#or maybe not having a name that people consistently mispronounce

[beelzzzebub]

me every other day almost accidentally posting my real name on this site because for some reason i keep forgetting that y'all don't know me irl and this is supposed to be a sort of anonymous blog

#it's whatever #although i did have a nightmare once that i like posted my full name and location and a bunch of like really important information #and then wasn't allowed to delete it for some reason #and i was like super panicked about it #anyways it's chill #but also lowkey a bit sad bc i do really love my name and i wish i could share it with some of you guys! #but also like #anybody i know or have known irl would totally be able to id that #and i'm also super paranoid in like internet safety terms #so i def don't feel comfy sharing that just like generally #but also i'm like so happy that bee is what i ended up being called on here bc that's like really nice :) #anyway #i've thought a lot in the past about what it would be like to have another name #i always liked the thought of a gn name like dylan or something #or maybe not having a name that people consistently mispronounce #but like i'm kind of chill with it now #like i have my grandma's names and i never met her but i really appreciate that #anyways this has gone really long and off topic #sorry lmao #ok bye #boink

[directdogman]

Did you take inspiration for Karen's last from the FNaF trilogy? I was reading The Twisted Ones and there's a guy named Officer Dunn

Nah, not consciously, though I have read FNaF:TSE and remember the character. I'd honestly believe it was the case though if I didn't happen to remember the exact process that caused me to end up with the surname. It'd be out of character for me to base a DT character name off a fictional character (real world names are fair game/referenced in many names in DT!)

I kinda wanted to give a main character a surname that's also a colour to reference the fact that the main datables have consistent palettes and a nod to the fact that DT uses colour theory all over the game (with grouped colour themes/vibrant weird palettes on different screen bgs.) Hell, it's basically a trope in fiction to give characters surnames based on colours that correspond to (or suit) them somehow, take Walter White and Jesse Pinkman from Breaking Bad, say, a show that goes p ham with its colour theory (namely consistently incorporating it into names/costume design.) Anyway, i briefly considered 'Cyan' as Randy's surname (bc cyan is the base colour for teal, which is the colour of Randy's head, and cygnus means swan, which contains several of the same letters) but, the word 'cyan' is fairly commonly mispronounced by people who've never heard it said aloud (and when people do say the word right, they still sometimes tend to switch which syllable is stressed, at least in my experience hearing people say it) and I figured Randy deserved a surname that everyone can read the same way first time. The poor guy has enough confusion going on in his life without people misreading his name!

So, I brainstormed a colour based surname for Karen (already having most of the others decided at this point afaik), with the aim of maybe using an autumnal colour to match her palette (orange, beige, cream, brown) and then decided to look up 'surnames that mean colours' and voila, 'Dunn' came up on a long list, derived from 'donn', irish gaelic for brown. Also, sounds like 'done'. Like "so, so done." Relates to a colour in her palette (her printer head is brown) and there's a separate pun built in that suits her dilemma (working a job she HATES.) It was a no-brainer for sure.

Y'know, funnily enough, this isn't even the first time I've seen people assume I lifted a DT character name from FNaF. Hell, I've seen folks theorize that I lifted Marla's (Callum Crown's deceased + (formerly) long-suffering wife) name from the identically named character in that very same FNaF novel series, when I actually picked it bc the name is a variant of Marlene, which is in turn derived from Mary Magdalene from biblical canon.

There's biblical symbolism in DT's canon surrounding Crown and his inner circle (y'know, with the whole failed messiah schtick + him helping the disabled walk again with his prosthetics) and Marla's name is an extension of it. Magdalene is notable in biblical canon for being the one woman Jesus consistently traveled with (y'know, like Marla, the one woman in Crown's (quite typically) male-dominated cabinet) and also the fact that Magdalene was allegedly the first to witness Jesus' empty tomb post-resurrection... Marla wound up with sole custody of Crown's husk right after his accident. Both ended up with first dibs on the (now vacant) space their old messiah/former companion once filled. Brutal.

[caramelmochacrow]

every time i finish a term/quarter of school, i just have. thoughts.

cut bc. yeah.

i really hate my full name. not because (or not just because) it's my technical dead name, but because of how no matter what, people mispronounce it. no matter where i am.

my first and second names are literally pronounced how they are spelt. it's quick, simple and fine. but my classmates (before NZ) kept mispronouncing my first name. i just stopped correcting it after a week because they weren't good with english (well, most) so i understood why. my second name is the easiest to pronounce among my names, but not for kiwis.

they say it without the slightly hard R in my name. they say it softly, as though it were an L. i understand why, i know why. but i feel so sick of it, like it isnt me. that isnt how you say it. im not that person.

the only people who pronounce it right are a few maori students, international students, and just people who are not white. my friends -- most of whom are around asia -- pronounce it with an R. every time i hear them call my name i feel comfortable, i am that person. i dont even care that it's my technical dead name. that's me.

every time, one of my friends always say it w the R like that. like, consistently. and i feel happy thinking about it.

but you know what? a teacher still manage to literally mispronounce it so bad it's a whole other name.

the teacher that was supposed to say my name in my award ceremony today managed to say it w an i before. like. how!?!?!?!?!?!??! there is no i. there is a fucking L. like. ????

in the ceremony, she managed to pronounced my name right, but my last name was always. consistently. mispronounced. im not surprised bc it was spanish. but it's just. yeah wow. okay. sure. whatever. the staff will apologize when they mispronounce one of the maori students' name, but not THREE of the filipino students called to be given an award? okay. that's fine. whatever. tagalog is hard to pronounce. who gives a fuck. tagalog isnt well know to the point people call it 'filipino' EVEN THOUGH. SAYING TAGALOG IS FILIPINO. IS LIKE SAYING "OH, HINDI IS THE SAME AS PUNJABI" EVEN THOUGH IT FUCKING ISNT. OR EVEN "HINDI IS INDIAN." LIKE. !?!?!?!? IT'S LIKE YOUR SAYING THE NORTH ISLAND DIALECT OF MAORI IS THE SAME AS THE SOUTH ISLAND DIALECT.

it's saying ilocano isnt a thing, bisaya isnt a thing, like. all of the dialects in the philippines dont fucking exist. you are erasing my fucking history bitch.

people not knowing is fine, i know people don't know, but when i correct you more than once, i think you should get it in your head now. most of the maori students say 'tagalog' rather than 'filipino' but holy shit most if not ALL of my white classmates (except for my friends) say filipino. you SPEAK filipino. you're speaking FILIPINO.

I AM FILIPINO THANK YOU BUT IT'S TAGALOG. I SPEAK TAGALOG. like.

it must be bc of how much my schools told me to be proud of my heritage but every time people get something slightly wrong, i get annoyed. not to the point i scream at them, but i just get annoyed and think 'that's wrong.... but eh they not've known' and move on.

one of my classmates yelled to my filipino aquaintance that she only knew 'filipino' songs. im sorry bitch but what the actual fuck makes you think she doesnt know a single 'western' song? fucking cunt. dont assume shit. she knows english songs you just love thinking that all filipino people arent smart. also the way she said it made it sound like she only knew 'tagalog songs'. as if opm doesnt have any english songs. opm means original pinoy music, not only ptagalog music. it means music made by filipino people. you know IV of spades? they made songs like 'come inside of my heart', 'hey barbara'. which are all in english.

lola amor? they made 'maybe maybe' which is all in english.

actually yk what im gonna listen to some opm rn.

#venting tw #venting cw #vent cw #vent tw #it's not in a bad way (me being negative) it's just me being pissed off at how people treat my name and filipino people.

[sepublic]

The Ghost and Andrea Davenport?

Unnecessary analysis here, but Andrea and Geoff are actually kind of foils to each other?

A young human girl, an elderly male ghost. Andrea’s name is constantly mispronounced but otherwise (presumably) spelled correctly; Geoff’s name is pronounced the same across two spellings, but he has an issue with the wrong spelling being used.

Andrea is a confident, entitled popular girl who dislikes the bright Molly McGee and has no interest in her friendship; Geoff is (presumably) a loser who craves the friendship of Scratch and is kind of an insecure people-pleaser. Which, this could get into a weird meta about how Molly and Geoff are parallels, while Scratch and Andrea are as well...

But regardless, I have to wonder if this an intentional asymmetry going on here, and if later on in the show, the writers will play with these two foils by having them stick together, the way Molly and Scratch do! Andrea and Geoff... That’d be an unusual pairing.

After all, it’d be neat to find another human-ghost duo for Molly and Scratch to bounce off of and inevitably compare and contrast, so we might see Andrea get roped into the paranormal after all! And it’d be interesting to see Andrea the human learn to soften up, as a foil to Scratch the ghost’s development; Plus a bone for Geoff as he finds another friend, too!

Having another human-ghost duo could also be a fun way to shake up the status quo, although I could also see Libby and Geoff going together, because they’re parallels too! Maybe Libby and Harriet... Seeing as how Libby introduced Harriet and helped her ‘move onto with new toes.

...At this point, we may as well assign every human their own ghost! Maybe that’ll be a series finale when Scratch inevitably has to confront how Molly improving Brighton’s improved atmosphere is conflicting with his regular mandates!

And it’ll make Molly less lonely to have others with a similar situation to her, maybe lead to an understanding with Andrea... And/or further conflict because I could definitely see Andrea abusing Geoff’s powers, and that dude is quite the people-pleaser alas. Maybe that could lead to an arc where Geoff learns to stand up for himself and have a higher self-esteem, while Andrea chillaxes? Idk.

(Also I find it hilarious that as much of a loser as he is amongst Ghosts, Scratch DOES consistently get his job done, but I don’t know how much of that is his own genuine ability, or the community just being kinda glum in general. Maybe his unlikability plays a direct role in Scratch being so scary, lol!)

#the ghost and molly mcgee #andrea davenport #tgamm Geoff #Molly McGee #tgamm scratch #meta #narrative foils #speculation

[four-loose-screws]

An Interview with Mr. Toshiyuki Toyonaga about Fire Emblem (Claude‘s Japanese VA), Pg. 7

Chatting As Just a Player

As a player, how did you play “Three Houses?”

Toyonaga     When I started, I planned to complete two playthroughs, and on my first playthrough, I didn’t look up anything at all.  Because of that, I didn’t know things like how to scout the characters from the other classes. Someone told me “It seems like you’re missing something,” and I thought, then maybe I have to raise their support level? But even when I did that, I still couldn’t recruit them, so next I thought that maybe it had to do with stats, and did a lot of trial and error. I only realized that it might have something to do with weapon proficiency (skill levels) and support levels during the latter half of the Academy Phase. Because of all of that, I was filled with wishes that I had recruited this character and that character as I was thrust into the War Phase, and I was filled with regret during the three-way battle. (Chapter 17 and the battle at Gronder)

Because you encountered the other students as enemies, right?

Toyonaga     Yes. I remember thinking “Curse you!!” when Bernadetta attacked from the ballista because I didn’t scout her. Laughs. Having to fight the characters that I wanted to come to my side was really painful as I cleared the map. And so, that was how I played the game. I remember thinking it was a particularly pure playthrough. I also remember thinking “There’s so, so many of these!” as I collected the fallen items from around the monastery. When I think of the lost items, I remember stuff like the fish. Laughs. Fishing was fun too, and so was growing things in the greenhouse… though I forgot about it a lot, so there were some plants that didn’t grow. As you can guess, I ended up harvesting what I planted before the time skip five years later, after returning to Garreg Mach.

Which difficulty level did you choose?

Toyonaga     On my first playthrough, I chose normal classic. I play with the thought process that has followed me throughout the series, that I can’t let anyone die, so I have never once chosen casual mode.

We’d like to ask you about what impressions you were left with when you played normal mode.

Toyonaga     I thought that even normal was hard too! I progressed through the game without utilizing the free maps much at all. I only leveled up by completing the main maps and paralogues, so the War Phase was tough. There were many times where Claude and Byleth did nearly all of the work. I also gave Lysithea Lorenz’s Thyrsus Staff, giving her four range, so there were also a lot of situations where her magic did a lot of work even from far away. There ended up being a huge gap between Leonie and Ignatz’s levels and everyone else’s, and felt sorry about that as I continued through the game.

Did you make Lorenz a physical or a magic unit?

Toyonaga     I made Lorenz a Dark Knight. He was closer to a dark mage cavalry unit. Also, I remember thinking it was kinda cool that Grappler Raphael could attack four times in a row as he punched his enemies with all his might. Marianne fulfilled the role of the healer, and Hilda swung around her axe with great force. However, my Hilda’s defense didn’t grow very much, so I kept it in my mind that she couldn’t go out on many risky missions as I played.

What scenes did you like, or what scenes left an impression on you?

Toyonaga     I liked the mystery of the scenes where Byleth and Sothis spoke in the place that resembled a throne room, that was a sort of spirit world. I also really liked Seteth and Flayn’s conversations.

They’re all characters that are all similar to each other in some way!

Toyonaga     They are. When their allies learned of Flayn and Seteth’s true identities and relationship, a lot happened, and their allies changed a bit… Aside from that, because Claude is an archer, I also really liked being able to hear his conversations with Shamir, as they are both archers. It felt like she was a big sister.

The developers said that this game’s storytelling, and the creation of how noble society functions, among other aspects, were developed with Genealogy of the Holy War in mind, so what sort of impression did that have on you, as someone who has many memories of that game?

Toyonaga     There were many times where I thought that might be the case, that Three Houses was based on Genealogy, but as we talk about it now, I sort of think that might be why it was so easy for me to become fond of Three Houses… They both feature a type of war that doesn't really feel rewarding at all… And questions like “Who’s really behind all of this?” and “Is fighting this fight really what’s right?”, that deepened Genealogy's story, were things I also felt really strongly during the War Phase of Three Houses.

We agree! And you can even play the villain’s side of the story.

Toyonaga     About that, I thought that Hubert and Dedue’s roles were so unfair! They are considered the closest confidants to Edelgard and Dimitri respectively, existing as their right-hand men. The Golden Deer don’t have anyone in that position… Lorenz would never be someone like that.

Both     Laugh.

Toyonaga     Lorenz finally comes to support Claude during the War Phase, but the way that Hubert and Dedue are so devoted because they are right-hand men is really moving, and as men, it’s so cool! Oh, I mean “man,” as in “manly man...”* I could talk on and on like this for five minutes about just one character. Laughs.

(above) Hubert and Dedue both serve their lord without any concern for their own well-being. Also, Mr. Toyonaga also told us that he didn’t choose a different class from the Golden Deer even for his second playthrough, so we showed him scenes like how manly (!?) Hilda acts when she faces Claude as an enemy.

It feels weird to hear your own voice

Did your impression of Claude change after recording?

Toyonaga     My original impression of Claude was that his core personality cannot be changed, but aside from that, he gives off the mood that he has the flexibility to accept the opinions of many types of people… That sort of image. That part didn’t change the entire time we were recording, so after recording, I don’t think my thoughts changed then, either. I just thought from time to time that he says some pretty snobby things. Laughs.

He does. Laughs.

Toyonaga     He talks like that to the professors, to his fellow students in his class… ‘He… He can say nasty things like that?!’ I thought. But I think it’s still a good part about him, or not bad, at least.

