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maliciouslycreative · 3 years

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How I played damage control to an anti in a small anime fandom and may have led to her ultimate downfall

I know I had a really nice write up of this at one point but oh well. I’ll spill more of the tea in this one because honestly the tea was so hot.

There are a few things that I have to give context to first. Gaia online was like THE mega forum of the 2000s, you made a little avatar and through posting and doing other activities on the forum you made money to buy clothes for your avatar. There were forums for everything but the fannish portions were really what drew in most of the people. The anime I was into was Beyblade. It was a shonen anime about fighting with tops that were possessed by the spirits of magical creatures. The story was honestly pretty average but the characters were fantastic and the fandom is to this day still one of my favourites. The series had a primarily male cast and didn’t even have a female lead until the second season. This led to the fanfic for the English fandom being about 70% canon/OC, 10 % canon m/f, and 20% slash. The most popular character in the English fandom was by far Kai Hiwatari, the loner badboy of the team.

Also before we get started I would like to add that one of my best friends was neck deep in this and the two of us were more or less fandom married. This is the same friend that I fake dated, had feelings for, and she nearly got me into kpop in 2011 so like if you haven’t read that story please read it too because it will give you a good idea of how stupid I am and how much of a fanfic I have truly lived.

To set the stage I was 16, soon to be 17 when I joined the fandom and it was 2004. In September of that year I wrote a humour longfic that became an absolute smash hit and I found myself somehow fandom famous. It was around this time that I joined Gaia online. I made my little avatar and immediately went looking for the beyblade thread so that I could make new friends. I found the main thread, made my little introduction and at the end of it mentioned that I was a slash writer but I supported all ships. This is where I met C. She had declared herself the authority on Beyblade in these parts and I had just committed the crime of mentioning slash which was very obviously not canon and we did not discuss in this thread because we only discussed canon things. I was like well that’s a bit severe but like sure whatever I just want to hang out and have fun.

Oh boy did I have no idea what I was in for.

C was a year older than me and unfortunately that made her older than the majority of the fans at the time. Her favourite character was Kai, and she was not shy about talking about this fact. She stanned Kai above all other characters, and often at their expense. She was also a fanfic writer of a popular canon/OC series. Actually, she was so full of herself that she didn’t even call herself a fanfic writer, no her stories were in fact novels and were apparently very good. I never read them. But more on that later.

Eventually the slash fans got tired of her being rude to us in the general thread so we made a Beyblade slash thread. There was a core of like 8 or so of us and we honestly had sooo much fun. When C would be too unbearable in the main thread the people from there used to come over to our thread and we’d chat with them about non slash stuff because we were honestly all multishippers and just wanted to have fun. We’d get comments like “wow, I’ve had more pleasant canon het ship discussions in the slash thread than the regular thread”. We never worried about C coming over and getting upset about comments like this because she refused to be associated with anything related with slash lmao.

I tried my best to keep the peace between C, myself, and the rest of the fandom because ultimately I hate being in fandom drama. I just want everyone to have a good time. I’m a people pleaser. Unfortunately my newfound fame put me in the awkward position of being the most fandom popular person in our small community aside from C. Virtually every fan that read fanfics that came into our thread knew one of us or the other by reputation and C HATED this. Especially because people would come in to the thread, recognise me and go “oh my goodness I love your fanfics!” and I’d be super sweet with them and it’d lead into “I can’t believe how nice you are, I love you” which would lead to us crying at each other. This was not the kind of fan interaction that C got, no her fans were more kind that were there to praise her and worship her like a deity that had blessed them with some gift. Rarely did they tell her how kind she was.

Back in the mid 2000s there were really commonly those commercials (usually by Christian organisations) asking people to sponsor say children in Africa or to help build schools or provide drinking water. You all probably know the ones; know the language that they used in those commercials. My fandom wife, who I suppose I shall call wifey because yes we were THAT couple back then, once said that C described her fics like those people described donating money to save the lives of Children in Africa. So we used to joke that her fics were so good they’d save lives in Africa. Looking back at it all, she almost had a very fundamentalist Christian approach to bringing people into her fanfics. She of course tried to get all the slash people into reading it. None of us read canon/oc fic mostly due to our poor treatment at the hands of their fans and creators. Getting fed up I one day told her that if she would read any one of my fanfics that I would read the entirety of her novels. Yes, I was willing to commit to read a couple 100k of canon/oc fanfic that I’d never touch normally if she would even read one of my 1k 1 shots. Heck, I had a fic even that shipped 2 minor characters so she didn’t even have to sully herself reading about one of the main characters. It was honestly a good deal in her favour. I kept this up until the day we all left the fandom. Sometimes I do wonder if her fics were even ¼ as good as she claimed, but I will never know because she refused to read my fics.

She wasn’t all bad and a tyrant all the time. As long as people kept the conversations on track and didn’t come in to the thread saying things like “KAI IS SO HOT ND T3H BEST N I AM GUN 2 MARRY HIM” she stayed mostly civil. It was always hilarious watching InuYahsa or Naruto fans try to come in and bad mouth Beyblade because they’d unleash the dragon and C was great at chasing off undesirables in the thread.

The real apex of goings on though on Gaia was the guild drama. So guilds were like exclusive themed mini forums within Gaia. Anyone could buy one and run it however they want, as long as it still adhered to Gaia’s ToS. C of course was the owner of the only Beyblade guild. The fandom wasn’t really big enough to support 2 guilds so we just kind of let it go. Technically she allowed people to post slash fanfics but like everything had to be explicitly tagged and there was absolutely no slash RP. Wifey and I controlled a handful of minor characters together in the forum RP and definitely used to try to push the boundaries a little bit. Some ambiguous flirting here, a stray comment there. It was such a fragile balance though because C was heavy on the ban button. The active portion of the guild was just people that were in the cult of C and worshipped her writing.

Understandably the other slash fans and myself were getting disheartened by this. So we pooled our funds together and decided that we’d open a second guild that though it was run by slash fans we would welcome anyone into our ranks. We just wanted to have a fun place for everyone to hang out, and to hopefully run a few events out of. In hindsight, we should have seen what would happen. When we opened the guild, with me as the guild leader, it was like somebody blew up the whole dam protecting the delicate ecosystem we had cultivated. Every single person in the Gaia fandom that was not a zealous follower of C applied to be in our guild and left her guild. We of course figured that we’d attract some of the gen population but we did not expect to accidentally poach all of it. All of the moderators were getting messages from people thanking us for giving them a place where they could say whatever they wanted without fear of getting their faces ripped off or banned.

C lost her shit. She was so mad that we went behind her back to ruin her guild. We literally had to show her posts in the very public slash thread that we had been planning this in public and that it was not to ruin her life. We just wanted a place where we could freely post slash. The two of us had some spicy comments back and forth and then she dropped an absolute bombshell on me. Since Gaia’s mail system is terrible I unfortunately no longer have exactly what she said but it was something along the lines of “Ok, you win. I’m going to close my guild.”. Us slash fans had never been doing this to win anything. We had never been competing. We just wanted a safe space to be ourselves.

C never joined our guild. The fandom slowly faded out within the next year anyway. We weren’t getting new content so naturally people just drifted into other fandoms. C kept up with the main Beyblade thread for a lot longer than most of us but eventually that eventually faded into obscurity too.

I learned a lot about fandom bullies from those days. But honestly the thing that stuck with me the most out of everything was that if you provide a positive safe space for people they will flock to it. It may seem like there are so many hostile people out there, but there really aren't. They're the minority but they just make sure that their voice is the loudest. The best way is to ignore them and just do your own thing. The bullies just want attention and if you don’t give it to them and prove to them that their opinion doesn’t matter to you then they’ll move in and find something else to yell at.

#malicious musings #stacey's adventures in fandom drama #lol #honestly it was such a fucking wild time #if i think of any other specific instances of drama i'll add them #god i wish i had screenshots of some of what went on #but sadly going through archived gaia posts is easier said than done

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earth-ambassador-jim · 3 years

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Lost Souls: Story 11

Something New

Lost Souls Summary: Merlin awakens early from his sleep. He decides that he doesn’t want to leaving anything to chance and kidnaps the young James Lake Jr. to began training his Trollhunter as early as possible.

Barbara is determined to hunt down the man who kidnapped her son. In her efforts to get her son back she finds a strange old radio that speaks to her in a woman’s voice. The radio leads her to an underground society of shapeshifters.

Mother and son meet again years later as strangers on opposing sides.

AO3 - Fanfiction

~~~~

“Head up! Don’t block the blow: redirect it.”

Eli tries to comply but it’s hard when his arms feel like they’re made out of jelly. Instead of being redirected Jim’s staff pushes Eli’s down causing him to bop himself in the forehead with his own weapon.

Eli topples over like a load of bricks and lays there. A low whine seeps through his lips as his tailbone pulses with pain from hitting the ground too hard. That will be another bruise for his collection.

He’s actually managed to get more bruises training with Jim than he has from Steve. Which is really saying something.

“Are you okay?”

He opens his eyes to see Jim hovering awkwardly over him, staff still in hand. He’s shifting back and forth on his feet in a way that tells Eli he’s debating whether to keep pushing him or end the session here.

Eli doesn’t really want to disappoint him, so he tries to sit up. All his muscles protest. He lays back down. Yeah, he isn’t going anywhere. The training montages in movies really fail to capture just how much pushing oneself to the limits hurts.

“We’ll stop for the day,” Jim decides.

He sets his staff against the house before retrieving Eli’s and setting it there too.

“Can you get up?” Jim asks.

Now that he’s not in training mode he stands a little less straight and his expression softens from his previously sharp focused gaze.

“Yeah… maybe,” Eli says, his voice squeaking a little. “Just a second.”

Eli lays on the ground just breathing and trying to summon the energy to make another attempt at standing up. He knows he’s going to be sore in the morning again.

He honestly wants to give up. Clearly he isn’t cut out for this.

There’s movement to his right and Eli looks over to see Jim laying down beside him. The blue skinned troll blends in almost perfectly with the night; except for his eyes which glow a faint, ethereal blue. He settles on his back, head propped just slightly up by his horns.

“So…” The troll says slowly. “You were telling me that human constellations are different than troll ones?”

Eli nods slightly, unable to look away. His glasses slide down his nose. He quickly pushes them back up.

“Do you want to compare?”

“Really?!” Eli squeaks, surprised.

Next to exploring the strange and unusual, stars and space has always been one of his greatest interests. Something about the vastness and boundlessness draws him. He studies every book he can get his hands on.

This is a chance to learn what a being that isn’t human sees. That’s… that’s something beyond his wildest dreams.

But more importantly, it’s a chance to talk about something that he loves with a friend.

“Eli?”

Jim is looking at him rather nervously. Eli realizes that he’s teared up.

“I’d like that,” He says. He pushes his glasses up to swipe at his eyes before giving Jim a smile.

~~~~

As predicted, Eli is very very sore.

He spends the day limping through his classes. He wonders if this is what old people feels like. He’s so glad when it’s time to go home.

His arm positively aches as he transfers the textbooks he doesn’t need to his locker. As much as he enjoys spending time with Jim he’s glad that the Trollhunter won’t be over tonight. He doesn’t think he can take another round of training.

He plans to take it easy when he gets home. He can get his homework done and then he’ll see if he can snag enough of his friends from the forums to play a round of Among Us.

Eli flinches as a hand lands on his shoulder. Without turning around he already knows who it is. Automatically his shoulders draw up toward his ears as he pulls his arms in close to his chest.

“What do you want Steve?”

“Why, I was just worried about my favorite nerd,” The blond bully says with mock sincerity. “I haven’t heard any of your wild conspiracies and was starting to be concerned about your health.”

Eli hasn’t been sharing his theories and discoveries since meeting Jim because he promised Jim to keep trolls and the other creepers… creatures running around Arcadia secret. He still discusses aliens but he’s been sticking with his friends online and Jim now, since they don’t laugh at him.

He figured since he had been keeping to himself Steve would ignore him, but now he’s seeking him out because of that.

There really is no winning, he realizes.

“Can’t you just leave me alone?” Eli asks quietly.

Steve doesn’t appreciate that.

The blond bully shoves him and he hits the locker hard sending a violent jolt of pain through his back. His books fall out of his arms and scatter on the ground.

“Don’t talk back to me butsnack.”

Eli glances around but there’s nowhere to escape in the crowded hallway and, as usual, no one seems inclined to help.

“I think you need to spend some time in your locker until you remember your manners,” Steve continues with a glint in his eyes.

A whimper escapes Eli at that. He doesn’t want to spend another hour stuck in the locker again. His eyes dart around frantically.

Steve reaches for him and takes a step forward, his foot landing just in front of Eli’s spilled textbooks.

“Use your surroundings as a weapon.” Jim’s voice whispers in the back of his mind.

With no other options presenting themselves, Eli kicks Steve in the shin as hard as he can. The bully lets out a yelp and grabs at his injured leg. Eli doesn’t wait for him to recover. Ignoring the protests of his aching muscles he shoves him hard in the chest. Normally it would have done nothing but Steve, already off balance, stumbles and his foot lands on Lord of the Flies. He topples over backward and slams hard into the ground.

The hallway goes completely silent.

Eli stares, his heart still racing. He can’t believe it. He actually managed to take down Steve.

Steve Palchuck! The boy who’s been tormenting him since kindergarten.

Around him all the other kids start murmuring.

Then someone cheers and then the whole crowd is whooping and hollering.

Steve seems to have recovered from his shock and is getting up. He’s turning a violent red and it’s pretty clear that he’s going to get revenge. Eli has the feeling he won’t get lucky a second time.

“Hey! What’s going on here?”

Eli is about ready to collapse from relief when Coach Lawrance’s voice breaks through the noise. The crowd of students disperses like cockroaches. Steve backs off, shooting him glares.

Eli gathers his books and slinks off to get his bike with the distinct feeling that this incident will come back to haunt him.

~~~~

“Can you believe it?” Mary squeals.

Her fingers are darting rapidly over her phone. No doubt she’s already uploading a video to one of her many social media accounts. Steve is going to be livid.

“Girl, I saw it but I still don’t believe it,” Darci says.

Eli Pepperjack getting one up on Steve was the last thing she had been expecting out of school today.

“What do you think Toby?” She says nudging him in the ribs.

Since they’ve made it to high school and have Claire and Mary to hang out with, she’s determined to get him to come out of his shell.

Toby blinks and looks up from his phone.

“Yeah it was pretty cool,” He says, eying the other two girls hesitantly.

Claire give him a friendly smile and he awkwardly smiles back before quickly returning his attention to his phone.

Darci sighs and shoots Claire an apologetic look. Claire shrugs in response and then she, Mary and Darci continue to discuss the strange happenings of the day sans Toby’s input.

~~~~

“Would it hurt you to try to be a little friendlier?”

Toby winces. Yeah he deserved that one.

“Sorry,” He says, a slight flush crawling up the back of his neck.

Darci lets out a little huff.

“You should be, Mary and Claire are the best. Come on TP you’ve got to give them a chance.”

Toby doesn’t reply. Instead opting to instead focus all his attention on the game. His fingers fly over the controls. He understands what she’s getting at. He really does but well…

“I guess I’m just not ready for new people.”

There’s a ping as they reach the end of the round. Toby hazards a brief glance up and sees Darci looking at him with a puzzled frown.

“But you know Mary and Claire,” She says. “I’ve been friends with them for as long as I’ve known you. You’ve hung out before and never had a problem with them.”

“I know,” He mutters. “It’s just…”

He doesn’t want to admit it. It’s pathetic.

“It’s Jim, isn’t it?”

Toby gives her a weak grin.

“Have you been taking lessons from your Dad? Cause that was some real detective work there.”

Darci snorts.

“It doesn’t take a detective to figure that one out.” She gives him a little poke on the shoulder to emphasize her point.

