#(which is a smaller unrelated issue but still. annoying :\)

[headfullofdolls]

So, now with the series 4 bios out, Lila Yamamoto is confirmed to be mixed Japanese and Chinese.

And this is good, of course, because the least they can do to explain her outfits is to have her be mixed heritage. Because there was a lot of reasonable concern over the cultural mishmashing going on with her fashions, as others have explained. And I’ve seen some people express relief because now we can put those concerns to rest!

...But as much as I, someone also Asian and mixed, would like to believe MGA planned for Lila to be mixed Japanese and Chinese from the start...

“Her dad is Japanese, and her mom is Chinese.”

That is the easiest sentence to insert into a paragraph as an afterthought. Just change “rich cultural roots” to “rich multicultural roots” and bada boom, she’s mixed now.

“Loves incorporating her family’s diverse culture with street style fashion” should really say “cultures” though, plural, so they forgot to fix that 🤔 But hey, that could easily be a simple typo, right?

Except the bio only mentioning Lila being a “streetstyle icon in Tokyo” also seems odd. She has a Japanese last name, lives in Tokyo, and reads rare manga, all referencing her Japanese heritage, but the bio makes no references to her Chinese heritage aside from her mom. If she “loves incorporating her family’s diverse culture(s)” with her fashion so much, why not a brief mention about what inspired her to incorporate Chinese elements? Like visiting her mom’s family in China (naming another specific city like Tokyo), or her mom introducing her to Chinese arts or fashions as she grew, in contrast to the Japanese culture surrounding them. Or being inspired by her parents’ respect for each others’ traditions and the way they incorporated them together while raising her. Lily Cheng’s bio talks about her growing up with “the best of both worlds,” so there’s already precedent for that similar experience. And there’s other students with longer bios that talk more about their families or backgrounds (see Krystal’s and Stella’s for instance), so it’s not like there wasn’t enough space or it’d be out of place for Lila’s bio to have a short reference to her Chinese cultural influences. Saying only, “Her dad is Japanese, and her mom is Chinese,” sounds bland and impersonal. And to me, seems like a hasty inclusion to hand-wave away the inconsistencies in Lila’s outfits. Because even with her mixed heritage, there are better, more respectful ways to incorporate Chinese and Japanese culture “with street style fashion” than the muddled hodgepodge they designed for her doll, if they only did more research.

You could say I’m being cynical and nitpicking, and you’d be right! But I also love Rainbow High and want better from it. Good representation is important (especially in properties directed at younger demographics), and it’s important to critique big corporations when they drop the ball, or at least question their actions. Because this issue isn’t new, isn’t even surprising, even just looking at Rainbow High’s history of diversity and representation. On the plus side, as fans have pushed for them to do better, they have started doing better! On the other hand, it’s frustrating to have to keep pushing for it, instead of the paid professional teams at MGA putting in the work and awareness to be better before anyone has to point it out to them.

I’m glad, relieved even, to have written confirmation of Lila as mixed race (I was worried they wouldn’t have any justification for her outfits at all). But planned or not, it doesn’t absolve the cultural carelessness issues going on with her clothes. As our first canonical multicultural representation in Rainbow High, I sorely wish she was better. Lila deserved better. We deserved better. But now, keeping that in mind, all we can do is speak out, and push for MGA to do better in the future.

#rainbow high #lila yamamoto #saw someone say now people could ''finally sleep at night instead of hating MGA'' and it activated my fight or flight reaction #and y'know what? #¿por que no los dos? (: #lila i want to love you but you're also causing me immense emotional turmoil :\ #like i almost never see darker-skin asian rep #i've literally seen more ads for ''skin-lightening'' products on trips to my mom's country #and then! woe! dark tan asian doll be upon ye! #eeeexcept her fashion is an insincere mix of east asian cultures as if they're all the same! yaaaaay #(and also her second skirt is just a straight up recolor of karma's) #(which is a smaller unrelated issue but still. annoying :\) #(like did they run out of ideas or just cheap out hahaaaaa) #anyway. i'm just out here writing long posts about dolls instead of going to bed. i am very normal #but hey! guess that also means i'm ''hating MGA'' instead of ''finally sleeping at night'' lmaoooo gottem #we've come full circle. the salt prevails #doll thoughts #tag specifically for rainbow high thoughts

[cianmars]

They were roommates... (A Lokius Fic)

So I made this a lil while ago, it gets updated every few days

Loki has to stay somewhere in the TVA and if he was working for them then its a little mean to leave him in a cell... or at least that was Mobius' argument, so he took one for the team and has Loki move in with him... A purely selfless act....

AKA Loki learns to be a good person, an okay roomie, and a not so good at being a menace to society (unless society bugs him)

AO3

Loki hadn’t recovered from seeing the projection of his mother being murdered in front of his eyes, because of him, for very obvious reasons…. But he had started to come to terms with it, with everything.

That of course didn’t mean that he wasn’t looking for a way, any way, out; but it did mean that he had agreed to work with the TVA, well not with them, but with Mobius, even if the man (was he a man? Man was just short for human, was he human?) was infuriating, in every Gods damned way.

A whistle and a tilt of the agent’s head was what woke Loki from where he was dozing at the same table he had been sitting at since he had brought in, some unspecified time ago, Loki had opened his mouth to tell him that Gods did not appreciated being whistled at like a dog but Mobius was already off, walking out of the room.

Gods did not chase after anyone, let alone men who were holding him prisoner, Gods did not chase…

“Gods don’t chase,” he told the man, practically bouncing as he caught up to the fast walking man (seriously how did he walk so fast?), his head following everyone who passed them as they walked by, and trying to see what propaganda they had tacked to their modern walls.

“And yet, here you are,” Mobius replied in that calm yet amused tone he always used for Loki.

Loki glared, but Mobius wasn’t looking at him so he rushed past him, turning back to face the man walking backwards without breaking pace, trying to focus on him not on everything they were passing, he hadn’t been this way before, had they? A hundred questions bounced around his mind, most of them were ‘why the fuck is a talking duck being led by four armed guards?’ and ‘can I go talk to the duck?’.

A hand on his upper arm stopped all the thoughts in his head and he had to stop himself from coming to a full stop, or tripping, that would be embarrassing.

“Careful, Loki, you’re gonna bump into someone,” Mobius slowed his pace as he pulled Loki to walk at his side, “You can keep bouncing around like Tigger from beside me.”

Loki was not blushing; not at how flustered the touch made him, not at the mixed soft and amused tone which Loki swore was just for him (he wasn’t possessive he was just right), not from the chastisement, no he was not blushing, the TVA clearly just had a heating issue which seemed to be largely affecting just his cheeks, they couldn’t even heat a building correctly. Typical.

Loki cleared his throat, unrelated to his blushing, “Casey doesn’t know what a fish is but you know what that hyperactive big cat is?”

“Like I said Loki, you’re a pussycat.”

“Remind me to introduce you to a real hungry tiger one time,” Loki muttered, cheeks still pink, he kept an eye onto the admittedly comfortable slip on canvas shoes as they slapped against the floor.

“What was that, darling?”

This bastard was doing this on purpose, he had to be… unless he wasn’t, then he’d have to explain why in general people who were practically strangers didn’t call each other ‘darling’, but that did come with the increased risk of him either never calling him it again… or calling him it again, and they’d both know it was on purpose. He’s a bastard. Loki plastered a cheery smile onto his face, looking up at Mobius with a look of innocence they both knew was fake, “Nothing!” his smile turned genuine hearing Mobius laugh.

They were in a golden doored elevator when Loki found his voice again, “Where are we going?”

“I seem to remember some God of comedy telling me that he didn’t talk much…”

“It’s the god of mischief, or tricks, not comedy,” Loki cut in, narrowing his eyes when he saw a barely concealed smirk on his face, “But of course, you knew that as you know ‘everything’ about me. Where are we going?”

“Why don’t you tell me?”

“How can I tell you if I don't know?”

“You’re pretty,” Mobius leant forward past Loki and pressed his hand to the black screen on the elevator pad, pausing his speech for a second too long as he did so, “smart, why don’t you try to figure it out?”

Loki was frozen as Mobius’s arm brushed against his own as he leant back and stood beside Loki, he could smell the sandalwood from his aftershave as he moved. “You’ve found The Variant, the less amazing, less talented version of me?”

“The Variant is pretty talented too, Loki.”

“Not as talented as me,” Loki pouted, not pouted, Gods did not pout (as his father so often talk him), but his lips were pressed together and slightly stuck out. This was just ridiculous, he wasn’t pouting and he wasn’t jealous, because what would he even be jealous of? Some less awesome version of himself gaining Mobius’ praises?

“Agreed.”

Loki’s head snapped to the man who was studying his watch intently, a little too intently, if Loki wasn’t imagining it.

Mobius cleared his throat, looking back up at Loki, a mild smile on his face, “We haven’t found The Variant, yet. Any more guesses?”

Loki let out a frustrated noise, “This isn’t fair, you have more information where we’re going, I haven’t been given any clues!”

“Take a breath.” Mobius told him with an amused smile and a glint in his eyes, “Why’s it so hard for you to say I don’t know?”

“I don’t know.”

“Nice, very funny,”

Coming from anyone else it would have annoyed Loki, but it sounded both fond and amused from Mobius, he needed to get out of the TVA it was making him… he didn’t know, but it wasn’t what he was used to, and that made him nervous, which typically made him feel stabby.  “So you’re not going to tell me? It’s taking forever, for a place which dictates how everyone else should spend their time you’d think that you would actually develop a elevator which doesn’t waste all of your time.”

“Time works differently here in the TVA, Loki, I’ve already told you; anyway no need to whine, we’re here now.” The elevator stopped and the doors opened and Mobius strode out and headed left.

“I wasn’t whining,” Loki whined to the empty elevator, before bounding after him.

“What’s this?” Loki bounced on the balls of his feet as Mobius stood in front of a door, as it scanned him.

“Do you ever stand still?”

Loki thought for a second, he shook his head, then ran his hand through his hair to place it back into its original place, “Most people ask me if I ever shut up.”

Mobius looked away from the door to Loki with that ever present smile, “I already know the answer to that one,” he winked then pushed the door open and walked inside.

Loki took a few more seconds to follow him than he perhaps would have had Mobius not winked at him.

When he finally did walk in he was met with… an apartment, fairly lifeless, the style of the rest of the TVA continued inside of the place, a small kitchen, a living area with a screen which looked like a television but he dare not ask in case that bloody cartoon clock began to play, there were a couple of doors leading off to one side and a couple more leading off on the other side.

“I don’t understand.”

“What don’t you understand?”

“Don’t use that patronising tone on me, I'm not a child.”

Mobius sighed, “I wasn’t using a patronising tone on you, Loki, I was asking you what you don’t understand, which is okay.”

Loki gritted his teeth and began to move around the room, strolling to the kitchen, he wasn’t sure if it was to stop himself from snapping again, or, gods forbid, from apologising. “So?” He turned back to see Mobius watching him with his hands tucked into his pockets.

“So…? Use your words, Loki.”

Loki could see the glint in his eyes across the room, that time he had meant to “What’s the test? Has the variant been here? Or is there some sort of set of clues? Or…, I swear if there’s a training video or propaganda video I shall launch myself out of the windows.”

“Nah, we’ll start on the training and propaganda in a day or two, not right this second, and those aren’t windows.”

Loki turned to look at the windows, “What are you talking about, of course it’s… oh simulated glass panes… I must have sustained a concussion from The Hulk, I’m never usually this slow.”

“Of course…” he said in a way which made it clear that he did not believe it, “We can get you checked out at the medbay tomorrow, if you like, being here might be affecting your healing capacity. This isn’t some form of test, it’s an apartment, my apartment.”

“It’s…” Loki looked around again with fresh eyes, it was still fairly lifeless, but there was a bright yellow mug on the draining board with that bloody clock on it, and a Coca Cola red pen on the table closest to him, a few certificates with ‘Mobius M. Mobius’ on all of them, along with some books which didn’t seem to be propaganda for the TVA… interesting… “It’s very…,” he tried to think of a compliment but gave up quickly, so instead gave a shrug, “it’s smaller than my childhood nursery was.”

Mobius gave a laugh, “I’m sure it is.”

“Well it’s very… it’s certainly an apartment… Why precisely are we here?”

“It was agreed by Judge Renslayer that if you would be working with us you deserved to be housed somewhere which isn’t a cell, of course you can’t go anywhere without me, and this apartment is fully secure.”

“You’re not worried that I’ll slit your sleep in your sleep?”

“It would mean I don’t have to get around to all of the paperwork on my desk.”

Loki frowned, why did this man never take his threats seriously? “If I’m staying here where will you be staying?”

“There’s two bedroom’s Loki, you’ll be staying in the guest bedroom.”

“A guest bedroom? Why do you have a guest bedroom? Are you allowed guests at the TVA headquarters? Do you have guests? Like your mother? Do you have a mother? Do all of the apartments have guest bedrooms? Are you agents allowed to get married and have kids? I don’t see why else you’d need two-.”

“Loki, can we stay on topic, please?”

“Sorry,” Loki swallowed, looking around once more, then back at Mobius, “I… I suppose it’s better than a cell.” The best thing about the cell had been Mobius’s visits, because Loki enjoyed annoying him, and nothing more.

“Marginally,” Mobius chuckled. “Is that a yes? Cause if not I should get you down to a proper cell before dinner time.”

“I… I suppose.”

“You don’t sound very enthusiastic, the cells really aren’t that bad, if you’d be more comfortable in your own space then I can take you there.”

Loki rolled his eyes, dropping into a rather uncomfortable armchair, he almost regretted his dramatics, almost . “I’m staying… But if you try to indoctrinate me into your cult with more of those videos I’ll skin you alive.”

“That’s the spirit.”

Loki was certain that he was going to kill either himself or Mobius by the end of the week.

