’ memes, whose bizarre absurdity reach ungodly levels of abstractism, are the ones leading in this young revolution. Teenagers are the ones who chant ‘no justice, no peace’ in filled city streets; teenagers are the ones working to create graphics and share information, a new form of armchair activism. K-pop fans fill conservative hashtags with videos of their favorite performers, burying rhetoric and dismissal of the protests with dances and songs. In hours, #BlackLivesMatter trends. It’s hard to believe that these new pioneers and leaders in activism and technology are children who are scared to give class presentations, share Juuls in bathrooms, and find humor in the most strange and ironic of places. While the old term goes that ‘the revolution will not be televised’ in many ways, this growing movement will be televised, publicized, expanded, through its own means and methods.

I.

We are the generation of school shootings. 

December 14th, 2012. My mom tells me, as I hobble out from the red doors of my elementary school in Stamford, Connecticut, that something very bad has happened. I don’t understand. Nobody does. I see the faces of startled adults. I don’t remember the rest of that evening, or the day that followed it. Every time I think about Sandy Hook, the senseless school shooting that left 28 dead, I think about the multicolored walls of my school’s hallway, my sneakers on the white linoleum, the fear in my mother’s voice and in her eyes. That day was the first day I began to accept that I was a child in the United States of America in the 21st century. That day, and the brutal and confusing months that followed it, solidified something in my peers and I. Not just in Stamford, or even Connecticut, but within all young American students. The people in power didn’t care that a gunman marched into a wealthy and predominantly white Connecticut neighborhood and slaughtered kindergarteners. Because as I grew older, I saw the patterns, the televisation of suffering and permitted slaughter among my peers, our youngest, our posterity. This was normalized to us, just another school shooting, another period of brief outrage followed by inaction. The slaughter of children, the preventable slaughter of children shouldn’t be normalized. But it was.

February 14th, 2018. A gunman kills 17 students in Florida. As I’m waiting in a doctor’s waiting room with my mother, I lean over and tell her, “On Monday, all my teachers will talk about is school shootings.” I was wrong. School was another silent funeral march, my teachers quiet and solemn as they assigned us our work and progressed with their work. At dinner with my dad, I tell him, “It’ll never change.”

That isn’t entirely true. Leaders are found in teenagers who now walk through haunted hallways with clear backpacks. They are the face of a new movement, a march for our lives. Many are summoned to Washington and elsewhere a month later to organize, to fight. On March 27th, a day meant for students to walkout and protest the preventable slaughter of students, my school barricades the doors.

No legislation is passed. Nothing changes. The resistance lulls and fades, despite a number of school shootings following the tragedy at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School. Gen Z is a symbolic Sisyphus, haplessly pushing a boulder of pleas up a mountain of indifference.

II.

Suzanne Collins published the Hunger Games on September 14th, 2008. It finds its way into the hands of teenagers of all shapes and sizes years later, and it has its cult following. Maybe the televised murder of children strikes a chord within the audience of young adults, as does the story of a growing revolution and a coup against a selfish government.

Gen Z gets its hands on theory at a young age, through Wikipedia and the uncensored vastness of the internet that we are handed. We are denoted as the generation born with the phones in our hands, but all I can remember is having a technology class from a young age, where we were measured on our abilities to type and memorize a keyboard. Our ability to cite and surf and stay safe in the face of danger. This wealth of information at our fingertips molds us.

Dystopian fiction is popular among young teens and young adults. Titles like Divergent the Giver, Harry Potter, the Maze Runner, all influence the devouring young readers. We are raised to see atrocity, in a place where atrocity is accessible to us in every way, shape and form. We are exposed and we are no longer innocent as we rise to 6th, 7th, 8th grade. Girls wear makeup for the first time and scream at the sight of bloodstained underwear. Boys become privy to the joy of video games and self-exploration. In this time, the internet truly consumes. There is no more script taught in classrooms, whiteboards have been replaced with Prometheans, and chromebooks are becoming normalcy.  

In 7th grade I receive my phone. The niches and underground media I discover shape me. I find acceptance, friends, in places where I had lacked them before. As my classmates begin to enter into weeklong flings that end in Instagrammed tragedy, I take a quiz online to find out if I’m gay. I begin to think for myself, and I find independence and a voice on internet circles.

