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ninjastormhawkkat · 3 years

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Alliance Swap Au: Other Characters

In my first post for this au, I mentioned which ally of Wordgirl is swapped. Some of this involves a swap of powers. It will also involve a swap of personality. Here is the outline for each characters.

Victoria and Violet:

I noticed that Victoria does have some good qualities despite her overall villainous character. (That is definitely her parents fault.) One thing I noted is that Victoria does have somewhat of a dependable character and she is smart enough to realize her situation and mistakes (when her ego is not in the way). In one episode (I forgot the name) Victoria was willing to work together with Wordgirl to get Wordgirl’s powers back from Victor. Even though Victoria’s main motivation was to not be out-bested by her brother, she did prove dependable in helping Wordgirl out. In this au, I increased Victoria’s better qualities. She is a loyal and dependable best friend to Becky. She still acts brash and is somewhat brutally honest, but she will acknowledge her flaws and sincerely apologize when called out for her bad behavior. She is sassy and will throw hands to protect her friends, even when she doesn’t have to. (Tobey and Becky often have to pull her back to keep Victoria from getting hurt or worse.) In this au, Victoria has a single ponytail, regular hair ribbons that are blue in color. She wears a light blue shirt with a grey jacket. Her skirt, shoes, and socks are the same as in canon. Victoria likes Pretty Princess (not to an extant as Becky). In this au her parents are corporate people. (Idk the jobs) They are better than their canon selves, but are a little distant due to how busy their jobs are. They do love their children and want the best for them (not pushing them to be the best always) they just don’t have the time to spend with them as they want to. Victoria’s parents do let Victor and Victoria stay with friends or a good babysitter when they are extremely busy. The Best’s home is not as extravagant as in canon and the rest of the family are dressed more normally and comfortably. (They are still an upper-class family, but look like a normal family to everyone else.) Instead of Art, Becky and Victoria take music class together. (Becky is still terrible.) Victoria does not have her powers. Victoria is sensible in this au, but does try to become a superhero because it looks awesome. “Violet Superhero” happens a little differently, but Victoria does not take the mantle anymore because she realizes she is not cut out for heroics and leave it to the professionals. She and Tobey are still fans of Wordgirl, neither are easily fooled as the rest of the city. (Victoria’s hero outfit is same as canon.) Victoria is basically sassy mostly and does have General Smoochington, but treats him like a loving pet in this au and is definitely a lot more caring toward him.

For Violet, I decided to twist her good qualities and make them corrupt. This was based on the villain from Wander over Yonder, Dr. Screwball, and how he wanted to make everyone laugh, whether they wanted to or not. Violet in this au wants to live in a world where everything is all sunshine and rainbows and everyone is happy all the time. She thinks that everybody is a winner and it is not fair when someone gets a trophy when another person doesn’t. Violet was raised in an environment by her mother where everything and everybody needs to live in peace and harmony and those who don’t need to be shown the error of their ways. Ex. In the introduction episode for Victoria Best, Violet gets upset when Victoria earns a lot of trophies (not every trophy like in canon). So she takes them to “teach her a lesson” about humility. (In this au, Victoria earned her trophies because of her hard work.) Violet also gets upset when she sees how Wordgirl treats the villains even though she is just doing her job and treats them the same as canon. Violet does get mistaken for Wordgirl and does try to take up the role of Wordgirl just to prove that Wordgirl is doing a terrible job and she should become a hero to be more sympathetic to everyone. (Her hero outfit is “The Framer”). Her powers are similar to Victoria’s. She has pink eyes when she uses them to move and levitate stuff. Violet paints and shows everyone her painting which puts them in a hypnotic trance which keeps them in a peaceful state until the control wears off. (If anyone has watched the Scooby-Doo: Mystery Incorporated episode “When Walks Aphrodite” it is similar to that.)

Tobey and Scoops:

I sorta did the same thing as I did for Violet and Victoria in this au. There are no interest or ability swaps for these two.

Tobey in this au is just an avid, albeit a little too energetic, inventor. Tobey is head of the media/technical club and is in charge of the media stuff used in school such as electronics used for classrooms and organizing technical special effects for school events. Tobey still dresses the same, but acts like a lovable nerd. Both he and Becky have crushes on each other, but the boy is oblivious as heck that Becky has a crush on him. Becky is not as lovey-dovey as she is in canon with Scoops when expressing herself towards Tobey in this au. Tobey has no idea that Becky is Wordgirl until the “Invasion of the Bunny Snatchers” episode. Tobey still invents robots for fun on the side.

For Scoops, you remember how I made his character in my Morally Gray Wordgirl au? Well he is a lot worse in this au. He is still a reporter and a part of the Daily Rag (not head reporter). In this au, Scoops will do anything to get a Scoop, even sometimes aiding villains or helping to cause incidents to just get a great story. (Since Tobey is not a villain in this au, I have Dr. Ape Brains taking over most of Tobey’s canon roles with some shifts to other villains.) He is obsessed with finding out Wordgirl’s identity and causes an incident where he messes with Tobey’s Robots which cause them to go on a rampage at Becky’s home and a few other instances. Scoops does not mean to get people hurt, but he is too focused on “getting the BIG scoop” to notice. He does get punished by his parents. Canon outfit.

Eileen and Rex:

Now I chose to swap these two because they are both similar in personality. The both have childlike curiosity and are equally energetic. They both tend to ignore what others tell them and seem to think they know what they are doing.

In this au, Eileen is a alien superhero from the planet Gigantian. She can control her size changes and is super strong. She can’t fly but has incredible stamina and dexterity that allows her to leap high in the air. She still has the baby talk (kids on Gigantian talk like a baby until their 13.) This annoys the heck out of Becky. Steven now has to deal with two energetic superheroes. (Sarcastically) Lucky him. Her hero name is Giantess. Her hero outfit is a pink mask. She has a suit style similar to Kid Math’s, but the main colors are pink with purple gloves, boots, and a cape. Her insignia is a mini green person in a strongman stance with black radio wave lines surrounding the person which symbolizes Eileen’s growth and shrinking abilities. Her secret identity outfit is the same as in canon. Her hairstyle as a superhero is in a ponytail while her secret identity has her canon hair and bow.

Rex is a kid villain known has Math Whiz. He treats everything as a research study. Rex does believe every day is his birthday which entitles him to do anything he wants all in the name of research. In the introductory episode for Eileen (changed for this au) Rex takes Squeaky for a lab rat and obliviously ignores Squeaky biting him all the time for release. When he doesn’t get what he wants he uses his powers. Rex is able to project holographic math monsters of various sizes that either protect him, steal for him, or attack anyone that bothers him (on command). These monsters may be holographic but can hurt someone physically. They look like math numbers and equations, have sharp teeth, cartoon eyes and arms, and are mainly white in color with a blue hue that surrounds them. Luckily, the amount of math monsters Rex is able to generate depend on his level of entitlement. If he is greedy for one thing or if it is for small reasons, he can usually generate one monster. Even if he is able to generate multiple math monsters at once, it takes a lot of energy out of him so he can only do it a few times.

Rose Franklin and Chazz:

Recently, I decided to do a character change swap for Rose Franklin. I originally picked Katy because she was friendly and apologetic with Toby like Rose was with Scoops. Writing this post, I began to think about how Chazz was in the episode where he was being a bad influence for TJ. Since I have Scoops being a villain in this au, why not do the same for Rose. In this au, Rose acts like a cool girl/bad influence which impresses TJ and he develops a silly crush on her (which then ends when Wordgirl gets him back to his senses). She has an outfit and attitude similar to Chazz’s, but adjusted for a girl. Rose in this au is called Roe.

Chazz in this au is a laid back, but intelligent kid who uses focuses on environmental science. The “News Girl” episode is retitled “Science Boys” for this au. In this au, Chazz accidentally insults Tobey by saying building robots isn’t really a helpful science as it would make people too dependent on robots. (Tobey is immediately upset and ready to throw hands because NO ONE insults his robots. Becky holds him back before Tobey does something stupid). Chazz in this au is called Chad Hudson. He moved to Fair City with his mom who is the new Forewoman (idk what a female foreman is supposed to be called?) for the Power Plant. Wordgirl and Mouse Ace stop the energy monster from destroying the plant and giving Chazz’s mom more work. In this au, Becky takes Chad to natural places along with technical places to get him more comfortable with the city and to ease the issues between him and Tobey. (Tobey does make friends with him in the end.) Tobey during this tour gets upset when Chad creates environment experiments that are beneficial for the civilians and villains. Ex. he creates an organic, environmentally friendly, gel that is great for Chuck’s bread skin and helps the grocery store manager to grow more head hair which he talks to Chad about profiting in his store. Chad figures out Becky’s identity the same way Rose does because this guy is smart. He plans Becky’s exposure as a major science project because her identity and life is a great scientific study. Steven is doing work stuff when Becky calls him to help her fight the bad guys so Steven is not on the tour with them. Steven finds out about how Chad discovered her identity after Becky tells him. Steven, after Tobey, confronts Chad (Tobey’s talk is similar as Scoop’s talk to Rose) and he basically explains the importance of keeping Wordgirl’s identity secret (acting as an adult) and also sort of threatens Chad (Two Brains’ canon character is showing). Luckily Chad, at this point, had already decided to not reveal Wordgirl’s secret and do something else for his project.He is from now on scared of Becky’s dad. It also takes a while for Steven to fully trust him.

Everyone else is pretty much the same for this au. Steven and Becky are neighbors to the Botsfords, TJ is still a fan of Wordgirl with Johnson as his sidekick (I decided to not bother swapping them for the au), and Miss Powers is still an evil alien (I couldn’t find anyone for her or Colonel Gigglecheeks). I don’t have any ship ideas for Victoria or the rest of the characters in this au. Except for Tobecky.

(Another thing I forgot to mention in my first post about Squeaky is that the mouse sometimes travels with Becky in her pocket. So he does come with her to school sometimes. He usually sticks with Steven in the lab. Squeaky is kidnapped as was Bob in the “Birthday Girl” episode and is put in a girly dress which he despises with every fiber in his being. He also escapes the “Invasion of the Bunny Snatchers” mind control and helps Becky because his body was too small for the button to stick on well.)

So that is my Alliance Swap au for Wordgirl

#wordgirl au #alliance swap au #wordgirl #violet #scoops #becky #Steven Boxleitner #kid math #eileen #victoria best #tobey mcallister #rose franklin #chazz #power and personality swap

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whoaffle · 3 years

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Today a person of my family was complimenting and admiring Bozos' stupid-ass fucking penis-shaped rocket...

They kept talking about how it's "amazing" and "genius" and whatever... They were really impressed by the whole "show" and by the technology used and I GET that on one hand, because it IS something different and new and it is impressive (which doesn't mean it is good, I'll develop later), and this person is much older than me and they kept insisting on how, for them, in the past, this would have sounded impossible and how it's amazing that it's happening! That one person would manage to fund that by himself and not a whole country! (which again, impressive, NOT good. The fact that ONE person has the same amount of money as a large country, while others are poorer and poorer every day... The slow erasure of a middle class as social inequality becomes more and more severe every day... The fact that all this money was conquered by exploiting several poorly paid workers in shitty jobs with bad conditions... All those are symptoms of a DEATHLY ill economic system that not only has gone WRONG already but still insists on pretending to be functional while dragging down everyone along with it to the absolute limit before it collapses entirely on itself, leaving a painful scar on the people it took advantage of AND on the planet it has exploited for so long).

Going back to the point, I get it that "space travel" is a magical sci-fi dream for many people, both young and old, and that older people who think differently from most of us young adult Tumblr users would be super impressed by it, BUT... This is still so... So bad! Most of it - if not everything about it - is such an absurd scenario!

Well, knowing by previous experience that criticizing Bezos' amount of money and how he acquired it would be useless and that he'd end up defended anyways, I tried criticizing the ecological aspect of the whole thing first! But the answer I got was "Hah! A lot of stuff pollutes the world much more and no one talks about it", which, like... 1- Your point being?? That's no excuse to ignore absolutely useless shit like this polluting the earth even more just so billionaires can feel special because they can go to space while millions of people starve, die and suffer. Besides the fact that insisting on investing in this kind of technology instead of trying to prioritize Eco-friendly technologies and research is PRECISELY why a lot of other things pollute so much more - because every time someone comes up with something new they insist on not giving a fuck about the environmental aspect of their tech... So both the issues are correlated, this is not a "different thing that is less important" this is ONE of the symptoms. And 2 - Yes we DO talk about it, very often, all the time, and we hate it, and criticize it, and wish it would change. How many younger people are legit extremely worried about the environment and about the several ways governments, industries and other large-scale processes like that damage the environment? Damn, we DO complain about those!

