#let me know if its worth continuing or aborting LOL

[awhiskeyriver]

le cirque monstre

This is the prologue to an old but newly updated story I idea I’ve had for years, sort of forgot about and recently remembered and became interested in again. I honestly don’t know when I will transfer this over to ao3 (probably at least the prologue, soon) or when I will add more. My inspiration for things is very fleeting right now, but I wanted to get your thoughts here in tumblrland on whether or not I should bother continuing!

Unedited and some things might end up changing in the future, but enjoy!

                                                            +++

Prologue: 1918, Coney Island 

     She used to think the cotton-spun candy that tasted like melted sugar was just like a dream; too good to be true. She was younger then, and everything about life was shiny and vibrant. Her nose crinkled with distaste as her boney knee stuck to the floor of the bleachers.  Not anymore, though. Now, the popular fair treats were only a nuisance, making her job of cleaning between shows all the more difficult.

      “Applesauce,” she muttered, twisting to sit on her butt as she peeled a piece of gum from her skin.

       “What are you complaining about now, Katniss?” Gale asked, poking up from the row behind her with a devilish grin. Katniss rolled her eyes when he reached out to poke her nose, wondering how someone three years older than her could still be so immature. Gale and her had been best friends since the time she was small, bonded through unfortunate circumstances of life. 

        “I’m tired of cleaning these seats,” she pouted, sweating and absolutely exhausted. It had been their fourth show of the day, with five more to get through before calling it an evening. Katniss felt the sharp pangs of hunger vibrate through her stomach and moaned.

        “If you quit being such a dewdropper this could’ve been done by now and we’d be off eating lu—“ he cut off, ears perking at the sound of distant voices growing closer. Katniss turned to face Gale before he pushed the top of her head in signal to crouch, doing the same for himself.

        Female voices billowed through the auditorium, followed by that of her father, whose voice was authoritative and all business. He cleared his throat loudly a couple of times before joining in their quiet laughter with a hardy one of his own that reverberated off the bleachers.  Katniss shrunk further into the ground with the sound. Father had always been a vocal man. Vocal when he was happy, even more so when he was angry. He talked, and Katniss listened. Katniss was always listening.

       “The children all loved the performance today.”

       “Simply loved it!” another high-pitched voice agreed. Katniss twisted her head uncomfortably in hopes of seeing beneath the bleachers and caught sight of two women dressed in long black robes with matching white-lined headdresses.

       Nuns from the orphanage.

      Gale had sold them tickets earlier before the last showing, and Katniss had hoped she would’ve finished her chores in time to see the children. Because despite living within her father’s circus (what he advertised to be the happiest place in America) there was a surprisingly low number of people who were willing to keep her boredom occupied.

     “Children, what must you say now to Mr. Snow?” A chorus of cheerful thank you’s sounded, and underfed children whose clothing didn’t exactly fit wore bright grins. Perhaps the advertising hadn’t been entirely false. They all sure seemed to think so.

     The children lined up behind the tallest sister like toy soldiers, marching towards the opening flap of the tent. All, except for one.

     “Not you, young man.”

     Katniss had practically turned herself upside down in effort to keep the woman in her line of sight, and caught the faintest glimpse of the child. He wasn’t facing her, but his hair was ash-blonde and unattended. Although he wore the same uniform as the other boys, it was sloppy with his shirt un-tucked and it’s color slightly off-white.

     “You are not going anywhere,” she spoke dismissively as the other sister came to stand beside her.

     “…But, have I done something wrong?”

     His voice surprised her. Strong for a child, despite the same unavoidable squeakiness Gale experienced sometimes, being almost fourteen. 

     “Part of becoming a man,” he’d said proudly when her and her baby sister Prim giggled. “It’s called puberty.”

     “Puber-what?” Prim asked, nose wrinkled.

     “Awe, forget it.”

     “Peeta...” The one reached out, as if to touch him but recoiled before her hand could land on his shoulder, and drew back. “Our home has no place for you, anymore. There is nothing we can do for you.”

     He remained quiet as the softer one peered up at her stone-faced sister, who only nodded with agreement.

     “You belong here. There is simply nowhere else for you to go.”

     “There is not a soul in New York who cares to take in a crippled boy.”

       Father took a step in closer to the nuns, who stood a fair distance from the wilting boy. Katniss watched on, her heart beating explosively inside of her chest in a way that made her breaths almost ragged. She’d witnessed cruelty tenfold and was not blind to its existence. But the reality of what the young man was crashed down on her heavily, and she realized perhaps they were not being heartless afterall.

    The boy was grotesque. Evidence of the fact made clear as he turned on a crutch made of wood and exposed his profile. It took a hand covering her mouth to keep from making any audible sound. 

    So, they were simply right, then. There wasn’t a soul in New York, or most likely any state, that would willingly take him into their care. Nobody but a circus.

    He resisted as her father’s thick hand clutched his arm, but surprisingly enough did not scream. He did not say a single word as he finally spun around fully into Katniss’s view. Watching with a mixture of fear and dread as the two nuns who had escorted him in left without him. 

                                                          +++

     “Quit trying to bug him, Kat,” Gale snapped, catching her arm outside of the tent where all of the circus freaks were busy preparing for their shows.

       Three weeks had passed since the boy joined her father’s circus, parading around with clowns on stilts and the small people that waddled around in shoes five times too big and circular red noses. Three weeks and any time she tried to catch a glimpse of him outside of the show, Gale caught her.

       “Aren’t you at all curious?” she huffed, twisting out of his embrace with a thoughtful rub to her elbow. “Haymitch says he is only thirteen. The youngest carnie we’ve ever had.”

       “Then going in there will only make him feel like more of a freak,” he scolded and Katniss wilted, realizing the truth to his words. They both jumped as father’s booming voice sounded from a distance, calling Gale’s name.

       “I need to go start selling tickets,” he sighed, turning to leave with suspicion in his eye. “Promise me, Kat.”

       “…Oh, alright.”

       “Promise me.”

       Katniss sighed, smoothing out the fluffy material of her dress as something to keep her hands busy. “Yes Gale, I promise to stay out of trouble. Now go, or you’ll have to answer to the whip.”

       He left and Katniss paced the length of the carnie tent. There was music playing inside, the soft blare of a saxophone and some sticks against metal pots. Katniss enjoyed spending time with the performers when allowed. Chaff, the deep-skinned muscle man that could lift four hundred pounds despite missing a hand, made her laugh. And Haymitch, a magician, let her play  with some of his props when he was drunk enough. 

       So, really, her going inside of the tent wasn’t completely for the new boy. She had been keeping her fingers crossed during the promise to Gale, anyways.

       Katniss glanced around the abandoned backlot, where dark puddles of mud created divots in the green grass she was forced to hop over to keep her shoes clean. Then, she slipped past the thin curtain, which closed off the strange world of fantasy from harsh reality.

       Katniss went unnoticed, weaving her way through lounging performers and billowing clouds of smoke. It was always louder in the back tents – deep laughter and saxophone practices, occasional drunken arguments and the escaped moans from two closer carnies. She winced when the volume grew unexpectedly, and bowed her head as if to provide a thin veil of privacy to a group of outlandish people who didn’t know the meaning of it.

       She waved at Haymitch, who only raised up his eyebrows in her direction before blowing up a shining red balloon and twisting it with his skilled hands. The other clowns seemed to be hanging close by; some sleeping, others smoking. The new boy most likely wasn’t far. She bit the inside of her cheek, silently debating with herself whether or not to ask of his whereabouts before she caught a glimpse of something that captured her attention.

       There it is again, she thought, following the thin trail of light that bounced off the draped edge of the tent, which was otherwise dark. She bent over in half, silently pushing past it with curiosity in her expression. The corners of her mouth lifted when she saw him, sitting perched on the clear opposite end near one of the long poles, which held the tent in place. With a thin, melting candle for light, he kept a novel perched in his one bent knee, his eyes scrolling the pages like a typewriter.

       “Hello,” she offered, jumping in surprise when the boy dropped the book and shot up on one wobbly leg.

       “Oh…” she bit the corner of her bottom lip to keep from giggling at his startled expression.  His overgrown hair fell haphazardly into his eyes despite his best efforts to push it back.

       “Did I scare you?” She asked, reaching out to hand him his cane. He didn’t reply, but accepted the crutch quickly before bending over for the book, which he tucked behind his back away from her view.

       “It’s alright, I’m not gonna take it,” she promised. He glanced down at her, bright blue eyes narrowed in suspicion. “I was just curious.”

            He huffed in silence, falling back to the ground silently as he dusted the dirty pages. Katniss frowned, shifting on her feet as she watched the boy flip through his story.  She hadn’t thought past the initial finding him, and now that she had, the silence was deafening.

       “Can you speak?”

        The tips of his ears turned red as he kept his gaze focused at the ground, running his hands over the dirty cloth of his pants.

        “Of course.”

        “I know,” she smiled slyly, inching closer to him the way one might approach a nervous animal. “I just wanted to hear you say something.”

        She sat down, pushing her butt closer when he didn’t protest and leaned over his shoulder to glance down at his lap. She’d never seen a book so close in real life, only in the hands of strangers or in pictures. Father had never bothered teaching her how to read more than a few simple words, claiming it was pointless for girls to fill their heads with nonsense like knowledge. Certainly, as a circus girl, it wasn’t Katniss’s place to argue. But, it hadn’t helped her curiosity.  She sat in silence, wondering if the boy could actually read the words on the pages, or if he was pretending. It was just as ridiculous for the time to be spent teaching him such a skill as it would be for herself.

        “What is your novel about?”

        “You can borrow it, if you would like,” he offered, dog-earing one of the pages before handing it over to her waiting hands. Her lips pursed sourly as her eyebrows furrowed, pushing the book back into his hands with a sting of betrayal in her chest.

        “Well, you don’t need to make fun of me.” she mumbled, rising up to her feet. How humiliating, to be made fun of by this boy she’d only hoped to make feel more comfortable.

        “Wait.” He grabbed hold of her arm, the first physical contact he’d offered to her since she’d approached. Her body stiffened and the warmth of his fingertips was gone in a flash as his hand twitched back down to his side. He pushed a long lock of hair back behind his ear, eyes boring into her despite her back being turned.

      And it was then, under the candlelight that she saw the gnashes and hideous scarring that ripped apart more than half of his face up close. Quickly, she looked away. 

        “I wasn’t making fun of you,” he promised lowly, sounding almost sincere. “I wouldn’t.”

         “I can’t read. You should know that,” she sniffed, chin tilted up in the air as her eyes shifted back to his forlorn face. “I’m a lady.”

        “My apologies. Someone I kne—” he stopped himself short with a shake of his head before cocking his chin back in the direction of the book. He ghosted a hand over its impressive script before opening it back up to the page he’d previously closed. “Perhaps, I could teach you. If you wanted to learn, then you could borrow it sometime.”

        Katniss took a moment to truly ponder the idea. Plenty of carnie’s had taught her things over the years. Octavia, the lady with facial hair as long as that which grew on Katniss’s head, had taught her how to properly buckle her shoes when she was younger. And to that day, Haymitch took credit for teaching the girl her first words. She didn’t suppose accepting such a proposition from this boy was much different.

        “What would you like in return?” she wondered aloud, confused by the boys humorless laughter, sounding through the dark space.

        “Your company shall be payment enough.”

        She imagined the boy, all by himself in the dark confines of the carnie tent with only the book as company, and pitied him. She knew well that it took more than being surrounded by a sea of people to not feel alone. Gale and Prim would like her new friend though, she was sure of it, and together they would all keep him fine company until he found a solid place within the odd circus family. 

        “Alright,” Katniss agreed, dusting the dirt from the bottom of her old dress. She needed to be going soon, or Gale would grow suspicious. The last thing she needed was father out searching for her when he had a show to run. “Friends, then.”

        “Sure,” he agreed slowly, as if mulling over the word. “Friends.”

        “But we can hardly be friends if I don’t know your name,” she argued, waiting patiently with her hands twisted together. Her tightly spun sausage curls bounced with every step she took in the direction of the main tent before stopping just outside of it. “Mine is Katniss.”

       “It’s nice to meet you, Katniss,” he spoke, so eloquently for someone of his status. “I’m Peeta.”

#fanfic #writing #circus!everlark #this will definitely be on the darker side...lol #probably the darkest thing ive written #very different #but i hope interesting?? #let me know if its worth continuing or aborting LOL #writing is hard #everlark #everlark fanfic #thg #why is putting something out into the universe so hard?? lol

[michelles-garden-of-evil]

Episode 31 Review: Danger to the Cryonics Capsule

{ Not available on YouTube }

{ Full Synopses/Recaps: Debby Graham | Bryan Gruszka }

{ Screencaps }

And now we reach Episode 31, the first episode that isn’t currently available on YouTube. In fact, none of Week 7 is available on YouTube, which means no Bad Subtitle Special until the end of Week 8. (Is anyone else disappointed, or is it just me?) It’s a pity, because this is both a good episode and probably relatively unchanged from Ian Martin’s original script, although the absence of cheesy one-liners about the Devil does suggest some rewriting.

Here's the synopsis for this one, by the way, from the October 24, 1969 issue of The Plain Dealer:

It’s interesting to note that, while this summary comes from the period of the Lost Episode summaries, it still accurately describes the plot of the aired version of the episode. It doesn’t describe all of it, but then, none of the newspaper summaries do, before or after the Lost Episodes period. So, without further ado, let’s hurry back to the crypt on Maljardin and check on Erica Desmond’s cryonics capsule.

Dan trying to stop the cryonics tank from malfunctioning, despite knowing nothing about how it works. Not generally a smart idea.

While Jean Paul and Elizabeth are still with Vangie at the French Leave Café, the cryonics capsule's cooling mechanism malfunctions and its tank starts spraying water upwards. Dan tries to get it to stop spraying, but his efforts are in vain and he calls for Alison. She freaks out and they both run down there, but it doesn’t stop until just after Quito arrives around the corner.

There’s a scene where they’re trying to fix the machine and both of them are talking to each other, but the only audio we hear is the background music. Not sure if that was deliberate on the part of the writer or the director, or if it’s a blooper.

Alison asks Dan what he was doing down there, and he confesses that he was searching for the missing cyanide. There’s an interesting part where he says “I’m not sure I trust [Raxl] or that zombie,” and Quito--who is still hiding--clenches his fists as though angered by the reminder of his undead state.

Quito clenching his fists just before the intro.

After they return to the Great Hall, Alison blames Dan--"perhaps you inadvertently crossed the wires," she says--but he denies it. I'm surprised that Alison would accuse cautious, practical Dan of something so careless, but I don’t know him as well as she does. I’m also not sure how inadvertently crossing the wires would cause a tank to start spraying water, and I’m not sure the characters have any idea, either.

On the main island with Jean Paul and Vangie, Jean Paul recaps his cryonics scheme in a way that makes it clear that Ian Martin and/or the meddling executives really didn’t want him to repeat his catchphrase from the earlier episodes again:

Jean Paul on Erica’s resurrection: "It WILL happen. I made that vow the day my darling wife was stricken IN SPITE OF GOD!"

Raxl, of course, blames THE DEVIL JACQUES ELOI DES MONDES for the leak in the capsule’s tank. Raxl may be right--she usually is about matters of the occult--but after learning of the note from the Episode 30 script about who pushed Holly down the stairs, I’m thinking that the true culprit is someone else, someone less obvious. This scene also provides some blatant foreshadowing for the aborted plotline involving Tarasca:

Raxl: “The master must be protected from all demons, from the past and in the present, especially the witch who seeks to own him!”

The next shot.

A clear shot from shortly after of Elizabeth’s dramatic eye makeup.

The witch’s own version of Bissits Face™?

Meanwhile on the main island, Jean Paul convinces Vangie to hold a séance to contact Erica's spirit, which she is willing to do if slightly reluctant because she knows that she will eventually die on Maljardin.  This suggestion excites Elizabeth, whom he has to remind that "it is not a game."  She also asks if he would ever let her go, and he says that he would only let her return to Maljardin: proof that Jean Paul is still on board with the whole detained guests thing.

In the lab, Alison is searching the drawers of Dr. Menkin’s cabinet for his notes on Erica and finds a small notepad hidden among the papers in one. She reads it, her mouth agape, as Raxl enters.