#lokius #lokius fic #wowki #wowki fic #agent mobius #mobius m mobius #loki #loki laufeyson #loki disney+ #loki show #they were roommates fic #twr fic #twr

[popculturebuffet]

Animation Reviews: OK KO: Red Action 3: Grudgement Day

Whelp I said i’d do all three in one day and I MEANT IT. And I may do it again just to stay on schedule in the future, but for now i’m just proud and exausted to have gotten this done. And after a rather “eh it has some things but it’s mostly just there” episode” we’ve come to our last episode and my personal faviorite, Red Action 3: Grudgment day. Also as a quick note I forgot red was actually a major part of “I hope this thing flies” back in my first review, but I probably would’ve left it out as while the plot is her racing with Rad, it’s entirely a rad episode, and like plaza prom which I had to realize wasn’t important, isn’t really necessary.  One last where we are in the series thing. We’re in season 3 and as I mentioned last time, RIGHT before the final episodes and one episode before the three part final arc and unrelated but beautiful epilogue that closes out the series. I didn’t go into my throughts on season 2 but it was good, the ending was just a  really sloppy end to an otherwise good arc that i’ll get to. Season 3 is somehow even better, using it’s shorter run time to tie up loose ends and character arcs left and right and , after trying all series to do it, crossing over with Sonic the hedgehog, another thing for another time, and the final episodes, both the wrap up to the story arc “Let’s fight ot the end” and the wonderful where are they now epilouge “Thank you for watching the show”, are absolutley amazing and how you end a show.. and thankfully endings of this calibur became the trend this year given that same year star vs ended terribly and the bad taste is still in my mouth over that one but that’s a story for another bunch of reviews. The point is as I said the crew used the time wisely and wrapped up most ongoing character and story arcs that needed resolution. And given they spent two episodes on it the team decided to pull the pin on red and enid getting together, and solve one dangling issue the fans likely had all in one go. IT’s grudgment day under the cut. 

We open with Rad and Red arguging and KO looking at them in a way that just screams:”Third mom, Rad, please stop fighting”  Enid comes in and wonders why one of her two best friends and her girlfriend are fighting. She dosen’t use the term but given the kiss at the end of the episode, more on that when we get to it, the general way Enid acts about this and the way Red acts around her this ep.. their a couple at this point.  I do wish they had an episode of them becoming offical, adressing Enid and Elodie.. bucnhes of other things but I concede that the crew was blindsighted by having a smaller season and had they you know NOT BEEN CANCELED FOR NO GOOD GOODAMN RESAON, we might have gotten more renid and more stories and a full on steven universe crossover with both sides. But I digress.. CN’s managment is terrible right now... but that’s not the reason for this article so we’re moving on.  Anyways Enid wants to know why their so pissy when she arrives, and Red .. is in the right this time. Showing her growth while she still got heated with rad.

Rad did at least start it, as she simply came in to take enid jelly surfing and was kind enough to ask him to come along.. and KO implictly given he’s there and their buds now and all that. But when rad insults her again she quits the explaning and goes right back to arguing with him while Enid and KO look on awkwardly. Then Red decides to go into a mocking impression of rad, which is not NEARLY as mean as it could’ve been given the guy has canocially, had a super virus get worse because he refused to get rest something the villian that gave it to him was COUNTING on as part of his evil scheme, was left on the floor in pain over his cocoa being too hot, and once confused his 6-11 year old friend for a doppleganger despite having GIVEN said friend his nametag, though to be fair red’s own best friend also thought he was rad and gave him her number, so everyone was kind of dumb that day but still, the point is she has a LOT of ammo. In contrast Rad STARTS light saying she says words like Cowabunga (she only does once at the end of this ep and has not at any time).. before saying Enid deserves someone better and flinging her surfboard... which Crinkly Wrinkly jumps on and crashes into a wall because of course he does.  Anyways Enid is offended at this and reveals rad’s been acting like a raving dickhead to Red anytime she shows up, which were this season 1 would be on brand but after 3 seasons of becoming a better person and an episode earlier this season where he rejected his dudebro friends once and for all, who by the way: Beefer and Mega Football Baby are the worst and I hate them and i’m greatful that their final apperance is rad realizing what a bad influence they’ve been and telling their asses off for their toxic masculinity. But I will however give OK KO credit as their SUPPOSED to be obnoxious, and the crew still dialed back hteir apperances to almost nothing when they realized it went horribly right, versus Rusty whose still mildly to massively annoying, but has yet to be fixed or removed from LIncoln’s crew, despite the show having a good track record for taking problematic characters and fixing them. And i’ve gotten entirely offf topic because all three of them piss me off so much, so let’s move on.  Where were we.. ah yes, since Rad being a dickhead this consisently is now an exception not the rule, Enid rightfully demands to know why and Rad.. makes up two very petty, weak and obviously pulled out of his butt to try and cover the real reason up reasons for his actions: Red didn’t follow him back on Social Media, which is both a website and what the website is in this universe apparently which Is brilliant, and that she took the last bit of cake at prom... you know after he realized he was screwing it up and fixed it all with a homoerotic dance fight. Plaza Prom is amazing. When pressed because Rad fired his stupid friends, Rad hastily challenges red to a power battle, which I haven’t had to cover yet: Basically a hero can challenge another hero to a fight, usually for respect, to settle a grudge or who took the last bagle, and it’s a socially accepted thing called a power batttle. Really given it seems like KO’s world has not had a hero civil war, and the one time we’ve seen heroes on heroes outside of these things has been when POINT was acting shady as fuck and thus needed to be stopped, it seems like a resonable mesure, especially since most heroes just.. shrug off damage from battles and stuff after a bit.  Unable to convince her girlfriend not to punch her best friend in the face, however much he deserves it, Red gives enid her belt with her time capusles inside, so they don’t go off mid fight and gives her an air kiss. Awww. Enid bemoans the fact this is happening for such dumb reasons when KO relaizes they can just use the belt to fix what once went wrong and end this petty fight before rad dies.  First stop, the Bodega a few months ago, which KO proves both by the fact they have mean beans, which theys topped selling months ago and is one of the single best refrences this show did and it’s done a LOT, and the social media feed being from months and months ago, with Beefer bragging elodie beat him up. Ewwwwww.... I don’t wnat to kjnow what he’s into. Gah gotta scrub my brain. ONe brain scrub later Rad needs only one more follower to 100. I hear when you get 100 this happens. 

Rad asks for a follow for follow from Red, who says she dosen’t have her phone. Enid is sure she’s lying, which she is, and follows Rad for her. Also I love rad’s file photo

Seriously they use this any time they need a picture of him. It’s one of the series best runners and is only topped by homer simpsons various terrible ones and this gravity falls masterpiece as being the best stock photo used for a character.

I will use this any time I have an excuse to and I have no shame about that. Anyways they go back but

As things have only gotten more heated at the power battle, so they try the prom to see if that’ll help.  Cue PROM. Seriously why they never did a second Plaza Prom episode is really beyond me. Lot of potetinal with that concept.. plus I like episodes that put tons of cast, main and supporting, in one event together, ever since venture bros. It’s always a fun time. Anyways, Enid wants to stop a paradox but KO has already interacted with his past self.. which is the KO enid’s talking to and a great gag.  So the two seeing Rad and Red both about to go for the cake decide to pull a destraction: Enid goes over and talks to Red to hold her off and get the cake to rad, while KO does what any sane person would do: Jumps onto Rad’s face while yelling rad I love you, and Rad is clearly more annoyed he’s on his face and this has very obviously happened before. .... I miss this show.  Anyway after giving the explination that she’s a shadow clone to explain why her past self is still up there DJing, she offers to dance and the two have a good cute time until enid gets the cake into rad’s mouth and bolts.. and now we get the thing I hinted at earlier. Red talks to the other Alley Teens about it, and notes that while she dosen’t know Enid she kinda likes her.. then backpedals as the teens make faces but are clearly not fooled by they all look really creepy especially Gregg. 

WHelp I have ny nightamres for tonight. But yeah this is implied to be what got Red to ask her out in the first place. Time travel is weird and inconsietent. This does give me a chance to adress the fact that the alley teens.. sorta stopped beiing a thing eventually. I mean their stillf riends as of the season 2 openoer but red and drupe show up for their own eps or supportingroles while Gregg just kinda vanishes, poor person. That being said given this interaction and how close they were I DO think their still friends; I mean gregg and drupe was confirmed by the flash forward as they visit rad’s cafe, but Red would still be their friend, they just all likely have more stuff to do as they grow older: by the end of season 2 Drupe has a buisness and gregg is probably in college. But I expect Drupe would be Red’s best woman at her wedding. I mean gregg would probably be her best person but still. Anyways they return to the present again and.

Yeah that. Their now battling in cars and Enid decides to cut the bullshit and just ask Rad why he’s pissed at Red, asking Red to pause the fight, which she agrees to.  KO and Enid throw rad int he back of his van tied up and ask him to be honest about why he’s so pissed off. After some dithering he says he lo.. lo.. and instead of saying he loves enid, thank god i’m so sick of love triangles, may they die in a fire, like the episode hinted at it’s a swerve. and unlike a vince russo swerve which ends in A “Buff Bagwell’s mother on a forklift match”.. no really

This is actually a great one: Rad’s fully moved on and I like that, evne if the finale does leave it vauge if those bodegamen at the end are theirs or not, given Rad’s her best friend by the end and she and red would need a surrogate, it’s not a huge stretch to say Rad sperm donored for them and is still a beloved uncle and figure in their lives. Anyways the point is Rad’s real beef is.. suprisingly sweet. Turns out Rad’s still pissed at the whole “Teens humilating, burning and spanking” ko thing and Red posting it online. Which is likely to adress the fact they.. never adressed that and was a good call and a good way to show rad’s growth: he’s not jealous , he’s not mad she’s taking up enid’s time, he’s mad that his best friend is dating someone who beat up his other best friend for just trying to help them then put it online for a cruel laugh. Granted Drupe did the same thing and he not only danced with her but is on good terms with her to this day, but odds are given they see her more and she’s in fact the designer for their mission outfits in season 3, she probably apologized off screen while Red figured KO forgiving her was good enough and just wanted to forget it, running away from things as usual. IT speaks to the diffrence in their personality: Red runs hot is stubborn and takes time to admit she’s wrong, Drupe is very chill and as the series goes on very nice, and probably wanted to get it out of the way asap given she frequents the bodega more often, either in the background or foreground.  Anyways after KO reveals he actually enjoys the video as a treasured memory of when he first met the alley teens, disturbing his friends, seriously this kid needed to remerge with his edgelord side yikes, Enid gives rad a headpat and kudos for being normal and Enid decides to take all of them to go fix this.  Back in the past we’re back at the bullying and before past red can post, present red explains she should stop and after clarfying this isn’t an end of the world situation, not an unfair assumption given you know time traveler, she reveals it’s for someone unimportant.. but whose important to someone they care about, and that what they were doing was a terrible thing they’ll be ashamed of anyway. It’s a good scene that shows how far red’s come: from pushing everyone but two people awaya nd treating most like garbage in a vain attempt to avoid being who she used to be, to accepting it, finding love, and becoming friends with someone she hurt and accepting she hurt him. Rad is also clearly moved seeing that Enid did indeed choose wisely. Back in the present. 

... NO not this time. No instead red and rad are pals, talking about how shredded they are and what not, and while Enid finds it annoying, understandably, she’s glad their not trying to kill each other and dosen’t have to buy Rad’s gravestone or visit her girlfriend in prison. In the alterted timeline, which their also aware of by rad’s comment, time travel just go with it, they were already planning on going jelly surfing and invite enid, and implictly ko along. 

So we end on our main trio and Red jelly surfing, Enid and Red sharing a board before wiping out, laughing about it and then, as if you hadn’t already seen the header but fuck it. 

Yup. The subtext just became.. text. Awww. In case you were wondering, I do like them as a couple, especially after this quintology, as it’s made me realize just hwo much they click and how much chemistry they have, and by this point their just adorable, their drama gone and they can just be happy and gay together. And that’s something cartoons are doing more of and tha’ts wonderful and it’s wonderful that, with all else he had to wrap up, Ian felt confirming the gay couples lasted was extremley important, as two others are shown married in the finale. And we’ll get to the finale more in a bit, but first Rad floats by with an “I support this”, to approving smiles, and enid thinking he’s a weirdo. Also I love the meta text of having a character voiced by the shows creator say that.  KO however is sad that the video is gone but ENid says the memories will last. Rad is understandably not sad about it suggests they make new ones and we end on our quintent taking a selfie together. THE END. Before final thoughts, this wouldn’t however be the last we saw of them. The finale has a bit more as it flashes forwards a bit: the relevant part is one shows Enid take over KO’s mom Carol’s dojo. with red, the two kissing again and alllooking over some supsciously familiar kids who look supsciously like the hue troop, but are probably there great grandparents. While Red dosent’ show up again after that, and could’ve gone back to the future eventuallyf or all we know, I like to think she stayed, and that as noted above, she and enid had kids together with Rad’s help given the similar looking kids we see running the bodega... which admitely was kept vauge by Ian on purpose so fans could draw their own inclusion so that’s the one i’m drawing; rad is still there for them aand still family to them, but isn’t with Enid in a romantic sense, if you think diffrently that’s fine. But My ending is these two crazy kids worked it out and are now happy ever after. and that ain’t bad.  Final Thoughts: A fantastic episode with TONS of great jokes, call backs and a great resolution , showing off Rad and Red’s character development greatly,f ixing a possible plot hole and giving fans the kiss that many of them had wanted for some time. ONe of the series best I can’t gush enough about it but I shall stop for your benifit. If you liked this review, subscribe for more, check out the backlog via the convient pages on my blog, and shoot me an ask, wether it’s to suggst an episode or just to ask me about my opinons or yell about them or ask what I think about certain shows or what i’ll cover. And until next time, later days. 

#ok ko #ok k.o.! let's be heroes #rednid #red academia #enid #ko #rad #drupe #gregg #mega football baby #bell beefer #they suck #rusty spokes #chrono trigger #red action 3 grudgement day #lbgtq+ #lbgtq #pride month #reviews #happy pride

[sepublic]

Infinity Train Book Two!!!

Cartoon Network JUST released the trailer for Book 2 of Infinity Train, and it looks GOOOOD!!!

