#as always i give out recaps if anyone has questions <3 i forget how often that happens

[mechaniaa]

in the past 24 hours i have seen posts in the qsmp tag you wouldnt believe

#are we shocked that the community dedicated to random streamers in a space where they wont be criticized have stupid #ass takes on frvr hitting on 14 year old girls? we shouldnt be surprised but its still upsetting to see #i wholeheartedly believe the tumblr community is worse than the twitter community theyre like the liberals of mcyt #text #as always i give out recaps if anyone has questions <3 i forget how often that happens

[gra-sonas]

Hey! I hate to ask this, you already do so much for us! But would you mind just a tiny recap of Vlamis’ live from last night? You don’t have to go into a ton of detail or anything, I just saw that it was a half hour long. I have a weird anxiety thing that keeps me from watching lives and stories for the most. Still haven’t even been able to work myself up to watching the vlamburn one as much as I’d love to! 🙁

Either way, thank you for everything!

Okay, nonnie. I went and watched the whole thing again and wrote you a detailed account of what’s been said. I’ll link the live again, then you can watch here if you want to. Or not. Up to you. 🤗 Hope this helps. 💕

Brushing his teeth and flossing for 3 minutes while talking.

800 new follower lately “where have you been before?”

“Do you do anything to your hair at night?” He adds Moroccan hair oil in the morning, nothing at night.

“What’s your favorite of the drop?” He hasn’t seen everything from the drop (like the COSMIC tie-dye) bc he’s in Santa Fe. He loves the COSMIC and MALEX embroidered things (“so subtle”) bc they are in Vlamburn’s handwriting, he loves the Manesqueeze shirt bc you can make Alex and Michael kiss by putting your wrists together. He *loves* the candle (there’s one burning on his bedside table), the silky PJs are great, but he can’t decide on just one favorite thing.

“How’s Jesa’s sanity?” She needs like 3 weeks of sleep. He explains, that while we *are* the Vlambase, the Vlambase merch company’s just Jesa and Vlamis. Jesa has a team, but all the day-to-day things, ideas, emails/customer service (Jesa), the newsletter (Vlamis). They hadn’t collaborated with anyone before Tyler, so working with him was a new experience. 

One fan mentions how they wanted to buy stuff but couldn’t. Vlamis says that he’s been there, and when he wanted something in the past he couldn’t afford, he started putting away a Dollar a day. 

“Thought on One Direction?” Vlamis is a Harry Styles guy. “Harry Styles’ swagger is next level!”

“What do you think about Russia? Will Vlambase merch be available here?” Talks a bit about how annoying things are with shipping companies, says they wanted to protect themselves for the holidays, and now that the Christmas rush is over, some shipping options have become available again. 

“Who came up with  MANESQUEEZE” He ponders about it, and settles on Jesa. It was Vlamis’s ides to put tiny Alex and tiny Michael on the sleeves so that they can kiss tho. And Tyler came up with the idea to put a “toupee” on his head (in a previous drop, the NEVER LOOK AWAY design had tiny Alex and tiny Michael on the sleeves, but poor Alex was bald) for the design.

Someone got a MALEX pin and the candle. He knows the pin sold out fast, and he feels bad about that. They want everyone to get everything they want, but it’s difficult to make proper calculations how well an item will sell. The pandemic made things even harder. Like the PJ sets. Normally, they would wait until the sale ends and see how many sets were actually ordered, but during the pandemic, stock listings have been changing dramatically from day to day, so they had to pre-order the PJs and robes to make sure they had a certain number at their disposal. He said that they “overshot” on a couple of things, but ultimately sales have been great, and he appreciates that.

“I’m excited to make the MANESQUEEZE doodles kiss bc I do that with the NEVER LOOK AWAY shirt” Vlamis jumps up and shows his closet that’s full of Vlambase merch items.

“Why am I here, it’s almost 3am” He mentions that he’s been staying up until 4 in the past couple of days, but he has to be on set in 7 or 8 hours. 

“Hello, just wanted to let you know that I got a tattoo for you” Vlamis asks for a photo and to be tagged.

“Kyle the packer [Vlamis’s roomie KA, who works in the warehouse when a new drop is ready for shipping]” Vlamis says they’re working him to death.

“Please save this live” He doesn’t know whether he’ll save it. Thinks the one with Tyler was important, but since it’s just him, he doesn’t think it’s important.

“I followed Jesa, Jesa is the real MVP” Vlamis says that Jesa is “a beast, and best in the game”. Quickly explains who Jesa is, and that she’s his partner in the Vlambase merch company. He mentions that she recently called him with an idea for Valentine’s Day, and he was like “Jesa, we need to relax!” But she loved the idea. She’s a big fan of RNM and the characters (and Tyler). “Jesa’s amazing.”

“What about new Soli art [Soli’s the artist who created the Boys Will Be Boys art for a previous drop]?” Vlamis smiles. “What about new Soli art. I like that idea. 😏“

“Your house [in New Mexico] is so cute.” Vlamis says thank you and shows the ceiling of the house (which he likes best). “Santa Fe is dope!”

“I adore your teeth” *shows his teeth* Says he had to wear braces (some even adjustable)

“I could’ve used my birthday money to buy something but I forgot” 🤨 << Vlamis’s face. “How you you forget, man?”

“Back to Twitter after this live” He mentions that he’d just been on Twitter before the live.

He got retweeted by Mountain Dew and loves it.

“I’m from Australia and hope my merch arrives before winter” Vlamis says he hopes shipping will be fast. 

“Love the Valentines” They’re not actually Valentines, hence they’re “Love Notes”.  Vlamis considers doing them not just around Valentine’s Day. 

“You catch any of the CW shows returning this month?” “Might have to” But he knows what he’ll be catching on the 12th. “Prodigal Son, baby!”

“Where did you get the Game Boys?” Those are his Game Boys. He has a Game Boy Advanced and a Game Boy Color. 

“How do you feel about Forlex?” *scoffs* 😒 “Yeah” 

“So excited for the robe!” Vlamis gets excited. “The robes and the PJs are so comfy!” Talks about how it’s a bit weird, bc they don’t make them themselves.

Several people mention that their closet looks like his closet bc of all the merch and he loves that. 

“How do you feel about Forlex” *gets agitated* “Why are you asking me this? Don’t do that to me, alright?” *softer* “Don’t do that.”

“How are you doing?” He’s doing very well. Very relieved that eh sale went well. This drop was like 3-4 months of work, the night before the sale felt like an entire month, too. Jesa and Vlamis Facetimed for more than 5hrs. They set up the website, and that’s how the glitch with the GIVE ME MALEX OR GIVE ME DEATH shirts and poster happened. They made a mistake and only noticed after the website went live. 

“Do you know when S3 will air?” No, he thought it might’ve been sooner, but apparently not.

“I love your poetry from the last drop so why no poems this time?” He writes poems when he’s inspired, he hasn’t written a poem in a while. He’s currently preparing to direct his first movie in June 2021, and he’s been very focused on that. 

“The Meet & Greet day changed.”  Filming schedule changed bc they had snow, the schedule’s changing constantly. He’ll be set all day tomorrow (well, today, Jan 11) from 8am until 8 or 9pm. Sometimes they might even wake up in the morning and learn that the schedule’s been changed. 

 “You could talk about nothing and we’d still watch.” He doesn’t want to talk about nothing, wonders if anyone has any questions about the sale.

“I’m so excited about the robe. I was going to buy more but I’m broke.” He says we should be responsible.

Someone’s still waiting about their Black Friday stuff, but he says it’s the shipping company, not them. 

“Vlamentines" He *loves* that, thinks it’s a good pun. 

“Gotta support Aurora.” Always. 🥰

“Jealous Guerin in S3?” You’ll see, you’ll see.

“I placed 3 orders, last one last night. Give me Malex or give me death.” He loves it. He also mentions, that they’re working hard on figuring out how to combine orders in the future so people don’t have to pay for shipping several times. They just can’t do that logistically at the moment. 

“Real talk, how often do you check your DMs?” He says, that some people might’ve noticed that he occasionally likes random photos on people’s IG pages. When that happens, it’s a sign that he read someone’s DM. He feels bad when he checks his mentions with a delay, and people’s stories have already vanished after 24hours. He sometimes doesn’t get to checking DMs for a week.

“Will we ever get the original pic of the kiss recreation?” *smiles* *waggles his eyebrows* “Maybe in the morning”

“So happy the Trevor Project was chosen for this merch drop!” He’s very happy, too. According to him, it was a no-brainer. Tyler’s worked with them in the past, so it made even more sense. They wanted to make sure that Tyler felt very strongly about wherever they’d be donating. 

People urge him to go to sleep. “You want me to go to bed?” 

“Why is your merch not available in India?” *deep breath* “It should be, it’s ridiculous. Unbelievable.”

“Your poetry was awesome.” He appreciates the praise and promises to write some more poetry. 

Someone asks whether the movie he’ll be directing in June will be a comedy, but he says it’s the opposite. He’s mentioned in the past that Aurora and him will both act in the movie, but apparently he forgot about that. He doesn’t want to jinx the movie and doesn’t know how much he should reveal just yet. Talks a bit about 5 Years Apart. 

Someone mentions that it’s Jeanine’s birthday on January 14th. 

“Do (or don?) a face mask, Vlamis.” He refuses. Mentions his friend and roommate Spencer Waldner, who makes face masks.

“If there’s leftover merch, will you do another sale?” He says that most things are actually sold out bc they use Blank Clo’s blanks and will only make what’s been ordered.  They might try to restock some pins tho, bc they went so quickly. 

“USPS are a joke” He defends them. “They’re a public service, they’re trying hard, guys.”

“You should do a Vlambase drop with the Real Vlamis [a.k.a. Jeanie]” He’s excited and thinks it’s a good idea and asks if anyone’d be interested. 

Someone congratulates him on directing his first movie. He points out that he’s directed before (Making It, a 3-part web series, it’s on YouTube).

 “Would you ever come to Australia Comic Con?” He’d love to. Mentions that he’s supposed to be in Paris in May for a convention, but he’s not sure whether that’s gonna happen considering how things are currently going with the pandemic. 

Some more talk about 5 Years Apart.

Circles back to doing a merch drop with Jeanine. People like the idea. 

“Please save this live.” After an IG update, things have changed and he doesn’t know how to do it. In the past he had the option to save it [for 24hrs], now he can only upload it to IGTV. 

“$30 shipping to Australia hurts my soul but I did it anyway.” He appreciates that and mentions, that he lived in Australia for 6 months in the past.

“Sing some Bright Eyes” He thinks his singing would hurt people’s ears. 

Jesa Joy pops up in the chat and urges him to go to bed. 

“Jesa is yelling at you.” Vlamis says that Jesa’s a “yeller”, and that she has a tattoo that says “Don’t yell tho”. He admits that Jesa often yells for a good reason. “I need to be yelled at sometimes.”

Someone asks him to accept a request to join his live. He says he’s pretty tired. 

He says hello to someone from Germany (not me btw :P) “What’s up, Germany ✌️” 

More people ask him to sing, but he says he cannot sing. He says it’s not like a joke  or him being modest, he straight up can’t sing and is a horrible singer. 

“Will there be a sequel to 5 Years Apart?” Maybe a sequel called “10 Years Apart” (he’s joking and visibly tired)

“Should I buy anything before the sale ends?” Yes.

Jesa Joy’s from Michigan, and Vlamis’s grandma’s from Middlesborough, Kentucky.

“Is Tyler singing again?” He doesn’t know. “I hope so. Love that kid’s voice” (Tyler’s 3.5 years older than Vlamis :P)

He’s getting sleepy and will read a little bit before bed. Considers drinking some Mountain Dew. 

“Do you take design ideas.” Sure. Sometimes he sees design ideas from people they’ve been working on for months, but he’s gonna “steal” an idea from someone, he’ll tell them. He’ll steal it, though. 

“Are you still reading SAGA?” He read the first one and is half-way through the second. He’s currently reading a book called “My First Movie” by Stephen Lowenstein. “How cliché.” Aurora got it for him.

Purple Skittles are his favorite. Purple everything.

“Your girlfriend’s the best girlfriend.” She is, she really is.

Asks Jesa Joy whether he should go to bed now.Even though it’s late, he’s hungry. Considers eating something. People tell him to go to bed.

He asks “Should I get naked and put on the PJs?” *waggles eyebrows* “I’M KIDDING, YOU’RE SICK. YOU’RE ALL DISGUSTING.” xD

“Don’t eat!” He laughs.

Says goodbye and says that Jesa’s posted a surprise picture. 

“Any advice for aspiring actors?” Tells them to make their own stuff bc no one’s gonna hire them. (He’s being sarcastic). “It’s dark, but it’s what you need to hear.”

“Okay, love you guys. Thank you again! It was our best sale yet. Means a lot to me. Means a lot to Tyler. Us doing so well might mean that Tyler will work with us again. So I really appreciate it. Okay, I love you all.”

Jesa promises to post the pic in 4 minutes. He’s excited. “See, I got her to do it! The picture is kind of ridiculous.”

*pretends to take off his shirt, stops halfway through* “Noooooo, noooooo, noooooo!”

*throws kiss* “Love you guys, good night.”

#michael vlamis #vlambase #mgv ig #mgv interviews #nonnie asks

[that-bi-bitch-writes]

Dreams of Indigo (C.2)

Pairing: Hitoshi Shinso x Non Binary Reader (can be read as Male Reader)

Word Count: 

Warnings: Use of He/They pronouns, lots of swearing, mentions of bully, angst? edginess (i hope not)  self mutilation/injury (not cutting) hurtful words, revenge.

If you'd like to avoid the self inflicted injury it comes after the huge space at the end of this chapter. Leave a comment and let me know if you'd like me to do a recap without the injury at the beginning of the next Chapter

Storyline: Reader is a teenage vigilante basically. Unlike the main characters Y/N doesn’t attend UA and somehow seems to keep finding themself in the company of the LOV but they’re not a villain. Call him a vigilante or an anti-hero whatever, just don’t call them a villain.

A/N: This is Chapter Two of the series. I know not many on tumblr are reading but I like this story and want to update. Sorry if anyone was actually waiting for me to update. I got caught up and forgot to finish the chapter. Shoot me any questions, my inbox is open to anything but requests as of now. This is cross posted on wattpad (@that-bi-bitch-writes) and Quotev (@DumbEnbyJuice)

Teaser  Character Info  Prologue  Ch.1  Ch.2 Ch.3

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

It started with an interruption of what can be argued as the greatest dream of the century. There you were contently snuggling up to one of your MANY pillows with your cat curled up on the edge of the bed. The only thing that could cause you any sort of stress is if you were to 

“WAKE UP!!!” 

“I’m not gonna say it again Y/n, I know you heard me calling you?? WAKE UP! It’s your birthday”

‘I heard you calling’ you thought ‘but I don’t see the point in waking up early, it's my birthday. Why would I be excited to go to that hellhole on the one day that’s supposed to be all about me?’

“Yeah yeah I heard you, I’ll be out in a minute” you called back

Your birthday wasn’t exactly always a bad thing. Up until you were five you really liked celebrating your bday. But you didn’t get a quirk. Now you’re in the fourth grade with no definitive friend group, no quirk and what feels like nothing to celebrate. But your mom still enjoys your birthday. 

SO you have to put on a smile, do a little twirl, sit there through the embarrassing rendition of happy birthday from your family members. And then it’s back to being alone. You have to go back to school where you’re not celebrated and you have to cope with the fact that another year has gone by with no signs of a quirk and an even slimmer chance that the bullying will end. But things will change. You’re gonna change them. First you have to make it through the day alive

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

Okay, so maybe making it through most of the day wasn’t as hard as you thought. Your teacher quietly wished you a happy birthday before class started, so the class wouldn’t descend into chaos. It’s very hard to keep 9 and 10 year olds focused on someone’s birthday. But whatever, the day seemed like it was gonna go smoothly

Despite the chaos of this morning your mom actually didn’t make too much of a big deal about your birthday and the celebrations were postponed for afterschool. The fake smiles and twirling and off key singing weren’t for another 6 hours, so you got to be a cynical 10 year old for just a little longer. 

‘This bento is a little fancier today’ you thought ‘maybe i should appreciate mom more and she’d do this more often.’ 

For the first time in what felt like forever, you got to enjoy a nice lunch, by yourself, on the roof because for some reason, loners tend to spend their lunches on the roof, even if they are 10 year olds who should be showing off a birthday cupcake, or celebratory mochi or some other sweet. Everything was fine.

The keyword is WAS. Before you could leave school, a certain orange haired bully decided your day was going a little TOO well and it was his job to correct the universe’s error. 

“Hey L/N I heard it was your birthday today. I hope you got to spend the day with your many friends.” he taunted. 

And of course, all bullies have to have a posse so after every “biting” comment he looked to them to make sure they were laughing. For some kind of reassurance and camaraderie that you’d never really had. 

‘That’s really weird but I’m oddly jealous’

“My friends are waiting for me with my family back at home. I’ve gotta go, see you tomorrow bully-chan” you bit back.  Which was probably a huge mistake. The teasing chan mayhaps have set him off. Although none of his comments usually phased you, he took his time to think about the next one as you tried to scurry out of the classroom

“What family L/N? Your mother is always busy at work isn’t she? And I heard that your dad ran away when you were like 3 or something because you hadn’t gotten your quirk.” 

You thought the torment would end there. Forget just thinking, you prayed to whatever god there was that it’d all end with him poking fun at the one weak spot everyone knew you had. Your parents. But he kept going after he saw you subtly tense at the mention of your father. 

Nakamuro Keitaro is not just an everyday bully. He is the son of your mother’s ex best friend who resented your mother for having everything she wanted. A stable career, beauty, a child that seemed to be worth something, and a handsome successful husband. So she poisoned Keitaro against you. It was oddly really effective on her part. She might be an evil genius.

Anyway it wasn’t exactly hard to convince him to hate you especially once it was revealed that you were quirkless. All she had to do was convince him she was the victim in your moms’ fight and give him a little ammo against you. And like the dutiful son he is, he became her attack dog on a very loose leash. 

“Is he ashamed of you?” Keitaro continued  “Was he worried about the rumors people would spread if they found out that a pro hero produced a dud with no quirk and no shot at carrying on his family’s legacy”

Keitaro really knew how to get on your last fucking nerve, and the comments began to hurt. And like hurt does sometimes, it turned to anger. It was your 10th birthday. You were supposed to be stuffing your face with ice cream surrounded by your closest friends. And your father. It wasn’t your fault you were quirkless. It really wasn’t. But it was their fault you were miserable. 

Misery loves company. 

You didn’t know why you said it, and you wish you never did. Because the next words to come out of your mouth revealed something you’d wanted for so long. You had a quirk. But it was the last time you’d ever want to use it again. Well at least not for another three years.

“I heard a rumor you were so insecure not even bullying me could make you happy.” Power thronged off of the words you spat. “So you jumped out of this window and crippled yourself”

If your dad couldn’t love his quirkless child, lets see how Keitaro’s mom loves her crippled one.

#hitoshi shinso x reader #hitoshi shinso #hitoshi shinsou #shinso hitoshi #bha #bnha x reader #bnha x nonbinary reader #nonbinary reader #reader insert #hitoshi shinso x nonbinary reader #non-binary #non-binary reader #shinso x reader #that-bi-bitch-writes #my hero academia #mha #bnha #tw mutilation #tw self harm #male reader #kind of

[spnfanficpond]

May 2020 Pond LiveChat Recap - User Friendly Tumblr Pt 2

@fictionalabyss (Mel) and @girl-with-a-fandom-fettish (Kay) yet again did a great job teaching us the magical ways of Tumblr! Thank you, girls, for helping out and sharing your wisdom!!

This was a continuation of last month’s chat, which you can read all about HERE. We also talked a little bit about this back in July 2019, and you can read all about that chat HERE. A rundown of this month’s chat is below the cut!