What could it say about Erica?

Raxl lets Alison know that she knows about Dan searching for the missing cyanide in the crypt and is not pleased. She asks Alison if Dan doesn’t trust her, and she defends him, saying that none of them can trust each other anymore. Then they debate whether or not one of the other characters made the machine break down. Alison says that she now thinks it most likely broke down on its own, but Raxl still insists that someone (by which she means Jacques) tampered with it. Raxl has a point, because brand-new water tanks don’t generally start spraying out huge amounts of water on their own like the capsule’s cooling tank was doing.

SCENE INTERRUPTING DAN: “Hello, Raxl. I didn’t know you were interested in lab experiments, too.” (LOL)

Even though the leak was clearly the work of supernatural forces, Alison still tells Dan, "Don't make any more waves around here." Good luck with that. You may want to talk Jean Paul into having Quito buy you duct tape the next time you see him, then tape Dan’s mouth shut and tie his hands behind his back to keep him from tearing it off. That’s the only way to stop him from accusing Jean Paul of being a murderer and imprisoning all of you here. (It will also make it easier to get with your far more attractive brother-in-law, especially if you leave Dan in his bedroom while the two of you wrestle with your unresolved sexual tension in the Great Hall.)

In the crypt, Raxl tells Quito that it’s time to begin searching the caskets for the conjure doll and the silver pin--which I thought she said they already did in previous episodes, but I could be wrong. Maybe they just want to double-check to make sure they checked everywhere in the basement. Quito begins pulling open Jacques’ casket and we cut to a couple filler scenes with the other characters. When we return to Raxl and Quito, we find her back upstairs searching the fireplace in the Great Hall for the doll and pin. When Quito arrives, she asks him if he found them in the casket and he shakes his head. They head upstairs to continue their search--which, again, I thought she said that they already searched upstairs in Episode 29, but I suppose they just want to double-check.

Alison tells Dan when he next visits the lab that Dr. Menkin was trying to learn how to recreate an entire human body. Reminds me of Frankenstein. Dr. Frankenstein and Dr. Menkin both tried to play God by creating a living human body, but their experiments differed in that Frankenstein used cadaver parts to build his man, while Menkin’s experiments involved cellular regeneration and possibly (based on the sources referenced in Episode 26) robotics/artificial intelligence as well. I don’t know if Martin had planned to draw a direct parallel between the Drs. Menkin and Frankenstein at some point, but I suspect he was.

But Alison still doesn’t know enough about his experiments to satisfy her (or us), because all of Dr. Menkin’s notes from the six weeks before his death are missing. This is suspicious for obvious reasons, given his death shortly after her arrival, which she still doesn’t know was Jacques’ fault for no other reason than that she was upstairs at the time when he told Raxl his highly suspicious story about Menkin’s “accident” in the water.

Really, Dan? A bottle of cyanide goes missing and yet you willingly drink alcohol that’s been sitting out where anyone could pour poison into it? SMH Yet another reason why Alison should duct tape your mouth shut.

Dan is suspicious of Raxl--who is just about the last character they should suspect of hiding the cyanide or murdering either Erica or Dr. Menkin--but even more suspicious of Jean Paul. He and Alison also discuss how Jean Paul may not have filed Erica's death certificate with the authorities and how suspicious this makes him look--which is recap, yes, but which I bring up again because it is still relevant. I am really thinking (and was really thinking as far back as last fall) that Martin was originally planning to reveal that Jean Paul killed Erica and was trying to resurrect her out of some combination of guilt, regret, and fear that Erica's death would make him look suspicious. This would not only make these clues worth more than red herrings (or, should I say, kippers?), but it would also connect to all the things that Jacques says about he and Jean Paul not being so different. I have a whole theory about this, which I plan to discuss in a future post sometime later in this arc.

Alison also mentions some sea caves five hundred yards from an unseen cove on Maljardin, which she says Raxl told her about (unfortunately, I don’t remember in which episode). This seems to be foreshadowing something--I’m guessing the discovery of Jacques’ pirate ship that’s mentioned in another episode--but they never visit the caves, unless that’s where the Temple of the Serpent is located.

Back on the main island, Jean Paul has returned, but Vangie has left to go somewhere. Jean Paul says that she is probably packing a few days’ clothing for her stay on his island. Elizabeth is relieved to hear that she will only be there a few days. She also reveals that she sees Vangie as "competition" for Jean Paul's affections. (LOL) I would say that she is deluding herself, but then, she is unaware that Jean Paul was possessed all the times that he flirted with her; in her mind, Jacques is the real Jean Paul and the Jean Paul who mourns Erica is “not himself.” It does explain, however, why she was clinging to him in that one scene from last episode. Even so, Vangie never has any love interests on the show. I’ve suspected for a while that she and Raxl secretly have a thing for each other. Obviously they wouldn’t have shown that on TV in 1969, but that doesn’t mean that I can’t still ship them together.[1]

Elizabeth’s profession of interest in him motivates Jacques to possess him again, and we get

HEADACHE FACES! Yay!

After possessing him, Jacques reassures Elizabeth that he is very much still interested in her (Elizabeth, I mean, not Vangie). He also sends the audience more false hopes for Holly's death: "I'd stake Jean Paul Desmond's life, virtually every day…What’s one life, more or less? It doesn't even matter whose life. Take your daughter for example, before she's twenty-one and inherits all those millions."

Elizabeth looks appalled by this suggestion, but it’s hard to say if she truly is or if it’s all an act. I’m sure, though, that this is, roughly, the thought process going through Jacques’ mind:

Coming up next: Jean Paul and Vangie make more arrangements for the séance to contact Erica and Raxl reveals more of Maljardin’s history.

{ <- Previous: Episode 30   ||   Next: Episode 32 -> }

Notes

[1] In the books, Quito is Raxl’s husband, but that obviously isn’t the case on the show, or else she would most likely be jealous of his affections for Holly. The fact that she isn’t suggests that the two aren’t married (or, at the very least, aren’t married anymore) in the show canon. This means that Raxl doesn’t have a canonical love interest.

#strange paradise #maljardin arc #ian martin #week 7 #episode 31 #review #analysis #bissits face #comics #cryonics capsule #headache faces #makeup #raxl/vangie #SCENE INTERRUPTING DAN #speculation on ian martin's original story #tarasca

[myhumblelife]

Storytime: my abortion story

I know abortion for a lot of people is connected with negative emotions and I do believe it’s not something to take lightly. Majority of women do it because they HAVE to do it. Example: wanting a child but not having resources to raise a child. In my case it was my own stupidity. 

It all started when I started dating this guy who’s name ain’t worth mentioning. He was charming in his own way but I swear he was on the most immature man I’ve ever met. People-pleaser! He did everything to please his boss and his so called friends. To give an example what kind of people they were, lets say his boss had a pregnant wife at home while he got the woman who works for him pregnant as well. She had a miscarriage yet she continued staying with him while knowing he had a wife at home waiting for good for nothing husband at home. Everybody knew in that circle and would visit the husbands house to party while that pregnant lady would be in another room. Whenever i asked what is wrong with them, they would reply that the boss is the REAL MAN due having those both girls. This is what I mean when I say Very Immature.Of course, a lot of drugs were involved and drinks. I believe he owned a real estate company so money was never their problem. Anyway I got out of topic.  But I was really single and I just got out of my relationship and any validation from any man at that time made me feel good about myself. 

I later found out that he was talking to bunch of girls and perhaps even meeting them but honestly I didn’t care much about it anymore cause I stopped seeing him more that just ‘’waste of time’’. He had a month trip to America and when he was back, we had unprotected sex which was the worst decision ever I made that year. I took plan B on the same day and broke up with him within a week. Couple of weeks passed and I wasn’t getting my period which I didn’t think of it much. I left to visit one of the islands and meet friends outside of main city where I’m located and that’s when I started to worry. As soon as I arrived to the city I live in, I went straight to 7-11 to buy pregnancy test and took it at the airport bathroom. It came out positive. I am trying to calm myself down thinking sometimes those test can be wrong and I should take another one. I call my friend and he tells me to go home and do it again. I get home, do another test, positive. For the first time in my life, I felt so sick that I couldn’t stop vomiting and I assure it definitely wasn’t morning sickness. I was 21 at that time and I had no fucking idea what do you do in such situations. I couldn’t tell my parents, they already see me as an disappointment. I had no money, my closest friend was against abortions so I couldn’t tell her. Before all of this happened I already had a messy lifestyle so this was rock bottom for me or that’s what I thought at that moment lol.  Let me just say one thing, abortion is illigel where I am located and highly look down upon due the religious beliefs. Finding that one goddamn clinic was one of a hell task. I had to go through so many humiliating situations just to find that one clinic where it was another hell. 

Once I found that clinic, I went there for consultation. I was told to come up after 2 months. Lemme remind you I had no money to do procedure. I contacted my ex boyfriend telling about the whole situation and he just told me that I am tricking him into this trying to get back with him. Like WTF. Apparently that what his coworkers said to him. Pathetic group of people. I hope they enjoyed themselves making fun of me. He decided to come to my appointment to see if I was really pregnant. So I asked him for like less 100$ cause my friend was willing to help me with the rest and instead of helping me out he said he talked to his mother about it ( FYI he was 26 at that time ) and his mother said its a bad karma to do abortion so I should keep it but don’t expect much help from us to raising it. WHO THE FUCK AFTER THAT BE LIKE ‘’OK LEMME KEEP IT’’. Anyway after this humiliation, fear, not knowing what to do..finally day for the procedure comes. To read more what happened at the clinic, read it in the next post!  

#story time #abortion

[thisbibliomaniac]

I didn’t know there was a difference between being prolife and against abortion. Would you be willing to explain this for me?

Absolutely, although I have no doubt there's going to be a lot of backlash lol.

I don't think the main difference tends to lie with the average prolifer. Most of them are against abortion for moral / religious reasons, but don't tend to think about it beyond that. I certainly never did. We gave all our change to the pregnancy centers around Sanctity of Life Sunday, and let that be that. I think most prolifers believe abortion is morally wrong. I think most of them do what they think they need to do to stop it. They give to pregnancy centers. Some of them go to clinics to offer alternatives to the abortion minded. Here's where the differences tend to come in;

- The Prolife Movement (PLM) tends to be against abolishing abortion. Please note when I talk about the PLM, I don't mean the average individual. I mean the movement as a whole, starting with its leaders. When an abolitionist bill, which could've completely abolished abortion in Texas at any stage was introduced, Republican prolife representative Jeff Leach killed it. Abby Johnson publicly speaks against abolishing abortion. It's relevant to mention here that Johnson charges $10k-$20k per speaking engagement. You can find that on her website. She doesn't profit when abortion is illegal. Many other prolife groups are directly responsible for bills of abolition being stopped, and I cannot remember them off the top of my head, but they're all brought up in Babies Are Still Murdered Here, which is on YouTube and deals with the PLM specifically.

- Abolitionists tend to be in favor of the total criminalization of abortion, and the PLM is not. In my personal opinion, that would look like the abortionist being charged as a hitman, the employees as accomplices, whoever drove the mother to the clinic knowing what she was going there for as an accomplice, and the mother as the murderer who hired a hitman to kill her baby. I didn't used to believe that. I used to believe that women were lied to, and they didn't know what abortion was. I don't believe that anymore. There's a quote from R. C. Sproul, saying that if we could only educate these women, they'd understand and they'd stop. That's a very old quote, and he changed his mind drastically as soon as the humanity of an unborn baby could no longer be denied, and abortion became more profitable than ever.

A big part of the reasons Roe v Wade went the way it did is because no woman had even been convicted of abortion, even when it had been illegal. The court rationalized that, if it had never been punished as murder, we can't continue to say that it is murder.

Women know. If you think women don't know, you're saying you think they're stupid. The women who come in past us often pull in with multiple born children in their cars. They know their baby is alive. They tell us they know their baby is alive. They go in anyway. One particular interaction stands out to me. A pastor friend called out to a women going into pretern, offering her help. She said, "are you going to pay my medical bills?" He said "yes." She laughed and went in anyway. We are actually prepared to pay for bills, provide for needs, and set up open and closed adoptions. Those offers are rarely taken up on.

- The PLM considers the mother a second victim, while we consider her the perpetrator. See reasons above, and also NotAVictim.com. Sandy is an old lady who comes out with us. She tells us she knows she killed her baby, and she regrets it every day.

- The PLM is in favor of incrementalism, while we only support total abolition. Most prolifers would argue that saving even one baby with something like a heartbeat bill, pain bill, or age ban is better than saving none at all. I struggled with coming to a decision on that for a long time, until I came to a realization; they weren't actually saving anyone. While it might be illegal to kill a baby past a certain age in Ohio, it's incredibly easy to move the ultrasound wand just slightly off place, and come up with a totally different image. Sarah Cleveland, ultrasound technician, demonstrates this in one of the Babies Are Murdered Here movies (both available on YouTube). The same goes for heartbeat and pain bills. One could assume that there may be abortionists with more integrity that wouldn't do something like that, but to make that assumption, one would need to forget that these are literal baby killers we're talking about. And even if you found some that wouldn't break the law, one who would is never far away.

Lakesha Wilson is an example of that. She was turned away by multiple clinics for being over the state limit, until she came to preterm, where they were willing to lie about the age of the baby on their forms. She and her baby died that day. You can search her name. She died in Cleveland.

So not only is incrementalism immoral because it's ageist, it doesn't actually do anyone any good. Do we believe that even saying one baby is worth our time? Absolutely. So we stand outside clinics and offer help and alternatives. And we see babies saved. Not enough. And fewer and fewer all of time. But we plead with every mother who walks in, because every single baby is worth saving. But we don't sacrifice the babies below the limit in favor of the ones above.

- PLM tends to make exceptions for rape and incest. Abolitionists believe the circumstances don't matter, the humanity of the baby matters. Prolifers who are against abortion in cases of rape and incest argue with those who are for it that it's such a small percentage (less than 1%) that it shouldn't be kept legal for those cases. That's how I used to think. Abolitionists, myself included now, believe that even one baby legally killed is too many.

- The names themselves. Prolife is passive. Nothing about what I believe or am doing is passive. I intend to be among those changing the laws, and changing history. I am an abortion Abolitionist.

I am not going to include any links here because I don't want everything I just wrote to crash with this post, but all of these sources are easily found!

Abolitionists- Jeff Durbin, Jon Speed, Sarah Cleveland, Sye Ten Bruggencate, C. R. Cali, Laura Klassen (I'm not 100% sure if Laura uses the Abolitionist label, but she's saying the same things)

Websites- freethestates.com, defytyrants.con, notavictim.com

Books- The Doctrine of Balaam by C. R. Cali, Gosnell by McElhinney and McAleer

Movies- 180 Movie, Babies Are Murdered Here, Babies Are Still Murdered Here. All free on YouTube. Gosnell: The Trial of America's Biggest Serial Killer. Not 100% accurate to events or the message of abolition, but good for exposing how easily a clinic can get away with the littlest, and the biggest things.

Other- The doctrine of the lesser magistrate, about the steps needing to be taken to outlaw abortion.

I hope this answers your question, and feel free to message me for further clarification, as this is an already long post and I won't be having discussions on it :)

*edited to add*

I don't have anything against individual prolifers. I think they've been lied to by their movement and don't know what they're supporting.

#this better post!!! #please tell me about any typos #my phone hates me #and changrs words after the fact

[smhalltheurlsaretaken]

Spoilers.

Okay I can’t hold it in anymore, I need to yell about Star Trek. 

SO.

In light of the revelations we got from Picard ep8 and ep9, I have come to the conclusion that the plot is a giant fucking mess. Lemme explain.  (Buckle up, it’s long and VERY spoilery).  First, a recap: 300 000 years ago, synthetic lifeforms from another galaxy dragged eight suns together (or maybe created them) and put a sign on the planet in the middle, saying “hey synth pals, when the organics decide to destroy you, give us a call, we’ll destroy them.” The Romulans stumbled upon it, understood only the “synth, organics, destroy” part and decided to hunt and kill robots before they evolved. So far, the robotic higher beings have only succeeded in making the organics hate the synths, so good job. Using the Romulan rescue, Oh makes synths illegal through the attack on Mars, causing the death of most of her people (and incidentally, of the entire Vulcan race in another timeline. Thanks, Oh!). I’ll give her points for dedication, at least this isn’t a “save my people and screw the rest of the Federation” scenario. She’s actually willing to sacrifice her planet to save the whole galaxy. (Doesn’t make it moral, but still, pretty selfless, in a dark a twisted way.) Again, this is the robotic higher beings’ fault. 