But OK. Didn't wanna argue, so I started just using my phone instead... Then another person joins the conversation. The two of them are now like "This technology may not be put to good use now, the Space Tourism is a bad idea and it's stupid... BUT they could use the same device for other kinds of travel! Something from the technology used here could be used later for useful projects! Imagine, we could use the same rocket type tech to make commercial international flights, for example!" and I was silently thinking "Yeah right and emit even MORE useless pollution just because people wanna get to other places EVEN faster! And just because some idiots who have the money would pay THAT MUCH to be able to go faster to Paris or whatever!"

That is NOT NECESSARY and it is not SUSTAINABLE, it is not viable in long-term! Why would we use this kind of shit that is MORE expensive and MORE pollution-emitting?? Because it's faster?? Well let me tell you something then! Being faster is not only unnecessary but in this context we are living right now, it's A BAD IDEA, because our society is ALREADY deeply sick about the need to speed up literally everything and everyone has anxiety and is unable to wait a single second for anything, and so they expect faster and faster results every time, and companies - who LOVE not giving a shit about workers' mental health and well-being - expect more and more and more in less time! And this adds up pressure and stress on people's lives - which, by the way, is one of the things THIS very person from my family always complains about 'modern days'... The fact is that if traveling between continents FASTER became an actual accessible thing, that would probably just become another stupid insane standard for our already impossible-to-keep-up-with lives! Because if you travel abroad so quickly, then you are expected to get back to work on the same day and fuck jet-lag... Or anything similar! I don't know!

Anyway, I did go on a tangent here because I'm so angry and I started ranting over my rant. Let me go back to the POINT.

I was silent all the time as they kept talking about it, because honestly, no matter what I replied, they'd be like "You're too radical!", "don't exaggerate", "there are much worse things" and SPECIALLY "but the scientific advancement!"

And my WHOLE POINT HERE is that this is NOT "advancement"! It is scientific creation, development even if you will, but not "advancement"! Because it emits ridiculous amounts of carbon and other kinds of pollution in a planet that is already suffering so much environmentally and literally CANNOT HANDLE that anymore!

It is not advancement if its so expensive that only the 1% people (who hold most the money in the world) can pay for it, while billions of others just watch and starve and die in floods and fires CAUSED by that sort of shit!

That’s not "advancement"! That is fucking technological masturbation coming from egocentric morons who only want to get more money and show off!

Advancement would be coming up with actual, real solutions that help people in their daily lives! Advancement would be coming up with technologies and solutions that would work BETTER for everyone and not just to fill billionaire's asses with MORE money! It would be to find new ways to do what we do today without destroying the environment, or finding new cheaper ways to produce products and services so that more people can have access to them! And this is the absolute OPPOSITE of that! It is insisting on a way of doing things that is outdated, unsustainable and destructive, and that doesn't FIT our reality anymore and should be left BEHIND while we still have time to change!

BESIDES scientific advancement has been happening ALL OVER the world for CENTURIES and all we need is that the RIGHT technologies get attention and investment. Eco-friendly technology EXISTS we could clean the seas, we could generate free electricity for all, we could invest on lab grown meat, we could do SO much that would be actually useful and nice and helpful, but instead those sons of BITCHES only want to play in space and maybe some day run away when the planet is too sick to be fixed, leaving us - the poor ones - behind to die.

The fact is that we don't need cocky, bastard, exploitative billionaires to have scientific advancement! It would exist anyway, perhaps in better ways! And people should STOP considering technologies that are more harmful to the world than helpful as "advancements"! Because they are not, they are a problem, they are like if a man invented a flamethrower inside a house that is literally on fire and everyone found it amazing because "now we can set fire on stuff more easily and faster" yeah like, AWESOME but can we solve the PROBLEMS caused by that instead??

And honestly, I hate the excuse that "space represents hope for many people in a world that is bound to destruction" like, there would be NO need to go to space to begin with if we focused on fixing what's wrong instead of that ridiculous bullshit disguised as research or whatever when it's obviously just two things: showing off their horrible amounts of money and making MARKETING of an unnecessary service that will only benefit those who already have the easiest lives of all of us while causing issues to all others! JUST so that these billionaires can make MORE money. It's DISGUSTING.

There is NOTHING wrong about space travel as a concept, nothing wrong with researching and developing technologies that may allow us to explore space! Space exploration would be AWESOME! BUT if we're gonna work on something like that, we have to develop it in a way that doesn't harm the world EVEN MORE. We have to have priorities! We have to focus on NOT destroying this planet, for FUCK'S sake! And if the only way we have to explore space right now is by damaging our already fucked up environment even more, then NEWSFLASH, BABY - this is not the TIME to do space travel yet! AND SPECIALLY NOT FOR BILLIONAIRE SPACE TOURISM.

#RANT #long post #angry as fuck #my opinion #honest-fucking-ly #tired

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socalwriterbee · 3 years

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Confessions Part 3

Catch up on Confessions

Part 1 Part 2

Book: The Nanny Affair

Characters: Marie Castro (MC) x Jordan Le x Sam Dalton

Rating/Warning: Teen, Angst, Some Adult Language

Word Count: 1,660

Characters Belong to Pixelberry

“It’s not something you want, it’s something I need.”

Sam’s words kept playing over and over again. Marie had watched Sam disappear behind the elevator doors, with an expression she can only describe as cowardly. Whatever they had was gone. Gone all because of a kiss. What kiss ended their relationship? Was it hers with Jordan or was it Sam’s with Lana, like Jordan had confessed to her.

“It’s not something you want, it’s something I need.”

He was leaving, without a fight. His promises of their relationship worth fighting for were all a lie. The quietness of the lab was deafening, everything her and Sam went through kept appearing in her head. The laughter shared, the arguments, the moments they spent in each other’s arms, it was all gone just like that. It wasn’t worth fighting for.

Marie didn’t remember how she made it back to the lab, it had gone by as a blur. Space, it was something he needed. Space. Their relationship was still in the dark to the world, a secret they couldn’t share and now there was nothing to share. Now, she was just the woman who spared Sam from marrying Sofia.

Tears began streaming down her face, the droplets landing on reports sitting on her desk. Her sobs slowly becoming uncontrollable.

“I’m just a fool, How could I possibly think he would want forever with me.” She tells herself, wiping away the tears that keep falling down her face.

She laughed at her situation, one she agreed to. She wanted anything and everything to with Sam, she foolishly fell in love with a man who kept their relationship in the dark. A man who hired a publicists to fool the world on how they met and fell for each other.

Sam had done all that because he didn’t want history repeating itself with her, wanting to protect her from the things he couldn’t protect Addison from. What she should have been protecting herself from was Sam. She had thrown caution to the wind in accepting the position at Dalton Labs without letting anyone know. Putting what she and Sam had accomplished at risk, but she didn’t regret it, if given the chance she would do it again. Because she believed that their love would be strong enough to handle whatever came their way.

Taking a deep breath, she was determined to come out of this ahead. It was her who impressed Evan in the interview, she earned this job. Hell, she even impressed Sofia. She was doing her best in helping the environmental lab succeed, even if after it all, it meant Sofia becoming CEO over Sam. She would work hard to prove to everyone who doubted her and just saw her as a nanny wrong. Packing her things to call it a day, Marie stood a bit straighter with renewed vigor and made her way out of Dalton Labs.

****

Letting out an exhausted breath, it had sounded like a great idea to walk home but halfway through the busy, noisy, chilly streets of New York she began to regret that idea. Pulling her jacket a bit closer to her body as the cold wind nips at her exposed skin, a familiar face catches her eye through the glass doors of the lobby.

“What are you doing here? Haven’t you caused enough damage.” Marie grits through her teeth.

“I came to apologize.” Jordan smiles at her, lifting a pizza box. “I come with a peace offering.”

“You can’t expect me to forgive you just like that.”

But the smell of greasy, delicious pizza wafts in the air, making her stomach growl.

“Please?” He gives her the saddest eyes that he can possible muster. “I think you could some food. It must have been hours since you last ate.”

Every possible reason that she should say no comes in a rush “I..uh..yeah..Ok.” Marie says against better judgement.

“I’m not inviting you up because I’ve forgiven you, but you did bring a pie from my favorite place. The least I can do is hear you out.”

A sincere wide smile spreads across his face, his eyes light up with hope. “I’ll take it.”

They step into the elevator together, Jordan watches as Marie passes her card to access the penthouse. The ride and walk to her apartment is complete silence. After unlocking the door and stepping inside she locks the door behind them.

“Make yourself at home. There are drinks in the fridge. I’ll be right back.” Marie tells him, making her way to her bedroom kicking off her heels.

After changing into an oversized t-shirt, one she had taken from Sam once upon a time, and black shorts. She didn’t want to give Jordan a wrong impression, Marie made her way back to the main room of her apartment, where Jordan had already set up everything for them to enjoy the pie he brought.

“That smells delicious.” She smiles, taking a plate from Jordan and grabs a slice.

“I’m happy that I could bring a smile out. You should always be smiling.”

“The smile comes from having food. Don’t take too much credit.”

“Right. Sorry.” He says as he takes a bite. “Oh my god.. I can see why this is your favorite.” He follows with a mouth full.

Marie chuckles at the facial expressions Jordan makes as they continue enjoying their dinner and swapping stories of pranks, experiments and everything in between that Mason and Mickey have done and gotten into.

“I can’t believe they tried the syrup experiment in your shampoo too.”

“I’m pretty sure it had the same result.”

“A sticky mess!” They say in unison.

“I still can’t compete with you. It’s always Marie was so fun or Marie would do this.” Jordan tells her with a soft look on his face, not of jealousy but she knew it was something more he wanted.

“Jordan, you shouldn’t compete to recreate with what I had with them. They love having you as their nanny. You should know that they talk about all the cool and fun stuff you do with them.” She tells him, reaching for his hand giving it a gentle squeeze.

“Yeah, well. I’m probably out of a job anyway. After what happened. Sam won’t keep me after I kissed his girlfriend.”

She doesn’t correct him about being Sam’s girlfriend, Marie begins to pick up the plates they used. Walking towards the sink, she places them down and turns to face Jordan, her back pressing against the marble counter. Everything that happened today comes flashing back, Jordan’s kiss, Sam walking in on them, Jordan’s accusation of Sam being with Lana. And the one that hurt the most, Sam leaving, her eyes began to water. She blinked back trying to fight the tears from falling, her new resolve beginning to crack slightly. Sam’s scent filling her senses, maybe wearing his shirt had been a bad idea.

“Hey..hey..” Jordan comes up to her about to take her into his arms but stops just short and caresses her arm, trying to bring her some comfort. “I don’t know what I can say, sorry doesn’t begin to cover what happened, what I may have caused, the argument and all.”

Marie side steps away from him “It was more than just an argument. He wants space. It’s easy to blame you right now and I do.”

Neither one saying anything, only their breathing can be heard in the quietness of her home. Jordan looks at the woman he has been falling in love with since meeting her. But she wasn’t looking at him, her attention somewhere else, with someone else.

“He just gave up and pushed me away. It was just a matter of time for this day to come.”

The smile on her face masked her true feeling, Jordan could see the hurt he caused her. He wanted her and he didn’t care how he would get her. The first step in winning her had been more effective than he had hoped for and he would be there for her, whenever and however she would want him.

“Marie, I don’t know if you’d believe me or you’d take this with a grain of salt. I’m here for whatever you need. A shoulder to cry on, someone to talk too. I’ll be here.”

“I..uh. Thank you Jordan. I think, you should.. you know, it's getting.”

“It’s getting late. I should head out, pretty sure I’ll be packing my things.” He grins as he makes his way towards the door. “Goodnight Marie.”

“Goodnight.”

She watched him go, turning and waving at her, Marie closed and locked the door after seeing him disappear behind the elevator doors. For the first time in her life she felt empty.

Marie hated that feeling. She wasn’t going to wallow in what could have been. It was her from this day forward and no one would get in her way especially not Sam Dalton.

******

His grip tightened around the steering wheel, knuckles becoming white with rage. His jaw clenched, his heart rate increased as he watched as the boys nanny walk out of the building. A smirk on his face, a fucking smirk.

He knows one thing can cause a look like that, Marie. The look of being the luckiest guy on earth, countless times she made Sam feel that way, after spending their stolen moments in each other’s arms.

Reaching for the handle of the Audi, he was going to confront him. Sam didn’t care if he caused a scene. As he opened the door, a honk of a taxi makes him instantly reconsider what he was about to do.

Jordan turns towards the noise, spotting a familiar car pull out and drive away, he watched the taillights disappear. A wide grin spreads across his face. He knew who it was, a satisfying feeling warmed him, knowing he was closer of making Marie his.