By the time we are promoted to high school, something has shifted. Something is different. Something’s coming, something good. Gen Z keeps calm and carries on.

III.

Donald Trump is inaugurated on January 20th, 2017, to much outrage, but also to much support. In my town, there is a protest around his building that overlooks much of our city center. It’s peaceful, energetic, and beautiful. A Planned Parenthood sticker is on my bedroom door, and I have accepted that maybe, just maybe, I’m into girls.

In 2018, we are in high school. Little fish in a big pond. I don’t have friends in my grade, but stick closer to my premade friends in the Class of 2021. My teachers are lovely, kind, and supportive, and I shine in this new environment. Politics is a force in my life as I begin to write, and as I begin to form opinions and do research. 

It’s easy to say that all of Gen Z is progressive, but this isn’t true. It’s actually very incorrect. The internet is a miraculous tool, one that can provide and produce and create new forms of communication and spread new ideas. But it is still an ocean that is widely uncharted, and young teenagers will fall into holes constructed by right-wing superstars. The racism and homophobia circulated by 4chan is on the internet for anybody to see. New popular figures and icons pledge their vote to Trump. Right-wing rhetoric overtakes in the forms of Ben Shapiro, Pewdiepie, 4chan, Reddit. There’s a neutrality to all things, but the dogwhistles and the normalization of prejudice are dangerously overbearing. As the 2016 election divided our country, it divides the new generation. A divided house cannot stand, and that is for certain. 

It is around this time, in my Freshman summer, where the politics makes a crescendo. I have broken 1K followers on my Instagram art account, where I draw fanart for a variety of musicals and plays. I discover Shakespeare, and lose myself in Hamlet. I am happy with my identity and with myself, and as the 2020 election nears, I stay informed on current events, common issues, the things that need changing.

Sophomore winter. My dad and I take two-hour drives spanning Connecticut, and we talk. He says, “You know, your generation’s fucked. You’re the ones who are going to have to cope with our mistakes.” I tell him I know. I tell him about my feelings towards racial injustice in America, the battle for a higher minimum wage against growing costs, issues in healthcare, housing, poverty, climate change, all thrown aside and discarded. Our generation, of course, when most of our white and male politicians are dead and buried, will have to deal with the repercussions of rising sea levels and global temperatures, volatile weather and crippling natural disasters, all overlooked due to blatant ignorance. “You guys are going to have to fix all of this.”

“I know.”

I’m sick of the battle being placed on the backs of teenagers. I’m sick of our faces being the fight for climate change, the faces of Greta Thunberg and Emma Gonzalez and young revolutionary congresswomen being mocked and heckled by throngs of keyboard warriors. I’m sick of the battle our leaders and representatives should be fighting being placed on our backs, when we are already our own Atlas. Ignorance is dangerous, biting, and overwhelming. We look back to the images and words we were raised upon, the story of the Hunger Games and the broadcasting of school shootings for us all to see. 

It is 2020. Happy new year! I watch from my living room as the ball drops. A brief Twitter moment about a newly discovered disease pops up in my recommended, I brush over it. Photographs of Australian fires are surfaced, and we joke about what a fantastic start it is to the year. 

Sisyphus reaches a fork in the road.

MMXX.

At around 11PM on Wednesday, March 11th, I send a strongly worded letter to the principal and local superintendent. The coronavirus has picked up worldwide, and has made its way into the states. Johns Hopkins has an interactive map that shows bubbles above cities where cases have been reported. Stamford, Connecticut Dead: 0

Recovered: 0 Active: 3.

New York’s cases are on the rise. On that same day, I began to realize the severity that would soon overtake us. I spent the afternoon first at what would be our last rehearsal for our school musical, James and the Giant Peach, and then I went to the library. I did my homework, read The Cripple of Inishmaan by Martin McDonagh, then bought a Subway cookie from the mall. I always keep a copy of King Lear in my backpack, and as my dad pulls up to the sidewalk I gloss over Edmund’s first monologue.

It’s the last normal day for a while.

March 12th comes in like a lion. In my first period class, civics, a classmate yells out, “Trump 2020!” A period later, my friend pulls me aside in the hallways, and asks if I heard that school was closing. 

“It can’t be true,” I said.

“Schadlich just showed us.”