Moving on, The surviving synths try to make first contact with Starfleet, resulting in the death of Jana, Beautiful Flower and Vandermeer, which has overall very little consequence on the bigger plot. AGAIN, this is indirectly the robotic higher beings’ fault. (Maybe losing her sister is what makes Sutra such a bitch? Don’t think so though, we’ll get to that.) Maddox, learning nothing from the Ibn Majid, decides to learn the truth about the ban and sends two synthetic girls that look exactly like Jana to investigate (my god is he stupid), while not actually telling them what it is they’re supposed to find (oh, Bruce. Oh my god). It leads to the Romulans realizing that there’s an entire planet of synths. Outstanding work, dumbass. 

Picard does his thing and decides to save the synths and advocate for their lives, Sutra realizes what the Admonition actually meant, and decides that killing all the organics sounds like a great idea. She doesn’t hesitate to let Narek kill one of her sisters to unite her people, showing that she’s exactly the same kind of psycho bitch as Oh. The problem is: SELF-FULFILLING PROPHECIES. The robotic higher beings are fucking IDIOTS!! They’re supposed to have seen many civilisations rise and fall, so they should know what to do and what not to do, and their rational still is “organics will kill us anyway, so let’s kill them,” leading to the organics being like “oh shit, the synths want to kill us, let’s stop making them,” leading to Sutra being like “welp they’ve already started hating us, our robot overlords were right, let’s kill organics.”  OH. MY. GOD!!!

I get that the lesson is that fear is the great enemy, and in this case it’s really well demonstrated (gotta give credit where it’s due), but still! It’s so frustrating!! 

My biggest problem with that convoluted plot is that we (the viewers) are supposed to see the synths as the organics’ equals. Their plight is supposed to be equal to the Federation’s. Except NO. I’m sorry, NO. 

(More on in-universe morality and out-of-universe viewer experience under the cut, because I took pity on your dashboards.)

I get wanting to survive from the Romulan attack, okay. (There is la Sirena for that, just as a reminder.) But Sutra saying that the Federation banning them was essentially genocide? NO. They are made. They aren’t born naturally. A government telling its people to stop making procreating isn’t the same thing as a government killing every kid younger that ten! Parents refusing to conceive isn’t the same as murdering their children (I won’t open the can of worms that is the abortion debate, the point stands). 

We as an audience are still supposed to see the Zhat Vash as the bad guys, because Oh, Narissa and Narek are villains, and because they have caused untold suffering. (By the way, linking Cris’ personal tragedy to the synth crisis is a massive plot contrivance to make us hate the Zhat Vash more, which I found frustrating watching ep8. Losing people in a horrible way happens even without grand global conspiracies, and Cris had already been established as going out of his way to help people even when there was nothing in it for him. We didn’t need the connection to empathise with his pain, and he didn’t need the added incentive. Seriously, how small is that galaxy? Are everybody’s demons linked to Picard’s heroic quest? How convenient.)

But are the Zhat Vash really the bad guys? (Even Cris questions that despite arguably being the Sirena crewmember who as per ep8 had lost the most because of them, along with Elnor.) I’m sorry, if Sutra does try to call the robotic overlords, I say burn Cappelius to the ground. Lemme continue to explain. There are what, 50 synths? 50 robots. And the show tries to make me (again, the viewer) accept that risking the survival of the entire Federation (trillions of people) to save them is actually a question worth asking? From an in-universe moral standpoint, perhaps. 

From an outsider’s perspective (the audience), not even close. Robots having souls and being equal to humans isn’t even a discussion we’re having in real life. I don’t believe androids will ever be self-aware, and capable of emotion and love. Sure, in the Star Trek universe they apparently are. So what? Suspension of disbelief only goes so far. The show can’t expect me to accept that many IFs. I get the very one-the-nose “fear of the Other,” “make love not war,” “different races have equal rights to life” analogy. The message is very much worthy, the show’s depiction of it really pisses me off. The show isn’t asking me to decide whether or not it would be moral to kill the last survivors of a human (or even alien) tribe to save the world, it’s asking “but what if we were basically God and we fucked up, how would we fix it? What if the stuff we made eventually had feelings? Then it’d be bad to destroy it, right?” 

Aside from the sheer hubris of that premise, I don’t know that the robots have feelings. I know it looks like they do, and that they believe that they do, but again, how am I to know? From a biological viewpoint, they’re certainly not alive:

“Life” (biological def taken from the web) Definition. noun, plural: lives. noun, plural: lives. (1) A distinctive characteristic of a living organism from dead organism or non-living thing, as specifically distinguished by the capacity to grow, metabolize, respond (to stimuli), adapt, and reproduce. 

Do the synths grow? Nah. Do they metabolize? Yes. Respond to stimuli? Yes but debatable as it’s programmed. Adapt? Yes. Reproduce? NOPE. 2.5/5 on the living scale lol. That’s not that great. (From an in-universe moral perspective, this time. I know, TNG did an ep on that, sorry.)

Still the show tries reaaaally hard to sell their sentience, and the one time that really didn’t sit well with me was that “robotic finger touching the human finger” image. WOW, last place where I expected to find religious imagery, a show that questions what it means to be human and what creating beings in our image would entail *sarcasm*. 

Except they twist the imagery. In the Bible, human lives are sacred because they are in the image of the perfect God, and He values us (=> so human worth come directly from God attributing worth to us because we’re meant to reflect His goodness). Humans being imperfect due to their fall, creating something in their own image is called an idol - it’s a false god, it’s not sentient, it’s even more imperfect, and it’s wrong. And if humans don’t value it and and it doesn’t reflect who they are anymore, well, it would make the idol even more worthless, right? (clearer explanation because my arguing skills suck => drawing on the Bible’s imagery, either humans are not gods and the images they created are worthless, or the series means for them to have God’s place, in which case refusing to attribute worth to their images makes those worthless. That invalidates the question that I previously said the show was asking.) So all in all, reminding us of the Christian take on the issue right in the middle of the Admonition claiming that synths are perfect is thus completely counterproductive, both in universe and from a viewer’s pov.

But but but, I hear you protest, what about Data? He had worth! 

This may be controversial, but Data mattered to us because of the character he was, not because he was supposed to be human. He was adorable and losing him meant losing an interesting and enjoyable element in the show, which would make us sad. I love him like I love Cris’ holos, the Voyager Doctor, Wall-E and Eve, R2-D2, Jarvis and Chappie. They’re (very) likeable fictional creatures that can be used as metaphors for real life issues, nothing more. In any show/movie I’d be really sad if one of them had to be sacrificed to save the world, but I’d accept it (looking at you, Infinity War Captain America). If the question arose in real life, would I question the morality of it? No. 

So, are the new synths the same? I already tackled the metaphor thing, it’s not handled that well and Detroit Become Human did it first. (Again, it’s hard to portray the otherness of other real life-cultures that we may unjustly fear by using things whose living status is so easily questionable!!)  Is killing off the synths wrong from an out-of-universe perspective because the audience loves them? Let’s see... Are the new synths adorable/likeable? Heck no, give me Emil and Enoch over them any day. Would we lose something in the show if they died? Nah. We didn’t even know they existed until one episode ago. Picard would get angsty and Agnes would get upset, but it’s nothing a few fluffy fics wouldn’t fix. Do we know the synths as characters? We know that Sutra is crazy, violent and bloodthirsty, Jana was probably nice (?), Dahj had a cute boyfriend (outstanding characterization) and Soji... Welp... *sigh* I guess Soji is okay, even though she’s the least relatable and interesting character of the whole Sirena crew?  We know that their creators and biggest advocates, Soong Jr and Maddox, are(/were) creepy old dudes with warped ethics, half a brain between the two of them, really toxic interactions with Agnes, and enough hubris to bring the entire greek demigod population to shame. They would race Icarus to the sun, seriously.  We know that Captain Vendermeer killed himself over two robots, permanently damaging one of the nicest and most beloved characters of the series. Yeah, real incentive for me wanting to see the Federation risk destruction for the androids, guys.

But seriously, the last time a psycho AI tried to destroy the galaxy and make it in its image (*cough* Control) the protagonists spent a season trying to destroy the thing, and they were right! Future-control was self-aware and demonstrated anger and fear! Make up your mind, CBS!! 

And by the way? THE SYNTHS HAVE A MEANS OF ESCAPE!! No, I’m sorry, if they don’t decide to go aboard la Sirena and choose to endanger the Federation instead, then for all plot issues I’m siding with the Zhat Vash. Go on, destroy the synths. As part of the audience, I don’t care, and the show attempts at making me care by trying to make it a moral issue feel clumsy and forced. 

Also. Q exists in the Star Trek universe! He’s a deus ex-machina machine!! (Pun intended.) It’s hard to take big issues like that seriously when he could just swoop in and teleport the synths out of the galaxy/destroy the Romulan armada/put the robotic overlords in their place. JL, please, give Q a call. Yeah, yeah, it’d take away from the moral stakes because you can’t solve your irl problem with a snap of your fingers and you have to make actual decisions - but as I already said, I feel like the moral stakes are dumb and contrived. Give me the deus ex-machina, please. 

This has been a Star Trek rant. I know that I tackled two separate issues here: the in-universe morality of the synths’ death (I will admit that from the crew’s perspective it’s not right, because they can’t know if the synths are alive or not for sure) and the out-of-universe viewer experience. I apologize if it came across as really confused and complicated. 

I still like the show and love the actual characters (meaning, la Sirena’s colorful crew), and the show writers are not incompetent, or stupid, or wrong for writing their show how they want. They are really skilled and talented and they have created mostly compelling characters - I’m just unhappy with the direction taken by the story.

#star trek picard #star trek: picard #jean-luc picard #sutra #noonien soong #bruce maddox #cappelius #et in arcadia ego #picard episode 8 #picard 1x09 #spoilers #picard spoilers #rant #meta #synthetic life #my meta #st talk #not sw

[breyito]

Brittle

TITLE: Brittle  AUTHOR/ARTIST: @breyito (read also on AO3) PROMPT DAY : Day 4: Hurt/Comfort for @geraskierweek SUMMARY: Post- Ep. 6Jaskier is on his way to being mostly allright, when an unexpected meeting with Geralt tears all his efforts apart. WORD COUNT: 2.1 k BOOKS/NETFLIX/2002 SHOW/VIDEO GAME: Netflix show TRIGGERS/WARNINGS: Angst. Hurt no Comfort. Emotional pain.   RATING: Teen and up ADDITIONAL NOTES: Yeah...I chose hurt. Ooops? ñ.ñ  I couldn't help it!!! I just love Jaskier and his angsty-potential!!! Tbh, I've read some amazing post-ep.6 fix-it fics, but I'm of the opinion that some things you just don't forgive; at least not without effort from the other part. Hence, this was born. I knoooow that Geraskier Week is ending, but RL is a bitch and writing (even if I've written more this week than the past semester, jeez) is hard. I plan to finish all the prompts, even if it takes me another week lol. Tho I'm having a hard time to come up with ideas for the last two days, so...help?? Enjoy the pain!!

When they find the bard, he is singing in a small tavern. This far North the Nilfgaard army has not being able to reach, yet; but refugees have been traveling and passing through, and it is noticeable. The place is fairly full, the ambient warm from the fire on the hearth and the ammount of bodies. The mood of the people, though, is solemn and gloom. The usual joyful tunes and bawdy lyrics that make most of Jaskier's songs would not be welcome; but his most recent works, full of longing and despair are listened to with the aumost attention; people eager to feel conected in their grief.

~I need time to replace, what I gave away~

He is singing with his eyes closed, the melody pouring out of him without effort; and he does not see them enter: the sorceress, the princess and the two Witchers.

~Though I try to resist I still want it all ~

The four of them sit in a corner, willing to wait until the performance is over; but the white haired witcher does not take his eyes away from the bard for a second.

~I see a little house on the beach and children's names I see quiet nights poured over ice and the sweetest ale~

Geralt tries really hard not to think that the song is about him, because surely it can't be. Neither of them are built for a quiet life and a settled home; and yet he can't stop hearing the hopeful proposal of 'lets go to the coast for a while' that he never responded to, which was on itself an answer of its own.

~But everything is shattering and it's my mistake~

Vesemir notices the moment the lark sees Geralt, because his body fills with tension, his shoulders go back and his eyes fill with something else: anger, pain, hurt. He feels the sharp inhale Geralt takes of the man’s souring scent, and hears the aborted whine that climbs up his troath.

~Only fools fall for you, only fools Only fools do what I do, only fools fall~

The sorceress thinks to herself that there is no way the dumb Witcher can miss the song being about him. The bard is practically singing it to him, not looking away once. The rest of the place might not notice, but the four of them on the table know. Even without the enhanced senses she thinks she can smell the betrayal and the hurt the bard pours out in every exhale. She did not know things were so dire between the two men, or she would have insisted on Geralt aproaching first, with an apology at the ready; instead of ambushing him to ask such a big favour.

~Only fools fall…~

As soon as the song finishes the bard jumps into action; throwing the few coins in the floor into his lute case and sprinting for the back door. Obviously, they follow. Or, Yennefer and Geralt do, leaving Ciri with Vesimir inside, to protect her.

~*~

Jaskier has never believed the saying that Witchers have no emotions; that they can't feel and only care for killing and coin. Because if that were true, then why would they help?why would they risk their own lives for the ungrateful little beings that humans are? They are hated, spat on, cursed, stoned...and yet they continue to travel seeking for monsters to kill and people to save. Surely it would be easier to just take whatever they want, instead of getting barely what they need? They could stop traveling, live in the woods or the mountains, hunt and plant and live quietly; until people grew desperate enough to seek them out and pay whatever amount they demand for killing whatever creature is tormenting the pesky little humans. Or become bandits, roaming the roads and stealing and killing as much as they want. It's not a big secret (just something people like to forget) that they can control the minds of people with their magic (similar to the way mages can, but they don't, not usually). They could take over a city, a kindom. They could do so many things; things that would turn them into the monsters people already treat them as. But they don't. They just keep picking themselves up after a badly payed hunt, a stoning, a beating for just exhisting; and they go back to the Path. So no, Jaskier has never believed the rumours about Witchers not having feelings. Traveling with Geralt only proved him right.

But right now he wishes it were true.

Because if the lack of emotional conexions was something biological, something they did to Witchers on those cursed Trials; if love and care and affection was something they forced them to erase, this would be easier. It would mean Geralt doesnt care for him because he literally can't. But knowing he has such a bottomless heart; that he cares, so deeply; having seen first hand how far his affection goes...and yet know none of it is directed to him? Know that he's just an annoyance, a passing amusement, some silly human the man took pity in? That's torture. Jaskier doesnt know what to do now. What do you do when you realize (when someone literally has to spit it to your face because you just won't get it) that the person you built your life around despises you? How do you keep moving on, when you have linked yourself (your sense of being, your sense of worth) so fully to another being and that other is no longer there? When you have spent more of your life by their side than alone? How do you manage without them?

Somehow, he endures.

It takes time, and acting skills, and ale and some new-found interest in weapons and fighting to release all that anger coursing through him; but he copes. He stills feels brittle, like all his pieces were put in the right order but not glued back together, and a minimal shift can break him apart again. There’s nothing to do about the pain, not really; just wait for it to dull until it’s an ache and not searing pain (like the throb you feel in a broken ankle when it’s going to rain years after it happened; not the excruciating pain of the exposed bone through ruptured flesh). He’s not there yet; but he feels like he could be, in a few more months (or years, being realistic, but realism has never been his strong suit, has it?).

There’s a war going on, after all, and he can’t give himself the luxury of pining when people are being killied left and right. He stops singing about White Wolves and monsters; because Princess Cirilla is still unacounted for, and people are starting to remember (after years of a heavy silence imposed by Calanthe) that Geralt of Rivia was to claim her by the Law of Surprise. He has made a name for himself and the last thing he wants it’s to be taken hostage on the missguided notion that Geralt would give a rat’s ass about him and come to his rescue. He is not that stupid. 

