#the past two weeks have felt like my household is a reality tv show and we are just waiting to see whose mental health is going to vote them

[extremelyblackandwhite]

ascendance - 04

PAIRING: mob!bucky barnes x reader

WARNINGS: abduction, age gap (reader is 23, bucky is 37)

A/N: hello!! i hope you enjoy this new chapter as i dive more into bucky’s past. italics in this work symbolise a flashback in case anyone’s confused. hope you enjoy it xx

> NEXT CHAPTER | MASTERLIST

The entrance hall of the Barnes household was pilled up with people. Between his mum barking orders left to right and caterers bringing food in and out, the once silent room turned into a busy crossroads which meant James had retreated back to his room. He was sat down in his bed, cashmere black suit on and hair pushed back, Dead Souls opened on top his legs. He was lost in between the small black letters printed on the yellowing paper, so lost that the sound of his window opening went by him until a loud thump woke him up from his literary daze. Bucky looked up to see his younger sister, sat on the floor of his bedroom by the window with her dress partially on and hair messy due to the windy weather outside. He sighed, closing his book and putting it off to the side.

    - Can’t you climb into your own bedroom? - Bucky got up from bed, leaning down to help her back onto her feet.

    - Yours is closer. - she brushed the dirt off her baby pink dress picked by their mother. - Shouldn’t you be downstairs?

    - Shouldn’t you be in your bedroom? 

    - Touche. - she pointed. - Can you not tell mum? She’ll freak out if she discovers that I went out on dad’s big day. 

    - Go on, I’ll keep mum occupied while you sort out that bird’s nest hair. 

    - Thank you! - she smiled, giving him a short hug. - What am I gonna do when you go to Princeton? Who’s gonna cover for me?

    - I guess you’ll just have to form an alliance with the maids.

Y/N and Bucky were silent, barely speaking to each other if even looking into each other’s eyes. She merely remained there in her operatic costume, the corset doing the best of jobs at enhancing her female features and almost making her look like a femme fatale out of a classical movie in rich red and green fabrics decorated with what he guessed where heavy metal gold pieces resembling precious jewels and golden rings. He did not know which production they were putting on, he hadn’t even heard her sing before but she looked like she belonged in that stage, like she would have been showered in praise the moment the spotlight grazed her. 

She paced around the living room not exactly sure what to do, the beads which made up her skirt and would suddenly peak to show her legs making a slight rustling noise as her eyes studied the book shelf which was filled with tons and tons of books from the classics to mere economy books. Maybe she could read them whenever the tension between of them wasn’t so apparent. She couldn’t help but sometimes look at the badly fixed window and wonder if she could make it, maybe when he wasn’t looking, maybe when he was sleeping yet looking at him; tall, muscular, fast, definetely much stronger than her, she knew that even if she managed to get outside, he would easily get her back. Her mind battled her positive side as she wondered if this was it, if this was home now. Suddenly, her old flat no longer seemed old and she would give everything away if only she could go back, back to being told to do errands that really did not concern her, to stepping on bobby pins laid on the ground, to way too strong makeup which looked ridiculous in proper daylight. She would give everything, if she could go back to what her life had been. 

The man whose name he hadn’t even dignified himself to tell her yet was sat on one of the high chairs by the kitchen with his eyes trained on her. She briskly turned around, arms crossed under her chest with an almost child like pout of someone who had just been punished. In reality, I’m the one who’s being punished here, he thought to himself.

     - You could tell me your name. - she said, not looking into his eyes, instead rubbing her worn out ballet shoes against his hard floor. 

     - You don’t need to know my name. - he was quiet yet imposing. Y/N could not deny he seemed to have a strong presence despite barely raising his voice. It was almost magnetic as if he was made to be looked at, yet she felt he didn’t want to be seen. 

     - What if I need to call out for you? 

     - I would know. There’s no one else here, is it?