-As predicted, each season will follow a new protagonist with their own issues who’s now trapped on the Infinity Train; In this case, it’s a young teen named Jesse who wears a letterman jacket (probably in high school), who has a younger brother he has (or had) a good relationship with, as well as a mom and dad. We don’t know WHY Jesse is on the Infinity Train, but I doubt it’s another divorce, as we’ve already explored that kind of issue before. Also, he has a smart phone, so Book 2 takes place around modern times (This makes me wonder if we’ll ever have a season that takes place BEFORE the others, like in the past).

-Also predicted beforehand; With a new protagonist comes a new main cast! We have the much-anticipated return of Mirror Tulip, who’s now the secondary protagonist, and she looks DIFFERENT; In the best way! MT, as she calls herself, is really embracing her individuality and I’m so happy for her! Hearing her voice is also bittersweet, because it reminds me of Tulip and I still miss her, alas. I always expected MT to return, but not as a member of the main cast, so count me VERY happily surprised!

-It seems MT is acting as exposition to Jesse, recapping on how the Infinity Train works so we don’t have to see him go through the process of figuring out what was already established beforehand. That’s helpful, and it also gives past ties to Book 1 as well.

-There’s a Map Car based on old, classic explorer maps; However, it’s incomplete within a void. In order to expand the car and access the other door at the end, Jesse needs to add more pieces to a smaller, identical map to expand the room accordingly.

-There’s a Fall Room where Jesse meets another new main character; Allan (Ellen? LN?) Dracula! Despite the name, Dracula is actually a deer, but he can apparently shapeshift, change colors, and shoot lasers out of his eyes- He’s probably a native to the Fall Room and doesn’t seem to talk, so it’s likely Jesse named him. Unusual choice in name, but it’s neat nevertheless!

-Unfortunately, those dumb Mirror Police are still hellbent on killing MT for violating Mirror law and have been chasing her across multiple cars, even hanging up at least one wanted poster that I think MT took. It still resembles her appearance at the end of the Chrome Car episode, so did MT change her appearance to hide? Or was it to be more of an individual, or both? Also, WHY are the Mirror Police so insistent on arresting/killing MT? Is there some grave consequence to her being free, or are they doing it just because that’s what the law says? Terrifyingly, the Mirror Police can travel through/hide in ANY reflection, including puddles. Can MT still do this, or will traveling through mirrors trap her again? Likewise, I don’t see Tulip’s mirror on MT... did she learn to remove it, did it get lost against her will, or is it hidden beneath her clothes???

-Intriguingly, MT says ‘Remember Tulip?’ to Jesse. This implies that either MT or someone else explained who Tulip was to Jesse, or Jesse himself knew Tulip prior to boarding the Infinity Train. The latter option is VERY interesting and I wonder how much time has passed since Book 1.

-Khaki Bottoms lives! Unfortunately, he lost an ear after the Stewardess destroyed his home, but at least he still has another one of those jiggly-wiggly things, whatever those are. 

-THE CAT!!! Everyone expected her to be a recurring character through seasons, making deals with new protagonists and messing with them, but it’s still great to see her! And she’s still up to her old antics too, I see; Either way it’s great to see her. Having the cat be a recurring character, a constant throughout Infinity Train, is really cool- It’s like in Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure, how each part covers a new protagonist after a certain amount of time, but there’s still a recurring character here or there, like Speedwagon!

-Also, we see Dracula approach a claw machine, only to be tiny and IN the claw machine. Jesse is trying to play to win him back and the cat explains what he has to do. It seems there’s going to be a ‘Festival Car’ episode where the main cast travels through, with Dracula getting distracted and captured while the cat helps Jesse and MT rescue him. Also, the two are seen running at some point without Dracula, making me wonder if the Mirror Police are in this episode.

-Another licensed song at the end, and more antics with the Mirror Police being annoying! Please tell me MT is okay at the end of this season

-And our final stinger, OneOne! I made an earlier post discussing what OneOne’s role in future seasons could be, and it looks like I was mostly right; He’s seen on a monitor explaining to someone (it doesn’t look like Jesse, but maybe he’s wearing something?) explaining that you can’t escape without companionship. It seems OneOne is also functioning as exposition, explaining to new arrivals how the Infinity Train works, and he might be telling Jesse (who MT is spying on), or perhaps ANOTHER passenger, how the train works. On an unrelated note, if OneOne has control over the Infinity Train, couldn’t he just force the Mirror Police to stop hunting down MT as part of his authority as Conductor? Or is this scene happening much later into the season, and this is where MT explains her problem to him? Perhaps OneOne is LETTING the Mirror Police chase down MT because he knows why the laws exist? Is that why MT is hiding, because she doesn’t want to be seen by him??? IS ONEONE TRYING TO FORCE MT BACK INTO THE CHROME CAR BECAUSE THAT’S PART OF HIS ROLE AS CONDUCTOR WHICH HE JUST NOW REMEMBERED!??!

-No Atticus, alas. I mean, I expected it with the whole ‘New protagonist and cast’ format, but I wish we get at least one cameo from him in Book 2.

-In the Map Car, it seems our trio is riding on the compass like a boat through the ocean, only for the mast to fall down and split it in two, separating Jesse from the others. Earlier, we see the whole trio on one of the compass halves, but the room looks like a natural background; This is where the Mirror Police appear.

-Jesse is naturally surprised to hear about MT’s technical status as a criminal. Considering her reasons behind it, I don’t think he’d blame her, but I do hope Jesse doesn’t begin to wonder if MT has done OTHER bad things she hasn’t told him yet...

-Also, I just noticed that this season is keeping to a trend of there being a main protagonist as a human passenger, accompanied by an inhabitant of the Infinity Train that was part of the train itself, as well as an animal companion also native to the Infinity Train. I wonder if it’ll be revealed that Dracula can talk.

-This bit is just speculation, but will we see Tulip at the end of the season, after Jesse escapes, but now all grown-up? Also, what happens if a passenger’s number goes down, but they don’t want to leave the friends they’ve already made on the Train? And will we see Amelia again, having now reformed and trying to bring down her number count?

Honestly, I can’t wait! 

#Infinity train #book 2 #season 2 #jesse #mirror tulip #MT #alan dracula #deer #oneone #the cat #khaki bottoms #mirror police #chrome car #discussion #speculation #trailer analysis

[ihearyourvoicecrying]

McKinnon visits recap

My four-day trip to the McKinnon Hotel has officially finished. It was four days of adventure, dream and fantasies. Also, it effectively prevents me from keeping on missing the McKittrick.

Are the two versions alike? Yes. But there exist some obvious differences as well. If you’re already a fan of McKittrick, McKinnon is the place you don’t wanna miss when you visit Shanghai.

I watched the show four days in a row, and still there are so many strange moments (to me) that I failed to catch up with. I’ll try my best to describe what I felt, but in a spoiler-free way. So don’t be afraid of spoilers in this post.

Warning: Recap is a very personal thing, so don’t feel astonished when you find out that I understand the show differently from you do. I also welcome friendly discussions

The Scenes & Settings

McKinnon is definitely much larger than the McKittrick, I felt that the moment I stepped into the dark hallway. It took me a century to finally get to the end. Then it’s the Manderley Bar, which is, still, bigger than that in the McKittrick. There are more seats for audience members, but unfortunately not enough space for MIB and WIB to dance (which is one of my favorite in-bar moments), so you probably won’t see bar characters dancing in McKinnon.

After getting out of the elevator, I immediately realized that the inner world was broader than I imagined. I spent four days exploring the scenes but still got lost sometimes. The McKinnon gave me a strong sense of being lost in a good way. I really enjoyed the feeling of seeing some familiar settings but still not knowing where I was exactly.

Despite the large inner world, the ballroom is somehow smaller than that in the McKittrick. Also, the ceiling was lower, which made me a little upset while watching the ball and the finale because of the comparatively less space.

In general, I believe that the overall space in the McKinnon was larger

The Audience

I don’t know if it’s just the week I visited or it’s the normality, but I got the feeling that SNM Shanghai is an easily sold out show. Plus, larger setting allows larger audience size, which made it much more crowded inside the hotel. I’ve met someone in the McKittrick who’s been annoying during the whole show by doing nearly everything not permitted. However, in the McKinnon, a single audience member bahaved better, but when everyone’s got some of my pet peeve, it could be an issue. I was glad to see few (or even no) phone players (probably because of the phone locking policy) and mask off-ers, but there were certainly more hand holding, murmuring and pushing. Families, friends, and lovers, people always don’t want to be separated from each other, so they choose to stick together all the time. And people became really aggressive sometimes when they wanna be in the first line of get some interaction. I’ve also heard enough of discussion about the story while the show was still going on, like they will leave each other forever after the show so they have to tell what was on their mind at once.

The Plot

I would like to describe the McKittrick’s Sleep No More as a story book with many blank pages. The show itself finished most of the pages for us, but we are always encouraged to imagine and complete the missing parts of the story. The McKinnon, on the other hand, somehow leaves less blank space in the storybook. It is very interesting that details in the story may change according to different performers’ interpretation and performance. I can’t say which version is better, because I enjoy creating my own speculations of the show, but I’m also dying to see how others, especially performers, understand it. It doesn’t matter whether their stories are like mine. I’m always amazed while someone led me view the story from another angle.

The Scent

McKinnon did an excellent job in leading its guests with scent: each place had its own unique scent that silently indicated people where they were. I’m not very good at describing smells but, when I enter a room the second time and smell something familiar, I would know that I’m in the place even if I didn’t remember how the room looked like.

The scent also effectively put each setting apart. Even when two totally unrelated places are just separated by a door, visitors could still have the feeling of entering a totally different world. It was like the story really took place in a forest, in a hospital, in a bar, or any other magical place somewhere in the world.

The Characters

Some relatively not-so-busy characters in the NY version definitely did more in SH! Also, the brand new characters added based on a traditional Chinese tale attracted me a lo! I spent most of my time following the new male character, and fell in love with his story. It was an attractive one.

The bar characters are very interesting to talk to. They are really sensitive to the time they’re in. I tried to talk about some modern things (like the phone) and they all looked confused. Of course, there are much more to explore. Like I said, it was so much fun talking to them. Also, I believe they are somehow part of the story, the story with witchcraft, schemes and violence.

The Choreography

Not too many things are changed, but some dancing movements may be slightly adjusted because of different settings. In my opinion, some of the changed were a little strange, but maybe I was just used to the McKittrick choreography. The overall choreography was as wonderful as the NY version.

And I have to mention: the newly added characters made amazing dancing scenes! I couldn’t get my eyes off them at all. The newly created choreography movements surprised me all the time.

The Costume

McKittrick familiars wouldn’t find it difficult to recognize characters, but their costumes are not exactly the same as those in NY. For example, Lady M’s ballgown had some elements of the Chinese traditional Qipao. Duncan and Malcolm’s suits killed me every time I saw them, they were fabulous.

The Residents

Just wanna cry out for the excellent performers! Also, I met some former residents of the McKittrick Hotel, and even former cast of The Drowned Man. It was like people who lived only in others’ description suddenly became alive in front of me. It was a dream coming true, and the dream was-with no doubt-a wonderful one.

(Steven Apicello and James Finnemore were perfect OMG!)

(Too bad that I didn’t get the chance to see Olly Hornsby-Sayer. I’ve always wanted to see him)

Oh, have I mentioned that McKinnon recently changed its outdoor decoration? Here are some pictures I took

And their posters

And my “I went to the McKinnon!” pictures

(Yes I was allowed to drink in China lol)

My McKinnon trip this year has ended but it’s never an end. I would like to visit it again whenever I have the chance, and I want to tell everyone who hasn’t seen SNM Shanghai: Go see it!

#sleep no more #sleepnomore #sleepnomoreshanghai #mckinnonhotel #麦金侬酒店 #不眠之夜

[sillyfudgemonkeys]

Im curious as to why you hate Makoto for ripping of p3pfemc's looks but consent to Royal-chan for the same thing? ( I know you hate Makoto for a lot of other reasons, like her personality and such, but it seemed like you disliked her since prereveal/release?) If Royal chan ended up being a completely unrelated character to femc, will your opinion of her change ? (no hate really, i jst wanna know. \V/m )

It's no prob! In all honesty I didn't even think about this kind of question, but the answer came right away, so I guess time for a not so deep reflection.

So like full stop, if Poniko isn't connected to the FeMC and it's just Atlus messing with me, yeah I'mma be PISSED. Will I rip on her looks like no tomorrow? Maybe, depends on how it’s handled (like how bad they burn me, and even then I might wait for a spinoff cause they might go into the connection there rather than Royal). I think it's obvious I went harder on Makoto because I don't like her for other reasons, and so any small thing about her annoys me (tbh Yusuke's design annoys me too, but not as bad cause....I kinda just don’t care about him and who he’s copying as much, but I'll get to that in a bit)

Anyway I think we need some historical context, because I think it’s important. When Makoto (and Yusuke) where first shown......FeMC had been ignored for A LONG time. We had a non-canon play (which no one really talked about), and that was it. No game related stuff, not even featured in the game where people were getting ripped out of timelines. FeMC were BURNED. I’ll be honest, when Yusuke appeared......While the parallels between P2 were obvious (not just with him) he reminded me of Minato as well. It annoyed me we had to have the token blue hair character since the rule had been made since the P3 era (kinda enforced with some black haired characters from P1/2, combining P2 games together that is, if you want to include them), Atlus said they’d be trying new things..... but like....whateves. But my association with him as Minato increased....when Makoto came along. 