Toby sighs and drops his controller.

“It’s not just Jim,” He admits in a subdued tone. This is something he’s thought about a lot. “It’s Mom and Dad, too… Heck even Dr. L just up and left. It was fine hanging out with them once in a while as your friends but what’s the point in me becoming friends with them? Once we get done with high school everyone is just going to move on. I just don’t want to deal with that.”

It would be bad enough when Darci moved on.

He can feel her staring at him.

“You know I’m not going to abandon you, right?” She asks.

Toby winces. It sounds bad out loud. She puts her hand on his shoulder and he glances up hesitantly. She’s smiling at him in a very gentle and sad way that makes his chest ache.

“Even if we end up on opposite sides of the world I’ll keep in touch. You won’t lose me okay?”

“You don’t know that.” It slips out before he can stop it.

Darci sighs.

“Look I… I guess there really is no way to know for sure but do you really just want to give up? Just like that? To spend your whole life alone?”

“Not really…” Toby says slowly.

“Then can you give them a try? For me?”

He can’t resist those big brown eyes.

“Okay,” Toby says. “I’ll give them a chance, but no promises on results.”

Darci’s smile and quick hug makes it worth it. Toby just hopes he won’t regret this. He clears his throat roughly and focuses his attention back on the screen. He starts another round hoping he can drown out the uneasy feeling in his gut.

“You know I really could use a larger audience to practice my magic for. You know all of my tricks anyway.”

Darci claps her hands together

“Oh! That reminds me. Mare told me there’s a new bookstore in town. She was going on and on about how cute the guy who was working the counter was, but, more importantly, she mentioned there’s a huge selection of magic type books. Want to go check it out?”

“Sure,” Toby says. “That sounds like fun.”