Y/N did not reply to this, instead rolling her eyes and sitting down on the couch. There was not much to do in the small one bedroom apartment other than pace around, eat and watch television. Her hand flew over to the remote, pointing it at the TV to turn it on which opened on the news channel. She guessed this was the way she had of now knowing what was happening outside the four walls she was being held captive in. There wasn’t much happening and even if it was, all the local news could talk about was about the upcoming mayoral election. It was a circus with advertisements and rumours flying around about each and every candidate and while it was almost painfully enjoyable to see men over thirty acting like gossip mean girls in school, everyone knew who was gonna win. 

She’d always been told that behind every great man, there’s a great woman and in this particular election it couldn’t be anymore true. The favourite candidate to win, Robert Moore, also known as Bobbie, was married to an senator’s daughter but not just any senator, Senator Barnes. She was too young to remember his policies or even his public persona, yet from what she knew, he had been a very well liked and well respected Senator, coming from a prominent family and building an even more prominent family. Being married to Rebecca Barnes, now Rebecca Barnes-Moore, was a one way ticket to a good career in politics. The two stood in the television screen, side by side in an almost JFK and Jackie Kennedy fashion with sunny smiles looking like the picture perfect Americana couple. It seemed all his ads showed him, his wife and their new born baby. High school sweethearts, it seemed.

    - Are you gonna watch that the whole day? - she turned her head around, looking at his annoyed expression, whiskey glass in hand. 

    - They look good together. 

    - It’s a circus. - he snickered, sitting by her side. 

    - What are you? An anarchist? - those words flew out of her mouth without any filter, mostly out of nuisance. - Her father was a great politician and he is young and likeable.  

     - Young and likeable ... sounds like great political traits. 

     - What do you know about politics?

     - What do you know about politics? Do they have a crash course in politics at whatever company you were in? 

She rolled her eyes, turning the volume up to listen to the broadcaster tell the love story of the future mayor and his wife. Her face softened as she heard what was probably a highly modified version of the actual truth yet she couldn’t help but slightly smile at the idea of it. They seemed in love and as someone who had a degree in pretending to be in love while singing, it warmed her heart to see it. She liked that idea, the idea of Ms and Mrs Americana, the idea of having someone to lean in. Well, she liked the idea of someone. Sure, maybe the man whose name she still didn’t know and was starting to believe was never going to learn was right, it was a circus, all elections are but she couldn’t help but be pulled by the myth of it, by the we against the world mentality no matter how morally wrong it was. 

She continued to watch the coverage of the election run as the man next to her got up from the couch to pick up a phone call. Her hearing slightly moved towards what he was doing, mind always thinking of escaping but even though he was talking on the phone, his gaze was trained of her as if she were his prey. He mumbled something on the phone before turning it off and moving his eyes to text someone yet after that his eyes were on her once more. 

    - Try not to escape for the next hour.

    - Do you have a nameless anarchy convention to attend?

    - Billy is coming to watch over you. No funny business. 

    - Will. - she corrected him. - He doesn’t like being called Billy. 

    - As long as you don’t pull a mission impossible on him, I will call him whatever you want. 

Will didn’t take long to arrive, dressed in a tennis-like outfit as if he had been pulled away from tennis which sounded like something he’d do. Bucky exchanged a few words with him before leaving the two of them together. He trusted Billy, or Will, was smart enough not to let her escape or run away. God, he didn’t even want to think about what John would do to him if she escaped, much less what he would do to her if she escaped. He made his drive to John’s condo in fifth avenue, parking his bike somewhere before making his way up. The condo was always weirdly filled with chatter talk yet he could see no people, it was as if the ghosts of the people he had taken out followed him in his own home and Bucky couldn’t say he pitied him. After all, he had his own ghosts too. 

He looked into John’s office where he was sat in the couch, the coverage of the election run on the television on low volume. John’s eyes immediately found Bucky’s figure looming at the entrance, never really entering, just standing behind the line which separated the hall from the office. 

     - How’s the roomie? - he motioned his hand for him to come in. - Still pretty?

     - What do you need?

     - I just got an invitation to a fundraiser. Zemo’s going so I want you to go. 

     - I can’t, I have her to watch over Y/N. She’s not very keen on remaining in the flat.

    - Chain her up for all I care. It’s in two weeks and I’ll be damned if I’m there by myself with Zemo. Besides it’s your sister’s fundraiser, I always love to see Rebecca. 