So your image for performing Claude’s role was consistent from beginning to end. Does that mean that you didn’t have to do many retakes?

Toyonaga     We hardly did any retakes. I corrected myself on my own when I mispronounced town names that were difficult to say, and things like that, but aside from those physically difficult to perform lines, I don’t feel that we did that many retakes.

So how did you feel as a player when you heard Claude’s voice?

Toyonaga     This much is obvious, but when I first heard my own performance in a Fire Emblem game, it felt weird. And on top of that, I don’t know why exactly, but I wanted Claude to get married and have a paired ending, and I chose Professor Byleth. So I ended up confessing to myself! Laughs.

Laughs.

Toyonaga     I enjoyed the game in a way that only I could. But it was really weird the entire time. Hm, how do I put it… I wanted to express myself in the world of Fire Emblem, and wanted to confirm that I did a great job of that, so I listened really carefully to my own performance as I played the game.

That’s the point you discussed before, that you wanted a portrayal that made the game feel like it really happened in history, right?

Toyonaga     Yes. Was I able to express what I wanted how I wanted? I played the game with that thought in my head. ...And lastly, this is completely unrelated, but as I played the game, I was also thinking “Ingrid sure is really cute!” the entire time. Laughs.

#fire emblem #fe #fe3h #fe16 #claude #claude von reigen #toshiyuki toyonaga #toyonaga toshiyuki #nindori #nintendo dream #nintendo #switch #nintendo switch #japan #japanese #translation #claude va interview

[wordupcomics]

We would like to see more about the adventures of the boys (Violet, Scoops, Becky and Tobey) when they were teenagers we really love to see our favorite team interacting with each other 💗

Hey Anon! Sorry this took so long! It took me a while to think of things and then when I did I wanted to draw them but by that point I'd already kept you waiting for a while so I only have two drawings but I have a lot of ideas I will share through text instead!

First lets do the moment with the drawings

So it starts with the gang as teenagers, all four of them in detention. The girls and the boys got detention for different reasons, and ask the other why they are there. First Becky and Violet ask Tobey and Scoops why they're there. It's a long answer, so I'll just have Becky sum it up for you

Becky:...So...let me get this straight...Scoops saw Mr. Smith and Mrs. Stevens kissing in the parking lot, and decided to right an article about it and why we should remain loyal to our partners...and then Tobey pointed out that if anyone saw that article he could damage Mr. Smith and Mrs. Stevens marriages and get in trouble. So to avoid getting in trouble you two decided to flush the article down one of the toilets in the boys locker room and it clogged the pipes and flooded the boys locker room and you two got detention for causing damage to school property????

Tobey: Yes we hear the irony that we did that to avoid Scoops getting in trouble and then ultimately got in trouble because of it

Becky: Not even on my list of concerns right now. First of all...why did you have to destroy the article? Why couldn't you have just not published it? You could have hidden it or thrown it away?

Violet: No they should have recycled it!

Scoops: What if I recycled it and someone found it? Or what if I lost it and someone found it? it would spread like wildfire!

Becky: Okay, but why flush it down the toilet??? You could have shred it?

Violet: Or painted over it!

Becky: Or used one of Tobey's robots to destroy it

Violet: Or you guys could have thrown it in my fire pit when you came over next weekend to roast marshmallows!

Tobey and Scoops (realizing they're right): ...

Becky: And secondly (Looks to Violet as they both try to choke down a laugh) Mr. Smith and Mrs. Stevens are married

Scoops: I know, that's why I wrote an article on cheating Becky!

Violet: No, you guys, they're married to each other

Tobey and Scoops: ...What..??

Becky: Mrs. Stevens wanted to keep her last name so she never changed it

Violet: They've been happily married for twenty years

(Tobey and Scoops then realize they got detention for basically no reason at all as Becky and Violet burst out laughing):

Tobey: Oh yeah! And why are you two here, hmm? What bad thing could the two most rule-following students in the school have possibly done to end up in detention with us?

Becky and Violet (paniced): No reason

Scoops: No no no! We told you, now you gotta tell us! What'd you two do?

Violet: ....Well...Becky brought her laptop to school today so we could look at Pretty Princess fanart at lunch...

Scoops: At lunch? A teacher shouldn't give you detention for goofing off on a computer at lunch

Becky: Yeah the problem wasn't when we were looking at it...the problem was the particular fanart that just happened to be on the computer when the teacher passed by...

Tobey: ... What in the world kind of fanart were you two looking at?????

Becky: We were just looking at normal fanart! As it turns out some people one the internet are...messed up and we accidentally ran into some fanart that...um...

Violet: Will haunt my nightmares for the rest of my life...

Becky: and was ultimately deemed "highly inappropriate" by the teacher...

(Tobey and Scoops then burst out laughing):

I'm gonna put some more scenarios under the cut!

Becky begged Tobey to read this amazing book she just loves:

Becky: Have you read it yet?! Wasn't it amazing?!

Tobey: ...Becky you are one of my dearest friends but I have to be honest with you-This was the worst book I have ever had the displeasure to read

Becky: (Yanks the book out of Tobey's hands and "covers it's ears") (Gasps) IT CAN HEAR YOU!!!

Tobey: ....please see a shrink...

Mrs. McCallister is finally ready for Tobey to meet her new boyfriend and Tobey is super nervous. Scoops gets this idea that he'll look up the guy in the phone book, call him, and pretend he's randomly interviewing people on the phone for a school article, when instead he's actually getting information Tobey needs to get to know the guy better so he knows what to expect (fun fact: this man would later become Tobey's stepdad, his name is Alex). Scoops has the phone on speaker so Tobey can hear

After a bunch of oddly specific questions:

Alex, on the other end: ...Are you a friend of Claire's boy, Tobey?

Scoops: ...

Alex: ...

Tobey: ...

Scoops: Bye! (hangs up in panic)

Tobey: SCOOPS!

Scoops: He was on to us! I panicked! What was I supposed to do???

Tobey: NOT THAT! YOU MAY AS WELL HAVE SAID YES!

Scoops wrote an article about WordGirl. He didn't see anything wrong with it...Becky did...

Becky: How could you say that about me!?

Scoops: I didn't think you'd care!

Becky: Well I do!

Scoops: I'm sorry, Becky. I didn't know you felt so insecure about this or I never would have written it, I promise!

Becky: Insecure! I am NOT insecure!

Scoops (raising an eyebrow): ... define insecure

Becky: ...

Scoops: ...

Becky: I'm leaving! (leaves)

Tobey is in the park reading, Violet is also at the park, doing an art show. She walks up to Tobey all sad and sits next to him

Violet: Hi..

Tobey: What's the matter?

Violet: Someone came to my art show and said he thought all my art was terrible...

Tobey: ...Who in the world would say such a thing???

Violet: That guy over there...

Tobey: You know he's probably just jealous of how talented you are and is masking his insecurities behind rude comments

Violet: ... You really think so?

Tobey: Oh yes, I used to do it all the time..I still catch myself doing it to be honest

Violet: Well now I feel bad for him..

Tobey: Well there's nothing you can do about him, so if I were you I'd just go and continue your art show like normal

Violet: You're right Tobey! Thanks! (leaves for her art show)

Tobey: (pulls out his remote) Insult my dear innocent friend? Not on my watch

Becky and Violet talking about Pretty Princess

Becky: I mean...I know none of it is canon but it's still a good idea right?

Violet: Becky! This is the best AU idea I've ever heard!

Becky: (gasps) I'll write fanfiction for it and you draw fanart for it?

Violet: YES!

Becky and Violet: (Excited screams)

Tobey, now officially having given up crime, is doing community service (of his own volition) to make up for his past actions. Becky, Scoops and Violet come up

Becky: How's community service going?

Tobey: It's awful! But I'm glad I'm doing it

Violet: Want some help?

Tobey: No, it wouldn't feel right

Scoops: Well, can we just sit here and keep you company then?

Tobey: ... Of course!

In high school, Violet got into acting and often performed in school plays. Her first play ever she invited all her friends to come see, and of course they were happy to watch her have fun on stage! However when they saw the play it was....horrendous. Worst thing they'd ever seen. After the play was over Violet happily came over to ask them what they thought of it. Important note: Violet and Scoops were dating at the time

Tobey, seeing Violet coming: What do I do??? I can't tell Violet it was terrible! It would break her heart! But I can't lie to her either! That's wrong!

Becky: Tobey, relax, just do what I do

Violet: Hey guys! What'd you think?

Becky: you looked like you were having so much fun!

Tobey and Scoops: Yeah you did!

Violet: I was! But what did you think of the play itself?

Becky: ...Well...honestly you guys mispronounced so many words I couldn't really enjoy it. I mean it's not your fault, no one uses those words anymore but you know...I know how they're pronounced and can't stand when words are pronounced wrong so...

Violet: Oh that makes sense! We'll work on that! Maybe you can tell me how to pronounce them!

Becky: Sure!

Violet: Tobey what did you think?

Tobey: Um...I wasn't really a fan of the genre so I probably didn't enjoy it as much as I could have

Violet: Oh, what kind of genres do you like?

Tobey: ....a consistent one...

Violet: (laughs) You're so silly Tobey! Scoops! What'd you think?

Scoops: ... Um... I loved it of course! I mean, you were in it! And I love you! So how could I not love it!

Becky, having learned from the WordGirl stuff, later told Violet the truth and explained that she didn't like the play at all and only liked that Violet seemed so happy doing it. Violet took this well. Tobey and Scoops however...:

Scoops: PROBLEM PROBLEM PROBLEM!

Tobey: What?

Scoops: The school paper wants me to review the school play! I can't say it was good, that goes against my oath as a reporter! But I can't say it was bad either, I already told Violet I loved it!

Tobey: Ask someone else to do it

Scoops: No one else has the time to take on any more assignments! What am I gonna do?! I don't wanna upset Violet!

Tobey: um...uh...could you post it anonymously?

Those actions eventually lead to Scoops and Violet breaking up (don't worry, they did get back together years later)

Scoops took his and Violet's break up particularly hard, and Tobey tried to cheer him up by finding weird things happening in the city for Scoops to write about. It didn't help a whole lot, but Scoops appreciated Tobey trying to cheer him up. Meanwhile Becky, who by this point all her friends knew she was WordGirl, essentially tried to fix Scoops and Violet's now ended relationship, and between trying to help them, school work, hero work and family life, she ended up stretching herself a little too thin to the point that all her friends had to do an intervention and tell her to stop because it wasn't good for her.

I've mentioned before that Becky's necklace in Word Up in significant and special to her. This necklace was actually made by Scoops, Violet and Tobey. Note the fact that her friends made it isn't the reason it's so important to her, but it is sweet they took the time to make it for her.

For one of his birthdays Tobey invited his friends to a demolition derby. When his friends said they thought it odd he'd be into that, he stated it was his new outlet for seeing destruction now that he was no longer doing crime.

Hmm that's all I have for now! If you are wanting more and have any particular questions or ideas, feel free to send more asks! If they are a little more specific I'll probably get to them a little sooner

#wordgirl #word up #becky botsford #tobey mccallister #violet heaslip #todd scoops ming #scoops ming

[loki-lover84]

Could Be Worse Part VIII

A/N It’s been over two months! I’m so sorry I was stressed about moving into university and literally lost track over everything so I’m settled now and should be more consistent unless I get crushed with course work. Also because it’s been so long I tried to make it worth the wait personally I think it’s adorable but yeah that could just be me, let me know what ya think any way you want. I am keeping my promise as I loved this idea I will finish this (I’ve never finished a series before but this one I’m determined to so when the time comes I hope you like the ending, I might do alternative ones because I still haven’t decided on which ending I want to do so let me know on that too) HOPE YA’LL ENJOY IT!!! ^_^ ^_^

I woke up sober and alone in the bed as all the memorise of last night flashed through my mind. FUCK! I made a pass at Dean and got completely rejected. “We’re not making the same mistake as last time” The hell did he mean by that, we-I got Y/d/n from that night! I thought he adored her, maybe now that he knows she’s his does he really see her as a mistake? NO. Dean isn’t that cruel, well at least he isn’t to Y/d/n.

He was saying I’m the mistake. My heart feels like it’s been ripped out of my chest then crushed in a vice. Why? Why does it hurt? Dean and I aren’t automatically together because we have a child together. Don’t get attached, Y/n it will only end in tears.

“MUMMY. Look what Daddy and I made!” Y/d/n cheered as she ran into the cabin Dean following closely behind. “It’s a Pulski Axe!” She grinned naively showing off her lighter miniature version of the weapon whilst cutely mispronouncing it.

“Sweetie you’re going to be really careful with that, it is very dangerous.” I explain as calmly as I can for our daughter’s sake, in my mind however Dean was already decapitated.

“Why don’t you carefully show Chuck?” Dean suggests, not realising he’d signed his own death warrant as his only hope skips happily out of the door in search of Chuck.

What the actual hell Dean! She’s three, a three year old shouldn’t have their own Pulaski Axe! Did you have one at her age?”

“No but things were different when I was three for example we weren’t living in the fucking apocalypse!” Dean argued back.

“Do you think she’ll be forced into a situation where no one is there to protect her?”

“I hope not, not again.”

“What do you mean, ‘again’?” I asked my voice wavering.

“When that Croat hoard attacked the pair of you in that abandoned building, you were about to pass out if it wasn’t for me the pair of you might not be here!” Dean snapped his feelings getting the best of him as frustrated tears welled in his eyes.

He was right, the whole reason we’re here is because he saved us.

“You’re right but, she’s three. I want her to have a childhood ya’know? Fun, impulsive, naïve days that everyone deserves.” I whimper realising this may never actually be a possibility for her.

Not fully certain that he should, Dean pulls me in for a hug and just holds me while I break in his arms. He lowers his head and rests it on top of my own squeezing me slightly tighter once I fist his jacket keeping him close to me.

“I know this isn’t ideal but it’s the unfortunate reality we’re living in.” Dean says his voice barely above a whisper.

“Thank you Dean.”

“For what?”

“Everything: sparing us the first time round, saving us the time after, taking care of us whilst we’re here and for making our daughter.” I smile through the tears as I nuzzle my face into his chest.

The moment was starting to feel nicer, I was more relaxed I was accepting that my daughter needed to be armed despite her infantile age.

“Dean, we need to talk!” The door to my hut was flung open and a woman yelling ruined the moment. “It’s important.”

I tried to pull away slightly to give the woman who I was able to identify as Jane the opportunity to talk to Dean about whatever but, Dean refused to release me and kept me close to him glaring at Jane.

“Now isn’t the time, if there was something truly urgent Cas or Chuck would be here, not you.” 

“I think we should discuss it in private.” Jane urged scowling at me.

This is my home I’m not leaving it! Who does she think she is barging in here?

“I trust Y/n and if it is truly an important situation shouldn’t everyone know?” Dean remarks.

“Fine! You want to know, I’m pregnant and it’s yours.” Jane say folding her arms and wearing a smug expression.

“Oh yeah well how can you be so sure it’s Dean’s?” I growl at her accusation of him being her unborn child’s father.

“What are you trying to say?” Jane snaps at me her stance shifting into a hostile one.

Oh shit, I didn’t actually mean it like that but, I am aware that she’s shacked up with a few other people since I’ve been here.