So he crafts another identity, another name and life and repertoire (he’s lucky that enough songs from Jaskier are being sung by other minstrels, so he doesn’t runs out of ballads and dittys while he composes new material), changes his image to fit in rather than stand out (more earthy colors with minimal embellishments, embroidered by his own hand), grows a beard (still carefully maintained) and lets his hair reach his shoulders. He sings more about longing and loses, homesickness and heartbreak; but still tries to end the performances on a high note, a cheerful tune (people respond better, when they can sing their woes but still feel hope at the end of another dark day).  

Or at least that is what he usually does. It only takes Geralt to show up once for all his careful work to come tumbling down. He can feel his grief start to choke him and barely manages to finish the song (and of course it’s about Geralt, because all his songs about heartbreak are about him) before he’s gathering his things in a hurry and running for the door. He just wants to get to his room at the inn before he starts to unravell. Of course he doesn’t get to, because the damn Witcher and the fucking witch follow him and cut him off.

“Jaskier.”

“That’s not my name.” he answers in a lower registry. It’s useless, he knows, but he still tries to side step and continue on his way. A hand grabs his forearm and the strenght behind it stops him short. He can feel the heat of his palm scorching his flesh even under all those layers and he starts to shake.

“Jaskier.”

“What? I’m on my way to the inn, I’ll be gone by morning. You-”

“Jaskier”

“-don’t have to see me or talk to me-”

“Jaskie-”

“-or even acknowledge me so-”

“Jaskier!”

“-what do you want!?” he screams, and his voice carries into the darkness around them. “What could you possibly want from a shit-shoveling useless minstrel, uh!?” 

He can tell that both the Witcher and the sorceress are shocked by his outburst; and he takes advantage of this by shaking the hand off and walking a few more feet away from them.

“Jaskier. We need you.” Is what he hears next, and the words make him stop. He lets loose a bitter short laugh.

“Oh, haven’t you heard, woman, that he doesn’t need anyone?” he hears steps behind him and continues walking, “And I wouldn’t go depending on him very much either. He tends to bite and run the other way when that happens, you know?” The Witcher gets ahead of him and grabs his shoulders, thightly and pushes him against a wall.

“Don’t do that.” he growls, shaking him, impatient. “She’s done nothing to-”

"How is it, Geralt” Jaskier interrumpts, finally looking into Geralt’s eyes “that you go out of your way to respect, protect, love” he spats the word out “people that  curse your name, spit on you, wish you dead and use you so badly that you have nothing left when they are done with you;” he doesn’t even try to pretend the words aren’t about certain witch that has apparently deemed the Witcher’s company good enough again, he sees her flinch at the quick look he shots her but pays it no mind “but show nothing but disgust towards the one person who has always stood by you?" he sees the way Geralt recoils at that, but honestly, if he can lash out when he feels hurt then he deserves to hear the pain he caused others.

"Jas-"

"What did I had to do; what did I had to change; what else did I had to sacrifice for you to give me a sliver of your affection?” He can’t hold his gaze anymore and just looks over his shoulder, tears escaping uninvited. “Just a morsel, a fucking crumb of yourself?" His voice breaks and fuck, he wanted to finish this conversation with the last dregs of his dignity intact, but he doesn’t even get that, does he?

"Jaskier, I'm so-" despite the fact that Jaskier has spent the last fucking year wanting to hear an apology from the man that destroyed his heart; right now he can’t. He suddenly feels so tired. Brittle, like that single word could make him crumble and disperse his very core to the winds. He swallows a moan and starts begging.

"Please, leave." he pauses, to see if the other man will, for once, heed his request. He doesn’t, of course. " Geralt, please, leave." he pleads. The Witcher lets go of his shoulders, but opens his mouth. But Jaskier won’t let him speak, not if he doesn’t want to end the night reduced to more pieces. "You are no good to me witcher. You wound me; it hurts. Everytime I think of you a fucking hole opens in my chest and threatens to consume whole.” he starts wheezing, but keeps talking, trying to explain his pain, to make him understand how badly those scarred hands have wounded him. “Seeing you here... Listening to your voice? It’s ripping me to pieces."

"Ja-" the bard feels like puppet whose string was cut. He falls to the floor in a crouch, hugging himself, trying to contain the void growing in his chest.

"Geralt, have mercy." he sobs, desperate. He hides his face between his knees, tears and snot being absorved by the dark fabric.

Finally, Geralt leaves. The keens and sobs of pain follow him all the way back to the tavern.

"Good gods, what have you done to him, Witcher?" Vesemir asks when they return to the table. The piercing cries continue on in the night.

~*~

Mmm, are those reworked lyrics from Troye Sivan?? Yes, yes they are. I just love this song and I had to tweak the lyrics a bit so they fit better, but I love the result, tbh. Thanks for reading!!! Ideas for day 6 (destiny) and day 7 (free day) are accepted ;P

Kisses

#2020 geraskier week #netflix witcher #fanfiction #day 4 hurt/comfort #angst #sad jaskier #post-ep 6

[okadiah]

Well, you are offering: Blackbird 2, 3, 4, 5 ,11 and 12

Well @comentter I certainly did offer (and thank you for taking up the challenge), so let’s get started! This gets long. Sorry, not sorry.

2: What scene did you first put down?

The first scene I put down … I’m not sure. I wrote all of the Origin chapters (and I mean all of them) before I even started posting the story, but … I’m pretty sure it was the ‘Kasmir death’ scene. That, or the ‘Kasmir describes the sky to blind Caleb’ scene. (You’re about to start seeing a trend here lol)

3: What’s your favorite line of narration?

My favorite line of narration … uh, that’s hard out of 250k worth of content but … probably this entire paragraph out of Chapter 7:

The Kalleran continued to tell him about the sky and what it looked like, what the colors were as they bled into one another before fading into inky blue, and in Caleb’s mind, in his imagination, he could see it, all of it. He knew it was embellished by all the memories he’d collected of the night sky across the galaxy, on all the planets he’d visited. He knew his imagination paled in comparison to seeing the real thing … but it was alright. With Kasmir’s help he imagined something almost real, and he valued the fabrication as much as he valued the real thing. He was quietly thankful to Kasmir for painting the sky for him, the first sky he had experienced in almost half a year. 

There was a certain pure and innocent magic that came with writing this particular bit that has always been one of my favorite parts of the entire story, and still sticks out in my mind. It’s the final beautiful, happy moment Caleb has in his new life before it all begins to tank. It’s very special.

4: What’s your favorite line of dialogue?

Ah, this one’s easy because it was the most tailored and emotionally loaded bit of story I wrote (next to the entire Forgiveness chapter in the temple, which is its own affair entirely).

“I like it,” Kasmir finally said, a small, satisfied smile pulling at his lips as his body fully relaxed. “Kanan.”

The Kasmir death scene butchered me, but these four little words are my favorite bit of dialogue because it’s essentially Kasmir baptizing Caleb into his new life as Kanan, which is the final act of his life. I sobbed writing this particular bit (this entire chapter in fact). When I was done writing it, I’d conned myself into believing that’s what actually happened in canon.

I’m always very relieved Kasmir is, in fact, still alive in canon.

5: What part was hardest to write?

The hardest part to write in Blackbird, by far, was the Thrawn chapter. You guys don’t even know how many hours went into planning and orchestrating Chapter 25 so it would be as clever and as brilliant as I could make it and Thrawn (this was before I’d gotten a more solid handle on Thrawn’s character too). I was so worried about that chapter and if it would fly or sink. You have no idea.

It did encourage me to write more Thrawn though.

11: What do you like best about this fic?

What do I like best about Blackbird? Frankly, it was getting to interact with you readers and learning better how to be a part of the fandom (something I’d never done before). It was kind of a springboard into that. This fic helped me find and make some pretty great friends :]

That, and it taught me I could finish an epic-length story while also teaching me about the editing process. It’s its own other post about all the things writing this fic taught me. Hopefully one day I’ll convince myself to write about it lol.

12: What do you like least about this fic?

There’s not really anything I didn’t like about this fic, to be honest. I wrote it as best I could to the best of my ability, and I wrote it my way. It’s hard to feel ashamed about anything in Blackbird when it was literally all I had to give as a writer and creator. 

The only thing I really disliked about the fic was how long it took to write it. I’m an impatient person and I usually like to have projects done in about three months. This took its sweet time (over a year) to complete. Staying motivated and on track, reconciling my limitations when I had to take breaks and hiatus’s, and not aborting the story during those times it felt like no one in the world was reading it was the probably the thing I liked least about this fic.

Thanks for all the questions! I love talking about Blackbird. I really need to write some posts about the whole experience of writing it one of these days :]

#blackbird #comentter #this was a lot of fun to do thanks so much for choosing the questions!

[kimmysfandomblog]

1, 2, 3 and 9 for the meme :P

Thank you Serahne! You always send me asks for these memes, and I appreciate it :D

Also sorry for the delay again. This time I actually had computer trouble when I was near the end, so I lost my answer, lol. ANyways, I’m sorry it’s really long because I like to go on tangents and further explain things ^^;

From Here: https://kimmysfandomblog.tumblr.com/post/169753929827/ship-asks

what is your absolute favorite ship?

what ship do you hate most?

what was your first ship, and what fandom is it from?

what is the most underrated ship, in your opinion?

Just as a warning, I do quite a bit of ship negativity and have V3 spoilers for the last question! check the tags for the ships that I’m negative about.

what is your absolute favorite ship?

Well, I think it’s pretty obvious that KomaHina is my favorite pairing! I love the relationship Haji and Ko have with each other. It’s a very complicated one, no doubt, but these boys always seem to create more complications instead of fixing any misconceptions ^^;.

What I really love is the potential for the ship post-canon! I feel like now that there is no time pressure, they’ll both finally have a chance to heal. I think that these two had it the toughest. They both believed strongly in Hope’s Peak Academy’s poisonous mentality in Talent being equivalent to how worthy you are as a person, measured in “Hope” for how much you can help society later. They both never considered themselves anything special and were on the outside looking in, but their way to cope with being “average” was different. While Ko just accepts his place, not even taking any compliments because he feels like he doesn’t deserve them, Haji fights to prove his own worth, and if the system for worth is based on talent, he even sacrificed his own body, mind, and spirit to finally be of worth. They are at these two extremes of how to cope, so I think given their perspectives on the issue and having it be proven just how toxic the mentality is, they can in turn help each other find that balancing point of acceptance to the new world order, so to speak.

Also, even in-game, there was a dynamic showing their strengths and weaknesses playing off one another. Haji is a super caring guy, and he genuinely tries to understand Ko, no matter how wary he feels of him. However, he always runs away from problems or denies them, even if he does eventually come back to try to solve them. Ko, in the mean time, cares, but he cares more for the toxic ideology of Hope’s Peak Academy (which is understandable once you know his backstory). All of his decisions are not based on emotion, but on what he would deem the logically best outcome (or maybe ideologically?). He is always fully against running away from the problem, no matter how tough the solution would be. So, in how I view these two characters, they compliment each other so well. Haji would be the emotional support and hopefully help Ko open up more to him and to the others so that he can learn to care about himself, and Ko can be the logical one motivating Haji not to run from problems, or the solutions that would probably lead to some sort of loss.

Everyone points out the aborted confession means Ko has a crush on Haji, but Haji really did like Ko in the beginning. They both felt calm towards each other, and Haji’s rejection towards Ko in the first trial was a result of him feeling betrayed that he person he woke up to on the beach was not the person Haji thought he was. Still, he tris to understand Ko while the others accept him as an outcast and don’t give a chance, while Haji feels conflicted because he’d seen a nicer side of Ko, so while he’d like to do the same, his caring side is asking himself why things turned out this way. That’s why I’m sure he was close to forgiving Ko in the FTEs. If Ko had a good reason for his actions, than why not forgive him and help him? Haji tries the whole game to deny any association with Ko, but it’s there and he realizes how much Ko helps even if he doesn’t ever admit it.

Koma//Hina brings up so many good points of discussion, and it leads to thinking about all of these AUs and speculations about post canon. The relationship is very complex, and it’s easily put into many different situations and wonder just how they would handle it. I guess that is why I like it so much!!! I hope that Kodaka never touches the Hope’s Peak storyline again and mess it up though :/ We really don’t need to, like, ship Haji with an AI or some other female charcter just to keep him straight and keep Ko the tragic character. Just saying :P

what ship do you hate most?

I have very few ships that I hate, so it wasn’t that hard to pick Junko///miki. Mikan has been through abuse and sexual exploitation her whole life. She’s very easily manipulated for fear that she’d endure more abuse, even by those that would never cause her any harm. Junko, in the mean time, does everything Mikan tries to avoid, except she adds her poison of getting Mikan to actually like the abuse because of despair and having it translate as “love and attention” instead of physical and emotional pain. The only way I can ever see this working is with an OOC/much toned-down Junko in some AU. Even then, the source of the ship really irks me most of the time :/

what was your first ship, and what fandom is it from?

Well, I think my first fandom was the Naruto fandom. I was into Naru//Hina and I hate how they became canon. I was also into Sasu//Naru, though I didn’t like it quite as much as Naru//Hina because as developed as it was, I couldn’t see Sasuke seriously reciprocating? Like, he’s done a lot of things to annoy Naruto, but it was always in a rivalry and he always just saw himself as better, yet when Naruto gets close to his level, he freaks because he’s dependent on the idea he has to be better than anyone to kill his brother, and Naruto, the idiot/dead last ninja, getting close to his level is some kind of failure on his part not to advance as quickly. I understand the complications, but I can’t see it happening in anything but an AU.

As for why I liked Naru//Hina, I saw myself in Hinata a little? Especially since I was even more shy as a kid, and no self confidence (not that that has changed all that much lol). Also, seeing how Naruto helps her gain a bit of confidence in the Chuunin exams made me root for her, and his concern leading to him swearing on her blood to get Neji to pay (and then beating Neji in a tough-won battle and spinning Neji’s ideology on its head). She doesn’t get a lot of screen time, and the manga makes fun of how hard she crushes on him, how shy she is, and how oblivious he is despite obvious signs, but I just shipped them together for it. I’d believed that they would compliment each other well (loud-obnoxious with shy-reserved: he’d tone it down a bit around her and she’d gain confidence in herself and come out of the shell more for other people, and they both share the same ideology and goals to become better and stronger for those around them and to prove themselves to those who doubted them). My opinion on the ship itself hasn’t changed that much, but I understand the hatred towards it, especially with how it became canon :/ I really would have preferred nothing become canon than what we got...

what is the most underrated ship, in your opinion?

This one was the hardest to answer... Like, there’s a lot of “crack pairings” that I ship based on the way I see characters and their personalities, and then shipping them based on the potential (Oum//ami, Hin//aegi, AI Kamu//Nami, and Koma//Nami definitely fall into this category). There isn’t a whole lot of canon interaction, if any (lol at Kamu//Nami), and a lot of people just don’t see the characters the way I do, and that’s fine! I’ll just have fun in rare-pair hell, like usual.

So, to actually answer the question, I’d have to say Sai/Mota would be my pick for underrated ship. Shuichi and Kaito already have development in canon. Kaito is told that Shuichi struggles by continuously placing the blame on himself after convicting someone to their punishment, especially when the culprit had a “good reason” to commit their crime. He also saw something in Shuichi’s motive video that made him approach Shuichi in the first place. Because of that, he takes on the role of “hero” and takes all of the responsibility onto himself, so that if Shuichi thinks he makes a mistake, Kaito can brush it off of him.Yeah, a lot of people saw Kaito as interfering with the investigation, but I’m pretty sure he’s aware how important Shuichi is in the investigation. He’s only around so that he can he that emotional support. He sees what Shuichi has investigated, asks questions and points things out so that maybe he can help Shuichi figure things out. The first trial, when Shuichi is beginning to doubt himself, he reminds him not to think about the responsibility and just do his best. No one will fault Shuichi if he makes the wrong deduction. He also makes a mistake in assuming Shuichi knows everything, and he doesn’t really do that again in the trials after.