Ngl I wasn’t pleased with the reveal of the last three girls (even didn’t like Haru, for ironically now what I love as an alt rewrite for her as, as I thought she’d be a mean and person full of herself due to calling herself ‘beauty thief’....Yeah all types of crazy here, I do love sweet Haru tho. And the reason for my opinion changing on the alt non-canon personality rewrite is just I.....see the appeal in it for the group dynamic now, while at the time I was afraid of disliking any of the characters or having them be disliked by the fandom.....which big laugh now haha :’D .....I want my happy P5 self back ;w;). Anyway back to the three girls, ngl one of the reasons I wasn’t happy was how they just dumped 3 more characters on us (too big a cast so can they handle it?, silly has to do more VA videos, I want the smaller cast back oh god don’t screw this up, and so on and so on). As for the characters, while Haru’s appearance in the trailer mislead me on her personality (for whatever reason)..... I just.....there was something about Futaba and Makoto I didn’t like. Futaba just rubs me all the wrong ways for reasons I can’t describe for back then (maybe the fact she looked like she’d be a troll and she kinda is), but Makoto it was clear...... She was ripping off FeMC’s look. The brown hair and red eyes.....the fact that Yusuke looked like Minato.....it felt like they were trying to draw them as expies of the P3MCs. And it pissed me off. I didn’t want an unrelated character look and remind me of the FeMC, I wanted FeMC herself! Why are you stealing her look????? And while some FeMC saw this and rolled with it as a joke (Hamu/Minty/Shin dressing up as Makoto/Yusuke/Goro to get into P5), other’s didn’t know who the FeMC was and thus.....didn’t see the blatant expy/rip off design. Seeing people be like “her character design is so original and cute and blah blah blah”.....it annoyed me....obviously (it didn’t help she grew in popularity doing absolutely nothing too, so initially it was all about her looks, and then I’ve been told a lot of her fans, at least male, has been mostly them saying the like her design and her hair and her eyes, and no everyone who likes Makoto is an FeMC fan so....yeah.....I mostly hear how it’s just about her design so I’m very focused on that in regards to her specifically BECAUSE of the fans). And yeah I know it was a bit petty/shallow reason, but I didn’t outright hate her atm, she was stepping on my toes badly but I was holding out till the game (where it finally cemented my hate for her, and now I legit hate her for petty, shallow, deep, and complex reasons). And lordy lord lord, it did not help Makoto’s name was Makoto, because that was a name some FeMC fans gave Hamuko (cause Makoto Yuki was the closest ‘canon’ name we’d get to P3MCs, and some people adopted it for both MCs cause it was gender neutral, so Niijima coming along and taking THAT away sucked ass, and I know different kanji, it still sucked tho). It just....felt like Atlus was spitting in FeMC fan’s face..... But anyway, I kept it in....for about....2ish years. Even when I was trying to stay positive.......and even when I was slowly starting to come out with negative opinions. I tried to keep it in. 

Finally I decided to make it framed as a joke, because I started to see Makoto ripping off more characters than just FeMC (FeMC, Aika, and Naoto in the detective novel to be precise, but what got the ball rolling was realizing that it was Aika who Makoto ripped the hair and motor vehicle from with the FeMC’s color scheme). That’s where my brain started going other places than just being restricted to FeMC, and I started being more critical of Makoto’s design outside the FeMC (tho that still burned me). Because, imo, it’s not original, it annoyed me people would say she was original when she was really just a Frankenstein rip off of other characters (other loved characters, FeMC and Aika were pretty popular in their own right). It only continued to cement in my mind that....anything ‘original’ about Makoto was a farce, she just copies while the original gets left behind.

Tldr; FeMC had been snubbed for years, along comes two design expies that remind you of P3MCs (3 if you wanna include Goro/Ken but Goro looks different enough imo), Makoto is named Makoto (a name some used for FeMC), and Makoto is praised for her design for being original and blah blah blah when it’s not (for multiple reasons besides the FeMC, kinda more the fans reactions fault but I was already having design issues so it just bugged me more when they’d say these things). So yeah it felt like Makoto stole aspects of the FeMC, and it’s not like FeMC has a lot for herself, which really just stepped on my toes. Combined that with legit hating the character when I finally get to see her in action (and it’s because of her actions and writing that I hate-hate the character, but prior to that it was just her stepping on my toes while trying to keep an open mind into liking her), the stuff said before gets amplified more than before.

But months later, after the first post of me ripping on Makoto for taking FeMC and Aika’s design (tho my later posts were in drafts I just didn’t post them till later), something amazing happened on Aug 4th. FeMC finally came back to us. And holy shit obviously I was happy, but it doesn’t dismiss the fact I was aware of how much of design rip off/expy Makoto was, and it wasn’t just FeMC anymore. But gdi if the fact that the FeMC wasn’t being ignored anymore didn’t change the outlook for me as an FeMC fan. FeMC was back, she’s loved, care was put into her character in PQ2, just.....skdfalf;a so happy ;w; But also so hopeful, she was acknowledged again, she had been cut from the 20th anniversary event in official art, and that hurt us, but now she’s back back. And she was a main character in PQ2.....which leads to you questioning, what next? 

Which brings us to Poniko, the one post hopeful outlook. Obviously she’s not starting in the same place as Makoto. Poniko has been revealed post-PQ2 FeMC....which means Atlus isn’t ignoring Hamuko (in fact a lot of the creators were stating they WANTED her back), we know the creators do love Hamuko. There’s also the fact.....Poniko looks less like an expy like Makoto (who imo looks like Soejima trying to emulate Kaneko’s art style, esp the eye shape, same with Yusuke too). Poniko? It goes beyond ripping off a design, she looks like she’s almost fully lifted from Hamuko, it just looks like Hamuko wearing a different outfit. Just straight up copy and paste. And would I have been pissed if she was revealed alongside Makoto? Maybe, or I might be theorizing that she is Hamuko herself like now (tho I think it’d get more push back due to Hamu being in Atlus’ basement for so long so it just being claimed as delusional and unlikely), or both (and then pissed when it’s revealed it’s not Hamuko). It’s just....she looks SO MUCH like Hamuko it can’t be a coincidence, and after PQ2 it feels less like one as well. Just.....the posture, the cinematic parallels, the hair color, the eye color, the eye shape, the eyelashes, the face structure, the way she stands.....Poniko just screams “I AM Hamuko” not “I just look like her because.” And it helps that other people in the fandom also see this too, some are hoping she’s a new person, but it seems people at least acknowledge that very obvious similarities between Hamuko and Poniko (while that didn’t really happen with P5 with Hamuko/Makoto). 

And....tbh I feel like I might sound like I’m splitting hairs (at least with the words I’m using). And it might sound weird that I think Makoto ripped off enough Hamuko it pissed me off, but Poniko just.....is a copy and paste of Hamuko, just straight up Hamuko in a different outfit and hairstyle but it doesn’t. But it’s the historical context I think that sheds that light. And the fact Poniko might just BE Hamuko, and so it’d make sense if that was the case for them to look like each other (while it doesn’t make sense for Makoto to look like Poniko). 

I guess it also helps that I personally had the headcanon Hamuko and Minato weren’t related (just strangers on the bridge in two separate cars), and they both survived the bridge accident but one became the leader of SEES and the other went on to live and do their own thing (until maybe a spinoff game pulls them back in). And while I.....well recalling it now I considered a reincarnation once in a hc scenario (opted for time travel forward cause that makes sense 8U I won’t go into it I had my reasons 8U), but looking at the 1st year symbol on Poniko (and reincarnation in other MegaTen works, I mean c’mon reincarnation is in the title) it feels plausible. And it works for Poniko because of the time the incident and the time to be reincarnated takes place (1999 being the accident and April 1 2000-April 2 2001 being the time frame she was born), which wouldn’t ever work for Makoto because she was born in 1998 (so even if I HAD considered Makoto it wouldn’t have worked, esp since they never tell us she jumped grades, it’s not possible....and while I’m all for hc and grey areas, this is something that WOULD be explicitly told because it’s not common in Japan and Atlus has been explicit about characters not in the ‘right’ grades before, just an fyi there 8U). 

I dunno I feel like there’s distinct clear reasons that I can fit them into separate categories. And yeah if Poniko isn’t Hamuko I’mma be burned too, BUT I’mma wait till a spinoff post-Royal before I get pissy.....cause I don’t expect clear answers to other past games in another game’s mainline entry (I only expect shallow shoutouts tbh). So yeah, just so you know where the deadline for my expectations are. 

[heta-stuff-2]

Dating ____ Would Include [Nordics] ♥︎

Iceland - Emil Steilson

- You could be literally married, and he’d still blush every time you kissed him.

- Mr Puffin loves to tell you embarrassing stories about Emil. You love it, but poor Emil goes crazy every time.

- Emil still has nightmares. He never mentions them and gets particularly upset if they’re brought up. If you turned a blind eye to them, he’d be very grateful.

- He’ll start off awfully shy, but once he becomes comfortable enough around you, he’ll shower you in little kisses and hugs.

- His kisses never last long, but they’re always sweet and meaningful.

- Once he’s super comfortable, he’ll begin calling you “elskan mín” [my love, my darling]

- Emil is always worried that Lukas’ overprotective tendencies would scare you away. However, if he approves of you, Lukas would back off a little bit and give you both space

- He’s used to being the youngest and the shortest. If you’re younger or shorter than him, you will never hear the end of it.

- But if you’re older or taller than him, he’ll get pissed off every time you mention it.

- He hates being sick more that anything. If he’s ever got an illness, be prepared to have to deal with a mean, sleep-deprived, whiny 5-year-old boyfriend.

- However mainstream or niche your hobbies are, Emil is impressed by every single one of them.

- Emil’s idea of a date is often Netflix marathons with tons of blankets snacks. He’s down to watch almost anything as long as he can hold you close.

- He tends to bottle his emotions up. If he’s ever feeling down, you won’t be able to tell at first glance. However, if you know Emil well you’ll easily notice the dullness in his gaze and his scrunched-up frame. It’ll be very hard to coax him into opening up, though.

- However, he’s very attune to your emotions and can always sense how you’re feeling, no matter how well you conceal it.

- Emil pretends to hate it when you give him affection. If you try to hug or kiss him he’ll act all flustered and annoyed, but secretly he absolutely adores the attention.

Norway - Lukas Bondevik

- Taking long, long walks in nature is when you’ll see Lukas really come to life. He seems to perk up and become chattier when he’s away from the hustle and bustle of the city.

- Behind his shy facade, Lukas is surprisingly talkative with those he trusts. Be prepared to listen to all the random facts he’s gathered over the years.

- He 100% tells his trolls everything about you. They’re like a family to him.

- Lukas likes spoiling you. He’s always coming home with random gifts that reminded him of you.

- If you want to date Lukas, you have to be alright with comfortable silences. Sometimes his social-battery burns out and he needs total silence for a while.

- He loves to cook, but he’s not very good at it. If his s/o was good at cooking, he’d shyly watch them until they asked him if he wanted to help.

- Meeting your family would be absolutely terrifying for him and he’d make excuses to try and get out of visiting them. However, when he does meet them, he’s perfectly fine and calm, and your parents would have no idea he was so anxious.

- Surprisingly, Lukas would have a preference for extroverts. He’s painfully shy and would lean towards a s/o who can keep a conversation going and help him break out of his shell a bit. Just don’t drag him to huge parties with lots of strangers…

- It would absolutely amazing for Lukas if you got along with Emil.

- Lukas isn’t fond of throwing pet names around carelessly. He’d probably call you by a nickname of your first name at first. Once you’ve been in a committed relationship for a long time, though, he will refer to you as “min kjære” [my dear]

- If you wanted to get a cat, Lukas would 100% approve, no questions asked. He absolutely adores cats oh my god. You’d go to the shelter looking for one, and come back with about five. His favourite cats are fluffy ones - Norwegian forest cats are his favourite, of course.

- Dogs are a different story. He’s secretly terrified of dogs (although he won’t let you know that) and it would take a lot of coaxing to get him to agree. However, he’d probably warm up to the puppy straight away and it would become his baby. He’d end up loving it. He would prefer smaller dogs until he got used to them, though.

- Lukas shows most of his love for you through simply asking you how your doing. Even little things such as “how was your day?”, “did you sleep well?”, and “did you eat?” are ways in which Lukas is showing his love for you.

- When it comes to physical affection, Lukas is very, very shy. You’ll be the one initiating the vast majority of hugs, kisses, hand-holding, and any other affectionate actions. However, he absolutely adores affection - especially cuddling. If you do initiate a cuddle, he’ll hold you as tightly as he can and bury his face in your soft hair.

- He’ll never tell you this, but he still sleeps with a stuffed animal. It’s a really old but pristine pink bunny. He keeps it well-hidden, but you ever mentioned it he’d get super flustered and embarrassed.

Denmark - Mathias Køhler

- Mathias absolutely adores PDA. If his s/o likes it too, he’d be absolutely ecstatic.

- Whether you’ve been dating for days or married for years, his passion never dies out. For Mathias, he falls in love with you every single day.

- He hugs you from behind, and if you’re shorter than him he’ll rest his chin on your head.

- Kisses you at every single opportunity. And everywhere on your body. Your hands, your lips, your cheeks, your nose, your forehead, your neck, anywhere he can get at.

- Mathias leans towards exciting dates - think amusement parks, roller skating, winter sports, and super-competitive bowling. He loves to be constantly active and thrives off adrenaline, so you’ll see the best of Mathias in circumstances where he gets to jump about.

- If you’re ever feeling sad, Mathias will be prepared with a specially-built pillow fort, two mugs of hot chocolate, and a ton of your favourite films.

- Completely unrelated; he’s amazing at building pillow forts for some reason? Like, his forts will be tall enough for you to stand in, and they’ll be super stable - you could spend all day in one. You always ask him what his secret is but he’ll never tell.

- He loves to bake, and you will be his Personal Taste Tester.

- Also, he gives you treats at every occasion. Birthday cake, Christmas cinnamon rolls, Easter hot cross buns, and sometimes just “hi [y/n] I made too many Danish pastries do you want 16 of them?”

- Pet names start pretty quickly in the relationship, with “min prinsesse” [my princess] and “min skat” [my treasure] being his favourite terms to use.

- He likes to wind you up by trying to get you to pronounce Danish tongue twisters, and then crying with laughter when you fail. [Unless your Danish. If that’s the case, he’d see how fast you could say them.]

- Mathias would never say no to a pet. He seems to prefer dogs, but that’s only because they match his energetic personality. He especially loves big, active dogs. He wouldn’t say no to a cat, but it would be hard for him to leave the cat alone sometimes. He’d get used to it eventually.

- Mathias is one flirty boy oh lord. He’s always yelling some kind of pick up line down you ear - yikes.