#the nanny affair fanfiction #the nanny affair choices #the nanny affair 2 #sam dalton x mc #m!sam dalton x mc #choices sam dalton #choices tna #tna fanfic #choices stories you play #masterlist

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safeandtuckedaway · 3 years

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Is it possible to like anything? Mixed thoughts on morality, turning a blind eye and "The Matrix"

I care a lot about media, and communication. As a guy that has some issues talking about exactly how he's feeling and has low social energy, things like shows, movies and books were a lot more important and relevant to my formative years than interaction with other people – not that I didn't have friends on my teen years, I did, just. Well, a lot of stuff to consider at that time that is irrelevant to this stream of consciousness. Something that I also care about is the message said media brings, and how that is inherently linked to who wrote, or directed the piece of media. This brings question to some of the internet's most infamously discussions: is it "ok" to like something made by someone that does very questionable decisions? I honestly don't have a definitive answer for that. More often than not, this kind of discussion feels to me to be in a vacuum in the internet, or of less politically inclined people. There are good articles out there, but they never seem to demand you not watch something, but to make people reflect on the bad writing, direction or production something got. Which I think is the way to go. Most of what I read and watch of radical left doesn't even mention such an issue with representation and how it should be completely isolated and burned to the ground, as I'm afraid they're more concerned with some more "tangible" problems, like the rise of imperialism, neoliberalism and fascism and imperialist and neoliberal feminism as a tool to maintain the capitalist system, often times built by people of color and resources from the "Southern" countries, and maintained cleaned and pristine by women of color (VERGÈS, 2019)¹.

I'm just a guy in his mid twenties with a degree in graphic design and a thesis in communication design. I didn't study political science in university. So I think I can do my part by talking about communication, then. Also I will try not to pull info out of my ass.

As some people might know from now, Matrix "4" Resurrections' trailer launched this week, and with that, some people were kind to remind past's fuck ups of Lana Wachowski regarding race in many of her works, like Sense8, Speed Racer and Cloud Atlas. Listen, I can't ignore the fact that the decisions made in these films are in the very least, questionable and distastful, specially regarding Asian people. Also she really out there rocking dreads, which I'm not even gonna get into, as I think it's already very well established why that's not a good look for white people. I only watched maybe one episode of Sense8, but this article here sums up pretty well what's weird about it. It also brings a good message by the end.

So, can you like anything without being morally crushed by what you know is right? Can you enjoy a piece of media that is flawed by the creator's White Gaze/Straight Gaze/Cisgender Gaze? I admit I have a hard time dealing with feelings of morality. It feels rather individual and super subjective on most accounts, and doesn't leave out (ironically?) a lot of nuance for different cultures and practices in the world. I wanna talk about that more in the future. Either way, about media, I'm of the opinion that you can enjoy those things if you wish to. Fuck it. Make it your own. Be critical of what you consume, as most things we do are made under the wing of big corporations owned by people that don't care about us, if we need screen time or actually be portrayed as a human being.

If anything, I would like to plead that people pay more attention to the independent side of media creation, if possible. The internet has its advantages in that regard. Don't lock yourself in on Netflix and [insert other streaming services here] and its desperately neoliberal vision of queer people. It's hard, but there's many POC and LGBTQIA+ folks that work hard to bring better stories for people just like them. Look for POC that make books and short films and documentaries. By comparison, it will be easy to spot how flawed The White Gaze makes when telling a story.

I'm gonna talk a little about The Matrix (1999) below, so I'm gonna do one of those fancy "Keep reading" right now.

So, I re-watched The Matrix (1999) yesterday and found the plot with Cypher turning against the other members of the Resistance as a pretty good analogy of what most people live their lives currently, under capitalism and overconsumption: Willing to throw your group under the bus, to literally destroy the remains of human existence that are still left, for the comfort of being blissfully ignorant. "I wanna be rich, and someone important, like an actor", he said to Agent Smith, that probably wouldn't fucking do that even if the plan did the way they wanted to. I like to believe it was the greed of the few that brought down humanity by their own creation in the Matrix universe, but unfortunately that is not brought up, in that case, bring in that "humanity" as a whole did it. There's another scene, when Agent Smith is alone with Morpheus, where he monologues about how "humanity" is a "cancer" for the Earth, for "abusing all the resources from an area and have no way to survive but to move to another area". This again shows the lack of perspective from The Wachowskis, blaming humans, that have existed for thousands of years, for the environmental atrocities that capitalism, that has only existed for a couple hundred years, has caused to the planet.

Like I said, it is okay to like things that can be questionable. I like this slip that the character Cypher is. He is the embodiment of a lot of issues and he is inherently opposite of our "good guys" characters in Matrix. I can still be critical of their lack of eyesight on what – and who – is really killing the planet, and their very distasteful idea of going post-racial when the fact is that race still very much matters.

¹ VERGÈS, FRANÇOISE, Decolonial Feminism. 2019

#rambling with milo #daily #will I dare actually tag this #nah. please do not perceive me

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lavenderpearls · 3 years

Text

Some thoughts about Basta (and Capricorn)

I just saw a post about the Inkheart characters and how PTSD could be a possible explanation for Basta‘s behavior. And I had thoughts about it.

So I decided to share them, even though I have no idea if anyone is interested in this.

I think that PTSD is kinda a part of what’s going on with Basta. We know he had a rough childhood, wasn’t treated well by his parents or the people that were supposed to care for him back then. And later Fenoglio stated that Capricorn didn’t treat him much better. (And let’s be honest, we also see that Capricorn only „cares“ for him as long as he‘s useful). And then there’s all the other stuff, like that time he got both his arms burned or later when Mo read him, Capricorn and Dustfinger out of their world.

So yeah, he surely has been through a lot.

But while that would be enough to end up with PTSD, I think he fits the criteria for Antisocial Personality Disorder a bit better.

According to the DSM-5 the symptoms of Antisocial Personality Disorder are

• Failure to confirm to social norms concerning lawful behaviors, as indicated by repeatedly performing acts that are grounds for arrest. (Do I even have to say anything here?Basta killed people, is the reason for Dustfingers scars, stole stuff, broke into houses, used to set things on fire, kidnapped people, all of this multiple times and in Inkspell it‘s literally mentioned that he was arrested after Capricorn died)

• Deceitfulness, as indicated by repeated lying, use of aliases, or conning others for personal profit or pleasure (Tbh this is more of a Capricorn thing, who also has ASPD imo, just a different subtype, but I‘ll get into that later)

• Impulsivity or failure to plan. (Throughout all the books Basta is CONSTANTLY doing impulsive stuff, and in Inkheart Capricorn literally said that this was a problem with him)

• Irritability and aggressiveness, as indicated by repeated physical fights or assaults. (I can’t mention all the times this was the case, it would be too much)

• Having no regard for the safety of self or others. (Pretty self explanatory.)

• Consistent irresponsibility, as indicated by repeated failure to sustain consistent work behavior or honor financial obligations (A little more difficult, because of the way the inkworld works and how Basta's life turned out in our world. He‘s never had a normal job. His job basically was being a criminal.)

• Lack of remorse, or inability to feel guilt, as indicated by being indifferent to or rationalizing having hurt, mistreated, or stolen from another. (The times he killed people and didn’t give a shit? The fact that he had no problem with threatening children? Just to name a few things. He never really seemed to feel guilty for all the things he did. The only time he kinda feels bad about it is when he thinks this could cause problems for himself, like that time he made sure the cat in Meggies room could escape through the window. He didn’t care about the cat. He was worried that it would bring bad luck to him to let it starve in there. Just as an example.)

So with all this we can be pretty sure he has ASPD.

But there’s more to unpack.

One of the criteria for the disorder is that these or at least similar antisocial behaviors already occurred before the age of 15. We don’t know exactly if they did, but I think we can assume it. If I remember it correctly Fenoglio mentioned that Basta was younger than Meggie, wo was 12 at that time, when Capricorn took him in. And probably not because he felt sorry for the boy, but because he saw something in him that could be useful later.

Speaking about Capricorn. I said that I’m sure he also has ASPD. But he’s pretty different from Basta. At least in some ways. He’s so cold most of the time, much less impulsive, he’s able to plan ahead and also to control a bunch of other criminals.

To make this a little shorter, there’s a lot of different theories about this that include different subtypes, but one basically says that you can somewhat put people with ASPD in two different groups.

The ones that are cold, more rational and manipulative (like Capricorn) and the ones that are more openly aggressive and impulsive, like Basta. (That’s also where people sometimes draw the line between psychopaths and sociopaths, even though there‘s also a little more to that, but I‘m not gonna get into it now cause this text is already ridiculously long)

But to stay with all this 'subtype of ASPD'-stuff for a little longer - you might wonder at this point where Basta's superstitions and his constant fear of bad luck fits into all this. And I have a theory for that as well.

Malignant Narcissism. A syndrome first described by Otto Kernberg. It’s, to keep it short, a mix of narcissistic personality disorder (which btw very often appears together with ASPD) and ASPD.

It’s, apart from all the stuff I mentioned earlier, characterized by sadism (remember how Basta actually enjoys threatening people, how he likes to tell stories about all the awful stuff he and others did in detail, watching people get uncomfortable, etc? Sounds pretty sadistic to me.) AND paranoia. He’s constantly afraid something bad is gonna happen. But this could also be due to some OCD that he might have as well. (I gotta say this here, with personality disorders it’s not uncommon for people to have multiple ones that overlap. That’s what often makes it so hard to give a proper diagnosis.)

But what’s more interesting to me is that malignant narcissists, while usually not caring about anyone but themselves and being unable to maintain healthy relationships with others (remember when Dustfinger was hiding in Bastas house and mentions that Basta has literally no friends?), can show some sort of loyalty to a few people. Which is the case for Basta, since he‘s incredibly loyal to Capricorn.

So while generally being a pretty awful person, Basta has, at least somewhat, the ability to care about a selected few individuals.

Which I think is also the reason why there’s more fanfiction about him than Capricorn. Capricorn doesn’t care about anyone. He doesn’t even care about his own mother, or Resa, who was known to be his favorite of out all the maids. As soon as she caused problems for him, he decided to get rid of her. So with him, there’s a lot less to explore and to work with.

And, something more general about ASPD, it‘s as far as we know at this point, usually caused by a combination of genetic and environmental factors, such as neglect or abuse during childhood.

And Capricorn is a great example for this, since the genetic and environmental factors are both definitely there. We know his father used to beat him, and Mortola displays a lot of ASPD symptoms herself.

And for Basta, it was mentioned that he was a very unhappy child. Sadly we don’t know anything about his parents or what exactly happened during his childhood. (Maybe we could ask Cornelia about his parents in the next livestream?)

There’s still more I could talk about, for example some interesting studies about ASPD and reactions to fear that would also apply to both Basta and Capricorn, just in different ways or how ASPD works in general, but maybe I‘ll make a different post about that sometime.

Also feel free to tell me what you guys think about this, it‘s super interesting and I bet there’s even more to say that I haven’t talked about.

#inkheart #basta inkheart #inkworld #inkspell #have I mentioned how much I love Basta?#probably more than once but anyway #I had these thoughts for a while now and felt like sharing them #also be aware that Im just a psychology student not a professional

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birdy-bat-writes · 4 years

Text

Damian Wayne - Civilian crime solver

Request: Could you do headcanons or a scenario about Damian with a friend or s/o that is really into mysteries and goes around investigating cases even though they're really in over their head? Bonus points for shenanigans. Thank you!

Of course, amazing Anon! Great suggestion! And hey, why do friends or lovers when we can do both?? ;) I hope you enjoy this!

A/N: Um… My Headcanons are basically just fanfictions with sentences that don’t flow into paragraphs. I split it into 2 parts. I Really liked writing this one though. I love Damian. This one came out kinda angsty though, sorry about that. But it has a sweet ending.

Part 2 here

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- You met Damian when you both were in the sixth grade. He was quite the indignant 11-year-old. Unfortunately for you, this fellow was your lab partner for the year.

- You noticed his distaste for most people, but he didn’t have it with you. You couldn’t have known at the time, but the reason for that was that you were the only person in the room Damian saw as someone of equal intellect. It was the way you were organized and level-headed. You were independent and self-sufficient.

- Truth be told, the only major difference between your mindsets was that you weren’t as cocky.

- Made sense though, since your mother was an environmental toxicologist. Your home was pretty full of science equipment since you could remember. You were always curious as a child, and of course your proud mother encouraged it and taught you bit-by-bit how to use the tools. You idolized her and your father, who passed away when you were younger.

- Over the course of your partnership with Damian, you grew to tolerate each other, and then even enjoy each other’s company. By the time You were both 12, you had a pretty solid friendship.

- You discovered this when he invited you over to his house for his birthday and his family nearly choked, had a stroke, or checked if you were a robot. He had to explain to you that he didn’t bring friends over very often.

- “I made an exception for you because you are far closer to me than anyone else and I enjoy your company.”

- You guys hang out all the time now and talk about personal stuff and just joke about things. It makes you really happy when Damian laughs. He often found himself thinking about how much more often he’s been doing it since he met you.

- “Hey, what do you want to be when you grow up, Dames?”

- “Well, I’d like to follow in my father’s footsteps.” You assumed that meant running Wayne Enterprises. You were half right.

- “I want to be a detective.”

- “Really?”

- “Yeah, like my dad was.”

- “He’d be proud of you.”

- You had a love for forensics and special permission from your chemistry teacher to use the advanced chem lab after school. You were her TA after all, and Damian used that time to sit with you and chat while you worked.

