#it all started when my mother showed me an article when i was around 8 that was about a | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

hiraya-rawr · 2 years

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So I ask mom and mama (Grandma) who are they going to vote and they Marcos.

What are you thoughts on that I don't know anything about him so.. 🤔

03 tw: PH Politics

There's a reason why the vast majority of students and universities are against BB M4rcos :')) In fact, there's really a lot so I'll try to sum it up.

Aside from the post below, I highly encourage you to do research at reliable sources! (Like reports from the united nations, international news stations, etc.) Avoid opinion articles without references!

I know politics is really stressful and heavy, but let's carefully (and slowly) expose ourselves for the sake of awareness and our future!

(last part has my personal note to you!)

(From my logical side) His platform and political activity is underwhelming. He lacks a stand for environment, women, and territorial disputes. He also doesn't have a built campaign for education and agriculture (remember, our farmers and fishermen are vital for stable communities!).

(From my petty side as a human rights advocate) Imagine being the son of a dictator, with hundreds of survivors sharing their experiences and stories. More than 11,000 victims, 2,000 murders and missing people. Most of which were students and lawyers. Your own mother CONFIRMED the use of torture and military force, the international court also confirmed it, the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) also confirmed it — yet as you stand on stage to spread your campaign, you denied ever single one of their experience.

My own uncle was imprisoned as a student actually. They called him a terrorist and his acquaintances were beaten.

Whereas, the richer side of my family profited (shamefully). We were part of the "rich growing richer" and "the poor growing poorer". This is also why a part of my family supports him. It's called crony capitalism (his father's rule is a textbook example of it too!)

Things his diehard supporters need to know:

1. Why are you so adamant to defend someone who won't even show up on debates for you? All of the other candidates show up to defend and present themselves, spread their agenda, interact, etc.

2. Compared to his infamous dictator father, isn't he underwhelming? His ambition, as stated in a live interview, was that he went into politics for money. Isn't that clear enough?

3. He doesn't have a degree. He lied about his Oxford diploma to the point that Oxford released a formal statement denying him. Don't you dare tell me a "degree isn't everything" when so many people work hard to get a great education in this country. He is a candidate for presidency, why not have one with a degree.

4. Martial law was never the golden age. Check every international textbook, every peso-to-dollar exchange rate, we were dropping rapidly.

5. "A lot of infrastructure were built during his father's time!" Those were debt-driven reforms, meaning buildings were built through debts left unpaid. We still continue to pay them UNTIL NOW. There are court hearings demanding the money back but, well, justice systems are unfair.

6. The "achievements" of the father are not the achievements of the son. He needs to build himself, not use his last name.

7. Again with him supporting people that have a negative presence for women's rights, environment, and LGBTQ.

8. The world is watching. I have friends abroad asking "is your country really voting for a dictator's son?" and it's humiliating that theyre more aware than us :(

There's so much more I have to say and clarify but please do take the time to research. Especially if you're entering the voting age! I started delving into politics at grade 9 and I understand how heavy it can be, especially when we're dealing with stubborn family members, but for the sake of educating the people around us, let's do our best!

note: I don't want to be THAT person encouraging family fights, but please do try convincing your family :')) there's only a few days left and it's crazy how people choose so carelessly. Let them consider other candidates, like Leni or Ka Leody, Kiko, or senators in the pink party list.

I'm lucky that most of my family is Leni-Kiko, but I can no longer deal with the ignorance of my BBM family side, especially if it negatively impacts the future of others :( they don't even have actual reasons, they don't know a thing about his campaign etc, they love him for his father and it really gives me cult-mindset vibes. It's very closed minded and harmful for us, especially for the less privileged 😖

Politics stresses me and I wish I never have to campaign for something as basic as compassion hcjshdjdjhed

#hira politics #tw: politics #hira coleluuviida #leni kiko 2022 #bongbong marcos #lenikiko2022 #politics #ipanalona10to #kulayrosasangbukas

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champagnepodiums · 1 year

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Do I remember right that you talked about this case?

https://www.vox.com/culture/23619617/delphi-murders-updates-reddit-true-crime?fbclid=PAAabEL-CXqQAgxTnBgWVytsnxqdLRimeYMAFYR4kxD8YJ-XSKqOCJsaqH2lQ

OH so it was actually the Moscow Idaho murders that I bitched talked about BUT that was a really good article and I definitely have a few thoughts on it.

I think the author does a really good job of showing the messiness of "true crime".

She doesn't really outright say it, but I really didn't appreciate that she implied that the police in Delphi (which is also something I had read about the Moscow murders/how the police handled that case too) were the reason that the true crime community went through the lengths that it did with the wild theories and accusations.

I think the thing that gets lost in the true crime community (and to this author possibly) is that first and foremost, the police's goal is obviously to figure out who committed the crime but also, they have to find the evidence to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that this person committed the crime to secure the proper conviction. Like above all else, that is their job.

And often, releasing information about the case and the leads they are pursuing would be detrimental to the above goal. This does include giving the family updates (it's mentioned that one of the mothers criticized the perceived lack of movement in the case).

Investigations can take so much time. I cannot stress that things like toxicology and DNA processing can take 6-8 weeks AT LEAST. It's not instant. People truly do think that police agencies should be able to solve crimes with completely unknown perpetrators in a few days but that's not how it works and really? That's not how it should work either. And while it sucks that this means that families have to wait in the dark and wonder if their loved one has been forgotten by law enforcement, if the end result is a convinction then I think that's a fair trade off (at least to me).

Now, obviously, police fuck up investigations ALL THE TIME. So like I understand the skepticism way more in the Delphi case than I did in the Moscow murders.

The article also talks about how even if the man arrested is convicted, some people will reject the verdict because "He has a point: If there’s anything true crime teaches us, it’s that facts, circumstances, evidence, proof, doubt, and truth are all often in the eye of the beholder... If people start digging they’re going to find warts on every single case."

I think maybe the above is one of the things that I hate the most about true crime. Even when the crime is solved, the true crime aspect of it is never really over?

And I really hate that for the families of victims because, for them, it'll never really be over. And it doesn't help that the large majority of the true crime community do not give one flying fuck about the fact that these crime impact real people and that it is SO fucking easy to compound on the grief and for what? Entertainment? Because I'm sorry, armchair detectives rarely solve cases.

I have some personal experience in the realm of being hurt by the true crime community so maybe that is why I feel so strongly about the way the true crime community treats those personally impacted by a crime. I think I've talked about before but when my grandfather was a child, he was a part of a group of children who accidentally found the body of a young girl and that experience had a profound impact on his life and in turn on my own life. But it's a weird thing because like he didn't know the victim in life so it's like a weird in-between of being involved/impacted without being the victim/family of the victim. ANYWAYS that murder is technically unsolved and it was covered on a very popular podcast and the host just really fucked up the details specifically around the body being found and that just HURT because like that changed my grandfather's life and by extension, my mom's life and my life and now my son's life and this podcast host couldn't bother to get the details right (and then when i reached out she argued with me about it and refused to change anything so).

I just saw your other message saying that you realized it wasn't the same case but nonetheless I am very glad that you sent it because it was a really interesting article to read!

#kate talks true crime

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shankhachil · 1 year

Text

I posted 1,612 times in 2022

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Blogs I reblogged the most:

@identitycrisis-electricboogaloo

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I tagged 1,039 of my posts in 2022

Only 36% of my posts had no tags

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#anyway one of them randomly sent a message in our gc like “it's called footccer” and not having context it took me like. half an hour to

My Top Posts in 2022:

It’s not gay if a dog is there na?

13 notes - Posted April 22, 2022

homodbodhan

An article, somewhat. For day 11 of the Desi LGBT Fest 2022, prompt: “The first time you heard ‘gay’”.

I’m going to change this up a bit. I mean, not that I’m not going to tell you the first time I heard the word “gay”, but there’s some more that I want to talk about and I think this is a good chance to share it.

Okay, so first of all, the first time I heard “gay”. Actually, technically, that doesn’t count either, because, really, the first time I ever had a sensory experience of some sort with this word (and doesn’t that just sound wrong?) was from a book called Jobless Clueless Reckless by Revathi Suresh, when I was eight years old. I read the word “gay”. The book itself is YA, but age restrictions never had any meaning to me, since I was often left to my own devices by my parents. Well — I probably shouldn’t have been reading that book, since it’s a bit mature for an eight-year-old, but the point stands.

A phrase from the book went something like “(....) it’s like he’s determined to show the world he’s gay (....)”. It’s not the exact quote — I have the book in my shelf at home but I can’t be bothered to dig it out — but it’s close. The context, here, is that the narrator’s younger brother likes those beginner’s cross-stitching and knitting sets, and is proudly displaying his collection to the narrator’s crush.

You see the issue with the narration here, obviously. I’m sure you’re all thinking “casual homophobia” right now, and, yes, once I was old enough to understand what “gay” meant, I went back to this book and said “Yikes!” out loud when I came to this part.

But onwards. I went to my mother and asked her what “gay” meant. She said, “Don’t say such words, you’re not old enough,” and so for a few years I went around thinking that “gay” was a profane word.

And that was it for that. It was the first time I had read, and then heard, the word “gay” at all. But it doesn’t really count because I only understood what it meant three years later. I’ve mentioned in my last post for the Fest that I realized I was gay some months after Section 377 was abolished. It was (I also said) the first time I heard “gay” and actually wondered about what it meant. I was eleven years old, and I enjoyed seeing pictures of attractive men, and didn’t really understand what my friends (who were, looking back, perhaps a bit too mature for their age) meant when they called women “hot”.

I saw “gay” and I went on Google — or maybe Wikipedia — and I looked at what it meant. I read very thoroughly, actually. For a week, when my mother wasn’t actively making me study or go to table-tennis classes or what-have-you, I went onto the Internet on my iPad and researched the LGBTQ+ community like I’d never researched anything before.

I came out of it a changed boy. Obviously, for a few months, I didn’t realize I was gay, I never even considered the fact that I was attracted to men. It never even occurred to me that other boys I knew just... weren’t like me.

A few months later, I started really thinking about whether I was gay or not. It was at the back of my mind for a while. Sometimes I wouldn’t think about it, sometimes I would. More than a year went by like this. And then, in March of the year I turned thirteen, the COVID pandemic came to India. I had already had a lot of alone time — and this increased to almost ten or eleven hours a day. At this point, of course, I had begun to hit puberty, which, combined with the fact that I am decidedly not asexual, led to the development of some... urges. You know what I mean. It feels weird to talk about it since it was so recent. If I’d been in, say, my thirties, I could probably have talked about it more freely, perhaps with a laugh, a look how dumb I was. But I am far from being in my twenties, let alone my thirties, and so I will not elaborate — much.

Skipping the fine details, I will say here that I discovered at thirteen that straight porn did absolutely nothing, and gay porn did everything for me.

Seventh grade, though, had brought my first crush, Who was a girl, and also my best friend. This made things difficult.

So, instead of saying I was gay, I came out to that best friend (who obviously didn’t know I liked her) as bisexual. And that was officially the first label I applied to myself. It was wonderful. These days, to avoid having to explain my full identity, I say I’m bisexual to most people. Most of them don’t ask further.

Fast-forward two more years to now. I discovered that I am demiromantic and homosexual. More labels.

Labels. Probably the most interesting thing that humans have invented — little words that tell you what kind of person a person is, what they do, who they love, where they’re from. All for the uniquely-Homo sapiens purpose of classification. We cannot live without categorizing people into kinds. Detrimental sometimes, yes, but, at its core, one of the most fascinating things about human psychology.

To be honest, before I discovered different kinds of labels, I never really knew anything about myself. I mean... I did, just not actively. The fact that I am Indian, or Bengali, or, for that matter, a boy, never really set itself in my mind very concretely. I never thought about it as much as some people seem to do.

I think that labels are the thing that have helped me most on my journey of self-discovery. Not meditation, or reading, or love interests, but labels. Everything I’ve ever known about myself has been from seeing a word, thinking about it, and going, is this me?

So, back again to the first time I heard the word “gay”. The first time I experienced the word “gay”. The time I came out as bisexual. The eleventh of June, 2022, as I write this post.

If any of these had not happened, I wouldn’t know who I am or where I am as accurately and clearly as I know now.

Thank you, then, to Revathi Suresh, the Supreme Court, my friend M, and you all. As all the stars say — wouldn’t be here without you.

***

@desi-lgbt-fest

19 notes - Posted June 11, 2022

I am SOOO jealous of the economics students in my grade rn they only have two papers in group II and the rest of the science students and I have to write four because SOMEONE in CISCE decided that physics chemistry and biology are three papers of one subject

24 notes - Posted May 1, 2022

BYE I JUST FOUND OUT THE INFINITE NOISE IS BASED ON A PODCAST HELLO GIRL THIS IS ALL I’M GOING TO LISTEN TO FOR THE NEXT 5 YEARS

36 notes - Posted May 26, 2022

My #1 post of 2022

চিঠি (Letter)

A letter in Bangla, followed by its translation in English. For Day 7 of the Desi LGBT Fest 2022.

০৭/০৬/২০২২ কলকাতা

হয়তো, যখন অবশেষে তুমি এই চিঠি খুলবে, তখন তোমার জীবন পুরো দমে চালু হয়ে গিয়ে থাকবে। হয়তো তুমি জোরটা পেয়েছ তোমার গল্পগুলো পৃথিবীকে খুলে দেখাতে পেরেছ; হয়তো তোমার মনের মধ্যে জাদুর, প্রেমের, আশার দুনিয়াগুলো কাগজের উপর, বা সাদা ডকিউমেন্টে প্রকাশ করেছ। বা, হয়তো, তুমি এই কলেজে ঢুকেছ, কে জানে, আই.আই.টি. দিল্লী যেমন তুমি চেয়েছিলে, বা ইয়েল, বিশ্বের ওই প্রান্তরে, আঠারো বছর পরে মা-বাবার থেকে ৮০০০ কিলোমিটার দূরে। তুমি কী পড়ছ? অথবা কী পড়েছ? অঙ্ক? নাকি ভাষাতত্ত্ব; একা একটা স্বপ্ন দেখে পরিবারের কথা না শুনে বেরিয়ে গেছ?