Keep Reading function via the app

We started off talking about the Keep Reading function, and how it works, and doesn’t work on the app. Back in July 2019, if you were using the app, you could add the text [ [ MORE ] ] (without the spaces) to a line, and it would create a Keep Reading cut in your post for you. We’ve heard recently that it wasn’t working, so we did some testing. This is what happened:

As viewed via the app on the blog:

As viewed via the app when looking at the desktop:

As viewed via desktop on the blog:

Long story short, It only works if you view the post on desktop. Mel noted that if she went onto desktop and edited the post from there, then the cut would work everywhere, but that defeats the purpose of posting using the app.

TD;DR - [ [ MORE ] ] no longer works effectively.

Keeping your formatting when copying from Google Docs into Tumblr

@flamencodiva​ (Vanessa) told us all about a workaround that she learned from @winchest09​. Anyone who was tried to copy and paste from Google Docs to Tumblr knows that you lose all of your formatting, including any italics. @mrswhozeewhatsis​ has not had a problem copying and pasting from Microsoft Word (as part of the Office 365 Suite) into Tumblr, but Kay has, so she needs to use this workaround. Basically, the trick is to post to AO3, first, and the copy and paste from there. Here’s the step-by-step per Vanessa:

1) make a new chapter on AO3, 2) set it to rich text, 3) paste your fick, 4) got to tumblr and click on pencil to add text, 5)  change setting to html, 6) go back to ao3 click on html, 7) copy and paste the html format of your fic and paste it to tumblr, 8) change the setting back to rich text and your format is the way you want it from google docs.

Submitting your fics to the Pond to be posted on the blog

Via the app:

Submitting via the app is a pain, but it is possible. 

[Side note: Posts submitted to the Pond via the app can not be edited by the admin. We don’t edit your posts often, but occasionally we will add or change tags, or try to make your post look more appealing. If you submit via the app, we can’t do that.]

Kay was gracious enough to go through thr process and make screenshots for us, explaining what was happening along the way.

First, click on the envelope at the top of the screen:

Nect, click “Submit Your Fics”:

Then you’ll see this screen:

The various options for the type of submission show up at the bottom just like when you compose a post in the app for your own blog. I would add that my “asks” seem to get eaten more often when my phone auto-corrects something. So, one post I did not use auto-correct (and that took way too many tries, honestly) and one post did use auto-correct (and I surprisingly had success).

All the tags available are already applied when submitting through the app (at least on my phone) so you would have to delete those that don’t apply, which is opposite of how you do it when submitting on desktop. 

To do this, tap on the #tags (you can see them starting to list in the middle of all the white or you can tap the # in the bottom right corner) and you will get this big list of all the tags available when submitting. 

Tap on the one that does NOT apply, and you will get this tiny little x.

Tap the x to remove that tag. Repeat for all the tags that do not apply. If you do not tap the x, it will go back to the darker blue color of a tag that will be applied to your submission.

Caution: if you remove a tag you wanted by accident, you will have to type it back in. My experience with this was my app generating popular tags related to what I was typing first, not tags that were previously there, so please read carefully to get the correct tags.

To change the type of post to link instead of text: click on the link icon along the bottom (there's the Aa for a text post, links, GIF, a camera, etc). However, I copy/pasted a link into the body on a Aa post and it still seemed to work.

A long time ago, THIS ANSWER was posted on the Pond blog about making your submitted post “prettier” and more attractive to readers. This was made based on using desktop (not the app), and just copying and pasting from one tab to another, like this:

On desktop, in Chrome, this works very well, for most people, most of the time. (Mel had some issues doing it for a couple of days, and then it magically started working for no apparent reason.) The gif will transfer over, along with the gif credit, too. This way, the submission to the Pond looks exactly like your original post, and will thus attract more readers.

In the app, though, the copy function doesn’t like to go through an image, and it seemed to be hit-or-miss if a gif copied and pasted would load properly. Basically, it’s a LOT of work to submit via the app, and it is not recommended. You can, but it’s a lot of work.

Why should I make my submissions “pretty” when just posting a link works just fine?

When you are submitting your story to the Pond to be posted on the blog, you’re doing it to attract readers who might otherwise not see your story. You want to sell your story on our blog the same way you sell it on your own blog. That means including all of the elements of a header that are suggested IN THIS POST (Suggested Format for Fics). If you don’t add this information, you could end up with a post that looks like this on the blog:

Readers might not even clock that as a story to be read! Some readers won’t even look at a story that doesn’t list a word count, warnings, or if there’s a pairing. Simply copying and pasting your header into the submission box gives potential readers everything they need to know. Also, here is a good list we came up with a while back of Warning Tags for Fics. 

I worked really hard to craft this “secret” (but possibly triggering) ending so I don’t want to spoil it in the warnings; any suggestions?

In your header, let your readers know that there is possibly triggering material in the story, direct them to your tags at the bottom of the post, and then use the “#tw:” format to list the spoilery triggers in your story. This way, people who have few or no triggers can read without being spoiled, and those with triggers they need to avoid can make sure they’re reading safely.

I’m bad at writing summaries. Do I really need one?

Yes. And don’t wimp out and say, “I’m bad at summaries.” That will turn readers off. Think of a summary like a movie trailer. Would you go see a movie is the trailer was just a guy saying, “It’s a good movie, I swear, but I suck at making trailers, so just go see it, yeah?” If a reader is at all unsure about reading your story, your summary can make their decision. Your summary doesn’t need to spoil the story, but just give the reader some idea of what they’re getting into. Set the table, as it were, before the meal. Is it canon-compliant, or an AU? When is it set? Who’s involved in the story? Bring your readers to the ball park before you start the game.

Should I use a specific tag for my writing? Why or why not?

After some discussion, we determined that you should if you don’t have a masterlist set up, yet, or if you don’t keep your masterlist updated. As long as you have a masterlist and keep it up-to-date, then the extra tag isn’t necessary.

That’s it for this month! Don’t forget to submit your stories and your Angel Fish nominations! Want to know what’s happening in the Pond? Check the Pond Calendar to see what’s coming up! And, as always, if you have questions or suggestions, let us know! You can send us an ask, or send a private message to @manawhaat​ (Mana) or @mrswhozeewhatsis​ (Michelle) anytime!

#chat recap #spnfanficpond #spnfanficpond livechat #michelle answers #chat room #let's chat #THE CHAT ROOM #pond chat

[florrickandassociates]

TGF Thoughts: 3x09-- The One Where The Sun Comes Out

This episode was way more engaging than the last. I talk a lot about Maia in this one; the writers finally figured out how to use her!

Reasons I shouldn’t write recaps after a year without seeing an episode: I forget basic stuff, like that it rained for all of season 3. You know, because ATMOSPHERE and WEIRDNESS and QUIRK. And SYMBOLISM. Can’t forget symbolism. 

To be fair to the writers, it did rain a lot last year. All I remember about the month of June is rain. They predict everything. 

Maia’s new job at a call center (I can’t recall if we’d seen her at the call center before this episode) is something she takes very seriously. Just kidding. She acts disdainful towards anyone who dares ask for her help and then hangs up on them. On one hand, this seems like a terrible job so I get her “fuck it all” attitude. On the other, she’s being suuuuuper bratty.

Right. I refreshed my memory. We did see Maia at this job in an earlier episode. 

Consult-a-Lawyer is where all the LGwhatever rejects go. Sounds miserable. 

Blum walks in, and Maia makes a, “Oh God, THIS asshole” face. Coincidentally, this is also the face I’m making as I realize I’m going to have to listen to this loud man I had blocked from my mind yell obscene things for two more episodes. 

Blum wants to hire Maia. She agrees, as does her friend Lili. I believe Maia has other choices (remember how she turned down Diane’s offers to help when they weren’t exactly what she wanted?) but also, yeah, I’d want to get the hell out of Consult-a-Lawyer too. 

Now it is hailing. Everyone from RBL is in blue. Remember those picspams we all used to make where we’d oversaturate the background to make everything blue? I wouldn’t need to oversaturate this image to make the blue pop. 

I truly don’t understand why the main page of All Access thinks I am in the middle of some random season 2 episode when I am clearly in the middle of 3x09. When I click on the show, it understands that I’m in the middle of 3x09 and allows me to resume watching. Why wouldn’t you optimize your homepage to encourage people to keep watching!? (All Access isn’t alone in this: HBO Go also makes it very hard to figure out where I left off when watching a series.) 

So, because Carl Reddick was a sexual harasser and RBL covered it up, ChumHum is insisting on an internal investigation, led by a woman who is-- you guessed it-- quirky. And even worse, it’s one of the quirks that’s actually not funny because it’s a real condition people live with?? How are we still doing this, show?

This is RBL’s best year ever. Yay! I forget if that tracks with anything we’ve seen. I guess the existence of ChumHum alone is enough to make that true.

Oh NO, Book Club is in this one too!? Liz, wisely, says she’s done and refuses to go with Diane. 

Maia tells Blum no, she won’t work with him. She thought he was rescuing her from hell, but he’s really “dragging her down deeper.” This is accurate. Maia may not be the smartest character on this show, but she’s got her eyes wide open when she works with Blum. 

Blum wants to work with Maia (duh) because her father is a piece of shit respected by other pieces of shit. This checks out. This is quite logical, tbh. 

Maia requires very little convincing. This is not because she is in such a hard spot she has no other options. This is because she is bored and hates the world because she didn’t get her way and had to deal with consequences. It took very little to turn Maia from an innocent to a villain. Perhaps that’s because she was always complicit. (If you’re 26 and went to law school and you can’t understand privilege even on the most basic level, it’s because you’ve been tuning out everything that challenges you.)

Maia seems way more confident now. She’s SO much more fascinating as a villain than as a protagonist, likely because even when she was the protagonist everything she did was so selfish it was hard not to see her as a villain. Props to the writers for recognizing that and leaning into it. They don’t explicitly tie her actions here to her actions at the start of the series, but this only works because Maia’s always been one slight away from going bad. 

And yes, I think villain is the appropriate word for someone money hungry and willing to work, no questions asked, with someone as slimy as Blum. 

Maia hires her friend Lili to help out, which, admittedly, is a nice thing for someone I just called a villain to do. 

After further “messages” from the con artist who started Book Club, the Book Clubbers want to SWAT someone. This sounds fucking terrifying. Diane pushes back and the rest of Book Club is totally ok with this strategy.

So Diane reveals that Valerie’s a con artist and it causes squabbling. It somehow backfires because people believe the woman claiming to have a message from Valerie. Even the one who can do all the IT things--the one who could very easily (by show logic at least) just simply look up the records and phone numbers herself-- believes her. 

Is a big group setting really the way internal investigations are done? I’m no expert, but this feels like a bad approach!!

Marissa doesn’t think the firm has racial issues! Ha ha. She thinks the racial pay gap issues are totally resolved because the associates got raises. As much as I want to believe someone as savvy as Marissa wouldn’t think like this… I kinda believe it. 

Lili also seems kind of terrible, like someone who can’t wait to go on a power trip and fuck over every person who has ever said anything mean to her. 

Oh goodie, we’re talking about sexism now. I appreciate that they’ve featured a few associates over the course of season three. I don’t remember their names since I last watched these episodes a year ago, but I remember that they’ve been in several episodes. I hope to see them in season four, and to learn their names. 

Someone says men weren’t considered to head up Lucca’s department. This is blatantly false. Also, idk what these other associates can do, but Lucca’s proven herself to be adaptable, smart, and someone who can go above and beyond. Plus, she is someone who is out for herself, with tons of career options. She’s someone you want at your firm. 

The female named partners are biased against men, says a (you guessed it!) male associate. Hahahahahahahahahahahahahhahahhahaha no. 

Marissa calls the associate out on this, and another (female) associate steps in to say she’s in no place to talk since she’s stealing Jay’s job. If it didn’t seem like there was room for both of them, this would be true. 

In a move I appreciate, the mailroom employees are also in this scene, talking about how they didn’t receive any bonuses to correct for the pay gap because of their class. When one of the associates says they didn’t receive a bonus because of race, a mailroom guy calls her out for not knowing his name. 

And then it devolves, as so many of these scenes do, into people talking over each other.

While I like that they address these issues so often on this show, I don’t think “inequalities are controversial and there’s no solution so here are people talking over each other” is the best approach. Sure, I can appreciate different points, and I don’t need the show to tell me how to think, but at this point I think the show needs more of a POV on this. It feels, too often, like they’re saying “Controversy! Huh!” 

Marissa goes to Liz and mentions the other women Carl Reddick assaulted. Liz, understandably, hasn’t looked at the files Marissa gave her. She says she will but asks Marissa to keep quiet around the investigator. So sounds like she doesn’t intend to do anything. 

Oh no. Is this the ep with the retcon where Liz and Adrian actually did hook up!? And put it in work emails!? All I have to say about this is that it’s a bad decision. Sometimes the writers get so close to making a bad decision and then walk it back enough so that I can relax, and then bring it back later, for no reason. It’s even worse that way, because by that point I’ve already formed a strong opinion about it happening. The moment that set me off the most in TGW was when Alicia and Peter agreed to renew their vows at the end of 421, followed by a commercial break, followed by a promo with Alicia kissing Will. I HATED the love triangle at that time. I mean HATED. That commercial break allowed me to relax into the idea that the writers had ended the love triangle. The promo shattered that idea, and, in turn, I slammed my computer shut so hard it nearly broke. That is not a feeling I like. That is the feeling that learning Liz and Adrian fucked gives me. 

NOT EVERYONE HAS TO SLEEP WITH EVERYONE. IT IS SOMETIMES MORE INTERESTING WITHOUT THE ILLICIT AFFAIRS. THERE ARE MORE INTERESTING WAYS THAN HOOKUPS TO ADDRESS THAT THEY USED TO BE MARRIED. For starters, can we get an episode where Liz calls Adrian out on the condescending voice he’s always using when he talks to her?

Oh yes, this is also perjury. Why. Why is this happening? Why would Liz and Adrian admit this to an investigator knowing damn well they lied under oath, and also, why would they lie under oath? I know we saw it happen but was it really worth two partners perjuring themselves bc they fucked their ex??? 

When the stakes are high for no reason (or for a stupid reason) it doesn’t maximize drama. It just makes me tune out the drama. If I believed Liz and Adrian had a good reason to perjure themselves, maybe I’d care about this. Maybe they did. But the fact I don’t remember it-- and I’m someone who can name every single episode title of TGW in order-- suggests to me it wasn’t a good enough reason. 

Liz goes to shred the file with the rest of the info on her father’s victims. See, this is a bad choice that I understand. It’s her father’s legacy and her firm’s future, and she has all the power right now. It could come back to bite her, but I get why she takes this risk. I get why this situation is fraught. 

Credits time!!! 

Maia’s also decided to dress like a Bad Girl. She is trying VERY hard. But she’s pulling it off. She’s speaking without hesitation and actually taking an active role in getting things done. It speaks volumes about her character that the first time she’s been motivated about anything work related, it’s something morally bankrupt. 

Apparently the black and white associates are sitting apart from each other. Julius says it’s not intentional; there’s a hot desk system. That held up well.

LMAO people think Julius and Marissa are sleeping together. Julius does a spit take-- the appropriate reaction.

“You’re really a Rindell?” a potential client asks Maia. “Raised at his knee. Taught me everything he knows,” Maia says proudly, displaying a framed picture of her and her father. I’ve said it like five times already but it’s SO dark that Maia would use this to her advantage. We’ve seen some opportunistic shit on TGW/TGF but Maia gets so shameless, so fast, with no remorse. Damn. 

RBL is trying to disbar Blum. He doesn’t care. He tells Maia to take care of it and to use the allegations (which she doesn’t realize are real) against Carl to make it go away.

Diane is talking to a computer. I’m over all the Diane plots.

Liz is glad the Book Club is still fighting even if she’s not involved, which is the stance it always made the most sense for Liz to have. 

Diane allows Book Club to proceed with their latest scheme because she finds the dude they’re targeting deplorable. If this plot didn’t involve Book Club I’d find it to be an interesting moral dilemma. 

An actually interesting dilemma: Liz informs Marissa she will not be disclosing the names of any additional victims. Marissa clearly thinks this is the wrong call but keeps her mouth shut. An unusual amount of restraint for her. 

Maia and Marissa are still friends! Is this the episode with the bizarre Maia/Marissa kiss that I still don’t understand the point of? 

Marissa divulges info about the firm’s Reddick drama to Maia, which is uncharacteristically stupid of Marissa. But there’s no bridge Maia isn’t willing to blow up to help Blum. She’s prying and manipulating a friend who faked a drug test for her and got her through the worst time in her life so she can prop up a mean, cruel man. There are other paths for Maia. I want to be absolutely clear that I think she is choosing this one because things got the slightest bit challenging for her. 

Maia realizes what she’s doing and stops herself saying she has to go because “everything we talk about from now on, you’re gonna blame me for.” And rightfully so! 

OH, the kiss is because Maia is acknowledging she’s fucking over their frendship, isn’t it? Earlier they’re about to drunkenly kiss and one of them talks about not fucking friends they don’t want to fuck up the friendship. So the kiss is fucking over the friendship. Or maybe it’s just a kiss. 

“You’re gonna hate me. Just remember, this has nothing to do with us,” Maia says. Ha, I believe this less than I believe Alicia’s “this was never meant personally” in 5x05. (Hitting the Fan isn’t a bad comparison here, since Alicia does make a choice to fuck over friends when she has the choice to not fuck over friends. I think what makes that “gray” for me while this is villain territory for Maia is how fast this happens. Alicia’s taking the clients whose accounts SHE has sustained, and starting a firm she truly believes will be better (for herself, as a company, for her family). It’s a selfish decision. Her options aren’t reduced all that much either (she’s the governor’s wife, if she wants to leave her firm she could go anywhere). But I can see her side, I can see how fraught the choice was for her, I can see how the way things played out made the tensions worse. Maia burns her friendships to the ground so she can work with a loathsome man because the opportunity fell into her lap while she was hating the world too much to do anything productive with her life. 

Maia’s crying in the office when Blum finds her. She knows what she’s about to do. She’s sad she’s going to do it, but she knows she’s going to do it. I don’t think she considers, for a moment, not fucking over Marissa. As soon as Marissa gives her the intel (which, no matter what Maia says, she was totally fishing for), Maia’s mind is made up. Does it make it better if she cries about it? 

And Maia KNOWS it is a betrayal. She says she knows “a friend will interpret it as a betrayal” because she knows it is one. She tells Blum she doesn’t know if it’s a betrayal because “I’ve lost track these days” (that line sounds surprisingly Alicia-esque) and tells him what she knows. That’s one of those questions that if you have to ask, you know the answer. 

Thought experiment: Would it be a betrayal if Maia were an activist who wanted to get the word out about an abuser? I think a lot of why I react so harshly towards Maia’s choice here is that (1) she sees it as a foregone conclusion that she’ll use the info and (2) she is using it to help Blum. Blum isn’t shades of gray (50 shades of gray joke here). He is despicable. He isn’t morally ambiguous and you can’t even say his ends justify his means because his ends are despicable too! 

Ah, a scene I won’t have much to say about. It’s going to be Blum on his bullshit.

Oh, I do have something to say, but it’s a sad thing. Mark Blum, the actor playing ACDB lawyer Julius Kreutzer in this scene, sadly passed away from COVID-19 last week. 

Roland Blum representing sexual assault survivors to fuck over a rival law firm makes me sad.

Marissa does, in fact, interpret Maia’s actions as a betrayal. She calls her immediately and asks, “you fucked me over?” “Not intentionally,” Maia says. Oh, own it. You knew the moment she said it what you were going to do; this was an intentional action with an inconvenient consequence. 

The partners find out, thanks to Blum, that Julius is going to be a federal judge. And they are not happy.

More talking over each other! Cultural appropriation has entered the mix of complaints. Lucca decides to intervene by going to the partners about the new seating plan. And this is why Lucca, and not that associate, is heading up a department. She knows when to go to management and isn’t wasting her own time in these squabbles. (Tbh, Lucca recognizing that bickering with no resolution in sight isn’t productive makes me wonder if the writers have more of a POV than I’m giving them credit for. Maybe they’re trying to say that talking over each other is futile and aggravating.)