I take my route to my next class, and find the hallway a chaotic mess of energy and camaraderie. What was meant to be kept under wraps has been instantly transferred across the student body over Snapchat stories and texts. People dance, sing, hug. It’s branded as a “Coronacation.” Broadway announces its closure, and I walk out of the front doors for the final time in my sophomore year.

Once again, ignorance overtakes. Within months, the death toll skyrockets, spikes, as we stay holed up in our online classes. My focus wavers, but I press on. Many other students resort to simply neglecting their work, choosing to take this time to focus on their own health or fill up their new time with their own hobbies. Teenagers find solace in each other, through social media and through the connections we’ve built online. As ignorance mounts among our leaders, teenagers jokingly refer to Covid-19 as the famous “Boomer Remover”. It trends on Twitter. Graduation, prom, is cancelled. The generation whose childhood began with 9/11 is once again cut short by a tragedy of preventable errors. Gen Z is subject to adapting once again to an unfamiliar environment, and we undertake.

Protests take over the streets, screaming against government tyranny. The deaths crescendo to nearly 100,000. A video surfaces of a young black man, Ahmaud Aubery, being publicly killed on a road while jogging. Ignorance continues as cases spike, and the political climate is ripe for change. On May 25th, a black man from Minneapolis named George Floyd is killed in a brutal act of suffocation by a policeman. More names resurface -- Breonna Taylor, Tony McDade, Joao Pedro. Names neglected to injustice are once again in the limelight -- Trayvon Martin, Tamir Rice, Philando Castile, Eric Garner, Mike Brown, Terence Crutcher, Atatiana Jefferson, and more. 

Sisyphus has had enough of pushing the boulder, and Sisyphus takes to the streets. It is the perfect storm. A storm fueled by ignorance and the preventable death of thousands, by decades of injustice, by the mere political climate in the United States of America. Gen Z, our generation, my generation, has lived the darkest hour. We were born at the cusp of a millenia, in an awkward position where society has begun to find its footing in an unfamiliar time. A time of domestic and overseas terrorism, shaped by 9/11 and a countless number of school shootings and slaughtered people of color. Where the new generation has accessibility to the injustice and wrongs committed by those before and those above, right at our fingertips. We have new ways to organize, new ways to televise, new ways to fight. In our armchairs and in our streets, wearing masks as we hold up our hands in surrender.

Generation Z marches. They lead. They throw tear gas back at officers with no hesitation. They create chants, organize through grassroots, and find a chorus of support online. 

Generation Z leads. As politicians and leaders sit in ivory towers, like President Snow in Panem, our generation cries for change. We witness and feel the repercussions of their ignorance in our daily lives, from cuts to education to the publication of school shootings to the absence of American atrocity in our history textbooks to a pipeline that directs BIPOC and low-income students to prison or the military as they step off the graduation stage. Each year, our winters get warmer as our summers turn boiling. The preventable pile of corpses rises in front of us, and we have been taught to sit by and let it occur while the world burns. 

No longer.

Sisyphus steps aside and allows the boulder to descend down the mountain. They are bruised, bloodied, their palms calloused and scuffed and their feet lacerated and sore. Up ahead, shrouded by clouds, is the mountaintop. Sisyphus wipes their mouth, finds their footing, and begins the march.

A CONCLUSION.

We have a future.

It’s awfully dim right now. Barely a light at the end of the tunnel. We began a dead march towards it from the moment we were born into this decaying way of life, held together with glue and string by leaders with fumbling hands and staunch indifference. Our backs are tired, and we are barely adults. Generation Z is tired of fighting a fight that shouldn’t be theirs. How desperately we still crave childhood joy and humor and innocence. 

Change is necessary. It is something that is especially necessary in our time. We can no longer let people die because they can’t afford food or medicine or housing. Students cannot go into school wondering if it will be their last day. Black people should not fear for their lives while wearing a hoodie, driving, jogging in their neighborhood, shopping, or sleeping in their own homes. Elderly white men which encompass most of our political elite can no longer sit on their hands as their population suffers.

The voice of Generation Z screams louder than anything else. It screams in its silence, its activism, its useless martyrdom and battle. Change belies itself within our voice, and it has gone unheard for too long.

Change is the voice of Generation Z.