তুমি প্রচুর বাধার সাথে মুখামুখি হয়েছ। আরও বাধা আসবে; তা ছারা জীবনই বৃথা। তবে তুমি পারবে। আমার দৃঢ় বিশ্বাস তুমি পারবে। তুমি এতো কিছু ঝেলেছ − আমি জানি। আমি জানি যে তুমি ক্লান্ত হয়েছ, হচ্ছ, হবে। কিন্তু তোমাকে চলতেই হবে।

২০১৮। ৩৭৭ ধারা অসাংবিধানিক শাসিত হয়েছে। তুমি কাগজের উপরে বড়-বড় করে দেখছ লেখা আছে একটা ইংরেজি শব্দ − গে, গে, গে। এ কী জিনিস, তুমি ভাবছ। ইন্টারনেটে কোনও বাধা নেই। এই দেখো গে মানে কী − আর এবার তুমি ভাবতে শুরু করো, আমি গে নাকি? এভাবেই তুমি নিজেকে নিয়ে অনেক কিছু শিখেছ, আর এভাবেই, ভেবে-ভেবে, তুমি বোঝো, আমি সন্দেহ ছারা গে।

আর আস্তে, আস্তে, তুমি এটাও বোঝো যে পাশে বন্ধু ছারা, এই যুদ্ধ জেতা যাবেনা।

তুমি আমার থেকে বয়সে বড়। তোমার নিশ্চয়ই বুদ্ধি বেশি, অনেক কিছু দেখেছ, কতজনকে চেনো এবং আলাপ করেছ তা তো অসঙ্খ্য। কিন্তু − তাদেরকে ভুলোনা যারা তোমার জীবনের সবচেয়ে কষ্টের মুহূর্তে তোমার পাশে ছিল। ওই তিনটে বন্ধু − হ্যাঁ, ওরা − ওদেরকে ছেরোনা। আমি জানিনা, সম্ভাবত তোমরা আর কথা বলোনা। তবুও ভুলে যেওনা। আর এটাও ভুলে যেওনা যে তুমি আলাদা। সারা পৃথিবী তোমাকে সন্দেহজনক মনে করে। তোমার আত্মিক পূর্বপুরুষরা তোমার অধিকারের জন্যে লড়েছে। তুমি ভারতীয়; তুমি সমকামী। তোমার নিজের আত্মা স্মৃতি ভর্তি। তুমি এই ধর্ম-পাগল দেশে বেঁচেছ, যদিও কখনও মনে হয়েছে তোমার নিঃশ্বাস যেন যে কোনও সময় বন্ধ হয়ে যাবে, কারণ চারই দিক, না, ছয় দিক, সামনে-পিছনে-ডান-বাম-উপর-নিচে থেকে তোমার দেশ তোমার শ্বাসরোধ করছে। তবুও, যদি তুমি এই চিঠি পড়ছ, তুমি আশা রেখেছ। নিজেকে দুর্বল মনে করোনা। তোমার পুরো জীবন তোমার সামনে আছে। শক্তি রাখো। তোমার যৌবনকাল প্রমান করে যে তোমার আছে।

ছেলেরা আসবে, যাবে, থাকবে, চলে যাবে। তুমি পড়েছ তো। নইলে এতোগুলো প্রেমের উপন্যাস পড়ার কী মানে ছিল? একটু তো সত্যতা আছে প্রত্যেকটি গল্পে। আমি আবার বলব: আমি জানিনা। কী জানি, হয়তো তোমার আছে একজন। একটা অসাধারণ ছেলে। রোজ দেখো তাকে, রোজ ভাবো তুমি ওর মতো একটা মানুষের যোগ্য হলে কিভাবে। আর ও যদি তোমাকে একই ভাবে আদর করে, এটা নিয়ে নিশ্চিন্ত হও যে ও তোমাকে এভাবেই দেখে।

জানিনা, এই পত্র যখন খুলবে, তখন তুমি তোমার স্বপ্নের মতো বেঁচে উঠতে পেরেছ কি না। যাই হক না কেন − উঠে আসো; দাঁড়াও; বেরোও। অনেকজন তোমায় ভালোবাসে। তুমি কখনও একা থাকবেনা।

তোমার অপেক্ষা করা হচ্ছে। তুমি কিসের অপেক্ষা করছ?

− ইতি, অনেক বছর আগেকার তুমি

***

07/06/2022 Kolkata

Maybe, when you finally open this letter, your life will have started for real. Maybe you’ve found the courage to openly show the world your stories; maybe you’ve expressed the worlds of magic, love, hope in your mind on paper, or blank documents. Or, maybe, you’ve just entered college, who knows, IIT Delhi like you always wanted, or Yale, on the other side of the world, 8000 kilometers away from Ma and Baba after eighteen years. What are you studying? Or, what have you studied? Maths? Or linguistics; alone, following a dream, ignoring your family’s advice, have you set off?

You’ve faced many difficulties. More will come; life is pointless without them. But you can do it. I daresay you can do it. You’ve dealt with so much — I know. I know you were, are, will be tired. But you have to go on.

2018. Section 377 has just been ruled unconstitutional. You see one English word written in big letters in the headlines — gay, gay, gay. The Internet has no limits. Look, this is what gay means — and now you begin to wonder, am I gay? You’ve learnt so much about yourself this way, and just so, having thought much, you realize, I am, without doubt, gay.

And, slowly, you realize this too: that without friends, this war cannot be won.

You’re older than me. You’re definitely smarter, you’ve seen so much, and you know countless people and have met infinitely many. But — don’t forget those who were beside you in your life’s worst moments. Those three friends — yes, them — don’t leave them. I don’t know, maybe you don’t talk to them anymore. Still, don’t forget them. And don’t forget this, either: you’re different. The whole world suspects you. Your spiritual forefathers fought for your rights. You are Indian; you are homosexual. Your own soul is full of memories. You have survived this country of religious fanaticism, even though it has seemed, sometimes, that you will suffocate at any moment, because from all four directions, no, six, from front-back-left-right-up-down your country is choking you. If you are reading this letter, then you have kept up hope. Don’t consider yourself weak. Your whole life is in front of you. Have strength. Your youth proves that you possess it.

Boys will come, go, stay, leave. You’ve read about it. Otherwise, what was the point of all those romance novels? There’s definitely a grain of truth to every story. I will say again: I don’t know. Perhaps you already have someone. An extraordinary boy. You see him every day, and each day you think, how did you manage to deserve someone like him? And if he loves you as much as you love him, rest assured that he sees you the same way.

Who knows if, when you open this letter, you have managed to live as you always dreamt. In any case — rise; stand up; come out. You are loved by many. You will never be alone.

You are awaited — what are you waiting for?

Yours, From years in the past, you

***

@desi-lgbt-fest

53 notes - Posted June 7, 2022

Get your Tumblr 2022 Year in Review →

#tumblr2022 #year in review #my 2022 tumblr year in review #your tumblr year in review

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haleslugworth · 2 years

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A Personal Struggle With My Mind

// tw: depression, psychosis, teenhood

It feels natural at this point to feel ashamed that I am scared of everything all around me.

For a while now, trying to figure out what is wrong with my brain, I had always figured I was only suffering from depression and anxiety. I would often look at symptoms and would try and work to make them balanced in my life. Trying to take accountability for things that I couldn't control.

However, that's where I began to slowly realize that these emotions, these symptoms that feel congruent with depression, didn't feel "normal."

When I say "normal," what I mean is that: I don't know if it's normal for a depressed person to feel like they're being followed around and being watched all the time. I don't think it's normal for a depressed person to think somebody is in their house, or it feels like they can feel the heat - as if a fire is erupting - coming from the kitchen and has to go check 8 times to reassure themselves that nothing is on fire. I don't think it's normal to think peace and harmony are when I'm six feet under and I can finally experience absolute calmness the moment I no longer breathe.

Every day I feel like I am just a ghost. I don't truly exist. I think I'm already dead, or I've been dead for a long time. I want to be dead. My brain has become my worst enemy. All I think about is how I could possibly be hunted down by people, who don't even exist, every day. I think, that if I don't wake up at a certain time, I am going to erupt or have a heart attack. If I show my emotions too much, somebody is going to hurt me, and I have to be as emotionally unavailable at all times to make them go away.

I don't have friends, because I am scared of anybody getting close to me. I have been used by ex-friends before and was tossed aside when they found somebody else to mooch off of. My family was emotionally unavailable unless they wanted to express anger at me. I have to always hide. I don't want to be hurt anymore, but I never feel safe. I think I'll make one wrong move and I'll lose a limb, lose an eye, lose my head. The constant, daily feeling of being in fear.

I tell myself that these "people" and "things" aren't really there. That I am safe in my apartment. I just ate a warm meal, I am listening to my favorite music, and I am comfortable in bed. And it helps calm me down some, but then, the fear always creeps back up. The peace never stays.

Lately, I have wondered if I am not truly depressed. Perhaps I am psychotic. I have tried reading up on the possibility of it, and what I found was "psychotic depression."

I'm not happy when I read the articles talking about psychotic depression. I want to feel proud that I found an answer to my chaotic mind, but I don't. I feel ashamed. The word "psychotic" is already such a negative and fearsome term to society, that even I feel so scared of the word being associated with me. I don't want to think of it so negatively. I want to look at it and work on myself.

I can't deny that it all sounds like me, though. It's like I can finally look in the mirror and see the flaws that I've been desperately avoiding acknowledging. This is a special diagnosis for me. I don't want it to sound as if I'm being angry that I could be psychotic. It's an obstacle I need to learn how to get over, to stop looking at psychosis as evil. It does scare me, but it doesn't scare me enough to run away. I wanted an answer and I have it. I can't back out of it.

It reminds me of moments of my teenhood when I was becoming more aware of how my mother acted in the house. Always scared the neighbors were coming to kill her, always scared we were going to be robbed, always thinking somebody was camping out on the roof or planting listening devices in our air vents. When I found out she was taking antipsychotic medication, it all started to make sense.

I was just a teen. It was all too messy to understand. Even if she took medication, it was never much help. It seemed to make her worse. And guess who she always had to lean on when she had her psychotic breaks? Or became violent? You guessed it.

I think I fool myself into thinking I would never be physically violent with anybody like her. But that doesn't mean I don't have violent thoughts and words. I'm not proud of those. I feel disgusted when those thoughts or words exist to and from me. Every day I want to keep myself contained because I don't want to hurt anybody. I think it's better if I just become sidelined by everybody. Just die.

I don't talk to my mother anymore. It's too painful. I want nothing to do with my ex-friends, they're toxic fucks that threw me away.

I've begun to look at myself more. Knowing I seriously need to think of myself for once. I just keep avoiding myself because I don't want to look at the person that dealt and still deals with all the bullshit. But I can't keep ignoring that my mind feels like it's consistently falling apart like a loose jigsaw puzzle. I can't keep losing the pieces and think it'll just solve itself one day. I have to do something.

#mental illness #psychotic depression #psychotic

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tlshfkthroxld23 · 1 year

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시라노소개팅 어플 후기 채팅 만남 사이트 앱 리

시라노소개팅 어플 후기 채팅 만남 사이트 앱 리뷰

시라노소개팅 어플 후기 채팅 만남 사이트 앱 리

On December 8, 2019, 'Kim Nam-gil's Strongest Show in the Universe - Winnie Dew' was held hosted by Gilstory. The Strongest Show in the Universe, held for the first time this time, is one of Gilstory's public art campaigns, and is a donation event held at the end of each year. It is a donation show sponsored by all cast members participating in talent donation. For about 4 hours, they performed 15 songs and danced and rapped, which is not normally shown. Ju Ji-hoon, Park Seong-woong, Uhm Jung-hwa, Eum Moon-seok, Lee Sang-yeop, Ko Gyu-pil, and Kim Min-sik were present as guests, and the host was Hwang Je-seong, and all proceeds from the performance were donated to Gilstory and will be used to support public art campaigns. 2019 Kim Nam-gil's strongest show in the universe, revisited in pictures

On December 3, 2022, Gilstory's signature donation show, 'Kim Nam-gil's Strongest Show in the Universe - Gillibus' was held. Due to COVID-19, which started to become popular in 2020, it was held three years after 'Winney Dew' in 2019. Im Si-wan, professor Kwon Il-yong, Jung Man-sik, Seong-jun, the drama Thief: The Sound of a Knife team, Baek Jong-won, the movie Guardian team, and Man Pictures CEO Han Jae-deok participated in the donation as guests. Jang Seong-gyu was in charge of the progress, and Kim Nam-gil and guests conducted a mission together with the goal of collecting 10 million won in donations, and donations were accumulated according to the results. It is rumored that the ticket price was not a waste at all as the stage was filled with a total of 7 songs, stories and events for 4 hours and 40 minutes. All proceeds from this performance will be used to spread animal rights awareness for animals appearing in the media and to treat and protect abused animals. Donation articles, campaign related articles Kim Nam-gil worked really hard on the set. Usually, other actors are done when the camera passes by, but Kim Nam-gil was acting more desperately, making use of that emotion from behind. An actor must have a deficiency. Kim Nam-gil also had a deficiency. He had the problem of having to go to the military this year, and there was also anxiety about being forgotten by the public after he did. During the first filming, Kim Nam-gil injured his foot. He was wearing thin shoes and running down a hill covered with small stones, but his foot broke. I need a few more scenes, so I asked him if he could play, and he said yes. "I'm in the 31st batch of MBC public recruitment, and I've been feeling the sadness of being unknown for 7 years." I really gritted my teeth and acted.

Some people might say that actor Kim Nam-gil changed because of Bidam's popularity, but the Kim Nam-gil I know is not that kind of person. He must be scared. Historical drama actors cannot realize their popularity because they are confined to the set during filming. It's scary when you go out. If you can't control yourself when you're up like this, you think you might collapse. Kim Nam-gil is a smart actor. He is also a good person. His mother underwent a major surgery in the middle of the drama, and I know that because of her mother's medical care, she remained silent even after the drama ended. Kim Geun-hong (PD, Drama 《Queen Seon-deok》) Kim Nam-gil values loyalty, and he was a good actor and decent man who didn't boast about being popular. During his interviews, he was also a man with a blank space who would throw out jokes while talking seriously about acting. Marie Claire Editor As soon as the filming begins, he turns into a different person from him. He is very focused and takes good care of his co-stars. He usually jokes around a lot and is a mischievous person. He is the complete opposite of me. I put a lot of effort into maintaining that feeling from the day before shooting. Like Mr. Nam-gil, if only the camera is turned, it cannot change 180 degrees. I envy that concentration. Hwang Woo-Seul-Hye (Actress, Movie 《The Night Before the Storm》) On the set, Kim Nam-gil was like a vitamin, and he devoted all his passion. He is an actor who exudes passionate energy even in silent times. Cho Chang-ho (director, movie 《The Night Before the Storm》) First of all, Nam Gil-hyung is an actor who is very good at acting, so when I was filming on location in Japan, I always went to see his brother filming even when I was not filming. There are so many things to learn, and we talk a lot while filming. But he's a bit of an unpredictable person, so he's very serious, and then he suddenly jokes around, so it feels like he's holding a time bomb when he's with him. Oh, in a good way. (laughs) Kim Jae-wook (Actor, Drama 《Bad Guy》) Kim Nam-gil does a lot of research before filming his scene. I have a headache because I prepare detailed performances by analyzing the script more than the director. Kim Nam-gil is an actor who has an indefinable feeling, a strong feeling regardless of good or evil. Kim Nam-gil, seen through the screen, is truly the best. I think Kim Nam-gil will probably become the best actor in Asia. Lee Hyeong-min (PD, drama 《Bad Guy》)

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melanywrites · 1 year

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Chapter 4: “El Privilegio of my Life”

I googled “best education system in the world” and the first thing that popped up was an article by “usnews.com” stating the United States as the first. I beg to differ, although, I will admit to my own privilege: being born American. I have to acknowledge this privilege before attempting to dissect the education system in the United States. What does it mean to be American? One click lead me to the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services website. So, “what are the benefits and responsibilities of citizenship?” according to their official website, the first benefit is voting, directly after; bringing family members to the United States and providing citizenship for children born abroad, traveling around the world, obtaining federal job, becoming an official, and "showing your patriotism". They directly advertise what many immigrants dream of doing, “the American dream”, obtaining a life in the US and eventually helping their families abroad or bringing them to the US as well. They don’t speak about the hurdles you have to jump, the applications, the lawyers, the years of waiting, and all the money spent for that affirming piece of paper. My mother waited 12 years for it, my father 8, more than $40,000 in combined expenses. I never had a college fund.