    - She’s not gonna be there. - his jaw locked. - A fundraiser for the mob? It’s mostly free alcohol and networking with them not showing up. 

    - Maybe you should bring your roomie. She’s pretty and if anything I’m sure she can sing and if not maybe she can entertain in another form. 

    - The NYPD is probably looking for her, it’s not wise ...

    - Do you make the rules? - John interrupted him, leaning against the couch with arms crossed. - You seem to have forgotten who makes the rules, soldat. 

    - I just don’t think ...

    - You don’t think. - he interrupted him once more. - This election is important and since I do not have the right person here to get ahead, I will make do with what we have. I don’t give a fuck about what you do when you’re at your flat but she is mine. She is my get out of jail card. Are we clear, soldat?

    - Yes. 

    - You can go now. - he dismissed him. Bucky turned around, eyes open wide yet emotionless face as if he were disconnected from his own consciousness. He guessed it was for the best to remain disconnected, to not know what was going on.

He drove himself back home, standing alone at night looking at his flat; the window still broken while the lights were flickering. He thought about running off, starting his bike and running off into the night and just drive until the tank was empty but he couldn’t. He had strings, strings which kept him tied to where he was right now. He guessed that now she was another string keeping him here. 

Bucky sighed as he walked back to his flat, opening the door to a rather serene sight. Will was by the kitchen watching the football game while Y/N was laid across the couch, book in hand which he recognised as one of his old ones. Her hair was different, she probably had taken off her wig and for the first time since those few minutes in the costume room. It looked soft, framing her face and getting in front of her eyes as she herself got lost in the room. Will excused himself, leaving just as he noticed Bucky before he could be yelled at by using his television. Yet again, Y/N and Bucky were alone in that small flat. She looked up from the book and at him before returning to read.

He left her with the book, walking to his bedroom which was probably now more hers than his to grab one of trousers and hoodies before returning back to the living room. Still reading. At least she wasn’t trying to break any more windows. He put the hoodie and trousers by her side, turning off the television as more screams for the football match came through. 

   - You can change into those. - he pointed at the clothing, getting her attention as she closed the book. - Those beads can’t be comfortable. 

   - Oh 

   - The bathroom’s there. - he pointed at one of the few doors in the flat. - You can shower too, there’s towels. 

   - Thank you. - she grabbed the things he had put out for her before leaving him in the living room by himself.

And then it was just him once more, alone, tied to this city which screamed everyone’s name but his.

TAGLIST: @lookiamtrying​ @buckyswillows​ @blossomslibrary​ @juliesland​ @iloveshawnieboi​ @unmagically​ @red-head011​ @poisonous00​ 

#sebastian stan #sebastian stan x reader #sebastian stan/reader #sebastian stan x you #sebastian stan/you #sebastian stan x y/n #sebastian stan/y/n #sebastian stan imagine #sebastian stan drabble #sebastian stan fanfic #mob boss sebastian stan #mob boss!sebastian stan #mob!sebastian stan #mob sebastian stan #bucky #bucky barnes #bucky x reader #bucky/reader #bucky x you #bucky/you #bucky x y/n #bucky/y/n #bucky imagine #bucky drabble #bucky fanfic #mob boss au #mobster bucky #mob boss!bucky #mob!bucky #mob boss bucky

[barricadebops]

Combeferre's mom once came home to find her son and his two best friends, tangled, sleeping in the couch, she has that picture framed next to Ferre's high school diploma.

Hi anon! I’m so sorry this took so long! Forgive me? I really loved this prompt and I wanted to do it justice.