- “Y/N, what are you analyzing?”

- “Um… It’s a mud sample.”

- “From?

- “The Gotham botanical gardens.”

- “Why?” Why are you analyzing dirt from Poison Ivy’s crime scene from last night?

- “Promise you won’t freak out?” He nodded. “I heard on the news that Poison Ivy was using monster plants to terrorize people. And they looked kind of like yellow trumpet vines you find a in the Gotham gardens. I was just checking the dirt for any chemicals that could have altered the plant growth.”

- Damian was stunned and speechless. Something he experienced rarely, if ever. “Y/N, messing with this stuff is dangerous. maybe you should let Batman and the GCPD handle this.”

- “Come on, Dami. Please don’t say that. I want to do this; I want to help people. If I figure this out first, I can tell the GCPD.”

- “I’m just worried for your safety.” He couldn’t deny that your work was brilliant, but he couldn’t let you put yourself in harm’s way either.

- “I’ll be safe, I promise.”

- He ultimately told you it was alright with him if you were careful. What he meant by that was that he was going to spy on you and keep you away from any and everything that was dangerous.

- Robin would follow you to your house from the shadows to make sure you got home safe and Damian would check in with you on your files. As your determination to solve cases increased, his desire to ask you why increased as well.

- “I just think it’s fun, Damian.” Wow you were a bad liar.

- “There’s more to it.”

- “What?”

- “Why are you actually doing this?”

- “Because I want to.” You were sterner this time. Damian noticed and decided to drop it for now. He offered to walk you home like he usually did but you declined.

- That night, you decided to investigate a lead you didn’t tell Damian about. It led you an abandoned building in old Gotham. You were scanning the second floor for anything out of the ordinary until you heard a voice approaching from the corner.

- You ran into the nearest room and hid. The voices were getting closer. “Falcone wants this job done tonight. Don’t f*** up.” You were terrified.

- Suddenly, your mouth was covered by a green gloved hand. You wanted to yell but you heard him shush you. You turned quietly to meet eyes with a domino mask. It was Robin. You didn’t have enough time to process everything that happened but at the end of it all you ended up on the sidewalk next to an ambulance and police cars.

- Deciding you had enough for one day, you headed home.

- The next day at school you seemed quiet and so did Damian. At the end, you walked over to Damian to ask if he wanted to hang out.

- “Not at the lab.”

- “Okay… we can watch a movie if you want.”

- “Alright.”

- “Cool. I’ll just go get my stuff.” He saw you walking in the direction of the lab and something sparked in him. He stopped you.

- “I’ll get it.”

- “What? I can get it. It’s fine.”

- “Just stay here, Y/N.” He was a bit too curt for your liking.

- “Don’t tell me what to do.”

- “Just listen to me for once.”

- “Why are you being like this?!”

- It turned into a yelling match. Damian’s emotions got the better of him and it ended with a “You could have died last night!”

- Tip of the hat to him *clap* *clap*. That’s how you found out he was Robin.

- It made sense really. You shared a heartfelt conversation about how he trusted you but he didn’t want you getting hurt. He knew what it was like out there and he couldn’t stand the thought of anything happening to you.

- You promised to keep his secret and he made a compromise with you; you could help him with forensics for his cases with Batman as long as you never went out into the field.

- Then you went an watched the movie you wanted to.

- “Hey Dames, I need to tell you something.” He turned his head to you. “You had asked earlier why I was so obsessed with the cases… my dad died investigating Falcone’s drug cartel. I guess got a bit too into it… I just thought you deserved to know.” You shared a look of sympathy and for the first time in your friendship, he hugged you. It held for a while, but it wasn’t awkward, just comforting, as if you both said that you were there for each other.

- Skip to the point where your working with him and Batman was normal. Well… as normal as it could get. You and Damian blew the Batcave circuit breaker. Twice.

- You would always get results before Bruce managed to figure out how. Tim liked you specifically because you could make Bruce look very confused.

- You and Damian would pass notes in class in code about new information from cases. It started to make people gossip about you two. It didn’t help that you both always stayed back late together and showed up to class alone, before anyone else.

- It began to scare people because Damian doesn’t bother to spend time with other humans but with you, he like?? Willingly?? Does it??

- You would work late nights with the boys and keep track of how much sleep they each were getting. If anyone fell too short, you sent them up to bed. It actually backfired on you once because you were very sleep-deprived and didn’t want to admit it, so Jason picked you up and dragged you to your room in the manor while Tim and Dick smiled cheekily. “Oh, how the turntables.” ;D

- Damian would sleep when you forced him, but he would still have his days. He believed he was above sleeping???

- This boy refuses to admit he’s tired. Even when he looks like a jittery racoon. So, you bring him hot chocolate in the mornings, (courtesy of Alfred) with a hint of a lot of caffeine (courtesy of Tim).

- Ever since you started spending so much time at the manor, you got much closer with Damian and his brothers. You felt a sense of family and care there.

- Your favorite nights were the ones where your mom would let you sleep over and you would stay late in the cave working with Damian. The serenity of the cave and the faint glow of the computers always made it feel like some alternate plane of existence.

- “Alright, Sherlock, you’ve been obsessed with this case for three days now. Let the computers do their work and take a nap.”

- “Dami, I’m too ‘thinky’ to sleep.”

- “’Thinky’?” you nodded and giggled at your superior use of vocabulary. “Come with me. I want to show you something.”

- You detected a hint of mischief in his voice and followed him up the cave staircase to the top of a ledge. He pulled a rope ladder out from behind the ledge and gestured for you to climb it.

- You glanced at him once before hoisting yourself up and climbing onto the rocky surface. You looked up and the sight took your breath away. The ledge was a flat floor of the cave that overlooked the waterfall from the inside. If you looked down, you could see the dancing currents on the lower levels of the cave. The air was misty and cool, and you honestly had no idea that there was a view like this anywhere in the manor.

- “You like it?”

- “Its so beautiful.” You said, your voice full of awe. Damian sat down on the floor, against the cave wall and patted the ground next to him. He wanted to say something. Just regular makings of conversation, like the ones you always had. This time, for the first time, he felt like he didn’t know what to say to you, so opted to look at you.

- The way the water reflected light on the cave walls made patterns of hazy light. The glow hit your skin and made your eyes sparkle. For the first time since he had met you, Damian saw you in a completely new way. He didn’t understand it, but he wasn’t opposed to it either.

- You broke the silence with, “You know, ever since I met you, and your family, I’ve never been happier.”

- You looked back at him. Something about the way he looked at you made you feel butterflies and fireworks all at once.

#damian wayne #Damian al Ghul #damian wayne headcanon #ROBIN BATMAN #robin #damian wayne fluff #damian wayne x y/n #damian x reader #damian wayne imagines #damian wayne x gender neutral reader #damian wayne x reader #batbros #dc comics #dc fluff #headcanons

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anotheronechicagobog · 4 years

Text

Bulletproofness and Playing God Jay Halstead x reader

written by: @anotheronechicagobog

requested by @confusedpimp, I hope you like it!

warnings: swearing, addiction, Hannah Asher is NOT porprayed well in this you have been warned, malpractice, emergency c-section complications, involves Chicago Med episode ‘Do No Harm’, police being idiots and assholes, warrants served incorrectly, drugs, drug dealers, bad neighbourhood created by systematic oppression and gentrification, Will is a prick with issues, and canon compliant violence

A/N: I am very sympathetic and supportive of people who have addictions because not only are there a tone of genetic factors that weigh in on it, but environmental factors that most people have very little to no control over. That being said, I am strongly against people with addictions working in healthcare, first responding, and/or law enforcement who spend most of their time with vulnerable people who don’t have much of a choice about whether to trust them or not. If someone works in an area where they have someone’s life in their hands they cannot be addicted to a substance that will control their ability to make judgements, affect how/their ability to work, and function as a whole.

In the past eight months, a warrant has been served to your apartment twenty-one times. You haven’t done anything wrong, the name on the warrants was always for your upstairs neighbour, did this make being woken up and the fucking crack of dawn and being interrogated (sometimes arrested) any easier? Not even a fucking bit. So you weren’t surprised when at 3:28 am, your door was busted open (again), heard shouts of “Chicago PD!” (again), and heard your house being “cleared” (again). You groaned and sat up, holding your hands up. Your bedroom door was thrown open with a bang. “I am unarmed, Marcus Evans lives in the apartment upstairs, and I have no association to him.” In the blandest voice possible, you recited the statement the legal aid at your university wrote you. “Uh... Sorry? Hey, Sarg, I think I’ve figured out why there were so many unsuccessful warrants on this place.” The blonde man was still pointing a gun at your head, but more members of his unit came to surround him.

“Can I put my hands down now? I have documents that prove I am innocent, that the warrant was served to the wrong address, again, and that the only connection I have to Marcus Evans is that he is my annoying upstairs neighbour.”

They all sheepishly looked at you. The Latina woman spoke up, “the apartment is clear of anything even remotely illegal. Well, aside from the power lines attached to her box outside that show that her neighbours have been stealing power and internet from her.”

‘Sarg’, an older man with silver hair with a surprised look on his face nodded. “Alright, put ‘em down and get us the papers.”

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Despite all the evidence that the warrant wasn’t meant for you, they still insisted on taking you down to the station. You refused since they couldn’t arrest you and had no grounds to hold you on, and Sergeant Voight did not like that. “I’m too tired to give a shit about what you want. I have three jobs, student loans, and university to deal with. The only things of value in my apartment are my crappy laptop and internet access. The only time I am ever here is to sleep. You already disturbed what little sleep I was able to get, and I have work in... Forty-five minutes. Just great. Please leave, and can one of you, for the love of all things holy put a note in the system that this is NOT Marcus Evans’ apartment?!” Everyone flinched at your outburst, all looking both sympathetic and annoyed except for Detective Halstead, he just looked very sad for you. “Of course,” he said as he handed you a business card, “if you could call me when you have time, we have some pretty important questions.” Sargent Voight shot him a look, one that clearly said ‘what the fuck are you doing? That’s not your call.’ “Okay. Now seriously, please leave.” Irritated and muttering under their breath, barring Halstead who gave you a smirk and a wink, they all left stepping over the splinters of the door you replaced three weeks before.

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The next day after entering your sparsely decorated apartment, dropping dead on your bed/couch, you heard the distinctive sounds of a door being broken down, followed by the police announcing themselves, and an apartment being searched... Above yours. They finally got the right apartment! Despite the ache in your muscles and bones, you jumped up and cheered. Complete and utter elation surrounded you and your soul. A few minutes into your dancing and celebrating there was a knock on the door. Smiling brighter than you had in years you answered the door. “Good morning detective!”

“Well, good morning to you too, Ms. Y/L/N. You’re in a much better mood.”

“To be fair, you guys busted into my apartment at three in the morning, again, and I just heard everything that happened upstairs, you guys finally got the right apartment!”

“Hey, we never served more than one warrant here.”

“Your unit only served one, but your brothers in blue served twenty-one. Destroying property, unlawful arrest, causing severe anxiety, and just general harassment for eight months. The only reason I didn’t move was because I couldn’t afford to. I’m just happy it’s over now, I’ll never have a Marcus Evans warrant served at my apartment again!” Halstead looked happy when you opened the door and your conversation began, but when you finally took a breath you noticed how guilty he looked. “I’m sorry.” He whispered, looking like he was in physical pain, before he nodded at you and walked away, leaving you feeling incredibly confused.

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Two days later you returned from two ten-hour shifts to Jay Halstead in front of your door. “Detective?”

“Please, call me Jay.”

“Alright, Jay, what are you doing here? Is everything okay with Marcus’s arrest?”

“Oh yeah, everything’s fine with that. I came here because of this.” He handed you a large manilla envelope. “What’s this?”

“Compensation. For everything that happened over the last eight months. And apartment listings in better neighbourhoods. Seriously, you need to get out of here, it’s way too dangerous.”

“Thanks for the advice, and the compensation, I’ll think about it. But it just might not be doable for me.”

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You couldn’t afford to move, something that irked Jay to no end. So he came around often. Dropping by with coffee and Irish breakfasts. Sharing his Netflix password and watching B99 together. Driving you home from work or university when it was late. The days grew shorter, and your hours of work grew longer. Jay worried. About you. About the number of hours you worked. About how much university work you had. About your health, how much (or little, really) you slept and ate, how you didn’t see the doctor as often you should (ironic considering you were in med school), and about how you never took time to relax, always jumping from one task to the next.

You slumped against the passenger seat of Jay’s truck, exhausted after working for thirty hours straight, ten at each of your jobs. “Okay, seriously, you can’t keep living like this. I have a spare room, I can get you a civilian job at my precinct. You are wearing yourself to the bone. Please, Y/N.”

“I get my residency assignment tomorrow. I quit today.”

“You did?”

“Yes.”

“All of them?”

“All three.”

“And you’ll move out of your apartment?”