#writing #writeblr #essay #english #how else do i tag this #my writes #gen z #ashbfkbskdk #i just wanted to put this out into the world for eyes other than my english teacher #xoxo at the 2 ppl who follow my account

[fashournalist]

Thank you, Isentia Content Hub: An open letter to my colleagues.

Eleven days ago, it has exactly been two years since I first started working at Isentia. I remember feeling scared whether I’d belong, and what kind of people I’ll be working with. I remember I kept telling myself “Bawal maattach, Grace, as some alumni have said, when you enter the real world, you’re there to work. Just do your job well and be a team player, but don’t invest your emotions.” But here I am, after two years, with so many beautiful memories with amazing people. I did get attached after all, and it’s worth it. Because I did not only have colleagues, I met a new family.

This was my open letter to Content Hub, which I hesitated to send at first after writing, because it’s too long. But thankfully, two of my teammates encouraged me to send it because they said what matters is I wrote it from my heart and it’s my farewell message to my friends. (I was one of the employees who got laid off.) It was here that I learned tears are really contagious, because after sending this letter, I received texts saying they shed a tear, too. Perhaps that’s because when I wrote it, I was shedding tears myself. Why do I feel like graduating from high school? Haha! I guess this is how close we have been. So here goes my letter, and pictures of some of the memories we have made. :)

Dear Content Hub,

This August 20, it has been exactly two years since I started working at Isentia. And now, 731 days and 41,283 summaries later, I just finished my last working day as a Broadcast Monitor. Permit me to be cheesy, I just want to thank the amazing people who made the past two years a memorable journey. I apologize in advance for the length of this email, but please know this letter came from my heart.

I'm really blessed that I got to work with you. I did not only have colleagues, I had a family. That is why whenever I reached the office, my update to my parents has always been "Happy place". It meant I arrived safely, I'm at OSMA already. And I know there have been hardships, times heartbreaking news crushed me, or times I went home way past my shift. Yet whenever I was on my home, no matter how tired I got, I just looked forward to facing the next day and working again. If world news were a play, we all get front row seats, binge-watching current events for at least 40 hours a week. It genuinely excited me that our job allows us to literally learn something new every day. But, I don't feel that way all the time; sometimes I just have burnouts and frustrations. So I think the real major reason that kept me going through it all is I had colleagues as supportive as you guys are. Allow me to thank you.

To Sydney Swans, my first team. 

Working with helpful teammates like you added to my motivation as I traveled from LB to Ortigas every day for five months (when I was not yet able to find an apartment in Manila). Thank you for your devotion to Qld Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk. It showed me what client-obsessed looks like, and I committed to following that example. Your compere inside jokes and reactions to news added a lot of fun to our job. Until now, I enjoy backreading the group chat just to see your new musings or memes. Thanks a lot especially to John, Julianne, Zennon, Marco, and Kuya Ronnie.

To Fremantle Dockers, my afternoon shift team for more than a year, 

Thank you for everything; for being supportive colleagues, helping me whenever I struggled, and celebrating with me whenever I improved. 

Kuya Coily’s last day at our team.

How we help one another, especially during the Christmas dinner just so everyone can go to Sambokojin on time, inspires me. This was our post-Sambo bonding at Greenfield. I am also relieved that you never judged me as “walang pakisama” even though I only drank iced tea or milkshake haha. Others tend to force me to drink, but my friends at Isentia just let me finish all the food. HAHA. I appreciate people who can respect our preferences and differences. And you are witnesses that I don’t need to drink to be drunk. Based on my energy, I am drunk by default. Haha I will miss all these sessions with you and my batchmates!

I will miss our movie nights and billiard sessions (tho I'm just watching you haha) at the lounge. I wish we played more board games, too.

Isentia Outing 2019

Thank you so much also for being there for me when I lost my mother, you had my back and that will always mean a lot to me. When my Momi was still alive, she always knew I was working with great people. Thank you to every single one of you especially AJ, Morris, Evann, Aly and Kuya Mel. 

I look forward to a Dockers reunion when this pandemic is over! 

And my favorite teammate, Czesar. The best meetings are the ones you participated in. Thank you for all the laughter you gave us. 

I also want to thank my friends outside my team, including Tomie, Zendee, LA and Nico from Collingwood Magpies. 

Thank you for the dinner sessions and conversations on life and dreams!

This was LA’s birthday salubong at Kanto Breakfast :) While the next photo is a “panel discussion” at Goto Believe haha! We talked about the news we monitored, and boi, we went home at almost 5am.