Kaito certainly has a hero complex, but I’m positive he’s aware of more than he lets on. He is actually pretty good at lying and has very strong sense of morals (he will never forgive killing someone, and since Kokichi was already on his way to death, taking the blame for his death was just a little easier). He was also somehow able to take the test to become an astronaut and pass and knows numerous languages fluently. Now, given what we can see of Kaito, he always seems like the idiot, the Hagakure or Souda of the V3 cast, but this time, he takes a more active role in the story. He is playing his part to keep morale as high as he can. He unfortunately lets that role get to him in Chapter 4, when he adamantly defends Gonta and realizes at the end of the trial just how close all of them got to death for his mistake. He can’t look Shuichi in the eye after that, maybe a bit mad for him siding with Kokichi during the trial, but more mad at himself for not seeing how much Shuichi grew to be able to not need Kaito’s support anymore during a trial, and for letting himself get in the way of that.

As for Shuichi, there is so much concern for Kaito once Kaito helped him relieve his stress about making wrong decisions and reaches out to him in Chapter 2. Shuichi may be a little exasperated at times, especially at being a sidekick when Kaito doesn’t really do anything, and Shuichi is a little snarky about that internally, but he truly appreciates Kaito. Kaito’s FTEs really don’t make a lot of sense since he rambles on a fictional story supposedly about how he became an astronaut, but the important part is how supportive Kaito is of Shuichi and how much Shuichi appreciates having Kaito so close and knowing he can rely on Kaito to help him feel at ease about the situation. It really does seem like Shuichi has a crush on Kaito built from his admiration of him, even if he doesn’t really realize that is what it was.

Sorry, I rambled a lot about Sai/Mota already, but I never really said why I think it’s underrated? It’s pretty clearly overshadowed by Oum//asai, Sai//Aka, and Kai//Maki, but to me I just don’t like these pairings as much. Sai//Aka I do kinda like, but the other two I kind of don’t. It’s not like they are NOTPs, I just don’t like them for different reasons. I didn’t like Oum//asai because, well, it’s very boring to me and I don’t get it and the popularity. I tried to understand it and the love for Kokichi, really, but they didn’t hit anything I liked and both the realtionship between the two and Kokichi’s characterization are quite straightforward in canon, while the fandom made me convinced that they’d be super complex (and honestly if people didn’t keep spoiling me, maybe things would have been much more different. Actually I’m positive fandom ruined it for me.) I don’t like Kai//Maki because, well, it makes me sad for Maki falling for a guy that apparently unintentionally lead her on :/ And Sai//Aka has it’s major problem of reducing Kaede to some 2D character with little backstory there to be killed for a man’s character development... when in Chapter 1 and prologue she was a character with many conflicted feelings trying to do her best.

Thankfully, Sai//mota isn’t that much of a rare pair, especially once the English Release hit, but it’s definitely not that popular, or people don’t get it because to them, they are just bros (perfectly understandable either way). I just wish there was more Sai//mota content because there’s a lot of evidence for it and it’s a ship that’s pretty mutually beneficial to me.

Sorry again for rambling a lot! I tried to cut it shorter... tried is the key word here hahaha ^^;;;;

#ship hate #negativity of hin;;am/junm;;iki/oum;;sai/kai;;mak/sai;;aka/ and some n@rut0 ones #mehere #ask meme #thanks for the ask Serahne!!! #serahne

[sweetnestor]

You Look Happier | Chapter 5

university au, teamiplier + jack

platonic/romance/angst/(smut at one point but it’ll only be on ao3)

previous chapter

“It was awful!” I rambled, anxiously pacing around my living room. “Oh god, it was going so well and then it just fucking - ah!” I rubbed my hands together, my mind buzzing horribly.

“I didn’t know Hollywood Hills had business hours,” said Jack, who was sat on the couch. “Did you get a fine?”

“No, but I did have an anxiety attack,” I groaned.

“Oh no.” Jack sat up. “What did Ethan do?”

I cringed as I remembered the irrational crying and hyperventilating. God, it was so embarrassing and stupid, I was trying not to reduce myself to tears. “Nothing. He didn’t know what to do! He just rubbed my back and told me to breathe!”

“So he didn’t do anything wrong?”

I shook my head. “But it was so stupid! Everything was perfectly fine until I ruined it!”

Jack then stood up and went to me. “Hey, it’s okay. You didn’t ruin anything, and I’m sure Ethan told you the same thing.”

“Yeah, and how long will it be before he gets tired of it? How long do I have before he starts rolling his eyes at me?” I asked, knowing exactly how insane I sounded, but I couldn’t stop these thoughts from spilling out.

“You need to trust him,” Jack firmly said. “And it sounds impossible, but it’s not. It just takes time.”

I sighed. “I don’t want to be afraid of him. I don’t want to run away from him… I don’t want to be sad anymore…”

“I know. You won’t always be said, you have to know that.”

This was exhausting. How long was I going to be like this? When would I stop being such a stick in the mud? When will everything just stop?

Jack gently hugged me as I started to cry. I wanted all of this bad stuff to be over. I wanted to give up, I wanted to stop fighting. It was more tiring than just being depressed and anxious all the time. At least I know what to expect with the latter; It was easier to stay on the ground.

“No one said recovery was easy,” he told me. “You have to take the good with the bad. And you have to remember that this is only the beginning. You have plenty of time, and you have plenty of people who want to support you.”

I didn’t realize that I had said any of that out loud. I didn’t care. None of this was worth it. It was always going to be this way.

“No, it won’t,” Jack reassured. “And it’s completely worth it. You’ll have your good days and bad days. That’s how you can appreciate the good.”

He kept telling me these things as I cried Things were hard to hear. My knee-jerk reaction was finding a reason to stay in my private, comfy sinkhole of depression. In that moment, I couldn’t believe that I could get better. I was broken beyond repair.

However, once the worst of it was over, I wondered why I acted like that in the first place. Yes, Ethan and I got a stern talking-to by a Hollywood Hills security guard, but it wasn’t that big a deal. Yes, I was trying to get my shit together, I had done this before in the past. I knew from prior experience that I couldn’t just expect everything to be better overnight… as much as I wanted it to be like that.

~

I had forgotten how consistent you had to be when it came to communication in relationships. Ethan sent me a text a few days after the Hollywood Hills incident that made me feel kind of like an asshole.

“Hey, you’re not mad at me are you?”

Of course not. I’ve just been too exhausted and embarrassed to talk to specifically him. How does one say that without sounding crazy or rude?

“No lol I’ve just been kinda busy,” I typed before sending. Then, as an add-on, “Sorry for the silence.” Then I realized how cold and distant I sounded, so I sent some emojis following my two messages. That was three. I just triple texted.

Although, Ethan didn’t take ten years to respond this time.

“Okay, just making sure. Besides that, is everything okay?”

How can he tell? What did I say? Was I really that obvious? Was the storm cloud above my head actually visible? I was hesitating. I didn’t want to lie to him, but I didn’t want to be a burden either.

“Sometimes I’m bad at keeping in contact, even if it’s people I really like.” I sent it before I could panic.

My heart pounded as I read his reply.

“Aww… I’m the same way lol… I really like you too.”

FUCK. ABORT. RUN AWAY!

“Ay, no seas pendeja,” I mumbled to myself, catching my immediate reaction before it could spiral. “We’ve been at it for this long, we’ve already established this crap. C’mon Bella, no seas chillona.”

I sent back the monkey covering its eyes and the blue heart emojis. Then, I filmed a video to distract myself. Thankfully, I was able to be by myself again, which meant that I could film a cover while Jack was away on campus.

While I was doing my makeup, I got another text from Ethan. He was what I was doing, and I told him. Then, he asked if he could listen somehow, and I was convinced to let him in on a Skype call.

“Hey!” he greeted when his face popped up on my laptop screen.

“Hi! Don’t mind me, I’m just putting on my actual face,” I told him. “I’m nearly done.”

“Take your time,” Ethan said, resting his chin in his hands. “Work your magic.”

I took my laptop over to the bathroom and moved my products aside. Then, I continued with my routine, not really conscious of the fact that I was being watched. Strangely enough, I didn’t really mind people watching me do something I knew I was good at. Plus, I was sure Ethan would get bored of me and open another tab until I was ready to sing.

“How do you do the wing?” he asked, much to my surprise.

I paused, letting that surprised feeling pass over. “Um… I’ve had to sacrifice all my babies,” I finally answered. “I also had to summon like, five different demons with the blood of a virgin.”

“And who did you murder to get that contour?” he egged on.

I sighed as I applied highlighter to the tops of my cheekbones. “You know too much already.”

Ethan giggled. “Well, I’ll stop asking questions, Miss Makeup Artist Person Expert.”

“Yeah, stay in your lane, Mr. Gamer Person Man.”

I finished up with my makeup routine by spritzing some setting spray onto my face. For a second, I forgot I was being watched, and I had a moment of… “feelin’ myself.” I turned my head from side to side, watching my highlight catch the light. I appreciated the sharpness of my winged liner and the flawlessness of my eyebrows.

Suddenly, I heard a shutter sound and snapped out of my vain moment. I turned back to Ethan on the screen, my eyes widening.

“I’m not doin’ nothin’,” he said, feigning innocence.

“Oh god. I can only hope I look good in that screenshot,” I said timidly.

“You always look good.”

I rolled my eyes and put on my best “white girl” accent. “Aw, thanks boo!”

Then, I took my laptop back to my room. I set it down on the bed and went to get my keyboard. I stood it in front of my bed, since I didn’t have a proper bench. After, I went to grab my lights that I left in the living room.

“What are you gonna sing?” Ethan prompted.

“I’m thinking Dodie,” I replied as I went to grab my camera and tripod. “Or something else, I’m not sure.”

“Dodie,” he said. “You gotta sing Dodie.”

I hesitated as I turned on the camera and lights. “I’ve been practicing ‘When’ but I don’t know if it’s good enough.”

“Let’s hear it then. I’ll tell you if it’s good.”

It was more nervewracking knowing that Ethan was the one hearing me sing. I always needed to sing for someone before posting on my channel, but since it was going to be the guy I liked this time, I was a little nervous. I also found the song because of him, too. I could only hope I would do it justice.

Nervously, I sat down on the bed and placed my fingers on the keys. After breathing deeply, I played the first few notes of the song, but I had to start over a few times. To be honest, I was just stalling, but I got to it eventually.

“I think I’ve been telling lies, ‘cause I’ve never been in love Everyone falls for the sunshine disguise Distracted by who they’re thinking of”

The vocals were a little too soft for my liking, but the lyrics and Ethan’s persistence are what won me over. The more I sang it, the more lost I got in it.

“Am I the only one wishing life away? Never caught up in the moment, busy begging the past to stay Memories painted with much brighter ink They tell me I loved, teach me how to think”

Part of me wished for the day I would find a happy song that I could relate to.

I sighed when I finished the song. Sheepishly, I turned to Ethan, who had a huge smile on his face. He started with a slow clap.

“You’re so talented!” he exclaimed. “Ah, your voice is so nice! I love it!”

“Thanks,” I replied, blushing furiously. “That should go on my channel, then?”

“Yes! Record it and post it, like, right now,” he excitedly told me.

“Ahh, should I?”

“Do it. Do it, and… then we’ll go out after?” Ethan said the last bit slowly and softly.

Honestly, that was all it took for me to hit “record.”

~

This time, we went to the beach. It was cold as hell, being mid-January. But it was quiet and lacking of other people. It was also getting dark, which only made it colder. I was comfortable.

“Leggings were a bad idea,” I commented as we walked on the sand. “You’re gonna have to cut off my legs later.”

“You should’ve told me sooner,” Ethan replied. “I would’ve brought a chainsaw or something.”

We both stayed silent. Then we looked at each other and laughed. Thank god we had a similar sense of humor. It was easy to be around him.

“Hey, so,” Ethan said, changing the subject. “I… I overheard Mark saying that he was talking to you again?”

Spoke too soon.

“Uh, where did you hear that?” I asked in response.

“He was telling Tyler at the office,” Ethan explained. “I just happened to… be in the room. So, it’s true, then?”

“We’re making amends,” I told him, looking out at the distance. “It’s just that… we were friends before we dated and… we want to get over the things that happened. And, I think if I don’t try to work out these things, then I’ll wind up making the same mistakes in other relationships.”

Ethan didn’t say anything at first, which prompted me to ramble.

“I’ve known Mark for two, almost three, years,” I added. “We have a lot of history. I still want him to be my friend. A-And like I said, I don’t want my past mistakes to happen in this relationship.”

“I get it,” he finally said. “That’s good that you still wanna be friends.”

“Yeah, I probably should’ve told you sooner,” I said. “I feel like that’s something you deserve to know.”

“It’s okay. I mean, he doesn’t know about… this.” Ethan gestured between the two of us. “So I guess that’s fair.”

I wanted to ask what we are but… you know the cause by now. All I knew was that we definitely weren’t just friends.

“You wanna get food and eat in the car?” he asked after a while.

“Absolutely.”

_______

next chapter

#crankgameplays x oc #ethan nestor x reader #jacksepticeye x oc #jacksepticeye x reader #ylh fic #sweetheart writes #this was a mini filler #the next chapter is where the Good Shit happes #im so excite #i hope yall are too #i hope yall are liking it #i wouldnt know bc no one tells me haha #but its ok :')

[anghraine]

So, my sister wanted to watch ANH, and I’m a noble and selfless big sister (:P) and agreed. It’s been ... at least a year? 

Impressions this time:

- ANH is really a magnificent film, just in terms of how everything comes together and how completely balanced the different elements are. It is what it is—a fancy Western-meets-Kurosawa fairy-tale space opera—and instead of trying to ~transcend~ its origins, it embraces them and goes for executing them at peak quality. Overwhelmingly it succeeds. I think that’s really its strength among the SW movies: it’s not the most ambitious, it’s not the most creative, it’s not the most inspiring, but it is the most cleanly, evenly executed, the one that succeeds most completely and unambiguously at the kind of thing it is.

- I definitely think the TFA=ANH thing is overblown. They’re very different movies with very different characters. The only exceptions are 1) the cantina and 2) the trench run. Speaking of which, the cantina scene remains spectacular. (And the trench run! My God.)

- Rogue One fits in REALLY WELL, while also feeling like an even more profoundly dissimilar film. But it really felt like it picked up right where RO left off. Like a lot of people, I was cackling at Leia’s sheer gall in her “???? HOW DARE” at Vader. Unfortunately, the near-seamlessness had me completely convinced that RO just happened and so I was like “wow, okay, Vader just took off after Leia and Jyn and Cassian just died WAIT WAIT ABORT MISSION DIDN’T HAPPEN BYYYYE”

- I thought the criticisms of RO!Tarkin were overblown (tbh I tended to think that a lot of them tended to forget how uncanny valley Tarkin is to begin with), and that’s also only more cemented. He seemed absolutely like the same person. I also don’t think I noticed before how ... bored? he seems with a lot of it. Like, Vader thinks the Death Star is shit but is gung-ho about Doing Empire Things and Victory!!! while Tarkin tends to be more “eh.” Gets a kick out of puppy-kicking Tuesday, though.

- I know it’s been litigated to hell and back, but the SE additions are in nearly all cases very jarring. (OTOH, going back and updating the terrible 70s computer graphics would have been a very feasible choice!) Similarly, I know it’s stale and everything, but the suggested backstory does seem very different from what we get in the prequels; I kept finding myself mentally working to make it fit. 

- If it’s possible, I feel even more strongly than before about how wrongwrongwrong the soft, fluffy, sunshiny!Luke* thing is. Despite his streak of fatalism, he’s also almost invariably confident—sometimes to the point of braggadocio, but in most cases in fact correct. His goals are largely heroic, but he is far and away the most purely pragmatic of the main trio. He’s incredibly naive, but also resourceful; almost all the actual ideas for what to do come from him, and in most cases in a single moment. When Han snaps that “he’s the brains,” I don’t think he’s actually being sarcastic (though obviously he’s being annoyed). Luke is the idea guy, Han is the shooting things guy (which both find frustrating on occasion). Luke combines a streak of earnest gentleness with very frequent abrasiveness. He’s very much Leia’s brother.

(...on that level.)