I was pressured to do well in school, whipped when I failed, never rewarded for small accomplishments because my only job was to “get good grades so you can be someone that doesn’t have to work as hard as me” and I don’t blame my parents or hold resentments. I’ve learned that the problem with our education system runs deeper than the demand for good grades to “make it”, in fact, without money or connections your grades and degrees mean nothing at all. My parent’s purpose, like many other parents who left their lives behind, was to allow us the privilege of education that perhaps they did not have. My mother never finished middle school, she got here when she was 14 years old, by herself. My father never started college, he was 18 when he arrived and lived with 10 roomates in a two bedroom apartment. When I was 14 years old, I got my first golden honor roll for good grades and no absences. When I was 18 I started college and now I’m about to graduate with my bachlor’s degee in English and Literature. Ironically, mi primer idioma es el Español.

Being bilingual has its own set of privileges. My parents tried to erase their accents, the ones that tie them back to their land. I don’t have a Spanish accent, and I fell in love with the sound of my adopted tongue, so I made it a mission to pratice the melody of both. At first, the purpose of my English degree was to help family members and loved ones who don’t speak English translate what they wanted to say. Later, it became something deeper, a passion, and my target audience grew, I wanted to help other students, I wanted to educate, I wanted to help the world, I decided I wanted to become a professor and published author. I was only allowed to come this far because God blessed me with the privilege of being born American and speaking two languages. God also blessed my parents on their trip here, and perhaps by extension I can return those blessings back to them.

Not everyone has this basic privilege. Mi prima Mari pays 6 grand every semester for tuition towards her degree. She’s forced to take breaks in between because she has to save most of her check to pay off that debt. No one said it was impossible but they sure do make it harder. She has never missed a day, and always gets the As, but she was not born here. She cannot travel with her friends for spring break, she cannot work a federal job, and she gets rejected because of her status so our education system fails her but still takes her money. The United States Citizenship and Immigration Services website says “America becomes stronger when all of its citizens respect the different opinions, cultures, ethnic groups, and religions found in this country. Tolerance for differences is also a responsibility of citizenship” but the United States of America doesn't seem to tolerate differences or support the progress of those working towards that citizenship or a future here. El privilegio of my life is being able to express these thoughts openly, it is your job to acknowledge your own privilege and to redefine it by using the tools life gives you to better the world, be a good person, and above all. love God, yourself, humanity, nature, and each other.

#writerscommunity #writing #writerslife #writing blog #hypocrisy #inequality #justice #government #education #language #teaching #english literature #humanity #peace

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white0x0rabbit · 2 years

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THE AGE OF THE CHARACTERS IN THE BATMAN 2022 MOVIE. I will show all the possibilities I found.

THE WIKI TIMELINE. (https://the-batman-universe.fandom.com/wiki/Timeline#October)

The Batman movie comes out in October 2019.

Bruce Wayne and Edward Nashton are 30 years old. (1898)

Selina Kyle is 22 years old. (1997)

Death of the Waynes (2001), Bruce and Edward are 12 years old.

RANDOM OPINION UNDER THE TIMELINE

https://the-batman-universe.fandom.com/wiki/Timeline?commentId=4400000000000040259

THE WIKI PAGE OF THE CHARACTERS. (https://the-batman-universe.fandom.com/wiki/Batman# + https://the-batman-universe.fandom.com/wiki/Riddler + https://the-batman-universe.fandom.com/wiki/Catwoman )

Still in 2019, i guess ?

Edward Nashton is 30 years old. (1989)

Bruce Wayne is 28 years old. (1991)

Selina Kyle is 22 years old. (1997)

Death of the Waynes (2001) « At age ten, Bruce's parents were brutally gunned down by a nameless criminal. » Edward would be 12.

BATMAN CHARACTER PAGE

At seventeen, Bruce returned to Gotham for the summer after completing his junior year at boarding school abroad.

Bruce's street racing activities eventually came into contact with a seventeen-year-old Edward Nashton.

THE BEST SOURCE OF ALL, WIKI DA PEDIA. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Batman_(film))

« Batman is around 30 years old »

« with Reeves stating Batman is "emotionally stunted at being 10 years old, because that's a trauma you don't get past". »

SCREENRANT ARTICLE. (https://screenrant.com/the-batman-how-old-is-robert-pattinsons-bruce-wayne/)

While Matt Reeves' new DC reboot doesn't confirm Wayne's age in specific terms, it is possible to work out how old he is, and Reeves himself has offered some insight.

Robert Pattinson's Bruce Wayne was written to be around 30 years old.

THEORY

To use the specific details of Batman's origin, the Waynes were murdered after seeing The Mark Of Zorro, and The Batman version could still mirror that by having the movie they see be 1998's The Mask Of Zorro making Bruce Wayne around 33, having originally been 8 when his parents were killed.

LOOPER ARTICLE. (https://www.looper.com/787614/how-old-is-bruce-wayne-in-the-batman/)

According to information provided by director Matt Reeves during an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Bruce Wayne was written to be about 30 years old in "The Batman."

REDDIT 1 (https://www.reddit.com/r/TheBatmanFilm/comments/mzmar8/theory_bruce_wayne_is_26_years_old/)

Bruce wayne is 25 years old.

REDDIT 2 (https://www.reddit.com/r/DC_Cinematic/comments/t955b0/the_batman_year_age_confirmation/)

Selina was 7 years old when her mother died.

Maria Kyle (1976-2004)

Selina is 22 years old.

The movie takes place on Thursday, October 31 (2019)

Vengeance have no age. (ok this one is not relevant, but I found it funny)

REDDITER OPINION

If this is set in 2022, that puts Selina’s birthyear around 1997. And if Bruce was 10 when his parents were killed in 2001 (which I believe has been confirmed?) that means he was born around 1991. This makes Bruce 31 and Selina 25. This is, of course, ignoring the fact that the last Thursday, October 31 (the day Bruce mentions in the opening narration) was in 2019, and the next is in 2024. If this is set in 2019, then Selina is 22, which can’t be right. So either this is set in 2022 (and fuck the calendar, I guess) or it’s set in 2024, which would be closer to a potential sequel release date anyway.

The letter he finds in Selina’s house also says 2019

The movie takes place in 2021. The Thomas Wayne mayoral ad has (on the top left) 2001 as the release date. This coupled with the fact that the news said it was 20 years ago that the Wayne’s were murdered gave me 2021 (year the movie started shooting)

MY OPINION.

I believe the movie is set in 2019, only because Thursday October 31 is mentioned. I used to think the movie was set in 2021, it made sense to me with the Wayne's death in 2001 ( it's been 20 years).

Bruce was born in 1991, he is 28 years old. Edward was born in 1991, he is 28 years old. Selina was born in 1997, she is 22 years old.

I am convinced that Bruce and Edward share the same age. Both characters mirror each other, it makes sense to me that they were born in the same year.

On the other hand, I'm upset to know that Selina is a 22, it seems strange to me compared to Bruce and Edward. I would imagine her to be around 24, at least.

If you have any theories or just want to share your opinion, you can drop a message :D

EDIT !!!

Please read the replies to this post! A little angel dropped a very convincing analysis regarding the year of the movie! This lovely person succeeded in convincing me that the movie is indeed set in 2021!

#The batman #the batman movie #selina kyle #catwoman #vengeance #the riddler #edward nashton #bruce wayne #i know im crazy

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derangedhyena-delphinidae · 3 years

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numerous issues with “The Aftermath of Seaworld”

When I get time to do so (aka when I’m done with the documentary), I’m likely going to make a video version of this going into the details.

But for right now, I’ve made this. Both as a guideline for me and so everyone can begin to get an idea of the severity of issues involved.

Researching things is time-consuming and can be very difficult - believe me, I know. But I’m of the mind that if you’re making content with the intent of educating people, you have a responsibility to perform a certain level of due diligence. It IS okay to express uncertainty or doubt if you have it. It is NOT okay to confidently assert things that you do not know with certainty.

The video has an anticap slant, and I’m obviously not disagreeing on that front. But again: if you’re gonna go through the trouble of teaching people something. Bare minimum... please make sure it’s actually correct. *** 1) x ‘founded in 1964 and based out of Florida’ - ???? Seaworld definitively began on the west coast, in San Diego, CA. And given that the first park opened in early 1964… things came together before that. Uh? 2) x ‘four people founded Seaworld [...]’ For one… it wasn’t originally conceived as a restaurant, it was originally conceived as an underwater bar/lounge. Two… calling the four guys involved in founding the place “frat brothers” is fucking ridiculous and completely overlooks a) how each was actually involved and b) the overall significance of their contributions to the field as individuals. Hint: like it or not, they were important and did a lot!

3) x If one is going to bring up SWBGCF/rescues while talking about the literal founding of SW, it gives the impression that it’s been around for that duration. It hasn’t. It’s actually a bit unclear when SW started an organized rescue program, but the Fund itself and all that it did came about much later. The rescue information and how it’s presented is actually INCREDIBLY complex, nuanced, and has a fascinating history (from a “bad company behaving badly” perspective). Oversimplifying this, to this degree and in this misinformative way, does the facts of the situation an INCREDIBLE disservice.

4) x [assertive statement about what the name Shamu means] ….Uh actually there’s several explanations for the name Shamu, and the most likely one IMO seems to be the “she-namu” one, not the “friend of Namu” one(? What is this even based on.) 4b) It’s not quite clear if she’s saying “Namu was the first ever orca to be displayed and perform shows” or or Namu was the first to be displayed and, like Shamu, performed shows. Either way, Moby Doll was the first to truly be displayed to the public, not Namu.

5) x ‘Namu died after one year in captivity and you’d think that this might deter Seaworld from doing the same thing again…’ Seaworld truly had nothing to do with Namu. And they leased/took possession of Shamu before Namu died. ‘Again’? What?

6) x “Now, PETA paints a pretty disturbing picture…” [while showing Okura’s artwork] This video segment is, and this is putting it nicely, a pile of poorly-researched BULLSHIT. -Yes, PETA talks about Shamu’s capture, re: the harpooning of her mother. This Youtuber cannot apparently be arsed to look more than 1 Google search into this, as she proceeds to dismiss the information as potentially fabricated. There are two detailed accounts of Shamu’s capture that I’m aware of - in books - and though they have some slight conflicts, it’s absolutely NOT in doubt that the female who was very likely Shamu’s mother was 1) harpooned, 2) died from her injuries and 3) this had been done to make her easier to catch/locate because there was a fucking buoy attached to the harpoon. Which she dragged around for at least 24 hours prior dying. So maybe don’t dismiss that as PETA hysteria, maybe TRY to determine the truth of the matter, which would inform one that it is both true and completely horrifying. -In addition, Okura is an awesome individual who has worked very hard to create a variety of informative artwork for our cause. Okura is NOT associated with PETA and it’s borderline libel in my eyes to use their artwork in this dismissive manner when the primary sources of it can be easily identified online, with full explanations and everything. Do I take special offense to this because of the misuse of artwork? Absolutely. Artists get disrespected enough online. I’m tired of it. This kind of laziness IS NOT acceptable.

7) x ‘timeline is fuzzy about when Shamu died’ …………… it’s…. It’s really not … newspapers are pretty clear about it…..

8) x [complete and utter oversimplification of the lifespan issue, which is not acceptable for anything published in 2020. It just isn’t. If you’re going to bring it up like this, either do the legwork and get into the weeds or stay out.] 8b) [same for reproductive ages. sigh]

9) x if we’re going to talk about when Cornell was involved with Seaworld it’s very important to specify when Cornell was involved with Seaworld and not make it seem like it’s present tense.

10) x “both were rescued by Seaworld” - uh? no. Zero orcas have been rescued by Seaworld. Literally none. The infected-jaw orca was Sandy, whose story is complex and certainly does not involve Seaworld until much later. And many of the orcas in that time period had bullet wounds, often only identified post-mortem because they didn’t seem to hurt the animals much. Also, unflinchingly blending 70s captivity ethics with modern ones is also complete nonsense?

11) x [tilikum coming from sealand] inhales I am going to make an entire video centered on this fucking subject because it’s one of the single most profound arguments for Seaworld being garbage as assessed by US government agencies in the 90s yet everyone utterly fails to mention this. Why?!

12) x what on earth is this nonsense re: quoting a quote from Zimmerman’s article - which has already been removed from its original context, so the original context is not available - and then penalizing the quote for existing as if Zimmerman’s article were the context? That is offensively disingenuous. I honestly don’t know what the original context is, either - but it’s wildly inappropriate to act as if the Zimmerman article is.

13) x this is relatively minor but ‘Paul Sprong’? You literally have his name on the screen. And then mis-reading his age too? While asserting it from a static article published years ago? Effort? Where is it?

14) x ‘another trainer, Peter’ ….. Ken Peters….

15) [weirdly glossing over the widely-available list of orca-trainer injuries/aggressions, despite it being central to the point.] 16) x This pilot whale outrage certainly happened but it was pretty clearly Blackfish that started the cascade of woes for Seaworld. Who has ever asserted this?

17) if you’re gonna just rehash blackfish, tell people to go watch blackfish.

18) x I’ve already gone over the context issue with Seaworld calling out Howard’s statement in Blackfish here (point 23). Which is to say, IN CONTEXT in Blackfish it’s clear what Mr. Garrett is talking about but, divorced from that, it sounds incorrect. But this Youtuber AMPLIFIES the issue by doubling down on the assertion with “no record of a killer whale doing any harm to anyone in the wild.” The surfer event should always be mentioned. Yes, there’s absolutely room for doubt. But there’s also a clear demarcation between an accidental attack (eg mistaken identity, as was likely for the surfer) and intentional one (eg the incidents at marine parks.) Why do people kneecap themselves on this point 18b) please stop acting like Luna represents orcas in general.