- Sometimes Mathias gets really restless and rowdy. This could potentially irritate his s/o and they should be aware of this.

- Please, please, please enjoy physical activities such as sport. You don’t have to be any good at it, but Mathias adores sport and if you enjoy it too, he’d love to spend time doing sports with you.

Sweden - Berwald Öxenstierna

- Berwald is a man of few words, but he loves to write heartfelt, poetic letters to express his love for you. He used to hide them, but one day you found them, so nowadays he just hands you them directly.

- He loves woodworking. He also loves you. The result? Lots of handmade wooden gifts from Berwald.

- If you were patient with Peter and Erling, he’d really appreciate it.

- You find post-it notes all around the house with silly little puns and doodles on them.

- “You’re my significant otter” “I have so mushroom in my heart for you” “I love you a latte”

- If he ever has to go away on nation duty, he will call you as much as possible. He’s addicted to your voice.

- Berwald gives the best hugs. He’ll hold you tight and run his fingers trough your hair as he rests his chin on your head.

- You will be the one to initiate kissing. No doubts about that.

- But after a kiss Berwald will press his forehead against yours and whisper sweet nothings.

- He likes to hold your hand a lot, but finds it hard to initiate anything more than that.

- He calls you a lot of Swedish pet names, but “mitt hjärta” [my heart] is his favourite.

- Sleeping in the same bed as Berwald is almost perfect. He’s silent, still, and sleeps like a baby. The only issue is his size - he’s so tall that he practically fills most of the bed aha.

- Berwald gets super jealous, super easily. In his mind you’re way too good for him, so he’s prone to get jealous over the smallest of things.

- What he lacks in words he makes up in actions. He’s always doting on you to show his love - wether that’s

- If you’re dating Berwald, you’re his best friend. Nobody comes before you.

Finland - Tino Väinämöinen

- For Tino, Christmas [and all of its celebrations] begins on the 1st of November. Good luck.

- Tino’s chatty, but he doesn’t really mind whether his s/o is an introvert or extrovert. As long as you’re happy to put up with his constant rambling, he’s content.

- Hanatamago will be weary of you at first, but quickly warm up to you.

- He calls you his “rakas” [love]

- Laughter will be a core value in your relationship. He loves a good laugh and he’s do best with a s/o who will appreciate his sense of humour.

- If you’re ever sick, he will wrap you up in a blanket and put reruns of the Moomins on whilst he gives you your medicine.

- He enjoys teaching you random Finnish words as a joke, but is really impressed once you remember and begin to use them.

- He truly is a sweetheart. You’re on his mind 24/7 and he loves to compliment you. He constantly dotes on you - akin to a mother - and is prone to spoiling you. No matter what he’s doing, he’s always thinking about you.

- He loves cuddling his s/o. Big spoon, little spoon, he doesn’t really care. As long as you’re pressed up tight against him and he can hold you close, Tino’s happy.

- Tino tends to get insecure at times - particularly at night. He’d appreciate a s/o who would understand and comfort him as opposed to mocking him.

- He’s super sweet, really, but if somebody hurt you, they’ll be taught a lesson. [A lesson that may or may not result in hospitalisation.]

- Please, please, please enjoy saunas and hot tubs. They’re Tino’s absolute favourite places on earth and he’d love to take his s/o to one.

- Bonding with the other Nordics would be essential for anybody who wants to date Tino. He cares deeply about his family and would find it extremely upsetting if his s/o and family didn’t get along.

- Be prepared to receive tons of texts, Snapchats, and phone calls when you guys are apart. Deep down, he has a dead of being forgotten and this is his way of dealing with that. He also does it because seeing your replies genuinely make his day.

- Tino loves winter and will happily partake in any snow or Christmas-themed activities with his s/o. Be it baking, snowball-fighting, snowman-making, skiing, or anything of the sort. He just loves the cool snow.

#aph #hetalia #aphnordics #hetalianordics #aphiceland #hetaliaiceland #aphnorway #hetalianorway #aphdenmark #hetaliadenmark #aphsweden #hetaliasweden #aphfinland #hetaliafinland

[lover-of-gore-and-rainbows]

IRKEN Biology

*Everything that is listed below is (based on in some parts) canon evidence I’ve gathered from my many, many viewings of the show or things Jhonen Vasquez confirmed himself. You may already know some of the things I list. I include a couple of personal headcanons of mine too and I will add them where they’re relevant and say which they are.

-Shades of pink, red, and purple are the most common eyecolors for IRKENs to have. IRKEN eyes are NOT compound or they would’ve been drawn that way like Jhonen’s done with some of the insects on the show. Related Headcanon: Certain eyecolors like green or blue are more common in certain areas of Irk and are pretty rare anywhere else, though IRKENs can have almost any eyecolor. IRKEN eyes are similar to human eyes, like they have the same parts like an iris and a pupil, except an IRKEN’s entire eye is the same color as their iris’s color, making them appear to have no pupil or iris. 

-Not sure if it was a coloring error, but IRKENs appear to have varied tongue colors? I remember Tak having a slightly different colored tongue than ZIM and in one of the comics, there’s an IRKEN named Poki who has a purple tongue instead of a burgundy tongue like ZIM.

-IRKENs likely don’t have nails. My headcanon on this is that they have small claws made of bone or some other hard material on the tips of their fingers UNDER their skin. Thankfully, they do NOT grow, that would stretch the skin out over time and they’d be unable to be cut and would be very painful I imagine. The default length varies with each IRKEN and the claws aren’t usually strong or sharp enough to use in combat or climbing like you might expect.

-IRKENs might be able to run on all fours, or at least ZIM can (from unaired episode Ten Minutes to Doom, near the end of the script).

-A reason they favor tall leaders is maybe because it may be partially left over from whatever animal their ancestors were (some of the original DNA used to create IRKENs) because lots of animals look for the biggest member of a species to obey or mate with and tend to not be interested in smaller mates.

-IRKENs don’t have a liver, spleen, or gallbladder. Their stomach is capable of doing the jobs of those organs itself.

-Headcanon: Their lungs don’t show up on some x-rays due to some material they’re made of (reason why lungs aren’t visible in ZIM’s x-ray from Dark Harvest).

-They do not have nipples but are still pretty close to be classified as mammals because they’re warm blooded (proven in Dark Harvest when the nurse take’s ZIM’s temperature and says he’s normal) and they have hair: their eyelashes. And, that one joke drawing of ZIM with nipples at the end of one of the comics was not canon, just, well a joke done by a guest artist. ZIM’s been shown naked on the actual show (Parent Teacher Night) and he did not have nipples.

-IRKENs actually have a nose; their nostrils are covered by a thin, permeable layer of skin that allows them to still be able to smell and breathe. 

-IRKENs don’t have navels (belly buttons) because they’re artificially created (duh!). They also don’t have reproductive organs.

-The antennae of IRKENs are not used for hearing like you would expect; the antennae are used for feeling vibrations (Battle of the Planets), expressing emotions, and for aesthetic purposes and are not jointed like an insects’ antennae. IRKEN’s earholes are in the same place as human’s (The Wettening, Plague of Babies, and comic issue #4), except like their nostrils, they are covered by thin, permeable skin that allows them to hear while also keeping dirt out. Headcanon: Maybe IRKEN antennae can detect changes in air flow and pressure, like how cats use their whiskers to navigate around obstacles in the dark using the air currents that move around them and can tell when storms/tornadoes are coming by the changes in air pressure.

-The reason IRKEN teeth have a slight red-pink tinge is because their teeth have extra blood vessels and nerves inside to help them stay attached in the gums, but also showing through the teeth’s enamel. Jhonen has stated a really long while back that IRKEN teeth are made of stiff, hardened flesh instead of bone, but I’m not sure about this because: 1. Jhonen can be kinda flakey and a bit of a troll, so he may have changed it by now since it was such a long time ago, and 2. IRKENs have been shown to have gums, so why would they need them if their teeth are also made of flesh? Gums are flesh too. So if the teeth were made of flesh, they should just be attached in the mouth without gums cuz flesh growing out of flesh doesn’t make sense, which is why I’m sticking with the idea that the teeth are bone instead.

-IRKEN blood is a clearish-pink color (stated by Jhonen, during an interview I believe), but is a bit darker in color and more opaque when still inside the body and unexposed to oxygen, like how human’s blood is slightly a darker red inside the body. IRKEN blood was originally supposed to be green, but Jhonen changed it to its current color early on.

-IRKENs are burnt by Earth’s rain because of all the pollutants in it; rain evaporates from the ocean, which is full of garbage, chemicals, and toxins and IRKENs aren’t used to all those chemicals because Irk’s oceans and overall environment is cleaner. ZIM has come in contact with water on many occasions, it’s just the dirty water like rain that hurts him.

-IRKEN’s faces do not look like those of the grey aliens or they would’ve been drawn that way like how Jhonen’s actually drawn grey aliens on the show (refer back to NanoZIM if you don’t remember). IRKENs have TONS of variety in their face, head, and eye shapes and are pretty human-like in that way.

*Extra, Unrelated Note!: The canon spelling of ZIM and IRKEN is in all capital letters because according to Jhonen: “IRKENs are annoying”.

#invader zim #biology #canon #headcanons #anatomy #comics #jhonen vasquez #irken #irken biology #irken body #iz #irken anatomy #reblog

[kitsunerokko]

watched the kamen rider ex-aid another ending direct-to-video specials because i heard they were bad and i wanted to satisfy my bile fascination

brave & snipe: holy shit this movie is one of the most misogynist things i’ve ever seen from kamen rider (and i’ve seen a lot of that shit in KR unfortunately) and also FUCK YOU TAIGA FOREVER!! I SEE YOU LEARNED FUCKING NOTHING. Character development, what’s that????

para-dx with poppy: yuya takahashi (writer of both the series & these movies) & and nobuhiro suzumura (director for this trilogy) have issues which are especially prevalent whenever dr. yaotome or masamune is part of a scene. also the bugvisor’s slash sound gets VERY annoying if it’s constantly used like it is in the key battles here.

genm vs lazer: so this one is the least bad of the three and honestly i’d almost go as far as to say it’s decent... if not for 1) you have to watch the other two pieces of shit to get the plot of this one and 2) this one really puts forth the theme of death and gets the viewer (or at least me) to reflect on how yuya takahashi treats death in all of ex-aid’s canon, which is to say, seemingly tries to have it both ways “death is serious” and “death can be undone surprisingly easily for drama and/or hope”. what gets me about this trilogy is how characters who were (seemingly) perma-killed in the series are revived for these movies only to all be perma-killed AGAIN (until i guess the next time toei tries to milk ex-aid)

also: it’s been 2 in-universe years since the end of the tv series and yet the NO ONE has revived ANY OF THE DELETED CIVILIANS despite like KIRIYA & KUROTO EXISTING AS REVIVED PEOPLE and the only explanation i can think of that lines up with these movies’ plots is “existing as data beings and not human is not good enough”. yet like... the two revived deleted people are obviously still living and interacting just fine and if being a doctor is about restoring people’s smiles as the main theme of the series I’D THINK MOST THE FAMILIES WOULDN’T CARE WHETHER THEIR LOVED ONES ARE RESTORED AS DATA BEINGS IF DATA BEINGS CAN INTERACT WITH THE WORLD COMPLETELY NORMALLY ANYWAY (of course at the very end oh hey they perfected full human body revival conveniently quickly i fucking guess but haven’t gotten around to restoring any civilians yet)

(also unrelated to criticism, but i noticed the suits tend to be the stunt version even in close-ups instead of using the hero version like the show usually does. if you look at the visors they have the tell-tale holes+some details like the back armor looks noticeably “soft material-ed” i wonder if this was done to save time by not having to coordinate what shots to get done during which suit version due to the smaller audience for these.)

#media #kamen rider #kamen rider ex-aid #kr exaid spoilers #in my last note im going by what terminology i've heard before where stunt version means what it sound slike and hero version means like the #the hero version means the suit designed to look good for non-action close-ups which means little to no eye holes & sharper details #long post #very long post #all caps

[mamaduck82]

Writer’s Block - Chapter 4

 The inside of the cabin was simplistic, yet efficient enough for the purpose of camping with a small family. The entryway where Alex had so eloquently fell flat on her ass had led right into a combination living room and kitchenette. There was a tiny sink, some cabinets stocked with mismatched camping mugs and dishware, a waist high fridge and a table just big enough for four, that was handcrafted from unfinished oak. The walls and floor weren’t bark covered like the outside, instead a natural oak coloring took over the entire room, causing walls, floorboards, and counters to blend. The cast iron, wood burning stove sat to the right of the entry way and in front of it sat a deep red and off-white plaid sofa bed that looked as though it were picked up at someone’s curb on garbage day.

On the opposite wall, next to the fridge were two doors. The first led to a tiny bathroom, shroud in seventies style forest green tile that had barely enough space to fit a toilet and a sink. A semi-rusted shower head at the top of the wall over the mirror clued her in that bathroom itself was the shower; the drain grate in front of the toilet confirming her assumption. The second door led to a room with a full-sized bare mattress atop an oak bed frame, matching end tables sitting on either side. In the far corner of the room sat an out of place, large crossbow with three green feathered bolts attached to it.

She flicked the switch and the overhead light burned brightly for a moment before the filament popped and the brightness faded, leaving here once again in the dimly lit room. She stared off to the side, as if to break the fourth wall of reality with an exasperated smirk towards an invisible camera.

Of course this is how this is week is going to go, she thought, flicking the light switch back to its off position as she left the room and headed back into the kitchen. She grabbed her duffel bag off the counter and pulled her laptop and its respective charger out and placed it on the side of the dining table facing the window. She plugged it in and watched as the green charging indicator light on the side began to flash, lettering her know that at least the most important accessory to her trip was going to be functional.

She headed into the bedroom again, her eyes narrowing in the darkened room towards the mattress. She could still see the colorful stains decorating the outside of the old sack of springs and fluff in the low light of the bedroom. There were no linens or pillows. She looked at where she was meant to rest her head with disgust. She would rather sleep either in the ‘fuck knows what lies beneath the cushions’ sofa bed or outside in one of those Adirondack chairs and take her chances with the wildlife before she let any part of her body come into contact with any part of the dried, unknown fluids on the mattress. She dropped her bag onto the end table nearest to her, unzipped it, and grabbed her black fleece sweatshirt. She flung it across the room to the chair next to her laptop when the lack of a little green light grabbed her attention.