- Han is incredibly brash and reckless! Sometimes hilariously so. I continue to love the scene where he runs from stormtroopers only to run into WAY MORE stormtroopers and just runs away screaming. He’s interesting because he’s not at all a comic relief character, but he does actually have a lot of it. I think it contributes to his lovability.

- Threepio and Artoo’s relationship remains the cutest, omg. And how did I forget Artoo’s built-in fire extinguisher??

- HELLO WALL-E

- LEIA LEIA LEIA LEIA

- There’s a gifset about how Leia is the only person unafraid of Vader, and I actually disagree. She quite plainly is afraid of him, IMO, quite naturally in the torture scene and then when she backs into him to get away from Tarkin. She just doesn’t let it govern her will or conduct even a little bit. <3

- I remain convinced that all probability is that Vader argued against the destruction of Alderaan, though not for any heroic reasons. I also remain creeped-out by Tarkin’s behaviour towards Leia accompanied by his genuine shock that she would lie to him. Vader is just “duh????” 

- I’ve also noticed it before, but it never ceases to amuse me: when Luke and Leia scream at Han about shooting in the compactor, they sound exactly the same. 

- Luke is the one who thinks to shoot out the cameras in the detention center.

- Obi-Wan’s lightsaber is the proper shade of blue, but Luke’s/Anakin’s has been left at greenish for some reason.

- ROBOT IS A CANON WORD

- I also think criticisms of the Obi-Wan/Vader duel are overblown. It’s a very different style, which seems odd, but ... looks like pretty normal fencing to me? A bit slower than Vader vs Luke in ESB, but that’s what you’d expect. I definitely got the feeling that Vader was drawing it out for maximum enjoyment, lol, but could have ended it at any moment.

- I love Threepio, but I find Chewie super irritating, sorry.

- Leia and Luke are so pretty!!!!

- Han’s snark about “female advice” remains as “well, fuck you, Han” as ever. I’m also not a huge fan of him going on about how he doesn’t care about the revolution or about her, considering that he knows perfectly well that she just saw her planet wiped out. How Jyn trying to survive is worse than this is just ?????

- Nevertheless, ANH Han is by and large my favourite Han. He’s genuinely charming, while his pseudo-devil-may-care is just ... aww, here’s your YOU TRIED star. Setting the implied incest aside, the back-and-forth with Luke about Leia is super cute. I also love the “no reward is worth this,” haha, along with “either I’m going to kill her or I’m starting to like her.”

- If I didn’t know better, I would definitely have thought Harrison and Carrie’s affair was during ESB, not ANH. The UST seems much less intense here (definitely present, but in a more lowkey, adorkable sort of way). 

- Luke and Leia both seem to feel this irrational, near-immediate bond. They tend to pair off and Leia flips out when he’s pulled underwater as much as Luke did when he realized she was scheduled for execution. Luke tends to back her when she’s pissed at Han or ignore it altogether. I also think it’s kind of ... sweet isn’t the word, exactly, but when Luke gives Leia the blaster to cover him while he gets his swinging cord out, he doesn’t seem to have the slightest doubt about her capabilities. And she doesn’t seem to doubt that he’ll be able to carry her with one arm across the BOTTOMLESS PIT OF DOOM. 

- That’s also there in the celebration scene; with Han there’s the UST with his wink + her I’M PUTTING ON MY PRINCESS FACE NOW, while with Luke he grins at her and she grins back, like they’re kids together. (Also, I think, a reason the twin retcon—while certainly awkward at points—works more than not. It's much more about this easy natural camaraderie they have than anything else. They’re bros before they were bros!)

- Leia actually isn’t certain if the plans will show a weakness or not, which suggests 1) she wasn’t told Jyn’s full testimony, or 2) she’s not at all sure about it either. 

- People generally seem to treat the Imperial Senate as a legit concern—not just Leia, but many of the Imperial officers, and Vader himself takes care to create a smokescreen to keep them from realizing what happened to Leia. The OT is not much for politics, but I suspect the abrupt dissolution of the Senate might have contributed to the expanded Rebellion of ESB and ROTJ.

- Even here, though, the Rebellion does seem very well-funded, and Han’s reward appears to be no problem at all. Also, everyone rides around on little carts.

- Luke totally knew Obi-Wan already and I am personally very doubtful that it took just a few hours or a day to get to Alderaan. Think: Leia supposedly caves about the Dantooine base right before Alderaan’s destruction (i.e., after Han&Co go into hyperspace). The Empire sends a contingent to Dantooine from Alderaan, who find and search the abandoned base, and send a report back. I definitely don’t think that’s something that in its entirety would be handled in a day. 

(I always get a sense with the OT—and RO—that we’re seeing snapshots of a wider story, with plenty going on in the empty spaces that’s just not critical, or which can be inferred from what we do see. Luke’s bit with the remote is clearly not his only interaction with Obi-Wan on the trip, say; it’s just a representative bit we see that coincides with the destruction of Alderaan. I think it’s part of the reason it’s compelling in a very fannish way, even though I have very very few issues with the series as-is; normally I get really fannish about things that are super compelling but have a lot of issues I feel the need to address. SW, though, manages to provide those spaces where I want to fill in the blanks, but as a form of storytelling rather than faultlines.)

- Aww, it’s for little children! also have you noticed that one of the charred skeletons at the homestead is contorted weirdly

- I love Carrie’s low voice

- the development of Artoo and Threepio’s relationship is not something I’ve really noticed before, but I was genuinely touched this time? They’re friends, clearly, but they start out at this snappish, intolerant place and Threepio gets increasingly more and more concerned and less selfish. He manages to look devastated when Luke shouts that Artoo is down and then when he offers his own gears and circuits for Artoo, it’s just... awwwww. (Also when they ask Luke if he wants a less beat-up droid and he’s NO WE’VE BONDED. Luke <3 <3)

- Alec Guinness, whatever his private feelings, does a really great job with Obi-Wan as this shrewd, tricky mentor with a deep sense of ambivalence. I think it’s part of the reason the retcon works so well; his behaviour seems entirely credible as someone who’s lying. I also think his :| at Han is pretty hilarious? He’s just seriously?? so much of the time.

- The whole deal with the parsecs was obviously meant to be stupid bragging from Han. There’s no need for an explanation; Obi-Wan and Luke’s faces are both like “...sure, bro.” 

- Even the damn summary of the title crawl on the back was like T_T

The Jedi Knights have been exterminated and the Empire rules the galaxy with an iron fist. A small group of Rebels have dared to fight back by stealing the secret plans to the Empire’s mightiest weapon, the Death Star battle station. The Emperor’s most trusted servant, Darth Vader, must find the plans and locate the hidden Rebel base. [etc]

*sob*

But, just incidentally, there is never the slightest indication given that the team of spies didn’t actually make it out of their mission or that there’s any particular tragedy around the first!!!! victory!!!!!!! They’re never explicitly pointed out, but there also isn’t any occasion for doing so; we don’t see anyone outside the purely military arm. No senators beyond Leia (who’s only there to bring the plans, and had originally intended to go to Alderaan anyway), no Mon Mothma, no operatives of any kind beyond soldiers, pilots, and commanders. It looks like they evacuated everyone else, so even if the Scarif mission had gone precisely according to plan and like 75% of them made it out, there’s no reason for them to show up in ANH anyway. But yeah, basically all we know is that the team that recovered the plans was a small and brave one affiliated with the Rebellion.

*feel free not to remind me that the sun is powerful and dangerous. this is a metaphor

#anghraine babbles #anghraine rants #/ #// #/// #//// #///// #star wars #luke skywalker #han solo #leia skywalker organa #threepio #artoo #anakin skywalker #governor tarkin #obi wan kenobi #the skywalker twins

[captainalwayslazycollectort-blog]

life insurance quotes online south africa

"life insurance quotes online south africa

life insurance quotes online south africa

BEST ANSWER:  Try this site where you can compare quotes: : http://freeautoinsurance.xyz/index.html?src=tumblr 

RELATED QUESTIONS: 

""Since we pay for car insurance in case sh-t happens, shouldn't we get that money back if sh-t doesn't happen?""

Car insurance is the biggest rip-off ever. I hate paying it. Sooo in case stuff happens, insurance takes care of it but then your rates go up!?! WTF? So if nothing goes wrong for a full year, shouldn't we get our money back?""

""Do you shop around for insurance i hope you do,, yes ,or do you stick with one company?

reason for question a certain very good online company that gets you lots of quotes showed( for the same details given) a difference of 1200 in the quotes. that was from approx 300 to approx 1500. how can this be justified. i know that the excess amounts are different It was a quote for my father and his car not me.

Couple questions on motorcycle insurance?

So I recently just bought a motorcycle 07 Yamaha R6S. I'm 19 years old and first time rider. I financed the bike under my name. My parents have Allstate and I'm under there insurance for the car insurance. Can they add a motorcycle under their insurance or do I have to go on my own? If so, how much is full coverage on a bike for a 19 year old? I have 1 ticket on record. Would I be able to just get liability? I live in California. Any advice would be helpful.""

What is full coverage auto insurance for colorado?

I am financing a car and I have to have full coverage but I just want the minimum full coverage I can get that colorado requires. I am setting my dedutibles at 1,000.""

Teenage car insurance?

i have a question i'm planning to get a car soon and im 17. Most likly im getting a new car i don't know the exact car yet. I wana know with my age and a new car how much do you think my insurance average will be. The car is gonna be financed under my dads name so im gonna have to get full coverage insurance so i wanted to get an idea on how much it would be for me.

How to get a car which is inbound because car was without insurance?

There is an awareness issue of , we didnt have car insurance . but yesterday I got to know that its illegal to drive a car without insurance. The understanding was that it would be dangerous but illegal was new thing. From yesterday we are trying to get insurance but they are saying that it is not possible to get insurance for inbound car. We can get insurance after release of the car but now we are stucked .Because police is not releasing car without insurance. We don't know anybody here so facing little problem.""

Car insurance total loss?

I own a 1997 dodge intrepid std 4 dr sedan 6cyl gasoline 3.3 liter 4 speed in fair conditions cd player no rust with 197,242 miles. My car was was in a hail and tornado damage where the hood has a dent and the driver and passanger side have dent and the trunk. I have full coverage insurance and they telling me that my car was total last i love my car and i spent alot of money fixing it and it drives great no problem. So I was trying to get some help from some one that could tell me how much is my car worth so they wont give me less money and if they offer me less what could I do. I am not trying to bew greedy but i do love my car and spent alot of money on it. I would rather get it fix . PLEASEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE HELP ME""

Motorcycle Insurance in Ontario help?

Hello, I am a 20 year old female looking for motorcycle insurance for a Honda CBR 250r with an M2. I have never owned a bike before and have a clean driving record. Like most people my age it is nearly impossible to get insurance that is affordable if you are under the age of 25. If anyone knows of an insurance company/brokerage that would give a quote below 2.5k a year please give me any way I can contact them. I live in the Ottawa area if that is any help as well.""

Life insurance in depth?

how do insurance company's find out you have multiple life insurance policies if you say you don't have any

HELP PLEASE. AUTO INSURANCE FOR NEW DRIVER. I NEED A GOOD ANSWER?

how much a year would a 1998 chevrolet camaro base, not z28, be for a new driver. any ideas? and also a 2002 dodge intrepreped es 4 door cost? please.""

How much would it cost to insure a 2002-2006 Subaru Impreza WRX for a 18 year old?

Just wondering, I'm looking into buying another car after I graduate High School. and I was wondering how much insurance cost per month to own a WRX between those years. For someone who has just graduated and turned 18.""

Auto insurance companies?

what auto insurance companies are best rated for customer satisfaction? anyone like geico? why?

Could I get car insurance before having a car?

I don't seem to have a car at the moment like I mentioned. But I was wondering if I could get a car first and then purchase the insurance or would that not work?

My driver's license was suspended for driving without insurance/license and not showing up for court dates.?

My driver's license was suspended for driving without insurance/license and not showing up for court dates. I did have my license and insurance at the time but did not have my wallet with me. I was wondering how much it will cost me to reinstate my driver's license and if I might have to take the driver's test over again or not. If I have documentation that I had a license and insurance at the time would it help me? I'm in Alabama if that helps. Any answers are greatly appreciated.

How much is the cost of a health insurance policy for a family of 5 in USA?

lets assume Joe (38years old) and Sally (38years old) public both work and make a total of $70,000 a year between them. They have 3 children, Todd, 15, Gwen 13, and Gina 10. They have to buy their own health insurance since their employers do not provide it. They want a plan that does the following: max $25 dollar deductible for any visit to a doctor....and then 80% of all cost after that up to an individual maximum cost per person per year of $2000 at which point the insurance will pick up 100% up to $300,000 per person per year. Dental and vision coverage is a flat 80% of all procedures after $25 deductible. If this family goes out in the market place to buy this insurance, how much will it cost them per month.""

Bankrupcy increasing auto insurance premiums???

Someone told me if a person files bankrupcy, their auto insurance premiums increase. Is this true and how do insurance companies justify the rate increase?""

New insurance companies?

I need a list of newly opened Insurance companies.

Car insurance coverage?

Will the insurance of a driver pay off for a non family member's vehicle that was totaled if he has total coverage for his vehicles? The vehicle that was crashes has a lien against it & only has liability insurance. However, the driver that wrecked has total coverage for both of his vehicles. He has USAA insurance which looks like good insurance? There is GAP insurance on the wrecked vehicle. My question, how do I get the ball rolling on this? I live in Oklahoma, the truck is sitting at a savage yard in Killeen, TX , the primary driver (a soldier) is in a military camp in Virginia, the soldier that wrecked the vehicle is living in Killeen, TX. I signed for the loan, my name is on the title. I haven't ever driven this vehicle. The salvage yard said they sent registered letters to the Oklahoma motor vehicle department. This sounds like it could take months and months to settle. Meanwhile, I need the primary driver to continue make the payments. They are not agreeing on who shuld""

Looking for cheap cars to insure?

Hello there, im 21 and looking for a cheap good runnin car! Thats cheap to insure! :) I dont like the old shape corses or nissan micras.. Ewww lol but really need a car asap! Any suggestions would be great n could u put make of car n model please? Thanks for reading! Lewis :D""

What is gap insurance?

My insurance co is paying only part of what I owe of the value of my car is was considered a total loss - after using the gap insurance does it erase the debt that I have with the bank and can I use the same bank to finance a new car?

Do i need health insurance for an abortion?

just wondering, would a woman need health insurance for an abortion? if she has cash can she pay that way without insurance. (in the state of pennsylvania)""

How much is car insurance and how much would car insurance on a mustang be how much would mustang I?

I am looking a used cars and I was wondering how much car insurance is and how much would a mustang be to insure.... Also I would be a first time driver and I live in pa if that makes a difference

Is insurance more expensive on a Two door car or a Extended cab truck?

Cant deside between a 99 Chevy silverado or a 2002 Celica. which insurance will most likely be cheaper?

Car insurance question?

Can someone get insurance on a vehicle when their name is NOT on the title?? The insurance is in VA. My husband owns the car and was letting his little bro drive it, but we've removed the insurance and told him NOT to drive it, and found out that he has put insurance on it with his insurance company! Is this possible or legal even?""

Is it compulsory to buy home insurance?

I'm going to move to my first house soon. There is one thing I want to ask you here. Is it compulsory to buy home insurance? If it is a must, then do you have to get an insurance before you move in?""

life insurance quotes online south africa

life insurance quotes online south africa

How much would car insurance for a 21 year old be for all state?

How much would car insurance for a 21 year old be for all state?

Mobile home insurance?

i am thinking about buying a 2008 single wide mobile home that is in a lot in a trailer park. anyone have a guess on what insurance might a month?? or do i need it?? Thank you

Driver's ed insurance? *POINTS FOR BEST ANSWER*?

I am currently 17 years old, and I am in driver's ed in CO. Will my insurance be cheaper because I took driver's ed? If so, is it only temporary? (for minors) And do I have to show my completed hours of driver's ed BTW and classroom hours paper for proof of going to driver' ed to an insurance company? Finally, when does your permit expire if you never got a license?""

How to get Health Insurance when you are 17?

