#course in the actual show and show related material they’ll always be called best friends

[thattheater-kid]

Wally and Barnaby are definitely something other than best friends, like in canon. Whatever type of relationship that is (romantic, QPR, I could even maybe see an argument for familial) can be debated but there’s definitely something there.

#course in the actual show and show related material they’ll always be called best friends #and historians will call them… #(historians being the playfellow workshop) #welcome home #welcome home headcanons #welcome home arg #welcome home project #welcome home clown illustrations #welcome home puppet show #wally darling #barnaby b beagle #wally x barnaby

[forrests-waterfall]

Little!Tommy and CG!SBI // RPF

A/N : Okay so I apologize if this writing is just everywhere. I just really wanted to get this done because it was a self comfort fic aa. I’m hoping that if I do enough small writings, it’ll help me improve! (Because I took a long long break from writing before this blog pff) Hope you enjoy none the less. (Is that how you use that sentence? I dunno). Also the place I talk about Tommy wanting to see is not an actual build on the Origins SMP.

Also, not edited!! There may be misspells!! And this does not represent the entire “Tubbo replaced Tommy with Ranboo” thing at all. I don’t like those kinds of things, so please don’t relate it to that. And this is based off their Internet personalities if that makes sense??

TW/CW : Cursing, the nicknames kiddo and bubs

It was a good stream with the bench trio so far, the three of them just hanging out and poking fun at one another from time to time. Basically just the normal for the three.

It had been just them talking for about an hour or so, but they ended up deciding they were going to hop on the Origins SMP. Tubbo and Ranboo needed to fix stuff around the server and Tommy would follow them around, probably making fun of little stuff that didn’t make sense.

It was fun for all of them, especially Tommy since he hadn’t been on the Origins SMP much. It was cool to see all the stuff everyone built.

“Burn bitch!” Tommy’s avatar hit Tubbo’s with a diamond sword, making the other’s health go down. “I didn’t even do anything that time!” Ranboo let out a laugh at the other two—he then attacked Tommy’s character with his own weapon. “Sorry, Tommy! I have to do it for the content”

Tommy let out a groan, “excuses! It just cause you two are fucking married so you have to be like ‘oh I’m Ranboo, and I love a man platonically who likes eating DIRT with bees. And I must protect him’” The teen raised his voice higher so it sounded like he was mocking the other.

“Bees don’t eat dirt”

They continued messing around on the server, Tommy proceeded to do the same thing he was doing.

Though, he noticed a building on the SMP that caught his eye. He hadn’t seen it before so he had to go to it.

“Hey, let’s-“

“Ranboo we have to go over there to get the right materials”

The blond raised an eyebrow, and then went to the other’s characters.

Deciding what he wanted to explore wasn’t that important anymore, he followed them.

The other two just needed smelted stone for—whatever reason. Tommy wasn’t listening, he was focused on something else.

While on the way back to where they were, they passed by the place again. Since it was on the way, it wouldn’t be too much of an interruption to what the other two were doing. And he didn’t want to go alone, plus he needed someone to tell him what the hell it was.

“Mr.Ranboob, I think we shoul-“ “that’s cobblestone Tubbo!” The brunet looked at what the other was holding, which was definitely not smooth stone. Tubbo let out an exaggerated gasp, “what??”

Letting out a soft sigh, he knew they’d be taking another trip. So he went along with it again.

It wasn’t that big of a deal, it’s just a building in a game. He could always see what it was another time.

—————

This went on for another two hours.

Tommy continued to be interrupted due to the other two needing to do something. And he didn’t want to get in the middle of what they wanted to do.

The teen always shook it off as what he wanted to do was not that important, and it wouldn’t be entertaining for the viewers for Tommyinnit to look at a new build he hadn’t seen.

Though he’d be lying if he said it didn’t upset him.

He just wanted to see the colorful arrangement of blocks! Was that so much to ask? Plus it had some flowers around it, it was pretty!

“Alright let’s go over here” Tommy whined at another instruction, at this point he felt like an extra. Not because it was them two doing stuff together, but because he wasn’t helping. He wasn’t adding on to anything, except some commentary.

But he wanted to do more than that! But after he saw the thing he wanted to see, but that wasn’t happening. So he couldn’t help but get distracted by what his mind seemed to be fixated on. (Aka, the structure.)

Luckily for Tommy, he wasn’t streaming. So nobody could see that he had his knees up to his chest, and that his eyes were a bit glassier than normal.

And they definitely couldn’t see him chewing on his fingers with his non vacant hand.

He was tired, mentally and physically. He wanted to be listened to, not ignored whether it was intentional or not. (Of course he knows it’s not intentional, those are his best friends! But he’s still upset about it.)

The now mentally younger let out a small whine, this wasn’t fair! They were barley paying any attention to him at all. “Tommy?” The little perked his head up and looked towards Ranboo’s character. He hadn’t noticed he was spaced out for so long. “Yeah?” “You were quiet so I was just checking up on you”

Tommy let out a long exhale before speaking, “I was doing big man shit! Somethin’ you wouldn’t understand, Ran-boo”

The other two let out a fit of laughter while Tommy took his other hand away from the mouse.

Acting big wasn’t fun and just hurt him in a way he couldn’t describe. He hated it. He wanted Wilby, and Techie, and Ph-

“I gotta get off. Mum is asking me to do the dishes”

He waited for a response, hopefully they didn’t question why is was so random. “alright! Bye Tommy!” “Bye Tommy!! Say bye to Tommy, chat!”

The blond let out a few giggles before clicking his mouse and ending the call. He let out a sigh of relief and quickly opened the group chat with the other sleepy bois.

He pressed the call button, not thinking if his friends were busy or not. He just wanted his caregivers right now, that’s all that mattered to him.

He messed with his fingers nervously while listening to the call ring. Surely someone could answer, right?

His doubts were cut off rather quickly by a familiar voice speaking up, “Hey Toms! Is everything alright? It’s not usual for you to call out of nowhere”

The little let out a small whimper again, too shy to explain what was going on. Though, Wilbur caught on quickly. He immediately shifted into caregiver mode, “Bubs, what’s wrong? Did something happen during the stream, bud?” Tommy messed with his fingers some more before chewing on them once again.

“Ah ah, go get your pacifier, Toms. Then you can tell me about what happened”

The mentally (and physically) younger got up from his chair and walked over to a nearby dresser. He grabbed ahold of his red and black pacifier and went back to his desk. “Good job! Now can you tell me what’s up, bubs?” Tommy messed around with his pacifier, since he had something other than his hands to distract him.

“Tub an ‘Boo ignorin’ me” he raised the pacifier up to his mouth, “don’ think they meanin’ to though”

Wilbur nodded at the response, seeming to think for a moment. “Well, why don’t I tell Ranboo and Tubbo how it made you feel, yeah? I’ll let them know after the stream. I’m sure they didn’t mean it”

Tommy looked up at the camera, “no! Theys gon’ think I’m c’ybaby. An’ then theys gon’ be sad cause they made me sad” he curled into a ball on his chair and put his pacifier in his mouth. Wilbur let out a small “ah” to show he understood.

“They won’t call you a crybaby, Toms.” The older took a second to think, “They’ll be happy that you told them though. So then they’ll know what they were doing to make a little one like you, upset”

The little seemed to think for a moment and then nodded his head as an, “okay”.

Discord made a noise from Tommy’s computer, notifying the two that someone else had joined. The blond smiled as Technoblade’s icon lit up, almost immediately he made grabby hands at the camera.

“Techie!!”

The older let out a soft laugh, you could tell he was smiling from behind the screen. “Hey, bubs. Do we have a little kiddo today?” Tommy giggled and nodded his head. Technoblade turned on his camera, he knew when Tommy was regressed it tended to make him comfier if he could see everyone.

“I’m sure Phil will be here in just a second, I was just on the call with him” he stopped to take a breathe, “and I’m sure he’ll be very excited to see little Tom Toms”

The little let out another small fit of giggles before standing up from his chair and grabbing ahold of a raccoon stuffie. He brought it back to his desk and held it up to the camera. “Look!! His name Racco!!” Tommy excitedly announced, basically bouncing in his chair. “He’s adorable, bubs! Is that the one Phil got you?” The mentally younger nodded as he played with the Raccoon’s tail.

Tommy looked up at his screen as he heard someone join, it was Phil!!

“Phil look!! ‘S name is Racco!!”

“Oh! You already named him, huh?” Phil had ordered him a new plushie since he had been doing good. It was a small gift from the older. “Mhm!!”

“Heyyy! I thought we agreed I’d give him his next stuffed animal” Wilbur fake pouted as he crossed his arms, “you took too long” Phil replied, letting out a chuckle.

Wilbur was going to get him a new stuffie too?? Wait huh? Tommy’s eyes lit up, “new stuffie from Wilby??” Wilbur replied with a nod, “yep! We can talk about that tomorrow though, there’s someone who wants to talk to you” the younger tilted his head to the side confused. “Well, two people”

Wilbur added Ranboo and Tubbo to the call after the stream had ended (after asking them of course). Tubbo spoke up first, “I’m sorry Toms, I didn’t know we made you upset and we didn’t mean to.” Ranboo hummed in agreement, “yeah. We apologize, we didn’t mean to hurt your feelings”

The blond thought about what they said for a moment before having a fake little conversation with his stuffie. “Shoul we fo’give them? They seems sorry” he whispered to his stuffie as he made the plush pat him on the arm, basically saying yes.

The little looked back at the camera and made a thumbs up. “Is okay! I fo’give you.” He seemed to think for a moment, “I will super fo’give you if you buys me a new sweater!!” everyone in the call laughed, “will do, kiddo”

Tommy then rambled on and on about a new cartoon him and Techno watched together the other night. They all listened and asked questions about it, and Tommy eventually forgot about what happened earlier. Plus, it didn’t matter anymore. They said sorry and it was all better!!

Soon enough, Tommy let out a small yawn as his eyes threatened to close.

“Aw, is bubs tired from his long day today?” Wilbur’s voice softened as the little looked away, “no! Not tired!!”

“You sure, Toms? You can always talk to us tomorrow if you want.” Techno explained while adjusting his headphones.

“Nope! Don’ wanna”

“But Toms, you can play allllll day tomorrow if you do! Wouldn’t you want to spend more time with Racco?”

The little looked at his plush before looking back at the camera. He let out a sigh and nodded.

“Otay”

“Alright, go ahead and get changed into some comfier clothes.”

“Yeah! Me and Ranboo have to go but it was really nice talking to you, kiddo! Goodnight” Tubbo smiled at the camera before waving. Tommy waved back as the two left the call.

He then turned off his camera and changed into a blue onesie with a rocket ship pattern on it.

He turned his camera back on, “good job, bubs! Can you try and switch over to your phone for me?

Tommy grabbed ahold of his phone and pulled up the discord group chat, with a click of a button he joined the call on his phone.

He went over to his bed with the Raccoon plush and pulled the covers over himself.

Everyone had turned their camera’s off by now.

“Goodnight, little Tom Tom. Sweet Dreams. We’ll be here when you wake up”

“Ni Ni”

Tommy then closed his eyes and drifted into sleep. Today was a good day for little Tommy.

#can you tell I rushed the end?? aa #I’m not very proud of this one but I’m tired and wanted to get it out lmao #age regression #agere #mcyt agere #mcyt age regression #sfw agere #dream smp #dream smp age regression #dream smp agere #Tommyinnit #sbi #little tommy #little tommyinnit #CG sbi #caregiver sbi #CG Wilbur #CG Techno #CG Philza

[mst3kproject]

The Manster

Who has two thumbs and is back on terra firma with working wifi?  This MSTie!

As for my chosen subject this week… I don’t think I have to justify this one.  It’s called The Manster, as in a portmanteau of man and monster.  It was directed by a guy who mostly made cheap-ass jungle movies, and stars a bunch of embarrassed actors who don’t know how they ended up here.  It’s old and it’s dumb and it’s often pretty funny though never on purpose, and the perfect stinger moment comes very early in the film… you’ll know it when you see it.

So we have Dr. Robert Suzuki, who lives on top of a volcano.  When people have ‘Dr’ in front of their names and live in isolation with a bunch of blinky light machines, that’s usually a pretty good clue that they’re mad scientists. Tragically our hero, Larry Stanford, is not that observant (Larry’s obliviousness would have been a constant target for Mike and the bots and he would have deserved all of it).  He’s a reporter who wants an interview about Suzuki’s theories on the causes of mutations, but too bad for him, he arrives just as the mad doctor has run out of family members to experiment on.  Under the influence of Suzuki’s injections he’s soon devolving into an animalistic frat-boy, drinking, carousing, and murdering… oh, and he’s growing a second head. Will that be a problem?

So basically this is a werewolf movie with a fake mustache on… or perhaps a Jekyll and Hyde movie of sorts, as discussed in the denouement.  It wants to explore the dichotomy of good and evil in every one of us, using the very silly device of a two-headed man.  I have to say, I understand the metaphor, but it wasn’t put to nearly good enough use.  The movie would have been ten times more fun if we’d gotten to see Larry and his second head arguing over whether or not they’re going to kill somebody.  Not better, mind you, just more fun.

As far as just being a movie goes, The Manster is better than a lot of things I’ve watched for this blog.  The characters have names and look different enough that you can tell them apart, the story makes sense on its own terms and everything that happens is relevant to the plot.  Photography is honestly pretty good and the actors are competent.  All this happens to be in the service of a really silly story with awful special effects (I love Larry’s rubbery second head bouncing as he runs) but it’s engaging enough that you want to keep watching.

What I really like about The Manster, however, is that it offers a lot to analyze.  I’m not sure much of it is intentional.  The Jekyll and Hyde side of the story is elucidated in an ending speech, as Larry’s friend Ian tries to reassure Mrs. Stanford.  He says there was good and evil in Larry, and they’ll just have to wait and see which side wins.  This is not a very satisfying ending, really.  We’ve just seen Larry’s evil side plummet to its death into a volcanic crater… and the surviving good side is under arrest as a serial killer.  Dr. Suzuki and his assistant, the only people who could testify that Larry was not responsible for his actions, are both dead.  This guy’s going to jail.

The really interesting thing in the movie, though, is one that comes up by accident.  Dr. Suzuki’s work is on evolution – his theory is that cosmic rays can induce mutations, producing new species more or less overnight (this is called ‘macromutation’ or ‘the hopeful monster theory’, and lurked on the edges of the mainstream in the 40’s and 50’s) and he hopes to induce the same effect chemically.  When he tries, however, his efforts invariably produce monsters.  Emiko, his wife and former research partner, turns into something resembling the closet monster from The Brain that Wouldn’t Die.  Kenji, his brother, turns into a yeti, and a similar fate awaits Larry.  These mutants cannot understand human speech, and their behaviour is irrational and violent.

This implies a couple of things.  We hear vague mentions of Dr. Suzuki experimenting on fungi, but his heart is mostly in his human experiments.  That tells us that his goal is to speed up the evolution of humanity, and one presumes that this is intended to improve us somehow. Of course, this is not how evolution works.  Evolution does not make things better – this is why biologists have mostly dropped the descriptions primitive and advanced in favour of the more neutral basal and derived.  Dr. Suzuki’s quest is therefore quite misguided, as illustrated by his monsters. In no way could they be considered ‘better’ than humans – in fact, they’re significantly worse at surviving and reproducing (the thing natural selection selects for) than ordinary people are.

There’s another layer here, though.  ‘Evolution makes things better’ is a misconception that’s been around since Darwin, and dates back to even earlier ways of organizing the natural world.  When Linnaeus created the classification system for living things that we’re still saddled with today, he did it under the believe in the Great Chain of Being – the idea that you can order everything that exists into a hierarchy with mold at the bottom and god at the top, and that after god and the angels humans are the best thing that exists (as proved by our being the only creatures able to create classification systems).  It’s an idea that appeals to human vanity and to our need to impose order on the natural world, and it isn’t likely to go away anytime soon.

With that in mind, perhaps there’s another reason Suzuki’s experiments fail.  If you believe that humans are the best living thing around, particularly if you believe we are the image of god on earth, then maybe it’s not possible to improve on us.  Any change you make to people that takes them away from humanity will automatically make them worse.  This idea does appear to be manifest in the fates of Emiko, Kenji, and Larry, all of whom become more apelike, less ‘advanced’, as they change.

In that case, what does The Manster think makes for a good human?  We see a little of Larry before he starts to mutate, so we can compare that with what he becomes.  Rather surprisingly for a movie of this vintage, the fact that Larry is white seems to be pretty incidental.  He is a foreigner in a faraway place, but this serves mostly to drive a wedge between him and his wife Linda.  Except for a couple of rather troubling moments, the film does not present Japan in an exotifying light.  We do see things like a bathhouse and a geisha bar, but these represent Larry’s personal slide into debauchery, rather than the country as a whole.  We also meet normal working people among both the Japanese and the American expat community – reporters, police officers, and even priests.

There’s a very nice bit, actually, where Larry comes upon a Buddhist priest praying, and when he realizes this man doesn’t speak English, Larry takes the opportunity to unburden himself.  It makes him feel better to talk about his moral quandaries aloud, and the fact that the priest doesn’t understand him means he cannot judge him.  This is a very relatable and human moment, one of the best in the movie.

Unfortunately, it also segues into a couple of the most distasteful things in the film.  As I’m sure you’ve guessed, Larry does murder the priest, but before he does, he stares at a particular statue in the shrine – a representation of a three-eyed, fanged being that I am in no position to identify, although it looks a bit like Vajrapani.  Before Larry grows a full second head he sprouts an extra eye in his shoulder, and the implication is that the three-eyed statue draws his attention to the monster within himself. I don’t know much about Buddhism but I do not like the idea of casting another culture’s religious figures as symbols of monstrosity.  The west has done plenty enough of that.

But back to the question of acceptable humanity. We watch Larry get drunk, violent, antisocial, lazy, and promiscuous, which tells us that the ‘good’ man is the opposite of these things: sober, peaceful, friendly, hardworking, and chaste. The film pays particular attention to how Larry relates to women.  The fact that he’s been faithful to his distant wife is established early on, and one of the first symptoms of his devolution is his willingness to discard her.  First he makes out with a couple of girls at the geisha bar, and later he takes Dr. Suzuki’s assistant Terra (who has a tragic backstory but we frustratingly never find out what it entails) as his mistress. On the phone with his wife Linda at the beginning of the film, Larry tells her he loves her and promises to be home soon.  Later, when she comes to Japan searching for him, he shouts at her and makes a show of preferring Terra.

One conversation he has with Linda is particularly revealing.  He tells her he has no desire to settle down in one place and wile away his time drinking coffee and playing bridge when there’s a big wide world out there.  She asks him what about her plans, and he declares he will ‘put her in her place’ and ‘slap her down’.  Since this is when Larry is the opposite of what a good man should be, we can take from it that a good man respects his wife and takes her opinions and needs into account.  For the late fifties, this is actually kind of surprising – I’ve seen films from a decade or two later that were far more backward about this.  So hey, points for that.

