#Hand-lettered for once because I'm ~inconsistent~ and don't know how to make letters do the curvy thing in the program I have

[idiots-at-sonobeno-high]

Sara!! What are your favorite snacks ? Do you have any games on your phone ?? What do you do in class when you're bored ???

"Oh, hey!! You're enthusiastic," remarks Sara almost immediately, mirrored just as quickly with a smile. Those are some pretty mundane questions... which was nice! Nothing wrong with some simple questions. The girl taps his cheek with his pointer finger, aimlessly staring above them for a little, though the answers weren't hard to figure out.

"Favorite snacks... I'm not supposed to be having it, considering I'm lactose intolerant, but those cheese sticks are really good. My mom really likes them too, so we always have some in our fridge. They just happen to 'mysteriously' disappear every once in a while, no big deal," she air quotes, breaking into a small laughter afterwards. They hunch over for a bit, quietly giggling into the top of her hand, but he straightens up afterward.

"Aside from that, I keep a granola bar on me most of the time. I sometimes forget to eat, and I don't always have the money to buy something, and school food? I'd rather die." A grin spreads across xir face as if he's joking, but his tone seems to imply otherwise. It's a half joke, perhaps. "Anything's fine, as long as it's not like... weirdly dry or anything. I really can't eat them when that's the case."

Sara taps their hands on their lap, not really thinking much of it. Xe continues to talk, keeping an inconsistent rhythm in the taps. "I have a couple games on my phone, yeah. It's pretty embarrassing, but those word games are pretty fun. You know, the ones where you're given a couple letters and you have to make words with it? Yeah, those! I also have Subway Surfers, which I don't touch too often, but it's a nice passtime when I don't have much to do."

Xe snaps xir fingers suddenly, stricken with a thought. "Right! Almost forgot, but that one cat game... Dang, what's it called again? Neko Atsume, yeah! The cats are really cute. I should probably see if there's any new ones there later..." She shakes her head, realizing he nearly got a bit distracted there. "Anyway! Sometimes Joe gets me to download some weird low quality game that's filled with ads. I usually delete them once he stops talking about it for like a week, just because I don't want to waste my storage."

She pauses for a moment, humming. It wasn't any tune in particular, of course--just something to fill the temporary silence before they added on. "One time, he did get me to download Among Us, though," he recalls, sighing. How he got her to do that, even she doesn't know. "We played over call with Ryoko, Kinashi-san, Kageyama-san, Kizuchi-san and her siblings, which... went about as well as you could expect. All in all, an interesting experience to say the least, but I'm never touching that game again." Knowing her, though, it probably wouldn't be too hard to convince them to play again, especially if there was the promise of putting their analyzing skills to good use. Sara liked to think she could be pretty scary in a game like that.

"Moving on... What do I like to do when I'm bored in class?" There wasn't much of a need to repeat the question, but he did it anyways, mostly just to confirm that's what he was going to answer. "I mean, usually I'm busy taking notes and stuff, even if I do already know the material. You can't be too prepared, right? Besides, I know they'll be handy when I study with Joe, so yeah. Speaking of which, on a day when classes are slow, most of the time, he starts up a conversation somehow and nearly gets us in trouble. He can be an idiot like that," she laughs, indicating the insult was purely lighthearted. "Can't say I don't appreciate it, though. It's kind of nice to have your best friend sitting near you in class. He always keeps things interesting, no matter the subject. The classes I share with him do wound up going by significantly quicker, unfortunately... That's just how it goes, I guess."

"I'm rambling again, huh? Think that's something I should get used to... Apologies, anyways! Hope you have a nice day, stay safe! And stay hydrated! Seriously, drink some water."

#[ OOC: hi ves :) yes the end was intentional. your ask was a reminder in itself for me to drink water. so!! ] #gh0stquartz #sara chidouin #sara answers! #sonobeno asks! #acci writes.

[zachsgamejournal]

PLAYING: Sable

I'm seeing some cracks in the experience. It is an indie game. Still, I enjoy it very much.