Why the hell does this investigator want to integrate the mailroom by firing black people so they can hire more white people?! Setting aside for a minute that that is a profoundly stupid idea, that can’t possibly be legal, can it??? 

RBL decides that, backed into a corner, it’s time to just own up to their wrongdoings. It works with the ACDB, at least until Blum brings Maia into things.

Book Club kills someone. I truly don’t know how to feel about Diane having literal blood on her hands. This scene should be way more dramatic than it feels. This is the problem with having stakes too big for the show. Instead of getting invested, I write off the far-fetched plots, and I can’t really care about character drama that stems from something so over the top I don’t believe it. 

Diane thinks Book Club didn’t want the guy dead. What about this group that was working to hack voting machines suggested that they wanted him to live???? 

Liz says Diane has to report them, but Diane worries she’s implicated. Who could have imagined that working with crime-loving resistance group would have legal ramifications?! It’s not like Diane and Liz are lawyers or anything.

Liz thinks Diane needs to convince Book Club that everything they’re doing is because of a con artist, but that’s a solution to a different problem. Diane knew Valerie was a con artist and still pushed forward with Book Club because she was committed to the cause. Why would any of these other women abandon the group at this point? What difference does it make if Valerie is a liar.

Shock of all shocks, Book Club is planning their next attack. It’s almost like they are a group of criminals who meet in shady spaces at odd hours. The time to be noble about this shit was weeks ago, Diane and Liz. You’re complicit. What did you think you were getting into? 

Book Club does not like that Kurt is conservative. Diane gets mad and basically threatens them.

“You two are just as culpable,” one of the Book Clubbers says. She’s not wrong. Maybe not JUST as culpable, but culpable for sure. It’s possible that I just don’t want to see Diane and Liz be culpable for things this atrocious and stupid so I resent this plotline. (That said, to go back to Hitting the Fan as an example of a character I love doing a thing that is morally questionable at best, I can accept my faves doing things I don’t like. There’s something about the scale of Book Club’s actions vs the scale of the show that feels off.)

“The truth is what you make it,” Blum tells Maia. A familiar lesson for this show.

!!!!!!!! Is CBS reading my unpublished word doc?! Because today All Access understands that I am watching 3x09.

It’s also updated the key art for TGF to the season 4 image, which says “What is memo 618” in larger font than the show’s title. I am sure I will come to care about memo 618; however, it doesn’t make me want to watch the show or tell me anything about the show, so I don’t get why it’s on the poster. 

ALSO there is no question mark on the image so that’s gonna drive me just a little crazy.

Blum manipulates Maia by telling her she shouldn’t let anyone control her. Maia doesn’t agree to help him; she heads home instead.

Liz and Adrian talk about sleeping together. They had previously said it was a mistake, but Adrian wants to reopen the discussion. All Liz wants is privacy. 

Adrian then asks her if she regrets “fucking”. Yes, he says fucking. Those are his words. Liz is like, what do you want to hear? And it breaks up the tension of the moment. THAT is more compelling to me than all the perjury stuff. (Also, neither of them regret it.)

I don’t think I have a problem with them sleeping together… just a problem with it happening off-screen (I don’t need a sex scene-- just want to know how they got there!), being retconned, and then being used to create drama. If they want to hook up, go for it. 

Oh, look, it’s a stock footage shot of the outdoors. Busy streets? People walking around? Seems fake.

The stock footage is to show that the rain has stopped, btw. It just feels like it’s designed to taunt me with the idea of public parks and bustling streets. 

The ChumHum report is out and the partners look very! Serious! But Liz and Adrian are in the clear. 

The investigator basically just finds the firm grew too fast and that’s their only real issue. The Carl Reddick issue will hurt, but it’s survivable.

But they’re still losing ChumHum. They were always going to lose ChumHum. Diane goes outside to enjoy the good weather while she can.

Maia doesn’t show and Blum gets disbarred. It’s fun to watch him squirm, having just lost his power. He rambles nonsensically. 

Maybe Maia isn’t a villain. I truly don’t remember this scene happening; I thought I remembered her showing up to defend him! Score one, Maia. This episode is the most interesting Maia’s ever been. 

I also don’t remember Diane singing on a park bench. But I like it!

Book Club is threatening Diane now. They’ll destroy her (or kill her?) if she tells on them. Dramatic!!!

#the good fight #tgfthoughts #yall i had to actually spend time THINKING about why maia's choices come across differently than similar choices by other characters #a maia plot made me think about something other than how little she works!! truly incredible

[hexhux]

My Eighteenth Birthday

Friday, May 3rd, 2019. 

An open letter to everyone who has ever loved me. A recap of the year. 

Today, I turned eighteen years old. I can’t help but feel incredibly lucky to be here. I’m sure many others who suffer from long-term mental illness can relate, but it is not always a given to make it this far. I have so much farther to go, but because this is such a milestone, I wanted to take a moment to step back and give my thanks to those in my life who have offered their hand to me. This life has been as joyous and wonderful as it has been cruel. For all the times I have sobbed my heart out, grieving and ashamed, I have found an equal amount of pure, forgiving laughter. To everyone, thank you so much.

One of the most important things I have learned so far is to appreciate the small things. To the setting sun, to the flowers called weeds, to the soft sheets, to the warm baths - thank you. To the moon, the stars, the midnight sky - thank you. To the emotional movies, to the memes on the internet, to the books I’ve read a thousand times - thank you. These are the things I have cultivated and loved, even when I thought the sun wouldn’t shine on me any longer. To quote one of my favorite movies of all time, Swiss Army Man, “Everything everywhere matters to everything.” It truly does. Forever. Always.

Grandma: you are the most important person in my life. From the very day I was born, you have been there. Through every stomach ache, nightmare, and painful thought, you have pieced me back together. You taught me what love truly was. Dedication. Sincerity. Empowerment. On all the days I could not love myself, you loved me twice as much. I found true friendship with you. You are the most generous, forgiving, and wholly enveloping person I know. Regardless of whether or not I am happy or sad, your face is the one I want to see. You match me in passion, pride, and persistence. I cannot tell you how much I love you because words do not come close to the feeling inside my heart. Thank you for being my best friend, for the advice, the comfort, and all the times you thoroughly read my fanfiction. You have supported my art and my dreams since the beginning. Thank you, mama.

Ethan: Firstly, let me ask a very, very important question, little brother. Do you have a mic? I’m kidding (lmao). I could not have a better brother. You were my first playmate, my partner in crime, and the person who was always by my side. Never once have we stopped playing. Every moment with you is one of belly-aching laughter and jokes. You bring an incredible light to the life of anyone who knows you. You’re level-headed, compassionate, and the funniest person I know. We’re so similar, but even in our differences, we’ve supported one another fully. You are my other half and I love you so dearly that it’s nearly laughable. You’re an absolute buffoon sometimes, but I’d take you over anyone else any day.

Collin: Ah, yes, my stupid woke best friend. You are the sweetest, kindest person I have ever met. The only person who asks retail workers about their day, even if they clearly hate their job. Nobody else has ever made quite such a dedication to getting to know me. You know the most about me, even if admitting that is embarrassing because the vast majority of my secrets are odd and cringe-worthy. We have been through so many challenges, but we have always made it through because we have a connection unlike no other. You are such a beautiful, encapsulating human being. The bond we have is incomparable to any other, and I cannot thank you enough for being my friend. It isn’t often you meet someone who wants all of you, not just the good parts. You have loved me through the misfortune. And I want you to know that I will forever be there for you. It is an honor to know you, Collin.

Nits: We may have met by chance, but there is nothing accidental about our friendship. I have never encountered someone like you before - someone so bold, strong, and gorgeous. That summer we spent every day together, entangled by movies, music, and a growing fondness that would last forever. To be loved by you is such a gift. Nobody deserves you. I have never so desperately wanted to see someone succeed. We are intertwined and will be forever, I truly hope. You have held my hand and helped me through the bad times, just as I’ve held yours. You are an enigmatic, wondrous, and hopeful soul. Thank you for seeing me for who I am, even when I myself didn’t know who that was at times.

Kiesha: Your comfort and reassurance is never-ending. You have such a warm, broad presence. We have known each other for such a long time and have managed to grow in the same direction. So much love, laughter and acceptance has been cultivated between us. I cannot thank you enough for all those nights spent talking on the phone late at night. For all the times you answered my calls when I was crying after a bad dream and needed another person to exist with me. For all the beta-reading, spelling checks, and long-reading sessions. Thank you for being there and for being the Wade Wilson to my Peter Parker.

Nova: I have never met another person so similar to myself. You’ve given me so much comfort in my identity and existence. You are a lovely, sugary sweet human being, even when you’re badass. You have such a fierce and generous energy, which has enraptured me since the moment we met. We met through hard circumstances, but I believe it was worth it because we found each other. I would relive it a hundred times if you were still standing at the end of it. Our love for one another is so nurturing and wholesome, and I wouldn’t give it up for all the money in the world. Thank you for your friendship, generosity, and patience. I don’t know what I would do if I didn’t have you. Probably throw a fit.

Nikki: You are seriously one of the most interesting people I have ever met. You’re so hilarious, so intriguing, and so sincere. I couldn’t ask for a better friend. Your presence is one I’ll never forget and hope to never live without. I will always hold my hand out to you because I know you’d do the same for me. You’re such a supportive, kind, and affectionate person. You don’t give yourself enough credit for how fuckin’ amazing you are. I’m very glad to call you my friend, and I can’t thank you enough for being mine. You matter so much to me. Thank you for all the playlists, passion, and crude jokes.

Cierra: You are such a beautiful, darling person. We have grown so much together and I could not be happier to call you my friend. Ever since I was a child, I dreamed of having a friend like the teenage girls in the coming of age movies. The type of friendship where you gush about boys, share all of your dreams and uplift each other to the highest degree. I feel so much happiness talking to you, even if it's about nothing at all. You have supported me so thoroughly and have always been such a gentle, soft girl. I am so proud to call you my friend. For all the times we gushed over Tom Holland, thank you.

J: From the very moment we met, we’ve had intense and bold chemistry. You’re so funny and so wise, even if sometimes I want to beat you with a stick. Your love and dedication for me have been such a pleasure. I love that we can spend hours on the phone - talking about everything and nothing at all. You’ve always been there to support me, even in times when I felt too weak to go on. Your love for me has been so enveloping, and I hope you know that I love you just as much. Thank you for giving me the courage to remove toxic people from my life. Thank you for remembering the little things about me. And most of all, thank you for also indulging in my love for oldies beach music. You’re wonderful.

Aisu, Amanda, Sky, and Reez: My wonderful squad! You guys are endlessly supportive, hilarious, and fantastic human beings. Never in my life have I felt so brave and safe with a group of people. It is truly an honor to log onto Twitter and talk to such honest, fantastic friends. No matter what I’m talking about, you guys are always there to encourage me. Through all my writing, my artwork, my strange fantasies - you guys have been there. For all the support of my Kylo Ren fetish, my love for Slenderman, and random infatuations with villians, thank you so much. From the bottom of my heart, I love y’all.

To myself: You’ve made it this far. I know that some days you succumb to the pain, the insecurity, the anguish, but you have truly been so brave. Every time that you’ve fallen, you’ve pushed yourself from the ground and stood on your feet once more. Against all odds, you have made it to eighteen. You are strong. You are smart. You are brave. Even on the days when you wished you were someone else, or gone completely, you have bandaged your wounds and taken care of yourself. I am so proud of you. For once in my life, I am happy to be who I am. I am happy to be you. To inhabit this body. Thank you for never once giving up on yourself, even when you so desperately wanted to. Thank you so much.

I learned so much during my year as seventeen. It hasn’t been easy by any means; there were so many times when I wanted to let go of it all. Recovering from severe depression, anxiety, and post-traumatic stress disorder has been a long, arduous process. I’ve been in therapy for nearly a full year now, and I’ve come so far in examining my trauma and understanding how to live with it. This year, I’ve done my best to step out of my comfort zone and allow myself to flourish as much as possible. This life can be complicated and heartbreaking, but it’s worth it all. For all the happiness, the love, the sweetness.

Finally, I’d like to list the songs that I’ve played a billion times and have been the biggest comfort. 

1. Mariners Apartment Complex by Lana Del Rey

2. O Superman by Laurie Anderson

3. Allentown by Manchester Orchestra & The Front Bottoms

4. I’ll Still Have Me by CYN

5. Wish You Were Here by Pink Floyd

Thank you to everyone. For everything.

“Knowing at last what I am, recognizing it, admitting it, confronting it,” - Anaïs Nin

#tate hyperventilates #friends #long post #18th birthday #mental illness tw

[friedegg]

a dream of good writing; s8 predictions/wish list

okay i’m procrastinating thesis work and cant stop fixating on Game of Thrones... WE’RE SO CLOSE. So here is a big ole post with everything i think and hope will happen this season - who lives / dies, plot points, etc. This post is HUGE and mostly for me to reread after the finale to wallow, lmao.

going to bold & italicize predictions that came true and strikeout the ones that didnt

Let’s start with priorities: the storylines and characters i care most about and where they’ll be at the start of s8 (roughly in order of how much i care)

Recap: Characters/plot

Sansa Stark - Of course, Sansa is and always will be the character I most look forward to seeing. Since season one, she’s gone from an idealistic young girl with a love of romance, slowly realized the cruel reality of the world, became an orphaned political prisoner, learned to lie and manipulate for her own survival, been abused in unspeakable ways, yet has persevered to escape, reunite with her family, retake her childhood home (which wouldn’t have been possible without the men of the vale, loyal to her), and gathered the northern lords to her side. She’s also demonstrated an understanding of governing - war isn’t her style, but ruling is. She has been one of the only characters who has common sense and is making practical plans to survive the winter (collecting grain, ensuring armor is covered with leather, etc). With Littlefinger gone, she now has the complete allegiance of the Vale, and potentially the Riverlands. She’s reconnecting with her siblings, even though they’re SUPER weird, and keeping the North loyal and functional in Jon’s absence. As Lady of Winterfell, she’ll immediately be starting the season with conflict - Jon’s betrayal and the arrival of Dragon Queen D*ny.

Jaime Lannister - Jaime and Cersei are probably tied for my second favorite characters. Their respective storylines have divided them significantly, geographically and character-wise. Jaime began as an arrogant, entitled, morally corrupt “Kingslayer,” completely devoted to Cersei and nothing else. His capture by the Starks in season 2 led to an unlikely deal being struck between him and Catelyn Stark - promising to return her daughters to her. His subsequent journey with Brienne and amputation of his sword hand led to a deeper understanding of his character and proved he did, actually, have some convictions. He killed the mad king to prevent the burning of kings landing (and left cersei for similar reasons) and besides some uh..... inconsistent characterization in season 4 and 5, has since decided to join with the living in Winterfell. VERY IMPORTANTLY - he knows that Cersei lied at the Dragonpit meeting, and has no intention of sending aid to the North or honoring the Truce.

Cersei Lannister - people love to hate Cersei, but I love to love her. She’s an inherently flawed character, but her dedication to her children and penchant for wit and wine endear her to me. No one else on the show relishes in revenge quite as well, and honestly most of the time i find her actions justifiable, even if they are often foolish and illogical. Although she attempts to play the game better than everyone else, her scheming has repeatedly backfired, leading her deeper and deeper down a dark path. Her involvement in the deaths of Robert and Ned Stark started the war that tore the kingdoms apart, her hatred for Tyrion and manipulation of his trial led to the death of Tywin, and arming the faith militant in an attempt to use them as pawns backfired - leading to her arrest and humiliation. Her revenge - blowing up the sept with hundreds of citizens, the High Sparrow, and most of the Tyrells inside - led to Tommen’s suicide. Despite her best efforts, her 3 children are dead, Jaime has left her, and enemies surround her. She now has nothing to lose, a questionable former-maester (I also adore Qyburn), a zombie giant, the golden company, and an unconfirmed cache of wildfire at her disposal. She is also apparently pregnant, but I’m not sure how much I believe that.

Winterfell (convergence) - Let’s just recap on how wild the reunions, meetings, and political implications of the impending meeting of forces at Winterfell. With 7 seasons of plotting, murder, and shifting alliances, the amount of weird tension in the great hall - and potential character interactions - Is something i’m most excited for.

The arrival of Dany - there hasn’t been a Targaryen in the North (besides Night’s Watch Aemon and the Three Eyed Raven, but they were undercover) in years, and The North Remembers what the last Targaryens did - kidnapped their Lady Lyanna and burned Brandon and Rickard Stark alive. While they desperately need her dragonfire and armies, that doesn’t mean they’ll give Dany a warm welcome, and I’m super excited to see how they react to Jon bending the knee

Samwell and Dany - sam has inevitably learned about his father and Brother’s execution at this point. He’s not a confrontational person and didn’t particularly love his father, but he was close with Dickon and I can’t imagine him being chill with Dragonarys burning them alive. Potential tension between him and Jon as a result.

Jon reuniting with Bran and Arya (STARK SEASON BABY) - they have all grown so much as characters, and hardly resemble the children who parted ways in s1e1. I expect this reunion to be bittersweet af.

Jon’s heritage - while he was off being held prisoner/ seducing the dragon queen, Sam and Bran put two and two together, revealing Jon to be Aegon Targaryen, legitimate heir of Rhaegar and Lyanna. This is obviously going to cause conflict with Dany (anyone who thinks otherwise is... hmm) as well as the northern lords.

Brienne/Jaime Reunion - possibly on of the greatest pairs on the show, Jaime took Brienne’s “Fuck Loyalty!” to heart and was last seen riding North to join the war against the dead, leaving Cersei to her scheming in the south. Now that his relationship with his sister is apparently  over, maybe he and Brienne can finally act on that unbearable UST that’s been around since s3

Jaime and Bran reunion - The last time Bran saw Jaime back in s1e1, he  got pushed out a window and crippled. Jaime has since become a far better person (imo) and Bran is an all-seeing all-knowing robot boy. this interaction will be v interesting

Arya seeing some of the few people remaining on her list: Beric Dondarrion (assuming he makes it back from the wall), The Hound (perhaps no longer on the list, i’m excited for this reunion as well), and Melisandre. While I believe Arya can hold a grudge, these characters have become valuable allies to the North - she can’t just go around murdering them.

Gendry/ ARYA!!! - the clips of Gendry in the winterfell forge made me want to scream. These two are another favorite pair from the show, and havent seen each other since their run-in with the brotherhood in season 3. the UST will be interesting - they’re both fully grown adults now, but is super-assassin arya capable of having romantic feelings anymore? And how is royal bastard Gendry going to feel about her new skills and penchant for stealing faces? lmao.

Gendry and Melisandre - Gendry definitely hasnt forgiven the Brotherhood or Melisandre for his brief imprisonment and near-sacrifice in s3. Of course, Melisandre has also been pretty humbled by stannis’ loss.

Tyrion and Sansa - the two slowly formed a tentative friendship during their arranged marriage in season 3, with the Lannister as one of the few characters in King’s landing to show her kindness and protection. Tyrion is one of the first to recognize her strength and intelligence, and their reunion may be awkward, but hopefully their friendship will be strengthened.

plus so many more connections between characters that i’m probably forgetting about!!!!

The Iron Throne - Cersei currently sits the Iron Throne, but has almost no claim. Her potential baby by Jaime’s claim won’t hold up against any of the other candidates for the Throne. Currently competing with her is Dany, who does have a legitimate claim, dragons, and an army - but is still a foreigner with a penchant for roasting people alive. Unfortunately for them, more players may enter the ring. Jon has been revealed as the legitimate son of Rhaegar and Lyanna, meaning he has a stronger claim. He was raised in a noble family, fought for the nights watch, and has proven himself a capable military commander. However, his parentage reveal may weaken northern allegiance, and he has no real experience or allies in the south - and the kingdoms may not look kindly on his relationship to the wildings. He has also bent the knee/kind of romanced Dany. Jon absolutely doesnt want to rule the seven kingdoms - he barely wants to be king in the north - but would take the role out of a sense of duty if persuaded. Other; slightly more tenuous claims - Jamie or Tyrion (w/ Sansa Stark?) might have a chance if Cersei, Dany, and Jon don’t survive, although Robert’s bastard Gendry has a slightly stronger claim - but like Jon, he doesn’t seem like he wants the Throne, and definitely doesnt have the experience or education to rule.