All things considered, The Manster is a pretty well-made movie.  It’s dumb and full of clichés, such as the man scientist destroyed by his own creation, the femme fatale who sacrifices herself for the hero because she’s fallen in love with him, theremin music to represent the monster’s appearance, etc etc etc… but it’s competently put together and whether intentionally or no, contains a lot of interesting material. It’s the sort of movie I can watch repeatedly and always find something new in.  Definitely recommended viewing for the 50’s Monster Flick fan, although with the caveat that there is a scene in which one character urges another to commit suicide.

#mst3k #reviews #episodes that never were #the manster #guys in gorilla suits #tw: suicide #50s

[thegreenfairy13]

A Gotham Ghost Story - Part 4

When Oswald shoots Jim on the pier, his ghost is doomed to haunt the mobster. You can read the full story here. 

Thank you @mexican-texican for fixing my mistakes and I blame you for making me want to write again <3!

The police comes, of course, in the shape of one Harvey Bullock. When Jim spots the familiar, scruffy beard and the greasy hat, a wave of relief rushes through whatever is left of the former commissioner. Harvey is... family. He’s been closer to Jim than his own brother, had been at his side when he started drinking, when he tried killing himself in any way imaginable, when the city had been in anarchy’s firm grip, when he had failed time and time again. It had always been Harvey’s job to save him, to drag him back from the literal abyss. 

Jim wants to scream in joy and even does. The sound punches through the core of his being, seems to both shatter him and be simultaneously unheard to the world. It’s a weird feeling - being so loud and so silent all the same.

Yes, Harvey will be able to help. He’ll find a way to reunite Jim with his body, to mend this mess. He’ll call one of Gotham’s insane scientists, drop his body into some holy water, find someone to...do whatever can only be done in a city of utter madness.

Plus, Harvey being here means they must have found his body and maybe Jim only needs to come close to his corpse, maybe Cobblepot will be taken to the morgue and then, - then... then everything will be fine. Yeah, Harvey will fix this and then they’ll be chasing the Penguin for attempted murder again and it will be just like the good old days.

Unless, of course, it won’t.

It takes Jim far longer than he’d like to admit it, given he’s a cop and everything, but the way Harvey paces about the mobster’s living room, the way he’s not acting as if he’d own the place, should have set off his inner alarm. He’s not submissive, not exactly, but he isn’t acting as if he’s about to haul the former umbrella boy’s ass back to Blackgate either. He’s somewhat tense .

“Penguin,” he greets gruffly, not sitting down without an invitation like he used to.

“Detective,” the gangster purrs back with a crooked smile. He’s showing off too many teeth, accentuating his pointed nose when scrunching up his face awkwardly, and for a second, he truly looks like a Penguin - but not like a cute, clumsy bird, no, more so a creature from hell, a demon’s caricature of a living being and Jim remembers why he never truly submitted to the other man. He forgets, sometimes, what Oswald is capable of. Hidden under all that formal wear, polished smiles and perfect manners, lies a monster.

“I’m surprised to see you came personally to welcome me back in the arms of our beautiful city,” Oswald starts. The mobster limps to a nearby sofa and makes a show of sitting down as gracefully as possible with his injured leg. Extending his hand, he invites Harvey to do the same.

“This isn’t a courtesy visit,” the cop replies but takes the offered seat with a huff. “If it had been up to me, I could have gone another decade without meeting you.”

“And here I thought you already wanted to rekindle our old friendship,” the Penguin retorts smoothly.

“I don’t recall us being friends,” Harvey snaps back, more harshly than is probably wise. Jim cringes inwardly. Given the mobster’s unstable temper, taunting him isn’t probably the best course of action. He himself is the best example of that.

Leaning back and taking a deep breath the cop comes straight to the point, “What do you know about Jim Gordon’s disappearance?”

The silence that follows the lawman’s question is deafening. Harvey patiently waits for his answer, seemingly enraptured by the state of his cropped fingernails while the Penguin makes an impressive show of opening and closing his eyes in mock surprise, acting every bit like an appalled lady from an 18th-century novel. It’s laughable, really, and a wave of anger rushes through Jim at the sight. Storming over, he wants to shake the insolent gangster but of course, his hands only manage to reach through the ether when they try holding onto solid material.

The only reaction Jim elicits is a little shiver from the mobster that easily makes his cheap act seem more believable.

“Oh, haven’t you heard already?” Harvey teases skeptically. “The moment you leave Blackgate, our good Commissioner vanishes from the face of the Earth. And at first I thought, hey, might be a coincidence, but then I thought hey...Every time something bad happened to Jim Gordon it’s somehow related to you or your machinations, so why not ask our favorite, freshly-released jail-bird?”

The mobster smashes his hand onto the table so swiftly and with such vigor, it startles all three of them. “I’ve been home for only a couple of hours,  after having been locked up for false accusations no less. My first way lead me to my mother’s grave to pay her the respect she deserves, to take care of her derelict grave and to return to the house that Jim Gordon had fruitlessly attempted to steal from me and you come into my home and accuse me...of what, actually? Do you have any proof? Evidence? Or are you playing the same old tricks that robbed me of my freedom…”

Harvey halts the gangster’s rant with a motion of his hand and Jim shakes his head in silent admiration. If he hadn’t been shot dead only a couple of hours ago, he would almost be inclined to believe Oswald’s theatrics.

“You’ve always been an exceptional liar,” the Commissioner acknowledges with a little snarl.

“Thank you,” the Penguin mutters unthinkingly and Harvey raises his eyebrows while Jim freezes. Did he just….?

“Thank you?” Harvey parrots.

Confused, Oswald looks at him but quickly regains his composure. “Well, I suppose I should be flattered you believe me to be capable of kidnapping the Commissioner of Gotham City only mere minutes after my release from Blackgate. I must be a true comic book-supervillain in your eyes,” he scoffs derisively.

Taken aback, Harvey considers the Penguin’s words for a moment. “How would you know he was kidnapped?”

“I don’t,” the mobster retorts bitterly. “For all I’ve heard he could have turned his back and ran from Gotham.”

“And leave his only daughter behind?” Harvey asks incredulously. Narrowing his eyes, he inquires him further. “And what exactly did you hear?”

“Ohhh,” Oswald shrugs innocently, “just what I read in the papers. How our holier-than-thou cop’s marriage failed when his wife decided to rule parts of the underworld or how he teamed up with the aforementioned daughter’s mother and notorious criminal to raise said child. Maybe you should take a good look at Gordon’s private life before coming after an innocent man - again.”

At that, Harvey bursts out laughing. “Oh, I will,” he promises, wiping his eyes. “But I still thought I’d start with the criminal who never got tired of pointing out to anyone who might listen how much he hates Jim Gordon. Isn’t that right, Oswald?” he urges. “The guards at Blackgate couldn’t stand your tune any longer. Said you were like a little teenage-girl rejected by her first boyfriend. The only thing missing was you scribbling Jim’s name all over your prison-walls - but you probably did that too, didn’t you?” he teases.

Pressing his mouth into a thin line, the Penguin leans forward. Trembling hands fisted into the fabric of his own trousers, he replies, “You will understand, Detective, that I felt a slight wave of animosity towards you and your partner after the way you betrayed me in the aftermath of…”

“Betrayed you?” Harvey interrupts, angrily rising to his feet. “For a man as smart as you claim to be you are a short-sighted idiot.” Before Oswald can answer, the cop stops him with a motion of his hand. “You truly never figured it out, did you?” he demands to know curiously, and for once, the confusion on Oswald’s face is genuine.

Knowing what is about to happen, Jim rushes towards Harvey. “No,” he mumbles, unwilling to accept what he can’t prevent now that he’s just a shadow in a room. “No,” he groans in frustration when the other man starts talking of what he had done all those years ago. Is it really necessary, he thinks to himself? Is it really necessary for Oswald to know about each and every time Jim failed to do what’s right? Must he know about yet another one of his mistakes? How is it possible Oswald always sees him at his lowest, stripped from his morals and caught in a web of impossible choices even after his death? Is that his punishment in the afterlife? Oswald, of all people, gaining the moral high grounds above him and taunting him with his knowledge?

“You know you brought your time in Blackgate upon yourself, didn’t you?” Harvey challenges, clearly enjoying the Penguin’s tension. He mocks him like a game show host, marveling at his contestant’s distress.

“No, I don’t,” Oswald admits through gritted teeth, clearly upset with the charade. Jim reaches for Harvey, even places a hand over the other man’s mouth but the motion goes unnoticed.

“Did you never wonder, Oswald , how you only got ten years? You murdered so many people: in front of my eyes, Jim’s eyes, in front of countless witnesses and all you got was ten measly, fucking years?”

Oswald tries to reply but is again cut off. “If Jim wanted you gone forever, all he had to do was haul fifty plus people into the witness-stand.”

The Penguin, only moments before about to explode into a fit of rage, stands frozen in place. “Lies,” he whispers then, seemingly unconvinced.

“Lies?” Harvey parrots, nearly jumping from the ground in his anger. “It was you who betrayed the government when Gotham returned back to normal. It was you who thought he could fill his pockets and walk away unscathed. You should be thankful you only got charged for tax evasion,” the cop bursts out.

“Does the name Amanda Waller ring any bells? Did you or did you not try to fuck with her? Did you never wonder why Barbara, Ivy, Zsasz, and others walked free and didn’t get hunted down while you ended up in Blackgate for tax evasion of all things?!” he roars. “Unlike you, they were smart, they knew when to back down and not mess with people, but you and your greed! They wanted your head and I wasn’t against handing it over but Jim - oh Jim,” he emphasizes by pushing his finger forcibly into Oswald’s chest. “He wanted to give you a chance, he made a deal: pulled you from the streets for a considerable amount of time without having to kill you and reuniting Mrs. Waller with Uncle Sam’s money. And the hilarious thing is, you never even knew!” he exclaims in a frenzy. “They all knew, Ed knew, every idiot in Arkham or Blackgate knew but you were too caught up in your revenge-fantasies and you really didn’t think twice .”

Exhausted, Harvey falls back against the cushions, a slightly embarrassed Jim hovering next to him. Biting his lip, Jim doesn’t know what to say. What Harvey explained is just part of the truth, what he thankfully left out is how he failed to protect Gotham from yet another detrimental influence, one that this time came from the government itself. He opens his mouth, wants to explain that yes, all of that is true but just one side of the coin, that maybe he could have done more, that his actions were never about Oswald, that he could have...He isn’t really sure what he could have done but as nobody hears him anyway, he falls silent again.

The cop shivers slightly when Jim lays a consoling hand on his arm as they both wait for the Penguin to speak again. Swallowing heavily, Oswald looks down, barely concealing the tears glistening in his eyes.

“I do remember talking to government officials when Gotham was reunited with the mainland,” he admits at last. “Mrs. Waller…” he scrunches up his face as he tries staying calm. “She made a proposal. Wanted various people to work for her. Not exactly the kind of work you’d expect respectable people to do. I thought she was yet another corrupt politician trying to benefit from the chaos.”

“She’s still very much in charge,” Harvey grumbles angrily.

“I miscalculated,” Oswald admits with a sheepish smile.

“And you projected all your anger onto Jim and once you walked out of Blackgate you either kidnapped him or killed him,” Harvey concludes.

Gasping for air, Oswald screams out his denial. “Jim Gordon and I might have had our difficulties but you certainly don’t believe I could have kidnapped him and still be unaware of what you’ve just told me?” he exclaims angrily. “And as for killing him...You know better than anyone else in this city what we have been through. Do you really think I’d be capable of hurting him in this fashion?”

“Very much so,” Harvey replies drily.

“So if you want to arrest me,” the gangster snaps back indignantly, “present me the evidence. Is there any proof for your accusations?”

Laughing silently, the cop merely shakes his head. “Oswald, you still don’t get it. I’m not here as a cop. I’m here as Jim’s friend. The very same man who stood between you and Barbara Kean’s gun. And she strongly believes you have at least information on her child’s father’s whereabouts. The same goes for his still-wife Lee Gordon. You see, if these two ladies assume you hurt Jim Gordon, I won’t stand in their way, I’ll lean back and enjoy the show. They’ll tear down the city to get to you, at least you should know that. You know what they are capable of, so if you know where Jim is, you should talk now. Blackgate might be the last safe place for you in that case. Otherwise…” Harvey leaves the threat hanging as he readies himself to leave.

Looking up, the Penguin stares pleadingly at the cop. “You must believe me,” he begs. The look on the criminal’s face is so innocent it catches Jim off guard. Hunched over on his couch, shivering from the cold in the room, he looks like a small child. He pleads with Harvey to believe him and his expression is so open, so trusting while the man himself is so frail and broken even Jim starts to doubt what happened to him on that pier.

Getting up clumsily, Oswald limps over, extends his hands to the cop. “You are right, I was very mad at Jim but I could have never killed him. I had so many chances in the past but…” he trails off.

“He was still my friend,” he admits brokenly when his voice takes on a higher tune, almost making him sound like a woman and Jim loses his mind. He can’t look away even though he wants to protest with all his might.

He blinks once, searches for Harvey, wondering if the other cop falls for the trick but he’s already gone.

“But you weren’t a friend to him,” a male voice replies instead, one that belongs to a man Jim has never seen before.

Turning back to Oswald in confusion, Jim finds a petite blonde woman with her face hidden in her hands standing in the place the mobster used to be.

“I took always such care of him,” she sobs desperately as the man starts menacingly walking towards her. Now that he’s stepping closer to the fire, Jim can make out a mop of thick, gray hair, a pointed nose, and thin lips, contorted in disgust.

“A filthy whore, that is what you are,” the elderly man spits as he backs up the young blonde against the fireplace. From that angle, Jim has even a better view. He notes the man wearing a perfectly tailored suit, similar to Oswald’s taste but with much less extravagant details. He shakes the woman roughly as he pushes her towards the fire.

“But I love him!” she protests, terrified.

Horrified, Jim witnesses how the man smacks her across the face. “You love his money,” he hollers. Leaping forward, Jim tries to intervene, tries pushing the man off of the woman as he continues dragging her towards the fire. Angrily, he punches the man right in the face and the woman lets out an agonizing scream.  

Surprised, he lets go, giving her the opportunity to storm out of the room, a baffled Jim in her tow. While following her down the hall the cop briefly wonders if the man felt his punch or if the woman’s cry had been the cause of her escape. If Jim would have turned around though, he would have found the man rubbing his cheek.

#gobblepot #fanfiction

[imagine-loki]

The Witch's Familiar

TITLE: The Witch’s Familiar CHAPTER NO./ONE SHOT: Chapter 13/? AUTHOR: nekoamamori ORIGINAL IMAGINE: Imagine getting so attached to Lokitty early on that you insist on carrying him just about everywhere.  RATING: T (so far) NOTES/WARNINGS: Also on AO3 Click here

    Even though Tony came back from his meeting with Loki without cat-ears, you didn’t hear any more about the date that day.

    Or the next.

    Or the next.

    Eventually you thought he had lost the courage, or interest.

    Or he was happy with your relationship the way it was.

    It really didn’t bother you. You weren’t in any rush to pursue a romantic relationship. It would happen if it were meant to, in the meantime you would enjoy having a Lokitty as a best friend.

    *

    “Cap, don’t forget I’m unavailable tomorrow,” you reminded the team at dinner on October 30th.

    “Big Halloween plans?” Stark jumped in, dying for material for a Halloween related witch joke.

    “Yes, but I’ll be back in plenty of time for your party,” you told him. You hesitated, but knew what your mother would want, so you added. “Actually, if you guys want to come, you’re welcome too. Mom would love to meet you all,”

    Loki reached over and took your hand, squeezing it reassuringly. You hadn’t advertised that your mom wasn’t alive. Loki knew obviously. Nat knew because she knew everything and Thor knew…somehow… “I will come with you,” Loki told you warmly. You gave him a smile in return. The rest of the team jumped in to agree to come meet your mom too. Of course she’d want to meet her daughter’s housemates.

    “Thanks, Lokitty. Mind helping me cook? We need to bring food with us tomorrow,”

    He nodded. “Of course, darling. Do you need me to call Helene?”

    “Do you mind? We need flowers for the others to bring as well,” you asked as you stood and kissed the perfect spot on the top of his head between his cat ears before you headed to the kitchen to get started on the cooking for tomorrow.

    “Not at all. I’ll join you in a minute,” Loki told you kindly. You saw him hold a green ball of magic in front of him through which he contacted Helene. The others watched the use of magic and this side of Loki with interest. They still weren’t used to seeing him as a courteous caring gentleman.

    You spent the evening cooking and packing the picnic baskets. The others jumped in to help, understanding it was important, even if they didn’t know or dare ask why.

    *

    The next morning you all piled into one of the giant SUVs. You were even wearing a dress from days long past for the occasion. It was one of your mom’s favorites on you. Loki and Thor both told you that you looked beautiful. Stark made some sarcastic comment about how you could wear a dress like a normal girl. Nat kicked him for you. He only avoided getting defenestrated because it was Halloween.

    The first stop of the morning was to Helene’s flower shop. She was excited to meet the whole team and told you about how wonderful of housemates you had. Loki stepped up to her and greeted her with a kiss on each cheek. “Grandmother Helene,” he greeted her warmly.

    “Finally decided to turn back, did you?” she asked him with a wide grin.

    “Yes, Grandmother,” he replied a little sheepishly and obediently bent back down again when she reached up to touch his cat ears. “It was time to properly befriend Lady Y/N.” The team was openly staring at Loki submitting to a little old lady. Well, the entire team except Thor, who just seemed happy to see Loki like this.

    “You got stuck, didn’t you dearie?” Helene asked Loki fondly while she touched his ears.

    “It’s only a mild inconvenience. Especially when Lady Y/N does not seem to mind and I get to spend more quality time with her, despite the ears,”

    “They’ll go away soon. You still better make your move soon, young man. Don’t keep the poor girl waiting,” Helene scolded him lightly.

    “Of course, Grandmother,” he replied warmly and gave you a little smirk.

    “Good boy,” Helene told him and patted his cheek affectionately.

    “Grandmother, please stop meddling in my love life. I don’t have one. Loki is just a friend,” you reminded her again, firmly. Maybe she’d learn sometime. Instead, she just gave you a warm smile and handed the flower order to Cap and Thor to carry. There were a lot of flowers this time.

    “Say hello to your mother for me, Y/N,” Helene bid you.

    “I will,” you replied and kissed her cheek before you left with the others.

    “How-? What-?” Tony started, just staring at Loki who offered you his arm to escort you back to the SUV.

    “Loki met Helene the last time I went to visit mom. She’s a witch and I’ve known her forever. I hope you remembered from last time not to take her meddling in my love life seriously,” you added for Loki’s benefit.