“Nope.” Popping the ‘p’. Jay sighed and shook his head, before looking at your half-asleep form. “I’ll take you to the shithole you call a home.”

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TWO YEARS LATER

Jumping up and down you waited for Jay to open the door. The envelopes sitting on his coffee table glaring at you. You flopped onto his couch (that didn’t also double as a bed) and huffed impatiently. Fidgeting.

The door opened and you jumped up, startling your best friend. His cop/ranger instincts taking over. He stiffly dropped his jacket and yanked out his gun before aiming it for your head. Panic coursed through you, tightening your chest. Reflexively you put up your hands, not able to control the words that bubbled out of your throat. “I’m bulletproof... But please don’t shoot me.” Jay lowered his gun, laughing. “‘Bulletproof’? Really?”

“Hey, I panicked, shut up.”

“What’re you doing here, anyway? I thought you were taking another shift?”

“I was, but then Sarah’s plans fell through so she decided to take her shift back, plus I got my fellowship applications back!”

“Where did you get accepted?!”

“I don’t know I was waiting for you to get back to open them!”

“Well I’m here now, so open them!”

“Okay, okay, here we go; Honolulu general, accepted, Seattle Grace, no, but they had a bomb blow up there recently so I’m not heartbroken, Chicago med, yes, and Miami Dade Memorial, yes. Okay 3/4, that’s great! What do you think?”

“Well I’m biased, so Chicago Med, but it would be fun to visit you in Hawaii.”

“Hawaii is so expensive though, I’d probably have to have a part-time job to make rent.”

“In a decent apartment this time.”

“Two part-time jobs, then. So Hawaii is out, now Miami... It is hot there, beaches, the ocean, the food, but Miami Dade Memorial isn’t very prominent in the research department and the crime rate is awful in the part I’d need to live and work in. I mean I know isn’t a whole lot better but... It would feel a bit like moving from bad to worse, especially on my budget.”

“So that leaves Chicago...”

“It does, but I think I need to find a new place that’s closer to Med and filled with less dug dealers.”

“Please tell me this was a subtle way of asking if you can move in with me.”

“It wasn’t, but now that you bring it up, would that be okay?”

“YES! Oh thank fuck, you’re finally moving out of that rat’s nest! C’mon, let’s go get your stuff now!”

“But Jay I just paid this month’s rent-“

“Let’s gooooooooooo!”

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FOUR MONTHS LATER

Because your apartment was in such a “great location” (in the same building as three drug dealers) your landlord was willing to give half of your rent back. It had only taken you twenty-something minutes to pack your things and leave. Now you were starting your surgical OB/GYN fellowship, excited to not be working multiple jobs at once for the first time since you were twelve. While Jay’s brother, Will, worked at Med as well he worked in the ED while you worked in the gynecology unit and you were thankful you only had to work together for consults or in an all hands on deck situation because he could be a fucking prick. When you first met him years ago he spent two hours quizzing your medical knowledge, and he got annoyed when you got everything right and he couldn’t correct you. So when you got a consult from him your first week there, you were apprehensive. “Hey Y/N, treatment room four.”

“Thanks, Maggie.” You pushed back the curtain and were met with the sight of a pregnant woman clearly in immense pain and a frustrating ginger. “Dr. Asher is her OB but we can’t find her anywhere. She was on-call but I, and a couple of nurses, and her secretary have been blowing up her phone and we’ve got nothing back. This is her patient Sienna. She’s in a lot of pain but is refusing painkillers, you’ve been working with her a lot lately-“ You snorted. His facial expression hardened. “Just come out and say it Y/L/N.”

“First of all it’s doctor Y/L/N, second of all, I haven’t been ‘working’ with her, I’ve been taking care of ‘her’ patients because she’s almost never at work. She just cancels the appointments short notice and since these women are kind of on a timeline their appointments get reassigned to other doctors. She’s listed as their doctor on all the forms but she’s never even met half of them. Sienna is the only patient that Dr. Asher has seen more than once.”

“Don’t talk about her like that, you don’t know-“

“That she’s an addict? The entire OB floor knows we just don’t have enough proof to do anything about it. And don’t get me wrong, I know that there’s a lot of genetic components to addiction and I would be sympathetic if she wasn’t responsible for multiple lives at a time on a daily basis.” You turned on your heel and entered the room, done with Will Halstead and his bullshit. “Hi Sienna, my name is Dr. Y/N Y/L/N, and I’ll be filling in for Dr. Asher, I understand that you don’t want any drugs and while that’s fine, if your condition gets bad enough we may have to intervene but we’ll do everything we can for you and your baby, okay?”

“Where’s Dr. Asher? I need her here, she understands!”

“Okay, we’re still trying to find her okay?”

—————————————————————————————————

“So I heard that you and my brother locked horns today.”

“Your brother is a prick.”

“I know that he is, I’m just wondering what happened this time.”

“He’s doing this weird ethical-puppy love-guilt trippy-Romeo and Juliet level of doomed-unnecessary drama-thing going on and it’s completely affecting how he treats his patients. We already had one loose cannon we couldn’t disarm, now we have another. It’s come to the point that I’m genuinely worried about the patients that come into Med, and I don’t know what to do.”

“I’m sorry, I wish there was something I could do.”

“Just try not to antagonize Will, okay? He’s more on edge and that makes him erratic, I would really appreciate it if you wouldn’t make it worse.”

“Okay. I’ll leave him alone.”

“Thank you. I’m starving, what should we do for dinner?”

“Vietnamese is on the way.”

“Have I told you how amazing you are today?”

“Yes, but I would love to hear it again.”

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Dr. Asher’s medical negligence had finally caught up with her, and for once Will wasn’t even remotely involved. He and Asher were having one of their silent spats again when Asher dropped the ball, or baby rather, during an emergency c-section of a patient she misdiagnosed and mistreated because she was in need of a fix. The only reason the mother didn’t hemorrhage and baby didn’t crack his skull was because of your observations and quick reflexes. The baby was healthy and mom was recovering and you were fuming. After scrubbing out you approached the, understandably distressed, father and told him that on your best medical opinion he and his wife should file a malpractice suit for missing an easy and obvious diagnosis, screwing up a routine surgery, and almost killing his son seconds after he was born.

You met with him, his lawyer and Asher two days later in a conference room with Goodwin and Peter the Stressed Out Lawyer. You accused her of having an addiction. The father requested a drug test. Goodwin glared, you glared back. If she didn’t want it handled like this then she should have dealt with it months ago when you brought it up your second week at Med. She tried to approach you in the hall, condescension on the tip of her tongue when you levelled her with a glare so fierce it rivalled that of Godzilla. “You do not get to scold me like I am a child. I told you when I first got here that she has a problem. That she is a danger to everyone who comes into her care. That she is a danger to other doctors. That she is a liability. Do not bitch to me when I told a husband and father who almost his wife and son to her recklessness to sue. To get angry and fight back. Do not take that petty, catty, condescending tone with me because I went around you. You have absolutely no ground to stand on. Because. You. Were. Wrong.”

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You were surprised you had a job to come back to the next day. So was a very pissed off and ‘heartbroken’ Will Halstead. He kept running around to your colleagues, badmouthing you, trying to get them to join in and turn on you, but that didn’t happen. They not only agreed with you but rallied around you. Doctors are not gods. They do not get to ignore a patient’s wishes or act like they don’t have restrictions and limitations. It came to the point that Will told Jay he didn’t approve of you and that he had to dump you... Despite the fact that you weren’t dating.

Jay had rolled his eyes and pushed Will out of the apartment before giving you a hug and made you pancakes for dinner. “I’m sorry that I messed up your relationship with Will.”

“Don’t be. We’re brothers, we fight from time to time, and sometimes those fights are bigger than others and that’s okay. Will, well Halsteads in general, are pretty good at torpedoing any and all romantic relationships.”

“I’m sure that’s not true.”

“My parents only got married cause my mom got knocked up and fought non-stop, Will was and still is in love with Natalie but he was too controlling, secretive, and refused to tell her about Burke, and me... Lindsay and I were on a break before we left because my Vegas wife refused to divorce me and I didn’t tell her I had even been to Vegas.”

“Okay, so maybe it’s a little true, but it’s not because you’re bad people or Even just saying ‘yes there’s something going on but I don’t feel ready to talk about it with you’ would go a long way. Cause all you Halstead guys say is that you’re fine but you never are and if you lie to yourself you lie to your partner.”

“I’ll keep that in mind. And tell Will when his head is surgically removed from Asher’s ass. You’ve seen that he follows her around like a puppy, right?”

“Yup, everyone on the OB floor has been talking about it nonstop since he started his whatever it was with Asher.”

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EIGHT MONTHS LATER

Because of the suit, the hospital conducted an internal investigation in relation to Dr. Asher that pretty much everyone could confirm. Erratic behaviour and attendance, leaving other doctors to tend to her patients while keeping her name on the case files, and horrifying evidence of being high while working. Granted that had only happened twice and she literally just sat in her office staring at paperwork the whole time. Still, she was fired, the suit was settled, and Asher lost her license. You had destroyed her career and while there was a part of you that felt guilty, you knew that in the end she did the right thing. She refused help and kept carrying on in a way that would have been detrimental to more patients if other doctors hadn’t stepped in. Will still wasn’t talking to you and had started avoiding Jay recently because you two started dating.

Barring the tension from all the Will stuff, your relationship was doing well. You had great dates (both out and at the apartment), were radiating happiness together, and Jay was taking your words about communication to heart. Not once has the phrase ‘I’m fine’ dripped off of his lips. If he didn’t want to tell you something or was more comfortable talking about it with his therapist or Upton before you he’d let you know. Most times he would just talk about what was bothering him, even if it was only bullet points sometimes you both felt relieved that functional relationships were actually possible.

You were on a date with Jay at your favourite Jamaican restaurant when you ran into Hannah Asher. She did not look pleased to see you and quite honestly you could have lived the rest of your life happily if you never had to see her again. After a few seconds of glaring at you and your boyfriend, an annoying ginger put his arm around her. “Hi Will. How are you?”

“My girlfriend and I are doing well Jacob.”

“Really Will? You’re using my whole name because my-”

“Okay, you know what? Let’s go our separate ways. It looked like you guys were just leaving, and we’re probably confusing our poor hostess. So let’s both just walk away.”

“You ruined my life.”

“Asher-”

“You took everything from me!”

“Do you have any idea how many patients you almost killed in your time at Med? Because I do, and it’s a triple-digit number. You shouldn’t have been practicing in your condition and you know it. So you need to drop the victim act and walk away.” You saw her face contort into complete and utter rage, then everything is hazy. There were lights, bright red ones, and screaming, you were pretty sure Jay was there, and there was... Copper? Why did your mouth feel like it was full of liquid pennies? There was gurgling, was there a baby? Were they okay? You tried to speak, get up, look around, but you were too tired. You were begging yourself to move, to do something, but it felt like your bones turned into melting iron.

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You didn’t remember waking up, or falling asleep for that matter, you were just looking at the glass door and suddenly it came into focus. You didn’t even know how you got to the ED, what happened at the restaurant. Dr. Choi entered your room apprehensively. “Y/L/N? How are you feeling?”

“Like I was mauled by a tiger.”

“That’s... Actually pretty close to what happened, honey.”

“Jay?”

“Hey, I’m right here. So, what’s the prognosis Choi?”

“Multiple contusions on the right side of the abdomen, lower back and around your neck, multiple lacerations all over your abdomen, forearms, and two on your head. Your liver was also perforated, we couldn’t stop the bleeding so we had to remove half of it, which you know means it’ll take a couple of months to grow back and you won’t be able to drink for around a year. We’re going to need to monitor you and run some tests, so you’re gonna be here for a few days.”

“Well I should hope so. What? Why are you two looking at me like I have eight heads? I could’ve died.”

“... You actually want to stay in the hospital and be cared for by your colleagues?”

“I trust you, besides I’ll only make things worse if I check myself out AMA, doesn’t matter how good of a doctor I am. It’ll be hard and I’m not going to enjoy it, but I have to stay here and get treated regardless so I might as well be as positive as I can about it.”

“You are officially my favourite patient.”

“And I love you even more.”

“Thanks guys, I appreciate it.”

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“What happened Jay? I don’t remember anything after telling her to walk away.”

“She went berserk. Attacked you. I tried to pull her off but Will lost his mind, telling me not to hurt her. I managed to toss him after a couple of seconds but I was too late. She’d already slashed you up and stabbed you twice. I grabbed her but she managed to get a bunch of kicks in while I was hauling her away from you all while screaming that she was going to kill you. I’m sorry that I couldn’t protect you. She’s sitting in a cell at the 21st right now with Platt breathing down her neck. We also did a drug test on her, she was high as all hell.”

“Please don’t feel bad Jay, I know that you reacted as fast and did as much as you could. And I know that Will did what he could to stop you. How is Will by the way?”