Readying Metro 2035, which has been translated from Russian...and somewhat poorly I believe. There's inconsistency in capitalization of certain letters in names, sometimes inconsistency in the names themselves. Plus, there's sentences that simply don't make any sense. Kind of like, "he jumped the shark". I barely even know what that means--so imagine someone reading a literally translation of that in another language: "Whoah, what shark?! I thought they were in a Metro...there's sharks in Metros?"

Point is, i feel like my opening comments above read like a poor translation.

So, SABLE!!

I'm starting to get the hang of the game a little more. While I love story, I don't love how this game handles dialog. We're given descriptive prose which provide insight into the main character's psyche. I think this is because the developers couldn't allocate resources to animations in order to provide visual storytelling. I mean, did they try? Final Fantasy 7 had about six different animations that it reused over and over to communicate unspoken emotion, and that worked perfectly fine. And it avoided the this annoying thing Sable does of over-explaining a conversation/interaction with prose.

Example:

I will walk up to a new character and click interact. The character will say, "Hey, how can I help you." Then I'm presented with reasonable dialog choices: 1. "Who are you?" 2. "Where can I find [quest item]? 3. "I'm just looking for general advice." And once you click on a choice, instead of assuming that is said to the other character, the game provides a few sentences such as:

"I nervously look up at this imposing figure, wondering if they're the kind of person that helps strangers. But I remember why I'm here, and that I shouldn't allow myself to be intimidated. That's when I manage to squeak out: "Who are you?"

Is that all necessary? I don't think so. It was kinda cute at first, but now it's getting on my nerves. I almost feel ashamed that I speed-read through most of the prose stuff and just get to the dialog. I think Roki handled this better, but only providing dialog but allowing the characters to express and auditory sigh of joy or sadness to bring forth the emotional weight of the scene.

I'm a little torn on how large the world is. On the one hand, it allows you to enjoy the act of traveling by hover bike. On the other hand, the world is pretty empty. There's not much to see or do in between major landmarks. I think there's two issues at play--the hover bike is kinda boring, but also--clunky.

I think about Sea of Thieves, which I love, and how sailing from one island to the next takes work. The winds are always shifting, which requires the player(s) to constantly adjust the sails. Uncharted rocks can appear, require a concerted effort to maneuver. And events like rain storms and accidents can require the player to manage war and ship damage. The point being, traveling is an experience in of itself. Sable's hover bike doesn't have that. it's just a vehicle that moves you about and there's no management really. No fuel or anything--just travel.

But travel is a bit clunky, because the hover bike constantly handles the uneven landscape in strange ways. I'll ramp off a hill and land funny, cause the bike to flip and roll out of control. You can't fall off, so it's low consequence, but it's frustrating and disruptive how poorly the bike handles the terrain. I've played tons of Jet Moto and expect more from my hover bike. I think this "punishment" would be fine if the player were given more controle, like in Jet Moto. Give me control of the pitch, yaw, and rolling. While a little more complicated, it would make the driving of the hover bike more of an experience, and would make these "crashes" preventable with good management of the bike's rotation. OR, if you're going to not give me control--make the experience less clunky--like in Destiny. The bikes just always know how to handle the environment.

I've done a few quest. One involved trying to solve a mystery of a stolen power source. The game gives you credit for trying, and there doesn't seem to be a right answer--but I felt I was mostly right. It was kind of neat, but also annoying. Otherwise, I'm mostly just doing fetch quests. It's got that World of Warcraft vibe I like--big open world with long travel times. It's a real chill experience. The quests are sometimes interesting, like using smokey rocks to get glow worms to drop off a ceiling or collecting lightning crystals.

Also, the lightning crystals are worth 100 monies each. I plan to go get more of those. Did you know merchants will run out of money?

I've started doing fishing. It's weird to think you catch fish swimming in sand. There's a cute minigame to capture a fish. It's kind of annoying though. Not as annoying as real fishing, so maybe I should be grateful.

They've made some interesting structures and areas. Sadly, these areas rarely have much more than a single treasure box and a collectable. It's both awe inspiring and disappointing. I mean, Shadow of the Colossus had a large but mostly empty world and it's well loved.

I'm still enjoying the game and it's tone. I think I'm starting to get hints of how this world came to be. I climbed a giant, dead sand worm. That was interesting. I'm already itching to play more as I write this.