19) x “Howard, for all of his research…” … while referring to David Duffus’ b-roll and statements. Uh. 20) x Apparently this Youtuber has single-handedly resolved the dorsal fin issue. You know, the thing that hasn’t been properly researched ever, that has been subject to a ton of debate, that isn’t 100% settled for a variety of reasons, and almost everyone talks about in terms of theories and likely possibilities. 21) x Alexis Martinez wasn’t “torn to shreds.” In a space where even moderate exaggerations are often penalized harshly by the opposition, this kind of blatant nonsense is not welcome. Plus, the reality’s bad enough… you don’t have to make anything up!

22) x *sighs. points at own webpage*

23) Talking about the shows stopping without acknowledging how that’s a bit of a farce is something else. In addition to apparently just flipping to buying what Seaworld’s selling re: its ‘improved image.’

*** Tl;dr video is so unrelentingly full of errors ranging from small to egregious it makes me seriously concerned for the veracity of the rest of this person’s content. The maker of the video provided a list of their sources in their video description, which I will have time to look through in detail later. The above is solely a response to the information they present IN THE VIDEO - which, is very important because let’s be real: a lot of people are not going to look at the list of sources. People don’t even do it when citing papers (no really, you’d be surprised, fml.) For anyone who wants to whinge that I haven’t linked or asserted any sources of my own for my claims… well, remember what I said about time-consuming and ‘I’m busy’? Yhea. Getting all of that together will be part of making a video. So if you want to shrug loudly at my list here… you can, that’s your prerogative, I’m happy to say I DGAF if that’s your takeaway.

What I hope, is that if there’s anything I’ve made clear over the While of running this blog, it’s that I don’t fuck around when it comes to sources and information and do my best to provide what information exists, all of it, not just cherrypicked bits and bobs. Anyways. Here’s step 0 at least. Please don’t share that video. Pretty please.

#seaworld #grumble

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aftgandotherbooks · 3 years

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First time Neil cries in front of the foxes- Aaron

Aaron’s experience in witnessing Neil cry for the first time is quite different, and much more… passionate and confusing? You see, besides having Nicky take the twins in, and obviously having Katelyn in his life, Aaron hadn’t had much experience with kindness. Not many people have shown him what kindness is like, and thus he doesn’t know how to be kind. Which explains his asshole attitude

For Neil, until he met the Foxes, he had never experienced true kindness from anyone he considers family, or just anyone at all really. His perceived experience of kindness was the fierce and harsh protection his mother gave him. Aaron can relate to this as well with having his brother and his questionable means of protection.

One day Neil was in the library after Kevin’s 30-minute rant of why he has to actually try to pass his classes to be able to play exy.

He was sat at a computer trying to do the research for his psychology paper on the history of the DSM and how diagnosis of mental illness has progressed over the years.

Aaron, who also had a bio exam to study for was in the library trying to find a good spot to camp out for a few hours trying to wrap his head around the many factors of the nervous system.

After almost 8 months of joint therapy with his brother, he learned many things about himself, his brother… and unfortunately of Neil. One was Neil was fiercely protective of Andrew, as much as Andrew hates loves it. Aaron respects that.

It’s because of this begrudging respect, when Aaron saw Neil in the corner of the library hunched over a computer, he decided to sit next to Neil and pack out all his books and start studying.

Aaron had it all planned out, he was going to get through the parasympathetic nervous system the first hour and then move on to the sympathetic nervous system the next so that he can avoid falling behind with his meticulously made study schedule.

That is until he looked at Neil’s computer on what he was researching.

You see, Katelyn wants to be a neurosurgeon one day and has done a few psychology courses already. Aaron always loved listening to her passionate rants about mental illness and how completely unfairly the medical system had been treating and stigmatising those suffering with mental illness over the years and still today. Aaron himself has gotten very passionate about the topic.

So, seeing Neil who was completely oblivious to Aaron sitting next to him while trying to understand the journal articles he’s finding on mental illness and huffing every few seconds when not understanding half of what they say, Aaron kept an eye on him

After 5 minutes of Neil not moving past the same highlighted sentence, Aaron made a decision.

Aaron sighed as if trying to be nice is the worst chore he’s ever had to do, he said “the null is that’s there’s no difference between the two variables. You want to reject that there’s no difference”

Neil jumped, only then noticing Aaron as the person who was sat next to him. He raised his eyebrows. “What?”

Aaron rolled his eyes, “in the results section, where it says the research null hypothesis for the study was rejected, it means that what they were trying to find… was proven to be found in the study they conducted. That’s good, that’s what you want to hear.”

Aaron was… actually being helpful… kind…for once. Neil furrowed his eyebrows and read the sentence he’s been stuck on for the last 5 minutes again. And. Lightbulb moment.

It finally made sense! He clicked back to the other tabs of articles he’s been trying to figure out and it was like he just figured out a whole new language.

“Um… yeah thanks, that… actually helped a lot.” Neil said, refusing to look at Aaron.

“Yeah well… Katelyn’s been chatting my ears off after doing psychology stats last year” Aaron said, looking back to his own work.

Neil took a minute to process that Aaron actually helped Neil. Aaron, who spent a majority of his freshman year antagonising, or ignoring Neil’s existence completely… was being nice to him. Granted Neil wasn’t being very polite back.

It was quiet for a few minutes before Neil spoke again.

“Um… I actually found an article on the long-term effects of the different types of medications for bipolar. You should show it to Katelyn, she told me the other day that she’s interested in neuropsychology. She um… might find it interesting” Neil said in attempt of making conversation.

You see, Aaron and Neil having been trying to be civil after a major breakthrough in therapy when Andrew actually snapped and started yelling at Aaron about how ungrateful and pathetic Aaron had been acting for the few years they’ve known each other. After that, they started to communicate more, even if that communication meant playing video games with the occasional comment here and there, and sometimes grabbing lunch when they had a break between classes. Andrew and Aaron made a promise that they’ll actually try this time to be brothers. And this meant trying with their partners as well.

So, when Neil threw the ball, Aaron caught it.

Slowly and gruffly at first, Aaron started talking about what he learned from listening to Katelyn talking about how medication for mental illness should only be given when all other types of therapy have been attempted.

This conversation then moved onto medical trials and how unfair it is that medical trials were forced upon juveniles.

Which moved onto Andrew.

Turns out, when Betsy talked about the medication Andrew was forced to take and how severely Andrew was affected, Aaron spent days figuring out what exactly the medication was.

Aaron then told Neil about what he found. It was medication for major depressive disorder, and the medication specifically targeted the dopamine system… which would have been effective if the dose wasn’t so excessively strong for Andrew. Aaron told Neil about how instead of levelling the chemicals Andrew’s brain was lacking, it increased it past a healthy point, which resulted in making Andrew manic a majority of the time.

Neil listened to Aaron talk, taking notes for future research on ways to help Andrew overcome the trauma and side effects he faced from the long-term use of the medication alone.

The more Neil listened to Aaron’s passionate rant about the unfair treatment and mishandling of mental conditions, the more he saw how much Aaron really cared for his brother.

It got to the point where they were going on about how much Andrew changed over the last year and how he adapted to such terrible conditions throughout his life.

Talking about this was taxing to both boys. Neil actually started to get tears in his eyes, and Aaron too. Both refused to look the other in the eye, instead focussing on the computer screen in front of Neil.

When Aaron’s phone alarm went off to remind him to start studying the sympathetic nervous system, they both went quiet. They then looked at each other.

Aaron said “you’re still an insufferable asshole”

And Neil said “and you’re still an ugly midget dickhead”

“You’re dating my twin!” Aaron sputtered

“So?” Neil smirked and raised his eyebrow

And so, they both wiped their eyes, packed their things and left the library, (separately of course) and never spoke about their hour of bonding again.

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localcultivator · 3 years

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K k so prompt mari is already in a relationship with Damian shes happy hes happy its adorable but dun dun dun Adrien finds out she's ladybug and tries to win her over it doesn't work but most of the class are rooting for him. Chloe is not she thinks he should respect that Marinette is happy with someone else and move on

Oh dear sweet anon, i have returned from war and I bring you this one shot, FINALLY FINISHED. it’s long, sorry. but pls enjoy.

Marinette wanted to believe that today was going to be a good day.

She had woken up early and was able to eat a full breakfast with her family, she was able to enjoy her walk to school and Damian was about to start his year abroad in Paris living with her family and going to school with her.

Marinette had made plans to pick Damian up from the airport the next day, so she was walking on air.

And then she got to school.

Things had been... strained since Adrien and Marinette had revealed their identities to each other. Hawkmoth had been defeated and as the guardian, Marinette felt like it was time for her to know just exactly who her partner was.

Finding out that it was Adrien seemed great at first! Someone she was already close to outside of the mask was also her partner in justice and had helped her save Paris many times.

It only took Adrien 2 minutes to show Marinette that he didn’t feel the same as her.

“My Lady! We can finally be together! Now that I know that My Lady is Marinette, I’m gonna sweep you off your feet! You’ll see, we were meant to be together. “

Marinette had tried to explain to Adrien multiple times that she wasn’t interested in him and that she was in a loving committed relationship with her boyfriend of 6 months, Damian, but Adrien wouldn’t take no for an answer.

Marinette was hoping that with Damian transferring in, Adrien would finally get the hint that Marinette wasn’t interested.

She arrived at her classroom, noticing that strangely the class seemed mostly full, like everyone had tried to get there early that day. It was... unsettling.

As she walked to her seat, she noticed the bouquet of flowers, both of them.

The first was kind of tacky, a dozen red roses with a big sparkly pink ribbon around them. It seemed to have shed glitter all over her desk and Marinette sighed to herself, thinking about the tedious cleanup she would have to endure from such a messy ribbon.

The second however, was beautiful. An arrangement of white lilies, daisies and Marinette’s favorite flower, yellow marguerites. Sometimes known as Paris Daisies, Marinette had fallen in love with the simple beauty of the flowers. Only one person knew that these flowers meant to her, and that same person also knew Marinette had a small love for the language of flowers.

White Lilies for My Love is Pure.

Daisies for I Love You Truly

Yellow Marguerites for I Come Soon.

She picked up the simple bouquet and smelled them, enjoying the soft scents and smiled to herself. Marinette looked around for Damian’s standard note but couldn’t find one, only seeing the note attached to the glitter bomb mess the other arrangement was.

“Hey Girl, did you see the flowers Adrien got you? He must really like you to have gotten you roses!” Alya said, sliding up to Marinette who had yet to acknowledge the other flowers on her desk.

“Alya, I’ve told you, I’m only interested in one guy, and it’s the guy that got me these flowers, knowing to even include my favorite in the arrangement. Those roses are beautiful, but you know I hate glitter, and pink isn’t even my favorite color. It’s green, has been for a while.” Marinette chimed back, picking up the roses finally to get them off her desk. The glitter shimmered in the light, leaving an even dusting on the note the flowers were on top of.

Marinette wasted no time in disposing the flowers, not paying attention to the note, nor her classes reaction to her throwing the flowers away

She started to begin the laborious process of cleaning her desk off when Ms. Bustier came in, drawing the class's attention.

“Class, Today we will be welcoming an exchange student from America. He will be with us for the next year to learn French culture and to learn alongside us! Please welcome in Damian Wayne from Gotham''

A boy entered the room, tall and handsome. He had dark hair, almost black and tan skin. His eyes were green, not unlike Adrien’s, however his held an air of mystery and a look of mischief.

No one noticed Marinette freezing, stopping the cleaning of her desk at the announcement of the new student, but everyone noticed her practically flying out of her desk to hug him.

“Damian! You said you weren’t coming until tomorrow! What are you doing here? You didn’t even tell me you were going to be coming. Were you the one to leave flowers on my desk?” Marinette rattled off her questions, still in the boy’s arms.

Her words were a mix of french and english, only a few people getting the full scope of what Marinette was saying to Damian. Chloe, who knew english due to her mother, Alya who had learned english reading articles by Lois Lane and Clark Kent, and Adrien who knew it for business.

“Angel, slow down, you’re speaking in both languages again. I wanted to surprise you so your parents and I planned for me to arrive this morning instead of tomorrow night. I did leave the bouquet, did you get the note with them? It was supposed to tell you to meet me at the Principal’s office, but I assume you were late again?” Damian looked at Marinette like she hung the moon, and more than a few of their classmates were wondering just who this boy was. And why was he calling Marinette Angel?

“Ya Amar, I didn’t get a note with my flowers this time. What do you mean you left a note?”

Adrien took this moment to ask the question on everyone’s mind, “My Lady, who is this guy, and why is he calling you Angel?”

Marinette turned away from Damian, fully pulling out of his embrace. “This is Damian, my boyfriend. We’ve been dating for 8 months, so I’d hope he would have some cute nickname for me. I told you guys multiple times about him, but all of you never seemed to believe me. Damian started to get frustrated at your advances Adrien, so he’s decided to spend a year abroad here!”

To say that the class was in shock was saying it lightly. Many of the students had just assumed that this boyfriend of hers was to make Adrien jealous. The only ones who had seemed to believe her were Chloe, Juleka and Luka. All three had met Damian previously to this, whether in person like Chloe or over a video call like the Couffaines. Alya’s face turned bright red while Adrien had gone pale, like he’d seen a ghost.

“Ugh this is ridiculous. I can’t believe none of you believed Mari when she said she had a boyfriend! Anyway, Wayne, you better treat Mari right while you’re here or I’m calling Jon.” Chloe exclaimed to the class, wanting everyone to stop staring at her friend like some kind of freakshow.

Damian just nodded his head in acknowledgment and started to pull Mari towards her desk. He noticed the glitter still on the desk and his eyes narrowed. “ Angel, do you need help cleaning off all of this glitter? It seems quite excessive.” His tone was cold, even as he had a gentle smile on his face directed at Marinette.

“I hope that people in this class will be respectful of My and Marinette’s relationship. I’m quite committed to her, and would be happy to prove that to anyone who doubts my feelings for her, or hers for me.”

The tension in the classroom was almost visible, some students with looks of shame and shock, other’s with small pleased smiles. The only one who hadn’t seemed to react yet was Adrien, still stuck in his shock over his lady actually being in a relationship. He finally seemed to acknowledge the world around him with Damian’s words but you could see the light in his eyes had dimmed significantly.

Damian looked pleased, and as he helped Marinette clean off her desk for the day, he had a feeling no one would doubt his angel any more.