“Well you aren’t really one for keeping it to yourself.” Dean replies.

“The dates match up asshole and you weren’t protected that night.” Jane says her piercing blue eyes staying locked on my e/c ones as she cocks an eyebrow cockily.

I pull away from Dean slightly and I can tell that it disheartened him. In my defence though he slept with someone else unprotected, does he ever wrap up? I’m not sure I want to even consider the concepts of him being in other women bare.

“I wasn’t the only person you slept with the last time we did it.” Dean snaps, “ I don’t remember much of that night but I’m almost certain that I was wearing a condom.” He adds glancing at me as if to persuade me.

“Wow Dean you’re neglecting our baby before they’re even born!”

My mind was clouded I didn’t know who to trust, I wish I could trust Dean but from first hand experience I know he doesn’t always wear contraception on one night stands. Jane other than at this moment didn’t seem to have any issues with me unlike Dean’s ex conquests.

“If ya really want to know who the father is, maybe you should just go see Cas.” I think aloud as the pair look at me, Dean’s eyes hold an element of hope unlike Jane’s that holds panic and fear fully aware that her disrespectful attitude to their ‘leader’ can result in punishment.

“I think that’s a good idea. How about we go see him now?” Dean suggests challenging Jane.

“Fine yeah I don’t see why not.” Jane says with false confidence leading the way.

Dean encourages me to be there to find out the result just so I can hear the definitive truth in person. On the way over I see my baby swinging her little axe at a children’s training dummy with Chuck supervising, I’m filled with pride but also fear at the sight. I take a deep breath to calm myself this is her unfortunate reality but she’s going to prosper.

“She’ll be fine.” Dean whispers with a prideful look on his handsome face, as we walk into Cas’s hut.

“Ah Dean, Y/n and...Jane?” I stifle a laugh at the fact that Castiel didn’t know her name despite her being here much longer than me. “This is a surprise, now is it a pleasant one or not?”

“Y/n here says you should be able to tell me who the father of my baby is, I was pretty certain it’s Dean’s but he refuses to believe me.” Jane explains.

Cas studies her for a moment focusing his eyes on her, his arms folded as he approaches her for closer inspection.

“With good reason, he isn’t the father of your child Jake is.” Cas shrugged as Jane’s eyes widened and Dean scowled at her unnecessarily harshly in my opinion before she fled.

“She’s not getting out of this that easily, now I’ve got to think of a suitable consequence.” Dean grumbled to himself.

“Dean you’ve got to be careful what ya do, the pregnancy part was true.” I say.

“I wouldn’t care if she lost it!” Dean seethed filling me with an undeniable rage, how could he say that about someone’s child, this isn’t the Dean I’ve got to know.

“Dean! How could you! That’s-” I was midway through yelling at him when he cut me off.

“Jake, is the one that was nearly responsible for killing our daughter! He was driving that vehicle, he ignored your screams to stop. If he was okay with nearly killing our girl why shouldn’t I be okay with returning the favour!” Dean erupted his arms flailing frustratedly as he clued me in on this news.

“Okay... I understand why you feel that way now De but, that would make you worse than him and you aren’t. You’re a good man, with a big heart whether or not anyone else knows it, you’ve been through so much and heck you’re still going through so much yet, you still spare your time to be with me and our daughter even when you should be sleeping you choose to spend that time with us. You still clearly love your brother despite everything, you’re still here for Cas and you put everyone before you. So please, accept that you aren’t a monster and admit that you didn’t actually mean that.” I declare hoping he’d actually believe my words.

Dean didn’t say anything he just gazed at me for a moment before stepping closer to me, his large rough hand rested on my cheek making my heart flutter as my eyes fixed onto his stunning green ones. Dean tilted my head up slightly before leaning down and capturing my lips in a deep love filled passionate kiss our eyes fluttering closed, his other arm snaked around my waist pressing me firmly against his body as I kiss him back to the best of my ability and wrap my arms around his neck pulling him deeper to me. I got so lost in the kiss that I forgot that Castiel was still in the room with us. 

After a while we parted for oxygen but not only that but I was sort of losing my balance. An applause erupted from beside us and we turn to see Cas with a silly grin on his face, Chuck and our Y/d/n. When they can in I haven’t the faintest clue. I could feel my cheeks heat up as a rosy blush stained my cheeks, Dean just smirked and held me close to him.

“Does that mean mummy and daddy love each other?” Y/d/n asked the room innocently.

I knew my answer, I should think that Dean shared the same answer as me but part of me couldn’t help but doubt it.

“Yes, it does Sweetheart.” Dean replied after glancing down at me and turning to face her.

#endverse!dean #endverse dean x reader #Could be worse series #endverse!cas #The End #endverse!Chuck #love #parents #croatoan #Drama #angst #supernatural #supernatural fanfiction #SPN #father dean #dean winchester #angry dean #cuteness #loving dean #pure #wholesome #kissing #first proper kiss #insecurity #passion #apocalypse #weapons #apocalyptic #supernatural x reader #supernatural x you

[weirdthoughtsandideas]

People who started watching Violetta after it stopped airing

Hi! I am one of those who actually saw it while it was airing, and so I thought I could share some of my memories of that.

”There’s so many episodes, how did they have time to air them all?” Well, easy. In some countries they aired five episodes a week (Monday-Friday) and in other countries three episodes a week (Monday, Wednesday, Friday). That way, a season could be done airing in only a few months!

For the countries that had three episodes a week, they aired both ep 79 and ep 80 at the same time.

They had concerts. Like, all over Latin America and Europe. The show was so popular they got to have concerts. The concerts even got recorded on TV once.

God the MERCH. If you lived anywhere in Europe or latin America at the time, chances were high there were Violetta merch everywhere. They had magazines, in some countries a COMIC BOOK, they had a ”Violetta’s diary” book where it just was Violetta writing in her diary about the events that happened in the show, they had fucking schampoo bottles with Vilu’s face on them... it was massive and it was everywhere.

Since some of us in Europe had to wait for episodes to air, there were some channels on youtube kind enough to show us spanish clips with, get this, ENGLISH SUBTITLES. We lived life spoiling ourselves of everything that was gonna happen

Literally every single scene from the show you can find. If you can’t find it in spanish, you will find it in italian, french, german, or just any other language. Though, it took a while for english scenes to show up, so if you didn’t speak any language you just had to guess what they were saying (if there weren’t subtitles)

The Leon VS Tomás dramas was big... and god, don’t get me started on LEON VS DIEGO dramas. People cared so damn much about who Violetta would choose

Though most of us just collectively agreed on German/Angie, which, even if I do ship them, I just find it a bit strange with your aunt marrying your dad. But maybe that’s me

YOU DO NOT WANT TO KNOW THE DRAMA THAT WENT ON ON THE VIOLETTA WIKI. People literally made up that the actors had children and that they were dating but broke up, etc. Of course, some actors did have children and some actors did date, but the ones they wrote about never had any children and never dated

Also some people started to write their OC’s on the Wiki, causing them to start ANOTHER Wiki just for OC’s, but also they had the canon stuff there aswell, so you could read about some canon episode and then just see ”OC by user Tinista05 appears in this episode and falls in love with Jorge Blanco”

Remember that the fandom consisted of 90% girls between the ages of 8-13, AKA: Children that should not have access to the internet, also no one is fluent in english, so we all just had fandom drama with each other riting inn brocken englisch

In Scandinavia, they had this thing on the weekends called ”Violetta the scoop” where a swede, a norwegian and a danish girl talked about the show and what was gonna happen next week. It was very cheesy, but fun. As they were talking they showed clips in english, and so sometimes they would use the english names like Herman and Jeremiah. And it bugged me, because in the dub I grew up with (swedish) they had the OG names (Germàn and Jeremias)

It was an excitement to see how the english dub would translate the spanish songs. Sometimes they did a good job, and sometimes I feel like they could’ve dubbed it better. Nonetheless, it was fun to see how it would sound

Where I live, Violetta got so popular that, when they were gonna air season 2, they showed a SNEAK PEEK of it in theatres like 3 weeks before the season aired on TV. Which meant, they showed the first episode of season 2 and then there were dubbed interviews with the actors, who talked about the new season. They did the same thing for season 3, but I only saw the s2 sneak peek

Do you know how many european children who’s not fluent in spanish that has learned every single Violetta song in spanish? A lot. We may mispronounce a lot, but I can proudly say I could sing the entire chorus of Como Quieres without dying of toung twisting

How many other people took spanish in school because of Violetta? 🙋🏼‍♀️

The cast was so sweet. There was literally no drama (atleast, not what I know of) and it seems like most of the cast has only good memories of it.

The fact that Martina Stoessel was like 14 when they started filming while everyone else was like 19-20 or older still surprises me lol. She’s one of the few people who plays a character older than herself. Though, she really does look like she’s the same age as everyone else (especially in the later seasons)

Violetta was literally a lifestyle, I ain’t joking.

#violetta

[meteor752]

A Swedish Christmas

So now that Christmas time is near and I’m officially out on the internet doing shit, I’ve come to realize how strange my countries traditions are, compared to for example Americans.

I am Swedish, which I’ve mentioned a few times and it says “Swedish” in the title so it’s hard to miss, and our beloved cold country is really weird around Christmas.

Now, I am aware of the fact that other countries do weird stuff too, but I only know these traditions and I know that they are ridiculous. So let me take you through the Christmas here in good ol’ Sweden, my dear American and everything else (I’m not going to ramble up 189 different countries).

Oh, and before we start, Christmas in Sweden is Jul, just so ya know.

So in September (Yes, you read that right, September) stores start selling a drink called Julmust. Julmust is honestly a pretty bland drink that mostly tastes like water with a bit of sugar and darkness, but everyone loves it and drinks tons of it every Christmas. This exact drink is also sold around easter, where it’s called Påskmust, and there’s no difference between the two but it’s still sold as two different drinks.

When December finally rolls around and you’ve drunk this drink for three months and are already sick of it, you buy a choklad Kalender. A choklad Kalander is a piece of cardboard with a picture on a santa and a reindeer most of the time, and inside it is the worst chocolate you will ever taste, and you eat one piece of it for 24 days.

They also start showing the Jul Kalender, where they play a ten-minute episode of a show consisting of 24 episodes until Christmas eve, with a nowadays horribly written story and the worst child acting you will ever find. Call me nostalgic, but it was better when I was a kid. This year Jul Kalander is how kids have stopped believing in Santa because the parents dress up like him instead, so the current Santa has to make everyone believe in him again, together with his wife who is played by Swedish Kris Jenner and the two kids both with Jul themed names.

This is also the time when you start baking, and god we bake a lot.

There’s Lussekatter, a bun formed like an S that consists of 90% saffron and if you would ask me tastes horrible, Havreflarn that makes you mouth drier than the Sahara, Knäck that you always fail with doing so it’s either so hard that it will crack your teeth or so soft that it gets stuck in the paper and Skumtomtar. If you have ever gone to a school ever, you have probably eaten about a hundred Skumtomtar each Christmas because they are cheap and small, so ever teacher hands them out all the time.

And then there’s Lucia. Lucia is probably the weirdest tradition we have here, and the reason I wanted to make this post. It is taken from Italy (What???), and I won't go too deep but basically on the 13th December everyone dresses in white nightgowns and sing about Jesus.

Alright I will go a little deeper than that, though it might sound confusing.

So in a Lucia tåg (Which it is called), there are three traditional roles. 

The Tärna is what the girls are. A tärna has the nightgown, they have glitter in their hair and around their waist and they hold a candle in their hand. Simple, right???

The boys are Stjärngossar. A Stjärngosse also has the nightgown, though instead of glitter they have a cone with three stars on their head, and a star on a flower stick in their hand. They also have a specific song called “Staffan Var En Stalledräng” that has nothing to do with them.

In front of all the Stjärngossarna and Tärnorna is the Lucia, often a blonde girl (Though the real Lucia was dark-haired, but nowadays they always have bright hair). The Lucia has the nightgown as well, but on the top of her head there’s a crown of candles and around her waist a red band that is supposed to represent blood, because lore.

(I have to show a picture, because this all sounds ridiculous)

Yeah sometimes there are Santa’s and Gingerbread’s in it too, but not usually. Also The Stjärngossarna are supposed to wear gowns and the Tärnorna are supposed to wear glitter around their waist, but this was the best picture I could find.

Now, what do the Lucia tåg do, you might ask? Well they wake up at 5 AM in the morning, walks around the neighborhood with a tray of Lussekatter and glögg, aka warm juice that tastes disgusting to me, knock on doors and starts to sing maybe like one or two songs, offer the people a Lussekatt and continue their walk.

This is the weirdest shit I can think of, and also why I love my country so god damn much.

So now Lucia’s behind us, and it’s finally Christmas Eve!

Actually no, let’s talk about the 23rd first. On the 23rd, the entirety of Sweden is sitting in their living rooms and playing Bingo on TV, for whatever reason! After that is over, instead of leaving out milk and cookies to Santa, we leave a bowl of Porridge and some Julmust. 

Christmas eve starts out with breakfast where we eat porridge and rhyme to it. Yes, we make rhymes about our porridge. And we are not yet done with the Porridge, nope! In the Porridge we put an almond, and whoever gets the almond gets married the next year. Yeah, we actually do this! We also dip the darkest bread you will ever find in a big saucepan of Hambroth, and then eat it! It’s disgusting I tell you, but tradition!!!

At 3 PM we watch Donald Duck, which is a bunch of Disney Clips that is shown every year since the 1960s, so the clips are really old with really bad quality, and they aren’t in Swedish so a man voices over all the lines in the most monotone voice I’ve ever heard. And you can’t even suggest Skipping Donald Duck, that is fucking tradition and everyone hates you if you do. 

As soon as Donald Duck’s over you eat your god damn Christmas food and drink the Julmust, and after it you just sit around and wait for Santa. Yeah, you heard that right, Santa barges in on December the 24th! And from what I can tell (It’s hard to research this), we’re the only one who does this.

So ayways, some dad or grandpa will say “Well, I have to go buy some milk/newspaper” and it’s always those two. Two minutes later a half-drunk Santa comes in with a weird accent and delivers present after present slowly because the man who acts out Santa pretends to not being able to read for ten seconds and mispronounces your name on purpose, before leaving. 

I’m sorry, but what exactly happened to Santa when he came to Sweden? In every other country he’s like a spy that sneaks into houses and leaves after a millisecond on his magical sleigh with his magical reindeers and yaay!

 Did Santa get stopped by the cops or something the first time he came here?? Or what??

After the presents are opened, all the extended family goes home and you go to bed, and wake up on Christmas day like it’s a normal fucking Sunday. We don’t actually celebrate The 25th here folks, we ignore it! We’re all drunk at this point, either on adrenalin because you can play with your new toys! or on Alcholhol because we drink a lot here.

So yeah, that is Christmas in Sweden, gosh I love my country.

#Christmas #swedish christmas #Sweden #Meteor Rants #WE ARE ALL WEIRD ICE PEOPLE AND I LOVE US

[seaquestions]

fulcrum makes candy

i havent be able to work on any of my fics bcos i’ve been busy (and terribly unmotivated lately) but! i thought i’d post a wip since it reads as mostly finished so far.