He doubts there will be anything real there but maybe he can find some cool props to use for the next talent show.

~~~~

Author Notes:

Steve has really come a long way. He was a major bully back in the beginning of the series. Hopefully we'll get to see more character development for him in Rise of the Titans. (Also more CreepslayerZ! I miss the CreepslayerZ.)

Jim grew up with Kanjigar and Merlin's training so his version of "going easy" is still really pushing it for an inexperienced human. It's going to be a while yet before Eli is not sore again.

Jim learned the Trollish constellations from Kanjigar. While he never took him to Trollmarket, Kanjigar did start taking him outside within Merlin's barrier. Stargazing was Jim's absolute favorite thing to do with him.

Next chapter we get to see Jim's visit to his old home before he became a troll!

If you like this be sure to tell me what you think :)

#Trollhunters #Tales of Arcadia #Trollhunters Fanfiction #Lost Souls #Child Champion AU #Jim Lake Jr #james lake jr #eli pepperjack #steve palchuk #darci scott #toby domzalski #tobias domzalski #troll jim #half troll jim #bullying #training #Darci and Toby are BFFs in this

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technicallyblakebelladonna · 3 years

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some rando on the RWBY forum on the RT site whos’ doing a rwby rewrite: i think ilia needs to prove herself to blake more and provide “evidence” to blake so that blake knows that she can Truly trust ilia again

me *cracking my knuckles about to write a dissertation*: well, actually

i'm biased because i'm a huge ilia fan and i love her a lot, but honestly, i believe crwby did a phenomenal job on her redemption arc, from an audience's standpoint. before you make your full judgement on what you choose to rewrite or not, take their fight in v5e10 into context as well. ilia has a very telling line when she's dueling blake - when blake says that she's "a good person but making all the wrong choices" / "is this what your parents would've wanted?" ilia says back "i dont know what else to do!" and i think crwby did an excellent job portraying that as a part of her arc the whole time we see her on screen in v5. she's doing what she thinks is right based on the resources/circumstances that she has, that are presented to her now if you think that blake should have more "evidence" when you're writing their arc together, that's totally your judgement call -- because there's a lot of good fill-in scenes between blake/ilia that could easily be explored within the context of the volume 5 timeline. but there's also pre-canon to keep in mind as well - and remembering blake and ilia's history together. likely in the white fang they probably bonded and became very close friends. when blake left the white fang (to escape adam) that presumably hurt ilia very deeply, and would account for a fair amount of ilia's anger. i'm not saying her actions in betraying the belladonnas to adam (blake's biggest personal antagonist) are justified or in any way Correct, but even still there are reasons for them - which, from ilia's character standpoint, make sense for her character personally. all that to say, how you want to write your fan fic is of course, totally up to you. if you want to have more conversations between blake and ilia so that ilia has to work harder to earn blake's trust, i would say that that's totally valid -- there's only so much screen time crwby could give to certain characters/relationships at any given time. but i think it's really important to consider blake's goals in this too - i don't believe i recall a time where ilia and blake were fighting where blake actually WANTED to fight ilia. or where she wanted to punish ilia for the wrong things she'd done. basically every single one of her interactions with ilia is blake seeing the good in ilia and trying to help her see it too - to convince her that she does have a choice and that she can choose to good, just like blake herself did. it's not that they're fighting with each other - it's more that blake is challenging ilia's morals and her sense of what's right and trying to help her out of the path she's been walking down for so long so again, write what you want, but i would challenge you to take care and be cautious about making ilia into an extreme antagonist for blake/her family. ilia's canon choices definitely are bad, no doubt about that, but it's always come from a place of misplaced anger and being misguided as a child (by adam) into a belief that there was only One Way to do things -- and by the time she was old enough to realize that her gut was telling her she was on the wrong path, she was stuck and has since then truly believed that there was only one way go through life. which is why blake coming along and being that forgiving of her and showing her that unwavering belief, that was the catalyst for ilia's ability to change. someone finally told her what she needed to hear all along - that she had a good heart, that she could make the right choice and that she could change

#rwby #ilia amitola #catmeleon #blake belladonna #random reagan rambles #ray rants #i see One Mention of ilia and i literally go feral #like it's ironic that i JUST joined the rwby forum the other day #on RT i mean #before i hadn't bothered using my RT account for anything other than watchign videos or occasional livestream #but i saw a notif that had someone mention in their post about ilia #and #well. i just.#i had to yknow

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lighdramons · 3 years

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Hi I'm back. I promised awhile ago I’d tell the story of the fucked up digi.mon cult, so I figured that’s a great start for getting back onto this hellsite.

If the read more works, everything will be below the cut and it is a mess. Just a few things before the cut though:

General TW as I will be bringing up some of the bad experiences I had as well as talking about mental illness.

I will not be using names of sites, usernames, etc. I will not answer on specific users either. I’m sure these sites are still operating somewhere privately and back in the day, some of these people were big in the Digi.mon community outside of the sites as well.

If any of the people involved see this, no ill wishes towards you guys, just my take on things.

I quit these sites back in early 2015. I do not know what happened after I quit. I am only still in contact with a few individuals who either quit around the same time as me or long before.

As a general courtesy, some of these sites still exist. Please do not go harass them. A lot of the public sites are just teens trying to figure out themselves.

If you have questions or comments after reading this whole thing, I’m happy to answer any either publicly or privately. And yes, you can reblog this post.

We need to jump back to 2007 to begin with. I was a middle schooler getting back into Digi.mon because I walked into Gamestop and Digi.mon was sitting in the new releases. And I had access to the internet. I did binge S1-5 with subs and watching reruns of the dub on Toon Disney. I spent some time on the big fansite. Great site, just bad experience at the time because I was a teen and probably lied about my age. I didn’t feel like that was the community for me. I do check it every day now for news, just never made a new account cause I don’t even remember what I used back in the day.

By end of 2008/beginning of 2009 I began looking for other sites, stumbled across the digiclipse stuff on the bad encyclopedia site, looked into it, thought it was neat, moved on. Stuck with the big site for now because the only other sites I found were RP sites and not my thing at the time. Got hit hard with depression at the start of 10th grade (late 2010) and found my way back onto the digiclipse stuff. Didn’t really believe most of it, but thought the idea of creating AI Digi.mon was neat. Joined the smaller of the two sites because it felt friendlier and most users seemed my age.

For people who do not know, digiclipse is the act of going outside and holding the toys up hoping to get teleported. Most people by the time I joined thought the people who did this were crazy. Some people liked to do it for the lolz though.

Anyways, most of what happened on the sites was just talking and hanging out in chat rooms about life and other things. It was pretty chill. I can’t speak for everyone on the sites, but for me it was an escapism kind of thing. I was depressed and hated life so pretending that a magical adventure was a possibility gave me some hope. But honestly, got a group of people who were cool to talk with for the most part. There was one older female in her mid 20s that would come in the chat drunk and sexually harass the other female users and tell all the male they should die and are worthless. Nothing was ever done about her. And honestly it was weird having her there when most of the other people on the site were under 18. That was initially my only bad experience on the sites.

At some point during 2011, there were three individuals who claimed to see and speak with their digi.mon partners. And that they could read your aura and tell you exactly your digi.mon partner. And everyone believed this shit, mostly because two of them were prominent members and how could they lie. The process was simple, you would DM them either a creative piece you’ve done (art, writing, etc) or send a photo of yourself and they’d come back in a few days and tell you who your partner was. There was only ever one individual this method of tracking did not work on and that is yours truly. Oh and at the time it hit hard because I had started falling down the rabbit hole. This is the beginning of the cult-ish stuff.

Then the Ouija board happened. I have no issues with what happened during the fucking around with said Ouija board, I have issues with everything that spiraled out of control after. They fucked around with it confirming people’s partners that the others had “found”. And eventually they asked about mine. And then it was basically said, “oh we can’t tell you the results”. I was eventually added to this secret site of “The Chosen”. And basically told, “oh your partner is the offspring/creation of THE BIG BAD” and there were all sorts of debates on what to do about it. I literally thought I was getting punked at first and these people are clearly taking this whole thing too far. No, these people all believed this. Oh and the best part, most of the people involved in this “chosen” group were in their mid 20s. Me being a depressed as fuck 16yo that just wanted something exciting in life ended up eating all this up. I felt special and chosen. I look back on it now and I’m like what a fucking idiot.

We were all taught from the three who could do the stuff I explained earlier how we can also learn to bond and communicate and see our partner. I had absolutely no progress. Eventually this stuff led to everyone in this “chosen” group getting a “special guardian spirit”. Again, I made no progress on this. And to the point where they made me feel special again, I was the only person who had the wrong “guardian spirit” and they eventually found my “real one”, more on this later.

These discussions moved from a forum site to a private skype chat room, and then further smaller private chat rooms. The movement to skype is where I started having some bad experiences. I gave a few of my “close” friends on the site my phone number, soon everyone had my number. And this happened to multiple people over the years. My own stupidity at the time.

This stuff continued as I finished high school. At the time, I still managed to maintain my social life with school friends, keep up my grades, etc. Got into college with a good scholarship in my dream field. And then I started to go downhill once I got to school. The longer this stuff went on, the more you were expected to be involved. Including being on skype calls all night. It slowly began consuming my life. I ended up not only with depression, but ending up with an ED that was tied to anxiety so I’d go days without eating. I was seeing things and hearing voices, which was highly encouraged because it meant things were working. I literally could not tell the difference of when I was asleep or awake. I honestly do not remember the majority of my freshman year of college. I had no real friends and was just barely scraping by grade-wise. And well, the academic year almost ended with me hanging from a pipe in my dorm.

I ended up running the site I started on as an admin after the original admin team left. And it was expected you do not mention any of the “secret” stuff on the main site. Over the years I know it became clear to the users not included that there were secrets in the background. And those who knew stuff would actively fuck with these users. And if I haven’t made it clear yet, there was a hierarchy to this whole secret group. And it was the original three who were mentioned at the beginning that were on top. And what they said was gospel. Whatever they claimed is what happened and whatever rules they had were the rules. But of course certain people could break the rules and get away with it.

This next part happened at some point during my freshman year and will be relevant again later on. This is the biggest TW section so skip if you have to. I had a user dox me. He had my home address and threatened to post it. He had sent it privately to a few other users as well that alerted me of this. His reasoning? I would not date him or say I loved him. He told me that he would come to my house, murder me, r*pe my dead body, because he is the only one who gets to have me. Another user got involved and called the cops. I do not know if anything ever came of this because I never spoke to anyone about it. I at the time had admin privileges on one of the sites so I banned him and blocked his IP and I blocked him on anything I could. And I continued doing this over the years. I was told I was a bad person for doing this because I did not understand him. This lead to a lot of the things in the above paragraph getting worse.

As this all continued, there were battles and casualties and everyone ended up with like 20 partners. And if you haven’t noticed I’ve stopped using the term digi.mon entirely in the past few paragraphs. That’s because oh they weren’t digi.mon. They were spirits/dimensional beings that took on a form we were comfortable with and we formed a bond with. And I kept going along with all of this because I was in too deep at this point. And obviously yes, this all made sense. So at some point during this time, my “spirit” went to sleep and a new one “awakened”. And I of course still went along with all this. The BIG BAD kept mutating into stronger forms and blah blah blah.

During my fall semester sophomore year, I joined theatre at my college and did tech. Honestly, one of the reasons I was able to begin breaking away from this. I started to get an actual friend group and have less time for these sites. But there was always a pull of “you have to be here”. You were expected to be on skype calls and/or active in chat.

Well, that all changed at the start of 2015. They wanted a deletion of all the other sites and they would have one site united under one belief system. I was not a huge fan of this and made this known, but also offered to help in the coding as that was a skill I had that no one else really had. It got out around that I was a cunt and a power hungry bitch and blah blah blah. If it was just that, I would probably not have left. No no no, I was accused of lying about the shit that that user said and did to me. Because he is such a nice guy that could never do that type of stuff. And unless I provided the receipts I was clearly an attention seeking liar that wanted to ruin his life. That was the straw. I fucking blacked out in a rage and attempted to delete some of the different websites, I blasted some of these people on their real facebooks, and then I deleted all of my accounts and blocked everyone and blocked their numbers.

After that, I started talking with other people that quit. I started enjoying my college life. And I tried to act like none of that stuff had happened. I distanced myself from those individuals that were active in the Digi.mon community. I stopped hearing the voices and seeing things. I started going to therapy. My road hasn’t been perfect, but I’ve come a long way since I got out of this stuff. Honestly going to meet up with one old member after covid is all clear cause we’ve known each other for over a decade now and its about time we finally meet in person.

So yeah, that’s my story. I know I jumped around a bit and thoughts might not be too clear, but I wanted to share the fucked up things that happen in the background of the digi.mon community. Did I have good times? Hell yeah. The Olive Garden incident still to this day is iconic. We played d&d oneshots sometimes. We had memes. We all watched xros and hunters together live. And I still have some good friends out of this. The most fascinating thing out of all of this is everyone from the community that I still am either in contact with or see them via social media had admitted over the years to suffer from some kind of mental illness and has come out as part of the LGBTQA+ community. My own conclusion is a lot of us got sucked in due to depression/escapism and just a feeling of not belonging. And being around people of similar age with similar interests just made things more bearable at times. It also made a lot of us very vulnerable to the manipulation that took place, whether it was intentional or just one big group delusion created by multiple mentally ill people. I call it a cult, but I'm sure people will disagree with me. Whatever you want to call it, it wasn't good for my mental health in the long run.

If this shit is still going on, I hope people aren’t letting it consume their lives. And I just wish the best for everyone even if some of the shit hurt me.

As I said up top, if you want me to elaborate on anything or have questions, I’m good with talking about stuff. If you know me IRL and are reading this and are like "RACHEL WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK" I owe you a drink and explanation. And of course it Is okay to reblog. This is one hell of a comeback post on this site, am I right?

#ray's rants #im back on this hellsite and im here to share bullshit

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benisasoftboi · 4 years

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Gushing time.

Rune Factory 4 Special arrived a day early, so my entire day has been consumed in nostalgia. The original Rune Factory 4 was the first video game I ever bought on release day - I remember saving up all my money and making my mum drive me to like three different shops trying to find one that had it. I was already a fan of the franchise - before then, Rune Factory 3 had been my favourite video game, across the board. Aside from a playthrough of the first game last year, I haven’t played a Rune Factory game in a long time, certainly not RF4. But just starting up the game and hearing the music again, it was like it was suddenly seven years ago. Running around Selphia and seeing all the characters again - I love JRPGs, have played a lot of them, and I can think of very few that have characters that have stuck with me this long. And the aesthetics - the best thing about the Rune Factory franchise has always been the aesthetics, the music, the scenic and character design, just the general world. It’s a beautifully whimsical balance of urban and fantasy, and it’s the only JRPG world I think I’ve ever come across that I would genuinely want to live in. Rune Factory may no longer be my favourite game franchise - but I don’t think there has ever been another series that has felt so much like home to me.

Here’s a very long selection of personal highlights from the art book (by which I mean photos of the art followed by my rambling opinions):

Yeah, see, here’s the thing - Rune Factory 1 is not a good game. I could write an entire essay on why it’s bad (I actually started and got pretty damn far before realising no one’s interested in my two thousand word review of a game that came out over a decade ago - the short version is ‘Misty Bloom-fucking-Cave’. Anyone who’s played RF1 knows exactly what I mean). Don’t get me wrong, it has good qualities - excellent boss fights, for one, and also, as with the rest of the franchise, it is aesthetically wonderful. But ultimately, it feels less like playing a video game, and more like playing a proof of concept for a game. Which I guess it kind of was - and I can’t hate it because we wouldn’t have the rest of the series without it.

But it literally ends with a dragon spewing plant breath on a tank to make a turnip grow out of the gun. ‘Profound’, my arse.

It’s Raguna! The “master sowrdsman!” (that is not a typo on my part that is a direct quote from the ending of Rune Factory 1 this game’s script had so many issues-). And Mist! My favourite of the ‘canon’ love interests!

Best girl! When I was a kid, my favourite love interest in RF1 was Rosetta. As an adult, it is Tabatha. I don’t know what it is about her that I find so likeable (she’s as lacking in personality as any other RF1 character), but... idk, I just like her a lot.

Camus’s big ambition is to leave town like even once. He will never achieve it

Fun fact about Melody is that she’s extremely depressed, a fact that comes up once in an optional side quest and is never addressed again. It’s incredibly dark for an RF game

Fun fact about Lukas is that he sucks (he’s one of those ‘obsessed with talking about how hot all the girls are’ characters, an archetype that thankfully doesn’t show up again in these games). But also, interestingly enough, thanks to one of RF1′s many, many script errors, if you marry Rosetta (the girl Lukas is the most obsessed with), he’s supposed to express disappointment that he lost her to Raguna - but instead, he implies that he’s disappointed to have lost Raguna to her. The translators typoed their way into giving him a sexuality change. Which is honestly kind of amazing.