Her anger started to grow at the once seemingly perfect location for inspiration. Even the thrill of the situation earlier with Merle was put on the back burner. She huffed her way outside, grabbing both her sweatshirt and the bottle of whiskey, the crickets and frogs singing their own slow and tormented melody because of the cooler evenings that came with each end of September.

She grabbed a couple of the smaller logs and some dried leaves and sticks that were littered among the wooden mess in the yard, and dropped them into the fire ring, letting them hit the ground with an echoing thud. This momentarily silencing nature’s night time orchestra around her before it came back Fortissimo! as if to continue to push her silent growing frustration into something a little more verbal.

Twenty minutes later, she had a decent fire going, the bottle of whiskey opened sitting in her lap, and her first cigarette dangling between her fingers since arriving at the camp. The darkness had finally began to completely settle in around her, obscuring the view of her surroundings beyond a few feet from where she sat. She listened to the noises around her as she felt herself relaxing, allowing thoughts of what happened earlier to swirl through her head.

She thought of the pangs of desire that she felt when Merle approached her and placed his warm large hand over hers on that doorknob; his mutual, undeniable attraction to her unabashedly displayed in those sexy jeans of his. She stared deeper into the fire thinking about what his hands would feel like holding her hips, her neck, or simply grabbing a handful of her hair and gently, but firmly pulling her against his muscular chest. The heat from the fire wasn’t what was making her skin warm up. The wetness that came from deep within her body made her eyelids droop as she once again squeezed her thighs together, letting out a loud sigh as she stretched her free arm out above her head until she felt a satisfying pull and her muscles began to unwind. She ached to touch herself but had no place to spread out comfortably enough to do so, though the tiny bathroom shower was starting to seem like a decent, viable option. She made a mental note of a need to visit the nearest Walmart-esque type store to pick up some additional necessary supplies to tide her over for the remainder of her stay, including a mattress pad and at least a couple layers of fitted sheets.

Holding the neck of the bottle, she swirled the liquid around, studying the unknown brand name displayed in cursive styled calligraphy in a futile attempt to make it seem fancier. She finally brought the bottle to her mouth, letting the first sting of the amber liquid graze past her lips and down her throat. While tasting fire wasn’t something she had planned to do on this writing excursion, it felt as though this was the answer to her issues right now. She felt the burn to pass down her throat and settle in her belly before taking another longer sip, the burn lessening slightly. She smiled as a warm fuzzy feeling began to crawl across her body. Her pussy was no longer the only body part of hers that tingled.

She felt her reservations begin to slip as sips three and four began to cloud her lustful mind. She thought of the table inside the cabin where next to her dying laptop, her phone sat atop the paper Daryl had given her earlier that evening.

I should really call them and let them know about all the shit going wrong here, she thought to herself as she helped herself to another long sip of the fire juice. I mean, I did pay good money for lodging, not for a who knows what stained mattress, shitty electrical work, and a big strong man to leave me all hot and bothered with no way to get my release!

She rose from her seat quickly, setting the half empty bottle of whiskey to the side of her chair as she sauntered into the cabin under the pretense of having to pee really badly. She walked up to the door, running her fingers along the solid wood grains that hours before she had been firmly pressed up against, pleading with unspoken thoughts to the stranger pinning her down to fuck her. She pushed open the door like he did: left hand on the knob, right hand slightly above where her shoulders reached to, and jerked her knee up, pressing her weight into the unlocked door. The door flung open with the same force as before, this time causing her to fall forward down onto the floor, using her forearms to break her fall. She giggled through the dull ache in her arms as she pressed her cheek to the smooth grain on the floor, inhaling it’s earthy, timber scent before shoving herself back up to a standing position.

She grabbed her phone, forgetting her excuse to be inside was to only use the bathroom. Pressing the home button, the screen shined brightly against the darkness as it came to life in her hand. The picture of her nephew Sammy, the one with the ears that resembled Daryl’s, came into view as she pressed her thumb to the small circle that gave her access to her digital world. She grasped the piece of paper and swayed back out to the chair closest to the contained flames. She pressed the phone icon that opened up a screen that waited for her to input the sequence of numbers that Daryl had scribbled onto the paper for her earlier.

This is only to let them know that there’s some stuff that needs fixing, she thought as she pressed the call button after double checking she had inputted the number correctly. Be nice, say what you need to, and get back to your alone time with this fine bottle of off brand, semi-sweet, molten lava.

The phone rang twice before the click of someone picking up sounded in her ear.

“Hello?” Merle’s gruff voice sounded through the speaker against her ear, seemingly annoyed at whoever was interrupting his evening, which she figured consisted of liquor, pornography, and making a mess out of his own house. Her anger exploded at the curtness of his voice and she forget everything that she had planned to kindly bring to his attention.

“Merle!” Alex voice rang out sharp and loud, the frequency of her voice again hushing the sounds of the night orchestra around her momentarily, her words slightly slurring. “This stupid cabin is fuckin broken and there’s cum all over the bed!”

“The fuck?” he shouted back confused. “Who is-“

She pressed the End Call button on the phone, satisfied with her short, adlibbed response. After sliding the small tab that turned her ringer to silent, she shoved the phone into the front pocket of her sweatshirt. She grabbed the bottle, taking a lengthy drink that drained nearly half of what still remained.

“I wish I had some fucking marshmallows!” she yelled angrily at the unrelenting chirping and croaking noises, as if they were the utter bane of her existence.

#Merle Dixon #Daryl Dixon #Fanfic #Walking Dead Fanfiction #Alexandria #fanfiction

[keikigoodbetter]

I’m going to rant at the void for a minute about my family, mental health, and communication.

I spent most of my day today on the phone with doctors and at the emergency room. My grandma has been having an issue for days that escalated enough that when I went over to check on her at lunchtime I ended up driving her to the hospital. Turns out she has serious blood clots throughout her leg and in her lungs, but is starting treatment and going to be just fine. That’s not what this post is about, though.

Depression runs very prevalently in my family, especially on that side. My cousin, uncle, dad, and grandma have all struggled with it at some point, (also my mom and her relatives, but that’s unrelated to this). Grandpa passed away 5 years ago, and 2 years ago Grandma sold her house in the mountains to move into a smaller place in town and closer to us. I truly think those events had the worst possible impacts on her mental health. Since she moved, I have seen her depression spiral noticeable out of control, which is very distressing and brings me to my main point:

My dad, despite his own experiences and best intentions, does not understand my grandma’s/my depression or how to handle it in an actually useful way.

My depression symptoms/habits and my grandma’s are almost identical, so it was pretty easy for me to notice when she started declining: Unpacking the house or organizing her paperwork is too overwhelming, so after 2 years she still has some things in moving boxes and piles of bills and notes covering the table. Her memory is poor. Around family she starts talking so much that she repeats things because it’s such a relief to have someone that cares to listen to her. She doesn’t eat, she hardly leaves the house, she doesn’t get out of bed until the afternoon but stays up until 3am distracting herself with tv. The amount of these behaviors that my dad has written off as “flakey old woman behavior” is frankly fucking alarming. Especially considering I moved home from college so that he could watch out for when I start to do that same stuff.

After today’s health scare I mentioned to my dad that Grandma is obviously super depressed, and as we’re checking in on her for the next few weeks we’ve gotta try to help her back to being functional. It quickly devolved into him insisting that he noticed and has been telling her the things that she needs to change in order to feel better, and me trying to convey that clearer instructions is not actually what she needs. (It was very familiar ground re: my own depression)

Conversations between my dad and I about mental health just end up feeling like we are talking past eachother. We are having parallel conversations, both trying desperately to reach the same destination, but only managing to pass one another without actually intersecting. It’s so frustrating to be unable to communicate even when we both try.

Trying to explain to him how things are in my brain, what exactly my struggles are, the vortex of apathy that seems to swallow the sun and all my energy along with it, is fucking impossible. Because the way my dad’s brain works is very different than mine. To him, the goal is always to solve problems. He’s a do-er, driven to fix everything (and, therefore, sees everything as fixable if you find the right steps or clever solution). It makes him deeply invested in supporting me and doing everything possible to help me, but it also means he absolutely does not relate to my experience. When things get bad mentally for my dad, it’s anxiety-driven. The dark cloud is made of terror, not apathy; and the way to pull out of the darkness is by making plans and lists and charging at every issue possible until enough stressors have been resolved for things to feel manageable again.

That is not what works for me.

Being told over and over what I need to do - especially when I already know and actively want to - does not change my physical ability to do those things. I get annoyed because it feels like I’m being patronized; he gets annoyed because it feels like I’m ignoring him. Hearing every day that I need to “get motivated” is infuriating because I don’t know how. That’s literally the problem. Not that I’m not trying. He sometimes tries to help by forcing my hand on things - like plowing into tasks that I hadn’t done yet because I didn’t have the emotional energy. He means to make things easier by taking an obstacle out of the way, but all it does is drain me further by expecting me to jump in unprepared. The absolute single fucking worst thing is the few times he purposefully picks a fight in an attempt to “get me engaged about something, even if that’s just being angry with him”. Which obviously does not make the apathy go away like he hopes it will, it just makes me feel even shittier because I don’t want to be mad at him in the first place.

I love my dad so much, and he loves me too. We are both trying so hard to set me up to succeed, and he’s been super supportive during these past few Depression Years. I just wish we could find a way to actually communicate and work together instead of at well-meaning cross purposes. Especially since it looks like that’s going to be important for another member of our family, too..

#*sigh* #don't r/b please #I just needed to put all of this down in coherent words #My life #Mental health #Family #My writing

[poppun-chan]

The Year of Keroro Challenge Update 4 (Yes Sir)

Goodness, even though I mentioned looking forward to this one it took quite a while to write it (this has been a difficult week)in terms of watching I’m almost finished with the first season, actually, one strange thing I noticed was that the valentines episode actually lines up with valentines day. But before we get started Jlucy pointed out to me that the scene from episode 21 with the car is specifically a nod to “Castle of Caliostro” with the drivers being based on two of the main characters and the car being a nod to the Fiat from the movie. Actually I wonder if the writers for the dub had this in mind when they were writing; in the English version the driver mentions he was renting a car because he didn’t want to use his Fiat.

Either way I had planned to wait until there weren’t any text pieces to translate, but I have at least one more of these non-episode specific notes to do before we reach episode 65, so a bit on name origins (The ones for the Human characters will probably be less familiar, but still....)

Keroro-Kero, the noise a frog makes (I’ve always suspected this is actually a really common name)

Tamama-Otamajakushi, meaning tadpole (I really find myself wondering about his family background that his parents gave him a name that assumes he’s going to look like a child for a long time)

Giroro-Giro, the onomatopoeia for glaring at someone/something

Kururu-Kuru, it’s used as an onomatopoeia, a noun, and a verb, either way it refers to something twisting, spinning or turning (which is why his resonance creates a loop)

Dororo-It’s best known as a reference to the Osamu Tezuka manga Dororo, which takes place in the feudal era, it also works as a play on Doro-Doro which is the sound of something dripping

And the plan count:

Serious Plans: K66:16 D66:1 MMK:1 TMM:1

Funding Plans: K66:1

It’s a plan, I Swear!: K66:5 (I’m throwing the sports day mission in here too)

Oh look! Progress!: K66:3 

And the marker board from episode 27:

Episode 22: Now first of all I’ve always enjoyed this episode, the absurdity, the cute break down Tamama has at the end, the completely impractical but still fun plan (actually I think Tamama only comes up with three plans over the course of the entire show and they’re all more or less the same basic concept). Plus the little stealth pun when Natsumi gets angry about the shower; she shouts “Kora!” which is an interjection that can be used as a reprimand, but it’s pronounced similarly to Cola.

Actually, speaking of this part I have to admit I sort of agree with Tamama’s point that Fuyuki could just serve that cake in the fridge instead of making dinner....Actually even the bit about accounting for nutritional balance could sort of be refuted; Baked goods often contain grains and eggs, not always dairy but ice cream and cheese cake covers that, his plan allowed tuna as an exception so that’s meat covered, plus many desserts are made with fruit and there are some made with vegetables (carrot cake, anything with pumpkin in it, corn cake), sure most people would probably either stop eating before this point or simply die trying, but theoretically it IS possible to get normal nutrients that way....Yes I’ve seriously thought about this; there are quite a few characters that can be explained this way.

Finally no discussion of this episode would be complete without bringing up the infamous letter, so I’m going to try and cover this in more depth since I have the luxury of making this a separate note. First of all, it’s written really oddly; everything except the word “leader” is written in katakana which you normally wouldn’t do (hiragana only is a different matter, but in modern times it’s considered a bit childish). One big issue with not using kanji is that it’s much harder to tell what you’re trying to say, plus katakana itself is a bit sticky since some of them strongly resemble each other or other kanji (one relevant to this is katakana ni resembling the kanji for two which is often pronounced the same way). The revealed part admittedly seems phrased a bit simply, but it says “Taichou wa Tamama ni” or “Tamama’s Leader” while the full message is “Taichou wa Keroro ni Makasetamama ni” or “Keroro will be left as the leader” I suppose the closest thing in English would be if the letters were a bit more spaced apart instead of grouped together

And fun fact; Etsuko Kozakura, the woman who provides Tamama’s voice, also did the voice of Puppetmon/Pinocchimon from the original Digimon series. I just thought I’d mention this since I noticed a few....similarities between their management styles (Though Tamama just imprisoned people who crossed him instead of....deleting them)....actually watching the episode and knowing this made me look into Digimon again, did you know one of the newer series has a Puppetmon who is one of the friend Digimon that shows up every now and then? Really. They have his nose grow when he lies (including to himself) and give him some really charming moments....and he shares his English voice with Keroro, hm.