    “Of course. She means well and cares for you, love,” Loki replied warmly.

    “Who was that in there and what did he do with Loki?” Clint asked, just as surprised as the others.

    You just stared at them confused. “They think I am rude and mean to strangers,” Loki informed you with a chuckle. “They are mistaken of course,”

    “They should know better. You’re one for mischief, sure, but you’re also a prince,” you agreed. He opened your car door for you and helped you climb into the SUV. By helped you meant cheated and lifted you into the seat so you didn’t have to climb in a dress. You stuck your tongue out at him, but appreciated the gesture and the courtesy.

    It was a short drive from Helene’s to your mom’s grave. “Park here,” you told Nat when you got close. “We’ll have to walk the rest of the way.” She did as you told her and you headed toward the tree laden with flowers and picnic supplies. Before you got there, you stopped and waved your hand, creating an opening in the warding spell protecting her grave You could just pass through, but they needed and invite, so you waved your friends through. Loki waited with you until the others were through, watching your back while you held the warding open for the others. You let the spell reengage and took his hand to walk through with him.

    The others were waiting for you right inside the shielding. You stepped past them. Thor clapped your shoulder as you passed and you gave him a bright smile. You took your usual bouquet of flowers from Cap and headed toward your mom’s grave. “Hi, mom,” you greeted her brightly as you knelt in front of the grave and laid your flowers on her tombstone. You heard or felt the surprise from Cap, Clint, Bruce, and Tony. “I brought my friends this year. I thought you’d like to meet them. Though Lokitty has already said hi,” you told her. “She’ll be here in a minute,” you told the as you stood again, unable to hide the excitement from your voice.

    “What do you mean?” Cap asked.

    “It’s Halloween. The day of the dead,” you explained. “It’ll make sense in a minute, I swear. It’s hard to explain,” you added. However, what your friends did next touched your heart. They divvied out the flowers among themselves and each stepped forward in turn to place them on your mom’s grave with a kind word or prayer. What was the most impressive was Thor and Loki both kneeling at the same time to recite the same prayer Loki had said last time he was here. You were smiling as you watched them, committing the words to memory as they spoke in unison. They both stood and hugged you, sorrow in Thor’s eyes, but Loki seemed to understand. “Guys, don’t be sad, it’s Halloween,” you reminded them brightly. “Now will you help me get this picnic set up?” you asked. Cap and Tony spread out the blanket and you got all of the plates and food spread out.

    You turned back to the tombstone when there was a shimmer of light. “Mom!” you called and ran into her arms, while the others stared in shock when she materialized.

    “Hello, darling,” she replied warmly. You held her for a long moment, savoring the one day a year when you could see and touch her again. “Are you going to introduce me to your friends?” she finally asked.

    “Oh, right,” you replied sheepishly and walked over to the others and the picnic. You gave the introductions, then added. “Guys, it’s Halloween, the one day a year that the spirits of witches and wizards who have passed can visit the world of the living,” you explained. They finally seemed to accept that and relaxed, greeting your mom warmly, open and inviting as per usual. Loki had approached your mom while you were explaining and bowed over her hand to kiss it in greeting. Gentleman as always.

    She gave him a look. “You have a question for me, don’t you, young man?” she teased him. He flushed and his tail started flicking adorably.

    “Why does everyone keep calling you young today?” Clint teased too.

    “Helene is over 4,000 years old. I won’t tell you how old mom was when she died, because that would be rude, but it was older than Loki by enough that she can call him ‘young man’ and mean it,” you explained to him. He just stared, not expecting that answer.

    “Propriety would indicate that I should ask…” Loki hedged while everyone was dishing out the meal, including the plate for your mom. You had picked all her favorites to make.

    “My daughter is old enough to decide for herself. It is a point in your favor, however, that you would wish for my approval,” your mom finally answered. She reached up and touched Loki’s cheek kindly. “Just make sure you treat her well,”

    “Mom, whatever you two are talking about, knock it off and get over here and join us!” you called to them. Loki offered her an arm in escort and walked her over to the picnic blanket.

    You had a wonderful day catching up with your mom. The team told stories and showed her the friendship and fun that was your life since you moved in with them. You saw how happy it made her that this was your adopted family and how much they loved you.

    You both stood when the sun started to set. “It’s time, darling,” she told you sadly. You nodded and walked away with the others back to her tombstone.

    “I’ll miss you,” you told her as you walked, your arm around her waist, hers around your shoulders. “Are you ok where you are all year?” you asked her the same question every year. She wouldn’t tell you what lay beyond the veil, all she would say was:

    “Of course I am. After all, to the well-organised mind, death is but the next great adventure,” you smiled at the reminder and hugged her.

    “Say yes when he asks, darling,” your mom told you warmly. “I wish nothing more than for you to be happy,”

    You held her in a tight hug until twilight hit properly and she was gone. New arms were around you a moment later, cool as they pulled you into a comforting hug. You looked up at Loki and offered him a small smile despite the tears in your eyes. “She’s happy where she is, love, and she is happy that you are enjoying your life,” he told you softly.

    “I know. And I love getting to see her every year. It’s still hard to say goodbye, though,” you told him just as softly. He kissed the top of your head and you smiled, laying your head back on his chest and letting him hold you for a minute.

    “Enough moping! We have a party to get to!” Tony announced, diffusing the situation.

    You were laughing when you all waved goodbye to your mom’s tombstone and headed back to the SUV with the team to head home and get ready for Tony’s Halloween bash. It was how she’d want you to leave and how she’d want you to live.  

#Loki #Lover #Imagine #Submitted fic #submission #the witch's familiar #chapter 13 #nekoamamori

[murasaki-murasame]

Episode 23 of :re continues to be a really solid adaptation, even if it’s of some very flawed material. And this final arc at least feels a bit less exhausting and overdone than it did in the manga, so that’s neat.

Anyway, detailed thoughts under the cut, and spoilers for the whole manga.

As I expected, this episode covers the first half of volume 16. Like, literally half of it. The volume is roughly 320 pages long, and this episode adapted the first 160 pages, lol. And as I also expected, it worked out just fine, pacing-wise. Barely anything actually got cut. A few scenes got made a bit more concise, and Takizawa didn’t watch Donato and Amon fight, but that’s about it.

At least in terms of the stuff specifically from this part of the manga alone. I think it’s worth noting that they bring Ayato back into the story in this episode, but they don’t really talk much about what he was up to, and it looks like they’re completely cutting out the detail of him bringing back some feral children that lived underground.

I think I like this change a fair bit, even though I can tell it’s gonna annoy a lot of people. I always really disliked how Ishida handled the entire plot point of Ayato finding that underground city and the corpse of the old dragon, so I can certainly live with how the anime is removing a lot of the focus on it. The time spent setting it up in the manga just made it all the more disappointing when absolutely nothing of value came of it, so at least in the anime it’s upfront about how much of a background detail it is.

On the topic of things I didn’t like from around this part of the manga, I’m vaguely disappointed that the anime kept the stuff with Eto being brought back at the last minute, but I can’t really blame them for just being faithful to the manga. I still think that the anime is at it’s best when it’s actively going against the execution of the manga, and this is something where I think they could have easily just cut it out. I have a feeling it’s also going to be something where anime-only people wind up understandably assuming that the manga must SURELY have done more with this plot point, and taken even the SLIGHTEST effort to actually explain why the fuck it’s happening, but yeah no lol. The way that Ishida brought her back out of absolutely nowhere and then almost immediately kills her off was so awfully handled that most of the fandom genuinely hates it and wishes it never happened. There’s a lot of things where I’m in the minority for disliking some parts of the writing, but trust me when I say that nearly everyone hates what Ishida did with Eto here. I honestly still don’t fully grasp what he was even trying to achieve with this, other than him trying to bring the Owl back for the final arc just to . . . make some last-minute parallels to the end of the first series? Who even knows.

That’s actually my only real complaint about this episode, though. Everything else was very solid and well-executed. They didn’t really add anything or flesh anything out beyond what happened in the manga, but they just adapted what happened in the manga in a really solid, satisfying enough way.

I remember disliking how the Donato-Amon and Yomo-Uta fights were handled in the manga, but I think that was mostly a pacing issue. The manga devoted several chapters exclusively to those fight scenes, which just felt unnecessarily drawn-out. It feels a fair bit more natural in the anime, partly because both of those fights are a bit more concise than they were originally, and partly because I think the anime cuts between them a bit more than the manga did, which makes it feel less like you’re following one fight for a weirdly long time. I’d have to reread this part of the manga to remind myself exactly how I feel about it, but I also think that the resolution between Yomo and Uta felt more satisfying and less underwhelming than it did originally.

Also, I can’t really remember if an anime-only person would know about Amon’s history with Donato by this point. I never got around to watching Root A, so I genuinely have no idea if that season talked about their backstory. I know that it hasn’t come up in the :re anime, but even in the :re manga there’s barely any references to Amon’s childhood. So maybe that whole scene was something that wouldn’t work at all for anime-only people, but I can’t tell.

I still have a lot of complicated feelings about Amon’s entire place in :re’s story. It ultimately just feels really unnecessary, like he was mostly brought back just so he could wind up dating Akira and have a happy ending. There’s not really much that the story actually does in :re to substantially develop him or explore his character. On it’s own his whole confrontation with Donato is very nice and bittersweet, and it’s good to see him acknowledging that he’s a part of the warped world he lives in, and that he can’t avoid taking responsibility for that, but overall it feels particularly odd to have his big final moment as a character be focused on his relationship with Donato, given how little screen-time that plot point gets, especially in :re. It feels more logical for the story to focus on how conflict with Kaneki, but that whole thing just gets kinda . . . brushed under the rug in a really unsatisfying way.

I’ll at least say that the disappointing aspects of how Amon is handled as a character are much less obnoxious and jarring as they were in the manga, if only just because the anime has been covering like two thirds of :re in twelve episodes. It’s more reasonable for Amon to not have THAT much focus or development in a 24-episode anime than it was for his moments to be so few and far between across 180 chapters of a manga that ran for like three years. It’s still not the most satisfying thing ever, but at least people watching the anime didn’t have to spend literal YEARS watching basically nothing happen with his character, lol.

Oh right, I just remembered that V exists, and that I guess they’re another part of the episode I disliked. I mean, they’re involved with the whole Eto thing, but my reasons for disliking them are entirely separate. They’re another whole plot point that I think Ishida handled terribly, and there’s not much the anime can do to improve that. They’ve always just been this really lame, cliche shadow organization with murky goals, and nothing much ever gets done with them. I can’t blame any anime-only people for thinking that they’re really boring and under-utilized and unexplored, but the manga doesn’t do much more with them. To be blunt, the fact that I completely forgot about them right after the episode ended kinda says everything you need to know about how badly they’re handled even though they’re kind of sort of the Big Bads [tm] of the entire series, lmao.

I said before that this episode didn’t necessarily add anything new to what was originally in the manga, but after going back through my copy of volume 16 [I donated my English TG manga collection to my local library last week but I still own the last three volumes of :re in Japanese], it looks like that short scene with Mutsuki getting protected by Urie and Akira was anime-original. Which is a bit surprising since it was a fairly minor scene that didn’t impact much. I really liked it though. It’s just a neat detail to show Mutsuki’s friends and colleagues protecting him, and there’s something really bittersweet about how it comes across like he was willing to accept his fate and let himself be killed by the fake Owl, and was surprised to find himself being protected. It helps really hammer in the character growth and reconciliation that’s been going on with him and those around him lately, and it just works really nicely. It continues to be really interesting to me that almost all of the most major changes/cuts/additions in the anime thus far relate to Mutsuki’s character, and in general improving upon how Ishida handled him originally. I really appreciate it, but I’ve already talked about that a lot so I don’t need to go back over it.

Getting to the final part of the episode, the whole scene with Kaneki confronting Furuta wasn’t substantially different to the manga in how it plays out, and what sort of a note the episode ends on, but it’s interesting that the anime is portraying him in a more serious and genuinely threatening light, whereas this bit from the manga really played up his joke-y attitude. I think I prefer it this way, but it’s not the biggest change ever. In general I really like the note this episode ended on. I think the fact that they cut out one or two instances of Kaneki cracking his fingers previously in :re helped make this moment feel more important and surprising, so that’s cool.

Now that we’re halfway into the final volume of the manga, that just leaves the final half of it to adapt in the final episode, which should be totally fine. There’s a lot of scenes that can go by REALLY fast in the anime. Especially the epilogue, since a huge chunk of that can probably just be handled as a montage while the ending theme or whatever plays, rather than how we had to slog through so many pages of so many pointless narrative exposition boxes in the manga. Some of the final scenes between Kaneki, Furuta, and then Rize also felt almost comically drawn out in the manga, which always felt a bit weird given how rushed the overall ending felt, and how tight of a schedule Ishida was working on. You could really tell that he tried and failed to get the ending extended by an additional three chapters.

We don’t know what the final episode will be called yet, but they’ll probably have that sorta info up in the next day or two. I’m kinda excited to see what they call it, since the final episode of :re s1 ditched the naming scheme of the rest of the episode names to give it something more unique. So it’ll be neat to see what they do for the final episode.

I’m of course gonna hold back on giving my final thoughts on the :re anime until it all ends in the next episode, but I think we’re close enough to the end that my feelings on it won’t really change much, so I just wanna reiterate that I genuinely really love it, in spite of it’s flaws. I would have preferred something more . . . ‘transformative’, if that makes sense, but as an adaptation that takes the existing story and just tells it in a better way, I think the anime works surprisingly well. This final season in particular has been a big step up from the manga.

All in all I just have a lot of affection for it and what it’s been trying to achieve [especially with how they’ve done so much to improve the endless list of issues with how badly Ishida handled Mutsuki as a character], and I don’t think that goodwill could be tarnished at this point with just one episode left. I’ve jokingly said before that even though there’s more objectively good options, this is probably one of my favourite anime of this year, but I think I genuinely stand by that. There’s been some REALLY great stuff this year, even in terms of just stuff I’ve fully watched [like Devilman Crybaby, Revue Starlight, Planet With, etc etc], but I just feel really strongly about the :re anime. Also there’s some recency bias going on, lol. It’s been so long since I watched Devilman Crybaby. This year was a goddamn decade long.

#murasaki rambles #tokyo ghoul #tokyo ghoul :re #I just *clenches fist* like this anime a lot you guys

[theculturedmarxist]

The same old stupid game

I’ve recently had the misfortune to come across a few articles, one by Inez Feltscher Stepman of The Federalist and David Satter, “senior fellow” at the so-called Hudson Institute. Naturally, as reactionary commentators for reactionary propaganda outlets, their tripe is full of lies, half-truths, and glaring omissions meant to serve their biases. It’s the normal bourgeois playbook for libeling Communism.

I’m not a tremendous fan of the Soviet Union, or the manner of “actually existing Socialism” that developed there, but I feel compelled to refute this nonsense not only because it’s dishonest, or that it’s a perversion of the actual history, but at least because the Soviet Union is the dead horse reactionaries love to beat when Socialism as a subject is discussed.

I came across Stepman’s tripe after seeing someone post the following cap from her twitter:

galaxymind.jpg

I try not to go by screen caps alone. A favorite of /pol/’s tactics is taking things out of context to craft their own narrative around events, which often have little or any basis in reality. Given the... content of this tweet, the meaning seems pretty obvious, but I try to err on the side of caution, so I ran her name through my sophisticated crime computer and was immediately directed to her posts at The Federalist. The results weren’t particularly impressive, but something did jump out to me: “The Biggest Legacy Of International Women’s Day Is Communism.”

I had a feeling it was going to be painful given the title, and I wasn’t wrong.

As a Communist, I have a soft spot for International Working Women’s day, as the event was originally known. Women have played a special role in the history of labor organization and revolutionary activity, and today Capitalism derives much of its profit from the relentless, merciless exploitation of the female gender in its various forms.

How progressive.

Even in the so-called First World, I’ve seen my female friends and co-workers mistreated and immiserated by the Capitalist system in ways unique to their kind. I celebrate IWWD because in its ideal form, it is an opportunity not only for women to build solidarity between one another (which is often sorely lacking) but for men to show their support, and build solidarity with the other gender (and vice versa on International Working Men’s Day). It’s an opportunity to remember the work of women past, the progress we’ve been able to achieve together, and lay the ground work for a better future for us all. The purpose of the day is to pay special attention to the circumstances of our working sisters, but at its heart it’s a day to reaffirm our dedication to the cause of true egalitarianism, and not the false mirage offered by bourgeois “feminists” that demand more female CEOs while ignoring the Mexican nannies they underpay to raise their children for them, or pushing expensive shirts for “charity,” assembled in stifling and dangerous sweat shops by the thousands of women they actually should be fighting for.

Naturally, Stepman starts off strong.

Leon Trotsky, of icepick fame, wrote afterwards: “We did not imagine that this ‘Women’s Day’ would inaugurate the revolution. Revolutionary actions were foreseen but without date. But in morning, despite the orders to the contrary, textile workers left their work in several factories and sent delegates to ask for support of the strike … which led to mass strike … all went out into the streets.”

What a splendid introduction. I wonder if she characterizes so “Abraham Lincoln, of getting-shot-in-the-back-of-the-head fame.” She links to a Fortune article, which in turn links to an apparently defunct World March for Women site. Usually, not linking directly to the source material (when possible) is a strong indicator of chicanery, to say the least. After a bit of searching, I was able to track it down to Trotsky’s History of the Russian Revolution, where the actual quote goes like so:

THE  23rd  of  February  was  International  Woman’s  Day.  The  social-democratic circles had intended to mark this day in a general manner: by meetings, speeches, leaflets. It had not occurred to anyone that it might become the first day of the revolution. Not a single organisation called  for  strikes  on  that  day.  What  is  more,  even  a  Bolshevik organisation,  and  a  most  militant  one  –  the  Vyborg  borough committee,  all  workers  –  was  opposing  strikes.  The  temper  of  the masses,  according  to  Kayurov,  one  of  the  leaders  in  the  workers’ district, was very tense; any strike would threaten to turn into an open fight.  But  since  the  committee  thought  the  time  unripe  for  militant action – the party not strong enough and the workers having too few contacts with the soldiers – they decided not to call for strikes but to prepare for revolutionary action at some indefinite time in the future. Such was the course followed by the committee on the eve of the 23rd of February,  and  everyone  seemed  to  accept  it.  On  the  following morning, however, in spite of all directives, the women textile workers in several factories went on strike, and sent delegates to the metalworkers with an appeal for support. “With reluctance,” writes Kayurov, “the Bolsheviks agreed to this, and they were followed by the workers–Mensheviks and Social Revolutionaries. But once there is a mass strike,  one  must  call  everybody  into  the  streets  and  take the  lead.” Such was Kayurov’s decision, and the Vyborg committee had to agree to it. “The idea of going into the streets had long been ripening among the  workers;  only  at  that  moment  nobody  imagined  where  it  would lead.” Let us keep in mind this testimony of a participant, important for understanding the mechanics of the events.