---------------------------------------------------

Despite everything, Christmas and the holiday break surrounding the winter season had never really been stressful for Enjolras. Every year held the same routine: first Combeferre’s mother would sprint to the elementary school which soon gave way to the middle school which soon gave way to the high school he, Combeferre, and Courfeyrac would attend, and, gasping for breath, ask Enjolras if he would like to spend holiday break with their family. Right as Enjolras would open his mouth to answer the question, Courfeyrac’s mom would materialize out of the air and tug him to their side and ask him if he would like to spend holiday break at their house. Then each of the mother’s would demand to know how dare the other have the audacity to ask Enjolras to spend holiday break at her house when she knows that it’s her turn, and the fathers would passive aggressively try to nab the same parking spot to pick their son up from, and in the end, Enjolras would head home after having promised each family that he would think on it. Then, the next day, the cycle would start over again when both Combeferre and Courfeyrac latched onto either of his arms and tug, demanding he spend holiday break with him, and while he would scowl and pretend it’s an annoyance, he was never really able to tamp down the beam that would eventually make its way onto his face during the whole argument, and he knew that Combeferre and Courfeyrac too knew how much he loved it—loved feeling wanted, loved feeling like he’s part of a family even if he didn’t necessarily hold the blood relations within it, because God knew that what little he had of his family--his father--never welcomed him.

Usually, Enjolras alternated houses each holiday break, but it never stopped the arguments from occurring. 

This year would have been the same. He was gearing up for the arguments even though he knew that this year he would be spending his time at Combeferre’s house. 

But there were none. No one had to argue. There were no laughs or smiles or pretenses at being mad at each family as if they were the Montagues and the Capulets. 

This year, Enjolras spent the first day of his junior year holiday break curled up in Combeferre’s bed while his two best friends and each of their parents all stood downstairs in the living room, speaking in hushed tones about the only person who wasn’t present in the room. 

Beside the bed on the nightstand stood the few barebone possessions Enjolras had stored in his pocket when his father had finally thrown him out of the house. There laid his wallet, filled only with a few measly dollars and his ID and license, among a few other things, his phone, a pack of gum, and a granola bar wrapper. 

He doesn’t think sleep will come to him tonight. Not while the sight of the little he has left to his name stares at him, a reminder of the fact that his father believes he’s only valuable to be allowed a pack of gum as edibles when he locked the door in his face. 

Enjolras knows his father is no fool; he knows that as soon as he uttered the words “get out,” that his son would appear on the doorstep of either the Combeferres or the de Courferyacs, that they would plunge their household into an emergency situation and get him in the shower, into new clothes, into a new bed, after having some warm food—but he also knows that if they hadn’t been there for him, he wouldn’t care either way where his son ended up. 

And then Courfeyrac and his family had been called over, and here he was, shaking in bed, a nuisance, rather than be out there, discussing the logistics of the situation with everyone. 

He doesn’t think motion will come easy to him either for a while. 

The door creaks open, spilling streams of light from the bright hallway into the dark room, and he finds he has to squint to make out the distinct figure of Courfeyrac gently padding into the room and gingerly seating himself at his bedside, right beside his face. His best friend cards a gentle hand through his hair. 

“Combeferre?” he mumbles unintelligibly, wondering where he was. His mouth feels dry—like no amount of water will get rid of that sharp feeling when he swallows and his throat cries out for nourishment. 

Courfeyrac gives him a small smile. “He’s gone over to your house with his father. He’s getting your stuff.” 

Enjolras coughs. When had he been coming down with a cold? “He’s probably thrown it all away by now,” he responds, shutting his eyes for a moment, trying to ignore the little he has on the nightstand. Courfeyrac cards his hand through his hair once more, and Enjolras leans in a little closer. This touch, at least, is gentle. He hasn’t felt such a thing in a while. 

“That fast?” Courfeyrac asks quietly. He nods with another cough. His friend gives him a pained look, and Enjolras knows how it must pain him not to portray his comfort through some form of touch—it’s how Courfeyrac expresses love and care, and Enjolras doesn’t want to see that look on his face, and truth be told he too wants it, but he doesn’t know how to ask for it, not like this, not in this situation—

But then, Courfeyrac comes through, like he always does, because he’s always there, he’s always been there just as Combeferre has, since they each met each other in kindergarten and decided through means of their friendship bracelets that they would always be there for each other, like the first time Courfeyrac’s heart had been broken, or the first time Combeferre failed a biology exam and started to doubt his potential to pursue his dreams of becoming a doctor, or the first time Enjolras had the courage to tell his friends about the verbal abuses his father would throw him, and Courfeyrac is there, real and solid, he’s not just an apparition, or a friend his father says simply “tolerates him,” and he’s asking him, “Can I hug you?” 