Episode 23: And it’s the clone episode! I have to confess, the bit about the clones not having a star always makes me wish there was a video of the original Keroro singing the song from the Sneetches, the one where the starred Sneetches are roasting marshmallows....I know it’s a strange association to make, but....Come to think of it, I don’t think this was a manga chapter, I’m not completely sure and I know most of the season one episodes were based on the manga, but I know a few stories were anime exclusive and I believe this was the first one, either way it’s hilarious to see Keroro being the responsible one and getting annoyed by the behaviour of his own clones (still, at least there was an easily visible way of telling them apart, which is better than what happened with Pinkie Pie, some people still theorise that they kept the wrong Pinkie).

Now for a bit of a sticky area, especially since I’ve been putting up with my grandfather’s preoccupation with this particular time for most of my life, but I noticed something a bit odd. Even now, a lot of people seem to be weirded out by the “clone salute”, but they actually switched two of the syllables in the Aliens’ name for Earth because the original term from the manga was associated with the Sino-Japanese wars (I’m not sure which, there’s two major ones and a bunch of smaller conflicts, but the second big one was during the world war) and was banned from television. I’d be curious to find out what it is that makes one war reference more acceptable than another (maybe because calling Earth “Pokopen” alludes to much longer standing conflict with a specific country? I have to admit I always wondered if the best way of handling “touchy terms” would be to find a positive, unrelated use for them so they take on a new meaning and the old one eventually falls out of use; you often hear about the power of words, but it’s actually their meanings that have effect rather than the words themselves)

Episode 24: Oh dear it’s 556, I have to admit I’ve never liked this guy (though I will admit, I like the instrumental version of his song on the Christmas album) I know for a lot of people felt the same way with Joriri eventually replacing him, but it didn’t work the same way for me.

Actually, one thing I love about this episode is how when Keroro wonders about the emotions he’s feeling watching 556 fighting “monsters” they immediately cut to Tamama; it’s almost as if the cinematography is saying “Let’s ask your resident expert, shall we?”

Actually I recently looked at the Japanese version of the full character page again, I think there’s one surprising one on there; I know 556 and Labbie are references to Space Sheriff Gaven and a character named Annie from Space Sheriff Shaider, but the character page lists their relationship as Gukyou-Kenmai or “Goofy Older Brother, Wise Younger Sister” which was the original title for a T.V. series called “Otoko wa Tsurai yo” or “It’s tough to be a man” which later became a huge film series of the same title (Often called “Tora-san” after the main character, Torajirou), spanning 48 installments and nearly three decades (only ending when the actor playing Torajiro died). The films followed a similar formula of Torajirou the traveling salesman going home to his sister’s family, walking out after getting into an argument and meeting a distressed young woman in the next town he goes to and offering to let her stay at the family’s sweet shop if she needs it. Eventually this happens and he falls in love with her, but in trying to win her over indavertantly ends up setting her up with another man and ending up disappointed, but putting on a brave face and wishing her the best before journeying to another town in hopes of getting over her and eventually becoming somebody his family can be proud of. 

The first movie was actually made to please fans of the original show who were upset that Torajirou died of a snakebite in the final episode, it also took quite a bit of convincing from the director to get the first movie made. Incidentally, the working title for the original show came from the final caption in another piece Torajiro’s actor played in

Episode 25: And here we have a Nishizawa family quarrel....which is appearently not considered complete unless enough money is spent that you could buy a small town and heavy weapons are nearly used (that’s the second time Keroro’s nearly let to Earth be destroyed only to be stopped at the last moment by the realisation that Earth is the official “Gunpla Planet”). Still there are some nice little moments (though I wonder if they ever did make that video, as long as they cut out the bits where they start to lose it could work)

Episode 26: Sports Day fun times ♪ Actually, has anyone ever noticed that whenever a show wants to slow down a sports day they usually target the scavenger hunt? Though now that I think about it, the cruel irony of all this is if they hadn’t tried to help, Aki probably would have made it in time to run in the race (or at least, the combined effect of accidentally speeding up the 100 meter dash and ruining some of the manuscripts). Though I do admit that I miss the parts from the manga where Momoka is running a race and the newspaper article at the end “Freak in tights crashes sports fest” I find it strangely hilarious the way they worded it. Also it’s amazing the things that become relevant later on, let’s see who remembers what I’m talking about.

Episode 27:  First of all, I love the way Keroro offhandedly compares renewing interest in the invasion to reviving the dead (He already knows it’s a lost cause), it’s especially interesting considering they come across the remnants of a failed invasion later on. Actually I sort of want to see a spin off about those past invaders; not necessarily a big, dramatic, action-y thing mind you, honestly I expect it would be more or less the same thing as with Keroro but in ancient times, perhaps with the human characters being the ancestors of the current ones.

Also they use the pun of kaeru meaning both “frog” and “to return” quite a lot in the series. Though I have to admit I can relate to Keroro’s feelings a bit here; all of the women in my family have been quite formidable, especially for their time, and my mother is crusading to change the child welfare system in Canada (even though she’s never been in it) and doing all of these things for political change and I sometimes feel I can’t really measure up to that, even though I don’t plan on going into a related field. Plus because of her work I’m a bit burnt out on people issues, I focus more on environmental ones.

Episode 28: This one was a bit tricky, though I always thought the effect of the cold weather on the Keronians sounded more like windburn than all out frostbite. As for the second part this officially marked the beginning of the odd sort of dynamic of Mois & Kururu, I don’t remember how much it was explored in the show apart from her sometimes being who they went with when they needed a girl to associate with Kururu, though I remember a few moments from the manga that built on it, such as the “Angol Stone” chapter.

#keroro gunso #sgt frog #Year of Keroro Challenge

[itbeatsbookmarks]

(Via: Hacker News)

By:

Linus Torvalds

([email protected]), January 3, 2020 6:05 pm

Beastian ([email protected]) on January 3, 2020 11:46 am wrote: > I'm usually on the other side of these primitives when I write code as a consumer of them, > but it's very interesting to read about the nuances related to their implementations: The whole post seems to be just wrong, and is measuring something completely different than what the author thinks and claims it is measuring. First off, spinlocks can only be used if you actually know you're not being scheduled while using them. But the blog post author seems to be implementing his own spinlocks in user space with no regard for whether the lock user might be scheduled or not. And the code used for the claimed "lock not held" timing is complete garbage. It basically reads the time before releasing the lock, and then it reads it after acquiring the lock again, and claims that the time difference is the time when no lock was held. Which is just inane and pointless and completely wrong. That's pure garbage. What happens is that (a) since you're spinning, you're using CPU time (b) at a random time, the scheduler will schedule you out (c) that random time might ne just after you read the "current time", but before you actually released the spinlock. So now you still hold the lock, but you got scheduled away from the CPU, because you had used up your time slice. The "current time" you read is basically now stale, and has nothing to do with the (future) time when you are actually going to release the lock. Somebody else comes in and wants that "spinlock", and that somebody will now spin for a long while, since nobody is releasing it - it's still held by that other thread entirely that was just scheduled out. At some point, the scheduler says "ok, now you've used your time slice", and schedules the original thread, and now the lock is actually released. Then another thread comes in, gets the lock again, and then it looks at the time and says "oh, a long time passed without the lock being held at all". And notice how the above is the good schenario. If you have more threads than CPU's (maybe because of other processes unrelated to your own test load), maybe the next thread that gets shceduled isn't the one that is going to release the lock. No, that one already got its timeslice, so the next thread scheduled might be another thread that wants that lock that is still being held by the thread that isn't even running right now! So the code in question is pure garbage. You can't do spinlocks like that. Or rather, you very much can do them like that, and when you do that you are measuring random latencies and getting nonsensical values, because what you are measuring is "I have a lot of busywork, where all the processes are CPU-bound, and I'm measuring random points of how long the scheduler kept the process in place". And then you write a blog-post blamings others, not understanding that it's your incorrect code that is garbage, and is giving random garbage values. And then you test different schedulers, and you get different random values that you think are interesting, because you think they show something cool about the schedulers. But no. You're just getting random values because different schedulers have different heuristics for "do I want to let CPU bound processes use long time slices or not"? Particularly in a load where everybody is just spinning on the silly and buggy benchmark, so they all look like they are pure throughput benchmarks and aren't actually waiting on each other. You might even see issues like "when I run this as a foreground UI process, I get different numbers than when I run it in the background as a batch process". Cool interesting numbers, aren't they? No, they aren't cool and interesting at all, you've just created a particularly bad random number generator. So what's the fix for this? Use a lock where you tell the system that you're waiting for the lock, and where the unlocking thread will let you know when it's done, so that the scheduler can actually work with you, instead of (randomly) working against you. Notice, how when the author uses an actual std::mutex, things just work fairly well, and regardless of scheduler. Because now you're doing what you're supposed to do. Yeah, the timing values might still be off - bad luck is bad luck - but at least now the scheduler is aware that you're "spinning" on a lock. Or, if you really want to use use spinlocks (hint: you don't), make sure that while you hold the lock, you're not getting scheduled away. You need to use a realtime scheduler for that (or be the kernel: inside the kernel spinlocks are fine, because the kernel itself can say "hey, I'm doing a spinlock, you can't schedule me right now"). But if you use a realtime scheduler, you need to be aware of the other implications of that. There are many, and some of them are deadly. I would suggest strongly against trying. You'll likely get all the other issues wrong anyway, and now some of the mistakes (like unfairness or [priority inversions) can literally hang your whole thing entirely and things go from "slow because I did bad locking" to "not working at all, because I didn't think through a lot of other things". Note that even OS kernels can have this issue - imagine what happens in virtualized environments with overcommitted physical CPU's scheduled by a hypervisor as virtual CPU's? Yeah - exactly. Don't do that. Or at least be aware of it, and have some virtualization-aware paravirtualized spinlock so that you can tell the hypervisor that "hey, don't do that to me right now, I'm in a critical region". Because otherwise you're going to at some time be scheduled away while you're holding the lock (perhaps after you've done all the work, and you're just about to release it), and everybody else will be blocking on your incorrect locking while you're scheduled away and not making any progress. All spinning on CPU's. Really, it's that simple. This has absolutely nothing to do with cache coherence latencies or anything like that. It has everything to do with badly implemented locking. I repeat: do not use spinlocks in user space, unless you actually know what you're doing. And be aware that the likelihood that you know what you are doing is basically nil. There's a very real reason why you need to use sleeping locks (like pthread_mutex etc). In fact, I'd go even further: don't ever make up your own locking routines. You will get the wrong, whether they are spinlocks or not. You'll get memory ordering wrong, or you'll get fairness wrong, or you'll get issues like the above "busy-looping while somebody else has been scheduled out". And no, adding random "sched_yield()" calls while you're spinning on the spinlock will not really help. It will easily result in scheduling storms while people are yielding to all the wrong processes. Sadly, even the system locking isn't necessarily wonderful. For a lot of benchmarks, for example, you want unfair locking, because it can improve throughput enormously. But that can cause bad latencies. And your standard system locking (eg pthread_mutex_lock() may not have a flag to say "I care about fair locking because latency is more important than throughput". So even if you get locking technically right and are avoiding the outright bugs, you may get the wrong kind of lock behavior for your load. Throughput and latency really do tend to have very antagonistic tendencies wrt locking. An unfair lock that keeps the lock with one single thread (or keeps it to one single CPU) can give much better cache locality behavior, and much better throughput numbers. But that unfair lock that prefers local threads and cores might thus directly result in latency spikes when some other core would really want to get the lock, but keeping it core-local helps cache behavior. In contrast, a fair lock avoids the latency spikes, but will cause a lot of cross-CPU cache coherency, because now the locked region will be much more aggressively moving from one CPU to another. In general, unfair locking can get so bad latency-wise that it ends up being entirely unacceptable for larger systems. But for smaller systems the unfairness might not be as noticeable, but the performance advantage is noticeable, so then the system vendor will pick that unfair but faster lock queueing algorithm. (Pretty much every time we picked an unfair - but fast - locking model in the kernel, we ended up regretting it eventually, and had to add fairness). So you might want to look into not the standard library implementation, but specific locking implentations for your particular needs. Which is admittedly very very annoying indeed. But don't write your own. Find somebody else that wrote one, and spent the decades actually tuning it and making it work. Because you should never ever think that you're clever enough to write your own locking routines.. Because the likelihood is that you aren't (and by that "you" I very much include myself - we've tweaked all the in-kernel locking over decades, and gone through the simple test-and-set to ticket locks to cacheline-efficient queuing locks, and even people who know what they are doing tend to get it wrong several times). There's a reason why you can find decades of academic papers on locking. Really. It's hard. Linus

#IFTTT #Feedly

[mrsteveecook]

I pretended I’m allergic to bees, is it ethical to buy a resume and cover letter, and more

It’s five answers to five questions. Here we go…

1. I pretended I’m allergic to bees when I’m not, and it made things weird

I’m fresh out of college and starting my first job, so I’m already self-conscious about how young and inexperienced I am. I was walking to my car with a few coworkers when I saw a bee on my car door handle. I have always had a fear of bees, so I panicked a little. One of my coworkers gave me a weird look, so I said, “Oh I’m allergic to bee stings and I don’t want to get sick.” Well, the nurse (I work at a school) overheard and now they’re asking for an allergy plan and Epi-pen. I’m not even really allergic! How do I get out of this without it seeming weird?

We’ve all said something weird on the spur of the moment and then later thought, “Why on earth did that come out of my mouth?”

Talk to the nurse privately and say, “I overstated the situation. I’ve been stung before so I’m afraid of it happening again, but I’m not actually allergic. I should have been clearer — I’m sorry for raising any alarm!”

2. Is it ethical to have a service write your resume and cover letter?

Recently it came to my attention that services exist where you can pay someone to put together your resume and cover letter and I wanted to get your thoughts on them. I had never heard of these services before, I’ve only been aware of advice-type services that may help you with things but not where you pay $300 for them to do it for you. Are these type of services common?

A friend of mine recently announced how excited he was to receive his new resume and cover letter for only $300 so now he can start job hunting (he’s looking to change fields after 10 years in his current industry). Another friend and I were shocked he did this which sparked a debate about the legitimacy of these type of services and the ethics behind presenting a resume you essentially bought.