#damian wayne #marinette dupain cheng #maribat #marinette x damian #maridami #fanfic #mlb fanfic #mlb x dc #one shot #fanfic one shot #fanfiction

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nickjunesource · 3 years

Link

Full article below.

Max Minghella is sitting in his backyard in the LA sunshine, his t-shirt an homage to the French filmmaker Mia Hansen-Løve, his adopted shepherd mix, Rhye, excited by the approach of a package courier.

“You okay, sweetheart?” he asks — the dog, not me — tenderly.

Minghella, who at 35 has dozens of screen credits to his name, is best known as The Handmaid’s Tale’s cunning chauffeur Nick Blaine, a character who it’s difficult to imagine saying sweetheart. In airless Gilead, of course, a cautious hand graze with Elisabeth Moss’ June can pass for a big romantic gesture. In a Season 1 episode featuring child separation and hospital infant abduction, Nick’s major contribution is to trade stolen glances with a sex slave while “Don’t You (Forget About Me)” pumps discordantly along. I ask Minghella about playing the series’ closest approximation to a dreamy male lead against the show’s dark narrative of female subjugation.

“I know this is not the answer you want to hear,” Minghella says with none of Nick’s hesitation. “But I like that stuff, right? In the pilot, I think Nick only had a handful of lines. It wasn't clear that this is what the character would turn into. And it's quite fortunate for me personally, because I'm not a massively sort of intellectual person in my real life. I love Fifty Shades of Grey. That's like my Star Wars. It suits me to play a character like him.”

Minghella surmises that this enduring romanticism is an outcome of nurture. His father, the late British director Anthony Minghella, made grand romantic dramas like Cold Mountain and The English Patient. And there was the young, cinema-mad Max sitting on the living room sofa, absorbing everything. “It’s taken me a long time to understand this,” he says of his prolonged childhood exposure to love stories. “My dad made The English Patient when I was 10. So it was two years of watching the dailies to that movie and then watching 50 cuts of it. And then [The Talented Mr.] Ripley he made when I was 13, and it was the same thing.” These were an adolescent Max Minghella’s alternative to reruns. “I think they did shape my perspective on the world in a lot of ways, specifically The English Patient. That was a complicated love story, and I wonder sometimes how much it's affected my psychology.”

Some sons rebel; others resemble. Minghella’s co-star O-T Fagbenle, who plays June’s other lover from before the time of Gilead, got his first job acting in Anthony Minghella’s romantic crime film Breaking and Entering. “Anthony is one the kindest, most beautiful men that I've ever had the privilege of working with before,” Fagbenle says. “And Max has his gorgeous, sensitive, open-minded soul.”

Though Minghella spent his childhood on the set of The Talented Mr. Ripley, playing an uncredited Confederate soldier role in Cold Mountain, and tooling around with a Super-8 camera Matt Damon gave him, he insists his upbringing was normal. He grew up in South Hill Park overlooking Hampstead Heath in London with his father and mother, the choreographer Carolyn Choa. (Minghella also has a half-sister, Hannah Minghella, who is now a film executive.) Yes, technically, it was London, but that’s not how it seemed. “I feel like I grew up in a very small town. Every school I went to was in Hampstead. I was born in Hampstead,” Minghella says of the small map dot of his life before university. “When I went to New York, I felt I was going to the big city.”

Despite his illustrious surname, movie-watching was far from restricted to the classics. “Beverly Hills Cop is definitely the movie I remember having an unhealthy obsession with. I think I saw it when I was 5 for the first time, and I'd watch it just two or three times a day for years. I'm just obsessed with it.”

Plenty of actors can trace their love of movies back to a love of stories, but for Minghella the relationship seems to flow in reverse. When he left for Columbia University, Minghella opted to study history for its connection, through storytelling, to film. It was during the summers between his years of college that he started taking acting more seriously. Before his graduation, he’d already appeared in Syriana, starring Damon and George Clooney. Soon, he’d make a splash as Divya Narendra in The Social Network in 2010 and be cast in Clooney’s Ides of March. As all young actors eventually must, Minghella moved to Los Angeles.

It’s been over a decade since he last lived on the Heath, but, perhaps unusually for a person who’s chosen his profession, Minghella is adamantly not a “shapeshifter,” in his words. Home for Christmas this year, he started sifting through old journals stored at his mother’s house, “just like scraps of writing from when I was extremely young up through my teenage years,” before coming to America. “It was hilarious to me,” Minghella says of staring at his childhood reflection. “My review of a movie at 7 years old is pretty much what my review of a movie at 35 will be. My taste hasn't changed much. And when I sort of love something, I do tend to continue to love it.”

Which brings us back to his enduring love of romance, born of his bloodline, which is all over Minghella’s own 2018 directorial debut. Teen Spirit is a hazily lit film about a teenage girl from the Isle of Wight — the remote British island where Max’s father Anthony was born — who enters a local X-Factor-style singing competition. (It stars Minghella’s rumored girlfriend of several years, Elle Fanning.) The story is small, but its crescendos are epic.

Minghella calls the movie — an ode to the power of the pop anthem — “embarrassingly Max.” Max loves a good music-driven movie trailer — he’s watched the one for Top Gun: Maverick “many” times. And Max loves the rhythmic beats of sports movies like Friday Night Lights. Max loves movies with excesses of female energy, like Spring Breakers. He likens Teen Spirit to an experiment, his answer to the question, “Can I take all these things that I love and find a structure that can hold them?” The result is a touching “hodgepodge” of Minghella’s fascinations, inspired by the songs from another thing he loves: Robyn’s 2010 album Body Talk (itself a dance-pop meditation on love).

Minghella hasn’t directed any films since, but he sees now how making movies fits his personality — organized, impatient — more organically than starring in them does. Directing also helped him to appreciate that acting is “much harder than I was giving it credit for,” which, in turn, has made him like it more. Besides The Handmaid’s Tale currently airing on Hulu, Minghella appears in Spiral, the ninth installment in the Saw horror franchise and, from where I’m sitting, at least, a departure.

“I do like horror movies, but the thing that was really kind of magical is that I was feeling so nostalgic, right? We talked about Beverly Hills Cop earlier. I was just missing a certain kind of movie,” Minghella explains of his new role as Chris Rock’s detective partner. He was yearning for simple story-telling, like in the buddy cop movies of his youth, especially 48 Hours. It almost goes without saying that a buddy cop movie is another kind of love story. “And then I read the script and it was very much in that vein.” He clarifies: “I mean, it's also extremely Saw. It's very much a horror movie.”

His renewed excitement for acting translated onto The Handmaid’s Tale set, too. Veteran Hollywood producer Warren Littlefield describes casting Minghella in the role of Nick as an effortless choice: “Sometimes you agonize over things. [Casting Minghella] was instantly clear to me, and everyone agreed.” Now in its fourth season, the tone of the Hulu hit is graver than ever. Gilead is more desperate to maintain its rule, and so more audacious in its violence. Perhaps it’s fitting that the show’s romantic gestures finally match that scale.

In one particularly soaring moment, Elisabeth Moss’ June and Minghella’s Nick meet at the center of a bridge and crush into a long kiss. It’s been two seasons since they held their newborn daughter together, and it’s hard to see how this isn’t their last goodbye. Littlefield, like Minghella, is here for the romance among the rubble. “It's spectacular when they come together. In the middle of all of the trauma is this epic love story,” he says. “Max is just magnificent in the role.”

For Minghella, the satisfaction is more personal. He works with good people, he likes his scenes, and he thinks Nick is a complex character. Minghella read The Handmaid’s Tale for the first time in college in 2005. Like all the things Minghella has ever liked, he still likes it. He’s as proud of this most recent season as he is the show’s first. And he watched Nick and June race recklessly back to each other across the expanse of the screen exactly how you might expect. “I watched it like a fan girl.”

#max minghella #the handmaids tale #the handmaid's tale #nick blaine #nick x june #june x nick #osblaine #*

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kumkaniudaku · 3 years

Text

Understanding

1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17

Recommended Listening: Understanding x Xscape, Purple Emoji (ft. J. Cole) x Ty Dolla $ign, My World x Asian

Word Count: 2,137

If you were going to win an award that afternoon, it’d be for attire, not confidence. Your expertly crafted golf outfit was the only thing willing your feet forward once you parked your car in front of Senior’s golf course.

Black women and men dressed like modern Jet magazine ads waltzed in and out of the clubhouse while you scanned the area for your party. You’d been to your fair share of golf courses, but none as exquisite as The National. Marble accents complemented modern brass finishes and unbeatable views of the city. The desire to take photos for your father was almost too much to shake, but you managed to play it cool. Acting out of place was surely some type of faux pas for the wealthy.

Across the way, Senior sat at the bar sipping a glass of water while thumbing through a newspaper. His furrowed brow was identical to Yahya’s whenever he was knee-deep in work or a good book. The mental comparison made you smile before ushering in a tinge of sadness. For two people so undeniably similar, they were miles apart physically and mentally.

You navigated through groups of young and old alike on the way to the bar.

“You made it on time,” Senior spoke without looking up from a story on education budget cuts.

“I made it with time to spare.”

“You don’t get praise for doing what’s right.”

“Think of how much better things would be if we did.”

Senior paused his reading to take a deep breath and shake his head. You mentally berated yourself for overstepping so soon. Not even five minutes into the outing and you had already committed an avoidable infraction

Yahya I prolonged the unbearable silence as he continued to read through another article, reading each line painstakingly slow while you watched in agony.

“I apologize. That was unnecessary.”

“I’ll ask you again,” he spoke, finally looking away from the newspaper to study your face. “Let’s leave the character right here. We’re here for a purpose, so grab your clubs and follow me to the first hole. I hope your game is as good as you are at running your mouth.” Taking his retort in stride, you quickly grabbed your set of clubs and followed with no objections. “After you.”

Senior found himself immediately impressed though he wouldn’t verbalize his feelings. He watched you breeze through each hole with near expert precision, opening a series of questions at hole 5 during casual small talk.

“Where’d you say you were from again?”

“A tiny town in South Carolina that you probably wouldn’t know.”

“Try me,” he answered while taking stock of his position on the fairway.

“Anderson, South Carolina. Home of Larry Nance and the great Chadwick Boseman.”

“Can’t forget James Kennedy, Young Lady.”

You cocked your head back in surprise. “What you know about Radio? I mean outside of what the movie says?”

Senior remained quiet long enough to take a hard swing. The loud “whiff” of his driver slicing through crisp, clean air didn’t match the stroke’s output. Both of you watch the golf ball sail high into the air before making a landing well short of the intended destination. Senior shook his head at the miscalculation before turning to answer your question.

“Black folks from all over are connected, even without all that Snapgram and Facebook foolishness.”

“I could argue it’s helped, right? How else would you be able to share your granddaughter’s first steps with the whole family?”

“In photo albums. You might not remember those, but they did us just fine.”

“Yeah, but it’s instantaneous conversation and information. Who wouldn’t want that?”

“Maybe instantaneous conversation is the problem. We aren’t making enough time to stop and really think about what we’re saying to each other.”

“Mm.” You let the conversation naturally taper before following Senior to his golf cart. The rolling hills provided enough scenery to keep you interested while you sorted the words in your head.

“I think we may have started off on the wrong foot.” You spoke once the cart came to a full stop. Senior trailed behind in silence, gathering a new club while watching you examine the other golfers in the area.

“You’re rather observant.”

You chuckled and plucked a club from your bag. “I’ve been told. Yahya calls me Eagle Eye when I catch something he’s already talked about ten minutes ago.”

“It’s what his Big Mama used to call his Pop-Pop for the same thing. That man was notoriously late to the punchline.” The nostalgia in Yahya I’s voice caught you off guard though he didn’t see your minor fumble. Something in his retelling appealed to your sense of compassion in a way that you considered long gone when it came to him.

“Let’s not beat around the bush. You have an issue with my presence that we should discuss. Because I can assure you, I’m not going anywhere.”

“Bold,” Senior responded with a sarcastic laugh. He gestured to nothing in particular as you squared up to take a swing and nodded. “And direct. Continue.”

You took a moment to hit a line drive toward the green in the distance, using the movement as an outlet for the unexpected nerves churning your stomach. Both of you quietly watch the golf ball for its final resting place before you turned to speak.

“You are extremely hard to please, and it is literally ruining your family. Yahya does everything in his power, and, excuse my French, you don’t seem to give a fuck. Why is that?”

“What makes you think that my love isn’t what makes me push him to be the best that he can? It may not be the fluff and frills you’re used to in your home, but it’s what he needs to get him to his potential.”

“Did it help you?”

Senior mistakenly allowed a quick moment of confusion to take over his features. “I’m here, aren’t I?”

“You tell me. When’s the last time you enjoyed a laugh with your family or felt like you could just...be? You’re carrying a weight that is crushing the people around you, and you don’t even see it.”

“You don’t…” Senior caught his words and bottled them behind his lips. He took a deep breath as he approached his golf ball and took a half-hearted swing. Noticing his misstep, he shook his head. “I’m from Baton Rouge, Louisiana. My father, Yahya’s Pop-Pop, moved my mother and me to a shotgun shack to find work when things weren’t quite shaking out back home. He was in and out of trouble and such. Couldn’t get right, but he had a natural knack for building and design.”

A nearby group of golfers erupted into laughter, helping to break up some tension.

“So architecture’s been in the family for a while,” you asked. Yahya I curled the corner of his lips into a far-off smile.

“A long, long time. It got us out of that shack when my siblings came along and into a house with our own rooms and a backyard. But, my father was a hard man. Hard to please, you know,” he laughed, making a reference to your earlier words. “He wanted the best from me, and he made damn sure he got it. I needed that to get my head out of the clouds.”

“You also needed some reassurance.”

“Perhaps. But, what’s done is done. I look at what I’ve built with no complaints, especially when it comes to my boys. I couldn’t be more proud of the men they’ve become.”

Senior’s proud smile almost looked foreign on his face. You’d never seen more than an indifferent expression or the slight twinge of anger smoldering behind his eyes.

Leaning on your club, you kept your eyes forward to gaze out over the course.

“Yahya would love to hear that. I don’t know if you know this, but he is desperately searching for your approval. There is not enough praise from me or anyone else that could replace knowing that you’re proud of him. Yet, as much as he would like to tell you these things himself, he’s afraid that you’ll think less of him for being vulnerable.”

“I could never think less of the boy. Tough love is still love.”

“Maybe for you,” you added, shrugging. “But, what good is continuing this cycle if it’s hurting the children you claim to love and the grandchildren after them?”

Senior dropped his head in thought before looking up with an unreadable expression. “Deuce will be fine. He’s all the best parts of his mother. I...I’m confident he’ll figure out fatherhood on his own despite my shortcomings. We raised him well.”