#Zach's Game Journal #PLAYING #Sable #PC #PC Gaming #Steam #Steam Gaming #Video Games #Gaming

[youre-not-a-god]

This scene is vastly underrated

Tbh the tenderness and hesitancy in Jon’s voice in the this scene is about as close to tact as he gets and it just makes me *clenches fist* feel so many fuckin things

#Jmart #JonMartin #jonathan sims #Martin Blackwood #TMA #The Magnus Archives #TMA fanart #TMA fan comic #The magnus archives fanart #The Magnus Archives fan comic #Sketchbook #Season 1 spoilers #I guess #Hand-lettered for once because I'm ~inconsistent~ and don't know how to make letters do the curvy thing in the program I have

[herstarburststories]

Beautiful Ghosts [p1]

A/N: HAPPY BDAY TO ME, YAY! The first chapter of this hopefully mini series is for @alleiradayne 's 1k celebration! Congrats, hon. A mix of angst and two kinds of comfort here. I gotta admit that I started working on this months ago and kept going until I was satisfied with how it was going. Hope you guys like this one! Divider by @talesmaniac89 !

Summary: Something as tribal as death wouldn't keep you away from Dean.

Pairing: Dean Winchester x reader

Prompt: I’m not going to leave you. You’re never going to have to suffer by yourself again, I promise.

Characters: Dean and Sam Winchester, you

Rating: PG 13

Word count: 2404

As always, you are in Dean's arms when the two brothers enter the bunker after a hunt. There isn’t any sound to break the silence, no raucous laughter, or even a snarky comment about today’s slain monsters. Their steps are stronger than usual, and one breath is missing.

Of course, it’s different from your usual entrance. Your arms aren't tangled with Dean's and his aren’t wrapped around your waist or shoulders. You are in his arms, yes, but you are lying still in a state of lifeless despondency. To think, he was once hopeful, stupid enough to believe that he'd only be carrying you like this when he was marrying you. 

Sam is awfully quiet. He can think and organize a hundred words into speeches in his mind, but nothing comes out. The younger brother feels like a kid during a class presentation too worried to say the wrong word and receive the wrong reaction. Therefore, he chooses silence, just like the other Winchester. They both make room for the grief that way.

It's a silent agreement that you are gone for good. The spell used to bring Eileen back is no longer available, and there is no devil willing to make a pact — not that one would allow the others to do so, after all.

Dean still considers it. More than once, more than a million times between the drive back home when you laid in the backseat with your guts on the car's floor and putting your body on the couch with more tenderness he’d thought himself capable of. 

He would come back to hell just to save you, even if it meant not staying to see you thrive. The agony would be more bearable if he knew that for each scream of his, there would be a grin of yours.

He has no hope now. All Dean Winchester has is anger and unprocessed grief slowly metamorphosing into sadness, hate, and bloodthirst. Even when he killed the fucking werewolf right after he laid his teeth on you, it wasn’t enough. He needed to make someone hurt as much as he did.

It was supposed to be an easy hunt, but isn’t that life with this job? It's usually supposed to be a quick thing, and then you are choking your own blood like it's tequila.

“She is in a better place now.” Sam is the first to speak, utterly doubting that his brother would make a noise if he didn't first.

Sammy was always full of faith, but this time it made Dean furious. “You don't know that.”

“Dean.”

“Don't, Sammy. Don't even fucking try. You know who we are and what Billie thinks about us. Do you think (Y/N) won't get the same destiny as we will? Alone in the empty, going crazy for years, decades!?”

“We can find a way—“ 

“No, we can't! We all signed her death sentence the minute we asked her to move in. And she—“ Dean cuts himself off with the sharp knife of silence, staving any hope left with harsh thoughts. The living room is maybe the most similar it’s ever been to the old glory days now: men of letters used to get frustrated there all the time, usually with a bottle of whiskey and a dead body on the floor, full of holes from experiments. 

The eldest Winchester wants to scream, throw a chair, break a lamp. He’d do anything to get this heavy sensation out of his veins, as if every single drop of blood weighs 500 pounds.