“He’s in the cell next to hers. He assaulted a police officer and was an accomplice in assault. Voight’s been asking if I want to drop the charges against him because he’s my brother. And I just don’t know, I wanted to talk to you first.”

“I don’t want to charge him. And I don’t want you to press charges either, but I won’t stop you if that’s what you want.”

“I don’t want him to go to jail, I want him to go to therapy. He needs it.”

“I wasn’t sure if I should say anything, but he really does. And I think you need to be the one to bring it up with him. We can do some research, too, and find psychiatrists that have their own practices so that it’s not connected to the hospital at all.”

“That sounds like a great idea, but I think you mean I do the research cause you are supposed to be resting and not doing any physically or mentally strenuous tasks.”

“Fine, fine. Just give Will a hug from me when you see him.”

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ONE YEAR LATER

The day of the trial had finally arrived and you were pissed off about it. The date of the trial was the same day as your due date. The defence had done everything they could to delay the trial, and when they finally settled on the worst possible day three weeks ago, you’d tried to have it delayed again because you didn’t want to give birth in a courtroom. The defence had convinced the judge to deny it, so here you were, sitting in a sweltering room that smelled like old wood and seventies carpet for five hours beside your husband behind the district attorney doing your best not to glare at the judge. “It’s going to be okay, honey, she won’t get away with anything, it’s cut and dry. The only real thing to do is to determine her sentence.” Jay kissed your forehead and placed his hand on top of yours on your protruding stomach. You winced. “She just kicked again, Jay.”

“That’s seven minutes apart.”

“I’m in labour, we need to go.” Jay nodded to your lawyer who motioned to the judge for permission to speak. “Your honour, my client is in labour, may we adjourn so that she and her husband can go to the hospital?”

“Objection your honour!”

“Ms. Asher, do not interrupt the prosecution. I’ve heard and seen more than enough evidence. Ms. Asher, you are hereby sentenced to twenty-five years in prison for aggravated assault and attempted murder. The court now is adjourned. Oh, and Dr. Y/L/N and detective Halstead? Congratulations.”

#One Chicago #Chicago PD #chicago med #jay halstead #jay halstead x reader #will halstead #Hannah Asher #sharon goodwin

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comicaurora · 4 years

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aaaa this is not technically a question, but I love how you draw fight scenes/action in both the comic and in all the legends/myths summarized videos!! It's so goodddd even tho you like to say how much you get tired of the process of choreographing fight scenes i think you really pull them off spectacularly!! do u perhaps have any tips... besides the usual looking at a bunch of refs and such- do you take inspo from action movies maybe? id love to know because like ur just so skilled red how

!!!! this is such a sweet question!

I’m so glad the choreography works! It’s difficult for me to gauge how engaging they are to read - I’m usually just focusing on making sure the movement makes sense from panel to panel. I’ve read a lot of manga where the fight scenes are beautifully drawn but frankly incomprehensible, because I have no idea how the characters are supposed to be moving in relation to each other. Because of this, when I choreograph a fight, I try and make sure the movement is clear from one panel to the next.

When drawing fight scenes for videos, I tend to exaggerate the movements a bit more than I might in a comic, since I’m usually trying to communicate the entirety of a fight scene in only one or two frames. Especially in the Journey to the West videos, I tend to give the characters very stretched poses - legs bent all the way up to the chest or stretched all the way back, arms completely extended, etc. In real life, overextending a limb is a very bad idea in a fight, but in the wonderful world of visual art, it usually looks a lot better than the more safe and realistic partially-bent option. I try to make sure the poses are all plausible, but for me, that stretch component is very important. It gives the illusion of effort - you can almost feel how the character would feel.

This frame demonstrates the stretch factor with Monkey’s entire pose, but it also demonstrates another important factor - flow. Anywhere there’s movement, I want there to be something flowing to show it. Monkey’s tail and sash and Tripitaka’s robes are very useful for this, and having a lot of characters with long hair or flowing capes also makes my job a lot easier.

Stretch makes the poses feel lively and full of movement. Flow makes it clear to the audience how the characters in this still image are supposed to be moving. Between those two factors, it becomes pretty intuitive to communicate a lot of energy in any given panel.

Of course, chaining panels together to make sure the movement is actually coherent is a different skillset altogether, and one I’m still working on. In my experience, the easiest way to make that work is coherent direction of movement.

This post is getting long, so I’m gonna try putting in a “read more”:

Using that fight scene as an example, the direction of movement shifts at the top of the page when Kendal rounds the tree. In the first panel, movement is from right to left. He pivots in panel 2, and then in panel 3, he’s abruptly attacked in a sudden burst of left-to-right movement. This is a new action; it’s fine that it’s moving in a new, opposed direction.

Kendal catches himself as he falls forward - this is still a left-to-right movement, because he’s still falling from the events of panel 3, so continuity of movement is to be expected. But the middle panel shifts focus again, because something new and unexpected is happening - his attacker is about to get kicked in the face.

In that center panel, the direction is no longer left-to-right - it’s out-to-in. We’re essentially zooming along the movement to accentuate its suddenness. Even if you can’t quite make out the detail of the boot, the movement is still pretty clear. The next panel brings us back to our familiar arrangement from panel 3, but this time, the movement has been reversed and is moving right-to-left again, as Kendal kicks back and gains the upper hand.

Finally, in the last panel of the page, the movement becomes a bit more directionless. His attacker is still moving right-to-left, continuing the flow from the impact, but the focus has shifted. The movement and overall flow is unclear, which reflects the fact that, at this point, the fight has become a stalemate.

Chaining movement together like this is tricky, as is representing clear movement in a single panel. You know it’s tricky because a lot of otherwise good media kinda sucks at it. For instance, I quite like My Hero Academia, but I’ve been keeping up with the manga for months and I have literally no idea what’s happening in these protracted superhero fights.

This next bit is going to contain spoilers from the most recent chapter, but it demonstrates my issue way too well for me to leave out:

This image has a clear direction of movement, but I have literally no idea what’s happening, except that someone might be about to get punched. (The next set of panels is not someone getting punched. It’s a flashback that lasts eight and a half pages.) The next panel that continues this action is this one:

It follows through on the clear right-to-left direction of movement established from the earlier panel, but it’s (a) still totally unclear what just actually happened, and (b) interrupted by eight and a half pages of other stuff. The panels individually look phenomenal (if a little speed-line-heavy for me) but it’s hard to know what’s actually happening. All we know is that movement happened; we can’t actually tell what happened in that movement.

In contrast, for a comic that does movement INCREDIBLY well, I recommend Usagi Yojimbo. It’s a comic about a wandering samurai who happens to be a rabbit, and all the Kurosawa-esque antics he gets into in his wanderings through ancient funny-animal Japan.

Uh oh! A setup for a fight scene! And that’s a lot of left-to-right movement I’m seeing! Even the swords in shot are all pointing that specific direction!

Oh, never mind. He’s fine. See all that right-to-left movement our hero is doing? See how the bad guys are suddenly pointing in all different directions and their movement has become chaotic and uncertain? That’s how you know the fight’s literally going our hero’s way.

This is a random encounter from a random issue of the comic. Fights happen frequently, and most of them follow the same structure - right down to the direction of movement. Bad guys move in from the left, good guy fights back from the right.

And when the fight proper starts, the background usually vanishes into a vague white void so the characters can take center stage - no visual cluttering, not even any speed lines.

These fights aren’t important. These random background mooks aren’t plot-relevant except as temporary roadblocks. As such, most of these fights play out roughly the same - no background, page-wide panels, minimal dialogue. But the serious fights? Those look pretty different.

Environmental shots! Close-ups! Banter! Backgrounds! The direction of movement is even reversed from the norm! This immediately sets the fight apart from the standard. Characters move around each other, the environment come into play, and each panel is a very clear beat in the progress of the fight.

Usagi Yojimbo is probably my favorite comic ever. But it’s also not the only very useful resource when you’re looking for media that does well-choreographed fights. Comics are good (even if a lot of them are just good bad examples), but animated media is built on a lot of the same principles as comic art. While they have an easier time showing movement (since they involve actual movement, rather than static images) they still need to chain shots together in a way that’s coherent and gives the audience enough information to understand the movement and progression of the situation. Movies and tv won’t help you much with drawing individual static images that communicate dynamic poses, but they can help a lot if you’re figuring out how one phrase of the fight should chain into the next.

While I’ve seen plenty of media that does this well, rather than making you analyze this stuff from the ground up, allow me to recommend a youtube channel that can do the analysis for you:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mACKHGfdLlo&ab_channel=JillBearup

Jill Bearup has a wonderful channel with a criminally small subscriber base. I only found her within the last month and I think she’s amazing. Everyone should watch her videos about fight choreography.

This answer got much longer than I expected, but I hope it was helpful!

#aurora #asks #art

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rotationalsymmetry · 2 years

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Re: “the average American throws out whatever pounds of clothes” when it’s significantly/mostly businesses that do the throwing out

This is…not very unusual actually, in journalism, where a journalist either genuinely doesn’t know how to interpret data or is going for a claim that will really catch people’s attention over an accurate one. This is one reason why it’s rarely a good idea to get your science from the news, especially on controversial topics like what foods are good or bad for you and trends about women in the workforce and that sort of thing. There’s too many journalists who either don’t understand stats or are willing to pretend they don’t.

As far as I’m aware, people who talk about fast fashion and know what they’re talking about are aware that a lot of waste is from the distributors and not from actual individuals throwing clothes out, but that is still an argument for buying clothes that will stay in fashion over a period of years at least rather than trying to keep up with the trend of the season. I think. I know fuckall about fashion, and before I got sick did as much clothes shopping as I could at thrift stores. However, like a lot of things, the concept of slow fashion or sustainable fashion is something that can be used as a way to sell stuff, and most options that are better for the planet do not advertise themselves as such.

I gotta say I can’t really get myself interested in it. I’m pretty sure clothes aren’t that big a chunk of waste in general, and waste is overemphasized as an environmental problem. Compared to things like deforestation and carbon emissions and how we get our food. This strikes me as one of those things that’s probably more about social stratification than actual change, given that it’s pretty easy to notice and talk about what other people are wearing, or what you are. “Oh this? Yes, it’s from such and such slow fashion designer. And it has pockets!”

When I was doing wedding research I noticed a lot of “green wedding” stuff was extremely symbolic rather than functional. And while I’m not like opposed to weddings as self expression… “green” aesthetics without “green” substance is just hypocrisy.

In general poor people have smaller environmental footprints than rich people. There are some exception, but in general the best thing rich people can do for the planet is live more like poor people. Fewer plane flights. Taking the bus. Having a small home. And to redistribute wealth so that poor people are less poor.

#commenting on without reblogging #fast fashion

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sparksflamesembersashes · 3 years

Text

Random musings on 10.18 Find Me

Other Carylers have spoken about the episode and their interpretations of it and what it means for Caryl and their future and I've been sharing those and don't have that much to add to what’s already been discussed. Others have written well thought out and detailed analyses and interpretations and said it way better than I ever could. Most of them have been writing about Caryl forever and I started less than a year ago. I do want to speak to some technical stuff and a few other things, since I never do know when to shut up. Spoilers for 10.18 below the cut.

Brief talk on techie stuff... Wow, the cinematography in the plus six are really taking it up a notch. 10.18 has some of the most gorgeous images in the history of the show. The colors, the framing, and Caryl; separated by a stretch of water that's a literal stand-in for the divide between them, in an episode stuffed with signs and symbols and parallels. "Find Me" has some of the most visually breathtaking shots in the history of TWD... and do you know why? Because the plus six were filmed on digital cameras, for the first time in the history of a show that has always been shot on 16 millimeter film. Turns out, the digital process not only has fewer "touch points" (thanks for nothing, COVID) but it's also cheaper, faster, and easier on the environment.

TWD almost switched to digital for Season 2, and while AK claims now that they can still give it that classic TWD look, in a 2019 interview posted on comicbook.com, she said they were committed to shooting on film to preserve it's look and feel (confirming that film and digital are noticeably not created equal, an opinion/truth they are apparently backing off of, now). If the new episodes look different, its because they are. I am torn between which style I prefer. The grainy, Kodak-y type images of TWD as shot on film are increasingly rare on any screen, simultaneously nostalgic and beautiful and born of toxicity. The gallons of chemicals used in developing standard film are not environmentally friendly and probably need to go the way of the dinosaur.

Digital is wonderful in its own ways, so minute in its details, and can easily capture images and light conditions otherwise incredibly difficult to duplicate on actual film... But digital doesn't look the same, it doesn't feel the same, in the way that CD's and vinyl records don't sound the same. Purists curl their lip at the new and improved version of the medium, but the truth is,most people don't notice the differences.

TWD has always used the sun and the moon to their best visual advantage and both the celestial backdrops show up in "Find Me." The sun filtering through the trees onto Daryl or in his general direction has made repeat appearances in S10. Is this a metaphor for his finally finding his enlightenment? (Or is it nothing deeper than AMC uses the light to make everything look as cool as possible?)