“Forgive me if I’m overstepping -”

“That has never stopped you before, young lady.” His light-hearted chuckle invited you to follow suit.

“Fair point,” you laughed. “So, let me cut to the chase. Allowing Yahya to just ‘figure things out’ is a passive existence. Yahya says you’re constantly reminding him to take things into his own hands. Sounds like you should take your own advice. Be the parts of your father that you needed at 33.”

Instead of acknowledging your advice, Senior twirled his club in his hand on the way to the golf cart. He maintained an impenetrable poker face that even the most skilled readers couldn’t interpret. You silently hoped that at least some of your words had made it through his thick skull, but you chose to let the discussion meet a natural end.

As he started the cart, Senior turned to you and smiled. “How the hell you learn to swing like that? I know it wasn’t in Anderson.”

“Hey, we play a little golf here and there!”

“Where? Out in the woods?”

“No, out in the Bayou like you did.”

A small smirk crept across your face as Yahya I chuckled at your joke. He sounded identical to Yahya, full of mirth and beautiful melodies.

“The ole Bayou,” he repeated in a thick accent. “You ain’t seen a place more beautiful in your life.”

“Maybe Yahya and I could visit one day.”

He quickly looked over and shrugged. “Maybe. For now, you focus on defending this lead. I think I’m getting back into my rhythm.”

Senior couldn’t make a convincing comeback, but he did show glimpses of a softer, more personable disposition. He cracked jokes on occasion and asked questions that turned the conversation from a therapy session to banter between associates. Your mind traveled to the possibility of civil family dinners or vacations during the ride home. Though it seemed silly to create imaginary scenarios after one conversation, you couldn’t help the urge to see a better future.

Your happiness helped you float into your shared apartment, making Yahya smile when he caught a glimpse of your wide grin and short skirt.

“Damn, girl,” he hollered from the couch with Leche cradled in his arms. “If Tiger was out there cheeked up like that, I might’ve paid a little more attention to the golf network.”

“Oh, really?”

Your raised eyebrow made Yahya kiss his teeth once he caught on to the joke. “You know what I meant. Where you been anyway?”

“Oh, I was just out doing a little golfing...with your dad.”

“Right. That was today, huh?”

Even Yahya’s best attempt at feigning interest, his question came out in a flat drone typically used on annoying coworkers. You dropped your purse and keys against a nearby barstool on the way to his spot on the couch.

“It was today. I think we had a good time,” you answered as you slid your arms around his neck from behind, placing a gentle kiss behind his ear. “He didn’t yell at me.”

“You must’ve kissed his ass the entire time.”

“No. We talked about how great I am at golf. I mean, I kicked his ass.”

“Good on you, baby girl. Bring honor to our house.” In a surprise maneuver, Yahya pulled you over the couch and into the space beside him. “Is that all?”

Silence blanketed the room, allowing the college basketball game in the background to have center stage. You considered your options carefully, weighing the pros of a potential argument against a peaceful Saturday indoors. Yahya turned his attention back to the television as he waited for a response.

“Did you hear me, baby? He didn’t say anything rude to you, did he?”

“No!” You blurted. Taking a deep breath, you slowly slid the remote off the coffee table and pressed the power button. Yahya blinked twice at his reflection on the black television screen before turning to you for answers. Your fingers danced across his thighs to interlock with his long digits.

“I think...I think we need to have a real talk about your dad.”

----

A/N: I hope this is better late than never. Only two more chapters left! Really striving to have those to y’all by the end of the month.

Let me know if you want to be tagged or untagged!

@earthformelanin @mufasathatniggatho @hidden-treasures21@justanotherloveaffair @jozigrrl @essaysbyciara @chaneajoyyy@determinednot2fall @honey-lamb-k @scrumptiouslytenaciouscrusade @walkrightuptothesun @ghostfacekill-monger @trillistb@shaekingshitup @purplehairgawdess @xo-goldengirl@steampunkprincess147 @twistedcharismaaa @fandomfavesss@bugngiz @lifelover4u @ljstraightnochaser @l-auteuse @itsjustyazz@energy-innerg @lahuttor @sagittariusroyalty@chrisgalore @grandadchadwick @blowmymbackout@supersizemeplz @just-peachee @itskikilove @eyeknowmywrites @aanairb @blackburnbook @leahnicole1219 @lovedersha @cant-decide-at-this-moment @jasmindaughteroftheworld

#Yahya Abdul Mateen II #Yahya Abdul-Mateen II #yahya abdul mateen ii fan fiction #yahya abdul mateen ii fic

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pianostarinwonderland · 3 years

Text

Birthday Azul Story Details and Thoughts

I think I’m finally calm enough to be able to relay my thoughts on the lore we got from Azul’s story. So we’ll go through the details in order that they were brought up, and in bullet points, I may detail my thoughts ranging from pure keysmash to actual questions and theories.

I will place most of the post under a cut because this may get a bit long. Do note also that this contains spoilers for his birthday story so take caution.

Azul’s birthday parties are celebrated with the family and the staff. The restaurant would close for a day or two, and they will have a celebration where all of his favorite foods are laid out onto a table. While now, he thinks it may have been too much, as a child, this made him very happy.

First off, I FEEL SO SOFT OVER THIS;;; before his birthday card got released, I always thought Azul might not like his birthday because what if he associated it with the bullying he endured and maybe his bullies managed to ruin it. But nO, he actually had a happy birthday... no, multiple happy birthdays, and I’m just so fucking glad because HE CAN AT LEAST ENJOY HIS BIRTHDAY UEUEUEUEUE

It’s also very sweet how the staff would join in the celebration!! It’s so cute, and the way Azul talks about them gives that idea that he includes them as family;;;

Azul’s mom manages the restaurant. Her business started out small, but by the time Azul was able to understand the world around him more (I’m going to guess at least around 8 years old), the restaurant is now the most famous in the Coral Sea and many of the staff are professionals. Furthermore, she is not only an excellent cook, but also a genius manager. She’s also invested in the Mostro Lounge.

First off, I stan his mom

No wonder why Azul’s so good with what he does, he has a really successful and badass mom

It’s actually sweet that Azul calls her a genius cook and manager and includes the staff as family despite having an apparent dislike for the restaurant itself.

Also like, the fact his mom apparently helps him with the lounge?? Like brooo that mother-son relationship is sexy

As someone who would lean to mom more for help than dad, this really makes me feel so... is happy even a perfect word to describe it? I guess it’s just, wow more similarities to share with Azul I guess. 😳

This actually made me remember an essay I had to do in grade 7 HAHAHAHA it was about women leaders. I forgot what exactly I wrote, but part of my research was centered on how women were better in business than men. A quick Google search will lead you to an article that states that women are more honest, more empathetic and collaborative, and more resilient (having faced discrimination and all that), and the article also shows that women-run businesses generate more revenue than men-run businesses. I say take those details with a grain of salt unless you can prove that all of it is true. It’s not to say there aren’t successful men. Anyway, some people have a business-y mind and others don’t. I really just brought this up because it was funny how I remembered this. 😆

And I thought I would never use my school essays again.

I doubt she knows about the shadier side of the deals xD no matter how mature Azul tries to be, teenagers will be teenagers and will hide stuff from their parents

Azul’s father... is not actually his biological father but his stepfather. He is a lawyer who met his mom when she was filing for her divorce. While he is a kind and sincere man in general, in his work ethic, he is very thorough and flawless. He’s the one who taught Azul all about contracts and law.

Now here is the explanation as to how Azul knows about drafting contracts xD his dad knows about the law!

Even if he’s not his actual dad, I’ll still refer to him as dad because the kanji says stepfather but Azul calls him father. At least, that’s what my JP friend said. Point is, Azul respects him enough to include him as part of the family, and I actually really like that?? Not many media would depict characters liking their stepparents, but here, Azul is actually comfy with him. It’s like taking in a fresh breath of air.

I find it amusing that his mom probably married her divorce lawyer. xD I say probably because it technically wasn’t stated and for all we know, she had an entirely different lawyer and she just saw him around lmao though then again, idk how the divorce process works 💀

This puts a lot of things into perspective, both in regards to Azul’s mom and Azul himself. First off, his mom literally raised her son (who was being bullied in school) while filing a divorce and managing a business that was small. She’s gone through so much man, and now look at her! Her business is successful, her new husband is a kind man who is accepted by her son, and she’s got all this good staff.

As for Azul himself, this is more focused on the bullying side. From the way he talked, it seemed like he was already there when the divorce occurred... actually, even before that. Obviously, there’s a reason why his mom filed a divorce. Could it be that his household environment was toxic because his parents often argued? Possibly, it could be worse...

And it could be because of that that he couldn’t share his problems to his parents. Actual dad seemed like a jackass and his mom was probably stressed out because of him. Having these things in mind, he would shy away from them because he didn’t want to get either of them mad or anything.

I wonder if the business got successful when his mom remarried or after she remarried because that’s the idea I’m getting, but it’s all based on assumption. And if I am correct, that means by the time his mom remarried, Azul’s already pretty much deep into the spite he feels for his bullies. Which is sad if ever my theories on this are right;;; had Azul have a better home life earlier on... well, who knows?

Everyone in the family can use magic, but Azul’s grandmother is especially talented with magic. She uses them to help others.

Jeez, what’s with all the grandmas in Twst being so magically talented? At this rate, they’re going to be the final bosses of the game.

But seriously, Malleus has his grandmother who is the Queen of the Valley of Thorns. Now we have Azul’s grandmother, whom he described as someone benevolent... and take note, this is how he describes the Sea Witch often.

Definitely, the grandma and the Sea Witch are not the same person because Azul is a fanboy of the Sea Witch lmao and he’d have called her his grandma kek (plus idk if the Sea Witch is still alive). But just... the similarities are uncanny.

Plot twist: Azul is related to the Sea Witch because his actual dad is a direct descendant of her— shot

In the Mostro Lounge, Azul is very particular about the tableware because to him, the presentation is just as important as the taste. No matter how delectable the dish, it’s going to be ruined if the presentation is ugly. Because of this, their tableware comes from a high-quality brand. Despite this, Floyd sometimes breaks the tableware.

Holy shit, I never really thought about the tableware playing a role. But he really does have a point. Imagine eating something like beef wellington using a plastic spoon and fork. 💀

Ok, that is an exaggeration. But like, say you use the simple spoon and fork to eat your everyday meals. You’re not going to use those utensils when you have guests over, no, you’re going to use your nice tableware.

Damn, the few people I know who manage a restaurant are very particular about food presentation, but I think caring about it is a sign of a good manager. Azul cares about what he’s serving to the customers, and he isn’t about to give them something subpar. He may scam your ass, but he will make sure that customers enjoy the experience.

I’d be pissed off too if Floyd broke the tableware. That shit is expensive. 🗿 Don’t break things just because you’re moody smh

Azul also implies that the teacups are pricey, saying that we wouldn’t be holding the cup so carelessly if we knew the price. Guess that’s why the place is so damn expensive.

Azul brings up how difficult it was setting up. They had to research on famous restaurants, send staff to the suppliers, etc.

Ngl, I had to ask my dad about how difficult setting up a restaurant was because he used to run a restaurant. It’s just so I can get a good perspective of things, even if Azul’s business is essentially a student-run business.

He said that it really isn’t all that difficult, as long as you “know the numbers”. So I guess as long as you have your basic foundation, then you can go off from that. He also emphasized the importance of having good business partners.

I think what made it difficult for Azul was that he was pretty much running a fancy restaurant that isn’t just being bought from another brand, so it required a lot more research on how other famous restaurants worked, as well as who are the best suppliers around.

Ngl, I could kinda imagine how it looked like. Having to see the construction work, having to consult with a lot of people, having to ask for a lot of help...

But it really highlights Azul’s perserverance and determination. Despite the difficulties, he was able to open up a restaurant at 17, which may be mainly for NRC, but it also opens up to the public on some occasions. Damn, I stan that.

Azul takes breaks by reading autobiographies of businessmen he finds in the library in the dim lights of his room. His room also relaxes him because it contains his tastes in design and collectables.

I lowkey wanna clown him for reading autobiographies because damn, how do you find relaxation from reading about the lives of businessmen?

And then I proceed to clown myself because in a sense, I am analyzing his life and he is a businessman... but hey, at least we have pictures and voices. 🗿

Okay but I’m actually relieved that he does take breaks?? He does give that idea that he continuously does his work and has to be yanked out of his office to rest but no, he actually knows how to take a damn break... granted, he’s still trying to pursue business by reading up on those people, but hey, if it’s a passion, it’s not work. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I also like that this implies that he isn’t so conceited as to think that he’s already the best he can be. No, if anything, this shows that he’s aware that he has so much more to learn, and he can learn from reading up on the lives of others who have gone before him. Learn from their mistakes. He’s striving to improve, and that is so inspiring;;;;

Also can I just say this does fulfill one of the things I rot about because he definitely would visit the bookstore to read a book, and I used to visit the bookstore to read and imagine if we meet there aha ahahaha just kidding,,, unless,,,,,,

Azul’s hobby is coin collecting. When he was a child, he discovered a coin in a sunken ship. He thought it didn’t mean much, but after studying it, there’s only 100 of those made. While its face value was 100 madols, for a collector, it may as well be worth 500,000 madols. Currently, he has about 200 coins collected, and the ones he’s especially interested in, he frames them.

Damn, and I thought he likes coins because octopuses are into shiny things. I like that there’s more to it. Granted, it’s still Azul being Azul, but we love him nonetheless.

He said something about how the economy doesn’t affect the value of the coins? To be honest, my brain works so horribly with things related to economy that even simple business and economic jargon just fly over my head. It’s frustrating. 😔

I wonder if he wandered off into the sunken ship because he was running away from his bullies;;;

Furthermore, this also gives him a similarity with Ariel: they find things around and collect them lmao

Another hobby Azul has is board games. When he first started school, he was looking for a club to join when he stumbled upon the board game club and met Idia... though it’s more like he met Idia’s brother, Ortho. Ortho showed him a game that simulates business, and Azul thought that this would benefit him in the business world so he signed up immediately for it. He adds that he loves to defeat people in games of intellect.

Ortho, what have you done 💀 why did you show him Monopoly—

Damn, he really tries to apply business into everything, but I can’t blame him. XD

Okay, but wow, that’s sexy of him to love defeating people in intellect 😳😳 like bruh . I feel him??? I love planning on how to secure my victory in games. It’s especially fun during EBG. 😆 @twstpasta can attest to this. :)

I don’t know if I ever mentioned this here, but I love that he does have board games as a hobby. Even if it’s because of business, it’s at least a way for him to relax and actually have something that makes him feel like a teenager. 😭

All in all, Azul’s birthday story gave us so much food, and I’m so happy about it. Honest to God, it makes me look up to him even more because he continues to learn, he doesn’t give up on his passions, and he knows how to take it easy when he should.