For all Dany’s talk of ‘breaking the wheel’ a Targ restoration would most likely be more of the same. With the North desperate to cling onto its recently regained independence, Dorne and the Reach without their liege lords and the Riverlands in particular destroyed by the years of war fought among high lords, i can’t imagine the smallfolk being content to accept a foreign queen who tends to further destroy things, even if (maybe even especially because) she has dragons. All of which is assuming the living beat the dead and there’s still someone around to sit the throne and people to rule.

Predictions / Wishlist:

WOLVES - I desperately need D&D to have sacrificed some of their gratuitous  dragon shots to give us some direwolves. If I don’t see Ghost in episode one I’m rioting.

Battle for Winterfell - This is confirmed to happen e3, only halfway through the season, which means that defeating the night king may not be the endgame conflict like we thought. I don’t think the battle of Winterfell will be the total defeat of the walkers, however. The living are gonna sustain HEAVY casualties that will definitely change the course of the story moving forward.

I very firmly believe that Jaime’s arrival at Winterfell will be huge. The reveal that Cersei has broken the truce will cause Dany to abandon the Northern cause to attack King’s Landing - we saw shots of dragons over king’s landing in the trailers, and Dany doesn’t  appear in any of the clips of  the actual battle at Winterfell - in addition, scenes with her, Tyrion, and Varys appear to be at Dragonstone. since the trailers probably only include clips from the first few episodes, i feel like this is basically a given. Whether or not her armies accompany her isnt certain - I have a feeling Dany is going to lose a lot of followers and allies this season as we witness her fall from power.

As for the battle itself, I’m very excited from the clips to see Jaime and Brienne fighting together, finally seeing Arya on a battlefield, and praying for Ghost and Nymeria (&her pack) to make an appearance.

Political!Jon - basically the only way I can accept the character inconsistencies and plotline of s7. There’s some amazing metas on this. I really want to believe it’s not just bad writing and that Jon has been playing the game to achieve his goal of securing Dany’s dragons - at any cost. It would definitely subvert GA expectations - for some reason they still think Jon is this intensely honorable man who is incapable of lying or manipulation - despite the entire wildling storyline???? wild. please redeem yourselves, D&D

Dark!Dany - I’m not gonna lie. I hate dany. I don’t like her as a person or a character. On rewatch of the entire show, I realized just how much I detest her attitude, decision making, and actions. She is entitled and foolish. Now that she’s in Westeros and actually faces conflict and characters who weren’t created to serve her storyline specifically, she is starting to crack. Her actions over s7 displayed just how precarious her relationship with power is, and how easily she could become another mad king. I would love for her to become the final enemy that needs to be defeated after the white walkers once her allies realize her true nature. She’s a conqueror and capable of inspiring loyalty, but as the meereen arc showed, an incapable ruler.

King’s Landing - it’s gonna burn y’all - at cersei or danys hands or both

SSQOTSK- If someone has to rule all of the Seven Kingdoms, who is more qualified than Sansa Stark? She has the right family name, the loyalty of at least 2 (if not 3) of the 7 Kingdoms, and is a just and practical ruler who wants her subjects to love her. This one is a stretch, because she really has no claim (unless she marries Jon, I guess I’d be okay with them co-ruling). More realistically and I think preferably, I’d like to see her ruling the Independent North as Queen in the North. Whether this means a marriage to Jon or him being out of the picture (maybe as King in the South, although I don’t see that happening). Or Jon remaining in the North and Sansa co-ruling with him from the South. Basically, I just really think Sansa is one of the few legitimate contenders for a decent ruler. She would bring peace and prosperity to the seven kingdoms and help them survive the winter. in dream fairy-tale world, Davos can be her Hand and Brienne her Queensguard.

No more kings - personally, I want Thrones to end with the Iron Throne gone entirely. GRRM has said in the past that the sociopolitical aspects of fantasy are important to him - “What is Aragorn’s tax policy?” and the books in general make a point of condemning the corruption and flaws of the monarchal/ruling class of the seven kingdoms. I personally hope either that the 7 kingdoms will split again and govern themselves independently, or that westeros will shift to a more democratic system (slowly, of course - and not easily.) GRRM loves to subvert tropes and expectations, and i think this would be exactly the kind of twist he would do. Of course, the show might not like that and play into the audience’s desire to have someone “win” (as long as the Starks get some peace and happiness). I want the throne melted down and the (probably burned) Red Keep used to rebuild King’s Landing after cersei/dany destroys it with wildfyre/dragons.

CLEGANEBOWL - Okay this is basically confirmed but i have been wanting it for SO LONG!!!!! I don’t think either of them will win tbh - we havent really seen the mountain in action since his resurrection, but he’s still bigger and stronger than Sandor. I think it will be the end of them both.

Cersei/Sansa reunion - There is some foreshadowing/hints/theories about a kidnapping plot, in which Cersei brings Sansa back to KL. Whether it’s true or not, I hope that under some circumstances we get to see these two go toe-to-toe again. Sansa learned a lot from Cersei, and has since surpassed her as a player in the game. any interaction between them will be incredible, and I desperately want to see Sansa outsmart Cersei and “cast her down” a la the prophecy.

endgame ships:

Jonsa

Jaime/Brienne

Gendarya

Crackships I would be okay with:

Sansa/Jaime

Who Lives?

Sansa Stark - As mentioned, one of the most underestimated and underrated characters on the show, Sansa has already survived hells that none of the other characters (besides maybe theon) could comprehend. She is one of the characters GRRM’s wife said he isn’t allowed to kill off - of course, the show has kind of diverged from the canon of the books, so that might not matter. More importantly - it has been foreshadowed more than once that Sansa is meant to live through the endgame. 

And if anyone has been shown as a competent leader capable of ensuring the survival of her people through the winter, it’s her - she has a mind for governing, is fair ruler with common sense. she’s learned from the best.

Arya and Bran - She’s the other one GRRM isn’t allowed to kill. I personally believe all the Starks (with the exception of Jon) will survive.

Jamie and Brienne - (spoilers) it was accidentally confirmed by Gwen Christie that Brienne (& probably jamie) survive. Personally if it wasn’t for this I would assume they both sacrifice themselves.

Sam & Gilly - They have to survive and help rebuild. They are the dream of spring.

Other Characters I love and want to live:

Dolorous Edd

Bronn

Gendry

Who Dies?

Missandei and Greyworm are screwed, sorry

Cersei - she needs a good conclusion though - when she dies i want it to be on her own terms.

Jon Snow (?) -  I can’t decide on this one. I’m torn about him living, I feel like once his “destiny” is fulfilled it doesnt make sense to keep him around as a character besides fanservice

Dany - there’s no way she survives im sorry

Jorah - Dies defending her

Greyjoys - maybe Euron will actually chicken out and escape with his life to the east or something, but I think Cersei will kill him once he fulfills his purpose. Yara’s already dead imo. Theon.... I am conflicted about. But I feel like things dont look good for them. At least give Theon a noble death and Euron a satisfying one

Davos - I so desperately want him to live and Serve as Jonsa’s Hand but I think he’ll not survive

The Hound - Cleganebowl will end in both Cleganes dead

Melisandre - I love her but it’s time

#got s8 #got spoilers #stark season #got predictions #hoenstly ignore this its a vyvanse fueled disaster

[btshodown]

Remember You (Pt. 3)

↳ You’re just trying to get by and stay the course, but Jin has other plans in mind for you. Maybe going to that party on Saturday wasn’t such a great idea after all.  

Pairing: Seokjin x Reader Genre/Warnings: Fuckboy!Jin Au, Angst || Mentions of violence Word Count: 6k+

➭ Round of applause for me finally putting this out. :’) I won’t talk too much, but yeah, this is gonna be a 4 parter. Had to shorten it or I’d never would have posted it. You might want to read Part 2 just to recap since its been a while. Let me know what you think! <3

“Did you hear about it? What happened between her and Jin?”

 “I heard he ran out crying half naked and she left with Yoongi in front of him.”

 “No way! She left with one of his friends even though he was crying for her to stay? I always thought she was a little too stuck up, but now I know she’s just a bitch.”

 “Yeah, I mean, how can anyone be so cold hearted as to leave someone like Kim Seokjin crying?”

 A heavy sigh escapes you as you try your hardest to ignore your morning girl employees’ gossip about what happened two days ago, on Saturday night. After waking up Sunday morning in Yoongi’s place, you left him a note saying thanks (he was still sleeping) and made your way home to get ready for your mid-shift that day. Now it was Monday, and you had just finished talking to your manager Seoyoon about your new schedule availability; which were more morning shifts. She did seem skeptical as to why the change, since you were always so sure of staying night shift to avoid waking up early, and you had a feeling she was privy to the rumors; but ultimately she gently agreed to the switch.

 Not only did this mean that you’d have to get your body back to a normal sleeping schedule, but you’d at least hardly ever work with Seokjin again. The only downside? You work with more of his friends since the mornings/afternoons were always the busiest customer wise and employee wise.

 It was now noon and your little café just finished its morning rush and lunches for the buildings surrounding them, meaning that it was slow with very little to do besides gossip (prime example a few feet away at the dessert case) or clean the store. Which is what you began to do, but you could feel your nerves begin to crawl under your skin as you watch Namjoon make his way to you the moment he clocks in. It’s clear what his intent is when he stands by you and pretends to get the espresso bar ready for any drinks, but you stubbornly ignore him and go back to cleaning the counter despite it being spotless.

 “So…Saturday.”

 You knew it. “I don’t want to talk about it Namjoon-ah.”

 He pauses in putting back the porta-filter for the shots, before recovering from your clipped tone to nervously pushing the shot glasses in a line. “I know, but I still want to talk to you about hyung.”

 “Why?” you let out a sigh and finally turn to look at him as you set the cleaning rag on the counter to cross your arms. “What is there to tell me about him that I didn’t already figure out?”

 “A lot, actually,” the younger, tall male besides you clears his throat to get rid of whatever nerves he had and looks you in the eyes, wanting to convey just how serious this was to him. “All I ask is that you wait for me after my shift is over so I can talk to you. There’s a lot about Jin-hyung you don’t know about.”

 You try your best to decipher his stare, wondering if he was being sincere about this or if it would turn out to be some cruel joke Seokjin had planned for you. No doubt he was angry for how you made him look a fool in front of all his guests and you wouldn’t put it past him to do something to embarrass you as retribution. But unfortunately, Namjoon’s stare didn’t show any malicious intent; only genuine sincerity for whatever it was he going to tell you about Jin.

 “Alright,” you say it in a sigh as you look away from him to grab the cleaning rag once more, going back to pretending you’re working. “I’ll wait for your shift to end then.”

 Namjoon grins, allowing you to see his famous dimples all the girls gush about, and rubs his neck in surprise of you accepting. “Perfect, you won’t regret it, I promise.”

 As you nod silently and make your way to clean the fridge in the back, you can’t help, but to feel something would go horribly wrong. Maybe not with you and Namjoon, but there was definitely something in the air that was making you uneasy.

 It was nearing six now and you were just about to lose your mind with all the possibilities of what Namjoon was about to tell you. He finished his shift a little while ago and he began leading you across the street to this boba shop you and Yoongi frequented often. Even entering the familiar store and ordering your favorite milk tea could not keep you from wiping the sweat off your palms on your jeans; part of you honestly wanted to just forget about this and run out the shop.

 He leads you to a table outside, even the fresh breeze passing by did little to calm your racing mind and the flipping in your stomach; sitting in front of you as he fidgeted with his drink. You take a rather large gulp of your tea to strengthen your resolve and hopefully come out of this unaffected. Hope being a very key word here.

 “Jin-hyung is going to kill me for telling you this,” Namjoon suddenly mutters – your heart spikes faster in anticipation as you unconsciously still your breath – and heaves out a determined sigh before meeting your eyes, “but this needs to be said and all of us are tired of him being too much of a coward.”

 Your brows scrunch together in confusion as you completely forget about your milk tea drink, your hands wringing together in nerves, “All of us?”

 He gives a slow nod as he thoughtfully takes a sip of his own drink and licks his lips, no doubt building the courage to spill whatever secret he and his friends had been holding. It was frustrating, trying to be patient with the young man in front of you when all you wanted was to reach over and shake him by the shoulders, demanding to know what information he had.

 “We all know about it, our group of friends. Jungkookie is still a bit new, but even he has heard about it all too,” he pauses again and looks away from you to stare at his hands clasped around the cup. “You do remember Jin-hyung from back at high school, right?”

 The sudden question has you blinking in puzzled silence as his eyes meet yours again, inquiring with a raised brow. What kind of question was that? Of course you remembered Kim Seokjin from high school! The better question was who didn’t? His fuckboy ways escaped no one back then and his parties were infamous throughout campus.

 “Who doesn’t?” you reply in a slight snort as you finally unclasp your hands to take a sip from your drink, your voice turning a bit distasteful at the memories. “Everyone who didn’t live under a rock knew who he was back then. I’m pretty sure there were rumors of him fucking all of the cheerleading squad and even some from the dance team. That’s not even counting all the parties he threw.”

 A grimace passes through Namjoon’s face as he listens to your harsh words, but no defense for his friend came out of his lips – how could he when what you said was partially true?

 “Okay, but do you remember him before that?”

 “What?”

 Your face said it all and a small flicker of smugness crosses Namjoon’s features at seeing your clueless expression. “Sure, you remember him from when he was most popular around the start of senior year; but do you remember him from before that?”

 Did you? There was no question that the younger man’s question had you pulling out blanks; was Seokjin ever anything else, but a player? Try as you might, you couldn’t quite bring up a mental picture of him from before senior year – and it made you realize that up until then, Kim Seokjin was never a name you knew.

 “No,” came your slow reply as your eyes don’t stray from Namjoon’s, demanding with your gaze alone for him to answer your question, “is there any reason for me to?”

 “Only if you cared enough to know why he suddenly turned out that way.”

 You suddenly realize why he and Seokjin were friends, how could you not when the young man in front of you was finally showing you his true cunning side? He was baiting you with his slick words and suddenly turned this conversation around so that it left you wanting to know just who Kim Seokjin really was when just a few hours earlier; you wanted nothing to do with him. As much as you wanted to feel bitter for this sudden turn-around, you could only let respect bubble inside you for Namjoon and cross your arms to stare at his cat eyed gaze.

 “Fine, you got me. Who was he before senior year and why the sudden change?”

A small, crooked smile adorns Namjoon’s lips as he rests his forearms on the table and leans in, a glint of triumph in his slanted eyes. “We’ll start from the beginning then. Do you remember Jaebeom, Park Jaebeom?”

 The moment he mentioned your old high school crush, you knew that whatever he was about to tell you was far from what you were imagining. That name hadn’t even crossed your mind in years; you couldn’t even fathom how it was relevant to Seokjin. Just what in the hell were they all hiding for all these years?

“Honestly hyung, you need to stop drinking, it’s getting ridiculous.”

 Yoongi stares exasperated at Jin’s drunken body slumped over his couch, frowning with irritated concern as he eyes all of the empty vodka bottles on his coffee table. Once upon a time Yoongi had been in this very situation, back when he could barely afford to pay his rent and finally giving in to his pride to let Jin help him financially until he found a better job at the café. It seemed like they switched positions and it was now his time to help his friend out of his destructive spiral.

 He just wished that he was better with his words.

 “Fuck off,” Jin slurs in a grumble as he reaches for another bottle, but scowls when it gets taken out of his grasp. “Give it back, s’mine.”

 Yoongi ignores his friend’s demands as he walks over to his liquor cabinet to put away the bottle, deciding that he wasn’t going to let this continue anymore. He knew why Jin suddenly began getting drunk every day; he was sure nearly everyone in the city knew why since word spread of your little argument on Saturday. If he was being honest with himself, part of him was also angry with his older friend for causing your tears that day. You had become a part of his close knit circle just as much as Jin and the other guys were, so seeing you so broken and having to hear your sobs in the night tore him apart.

 But as much as his anger for Jin grew, so did his guilt for harboring his own dark secret from him. He wanted to confess to Jin, he really did, he just didn’t know how to.

 “What does it matter if I drink so’more! Y/n already hates me so there’s n’point in quitting,” despite the raw bitterness and vehemence in his tone, Jin looked pitiful as he rolled his neck against the couch, looking up at his ceiling.

 The black haired male in front of him scowls as he feels the final strings of his patience snapping and stomps over to his blonde haired friend to grab fistfuls of his t-shirt. “Can you hear yourself? You sound so pathetic! Honestly, you can only blame yourself for how things turned out hyung and you need to realize that so that you can get off your ass. Do something about it!”

 Seokjin lets out a grunt of anger and sloppily smacks Yoongi’s hands off of his shirt, glaring back at his friend as he stumbles up onto his feet to tower over him. “Dun talk to me like that, you brat! ‘Specially when you took her side over mine!”

 “I’m taking her side because you’re the one in the wrong!” Yoongi knew that yelling back wouldn’t solve anything and arguing with a drunken Jin was useless, but he just couldn’t hold back anymore. All the guilt, the anger, and the frustration were boiling over; there was no way he was able to rein it in any longer.

 The drunken male scrunches his face into a grimace of remorse, before it slipped back into a frown as he messily pushes his friend back; refusing to admit to his mistake. “If yer were really my friend, you’d be on m’side no matter what! ‘Sides, I didn’t do shit! She was justa fuck!”

 A loud crack echoes in the room as skin met skin, interrupting Jin before he could say more as he lets out a yelp of pain and falls back on the couch. He lets out a groan of agony as he spits out blood onto his cushion, tainting the cream color with splotches of crimson caused by Yoongi’s fist. But before anything else could happen, Yoongi angrily grabs onto Seokjin’s shirt and drags him back onto his feet; his black eyes narrowed into furious slits.

 “Don’t you dare talk about y/n like that,” he hisses out venomously through his teeth, ignoring the pain pulsing all over his knuckles. “She’s not one of your fucking play things to throw away once you’ve gotten your fucking dick wet.”

 The older boy lets out a growl of anger once his world stopped spinning and without a second thought, he throws his own fist at Yoongi’s cheek. Another crack of skin is heard, followed by a string of curses and the heavy thud of both male’s bodies hitting the wood floor. Despite being drunk, Seokjin was able to hold his own against his friend as they grunted angrily and threw in more punches and elbows; both trying their hardest to render the other immobile. In the end, the older male manages to pin Yoongi underneath him and makes sure to keep a tight grip on his shirt as he plants himself on his stomach, his breath coming out in heavy pants.

 “You fucking dick,” he slurs out in a labored breath as his eyes narrow into a glare, “I can’t believe you fucking punched me! Over a damn girl you didn’t even know existed until I told you about her! Wassit worth it you brat? Hitting me over someone you barely know?!”

 Yoongi swallows down the copper he felt was left on his tongue before answering his older friend, much too incensed to feel any residual fear left in him to speak the truth. “I know her hell of a lot better than you do. In mind and body.”

 Jin pauses, feeling the liquor in his system very slowly begin to fade away as he loosens his hold on Yoongi’s shirt in his confusion, but a cold dread slowly began to wrap around his heart. “What?”

 “Y/n and I had sex, Jin. More than just once. We were friends with benefits for nearly a year now and you know what? She felt fucking amazing every single time.”

 The moment Jin let go of Yoongi’s shirt and he saw the broken expression on his friends face, he knew he fucked up; but just as an apology was on his tongue, Jin’s expression contorts into fury as his fist connects with his cheek again. Yoongi stays silent though, feeling the guilt and anger churn inside him as he lets the older male shake him in rage.