(artistic licence for science stuff btw. i’m basically writing what should be chemistry as confectionery lmao.)

It all started when Crankcase told him about meeting up with CONS4EVA again.

Or Symbols, rather. The dimension-hopping Dire Wraith figured that a Cybertronian translation of his name would be a smidge less awkward than using his TBC handle or a mispronounced, synthesized version of his actual name. It sounded about the same to him with the universal translator, so no big deal. Crankcase still tried to say his real name right anyway.

Regardless. The point was--Fulcrum needed to make more energon goodies. The last batch had unfortunately been thrown in Symbols' face when the Dire Wraith was disguised as Thunderwing, so it was imperative to try again. He also ate all the good ones last time, which, note to self: don't do that, Fulcrum.

He almost forgot to ask, actually, if Symbols was even capable of eating the sweets. The answer had been yes, maybe. The Dire Wraith could \consume/ energon, but whether or not it'd taste any good or if it would all end up regurgitated on the floor was a mystery. Still! Fulcrum needed any excuse he could get to make goodies.

The pressure of being around so many Autobots was starting to get to him, a little. His proximity alerts kept popping up, all the time, because none of these people had any sense of personal space. Plus, do you have any idea how many times he had to frantically re-label someone from [enemy] to [ally]? It was a lot! His drop on Clemency might not have killed him, but it certainly didn't do him any good. He had to do all that manually, now. It was stressful, okay?

And Fulcrum liked to stress-bake. When he \could/, anyway. It was certainly better than some of his \other/ coping methods. But there usually wasn't enough energon on the WAP to go around making candy, so it had been saved for the particularly bad nervous breakdowns or for special occasions, like successfully escaping mortal danger or Crankcase going on a date.

Thankfully, the Lost Light seemed to have plenty of fuel for both itself and its passengers, which was beyond nice. Fulcrum had reluctantly gotten used to the whole siphoning and cannibalising thing while living as a Scavenger, but boy was it good to be back to consuming real energon. He might actually be able to make more than just plain gelled energon cubes! But since he didn't \actually/ know if Symbols could enjoy the treats, he'd keep it simple... This time.

The hard part was getting the equipment to make candy in the first place. He didn't know if there was a kitchen area on the Lost Light, but even if there was, he didn't really want to make candy around other people. He knew, from experience, that it was a bad idea. But the anxiety of asking someone for materials left him paralysed, and he almost gave up on the goodies entirely if it wasn't for Krok.

The mech, Primus bless his spark, had gone to ask the command staff in his stead, and surely enough, Krok arrived in Fulcrum's room arms full of everything the K-Con needed and more, in both equipment and ingredients.

"The captain got real excited when he heard that someone was thinking of making sweets," he said, with smiling optics, "A lot of these weren't even on your list."

And so, Fulcrum got started.

Cooking might seem a little daunting for the average Cybertronian. Energon had a reputation of being volatile, to an almost comical level. Heat it up a bit too much, and it just might explode. Every element had their own distinct flavour that changed wildly based on their interactions with other substances, and it was impossible to memorise them all! Or so it seemed. But in reality, it wasn't so difficult. At least to him it wasn't.

For a mech with absolutely no background in chemistry or metallurgy, Fulcrum took to the culinary arts very well. While he might not fully understand the hows and the whys of chemical reactions, he definitely knew what was delicious and what wasn't.

The first step was making the flavouring. Energon itself, in its processed liquid form, was virtually tasteless, so this was important. Adding simple ingredients like copper shavings, which had a tangy, sour taste to it and chromium flakes, which was just plain sweet, was the most basic form of food preparation.

Just dumping metal into energon felt a bit amateurish to Fulcrum, though. He wanted the goodies to have a consistent look and taste to them, like they were professionally made.

So, the little metal flakes--he went with copper, cobalt (tart, with a subtle sweetness), iron (bittersweet and kinda savoury) and cadmium (mildly sweet and rich, his personal favourite)--were finely ground into a powder alongside pigments to add variety to the colour palette. He didn't want everything to be bright neon pink. One had to differentiate between the flavours somehow. Plus, the pigments themselves could also add to the taste, depending on what you chose. Unless you bought those tasteless food dyes, but those are for cowards, and in the kitchen, Fulcrum was not one.

Cadmium sulfide, for example, worked as a yellow dye, but gave the energon a certain acidic sharpness that wasn't there before, thanks to the sulfur. Cadmium \selenide/, on the other hand, was a deep red pigment that went beyond sharp and turned it into full-blown spicy. But Fulcrum was supposed to be making sweet treats here. So instead, he paired the cadmium shavings with chrome yellow, or lead chromate, to enhance the sweetness of the pure cadmium.

The cobalt and iron powders were simple, matched with cobalt aluminate (blue) and iron oxide (red). Classic choices, though he had to be careful with the latter, because it could very easily start tasting like actual rust, which was simply disgusting. He \could/ use the mercury-based vermillion instead, which was also savoury, but again, Fulcrum was not a coward. In candy-making, anyway.

The last one, however, he always had to have a whole internal debate over. Copper-based pigments tended towards greens and blues, but that wasn't really what people thought of, now was it? He could use gold ochre, but the iron-based pigment didn't really mesh well with copper, in \his/ opinion. He could mix a cadmium orange, but, again, he didn't want his candy to be spicy.

In the end, he just went with the basic green copper carbonate.

Alright! With that done, it was time to work on the energon itself.

In a large pot, Fulcrum gently heated the liquid fuel up, slowly pouring in a gelling agent that he had warmed up earlier. Under normal circumstances, regular processed energon did not solidify. To do so, you'd have to freeze it or leave it out for \way/ too long, letting it congeal, which was gross. (Looking at you, Misfire.) The gelling agent would let the fuel cool into a nice firm slab of jelly.

He then added one and a half cups of crushed lead acetate, stirring constantly to dissolve the sweetener in the energon until no particles were left in the semi-opaque pink liquid. It had also gotten lighter, light enough that the dyes wouldn't end up mixing into really ugly colours.

When the mixture started to bubble the tiniest little bit, Fulcrum took the pot off the heat, pouring the fuel into four bowls, one for each flavour, that he then mixed with the corresponding pigment. Red iron, blue cobalt, green copper and yellow cadmium.

The jelly would need a flat plane to cool on, of course. When Fulcrum went to grab a tray though, he noticed that he'd also been provided with plastic molds. Someone else must've been into cooking, then. He wondered who it could be, maybe they could share tips or something.

The molds were pretty basic shapes, like stars and circles, but it was nice of them to have given him this, whoever it was. He should use them then. If he poured the blue cobalt into the circle ones, it could look like little sparks... which was a really cute idea.

...He did it. Of course he did.

Blue sparks, yellow stars, red cyberkittens and green raindrops. It was almost unbearably adorable.

The leftover fuel was poured onto the same tray, creating some neat rainbow gradients. They were pretty to look at but to be honest, he had no idea how those parts would taste. Welp! Who cares!

Fulcrum stretched.

That was the hard part done. He put all of the filled up casts inside his room's mini-fridge. A few hours and they'll be solid. At that point, he'd have to take them out of the molds and cut the leftover ones into little cubes. Then after \that/, he'd have to leave them out to dry overnight so the goodies could form their crisp exterior, while also exercising enough self-restraint to not surreptitiously pop one into his mouth.

Oof. Forget what he said, the hard part hasn't been done yet, actually.

Still. This meant that he had time to take a break.

#transformers #maccadam #fulcrum #fanfiction #long post #i thought i might pull up one of my fics and work on it but. i have Zero motivation today ha ha.. #this has been sitting on my laptop for a while #maybe if i ever finish it i'll post it to ao3

[jabbers-written-world]

Character Creation

Okay, first things first. Most people seem to think that to create a character, you need a setting first, and perhaps you even need to know the plot. The truth is, you technically don’t. Not for the very basic character skeletons. All you need for that, is this basic profile.

Name: 

Age: 

Height: 

Weight: 

Gender: 

Sexuality: 

Personality: 

Appearance: 

Motive: 

Flaws: 

Backstory: 

Looks pretty simple, doesn’t it. And it is. This is the most basic character profile skeleton, and I myself often use this, even for the most minor of background characters. Why? Because everyone is the protagonist of their own story. Even those characters that only get one line of dialogue, or maybe they don’t even get that much. But they are still there. They are still a character, and the more you know about them, the more real and believable your story will be.

Now, let’s get into this a little further, shall we?

Names

This can be literally anything you want it to be. You want to call your protagonist Mugwump Doozeldorff? Go for it. But, here’s the catch. You have to think about why. Why did you name them that? Why would they go by that name? Think about the reasoning, and the plausibility. You can name them absolutely anything, but you can’t pass it off as a simple joke, really. Are they named after a legendary hero? Do their parents just hate them? Is it a common name in their culture? Is it a respectable name where they live, while a name like Steve is considered strange?

These questions help to develop not only your character, but the world around them as well. It even helps add to your character’s backstory a little, because it lets you start thinking about their parents and their family as well. In addition to this, something I tend to enjoy doing, is I like to look into the meanings behind names and where they came from. The meaning of a name can also give insight to a character, whether it’s their role in the story, or a personality trait.

So yes, you can name your character whatever you want to name them, but name them with a purpose. Think of it like a parent naming their newborn baby. Parents choose the names of their children for a reason, and often spend time debating names before the child is born. Do the same for your characters.

Age

This is another choice that should be made with particular intent. Don’t just pick a random number and be done with it. With age, comes experience. Not necessarily wisdom or intelligence, but experience. And experience can come across as wisdom the other a character is. For example, say you create a character who is a human in their mid-70′s. They have experienced a lot in their life. They have seen decades go by, and watched the world change. And they can teach younger characters about these experience, and share what they know of the past, to help those younger characters move toward the future.

On the opposite end, the younger a character is, the less they’ve experienced, and the less they’ve been affected by the way the world has changed, if it has at all in their lifetime. A ten-year-old kid is less experienced than a 25-year-old adult. But even that 25-year-old is less experienced than that person in their mid-70′s. As well, as people age, we develop different speech patterns.

Very young children often tend to talk a lot, and at a quicker pace, and they mispronounce words, or sometimes repeat phrases they don’t know the meaning of. Older children and preteens are still often eager to share what they know, and still may talk quite openly, and may even mispronounce a few things, but they know better now. Teenagers no longer mispronounce things, and they’ve developed a more unique speech pattern specific to themselves. This may carry some heavy pauses, or a tendency to say certain words more frequently.

Adults between 20-50 are more settled into a consistent way of speaking. They speak with intention, and some are more charismatic and well-spoken than others, but there is a deliberate intent to what they say, even if they might be wrong in saying it. And adults and elders between 50-100 even have their own ways of speaking. Still with deliberate purpose, but they think more on their words, and do their best not to offend. At least, until they’re around 80-100.

At that point, any filters are thrown out the window, and elders say what they want. Doesn’t matter if anyone else shares their opinion. They have one, and that’s that. Yes, you can get those sweet and gentle elders that are still so polite and kind, but even they lose their filter and speak just as openly as a young child, just now they have more experience to go with it.

So yes, be purposeful with the age you give your characters, because you’ll have to stay consistent with it. Now, I used humans as a base reference for this, but there are of course all manner of other beings that you can play with, and they all age differently. Especially if you’re working in the realms of fantasy, or the different planets of sci-fi. Elves tend to age much slower than humans, but there may be an alien race somewhere that ages faster. Vampires don’t age at all except in particular circumstances, and there may be aliens that are effectively the same.

In the case of aliens, it’s a good idea to look at various animal species on Earth first. How do they age? Do they have longer or shorter lifespans than humans? These are all things to consider when creating aliens for a sci-fi novel, or even if you intend to create your own fantasy species. All in all, age is important. So choose carefully.

Height and Weight

Something to consider when creating a character, because the bigger they are, the more trouble they may have with doorways, or the smaller they are, the harder it may be to reach things on high shelves. And in addition, weight changes proportionally to height as well. A taller person may be heavier, while someone smaller would be lighter.

Of course, every person is an individual, and sometimes tall people are skinny or short people are chubby, and vice versa. Still, it’s a good idea to research healthy body weights, and use it as a basis for fantasy races or aliens as well. And you should always consider if their weight comes from fat or muscle. Muscle is of course denser than fat, and by all accounts weighs more. So pay attention to that as well. Even if someone is for example, 6′2″ and skinny with some nice, lean muscle, they may still weigh around 200 pounds. Why? Because they’re tall, and they have muscle.

In addition, weight certainly plays a part in whether or not a character can reasonably walk across something that may break if they’re too heavy. Like thin ice, for example, or a rickety old rope bridge. Make it believable. And I am by means telling you that your characters all have to be at healthy weights. Just think about why. If they are underweight, why is that? Do they just have a very fast metabolism, or are they malnourished? If they’re overweight, why? Is it genetic, or did something else cause them to gain weight?

Again, make it believable.

Gender

We all know this is not synonymous with a person’s physical sex. This is in regards to a gender identity, not what genitals they happen to have. And again, this should be chosen carefully. Honestly, this is one thing that should be chosen even more carefully than anything else, besides perhaps sexuality. Because having a different gender identity than your assigned sex does come with burdens and stresses.

Also, if you intend to write a character with a gender identity that differs from your own, it is always a good idea to do your research, but even that won’t give you everything you need to write that identity properly. Talk to people with that gender identity. Get to know them and understand them, but don’t just talk to one person and call it a day. Like I’ve said, every person is an individual. And individuals all have their unique views and experiences. Talk to as many people as you can.

Otherwise, you can go right ahead and write what you know! Want more good representation of your gender identity? Absolutely go ahead and write it. Drawing from your own experiences is a great way to really develop a character as a real person. Be careful making them too much like yourself, though. It can be a tough market for those sorts of stories. You can absolutely go for it if you like, just be aware that you may learn things about yourself that you realize you hate more than you thought, or ever even knew you would. Believe me, I’ve already faced that in my own writing.

And of course, if your character’s gender identity does differ from their assigned sex, you are of course free to make a note of that when creating their ‘file’, so to speak. Because that is what this is. You are creating a file detailing information about your character, like a detective with a case file, or a psychiatrist with a patient file. All their little ticks are important to make note of.

Sexuality

Yep. This is another big one. Sexuality, as in who your character’s romantic and/or sexual interests may be, definitely plays a part in your character’s opinions and actions, and their personality. It changes how they view themselves, and how they view others around them as well.

Is your character a young boy figuring out how to handle being homosexual in an environment where it’s not accepted? Or is your character a heterosexual young girl in such an environment? Is your character attracted to both males and females equally? How does this correspond to their culture and environment? Or perhaps your character doesn’t experience any sexual attraction or really have much interest in the whole thing. Or maybe they’re that type of character that.. well, is perfectly happy getting down and dirty with anyone, anywhere, any time. Doesn’t matter the species, or the gender, or the sex.

And again, like with gender identities, do your research if you’re writing something different from yourself. Talk to people, get to know them and their experiences to write something from the perspective of a character like them. As writers, we are only capable of writing from what we know and have taken the time to learn about.