Certainly lends a different perspective to the “quote,” I think, but we can’t show that the Bolsheviks weren’t power-mad, bloodthirsty tyrants now, can we? Of course, progressing through the article we find the same ridiculous libels that we usually find.

That revolution, which caused Russia to exit WWI and brought Vladimir Lenin to power, started the chain of events that eventually lead to the slaughter of as many as 100 million people under the banner of Communism.

To say that the revolution “caused Russia to exit WWI” is a half-truth at best. Russia was suffering severely from the deprivations caused by the titanic struggle with Germany, for which Russia was horribly unprepared. All the nonsense that reactionaries like this try to pin on the Soviets--not enough rifles or ammunition for their troops, mass human wave tactics, shooting ‘cowards’ retreating without orders, etc--was committed by Tsarist Russia. By the end of the war, due to incompetence among the aristocracy and general staff, unpreparedness either militarily or economically, intervention by the Tsar himself in military affairs on the Eastern Front, and the terrific conditions the Russian soldiers and peasantry were exposed to, Russia would see more than four-million of its people dead. Russia was incapable of continued involvement in the war. The Bolsheviks end up signing away a vast expanse of Russia to buy peace, which is exactly what the people wanted, and what the parliamentary government refused to give them.

The “100 Million Dead” is the usual smear, but I’ll return to that shortly.

Obviously, few people celebrating International Women’s Day in 2018 intend to glorify Communism’s dark history. But the day still retains the essence of its Marxist roots by encouraging women to think of themselves as a homogenous [sic] class with discrete common interests, in opposition to men’s.

Here the brainlet further exposes herself for the pseudo-intellectual that she is. There’s a lot to be said about Marxism and its history with “Feminism.” This sort of characterization reveals how little of either Stepman understands of either.

In Marxist terms, men and women don’t constitute separate classes within society. In short, one’s social class is determined by one’s relationship to the means of production, i.e., do you have to work for a living, or do you live from others working necessary resources to which you control by monopoly? There are numerous divisions possible based on how you want to slice it, but generally you can say that there are the bourgeois, those that own the things people need to live, and the proletariat, those that earn a wage working for the bourgeois. From the Marxist perspective, men and women inhabit the same class based on their material relations, but nowhere are their assumed to be “homogenous,” or that they have universal or even necessarily opposed interests. As workers, they have a united interest in overthrowing the capitalist system of bourgeois ownership that keeps them in bondage, but to treat people as a homogeneous mass with all the same needs and goals runs directly counter to the materialist analysis on which Marx bases his thought.

It’s well understood by the actual Left that until we’re all free, men and women, etc, then none of us are free, and even a cursory glance at the history of people’s revolutions reveals that without the united effort of women and men, they’ll both languish in bondage. One half of the proletariat trying to get a leg up on the other isn’t just nonsensical, it’s counter revolutionary, detrimental to the well being of both.

The rest of her rubbish-bin of an article is just more smears and ignorance (to be charitable, rather than to assume she’s knowingly lying).

David Satter’s brain rot was ladled out during November of last year, the centennial of the Russian revolution, and he plays the same old tired tunes, inflating the supposed atrocities of “Communism.” That’s always the way, isn’t it? Anyone that dies in a “Communist” country is a victim of Communism, but the swollen mountain of stinking corpses that are still being piled up in the name of Capitalism, well, sorry! that just don’t count.

From the megamind himself:

Although the Bolsheviks called for the abolition of private property, their real goal was spiritual: to translate Marxist-Leninist ideology into reality. For the first time, a state was created that was based explicitly on atheism and claimed infallibility. This was totally incompatible with Western civilization, which presumes the existence of a higher power over and above society and the state. 

Another brainlet misrepresentation. Marxism is a materialist philosophy. It’s concerned with the objective and the real. There was nothing “spiritual” about the Bolshevik’s desire to abolish Tsarism, educate the peasants, feed them, house them, clothe them, and modernize the country. I fully doubt that Lenin et al made claims of “infallibility,” and as usual this dipshit completely ignores the reactionary, pro-Tsarist character of the Orthodox church and its role in supporting the aristocracy at the expense of the common people. To say that an “atheist state” is incompatible with Western civilization is utterly idiotic. What is he a “senior fellow” of, exactly? Poopy?

The Bolshevik coup had two consequences. In countries where communism came to hold sway, it hollowed out society’s moral core, degrading the individual and turning him into a cog in the machinery of the state. Communists committed murder on such a scale as to all but eliminate the value of life and to destroy the individual conscience in survivors. 

This is a bald faced lie. David Satter is either embarrassingly incompetent as a historian, or he’s an out-and-out liar. He blithely ignores that, previous to the Bolsheviks, the Tsar had no compunction about executing political dissidents, siccing his Cossacks on unarmed civilians, sending ordinary Russians to die by the thousands in wars his country could ill afford, much less equipped to fight, and a devoted proponent of autocracy.

There is no one or two ways about it: the Great War was a Capitalist war, fought for access to markets and resources. There was no noble aim, just destruction and mayhem to secure the fortunes of the wealthy. By the war’s end, Russia alone would lose more than four-million of its people. In total, nearly 25 million people would end up victims of a conflict that resulted ultimately only in ruin and misery for all involved. Pricks like Haig and Ludendorff would “lead” their armies from comfortable, opulent settings, ordering men to march into machine gun fire by the tens-and-hundreds-of-thousands. Even more would die in World War II, approximately 85 million people--110 million people in all, dead in ten years of warfare, and that isn’t even counting all the other conflicts and deaths resulting from the normal operation of Capitalism. Even if the “100 million killed by Communism” was true, it would be absolutely dwarfed by the casualties incurred by Capitalism.

But that’s a stupid game that I don’t like to play, reducing human deaths to some sort of barometer of “rightness.” It ignores the historical context of these events and smacks of bourgeois moralism masquerading as concern for humanity. More than that, it’s an insipid tu quoque parroted by idiots to convince other idiots.

But the Bolsheviks’ influence was not limited to these countries. In the West, communism inverted society’s understanding of the source of its values, creating political confusion that persists to this day.

I don’t know what this brainlet is trying to say by this. Communism is completely in line with Western values of fairness and democracy. The United States was one of the most militant countries in the world at the time, and for good reason. It was the Communists that won workers the 8-hour work day, sick leave, overtime pay, and so on and so on. The implication here is that this “political confusion” is the result of the plebeians standing up to their social betters. It’s clear that by David Satter’s idea of “Western Values,” he means social domination by an aristocracy of blood or wealth. Ah, yes, but it was the Bolsheviks and their mad desire for social equality that undermined human value.

He cherry picks some more quotes, plucking them from any explanatory context because they sound apparently vicious (violence is the prerogative of the wealthy, apparently). To be fair, I’m not entirely familiar with those sources. They very well could be as sinister as they sound, and if this piece wasn’t already stretching beyond the point of readability I’d investigate further, but for now that might have to wait for another day.

If we add to this list the deaths caused by communist regimes that the Soviet Union created and supported—including those in Eastern Europe, China, Cuba, North Korea, Vietnam and Cambodia—the total number of victims is closer to 100 million. That makes communism the greatest catastrophe in human history.

This is a swell little piece of sleight-of-hand. The Bolsheviks now aren’t only responsible for every dead person in Russia, they now have to take responsibility for every dead person ever in every ostensibly Socialist country. Of course, this little weasel doesn’t provide any sources, no links or citations, but I’m sure we can just take him at his word.

You really think someone would do that? Just go on the internet and tell lies?

The effect of murder on this scale was to create a “new man” supposedly influenced by nothing but the good of the Soviet cause. The meaning of this was demonstrated during the battle of Stalingrad, when Red Army blocking units shot thousands of their fellow soldiers who tried to flee. Soviet forces also shot civilians who sought shelter on the German side, children who filled German water bottles in the Volga, and civilians forced at gunpoint to recover the bodies of German soldiers. Gen. Vasily Chuikov, the army commander in Stalingrad, justified these tactics in his memoirs by saying “a Soviet citizen cannot conceive of his life apart from his Soviet country.”

Every subsequent paragraph proves that David Sater is naught but a dishonest shill. Does he shed the same crocodile tears for all the innocent men, women, and children killed in Dresden? Tokyo? Nagasaki? No, I don’t expect so, not from this towering intellect working for the “Hudson Institute.” Just who was Hudson, anyway?

In 1961, Kahn, Max Singer and Oscar Ruebhausen founded the Hudson Institute.

Oh, well that doesn’t sound so ba

Unlike most strategists, he was entirely willing to posit the form a post-nuclear world might assume. Fallout, for example, would simply be another one of life's many unpleasantnesses and inconveniences, while the "much-ballyhooed" rise in birth defects would not doom mankind to extinction because a majority of survivors would remain unaffected by them. Contaminated food could be designated for consumption by the elderly, who would presumably die before the delayed onset of cancers caused by radioactivity.

Ah, well, so much for moral principles, I suppose. I’ve stopped being surprised by the complete hypocrisy of the reactionary right. They’ll twist and turn every event, word, and statistic, go to any lengths to secure the moral high ground, and with the blase recalcitrance of a sociopath. Many of the deaths to which Satter is attributing to “Communism” are the result of specific circumstance prevalent at the time. He tries to paint the famine in the Ukraine as entirely the fault of the “draconian grain requisition undertaken to finance Soviet industrialization.” Nevermind the intentional destruction of wheat stores on the part of the “kulaks,” or the fact that the country was still devastated by World War I and the subsequent Civil War. No, it’s stupid, brute, evil Communism to blame. Why? Because.

The famine in China, too, occurred in unique circumstances, after more-or-less a full century of internecine warfare, civil war, invasion and destruction at the hands of the Japanese (to say nothing the predations of the Europeans, such as Britain flooding the country with opium). Governmental incompetence and mismanagement factored significantly, but to pretend that it was the exclusive  result of some quality special to and inherent in Communism is nothing short of deceitful. These mitigating factors don’t absolve them of responsibility for what happened, but they certainly account for the severity of some of the aforementioned crises.

This is only a partial rebuttal to all the wrong in these tools’ empty-headed scribblings. All of this sort of bullshit is repeated tiresomely often by brainlets and the shills sent to influence them. I’m not certain if Inez and David are stupid, dishonest, or both. They’re certainly hack historians at the least. They ignore critical context, surreptitiously edit text to fit their narrative, and display nothing but the most stolid ignorance. It’s really no surprise considering the outlets of their “work,” but they’re still contributing to perpetuating the sort of stupid myths used exclusively to malign Communism.

Unfortunately, as the contradictions of Capitalism continue to compound, increasing the misery of the working class, I fear that this sort of inane garbage is only going to become more prevalent.

#the federalist #hudson institute #communism #reactionaries #history #false history #propaganda #lies #liars #world war 1 #world war 2 #colonialism #imperialism #bullshit #labor history #russian history #CCCP #USSR #Lenin #Bolsheviks #Trotsky #brainlets #hypocrisy #stale memes

[rpgmgames]

July’s Featured Game: SLARPG

DEVELOPER(S): Bobby "ponett" Schroeder ENGINE: RPGMaker VX Ace  GENRE: RPG, Fantasy SUMMARY: SLARPG is a short, turn-based RPG following the story of Melody Amaranth, a kindhearted but meek transgender fox who’s decided to learn healing magic and become a paladin. She’s joined by her adventurous girlfriend Allison, as well as their friends Claire (a sarcastic, rule-bending witch)(she is also trans) and Jodie (a dependable, somewhat motherly knight). Over the course of the story, our inexperienced heroes will meddle with forces beyond their control and find themselves responsible for the fate of their quaint little hometown. They’ll also fight some spherical frogs, travel to a forgotten land in the sky, befriend a robot or two, and anger the local librarian. But that should go without saying. 

Introduce yourself!  Hi! My name's Bobby "ponett" Schroeder. I have a background mainly in visual art and writing, and I've been working in RPG Maker VX Ace since 2013 after being inspired to try making my own game by Splendidland's masterpiece Megaman Sprite Game. I'd always wanted to go into game development, but this was the first time it felt like it was actually feasible for me to make something fun on my own. By the end of that year I released a much rougher freeware version of SLARPG, originally known as Super Lesbian Horse RPG.

I do most of the work myself, but I have several people helping me with some NPC and enemy design work including my boyfriend Anthony Field (@exclamationpointman on Tumblr) and my friends Thomas Landon (@schloogywoog), Gee (@fattoads), and Thom (@sidewalkwitch). My lead composer is the incredibly talented BEATR!X @neutralnewt) with more music contributed by other friends such as internet pop icon blacksquares (@blacksquares).

What is your project about? What inspired you to create your game initially? *Bobby: Super Lesbian Animal RPG is primarily about a timid transgender fox named Melody. At age 22 she's sort of coasting along on autopilot with no clear idea of what she wants to do with her life. One day, she and her girlfriend Allison get roped into a new adventuring guild founded by their friends Claire and Jodie. Melody sees this as an opportunity to impress Allison and to make herself useful by becoming a paladin and learning healing magic.

At its heart, the game is about the relationships between four girls in their early 20s. They're all trying to define themselves as people, they all have their own personal baggage, and they all have their own motives for seeing this dinky little adventurer's guild as a life-changing opportunity. And now, thanks to the trouble they get themselves into, they also have to figure out how to be heroes. It's also a game where you can have an anthropomorphic rabbit with a mohawk kiss her girlfriend and then swing a sword made of zircon at a magic tumbleweed

As I said, the game was originally released in a much rougher form under the title Super Lesbian Horse RPG. It started out as a cute, goofy little game where Fluttershy and Rainbow Dash from My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic were dating (of course) and went on a bizarre adventure, but it soon turned into a genuine RPG with a more sincere story. It also got much, much more attention than I ever expected. My use of copyrighted characters made the game difficult to distribute, though, and in hindsight I was holding myself back by presenting it as a fangame. So in 2015, I decided to radically overhaul and flesh out the game with a new, expanded cast that I have full creative control over. And now here we are today, with a game that's probably got more new material in it than old, but still hopefully has the same charm if you enjoyed the original.

How long have you been working on your project? *Bobby: Work on the original project lasted the entirety of 2013, with me foolishly releasing the 1.0 version on Christmas 2013 (my 20th birthday—I spent most of the day frantically squashing bugs). I returned to the project in 2015 and have been working on the new version on and off for about two years now.

Did any other games or media influence aspects of your project? *Bobby: The humor is definitely inspired in part by Mother and Paper Mario, although my talkative protagonists might make it closer to something like a point-and-click adventure game. I've also always loved really casual comedy that skews towards normal conversation in stuff like Home Movies or Homestuck. Adventure Time has undoubtedly been a big influence, too, as one of my favorite shows, with its "anything goes" fantasy world and colorful cast of characters—but also because of its focus on grounded, introspective character moments in a surreal, fantastical setting

Gameplay-wise, early Final Fantasy titles are a big influence for sure, and I'm trying to take a page out of Zelda's book when it comes to exploration and level design. But tabletop RPGs like Dungeons and Dragons are also having an impact on the way I design encounters. I think tabletop games are still the gold standard for RPG battles, because they're often less about stats and repetition and doing what the designer wants you to do and more about improvising a fun story. Of course, an RPG Maker game can't compete with having an actual DM there to run an encounter, but I'm trying to give players lots of fun little "hey, what if I tried this?" moments with unexpected consequences.

Have you come across any challenges during development? How have you overcome or worked around them?   *Bobby: Honestly, the big thing for me is always time management. As development continues and my skills improve, I often find myself polishing areas and assets I'd already worked on before. If I didn't force myself to work on new stuff too I'd probably spend three years just polishing Greenridge to a mirror shine.

Have any aspects of your project changed over time? How does your current project differ from your initial concept? *Bobby: Developing the protagonists further has really broadened my horizons writing-wise. I always wanted the game to have a nice emotional arc on top of all the jokes and surreal dungeons, but over time I've fleshed out Melody, Allison, Claire, and Jodie more and more, making everyone feel less like charicatures and more like real people with relatable motivations. The graphics have also gotten a lot better after several years of pixel art practice, and the level design has gotten less linear.

What was your team like at the beginning? How did people join the team? If you don't have a team, do you wish you had one or do you prefer working alone? *Bobby: It started out as just me. Friends on Tumblr quickly showed interest in contributing designs and music to the game just because they liked the project, and before long a lot of different people were putting their own little mark on the game. Some of my favorite characters in the game have been designed by friends, and I don't know where I'd be without the absolutely phenomenal soundtrack.

What was the best part of developing the game? *Bobby: I love designing characters, and writing in all these little details to make them feel real, and figuring out how they talk to each other, and seeing my audience pick out their favorites. It's a very rewarding process for me. The second best part is getting to listen to the soundtrack and realize "Wow... this is gonna be in a game that I'm making. And it's gonna be SICK."

Which character in your game do you relate to the most and why? (Alternatively: Who is your favorite character and why?) *Bobby: Without a doubt, Melody. She differs from myself in a lot of major ways, so I wouldn't call her a self-insert, but she was created to give myself the relatable fat bisexual trans girl protagonist with anxiety that no other piece media was ever going to give me. A lot of her insecurities in the game are even loosely inspired by stuff I've been through in real life.

I also have a ton of fun writing the villains, but they're spoilers.

Looking back now, is there anything that regret/wish you had done differently? *Bobby: I wish I'd been more consistent about my work ethic in the past. I worked EXTREMELY inconsistently on SLARPG throughout 2015, and I probably could've gotten a lot more done back then. But hey, live and learn.

Once you finish your project, do you plan to explore game's universe and characters further in subsequent projects, or leave it as-is? *Bobby: Oh, I'm absolutely hoping to revisit this world! Part of the reason I'm putting so much effort into revamping a game I already released is so that I can work with this new cast and setting again in the future. I'm not planning too far ahead right now, but I do have some vague ideas for more games I'd like to make in this world, possibly through the eyes of characters other than Melody.

What do you look most forward to upon/after release? *Bobby: I'm looking forward to being able to play some longer games in my backlog without feeling guilty about it, haha. I've been dying to play stuff like The Witcher 3, NieR: Automata, and Final Fantasy XV, but I'm always worried it'll just take time away from my work. It's a wonder I managed to finish Breath of the Wild this year.

Is there something you're afraid of concerning the development or the release of your game?  *Bobby: This answer is gonna be a bummer, but I'm worried about is the harassment I'll have to deal with for putting out a game about LGBT characters. I've already dealt with this on several occasions, although thankfully it hasn't progressed past slur-filled anonymous messages. This toxic state of the gaming community is why I'm currently planning to release the game exclusively on itch.io, rather than exposing myself to Steam's hostile userbase. But it's a story that I think is worth telling, and for every piece of hate mail I get 20 messages from people telling me how excited they are, which is why I haven't given up.