Tomie, thank you for our never-ending laughter on our way home. Normally, I just want to be quiet and regain energy while traveling, but with you, it's okay to chat all the way to Quiapo.

To my favourite comperes, who will not read this but I feel like thanking anyway because some of you might share love for them: Marc Fennell, Jan Fran, Kanoa Lloyd, Jules Schiller, Sonya Feldhoff, Anna Vidot, Dave Sutherland, Tamara Oudyn, Sammy J, Paul Barry, Jeremy Corbett, David Speers, Leigh Sales and my inspiration Jesse Mulligan. Thank you because I learned so much about the world and about life from you. I will miss blogging about your stories and reacting to your insights.

To the leaders who managed me and/or accommodated my concerns, 

This is my former TL, Kuya Coily :)

TL Coily, TL Angel, TL Rem, TL Nico, TL Nic, TL Jonna, TL Geoff, TL Alni, and Sup Mitch. Thank you for all your help! Thank you for the times you inspired me and my colleagues to grow as well as the times you coached me, gave constructive feedback, and helped me overcome my weaknesses so I can continuously improve. 

To our Trainer Rachel, who we can consider as Content Hub's matriarch, 

thank you so much because you patiently equipped every single one of us before we transitioned to live operations. To OM Dean, thank you for your feedback and praise during my regularisation.

And most of all, to Western Borlogs fam, my home for two years, I don't even know how to thank you enough. 

I'm grateful you've been my batchmates at our training--and for everything after that. 

Isentia Outing 2019

Sibyullee, farewell samgyup party for Jai (her last day in the company)

Seoulgyupsal, farewell samgyup party for Aiona (before she flew to Spain to teach)

office memories :)

Pantry catch-ups. I usually eat at my desk because of all the work but I’m grateful for the times I was able to join their dinner breaks hehe.

Sambokojin, Christmas dinner 2019

Dear Borlogs, thank you for all the memories, endless laughter, samgyup sessions (a regular segment haha), Friday nights, and times we comforted each other when some of us are facing a hard time. Thank you also for comforting me and my family when you and B visited the wake of my Momi. She has always heard about you (and I'm happy she met some of you) when she was still alive. Thank you for being such a great sounding board, a safe space where we can be vulnerable and strong at the same time. Also, I've never been a milk tea person until I met you guys, so thanks for that, too. My BM experience would not be the same without you. Naz, Janelle, Joey, Patty, Billie, Lou, Aiona, Jai, Nee, Mau, C, Ady, Sarah. Thank you, sists!!

If you've read until here, thank you for bearing with my lengthy cheesy, farewell note to Content Hub. I attached some photos that captured a few of the memories I spent with you, as well as some jokes I've randomly thought about while monitoring. I was reserving them for Christmas Party or something, but anyway, here they are. I am confident they will make you cringe.

So there, I will miss you and I appreciate you always. I will not forget the memories we've made along the way. Thank you for everything, Isentia Content Hub! God bless you all and stay safe.

Arrivederci :)

Always,

Grace / Mariel

(this was me when I graduated from training and was so excited to be part of Content Hub haha)

PS. Thank you to Janelle, Jai, Joey, Jai, Kuya Coily, LA, Zendee, Dots and Troy for the photos!

PPS. Thank you so much for your heartwarming replies!!! And the food/gifts some of you sent!! I love you guys. (There, I said it. Haha! I was too shy to put that sentence in the email I sent. But this is my blog, I can write what my heart says without holding back)

^letter from AJ with a Bebi plant. She sent me oatmeal cookies and three novels too huehue she knows my weaknesses well haha thankuu ajj

^Matchaaaa from Patty thank you sist! <33

^Carbonaraaaa from Tomiee thank you siz!!!

Thank you to every single one of you. I was emotional when I wrote the open letter, but I got more nostalgic when I read your responses. I will always be thankful for the privilege of working with you and being your friend. Keep in touch, okay? We’ll still meet again. :)

Love,

Grace

#memories #grateful #work #job #Isentia #happy place #journey #personal #life #blog post #open letter #letter #colleagues #article #photojournal #thank you

[eightyonekilograms]

@invertedporcupine tagged me in this.

ARE YOU STAYING HOME FROM WORK OR SCHOOL?