10.18 shows us more of Daryl's soul (in a single episode) than we've seen before. His character goes through all sorts of colors, screaming in the rainstorm, grimacing as puppy Dog licks his face, meeting and spending time with this strange, lonely, gruff, almost mirror reflection of himself, someone who is grieving and angry and alone. Fighting with Carol! A real fight, but an honest and not altogether unhealthy one. You gotta work through to acceptance and let go of the past before you can look forward to a future, and these two have enough trauma issues between them to fill a psychiatric journal. They’ve a long, arduous road ahead of them, but they WILL reach their destination. Together.

Daryl throwing the fish at Leah's door and Leah throwing the fish at Daryl are my favorite moments in the episode. I laughed out loud. I did not get the impression that they only encountered each other once every several months, I took it that the time jumps measured the progression of their relationship, i.e. that it took that long for them to warm up to each other. When Daryl did go to stay at Leah's, it was literally out of necessity, as he was getting frost bitten in the woods and probably would have lost at least a digit or two had he remained in his camp.

For the first time, I didn't really enjoy the Caryl banter? (Please don't hurt me.) There was a sadness, a tension, and a sense of loss there I just couldn't shake. Carol was trying to run away from the horrors of the Whisperer's aftermath, and Daryl knew it, and he was annoyed by it. Carol's attempts at lightheartedness seemed forced. I feel like Daryl is a man with a whole lot on his mind at this point, and that Carol is a woman who is habitually trying not to think about the real stuff if she can avoid it. She jokes and banters but she's almost too cheerful... or maybe it just seems that way because Daryl's so grim. Not grim as in we're-all-facing-our-end-of-days-doom grim, but not in a laughing mood where Carol's concerned. He thinks she's running again, and seeing Leah's cabin reminds him that Leah probably ran from him, too. He lost both his brothers, Rick and Merle. Daryl has abandonment issues and an overdeveloped sense of responsibility going back as far as we know. He loses people and can't find them again, no matter how much he searches.

Revisiting Leah's cabin, the devastation of Alexandria, and everything that's been building up over, about, and because of Carol has pressurized within Daryl till he finally takes a shot, and who can blame him? But he also shows his development and maturity by trying to express his disappointment with controlled words of frustration (compared to camp- or barn-rage Daryl in S2), telling Carol exactly what it is she does that's widening the chasm between them.

Carol to Daryl early in the episode "I don't want to lose you because you can't figure out when to stop," and Daryl to Carol "That's on you. 'Cause you don't know when to stop.") Daryl doesn't know when to stop searching for his lost brother and blaming himself for things, Carol didn't know when to stop her revenge-fueled pursuit of Alpha. Daryl also tells Carol "That's all that matters. You being right." (after she says she was right to go after and destroy Alpha to avenge her son.) At the end of the ep., Carol says it again: "I was right" (this time about their luck having run out), then she goes to fix the door.

So now Caryl know and have established what gets each other's goat. That could be a good thing, but tptb will undoubtedly attempt to convince us its a bad thing,, ya think? Neither of the characters knowing when to stop and their mutual annoyance over the fact could be something the show runners milk for a while.

Î wanted to know whether Daryl went back to the cabin after leaving his note, to see whether Leah had returned to it, or not. I want to know what Carol did with the note. Did she take it with her, or did she put it back? They never showed us. Daryl seemed anxious and tense about her finding it, and I did not miss the symbolism of Carol being the woman who eventually finds the note Daryl left behind years ago: "I belong with you. Find me." I mean, how perfect is that?

Contrary to spoilery bullshit stinking up the Twittersphere, Carol did not seem exactly “upset” at finding the note, though clearly she was sad. She knew exactly what the note was, so Daryl must’ve told her about it, that he left it. Maybe he didn't tell her exactly what it said or everything about Leah, but my impression was that she realized what it was and where they were, and it was all yesterday's news to her. Seeing the note seemed to make her sad for Daryl because she knows Daryl can't handle losing people, and that he punishes himself for failing to help or save people by pushing everybody away and isolating.

Leah didn't so much choose to be there in the cabin as she ran for her life from a dangerous situation and the cabin was just the place where she and her bitten son ended up.

So many yawning gaps in the Leah storyline. How often did they see each other? Did Daryl move in with her toward the end of their relationship? I felt like he did after the time she found him freezing in the woods, but that he'd leave for days to go look for Rick, or hunt, or who tf knows. Maybe he'd leave to see or meet Carol. Carol knew about Leah, but when? Before, or after it was happening? Why is that important? I just want to know when he told her. Really hoping they didn’t leave things purposely vague so they can fill in the gaps to screw with us later.

Timing is everything. Like, how much time passed between Leah telling Daryl to choose, and the time Carol told Daryl she couldn't keep visiting? Or did he leave Leah's cabin and return to it that same day? Which would imply Leah abandoned Daryl practically the instant he walked out the door following her ultimatum. It seems like Daryl was gone a while, it was dark when Leah told him to choose, and daylight in the scene with Carol at his camp and when he was walking in the woods. It could have been days. That makes a difference. Leah was obviously not Daryl's first choice, no matter that he ran back to her in the end.

The fact that Carol knew about Daryl's relationship with Leah is a crafty move on the show runner's part because we can't really be pissed at Daryl if Carol knew about it the whole time and was cool with it.... but we all know now that Daryl didn't tell her everything.

No one is talking about how Leah obviously abandoned Dog, she left him shut in the damn cabin for who knows how long after she left. And she DID leave. The cabin looked abandoned when Daryl left the note. He obviously went searching for her with Dog, but for how long?

Not to say there was nothing between them, but I never felt for an instant that Leah had Daryl's heart, or that he ever offered it up to her in the first place, but I am also 100% sure that’s because I’m ride-or-die for Caryl and can’t bear to entertain the thought. No matter what else they were, Daryl and Leah are isolated, damaged, traumatized people who wanted someone to hold on to. Someone to try and forget with. It's not like there were a lot of other people around to choose from.

So did Leah just leave Dog behind because the memories associated with him were too painful? (i.e. he was born on the day Leah's son died) Or did she feel that Daryl needed the companionship and gambled that Daryl would drop by soon and take him in? It really bothers me that she just split and left the dog locked in the cabin like that.

Grateful they didn't show us anything extra of Daryl seeming to genuinely give a shit, tbh. (Throwing a fish at someone's door, having sex with them, sleeping in their bed or eating their cooking doesn't necessarily constitute giving a shit in this world, just saying.) That was both refreshing (cuz u know, Caryl is endgame), and kind of tragic. I felt like Daryl was rather emotionally detached the entire time, but that Leah was maybe falling in love with him. Not in a good way, but in a possessive, demanding, all-or-nothing type of way.

How very very clever of AMC to leave us with all these ambiguities. So much room for interpretation, so many gaps to never be filled in. Bastards. On the bright side, all these holes in the story and missing material provide endless new opportunities for fanfic writers like me who can't break free of the bonds of canon. So, yay, I guess?

I am sad to give up the virgin Daryl trope, I was beginning to think that one was ours in canon to keep, but you know, it is what it is. It was a good, long run while it lasted, and I'm grateful we got to write inexperienced Daryl fics while we could still entertain the fantasy that Daryl was actually inexperienced. So, R.I.P. virgin Daryl. I'm not as upset about his getting laid as I thought I'd be (although it was incredibly underhanded, AMC, to pull this shit so very late in the game, there better be a good reason for it).

All the Leah thing means to me right now is that our man has probably picked up some skills during his time with her, and Carol's gonna be the ultimate beneficiary. Plus, Daryl's evolved over the years from throwing a fish at a woman's door to delivering her dinner on a tray with a flower, so...progress was made, even if he didn't start out with the woman we wish he had. (News Flash: The love of his life was unavailable and actually married to another man at the time, so there's that.)

There are a staggering number of Caryllels in this episode. Someone once said here that Kang loves her symbolism and they weren't wrong. No matter what's to come, we can be confident about where this road ends. At this point in TWD, to not eventually give us Caryl canon would be the absolute greatest trolling of a fandom in the history of trolling fandoms, and besides, we're getting a spin-off.

Another thing, the fact that Rick and Leah both basically disappeared on him shines a bright light on Daryl's determination to stick to Carol like glue in 10A and B. He was terrified that she was going to disappear on him, too.

What happened to the Caryl fandom following the spoilers wasn't worth it. How many times have we freaked out over spoilers? You think we'd learn. And you KNOW we are valued because AMC went so very far out of their way to provide the vaguest-ever depiction of a sexual encounter for Daryl. Remember the Eugene spying scene with Abe and Rosita, guys? Shane and Lori screwing on the ground in the woods? They could really have tortured us, and they chose to be kind.

I'm looking forward to "Diverged." Honestly, I could give a shit about most of the other characters, but they'll have to make do for us over the next couple of weeks. Just about the time 10.18's been dissected and interpreted to death, Caryl will reappear on our screens and mess with our hearts and minds some more. I can't wait.

Thank you for coming to my rant, and Caryl on!

#caryl rant #caryl spoilers

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quicksandblock · 4 years

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Hi!! I’ve just spent way too long writing down a probably excessive amount of worldbuilding for Jevin’s species in @martuzzio‘s hermit space outlaws AU!!! Disclaimer: I pulled everything scientific-sounding in this post straight out of my ass. Also I’m pretty sure I contradict things that have been established as canon at at least a couple points. martuzzio, please feel free to take this or leave it, or only take part of it, whatever you like. I just got hit by worldbuilding inspiration! And I had to get it out!!

History of Slimes!

Modern slimes’ ancestors were simple, non-intelligent slimes a lot like the Minecraft ones. Jevin’s species (the only intelligent species on the planet) is specifically descended from cave dwelling slimes, but there were also species that lived aboveground in damp environments such as swamps.

Ancient slimes needed very damp environments in order to survive. (Even the ones that lived aboveground were nocturnal, because direct sunlight could be deadly to them!) Modern slimes, including Jevin’s species, are much much more resilient than their ancestors, though hot and dry environments are still bad for them. This change came about because of a mass extinction event that killed most ancient slime species as well as most other life on the planet!

Slimeworld used to be a very wet place, but several million years ago, something happened to cause a planet-wide drought. The evolutionary pressures of the drought are what eventually led to the rise of Slimes as an intelligent species - before then, there was no intelligent life on the planet.

The cause would have to be unnatural, because I'm pretty sure there’s no natural way for a planet to just lose all its water. So I think some advanced spacefaring species came and drained most of the water off of Slimeworld for some reason. Why? Who knows, they’re probably all dead now.

This catastrophe left almost no habitats for slimes to live in. The surface-dwelling species almost all died immediately, with only a few hanging on in obscure corners of the world. The ones in the caves were a little safer, but not for long, because the devastation wasn’t just limited to slimes!

The extreme damage to Slimeworld’s environment killed off most life on the planet. The ancient cave slimes thrived for a little while! Dead stuff falling into caves from above had always been their main food source. But eventually the fallout of the drought settled and the famine hit them too.

Food was scarce and it wasn’t coming to them anymore. Anything that wanted to eat on this new world needed to be able to survive and ideally travel long distances in the harsher climates of the outside world. Most cave slimes couldn’t do that, so most cave slimes died off. But a few had mutations that let them do just well enough to survive. Those were the ones that evolved into Jevin’s species!

Ancient slimes spent a long time hanging around cave mouths, rolling out at night to find food and retreating back during the day. The ones that got the furthest and still managed to make it back were the most successful. The first big break of the Slime species in terms of intelligence was when they started carrying their shelter around with them instead of having to hide every day.

That’s right: the first human technology was sharp stick, but the first Slime technology was leaf hat.

Physiology of Slimes!

Ancient slimes started out pretty much the same as slime molds here on Earth. They were colonies of individual organisms that all acted together like a single body, but could survive just fine on their own. However over time they evolved to become more and more dependent on the colony, and the cells became more and more specialized. Now they’re something in between a colony and an individual! Each cell of their body is technically a different organism, but they can’t function outside of the colony. Also, each colony does have a single consciousness, they’re not hiveminds.

They evolved like this because in the harsh environment of the drought, a single cell would die in minutes. A colony could retain moisture for much longer! The fact that colonies were now staying together all the time let them start to evolve more internal organization, which led to the evolution of intelligence!

Slimes are very structurally simple. A slime is made up of a jelly-like mass and a more rubbery, less malleable core.

The jelly layer cells have a unique structure - under a microscope they kind of look like sea urchins, but with long flexible tendrils instead of spines. The way they tangle and cling lets the slime hold together and keep its structure instead of melting!

The tendrils also act as transmitters and receptors for the electrical signals sent out by the slime’s “brain.” Each cell is in constant communication with all the cells around it, which is how a slime moves and controls its body. They also pass nutrients to each other based on chemical signals!

However the structure of these cells means that they lose water very easily. In hot or dry environments, the tendrils of the cells retract to reduce the amount of surface area that water can escape from. This means they don’t cling together as easily, and the slime “melts.” Enough time in its melted state and the cells start to die because nutrients aren’t being passed around the body like they should be.