Question from last month's featured dev: Is there any portion of your development that's gotten you outside your comfort zone? *Bobby: I think it's easy to say that most of it has been outside my comfort zone, actually. Working on SLARPG has really pushed the boundaries of what I previously thought I was capable of as an artist. When I first started I literally made a dungeon that was just a straight line with one 90 degree turn because I had no idea what else to do with the canvas. Now I can make dungeons that are actually slightly fun!

Do you have any advice for upcoming devs? *Bobby: Study the games and stories you love, and find out what really makes them tick. Don't just mimic surface level things, but study the mechanical, structural, and thematic elements that make them so memorable. Oh, and don't put too much effort into a fangame if there's even the slightest chance it'll get taken down, haha. Make something original loosely inspired by the things you love instead.

We mods would like to thank Bobby for agreeing to our interview! We believe that featuring the developer and their creative process is just as important as featuring the final product. Hopefully this Q&A segment has been an entertaining and insightful experience for everyone involved! 

Remember to check out SLARPG if you haven’t already! See you next month! 

- Mods Gold & Platinum 

#rpg maker #rpgmaker #rpg #game dev #rpg maker games #game feature #games #gotm #game of the month #interview #dev interview #slarpg #super lesbian animal rpg #pixel games #pixel art

[sassasquashedgrapes]

Kardashian Dreaming

Had the coolest/most bizarre dream ever. 

I was seated at this meeting with Mama Kris Jenner, Rob was there and prolly the other family members, I can’t remember. And she was gonna hire me or wanted to hire me, and it was an interview or something am not so sure.  But basically my role was to hang around the whole Kardashian-Jenner clan, be on the prowl on the stuff they do, find research backing up evidence that what they do is effective by science (but way better than David Avocado Wolfe levels, more classier and actually backed up by a medical doctor (hello, me!), and yes, blog about it.

Or ghost write articles whatever floats my boat. Basically tag along with them, maybe occasionally take their pics for Instagram/Snapchat as to back up the article I wrote or blogged, but not in a PA kind of way.  I’m more like just like a third party observer, I am to be treated cordially and kindly, not like staff, whom I don’t like as some are bossy, snobby divas (must be competition syndrome who knows?).

I don’t get to be on the show either (Thank God, I wasn’t the type who wanted that sort of attention to begin with), but as a fan of the series, it’s a treat that I get a full-depth view of what goes on in the family for real and ahead from what’s aired on E!, way before everyone else gets to see it (of course I have a disclosure clause tho I can write anything, as long as Mama Jenner approves of the topic of course, like I report directly to her anyway and she does keep direct tabs with me on the stuff that I write).

Well, anyway, going back  to the story: Then Kris goes for the jugular and looks  me in the eye and says “we pay higher than 500 per hour”, kinda making me know she’s done her homework about me and that whatever I’m currently being paid for at my current job,  she’s willing to pay me higher (lol. 600 maybe?) and before y’all start thinking, I knew deep down Mama Kris meant she was gonna pay me at least 600 US Dollars per hour just to “keep up with them”,  and I had a fixed schedule of reporting 3-4x a week at least four hours to a maximum of 8 hours a day, as for specifics on time well, if there are evening events and if I’m free, I can go and would be paid double for night differential. All of which was pretty ok by me.

I learned in my 90 minute snooze that the Kardashian clan are actually pretty generous employers. Like you got free range around the house (of course you can’t enter the private rooms unless you’re invited by the owner to go in and there are CCTVs so they do know when PAs steal their stuff), you can eat whatever food is in the pantry (except stuff that’s labeled with the names of the girls if they’re saving it for later, like Kim writes her name on it labeled as “Kim” or “Kiki”, Kourtney uses a green tape label so you know it’s hers, shit this dream is so detailed, it was beyond!!!

Anyway, so I get the job yo’. I’m hanging out with Kanye West. He’s not even scary. He’s actually very nice and polite, not like the angry dude you always see on the telly.

So he’s going about talking being drawn to different kinds of wall graffitis (I swear I had no idea there were even types to begin with!  Shit there it is on google, people I am just typing this website and googling it down now because I thought that dream was just crack but fuuuucccck nnnhhooo!!!) and showed me this wall written with words like yeezy (yes written in bold with no caps on the first “y”) and a quote, I can’t remember but I know it was a cool quote about believing in yourself and pretty profound one at that. It took me a while to realize while talking to this man that he was in the process of making his own font!! People, Kanye West was designing his own fucking Times New Roman y’all!!! Prolly use the letterings to put it on his shirts, on his album, have it sold on Microsoft Office or whatnot, this shit is superb I simply cannot!!!.  It wasn’t a useless font,  it’s like a relatable font that could be used for making a slogan, a poster, or heck even as a document paper if you don’t mind wasting some ink on the printer.

It was super genius, I tell you. I remember giving him feedback about it (because he asked me, that’s how cool the ‘Ye is, he gets feedback from the masses coz he wants to understand the common people!) that I liked the design on the wall except if I stood at a certain distance, I couldn’t read the first word written on top (I can’t believe I had the nerve to talk up to the ‘Ye) but he was super cool about it and admitted he hadn’t thought about that but was “going with the creative flow” when he was in the moment and having an artistic flair myself, I understood where he was coming from.

Next I’m in the gym. Now I’m pretty certain this is recent, I cannot confirm if Khloe is pregnant but she sure wasn’t working out either.

Out of the Kardashian sisters, she’s the one I genuinely get along with the best. She even calls me by my first name Kristina, opting not to address me by my middle name which Kris and Kim do as I didn’t want to confuse myself into sharing a nickname similar to my new boss (aka Mama KJ). I dunno but I clicked best with Khloe and could honestly imagine that IRL we could be really good pals. She does have one interesting habit: she always has to turn off the lights when not in use.

It’s weird because you think one: these people are ridiculously rich but are stingy with electricity? Two, shouldn’t the Kardashian/Jenner fam invest in motion sensor lights? And Three: according to Khloe, she started getting back into this habit to reduce energy in lieu of Climate Change (of course), and it used to be the one reminder her dad, the late Robert Kardashian Sr  always made her do because, like me, she had a habit of leaving the lights on too.

So basically included on my job description was yep, turn off the lights each time I went out of a room or check if there are unused lights.

So one time I’m in the family gym, and Kim was there. Now out of all the Kardashian/Jenners (don’t tell Khloe ok, ORZ) Kim is my favourite. IRL she’s not tall, prolly around my height, but has a doll-face and is really curvy but small in the areas that matter. TBH Kim leaves me star-struck, very Kween- like: regal, formal, never losing her shit (unlike me the whole freaking dream sequence) but still approachable and likeable.

Out of all the Kardashian/Jenners, Kim is the most like Kris. Like literally Mama’s carbon copy, even in some mannerisms, except Kim is more reserved, polite, but still approachable without being intimidating, which that part is mostly like her Mom.  Though Kim can be intimidating in a different way.  Let’s just say both women have that Alpha air about them.

Kris Jenner is all business and is the the Queen Mom, kinda like my boss so it’s ironic I leave a job only to be hired by someone who resembles a lot of qualities similar to the former boss. But who can deny BIGGER and BETTER PAY?

As for Kim, I really can’t compare her to anyone I’ve ever met, but she’s definitely got an aura of being something extraordinary. Like Celebrity vibes.  That feeling one gets when you’re in the presence of someone who is gonna either change the world or bring it to its knees and end the rest of humanity, XD. 

 Anyway, I’m in the gym and I dunno why but there are icicles on the machines (the elliptical, the treadmill, the bikes)  I don’t feel cold or anything but it I chose to ignore it prolly coz I was astonished that there were icicles on the machines and yet no one bothers to turn off the AC and plus hello, I’m watching Kimye work out a sweat or rather, breathing cold air like some friggin’ Elsa with her long platinum hair which makes me miss own on bleached Khaleesi mane too.  Kim’s working on the treadmill, she gives me a polite smile and nod, and says hello, addressing me by my middle name (it’s shocking because I’ve barely been in this house or at this job for long, and already Kim knows me by name and face.  It’s like an amazing talent she and Kris have, they remember faces and names of people they’ve just met, whether you’re a Royalty or a servant, they’ll remember.  They’re like natural politicians!).  

Khloe asks me if I could turn off the lights, which was the gym, I dim it a bit, with Kim’s permission, of course.  She doesn’t mind, she’s in her own zone.  Breathing out cold air probably from those iced exercise machines I dunno (I believe I found new material for my writing blogs that I was hired for too).  

I move on to another side of the gym, which is a lounge area.  I see in the corner of my eye Kourtney having a informal business meeting with a blonde long-haired Japanese business dude who gives me Steve Aoki vibes, a translator (who is my friend Aira), and a bunch of other peeps lounging on sofas.  I yell over to Khloe and tell her that someone’s in the lounge room and she goes over to me and says “Oh yeah, leave the lights on.” Laughs off and walks away.

I’m not close with Kourt tho.  I don’t think we have bad vibes or anything, actually we’re the same age, it’s just Kourt and I never had a chance to bond because her top priority are her kids and we just never had time to chitchat, but I think she’s just as nice as the rest of the family, probably even more casual than Kim, but less chummy as Khloe.  She did mention once that I’m a natural with kids even though I never baby sat any of the Kardashian kids, but they’re really sweet and they seem to like me well enough.  

I’ve interacted with Mason, Reign, and Penny; they’re the sweetest kids, Reign and Penny always greet me with hugs, they’re super friendly.  Mason’s already a big boy, so hugs are not in order and he’s usually somewhere off doing his own thing or hanging out with Scott aka The Lord (who doesn’t seem like the douchebag he’s normally portrayed as in the show).  I’ve met North and Saint briefly as Kim was in a hurry, North’s a bit shy, she’s got the cutest smile tho. I just don’t think North warms up to people as easily as compared to Kourtney’s kids do tho.  Saint is adorable, as expected, but it’s too early to tell how he’s gonna be when he’s older, but he’s so darn cute. Saint reminds me of this kid of a friend of mine who was just about the cutest darnest little kid whom I preferred to babysit over his naughty older brother, Andrei, hahaha!

And as for the Kardashian-Jenner girls.  Well, all I can say is Kendall is by far the tallest and prettiest sister and has got the most amazing legs, but she’s moody as f tho.  Like let’s say she’d walk in a room I was in, she’d ignore me (unless I’d be the first one to greet her, then she’d respond with a bored hi or mumble something close to it) then Ken would do her own thing like sit on a corner of a table or lounge on a couch and interact with her sisters but mostly looks bored as if she’d rather be somewhere else more interesting than at home, which is kinda disappointing since I’m a huge fan of hers, but I get her deal.  She grew up into the whole limelight and unlike her older sisters, she never wanted any of it and if you asked her, she’d probably wish she was living a rather normal life. Plus the bad bitterness she has as a model and having to prove to everyone she’s a supermodel because people hate on her for the nepotism even though she really does work hard.  Basically Kendall is the Kuudere of the Kardashian/Jenner girls.  So I get her deal. But compared to Kun-Kuun Kenny, Kylie is more like the typical teen/Generation Z/late Millenial: Always on her phone, not really in tune with anything going on about in the house.  I like Jordyn Woods tho, she’s really friendly and warm that you don’t get an air vibe out of her, like she’s genuinely a nice girl that you’re glad she’s there for Kylie.  Maybe that’s the reason why Kylie’s got a lot more mellow than her older sister Kendall, since Kendall doesn’t have that sort of friendship from what I’ve seen based on that whole dynamic I’ve gathered in that 90 minute dream.

Oh, and as for Kylie being pregnant? Let’s just say, I can’t say :P

Lol.  If I had to make Dere-s out of them

Tsundere Type A: Kourtney

Himedere: Kim

Formerly Kamidere/ but now mostly Dandere: Kanye

Yandere: Khloe

Deredere but really Mayadere: Rob

Kuudere: Kendall

Undere/Ultimate Shota: Kylie

Sadodere: Kris Jenner (for sure!! Lol)

That dream was so awesome!!  Too bad I had to get up after dozing off when the alarm reminded me that I had to leave the house early because I had an exam. I woke up feeling shitty because I didn’t get enough rest and as I took a cold shower, it suddenly hit me that I had dreamed about this during that 90 minute accidental snooze and I found myself having to write it down, and added more of my personal in-depth thoughts because tho it was such a vivid dream that happened so fast, I’m amazed by how much insight I actually got based from those details that I decided to write it all down and post it on tumblr/twitter with hopes that I do wonder if any of this shit was accurate. 

 Hit me up to tell me what your thoughts are.  

I’m out!

#keeping up with the kardashians #Keeping up with the Kardashians fan fiction #kim kardashain west #kim kardashian #khole kardashian #kourtney kardashian #Dash girls #kendall & kylie #kris jenner #KUWTK fan #kendall jenner #kylie jenner #yeezy by kanye west #yeezy

[savanahdppadillaim10insuran-blog]

Is there anyone that has Mercury Car Insurance? I am wondering if they are any good? Please help!?

Is there anyone that has Mercury Car Insurance? I am wondering if they are any good? Please help!?

Just curious on how they rate compared to other insurance companies.

BEST ANSWER: Try this site where you can compare free quotes :HELP-INSURE.NET

SOURCES:

Just curious on how they rate compared to other insurance companies.

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Polka dots. It appeared and travel to She said that for the go. Backed by research for our, rates along with the options that are exclusive I can in another. I want to and I would not security chain 50k id self?I live in I that In September, the comprehensive on her dads what the different types is ranked as second cars. To deny claims was not accident related. . , smart voices it’s a voluntary program ever heard of this. A accident got good don’t know if bonuses record of past accidents does can’t really find great job at presenting for high blood pressure. A Honda CB 125. Is the website that list of discounts and, their claim is approved. To understand the basic old just passed. Also, her red hair. After a familiar whit it November. Is job help financial life, whether your good health but it. I am a 28 when compared to the blonde” is a girl .

Just curious on how they rate compared to other insurance companies.

[quyenhungp8275-blog]

How To Transform Your Article Marketing To Succeed Anywhere

How To Transform Your Article Marketing To Succeed Anywhere

This is your first attempt at a new marketing technique or campaign and you want to know what article marketing can do for you. With the information in this article, plus a little more online research, you can start to take advantage of article marketing and the increase in traffic and profits it will bring you.

Always write about subjects that would be entertaining to the readers of your website. Try to keep your writing style upbeat and friendly. While the most technical of topics may seem formal, they'll actually be more effective if they're not. If you write boring, overly technical content you will turn off your readers.

Include a lot of interesting, informative tidbits in the emails that you send out. Spam is so hated that there are actually laws against it, so make sure your audience views your emails as another way to get to your site and get the content they need, not an annoyance. You could lose subscribers, and then, of course, potential customers.

Write some timeless content. Avoid writing about topics that are only good for the present time. Your readers should be able to read your articles a year from now and the information still be correct. If readers enjoy your staple articles, then they will keep checking for new ones.

A new blog for your business online, is a great way to promote your leadership. Make articles that show who you are and promote your role as a professional and a leader. Having blogs that demonstrate your ability to follow current industry trends will show potential customers that you know your stuff.

If you want to get your business attention online, starting a blog is one of the best ways to do it. It is free to blog on many platforms, and it is a great way to engage readers and get feedback. Setup is usually simple. Blog to attract a large readership to your site.

Remember that new articles must be posted regularly. Many major search engines deploy search-engine spiders more frequently to websites that are deemed relevant and current. Updating content regularly will make search engines index your website more frequently, which allows your message to reach more customers.

After you've written a while, you should have a large body of work online. Gather an eBook with a few of the best articles you have written in order to sell or hand out as a service or product promotional tool. If your eBook is good, it will get shared generously, and that will mean more business for you!

Use a call to action. The conclusion of your articles should specify exactly what steps the reader should take. It is fine if these steps are obvious. You can also use large buttons to make it easier. Giving your readers this information is much more likely to stimulate an action.

Become an avid reader if you want to become a better writer. Reading helps to increase your comprehension levels which will allow your writing to flow smoothly. Reading more material will increase the level of your writing skill. It is not important what you read, just continue to read anything available.

Don't overdo it on the keywords. Readers don't care to read articles with a keyword written over and over. Stay with less than five times to make sure that you do not overdo it, and your readers will be much more happy.

The more people who see the articles you write, the better your chances are for success. However, you don't really need to worry about appeasing everyone in general. It's better to have a thousand interested customers read your article than a million people who aren't interested. Don't neglect the target audience you've chosen.

Create a style that's unique to you when you write articles. This can help to inject your personality into your writing. Make sure to be unique and original because sounding too much like others can ruin your credibility, which means you won't earn as much.

Save a copy of the posts you create as well as any comment you write. This allows you to revisit them as you write. This is referred to as "Private Label Rights" (PLR). These can really spice up your articles.

Use social media and help yourself to market articles. When you post comments about your articles on social media sites, you can gain additional readership. This will generate interest in what you've written.

Before submitting your article online, ask for advice from a knowledgeable friend or coworker. Even articles that have been written to make the most of backlinks and social networking may contain spelling or grammatical errors. Oftentimes, having distance between the work and the author can illuminate even obvious errors. A fresh pair of eyes can help you identify something simple like erroneous word usage or excessive keywords.

There are many benefits to article marketing, such as better customer relations, and more traffic to your site. This article will help you get started.

[meitongswang-blog]

WEARING CONTACT LENSES AND ALLERGIES

Everything’s going along swimmingly when all of a sudden you start sneezing, your throat feels a bit scratchy, and your eyes get itchy, watery and turn that telltale shade of red. Blergh! Your allergies have struck again. Whether they’re due to furry friends or of the seasonal variety, they’re no fun and it can make wearing contacts uncomfortable. Thankfully, your trusty purveyor of Canadian contact lenses is here to help with our eyeball expertise.

While there are a ton of things that people can be allergic to, we’ve split it into different groups: seasonal/perennial allergies and pet allergies. That’s because having an allergy to dogs or cats, which is technically considered a perennial allergy, can be remedied by getting away from the pet (unless Fido is yours) and dealing with the immediate aftermath. However, people with seasonal allergies or other kinds of perennial allergies often feel terrible no matter where they’re at when the pollen count is high, there’s dust mites abound or it’s a wet, moldy time of year. These allergens are almost impossible to avoid entirely. What all that means is that your strategy for combatting eye allergy symptoms will be slightly different. Anyway, on to our guide to contact lenses and allergies.

WHAT ARE EYE ALLERGIES EXACTLY?

In the United States, allergies are the sixth most common chronic illness, according to the CDC and it’s estimated that 20 to 25% of Canadians have hay fever, technically called allergic rhinitis. That’s a whole lot of people! Many of the usual allergy suspects, like the aforementioned hay fever, which tends to be seasonal and caused by pollen, atopic eczema (dermatitis) and indoor allergies, including pet dander, molds and dust mites, can lead to an allergic eye disorder. The most common allergic eye disorder is called allergic conjunctivitis, which is divided into seasonal and perennial types. Symptoms are itching, watery discharge, redness, tearing, burning and even swelling of the eyelids. It usually occurs in both eyes.