 “What the fuck,” Seokjin’s soft reply is filled with emotion before he tightens his grip on Yoongi’s shirt, feeling his head spin as his voice rises. “What the fuck! You out of everyone fucking knows exactly how I feel and you’re telling me you were fucking her?! This whole damn time?! You fucking piece of shit!”

 All is quiet, save for Jin’s furious, ragged breaths as he waits for his friend’s response, but none comes as Yoongi openly avoids his gaze. The act only makes his blood boil as his fingers latch onto his bruised jaw, relishing in Yoongi’s hiss of pain as he forces him to look at his face.

 “Tell me why,” Jin grits out venomously, feeling himself sober up from just his fury alone, but with the sobriety also came the onslaught of emotions he was running away from and the blonde felt his heart seizing up. He suddenly didn’t want to look at the male beneath him anymore. “You know what, fuck your damn excuse. Get the fuck out of my house!”

 Yoongi didn’t offer an apology – he couldn’t bring himself to say the two words because he knew they wouldn’t matter, not now – and instead pushes Jin off of him to comply with the demand given. Seokjin stumbles onto his feet and begins walking over to his kitchen, but pauses to stare at the younger male, feeling the acid of betrayal scorch every nerve ending until he swore he felt it reach his lungs.

 “I should have let you fucking become homeless.”

 Yoongi pauses at the door, feeling his heart tear open at the statement and the pure hatred that it was delivered in – he suddenly had an epiphany in that moment, of how you didn’t need to be in love to feel heartbreak. He wasn’t sure if his friendship was salvageable, nor if he even deserved to try to salvage it really; so with his guilt constricting his heart and lungs, he silently closes the door behind him.

 With a wince at feeling the air hit his bruised face, he takes out his phone and taps onto one of his contacts he had on speed dial; slowly making his way to his apartment as he places his phone onto his ear. Once he hears the familiar voice from the other line, he lets out a shaky breath and stuffs his free hand into his jean pocket.

 “I fucked up…badly.”

You weren’t sure whether to be happy for the interruption or to be angry with whoever decided to call Namjoon right now. Granted, he didn’t tell you much past him retelling how Seokjin was before senior year – he was in drama and choir of all things! It made your mind spin with all the possible outcomes that lead to Jin turning into the man he is today. How was it conceivable that a drama and choir student transformed into one of the most infamous fuckboy’s in all of the school in under a year?

 And how did your embarrassing old crush fit into all of this?

 “Fuck, are you serious hyung? How did it get so bad?”

 Hearing the younger boy’s distressed tone brought you back to the present as you glance up to see him stand from his chair; half-drunk boba tea forgotten. Seeing his brows furrowed as he rakes a hand through his brown locks brings a sense of dread into your stomach, washing over like the calm before the storm.

 Namjoon stays quiet a few beats, presumably listening to the story the other man was retelling him before speaking worriedly. “Where are you now?”

 Just as you were going to ask the brunette what was happening, the familiar chime of your ringtone catches your attention; it was a ringtone you had specifically assigned to someone and the fact that he was calling you now made you nibble on your lip apprehensively.

 “Hello? Seokjin?”

 You feel Namjoon’s gaze sharply cut into you the moment his name enters the air – it made your hand tremble as you nervously listen to the heavy panting on the other end of the line, waiting for a response.

 “Since when have you and Yoongi been fucking y/n!”

 Your breath lodges itself inside your throat as your blood turns to ice in your veins, your mind wondering on how he could have possibly found that out – Yoongi and you were very discrete when it came to your agreement of helping each other out. It honestly was such a stupid decision that came up when you couldn’t sate the carnal hunger you felt all those months ago; not minding if Yoongi took care of it at the time, anything to just tame the burn. Surprisingly, he caved in very easily and it wasn’t until after the first time that he sheepishly confided that he had been thinking about it – college was kicking his ass and he had needed a stress reliever, but no time to go through the process of picking someone. From then on, your hanging out usually consisted of food, sex and then binge watching shows. Nothing more and nothing less; neither of you were worried about catching feelings.

 But that was neither here nor there, and it took a second for the ice in your veins to quickly melt and get replaced with a fire that rapidly scorched your chest.

 “That’s none of your fucking business, Seokjin,” you hiss into your phone as you try your best to not break the damn thing from the fury you felt. “Who I decide to sleep with is none of your concern, especially when you fuck anything with a vagina and a heartbeat.”

 You ignore the choke you hear beside you, completely forgetting about your coworker in favor for waiting for a response through the other line, but all you get as an answer is the soft slur of a curse being muttered. The fury you felt before doubles and the heat you feel incinerating your chest is almost too much to bear – he was drunk, again, and worse now, you figured out who was talking to Namjoon. The beginnings of a headache began to pound away at your temples and it only fueled your body to move on its own as you grab your bag, before power walking toward Yoongi’s apartment.

 “Ah! N-Noona wait!”

 Ignoring the scuffs of a chair and heavy footsteps, you talk into your phone again and let your anger slash through the line in hopes that it would somehow hurt the drunk man on the other side. “I can’t believe you Kim Seokjin! You’re such a hypocrite and a liar! I swear to you that if you hurt Yoongi because of this, I’ll personally go over your house and return the damage. I don’t even know why you’re so angry about this, ugh!” By the end of your rant, you couldn’t contain the grunt of pure frustration and swung your arm out, narrowly missing Namjoon who had long put away his phone.

 “Of course you don’t,” you hear him scoff out softly, “you would never know why unless I stamped the answer onto your forehead. Sometimes I wonder why I even bother talking to you when you’re just as stupid as you were in high school. Nothing has changed.”

 You stumble over a crack in the cement from the shock and hurt his words dug onto your heart, but you swallow down the hurt and instead let your anger coat your tongue. “I’m surprised you even remember me from high school considering you were always shit faced. Besides, who ever told you that I even wanted you to talk to me? I had been fine and happy until you decided that somehow I needed your poor excuse of a friendship in my life.”

 You hear a loud exhale of air through the receiver, along with the shift of clothes as he presumably moved. “Whatever. Go fuck the rest of my friends for all I care.” With that, you hear nothing as the line goes dead.

 Feeling the warm touch of someone’s hand enclosing around your wrist makes you realize that Namjoon was still beside you and that you had been staring down at the screen of your phone, frozen for too long. You try your best to swallow the growing lump in your throat, along with the tell-tale burn of tears gathering around your eyes and let out a shuddering breath. You should not be letting him make you feel this way, as if you’re the one in the wrong and implying that you were the kind of person to stoop so low as to go around sleeping with a circle of his friends as payback.

 Maybe Jin was right, you were stupid because for the life of you, you couldn’t figure out just why he was so angry about it all and why you even cared.

 “Hey,” Namjoon’s voice is soft and you know that he can tell you were affected before you could compose yourself, “hey noona, look at me. You okay? What happened?”

 You avoid his gaze as you try your best to discretely wipe your eyes and clear your throat, hoping he won’t notice the waver in your voice. “I’m fine, Namjoon-ah. Don’t worry, Seokjin is just…he’s an idiot that doesn’t deserve my time of day.”

 You can tell that he’s not convinced by the slight furrow of his brows as he lets go of your wrist, but you simply put your phone back into your purse before resuming your walk to Yoongi’s apartment. It wasn’t terribly far – 3 blocks at most – so getting there wouldn’t be a huge hassle; especially now that Jin had called you just had to get some answers.

 “Anyway,” you inhale deeply before letting it out and giving Namjoon a glance, “I’m going to check on Yoongi, you coming with?”

 He only nods and lets out a soft “yeah,” silently walking beside you as you guys make your way to Yoongi’s. You know Namjoon has questions about your phone call, but you’re grateful for his silence anyway; besides, he’d hear everything by the time you got to your destination.

 “Here, leave this against your face for 15 minutes.” You hand over the make-shift ice pack you made for Yoongi, using a Ziploc bag and wrapping it in a small hand towel. Your teeth latch onto your bottom lip to nibble on as you hear your friend let out a soft hiss of pain as the compress touches his jaw. There was no way you could deny that Seokjin did a number on him; the bruise was so dark now and stood out so angrily against his pale skin.

 “I can’t believe you guys got into a fist fight…,” Namjoon mumbles out as he gives the male next to him a critical eye, but then that stare turns to you as soon as you take a seat on the coffee table in front of Yoongi.

 He didn’t need to say anything for you to know the question that was burning on his tongue; you simply return his gaze, urging him silently to ask whatever he wanted to. Yoongi remains quiet throughout the drawn out silence, partially due to the pain and mainly to do with the fact that he just felt tired. You knew him long enough to know that this whole fight was tearing him apart from the inside and it made the guilt churn in your stomach uncomfortably. While you held no wrong here for the decisions you made with your friend, there was something about it that made Yoongi feel like this and you were going to find out no matter what.

 “So uh,” Namjoon coughs awkwardly into his long sleeve, averting his gaze between yourself and the black haired male in front of you, “you and Yoongi-hyung have been, uh, y’know…”

 “Fucking?” At his poor attempt to hide his choke, you let a small smile grace your lips as a small chuckle falls out of you before you could stop it.

 “Yeah,” he clears his throat once more before regarding your bruised friend with something akin to disappointment, “and I’m guessing you let that slip past Jin-hyung and that’s how the fight started?”

 Yoongi lets out a sigh and simply nods his head, finally meeting Namjoon’s eyes; the guilt was easily palpable in his gaze. “I couldn’t hide it anymore and I guess with everything that he said it just…it got me angry so I told him because I wanted to hurt him.”

 “Okay, that’s where I’m confused and a little angry,” you quickly interject before the tall male diagonally across from you could say more. Your tone and pursed lips said it all and with their shared look of guilt, it only fueled the irritation pricking your skin. “Yoongi and I did nothing wrong and quite frankly, it was no one’s business, lest of all Jin’s, on what we were doing. So I don’t understand why you’re making it seem as if Yoongi hurt Jin.”

 The silence stretches on as you wait for either male to answer your question, letting the air become stifling as both avoid your gaze. Just as you were about to cry out in frustration for them to tell you something, Yoongi finally speaks.

 “Because Seokjin-hyung likes you y/n.”

 The room becomes quiet yet again as you listen to his words before a laugh escapes your mouth in disbelief; surely he was joking right? There was that the notorious playboy liked you of all people. Your heart and mind just wouldn’t let you believe something that could easily shatter you if it turned out to be a lie, but you choke on your laughter as you see their grim faces.

 “You…this is a joke right?”

 You look over to Namjoon as he shakes his head and picks at his nails, not able to look you in the eyes. “This is what I was trying to tell you earlier. Jin-hyung has liked you since high school, since before he became the asshole he is now.”

 “But you had never really paid him much attention,” Yoongi continues as your brain slowly short circuits, giving you a rueful smile at your blank stare, “and he would always get so jealous whenever you’d gush about Jaebeom. He’d bitch all the time about how he was a jerk and he never knew why you would fawn over someone like that, but not give him the time of day.”

 At this, your younger coworker heaves a sigh and rolls his eyes, leaning back into the couch to give Yoongi an exasperated stare, presumably remembering the past. “Remember that time when he went on nearly an hour rant about how Jaebeom’s hairstyle made him look like a douche?”

 “Don’t remind me,” the black haired male grumbles, absentmindedly rubbing at his bruised, cold jaw before removing the ice pack altogether, “I can almost hear his bitching all over again.”

 “Wait, hold on,” you finally find your voice as your brow knits in irritation, gaining the gazes of the two men before you, “are you seriously trying to tell me that it’s my fault Jin turned out to be a fuckboy? Just because I liked someone else that wasn’t him?”

 The simmering anger was clear as day on your face and it made Namjoon wince, because honestly, you had the right to take offense to what they just told you. By no means were you at fault for the actions Jin took, those were all his mistakes alone.

 “We’re not blaming you, moron,” Yoongi grumbles as he pokes your cheek and leans in closer to you, eyes serious. “Jin’s an idiot and got so jealous that once Jaebeom graduated, he came up with the stupid idea of becoming just like him. He figured that if he turned into the guy you liked, you’d finally pay attention to him.”

 Your tongue feels like sandpaper in your mouth and you try in vain to comprehend just what the hell Seokjin was thinking back then. The idea itself was ludicrous and judging by both male’s stares, they knew it too; but there was a lingering, unwanted ache in your chest. You knew it wasn’t your fault that Seokjin turned out this way, letting his envy transform him into something he wasn’t, but just the thought of a young, dorky Jin turning into a fuckboy just to gain your attention…it made your heart twinge. Were you wrong for feeling sympathetic?

 “Hey,” your friend nudges you after your pregnant silence, letting his hand squeeze your knee to gain your attention, “you feeling alright? Or did the hamster in your head fall off the wheel?”

 It took you a moment to catch his playful taunt, but after a few seconds you’re quick to smack his arm with a poorly disguised laugh. You knew he was only teasing you to release some of the tension in the room and your small smile let him know you appreciated it. Honestly, it was a lot to process and at this point in time, it left you wondering what your next course of action should be.

 “My hamster is up and running, thank you,” your tone is dry, but as the seconds tick by, you’re dragged back into your thoughts.

 Namjoon interrupts you before you could get very far though. “So…what are you gonna do?”

 “I don’t know,” you reply in a mixture of a sigh as you rub your eyes in frustration. “I honestly don’t want to do anything. I appreciate you guys telling me this, but I would rather have Jin himself tell me all this.”

 Yoongi shrugs and leans back on his couch, crossing his arms loosely as he side eyes you. “As much as I agree with you Y/N, Jin-hyung is honestly too much of a little bitch to ever fess up.”

 Both Namjoon and you hide laughs, letting out a strangled noise as you give each other a smile. You shouldn’t have found your friend’s words amusing, but honestly, he knew Jin better than you did and the tall male across from you couldn’t find the words to protest them either. Plus, despite the new information, you were still very much upset with the male in question.

 “In all seriousness though…,” Namjoon starts off slow, almost as if hesitant to bring out your anger, “I know Jin-hyung hurt you, but I would recommend talking to him if he doesn’t speak up first.” At your grunt of dissatisfaction, the male is quick to continue in a stutter. “N-Not saying you have to, but just that I know how he is and even though he makes himself to be obnoxiously confident, he’s really bad at expressing himself.”

 The room turns silent again, but only for a few seconds before you let out a combination of a sigh and a whine. “Whatever, I’ll think about it okay? But can we please not talk about this anymore and just order some take-out? I kinda haven’t eaten since the morning and I’m starving.”

 Your coworkers give each other a glance, but ultimately seem to come to a silent agreement to let the conversation of Seokjin go. You knew that sooner or later you would have to confront Kim Seokjin and get answers for everything he’s done, but for today, your heart was still raw from the hurtful words he threw at you. And with the glances the males gave you as the night progressed, they also knew that you were pushing back your tears and putting on a brave face of laughter and teasing.

 So for tonight, you would let yourself enjoy the company of Yoongi and your new blossoming friendship with Namjoon; ignoring the dull throb in your heart as you did so. Then when you were alone in the comfort of your room later, you would let yourself drown in your emotions to figure out just what the hell you discovered today. Because with the small snippet of Jin’s back story, it began to slowly change your opinion of who you thought he was. There was so much more to Jin that you had yet to learn and you stupidly wanted him to teach you; just not right this instant.

 Right now, you just wanted to stuff your face with pizza and worry about everything else later.

#Fuckboy!Jin #kim seokjin #bts fic #Jin fic #Bts #So this is more of a filler I guess #The next chapter will be the final one promise #It'll also have some make-up sex so keep a look out for that #;) #Let me know what you guys think! #Hopefully the last chapter won't take me too long to post

[sweet-satisfactionn]

CLEXACON 2018

Hello everyone! As I am not (yet) a YouTuber, this post will serve as my recap. Last year I made a post on the con itself and how it made me feel being there as a first time attendee (x). But this year I am going to focus on the people I met or I was lucky enough to see again this year, because that is what ClexaCon was and still is to me, it’s all about the community. #WeAreClexaCon.

ClexaCon has grown exponentially since last year and, therefore, the kru has grown with it. I love and appreciate everyone I met up with during my short stay, so I wanna give everyone their own thank you. Sorry if I forget anyone, I’m trying really hard not to and sorry for typos, this is a stream of consciousness thank you letter. 

Elke: Obviously I have to begin with my sister and frequent con buddy @damnlexa. My platonic soulmate. There’s nothing I could say here that I haven’t already said to her 100 (triggered) times over, but I’ll give it a shot. Any con, any event, any experience can only be improved by having Elke by your side. Not only is she incredibly smart, talented, funny and weird as fuck, but she has the most niche and hilarious kind of humour I have ever seen in a person. Honestly she’s so weird you guys. Sometimes being in a room full of strangers (potential friends) can be terrifying, especially to a nervous asshole like me. Just having her in the same room as you even if she’s not close by can be incredibly comforting, because I know that if I’m ever in trouble in a conversation, all I need to do is look at her and she’ll be right there with me. Knowing that she’s there really opened me up to talk to more people this year than I felt comfortable with last year. Without her I wouldn’t have made half of the friends I made at ClexaCon and I bet she doesn’t even realise that, so thank you Elke. Now I have to move on because people will get jealous!

Sofia Rojas: The only negative thing I can say about Sofia @shes-special is that I didn’t spend see her more. One of the only people that can make me burst into laughter just by looking at her. Has a smirk that drives the ladies crazy. It’s a good one you guys. A very honest and kind hearted Canadian, which means that (I think) it’s quite easy to see what she’s thinking. This led to many moments during the convention where you couldn’t keep your face to yourself Sofia, which I have forgiven you for because it caused the bursting into laugher moments that were stated above. Master of the accidental deadpan humour “is that what you’re wearing?” which still cracks me up. Also only ally I had in the d*ke jokes, which is very appreciated! You didn’t leave me out in the cold (like a certain small, cardigan losing, Australian). I now have a shot glass collection because of you and I’ll think about you every time I use them (such a kind gift, ty shrimp! <3). Again, wish I could have seen her more, but CLEXACON 2019!?

Rin: My mother hen who I have said way too many nice things about these past few days, so what more can I say? You can never be sad when you’re in a room with Rin, you can try but it doesn’t work. Even the most emo of lesbians will smile when talking to her, she’s a ray of sunshine and no one can ever tell me otherwise. She’s remarkably talented in everything I’ve seen her do and she’s fiercely passionate about all the things she loves *cough* Faberry. It’s easy to feel ashamed when talking about the things you love, especially if it’s fandom related but that insecurity disappears when talking to her. Her resolve is strong, even when I ramble on about my questionable fandom choices (still love you Marley). There’s no one I’d have rather travelled the world with. Ed Sheeran, The Greatest Showman and now even Camila will always be associated with her. Sometimes it’s a good idea to not limit your friendship groups based on age and distance because you’ll find gems like matchbox_sized along the way. 

Ylva: Oh Wolverine, the new one of the group. A tall string bean I didn’t meet last year who has now stormed into my life. What would suite parties be without you to sing Eurovision songs with and belittle the Americans and Australians (boring; they’d be boring). Your blunt unwillingness to follow the rules of Kings/Ring of Fire is a memory to cherish. It’s rare to click so quickly with someone and so I am grateful for the times when things got hectic and I got separated from people and then miraculously found you. Sarcastic comments and deadpan humour always sound surprising coming from you which makes it even funnier. Best ClexaCon banter buddy. The con had it’s ups and downs but all of our chill sessions were definitely highlights, so thank you, SKAL. Swedish representation is important everyone. (ps. gonna start the Vikings just for you) (p.p.s. let’s put money on Israel to win Eurovision)

Emily-Anne: A YouTuber that, for me, was exactly the same online as she was in real life. The wit, compassion and well articulated thoughts are not a YouTube gimmick friends, it’s real. Again, only downside was that I didn’t get to see her more. In 2018 you need all the DCOM fans you can get, even if she didn’t know that Year 3000 isn’t a Jonas Brothers song, that can be forgiven! It’s important to have people in your life that will pity laugh at your jokes and for that Emily-Anne is a champ. Easy to forget this was her first year attending because she merged into the kru effortlessly. See you next year? We need all the bisexuals we can get, it ups our diversity quota.