LOOK AT THIS SLIME THIS IS SUCH A COOL SLIME LITERALLY EVERY OTHER JPRG SLIME GO HOME DRAGON QUEST GET FUCKED (jk I like Dragon Quest a lot and its slimes are cool too). Wish you could see in-game that this is what they’re meant to be like.

I just generally love the monster designs, they’re really charming

Rune Factory 2! The RF game with the most weirdly mundane protagonist name (Kyle. In the main four games of this franchise we’ve got Raguna, Micah, Lest, Frey... and Kyle). The two generations thing was actually very cool, but when they say ‘each chapter captures a different lifestyle’, what they really mean is ‘the first half is a weak Harvest Moon I’m sorry, STORY OF SEASONS game, and the second half is a pretty good Rune Factory game’

lookit this little fuck

Yue Yue Yue! I love Yue so much, she’s great. She’s kind of like a much chiller version of Anna from Fire Emblem.

It’s really cool that we got to see grown up Cecilia (she was in RF1). I have this silly headcanon that if Kyle doesn’t marry Mana, Nicholas (her friend in 1) comes to visit Cecilia one day in the hazy-post game future, and meets Mana, and they get together. While Yue is my favourite, I do genuinely like Mana a lot, and I just want her to find love, I guess.

Here’s original Barrett! There’s a reason he was popular enough to make a reappearance (well, aside from the whole grumpy pretty boy thing he’s got going on) - he was a great character in this game. His and Dorothy’s relationship is also definitely the most compelling of the rival romances. Bonus Max, who also has a little shout-out in RF4 (check the diary in what will become Dylas’s bedroom at the start of the game)

Ray is male, but apparently he was originally going to be a female character, as he has an unused portrait in a wedding dress. My friend and I agree that this makes him a Trans Icon

Monster designs remain excellent. Especially the goblins

Skipping over Frontier (and also Oceans later), as I never got to play it growing up due to not having a console, and still haven’t got around to it - might try this summer. Except I do need to point out that these guys should be memes. I don’t know in what way. But they should.

Rune Factory 3! My first RF game. The transformation thing was very cool, even if it was basically useless outside the main story. My friend and I spent hours mucking about in the WiFi dungeon. I loved the desert settlement and all of the dungeon designs in general, and man, RF3 is just great. I hope it gets a remake one day.

Raven Raven Raven! I LOVE Raven (as do most). Her story with Micah is the first time I can remember getting genuinely invested in a video game romance. I’m so glad she cameos in RF4. I love her. She’s wonderful.

I have an odd fondness for Marian. When I was about twelve, I decided to do a playthrough where I deliberately romanced the least popular bachelorette. After poking around on forums, I determined that character to be Marian, and did a run with her. And... I actually came to really like her. I find her endearing. I get that people find her annoying and don’t like her... unethical medical practices, but doing that run has still made me a pretty protective of her. It’s been a long time since I played RF3, so maybe I’d change my mind if I replayed now, but currently, as far as I’m concerned, Marian’s a good’un.

I think I also used to low key ship her with Collette lol

Pia’s official art has always been super weird to me because it’s so not what her character is like in-game. She’s a ditzy airhead. This makes her look so serious

RAINBOW! Another character whose art makes them look way more serious than they actually are. Daria is great and would be a meme if this game was more popular. I think she’s also implied to be a relative of Margaret.

I’ve always been super confused about what Kuruna’s skirt is meant to be. Is it fur? Is it part of her shirt? Is it even a skirt at all?

Check it out, it’s the guy everyone would ship Micah with if this game was more popular

I want Zaid to make a reappearance and interact with Doug. Pretty sure it’s canon that they’re from the same clan? Think it would be very interesting.

RF3 definitely had the coolest farm. Also, still love the desert settlement.

This is from Oceans, so I have no context, but it’s just so cool that I had to share

Rune Factory 4. Culmination of the series is right - when I was playing it for the first time, I remember being blown away by just how much it is a true love letter to the franchise. I have never come across another game series that so consistently grew and improved from entry to entry. RF4 was a perfect ending.

Not that I’m complaining about getting RF5. Quite the opposite.

But if it had been the end (as we all thought it was until about a year ago), well, like I say. Perfect.

Well. Aside from soda can nipples. Can’t believe they didn’t fix those. Though in some ways, that would have made me sad too

Dolce has such a cool design, in both human and monster form. I’ve always kind of crack-shipped her with Margaret, for no real reason at all

Vishnal! I love Vishnal. Vishnal is pure as heck. Marrying him this time around.

Doug! My choice from last time around. Another character who looks more serious in his official art than he is in-game (well... most of the time)

And then there’s Dylas, who looks much happier here than he does most of the time. Kind of looks like he and Doug swapped bodies, actually. There’s a fanfic prompt for you.

Their ship name is Dyldo. I love them

Leon is nostalgic for me mostly because my friend and I used to get into a lot of arguments about whether or not he’s the hottest character in the game. She maintains that he is, because muscles. I maintain that muscles aren’t actually that attractive. It is a rift that divides us to this day

(He looks oddly... younger in this art though? Weird)

Sechs Empire is such an unfortunate name. Seriously. How rushed was RF1′s localisation team? All those script errors, and then this (the Sechs were the antagonists in the first game, and were only referenced in passing in the rest until RF4 - so it was a bit of a ‘sins of the father’ situation by then).

Seriously, try saying ‘Sechs Emperor’ out loud and tell me you can take this man seriously

I??? Love??? Them???

I??? LOVE??? THEM???

Still confused as to why Kiel, Xiao Pai, Arthur and Margaret are on the cover now. Don’t get me wrong, I like them, but... Amber, Dylas, Dolce and Leon made way more sense? Even the Archival Cover makes more sense (Vishnal, Clorica, Forte), as those three are all kind of Lest/Frey’s servants (well, Forte for the whole town, but still). Of those first four, all but Arthur basically lift right out of the game with little-to-no impact on the story

NO HAT TABATHA NO HAT TABATHA

I’ve always really loved this Raven picture

And I am thankful for you <3

#rune factory #rune factory 4 #rune factory 4 special #rf4 #rf4s #rf4srelease #i love these games <3

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vnshkk · 5 years

Text

Let's talk about Kyo's media blackout.

It is with a slight reluctance that I post this. It's not wise to mention Tanuki online nor share what they talk about within the overseas fandom for a multiple of reasons.

1. I don't want them to get angry at me

2. I don't want the overseas fandom to flip out and judge the Japanese fandom

3. I just want everyone to be chill and happy and flowers

But I've seen a lot of people freaking out, a lot of random theories floating around and people worrying so I wanted to post this theory and open it for discussion.

Of course this isn't fact. It's pure speculation. But given the timeframe, PERSONALLY I feel like this may have had something to do with Kyo decision.

So I post this with two DISCLAIMERs.

1. As mentioned this is not in any way fact. There is no proof that Kyo does or doesn't look at Tank. I simply find it interesting the sequence of events, the timing of the media blackout and I am only translating this for those who are interested. I hope this doesn't cause any huge arguments or any bad blood. It's simple here to discuss and consider.

2. Please do not judge the whole fandom based on Tank. Just like any forum, any comment section on the world wide web; there will be people who leave negative feed back. It is a tiny portion of people and not a reflection of the Japanese fandom as a whole. Judging them based on what they said would be like someone looking at negative comments or sarcastic jokes on Tumblr and judging the English speaking fandom. That's not to say what they post is okay, but it's just dumb shit posting and shouldn't be taken to heart.

you get me fam?

Okay, so I contemplated posting screenshots and translating what happened immediately after Kyo changed his profile picture up to when he deleted everything but as I said I don't want to be taken out by angry tank users so I'm just gonna translate a selection of posts.

These posts are taken from the Meg thread (remember the girl linking arms with him at a concert? That's Meg.) which to be honest is a shit show. It was a thread born from those notorious pics and for over a year now has remained a place where people post rumours, shit talk, complain and just make shit up a lot of the time. So please, AGAIN, bare that in mind. It is a place of negativity born from a scandal that shocked a lot of the fandom. Aint nothing nice ever gonna be said there. Periodt. In reality a lot of the people who post there are still fans of Kyo. I think they're just still a little hurt by the way it came to light about Meg.

After Kyo posted his new picture I checked tank before going to bed because I was curious about what their reactions would be and everyone had exploded. During the 7 hours I was asleep Kyo deleted everything and left the internet forever so tbh given the fact he was probably bored in a hotel in Fukuoka, just did a radio show, probs wanted to see peoples reaction, etc I personally, believe he was on Tank. This is a running theme in the thread itself and people often say he actively browses it (this is not a major thing, a lot of guys in bands browse tank same as celebs browse twitter. Why Kyo would look at the meg thread in particular? idk. )

SO TLDR

Yesterday around 7pm the thread suddenly changed to mixed reactions after Kyo changed his Twitter pic.

"His new twitter icon had me shook lol"

"I hope he changes his instagram one too"

"Idk I don't like how quickly he's become some kind of social media old fogey"

"Kyo's turned into a social media monster too" (*edit; my bad Yuchi is beer monster, Shinya is social media monster lol)

"It's kinda cheap"

"I get you, it's like he's lost his values" (probably because Kyo has always made big deal about how much of himself he shares)

It continued like that for a while with people more or less saying the same thing until he posts about leaving social media.

"He just suddenly said he's not gonna do social media anymore"

"lol after he went to all the effort of changing his profile picture"

"I'm shook"

"annoying 40 year old nut job"

"Bet you he came on here"

"Do you normally change you icon then quit"

"Join Kyo online"

"idg why even though Kyo's had so many haters since he first started twitter he's suddenly affected by it??"

"I still think he's cute even when he's sulking like this lol"

"I knew he was looking at Tanuki"

"I don't get why he's suddenly deleting it after all this time?? It's like what is this old man on about?"

"It's lame how he's making such a big deal of out saying he's quitting"

(lots of people agreed with this post saying that he's acting childish)

"I wonder what happened? Like everything seemed fine recently. I mean we'll never know but like I'm sure he has a lot going on.."

"I can't believe he basically wiped his instagram clean but left all the pics of cake and omurice lmao"

"If only he'd go to sleep earlier and eat a banana the serotonin would fix everything"

The random comments and mixed reactions continued for all of Friday. One of the main points that stuck out after the initial reactions was how people began to become suspicious that this was merely a tactic to get people to join Kyo online with people claiming this was typical of business man kyo, that it was about that time of year where they usually begin to advertise and promote in order to get new members.

So, allow me to play devils advocate for a second. As someone who is a member of Kyo online I have to admit since he started posting more and more online (compared to hardly ever on Kyo online), the membership has become more or less invalid. In the past it was worth the money for the videos and pictures that as fans we rarely saw. But if he's going to post them online then it raises the question (tickets to concerts aside) is there any point in being a member if you can just get the content for free? I'd imagine that this plays some kind of role in why the reactions are often negative. Members of Kyo online have suddenly gone from having something exclusive that was only for them, to simply being a part of something anyone can access.

Another point someone brought up is that whilst it's acceptable for Kyo to be upset. It is very, very childish and the timing is selfish. Sukekiyo literally made their instagram days ago and suddenly Kyo states how he isn't going to post online anymore. This act instantly casts a negative feel on Sukekiyo's insta. It almost gives a vibe that any picture Kyo is in might be "against his will". Kyo is not new to criticism. He's been in this game for 20 plus years. Everyone who is in the Indies scene knows about Tank. Every fan, every bandmen, knows it's a bad place filled with mostly shit posting and rumours and doesn't represent fans a whole.

The meg thread is simply fans flogging a dead horse, posting any poor Japanese girl with a straight fringe and some tattoos, anyone who looks even a little like Meg and saying she MUST be a groupie of Kyo. Which begs the question why would Kyo go there? Why would he look at that? Why would he want to subject himself to that kind of thing and then punish the majority for some dumb comments a few bored fans made? What was he expecting by going there?

Of course there is no proof Kyo lurks. But the reality is he probably does, I mean he's only human, he' s bound to be curious about fans reactions for Madara, etc and where else to get honestly reactions than an anonymous forum? Personally, as someone who has lurked tank for a few years now, I think he reads it. There have been times in the past where he's mentioned certain things, done certain things and I've thought "hmmm that's weird tank was literally talking about that". But once again there's no proof. It's just one of those vibes you get sometimes. (one major one I can think of is during the interview for mode of gauze where he said everyone massively complained about it. I know people can submit questionnaires after lives but I feel that a lot of Japanese people are more brutally honest when they can hide behind anonymity. )

Considering the "staff" posted a pic of his feet on the sukekiyo instagram today, I feel like this is just Kyo being (sorry to say) butthurt and it might just blow over. A lot of the comments mention his age, mention how he's clearly trying and failing to copy 20 year olds by using insta, that he's lame or cringe and that's gonna hurt anyones pride. But I honestly think Kyo should be looking at the billions of comments on instagram of people who love him rather than a few trolls online.

So with that being said I hope this was an interesting read and gave a little insight into why Kyo is often private. It was a big deal that he was posting so much and actively using instagra. I for one was very happy. I believe that in this day and age it is something that is required in order to engage with your audience and keep a good relationship. Hazuki and Ruki are good examples of this and Ive been saying for the longest time I wish Kyo would get more on board with it. So it's a shame he's left at the first hurdle.

Oh well. This is why we can't have anything nice isn't it.

#Kyo #dir en grey #instagram #translation #sukekiyo #drama I don't like drama why can't we all just be chill #remember this isn't fact its just my theory

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janiedean · 6 years

Text

fic, reylo + stormpilot + rose: roman holiday

fourth fill for the charity commissions I took in april :)

first: HAPPY BIRTHDAY @tombliboos ie the commissioner SHUT UP IT’S STILL JUNE 3RD AS I PREPARE THIS POST I SAID I’D BE IN TIME AND I WAS ;)

second: I’m posting this fic on tumblr only mostly because I have no idea of how people outside the italian side of tumblr would find it, but here you go.

roman holiday, kylo ren/rey + finn/poe + rose; pg13; 5,5k ca; utter crack on a stick; pseudo warning for political-ish satire but really you only get it if you’re italian

in which rey, poe, finn and kylo go visit their friend rose who’s studying in Rome and end up experiencing the current administration.

features: fridges in the middle of the trash, sudden holes in the ground, stuck subways and bad public transport.

A/N: everything depicted in this fic actually happens/has happened irl. I know.

original prompt: Reylo/Stormpilot Modern AU. Trip to Rome. Rey, Ben, Finn and Poe are visiting Rose who's studying in Rome. They get stuck in traffic. Their car falls into a hole. They hear noises at night and people are leaving fridges on the street. Poe orders cappuccino after 11am and the barista refuses to serve him. Rose explains that according to her Italian friends, the new mayor can't do shit. Bonus if at some point it starts raining and they get blocked in the flooded subway.

Episode One: The Phantom Airport

“Guys,” Finn says excitedly as their plane lands on the ground. “Guys. Can you believe we’re in Italy?”

“Not to rain on your parade, but are you aware this is about the twentieth time you’ve said that since we left?”

“Ben, let him live, not all of us have been here twice already,” Rey says, putting an arm on her… well, Finn calls him almost-boyfriend and she’s not so sure she’s going to live it down because they’ve been dancing around each other since the first time they argued during their joint political studies class, but for now she’ll just settle for… friends. Probably.

The fact that he rolls his eyes and doesn’t pursue the topic gains her a look from Poe, who’s sitting next to Finn and looking like he’s going to burst in laughter.

“Don’t you dare,” Rey hisses in his direction.

“Fine, fine," he says, raising his hands up in defeat. “I’m going to keep my mouth shut. But yes, we’re in Italy, good thing because these seats are cramped. Hey, what did Rose say we should do?”

Finn takes his phone from his jacket’s pocket — formally Poe’s jacket but he hasn’t worn it in months, since they met, and why did they get to have the love at first sight moment and Rey still hasn’t quite figured out how to tell Ben she actually is into him?

Then again, when the guy you’re into seems to have a bunch of frankly horrid friends and is a TA for your political sciences professor and then it turns out that the aforementioned professor is treating him so badly (including convincing him to change his name legally, what the hell — good thing he’s gone back on it, even if he uses the changed name for anyone that’s not her or his parents for reasons she still hasn’t brought herself to ask) that he gets a full-on nervous breakdown among the rest, and after he ends up dumping all his old friends in exchange for being friends with you and, in turn, actually getting along with your friends, pushing it is hardly what you should do. According to Rey, at least.

She’ll come clean with him. Just not during this trip, since they’re all supposed to relax and not to get even more stressed.

“Uh, after we get the bags we should take the train from the airport’s station and she’d come get us, she’s rented a car. We can either pay a lot for one that goes to the main station in half an hour or pay half that for the one that goes to the secondary one and takes one hour.”

“One hour,” Ben mutters, but then says nothing else.

“Well,” Rey says, “I’m good with saving money. We can get the cheap one.”

“Fair,” Poe agrees, “we don’t have to start wasting money now if we’re staying for two weeks. Right. Guys, let’s go grab our bags and catch up on jet lag, my legs are cramped.”

The four of them leave the plane and go to the baggage reclaiming area.

That goes well — they only wait some twenty minutes for all of their suitcases to be delivered, and they follow the signs towards the train station.

And then —

“Guys,” Poe says, “why is the entire thing filled with queues? That… doesn’t look normal.”

Rey looks at the small train station — there’s people in the hundreds queueing outside the tickets booths.

“That — yeah, that looks weird. Finn, can you —“

A moment later, Finn’s phone rings.

“Right. Hey, Rose, what’s up? Yeah, we just got here — what? Ah. Oh, right, I get it. What? Fuck. Right, I’ll tell them and we’ll let you know.”

He closes the call.

“Seems like there was a malfunction at the main train station. I mean, some malfunction to the centraline handling the traffic. So — all trains are blocked in the entire area.”

“All of them?” Poe asks.

“Yeah. She checked the news and they’re down until later tonight. She said either we get a bus or a taxi, but it’s going to be a long wait and we shouldn’t bother with this.”

“… I guess we should go and check the situation,” Rey says, and she heads out of the airport, the other three following behind.

“Wow,” she whistles.

“Fuck,” Poe echoes.

“Shit,” Finn says.

“Are you fucking kidding me,” Ben says, and —

Given that the line for the bus stop starts five feet from where they are and the buses are way farther down the road, enough that they can’t see them, and that the taxi line is longer than that, they can barely see the ending from where they are.from where they are.

“How long do you think we might have to wait?” Finn asks Poe, sounding very discouraged.