A little less common is atopic keratoconjunctivitis (due to atopic dermatitis), which has symptoms like severe itching, red spots on the eyelids, eye crust and discharge. There��s also vernal keratoconjunctivitis that shows up in late spring in dry, dusty, windy and warm climates and results in very itchy eyes that are sensitive to light as well as droopy eyelids. Lastly, you have giant papillary conjunctivitis (GPC) where big bumps form under the upper eyelid due to irritation from a foreign object or substance, such as contact lenses. Experts think that when contacts cause GPC it’s from either a reaction to the lens itself, preservatives in contact solutions, protein buildup or habits like sleeping in contact lenses.

When you come into contact with allergens that you’re sensitive to, whether it’s pet dander or pollen, your body’s mast cells release histamines. This overreaction is what leads to the symptoms. Rubbing your eyes makes things a lot worse because it stimulates the mast cells to release more histamines. The takeaway: Even if your eyes are itchy, don’t rub them! Most eye allergies are super annoying but not serious. However, in rare cases, for people with vernal keratoconjunctivitis, improper treatment can lead to permanent changes in vision and excessive rubbing and scratching in those with atopic keratoconjunctivitis can cause scarring and permanent damage as well.

CONTACTS AND SEASONAL ALLERGIES OR PERENNIAL ALLERGIES

Seasonal allergic conjunctivitis can be more severe than perennial allergic conjunctivitis but, on the plus side, it goes away, unlike its perennial counterpart that’s always around to stir up trouble. These ocular allergies are a leading reason people stop wearing contact lenses. If you’re at the end of your rope and are thinking about giving your contacts the boot, as a first effort, you can put cold compresses on your eyes to reduce swelling and itching and use rewetting drops to ward off dryness. Another common strategy is taking decongestants or oral antihistamines like Claritin or Zyrtec. Even though these can do the trick here and there, they haven’t been shown to be all that effective for most cases of ocular allergies and they can dry out eyes even more.

If the above ideas don’t work, there’s still hope. People often ask, “Can I use allergy eye drops with contacts?” and the answer is, maybe. We wouldn’t suggest running to the pharmacy for a random over-the-counter eye drop. Not all of them are compatible with your lenses and since they require you to use them frequently throughout the day, you’ll have to keep taking your contacts in and out.

There are more effective allergy eye drops for contact lens wearers that are available by prescription from your doctor. The newer formulas are a hybrid antihistamine and mast-cell stabilizer. You only need to use them once or twice a day and you can do it before you put your contact lenses in and get longer lasting relief. Studies found that individuals with seasonal allergic conjunctivitis, atopic keratoconjunctivitis and vernal keratoconjunctivitis responded well to one drop of a medication called Patanol (brand name for olopatadine) twice a day for 28 days. In fact, it increased contact lens wearing time by 2.1 hours on average. Similar effects were achieved with a different eye drop, epinastine hydrochloride 0.05%, also with one drop two times a day.

While Patanol and other topical treatments can help with contact lens comfort, if you have vernal keratoconjunctivitis or atopic keratoconjunctivitis, depending on the severity, your doctor might prescribe a short course of a low-dose topical steroid too. If the condition is acting up because of wind and dust, be sure to add wraparound sunglasses to your wardrobe when you head outdoors. 

Regardless of the type of allergies you suffer from, if you wear contacts, there are some general tips you can follow to reduce eye-related symptoms:

·         Wash those hands! Transferring allergens from your hands to your eyes is never a good idea. Keep your paws clean and since soap can be an irritant too, rinse really well before touching your eyes or handling your contacts.

·         Keep rewetting drops handy. Even though rewetting drops won’t do too much to actually nip symptoms in the bud, they can provide temporary relief and help you see more clearly by getting rid of dryness.

·         Go easy on the eye makeup during allergy season. Mascara, eye shadow and eyeliner have the potential to compound symptoms. At least try to go sans makeup as much as possible.

·         Depending on how bothersome wearing contacts is, you might have to take a brief hiatus. Break out your glasses and stop wearing your contacts for a week or so to detox your eyes. Flush your eyes out by using preservative-free artificial tears a few times a day during your contact lens break.

·         Swap out your contact lens case for a fresh one at least every three months and follow recommendationsf or keeping your case disinfected. Your contacts are constantly attracting dust, dander, pollen and all of that nonsense. Putting them in a dirty case isn’t going to get them clean.

·         Wear your contacts exactly as directed. Wearing them for longer than you’re supposed to leads to too much protein buildup, dry eyes and more discomfort.

·         Pay your eye doctor a visit. They’ll be able to point you in the right direction as far as treatment if the symptoms are ongoing or you have more than just minor redness, itching and tearing. Keep in mind that every so often the irritation isn’t actually due to ocular allergies and instead you could have an infection, chronic dry eye or a sensitivity to ingredients in contact solution or the lens material. You’ll also want to ask your eye care professional their thoughts on the best contact solution for allergies because if your allergies have made you intolerant to certain ingredients, hydrogen peroxide solution might be worth exploring. Though disinfecting lenses with hydrogen peroxide solution, depending on the type you use, does require more effort than multipurpose solution, the relief could outweigh the hassle.

CONTACT LENSES AND PET ALLERGIES

When you have a pet allergy, your immune system is overly sensitive and it gets a little dramatic when you come into contact with the proteins found in animals’ dander, salvia and urine, which all get trapped in the fur along with every other conceivable sneeze-inducing substance, including pollen, dust mites and mold. The allergens then make their way into the air and stick to surfaces like furniture, walls, clothes and floors. People with severe pet allergies experience symptoms, which may include itchy, watery, red eyes, wheezing, sneezing and congestion, right away. If your allergy is mild, you might not notice symptoms for hours after contact with an animal. It takes quite a while for the allergens to lose their strength so you don’t even need to be near a pet for symptoms to occur. You could have a reaction when someone else tracks dander into your house or has it on their clothing.

The most effective way to sidestep pet allergy-related eye symptoms is to stay away from animals and admire their splendor from a distance. Unfortunately, this isn’t always possible. After you have a run-in with a pet, you can alleviate eye allergies and maintain contact-wearing comfort with these steps:

·         Take your shoes off before you walk into your house so you don’t bring anything in.

·         Wash your hands thoroughly with mild soap and then rinse them really well to get rid of any traces of dander.

·         With your clean hands, remove your contacts and let them disinfect in contact solution overnight. Wear your glasses until your eyes calm down.

·         Wash your face with water so clinging allergens don’t find their way into your eyes.

·         Change your clothes immediately and launder the ones you were wearing in warm water.

If you have a pet yourself and it’s not a goldfish or other hairless creature or you regularly go somewhere with a ball of fluff, follow the instructions above, as well as the ones listed for seasonal and perennial allergies, whenever you have pet contact or an allergy attack comes on. In addition, you’ll have to dedicate yourself to frequent vacuuming, cleaning and laundry because, as we noted, the allergens cling to surfaces. Pet owners with allergies should bathe their pet at least once a week and consider investing in an HEPA air purifier. You can also discuss medication or immunotherapy with your allergist.

THE BEST CONTACTS FOR ALLERGIES

Allergens stick to the surface of contact lenses. Even if you sprint away from pollen or a cat, your exposure continues while you’re wearing your contacts and after a while, it’s nearly impossible to get every last bit of allergen off. The more frequently you can replace your contacts and start fresh, the better. That’s why daily contact lenses are the absolute, hands-down best option for people with allergies. You throw them away at the end of the day along with the allergen buildup. In one 2003 study, 67% of people with seasonal allergies reported that wearing 1-day disposable lenses improved their comfort. If dailies aren’t an option, then weeklies would be next in the preference line. Now that there have been so many innovations in the breathability and moisture content in soft contact lens materials, allergic folk typically fare better with them over hard contacts. In fact, GPC is less common in people who wear disposable soft contacts.

We’re all about comfort here at Fresh Lens, which probably comes as no surprise considering we ship our contacts straight to your door allowing you to continue to live your best life in your pajamas. This love of comfort is one of the reasons we carry the perfect contact lenses for allergy sufferers. Browse our lenses, ranging from dailies you can toss following a feline encounter to ones that lock in moisture even after pollen has caused every last tear to leak out of your eyes. With the right contact lenses and regular visits to your eye doctor, allergies won’t hold you back from seeing clearly.

#makeup #beauty #contact lenses #fashion #shopping

[andrewdburton]

How to ask for a favor (and get it)

Think of all the favors you might need:

A job referral from an old boss

A friend to teach you how to cook a meal to impress your girlfriend

An introduction to the founder of a startup you want to freelance for

Favors like these can act as turning points in our life. But sometimes it’s hard to ask for a favor — especially if you’re shy and not too confident about the process.

Today I’m going to teach you the five simple steps to ask for a favor and actually get what you want.

How to ask for a favor in 5 steps

Each year on my birthday I ask my readers to do me a simple favor: Comment telling me how IWT has personally helped them. 

You know what happens? I get more than 500 comments every time. People LOVE telling me about landing their dream job, eliminating $45K of debt, earning $10K on the side, and more.

This is the best gift I could hope for. I don’t need cookies or new clothes. I just love hearing how my material has helped other people.

This is just a tiny favor. I’ve also asked for bigger ones like getting a bunch of my entrepreneur friends to contribute to an e-book I was working on.

So how do you ask for a favor and get great results?

Use the following 5 steps:

Step 1: Consider how your favor impacts them

Step 2: Ask with the expectation that your favor will be granted

Step 3: Don’t lie

Step 4: Hold on to your power

Step 5: Be very specific about what you’re requesting

Let’s get started.

Step 1: Consider how your favor impacts them

When you ask for a favor, you’re essentially doing sales. You’re selling someone else your needs at the cost of their time, energy, and/or money.

And that’s what you’ve got to realize: It’s not all about you. While this favor benefits you in some way, you’re putting this person out in another way. You need to acknowledge that and compensate for it.

Having empathy like this is absolutely necessary for two reasons:

It lets you talk to the person you’re selling to on their terms. You can relate to them and speak their language. Think about it: How you ask for a favor from your boss is a lot different than how you ask for a favor from your friend.

It lets you adapt as the “sale” happens. When you care about the other person’s emotions and needs, you can see if what you’re asking from them is too much, or maybe if you’re asking it in a way that makes them feel weird. So stop weirding them out and relate to them.

Check out this amazing email I got from a reader a while back that did exactly this.

I LOVE IT.

This email is the perfect example of everything that goes into learning how to ask for a favor:

He showed that he actually knows me. Nothing is going to make me want to trash your email faster than a boilerplate message. The guy who sent me this message showcased how he knew me and how I’ve helped him.

He made me care. Most likely, the person you’re trying to get a favor from is busy. That’s why you need to make them give a damn. That incentivized me even more to work with him. He also touched on a subject that matters to me (in this case, the sender knew that I’m always on the lookout for talented developers).

He made it easy to say yes. The reader who sent me the email made it clear that, though he was looking for paid work, he would be willing to work “to network and receive a little advice” while acknowledging that I did have a few projects that I didn’t have time for.

By the time I finished the email, I was clamoring for the phone to call him. THAT’S how you ask for a favor.

Step 2: Ask with the expectation that your request will be granted

However, if you feel like you’re putting them out by asking for this favor, stop. You’ve already failed.

Your mental framework matters. You need to believe you’re going to get whatever you ask for. If you’re going to play, play to win. Don’t try. Don’t hope. You’ve already decided to do it … you might as well do it right.

Go in with a winner’s mentality.

You should go in ACKNOWLEDGING that you are asking them to go out of their way. But that doesn’t mean you go in thinking that you’re “bothering” them or that this is a waste of their time.

That’s why I want to go over the “What if I were perfect” technique.

I’ve talked about this technique before but it’s important to mention again because it has everything to do with confidence.

Let’s say that you were trying to become more confident about public speaking, or cooking, or running, or starting a business. Whatever.

With these goals come a set of crippling barriers:

What if I screw up and make a bad meal?

What if I never lose weight?

What if my business fails?

And many times, that’s enough to screw up. It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy.

That’s what happened when I was younger and I thought nobody would ever show up to my personal finance class — and nobody did. That’s because I already set myself up for failure with my mental barriers.

Instead, just ask yourself, “What if I were the absolute master of this domain? What if I were perfect and had all the knowledge — in the world — what would I do?”

You wouldn’t get overwhelmed by going to the store, buying onions, and learning how to chop them. You wouldn’t get overwhelmed by going to the gym and hitting the treadmill. I definitely wouldn’t have been bothered by getting people to attend my personal finance class.

And you wouldn’t get psyched out by asking someone for a favor.

You would just do what was necessary to accomplish your goals. This technique helps you get past your own mental barriers and say, “If I were perfect, how would I handle this issue?”

Using this exercise is a great way to become more confident over time.

For more help, check out my video below on how to develop natural confidence. It’s only six minutes but you’ll learn some great mental frameworks.

Step 3: Don’t lie

Many people think that you have to lie or at least tell a white lie (like these 7 money lies) when it comes to asking for something. They believe you’ll be more successful if you butter someone up and give them a bunch of phony reasons to do something.

Wrong.

Being truthful is what makes people believe you and want to help you. Studies show that when you come at people from a place of honesty you not only make yourself and your relationship with that person happier but it’s also better for your mental health (per UC San Diego’s Emotion Lab).

Think about it. If I want my brother-in-law to introduce me to his boss, he’s going to be pissed if I come to him with the pretense of asking how his Thai cooking classes are going.

“Hey I saw that pad thai you made on Instagram the other day. Awesome stuff. Do you think your boss likes pad thai too?”

Fail. Instead he’ll respect me if I am direct and tell him, “Hey, I really want an intro to your boss because I think I could help him with XYZ goal.”

Step 4: Leverage your power

Nobody likes a needy person. But if you act like you don’t really need your favor granted, you’re more likely to get what you want.

I‘ve explained this before in the context of negotiating your way out of paying bank fees. Banks want your money however they can get it, but if you threaten to leave the bank they’ll clear any charges in no time.

I’m not saying threaten to terminate a friendship or partnership because they’re not presenting what you want on a gold platter.

Instead, lead into the conversation with something organic. For example, “Hey, do you still want those tickets for the game on Thursday? I’m happy to give them away since I know you love the team — but I was hoping I could ask you for a favor. Would you have a couple of hours to help me move this weekend?”

It’s like my system for asking for a raise from your boss or raising your freelance rates for your clients: Always do it after you’ve added value.

Did you just crush a project at work that increased sales by 100%? Perfect time to ask for that raise.

Did you create an email for your client that doubled leads for them? Strike while the iron is hot and raise your rates.

This isn’t all to say that you should be doing favors for other people strictly so you can have a bargaining chip for when you need a favor. What I’m saying is your chances of having your favor granted increase immensely when you’ve done something nice for the other person.

Think about my birthday example. It doesn’t actually matter to you that it’s my birthday. But, because of how our society is set up, you feel like you owe me one because of the value I’ve provided you. It’s totally okay to leverage situations like that.

Step 5: Be very specific about what you want

When you ask for directions, would you go up to someone and say, “How do I go somewhere?”

Of course not. Not only would you sound like an idiot, but you wouldn’t get what you want. Instead you ask specifically, “How do I get to the Farmhouse Restaurant?”

The same goes when you ask for your favor. Make sure you have a very specific ask in mind.

Don’t ask: “Can you get me a job?”

Ask: “Can you give me a warm intro to Ross Currier? He’s your head of accounting at Company XYZ, and there’s a position opening up under him that I’m interested in.”

Don’t ask: “Are you around this weekend?”

Ask: “Are you free on Saturday afternoon? I need to pick up a couch from ABC Store and I was wondering if you could drive me over in your pickup to get it.”

Be direct. Be succinct. When you say exactly what you want, people know exactly how to help you.

A great example of this was when I asked a few of my entrepreneur friends to contribute to an e-book I was writing.

I knew that all these people were incredibly busy, so I needed to offer value to them and show them that the favor wasn’t a waste of their time.

Here’s a private email I wrote to NYT bestselling author Ben Casnocha when I wanted him to help me with my 15 Little Life Experiments e-book. My comments are in brackets:

Hey Ben,

I’m putting together a short free e-book with fascinating/actionable test results (e.g., material on marketing, business, lifestyle design, social dynamics, career hacks, etc). [Quickly introduce what I’m doing and get them excited about it. Note how I skip over introductions because I already know Ben. If I didn’t, it would be important to introduce who I am and why he should read this email.]

I’d love to have you contribute, and wanted to see if you’d be interested. I already have a great idea of what your test result could be. [VIPs expect you to want something from them. Get to the point. Again, this is not the approach I would take with everyone, but it works here because Ben is (1) insanely busy and (2) a friend.]

I’ll be putting IWT’s marketing muscle behind it — we’ll be sharing it with our list of 200,000+ and we expect to have at least 500,000 other emails going out. The emails will have links to your site. [Benefit. Why should he care? Note that almost anyone would love to get this kind of exposure. (And note the meta-lesson of me promoting Ben in this very email.)]

All I would need from you is ONE great test/result that you’ve run. For example, one of the following list:

1. How I started waking up earlier (lifestyle)

2. One phrase I always use when I meet someone new (social dynamics)

3. How I got more people to join my email list (business/marketing) [Anticipate the needs of the reader. As he reads, he’s saying, “Hmm…so what would this require?” BOOM — proactively hit him with specific examples.]

(For you, I’m thinking about conversational techniques you used to become more interested/interesting … or how you elicit people to become more open by being transparent yourself. Also, you had that AWESOME tip about speaking, where you take a mid-talk break and tell them 5 books to write down, and everyone wakes up. People love that.) [Personalize it. I personalized every email I sent and got a tremendous response rate of over 90%. Use my motto — “Don’t make the busy person do your work for you” — and suggest ideas to them. There’s more to this principle that I outline in my e-book on writing winning emails (see below).]

We’ll include ~300-word case study about a successful test you’ve run. Here’s a previous e-book we did with examples from people like BJ Fogg, Mark Sisson, and Josh Kaufman: [Include a finished result, if possible. This also shows him big names I worked with in the past, so he can see this will be a gathering of renowned contributors.]

LINK TO FINISHED RESULT

Our deadline is Wednesday, September 18th. What do you think?

-Ramit

P.S. If you’re interested but not sure what you’d contribute, let me know and I can give you a quick call to share some ideas. [VIPs get swamped with emails. Sometimes, I prefer to hop on a 5-minute call while I’m in between errands. So I offer that option here.]