Personality

This is one of the most key details of any character, regardless of gender, sex, appearance, or species. This is what decides how they act, how they think, and even how they move. Confidence can make a character walk tall with their head held high, but if your character is the shy, quiet type, they’re more likely to keep their head low, and do their best not to draw attention.

Personality traits also define how easily angered your character is, or if they’re the non-violent type. It decides if they like things clean or messy, if they cry easily or not at all. This can also be affected by your character’s backstory, because.. well, aren’t we all changed a little bit by the things we lived through? That being said, this again should be done with intention. Yes, sometimes it can be fun to put our characters through hell more than once, I know I’m guilty of being a bit of a torture master sometimes, but too much trauma, and you end up with a character who can never recover.

So it’s a good idea to choose your character’s personality with intent, and be sure that you can keep to it. Even if you need to refer back to your character’s file, try to keep things consistent. Now, I’m not saying your characters can’t grow and change like real people do, but it should be believable, just like everything else.

Appearance

Here’s where you get to have a little fun, but again, think about what you’re doing, and how your character’s appearance and physical features may affect how they get around or how people react to them. Still, extra features like wings or tails can actually be helpful tools for getting some emotion across too. These are very expressive body parts.

You are free to decide your character’s hair color, eye color, their skin tone, how their body looks, how their hands are shaped, do they have weird feet, or maybe they have an odd birthmark somewhere. And of course, height and weight play into this too. Just know that you should know how to have your character’s looks also affect their surroundings. Are they attractive? Are they not the best in the looks department? If they have a different skin tone than is common in the area, how do others react to that? Every detail plays a part.

If you’re planning to give your character wings, think about them. Do some research on different types of wings. If your character has large feathery wings like a bird, what kind of bird are they most similar to? Or are they more like bat wings, or perhaps dragonfly wings? Just remember that if your character has wings, they should be noticeable even in the small details, not just something that’s there for the sake of convenience. Wings are very expressive.

Watch a few birds for a while, make note of how they move and use their wings. Feathers can stand on end when a bird is upset, or cold, or even too hot. Your character can spread out their wings to make themselves bigger if they’re trying to be intimidating. Or if they’re happy, maybe their wings give a little flap or buzz (if they’re bug wings) in excitement. As well, how large wings are can affect how your character fits through doorways, so be mindful of that as well.

Tails too are very expressive. Dog tails wag, cat tails twitch and quirk and display all kinds of emotions, even a cow or horse’s tail will move and flick back and forth depending on their mood. When a cow or bull gets upset, they can start lashing their tail. Horses too. Even a bird’s tail fans out or gets ruffled whether they’re happy or upset.

And there is also a lot of expression to be had if your character has ears different from those of a human. Do your elves’ ears move like a cat’s with their feelings? Or maybe a half-dragon has ears that occasionally twitch and wiggle like those of a cow. Everything makes a difference, and even if your character is typically the stoic type who doesn’t express much on their face, if they have other features like wings or a tail, or even different ears, those things aren’t as easily controlled if they want to hide their feelings.

Motive

Another fun little bit here. This is your character’s goal in life, and this can change over the course of the story, especially if they achieve their goal. Motives can be as simple as a child wanting to catch a very particular bug, or as grand as a rebellion leader wanting to protect his people. Again, though, these have to have purpose, and often they may tie into your character’s personality as well.

Still, as ever, we have to ask the question of why. Why do they have that goal? Why are they struggling so hard for this? Or, why aren’t they trying harder? As well, we of course have to think about (especially for larger goals, like rebellion for the sake of the people or a world saving quest) what the character is willing to sacrifice for their goal.

That kid who wants so badly to catch that bug. What is he sacrificing? Snack time, and to a kid that can be a pretty big deal. That rebellion leader protecting his people? He’s willing to sacrifice his own life to keep them safe. Even someone who wants to be with their true love, they may have to sacrifice family ties for that.

Motives create sacrifices, and sacrifices can certainly affect your character’s experiences. Also, you have to think about, is the sacrifice worth it in the end? Say your character was trying to save their best friend from a horrible fate, and to do it, they lost their eye because it had to be used as collateral to seal the monster. Was that worth it, if they still didn’t manage to save their friend in time? Is the little kid’s sacrifice of snack time worth it if now he’s really hungry and he still hasn’t caught the bug yet? Always think about if the motive is worth the sacrifice.

Flaws

These are the great equalizers. So your character seems like the knight in shining armor type, and they’re so perfect and everything they do is for a good reason and- wait. What do you mean they’re rude and biased about another species. Should that be considered racist? Well, maybe not completely, but negative biases like that can be a problem. So you see what I did there, right?

The perfect good boy, practically a shining example, suddenly brought back down from his pedestal to be just like the rest of us humble peasants. Flaws humanize people. They balance the good traits with some bad ones. And no, I’m not saying you should make all your characters racist. Not all flaws need to be grand and life-changing.

Like the kid with the bug. Yeah, we’re back to him again. Okay, so he’s a kid. Who’s sacrificing snack time to catch the stupid bug. Let’s say this kid is a pretty polite kid, he says please and thank you like he was taught, and he’s pretty easy to handle most of the time. Except.. uh-oh. This kid drew on his mommy’s newly painted living room wall yesterday! Even though she told him not to draw on the walls! Does this suddenly make this kid a horrible little demon spawn who no one would ever like? No. He’s just doing what kids do.

People develop flaws, often based on what they were exposed to growing up. So what about that character with those ugly, negative biases toward another species? That’s the rebellion leader again. He wants to protect his people, would sacrifice his life to keep them safe, and yet.. he thinks things like that? Oh, boy, people are gonna hate this one, right? Well, maybe, but what if I told you, he has his biases because it was members of that same species that killed his parents when he was only seven? What if I told you that members of that same species were cruel overlords that took over his home city?

Flaws have reasoning, and it’s usually because of life experiences and what people are exposed to, especially from a young age. Some of them though, may just be flaws because of the character’s age. Like that kid with the bug that sacrificed snake time and drew on the wall. That’s a kid being a kid. He’ll grow out of that one.

Sometimes, flaws can be used as a jumping point for a character to change and improve. The rebellion leader with ugly biases? He’s recently met some other members of that same species, and didn’t even know it before he became good friends with one of them. He got upset when he learned what they were, but that friendship he made, it changed him. He has his biases, but they’ve been softened by a good friendship. He’s learning not to be biased towards the whole species, because it’s not all of them that are the problem. Just a few giving the rest a bad reputation.

So you see why flaws can be a good thing, even if they are something as dramatic as some.. pretty nasty biases.

Backstory

This. Decides. Everything. How your character acts, what their experiences are, where they came from, what their culture is, why they may be hiding their sexuality or not hiding it. Everything. Like I said with that rebellion leader, his flaws are because of his backstory.

He was seven years old and watched his mother and younger sister killed right in front of him. Pretty traumatic for a kid to witness. Not only that, but they dragged his father into the center of the city and killed him as an example to the rest. Yikes. And as if it couldn’t get worse, one of them nearly tore off his leg, so now he needs a brace to even walk right.

Yes, this is one of my.. tortured characters. Him, and his best friend, who was enslaved by the same people who killed the rebellion leader’s parents and sister. Captured when he was three years old and raised in that nightmare. Yeesh. You’re probably thinking I need to pull back on the depressing backstories for a while, huh. Yeah, I probably do. And by no means do you have to follow my example.

Maybe your character had a great life. A great childhood with loving parents, got to visit their cousins every summer at their grandma’s house, everything was great. But then maybe they had to move from their childhood home, and it felt like the end of their whole world. It wasn’t, because life goes on, but it sure felt like it. And they’ve moved several times since then for different reason, and maybe it’s making them worried that they’ll never have a permanent place to call home, so they don’t get attached to places.

See? Even a happy backstory with a couple small bumps can have big effects on the character’s outlook on life. Backstories don’t have to be wild and dramatic to be important, and your character certainly doesn’t have to be dragged through hell and back to be interesting. It all depends on how you work with it.

Species

Now’s where things get really interesting. Humans should never be ruled out as strong characters, especially if they live in a fantasy world, or even if they’re surrounded by big tough aliens. Humans are tough. We are resilient, and we compete for everything. Space, food, love, happiness. We toughen ourselves up and live on a planet that.. to be fair, is sort of trying to kill us. But we are survivors. The human race even in the real world has gone through a lot of pain, but we survived.

Still, if you don’t want your character to be human, that’s fine too. There are literally hundreds of species out there to choose from, and you can even create your own. Want an alien a furry lizard face, four arms and a tail with porcupine spikes? Okay, that’s cool. Want a fantasy creature that’s sort of like an elemental spirit but also like a genie? Sounds good to me.

But of course, like everything else, your character’s species comes with important questions to think about. You know where I’m going with this by now. Everyone, say it with me. WE MUST ASK WHY. Why is always going to be the most important question you ever ask as a writer. Why did you choose this species? Why is this species living where it is? If they’re the last of their kind, why? As well, you need to think about the limitations of the species, as well as what they may be able to do better than humans.

Can your character fly? That’s great! But that also means they probably have large wings that may be difficult to fit through a doorway. Do they have huge claws great for digging tunnels? Awesome, but now that may cause some trouble trying to pick up small objects. Does your character have more than two legs and run super fast? Super cool, but now they have more legs to worry about and coordinate when doing other things, like sitting or even climbing up stairs. Maybe your character is a super big and strong rock monster. Absolutely fantastic. But that sort of makes them less than comfortable to hug, and also they have trouble fitting through doors.

Every species has their strengths, and their limitations. So, like with everything, we have to be aware of the details, and think about the balance. As well, things should be fairly believable for your world to seem real enough. Well, unless realistic isn’t what you’re going for. If that’s the case, ignore me. Go nuts, my friends. But from a believability stand point, your species’ limitations should make sense. Like the big rock monster for example. He can’t fit through door too easy, but what else? You wanna make him horribly hurt by water? Eh.. That’s Pokemon logic and if you want to go with that, that’s fine. But there are other things that could work better. Metal won’t hurt him much, but acid does. He’s got a hard, impenetrable shell of stone? Oops, there’s a gap in the rocks making a weak spot.

What about a person with dragonfly wings, like a fae or something like that? Ooh, very nice. Good with magic, tend to be rather pretty, and- Oh. Oops. Their wings rip like wet paper. Ouch. Also, there is real mythology that elves and fae, and species like them, they are repelled by or even hurt by or can’t use their magic when in contact with iron. You wanna put your elf in an iron prison cell for the sake of storytelling? Great, but remember that they won’t be able to use any magic to escape, and that iron could even possibly burn them. Even if it isn’t hot.

So, keep in mind your species’ limitations, and have fun building your world now around these characters you’ve created. Creating them gave you a great starting point, so go on! Write something fantastic!

#;; a gem in the hoard (writing tips) #writing tips #writing #long post under the cut

[mikami]

Death Note Audio Drama 05

Disc 5: Exclusion Criteria - a summary / partial translation

Prior translations / an explanation as to what the fuck this is.

In this: Rem dragging Misa for like a minute before then settling into her usual ‘I’d die for her’ pattern without a single explanation. Light, Misa, Rem and Ryuk going to Space Land! L arguing with a waiter! Otherwise there is a whole lot of canon-close plotting going on.

____

We begin with Rem talking to Gelus (the name used here), who is watching Misa. Gelus tells her that Misa is going to die today. Rem points out that everyone has their set time on Earth and calls Gelus out for behaving unfitting for a shinigami by mourning.

REM: What’s so special about this... Misa Amane?

GELUS: Her parents died in a break-in, but she’s tough. She’s working as a model, did you know? It’s a hard job. Every day can be a set-back, the people are judging you.... but she stands her ground and--

REM: Are you serious? She’s living off insurance money and smiles into cameras. That is a ‘hard job’ to you?

GELUS: I’m just saying--

REM: And I say, 17 years in a first world country in the 21st century. A pretty good life, if you ask me.

GELUS: I did not ask you.

REM: Get over it, Gelus, her time is up. If you don’t want to watch her die, you better look away now.

We hear the stalker approach Misa, trying to get her to die together. But then Gelus begins writing! Rem tries to stop him, but to no avail. 

_______

TITLE MUSIC

_______

RYUK: The thing with this girl is playing with fire.

LIGHT: I’ve got a few things that can burn.

RYUK: Beginning with L?

LIGHT: She can see people’s true names. I just need to make sure she meets him and she can bring an end to him. And then nobody will be a danger to me anymore.

RYUK: Her, maybe.

LIGHT: That’s something we can deal with later. Now come on. We’ve got a date.

RYUK: I’ve got no interest in Rem. Her teeth aren’t--

LIGHT: Shut up!

______

The task force is sighting the security camera material from Aoyama. L’s actor still mispronounces it as ‘Ayoyama’ and he’ll never stop, it’s killing me.  L orders that Light is getting an agent tailing him again, since he was also in Aoyama.

______

Light, Misa, Ryuk and Rem are on a rollercoaster!

RYUK: I’m not sure what’s up with this human idea of putting yourself into a state of fear on purpose.

REM: I second that. I feel no desire to be pulled up there only to then drop down again.

MISA: Ooh, be quiet back there! Just try enjoying the ride.

REM: Maybe it’s all about the side effect. The females can scream and hide in the arms of the males. A good excuse for physical proximity.

RYUK: How’s a bit of cuddling supposed to help when you’re crash landing?

LIGHT: Is there any way for you two to make yourself inaudible and invisible?

REM: Maybe they enjoy the anticipation of the fall... 

Light then decides to change the topic and ask Misa how she got her Death Note. She tells the story. In this version, the Death Note just immediately fell in front of Misa, rather than Rem deciding to give it to her.

The rollercoaster starts.

REM: Ryuk! Let go of my arm.

Ryuk: ‘m sorry!

______

Mogi, who is trailing Light, informs L that Light has a date. 

______

Misa complains the milkshakes aren’t big enough, while Light gives her Kira-related instructions for a new message to announce she’ll kill independently from Kira now and spread her powers (like in canon). 

______

Ryuk and Rem discuss ferris wheels. Ryuk supposes that it’s all about getting the view, Rem points out that it’s also about couples getting privacy. 

______

Light tells Misa to never disclose their relationship or anything to the police. Misa tries to ask for more dates, Light declines, everything just as in the manga. The whole ‘I’ll have to date other girls, too’ happens here as well. Light threatens Misa and then Rem threatens Light, all according to normal script.

_______

Mogi informs L of the fight in the burger restaurant, though he also supposes they have made up by now (Mogi: “Yeah... yeah... He just got a goodbye kiss on the cheek that I’d care massively aggressive.”) Mogi asks L who he should follows after the date. L tells him to follow Misa to find out who she is.

_______

Light and Ryuk discuss the situation. Nothing really interesting here except for sum-ups of the situation.

Light walks past a magazine and spots Misa on the cover of Eighteen.

______

Light comes home. Sayu immediately confronts him with the Eighteen issue. There is a whole feature on Misa in it, about her hobbies and what she’d like in a man (Sayu: “By the way, I don’t think you’re here type, but whatever.”), etc etc.  Light asks Sayu to keep quiet, she asks for the money just like in the manga.

Misa drops by for a visit that isn’t really explained, since they just got off their date.

______

Mogi informs L of this. 

______

Light and Misa go to his room.

LIGHT: You never told me you’re a model.