Still, he doesn't fall on his knees.

An inconsistently wry smirk consumes Dean’s face, warped with grief. “I had to put her guts back in her body, you know? To carry her in the car.”

He lifts his hands. They are stained red. Sam purses his lips together, trying to find something to say that would have helped him when Jess died. Nothing but an annoying little voice saying time comes to mind. It's gonna be hard, but they will make it. They always do.

Sammy doesn't tell that to Dean, though. He isn't ready yet. And neither is Sam to vocalize the words.

We are gonna be okay because we always do. And the dead bodies end up like frightening memories and nothing else.

That would sound too cold, like most truths for hunters. If Sam says those words, it becomes real. Not even the bloodstained picture of murder is stronger than words of farewell. Besides, you were his best friend. He had to recompose and convince himself that everything would be okay before he helped Dean. For once, he had to be the brother who shut all the turmoil in to take care of the other

“I'm sorry, Dean.”

And then, Sam does the only thing that he could think of as useful for making the ache bearable. He hugs his big brother.

Dean struggles to get away from the hold, even with every fiber of his being screaming to remain there. “Let me go! Sam, I'm serious. Fucking let me go!”

“It's gonna be okay, Dean.”

“Let me go, Sammy! Now!”

“You are not alone, Dean. I'm here. She will be okay, too.”

“Let me go! Let me go! Let me go!”

Until he finally gives in, collapsing in Sam's arms like that little kid in Kansas who didn't want to cry in front of his dad after seeing his mom get killed.

There is blood on Sammy’s favorite shirt now, but he doesn’t care. He just tightens his embrace around Dean while his brother is lost into racking sobs. 

His grief is just as expansive as Dean’s, their ragged souls laced with a sickening kind of sweetness that can only show up when someone you love needs help. It squirms and crawls in their guts to make a home that sticks. It’s their tiny comforts— the good feelings always show up in defiance of the ache like a plant growing on concrete. They just have to get the energy to look for them.

Everything is still the way you left it in Dean's bedroom. He didn't put your clothes away. You left your book on the shelf and kept your perfume in the wardrobe. Your pillow is still scrambled as if you had left for a couple of minutes to grab a cup of water and would soon come back to snuggle up to him. Well, it could always be from the fact that he's holding onto that piece of cotton for dear life. If he had long nails, his floor would be a complete mess now.

He's glaring at the wall, mind trying to come up with ways to cope with the growing ache in his whole body. Yes, the books and poets and films speak fondly about heartbreak, but he already threw the last glimpses of his bruised heart on the fire, burning with your body to the point no one could say it was ever in his chest to begin with. What could he do? There's always a way for the Winchesters. If Dean thinks hard enough, maybe he can defeat death. Maybe he can have you back.

Dean puts the pillow away after another sniff. The smell of your pepper shampoo is almost fading — he shouldn't have hugged it. Nonetheless, the green-eyed hunter focuses on coming up with ideas, and it's a stupid, humanly behavior when his mind goes to what desperate people usually seek.

Dean was never a pious man. The fact his mother died while angels were too busy watching over him to help her didn’t do it any good. Yet in stolen moments like these, he, like most humans, would bear his soul in a peace offering to all the holy things he doubted. The Winchester never prayed for himself, though. Who would answer his cry for help? He never deserved to be saved. So, he put his hands together and closed his eyes for who he cared about. As the Layla woman who told him to have faith or Sammy as something scandalous happened. It was rare, but Dean did that sometimes. He used to hope someone was listening. He doesn't pray anymore, not even now. Because he knows someone is listening, and he doesn't care.

Can an empty room seem crowded? Yes, when touch-starving grief is piled inside, begging to be seen. Why can't he allow himself to feel it? Why can't he cry? Why can't he just stop using anger as a comfort? Dean doesn't know. It used to be easier to cry before. He'd say he's lost his emotions, but the all-consuming anger and his ferocious barks to keep the hurt is burning proof he isn't yet.

Y/N died, and it's his fault. Y/N died, and it's his fault. Y/N died, and it's his fault.