And Enjolras is nodding, nodding because he needs this, he lets Courfeyrac wrap his arms around him tight, he caves in and fists his friend’s shirt, and reality is crashing down on him, but as real as his father’s words to never come back, as real as the uncertainty of his future is, so too is the reality of his friends’ love for him. 

And if they both fall asleep like that, and Combeferre gently opens the door to the sight of his two friends curled around each other, as if the past few hours never occurred, if he joins them on the bed, then that just serves as further proof that even if the world comes crumbling down around them, at least they’ll be together, salvaging what little they can and rebuilding their own, better world.

_________________________________________

They managed to retrieve most of his possessions, actually. 

Well. His father would argue that they’re really his possessions because they were bought with his money, but Combeferre and his father wouldn’t hear of it. The important thing is they retrieved the legal documents necessary, and quite a few of Enjolras’ clothes and books, amongst various other things. 

When they finish raiding the house, Enjolras’ father asks with a sneer to leave him alone from then on. 

How ridiculous, thinks Combeferre. If Enjolras was going to start living with his family now, he does realize there’s going to have to be some legal discussion on the transference of possession of a minor, doesn’t he?

---------------------------------------------------

They’re sitting on the couch, bundled underneath a blanket while Combeferre’s parents are out dealing with the legalities of the situation, and they are watching, of all shows, Maury, and Enjolras can’t stop complaining, but Courfeyrac won’t change it, even if he loathes the show (honestly just loathes daytime television—who actually enjoys this stuff?) because there—there—there’s that relaxed, unstressed attitude he’s been trying for so hard to coax from Enjolras in the past few weeks that Courfeyrac has been staying with Combeferre’s family, trying to ease Enjolras into this new transition with as much support as he can give. 

“You… are… the… FATHER!!!” Maury screams on tv, pointing to the man everyone already knew would have been. From his position—head in Enjolras’ lap, he can see the way Enjolras’ expressions contort to one of exasperation and irritation at having to watch something so unbelievably garbage. 

“Okay, you know who the father is, now can we please watch something else?” he asks for the hundredth time. 

Reaching up, he pokes a finger in Enjolras’ cheek. “But, Enjolras! There’s a new episode starting up right after this! Don’t you want to know about…” he casts his arm around for the remote, reading the description for the next episode, “...Garth cheating on Cheryl with her friend… Helen?” 

Enjolras looks down at him, incredulous. “Courfeyrac, please.” 

“Yes, Courfeyrac,” Combeferre says as he drops down on the couch, a bowl of popcorn in his hands, “change the channel. There’s only so much of Kathy accusing Abigail of carrying her husband’s child that I can take.” Setting it aside on the coffee table in front of them all, he drapes an arm around Enjolras, a silent invitation. 

And when Enjolras leans in, settling his head on Combeferre’s chest without flinching or tensing up for the first time in so many days, Courfeyrac smiles.

Pouting, he pretends to be upset at the way Enjolras and Combeferre gang up on him. “Fine, then what do you say we watch—and no, Ferre, we’re not watching a Nat Geo documentary. This isn’t the time for Nat Geo documentaries.”

Combeferre looks affronted. “Fine. But that means we’re not watching Bridget Jones’ Diary again.” 

He gasps, outraged. “Excuse you! Bridget Jones’ Diary is a cult classic.” He glances back up at Enjolras. “Back me up here, Enj.” 

Enjolras snorts. “Why would I waste my time watching Bridget Jones get together with knock off Mr. Darcy when I can instead watch Elizabeth Bennet get together with real-deal Mr. Darcy? After some due insults, that is,” he ends, smiling a little. 

Sighing dramatically, he reached up to twist one of Enjolras’ curls around his finger. “All this talk of Lizzy Bennet and Mr. Darcy from you Enjolras, and yet I still don’t see you looking for your own Mr. Darcy. You’ve roasted the shit out of plenty of people. When are we going to find someone who tells you that you’ve bewitched them body and soul?”