The jelly-layer cells are all pretty much interchangeable. They’re also very adaptable! When exposed to open air, jelly cells lock up their tendrils and partially dehydrate themselves, passing the liquid back into the mass of jelly behind them. The result is the thin, rubbery “skin” of a slime’s body. This was the most crucial adaptation that allowed modern Slimes’ ancestors to survive the drought, since it drastically improves their ability to retain water.

The core cells are different, more structured. The core is a slime’s brain. If most of a slime’s body is like jelly, the core would be like stringy algae. It’s still very flexible and malleable, but if it tears or breaks, that damage can’t just be healed by squishing the parts back together. The brain is usually kept scrunched up safely in the middle of the slime’s body, and there’s a dense layer of more rubbery jelly surrounding it.

Slimes can digest almost any organic material, but a lot of the life on their planet evolved to be toxic to them, and if something is toxic to slimes you better believe it’s toxic to most everything else. There are a lot of really weird toxins native to Slimeworld!

Culture of Slimes!

First I’ll just copy/paste the ask about Slime fashion I sent to martuzzio a while ago since I am still enamored with it:

idea: since they're blind, Jevin's species's fashion is entirely based around the vibrations they make when they contact whatever surface they're moving on. you pick up different materials or combinations of material depending on what "look" you're going for and hold it on the outside of your body. they could use all kinds of material for this - cloth, metal, powders, whatever. you arrange different items in patterns on your surface to create different "outfits" (soundscapes) of vibration. the more complex the pattern, the fancier and more formal the "dress." this stuff makes it a bit more difficult to move since it reduces their traction, and it also takes effort to maintain more complicated "outfits", so dressing up is really only for formal situations or showing off. casual dress is keeping just a few things you like the sound of on your surface, and it's also perfectly acceptable to wear nothing at all. of course this all looks really weird to people with eyes.

Slime language doesn’t just involve sound. It also incorporates chemical signals (which give a sense of the slime’s mood and fulfill the same function as body language does for us humans) and touch. Two slimes having a conversation will press tendrils of their body together and communicate with something like a cross between braille and sign language. This is actually the main component of their language - sound is kind of secondary. It’s impossible for a non-slime to “speak” the slime language without the help of technology, and slimes can’t make the range of sounds that humans do with their vocal cords. Fortunately they can hear at least as well as humans and using a soundboard to talk is pretty intuitive for them!

Most slime cities are either underground or underwater. The oceans of Slimeworld are pretty densely populated! It actually led to a lot of environmental problems in the Slime species’s history, because there isn’t a ton of ocean left to live in. A lot of aquatic animals on the planet went extinct during the slimes’ industrial revolution a thousand years or so ago.

Slimes obviously don’t have visual art since they’re blind. Some of the main art forms of the species are perfume and culinary art! Because of all the stuff on their planet that’s toxic to them, slimes evolved a very keen sense of taste/smell. They can detect minuscule amounts of a chemical. Most other species can’t appreciate their art because their senses aren’t fine enough to pick up on all the subtle flavors and smells! Also slimes’ ideas about what tastes and smells good can be... eccentric.

They also do sculpture and music. They have some really awesome musical instruments because they can shape their body to whatever shape it needs to be to use the instrument!

Personal space isn’t really a thing in slime culture. Their language requires being in constant contact to speak, so casual touch with strangers isn’t just normal, it’s the polite thing to do. If there’s a group of slimes in a room, each one is pretty much always touching at least one or two others. Blobbing together is natural for them!

...aaand that’s all I got for now, because it’s 4:30 AM. I hope this is coherent because I didn’t really edit it! If you have literally any questions at all please let me know! because there are certainly details that didn’t make it in here!!

#martuzzio #space outlaws lore #hermitcraft #worldbuilding #slimes #ijevin #I don't even watch jevin... I just really like worldbuilding and I love this au......#and now it's almost 5 am help me

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arsonist-chicken · 3 years

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Lockdown Tag game; I got tagged by @we-are-not-amoosed thank you! I keep forgetting you know I exist, also I hope you had fun being drunk at midnight on a Tuesday hjhjhj.

First of all, a big FUCK YOU to tumblr, because I was at the LAST QUESTION and opened ONE NEW TAB to look up the word windmill, and when I went back to tumblr, my post was GONE, so here we go again. If an answer seems short of half-answered, it’s because I didn’t feel like typing everything again.

Are you staying home from work or school?

HA. Yes. Love that for me. Not at all. My university opened for 1 1/2 weeks in March 2020, then for another 4 weeks in November, and it has been closed ever since. I’m in my dormitory in the town I study in, not home home at my parents’ place though, because that would Not end well. The internet connection sucks though, that’s really annoying with distance learning. When I go into The City for A Thing, I usually cycle past my department and it makes we Yearn to go back in there, which is a thing I didn’t think would ever happen, but one pandemic later and suddenly everyone would kill for the change to go back to work/school in person, wouldn’t we?

If you’re staying home who is there with you?

I live in a dormitory, so technically, there’s a lot of other people there, but I don’t really talk to any of them except for when we meet in the hallways or the kitchen or wherever, so really it’s just me, the stuffed animal my friend got me last year because I kept whining that I didn’t have a cat like her at her boyfriend’s place where she basically lives now, and the birds who come to eat from the bird house I put on my balcony.

If it makes you feel any better @we-are-not-amoosed, not that I think it will but hey, who knows, my twin sister is moving out in December, so I will be the only child at home with my parents during summer/Christmas/Easter break, which will be Not Fun. I’ll take another 1 ½ years for my degree, and another 2 if I do a master’s, so that’s about... 1-3/4 years I’ll be alone with my parents while my perfect sister gets to move out and move on and live Adult Life fully respected as an Adult working with renewable energy, as opposed to the Disappointment who takes 5 years for a 3 year degree in a field that’s hard to find employment in and never Does Stuff like my mother wants me to Do Stuff.

Are you a homebody?

I’m with @we-are-not-amoosed there, I didn’t know what that meant, but Pons says “Stubenhocker”. A bit I guess? I’m definitely fine being home by myself if I’m unbothered there (read: not at my parents’ when they are home) and I do need time by myself to recharge. But probably like everyone else, I crave and enjoy social contact a ton more than Before. I meet a friend fairly often (aka the only friend still here instead of home for distance learning), and today we worked together (handing out flyers which idk why the company pays us to hand them out, like 95% of them get thrown away immediately, but hey, we’re getting paid 🤷) and then went to sit by the river, and there were SO MANY people there, it was not *entirely* corona-compliant (but outside with town-typical wind, so it’s fine I think, with my non-existent knowledge about spreading of viruses and such), but honestly? I just couldn’t be bothered to care in that moment: it was warm and sunny, I was there with a very close friend, people were laughing and dancing to good music, it was just so GOOD to be there, almost as if Corona didn’t exist. The police even drove by like they always do to check for people smoking weed and didn’t say anything like usual, so hey. It was just so good, okay? So, homebody? Within reason, I guess, but less than Before, probably.

An event you were looking forward to that eventually got cancelled?

Oh boy, SO MANY. The one I’m most bitter about was a very prestigious international interpreting event, that would have involved me interpreting in the actual European Parliament building in Strasbourg. But there was also a festival week with my best friend I was looking forward to, maybe even a second festival with another friend, my company’s ten year anniversary party, etc. And Prides! I came out to my family in 2019, and was like “Yay, I can finally go to Prides now!” but well 🤷

DUDE SO MANY ARE YOU KIDDING ME

CONCERTS: 5SOS (I SHOULD HAVE heard “Old Me” in a crowd full of other people getting nostalgic for their past selves, but NO), Louis Tomlinson, Harry Styles, Rock im Park aka GREEN DAY AND RISE AGAINST (I have been trying to see Rise Against for YEARS and ALWAYS something gets in the way!), one or two small local artists.

ERASMUS: I should have gone to Russia for a semester to improve my not-too-great speaking skills but Corona said FUCK YOU you will study ALONE and LONELY in your ROOM like a child on TIMEOUT

PRIDE: none in particular, just generally it would have been nice to go, maybe even with a friend to the one in Vienna

Also just general stuff like birthdays and get-togethers with friends, and my club’s annual get-together was cancelled too, and it would have been my friend, sister and my’s 10-year-anniversary, so that sucked to get cancelled.

What movies have you watched recently?

Movies? Pfuh, I don’t know, I’m not really into movies anymore, tbh. TV-series and games are more my jam.

Descendants 1 +2, I finally watched those after I read so much fanfiction that I knew the plot without having watched a single scene that isn’t a music video that youtube kept showing me. They’re nice enough, if you overlook the fact that they make a 16-year-old king while there’s still perfectly capable adults but whatever, there’s a lot of cute moments (Carlos and Jane omg) and a lot of funny ones (UMA. Is HILARIOUS), the music kind of slaps ngl, and arguably Mal + Evie are queer and in love. I still want to watch the third soon, and rewatch The Hunger Games since it showed up on my dash recently.

What shows are you watching?

Rewatching Julie and the Phantoms forever until the end of time (or until season 2 comes out @netflix, and I started Brooklyn 99 again for background noise/low-energy background watching. A friend recommended Ginny & Georgia and it’s okay enough, but it’s written in a way that makes you want to keep watching because there’s just such whack stuff happening that you want it explained; it’s 1h episodes though, that’s a bit hard on my attention span. I want to rewatch FMA:B some time, too.

What are you reading?

@we-are-not-amoosed said “tumblr posts and the texts I translate at work” and if that isn’t a Mood. I’d love to read more, but my attention span is shit and my reading comprehension even worse. I *am* reading “Explain to me like I’m 5” atm which explains stuff easily, like, well, you’re 5 years old, so you’d think a 23-year-old could understand, no? No. I read it, I vaguely understand some stuff, I close the book, and it’s G-O-N-E, not a single thing left. Literally the only thing I remember – and this is why I had to re-write ^^^all that because I needed to look up the English word for Windräder, if that’s even what they’re called in German but whatever I’m tired – is that insects and birds die a LOT in windmills when they get too close and get sucked in and can’t escape anymore, which is one of the reasons windmills aren’t as environmentally friendly as we thought when we built them. Anyhow, I’d love to read more, but idk, there are a lot of posts on here, some I’ve reblogged, that are like.. something something reading fanfiction is easier because you already know the characters and universe something something less mental energy something something idk. Yeah I mostly read fanfiction these days. I hope I’ll get back to reading books sometime soon-ish, I have a long list.

What are you doing for self-care?

Hm. I meet my friend I mentioned above pretty regularly, and I have a notebook that I write stuff in that was nice or made me happy when that happened (like today: working with my friend and then sitting among people by the river in the sun with said friend). I’m getting a tattoo next week (3 cat paws + 1 dog paw = technically my two cats and my late cat and dog, but well, two of them are dead, so I asked two friends for a paw print of their cat and dog, so I’ll always have those two with me, too). I try to make a to-do-list each day, but I rarely stick to it. I apply eyeshadow and body glitter if I want to, I dye my hair bright colors (think pink, purple, blue, red, maybe orange next). I always have chocolate in my room meaning I stopped depriving myself of food I like/food in general because it’s “healthier”/”I need to lose weight” etc. all that you know all those great reasons. I went to a doctor about my knee and it ended up being useless but I went, so.

I also went to see a therapist but she is very useless, like “ended our first session telling me well she doesn’t know how to help me/if she can help me at all/if therapy would even help me” kind of useless; I’ll go again next week and see if that changes or if next week will be the last week and I’ll go back to Dealing Like Before, which is not great but whatever. I’ve lived until 23 without therapy, surely I can keep doing it. Therapy’s expensive if it’s not covered (which this doctor IS which is why I went to her but it’s still a waste of time) and if it’s not gonna work/not gonna help me apparently or if there’s nothing actually wrong OR that therapist is just like, bad at her job, what’s the point of going yk?

Uggggh, I hope the swimming pools and Zumba class will be open again soon, Zumba (also with said friend) is AMAZING, easy fun exercise you don’t need any knowledge or skill for and you can hang out with your friend by the street after for an hour and say goodbye five times and then remember one more thing you wanted to actually still mention and stand there for another 20 minutes hjhjhj. Best times, truly.

Idk this is probably not self-care but I got a small job working with Austrian German and it gnetflix the chance to save up a bit and add it to my resume and also hopefully get my mother to shut up about my non-existent job prospects for a bit, so that’s kind of helping in making me feel a bit more like I’m Being An Adult (also because it means I have to learn how to change my insurance and finance department stuff now, yey).

Tagging: @languages-and-else @psychicbouquetblaze-stuff @the-real-daddy-van-der-bellen @sunsetcurveofficial if you feel like doing it, also sorry @we-are-not-amoosed it became such a rambled long answe on almost everything hjhjhj

#tag games #me talks #covid-19 #swearing #It’s a post about corona there Must be swearing

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