His nostrils are opening, the wrath that swaths him as comfortable as his own skin. It’s not natural enough that he doesn't feel the burn, and you know he's going to break again. Your Dean doesn't break easily, but when he does, it's in a million little pieces that he wouldn't allow people to help pick them up. He’d rather shove them under the bed with his childhood monsters or bruising his hands as he exasperatedly tries to get them all by himself. You know he's going to shift into a storm and start breaking things. You know it's a temporary morphine, and the sickness will remain in the morning.

That's the incentive you need to try harder, to flash yourself into this plane of existence long enough to be seen. You force every fragment of yourself and light and whatever other pieces you are made of now to appear. To be heard. To show Dean he isn't all by himself again.

An image starts glitching in front of him. It’s rapid enough for Dean's reaction to come as a frown and his hand to snake around to the gun at the hem of his pants. 

And then, he blinks and a heart-stopping joy hits him. He can't believe the unbreakable heaven that he's being blessed with. Every feeling that should be burrowed under his skin is fighting to come to the light, and God, he wants to. For the first time, he doesn't want to hold back because what was trying to come together finally is you.

You. You are standing right before his own green eyes. There is a soft look on your face. It’s laced with that pretty smile that’s always spread happiness to him as well. You are here, standing in his room, clean clothes and blood in your veins. Guts inside your body! He never imagined he'd be happy to think that.

Is this his heart? Oh God, it is. And it's beating. No, no. It's racing. His heart is working again and now he almost falls on his knees. The pain was never able to break him, but he had forgotten how strong happiness could be. He's relieved.

Dean's eyes burn when he looks at you. Maybe it’s because he’s too shocked to even blink or perhaps it is all the tears that were flowing. Who cares? That man would allow his entire body to collapse in flames if the smoke signaled you back home. 

He takes a few steps, having the nerve to touch you — probably the most daring thing he has ever done. He is ready for you to dissipate, for that to be a dream, anything. And you don’t. You remain there. You don’t leave him too. Your usually warm body is gelid, but Dean doesn't care. It's an honest warning, yet he's happy to ignore those for once. You're here. 

“Dean, I—“ Your voice. It's your voice saying his name. He recognizes the importance of a name now. For a brief moment, he's confused. What the fuck is happening? You purse your lips and Dean chortles in dismay, unable to discern his inner state of being. “I don't know what to say.”

“I thought I had lost you. I was so fucking scared, Y/N. I thought you were gone for good.” He's found the words for you, exhibiting his vulnerability so quietly. Your entire soul feels it— it's not true what they say. You don't stop feeling when you are dead. You start to feel everything deeper because after leaving your meatsuit, all that is left is your soul. And what's a soul but the patchwork of emotions? “I thought you'd never come back again. That I'd have to go on without you. I'm so sorry. It was my fault. I should have saved you.”

“No, Dean. Don't start self-loathing and all that. It wasn't your fault. What happened to us could've happened to any hunter. And if it happened to me, there is a reason for it.”

“A reason for you to be ripped apart?” He scoffs at your belief of fate. You always had a graceful heart in you, even after you met Chuck. 

“I'm back, right? I told you I'd always be with you, and I'm here. Always.” You intertwine your fingers, and he watches your hands for a little while. While it’s difficult for him to grasp anything but pain nowadays, he accepts the rush of joy in his chest. Dean looks up, and you're still here, big eyes offering him a loving gaze. “I'm not going to leave you. You're never going to suffer by yourself again. I promise.”

He kisses you, and it feels like your emotions have finally found a perfect body to rest in when yours is a little bit tired — a place to call home. He kisses you, and everything is worth it. Because he kisses you. And you kiss him back.

Dean Winchester is a marvelous hunter. He should know that the cold his tongue experiences in your mouth while you two make out ferociously isn't quite right. You should feel fervid, and you are warm in every way of being but skin. He should pay attention to that. He should stop trying to make you come alive with love. Still, he can't bring his rational side to care. That man was always guided by emotion, anyway. What could matter more than you on his arms? Worries could be postponed because you did what no one else ever could.

You came back to him.