Maybe it’s my bias for him, but the feeling I felt when taking all this in is indescribable. It’s like I enter a buffet expecting to have a good meal, or I enter a Catholic mass and expect to be enriched by a good homily, or even I enter a Ludovico Einaudi concert and expect to be touched at the heart. Then I partake in all three, and I come out of the buffet having the best meal of my life, or I come out of the church, hearing the best homily I ever had in my life, or I leave the concert, feeling the most light and whole I’ve ever felt in my life. I’m just so inspired after reading that, rot aside.

And with this, I end with a happy birthday to Azul, you’re such an amazing person even if you’re not real. I really hope you have an enjoyable birthday. 🥺

#twisted wonderland #twst #azul ashengrotto #twst spoilers

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demxters · 4 years

Text

When There Was Me and You-Part 1

jj maybank x reader

summary: When the reader finally awakens from a coma, JJ Maybank’s world gets turned upside down.

word count: 3.7k

warnings: swearing, mentions of a car accident (?), descriptions of a panic attack

series masterlist

my masterlist

a/n: i’m so excited to share this with you all! i worked on this all night so i hope you guys enjoy! i’m not sure how long this series will be yet, but i hope to get the next part out soon!

(not my gif)

***

Beep. Beep. Beep.

JJ felt like he was in purgatory. The constant beeping of the heart monitor was currently the only thing giving him hope. It’s been three weeks, 504 hours, 30,240 minutes, and 1,814,400 seconds (he may or may not have begged Pope to do the math) since he’s last heard your voice. His sweaty hand was firmly grasping yours, afraid that if he let go you would slip away. JJ didn’t dare go further than the hospital cafeteria while you were there. The Pogues and your parents had to practically drag him out of there every other day to get him to shower, get a change of clothes, and eat some food. And every time he left, he made sure that whoever was watching you promised to call him for even the slightest change in your state. Because the hospital only allowed one overnight patient to stay with you, your parents were kind enough to give that privilege to JJ.

“JJ, it’s my turn to take over,” Kie’s voice breaks the unbearable silence.

He lets out a shaky breath. He goes through this routine every time he has to leave your room, even if it was just to use the restroom. He squeezed your hand, and silently counted to 10 in his head.

10…

He places a kiss to your palm.

9…

Then one on your wrist.

8…

Another in your hair,

7…

On your forehead,

6…

The apples of your cheeks,

5…

Your chin,

4…

The spot behind your ear that you loved so much,

3…

And finally your lips.

2…

1…

JJ’s lips leave yours, his tears falling onto your cheeks. He wipes them away and leans his forehead against yours. “I’ll be back before you know it, my love,” he whispers. “I love you.” He turns to face Kiara who’s patiently waiting by the door. “If anything changes, anything at all-”

“I know, I know. Call you right away,” Kie says.

JJ nods, walking past Kiara and giving her a hug. He buries his head into her neck and mumbles, “Thank you for being here.”

At this Kiara feels her eyes begin to water, her heart aching for her two best friends. “Of course,” she whispers to him.

JJ lets Kiara go and gives you one last look before walking out of the room and into the dimly lit hallway. On his way down the hall, he sees your parents sitting a little ways outside your hospital room with their heads pressed together as they spoke in hushed whispers.

Your mom notices JJ walking their way and nudges your father who looks up from the catalog in his lap. “JJ,” your mom says, with a small smile.

“Mrs. Y/L/N, Mr. Y/L/N,” he greets back with a small nod, shoving his hands into the pocket of his shorts, stopping in front of them.

Your dad stands up and shows the catalog that was in his lap to JJ. “We’re thinking of ordering Y/N a bouquet. Which one do you think she’ll like best? Y/M/N thinks that she’ll like the lilies, but I completely disagree. I think she’ll like roses.”

JJ doesn’t even have to look down at the catalog to know which flowers to get you.“Sunflowers,” he states. “You should get her sunflowers.”

“That’s an excellent choice JJ,” your mom says. “Are you heading out?”

“Only for a little while,” JJ says. “Just for a quick shower and a change of clothes. I’ll be back before the nurse’s rounds.”

Your dad sits down, clearing his throat. “JJ, thank you for being here for us, for her.”

At your father’s words JJ feels the need to cry once again. He harshly swallows the lump in his throat. He can only bring himself to nod before walking away to his bike in the parking lot.

As JJ rode home, he couldn’t help but think about the last time he spoke to you. If only he hadn’t let you go. If only he had begged you to stay. But he didn’t. And he has to live with knowing that what happened to you was all his fault.

_____

“JJ, I have to go,” you say with a laugh as the blonde haired boy pulls you back into his chest.

“Noooo,” he whines. “Just stay with me tonight, please.” He places an arm around your waist and uses his other hand to keep you firm against his chest.

“You know how my mom gets,” you say with a sigh. You slightly push back on his hand, his grip loosening a bit, and rest your chin on his chest looking up at him. “I promise, tomorrow it’ll be just you and me out on The Pogue. No John B constantly pestering us to keep the PDA to a minimum, no Kie and Pope bickering, and no Sarah constantly bugging us about reapplying sunscreen. Just us.” You give him a quick peck on his chin then move your lips to his.

JJ immediately reciprocates the action, his lips moving with the familiar rhythm of yours in a kiss that you have both shared a thousand times before. Barely pulling away, JJ mumbles against your lips, “Fine. But promise me you’ll text me when you get home.” He gives you a stern look, one similar to a parent scolding their child.

“Of course I will.” You knew JJ would be on your ass about it if you didn’t. You unwrap your arms from around his neck and quickly give him one last kiss on his lips. You laugh as he leans forward trying to capture your lips with his once more. You walk backwards towards the front door of the Chateau and blow him a kiss, exaggerating the noise when your palm hits your lips. “I love you!” you say with as much enthusiasm as you can muster.

“And I love you, baby!” JJ responds back with a laugh, pretending to catch your kiss and stuffing it in his pocket. He watches you go, with the biggest smile on his face, wondering how the hell he got so lucky to have someone like you to love him in his life.

_____

JJ walks into the Chateau like a man on a mission. The longest he’s ever spent away from the hospital since you were admitted was thirty minutes, and he plans to keep it that way.

“Hey.” JJ hears John B’s voice say the second he pulls the door to the Chateau open. “How is she?”

JJ sighs, running a hand through his hair. “The same.” He harshly tugs at the roots of his hair. “The doctor said the wounds on her ribs are healing fine and that he’s confident she’ll wake up within the next week or so.”

“But you think it’s bullshit,” John B responds before taking a sip from his beer.

“I don’t know what I think anymore man,” JJ says, his voice wavering. “All I know is that I want her to wake up. I just want everything to go back to the way it was.” JJ’s voice breaks towards the end of his sentence, tears openly streaming down his face, unable to keep it all in anymore. He’s been breaking down more and more as each day passed with your absence.

“JJ-” John B starts.

JJ doesn’t give him the opportunity to finish. “I need to go shower.”

_____

JJ fell asleep in the guest room waiting for your text when it happened. The first time his phone rang, he ignored it thinking it was spam. The second time it rang, he declined the call without even opening his eyes. The third time it rang, he forced himself to open his eyes, slightly squinting from the brightness of his screen. The second he read the caller id he knew something was wrong. Your mother never called JJ. The only reason why she had his number was to help him plan your surprise birthday party last year. A sick feeling fills his stomach as he answers the phone.

“Mrs. Y/L/N?”

“Oh, thank god,” your mother lets out a sigh of relief. “JJ, it’s Y/N.”

JJ feels his heart rate quicken in fear. “What’s wrong?” he frantically asks. “Is everything alright?”

He hears your mother let out a choked sob before she responds. “She got into an accident on the way home,” she releases a shaky breath before continuing. “Some drunk idiot was on the road and…” She trails off letting out another sob. “And he hit her head on. When the paramedics got to the scene, Y/N was unconscious. She’s in the ER right now but we haven’t had any news about her condition.”

JJ can barely process the words coming from your mother’s mouth. It’s as if his body began moving on autopilot as he tells your mom that he’ll be there as soon as he can. As JJ pulls on his boots, he accidentally knocks into the dresser behind him causing various objects that were sitting on top of it to topple off. “Fuck!” JJ lets out in frustration.

Hearing the ruckus from the other room, John B is awakened from his slumber and stumbles down the hallway and to JJ’s room. “JJ? What the hell is going on? It’s nearly one in the morning,” John B says with a groan, leaning on the doorframe.

“It’s Y/N, man. Sh-She got into an accident and she’s at the hospital and-shit!” He says as his foot got caught in one of his loose articles of clothing that was scattered on the floor.

John B is suddenly wide awake when he hears that you’re in the hospital. He swiftly turns around running back to his room and grabs his car keys off his dresser.

JJ nearly bumps into John B on his way out of his room and questions, “What are you doing?”

“Coming with you, of course. You know you can’t drive in this state right?” John B knew just how reckless JJ could be and with your life at stake he knew JJ wasn’t in the right headspace to drive.

JJ just frantically nods, quickly making his way to John B’s van. Sitting in the passenger’s seat as John B makes his way towards the hospital, JJ couldn’t help but wonder if this was all his fault. If only he had driven you home then maybe you wouldn’t be in the hospital right now. Maybe it would’ve been him who got hit head on instead, and you’d be safe on the passenger’s side. If only he had not taken no for an answer then you’d still be here, safe in his arms where you belonged.

“Dude, she’s going to be ok,” John B says, feeling the anxiety reeking off of JJ in waves. He noticed that JJ hadn’t stopped bobbing his leg up and down ever since he sat down in the car.

JJ doesn’t say anything. He just stares out the window, hoping that everything’s going to be ok.

_____

A series of knocks coming from outside the bathroom snaps JJ out of his thoughts.

“JJ!” he hears John B hollar. “JJ hurry your ass up! She’s awake!”

JJ shuts off the water, standing rigidly still for a moment.

“She’s awake,” John B says, slightly softer. “Y/N’s awake.”

JJ is out of the shower and changed in record time. He steps out of the bathroom with his hair still dripping, droplets of water visible on his dark blue t-shirt. “Damn it!” JJ says, running out of the Chateau, John B hot on his trail. “I said I’d be there. I promised her I’d be there when she woke up!” He slams his hand into the passenger side door of the van.

“Hey!” John B scolds, standing face to face with JJ. “Calm down, man. What matters right now is that she’s awake. Now get in the van.”

JJ practically throws himself into the passenger’s seat, his heart racing at the thought of seeing you conscious again. To finally see your y/e/c eyes staring into his and to just be in your presence once more…

_____

“Where is she?” JJ shouts, walking into the ER. He sees your mom standing by the front desk with her arms tightly wrapped around herself. “Mrs. Y/L/N,” he says with a quieter tone.

Your mom looks up from where she was staring at the floor to meet JJ’s stare. She lets out another sob before walking over to him and engulfing him in a hug, squeezing him tight.

JJ hesitantly reciprocates the hug. When your mother finally pulls away JJ asks again, “Where is she? Is she ok?”

She swallows down another sob. “She’s with the doctors right now. There’s no news on her current state. Why don’t you come with me to the waiting room? Y/D/N is there waiting for word on her condition,” your mother says putting a hand on JJ’s back and leading him to the waiting room.

Your father looks up at the sound of the approaching footsteps and gives JJ a slight nod when he walks into the room.

“Any news?” your mother asks, sitting in the seat next to your father.

“No, not a word.”

JJ settles himself a couple chairs down from your parents. He’s not sure if he leaves the space for them or for himself. The silence is deafening, leaving JJ with nothing but his thoughts to run a mile a minute. You were going to be ok, he tried to convince himself. You had to be. His girl was a fighter and you would get through this. JJ rested his elbows on his knees, holding his head in his hands as he held in the tears that threatened to spill. He couldn’t lose you. Not when you were the only thing he loved more than anything in this world. You were his rock, his anchor. You kept him from spiraling out of control. Whenever he found himself acting impulsively, you always crossed his mind. He always tried to think about the consequences and how it would affect you. And though there were times he couldn’t help himself, you were always there to take care of him, to keep him safe, to love him. Without you, everything would fall apart. He would fall apart.

The sound of two knocks on the waiting room door catches JJ and your parents attention, causing the three of you to stand up.

“Mr. and Mrs. Y/L/N?” the doctor says, stepping into the room.

“That’s us,” your father answers, stepping forward with your mother.

JJ silently stands to the side, listening to the whole ordeal.

“I’m Dr. Kavanaugh,” he introduces himself, giving them a hand to shake. He then turns to JJ, with his hand still extended. “And you are?”

“He’s Y/N’s boyfriend,” your mother answers for him.

“Ah, nice to meet you,” Dr. Kavanaugh replies, still waiting for JJ to shake his hand.

JJ reluctantly takes his hand, giving it a firm squeeze.

“So, what’s the news Doc?” your father asks. “Will she be ok?”

Dr. Kavanaugh looks to your father before giving his reply. “The good news is, her condition is stable. Other than the bruises on her ribs and the cuts on her face, her body’s in good shape.”

“Oh, thank god,” your mother says as your father wraps an arm around her shoulders.

“So what’s the bad news then?” JJ abruptly asks. He doesn’t mean for it to come out so harsh, he was just tired of the doctor taking his sweet time to tell them what’s wrong. “You said that was the good news, so what’s the bad?”

Dr. Kavanaugh turns to JJ before letting out a sigh and looking back to your parents. “The bad news is, she’s currently in a comatose state.” He pauses before continuing. “We don’t know how long she’s going to be like that or when she’s going to wake up. The best thing we can do for now is watch over her and look for any signs of complications.”

A coma. The love of his life was in a coma. It felt like the walls were closing in on him as JJ suddenly began hyperventilating. He was lightheaded and unable to comprehend what was going on around him. He pushed his way past your parents and the doctor ignoring their calls for him to come back. He stumbles down the hallway, leaning against the wall for support. The only thing that was running through his head was the thought of you being in a coma. That they didn’t know when you were going to wake up, or if you ever were. JJ feels himself crash into another body and almost falls to the floor, but the person hoists him up by his elbows.

“Woah, JJ, you good?” John B’s voice sounds like it’s miles away.

“I think he’s having a panic attack,” another voice says. Female. JJ identifies. The voice is female.

John B moves JJ to one of the chairs that are lined up in the hallway and steps aside so Kiara can bring JJ back to reality.

Kiara crouches down in front of JJ, holding onto his knees to keep herself steady. “Hey, JJ, can you hear me?”

JJ slightly nods, his mouth too dry for him to respond.

“Good,” Kie’s voice soothes. “Now I need you to breathe with me ok? Can you do that?”

JJ nods again, beginning to follow Kiara’s instructions to breathe in and out.