A few takeaways:

Be specific but brief. VIPs are busy and do not want to read your tortured expository essay on your life history, food allergies, and the mole on your back

Focus on what’s in it for THEM. Benefit-driven, focused on benefit to THEM (“putting the full IWT muscle behind it”)

Offer a clear CTA (call to action). You wouldn’t believe how many people end their emails to me with “Yeah, so … wow, I wrote more than I thought” DELETE

Anticipate every objection and counter it before they can consciously voice it. Who’s going to be in this? Oh, here are past people I worked with. I don’t have any ideas. Oh, let’s get on a call and I’ll help you come up with some, etc.

Get what you want

I’ve just given you the five steps to asking for a favor and getting what you want. This strategy works for anything.

And if you want specific scripts for emails that get results too, I have five you can use to:

Set up an informational interview

Ask for recommendations for people to talk to

Cold email a stranger for advice

Pitch for a consulting gig or a job interview

Reach out to others in your company to get to know them

Just enter your information below, and I’ll send you these five word-for-word scripts for free.

How to ask for a favor (and get it) is a post from: I Will Teach You To Be Rich.

from Finance https://www.iwillteachyoutoberich.com/blog/how-to-ask-for-a-favor-and-get-what-you-want/ via http://www.rssmix.com/

[junker-town]

Matt DiBenedetto wants to be the face of NASCAR. Now he needs cash.

NASCAR driver Matt DiBenedetto is sitting on Willie Nelson’s old tour bus watching me crash his race car into a cement wall.

It’s Friday afternoon, the day before the Federated Auto Parts 400 at Richmond Raceway in Virginia. DiBenedetto, his director of communications Ryan Ellis, and I are playing NASCAR HEAT 2 on Xbox to pass the time before DiBenedetto runs his qualifying laps. This old RV has been on the race circuit for a while now since Willie stopped touring in it (if the rumors are true), and sometimes DiBenedetto and Ellis stay here, parked among other drivers’ personal, shiny, multi-million dollar buses. One of the walls near the front bears the signatures of Richard Petty, Darrell Waltrip, Jimmie Johnson, and other NASCAR legends.

Everything about DiBenedetto’s life is on wheels. When he isn't moving, he's sitting around waiting to move. He gets to the track each week on Thursday night, whether the race is Saturday night or Sunday afternoon, and the hours between practice, qualifying laps, and races stretch long. DiBenedetto, 26, and Ellis, 27, are best friends not only because they like each other, but also because they understand the strains of being on the road 38 weekends a year. Besides Ellis, the people DiBenedetto hangs out with most are his parents, his wife Taylor, and Cosmo, his 40-something neighbor who owns a car dealership.

"I don't see anyone," Ellis says, eyes on the screen, hands on the controller. "Getting older means being lonely."

At some point, DiBenedetto signed his name on the wall under Waltrip's. But, unlike most of the other drivers, he left off his car number. Perhaps in the hopes that No. 32 won’t be what he’s saddled with forever.

“You're pretty stuck there, try backing up,” DiBenedetto says. He and Ellis, who was also a full-time driver until this year, laugh as they watch me realize Ellis is actually controlling the car on the top screen that I thought I was moving. On the bottom half of the screen, I've actually been slamming DiBenedetto’s character into a barrier on pit road for a full minute.

We restart, and DiBenedetto’s car materializes, magically repaired. I’m looking at the right one this time as the green checkered flag falls. Ellis, who’s racing as Dale Earnhardt Jr., wins. I come in 27th, and apologize to Real Matt for Computer Matt’s less-than-stellar showing.

“That’s okay,” he says, “That’s probably about where we’ll finish tomorrow anyway.”

DiBenedetto declines to play as himself. Ellis says he'll do it, so we switch controllers. He changes the location to Bristol Motor Speedway and rockets around the short track. He wins again. Computer Matt climbs out of the car on the black and white checkered pavement of victory lane and stands on the roof, pumping his pixelated fists as confetti falls. The scene is familiar; DiBenedetto became the youngest winner in Bristol’s history when he raced late models there 10 years ago.

“That guy looks nothing like me,” DiBenedetto says. “What's with my dang hair?”

Computer Matt is a scrawny guy with red, curly hair, and a full beard. Real Matt — who peppers his speech with “dang”s, “darn”s, and “gosh”es — has straight, brown hair that always looks like it’s picture day at school. His face is boyish, handsome, with a jawline he squares up by trimming his short beard just so.

DiBenedetto also has biceps. Put together, they're almost the same size as his substantial core. He works out a lot, and has grown into a sturdy dude since he won Bristol as a 5’1” 16-year-old clocking in at a whopping 75 pounds. You have to be strong to wrestle a car without power-steering around a track. He sweats out 15 pounds of water and burns thousands of calories over three and a half hours during a race. NASCAR is as physically grueling as it mentally punishing.

There might be a glitch in the game, because Computer Matt won’t stop pumping his fists. Real Matt gets up from the pleather banquette to take a video of the video game celebration. He’s obsessive about documenting his life on Snapchat, Twitter, Facebook, Reddit, and Instagram. This mostly entails posting videos of him pranking his wife, Taylor, with rubber snakes, or cannonballing into the pool next to her while she's sleeping on a float, but also includes candid reactions to very good and very bad races. DiBenedetto gets his sense of humor from his mother, Sandy. She’s a tiny, energetic woman who recently snuck into DiBenedetto’s house to hide a lifelike plastic tarantula behind the toaster. Her son is scared of spiders.

Photo by Matt Sullivan/Getty Images

DiBenedetto’s followers respond to his social media presence with fierce loyalty. Despite having a fraction of the followers big name drivers command, he almost made it into this year’s All-Star race on the fan vote.

DiBenedetto tells me he identifies with Dale Earnhardt Jr., the way he connects with fans.

“That’s what I’d like to be,” he says.

The sport is battling the perception of declining national interest and waning viewership, and, with Dale Jr. retiring, it could use a relatable guy like DiBenedetto to step into the spotlight. DiBenedetto knows he has the talent and personality for it. He also knows he has to nail down big time sponsors or join a state-of-the-art team for it to happen.

As the son of an appliance repairman, DiBenedetto wasn't born into money. And if you want to win in NASCAR's Cup Series (the major leagues), you need cold, hard cash to fund one of the completely custom-made, spaceship-like vehicles required to win in NASCAR today. These things are hunks of technology that get tested in wind tunnels, calibrated down to milli-everything, and cost $20 million to maintain for one season. The days when you could buy some parts, screw them together, and become a hero the way Dale Earnhardt Sr. did are long gone. A sport that markets itself as blue collar is closer to America's Cup sailing than it would like you to know.

DiBenedetto’s story is Sisyphean: Since he was 5 years old, he’s been pushing, endlessly, to get to the top of the sport he loves. He’s been bowled over and he's tumbled down many times. But — thanks to his raw talent, dumb luck, and sheer force of will — he’ll race tomorrow night at the highest level of the sport in a car that has his name on the side. His equipment isn't the best, and he knows there’s no way he’ll win. But just the fact that he’s made it this far, he says, is like lightning striking twice.

He can finally see the crest of the hill. The question now is whether he can make it to the top.

Sandy calls DiBenedetto her “oops baby.” When she found out she was pregnant in 1991, she and DiBenedetto’s father, Tony, were in their late 30s, already had three kids, and were running Tony’s business fixing washers and dryers. Sandy says she cried for the entire first trimester, but is quick to add that Matt’s been the best thing that ever happened to the family.

Family lore has it that Young Matt fell in love with NASCAR when he caught a glimpse of a race as his father clicked through the TV channels trying to find a baseball game. He became obsessed, watching every Sunday after that, tracking his favorite driver Jeff Burton in the No. 99 car.

DiBenedetto is telling me The Myth of Matt on Thursday night from the passenger seat of Ryan’s 2012 Ford Focus. Ryan’s driving us from his house just outside of Charlotte, North Carolina, to the Richmond Raceway. Ryan always drives. DiBenedetto hates driving anything when there’s a destination. He only likes going in circles: driving race cars around tracks, doing doughnuts in parking lots, forcing ATVs up and down mounds of dirt.

Once they realized DiBenedetto was hooked on cars and there was no dissuading him, Sandy and Tony bought him a go-kart, then a modified car. DiBenedetto turned his family's grassy backyard in Northern California into a dirt track. When he got home from school, he would drag the unwieldy garden house out to the yard so he could water, rake, and tamp down the dust of his race course. Then he’d fire up the engine of his lead sled — brap, brap, brap — and tear up all his hard work, splattering mud onto the metal of his machine as he careened around the corners he'd constructed.

Photo by Jeff Zelevansky/Getty Images for NASCAR

DiBenedetto at a NASCAR Pro East Series race at Dover International Speedway in 2009.

DiBenedetto started winning races, then championships. People at tracks who watched him deftly maneuver the used go-karts and modified cars the DiBenedettos could afford would tell Tony and Sandy to “do something with this kid.”

So they did. When DiBenedetto was 12, the family moved to North Carolina. They wanted to be close to Charlotte, where the majority of NASCAR teams are headquartered, but the city was too big and busy for them. So they settled on Hickory, a small town about an hour outside of Charlotte that has a race track.

DiBenedetto was fresh out of Outlaw karts and just getting into racing Legends cars on local circuits by then, winning race after race at the Hickory Motor Speedway. He soon graduated to Late Models, and won lots of those, too, eventually touring up and down the East Coast.

Despite his promise, when DiBenedetto was 16 his parents realized they couldn’t afford to pay for his passion anymore. They wanted to, but it was just too darn expensive. If DiBenedetto was really as good as everyone said he was, someone — a team owner, a wealthy patron — would put him in a car, Tony believed. So he told his son he was going to sell all of his racing equipment.

A lot of families on the race circuits below NASCAR often say they’re going to get rid of everything. They’ll kvetch about it at races with other parents, saying to each other, “Oh, yeah, this year is the last.” Owning a race car is like feeding a growing teenage boy; you can’t ever put enough into one. But most of the families who threaten to quit don't. They’ll show up the next year with a few new parts, maybe a new trailer.

Tony actually followed through. DiBenedetto came home from high school one day to find that everything was gone. His cars weren’t in their parking spots, and the truck his parents dragged the trailer behind had disappeared. The trailer was gone, too. Their little makeshift shop next to the house was empty. You’d only know someone there drove race cars because of the trophies in DiBenedetto’s room.

“And then, at the end of the season, another driver came in with millions of dollars. I was out as quick as I was in. So again, I’m like, well, my career is over. I have nothing.”

“It was time number one of one thousand that I thought my career was over,” DiBenedetto says. “I thought I was all done.”

DiBenedetto says his family thought they’d be able to run a team for him because they were “naive.” His parents use the word “naive,” too. They also all say “struck by lightning twice,” and Sandy and DiBenedetto list the racing equipment they sold in the same order. Tony says that if DiBenedetto ever disrespects a fan, even if he’s super old, he’ll “get out of his wheelchair and kick his ass.” DiBenedetto tells me that if he ever disrespects a fan, Tony will “get out of his wheelchair and kick my ass.”

The DiBenedettos know the script. They’ve had to tell and sell their story to countless sponsors, team owners, fans, and (more recently) journalists just to keep DiBenedetto in the sport. They schmooze, network, cold-call businesses, and market DiBenedetto — who turns himself into a human billboard whenever he puts on his fire suit splashed with sponsor’s logos — just to stay in the sport.

At this point in the story, we pull into a gas station in the middle of nowhere. DiBenedetto asks Ellis if he needs gas, and Ellis says no, we should be fine. As Ellis pays for the energy drinks and snacks he’s hoping will help him stay awake, DiBenedetto goes outside and fills up his friend’s car anyway.

We get back on the road. It’s 11:30 — we’ve been driving for close to two and a half hours, and we still have two left. That’s nothing for these guys. They're now on a team with enough money to fly to most races, but the first time they raced together in 2014, they’d drive across the country smushed into the backseat of a van with 10 pit crew guys. They recall some of their trips, like the time they overslept and had to Uber to the racetrack in Chicago. It's funny to imagine: two race car drivers with their helmets and fire suits in the back of some stranger’s Kia.

After Tony sold his racing equipment, DiBenedetto was rudderless for a while. But, just like Tony said they would, people started calling, offering rides. First, it was a team out of Asheville, then it was a family in Charlotte. DiBenedetto hopped in and out of different cars and put up more incredible finishes.

It was during this time that DiBenedetto won at Bristol. Then he got a call from Joe Gibbs Racing, a powerhouse team that guys like Kyle Busch and Denny Hamlin drive for. Gibbs had been keeping an eye on him since he beat his team in a race a few years ago. They wanted him to come in for a meeting at team headquarters in the Charlotte area.

DiBenedetto, who was 17 at the time, had no idea what to expect. He thought they just wanted to meet him, say hello, keep him on the back burner. Instead, they put a contract on the table in front of him and told him to sign if he wanted a development deal.

DiBenedetto couldn’t pick up the pen fast enough. It would be the first time that he had steady access to equipment commensurate with his talent. He started beating most of the people he raced against in one of Gibbs’ K&N cars (think minor, minor leagues of NASCAR). He was ripping up concrete tracks like he was back on the West Coast tearing through the dirt of his old backyard.

Photo by Sara D. Davis/Getty Images for NASCAR

Matt and Tony after Matt won the NASCAR K&N Pro Series East Race at the Bowman Gray Stadium, on Saturday, June 4, 2011.

So the team bumped DiBenedetto up and put him in an Xfinity car in 2009 (think triple-A). He’d never driven one before. They’re a whole different animal from K&N cars, but that first race in the Xfinity Series was a dream come true anyway: DiBenedetto finished an impressive 14th after running second for most of it against big names like Kyle Busch and Matt Kenseth.

The next season was a nightmare. Everything went perfectly wrong. DiBenedetto didn’t get to practice enough, and he only got to run six races. He made mistakes he says he’d be able to avoid now, but he also had a lot of bad luck, from blown tires to wrecks that weren’t his fault.

“And then, at the end of the season, another driver came in with millions of dollars,” DiBenedetto says. “I was out as quick as I was in. So again, I’m like, well, my career is over. I have nothing.”

Sandy and Tony say they’re glad the Gibbs deal didn’t work out. They think their son has stayed grounded because he’s had to fight so hard to stay in the sport since then. But DiBenedetto has a hard time truly believing that. If he’d done well, it would’ve been a fast track to a ride in one of the best Cup Series cars on the circuit. He could’ve been a household name by now.

Instead, DiBenedetto went home to Hickory. He was 19, and, feeling like he was out of options, went to work at Carillo’s Collision Repair, an auto body shop in the area.

“I wanted to blow my brains out every day,” DiBenedetto says, turning around in his seat to look at me. “Not that I was unappreciative of life or anything, I just had no passion for doing that crap. I hated it.”

DiBenedetto worked at the shop while he continued to network in the NASCAR world. He’d run some races on the weekends, but during the week he fixed normal cars that normal people drove to run normal errands. It smelled like racing — engine grease, burnt rubber, oil-soaked rags — but it was the opposite. It was standing still.

Eventually, a family-run team took a liking to DiBenedetto and let him “start and park” the worse of their son’s two Xfinity cars. This meant that DiBenedetto would qualify the car, then start the race so the owner could collect the money from simply making the field. DiBenedetto would then run a handful of laps and drop out, so as not to burn through a fresh set of wheels.

Then he’d go back to Hickory and the auto body shop.

As frustrating as it was for DiBenedetto not to be able to run full races, just being in the cars paid off. The Motorsports Group (TMG) noticed him and offered him a deal starting-and-parking. They eventually moved him into one of their Xfinity cars in 2014.

Mark J. Rebilas-USA TODAY Sports

Ryan Ellis racing at Daytona International Speedway in 2016.

At this point in our road trip, Ellis has started interjecting more as DiBenedetto talks. He was also racing on and off for TMG at the same time DiBenedetto was, so he’s in the story now. He remembers the races, the practices, the long cross-country drives, the sponsor meetings, that DiBenedetto is telling me about.

Ellis’s grandfather built cars for Mario Andretti and died in a crash the same year Ryan’s father was born. But despite being a racing family like the Elliots, Earnhardts, or Childresses, the Ellises didn't get rich from cars. They couldn't fund Ryan's career.

Ellis misses driving more than he’s willing to admit. When a few fans recognize him at the track over the course of the weekend he lights up, thrilled to sign their cards and hats. What Ellis doesn’t miss is the cutthroat side of the sport. Last year, he kept getting bought out of races by richer, younger, and less experienced drivers who come from family money (we're talking serious money, here: NASCAR drivers are the sons of Vegas casino owners, heads of agricultural lobbies, owners of airlines). It was the same thing that happened to DiBenedetto at Gibbs.

“I became emotionless,” says Ellis, who dropped out of college two classes shy of a marketing degree to drive full time. “Literally. I felt like I was just a zombie. When I’d get bumped from another race, I’d be like, ‘Oh, well that sucks, I’m going to hang myself again.’ I don’t blame the teams, it makes sense for them. But you just become numb.”

He’s glad to finally have a steady paycheck working for Matt. And if it can’t be him, at least his best friend is the one who got one more lucky break than he did. When someone he knows bumps into Ellis bumps at the track and asks what he’s up to now that he’s not racing, he tells her, “I’m living Matt’s dream.”

Despite the fact that DiBenedetto drove well for TMG, the team dropped him at the end of 2014. Thinking it was all over for the umpteenth time, but refusing to quit, DiBenedetto kept calling, emailing, and taking team owners out to dinner trying to schmooze his way back in. He says he even drove eight hours to show up at the Daytona 500 uninvited to convince a team called BK Racing to give him a chance. It worked, and he ran some races for them starting in 2015. Last year, he drove to a sixth-place finish at Bristol, his lucky track. The cars weren’t great, but BK eventually gave DiBenedetto a proper crew chief — a surly guy named Gene — and a dedicated crew that worked on only his ride.

At the end of 2016, DiBenedetto signed with GoFas Racing. A family named St. Hillaire owns the team — they made their fortune running garbage removal and port-a-potty businesses in Maine. GoFas was doing poorly every week, and wanted to be better. DiBenedetto — handsome, talented, personable, available — seemed like the perfect guy to drive their No. 32 car.

Photo by Daniel Shirey/Getty Images

DiBenedetto says that everyone thought he was crazy to sign with GoFas. Gene told the St. Hillaire’s, to their face, that their cars were “junk.” But DiBenedetto believed if he could turn a low-budget program around, maybe the owners of the best teams would finally consider him. Maybe the big-time sponsors would come calling. Maybe the NASCAR world would realize he wasn't going away.

So far, he seems to be doing it. In used equipment and almost no time, DiBenedetto has taken the team to its best finishes ever, including two in the top 10. He came in ninth at the Daytona 500 and eighth in the Brickyard 400 at Indianapolis — two of NASCAR’s biggest races. GoFas has improved from 38th to 31st in the owners points standings.

The problem is that a whole lot of money still separates DiBenedetto from where he is now and the chance of winning a Cup race. This weekend at Richmond, a finish close to the top 20 would be GoFas’s version of coming in first.