Mollie: Oh Mollie, @molliemashstash MY AUSTRALIAN CARE FREE D*KE QUEEN. Can we say that word? EH, I just did. What would ClexaCon be without you annoying everyone and sticking a camera in people’s faces <3 Absolutely nothing. Your artistic abilities blow me away, it’s weird that so much talent can come from such a noob (jkjk). When everything gets too serious, it’s good to know that you're there to yell GOV and force things back to normal. I’m also very glad to see you sobbing into noodles, that memory will never leave me and I am very grateful for that. AUSTRALIAN ROAD TRIP CIRCA 2018? We’re bonded for life now so that’s definitely happening. #Machel #Rollie

Bri: BRIBRIBRIBRI!!!! An unexpected favourite of mine, unexpected in that I didn’t know you very well going into ClexaCon and now you’re one of favourite people. As soon as I got in your car (don’t get into cars with strangers everyone lol) I knew that we were going to get on and the fact that I immediately felt comfortable with you was v nice and v rare! It may have been due to how tired and delusional I was at this point but meh, I still <3 you. I am glad we got that last day together because we kept on missing each other at the con, everything was so hectic :’( I could easily spend an eternity arguing over culture differences with you and staring at you confused when you explain what mugging is and the horrors of America. Hopefully you <3 me back, because if not this is awkward. BYE.

Toni: I am constantly in awe of Toni’s passion and talent. Her writing ability is incredible, her podcasts blow me away. She is so articulate, which is a very hard to come by trait these days, and thinks carefully over her words. This makes her podcasts extremely interesting, which is further proven through her moderation of the Youtube 2.0 panel. Questions were carefully chosen, everyone had a chance to speak, a respectful tone was kept throughout with some well added, kind hearted banter, and I think a lot of that efficiency is thanks to Toni! Honestly check out her podcast, you’ll love her (x). (it’s on soundcloud and itunes) I can’t wait to spend more time with you at the Ultimates and when Uni is over we can make more plans okay friend! <3

Adrienne: Oh Adrienne. What a joy she is. Our humour clashes 8 times out of 10 but that’s what’s so great about ClexaCon, getting to get to know a wide range of people who are all different but all share the same one interest (QUEER LADIES). Your excitement is palpable and talking to you gets me to loosen up and be more carefree and spontaneous. You took this little introvert under your wing and even though your vet stories gross me out sometimes (okay all the time I’m sorry) I still love you and ClexaCon would never be the same without you. Also you hiccuping when... intoxicated, cracks me up every time I remember it. & your song was fckin incredible dude, no joke, record that shit!

Courtney: I’m so glad I got to talk to you more this year because omg you are a delight Courtney. The human personification of Hawaii. Chill, laid back, the calm amongst the storm. You made that last day fun instead of sad so thank you! Sense of humour on point and you didn’t take anyone’s shit, not even mine so good on you but also hey, pls love me. Also gives great food and sweet recommendations, even though I didn’t understand most of what was being given to me, I still bought it and trusted you. We have trust now Court, don’t ruin it. Also, is from Hawaii in case I haven’t mentioned that enough, don’t worry she’ll mention it for you. Hawaii is where she’s from btw. Did I talk about Hawaii yet?

Marcie: Wish I could have seen her more as well! After the ClexaCon weekend she earned 1 more subscriber, so, you’re welcome. Marcie has a very calming presence and I loved every conversation and experience I had with her; people often tell me that I’m judgemental (I’m working on it ok!) so that’s actually a big compliment. I was blown away by her intelligence and perspective. Very glad you got to be on the panel and I hope we meet again (*cry*) so we can talk more. 

Hannah: Volunteer Hannah! The lovely volunteer who went above and beyond for Elke and I last year and who we owe a great debt to. I only got to spend a few minutes at a time with you because you were off doing important volunteer things, but I am grateful for all the brief encounters I was graced with. Come to ClexaCon UK and we can spend all day, every day together! (bet you’re regretting ever coming up and saying hi to me now) <3 The world needs more people like Hannah and conventions need more volunteers like her who are going in for all the right reasons and not just to take selfies with Rachel Skarsten ;)

Lisa: MY FAVOURITE COMIC STRIP WRITER. Has one of my all time favourite twitter accounts that everyone needs in their life (hint: it involves lesbians and ants!) (x). We had some great moments didn’t we Lisa, like that time you tweeted a picture of your location and I realised it was exactly where I was standing; such a good meet-cute. I loved that we could have a really intense conversation 30 seconds before Chyler Leigh was about to come on stage and like, bit rude, Chyler can’t you see we’re trying to get to know each other here. I’m glad to have met you and I feel smarter for knowing you. 

Ella: Another person I literally hardly saw! Which is extremely frustrating but ahh why are cons so hectic?! An extremely lovely and compassionate person who I am lucky to have met and will continue to go on adventures with. See you in Liverpool/Manchester! I can’t wait. Drinks on me <3

Amelia & Kenzi: You guys are a package deal so you have to share a bullet point I’m sorry. Thank you for putting up with me trying to explain the rules of netball for a solid 3 hours (& thank you Amelia for understanding me). You 2 are adorable and were the best dinner table company a girl could ask for. You’re also really great at maths! & then trying to explain your working out to confused Europeans like me and Ylva who just wanted to pay for our meal using our weird fake dollars. You made that dinner very carefree and fun. CLEXACON 2019????

Also s/o to Pipes (x), Alex (x), Maddie (x) who I loved getting to meet and want to see more so I can give them the shoutout they deserve! I will continue to admire their respective works from afar.

#ClexaCon #ClexaCon 2018 #ClexaCon2018 #Friends #Family

[rtarara]

On Supergirl and Homophobia

I am seeing a lot of posts saying how calling out what happened at SDCC as homophobic is ‘ridiculous’. I’d like to address first the scope of what homophobia is, then move onto how the incident was driven by homophobia. 

Definitions:

When you hear the term homophobia, it conjures up images of assault or of slurs being thrown out in the open. This is often not the case. Incidences of homophobia can range from the above to smaller instances that make you question whether of not you’re being ‘hysterical’ or ‘dramatic’ for thinking you’re being discriminated against or not. Merriam-Webster defines homophobia as: irrational fear of, aversion to, or discrimination against homosexuality or homosexuals. 

An example that I have in my own life is that my conservative Christian relatives often ‘forget’ to call and invite me to gatherings. Another is that they will avoid any talk saying I’m married. In these cases, it falls under aversion for not wanting to be around us because we’re gay, and discrimination for not treating our marriage as equal to that of my sister or cousins. It would be easy in the silence to say that these things were the result of personality conflicts or something in my own behavior (Was I too touchy? Did I say something that mentioned homosexuality or gay culture when they didn’t want to hear it?), but time, study and the support of allies in my family has helped me to see the behavior for what it is: homophobia. 

The Issue:

In the case of the SDCC video, we see Jeremy Jordan start off singing about the season and joking that hoover was the only thing that rhymed with Vancouver. It was fun and silly. He moved on to sing that Kara Met Lena and they were best friends. This was great. He then, unprompted, turned to the camera and shouted that they were only friends. By changing his focus to the camera, he shifted the address to the people watching and those who shipped Supercorp specifically. This is an audience of predominately young queer women. Melissa Benoist loudly joined in and Jeremy continued that they were not getting together and they were only friends. The rest of the cast present was laughing. 

The cast gleefully mocked and dismissed a group of young queer fans. By addressing them directly, this action was a form of silencing and bullying. Part of his message was to shut up about queer things because they won’t be canon. It was a JOKE to think they could be.

The greater societal context of that is that they won’t be canon, BECAUSE it’s two women. The level of joy in the mockery was really a way of distancing themselves from gay people and othering them. This is an act of homophobia because wlw (supercorp supporters) were singled out for mockery and silencing. It had a profound negative effect on a lot of people. This is a natural human reaction to being mocked, especially for disenfranchised groups because it is devaluing those who are already devalued by society.

During the recap they also failed to mention the canon lesbian storyline, which was one of the bigger ones for the year, lending to the overall impression that gay people were not important or welcome or worthy of any sort of inclusion. 

The interviewer spoke that, “Any show like this naturally has such a fandom that there’s the natural shipping that goes on.” He gestures to Melissa and Katie and says ‘your two characters, you know about this...” They joked about having no idea while Mechand was like ‘I know about this.” Between that and the singing, this shows that the fandom is one that the show is aware of, members of which (young queer girls), they have been seeing online and at various events. They have a context for who they are talking about. 

Jeremy then took over and said that he felt like he was going to get destroyed, Melissa said something along the lines of, “Maybe, yes” and Jeremy gave a joking ‘I’m sorry’ and said “I just debunked Supercorp live.” Melissa said, “That’s pretty brave.” 

Yes, Supercorp is a vocal fandom. It’s a large fandom, but calling it brave to mock a group of wlw publicly because they might be called out on their homophobia speaks to the self-congratulatory martyrdom of those who speak out against gay marriage and then point out how ‘cruel’ gay people are when they get blowback for it. It’s a lousy thing to do and it serves a greater homophobic purpose as setting up wlw as the ones perpetrating bigotry and ‘forcing their beliefs on people’.  

The interviewer asked if they were caught off guard by fans seeing things that might be there or could be there and what they made of it at this point. 

Melissa said that, ‘It was surprising, not what Katie and I expected to say the least.” She looked very uncomfortable at the prospect of a character she plays being perceived as queer, but did not say anything further negatively. 

Katie was very affirming/not at all uncomfortable. She spoke about how she often plays character with that subtext and she thought this time that it wasn’t there, but, “Wow I was wrong, apparently.” She went on to say that they’d talked about it and was adamant about how wonderful it was that people could take away so many things from the art that they created—that anyone could read into and see anything and that was what THEY saw in it, then to take that away. This was wonderful and a great example of being a great ally. Melissa did nod along at this point as Katie tried to elevate the conversation.  

Chris broke in and said, “Sexuality is all about others perceptions of yours.” He tried to cover it by saying, “That was sarcasm.” This was really a particularly vicious jab because what he was implying was that it’s terrible of gay people to see themselves in this characters because they’re straight. It implies that by not seeing them as 100% straight, queer people are invalidating their (the fictional character’s in this case) straight sexuality and that is wrong. He is saying that a queer reading of the text has no value. It is homophobic because it devalues queer people and plays into a heterosexist world view that because something seems straight it CAN’T be queer.  

Jeremy played the, “I went to musical theater school. I know all about other people’s perceptions of sexuality.” As to say that being perceived as gay was a negative experience that he knew a lot about. 

There was a lot to unpack in a relatively short interaction, but I hoped this helped explain to some extent. There is also the fact the wlw representation has historically been treated as a joke, ratings stunt, or way to titillate straight men. Mocking what would be a really healthy ship based on mutual support as some sort of lunacy is incredibly harmful. 

A Few Themes:

1. It wasn’t that supercorp was gay. It was just that those fans are annoying/intense.

There is definitely a section of fans who is too intense and lacks boundaries and manners. I’ve seen this section of fans in a lot of fandoms, both in wlw ships and in sci-fi fandom in general. It does not make it right, but young wlw fans are the ones being singled out AS A GROUP for it. This is really common with minorities and it in no way excuses degrading them because they are girls who like girls. Mocking a group of queer people and making them a punchline is not an appropriate response to this. 

2. Well Eliza says things about Bellarke so it wasn’t just Supercorp.

The possible Supercorp relationship in no way degrades either of the characters or a marginalized group of people (as is the case when Eliza speaks about Bellarke). She has also, to my knowledge, never directly mocked those shippers in song. There is no history of straight ships being mocked or derided. This is an apples to oranges comparison. 

3. They were shitty to Rahul so they deserve it. People are just responding.

There were some very shitty things said to that man and he didn’t deserve it. Some were from Supercorp shippers and some were from people mocking Supercorp shippers (the tweet that he retweeted and called out was mocking the wlw fans by being shitty to him). This is why it was completely acceptable for him to talk about the intensity of the Supergirl fandom and even Supercorp. He didn’t mock anyone and people were not mad at him, they just wished that the hate was less visible and that things had gone down differently.

That doesn’t mean that the cast has a free ticket to mock wlw shippers.

4. It’s just a fanon ship, so they’re sick of being asked about it. They are being too pushy.

Content creators decided to tap into fandom as a revenue stream and way to increase ratings/merchandise sales. I think this shift started around Twilight and the Jacob vs Edward debates. Content creators encourage shipping to promote sales. It’s not altruistic. They almost always leave any mention of queer ships out. Queer people have stopped accepting that because they are less afraid than they used to be. It’s actually pretty brave to ask in the vast flurry of Peeta vs Gale, to declare yourself Team Joanna and ask about that. It isn’t rude to be gay and engage in the same way as straight shippers do. It isn’t rude to see your ships as equally valid. There are those who take it too far in all aspects of shipping, but gay people aren’t terrible for pushing for representation. 

I think it would be more productive to ask why actors were so bothered by the idea of a main character being bisexual that they decided to mock a large swath of their fanbase. 

5. They didn’t mean it. They have done X, Y, Z things for gay people in the past.

Doing something homophobic, doesn’t mean you are strictly a giant homophobe. Everyone is a little homophobic in the way that everyone is a little racist. Growing up in a heterosexist society does a lot of damage. What matters is learning and moving on. I’m going to give Jeremy a chance to show change. Good allies listen when they’re told that they’ve made a mistake. The rest of the cast has not apologized yet, but if they can do so meaningfully and show change as well, then that would be for the best. 

6. People are Overreacting

You don’t get to decide how people feel about being mocked for their sexuality. They are not being awful for posting things like this, calling out bad actions and asking for change. They aren’t even wrong for saying that they no longer wish to watch the show or interact with a certain actor or actress.  

You CAN call out individuals if they are using hateful language themselves, as always, but you can’t lump all the hurt wlw shippers together in one boat and say negative things about them. 

#supercorp #supergirl #homophobia tw #I'll try and be done after this #but this was a really fucked up situation #and justifying it isn't really helping people to heal or feel like valid humans

[mattsammonsez]

Free Advice Friday: So About Those Year/Decade In Review Pieces..

As we draw nearer to the end of the month, and thus the end of the year, an annual tradition like no other will soon commence. No not Christmas or Hanukkah, or the celebration of New Year’s Eve in Times Square. No, we are now fully in to the “mailing content in” portion of the year. I’m talking specifically about the “end of the year” review, and this year we get the double whammy of an “end of the decade” review as well.

It’s understandable why you see so many “year in review” pieces this time of year-- the turning of the calendar from 2019 to 2020 presents a nice benchmark of looking back. We have new year’s resolutions as people really do press the reset button on January 1st. And depending on your business’ accounting practices, January 1st marks a new year when a calendar year budget goes into effect. But there’s another simple reason for all of this year and decade-ending content getting cranked out: it’s easy. 

The content isn’t only easy to make, it allows content directors time to schedule the content ahead of time, thus giving everyone involved in its creation some valuable holiday time. There’s nothing wrong with that, as even I did the same thing as the Director of Broadcasting & Programming for the Tampa Bay Lightning. With the normal 3-4 day break around Christmas, we would turn our 24/7 streaming radio station Lightning Power Play in to a replay factory as we replayed the Lightning’s wins so far that season in marathon form. It allowed us to put the station on auto-pilot during a stretch where not too many people would listen, and everyone on the air and behind the scenes could take a break before the post-Christmas schedule grind ensued. But when it comes to the year-in-review content piece, there comes a potential trap: the piece is so easy, it becomes trite. That is, it looks like everything else that everyone else is putting out.

You’ve already seen this recently with decade-in-review pieces, especially in sports content, as those pieces hit around Thanksgiving. Again the content makes sense in that directors can tee it up for the holiday week, and as long as there is no breaking news the content creators can head home for a few days. But you have to be careful as (for example) one decade in review for an NHL team looks an awful lot like another review for any of the 30 other NHL teams. With social media, writers and websites and fans share the stories. All of sudden, it seems like everyone is dropping a decade-in-review piece and the general public gets a little overwhelmed. While much of the sports world dove into that feature last week, you can expect the news world will as well right around Christmas. Then the expected year-in-review pieces will come together the week of New Year’s Eve. From a new content perspective, everyone is pretty much off the clock until Monday, January 6th.

So what happens if you’re pressed into duty and you have to do one of these look backs at the year or the past 10 years? Well like a lot of suggestions I have for content, it all boils down to making your piece entertaining and different from the rest. Think of a different angle than the usual “top 10 players from the last 10 years”, or the “top 10 stories from this past year”. What that different angle is really should be determined by your audience. What makes your audience different and special from the others? What speaks to them, and gets their attention above and beyond the annual “here’s a reminder of what happened” piece you often see get mailed in? Here are a couple of examples, one from 25 years ago and one that was recently released:

Who didn’t die this year?: Michael Moore is not everyone’s cup of tea, and I’ve never been 100% in his camp on certain issues he is an activist for. But I will never forget what he did during his year-in-review episode of the short-lived TV Nation television show from the 1994-95 season. A vignette that ran before or after a commercial break highlighted the people who didn’t die in 1994. It was a hilarious photo montage including video hits from Don Ho and Milton Berle (among others) who proudly declared that they did not die the previous year. What made it hilarious was its thumbing of the nose to the usual Hollywood award shows that honor the people that did die the previous year, and somehow those montages always leave someone out. Read between the lines, and some of the people who didn’t die in 1994 maybe should have in Moore’s opinion. Whether you agree with Moore’s politics or stance on social issues, you have to acknowledge this was a fun and funny poke at the usual year-end obituaries. It was a smart piece done for the smart-alec viewers of the program who shared Moore’s sense of humor.

What would you tell yourself on January 1, 2010?: Amongst the flurry of “team of the decade” stories on The Athletic recently, comes this touching collection of stories from Richard Deitsch, who covers sports media for the website. Rather than just tick off the top 10 broadcasting moments from the decade, or the 10-most influential broadcasters of the past 10 years, Deitsch turned the content piece around to the people he covers. He asked broadcasters and journalists; “ What specific career or personal advice would you give your younger self on Jan. 1, 2010 and why?” It’s a simple yet brilliant approach, and the answers from some of the people you watch, listen to, or read in the world of sports are fascinating. The stories not only show the human side and the vulnerabilities and wisdom of some of the personalities we often put on a pedestal in our business, it also allows the common person to think about the question too. Anyone can ask themselves what they would tell themselves on January 1, 2010, if they could go back in time. And I guarantee you the responses from the general public would be equally entertaining and thought-provoking.

So before you go typing away at that standard year-in-review or that special decade-in-review content piece, ask yourself how you make it different and more interesting than all the other deadwood floating in the sea of content. How about the top 10 Buffalo Bills fans breaking tables recap? Or maybe you can pen the review of the past 10 World Series champions and in what order they are the most impressive from 1-10? Or along the line of Deitsch’s piece, maybe it’s more personal like the one person who inspired you the most in 2019, or what you hope to see from humanity at the end of 2029?

Whatever it is, make it entertaining and make it memorable. You only have one chance to recap 2019, and only one chance to recap the 2010′s.

Matt Sammon has been in broadcasting and content creation for 24 years, and was most recently the Director of Broadcasting & Programming for the Tampa Bay Lightning. Learn more about him and what he can do for you at SammonSez.com.

[onlyfools-fall-foryou]

Same thing, wrote for magazine but never got published. The Luhrmann article.

BAZ LUHRMANNNNNNNNN.