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#dean winchester #alleiradayne’s 2020 SSSI #dean winchester x reader #dean Winchester x you #dean x you #dean winchester fanfiction #dean winchester fanfic #dean winchester x reader fanfic #dean winchester x reader fanfiction #dean winchester x you #supernatural fandom #supernatural #supernatural fanfics #supernatural imagine #supernatural fanfiction #supernatural reader insert #supernatural x you #supernatural x reader #spn imagine #spn imagines #spn fanfiction #spn fanfic #spn x you #spn x y/n #spn x reader #spn reader insert #jensen ackles #dean winchester imagine

[acommonrose]

What in your estimation makes a crossword puzzle good or bad? I just don't know enough about them to be able to tell at all.

So there's a lot of ways puzzles can be good or bad, and it mostly comes down to how much fun solvers have, but here's a few things I think about when solving. Wall of text incoming--I'm sorry.

Theme

So from what I can tell, NYT editors care a lot about how clever/novel/interesting your theme is, which in some ways is fair--they see a lot of puzzles, and when I started out, I cared a lot more about themes. Personally, I love a good themeless (of any difficulty level, not just the NYT Friday/Saturday level), as well as a well-made puzzle with a boring/overused theme type (like most USA Today puzzles, my own included), so themes are not the be all and end all, but they do matter.

What makes most (though not all) good themes is really just a set of a few fun words or phrases that either all have something interesting in common or have all had the same wordplay gimmick applied to them. The theme suffers if the gimmick/commonality is inconsistently applied or if one of the theme entries just is a mediocre entry to begin with. So, for example, I thought the Thursday puzzle this week had a theme that was bad for a Thursday (since Thursday puzzles usually use complicated wordplay or rebuses) but good overall--it added ING to the end of movie titles to get things like JURASSIC PARKING and LA LA LANDING, which was fun. On the other hand, the Wednesday puzzle had a revealer of IT'S A WRAP, and had entries that were bookended by the letters I, T, S, and A in some combination, which is fine (though not a super exciting gimmick or revealer), but was really brought down by two of the three entries being TSAR NICHOLAS I and SARGENT PORTRAIT, both of which I think are pretty uninspiring.

Beyond that, there's also some constructors that do really interesting and creative themes, which are outside of the scope of this (already long) post--I'll just link Will Nediger's recent puzzle with two themes, as well as Cracking the Cryptic's solve of Brooke Husic's Lollapuzzoola puzzle. (If you're an experienced solver, do try the Brooke puzzle on your own--it's beautiful but extremely hard.)

Fill

Okay, after all that, this is usually what actually makes a bad puzzle bad. Good puzzles have fun and interesting entries--modern phrases/phenomena, interesting people, or just fun turns of phrase, particularly (but not exclusively) in longer slots. Some I've used or tried to use recently (not all of which would fly in a newspaper, probably) include URSULA K LE GUIN, HADESTOWN, BRIDGERS, SPOOKY SEASON, HUMBLEBRAG, and EXTREMELY ONLINE. Along with "fun" words and phrases, you want to fill the rest of grid as much as possible with things that are real, reasonably well-known words, phrases, or names, ideally things that can be clued in a variety of interesting ways and that are real standalone phrases. (There's lots of things that are in puzzles that are not "real standalone phrases", and I can get into which ones bug me most, but that's a separate post.)

Constructors who are new or just trying to fill a constrained grid, may fall into the trap of putting random words and especially random short abbreviations into a puzzle because they see them in a wordlist or see that they've been in other puzzles. Unless they're extremely bad entries, one of these won't kill a puzzle, but they pile up fast, and once you get more than one or two, it will make the puzzle a slog for a solver. This applies particularly to crossing entries. The rule of thumb I've heard is that proper names shouldn't cross, but I don't think that's actually be best rule. What really matters is that there should be no uninferrable squares--so if I had ELIZABETH crossing some name I'd never heard of, I could probably figure out the last letter even if the Elizabeth in the clue was someone I'd never heard of. On the other hand, obscure abbreviations/vocab crossing can also be deadly. For example, yesterday's puzzle had ANA (clued as a Japanese airline I'd never heard of) crossing ACC (clued as a sports league whose first letter could have been literally anything), so I just had to guess random letters. Today's puzzle had LOTHAR (a comic strip character I'd never heard of) and MALAR (a word I didn't know), so again, I just had to guess letters.