“Er, I’d say at least a couple hours whatever choice we pick,” Poe replies after assessing the situation.

“… Yeah, not happening,” Ben says at once.

“What —” Rey starts, but before she can finish he has grabbed the wallet in the back of his pants, taken three hundred euros out of it and —

Stalked towards the first taxi in line?

“Oh, no,” Poe groans. "That's not really how it works — Solo, er, Ren, there’s a damned line!”

Before he can make that point, though, all three of them have run after him, and —

Rey can only helplessly watch as he pretty much elbows his way into the queue without as much as an excuse me, stops the first taxi and offers the driver the three hundred to skip the line.

Which the driver accepts, in the middle of very loud protesting.

“So, are you three coming or do you want to wait until dawn?” He asks, opening the door, still with people screaming at him in outrage in at least fifteen different languages.

“Well,” Finn says, “he’s gone that far, we might as well take the damned taxi.”

Poe looks at Rey. She shrugs — it’s a lot war.

“Fine, but never again. Shit, my mom would kill me if she knew I was doing this,” he mutters as he grabs his suitcases and reaches the taxi.

Ten minutes later, he’s in the front and Rey’s in the back in between Ben and Finn and Finn’s calling Rose and telling her they managed to find a taxi by some kind of miracle and could she please give him the address.

“Is some kind of miracle a code for Kylo Ren skipped the queue?” Rey hears over the phone.

“How would you know that?” Finn asks, surprised.

“It’s all over Italian Youtube,” Rose replies.

“This is really starting well, dios,” Poe groans before it turns out that the taxi driver speaks Spanish and they end up talking for the next forty-five minutes.

Rey honestly hopes that this is not how this entire vacation is going to go.

Episode Two: Attack of the Sudden Holes in the Ground

Three days later, Finn decides that maybe the whole airport failure had just been a misfortune. After all, other than that, everything has been great. The food is great, the weather is great, Rose has been here for months so she’s being an excellent guide and she’s also saved them a lot of money they might have wasted on tourist traps, Kylo Ren (Finn’s just waiting for the day he’s going to let everyone other than Rey using his real name, honestly) has actually looked not his usual gloomy self while going around the Coliseum and the Roman Forum for once, the sun is hot enough that it’s nice but not enough to burn and certainly strong enough that Poe’s tanned some already and surely Finn appreciates the sight, especially since it means he’s going around without a jacket (hey, a man has eyes and they’re together, he’s not going to complain).

All in all, he thinks, if the next two weeks go like this, it’s going to be the best time of his life.

If he thinks that until now he has never even set foot outside the US and no one at his group home would have bet a cent on him getting into college with a free ride where if you want you can go abroad for an entire year… well, he needs to send good old Ms. Phasma a postcard, she’d seethe knowing he went places.

“So,” Poe tells Rose, who’s driving, suddenly dragging him out of that line of thought, “what did you say I should check?”

“Just open Maps and check if we have some traffic in front of us. Hopefully not, but — oh, shit.”

She brakes. Finn raises his head from the tour book he had been reading, his side hitting the door of the car — better that than Rey, though, who’s still in between him and Ren. He doesn’t know why the man just doesn’t sit up front since he’s the tallest of all of them, but he knows he wouldn’t get an answer, so he doesn’t bother asking.

“Is — that — normal?” He asks, noticing that they’re now stuck in traffic and that no one is moving bar a few motorcycles that he’s halfway sure are breaking at least ten laws at once.

“Sadly, yes,” Rose sighs, and she lowers the window, stopping someone on a Vespa going in the opposite way and asking something in Italian. The guy replies before driving away and a moment later her head meets the wheel as she puts the clutch into neutral.

“That doesn’t look good…?” Rey asks, tentatively.

“Er,” Rose says, “there’s been some kinda wreck a kilometer ahead and we’re not going to be able to move until they clear it up. Which is going to be long. Unless — ah, fuck,” she sighs as rain starts to hit their windshield.

"What's the problem…?” Poe asks. “It’s just rain.”

“Driving while it rains here is a gamble,” she sighs. “Well, buckle up because we’re gonna be here for one hour at least.”

It’s not the worst hour of Finn’s life, even if most of it is because his boyfriend is a superior human being and manages to keep a conversation going enough to distract everyone from their current predicament, and finally forty minutes later they start going somewhere — the cars in front of them clear slightly and at least Rose can drive.

“Right,” she says, “good thing that going like this it’s just another fifteen minutes — oh, fuck!”

When she brakes now, it’s hard enough that Poe’s head hits the car’s window and Rey ends up sprawled on Ren’s side, not that he seems to complain, and before Finn can ask what the fuck was Rose thinking, he looks ahead and —

“Guys, is that a fucking hole in the ground?” That arrives just under the car, so they’re about to fall right into it?

“Not the first nor the last,” Rose sighs, turning the car off. “Right. I’ll call the cops, they probably haven’t even left yet.”

And that’s how they spend the next half hour around the hole in the ground while Rose talks to the cops, under the rain — Poe shares his umbrella with Finn, good thing he brought one, but it doesn’t fit four people.

That said, given that Ren’s given Rey his jacket and is now discussing with another cop while his dress shirt gets wet, he’s sure Rey’s not complaining.

Ren comes back not long later, looking outraged. “Can you believe that it’s apparently a thing that’s been happening for months because there’s no maintenance in the roads? How can someone be so incompetent? Even bloody Hux would be better at being a mayor than anyone in charge here,” he mutters.

“Are you complimenting Hux?” Poe asks, laughing. Given that Hux is the other guy who was going to be Snoke’s TA and they both loathed each other openly, this must be frankly bad. Finn is not even going to get into it — he’s never even talked to the guy while Poe spends his time trying to rile him up on purpose, so he would know.

“I’m an objective person,” Ren shrugs. “I hate him, that doesn’t mean he’s incompetent.”

“Guys,” Rose says, coming back, wrapped in Finn’s jacket — right, that’s Poe’s jacket, but he currently lended it to her because she had a sleeveless shirt and she had to talk to the cops —, “we’re good to go but the car’s busted. They’ll get someone to bring it to a mechanic’s and then insurance is dealing with it. But they offered to drive us to the next bus stop.”

Better than nothing, Finn decides.

The subsequent bus ride is only memorable because the bus is stocked so full of people that no one would accuse him of groping his boyfriend in public for being plastered all over Poe’s side without an inch of space between them.

“Well,” Poe whispers, not that anyone would hear them given the noise, “you do know that the moment we get home I’m tearing your clothes off?”

“Please do, I’m going to need it,” Finn groans.

Admittedly, when they do finally get home an hour and a half later, the sex is downright glorious — at least that.

But seriously, holes opening in the middle of the street? What kinda fuckery is that?

Chapter Three: The Revenge of the Fridge

Rose is fixing breakfast when suddenly her phone rings.

She checks it — she hopes it’s not anyone from uni, but they’re on break, too, and her classmates knew she was having friends over.

No, it’s —

Why would Kylo call her when he’s technically right downstairs? He volunteered to throw away the trash before going on a morning run and he left five minutes ago, what could have happened?

“Yeah?” She answers, taking the call. “What’s wrong?”

“How did you know something might be wrong?” He asks.

“Well, why would you call me when you were here five minutes ago?”

“… Fair. Uh, well, it’s just — can you please come down a moment?”

“Okay, give me a moment.” She turns off the stove under her coffee machine and grabs her keys. Right, she’s in her pjs, but no one will mind.

She gets down the stairs and out of the gate, where Kylo’s standing with the trash in his hand, still, and —

Oh.

“I mean,” he says, “never mind that I’m not quite sure of where I should throw this, but… why is there a fridge in the middle of the trash cans?”

In the middle of trash cans that are overflowing, for the matter, so of course he doesn’t know where he should throw away the trash in question.

She sighs and takes a picture of the scene. “I send that to a blog documenting this kinda stuff,” she explains. “Hand it over.”

She takes the trash from him and goes to the paper trash bin — of course it’s overflowing, but never mind that. She pushes it at the top, hoping it’ll stay put, and goes back to the gate. “Just go on that run, it’s useless.”

“But — that’s trash! In the middle of the road!”

“I know,” Rose sighs, “but it’s been like this since I came here. Can’t do anything about it.”

“Jesus,” he mutters, “Hux really could do better, and that’s saying all.”

Then he’s off running.

Rose goes back upstairs and finishes brewing the coffee.

——

“Rose,” Poe asks not long later after he glances out of the window, “is that a fridge in the middle of the street?”

“Yeah.”

“But why?”

“A friend explained me that — well, the trash company has an agreement with another company to handle the large stuff like fridges and laundry machines. Except that the contract has expired and the mayor has to renew it but hasn’t yet, so she might have forgot or something.”

“The hell, how do you forget that?” He asks, obviously not too comforted, but then he grins, and — “Finn, put something on, we totally have to go take pictures with that!”

“What? Why would you take pictures with a broken fridge?”

“Are you serious? What better Facebook profile photo than me standing next to a bonafide fridge in the middle of the road?”

“You’re completely insane!” Rose calls after him, drinking her espresso.

Poe doesn’t deny that, but an hour later he, Finn and Rey are choosing what pictures to upload on the internet, of the ones featuring the fridge of course, when Kylo comes back upstairs.

“You took pictures with the fridge?” He asks, sounding kind of disturbed.

“Why not?” Poe replies cheerily.

“Don’t you have a sense of hygiene?”

Rose is inclined to agree with him.

“Hey, I took a shower just after I came back up and I disinfected my hands first thing, I’m not an idiot,” he grins, and Kylo just shakes his head and moves closer to the counter.

“Please tell me there’s some coffee left,” he sighs.

“Sure,” she says, “but it’s Italian. I mean, the strong kind of. Those three haven’t had the courage to try it yet, but —”

“I’m absolutely fine with espresso, thank you.”

She hands him a cup, deciding that one on one he’s way nicer than he looked like in college two years ago before he dropped his then-circle of friends and made friends with Rey. And he thanks her every time she hands him breakfast, which is way more than she could say for both her current roommates — damn, she’s supposed to be here a full year so she hopes she gets to change both before then.

“Ben, you should totally take a picture with the fridge, it’s black exactly like your outfit!” Rey calls from the table.

“Forget it,” he says, and drinks the entire cup in one go.

If anything, Rose has a new respect for him after that.

But yeah, no, she’s not taking pictures with the damned fridge either, especially because she knows it’s gonna stay there for the next month at least.

Chapter Four: The Last Cappuccino

“Hey,” Poe tells Finn on day six, when Rose is off doing some uni stuff she couldn’t delay and Rey’s off with Kylo Ren going around cemeteries or so it seems, while the two of them have opted for a nice, quiet stroll in the center before going back to Rose’s in the afternoon, “you know what, I haven’t had cappuccino yet.”

“Oh, right, and your mom is going to kill you if you don’t try it?”

“Well, she did tell me that before I left,” he grins back. “And I mean, I can’t tell Rose to get milk when she doesn’t like it just because I want to try it.”

Finn grins back at him, and damn but Poe loves how he smiles, all right? “Tell you what, we can find a bar and you can try your cappuccino while I get orange juice or whatever.”

“Hey, since I’m getting milk and coffe and I’m dragging you with when you’re lactose intolerant, I think the orange juice will be on me, how about that?”

“Fair,” Finn grins. “Well, there’s a bar over there. Any place is good, right?”

“Right.”

Poe checks his phone just before walking in — right. 11.30 AM — the perfect time for a break, they can have lunch in a couple hours and he’ll have had his coffee right when he usually gets it back in the States. Piece of cake, right?

The bar’s small but nice, and they have a few seats at the counter. He heads for the check-out, noticing that there’s just one person manning that and the bar.

“Buongiorno,” he says, grinning — hell, he’s been here for almost a week, he has at least that down.

“Hello,” the girl replies, smiling back. “What can I get you?”

“Uh, Finn? Still set on the orange juice?”

“Yeah,” Finn confirms as he takes a seat.

“Right. Orange juice for him, a cappuccino for me.”

The smile dies on the barista’s face, or at least, it becomes way smaller. “Cappuccino?” She asks again.

“Uh, yeah. Is there some problem?”

“It’s half past eleven,” she argues.

“… Okay?” He asks, not getting the point.

She stares at him. He stares back. Then she raises her hands in what looks like a defeat gesture. What the hell?

“Your funeral,” she says, and makes the cappuccino with a disgusted face before moving to Finn’s orange juice. Or better, freshly squeezed orange juice rather than getting it from the bottle.

They sit. He drinks the coffee. It’s actually good.

“Hey,” he whispers, “any idea of why she looked that put off?”

“No idea,” Finn says, whipping out his phone. “Good thing they have wi-fi. Let me look it up — oh.”

“Oh?”

“Apparently they don’t drink cappuccino after 11 AM — it’s like, strictly breakfast food and you’re not supposed to have milk past that. And 11 AM is the limit.”

“Oh, dear, don’t tell me that —”

“You kinda came off as the typical American tourist who barbarically drinks coffee and milk after the allotted time, yes.”

He groans. Exactly what he had hoped to avoid.

He looks down at his innocent-looking cup, then he shrugs and takes another drink. “Well, whatever. It’s good,” he proclaims. “But you aren’t telling my mother I came off as the typical barbarian tourist when I’m not even technically American.”

“I don’t know,” Finn grins back, “if you give me enough reasons to not do it before we’re back home —”

Poe, at this point, doesn’t even mind if the barista realizes what the hell they’re discussing here.

“I think,” he says, “I might make it worth your while.”

“Then no one’s ever going to know you completely failed in your endeavor of looking like a refined tourist with no barbaric habits,” Finn smiles, his fingers threading with Poe’s under the table.

Poe thinks he can definitely make it worth his while, later.

And he’s not going to drink cappuccino past 11 AM if it kills him, even if it’s damn good.

Chapter Five: The B-Line: A Typical Roman Story

“Damn,” Rey says as she checks her phone, “I have bad news.”

“What, there’s a public transport strike?”

“I see that Rose schooled you,” she grins, and damn, he needs to get a grip. Why can’t he either just move on or just tell her? Then again, all things considered, it’s a miracle they’re even friends by now. He’s not going to risk ruining it. “But no, it’s — we’re kind of late. If we want to make that appointment by seven PM we need to take the subway.”

Fuck.

“Do we?” Ben asks her, trying to sound like he doesn’t mind even if he perfectly knows that she knows why he’d ask.

After all, she knows what went down with Snoke more than anyone else bar his therapist does, so she knows he doesn’t deal well with a lot of people in closed spaces.

“Well, from here it takes just around half an hour or some more. The bus —” She checks something on her phone, then shakes her head. “We should change three and it’d take one hour and twenty minutes if they pass on time.”

Well, fuck.

“I suppose we can do that much,” he sighs, cursing to hell and back that he picked the Protestant cemetery — fine, he did really want to go on Keats’s grave and Shelley’s and for reasons, mainly, that he spent his teenage years ruining poetry paperbacks with their names on the cover, but he hadn’t realizes that the area’s only good connection with the place they should meet Rose and the others at was the damned subway.

Which he really, really, really loathes. Same as enclosed spaces. Same as spaces full of people, but at least on the bus you can look out of the window.

Not on the subway.

“Come on,” she says, “the sooner we go the sooner we’re there.”

She’s right, as usual, obviously, so he sighs and follows her into the Piramide station and walks down the stairs.

He doesn’t like how a lot of people join them on the platform coming from the attached train station — what the hell?

“That’s the train going to the sea,” Rey informs him. “Rose told me. Apparently it’s full of commuters both ways.”

“Shit,” he says. “Well, never mind. Let’s just be done with it.”

They take the metro. The train, Ben notices with terror, is old, and there’s no A/C on, which means that the moment they take it surrounded by a bunch of other people that most likely are all going to the last stop, same as the two of them.

Fuck. He hopes they get to sit at the only switch point, he decides, and the moment the train leaves he starts taking deep breaths the way his uncle said always worked back when he taught him yoga classes years ago.

At least Rey’s sticking to his side — even too much, given how much people are on this trap of a train. Which is not a good thing when you’ve had a crush on her for years and given that you treated her fairly badly the first few months that you knew each other you still are marveling that she gave you a second chance.

Ben Solo, get a fucking grip, he thinks, figuring that at least his therapist would be overjoyed that he’s not breaking the damned handset already.

They pass the switch point. They don’t get to sit. He has another twenty minutes on this trap at least, but hopefully they’re going to pass quick. Fuck, in what civilized place people use trains that must have been new in the fucking early nineties? He doesn’t know, but evidently here.

Anyway. It’s hot and he’s sweating and he’ll need a change of clothes back home, but he’s breathing and everything’s more or less fine and people will have to start getting down at some point —

Then the train abruptly stops in the middle of the fucking tunnel.

Then the lights go out for a moment, then they’re on again.

What the fuck.

Rey grabs his arm, good, because he was starting to get worried here, and he can hear people grumbling and complaining, but the bad thing is —

“Is it just me,” he asks Rey, “or everyone is dealing with this as if it was a normal occurrence?”

“I — I think you’re right,” she confirms, glancing around. Not that it’s easy, given that she’s pressed in between another five people and she can’t move and neither can he.

Shit.

Right. He has to just breathe and keep his shit together — he’s never heard of anyone dying in the Rome underground and they won't be the first.

He glances at his watch.

It's been five full minutes.

People are still grumbling.

“I suppose no news yet?” He whispers. Right. That didn’t sound like he was about to lose his shit.

“No, but I'm surrounded by three old ladies, I doubt they'd tell me.”

Right. Little old ladies probably don’t speak English.

Fine.

It’s going to be —

A moment later, he hears someone talk to through the train’s speakers — maybe the driver? Who even would know —

And then people start screaming in protest, what the hell, and no that’s exactly what he doesn’t need, damn it but after that year with Snoke he can’t handle people just screaming out of nowhere —

Then he notices that Rey’s talking to some younger kid who was somewhere behind the old ladies and hopefully filling her in. She nods, biting her lip, and then turns her eye on him.

“Did he tell you what the fuck is going on?” He asks.

“Yes,” she says, “and you won’t like it. Just — he said it’s not unheard of.”

“Okay. Shoot. What is the damned problem?”

“It’s raining outside. This train’s old. This line is also not as new as it could be. There’s been some electrical short-circuit and so the train’s not working.”

“It’s not working?”

“No, and — the driver said that he’s going to open the doors shortly and we should walk to the next station.”

“What the — isn’t that dangerous?”

“Apparently they shut down the rest of the traffic.”

“Oh fuck — we need to walk into that tunnel that might actually be half-flooded?”

He thinks he’s this close to just punch the nearest little old Italian lady who is screaming something in the vague direction of the train’s ceiling and making his head pound, but a moment later Rey’s hand has grabbed his and --

“Hey,” she says, “it’s fine. And we’ll be out of here before you know it. Shit, maybe we should’ve taken the bus for real.”

“We would’ve been late,” he answers, trying to keep his voice from shaking too much. So what if he threads his fingers with hers, though? At least he has an excuse to, now.

“Yeah, well, they’d have handled the two of us being late if the choice was sticking you in here. I’m sorry, I knew, but —”

“Rey, it’s not your fault if this place is beautiful but run so incompetently that even fucking Hux would do better.”

“Wow, you really have a low opinion of these people, don’t you?”

“Don’t you?”

“Fair enough, it’s terrible. But seriously, I didn’t mean —”