Enjolras scrunches his nose as Combeferre shakes his head. “Enjolras ‘roasts the shit’ out of bigots in school. I doubt he’d want to go out with racist Randy from history class.”

“I thought we were deciding what movie we were going to watch, not my love life,” complains Enjolras. 

“And I’m just trying to find you a love life!” he shoots back. 

Enjolras raises an eyebrow. “If I’m Elizabeth Bennet, and you’re unjustly interfering in my love life, wouldn’t that make you Mrs. Bennet, then?” 

He gasps. “You take that back!” 

Enjolras smiles smugly, resuming carding his fingers through Courfeyrac’s hair. “I can think very well of another bookworm who Mr. Bennet would be,” he says with an air of superiority. Courfeyrac blushes and glares up at him, just as Combeferre breaks from looking through Netflix and goes hm? 

“Let’s get back to looking for a movie,” he mutters. 

And then—

Then—

Courfeyrac would risk his crush being exposed hundreds of times if it meant he could hear Enjolras laugh again like that, laugh after so long, after so many weeks of being so tense, so much more tense than boys their age should be. He beams as he watches Enjolras try and recover himself from his fit of laughter, and under the blanket, he squeezes Combeferre’s hand, and he smiles even brighter when as he watches Combeferre watch their best friend softly, some of the past few days’ tension dissipate, though they all know it’s not gone completely. 

But here in this moment, as Enjolras laughs, which makes Courfeyrac laugh, and in turn makes Combeferre furrow his eyebrows trying to figure out what he missed, it exists as something outside their reality. 

“You know what we should watch?” Enjolras finally manages to say when he’s caught his breath. Combeferre sees the look in Enjolras’ eyes and sighs. 

“But it’ll be the second time this month.”

Courfeyrac catches on quickly. “As if you haven’t watched the same Nat Geo documentary four times in the same month.” He casts his eyes back up to Enjolras and gives him a small salute. “I second the motion, dear leader!” 

As Enjolras bursts out into laughter once more, Combeferre heaves another sigh and begins to look through Netflix, resigned to his fate. Though, he admits it’s a rather good fate. Honestly, who doesn’t love this movie? 

Enjolras snuggles closer into Combeferre’s chest. Combeferre tightens his arm around Enjolras’ shoulder. Enjolras continues to card his fingers through Courfeyrac’s curls. Courfeyrac has his feet thrown up on Combeferre’s lap. All three of them burrow under the blankets as, on screen, Grandpa begins to recite the tale of Westley and Buttercup’s love story. 

_________________________________________

Unsurprisingly, it is Enjolras who falls asleep first, head heavy on Combeferre’s chest. Courfeyrac would have smiled at the sight, if he wasn’t also on the verge of falling asleep. Combeferre considers making two trips and carrying his two friends up the stairs and two his room, but his own eyes are drooping closed, and the blankets were warm, and so were his friends. 

He figures they’ll all wake up later anyways. 

---------------------------------------------------

They don’t wake up for a while. 

The movie is over and something absurd Netflix has suggested is playing, but dimly, as her son, Enjolras, and Courfeyrac all sleep on, bundled together.

Can anyone blame her, really, when Mme. Combeferre cannot resist and snap a picture?

Right now, the entire world seemed to be crashing down on those three, and on her family and the de Courfeyracs. 

But here is a moment in which they reside in this little space of bliss they have—carefree, the weight of the world off their shoulders, the weight of problems they shouldn’t have to deal with—and it is a moment worth capturing, a reminder that maybe, hopefully, soon enough, things will be okay. 

Two years later, as her son and his two best friends—one of which she had considered another one of her sons the moment she had seen him when the three were all in kindergarten—leave for university, she breathes out, looks back, and nods. 

Yes, things had turned out okay. 

Next to her son’s and Enjolras’ high school diplomas hangs that same picture—the three all snuggled on the couch. At the de Courfeyrac’s the same hangs in the living room, and as the three boys—the triumvirate, she thinks with a fond roll of her eyes—head off to their new residence at university where they’ll stay together, as they had always meant to, she knows that the framed copy she sent with her son will hang there too. 

Things turned out okay. 