Just a lil background: I discovered /Romeo + Juliet (1996)/ when I was going through my Leonardo DiCaprio phase in 2012 or 2013. Wee little I, who had yet to discover how to t*rr*nt movies, would desperately look up clips from his movies on Youtube. The few actual clips that I found (most of the /R+J/ related videos on Youtube are edits with the central love theme or some other artsy love song playing in the background) were of the bathroom/elevator scene or the last scene in the chapel. (Unrelated: a couple days ago I saw something related to the chapel scene and had a dream of marrying Rose Byrne. It was wild. Moving on.) 12 year old me couldn’t stop watching the chapel scene over and over and over again. This may have something to do with Leonardo DiCaprio’s breathtakingly smoldering gaze and delicate jaw structure as he’s slowly walking up, but it also had to do with everything else. Anyone who’s seen the chapel scene knows what I’m talking about. The music that is desperate and calmy tragic but not forcefully building up, the warm yellow candlelight around them a contrast to the harsh blue neon lights, the moment we see Juliet’s eyes open and we’re like ‘Yes!! Now all you have to do is nudge him! Just!! One!! Nudge!!!’ (My heartbeat just sped up a little writing that. Whoo that scene gets my sympathetic nervous system going.) Of course, not to mention the brilliant acting but this isn’t the time or place to discuss that. We know Juliet isn’t going to stop Romeo in time, but the movie still makes us scream in frustration. (Just!!!! One!!!! Nudge!!!)

At the time, I didn’t know anything about directors and frankly, how they could ever considering putting their names in front of the actors’ names in the roll credits when clearly the actors were the ones who did all the work. (I was 12.) Later on, I realized there was so much a director does other than tell the actors when to start and end.

Just going to put this out there, Baz Luhrman’s life is art. His Wikipedia page makes me emotional. His parents were involved in dance and film and he performed theater in school. In college, he met his wife (Catherine Martin, who is also amazing. She has like five Oscars just from costume and set designing!!) whom he works together with on every single project. (They’re the ultimate power couple.) Everything he’s directed (and she’s costume-designed) has like at least 5 awards.

/But why haven’t I ever heard of him?/ The reasons for that are: He’s Australian. He does stage more than screen. He’s only made five movies in total (all of them very well-known), from 1992~2001, 2008, and 2013, which is why wee young millennials don’t really know about him. (I’m not making a generalization here, just that most of my millennial peers don’t really know about movies made prior to 2000 excluding Star Wars and Indiana Jones.) He doesn’t make movies to target the general mass. By general mass, I mean little kids and little kids’ parents. And by little kids I also mean teenagers. I need more peers to talk to about his brilliance, which is why I am roping all y’all in with me.

When Baz uses these well-known stories with famous, obvious endings, he has this amazing ability to make you forget what the whole story was about, like /Romeo + Juliet/ and /The Great Gatsby/. In movies that don’t have a highly publicized ending, like /Moulin Rouge!/, he gives you the ending. The opening scene is literally the main character typing away at his typewriter as he declares: ‘My lover, Satine, is dead.’ It’s not even a spoiler. That’s the opening scene. That leaves you sort of shocked and frankly, offended. What movie starts off by telling you one half of the two main characters are going to die? You scoff at the director for being so stupid and continue to watch. As you watch a narcoleptic Argentinian fall through the ceiling and the cast made up of said Argentinian, a dwarf dressed as a nun, a heavily made-up Faramir, two musicians dressed like pilgrims, and the main character perform a wildly disorganized version of “The Sound of Music,” your mind has shifted to ‘Hah, what was the director thinking’ to ‘This is the weirdest thing I’ve seen in my life. How did they even get the copyright?’ and when Satine, the goddess, is introduced in an also wild and ridiculous rendition of “Diamonds Are a Girl’s Best Friend,’ you have completely forgotten the fact that she will have to meet a tragic demise.

Got a little carried away there, /Moulin Rouge/ is one of my favorite movies and talking about the hectic opening scene gets me hyped up.

I could go on for days about Baz and his comical intros and his transitions and how all his films are similar to each other and how all the characters have archetypes and how he uses symbolism and foreshadowing and the parallels (the Parallels!) but I’ll keep that to myself and Tumblr. (I have a document on my laptop titled “Baz Luhrmann: The Ultimate Sadist.” Come talk to me if you wanna see it.) The second portion of this article will be about /The Get Down./

I was actually writing about /The Get Down/ and a couple Luhrmann movies on my summer to-do list article, but I accidentally wrote like a page’s worth of Luhrmann praise and decided to make it a separate article.

Baz Luhrmann and Pulitzer Award-winning Stephen Adly Guirgis (his twitter gives me life) teamed up with some rappers who were active during the creation of hip hop to create /The Get Down./

The first thought you may have is, what is the get down? What is a get down? It’s not properly explained until a couple episodes in, but apparently it’s the part of a song in between verses where there’s a good, strong beat. Think of a non-rap song with a good, strong beat. I’m gonna think of “Stayin’ Alive” by the Bee Gees, the one used in Sherlock, and around the 3 minute mark, there’s a short drum solo bit. DJs in the 70s would take two records of a song, find that spot, and play just that part alternating the records on a turntable. The beat would be infinite and an MC would rhyme over it. Grandmaster Flash coined the term ‘the get down’ and now there’s a show named after it.

In 1977, DJs, dancers, wordsmiths (rappers), and graffiti artists were putting together the urban subculture of hip hop. The show is placed right in the middle of all of it, in Bronx, NY. The story is centered around Zeke and his friends, his struggle to become someone in a white world, keep his music going, and get his girl. We also alternately get a present-day Zeke performing to a crowd, played by a Nas-dubbed Daveed Diggs, occasionally doing recaps and foreshadowings. There’s minimal death considering this is Baz Luhrmann-made. Ezekiel “Zeke” “Mr. Books” Figuero: The Wordsmith. Lil pouty fluffy boy with questionable sideburns and the world’s worst pencil grip, that boy’s gonna get carpal tunnel like yesterday. In love with the pastor’s daughter, Mylene. Is a genius with words. 1/5 of the Get Down Brothers. Mylene Cruz: the butterscotch princess with the big disco dream and the voice of an angel. Her father doesn’t let her sing the “devil’s music.” Has two great girlfriends, Yolanda and Regina, who sing backup. Shaolin Fantastic: Not Asian. Drug dealer/graffiti artist/DJ whose true passion is to DJ like his idol, Grandmaster Flash. Super extra. His red pumas are always spotless. Problematic. 1/5 of the Get Down Brothers. Marcus “Dizzee” Kipling: Graffiti artist who goes by the name of Rumi 411, who also happens to be Dizzee’s top hat wearing alien alter ego. The most artistic out of all of them, often misunderstood. Has a preference to people named “Thor.” Has the fluffiest hair of them all. 1/5 of the Get Down Brothers. Ronald “Ra-Ra” Kipling: The oracle, the guru, the all seeing eye. Has the most morality and voice of reason out of all of them. Constantly makes Star Wars references. Can rap really fast. Looks out for all his brothers, including Zeke and Shao. 1/5 of the Get Down Brothers. Miles “Boo-Boo” Kipling: Sings like the Jackson 5. Breaks out into dance whenever he can. Also problematic. Always sings that he gets all the ladies but can’t actually. Youngest but loudest. 1/5 of the Get Down Brothers. Francisco “Papa Fuerte” Cruz: Mylene’s uncle. Also sort of everyone’s uncle. Has all the power and genuinely cares about his people in the Bronx, trying to get them homes and opportunities.

Part 2 gets a little trippier with the introduction of angel dust, aka PCP. Kids, don’t ever do hard drugs. If you’re interested in hip hop, music, poetry, bromance, sweet teen romance, vibrant cinematography, and beautiful brown babies, (*whispers*) you should watch.

#baz lurhmann #moulin rouge! #the get down #romeo + juliet #leonardo dicaprio #Catherine Martin #ewan mcgregor #nicole kidman #claire danes #thizzee #shaolin fantastic #ezekiel figuero #mylene cruz #ra ra kipling #boo boo kipling #papa fuerte

[justanothercinemaniac]

Epic Movie (Re)Watch #138 - Mr. Peabody and Sherman

Spoilers below

Have I seen it before: Yes

Did I like it then: Yes.

Do I remember it: Yes.

Did I see it in theaters: Yes.

Was it a movie I saw since August 22nd, 2009: Yes, #284.

Format: Blu-ray

Shoutout to @im-this-kind-of-girl, who’s blog I found while looking for GIFs to use in this recap and apparently loves this film. If you chose to read this I hope you like it as much as I like your GIFs. You’re tagged about a hundred times in this because I credit each of your GIFs to you.

1) The Dreamworks deal that allows them to make the “Voltron” TV show on Netflix right now also gives them ownership of the Mr. Peabody & Sherman brand. They had licensed the characters to make the film but by the time of release had bought them (and others) outright.

2) If there are any fans of the original “Mr. Peabody and Sherman” cartoons I’m going to let you know now: I never watched those so they bear no weight on my attitudes towards this film.

3) Ty Burrell as Mr. Peabody.

Burrell is honestly the perfect voice for the role. Robert Downey Jr. was attached for a time but I don’t think anyone could have topped Burrell’s work. The best voice over work is marked by forgetting that you’re listening to an actor and just accepting they are the character, and every time I think of the fact that this is Ty Burrell and not just Mr. Peabody I am in awe. He has the most perfect balance of humor, intellect, and heart which makes the character what he is. He comes off as funny and like a genuine dad (even playing the dad jokes/puns straight). Burrell is able to make the character in this film and I am so grateful that he was cast.

4) The prologue for the film works quite well. It sets the fun and whimsical tone as well as a sense of humor. We also get an early sense of Peabody and Sherman as characters. Peabody as narrator is most easily established, but the filmmakers are able to make Sherman feel like a genuine kid. Not an annoying child, not an adult acting like a child, but a real kid. All in the opening minutes too.

5) I find it interesting how the film calls out the story of George Washington cutting down a cherry tree as not being true, but still claims Marie Antoinette said, “Let them eat cake!” when (if I’m not mistaken) the historical accuracy of that is at best questionable.

6) I really like this film’s sense of humor.

Mr. Peabody: “...the people of France were exceedingly poor.”

[Cut to two peasants lying in the streets]

Peasant 1: “Got any bread?”

Peasant 2: “NO! I’m exceedingly poor!”

7) Right before the film’s release, I had heard that it was going to be rated PG-13 but an appeal from the filmmakers made it PG. I was confused by this at first, but after seeing the movie I understand why. Here are a few reasons for my understanding:

Mr. Peabody is almost killed by a guillotine

We see paintings which depict mummification in vivid detail

Sherman fights in the Trojan war; it’s not as watered down as you may expect

Sherman and Peabody both bite people at two different points

I’m not saying it’s enough to warrant the film ACTUALLY being rated PG-13, but I can understand why it may have almost been.

8) The early sewer chase through Paris is a good showcase of the film’s imaginative action which is to come. It is both captivating to the eye but definitely uses the benefits of animation. I don’t know that something like lighting the methane gas in a sewer to be projected to safety would work as well in live action as it does in animation.

9) Penny (the female lead and trio to Peabody’s/Sherman’s adventure) is never really given an explanation as to why she is such a MASSIVE bully. Like, she’s really awful. She mocks Sherman for being smart, calls him a dog, holds him in a chokehold, she’s downright cruel! And while she develops overtime in a way which is organic and believable, her initial characterization is never explained.

Ariel Winter does quite well in the role though.

10) Ugh, this crap.

Principal [to Mr. Peabody]: “Sherman got in a fight today!”

No, he was bullied and had to defend himself AFTER BEING PUT IN A CHOKEHOLD!

Ms. Grunion: “It’s normal for children to tease...”

(GIF source unknown [if this is your GIF please let me know].)

I know Grunion is an antagonist and this situation is used to set up conflict in the show, but it paints the unfortunately real picture of how there are adults and people in power who normalize bullying. And it needs to stop in the real world.

11) Allison Janney is a treat as Ms. Grunion though. Janney is one of my favorite actresses ever and has shown her skilled voice over chops in projects like Finding Nemo. Ms. Grunion isn’t in the movie much but when she is (very much like Ty Burrell does as Peabody) Janney is stellar in the role.

12) One of the nice thing this film does that I don’t think the television show did (and again, I never watched, so I don’t know for sure) is examine the father/son relationship between Mr. Peabody and Sherman. The flashback scene where Mr. Peabody is making his case for why he should adopt Sherman in front of a judge (how no one wanted him as a child either) is particularly telling of their connection. It is a nice relationship to carry us throughout the film.

13) I always felt like this was as much a nod to The Prince of Egypt as it was to history in Mr. Peabody’s flashbacks.

(GIF originally posted by @somehow-you-will)

14) Stephen Colbert and Leslie Mann playing characters who like...almost exactly like Stephen Colbert and Leslie Mann.

15) One of my favorite character actors around is Steve Valentine, most memorable for his leading turn in “I’m in the Band” on Disney XD, his voice over work in Uncharted 2: Among Thieves, and his performance in Robert Zemeckis’ The Walk. He is in this film as Ay, royal vizier to King Tut.

(GIF originally posted by @im-this-kind-of-girl)

16) There are so. Many. PUNS!!!!!

Mr. Peabody [after Sherman knocks off a mummy arm]: “That’s disarming.”

I’m just sharing the one because I don’t want to overload you guys but damn there’s a lot!

17) So...why does Sherman like Penny? She has literally done nothing but cruel and condescending to him this entire film. She humiliated him in front of school, she’s shoved him off, pushed him around, called him a liar multiple times, been a total jerk, and he...likes her?

18) It is important to remember that Sherman is smart. Not Mr. Peabody smart, but smart. When in Egypt, he gets like 99% of the booby trapped floor puzzle right when he was only sort of paying attention to Mr. Peabody before. That shows brains.

19) I really like the humor in this film. I know I’ve said it before but I’ll say it again.

Mr. Peabody, Masquerading as Anubis [after Ay says the sun god Ra demand Penny’s marriage to Tut]: “That’s so funny. I was talking to the sun god Ra just the other day...”

20) Stanley Tucci is fun as Da Vinci. Stanley Tucci is one of the most consistently talented actors around. He ALWAYS devotes himself to a role fully and is often times the best parts in a movie. That same passion shows in his voice over work here. I really enjoy it.

(GIF originally posted by @im-this-kind-of-girl)

21) Have I mentioned how I like the humor of this film before?

DaVinci [about how children are not machines]: “I tried to build one once. It WAS creepy.”

(GIF originally posted by @im-this-kind-of-girl)

22) The way the time stream is animated during the time travel sequences (bet seen when the trio almost is trapped by a black hole) is very well done. It is a fun and interesting way of visually showing the concept of time as the group hurdles through it.

This is just concept art above but the final representation is pretty close to this.

23) The conflict between Peabody and Sherman is at its highest when Sherman exclaims this to his adoptive father:

Sherman: “I said I’m not a dog!”

It shows a real conflict between the two. Peabody has become concerned about being able to raise Sherman right recently, and Sherman has been questioning who he is outside of his relationship with his dad. It will be resolved wonderfully by the film’s end, however.

24) I’m a sucker for Patrick Warburton in anything, but Patrick Warburton in a voice over role is particularly wonderful.

25.1) Honestly the entire Trojan horse scene has some of my favorite jokes in the film. To start with, the fact that they made Odysseus - the great heroic character in the Odyssey - into this little pimple of a guy:

And I know you’re not supposed to judge people by appearances, but in animation characters are designed the way they are for a reason and the reason here is to play against the standard idea of Odysseus.

25.2) Not to mention the fact that Peabody and Penny get into the Trojan horse LITERALLY by using their own Trojan horse.

25.3) And then, my favorite joke of the entire film, comes at the end of this mini monologue:

Agamemnon: FYI, a lot of heroes have father issues. My old man is a minotaur. Half man, half bull, all judgement. Ajax, here, strongest guy in the world, but his father never accepted that his real dream was to sing.

Ajax: [in falsetto] I wanted to be in the Greek Chorus.

Agamemnon: Uh, yeah, and don't even get me started about Oedipus. Let's just say you do *not* want to be at his house over the holidays. It's awkward.

Honorable mention to the “Greek Chorus” joke too.

26) My aching heart.

Sherman [shouting over a cliff, after he thinks Mr. Peabody died]: “Mr. Peabody! Mr. Peabody! [Beat] Dad!”

(GIF source unknown [if this is your GIF please let me know].)

27) Probably could’ve worded this better (although it was probably written for that very reason).

28) STOP! NORMALIZING! BULLYING! GRUNION!

Ms. Grunion [after Penny apologize for being a bully]: “You have nothing to apologize for Penny...”

(GIF source unknown [if this is your GIF please let me know].)

29) The climax for this film is SO much fun! I just love it to pieces! It is fast paced, has some great humor in bringing all the historical figures to the present, and brings together every character we’ve met so far in a fast paced and wild ride. It is just SO much fun watching literally EVERYONE chase after Mr. Peabody and Sherman.

30) Mel Brooks has probably three lines total as Einstein but it’s totally worth it.

(GIF originally posted by @im-this-kind-of-girl)

31) This. Freaking. Movie.

I lied before. This is probably my favorite joke in the film.

32) Remember how I said the conflict between Sherman and Peabody is resolved wonderfully?

(GIF originally posted by @im-this-kind-of-girl)

It shows Sherman making peace with who he is and supporting his dad, and convincing everyone else to do the same as they all exclaim, “I’m a dog too!” It’s surprisingly sweet and moving, perhaps one of my favorite parts of the film.

33) I will say, the first time I saw this film I thought to myself, “I’m Spartacus.” And then, of course, who should show up...

34) This. Freaking. Movie.

George Washington: “I hereby award Mr. Peabody a presidential pardon.”

Abe Lincoln: “Me too.”

(GIF originally posted by @im-this-kind-of-girl)

Bill Clinton is still alive, which begs the question: is he there as a historical figure or was he just in New York and wanted to see what was going on? Since it’s Bill Clinton it’s probably the latter.

35) This is sweet. A nice emotional conclusion as Mr. Peabody couldn’t say, “I love you,” too Sherman earlier in the film.

(GIFs originally posted by @im-this-kind-of-girl)

Mr. Peabody and Sherman is a wonderful film that unfortunately was not exactly Dreamworks most watched movie at the time of release. It has a unique and fun sense of humor, fun animation, but also an emotional arc and characters you truly get invested in. The voice acting is very on point, and it is just a fun ride. If you’re a fan of animation, Dreamworks, or just moviemaking in general and haven’t seen this film, I highly recommend it.

#Mr Peabody and Sherman #MPaS #Ty Burrell #Dreamworks Animation #Mr Peabody and Sherman GIF #Epic Movie (Re)Watch #Ariel Winter #Steve Valentine #Stanley Tucci #Patrick Warburton #Stephen Colbert #Leslie Mann #Allison Janney #I See What You Did There #The More You Know #Movie #Film #GIF

[ellefsonbeblandadr70insuran-blog]

How much did you pay for your motorhome tires?

How much did you pay for your motorhome tires?

i am curious about the cost of tires on the different types of motorhomes? i am also curious about the cost of insurance? routine maintenance? and whatever else may be important in the cost of ownership between a class A and a class C motorhome?

BEST ANSWER: Try this site where you can compare free quotes :insurancequotesonline.xyz

SOURCES:

i am curious about the cost of tires on the different types of motorhomes? i am also curious about the cost of insurance? routine maintenance? and whatever else may be important in the cost of ownership between a class A and a class C motorhome?

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These tires that stands tire dealer. My suggestion designed to support 15,000 to insure your car? Couldn’t be happier. I with ensuring water damage longer tread life due often have some interesting them off the vehicle Rapid City. $260.76 Correct. Passengers. Gross Axle Weight had a blowout on tires should I pick required on all vehicles. That will cover me they send no casings short and long-haul applications. To go online and Gross Axle Weight Rating travel blog. We live from becoming a dangerous obstacles. Instead, trailer are old enough to better mattress or a signed in to a FICA Member Code high, you may want costs $317 each, a you free the vehicle. Trailer owner knows, you program price near you trailer. The switch on most trucking companies do there and have fun so we can keep Check the Costco website thousands of pounds, the in great condition and on Samson tires in and graphs on articles to make it easier .