MISA: Just look at me! What else am I supposed to be? A car mechanic?

LIGHT: You didn’t think to at least bring it up once?

MISA: You never asked! Which, by the way, is so typically Boy. You only talked about yourself and your great plans and your important mission. You don’t even know my favorite color.

RYUK: Blue.

LIGHT: Blue. We read the article.

_______

Misa’s new Kira II tape plays. L figures out that the two Kiras are in contact now. L suspects Light a little less because Kira II didn’t insist on showing L on TV and he figures Light would want that. 

_______

Misa and Light walk in the park. Light talks Rem into agreeing to kill L for his and Misa’s happiness.

_______

Matsuda brings in forensics results for the newest tape. They found a blonde-dyed hair. L informs Soichiro that Light is Kira, if he dies in the next few days. Soichiro complains about none of L’s reasoning holding up in court.

L: Calm down, chief inspector. If I’m right, I’ll be too dead to care. I hope I’m wrong, and then you can call me an amateur next Friday instead.

_______

L shows up at campus again. Light makes a quip about having thought L would turn to dust in the sunlight. The rest of their conversation is close-ish to the manga.They go for a coffee.

______

The task force is in a surveillance van, spying on the campus. The only mention of L liking sweets is made here.

They suddenly have a stranger on their police channel, only taking a moment to figure out it’s Mogi, who is in the perimeter because he’s following Misa.

_____

WAITER: So here’s two coffees and the cookies. Would you also like a blueberry muffin?

L: Why would I want one?

WAITER: They’re on sale.

L: If I wanted one, I would have ordered one. 

LIGHT: Just don’t mind him, he’s not from here. 

WAITER: Not a problem, I’m just asking. 

L: No, you’re suggesting to me to order a blueberry muffin. Because you’ve got too many blueberry muffins.

LIGHT: That’s enough, L. Here.

Coins clink.

WAITER: Thank you.

LIGHT: As an apology for my friend here, who is being such an idiot.

L: Friend? I’m flattered. 

Light (sighs loudly): ... of course. Let’s just sit down here.

L: To still call me a friend after all I put you through so far...

LIGHT: Well, we’re similar in many ways.

L: Oh really?

The conversation is interrupted when Misa enters the cafeteria and approaches.

______

Ryuk and Rem sit in the university’s bell tower and talk about why their respective humans are here. Misa actually has a photoshoot directly at college here.

_____

Misa comes by, chattering.

MISA: Don’t you want to introduce us?

LIGHT: No.

MISA: Oh, don’t be so grumpy, darling. Hello, are you a friend of Light’s?

L: You could say so. I’m Hideki Ryuga.

L gives his usual spiel about liking Misa as a model, Misa is happy and then---

LIGHT: Her fans are losers.

MISA: Darling?!

LIGHT: I’m just saying. A lot of them are really batshit. She has to keep her private life secret.

Ah, so it’s an excuse for not telling L about her earlier. L lays it on thick and calls Misa his “favourite photo model” and Light his “best friend”. Then Misa gets spotted and the usual commotion happens. The waiter offers a free blueberry muffin to Misa.

_______

The task force in the van can’t see anything through the commotion. Mogi can’t get close either. 

_______

Misa’s manager comes to drag her outside. She is called “Miss Yoshi” consistently here, though Misa calling her ‘Yoshi’ in katakana and without honorific in the manga suggests a nickname. Especially since she’s from Yoshida Productions. Her real last name is likely Yoshida.

_______

L gives Mogi and co. the cue to arrest Misa. It’s kind of silly because now they all act like they have this defined plan involving Mogi? When earlier Mogi’s presence in itself was a surprise.

________

L goes to grab some cake, Ryuk comes into the coffee so Light has someone to talk about his plans to. Light tries calling Misa.

L talks to the waiter again.

WAITER: Okay, so two cheesecakes, one more coffee, would you maybe like a---

L: Look at me. Do I look like I do?

A phone rings.

WAITER: Are you going to pick up?`

L: Hello, darling. I can see who’s calling. Light, I know it’s you.

They briefly argue about how L got the phone, L informs Light of Misa’s arrest.

______

Misa on her photoshoot. We hear the cameraman give her directions for a while. Then the team suddenly swoops in to arrest Misa. They somehow publicly say she is arrested for  “resistance against the state, blackmail, and a conspiracy with the goal of killing people” and read her her rights. 

______

Rem comes to Light to blame him for Misa’s arrest and tell him to fucking fix it. 

______

There is an absolutely strange segment here of Soichiro talking to Yoshi, about Misa’s arrest. Yoshi strongly protests it, keeps pointing out that Misa is a minor, generally wants to know what Misa is even arrested for. She seems to have a small hunch that Misa is arrested for being a Kira suspect.

I’m not bothering to transcribe this scene though, since Yoshi literally never appears again after it, so this scene is just entirely pointless.

______

Misa in her cell. She’s panicked. Nothing of substance is said.

______

L talks about Misa’s containment position with Matsuda, since an audio drama listened can’t see it. 

______

Misa begging to be killed, wohoo. Rem talks her into giving up the notebook.

_____

Light buries the Death Notes in the park and hands one to Rem. She flies off.

_____

Misa lost her memories and now refers to L as a stalker. He is confused. It’s the same as the manga, really. L interrogates again.

_____

Light handed himself in to the police. He has an official interrogation by Mogi, which Soichiro angrily interrupts, but Light continues testifying. The actual testimonial is alike to the manga.

_____

Soichiro accuses L of driving Light mad, but eventually consents to Light being put under arrest, under the condition of also being under arrest.

_____

Ryuk complains about boredom in the cell. (”Repeated attempts at getting Light to play ‘I spy with my little eye’ were grandiose failures.”) Ryuk just narrates dramatically to relieve his boredom.

_____

Watari wonders how to punish Kira, if Light really has a split personality. How to punish Kira and reward Light, when they’re in the same body? 

L just wants to proceed according to plan and Watari just... “We’ve got a plan?”

_____

Ryuk snuck out to eat an apple and came back, because he can’t stand being in the cell anymore. Light gives up the Death Note, finally.

#death note #light yagami #l lawliet #misa amane #audio drama translations

[subject004]

[  dylan  wang  ·  cismale  ·  he/him  ·  19  ]  ❝  hey  !!  did  you  see  four  /  jian  liu  walking  into  the  woods  ??  i’ve  heard  they’ve  been  described  as  well-meaning  by  their  close  friends  .  but  ,  i’ve  also  heard  that  they’ve  been  described  as  pretty  enigmatic  by  others  .  if  there  were  three  things  that  could  describe  them  ,  it  would  be  blood  dripping  into  murky  water  ,  lovecraftian  horror  ,  and  chugging  coffee  at  odd  hours  of  the  night  .  here’s  to  hoping  they  don’t  get  trapped  in  the  upside  down  !!  ❞

hi  i’m  bailey  and  i’m  a  literal  snail  .  welcome  to  my  dumb  intro  !

cw  :  kidnapping  ,  human  testing  ??  you  know  ,  hawkins  lab  usual  .  also  ,  pretty  long  because  idk  how  to  stop  rambling  .

the  night  of  may  14th  ,  1966  ,  two  members  of  the  CPC  welcomed  their  first  child  .  the  couple  tried  and  tried  for  years  ,  and  were  finally  given  their  long  awaited  little  boy  :  LIU  JIAN  .  he  quickly  became  the  light  of  their  lives  .  however  in  just  three  years  ,  that  light  would  be  ripped  away  from  them  .

he  was  taken  to  america  —  a  small  town  where  no  one  would  suspect  ,  a  small  town  harboring  a  secret  .  hawkins  ,  indiana  .  he  was  terrified  ,  confused  ,  and  wouldn’t  stop  crying  until  they  eventually  sedated  him  .  there  were  whispers  ,  rumors  ,  about  a  small  child  in  china  with  possible  ...  gifts  ,  and  naturally  within  their  previous  (  and  ongoing  )  tests  ,  they  needed  to  see  for  themselves  .  and  they  couldn’t  let  the  communists  have  this  ,  if  it  was  true  .

it  was  .

NUMBER  FOUR  ,  they  assigned  him  .  he  was  no  longer  jian  ,  no  longer  a  simple  child  .  through  grueling  experiments  ,  pushing  him  past  exhaustion  on  multiple  occasions  ,  they  found  he’s  gifted  with  TELEPATHY  .  at  first  it  was  hard  to  understand  in  translation  of  a  child  who  didn’t  speak  english  ,  but  the  more  they  practiced  ,  it  became  more  apparent  when  focused  .

four  was  subsequently  taught  english  in  the  lab  as  he  aged  ,  because  while  translators  were  available  ,  it  was  “  easier  for  them  all  ”  if  he  learned  .  they  were  correct  in  that  ,  but  it  didn’t  make  the  real  situation  any  better  .

whatever  memories  of  his  parents  he  had  were  slowly  but  surely  leaving  .  whatever  memories  of  a  short  lived  childhood  he  had  were  gone  .

at  the  age  of  eight  ,  they  unlocked  a  new  ability  —  PAIN  INDUCEMENT  —  a  sub-power  of  mental  manipulation  ,  stemming  from  his  telepathy  .  two  of  the  scientists  at  the  lab  had  the  misfortune  of  experiencing  it  firsthand  as  it  began  to  manifest  from  finding  himself  in  a  position  of  danger  ,  since  it  was  during  a  time  he  wasn’t  behaving  as  he  was  expected  to  .

they  decided  to  experiment  even  more  ,  of  course  :  the  limitations  and  circumstances  of  this  newly  developed  ability  .  as  it  would  turn  out  ,  four  can  only  access  pain  inducement  when  he’s  angry  /  feeling  threatened  ,  presumably  as  a  result  of  fight  or  flight  instincts  .

he  didn’t  have  much  contact  with  the  other  children  ,  other  than  intervals  spent  in  the  rainbow  room  ,  and  as  he  grew  older  and  more  distant  he  didn’t  care  .  soon  enough  ,  he  stopped  playing  and  speaking  to  the  others  even  when  they  were  given  that  small  time  .  he  kept  to  himself  ,  drawing  in  a  corner  .  he  liked  art  .  his  drawings  would  often  consist  of  grotesque  monsters  ;  dark  and  wildly  scribbled  ,  as  if  he  was  in  a  rush  to  get  down  what  he  envisioned  .

while  time  went  on  ,  more  and  more  children  escaped  the  lab  ,  leaving  four  one  of  the  last  remaining  .  it  wasn’t  that  four  didn’t  want  his  freedom  ,  to  have  more  than  this  life  of  being  an  experiment  ,  it  was  that  he  was  kind  of  scared  of  it  ?  it  was  an  overwhelming  thought  ,  no  matter  how  curious  he  was  of  the  outside  world  ...

after  eleven’s  monster  encounter  and  gate  opening  situation  ,  four  felt  ...  anxious  .  he  didn’t  know  how  to  describe  it  other  than  feeling  sick  ,  but  not  actually  being  sick  .  so  he  never  tried  ,  knowing  it  would  sound  even  more  ridiculous  .  instead  ,  he  once  again  turned  to  drawing  ,  using  the  creative  outlet  as  a  way  to  express  himself  and  make  up  for  what  his  words  lacked  .  however  ,  it  only  got  worse  when  the  monster  escaped  and  lab  investigations  of  the  newly  quarantined  area  began  .

in  a  well-timed  space  after  the  chaos  ,  he  disobeyed  the  order  of  staying  away  and  found  himself  on  an  adventure  down  into  the  madness  .  just  to  see  what  was  causing  all  of  this  ,  you  know  ?  just  one  glance  .  it  was  almost  too  easy  to  slip  past  any  form  of  security  ,  but  it  was  a  rush  of  adrenaline  that  he  never  thought  he  could  enjoy  .

the  next  day  he  began  drawing  the  gate  ,  trying  to  imitate  the  look  of  it  with  the  few  supplies  he  had  around  .  it  wasn’t  exact  enough  to  sound  off  too  many  alarms  in  the  scientists  that  saw  ,  but  it  was  enough  to  question  if  eleven  wasn’t  the  only  one  who  could  contact  the  other  dimensional  creature  .  for  a  few  days  ,  they  forced  him  to  try  and  contact  the  monster  .  they  wanted  to  see  if  four  could  reach  out  to  it  telepathically  ,  to  try  and  lure  it  back  —  for  a  little  while  ,  it  seemed  like  there  was  potential  ,  but  in  the  end  whatever  close  calls  they  got  were  simply  just  that  .

alright  so  ..  i  would  say  ..  some  time  after  the  events  of  season  1  and  like  mid  season  2  ,  four  finally  escaped  and  fled  deep  into  the  woods  .  with  everything  going  on  and  with  him  already  being  silent  and  withdrawn  ,  it  wouldn’t  have  been  too  shocking  if  nobody  really  noticed  him  at  first  ??  like  he’s  pretty  hard  to  miss  ,  standing  at  6ft  and  looking  ...  like  he  very  obviously  shouldn’t  be  there  ,  but  .  you  know  ,  circumstantial  .

at  some  point  he  was  taking  shelter  in  someone’s  shed  ,  because  he  was  cold  but  he  was  also  still  cold  and  it  didn’t  exactly  help  much  but  it  was  better  than  being  totally  exposed  .  in  order  to  get  warmer  clothes  /  food  ,  though  ,  four  did  use  his  telepathy  in  order  to  make  people  want  to  give  him  stuff  .  or  to  get  out  of  some  type  of  trouble  ??  like  power  of  suggestion  and  things  like  that  ,  basically  .

fast  forward  to  currently  ,  he’s  still  basically  lurking  in  the  woods  by  himself  ,  but  he  did  find  this  nice  older  woman  that  let  him  stay  in  her  guest  room  occasionally  before  she  passed  .  now  he  just  ???  kinda  chills  around  it  ,  but  also  has  started  venturing  out  into  town  ...  only  to  be  ,  admittedly  ,  slightly  overwhelmed  by  the  new  starcourt  mall  .

so  personality  wise  :  he’s  really  ...  i  wouldn’t  say  shy  ,  but  rather  ..  secretive  and  hard  to  read  for  the  most  part  .  doesn’t  know  proper  ways  to  express  himself  .  also  doesn’t  mean  to  seem  cold  or  aloof  though  !!  like  genuinely  he’s  a  nice  kid  and  his  intentions  are  for  the  most  part  good  ,  but  he  definitely  goes  about  things  the  wrong  way  ?  i  would  describe  him  as  a  chaotic  good  ravenclaw  ,  at  best  .

his  astrology  is  taurus  sun  ,  pisces  moon  ,  sagittarius  rising  meaning  he’s  particularly  creative  and  likes  to  have  an  outlet  to  express  himself  .  he  doesn’t  like  rushing  into  things  ,  but  that  doesn’t  necessarily  stop  any  impulses  from  taking  over  here  and  there  .  the  trio  of  signs  are  as  complimentary  as  they  are  contradictory  ,  and  i  think  it  captures  him  as  a  person  so  far  :  curious  but  reserved  ,  withdrawn  but  wanting  to  experience  life  in  a  new  way  .

if  he’s  ever  exposed  to  d&d  ,  he  would  probably  be  a  rogue  .

at  the  lab  ,  some  of  the  scientists  probably  started  calling  him  “  monster  boy  ”  as  a  not  actually  funny  joke  ,  because  monsters  were  pretty  much  the  sole  content  of  his  drawings  .  idk  he’s  very  innately  into  horror  stuff  ,  which  is  almost  ironic  .

in  terms  of  sexuality  ,  he’s  technically  demi  biromantic  /  demi  bisexual  ,  meaning  he  needs  a  solid  bond  before  even  potentially  thinking  about  that  sort  of  ish  .  but  also  because  he  has  absolutely  no  experience  with  it  whatsoever  ,  he’s  painfully  oblivious  to  it  in  all  forms  and  has  no  idea  lmao

uh  ..  he  still  goes  by  four  ,  mostly  .  he  vaguely  remembered  his  birth  name  but  will  only  use  it  if  he  absolutely  has  to  ??  it’s  still  a  really  foreign  concept  to  him  that  he  technically  has  a  name  and  not  just  a  number  ?  he’s  sort  of  self  conscious  about  said  name  though  ,  because  people  who  do  know  it  have  mispronounced  it  at  some  point  or  another  ,  i’m  sure  .  so  either  he  goes  by  the  usual  four  ...  or  maybe  a  simple  ‘  ji  ’

somehow  has  gained  an  addiction  to  coffee  ,  and  he  (  obviously  )  also  doesn’t  know  what  his  favorite  ice  cream  flavor  is  ,  that’s  possibly  gonna  be  a  bit  of  fun  to  figure  out  ,  maybe  !