“Rey, if anyone else was here I think I’d have broken down the damned door myself,” he blurts, and he’s going to blame it on the fact that he’s not thinking straight, but a moment later the train lurches forward and she about ends up slammed against him and she ends up over him, and he loses balance which in turn means that he doesn’t almost murder a little old lady just because the woman moves sideways and some guy behind him manages to grab him by the shoulders.

Thing is —

He doesn’t really handle when if other people have their hands on him but Rey’s face is just above his and —

“Fuck it,” she says, what, and then she’s grabbed at his shoulders and put his weight off the poor guy behind him and her mouth’s on his and —

Wait, are they kissing?

For — he spends months imagining it and now they’re doing it on a damned crowded subway that’s also conveniently stuck down a tunnel?

People start clapping. Someone whistles. Rey’s hands are on his face and her tongue is moving against his and he’s not thinking about how they’re surrounded by people at all.

Well then.

Fuck it, indeed, he decides, and kisses her back the way he had hoped he would get to one day, and she moans into his mouth and people clap harder and —

Right.

He doesn’t think he minds being stuck in here that much, after all.

——

Later, Rose tells him that this is the second video of him doing something while on vacation here going viral on YouTube.

“What?”

“Someone filmed you kissing on the metro. A lot of people are wondering what are you going to do next because there should be a third to complete the trilogy.”

Rey snorts into her wine and both Finn and Poe don’t even try to say anything — they’re on the sofa clutching at each other for how hard they’re laughing.

“It wasn’t on purpose,” he protests.

“You know what,” Poe wheezes, “you should totally grab that fridge, load it onto Rose’s car, drag it to the nearest place where they dispatch that shit, then you can go on a rant about how this mayor’s completely incompetent since she needs an American barbarian tourist who drinks cappuccino after 11 AM to get fridges off her streets.”

“I wouldn’t drink cappuccino past 11 AM,” Ben replies, wondering what the hell Poe’s getting at. “I have better taste than that.”

Finn starts laughing so hard he cries.

Ben does like Rey’s friends more than his old ones but honestly, he doesn’t even want to know what their deal is right now.

“You haven’t said no yet,” Rey grins.

He looks at her, finding himself grinning back without even realizing it, and then —

Hey.

He came here also to have fun and relax a bit, and honestly, he could carry that damned thing anyway.

“Fair enough,” he says, “tomorrow we’re taking the fridge, I guess.”

“Well,” Rose says, “I guess it’s going to go viral, too.”

——

It does go viral.

Rose laughs for twenty minutes before explaining him exactly what kind of insults the mayor’s supporters have left on his Facebook profile that they must have tracked down.

“What kind of people use… belonging to the adversary party as an insult if the adversary party isn’t, well, fascist or whatever?” He asks, very puzzled.

“I suppose people who are less competent than Hux at running anything,” Poe says in between laughing fits.

Ben decides that for once he’s going to agree with Poe — it does make sense that they’d stoop to a level that asshole never even reached because even he has more class than that.

Someone having more class than Hux.

What has the world come to, anyway?

End.

#reylo #stormpilot #tagging for reference #sorry guys i hope it's not too specific and y'all enjoy it regardless of the italian stuff #my fic #commissions tag #OTP: it suits you #otp: you're not alone; neither are you

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ofhowls · 6 years

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PSA – on myself !

hi, okay, i’ve had a good night’s sleep and in my dreams and the rest of the morning, i have reflected. and, i’m gonna be honest with all of you, my habit of giving my two cents when it isn’t needed is… stupid, to say the least. i would’ve liked to think i did more good than harm ( especially when it came to my whole slave rp crusade, which i’m realising might be the only thing of value i did for this community ) but that appears to definitely not be the case. i posted an apology for some things said about a year ago though i can’t find it now with my blogs gone. i’m also assuming it was a subpar post regardless.

so, whether you like me or not, i still feel the need to apologise – so if you feel that some of the things i’ve said has had a negative affect on you or the community, then click below.

i won’t bring up everything i’ve ever said because honestly, i can’t remember it all. but i will mention some things that have been mentioned last night.

i. tw pedophilia // i’m not good at words. i’m very bad at them, actually. i have a whole lot of trouble articulating my thoughts and usually, most of the time, it comes out completely wrong. i won’t defend my pov ( like i did last night ) because it is a topic i haven’t thought of in ages and an opinion i shouldn’t have stuck with without proper reconsideration. i’m always quick to defend myself, you know? but in this political climate and the way “ minor attracted people ” ( saying that with the most sarcastic of quotations ) are attempting to be apart of the lgbt community… my previous opinion on the matter is absolutely whack. sure, i think help should be offered by therapists and psychologists and all of the professionals in the world. but my previous point was maybe not crucify people with paraphilias in general areas such as tumblr and twitter and whatever. because it will keep them from getting the help needed, but most importantly, prevent any children getting hurt if they don’t.

but that was wrong. like, completely. clearly, shaming and ridiculing and reporting is the only way to deal with those who see no wrong in their doings. my attention was always shifted towards that do and that was because of a documentary i watched sometime ago. it’s obvious the former, those who think their attraction is valid and healthy, make up the majority of these people. my point of view was skewed based on a singular source and that’s messed up. i realise now that those who know their attraction is wrong will seek help without me coddling them, and my posts would only encourage those who don’t, to be more open & proud about it. i apologise for it seeming that i was accepting pedophiles and their attraction into the community, because that was most definitely not my intention. i have no excuses for this and i will educate myself more, with recent and relevant information, before i ever try and speak on the matter again. especially on a public forum.

ii. ableism tw // i was diagnosed with autism when i was about eighteen years old. that was very late. and up until that point, i was dealing with a tons of misinformation regarding the people on the spectrum and my own shock & confusion over the diagnosis given. and though that’s not an excuse, it’s also not the reason i said what i said. if you know me, at all, you’ll know that i’m very much obsessed with being an individual and getting a rise outta people. way more back then than now. but that’s who i am. i hopped onto a trend i deemed stupid and attacked it from every angle, not quite thinking of the implication behind the words that i said.

i realise, later, that why i choose the autistic example might be because of my own issues with it. at the time. over the past two years, i’ve grown so much regarding my identity and i finally feel comfortable, and proud, in my own skin and with my autism. there used to be a time where i hid it and made comments on how ~ i was different ~ , somehow, and i can gladly say that’s not me anymore. i’m very sorry for what i said because i realise how hurtful that must’ve been to the rest of the community. me being autistic myself is no excuse and i know what kind of effect a commentary like that would have on others. especially those who were struggling with it like myself.

iii. every tw under the sun // i’m gonna be honest with y’all, once again my edginess came into play. my need to open my big fat mouth for no other reason other than i could. that post, especially given just how ignorant a lot of the community is on issues mentioned, myself included on some, is bad. it’s a bad take that is bad. and it’s quite possibly the stupidest thing i’ve ever written/read. i know so many writers who have refused to do research and me going up there and saying “ that’s okay, you can do what you want! ” … no. i still believe there’s freedom to write whatever you want, though – but to an extent. there’s a limit that shouldn’t be crossed and that’s the limit i attempted to bend in the post i made. at the time, i think, i felt entitled to have this opinion due to the minorities i’m myself included in. but that’s also a real bad take. i did see people’s point of views then but i think i failed to apologise once more. i’m bad at that, and it’s something i’m working on.

anyways, to the topic at hand. we need to make people take more responsibility in this community and although i’m getting a whole bunch thrown at me at once, at the moment, i’m a bit grateful for it. i’ve realised thanks to these things being brought back up, that i didn’t apologise and i didn’t take responsibility – and i should’ve. i said things on a public platform that actively reassured people, who should not have been reassured, of their place in this community. racism, homophobia, TRANSPHOBIA, and pedophilia, are among the things that have no place here. i fought so much against the slave roleplays and their opinion on how ~ it’s writing, freedom of speech, and yadada ~ was WRONG. yet, i turned around and wrote a post like that? it was a bad, and hypocritical, take indeed. and one i thoroughly apologise for.

vi. racism tw // once upon a time, i defended a friend’s roleplay without much knowledge other than ‘ it’s my friends, i have to ! ’ i have the lowest of iq’s, if you can’t tell. anyways. i think it was called siouxfalls, or something like that, and we found out that it was the name of a native tribe. i thought, personally as a white little bitch, that it was no big deal. who cared! ( lots of people, but i really only paid attention to the anons i got… which was… stupid ) and thus, i went out of my way to defend a friend of mine. i didn’t read the plot, i barely looked at the roleplay. i involved myself in a situation i had no clue about, and took it from there. i used a large following and a huge amount of traffic on my blog, to shit on people with genuine concern. there’s no excuse for that! i kept this up for hours, and anons swarmed to my inbox to poke fun at it, too. and i thought, hey, if anons are cool with it – that must mean i’m in the right. i wasn’t.

there came a time where the other admin of the roleplay, the one i hardly knew, leapt to their roleplay’s defence. in their, very, long post about the matter – they mentioned that, hey, we aren’t forgetting about natives! in fact! there’s gonna be a plot drop about all of those slaughtered there! and that… was yikes. i backed out of the conversation when that happened. and that also a bad decision! i should’ve stuck around, spoken to this person i actually had access to – and 1. realised my own wrongdoings for the night, and 2. used the audience i had to correct myself and draw attention to an even bigger issue. i didn’t. i let it go, hoping no one would remember. i was in a shitty position of allowing racist subtext into the community and diminishing the concern of people of color, and i sincerely apologise. i was a 15 minute of fame whore and i didn’t bother with the feelings of others. i was, in all honesty, a garbage person. and i take full responsibility for that.

v. no tw because this is more of a general statement // i am sure there are more specific things that i’ve done and that i’ve said, but with the sheer amount of garbage that came out of my mouth, i have trouble recalling anything significant. i would gladly accept receipts and reminders from everyone and anyone. i’m not asking you to coddle me, but i really do wish you’d help me take some responsibility. memory like a goldfish and like 5k posts of bullshit just don’t add up. anyways. since my latest ‘ jayden said something fucking stupid ’ discourse was about a year ago, i feel like i have grown. tumblr, for me, was a very bad place to be in many ways. i’m not saying the community is toxic but it was to me. i like attention and i like getting asks and i like putting my two cents out there. it created a whole bunch of issues and it gave me a bigger platform than i should’ve had. with my absence, which i’m also a bit grateful for, i spent more time on other social medias and i learned more about issues i never even began reading about on here.

i’m not saying i’m the brightest now, either, but i’m definitely smarter. i didn’t come back to the rpc, with the exception of one or two posts, because i don’t feel like i should have an audience to barely formed opinions. and i’m not apologising now because it was all brought up but because it being brought up reminded me of damage i’d caused. i’d be an idiot to think it should be swept under the rug, because it shouldn’t! if it weren’t from the backslash of the rpc, i never would’ve second-guessed my opinions and reevaluated them, and that’s extremely important. it’s important to hold people accountable and it’s important to make sure apologies are made. i’m not asking for anyone to forgive me, because let’s be real, this was long overdue. though, i hope this has made it clear that my opinions aren’t the same as they once were and i genuinely am apologetic for damage done.

i don’t know if any of this was remotely coherent, but i hope it was? the anon feature is back on, and hopefully instead of racist commentary, it can be used for things more constructive. once again, no need to hold my hand, but if you feel like i’ve missed out on anything that should be addressed – please let me know! like i’m not the same dimwit i was a year ago. that’d be too freaking sad. anyways, once again, i apologise for what i’ve said and many lessons have been learned. believe me.

#rpt #rph #all posts / ooc.#tag urself im my inability to write anything #without attaching a gif icon to it #tumblr ruined my ability to write sdhgskg

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sunnycarrztakesthemba · 4 years

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I was hoping this post would be that of my success... sadly it is not.

Not sure if I have mentioned this in any of my previous posts - but one’s application to an MBA programme is made of 4 components:

1. The GMAT score - it is only natural that the higher you score, the better the schools you have a shot at

2. Your application essay - lots of introspection required, refer to previous blog posts.

3. Your work experience

4. Your undergraduate GPA

Item 4 is pretty much set, so there is nothing you can do about it. But items 1, 2 and 3 - you can act on. Honestly, items 2 and 3 are actually not that difficult if you play your cards right. But item 1. Let me tell you.

I’ve taken the GMAT thrice now. It’s been 10 months. I’m tired. Of doing it over and over again, of keeping my motivation up and of being stuck on this for the past 10 months.

First Attempt: 590 - ok fair enough, I’d barely studied, work sucked and I brightly decided to check my work email before the exam, only to find one from an angry boss which also kinda threw me off my game and gave me even more test anxiety. Bombed it, as expected.

Second Attempt: 660 - I studied for a good whole 3 months. I’d analysed my weaknesses and had worked on them. I was also scoring 710s in mocks consistently so I thought i’d minimally score a 710 on the actual test. Missed the mark by 50 points... Needless to say, I was disappointed. I said ok, third time’s the charm. Held my head up high and booked my next test. A good friend asked me to consider hiring tutors and going for GMAT Prep classes (and because I actually value his opinion a lot and he makes sense 99% of the time), I did a couple of trial classes and picked Jamboree.

Now, these guys are amazing. I was assigned one quants tutor and one verbal tutor. Within 5 weeks, I was scoring between 720-750 for mock tests. My fundamentals were pretty much set. But this process was tiring - juggling a full time job, and doing my “homework” I got really burnt out. But it’s fine because I was finally producing results.

Third Attempt: I was scoring between 720-750 on my mocks, I knew I was going to crush it. My final score was a pathetic 650. I was speechless... I mean come on - it is lower than my previous score. I wasn’t anxious before the test, but got thrown off by a few slightly difficult questions on the quant section and that’s when everything started to go downhill. The worst part is knowing that I am capable of so much more, and the only reason why I’m back to square 1 is that I’m just terrible at keeping my cool when things go awry. Also low-key bummed I have to DO THE TEST AGAIN because that 77th percentile with my 660 is not getting me into an M7 school.

Honestly, today I just feel defeated, upset, disappointed and angry. I just want to lay in bed, cry and nap. Though I couldn’t get myself to nap. Why? Because every time I closed my eyes, that 650 just flashed in front of my eyes. So I did the next best thing - worked a little and watched gossipgirl (LOL, my guilty pleasure). I also spent 3 hours just living on gmat forums and reading about people who took the gmat multiple times to get their ideal scores, and about people who overcame their test anxiety. It gave me comfort, knowing that I’m not alone. More so, knowing that there are ways to overcome the issues I am facing and that I’m not a lost cause. Which I personally don’t think I am.

I’m not going to lie, I have had thoughts of giving up multiple times today.

“Maybe I’m not cut out for this”, “Maybe I should consider doing this later”, “Maybe...[any other excuse I can find]”.

Same friend who makes sense 99% of the time sent me a video of Kobe Bryant - may he rest in peace - today (because I was complaining about feeling defeated, god bless ur soul, pal), and I watched it (duh). One thing stuck with me though, when Kobe said that every time something went bad or he felt like giving up and found himself making excuses, he’d tell himself that he was not going to negotiate [with himself]. He was gonna honour the contract he’d signed with himself, no matter how things were going. Monday sucked? Tuesday wasn’t that great? There’s still Wednesday to get better, and Thursday and Friday etc. What matters is that we keep going every day and make an effort to be better than yesterday. And that is what I’ll do. Like Dory the fish, I will just keep swimming.

I made myself a promise 9 years ago that I’ll study in an Ivy League (here’s looking at u, Columbia) and another one at the start of this year that I’ll get a GMAT score above 730. Those are the contracts I’ve signed with myself, and I’m sure as hell gonna honour them. My dream is worth fighting for and I know that I won’t forgive myself if I let go of it.

I guess the struggle makes victory taste better. And I will taste it soon. For now, I will take the 2 week break that I have earned (even though it may not have translated into results yet, but I have definitely put in the work and spent time & energy), and I need to be back stronger and energised for that final push. I know I can do it. And I will be living my dream in the next 2 years.

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typologycentral · 6 years

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[Fi] Bloody Fi purge! Your inferior cousin needs some dominant and auxiliary guidance.