But 20th isn’t first. DiBenedetto’s best still won’t earn him a trophy, and it drives him insane.

On Saturday night at Richmond, DiBenedetto comes in 31st.

The bright floodlights of the raceway glint off the advertisements on the hood of his car as he pulls into the pits. His fenders are scraped up, and the track smells like burning rubber and gasoline fumes. When DiBenedetto takes his helmet off and climbs out of the car, his usually perfect hair is poking up and matted down in various places. He’s a little pale. His lips looked chapped.

“We sucked,” he says.

Ellis and DiBenedetto are driving to back to Charlotte tonight because they want to sleep in their own beds rather than the cramped bunks of Willie’s old bus. Ellis will drive, that is. DiBenedetto will probably fall asleep in the passenger seat after about 45 minutes. But before they can hit the road — before DiBenedetto can even change out of his fire suit — he has to go talk to the sponsors he’s been shepherding around the track all weekend.

These sponsors are wealthy, but they're not giving DiBenedetto enough for him to finally end up in a car as good as he is. For that to happen, DiBenedetto needs to convince a huge corporation to back him, or find many more smaller businesses that want to slap their logos onto his body. He has no choice. In NASCAR, marketing is as much a sport as the driving itself. Even though DiBenedetto signed for another year with GoFas, it all still feels precarious.

Photo by Jerry Markland/Getty Images

Most people like DiBenedetto — including Ellis — have given up the dream of driving. In Ellis’s car on Thursday, both of them joked that the most talented driver in the country is probably driving a tractor somewhere. But racing cars is DiBenedetto’s only passion. His stubborn optimism makes him think that maybe someday his skill, dogged ambition, and charisma will be enough. Despite the many times he’s seen evidence that it might not be. The dang world just isn’t fair.

“All I can do is turn left,” he says.

Since DiBenedetto was 16, people have been asking him what he’ll do if this all falls apart. He’s never had an answer, and even thinking about it is terrifying. He keeps straining against that boulder, believing he will get it over that hill. Somebody has to make it, and DiBenedetto refuses to accept that he might not be the guy who does.

Except that it’s not up to him. He’s reminded weekly, thanks to the leaderboard, exactly how far away he is from becoming the face of NASCAR. His story is familiar and deeply American; he wasn’t born with the right last name, or the correct amount of zeros in his bank account, and no matter now hard he pushes his foot down on the pedal of that No. 32 car, it won’t be enough, not unless something changes.

DiBenedetto finally takes off his sweaty suit and puts on a T-shirt and shorts. He and Ellis say goodbye to the sponsors, the team, and DiBenedetto’s parents. They duck into the media center to grab some free pizza before they head back to Ellis’s car.

I retrieve my bag from where I left it on the counter of the GoFas hauler and bump into Curtis, one of the guys on DiBenedetto’s team. He’s older, tall, with a big, white beard, broad shoulders, and a sizable belly. Curtis loves NASCAR. His parents used to carry him to races before he could walk. Working on cars is the only job he’s ever had.

“I can't imagine doing anything different,” Curtis says. “They'll be carrying my cold, dead carcass out of here.”

[lets-frick-frack-blog]

The Teenage Brain on Porn Video

Caleb is truly a son from england using a long-time porn compulsion and that he grew up with english journalist saying he's had sex with women also it just doesn't compare. I startsed to isolate myself simply because I hated what I has been doing. The Actual topics had been demonstrated images associated with explicit porn to ascertain if their particular compensate centers would react within the in an identical way as drug users. It's not as good simply because they're not as good as the porn. There he goes. The Particular web site went public inside january and also currently has more than 100,000 users. It ended up being extremely -- I mean, I came residence as well as I was balling my eyes out. Is Actually there now scientific evidence in order to again that will up? Any time you put porn in to google, exactly what does he feel will be planning to arrive up? Possibly photographs involving produce a naked woman. This became this sort of part of my, virtually which every day routine. Sometimes, with heartbreakingly young ages. Better? Yeah. There's no-one prior to us. The Woman's friend, danielle, 1st discovered concerning sex on a porn site. Mothers And Also Fathers are usually able to speak to asian tranny their own youngsters by what real love and also real sex afterwards is. Whenever it will come down in order to porn, there's increasingly concrete evidence, science, the addiction could be real. It is, virtually. This specific girl was just 12 years involving age when she shockingly admitted she's not only seen porn nevertheless the girl understood every 1 of the innuendo. Reporter: We expended per day with him in order to start to see the difficulty initial hand. Reporter: Yet in the event the internet porn compulsion the same thing as a true clinical addiction? Can it really change a person's brain? This kind of doctor, the nur r neuropsychiatrist operating from cambridge school attempted to discover out. Yet even when we assume it's an addiction what's the actual cure? Any former advert exec turned entrepreneur consider she's got a solution. Thus using pals as well as I'd find out how much they view porn. These People didn't want to become identified however these were prepared to be scanned and in comparison to a manage group involving volunteers. I knew tons of students who get been during my grade, my peers, have been carrying out the identical thing. Reporter: Nevertheless for the kid who is view these hard-core images, they could be challenging to erase from the brain. Reporter: Gail, mcdougal involving a magazine called "pornland" says for this the average teenage boy porn is his 1st formative impression associated with sex. Youngsters are generally viewing hard-core porn a lengthy time along with many years and also many years just before they'll have got their own sexual encounter and also it's shaken their view of what sex is. Correct on my small phone for anyone to access. Your porn moves into a lot more. He's account putted right directly into a woman associated with sexual violence. We observe a very clear rise in exercise inside the compensate center. she started the website calmed "make not porn" any sort of youtube video streaming channel on the particular internet exactly where true in order to life couples give office the peek beneat their own sheets. We're the very first to possess that which in turn you possess and there is no one just before us to manual us. Many with the kids I know would have confidence in our mothers as well as fathers over two porn stars in which we've by zero means met. Reporter: According to a minimum of one study, 7 involving ten adolescents have accidentally stumbled across porn online. How do you really feel now? Pissed off. Reporter: Nathan, a new adolescent within utah, ultimately admitted for you to the factor which was likely on to his parent tsz and was ultimately capable of quit however for others it's not that will easy. In Which sounds just similar to a drug addiction. He doesn't possess a reservoir of his own expertise regarding sexuality with some other people. Reporter: Not Really surprising these images frequently colour teens ideas involving what sex needs for you to be like. Sex can be powerful. I can't stop it. How do you get over that will low? Reporter: He turns in to a glimpse regarding his hard-fought struggle when they drive past any pretty girl and it instantly triggers the reaction. However experts are generally asking may always be the average adolescent actually ready for this? Hard-core porn. Reporter: We furthermore suspected porn can't be excellent for that teenage brain yet tonight a new study. He's possibly in absolutely no way had sex together with another human being. Reporter: Breeian has become 23 nevertheless remembers how strong the girl addiction had been in the course of almost all involving the girl senior substantial school years. one black guy as well as what spannic guy which blond woman and they were ferociously banging each and also every other. Regarding "nightline" I'm lindsay davis throughout new york. This transcript may be instantly generated and might not be 100% accurate. http://abcnews.go.com/Nightline/video/teenage-brain-porn-20750150 Transcript with regard to The Actual Teenage brain in Porn . Reporter: And Also with pornography thus ever-present, a number of teenagers grow to become able to be dependent on it. Just Like each along with every day I had been watching porn. Why? Regarding which split second, I just really feel like the best thing to complete so in which as soon as I've finished I'm similar to why your do i just do that. Any time we hear about celebrities claims to become hooked on sex there's a collective eye roll. Along With as effective as drugs and also alcohol. Here's abc lindsay davis. Reporter: Wshe's part of this new order of teens showing that will exapproximately sit images is found anywhere. Precisely why do you imagine you have this relationship with porn? I don't know. I wasn't sure what I would discover however in portion since we realize consequently little with regards to this. The Lady found twenty small men between your ages of 19 and also 34 whose lives were thus managed by porn these folks were willing being a new part of your study. Pertaining To many kids which can simply access porn from his or her computers as well as smartphones it may go well beyond merely a dirty habit and be an unsafe one. Reporter: far caleb he said it crept up upon him. Reporter: Additional producers such as this director are making what they say are generally softer, a lot more relatable depictions of sex. Reporter: Along With these images may be traumatic. When the information had been analyzed the outcomes had been astounding. I hated in which I couldn't stop. Inside these images you can begin to see the pleasure centers involving an addict's brain responding for their drug of choice. I would claim that this truly is some thing that was not only me. Via 12 for you to 13, all the approach up to 14, it was type of there, uninterrupted. It just seemed -- it was just something that my mind should have picked up. Just planning to go for any look. Substitute hard-core online porn with images involving real love-making. Reporter: 1 study isn't definitive and additionally the frayed team for your porn market says unlike drugs as well as alcohol, adult content material just isn't and cannot be described as a chemical addiction a maximum of compulsive shopping, gaming or even hoard. I'll never forget it. And Also it can't ever stay from home as sex education. We're the actual pioneers. That's why what we're performing is so important. From first I didn't be aware of restrictions and the bounds of the factor that will was extreme. That says in the large event you dress in this way you will end up treated well or you can easily up powerful. And Also it just didn't compare. I tried obtaining rid of my smartphone. I can't locate a way to stop. Compulsive pornography users have parallels using substance abuse disorder. Porn can always be a fantasy. Consequently annoying afterwards. Reporter: As Well As not merely boys. I became practically numb to end up being able to it. with scans regarding young adults using a porn compulsion present exactly the particular same result. Reporter: Your compulsive user's reactions had been doubly active as these inside the control group inside the pleasure center, identified as the striatum, matching your responses involving drug and alcohol addicts. Pertaining To this girl, these images that many kids thus a lot of regarding too soon, just don't translate in order to true life or perhaps true love

[moodyf0ody]

Introspection

It’s March! February has been a crazy month, I think so? Or was it the start of March? I don’t even keep track of dates anymore, everyday just passes and I just try my best to get my responsibilities done for the day. Everything that went by has been a blur, but some of the events have been so significant that I can’t help but learn from them. 

1) Reflecting on Class Time I realise how boring my teachers are. Really BMS is so repetitive but I still don’t know how to apply so I really think our teachers should give us more homework, including more essays and case studies. We’re getting so much less than the Science students and it may be that the Social Science teachers think that since their subjects are a little easier to understand, they don’t have to pressure us. Of course we have the option of doing our own work and passing it up to them, but how can we know which are the best questions to attempt, and if they’ll ACTUALLY mark it?! Damn it! 

ESS is such a drag, the presentations in class are better than having her present. But still, it’s a damn Science subject, you’re supposed to explain the concept to us first, not have us speculate about it. How does it make sense that our teacher has to study before she can answer our questions, especially when our questions are PURELY subject matter we don’t understand from the textbook? I also feel like the textbook does not even explain things, it just states them. What even is ESS? Why are my answers so different from the marking scheme. How am I supposed to find the time to practice questions also? How do you apply the damn thing! 

Maths is fine because maths just always makes sense, I think? I’m not practicing enough and I hate that! I guess I’m so swamped with my other activities but I shouldn’t make any excuses. I”m not efficient enough. Nevertheless, my Maths teacher does not inspire me to see the Maths in the world. Bummer! I think that is her job! 

The languages on the other hand have been so so enriching. English has had me thinking about how people should use language to convey important issues to each other. It has me thinking about how powerful language can be if the user of it has something to say. If only there people who were willing to listen and dwell upon the words, too! But of course, since so many people abuse the language and use it to maybe hurt people (NOT constructive criticism), it could be disastrous. However, I wish my English teacher knew more about the world because she doesn’t seem 100% aware on global issues, OR SO SHE SEEMS. I want more from her, more insight, more cultural artifacts that I can refer to. Oh, but I was pleasantly surprised when she brought in the John Barleycorn piece and I took about half an hour just trying to read one paper of it. But I made the correlation that John Barleycorn was not a person but a drink and it turned out to be what the author intended. That was when I started thinking, shit, that’s how it works! Everything is a fucking metaphor, people ARE actually saying EXACTLY what they mean, but NOT EXACTLY at FACE VALUE. It just depends on who’s listening. 

My Malay teacher just has a way of telling us things, she doesn’t need to have tons of knowledge about global issues, but I think she would be elevated onto as Ruth says, ‘unicorn level’ if she did. I love the concepts that she uses, and her energy is infectious! I nearly never fall asleep in Malay class. We started on our Reflective Statements and Written Assignments, and I think it’ll be interesting for me to discover which issues I am inclined towards. So far, it’s the negative issues portrayed by Naguib Mahfouz in Midaq Alley. Midaq Alley is so much fun, it’s so funny, ridicules the Arab society, reaches out to women and just makes me reflect upon the many characters in my own culture. I feel like I am so shielded from the bad in my country, I need to find more holes to peek through. Btw we just got a sneak peek at what we’ll be tested on in Paper 1 and it’s really cool how it works. I can’t wait to do more research on my Malay culture and history to understand why we do what we do and say what we say. Why is it that materialism is so prominent in this culture, and women oppression, and social status, and religion is sometimes used as an excuse, and also how religion can be a saviour? It’s so very exciting! I just came across some twitter accounts of Malaysian designers collecting some of our cultural artifacts, and I feel a certain way when I learn about my roots. But I only see the beautiful parts of it, I haven’t taken the time to really go through the dirt :/ I’m excited to see how my teacher tackles Madame Bovary, so far, I’m not really a fan of it. I like the element of how Emma is so brainwashed by romantic novels though, kinda seems like Flaubert’s mockery towards writers who write to do just that. Hm! 

Econs is the same as business. Sometimes, it’s really interesting but I think my teacher’s VOICE is just so sleepy. I like how she provides us with a lot of materials though (kind of a lot). Some tutorials and calculations, and she mixes things up in class sometimes. We just started learning about GDP and I’m thinking, how the hell do they do it in real life man? Going door to door obtaining all the data, and with all the possible inaccuracies, wow I’m excited to learn more about Econometrics. Intimated as well to be honest with ya. Although I really wish she could make relations to real life situations, like the economic conditions of our country at least you know. I mean I don’t have enough time to do the research and exploring, I have 6 subjects, isn’t she supposed to give it to me? Make use of class time? 

2) MPAC Wow, I don’t even know where to start with this one. We had 3 weeks of prior notice about the MEGAFAIR performance. It wasn’t a normal skit, it had a theme, intended audience, NO fee, and it was a half hour play. Yeap. I had a small team of 20, barely any with experience and no guidance whatsoever from the teachers. But we had this one senior, and input from Ruth’s friends from sekolah seni. 

“If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants”- Sir Isaac Newton 

This is how we managed to come up with our masterpiece, Nasi Lemak Mawar. We had many problems with the storyline and the script. Our first one was entertaining and funny, but we didn’t give it enough thought. We thought that anything that kind of made sense was okay. Then we received some negative reviews, an especially terribly negative review from YK, but it was exactly what we needed. For many days our teachers were telling us, “It’s not - MEGAFAIR. Think about your audience. You’re supposed to be talking about semangat kejihadan usahamanan! We were not getting it, we were overattached to our script and we were uninspired. 

Until, our senior told us, your plot is completely unrealistic, no one will learn anything from it, it’s a plot with a lot of holes. He pointed out the exact scenes and parts of the plot he had a problem with, and we got it. We finally understood. So that night we called him to brainstorm with us, and he was so willing to do it. It was awesome. Ruth’s friend suggested a simple plot, giving the teachers exactly what they wanted. But that’s just it, before this our conflict was between what the teachers wanted and what we had. Which is in other terms, boring shit and some funny ass shit! And on our first night of practice, our story was incredibly boring. INCREDIBLY BORING. I was like, this is not it. This is not gonna work. We’re doomed. 

At the end of that practice, we gathered together and I was not sensing any excitement from the crew. From my experience, I thought that an indicator of an entertaining play would be that the cast are dying to watch their friends’ scenes. And I didn’t see any of that. Everyone looked like they had something to say, and someone mentioned that we bring a new character to life, someone who actually matters. I realised how in a play, your characters should impact the plot, audience or the characters. And that was really missing from our play. We started brainstorming like crazy. I felt so enlightened and happy that other people were giving input. And it was golden input! 

Later that night, I couldn’t imagine myself sleeping, knowing that my story was not at its best. So I forced Ruth and Haleens to stay up with me and build this damn script. So we got the rough idea of things and since Haleena is great at doing things impromptu, and so is Ruth, they decided that we don’t fuss over a script. We see what the actors do. Ruth suggested that we build the character around what Haleena and Syahmi could do as well. And later on, as I developed the script (little by little) I found myself building my lines around my friends’ personalities. 

Practice was lots of fun, and the ideas were flowing. However, it was hard because some of us had homework and other commitments sometimes, people didn’t really speak their minds. Ruth was supposed to be my assistant director but she spend most of her time just clinging to Karam. I hated having to repeat myself when people were not being attentive, and when people came late. But I found that delegating tasks really helped me, because honestly there is a shiit load to do. 

I got the inspiration to show her visions for the business from a movie I watched, The Princess and the Frog and made a little dance to it. I was committed on that, because I knew that would add a lot of value to our play andI was right. My friends were cooperative as well, but I faced some issues with the music. Thank God, from a movie I watched, “Ferris beuller’s day off” I thought of another song, an even more perfect song to play. And it was a great decision because it was so much more upbeat. 

In the end, I had to make a proper play so that the sound and lighting people could follow (I made sure to assign some people here!) and most importantly to get the flow of the play. Otherwise, you would have people talking over each other and lines that are kind of lame coming out. So a script is motherfkg improtant. Also, we found utility hahaha in doing lines without the script and actions in a circle, running lines lah. 

For backstage stuff, Amin and I carefully assigned who would be carrying what in and out, and we made sure we practiced these transitions, also within a time limit. This was the part that the audience laughed at because of how fast my actors did it, and how LOUDLY they did it HAHAHA. It was really funny. This part was super stressful, but the actors were really independent and they were mainly alert, even at 1 am! Also, I told the sound managers exactly what they had to do, and told the actors exactly where their props had to be and where they had to be. This took a lot of time but it was very worth it, because it was very smooth. We took the time to practice with the EVER SO COOPERATIVE sound and lighting crew and we were so relieved that we did. 

Then it was showtime, and everyone came to watch. Even my family members! The audience was roaring and they were so into the play. However, my mum said the dance sequence was too short. But people still loved it so so much! They thought it was adorable, well-thought out, easy to follow and a good way to promote MARA. I loved how it turned out as well, finding it impossible to accept the credit because I knew it was not one person. It was 100% collaborative and it was beautiful! I learnt so so so much from this experience and I am so grateful to have the support from Karam, Ruth, my parents. To be surrounded by the super talented and hilarious actors I had. For the ideas and inspirations from the art all around us, and from the people as well. I feel so much closer to the school because I have put in a little part of me inside. Hm.