I’m well aware many people need help with their resumes and cover letters. I always use my network of friends and professional acquaintances to provide feedback on my resume whenever I update it, but I put it together 100% on my own.

Resume-writing services are common, although they vary widely in how good they are, and a lot are pretty bad. (More on that here.) I’d be very skeptical of one charging only $300, considering the amount of work that needs to go into drawing resume-worthy accomplishments out of you, to say nothing of the work in then writing them up. But they’re not considered unethical, largely because a resume is primarily about conveying data (your experience and accomplishments).

A service that writes your cover letter, though, is far less common — and it’s unethical and a terrible idea. Your cover letter is supposed to provide a sample of your written communication skills, not someone else’s — and a lot of people who hire would find it hugely problematic if they found out you didn’t write your own letter. (And I strongly suspect these purchased letters are largely crappy boilerplate and aren’t even close to the kind of personalized, tailored letters that are actually effective. As evidence of this, note that they’re having your friend use one letter for all the jobs he applies for.)

3. Coworker stands and crouches during meetings

I’m on a team of eight people and we have a weekly meeting in our bosses office. It’s a little awkward because he only has four chairs in there, so the rest of us bring our desk chairs in. We sit in a semi-circle and go through the weekly topics. It usually takes 45-60 minutes.

This summer we had a new member join the team, the only man, and he won’t bring a chair. Instead, he stands for about half the meeting and then crouches for the rest of the time. It comes across weird and unprofessional to me, but my boss (also male) doesn’t seem to mind. Is this weird? Or am I too sensitive?

Another fun issue, likely unrelated, is this team member doesn’t pay attention to meeting or take notes. Often we have reminders or policies clarified that he immediately forgets. I often catch mistakes from him that I know we went over in the meeting.

It doesn’t sound like a big deal to me. He probably figures there’s no point in dragging a chair in there if he doesn’t mind standing. He shouldn’t do it in a meeting with clients, but it doesn’t seem terribly problematic for a small internal meeting.

The not paying attention is more of a problem but sounds like an unrelated issue … although I wouldn’t be surprised if you’re more annoyed by the standing and crouching than you would be if he seemed more top of things. When people are annoying in one way, anything else they do that’s even mildly annoying can start feeling more frustrating.

4. Is it a red flag to be asked to interview during Christmas week?

I applied to an organization that I’m really interested in that asked what my availability for a phone interview was during the week of the 23rd-29th. I said not Christmas Eve, Christmas day, or my birthday (on the 28th), but most of the options that week would have left me either preparing for my interview on one of those holiday days, or worrying about how my interview went and the potential outcome while trying to celebrate them. Thankfully, the interviewer’s schedule changed and I ended up not having to interview during that week, but I still found it odd.

The organization is not associated with religion or secularism in any way. Like, I might understand if it were a Jewish or Muslim or atheist organization that would probably expect its employees not to celebrate Christmas, but it’s not affiliated at all. Also, interestingly, the office itself is closed during that week. (For what it’s worth, though, there’s nothing in my name, website, or social media to suggest my own religious beliefs or background, so my interviewer wouldn’t have known.)

Still, I’m used to that time of year being seen in the nonprofit world as time off for everyone. Should I consider this a flag of some sort – that it will be indicative of the org expecting people to work during holidays? Or am I just overthinking this/spoiled by past employers?

Lots of businesses are open during Christmas week; it’s not at all uncommon to just close for Christmas day, and many people work some or all of the other days that week. So it’s not inherently a red flag that they suggested dates that week, although it would have been a red flag if you’d said you weren’t available that week because of the holiday and they’d seemed surprised or put out by that.

I’d take it at face value — they asked about your availability that week because they wanted to know your availability that week, and that’s it. (Obviously if you see other signs during the hiring process that indicate they expect people to work unreasonable hours, it might make sense to look at this differently. But on its own, I wouldn’t worry.)

5. When working from home, what expenses should my company reimburse?

I’m going to be offered to work from home full-time after working in an office mostly by myself for the past four years. Are there any things in particular I should be thinking about in terms of negotiations and arrangements? What expenses would be reasonable for me to ask for reimbursement or for the company to pay for? Basically, I’ve thought long and hard about whether working from home would be right for me and I think it will. Now, I want to make sure I am prepared for when the offer is made.

Different companies handle this in different ways, but you can generally expect your company to pay for your computer, any necessary software, phone expenses (at least above whatever you would be paying for your service normally), VPN if necessary, and any equipment you need for work, like a printer and printer paper. Some companies will pay for internet access, but others expect you to have it as a condition of being able to work from home (and on the assumption that you’d have it regardless). Some companies but not all will pay for your home office set-up (desk, chair, filing cabinets, etc.). At some companies it would be fine to expense smaller office supplies, like Post-It notes and pens, and at others it would raise eyebrows (in part because you’re also saving money by working from home and not having a commute, etc.).

And there’s often room to get more things reimbursed when the company has asked you to work remotely; when you’re the one asking for it, it’s seen as a major benefit to you and you’re more likely to be expected to buy your own pens.

If the company offering you the job is one with a lot other remote employees, they likely have a standard policy for what they cover. In that case, I’d start by just asking, “What expenses do you cover for remote workers’ office set-up?”

You may also like:

are professionally done resumes worth it?

if you’re not getting interviews, here’s how to fix your resume and cover letter

my friend fabricated his resume and now wants me to be his reference

I pretended I’m allergic to bees, is it ethical to buy a resume and cover letter, and more was originally published by Alison Green on Ask a Manager.

from Ask a Manager http://bit.ly/2FfAsLJ

[nancygduarteus]

The Gay Men Who Have Lived for Years With Someone Waiting on Their Deaths

Flipping through LGBTQ magazines from the 1980s and 1990s, you can map the trajectory of the AIDS crisis in the United States by looking at the advertisements. Early in the 1980s, as HIV swept through gay enclaves of metropolitan cities, publications like The Advocate collected advertising revenue from gay bars and bathhouses—institutions that New York City tried to shutter in response to the crisis. By the mid ’90s, pharmaceutical companies had taken over the ad pages of magazines like Out and POZ to promote protease inhibitors, a lifesaving class of HIV drugs.

Yet in the midst of the epidemic, a third, oft-forgotten sponsor kept these magazines afloat: the viatical-settlement industry. In a viatical settlement, the holder of a life-insurance policy names a third, unrelated party as the benefactor, in exchange for immediate cash. Brokers for viatical settlements advertised almost exclusively to people living with AIDS, and the industry quickly received a ghoulish reputation: Investing in a viatical settlement was a bet on another’s demise. An imminent death yielded a quicker return.

Brokerage firms now dub these agreements “life settlements,” catering to senior citizens, the terminally ill, and those unable to maintain their policies. But viatical settlements first emerged in direct response to the AIDS crisis. “All my first clients were HIV-positive,” says M. Bryan Freeman, who brokered one of the first settlements for a person living with HIV. “So many wanted to sell their policies and it was easy to advertise into the HIV community.”

A wave of people viaticated their life-insurance policies when confronted with such a gruesome and fatal virus. Some came into enormous sums of cash. Many are alive today because of protease inhibitors. Those who viaticated their policies and continue to live with HIV do so knowing that investors have long waited to collect on their deaths.

The advertisements for viatical settlements in the ’80s and ’90s usually depicted a singular demographic: white men, usually fit or buff, looking perfectly well. “Exercise your options,” reads one advertisement, accompanied by a bodybuilder lifting the world above his head. Some of the ads conveyed a sense of serenity, showing a park bench or a nature scene. Others appealed to the financial concerns stemming from exorbitant medical expenses. One ad in a 1996 issue of The Advocate markets the settlements as “cash infusion therapy,” promising “an immediate cure for one of the most damaging side effects of AIDS ... financial devastation.”

A smaller number of viatical advertisements pictured men on vacation, hanging out on a tropical beach and watching the sun set. “Distant lands to see. Goals to achieve. Spirit to rejuvenate,” reads one advertisement from Legacy Benefits, a viatical-settlement brokerage. The message is clear: Enjoy life now.

Sean Strub’s health was in stark contrast with that of the strapping men in those advertisements when he began viaticating life-insurance policies in the mid-1990s. “I was a skeletal 125 pounds, 6’1”, covered in purple Kaposi’s sarcoma lesions,” he says. “Anyone looking at me assumed I didn’t have long to live.” Strub, a writer and activist, says he viaticated three life-insurance policies, collecting 93 percent of the death benefit on a $150,000 policy, 70 percent on a policy for $300,000, and around 50 percent on a $20,000 policy. He used the money to start POZ magazine.

POZ at first generated much of its revenue through advertising similar settlements to the one Strub had entered into, so he became acquainted with a few people who worked in the viatical industry. “Some were a step from con artists, jumping into an unregulated, emerging, high-profit financial sector,” he says. Many flaunted a get-rich-quick attitude. Strub says he once met a buyer who never consulted doctors about the life expectancy of the policyholders. Instead, according to Strub, the buyer claimed he could “look in their eyes and get a sense of how long they will be around.”

[Debt after death]

The industry did have its bright spots, Strub notes: “There also were people who were great, particularly the brokers, who tried to get as much money for the policyholder as possible and enabled many people to realize a dream—buying home, starting business, whatever—or to significantly improve their last years, months, or days.”

Strub wasn’t the only person who used money from his viatical settlement to start his own business. Henry Scott, an acquaintance of Strub’s, tested positive for HIV shortly after the introduction of protease inhibitors. Scott says he had a $600,000 life-insurance policy, part of his benefits package from working at The New York Times. As is common practice, The Times stopped paying the premiums on Scott’s policy when he left the company. Scott continued to pay his premiums at first, but soon decided to viaticate, as he didn’t have children and his monthly premiums cost $1,000. He later used the money to start West Hollywood Media Company, a hyper-local publisher that covers the West Hollywood neighborhood in Los Angeles.

Once protease inhibitors came to market, the value of an HIV-positive person’s life insurance began to drop. For his $600,000 policy, Scott says he received $167,000—a substantial sum, but a much smaller percentage than Strub had fetched.

Others who viaticated their life insurance policies used the money to buy property. In a 2000 profile in POZ, Cleve Jones, the founder of the AIDS Memorial Quilt Project, describes a gay enclave of Palm Springs as “the town that viatical settlements built ... All these guys who sold their insurance and moved out here to die—now they’re redecorating.”

While viatical settlements awarded life-changing sums, this influx of wealth was not evenly spread among those living with HIV. Those who do not own life insurance often cite the prohibitive costs of insuring themselves. Only people living with AIDS who could afford life insurance, or who had secured it through employment, could leverage this asset. The turn to viatical settlements reflected how wealth has always determined access to HIV treatments. A year’s worth of AZT, the first federally approved HIV drug, cost $10,000 per year when it came to market in 1987. For those who test HIV-positive, cost remains one of the most common barriers to treatment.

When AZT became available, activist groups such as ACT UP, or the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power, of which Strub was a member, branded the drug’s manufacturer, Burroughs Wellcome, as an “AIDS profiteer” to highlight the drug’s exorbitant costs. The practice of viatical settlements literalizes this idea of AIDS profiting. In the viatical industry’s first years, it was often individual investors who purchased stakes in these policies. That demographic later shifted, as detailed by a 1994 article in the New York Times: “As the young industry grows large, insurance companies and big banks are attracted to this obscure corner of the business world previously dominated by free-wheeling brokers and small entrepreneurs operating largely free from scrutiny.”

That an individual, not a collective, might own their life-insurance policies is a bit worrisome for both Strub and Scott. Strub is the mayor of Milford, Pennsylvania, a thousand-person town in which he owns a boutique hotel. “What if they really got annoyed and wanted their money?” he says.

“It’s not hard to find Sean Strub,” Scott quips about his old acquaintance. For his part, Scott says, “I don’t know who owns my policy now. That’s part of the strangeness of it.”

No law stipulates that the purchaser of an insurance policy must notify the original holder. Nor is there is there an easy way for the original holder of a viaticated policy to learn who would benefit from their death. Scott says that in the first years after he viaticated his policy, he often received handwritten cards from the company managing his life-insurance policy. They’d include messages like Hope you’re having a wonderful birthday or Hope you’re doing well, which Scott jokingly refers to as the “Are you dead yet?” letters.

Now, he says, the letters are less personal and less frequent. Twice a year, he has to sign a note confirming that he’s alive and seeing the same doctor.

Strub receives similar letters from Legacy Benefits, the viatical brokerage firm. The wording of these letters is somewhat vague: It’s unclear whether Legacy Benefits actually owns Strub’s life-insurance policy, or if they represent another party.

A recent lawsuit against Legacy Benefits illustrates the complications of an individual owning stake in a life-insurance policy. As the North Bay Business Journal reported, an individual investor named Chris Amberger sued the firm in 2016. He alleged that Legacy Benefits sold him stakes in two life insurance policies in 1998, both of which had been viaticated by people living with AIDS. According to Amberger, Legacy Benefits put the life expectancies for the two policyholders at 18 to 24 months. But by that time, doctors had already been prescribing protease inhibitors for at least two years, and the annual number of AIDS deaths had dramatically dropped, from 50,000 Americans in 1995 to 20,000 in 1998.

Both of the original policyholders lived into this century, and may still be alive. Amberger’s attorney told the North Bay Business Journal that one of the policyholders had their premiums paid by their employer, General Electric, until they retired. Amberger then began receiving bills for the policy premiums and stopped paying in October of 2015, thereby canceling his interest. He sued Legacy Benefits shortly thereafter. The lawyer who represented Legacy Benefits argued that the firm, in its current structure, had no business dealings with Amberger.

Amberger settled for an undisclosed amount this July after the judge dismissed four of the five charges. (Both Amberger and Legacy Benefits did not responded to requests for comment on the case.)

Like Amberger’s persistent policyholders, Strub and Scott survived the most deadly years of the AIDS crisis. Living with HIV for more than 20 years, Scott has never even experienced any of the virus’ symptoms—perhaps to the chagrin of whoever has waited several decades to recoup their investment. “They could have done better buying Apple stock,” he says.

from Health News And Updates https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2018/10/viatical-settlements-aids-gay-men/572044/?utm_source=feed