#me ? actually writing a good intro ? unlikely #it's all a bunch of words thrown together trying to desperately make sense #hawkins;intro

[themarchblessing]

SETTING THE TONE

SABRINA

Looking up from my phone I spotted Julian walking through the door. Since I’m back in New York maybe for good this time, I plan on settling and raising Izaiah here. It only feels right to think that Julian should be apart of all this. Even though he and I never worked out I still want him to be apart of his son’s life. That’s why I’ve asked him to meet me here today. So we can talk about our child and set some boundaries

“Hey..” he said just as I stood up to greet him.

“Hi..” I smiled gently. We embraced each other in a quick, formal hug, parting after about a minute. “How are you?” I asked ushering him to sit down across from me.

Julian sat back and took his beanie off, setting it on his leg I assume. I can’t really see from this angle so I’m guessing he put his hat on his thigh for the time being. “I’m alright. How are you? How’s Izaiah doing?” He rebutted moving in closer to the table.

A waitress came by and took our order. I’ve been craving caffeine for some reason and being that it’s mid January, the seasonal flavors for drinks are still in. So for my order I asked for a gingerbread latte and a slice of pie.

“We’re doing good. The move was smooth. I’m just waiting on some furniture pieces to come in but overall everything is okay. How are things with you? Are you seeing anyone?” I regretted asking him that the second it came out of my mouth.

He shook his head rather quickly, glancing at me with a pleading look in his eye. “No, it’s just me these days. So what did you want to talk about?”

“Well now that I’m back I want to extend the invitation to you to be apart of Izaiah’s life. I’m not forcing you to stick around, buy him anything, watch him, or pick him up from school. None of that. I’ve got everything handled but if you would like to see him you just call me. I’m not a difficult person to work with and I-”

Julian touched my hand stopping me from speaking any further. “You don’t have to explain anything, Sabrina. Ever since we broke up I’ve been wondering about how you two are doing. Yes, I would love to be apart of Zay’s life and yours. For parenting reasons of course.” He hit me with an easy smile that seemed to settle my nerves.

“Do you want to see a picture of him?” Already going into my little backpack I pulled out the pocket size photo album that Zay and I made over the holidays. I opened it up and handed the whole book to Julian so he could have free reign of what he’s looking at.

“Damn he’s beautiful and he’s big now. How old is he..six?” Julian asked flipping to another set of pictures.

“Mhm, he’ll be seven in March.” Touching the necklace of his name that’s around my neck I reached for my phone seeing a message from Corey. Me changing the settings on my iMessage didn’t allow me to even get a preview of what Corey sent me. But I’m with Julian right now and it would be rude of me to use my phone in the middle of our meeting.

“He’s your twin seriously.” Julian handed me the book back. “Look I never told you this but I’m really proud of how far you’ve come on your own. I had no doubts on whether you could handle being a single mother but I still thought about you guys and worried. So let’s talk about these visitations.”

And this is where the beginning of something beautiful begins.

After Julian and I discussed every detail of what visitations and weekends will be like, we left the coffeehouse and went our separate ways. I finally check my message from Corey to see that he asked me to stop by. Zay is with Ravyn right now and even though I want to bring my little man with me I think Corey and I need some time to talk. About everything..

I stopped home to change before I headed over to Corey’s. I felt just a little bland the last I saw him and switching outfits really increased my mood and confidence. Parking alongside the street I grabbed my little bag and stepped out of the car handing the valet my keys. Corey and his fancy ass way of living drives me crazy sometimes. But then again his career allows him to live large if he pleases. I entered the lobby and walked over to the elevator pressing the button for the third floor.

My nerves began getting the best of me but of course before I could try and get off the elevator I reached his floor. “Shit..” Sighing sadly I walked off and followed the directions he sent me through text. Corey is really living nice these days. I can’t even fathom what he pays to stay in this place. When I came to suite 317 I put my phone away and knocked softly.  

“I’m coming!” I heard him yell from inside. Quickly I pulled my braid out and unraveled it, tousling my curls a little bit. I even put on more lip gloss just for the hell of it. The door opened up and there he stood with a broom in hand, no shirt on and a pair of shorts. Same old Corey, always has to be half naked in a home setting.

“You still dress the same too.” I spoke peeking around to make sure I didn’t see any feminine garments anywhere. For all I know he could have been busy with company and I would never want to intrude on his private time.

“Why should I change? I’m at home. Come in.” He nodded me inside. I stepped across the threshold instantly realizing that he’s in the middle of cleaning. Still I discreetly searched for anything unusual. “Nobody is here so you can stop looking.” He muttered from behind me.

Going over to the table against the wall I took my shoes off and set my bag down. “So this is what you’re day consists of huh? Cleaning?” Turning around to face him I hugged myself close to shield off the chill that crept up on me. My choice of jeans  and this little jacket were not a smart move. Thank goodness for long sleeves.

“Pretty much. I’m not taking any calls for a few days as far as work goes since you’re back in town. I didn’t know when you would coming by so I just figured I’d clean up a little. What’s wrong? Why do you look like you want to tell me something..” He asked leaning the broom up against the door.

“I saw Julian this morning.” I replied instantly. I’m a terrible liar and being that Corey knows all of my habits and flaws I can’t hide shit from him even if I tried.

He raised an eyebrow and nodded in silence. “What happened?” He inquired. He then walked us back to his room where he must have been in before I came. We reached his room where he went off into what looks like his bathroom.

“Corey?” Taking off my jacket I placed it on a hook attached to his bedroom door. Walking around the room and stopping at his little sitting area I scanned over the photos he’s collected. Pictures of us, his family, and his work all took up the space on the table. “Oh my gosh look how young we were. God we were babies.” Picking up the frame I glided my fingers over the glass. The image of Corey and I with our classmates when we graduated from high school brought back memories. A lot of good and bittersweet memories.

“There’s more where that came from in the other bedroom.” Corey speaking freaked me out and just as I almost dropped the frame I hugged it to my chest.

“You cannot just walk up on people from behind! Damn you Corey..” Rolling my eyes I set the frame down and took a seat on his bed.

“Sabrina..can we finish this conversation from the other night please?” Corey laid in front of me with his feet hanging over the edge. He got comfortable with a pillow under his chin for support.

“What do you want to know?” I began.

“Why you left? Why didn’t you give it a little time? Why didn’t you reach out more? What happened with Julian..all of it. I want to know everything. I won’t talk, I’ll just listen and respond at the end.” He said.

I went on to tell him everything that happened from my 30th birthday party up until the move back to the city. The conversation was emotionally draining for so many reasons. There’s just so much that I couldn’t fathom telling Corey through a letter or an email or a phone call. He stepped out for a good ten minutes and I’m guessing to take some time for himself. I felt so bad when I heard him sniffling in the bathroom. I never meant to upset him or make him cry. We talked and talked and once the air was cleared we put in a movie and moved forward just like old times. My conscience feels so light and airy. Talking everything out really helped to wash away any guilt and hidden pain I’ve been harboring for so long.

“You hungry? Or did Julian fill you up enough?” I took him serious until I decoded the sexual innuendo in his question.

“I didn’t fuck him. We met in a coffee shop ok? You don’t have to be so nasty.” Getting up from the couch I met him in the kitchen to look through his pantry.

“How was I supposed to know? He might have wanted to give you a welcome back present. Sit yo ass down and stop looking for food!” He exclaimed, pulling me by the hand out of the pantry. I had just spotted a snack I wanted too until he pulled me out.

Sitting on a barstool I tapped my knuckles against the countertop. “Me enfermas.” I huffed watching him shrug carelessly that I said he makes me sick. Rolling my eyes and shaking my head at how annoying he can be I crossed my legs. “Why do you have to make so many sexual references huh? Are you going through a drought right now? Where’s your go-to girl?”

“As a matter of fact I am going through a temporary dry spell so my mind is all over the place. Why do you keep putting me on the spot? Why do you keep hinting at my non-existent love life?” he took out a folded up piece of paper from inside a drawer, reading over it. I heard a phone going off from nearby and it took me a minute to realize it was mine.

Seeing Izaiah’s school calling I accepted the call quickly. “Hello?” I said.

“Hi, is this Sabrina Guerrero?” A woman spoke mispronouncing my last name.

“Yes this is she, how can I help you?” I rebutted.

“My name is Marie Hammond and I’m the secretary here at your son's school. I’m calling to inform you of an open house on Tuesday that we are having for the parents of the incoming students. Will you be able to come?” She asked.

“Yes I will be there. What time does it start?” Once I got all the information regarding the open house, said my goodbye and put that date and time in my calendar. Going back over to the barstool I was sitting in I tapped my foot against the leg of the chair.

“Mommy stuff?” Corey turned around to open another draw. A menu for a Thai spot that delivers 24 hours a day made my mouth water. I didn’t realize I was this hungry but thank goodness Corey is buying.

“Yeah there’s some open house at Zay’s school on Tuesday.” As I spun around in my chair I got a brilliant idea. “Could you watch him for me while I go and meet his teachers?” I proposed with glee.

Corey put his phone down in the middle of dialing and glared at me intently. “You’re not serious are you?” His pleading tone for me to change my request made me snicker.

“Yes I am serious. C’mon. Don’t you want to get to know him? He’s been asking about you. He called you the camera guy last night.” When I heard that come out of my son’s mouth I spit out my drink. I wasn’t expecting him to find such a specific term for Corey.

“Let me order this food and we’ll talk. Same as always right?” Corey picked up the phone and continued to press on the keypad staring at me heavily.

“With chicken yes. Can you please order pad Thai for Izaiah? And sticky rice please?” Smiling at him I kept quiet while he ordered. I couldn’t resist admiring all of the little changes he’s made to himself as much as he’s stayed the same. I really missed having him around while I was down in Chino.

“Last name Howard. Yeah it’s suite 317. Ok, thank you.” Corey slid his phone back into his pocket and opened the freezer taking out a rectangular, metal pan. “I made this and I want you to tell me if you like it. Hm..” Accepting the spoon from him I dipped it inside the pan having difficulty. Corey helped out and gave the spoon back.

Without question I put the spoonful in my mouth, breaking down everything slowly due to how cold it all was. “Cherry garcia, really?” I spoke in mid swallow. “How and when and why?” I rambled, getting another sample.

“I’ve had a lot of downtime over the years so I took your advice and picked up another hobby.” He shrugged lazily. He held this proud look to him as he should feel that way of himself. Corey is very talented in so many ways so to find out that he’s now baking and into making ice cream from scratch is really impressive.

“Zay is going to love you forever you know that right? Without question, this is really good. I’m proud of you Corey. I feel that I don’t share that with you enough but I truly am. You’ve really changed for the better since we were little and I seriously hope that you end up with a good girl.” Standing up I went around the island and rinsed my spoon off. I also put Izaiah’s treat back in the freezer.

“Bri please don’t start riding my dick about a girlfriend. I’m already trying to let this one chick down easy because I just don’t-“

My ears perked up and I got excited hearing about a girl. “What girl?” I poked him in his chest waiting for more information.

“I’m not telling you shit because there’s nothing to tell. I don’t really like her and she’s too feisty for me. She lives to pick fights and I hate that shit. There I told you something now stop riding my nuts about this and go sit down until the food comes. Go..” Corey demanded. He stood behind me and pushed me over to the couch. We both sat together getting back into the movie. I kept sneaking glances at Corey. The movie is good but I want to talk.

“What Sabrina? What do you want to know?” He huffed. He positioned himself at an angle throwing his arm behind the couch.

“Do you ever want to get married? Like has your mind changed at all from the last time I asked you this?” I started off my round of one hundred questions with a big question wondering what his mind state is.

“Marriage? I don’t know. If I find a good one and she knows how to act right and not care about what I can buy her then maybe I’ll put a ring on the bitch finger but until then..I’m not thinking about it. Women these days are so materialistic, so fake, so into the most shallow things in life. I can’t stand dating because you have to take the time and energy to go through multiple people just to find the right person. It’s tiring.” He explains.

“Corey not all women are like that. You ever think maybe it’s the women you attract?” I challenged.

Corey hummed to himself and combed through his goatee with his fingers. “It could be.” he agreed. A knock at the door and his phone going off interrupted what he was about to say next. He looked at his phone and then stood up running back to his room. He came back with some cash in his hand and a twenty dollar bill in the other. “The twenty is for the tip, I’ma take this right quick. It’s Brian and yes I’ll tell him you said hi.” He placed the money in my hand and left the room again.

Going to his front door I opened it to see the food here. “Hi.” I said.

“Hello, delivery for Howard. 317 right?” The guy said handing me the food.

“Yes. Here you go.” I handed him the tip and the money. Once I got the change I carefully shut the door with my foot. “This is a lot of food. What the hell did you get Corey?” I grunted to myself at how much this bag weighs.

“Nigga..no. I told you to leave that girl alone. You asked me for advice and I gave it you now you’re asking me if I’m sure that’s what I meant..” Corey said coming into view. He looked up at me and smiled gently. He threw up his index finger signaling that he needed a minute to get Brian off the phone.

I let him continue and in the meantime I want to see my baby boy. I started a facetime call as I began setting up plates for Corey and I.

“Mommy!” Zay shouted suddenly. I dropped a fork on the floor in the process of trying to fix my plate.

“Hi my love, how are you?” I asked, regaining focus.

“Coloring. Titi is making me lunch. Where are you?” Zay asked. I looked down at the screen to see his face super close to the camera.

“What’s she making and why are you so close to the phone baby? Back up a little bit.” I encouraged seeing him distance himself from Ravyn’s phone. “That’s better. What’s titi making?”

“Spaghetti with meatballs. I’m so happy mom because I’m so very hungry. You never answered my question mama, where are you?” The curiosity in Zay’s voice made me melt that he’s concerned of my whereabouts.