“That’s it, there you go,” Kiara says. She waits for a moment, letting JJ regain his senses come back to them. “You don’t need to talk now. Just let us know whenever you're ready.”

JJ blinks a couple of times before finally being able to see clearly again. He sees Kiara crouched in front of him with a reassuring smile while Pope, John B, and Sarah stand behind her with looks of concern on their faces. JJ swallows, before telling them the news. He chokes up as he begins to tell them what happened, starting from when you left the Chateau, to the accident, and finishing at where you are now.

Pope takes off his hat, putting his hands behind his head as he tilts his head back trying to stop the tears that are threatening to fall. Kiara lets out a small gasp as she starts to cry. Sarah buries her face into John B’s neck, sobs shaking her form. And John B just stares blankly at the wall, trying to stay strong for the rest of them. But JJ doesn’t miss the small tear that escapes from his right eye.

At the sight of all his friends breaking down in front of him, he begins to break down too, his sobs becoming loud gasps for air. JJ buries his face in his hands and whispers, “It’s all my fault,” over and over again.

Kiara is the first to move, capturing JJ in a tight hug as the others are close to follow. The five friends hold each other, sobbing for their best friend and the uncertainty that’s to come.

_____

John B dropped JJ off in front of the hospital so he could go in first while he looked for a parking spot.

JJ walked through the hospital dodging other patients, visitors, and nurses as best as he could as he made his way to your room. He could see Kiara standing outside of your hospital room with a faint smile on her lips.

The door to your room was open and he could hear your faint voice talking to your parents and the doctor. God, how he missed your voice. JJ makes his way inside the room to see you sitting up and sipping some water out of a straw. “Y/N?” he whispers, his voice slightly shaking at the thought of you being awake again. He takes in your appearance thinking you look as beautiful as someone possible could from coming straight out of a coma. There’s a slight tinge of pink on your cheeks that have been pale for the past few days and your hair looks like it’s been groomed, probably by your mother. He takes another tentative step into the room, unable to help the smile that comes across his face. “Y/N,” he states this time.

“JJ-” your mother starts, but he cuts her off.

JJ’s eyes well up with tears as he makes his way to the foot of your bed. “Thank fuck your ok,” he says with a small laugh getting a look of disapproval from Dr. Kavanaugh. “I’m sorry I wasn’t here when you woke up. I know I promised I’d be here but I had to run to John B’s to shower.” He pauses and smiles at you again. “God, I missed you.” A look that JJ can’t decipher crosses over your face. He thought you’d be at least a little more excited to see him.

You look to the doctor, then to your mom, as she nods and encourages you to speak. “Thank you. That’s so sweet of you to be here but…” you trail off trying to gather your thoughts. “I’m sorry, I don’t quite know who you are.”

Your mother looks down at her lap, while your father puts a hand on JJ’s shoulder whispering to him, “JJ, come on, I need to speak with you outside.”

JJ shrugs your father’s hand off his shoulder and steps away from him. This had to be some kind of sick joke. “Very funny guys,” JJ says with a dry laugh, turning from your parents, to the doctor and then back to you. “Y/N, if this is your way of getting back at me for all the pranks I used to play on you then it worked. You got me good. Now come on, drop the act.” He desperately looks at you as the look of confusion on your face only grows.

“JJ,” your father whispers to him again.

“No,” JJ whispers. “No, this can’t be happening.”

You push a strand of hair that fell in your face behind your ear before looking at JJ once more. “I’m really sorry,” you say softly. “But should I know you?”

JJ felt a sharp pain in his chest at your words. Those five goddamn words that broke his heart.

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pluviophile-bookworm · 3 years

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HSMTMTS 2x10: New and a bit alarming... ok, very alarming

I don't even know at this point if I'm more nervous or excited for this episode. I've done my waiting and, well, whatever lies ahead, good or bad, or a little bit of both, I just can't wait anymore, even though I haven't been so scared to press play since... well, since last week. Guess I should just go for it, then:

Ooh, shady Seb doing the recap! We love to see it. Like, seriously, I'm anxious about the Seblos fight, but shady Seb is kind of my new favourite Seb.

I just... Ashlyn's acting is top tier. Emotional connection to the material? Superb! Chemistry with her co-lead... well, he'd have to be co-leading for any chemistry to be possible. I love Ricky, and I feel for him with all he's been through, but he's just not lead material right now. And it shows. Especially next to Ashlyn, who is killing it!

Miss Jenn is on the verge of a bloody mental breakdown and I just... wish I could do something to make things better. She reminds me of my mum when a deadline approaches for her to submit an article, and I just feel for her right now. Gosh, I'm feeling for everybody today. My empathy seems to be at its peak and I might just burst from all these emotions this episode is making me feel even before the 5-minute mark.

Ok, but Miss Jenn being stressed means Carlos is stressed for two, which means... this is a really bad time for him and Seb to have personal problems. My heart just can't handle it.

Wow... I never thought I'd see the day! The two leads are actually talking to each other! This is a mid-July miracle!

Why does everyone keep pretending their HSM was good? It was a flaming hot mess! A child could see that.

Miss Jenn needs a lot of work on her 'gracious face'. I, like Carlos, have quite some notes. Only mine aren't exactly, how do you say... verbally formulated quite yet.

Did Carlos just refer to Miss Jenn as 'mother'? Because yes.

I've been in a couple of local theatre productions in my day, but none of them had actual physical sets — we relied on the audience's imagination quite a lot — so I wouldn't know what a good set is made of... but even I can tell that plywood and Elmer's glue = not good.

Kourtney is a multi-tasking icon and we love her. I feel like I don't say this enough, but she deserves all the love.

Ooh, shady Seb is... well, shady! 'Quit school and get a job at the pizza shop?' — I mean, you don't see Reddy or Kourtney (or Howie, for that matter) quitting school in order to work at the Slices! Those kids juggle it all and, as someone who's never had to balance school and a job all at once, they have my deepest admiration.

Still, I think they should have thought about 'inventing' something re: transformation earlier than this point. The personal drama has taken up too much of their time.

Why does everyone keep inviting people over to Ashlyn's? I mean, it's not like I've ever heard her complain, but the girl needs some rest! And her house is not a public space.

Oh, so they're making this into a contest? I mean, I have never been a fan of competition, but to each their own. And Redlyn are hosting! This is going to be so beautiful! (You know, unless the boys try to sleep — see my post from yesterday about Reddy's background noise machine)

'I'm not worried. But North High should be!' Ooh, I love this look on Ashlyn! See, there's a lead to take notes from! And Ricky should be the first to do so. Take notes about what a lead acts like, I mean.

Oooooh, Big Red claps back! We love to see it. Although, you know, it stems from the fact that he's nervous about coming up with a solution to the transformation problem. 'I get bossy around the power tools' — Yes, sweetie, and I love that look on you. Maybe you should be around power tools more often, if that helps.

Ughhh, look what the cat brought in! Lily (I wish I knew her last name so I could refer to her by it exclusively, but we'll have to make do). I hate that girl. She reminds me quite exactly of the girl who bullied me in seventh grade to the point where I wished I'd die before having to deal with her at school again. She and Lily both bring out my aggressive side, and I hate that about them.

Ricky — 'so good at being a leading man'? I don't know what Lily is playing at here, but Ricky has not shown himself to be a very good leading man this season. He has the potential to be, but he has not fulfilled it by this point. Sure, he supports his friends and they support him, but that's basic decency. Not yet good leadership. No hate on Ricky, just the truth.

'I vaguely remember him' — please tell me this is setup for Ricky leading Lily on and then slamming the door in her face with the truth. The way I see it, he's been given a chance here. A chance to be the supportive, protective best friend Big Red deserves. I just... have a lot of ideas about this and I don't want it to end badly instead.

'I'm just not well-liked here, and I don't know what to do' — well, of course you aren't well-liked, you little— (ok, ok, calm down, breathe, 10, 9, 8...) whatever. I mean, she hasn't even considered basic decency, as it seems. Must be a new concept to her.

'Don't start with me, Carlos!' Wow. As much as I hate it that my two faves' only interaction in so long is so hostile, I kind of like this side of Big Red. I wonder what other sides of himself he's been hiding.

Listen, I don't like Seb being patronised and babied, but... 'Chip, this is your mother speaking: go call your mother!' made me laugh so hard. They're leaning into the on-stage family dynamic and I live for it.

EJ's idea of using old skateboards for the spinning contraption is... a brilliant callback to the fact that Ricky and Big Red were first characterised as skateboarders... you know, before diving headfirst into the theatre thing. And it feels like it might actually work.

Miss Jenn's excitement at seeing Mr Mazzara ('Benjamin!!!') is perhaps only topped by the fact that he was halfway home, got a text from her and instantly went back to the school. I mean, these two have something that's really big.

Miss Jenn referring to the kids as 'my children', combined with Carlos calling her 'mother' earlier just warms my heart so much! Those guys really are family. I live for it.

Ok, but... as clear as it is that the Wildcats are very far behind NH in terms of budget, rehearsal time and who knows what else, I hate seeing Miss Jenn resigned to them losing. I want to see her have faith in them, talk about how they will win, and, in her own words, 'trust the process'. I mean, I guess it's good that, as a teacher, she wants to prepare her kids for a possible defeat (and I mean really possible if they don't step up their game immediately, especially some of them * cough* Ricky *cough *), but a team that goes out to the field expecting to lose has a very minimal chance of winning.

Despite everything I've been saying again and again about Nini lately, the fact that she just delivered a very different 'No, Seb' has just redeemed her. See, this one wasn't dismissive or patronising — this was like, 'no, Seb, don't put yourself down' and I love that spin on the catchphrase I'd grown to hate. See, many things can be redeemed. And some simply cannot. * cough* Devil's spawn Lily *cough *. Also, Seb being self-conscious about the fact that Carlos 'doesn't have many options' at East Hight is the perfect setup for In a Heartbeat — meaning they will either have a chance to talk about their issue, or they have a telepathic connection, in which case, what kind of soulmate stuff is that?

'You're my sister; he's my cousin' — yeah, Ash, putting it like that makes it sound a lot weirder than it should, but I do get what you're trying to say. This is not a drill! Ashlyn is a Portwell shipper (heck, maybe even the captain of that ship) — but I feel like we already knew that.

'Why'd I never hear about this?' — and there it goes. Within the same scene, Nini was redeemed and then made aggravating again. What does she care if Gina thought Ricky sent her chocolates? He didn't. Because he and Gina can't be anything but very good friends. And I feel like good friends is what Gina needs. Maybe that's why I wanted EJ to be that for her initially (or it was because I'm aroace and don't tend to notice romantic attraction between fictional characters — or real people for that matter — unless it's explicitly stated to be there). But I've been on board of the majestic S.S. Portwell for a few weeks now and it's finally about to set sail.

Yeah, Nini, get a root beer, calm the heck down and get over it!

'Your other clockwise!' — Why does this even need to be said? How many 'clockwise's are there? I absolutely understand why Big Red gets the way he gets around power tools. I'd be on edge too, if the people I was trying to work with didn't know what way clockwise is. Still, I feel like by the time I'm 30, nobody younger than me would have a reason to know what way clockwise is, and I don't know if I feel bad or neutral about it.

Oh, so there's no telepathy involved in Seblos' problem resolution — it's been Redlyn's good communication all along. I might have known.

Ooh, Portwell is being discussed on both sides! PORTWELL NATION HOW WE FEELING

Nini? Why is everything about Nini? There's no way everything is about Nini. In all seriousness, though, EJ's worries about letting the next girl go seem valid in regards to Gina, given that she explicitly stated (though not within earshot of EJ or anyone who could have tipped him off) that she needs someone who will show up and stay. But they'll figure it out. They'll find a way. I know it. They will, or I will riot, and I know I won't be alone in that.

Ooh, Howie is giving Kourtney the original blueprints! Looks like Reddy isn't the only one who has a spy on the inside.

Ahhh, Ricky! Not 'Let You Go' again. I haven't cried to it in three days and I was not ready to break that streak. But... wait, this is where Carlos approaches Ricky to ask him for help with writing a song for Seb, isn't it? I am definitely ready for this.

Oh, is it... is it Ricky who suggests Carlos write a song for Seb? Now that is what a good leading man looks like.

'I'm adjusting to being called bro' — me too, Carlito, me too. But... this scene must have been so emotional for Josh, given that he hadn't come out yet. I remember him crying during The Climb and... all I'm saying is I want Ricky to come out at some point, too.

Oh gosh oh gosh oh gosh... they were just talking about love languages and that's when Carlos shows up? Cinematic. Wait, there's Portwell too? This is what dreams are made of.

My oh my oh my! Risotto! For real this time. I might have just teared up. (Full disclosure: I did.) I've only had Portwell for about three weeks, but if anything happens to them, I will... you know how the meme goes. [side note: Wait, when I said 'for real this time', I was not expecting EJ would say it, much less word for word. Am I... writing this show now? It's usually my dad who predicts people's lines in TV shows]

'Not that I know of'... excuse me while I hyperventilate! These two are literal soulmates. They might share a brain, too, for all that I know. Portwell nation you ok guys?

I love that Ricky helped Carlos out with this song and is supporting him through it, but... I just might have preferred for him not to be there. I kind of need Seblos to have this moment to themselves. But, you know, with the way they feel about each other it might as well be like they're alone in the universe, let alone the room.

Ok, but Frankie's voice... brings out feelings in me that I didn't know I was capable of. Make of that what you will. Also, I'm not sobbing my eyes out, you are.

Ahhh Reddy my sunshine my sweet boy I love you but why did you have to cut Seblos' moment short? They were going to kiss, I know it. Oh well, they probably will, later on. Off-screen probably, but who cares? Not everything is for us to see. At least Carlos and Ricky had a moment there... Carlos calling Ricky 'bro' made me more emotional than I expected. It's like Miss Jenn says in s1: 'They're best bros, and that's a sacred thing... for reasons I will never understand'.

Ricky's acting sounds like a cat about to spit up a hairball, and it's so funny... in a scene that is supposed to be arguably the most dramatic of the entire play, that is not a good thing.

Oh my, oh my... you did not! You did not just end the episode with Ricky taking a fall from who knows how high. I was not ready. This episode was entirely too much for me. I will need 10 to 15 business days to recover from this, and we all know there aren't that many. But in the meantime you'll find me obsessively listening to In a Heartbeat for hours on end. Seriously, this episode is too much.

#hsmtmts #hsmtmts s2 #ricky bowen #nini salazar-roberts #gina porter #ej caswell #ashlyn caswell #ashlyn moon caswell #big red redonovich #carlos rodriguez #seb matthew-smith #kourtney greene #hsmtmts miss jenn #hsmtmts mr mazzara #jnk #seblos #portwell #redlyn #jenzara

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