Clues

Unlike with themes or especially fill, it's hard to have actively bad clues if you follow cluing conventions (e.g. having clues agree with entries in terms of parts of speech), unless you're trying so hard to be clever that your clues don't actually make sense. However, it's easy to have lackluster clues if you're just giving short definitions for most clues, which is fine in an easy puzzle with a good theme but boring in something like a themeless.

There's a lot of ways to write good clues--which is not to say that they're easy to write. The most famous type are puns or clever misdirects--for example, I recently clued HAND SIGNALS as [Digital means of communication?]. Beyond that, I'm also quite fond of clues that show off the constructor's voice and personality, as well as those that have fun trivia (though the line between cool fun trivia and annoying obscure trivia that no one should be expected to know can be thin). Overall, it's more an art than a science (and it's hard to save a lackluster grid with good clues--though it can be done), so I don't have too much to say, but Kate Schmate is a great constructor to look at if you want to read some good clues.

#crossword tag #i have no idea if i answered your question but i did write a lot

[fantabulisticity]

One of the mail carriers has been refusing to deliver our mail for several weeks and won't tell us why, and the Post Office doesn't know why and won't tell us and the manager there is very rude to us when we try to figure out how to fix it, and he wouldn't give us our held mail when we went in in person to collect the mail that wasn't being delivered. He confirmed that we DID have mail on hold but refused to give it to us. I believe it's because we have a small Pride flag on our porch because everything else they've told us is VERY inconsistent bullshit.

Anyway, today we finally got our mail delivered, and I received two letters from September 5th (2 weeks ago) that my food stamps have been cancelled because I "didn't comply with the requirements." In addition, because they claim I didn't comply, I have a sanction against me and cannot receive food stamps for a month as punishment. And that goes on my record and makes them less likely to give me food stamps in the future.

But here's the thing: I did comply. I took the Intake Assessment and called MAXIMUS to set up a phone appointment for the 23rd. And my food stamps have been cancelled for October even though EVERYONE I TALKED TO AND THE LETTERS told me I had until the end of the month (September) to comply.

So I called Idaho Dept. of Health and Welfare, like it told me to in the letter, and I told them that I had a sanction against me that was invalid since I DID comply and I have an appointment set up for the 23rd, and I didn't know about the sanction until now because USPS hasn't been delivering our mail even though we have done everything in our power to appease them, and the DHW people were very dismissive and slightly rude to me and then told me to call MAXIMUS. So I called MAXIMUS and they were MUCH nicer (probably because I was sobbing and trying very hard to speak calmly and clearly through the shaking and the tears), and they confirmed that I HAD set up an appointment, but that even though I had complied, since the process wasn't complete, that Idaho DHW had preemptively sanctioned me and the cancellation and sanction will be lifted retroactively once I complete the appointment on the 23rd.

The Idaho SNAP system SUCKS. This shit is TERRIFYING and SO FUCKING STRESSFUL. I had picked up an extra shift at work today because someone called out sick, but I just had to call in and ask if it wasn't too late to call someone else because I had to deal with this shit and I am a puddly MESS. I am so tired and so angry and so stressed out, and I can't do work today. I HATE the Idaho government so fucking much. This shit is exactly why I wanted to move to Washington and leave all my friends behind, so I wouldn't have to deal with THIS. This fear of getting in trouble for literally nothing, of not being able to eat, of being MORE financially stressed, of losing my house because I can't pay rent, of losing my job because I can't work when I'm hungry (which has been tested before thank you very much), of having NO IDEA when things are going to be okay or how things are going to turn out, of having my life weighed in the hands of people who truly don't care about me or my welfare and wouldn't blink if I just dropped dead because of them.

This shit is why people don't apply to government assistance even when they NEED it. This shit is why I want to pull out the throats of people who give me dirty looks when I use my EBT card at the grocery store. I HATE living in Idaho.

#personal #food deprivation tw #starvation tw #classism #capitalism #eat. the. fucking. rich. #queerphobia