My parents are divorced and my sister and I have been living with our mom. However, we received health insurance through our father's place of work. Now he is applying for disability and has quit his job, so currently my sister and I have no health insurance. Because of this, my mom forbids me to take my car or motorcycle out because if my sister or I get hurt, there is no way for us to pay for it (we are suffering financially because my mom's hours at work got cut, and she is still recovering from breast cancer). Anyway, is there any way for me to obtain health insurance (or at least help my mom to) that would be affordable? We live in New York State""

""Life Insurance -- Is a 78 year old woman too old to get life insurance? If not, who are the better providers?""

I've made preliminary inquiries to get life insurance for a 78 year-old female, however, I get the standard response of no because of her age and the fact that she has been hospitalized in the last year and has pre-existing conditions (COPD, high blood pressure, arhythmia). My sense, however, is that there may be life insurance companies out there with more accomodating terms for senior citizens. If you know of any such companies, or are experienced enough in life insurance to give a definitive no- it's not possible response, please let me know. What are our alternatives, if any?""

What is the best and cheapest company for motorcycle insurance?

I am a rider with 10 years of driving experience but my license lapsed and I was forced to start over as a new driver (M1 graduated liecense). I'm married, in my 30's, I drive a 1999 Yamaha YZF R-6 and have never made any claims.""

With pretty good insurance what would the average cost to have?

a hospital monitor my heart over night? I have been having chest pains and went and got a EKG done my doctor said he thinks I am fine I may have just pulled a muscle. But I am having shortness of breathe and my chest has been just a little sore for over week and a half.

Where can i find cheap young drivers insurance in uk?

where can i find cheap young drivers insurance in uk

Cheap car insurance? But also good?

My brother recently gave me his car. I'm trying to find a good-cheap insurance. One way / Full coverage. Car type: 1994 Lexus ES 300. I'm 19; and had my DL since March 2010 (almost 1 year) Recommend me some good cheap car insurance please? >.< & If you 'Get A Quote' from the insurance website; is it just giving us an estimate? And not signing up for it just yet??

Motorcycle insurance is so expensive?

Basically I'll be doing my cbt test this Wednesday so I can ride my 125cc supermoto which I use for dirt biking. Checked insurance on my Yamaha WR125X and it's 1400 for comprehensive, da fk is this? After seeing that I was physically sick. So I thought I'll just check on the most cheapest moped and it's 700 which is still expensive.. How the fk do these kids I see with mini coopers afford insurance and all I wAnt is to ride a small 2 wheel sht face. I'm 18, 19 this march, work full time. Can I find it any cheaper anywhere? Should I go for third party insurance? I just hate my life""

Car insurance cancelled?

i have been with the same car insurance company ever since i past my test 3 years ago, 2 years ago a neighbour accused me of backing into his car I NEVER, i phoned my car insurance company to notify them there was a claim being made against me just to keep them up to date in case they had a phone call from anyone!, Anyway after weeks of Police investigation i managed to prove i was not involved and no claim was ever made, i thought this had all disappeared but now 2 years later and still with the SAME company they are saying i have lied on my no claims and have told me by letter they no longer wish to insure me, then 5 days later they took there payment from my bank ? i only received the letter this morning (sat) and none of the offices are open until mon, i am so worried they wont reinstate my car insurance ? has anyone else been in the same situation ? and what was the outcome ? ( and they also said in the letter that i would have to pay the outstanding amount on my policy withing 7 days or they will send me to a debt collector ?""

Does anyone know a home owner's insurance company that will cover Pit Bulls?

Attempting to buy a home and need homeowners insurance.

Quick health insurance question?

I want to get a specific Kaiser health insurance plan that has an annual $500 deductible. My question is, does annual deductible mean in a calender year? Or 1 year starting when you started your insurance (e.g 11/1/11 - 11/1/12)?""

How can I get the other driver's insurance co. to pay the full cost of rental car?

I was hit from behind and the other driver's insurance company has accepted liability but, they only want to reimburse me about $27/day for a rental car when I'll have to pay around $50/day. They are also dictating to me some terms about the duration of the rental car period based on the number of shop hours estimated for repair. I am wondering if there is some leverage I can use to make them pay 100% of the rental car cost for a reasonable car and duration.""

How to check multiple car insurance quotes at once?

We are in Tacoma WA and currently have progressive as auto insurer and we want to know what is the best way to check multiple insurance quotes? We would prefer than credit is not checked so please suggest accordingly.

Getting into a car accident with a 16-year-old uninsured driver?

I live in San Diego, California. I recently got into a car accident with a 16-year-old uninsured driver, who was using his mother's car at the time and had two underaged passengers. I was in a business area (25 MPH) and I was switching lanes into the right lane. I had my right hand blinker on and was in the process of switching lanes. The 16-year-old driver was speeding and quickly hit my front right end. I had a witness - who reported two things - with the police, he reported that the 16-year-old tried to avoid me by getting into the bike lane, but then reported with my insurance company that the 16-year-old ran straight into my car at 50 MPH. They are currently finding me 80% at fault because of the police report. The police report was obviously misrepresented. What steps can I take to fix this?""

How much will my mom's car insurance go up after I crashed her car?

I'm almost 19, got my license about 8 months ago now. I was in a drive-thru going only 10 KM an hour at most and accidentally rear ended a car after I panicked and accelerated. My mom's car definitely had the most damage done. All of the other people involved only had slight dents or scratches. I think the damage is around $3000. I know my mom has really good insurance and I'm pretty sure it's no-fault (and it happened on a private property). How likely is it that her insurance will go up? Oh and for the record my mom has NEVER had a ticket or been involved in an accident before. Stupid me.""

Car Insurance and Registration?

I am a Kansas Resident and have a Kansas Drivers License; however, I am studying in California for the next four years. I am receiving a car from my friend as a gift, but it's already registers at California. What do I do to make it legal for me to drive it?""

I need help with getting insurance...?

I am 19 years old and have just passed my test, I am female. I'm not sure what car to get that will be cheap on insurance and to buy??? any help would be much appreciated.""

Insurance on a crashed car?

Today someone crashed into my car, anyway both cars have minor damage but they're trying to say it was my fault and claiming on their insurance etc. etc. Anyway, i was just wondering if the price of insurance increases for a driver who has crashed, how long does it go up for and if they don't insure the car during that time (i may be at uni) Will the increased charges be saved for until they next insure the car?""

How much would car insurance be on a BMW M car?

BMW M3 or M6 Convertible I have no tickets Location: South Orange County, CA""

Car insurance in Nebraska?

How much would car insurance in Omaha, NE cost for a 16 y/o male?""

""How much roughly is insurance for a 17 year old driver, on a 125cc bike?""

How much roughly is insurance for a 17 year old driver, on a 125cc bike?""

Motorcycle insurance question?

I've never been involved in an accident before and I dropped my bike in a parking lot learning 12 o clock wheelies and did a bunch of damage to my bike, maybe even totaling it. What do I tell my insurance company happened? Because they obviously won't cover my bike if they knew I was doing wheelies. Do I just tell them I slipped on some loose gravel and the bike fell or what?""

What is the average yearly cost of landlord insurance?

Let's say the place is a newer (built after 2000) duplex in Texas and has a $1,000,000 liability policy as well. Can someone give me a ballpark estimate?""

life insurance quotes online south africa

life insurance quotes online south africa

Whats the cheapest car insurance company in Michigan?

I'm moving out of my parents house in a few months, and am at the point of looking at car insurance rates. I've always just paid my fees on their shared account, which was only about $25. Friends in Ohio that also live on their own pay about $80 on their own plans per month, and they have accident histories. When I ask for quotes with a clean history, Progressive gave me a $350 quote! What's the best company to go through? Or at least top 3? I just want minimum coverage because that's all I can afford for now.""

Is there a law in California for mandatory Health Insurance now?

Is there a law in California for mandatory Health Insurance now?

Anyone ever heard of a car insurance company called The Electric Company?

I called them and got a really great quote on car insurance. Has anyone ever used this company and is it a good company to go with?

Car insurance for learner driver UK?

I am considering to buy a car before I pass my test. Without buying the car first I can't get a quote online. I understand insurance is not much differenet for a learner driver and someone that just passed their test. Anyone knows how much roughly insurance cost for a learner driver? Thinking of getting a 2002-2003 ford focus, and I am a female 27 years of age if that makes any difference.""

How much is the cost of delivering a baby in california without insurance?

Hi, i'm from the philippines, and I'm planning to give birth in california specifically in san francisco or los angeles where I have relatives. I wish to pay in cash but I would like to know how much discount I can get for a normal delivery or c-section. I hope you can provide me with organizations as well as their contact numbers that can guide me throughout the process within those area. Thank you so much.""

Does the car insurance charge extra more for adding a teen driver under 18?

i'm 17 now and will be in august i need to learn driving and get the license in this summer break i've the driving permit my dad is the only driver in the family's car insurance plan so, does the insurance charge more if i'm under 18? if yes, i'm going to apply it after my birthday thanx""

""On Car Insurance, do additional drivers have to drive the car?""

Im trying to get quotes for car insurance. Im a new driver and buying my own car myself. By myself the quotes are quite high, around 5000. Ive added my mum as additional driver (im the main driver), that got it down to 3500. But I was wondering, what would happen IF my mum didnt actually end up using the car? She probably would...but I was wondering if it would effect my insurance if she just didnt end up using it?""

How cheap would my insurance rates be?

A friend on mine had recent gotten a 99 Civic 2 dr and his insurance is 80$ a month. If i get a 94 Civic with 4drs, how much cheaper would it be going to the same insurance company, having a older year, and it not being a sports car? We are both 17. Also, How much do you think my rates would be for a 21 year old owning both a 95 Civic and a 2001 Corvette? Its kind of late to call the insurance company now so i want an opinion. =D Thanks""

In what company can I buy cheap car insurance.everybody are very expensive.?

In what company can I buy cheap car insurance.everybody are very expensive.?

Why does health insurance pay for doctor visits and teeth cleaning?

My car insurance doesn't pay for oil changes. Basic maintenance is up to me. As near as I can tell insurance is like an expensive savings account that you can take more money than you put in if needed.

Good Life Insurance Plan with guaranteed return and maximum life coverage.?

Which Life Insurance plan (from Govt. or Private company) will give me the highest return If I invest Rs. 50,000/- yearly for 20 years including the life coverage. Please name the plan with name of the company.""

How does car insurance work? my mom recently wrecked our car-it cost 2000. we have 25000/500 deductible.?

what part do we pay

Should I use my insurance to pay for car damage and will my rate go up?

I scratched some ladies car as I was parking and was wondering if I should go to my insurance to fix the scratch. Its on the front passanger door guard molding and isnt even that big. Its like a foot long and maybe half an inch wide but I was wondering if I go to my insurance to take care of it if it will raise my rate up or if they will be cool about it. I checked around and she supposedly got a quote for $180 but I found places that will paint it for about $75 and one that will do it for $30-40 if the paint is available. I am also a student so I cant be messing around since I dont have alot of money saved up : (

Affordable eye insurance (college student)?

I'm currently an undergrad student and I wear glasses which broke a few days ago .. I don't have insurance as of right now so I'm looking for some . I just need something basic that will cover the costs of eye glass exam and contact eye exam , contact lens , eye glass lens and the frame . Something that isn't too expensive but not too cheap where the insurance isn't good .. Like some that are cheap require you to pay for our exams out of pocket and then wait to be reimbursed . I can't have that . I need something where I can pay at a set rate and not have to worry about having to pay hundreds of $$$ and wait to get it back .""

How good is military insurance(Tri-Care) for maternity care?

My husband is in the military. I've never used the insurance, but I will need it now that I'm 6.5 weeks pregnant. How's the coverage?""

The Best Health Insurance ..?

Hi there folks, I am new in this health insurance business and we are shopping for one. We live in Texas. Im looking for a plan for me and my wife. What's the best plan you guys have that affordable plan with the best coverage for 2 people.What do you have and what would you recommend? And whats the best health insurance plan that is affordable and also covers pregnancy? Please do let us know , I would really appreciate your responses. Camry Lover""

""An insurance company will insure a $200,000?""

An insurance company will insure a $200,000 home for its total value for annual premium of $650 .If the company spends $25 per year to service such a policy ,the probability of total loss for such a home in a given year is 0.002 and you assume that either total or no loss will occur ,what is the company's expected annual gain ( or profit ) on each such policy.""

Young driver insurance?

what is the best car insurance for young drivers

Primary insurance?????????????/?

So I took my Daughter to the doctor today she is on ARkids. everything went fine at the Doctors but when i went to get her RX they said i would have to pay 81 dollars because of my primary insurance. I dont have Primary insurance she has only had ARkids. well they told me it was through her (sperm donor) father. that had not had anything to do with her for 2 years. she is 5 and when he did it was off and on. well how is this right I have custody of her. I can not afford her meds with his insurance making me pay. when it was just her insurance i didnt have to pay since it is his doesn't he have to pay? I dont know how to get ahold of him like i said no contact nothing for 2 years. she never gets sick.. i havent had to get her any meds or take her to the doc for like 5 mo.or more.

What is the best thing to do when an un-insured driver hits you and you only have liability coverage?

I was hit July 16th behind my rear passenger door. I drive a chevy malibu 2000. The driver's policy was cancelled 12 days before the accident. I was told to repair my car I would need to take him to small claims court. What is the best option I would have? Would I even win because by law you are not allowed to even drive an uninsured car therefore he should have never been on the road?

Do various driving school programs give different types of certificates that affect your insurance?

I am a 20 year old female first time driver living in Colorado, and I'm debating what program to go with for driving school. The completely online one, the half online half classroom, or the full classroom. I want to take which ever one will give me the best insurance rate.""

Will my insurance company keep me with them once i buy a new car?

I am an 18 y/o female I was recently involved in a serious car accident 3 days ago. so here is what happened, I was traveling southbound and there was an 18 wheeler traveling northbound. I was moving over into my left lane because I was soon about to turn onto the highway.the light was green and I must admit I did see the truck but it was further back so I decided to try and make the left the light was turning yellow and I wanted to beat the light but my main focus shifted to my left rearview mirror because I wanted to make sure there weren't any cars in my blind spot..next thing you know I looked up and the truck was swerving out of control obviously he was trying to beat the yellow light as well and since he is driving a truck it is way much harder to complete an abrupt stop without gliding practically 100 yards..he smashed right into me and dragged my car along with his truck until I was facing northbound with him..my car is completely ruined and totaled..I know for a fact that if I would've had a passenger with me they would've died on impact, I am so blessed because i wasn't injured that bad beside a little torn tissue in my knee,the pain from my seatbelt, minor scratches,bruised lips, and the small cuts from small glass and powder from the air bag, I did however immediately jumped out of the car cause I didn't want to get blown up or anything...anyways the police came..come to find out the truck driver didn't have proof of insurance with him..and we both got a ticket..mines was failure to yield and his was failure to slow down at yellow light so we both were at fault that was my first car and I only had it for a month and I have full coverage..now the big question is once I buy another car will my insurance company let me stay with them?..because I really like them and they are loyal to their words and customers..I also realize that I caused them to lose alot of money compared to how much I paid...""

What is the difference between Investment life Insurance and Life risk insurance?

What are the products included under the category Investment life Insurance and Life risk insurance?

""How much can the owner of a commercial Insurance Agency expect to make? (in Year 1, Year 5, Year 10?)?""

Hi all, I live in Florida and am currently in my second year of law school. I am looking to get into the insurance business after I graduate to build some form of residual income. ...show more""

Why do students need Insurance?

what benefit will they get from it? Why should the city of Quebec make insurances available to students. An example of a story would help.

life insurance quotes online south africa

life insurance quotes online south africa

What is the cheapest car insurance?

What is the cheapest car insurance?

What is the cheapest possible auto insurance?

I don't care about customer service or anything. I just want liability only cheapest insurance. Thanks

What are some cheap auto insurance companies in florida for teenage drivers?

I am 17 years old. I currently have liberty mutual insurance with my parents for $5,901 annualy (about $550 per month for three cars). Is there any cheap car insurance?""

What are the cheapest cars to insure as a 17 year old male that wants to buy a car in a budget of 1500 pounds?

i know insurance insurance is sky high but which cars can i get with a maximum budget of 1500 pounds that are good reliable cars and have a good name like VW etc i wluld prefer not to have a vauxhall renault pegeout etc and ford is last resort only

How much will I pay for car insurance as a 17 year old in CA?