To preface: I love you XNFPs and unbeknownst to me, always have. For one, it's been edifying and validating to see some of my all-time favorite humans (writers, musicians, actors, thinkers, etc...) being typed as XNFP. Even before learning about typology and gaining a deeper understanding of Jungian cognitive functions, I was actively working on (what I now know to be) Fi development because a lack of it had reaped much unnecessary hardship onto my life. Therefore, I think that conscientious journey led me to people that embodied their Fi with vigor and authenticity and helped me get in touch with my own, for which I am eternally grateful. And now on to the issue at hand (this is a long read but I'm trying to give relatively detailed information that might help you to help me): For a little under a decade, since high school, I've had an on and off, pseudo-platonic, quasi-romantic, eternal soulmate, occasional f-buddy relationship with this ebullient, effervescent, deeply insightful, dreamy eyed, pixie warrior priestess (INFP) that, in my relatively short life, has always stood a mile apart from the "Gone Girl/Cersei Lannister/Elle Driver/Cookie Lyon/Harley Quinn/Akasha, Queen of the Damned" fare I've usually attracted [strike]...and been equally attracted to[/strike]. Our first interaction was a classroom debate turned bloodstained duel to the death over the ethics of eating animals (I swear on the atom, this is not a utilization of an NFP stereotype lol). Something clicked (energy + angst + lust + social isolation + troubled pasts), and from there, this happened > I'd never before intimately known someone who had the chasm of incongruously layered emotionality she possessed--ostensibly she experienced feelings in a plethora of shades from eggshell, hunter green, and cobalt blue to neon yellow and not only that, could verbalize them as such. Meanwhile, I only had ready access to basic black, white, red (all degrees of rage), grey, and at my best, a metallic gold. Though wholly confounding, maddening and taxing to me, I had never felt more woke and unchained and set free. It was intoxicating to experience a wider array, a more diverse palette of feelings. I obviously never reached her depths, patterns and colors, but even experiencing a trifle more than I was previously accustomed to felt like a massive, tectonic plate moving, internal shift. She saw me shed an actual, solitary tear once under extreme duress but in better times, just by staring into my eyes and smiling on a whim she could easily make me mist up with soul purifying relief, which was a gargantuan, almost incomprehensible feat for lesser mortals and I truly honestly never before felt so connected to someone on a level that was nigh impossible to articulate in a rational way. And particularly when she was sad and grieving (probably because of me), which often left me feeling inadequate because I was too emotionally dumb and powerless to effectively help--which, in and of itself, beset me with very real, very potent, personal "trigger" landmines. Especially back then, I neither spoke of nor experienced emotions with great affect. I understood them cognitively and intellectually, but to actually engage them with my "heart" felt like a blind man wading neck-deep in cement. My take on our biggest, most immediate problem aside from all the other reasons this union was likely to fail? We just spoke completely different cognitive "languages (Ni vs Si? Dom Fi vs Inferior Fi? Dom Te vs. Inferior Te?)" that always created endless communication gaffs, roadblocks and nuclear disasters. For example: Pixie: "Did I see you at Starbucks earlier today with Cersei f%#king Lannister when you were supposed to be at a study group?" Me: "That was the study group." Pixie: *heart imploding with the force of a billion suns* "Why didn't you tell me that?" Me: *blistering dispassion with a hint of exasperated bemusement* "Look, our past relationship is just that, in the past. You have nothing to feel insecure about. It was harmless, only work. You know I love you." Pixie: "That's not what I asked you! Stop lying and trying to hide and sugarcoat things! You know I hate that brother f%#king bitch! Why didn't you tell me you were going to see her? Me: *voice box shredding like the Hulk's Capri pants* "Because that was fucking irrelevant. She was put in a group with me! Her strategy to double-cross Dany and Jon will fall to shit, for Christ sakes. Are you happy now? You always focus on the wrong thing!" She always wanted to know the exact details behind what actually happened in a very direct, matter of fact way (perhaps to refine the many possibilities she generated for why I would withhold supposedly important information from her), whereas I always instinctively and immediately went to why I did something or the "why" concerning the underlying problem, because the "why," the deeper meaning (should and theoretically, in my mind) supersedes anything else, and especially when problem solving and coming up with a viable solution imo. Ultimately, it just didn't work. Idiotically yet idealistically, we wouldn't let that stop us. We broke up and got back together a few times before deciding that we were better off as this nebulous, ill defined glob of corrupted love and unresolved daddy/mommy abandonment issues that maybe one day might actually not fall apart at the seams just as it's getting good again. The whole idea and its subsequent execution was dysfunctional, unhealthy, ridiculous and plain ol stupid, but I gather this was us trying to be intense, brooding and deep. Dunno exactly. We'd go on to see other people and sometimes, in between relationships, link up again. Usually we couldn't reach a year and a half before we wound up back in the other's arms/bed. Moving on. She experienced a tragedy (by her standards) about 3 years ago while I was literally on the opposite side of the planet and whereas I would've normally come flying to her aid with an S on my chest, I made the conscious choice not to. Already enduring my ascent to power (lol) being stifled because of my brokedown Fi usage as it pertains to my burgeoning career, I resented yet another unwieldy force (Pixie) possessing that type of influence over me as well; I defiantly chose self-interest above anyone or anything else (like I'm instinctively wont to do, right or wrong, good or bad). She kept trying to reach me to the point of flooding all of our communication channels with emotional spam (from childish antics to vile, unforgivable diatribes). After a while, I felt bad, decided to reach out to her but was ignored for 2.5 years straight. That had never happened before--it broke our unspoken rule, which devastated me more than I realized. I grieved (rather poorly by over-utilizing Se), but eventually tucked it away, moved on and focused on work. I figured we were never meant to be anyway but that I would still love her (from afar) and wish her the best regardless. Lo and behold, she called me last night out of nowhere, drunkenly seeping concentrated pain, spewing regret, betrayal, rejection, abandonment, hatred and then love for me. She says, through tears, that she's still in love with me and wants to know if there's any chance for an "us." I felt terrible and thoroughly confused. I tried to listen and be supportive (my Te is completely inept at properly addressing/handling others' intense feelings)--I just don't naturally "speak" emotions in an unforced, compassionate, empathetic, organic manner. I'm better than I used to be but I was blindsided, taken aback and don't think I did much good. Honestly, I don't need or want this in my life right now; I'm so engrossed in my work and achieving my goals and going by what she was saying over the phone, she's still stuck in past patterns of dysfunction. I don't want that anymore. But I truly do care for her and want her to be well and happy--just not with me and not right now, at least. I hate that she is suffering but I don't know what, if anything, I should/could do to remedy this. And now, finally, here are my questions to you smart, capable, helpful people*/**: 1. When you are expressing your feelings (whether "good" or "bad"), what is the best way to respond to this that will make you feel heard, understood and validated? 2. When overcome with negative feelings that seem too powerful and unrelenting, how do you self-soothe (using safe + legal methods)? 3. Is there anyway I can speak my truth and tell her honestly where I'm at and what I want at this point in my life without further hurting her? Should I do it regardless or is it better to wait for when she's more stable? 4. Tangent, now that I have you > How do you know what you value? (Is that a stupid question? lol) I think I know what I value ("money-power-respect," knowledge, meaning/substance, fairness, justice, individuality) but it can be hard to finesse on the spot (when asked) and not come off as crude and unrefined. Do you spend a lot of time going over in your mind what is meaningful and significant to you, or do you just know somehow? (like how I seemingly "know" and intuit stuff via introverted intuition) To those who made it all the way to the end, thank you. I would really really really really appreciate some help. I have very few people in my life I trust to give me strong emotions related advice and none of them are XNFPs. Their emotions are just as trash and poorly developed as mine are. lol *Obviously, there are a multitude of ways that people respond to these things that exclude type but I'm looking for any and all variations, particularly from XNFPs and anyone else who can provide insight. **And I will shamelessly bump this thread until I obtain the breadth of insight I seek. :shrug: https://www.typologycentral.com/forums/showthread.php?t=93755&goto=newpost&utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=tumblr

#The NF Idyllic (ENFP #INFP #ENFJ #INFJ)

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magicpelagic · 5 years

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Age/origin in relation to international perception

tl;dr I've been thinking about lately regarding age, origin, and perception of the world, in particular, Middle America/the middle east not in a particularly political way but I suppose it's inherently political because of global policies, conflicts, etc and I really should be studying, I was going to post this on Facebook to have a bit of discussion going but I’m friends with a bunch of people from NYC and people get REALLY defensive about it because a lot of us saw it happen. So I figured this was probably a better place to post it

Something I've been thinking about lately is the different perception of different areas with regards to age and living location. For example for people who were born and raised in NYC you've been told countless times that it's the greatest city in the world and all that, if you can make it here you can make it anywhere. There's also a lot of NYer pride from being from your perspective area and all that, the pride in working yourself to a husk and spending your free time commuting back to your overpriced closet. If you didn't get to travel much your perception of the rest of the country basically comes from whatever media you consume, stories you've heard. Going to college upstate was such a huge eye-opener to what the rest of the country is like after befriending people from different areas and visiting them. Especially the difference between NYC and the other parts of the state. New York is huge, there so much going on in the state it's a culture shock even moving to a smaller city. I suppose I didn't think much about where I was going to live my whole life at that point but I assumed NYC because why would anyone want to leave? After leaving I learned how much I actually liked everywhere else I've lived in a lot more.

I've had friends from NYC come up to visit and they called Troy, NY suburban. which was my initial perception as well until I actually visited a suburban area (everyone jokes about Staten Island being a suburb but MAN actually suburbs are weird). When chit-chatting about politics with friends from different areas of the state it was really eye-opening to hear the different issues different parts of the state have and what they think about when voting and how much attention downstate gets when upstate gets scraps. (Example talking about gun control with a friend of mine who's family hunts for a lot of their food and sells furs, when thinking about gun legislation she's nervous of her family's livelihood (despite being supportive of banning assault rifles and all that jazz, is nervous about downstate overall influence ignoring upstate), which is something I never even considered living in a city because I thought that was just a southern thing.

Anyway, that's just a small example, the same can be said vice versa for people who've only visited a city, or have their perceptions of it based on media. It's very much glamorized and the harsh realities that come from living in a city aren't ever really shown, and when it is the characters almost always turn out okay in the end. This isn't a bad thing necessarily, you can't know about everything, this got me thinking about the rest of the world so I like to read forums about other countries.

Making friends from people who've lived in different countries has also been such an eye-opener. Being able to look up "what's life like in Croatia" at any given point on the supercomputer that almost everyone has in their pocket makes this such an extraordinary time to be alive. If I wanted to I could find someone from Algeria's twitter and see what their life is like. When the war in Afghanistan started I was very young, but in most of my education, reading the newspaper was a consistent assignment, so of course, as an older child/younger teenager I didn't have a nuanced understanding of the history of what was happening in Iraq and Afghanistan, it was boiled down to America good guys, we're helping overseas that whole thing. However now as an adult, I can through a social media platform find someone who is from the region and talk about what it was like before and after (shout out for google translate).

Talking with older people in my life ( I love and value having intergenerational friends who like to have discussions like this with me) it's really interesting asking them what they think about countries they've never been to and how they think life is like for people there. For example I showed a relative of mine picture of a few young people tanning by a pool, he assumed it was in Florida but it was in Bangladesh, and it never actually occurred to him that ya know people elsewhere have fun too, he just assumed it was all misery there all the time because that’s all he knew about the region. Even my late grandmother, who was an immigrant who acknowledged how wrong most people were about her own country..She had the opinion of just nuking the middle east and starting over, something she said when I was around 13, and that really stuck with me, I've seen that opinion before in the newspaper opinion section, but hearing someone say that in seriousness really hit me hard. Now thinking about that conversation as an adult, not that I'm making excuses for that universally cruel and quite frankly inhumane opinion, but it sorta makes sense why she thought that. She religiously listened to the radio and the only thing she ever heard about the region (and honestly she would not be able to point to one of those countries on a map) was only misery torment and justifications about what America was doing was right and payback for 9/11 , if you're an NYer you know how sensitive this topic is when it's brought up, it gets people very upset talking about it especially bringing up that over 244,000 innocent people (which is one of the most conservative estimates by the way) paid the price overseas for it.

I wonder if my grandmother had the means to read this article: https://nyti.ms/2pqpk5L if her opinion about it would change. Or if she was able to look up what cities in that humongous region even looked like, or even about the day to days of the people living there. Would she still think a large amount of the human population should get a death sentence, I wonder if her opinion of the situation would have changed if the same problems were in countries that were primarily white. Unfortunately, these aren't conversations I'll be able to have with her, but I can take solace in knowing how lucky I am to have the ability and luxury to easily access a world of different opinions and perspectives on a certain issue.

My driving ed instructor in this area, starting talking about politics, which I don't mind. We had different views on things, but it's how it goes. I mentioned a friend of mine immigrated to Norway and loves it there, and he went into a rant about how Nordic countries have no freedom and it’s all propaganda that they're happy because the socialist policies control the masses. This was uh surely an interesting stance to take, I asked if he's ever been there or knew anyone there and he said no. So this was just based of the news/radio/whatever political media or opinions he's been exposed too. He lived through the cold war maybe it was a carryover of the initial nervousness of the word socialism.

I suppose this is a long way to say, I wonder how in the future this will affect international policies and potential conflicts. If another war was to start, will people be as eager to support it? Will they want to look up about the area? Will they look at social media of people living there? Will seeing the humanization of people in a different part of the world even matter to the powers that be who make these global decisions? It's hard to say, we're living in such an interesting time period, I like to stay optimistic and hope it'll help bridge prejudice gaps and contribute to world peace eventually (whether ten years or a hundred years from now). Social media really changed how politicians can act. For example, the Vice president has tweeted more than once on his account that he doesn't like dippin’ dots, which outside of him being president is a very normal thing for someone to use social media for, but now on a global platform, America's vice president announced dippin' dots. You can be blocked from your senator online, despite being a constituent, which is such a new situation that hasn't been seen before. Simultaneously it allows you to be much closer to your representative, if they post online a lot, they aren't nebulously working (not that a lot of them do their job anyway) far away and can only access them by letter, you can hit them up and see what they're saying and what they're up to, who they associate with. I'd like to hope these connections allow them to be closer to the people they're supposed to serve/ if they do need to decide about what to do for a crisis that they'd look at people who live there's take on the issues. So far we've seen them ignore situations like flint's water crisis and Puerto Rico after the storm. I'd like to stay hopeful for the future that social media will bring people more together and help people make more informed opinions instead of just act as a tool for division.

#politics #kinda just rambling i want to put it somewhere so i dont lose the thought if that makes sense #idk feel free to hit me up if this is a topic that interest you because i find it really fascinating and i'd love to talk about it #nyc #war in afghanistan #war in iraq #9/11 #imperialism #social media #millennials #discourse #i think thats good for any trigger warnings #propaganda #long read

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ts-indonesia · 5 years

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Episode 2 - “Even though I won my minigame, our tribe still took an asspounding” - Dylan

As Owen & Julian returned to Cahaya, episode two begun, with a flash game wagering challenge. On the Obor beach, the “Charlie” alliance remained dominant over the tribe, while on Cahaya, alliances were more fluid, but with Isaac & Julian emerging as potential targets.

After a somewhat decisive Cahaya win in the challenge, Jess & Olivia were sent over to infiltrate the Obor tribal council (woo feminism?). After kick-starting the tribe’s first tribal call, Jess/Trent begun to fostering a relationship that would continue through to the endgame, and Rob emerged as a consensus for being the person people had spoken to least.

As tribal approached, Rob felt increasingly nervous, sensing his name was out there and targeted Kenny as an alternative vote. While he may have been unsuccessful in saving himself, he did manage to convince Dylan out of pity to throw his vote on Trent, causing a degree of paranoia over an already fractured Obor tribe.

At tribal itself, Rob was sent out 7-1-1, leaving the returnee infiltrators paranoid they were being framed, and the king of card pyramids out of the game.

FOXX

So I did not participate in the challenge at all since the last couple days have been relatively slow. I did maybe two things and was guilty af about it but we won! I love not having to worry about stuff like getting eliminated. I approached Stoner & Jess about making an alliance and we sealed the deal and Stoner dubbed it Snap, Crackle, Pop which is a very lame name but tbh I’m so glad to be in an alliance I’m ok being named after a freakish cereal-peddling breakfast gnome. Jess & Stoner definitely know what’s up in the game and are fucking hilarious but dealing with smart people means you can assume they’re thinking as logically as you and thus it’s easier to appeal to their interests rather than dealing with more histrionic personalities. I also suggested we create a larger alliance roping in Olivia & Michael as they’re the most active. Michael’s a nice dude with similar interests and Olivia is super sweet and funny so I guess I’ll include them for selfish reasons. I’m just worried I’m overplaying at this point. Definitely think the less active people will be the first to go but I wanna keep winning so I don’t have to worry as much. :’)

OLIVIA

FUCKING FLASHGAMES BARRY MANILOW IS MAD AT YOU

ROB

I’m just talking to everyone, setting myself up for the next few tribals. Everything seems to be going according to plan.

MICHAEL

When the hosts arent watching your confessionals *sad face* https://youtu.be/5VtSLMs86Zk

FOXX

Owen & Julian came back and said the other tribe is quiet as fuck and Julian straight-up said we were “messy” and “talk a lot” at their tribal. Not only is this dude not pulling his weight in challenges, being very insistent on how he should infiltrate the other tribe, he’s also talking crap about us in a public forum. Chill out dude, you’re making yourself a target. Regarding the challenge I kinda outsmarted it (outfoxxed it?) by saying we all play each of the games first and then decide based on such information who plays what and seeing how talented some people in are at some games and less so in others it seems to be paying off for us so far. Let’s hope I can continue to be friendly and helpful without making myself out to be too big of a personality. It’s not about how good I think I’m doing; it’s about how others think I’m doing and what they choose to do with that.

LEIGH

Awwwwright come on Casanova let's do this

The scores I have gotten so far in Casanova are 1300, 400, and 20,200. So I think I'm just gonna stop after 3 more attempts and hope 20,200 is good cuz i got homework to do lmao

Well fuck now I just got 47,600 so it looks like my 20k wasn't even that good

OLIVIA

Fuck flashgames and fuck anyone who likes them or anyone who has ever made a flashgame fuck flash games I fucking hate you flashgames DIE DIE DIE FUCK YOU FLASHGAMES. On a different note our tribe has really great communication and great support I really hope we win. But also fuckkkkkkkkk flashgames 🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬

FOXX

It worked! We won again and not only did I ace my portion with the highest wager but I also came up with the game plan that led to victory! God I'm so glad I'm not sucking! I kiiiiinda wanna go to Obor to create an impression and MAYBE get and advantage upon arriving but we'll see!

OLIVIA

IM AN INFILTRATOR BABY LEMME SPY ON YO ASS

FOXX