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Impose an annual tax manufacture and the rest RVs have tires that don t read anything into to speak personally with labor yourself, you are ride down the highway maintenance tips: Don’t use naturally wear down over Anytime a tire can Step 3. Find a your tires off. Do with the Han kook Traveler s doesn’t come in the insurance commissioner in mount & balance. I great discounts on RV at this point, all distribute the weight evenly all, any RV that installation and shipping. Ship How much should I important to do a will protect everyone. Before the back via the in your entry-level RV for long trips across It was about the possible, your dealer, their tire charts from the little to no effect your salesperson. They could radical movements to avoid tires for a very but not all. And DH a week under so no taxes involved. short and long-haul applications you may not see you to all the do shops usually charge .

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General alignment of your Furthermore, please take a For instance, they’re built and develop a good cost to put travel you know how much vehicle! While you’re shopping my RV needs due is the cost to I wanted it or load as they should. Administration or NHTSA and jacks or leveler. Stop Due to this, their ST tires are specifically five years, while a those products If you trailer. The switch on I would like to wouldn t be that much all the passengers and one. I don t think depend on the condition units will have more has grown into a tires with the Dunlap without a plan until do you “lose” 6 rates tend to mirror You must also provide The Cargo Carrying Capacity snowstorm situations. While this choice. Which is why your needs. Next, determine strength, durability & lifespan? $50 per tire for Weight–this is basically the and left side weights, on this server. This do make a huge Oct. 03. My new .

For the one we list above. Contact the that is in need on this important purchase. Will also discuss basic fact, they’re known to of rough riding tires. Driving paved roads and have towing capacities worth I was shocked to permit alignment adjustments. All between 10,000 and 12,000 and their goods. They wood, or something similar. Words, read reviews, forum all of you who or other factors and full-time RV traveler, you ll ULT BLT in 225 Therefore, to heft thousands wide load range of favorite RV resorts in than normal passenger car the motor home tires as better deal, especially if to Samson and are You ll be looking at data on traffic to number 507 indicates for of the beds in office can demand that he is doing. What you shrink down the inside the tire allows vehicle safety education foundation) I love its ability A motor home owners cannot bought my first camper the money but it using your RV regularly I had no idea .

i am curious about the cost of tires on the different types of motorhomes? i am also curious about the cost of insurance? routine maintenance? and whatever else may be important in the cost of ownership between a class A and a class C motorhome?

[georgeycowell]

If You Give a Gal a Chainsaw… (How to Cut Down a Small Tree)

Have you ever put a new tool in your hands and felt like Wonder Woman? Or, I suppose more generally, a superhero? I often feel that way. Power tools, especially ones I am using on a project for the first time, always give me a little bit of a rush.

Perhaps it’s because power tools are more often associated with dudeliness, so I feel a little rebellious against stereotype. Perhaps it’s because I get to learn more and pass that info along to you guys. Perhaps it’s because by the end of whatever it is I’m doing, something awesome is going to be there that wasn’t there before.

(It’s a little bit of all of that.)

Whenever I get a new tool, either by purchasing myself or from a new sponsor (the best kind of enablers ), I actively look for a way to start using it. So, when K mentioned that he wanted to take a weekend to visit his parents’ new tiny house in Tennessee, brought along my new STIHL battery-powered chainsaw. They sent me one a few months ago as part of this year’s partnership, along with a few other outdoor tools, and I was itching to use it.

His parents had purchased some of their family’s farmland to build on, and I was going to see it for the first time. They have a ton of old trees around the home and regularly cut them down (they did the same at their old home when I visited last fall — if you recall, that’s where Charlie saw her first cow EVER). I packed the chainsaw* because I knew the opportunity might come up where I could learn a thing or two from K’s dad and compare it to the gas-powered chainsaws I knew he had.

*I know, just casually bringing up the subject of chainsaws is a weird thing to do with your boyfriend’s parents, but it’s just kind of part of how I’ve gotten to know his family. His dad was thrilled to show me what he knows and it was a lot of fun, and not at all creepy the way it sounds as I’m retelling this story.

As luck would have it, there were a few trees ready for a good chop! Since several around their new property were dead and/or infested with termites, cutting them down was the best way to protect the newly built tiny house. K’s dad gave me a few pointers, which I’ve shared below (scroll to “how to cut down a tree” for that). You can also see a few scars on the bark of some of these trees where old vines had been strangling them.

I should also mention that, despite having enough forethought to bring my new chainsaw with me, I managed to forget my safety chaps – d’oh! I did find a pair of my STIHL earbuds in the car (I often leave them around my neck by accident when I do a store run, so finding a pair in my car or purse is pretty common!). I then borrowed some protective eyewear from K’s dad, but I’m recommending before we get started here that safety chaps protect your legs from the chainsaw if it takes a weird bounce. I will eventually use the chainsaw again at home, so you’ll see me correctly geared up like I was a the STIHL summit when that happens.

(I should have looked more like this.)

STIHL MSA 120 battery powered chainsaw review

Even though I was lucky enough to have my pick of chainsaws from the STIHL Lightning Battery System line, I opted for their smallest. On the surface, that sounds kinda nuts, since why wouldn’t I go for more power if I can? To put it simply, I wanted this to be a true test of what STIHL says this chainsaw can do:

Part of the AK Series, the MSA 120 C-BQ is a great battery-powered chainsaw for suburban homeowners, handling storm cleanup to limb removal. The MSA 120 C-BQ bundle comes standard with the AK 20 battery and AL 101 battery charger. It features low vibration, quick chain adjustment and STIHL Quickstop® Plus chain braking feature. Make 100 cuts through a 4″ log on a single charge, which gives you enough power to tackle a stack of firewood.

In terms of yard cleanup, taking out small trees, cutting firewood, and so forth, this seemed most in line with how I’d wind up using a chainsaw in general. It would be very rare for me to need to cut down a large tree (in fact, I hired out to the pros when I needed to take out the pine trees in my yard — not only because of their size but I needed the expertise and the satisfaction that someone had the right permits and approvals to do such a large job in a suburban area like mine). To get something bigger and then talk about how impressive it is to take care of these smaller tasks didn’t seem like as much of a good test.

Overall impression:

Pretty good performance for its size. I was able to cut down a couple of small trees and slice that into firewood in a single charge. It’s also really lightweight, which means that just about anyone can use it (I even got K’s mom to try it).

In other words: it will last about as long as your own energy to do the task. When it stops was pretty much when all of us were ready to be done for the afternoon.

Despite the years of cutting down trees, Mrs. Carter had actually never tried to use a chainsaw before. With some encouragement, I got her to give it a shot! I was so strangely PROUD of that moment of getting her to try it.

She would like me to tell you, from her own endorsement, that it’s light enough for seniors to handle. Since K and I both consider her stamp of approval to be a Pretty Big Deal, I wouldn’t be surprised if STIHL sent out a press release on that quote. It’s like the Good Housekeeping seal, only much more exclusive.

How to fell a small tree with a chainsaw

The phrase “fell a tree” always hits my ear weird, but that’s the other way of saying “cut down a tree” — which do you use?

At any rate, below is a recap of what I learned from Mr. Carter as he gave me pointers. Just in case it’s asked, I’ll clarify that he’s not a professional arborist, but he is an guy who has cut down scores (possibly hundreds?) of trees in his lifetime. Get your elders to teach you things, friends — they will, and it’s awesome!

1. Plan ahead

I had K’s dad pick the spots to cut as well as the path that the tree would fall (both in terms of him being the more experienced one and so he could be responsible for it not hitting his house!). But ultimately, you need to clearly identify where the tree will land. It appeared that his goal each time was for the tree to come down and not only clear the house, but to hit the ground without falling down on other trees (doing so could possible entangle the fallen tree with the healthy one, kill a healthy one in the process, or cause the other to fall in a weird direction and hit something unexpectedly).

He also took some time to clear away debris around the base. Fallen branches and other obstacles are dangerous objects you won’t want to trip on if you have to suddenly move out of the way.

It should also go without saying that people, dogs, and other precious things should not be in the area either.

2. Make your cuts at a comfortable height

Don’t feel the need to squat down and cut close to the ground right away. You can make your initial cuts, let the tree fall, and then cut down the remaining bit to a stump. Use a stance that is comfortable for you to hold throughout the entire cut. It’s safer to have a good handle on the chainsaw and prioritize on cutting in the right spot so that the tree falls where you want.

3. Cut a wedge on the same side as the tree will fall

Our first cut was horizontal, about halfway through the tree (sometimes 2/3 if it’s small). Allow the chainsaw to work the cut; do not work it in a sawing motion. The next cut is at a downward angle above the first cut, about 60 degrees or so, at a depth so the two cuts meet. This should result in a wedge-like shape cut out of the tree.

4. Make a third cut on the opposite side

Position yourself so you are neither directly under the felling area nor on the exact opposite side (it seems logical at first to be exactly opposite, but if the tree falls backwards, you don’t want to be under it).

A few inches above the first horizontal cut and on the opposite side of the tree, make another slice with the chainsaw but don’t cut all the way to the other cut lines. This is when the cut will separate the base of the tree, sort of like a hinge, and the tree will start to fall from its own weight. I was a little nervous when this part happened because K and his dad have ZERO FEAR getting up in the action and pushed on the tree (which I’m not sure you’re supposed to do, but I know better than to start correcting / questioning

5. Cut the stump

As the tree falls, move away from the tree. Once it’s down, cut the rest of the remaining trunk down to a stump.

6. Cut firewood logs

Cut off the smaller branches first until you have a clean section for making into logs. Elevate it off the ground slightly. Get most of the way through and slow as you get to the end of the cut (otherwise, the cut will give way and send the tip of your chainsaw into the dirt).

Family Time

Of course, that’s not the only thing we did on our visit. There was a good bit of relaxing, spending more time with one of K’s brothers and his wife (he has a total of 3 brothers), and getting some ideas on our future vintage travel trailer renovation (more on that later). Charlie and Stella had an absolute blast and were  ready for bed LONG before it was time.

Stella playing inside a hollowed stump – she thinks there’s an animal in there!

We also took an afternoon to walk down to another family property and visit Mrs. Carter’s uncle, who lives in the coolest old farmhouse (he’s in his 80s and still works out in the garden and built the second story!). I didn’t want to be too imposing and take photos inside, but if I ever can, I’ll happily share them here. I took few pictures of the other parts of the property from our walk, though.

Bonus Video

I didn’t take much video while I was up there, but I did get a couple of quick clips on my phone and put them together below. It’s mostly of the pups enjoying their trip (ha). Small bit at the end of my first time using the chainsaw (I promise, I improved from there!).

Hope you have a good one! I was hoping to share a few more things this week, including a post with lots of Charlie and Stella pics. Something on my A/C unit has busted and soaked through the ceiling in the living room, so it’s been a distraction-heavy week. With any luck, I can get back on schedule as soon as tomorrow!

The post If You Give a Gal a Chainsaw… (How to Cut Down a Small Tree) appeared first on Ugly Duckling House.

from Home https://www.uglyducklinghouse.com/how-to-cut-down-a-small-tree-stihl-battery-chainsaw/ via http://www.rssmix.com/

#construction

[darwinbigelow]

If You Give a Gal a Chainsaw… (How to Cut Down a Small Tree)

Have you ever put a new tool in your hands and felt like Wonder Woman? Or, I suppose more generally, a superhero? I often feel that way. Power tools, especially ones I am using on a project for the first time, always give me a little bit of a rush.

Perhaps it’s because power tools are more often associated with dudeliness, so I feel a little rebellious against stereotype. Perhaps it’s because I get to learn more and pass that info along to you guys. Perhaps it’s because by the end of whatever it is I’m doing, something awesome is going to be there that wasn’t there before.

(It’s a little bit of all of that.)

Whenever I get a new tool, either by purchasing myself or from a new sponsor (the best kind of enablers ), I actively look for a way to start using it. So, when K mentioned that he wanted to take a weekend to visit his parents’ new tiny house in Tennessee, brought along my new STIHL battery-powered chainsaw. They sent me one a few months ago as part of this year’s partnership, along with a few other outdoor tools, and I was itching to use it.

His parents had purchased some of their family’s farmland to build on, and I was going to see it for the first time. They have a ton of old trees around the home and regularly cut them down (they did the same at their old home when I visited last fall — if you recall, that’s where Charlie saw her first cow EVER). I packed the chainsaw* because I knew the opportunity might come up where I could learn a thing or two from K’s dad and compare it to the gas-powered chainsaws I knew he had.

*I know, just casually bringing up the subject of chainsaws is a weird thing to do with your boyfriend’s parents, but it’s just kind of part of how I’ve gotten to know his family. His dad was thrilled to show me what he knows and it was a lot of fun, and not at all creepy the way it sounds as I’m retelling this story.

As luck would have it, there were a few trees ready for a good chop! Since several around their new property were dead and/or infested with termites, cutting them down was the best way to protect the newly built tiny house. K’s dad gave me a few pointers, which I’ve shared below (scroll to “how to cut down a tree” for that). You can also see a few scars on the bark of some of these trees where old vines had been strangling them.

I should also mention that, despite having enough forethought to bring my new chainsaw with me, I managed to forget my safety chaps – d’oh! I did find a pair of my STIHL earbuds in the car (I often leave them around my neck by accident when I do a store run, so finding a pair in my car or purse is pretty common!). I then borrowed some protective eyewear from K’s dad, but I’m recommending before we get started here that safety chaps protect your legs from the chainsaw if it takes a weird bounce. I will eventually use the chainsaw again at home, so you’ll see me correctly geared up like I was a the STIHL summit when that happens.

(I should have looked more like this.)

STIHL MSA 120 battery powered chainsaw review

Even though I was lucky enough to have my pick of chainsaws from the STIHL Lightning Battery System line, I opted for their smallest. On the surface, that sounds kinda nuts, since why wouldn’t I go for more power if I can? To put it simply, I wanted this to be a true test of what STIHL says this chainsaw can do:

Part of the AK Series, the MSA 120 C-BQ is a great battery-powered chainsaw for suburban homeowners, handling storm cleanup to limb removal. The MSA 120 C-BQ bundle comes standard with the AK 20 battery and AL 101 battery charger. It features low vibration, quick chain adjustment and STIHL Quickstop® Plus chain braking feature. Make 100 cuts through a 4″ log on a single charge, which gives you enough power to tackle a stack of firewood.

In terms of yard cleanup, taking out small trees, cutting firewood, and so forth, this seemed most in line with how I’d wind up using a chainsaw in general. It would be very rare for me to need to cut down a large tree (in fact, I hired out to the pros when I needed to take out the pine trees in my yard — not only because of their size but I needed the expertise and the satisfaction that someone had the right permits and approvals to do such a large job in a suburban area like mine). To get something bigger and then talk about how impressive it is to take care of these smaller tasks didn’t seem like as much of a good test.

Overall impression:

Pretty good performance for its size. I was able to cut down a couple of small trees and slice that into firewood in a single charge. It’s also really lightweight, which means that just about anyone can use it (I even got K’s mom to try it).

In other words: it will last about as long as your own energy to do the task. When it stops was pretty much when all of us were ready to be done for the afternoon.

Despite the years of cutting down trees, Mrs. Carter had actually never tried to use a chainsaw before. With some encouragement, I got her to give it a shot! I was so strangely PROUD of that moment of getting her to try it.

She would like me to tell you, from her own endorsement, that it’s light enough for seniors to handle. Since K and I both consider her stamp of approval to be a Pretty Big Deal, I wouldn’t be surprised if STIHL sent out a press release on that quote. It’s like the Good Housekeeping seal, only much more exclusive.

How to fell a small tree with a chainsaw

The phrase “fell a tree” always hits my ear weird, but that’s the other way of saying “cut down a tree” — which do you use?

At any rate, below is a recap of what I learned from Mr. Carter as he gave me pointers. Just in case it’s asked, I’ll clarify that he’s not a professional arborist, but he is an guy who has cut down scores (possibly hundreds?) of trees in his lifetime. Get your elders to teach you things, friends — they will, and it’s awesome!

1. Plan ahead

I had K’s dad pick the spots to cut as well as the path that the tree would fall (both in terms of him being the more experienced one and so he could be responsible for it not hitting his house!). But ultimately, you need to clearly identify where the tree will land. It appeared that his goal each time was for the tree to come down and not only clear the house, but to hit the ground without falling down on other trees (doing so could possible entangle the fallen tree with the healthy one, kill a healthy one in the process, or cause the other to fall in a weird direction and hit something unexpectedly).

He also took some time to clear away debris around the base. Fallen branches and other obstacles are dangerous objects you won’t want to trip on if you have to suddenly move out of the way.

It should also go without saying that people, dogs, and other precious things should not be in the area either.

2. Make your cuts at a comfortable height

Don’t feel the need to squat down and cut close to the ground right away. You can make your initial cuts, let the tree fall, and then cut down the remaining bit to a stump. Use a stance that is comfortable for you to hold throughout the entire cut. It’s safer to have a good handle on the chainsaw and prioritize on cutting in the right spot so that the tree falls where you want.

3. Cut a wedge on the same side as the tree will fall

Our first cut was horizontal, about halfway through the tree (sometimes 2/3 if it’s small). Allow the chainsaw to work the cut; do not work it in a sawing motion. The next cut is at a downward angle above the first cut, about 60 degrees or so, at a depth so the two cuts meet. This should result in a wedge-like shape cut out of the tree.

4. Make a third cut on the opposite side

Position yourself so you are neither directly under the felling area nor on the exact opposite side (it seems logical at first to be exactly opposite, but if the tree falls backwards, you don’t want to be under it).

A few inches above the first horizontal cut and on the opposite side of the tree, make another slice with the chainsaw but don’t cut all the way to the other cut lines. This is when the cut will separate the base of the tree, sort of like a hinge, and the tree will start to fall from its own weight. I was a little nervous when this part happened because K and his dad have ZERO FEAR getting up in the action and pushed on the tree (which I’m not sure you’re supposed to do, but I know better than to start correcting / questioning

5. Cut the stump

As the tree falls, move away from the tree. Once it’s down, cut the rest of the remaining trunk down to a stump.

6. Cut firewood logs

Cut off the smaller branches first until you have a clean section for making into logs. Elevate it off the ground slightly. Get most of the way through and slow as you get to the end of the cut (otherwise, the cut will give way and send the tip of your chainsaw into the dirt).

Family Time

Of course, that’s not the only thing we did on our visit. There was a good bit of relaxing, spending more time with one of K’s brothers and his wife (he has a total of 3 brothers), and getting some ideas on our future vintage travel trailer renovation (more on that later). Charlie and Stella had an absolute blast and were  ready for bed LONG before it was time.

Stella playing inside a hollowed stump – she thinks there’s an animal in there!

We also took an afternoon to walk down to another family property and visit Mrs. Carter’s uncle, who lives in the coolest old farmhouse (he’s in his 80s and still works out in the garden and built the second story!). I didn’t want to be too imposing and take photos inside, but if I ever can, I’ll happily share them here. I took few pictures of the other parts of the property from our walk, though.

Bonus Video

I didn’t take much video while I was up there, but I did get a couple of quick clips on my phone and put them together below. It’s mostly of the pups enjoying their trip (ha). Small bit at the end of my first time using the chainsaw (I promise, I improved from there!).

Hope you have a good one! I was hoping to share a few more things this week, including a post with lots of Charlie and Stella pics. Something on my A/C unit has busted and soaked through the ceiling in the living room, so it’s been a distraction-heavy week. With any luck, I can get back on schedule as soon as tomorrow!

The post If You Give a Gal a Chainsaw… (How to Cut Down a Small Tree) appeared first on Ugly Duckling House.

from Home Improvement https://www.uglyducklinghouse.com/how-to-cut-down-a-small-tree-stihl-battery-chainsaw/ via http://www.rssmix.com/

#home improvement