#les miserables #enjolras #combeferre #courfeyrac #enjolras & combeferre & courfeyrac #triumvirate friendship #les mis fic #annie writes stories #I loved this prompt #sorry for the angst at the beginning :( #fun game find the 'Hasan Minhaj: Homecoming King' reference #it's 'racist randy' that's the reference

[arbeaone]

For “Great British Baking Show” Contestants, The Real Loss is the Endless Trolling

by Rae Robey Published on December 2, 2019 at 11:51am

Against the vast backdrop of high-octane and anxiety-inducing cooking competition television programs, The Great British Baking Show is an aberration. Internationally beloved for its affable contestants and endless supply of baking-themed anglicisms—“soggy bottoms” and “saucy puds” abound—the show follows a dozen or so home bakers as they compete to be named Britain’s best amateur baker. When the 2019 season premiered with a record-breaking 9.6 million viewers, each contestant was thrust into the public eye; most have racked up tens of thousands of Instagram followers since the season began in August. For American audiences in particular, The Great British Baking Show’s intrinsic wholesomeness makes it a cultural phenomenon: We could never be so well-mannered in a televised competition, but we do enjoy pretending.

The Great British Baking Show is, at most, an estranged cousin to American cutthroat cooking competitions like Chopped, Iron Chef, or even Cupcake Wars. In the Baking Show tent, contestants help each other finish their bakes, are graceful (even grateful!) in defeat, and despair when their purported rivals are dismissed from the competition. Each episode is predicated on kindness, love, support, and the freely-given home-baked comforts of the feminine domestic realm. Even the grand prize—a cake stand and some flowers, no cash—highlights the show’s near-pathological humility. Produced by a team called Love Productions, decency is, we can only assume, woven into the show’s DNA. But when Baking Show airs on TV, long after the last bun is iced and the final bap prodded, the trolling begins.

Each season, the bakers spend months immersed in icing sugar, bavarois, and ganache, frantically preparing for the 30 challenges of the competition. In addition to the generalized stress of executing difficult pastry skills while trying to impress professional judges on an international stage, the bakers are told by producers that they’ll likely deal with some backlash from a handful of disproportionately peeved viewers. After all, it’s a competition. But the backlash goes beyond competition, and, despite the warning, most bakers are blindsided by the frequency and ferocity of their trolling. And though adoring fans are certainly in the majority, online trolls yell the loudest. Stacey Hart, a Season 8 semifinalist, dealt with severe online harassment as soon as the season began airing. “I’m smug, I’m a bitch, I’m a worthless piece of shit, I’m a useless baker,” Hart told Bitch, describing the comments that strangers sent her. “[The show] was the best experience and the best thing—at the time—that I ever did. It became the worst thing I ever did.” Trolls loathed her pink, glittery bakes and how often she brought up motherhood; their caustic DMs and comments drove her into a months-long depression. “I’m quite a self-conscious person anyway, and it made me question myself,” says Hart. “Am I good enough?”

Before Hart, there was Ruby Tandoh, a Season 4 runner-up who was deemed a “filthy slag” who traded sexual favors and weaponized “female tears” for preferential judging. Tandoh wrote a piece for The Guardian in October 2013 describing the waves of “lazy misogyny” that followed each episode’s release, but shining light on the problem change much for future contestants. Claire Goodwin, the first to leave the tent in Season 5, was inundated with fat-shaming comments. Season 6 winner Nadiya Hussain, a first-generation British Bangladeshi, was told to “go home” on Twitter. Candice Browne, winner of Season 7, regularly endured comments from strangers who “fucking hate Candice, reckon she’s a right bitch.”

In a 2018 joint study with Element AI, Amnesty International named online trolling of women a human rights violation—one that social media platforms like Twitter continuously refuse to be held accountable for. The trolling of Baking Show contestants generally reflects the Amnesty International findings: White women are trolled hard, but women of color are trolled harder. Commenting on the viciousness of a particularly nasty troll, Hussain offered a succinct explanation: “I’m Muslim, brown, working-class and a woman! I may as well have ‘punching bag’ written on my torso.” In general, men are less likely to be trolled and, instead, are more likely to be trolls themselves, due to years of learned misogyny and—according a Brunel University and Goldsmiths, University of London report—a higher rate of narcissism. But on Baking Show, trolling often extends to the men with nearly as much vitriol and regularity as it does to the women.