I am a 17 year old girl, who is going 2 get a nissan versa. I make about $600.00 a month at my job. My parents said they would get me the car. I have to make monthly payments, which would be $250. They have really good credit. How much would insurance cost? What is the best deal I can get? What company should I go to?""

How do you switch insurance on your car if you get another one?

1) How much paperwork is involved. I drive a 92 Lebaron that is not too far from dying. I would like to buy a car within the next year and make monthly payments. 2) Is it really just a phonecall with my agent? 3) Do I get to keep my license plate? 4) What happens to my excise tax?--Do I have to inform my town hall of my new vehicle? Do I still get billed for my old car?

Whats the cheapest car insurance?

Whats the cheapest car insurance?

What are some cheap car insurance companys?

What car insurance companys are cheap... and do they have a web site/phone number so I can get a quote thanks!

Are there any cheap car insurers for older cars?

I am a 38 yr old woman who has held a license for 20 yrs but has not driven for about 10 yrs. Therefor i have no NCB (No claims bonus) which i can use as it needs to be current or expired for no more than 2 yrs. I have bought a very cheap car for about 300.00 and have looked at insurance but the cheapest so far is around 600.00 which i simply cannot afford. If i could afford to pay that amount i would have obviously bought a car that was worth much more but unfortunately at the moment a cheap car is all we can get. We have been desperate to get a car as i am in a new relationship and my partner has a 13 yr old son who we want to take to lots of lovely places over the summer holidays for some fun. It seems that we will not be able to do it as the insurers are penalising me and im sure lots of other drivers who are sensible drivers but have just not driven in a while for many different reasons - I think this is very wrong! I cant feasibly pay 600.00 for a car that isnt even worth quite half of that - its lydicrous!! Please can someone help me by pointing me in the direction of a cheap insurer who is prepared to insure for the minimum amount. I have read about pay as you go car insurance but dont really know if it is a good option although we ont be doing many miles so i dont know. If anyone has used pay as u go car insurance could u tell me if it is any good please. I hope anybody reading this can help me with the cheapest insurance possible as i am totally deflated at the moment as it has taken us ages to save up enough for the car and tax and what we thought the insurance would be ( we saved another 300.00 for insurance as i thought it would be as much as the car roughly). Thankyou ever so much. Jane.

Where can i get two wheeler insurance policies through online?

i need to buy insurance policies.

Auto insurance question?

I was a passenger in a car accident and my laptop was broken. Would the drivers insurance cover it? Even if it was liability, it should still have to cover it right? He says the insurance says no because I wasn't injured... That doesn't make any sense.""

Why did Geico raise my insurance just because I changed my ADDRESS!?

What in the hell was this all about?! I simply moved 30 mins away from my previous residence and ALL I NEEDED to do was just change my mailing address.....so I went online, gave them my new info.....and they said my premium was increased by over $60.00! Why is this? Has this happened to anyone else?""

Will we be covered by insurance when driving to get a new car?

I have bought a new (second hand!) car and will be going to get it today. Not having changed my car before, I have a question. Just before we go to pick up the new car, we will be changing our insurance in town from our old car to the new car. If I change my insurance to the new car, how can I then drive my old car as it will be uninsured? We will need the old car to drive a few miles outside town to get the new car! Is there a special way that this has to be done so that the the old car is still temporarily covered? We will be going to get the new car immediately after sorting the insurance. Please give as much details as possible of what I have to do.""

Do most insurance companies cover birth control?

I'm getting new health insurance through work and I'm already on the pill and I was wondering: 1. Will most insurances cover it? 2. Can I stay on the same pill?

How much is insurance for jeeps?

I want to get a jeep cj7 or wrangler, but i have to make sure i can afford the insurance first. Im a 17year old guy in highschool. Are 4by4s more expensive for insurance?""

Car insurance in new york state?

i know there are 3 types of car insurance; Liability,Compensation and another,and the combination of this three makes auto insurance very expensive,but i also heard you can chose the one that best suit your needs than to take all three so that your monthly auto insurance expenses could be slashed almost 75%.My question is,as a resident of NY state,am i allowed to just take the insurance i prefer,eg if i want just liability insurance,i just pick that one and ignore the others to lessen my monthly auto insurace.Is that allowed?From the online quote of GEICO which claims to be the cheapest in the NY state,am to pay $550,which is wayyyyyyyyyyy to expensive for a student like me and so heard about choosing one option of auto insurance.Can i just choose the form of insurance i want or is IT COMPULSORY TO TAKE FULL AUTO INSURANCE in NY or America as a whole?""

Can i change my license address to be covered by car insurance?

background info: -17 yrs old, male, got my license in january so its provisional, live in california. so i contacted my mom's auto insurance (liberty mutual) and they said the only way i would be covered as an occasional driver without being listed is if i didn't live in the same household otherwise i would have to be listed. so would it work if i just changed the address on my license?""

Do car rental companies ask for proof of insurance?

Here's my circumstances, I'm 22(have credit card in my name) and am going to rent a vehicle. I had insurance for 4-5 years, have never been at an at fault accident and have one speeding ticket, so I'm a pretty good driver, when gas was near $4.00 I traded in my vehicle, and it's fine as I bike everywhere as it's all close to me. I'm having family over for a couple days and need a car though, it's easy to drive around town, I'm almost 100% sure I wont get in a wreck, but I have a feeling the insurance would be more expensive than the rental itself which is ridiculous for someone with a driving record such as mine. Can I say purchase just liability and then sign something that says I'll pay for the rental if I do any damages, what would be the cheapest way to get out of this?""

Where can I find the cheapest possible car insurance?

I'm getting my first car which is pretty crappy and cheap (<$5000) so I don't want to spend that much on insurance. Where can I look to find the *cheapest* liability coverage. I don't think the major insurance companies have very low rates so I'm looking for lesser known ones.

Why has my health insurance coverage gotten worse under the Affordable Care Act?

This was supposed to be affordable, but it's making everything worse!""

How much money does car insurance go down when you turn 17?

I'm 16 years old and turning 17 in a few months. I am currently paying about $435 for insurance in a 6 month period. Will that rate decrease when I turn 17, not having any tickets or accidents?""

If you can't afford health insurance for your family and the government says you make too much...?

then what do you suggest? What if your family has too much income according to the government for your kids to even qualify for Medicaid or the low cost options (CHIP)? My husband makes $48,000 a year before taxes are taken out. While that does pay the bills and keep food on the table, we can't do a $800 monthly insurance policy and our kids are denied Medicaid and CHIP (we make $300 too much per month, of all things). We pay the necessities. We don't over spend and we don't go out and spend money on entertainment more than a few times yearly and even then it's cheap entertainment. We do what we can, but health insurance just isn't going to happen for us unless one of two things happens: 1- my husband gets a major pay raise or 2- the government changes their income requirements (don't see that happening). So what do you suggest for my family? We do what we can. We use our tax returns each year for medical expenses and bill pay offs. If a major medical expense comes up, we pay it down little by little. We do use the public health department when we can. But bottom line is that we can't afford insurance. Period. So, for all of you who think this is completely unacceptable, what do you suggest we do?""

""I am disabled,my wife is 63 and cant get affordable insurance. anyone know where to look?

she only gets 700 a month ss and shes told if she got insurance it would be about 600 a month.what do we do?

How much do you pay for car insurance a month?

i have a 2001 Toyota Rav 4 and my parents tell me to give them $100 a month for car insurance, does that sound right? how much does car insurance usually cost?""

Car Insurance for a 16 year old in California?

I am gonna get either a Used 03-04 Nissan 350z and would like to get a rough estimate of how much insurance is gonna cost. Thanks in advance. Also what would happen to my insurance if the car is on a salvage title?

life insurance quotes online south africa

life insurance quotes online south africa

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/how-afford-health-insurance-after-retirement-julia-blanchard/"

[ddrkirbyisq]

So a few days ago I played through all of Super Mario Kart's 4 cups on both 100cc and 150cc modes, courtesy of our new SNES Classic! (<3)  It was absolutely glorious.  I don't know if I've had that much intense fun playing video games in quite a while.

Like many others, I was first introduced to Super Mario Kart back in my childhood.  It was one of the very few Super Nintendo games that featured a 2-player mode that wasn't just a head-to-head competitive battle -- you could both enter GP mode together and race against the CPUs.  I was in elementary school at the time, maybe 5-8 years old?  It was before my brother went off to college, at any rate.  So there I was, playing with my brother, who is 9 years older than me, with of course a proportionally better ability at playing games -- but I could certainly hold my own too.  I was very lucky to have grown up around video games in a way that probably few others did at the time (or at least I could tell judging from the way that I trounced everyone else in my age group at them, lol).

As a principle, my brother always picked Toad and I would always pick Koopa Troopa, simply because those were the characters that we liked best.  They had the best handling (ability to take turns well), which I think appealed to both of us (there was also Bowser and Donkey Kong, who had the highest top speed, Yoshi and Princess, who accelerated the quickest, and Mario and Luigi, who were basically balanced).

Koopa Troopa will always have a special place in my heart because of this, and Toad too, although to a lesser extent because Toad's later incarnations tended to be...less pleasant.  It's worth noting that each character had their own musical theme that played when you took 1st place with them, and that Toad's theme in particular became oh-so-familiar to me due to my brother taking 1st place so often, though of course I would also hear Koopa's theme a lot too.  I actually still use Toad's theme as a custom ringtone when my best friend calls me, so it's still present in my day even now. (I'm actually also fond of Princess's theme as well, though I didn't hear it too much at the time)

A core mechanic of the entire Mario Kart series is the ability to "drift" or "power slide", usually by pressing the shoulder buttons of the controller, which initiates a drift turn, which (depending on the exact game) usually allows you to conserve speed through a turn, corner more effectively, and sometimes get a speed boost when exiting a turn.  Super Mario Kart's drifts are triggered by pressing L or R (which causes you to do a hop) while turning, which initiates the slide. Something that's really interesting is that when I first played SMK way back when, I actually didn't use drifting!  I took corners without doing power slides at all and just used normal turning, which looks something like this:

This actually works reasonably well in terms of just being able to navigate the course (particularly because Koopa and Toad have the best normal turning!), but ends up costing you speed.  I believe (?) there may also be some turns that are just too tight to get around with normal non-drift turning, and I think in those cases I would just bump into the walls (!).  So obviously I wasn't playing optimally at all, but somehow it actually worked out pretty well for me.  I was still holding the accelerate button the whole time and never touched the brake button.  It's great, of course, that you can still be pretty decent at the game with just the basics.  But maybe this is part of the reason that my brother was just better at the game than I was.  It's worth noting that in Donut Plains there are several turns where your kart will actually spin out if you try to take them with normal cornering, so I actually DID use the power slides for that level specifically.

Of course, the ideal way to play the game is with the power slides, which is what I started doing once I was older (and again now too).  You end up starting the turn way earlier and =sliding= around the corners, which looks something like this:

Notice how the approach to the turn is completely different.  Without the drift, the best strategy is to start on the =outside= of the turn so that you don't have to take such a sharp angle.  But with the drift, since you start turning way earlier but slide sideways around the corner, you can actually hug the inside of the corner, which results in a shorter distance traveled (in addition to you preserving your speed better).  Taken to its extreme, it looks like this:

...except you are probably not taking the corners THAT aggressively unless you are a speedrunner (the above gif is pushing the game to its limits).

In SMK, once you start a drift, your kart continues to slide around a bit, even after you've let go of the turn direction.  To counteract this, you actually have to =countersteer= for a brief moment at the end of a drift, which straightens your kart out and sets you up to go straight again.  The timing and execution of this countersteer is actually really important and a slight screwup can mean you exit out of the turn pointed totally wrong instead of being lined up with the track.

One really important thing I'd like to get across in this post is just how different this implementation of the power slide physics is compared to the way that it is in later mario kart games, including Mario Kart 64 all the way up to Mario Kart 8.  Here's what the newer version of drifting looks like:

I am of course glossing over a whole world of significant differences in the way that drifting works in these different newer games, but let's just use these gifs as an example.  In the newer Mario Kart games, drifts are usually =controllable=.  Once you initiate a power slide turning to the right, you are "locked in" turning to the right until you let go of the L or R button and during this time, you can actually press right to make your turn sharper, or alternatively press left to slow down your rate of turning.  You can see Yoshi in the first GIF start the turn relatively aggressively, then ease off for a bit before turning more sharply again.  Back in Super Mario Kart this wasn't possible -- you could let go of the direction of the turn for bits at a time, but pressing in the opposite direction (counter-steer!) would just result in the slide ending altogether.

Speaking of counter-steer, since you end a drift by letting go of L or R, the counter-steer element is gone entirely and instead when you end a drift by letting go of the shoulder button, your kart straightens out automatically, as you can see by toad's boost in the second GIF.

So to drift in SMK, you usually:

- Start on the =inside= of the track (ideally)

- =Commit= to when you start the drift

- At the right moment, =counter-steer= in the opposite direction, enough to straighten out, but not too much to throw you off alignment

Whereas to drift in MK8, you usually:

- Start on the =outside= of the track (ideally)

- Start the drift, then =adjust= your steering during the entirety of the turn 

- Let go of the drift button (and automatically straighten out)

So basically in SMK the drift is super committal and you really need to be precise about where and when you start the drift, whereas in MK8 you can just adjust your steering as soon as the drift starts, so it's no big deal.  In SMK too you have to manually countersteer and straighten yourself out.  It's way more difficult in general and I can see why they moved away from it.

...but MAN is it satisfying to do.  I think requiring such precision is exhilirating and really feels like a true test of your driving abilities.  There are a lot of turns in SMK that are really challenging to execute properly, with obstacles and boost pads and whatnot to make things even more interesting.  This time around I even used the technique of tapping the brakes sometimes when I needed to cut a corner really sharply or abort a drift that threatened to swing wide, as tapping the brakes seems to stop you from sliding and straighten you out much faster.

Don't get me wrong, the newer mario kart games are fun (especially MK8 I think.  And MKDS was...well, that was sort of its own thing).  But I think something about the physics of SMK really, truly shines out to me in a way that I love, and it's no wonder that MK64 doesn't garner nearly the same amount of respect from me as SMK does.

So anyways, we played through the 100cc races and then moved onto 150cc and that where things get real.  150cc is pretty unforgiving in that all of your slip-ups are really amplified because everyone is moving so much faster, so running into an obstacle or going off-course is so much worse.  Plus, you're just going at a much faster speed so you can't just leisurely approach each turn conservatively -- you really have to go for it and start the slides early, and even string them together.  It's =exhilarating=.  And then of course, there's the CPU players, who can be a royal pain in the butt sometimes.  I was playing as Koopa, which meant that the Luigi CPU was always the one I was fighting with for 1st place, and man, both Mario and Luigi are insanely annoying when you are trying to compete with them because their special ability is basically to flash invincible as if they have a Star, basically at will -- and touching them in that state makes you spin out.  So basically getting close to them is always super frightening at any moment, not to mention you're also going really fast through really challenging courses with turns and narrow straightaways, little room to maneuver, etc.  This time I actually had quite a few times where I just slammed on the brakes because it's better to just slow down and avoid trying to pass Luigi until you have a good chance rather than run into him and spin out, which is a disaster.

150cc Special Cup (like many other things in the game, to be honest) holds special significance for me since me and my brother spent so much time trying to clear it.  Some of the courses in that GP are really brutal and I have to say, even now it truly pushed my abilities as a gamer.  I had to try it quite a few times and on the last try, I reached the last course, the glorious Rainbow Road (with its epic music and all) with 3 lives remaining.  I failed my first attempt, and then also my second, and it was down to my last shot remaining.  I was off to a great start, but slipped up in the middle and fell behind, but somehow managed to super duper clutch it out and catch back up safely, taking some really crazy maneuvers as well as avoiding all of the CPUs to regain 1st place and finish the race.

All that is to say that Super Mario Kart is and probably always will be my favorite racing game of all time.  It's really all in the way that the karts handle and I'm really amazed they were able to create something so unique, skill-testing, and satisfying all at once.  I love SMK!!!

#Blogger