Yes, I was actually one of the first ones to start working from home: employer ordered it on March 5th and some people in my office had been unofficially working from home even before then, though I wasn’t one of them.

I don’t love working from home - I don’t feel nearly as productive and my current commute is a walk of four blocks so I’m not even saving that time - so even though my employer, as tends to be the case with large tech companies, is fine with WFH, this probably isn’t going to cause a paradigm shift for me where I do it more often.

IF YOU’RE STAYING HOME, WHO IS THERE WITH YOU?

My cat; apart from her I live alone.

Funny story about the cat: a couple weeks ago I stumbled across the “squish that cat” meme, and did it to my cat just for lulz. Turns out she loves it, and instantly went from being kind of grouchy and standoffish, which she has been for 15 years, to wanting to cuddle every chance she gets. It’s a pleasant change, but I feel vaguely weird about it, like I found a mind control spell that overrode my cat’s free will. Oh well.

ARE YOU A HOMEBODY?

That’s a complicated question. I think so, but people who are more homebody-ish than me might disagree. I’m somewhat introverted but before quarantine didn’t find it that troublesome to go and hang with my ~20 board game Discord buddies several times a week (for both board games and other things). I guess I don’t find social interaction actively unpleasant, I just have a finite budget for it in a week and then need to sit a dark room by myself for a bit. I also want to be outside a fair amount, but fortunately even though actually hiking is out I can keep being outside as long as I distance - I’m following @dagny-hashtaggart‘s lead and going on Extremely Long Walks and bike rides. I did a ten mile walk up to Ballard/Fremont last weekend and a bike ride around Lake Washington today.

AN EVENT THAT YOU WERE LOOKING FORWARD TO THAT GOT CANCELLED?

2020 was going to be the year I started going to cons and whatnot. I traditionally avoided them, and if I’m being honest that was mostly because of a sense of cringe that I knew was snobby and obnoxious and something I had to get over, and this was going to be the year for that. Obviously that’s been screwed up, but there’s nothing wrong with pushing that resolution to 2021.

WHAT MOVIES HAVE YOU WATCHED RECENTLY?

Not a lot, to be honest. I recently cancelled a bunch of streaming services, and even the ones I still have (Hulu because I have a bundle with Spotify and Amazon Prime because duh) I hardly ever use. This sort of makes me a pop-culture outcast, but so far not enough to stop. My Discord group has streamed a handful of movies together: Your Name, Taxi Driver and The 36th Chamber of Shaolin.

WHAT SHOWS ARE YOU WATCHING?

I watched the finale of Steven Universe; nothing else now that that’s over, see above.

WHAT MUSIC ARE YOU LISTENING TO?

I have YouTube synthwave or lo-fi hip hop mixes on continuously when I’m working, although part of me doesn’t consider that music so much as background noise, like a replacement for white noise generators I also sometimes use at work. As for “actual” music, I’ve been listening to piano jazz like Vince Guaraldi or Medeski, Martin and Wood, along with Juno Reactor when exercising. Thievery Corporation, my favorite band of all time, just released a new album too.

WHAT ARE YOU READING?

Main thing right now is Romance of the Three Kingdoms, which was the next thing up on my “classics bucket list”. After seeing @argumate rave so much about Greg Egan, I bought a bunch of his short story collections when they were on sale on the Kindle store and have been reading those too. Also Shining Path, which is kind of dumb and the writing isn’t great, but it’s highly entertaining. It may get me to finally get around to reading Worm, which I’ve seen people rave about. Finally, some people from the board game group, @etirabys and I occasionally meet to work through The Art of Computer Programming, though quarantine has kind of put that on hold -- we have attempted virtual discussions instead but it’s really too dense for that.

WHAT ARE YOU DOING FOR SELF CARE? 

Not much? To be honest, while this whole crisis really worries me in an abstract way re: the harm to other people and the long-term implications for society and politics, I don’t feel personally worried and it hasn’t actually messed with my stress levels that much. I have a pretty flat emotional affect and this hasn’t really knocked it off-keel. I am trying to hold fast to routines: some kind of exercise every day, keep the apartment from becoming a mess, force social contact that I would otherwise just kind of forget about, but I was doing that all anyway.

I also do not know who has done this meme already, feel free to assume I tagged you if you want to do it.