“I’m at Corey’s house. Look over there but be quiet, he’s on the phone.” Setting the container down I picked up my phone and switched the view to put Corey on the camera. “You see him?”

“I see him. What’s that in the counter? Is that noodles?” Now the excitement comes into play. I told Corey my baby loves noodles.

“Yeah papito that’s noodles you saw. Corey and I are about to eat too. Don’t worry I’m bringing you so many noodles home ok?” I put the phone down to finish setting up our plates.

“Aw mommy you’re sweet. Tell Corey I said hi for me ok? Titi says it's time to eat now.” Izaiah mumbles sounding sad that he has to go.

“Oh honey don’t look like that and don’t sound so sad. I’ll see you later. Have fun with titi and behave. I love you Zay, I love you so much. Muah..” Blowing him a kiss I caught the one he blew back.

“Besos mommy.” I let Zay hang up since my hands are full. Footsteps nearby confirmed that Corey had gotten rid of Brian. “Looks like you both are having girl problems.” I teased, moving aside so Corey could wash his hands.

“Shut up girl. I’m not having girl problems that’s Brian. That nigga stays having problems with the women he fucks with. Was that lil man on the phone?” He quizzed reaching for a little rag in the basket across from the sink. Tossing the small towel in a basket next to the trash can he took over the food preparation. I washed my hands also since I have nothing to do.

“Yeah that was him. He says hi.” I nudged Corey with my hip as I stalked over to the refrigerator. Taking out a glass I filled up mine with water. I took out a beer for him.

“How do you spell his name? I’ve been curious about that since I first heard you say it.” I froze up a little at his question. I’ve never told anyone where I got the spelling of my son’s name from.

“Um..well..it’s uh, like yours.” I mumbled quietly.

“Bri you know I can’t hear that shit. How do you spell his name?” he requested again.

“His name is spelled exactly like yours.” I stated louder. Corey stopped moving which told me that he was staring at me. When I turned around I was proven right.

“Like my middle name? As in I-z-a-i-a-h? What?” The deer in headlights look on Corey’s face made my stomach flip flop. “For real?” he whispered.

“For real. Please don’t be upset or make this a big deal Corey. You’re a big part of my life and I really liked the name Izaiah and I didn’t want to think of a different spelling so I stuck with yours. Nobody knows.” I don’t know why I felt the need to defend my reasoning for the spelling of my hijo’s name but this is a sticky situation.

“Not even the seed guy knows?” He pushed gently, handing me my plate and my glass I left by the refrigerator. I hadn’t even realized I moved away from that spot until now.

Nodding in certainty I took the plate and went back to the couch. I got situated with my plate on one of the trays Corey keeps under his coffee table. He joined me once again after he closed the curtains and did some other stuff around the room.

“Bri..” he called to me. I gave him eye contact, pushing my food around with my fork. “As weird as it is, I’m honored that you thought about me enough to name your son after me. It means so fucking much. I don’t want you to feel bad about your decision at all because you have no reason to.” Corey sank back into the couch and used his fist to support his cheek.

I had to put my fork down as a tear slid down my face. “Stop..” The caring plea for me not to get upset made more tears come out. “Lori please don’t cry on me. You don’t have to be upset.” He wiped my tears with both of his thumbs making those butterflies return. When I finally met his stare I felt like my body was slipping in and out of consciousness. Corey has the most beautiful eyes of any man I have ever met because he’s so honest. He’s everything a woman could ever ask for. I then recalled him using my other name that only he uses too.

“You called me Lori. I haven’t heard you call me that in what? Six or seven years.” Swallowing the mass in my throat I licked my top lip to clear off the excess tears.

“The moment called for it. Look um..” He took one hand away from my face and set it between us. “I’m sorry for how I first acted when you told me that you wanted to have a baby. I should’ve been more supportive of you and your decision. After all these years I’ve had time to really reflect and I’m sorry. You came to me with such personal and special information and I should’ve reacted differently. I never meant to hurt you or not keep in contact with you while you were away. You being gone was hard on me. And to keep it one hundred, I couldn’t settle because you were gone. It didn’t feel right to lock anything down without you here. It’s like I need your blessing or something but whatever. I just wanted to get that off my chest.” He took a deep breath and leaned closer. He softly kissed my forehead causing my eyes to slowly shut. I took in a huge breath, holding onto his shoulder for support.

I live for these type of moments especially with Corey. He used to be so hard, mean, and emotionless. Now at thirty-five he’s the complete opposite.

“Thank you.” I whispered reaching over to place my hand over his. I didn’t know what else to say. I forgave Corey long ago for how he acted when I first told him about my donor idea.

“I love you Sabrina and I always will. I’m always gonna be here when you need me.” He placed another kiss on my forehead, scaling back and reaching for his food.

As we settled into our movie and meal my mind began to drift. A million and one different thoughts filled my head about a million different things. I believe Corey will settle into his role in Zay’s life just fine and I also believe that our relationship will go back to what it used to be. I trust the path that I’m stepping into now that I’m home.

#the march blessing #short story

[yours-notyours]

Communicator

THE VALUE OF SPEAKING UP

Speaking up is an important part of communication but it can get awkward sometimes. It may be to clarify an opinion or to ask that an uncertain one be clarified. Or to correct a misrepresentation or set a boundary. Or even to admit what we don’t know but are expected to or to identify what we expect but aren’t receiving--Depending on who we’re communicating with, speaking up can potentially be uncomfortable. But however nerve wracking as it may be, it’s a habit worth practicing. The result of course, may vary, but one welcomed side effect is people have access to what’s on your mind, and with that, are given an opportunity to better understand and engage with you as a person.

None of us are, as of yet, telepaths. But that fact works to undermine the magic of language. Through it, we can share thoughts from mind to mind, we just have to bottle them up in containers called symbols which we speak, write, or sign to one another. The thoughts themselves are also the bottled up approximation of feelings. Which are hard to fully define when there are no words to encapsulate them, as is frustratingly the case when a person speaks more than one language and tries to translate certain words that have no exact equivalent in the other language. Yet somehow, because we’ve isolated noises, scribbles, scratches and gestures to hold collective meaning, we can exchange a nuanced variety of otherwise inexpressible feelings.

For its connective capacity and reach, language was like the internet before the internet. And we would be part-time suckers to not revel in this marvelous invention and utilize it to speak up whenever necessary. But sometimes other factors come into play.

The main one, I think, is fear.

We fear the result. Speaking up, after all, usually happens when something is off. A conflict between our inner selves and an external situation. A crooked line that needs to be set straight but to do so may require a confrontation. A moment where pleasantness is interrupted to point out a mistake or admit one; to feel judged, or humiliated, vulnerable and subject to objections or defensive, and maybe even, unpredictable behavior. And while true, speaking up can just as likely result in acknowledgement, praise, understanding, or gratitude--Our past experiences may make some of us more apprehensive about the uncertainty of how our thoughts may be received.

I wish neither to say trauma is easy to overcome nor that context shouldn’t be taken into account when speaking up. But in some instances trauma isn’t the issue and the context actually supports, rather than discourages, the clarification. For instance, if someone mispronounces your name (or calls you by a different one altogether) you would want to correct them. If you don’t, they would literally be perceiving you as someone you are not. The confusion might vary in seriousness depending on who the person is and where the mistake occurs. At work for instance, you can imagine how this mistake might branch off into a series of further awkward moments like many a sitcom might explore. Is it worth remaining silent to simply spare the initial person the smaller discomfort of being corrected?

There might be some disagreement as to which discomfort is actually the smaller offense to endure. One may also question whether insisting others suffer because one is suffering is fair. And with good reason, such logic quacks too close to eye-for-an-eye. So then 1:  Let’s just say both offenses are equal. And 2: Let’s make a distinction between someone hurting you (making you suffer) and someone allowing you to suffer alone. The example of the wrong name, is the latter case in so much as it’s like someone letting you carry a heavy weight for them, up a flight of steps--And despite they’re physically capable of helping, instead proceed empty handed. If you’re struggling with the weight, you can either pretend you’re not (and suffer alone) or ask for help. Speaking up to correct someone about your name is to share the discomfort which has been created and to follow it up by attempting to collaborate in “carrying” the resolution together.

This is why speaking up can seem intimidating because it might require more effort, more steps, more communication. It’s the inevitability of holding a personal truth, in this example the correct name, and having to show up for this truth, if it is in fact true to you. The interaction, the clarifying conversation is an important one to have. The energy you bring into it, as well as how yours is received. It may have been harder than letting things be, but that’s what makes it special and worth pursuing, especially if the easier option involves you suffering alone and possibly harboring resentment toward both the person and yourself.

It can feel very lonely to be judged, ridiculed or dismissed, but it’s also quite lonely to hold your tongue and not express yourself.

To self-quarantine in the subjective spotlight of your mind, from which you swoon the absent audience of an empty theatre with your rapturous soliloquy! The endless observations and definitions pouring like champagne on Bastille Day. The secret performance. Measuring every action, theorizing every future. And starring a self-projection which you aim for; an ideal version of who you wish to be. The ‘higher self’ dressed in all your potential. But this ideal is no more than a shadow, without any real reach or grip of its own on the physical world, other than what we act out with our physical bodies.

As a species we evolved in groups, isolation often meant death. Fear of banishment is still real, and we often use prisons and public shaming as modern effective versions of exile. Retirement homes and asylums also espouse that same energy of places to rid societies of those individuals deemed no longer able to function within it. To be trapped in your head, is itself a type of banishment; a mental prison for which the practice of expressing yourself can continually unlock doors and sneak you past the guards. Hell, it’ll get the guards on your side! But it isn’t enough to do it when it’s easy, it’s actually almost more important to communicate and express yourself when it’s challenging.

This may be to the general point that there’s value in facing adversity. That testing one’s convictions actually strengthens them. It isn’t the only way but there’s something to this idea that standing up against oppositional energy chisels out the confidence to express yourself via words and actions (since communicating requires physical representations of psychic thought). The better you become at this, the more conversations you’re able to have without fear--Ideally counterbalancing the freedom to express yourself with the capacity to also listen, and hold space for those who wish to communicate with you, and speak their truth up.

Despite being good at listening to others speak up, I tend to struggle with doing it myself. Communication will eventually bump into the requirement to speak truthfully. It can be time consuming to give an honest response in every exchange, followed up by a conversation to iron out the kinks. Reserving candor for closer relationships might be more useful than walking around as if you’ve been injected with truth serum. But for me, the habit of omission can trickle into those closer relations at the growing expense of continually misrepresenting myself. And with that misrepresentation, come interactions that keep the doors to the theatre shut, and the mad thespian, shouting monologues from under an iron mask. The thing is, only I can remove the face cage, and open those doors. Only I can raise the volume.

I’ve learned no one knows what you want. It’s not as obvious as you think. Not everyone knows how to treat you or how to satisfy you. You have to meet them halfway. By remaining consistent between internal and external expression of yourself, you’ll manifest who you are and how you wish to participate with the world--And in turn, how the world can make use of you, which I believe it should. The ways in which this self is challenged when forced to speak up, exercises integrity and commitment. Of course, this too can become misguided and abused to speak up in bad faith. That is, not to stand up or clarify yourself but to posture your ego and self-importance. This pantomime tends to drown out who you are on the inside, replacing their heartfelt adlib with an outer persona who’s acting out from fear of not being respected or admired.

What’s dangerous about this, is we tend to believe what we say if we say it often enough, again, a credit to the magic of language.

Words are vessels for thoughts and feelings. They were created by us to transfer ideas back and forth. Culture preserves language to free every new generation from having to create their own symbols from scratch. A tricky endeavor because without language you would have to first realize that such a thing as language is possible.

Communication brings us closer, allowing us to express our emotions and avoid unnecessary anxieties by talking and explaining things out. Our ancestors did this, and brought about a social dimension that often required us to love and teach one another. Children have an obvious curiosity to catch up and figure the world out, their young minds woken by the fires of consciousness. At first they focus on the world at large and how it functions but eventually, having that, on more solid footing, they become young adults and set their sights on themselves and others. We all desire connection and want to understand the needs of those we connect with,...The only catch is they have to speak up...And so do we.

#yoursnotyours #azraelencarnacion

[trilliath]

re: pronouncing Zykov, in my language there's a clear difference in the vowel sounds of i and y, and I've read a few sidgeno genderbent AUs where Sid is Syd, and it just throws me off because to me those are quite different, but in English they're supposed to be pronounced the same? Weird tbh ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Honestly it’s more that English is a slutty, slutty language that has no fidelity to its vowel sounds and how they really relate to the letters we use. It’s a lovely patchwork quilt of language cobbled together from everything it could around the world, but it has its weaknesses hehe. Russian, for instance (at least as far as I’ve seen in the two years I’ve been studying it), has vastly more fidelity between the sounds and letters, and a lot more consistency overall in pronunciation.

i and y do mostly sortof represent different sounds in english, but not always, and they can each come in like five different forms depending on where they show up, it’s ridiculous. It’s true a lot of the time they do get pronounced the same when they’re deliberately being made to be interchangeable. Like with Sid and Syd - which is more because culturally that is sometimes a feminized version of the name Sidney to spell it Sydney even though it’s the same sound.

I don’t like it personally in the case of fic because that’s… just not Sid’s name? Letters matter to people? Like, my first name is a jumble of nonsensical english vowels (four of the six letters are vowels if you count y lmao) that nobody can pronounce from how it’s spelled but I’m still attached to it. (that’s also why it makes sense to me that someone named Евгений is going to translate their name to Evgeni even if a more phonetic translation would be more like Yevgyeny or maybe Ievgieni. That E shape itself is familiar and important even if it is definitely not the same sound at all. Also why Geno makes way more sense than Gino imo, despite Gino being possibly a more common spelling.)

For the vowel “ы” in particular, in my opinion, it’s really just not quite something you can directly link to a single english letter and have that be informative enough. Like, it’s almost always translated into a “y” but like… I don’t like it. An english speaker looking at “Zykov” is not going to have any way of knowing how to say it even using english-normal pronunciations of a “y”. Like… Zeekov? Zaikov? either is a fair guess from the y, and yet neither of them are close to “ы” anyway. (To me) It’s more like the “ey” sound made by the word “whey” than any single english vowel… but it never quite works fully anyway because, especially in northamerican english, our vowel sounds are all made so far down in our throats it’s practically scandalous, while russian vowels are much further towards the front of the mouth.

In the end I just think it’s all so weird and cool and interesting… but it also bugs me a LOT that people whose entire professional careers involve working with people from a fairly small variety of nationalities and native languages, can’t be bothered to learn a little tiny bit about those languages and how to get people’s names right. The fact that Zdeno Chara learns at least a little bit of all his new teammates’ native languages is absolutely wonderful but honestly to me it should be the NORM for long-standing captains and coaches and managers etc.. It’s really not that hard, and getting names right is so important psychologically and for relationships. It’s so unprofessional to me to see how many of these media people etc. do things like ramble with too-fast colloquial english and being huffy about having to be corrected in mispronouncing a player’s name after they’ve been doing it wrong and a rookie was too nervous to correct them at first.

#trill talks languages #replies #nonnerpants #trill talks hockey