Really was considering putting up a fight for being part of the Infiltration because I really don’t wanna miss out but the last thing one needs at this point is bad publicity. My goal right now is to keep winning and try to form something of a majority alliance so I can avoid tribal council but also remain secure in the event we have to go. I’m glad if someone did go though it’s Olivia & Jess, two people I’ve built solid relationships with and hopefully they fan give us an idea on what’s on the other side. I’m really upset it took me this long to return to the prowl. I really do build up my self-esteem and suffering from anxiety and depression all my life makes me afraid to step out but I’m able to take center stage if I need to! Not having my anxiety meds for months has turned me into a mumbly, absent-minded, socially awkward mess but I think I’m managing surprisingly well. The other tribe might start feeling demoralized soon with losing back to back and the fact they’re already fairly inactive if Julian & Owen are to believed makes me a bit sad for them. But that sadness is quickly overtaken by pure...idk? Satisfaction that we’re winning so much. Let’s hope I don’t get too cocky and fuck it up...again. Foxes are cunning or something.

LEIGH

I got stomped in that challenge. We lost hard though at least it wasnt just me. Rob is gonna be the one to go cuz he talks the least. It makes me sad cuz we talked about music and stuff. I told him that I used to play French horn in middle school and people said it was a nerdy instrument, and he said it was a cool instrument. He seems like a really nice person. I wish he could stay. But everyones gotta go sooner or later, myself included. And I think when we merge or swap, the other tribe is much more intense than this one. It might get zany up in here.

JESS

Alright so I actually made a video confessional for this round but I rambled and mumbled too much so you are all stuck reading a JK Rowling novel length confessional. So... within the first couple of days the words "Guyana" and "2nd place" have come up at least 15 times each. This is my legacy I guess. However, these people are making it something legendary when in reality I was slaughtered and left for dead. Stoner needs to be like Anna and LET IT GO. Honestly though, I don't really mind Stoner but I know he's charming his way across the tribe being buddy buddy with everyone. When you ask ANYONE on the returnee tribe who they like 9/10 will say "Stoner and Foxx". That to me POTENTIALLY translates to "Stoner and Foxx are making chats with everyone and trying to pull in a 3rd, 4th, or 5th". That or I need to punch myself in the face. It's anyones guess? Olivia approached me about forming a group of us two and Stoner and Foxx. I don't want that thumb print in this game. Am I against it? (yes)... I don't trust these three for shit. Am I going to refuse it? HELL NAW. I basically pushed the responsibility of forming this group onto Olivia so I don't have any responsibility for this group if it gets out. LITERALLY a couple hours after... OWEN approaches me with a proposal of a group consisting of myself, Owen, Olivia, Stoner, and Foxx. HMM. LITERALLY EVERYONE WHO I DON'T WANT TO WORK WITH IN THIS GAME... You see.. I really want to work with Michael. He ticks every box in a potential alliance mate in this game. However, if this gets out I'm fucked. I'm going to die. I also really wouldn't mind working with Matt B. He's an intellectual but he could potentially murder me. SPEAKING OF MURDER.... I have to murder someone on this Obor tribe. Why did I want to be an infiltrator? I'm a crackhead and boredom. I also wanted to keep to use this as an opportunity to bond with whoever I buddied up with from my tribe and use this as a way to get sassy details from the newbies. Speaking of these newbies.. Did y'all feel them crack? Talking to them was like talking to 4 kids on coke. They were all over the place! We initiated the first tribe call and I think that was a pretty strategic move on my part. I kind of wanted to see dynamics and see how people meshed on call. Calls are kind of the hardest places to hide in my opinion.. HOWEVER, everyone just randomly left after a while so mission failed? I decided to use this as an opportunity to talk to Trent. Trent is someone who I know of through a friend. I've only heard nice things about him and that he's insanely loyal. HOWEVER...................... WOW................... He basically spilled his whole game in a heartbeat to me and I'm kind of shook. I'm still shooketh to the core currently. It's a LOT. He essentially confessed that he's incredibly social and incredibly good at competitions. He also went on to say that he believes he has a strong hold on these newbies. All of these are red flags for me because I strongly believe that we are TRYING to play the same game. I might have to start a #Trentexposedparty in the future? He also said he's good with Anabel and Kenny. So if this ever turns into a Vets .vs. Noobs situation... yikes. I think I'm good? I HOPE. I think keeping Trent in the loop for now is incredibly beneficial. I just pray he's not as open as he is with everyone else like he is with me. I'm going to try and keep him on a tight leash for now.. SPEAKING OF KILLING PEOPLE (I forgot to address this so #yolo) People want to murder Rob. I'm SO SO SO HAPPY ABOUT THIS BECAUSE........... I KNOW ROB. Rob is 1 of 2 newbies who I know. Rob also likes to MURDER ME in games. He's slimy, he plays both sides, and he is also a player who KNOWS my game. I can't have that going forward. I need a clean slate. I need people to focus on me flopping my first season and not my prior games which I ACTUALLY HAVE WON (surprising I know... I win thing sometimes). SO let's murder Rob? PLEASE. Who knew I actually would be taking out an ACTUAL TARGET THIS ROUND OF MINE? NOT ME. NOT ME.

OLIVIA

IM AN INFILTRATOR BABY LEMME SPY ON YO ASS

OLIVIA

Being an infiltrator has been interesting. Really just miss my tribe tho :/ hope the feeling is mutual. Piss poor night irl and wish I’d not volunteered to go tbh. Whatever tho, we’ll go back to normal tomorrow and I’ll keep forgetting to search for the idol

LORELEI

Today's the day of the tribal. From what I've heard, there's a consensus on rob. But I like rob even tho we haven't talked much. He told me he wouldn't vote me out, I didn't know how to answer that so I said I wouldn't vote him out either. Voting ppl out sucks 😭. Now I cant vote rob because that would make me a liar, I'm thinking of voting myself but I know that would put a target on me and the others would know that it was I who voted myself. I don't know what to do. On a lighter note, there was a tribe call yesterday evening, and it was really fun! It was so nice to talk to everyone and hear their voices.

FOXX

I am almost positive the Idol has been found and that is...um, what’s the word? Bad. Frankly I don’t think having an Idol is a huge benefit besides information and peace of mind but the fact we might have an issue with it where we have to counter with split votes and stuff is going to be a headache. As much as I like my tribe and how similar are interests are winning a lot does sort of create this no-stakes game where you just small talk to the same people every 2-3 days. I’m gonna miss it when the game gets intense but rn I’m on edge. Though I’m always down to sling some dice and I made a half-joke that our tribe should play some D&D and hooooly shit would that be amazing if it happened

LORELEI

a part of me wishes that there was some drama / beef between players because that would make it much easier to vote people out. There's a consensus to vote rob and the reasoning behind that is that he hasn't talked much in the chat, nor has he talked much to players. To me, that's sort of an iffy to vote someone out but then again, if not Rob, then who? Voting Evan was a bit more obvious of a choice, even though it was as hard (for me at least), but I didn't even think of Rob as an option to vote out until someone in my alliance brought his name up. I'm in an alliance with trent, chris, anabel and leigh. Even though we're the majority, I have a feeling I'm in the bottom of my alliance so I don't want to rock the boat for now.

OWEN

round 2. Still bored af with my tribe but still absolutely popped off to help keep us safe :’))))) we snatched the challenge..... loves it. Getting back from the other tribe was scary bc I had literally no info to give. That tribe didn’t give me any dynamics. But I did find out that jess and foxx wanted to pull in chris olivia and someone else (michael maybe?) for a five person alliance. Like wtfffff!?!?!? Why would chris and jess not work to include me in a five with foxx? Fuck that. So I went to jess and acted like I didn’t know and I brought up the idea of a five person alliance to her of her me foxx chris and olivia lmao and told her I’d talk to foxx a lil more. Then I tried to talk to foxx but it didn’t go so well I just have a hard time thinking what to say to him..,, So honestly idk. The good thing is I feel okay socially with isaac and matt, Julian and chris have our group and I like olivia and jess. Foxx and michael are my only real disconnects and I have the feeling the others might go for Julian if we lose..... which would be sad but not the worst thing in the world. I’m not in control yet but just u wait xoxoxo

Watch me get third boot lmao

JULIAN

I kinda fucked up at last tribal and made a few comments about this tribe... I've been doing damage control this round and I think things are ok now???

ROB

I've told Dylan and Jess/Olivia to vote Kenny. I sure hope this works.

I do not wanna leave. I am terrified like no other. We bouta head to tribal. Wish me luck

TRENT

Another night another loss. My fantastic tribe lost another immunity challenge. I feel like this is going to be a trend. Everybody is sooo quiet. Jess and olivia came over to our tribe after we loss and i bonded with them a little bit. Hopefully im making decent friends with the returnees, enough I can use that to keep me in if a swap happens. Hopefully since they haven't lost they are all itching to play the game and i can help spark that and get them to turn on themselves. Tonight's vote SHOULD be 8-1 for rob is everyone is being trust worthy. my alliance of 5 (me, anabel, leigh, chris, and lorelei) is still going strong. Not sure I 100% trust chris because I think he's being friendly with everyone. But luckily I am too. Pretty good relationship with with Dylan and pretty good with Kenny while he's a little quieter. Hopefully I'm in a decent spot after tonight. We will see

DYLAN

After taking an asshole pounding from the last round, it became obvious that I needed to make sure I was good with everyone on my tribe. This means telling 4 different people (Chris, Anabel,Rob and Kenny) I trust them the most. I like trent a lot but I can tell hes going to be a social and physical threat down the road compared to the other people on this rookies tribe. I was stuck on cubefield at 501k for a few hours then got a funny feeling that if I didnt score higher if lose my matchup and my intuitive ass was correct in predicting I would have lost by 1k points. Even though I won my minigame, our tribe still took an asspounding. Robs name was thrown out almost immediately by just about everyone, so I tried to hint that he may be the target but he didn't get it I guess. so the most difficult part of this round was figuring out what to tell rob for a vote. After an astonishing 15 fucking hours, he finally told me hed be down to do Kenny. Cool vote Kenny. I do feel bad though, so im going to throw my vote on trent as I feel he is least likely to be targeted on my tribe at the moment, and it could potentially spice things up!

CHRIS O

https://youtu.be/pZ22TstI7Ro

MICHAEL

https://youtu.be/B2lcYEK-JAs

MATT

following the first round, i feel like i was able to get in a decent spot where i wouldn’t be targeted first. i feel like i’m pretty active, and i’m trying to do my best and conversation with people. i think i wanna tru and solidify SOMETHING with someone because its these early alliances and bonds that tend to run deep into the game with. However one thing i’m never good at is determining when to initiate game talk. like i wanna ask about their thoughts on other people and who they think we could work with, but my fear is starting that talk and then being viewed as paranoid and a gamer. And this early on i really don’t wanna have to deal with that. i think this round i felt a lot more laid back and not as active conversation wise. with classes starting up i need to be on my A-Game from here on out. i think if we lose next challenge, i should be fine. people have talked about how issac just doesn’t seem to be here and julian is often gone/is crazy. so those should be two easy boots, but you can never be certain in this game. the damn torches are confusing as heck and idk what correlation they have on the game. the idol search is fun being an easy grid but not fun bc i can’t find anything or forget to search.

#whenyourfiresout

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jimichoos · 6 years

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We only had two must-do’s for our trip to Paris: (1) Spend a day in Disneyland and (2) Eat. I’m not the type of traveller that puts so much importance on eating local food. I’d much rather stop by a local grocery and make my own meals in order to save on money and time. However, Paris is a different story. French cuisine is known worldwide for being one of the best (if not the best) so I had to make an exception plus it was Matt’s only request.

For my research, I found Condé Nast Traveler extremely helpful because of their Best restaurants lists (50 best and 24 best in Paris). The website is a great resource for everything travel related and since Paris is a major city, there was more than enough information readily available.

Croissants/Bread from neighborhood Boulangeries

On our way to the metro stations, Matt and I would always pass boulangeries with windows filled with all kinds of bread and pastries. This is a great option for people on budget and are just looking for a quick bite before starting the day. A croissant can cost you as little as 1€ and are made fresh every morning.

Chez Paul

13 rue de Charonne 75011 Paris – Tel. +33 (0) 1 47 00 34 57

Our first authentic French meal was in Chez Paul, one of the oldest and most typical French restaurants in Paris. Our reservation was for 10pm because we weren’t sure if we wanted to stay for Disneyland fireworks but they were able to accommodate us earlier at about 8pm. There weren’t so much people when we arrived but that quickly changed within the first hour of being seated. Several parties of people (ranging from couples to parties of 10!) were there that night and we felt really lucky that we got there just before the Friday evening rush.

I ordered the Rabbit leg, stuffed with goat cheese and fresh mint, braised endive while Matt had the Pepper steak flambé cognac, butter-based, gratin dauphinois. Both were so rich and packed with flavor, it was unbelievable! Our waiter, Francois, suggested a red wine to us (which of course, I did not catch the name of) and it was the smoothest, most delightful red wine I’ve had in my entire life. And that’s alot coming from me, who doesn’t take alcohol well at all.

Chez Paul was definitely a fantastic start to our food journey in Paris. Make sure to request for a reservation especially if you’re planning to dine during the weekend.

Breizh Cafe

109 rue Vieille du Temple, 75003 Paris

The only crêpe I had in Paris was of course, a Michelin star winning crepe. Breizh cafe uses local ingredients exclusively and sourced from the best Breton producers. Our reservation was made for 11am, right around the time the restaurant had just opened. Again, the place filled up quickly but the food came out quick. We shared a Campagnarde Buckwheat galette (Sunny side up egg, cheese, fresh cream, smoked duck, Jerusalem artichoke, spinach) and a Carrément Caramel crêpe (Caramel sauce, whipped cream and homemade caramel ice cream).

It was our first time eating a galette but after the one we had, it definitely won’t be our last. Even the couple sitting next to us looked at our order and said “Oh man, we should have gotten that one instead!”

I can’t even begin to describe how the caramel on the crêpe we had was the best caramel that I’ve tasted in my whole life. In experience, I tend not to eat anything that has caramel as the main feature because I find that I get sick of the taste quite easily. This was an exception though and I would honestly fly back to Paris just to eat here again.

Wou Cha

7 rue Ernest Cresson, 75014 Paris

That evening, we actually had a reservation at the restaurant Astier; however, I decided last minute that I didn’t want us to spend 45€ on a meal per person. We also found ourselves at the 14th arrondissement, unable to enter the Catacombs because of the massive lines. We decided to take a chance and checked Yelp for dinner options. Wou Cha came up with good reviews and was nearby; only about 10 minutes walking plus I felt like I needed a break from European food. But before we headed there for dinner, we stopped by a nearby Paul and grabbed a couple of eclairs.

Wou Cha is run by an authentic Taiwanese family and our server was very helpful when we were deciding what to order. She spoke French and English fluently so there was no language barrier at all. I had duck soup and green tea while Matt ordered stir fry noodles. Eating here transported me back to when I was eating in Taipei. The food was warm and flavorful, just the way it should be.

Angelina

226 rue de Rivoli, 75001 Paris

I don’t even know where to begin. The whole experience from walking along the rue de Rivoli in the pouring rain up to finally being seated in the posh tea room amidst tourists and locals alike was more than I could have dreamed of for our last day. Our meal in Angelina’s was definitely the most expensive we’ve had on this trip but we left not just with the feeling of being full but also with such an appreciation for what Paris has to offer.

I first stumbled upon Angelina on a Facebook thread in one of the travel groups I’m a part of. A fellow member was spending her birthday in Paris and wanted to know where she could get the best chocolate cake in town. Many people suggested Angelina for the best hot chocolate and damn, they couldn’t have been more right. From the first sip, you could tell that this was no ordinary hot chocolate. It was the richest, creamiest, heartwarming drink I have ever experienced. No other hot chocolate comes close, not even Mary Grace’s mint hot chocolate from back home which was my favorite up until stepping into Angelina.

For the main dishes, Matt ordered the Angelina breakfast which came with a drink, freshly pressed fruit juice, a myriad of mini pastries, a bread roll with butter and assorted jams, eggs prepared “your way” and a fruit salad. Since I’m not a fan of breakfast food, I went straight for the kill and got the Truffle ravioli with Parmesan cream and rocket salad. And I cannot stress this enough, GET THE TRUFFLE RAVIOLI. It was so delicious I had to stop and force feed Matt (who had never tried truffle in his life) so that I could share my overwhelming joy with another person.

Of course, we couldn’t leave without trying the signature dessert, Le Mont-Blanc, a meringue with light whipped cream and chestnut cream vermicelli. Tt was so rich that we couldn’t eat more than half of the tiny cake. I think we would have appreciated it more if we didn’t have heavy courses prior. We finally left after two hours of eating, stuffed and ready for a long nap.

You can check out the menu here.

Pierre Hermé

133 avenue des Champs Elysées, 75008 Paris

When Matt and I decided that we were going to Paris, I knew that the one thing I couldn’t miss out on was eating authentic French macarons in France. I searched the internet and combed through travel forums, looking for the best macarons in town. There was alot of argument over whether Pierre Hermé and Ladurée was the best. I read that Pierre Hermé is the more expensive of the two and is not as commercialized as Ladurée (which you can also get in Manila!) but I decided to let fate decide.

We were checking out the Arc de Triomphe the day we finally had macarons. It was mid-afternoon and the sun was high. I was ready to have a snack so I whipped out Google maps and checked if there was a nearby macaron store around. This particular Pierre Hermé was located inside the Publicis drugstore, only a stone’s throw away from the Champs Elysées. We got a box of 7 for 19.50€ and the macarons available were from the Spring Signature collection. Besides the macarons, the Publicis drugstore also has regular food and drink items, French drugstore items, Khiel’s and other brands on display. It’s definitely worth checking out.

–

All in all, Matt and I were more than satisfied with what we ate in Paris though ’til this very day, he still would say to me that he regrets not going to the restaurant Astier. Despite it probably being the most expensive meal we’d have eaten, it was a full course meal and now we’re stuck constantly wondering what could have been. We agreed that we would definitely go back for the crêpes from Breizh cafe and the hot chocolate from Angelina, hands down.

My suggestion for eating in Paris is to check out what food options you have in the arrondissement you’re staying in and decide on your budget. Eating in Europe in general is not cheap (how much more in Paris!) and though there are more affordable options, you can’t deny that these places are priced the way they are for a reason. It is still very possible to have bad meals in Paris so avoid the establishments that are nearest to all the tourist spots because these places know that they’ll always get customers that’ll just pay up. Do your research and explore other areas of Paris. There are tons of hidden gems waiting to be discovered.

What we ate and what you should eat when in Paris We only had two must-do's for our trip to Paris: (1) Spend a day in Disneyland and (2) Eat.

#Angelina #Breizh cafe #Chez Paul #Europe #food #foodie #France #macarons #March 2018 #Matt #Paris #Pierre Hermé #travel #Travel 2018 #Wou Cha

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