Dan Beasley-Harling, a 2018 contestant and self-identified “gay-at-home dad” received the overwhelming bulk of Season 8’s cumulative harassment. “It was about five weeks of people just saying horrible things about me constantly. I had some really overtly homophobic comments,” says Beasley-Harling, referring to unoriginal jabs about queer sex and the suitability of a queer parent. Trolls can generally find a problem with any woman, but two types of bakers stand out as exceptionally deserving of harassment: women who don’t land neatly in the realm of palatable, perfect femininity, and men who aren’t stereotypically masculine. Beasley-Harling’s experience suggests that Baking Show trolls might take a more nuanced approach to their vocation.

Perhaps it’s not just about harassing women online—it’s about re-establishing gendered power dynamics and punishing those who flirt with the domestic on public-facing platforms. Domestic work has historically been an unpaid at-home venture delegated to women, so Baking Show contestants are either women overstepping their household boundaries or men crossing gendered labor lines. For a troll, either is a damnable offense. But with each record-smashing episode, Baking Show subverts the assumptions of where femininity belongs, who it belongs to, and how much it’s worth—roughly £24.2 million in predicted revenue. Still, exploitation is often and easily disguised as empowerment. Lest we forget, Baking Show contestants aren’t paid, and the grand “prize” has little to no real-world value.

To an extent, we all participate in the uninformed and unkind public judging that trolls have championed. We experience celebrities and public figures—especially women—as dehumanized subjects ripe for public dissection, each one existing in a vacuum sealed behind a screen. After all, the Baking Show contestants are filmed, edited, and packaged by professionals into easily digestible archetypes for the sake of a comprehensible and compelling storyline. For example, the latest season featured Michael Chakraverty as the optimistic goofball, Steph Blackwell as the irrationally insecure savant, and Helena Garcia as the spooky, whimsical free spirit. While these personas are fully inspired by who the bakers actually are, they’re ultimately deployed to create drama and tension where it doesn’t exist—that’s just the mandate of reality-TV editing.

But trolls live in the extreme, and for them the editing spurs online abuse. Beasley-Harling, for example, saw the trolling as a direct extension of Love Production’s editing. “I felt like the editing choices were very much treating me like collateral damage,” Beasley-Harling says. “I phoned Love Productions and said, ‘I don’t think you’re representing me fairly, I understand why people don’t like me.’ And they said, ‘No, you’re crazy, everyone’s getting a fair, balanced view on the show. It’s all in your head.’” Gaslighting, the Old Faithful of emotional abuse is regularly deployed against women, people of color, the LGBTQ community and other marginalized groups, is remarkably efficient at restabilizing power dynamics—exactly what trolls seek to do. A representative for Love Productions stated via email that: “Love Productions has always taken contributor care seriously and has robust protocols in place to protect and support those taking part in our shows throughout production and after transmission. These protocols evolve to acknowledge and address the changing media landscape and scrutiny.”

Depending on who you ask, however, the robustness of their protocols fluctuates. According to Beasley-Harling, past contestants have speculated that the Love Productions team tailors their level of attention and support based on the profitability of the contestant in question. After leaving the tent halfway through the competition, Beasley-Harling felt like Love Productions was less interested in protecting its contestants from trolling when money was to be made elsewhere, a behavior not dissimilar to reality television at large. “I barely left my house for three months. I was a shitty parent for three months,” Beasley-Harling says, describing the impact of his trolling. “To me, that felt like, ‘We’ve used you for the entertainment value and now we’re disposing of you.’” But Hart, the semifinalist who received the brunt of Season 8’s trolling and suffered a depressive period similar to Beasley-Harling’s, found Love Productions reassuring throughout airing.

“Every time I called them, they were wonderful. Didn’t matter what time of day,” says Hart. But she does concede that the emotional scarring from her online abuse outlasted Love’s self-proclaimed robust protocols. “They’ve got no idea how it’s affected me to this day,” says Hart. “I don’t think that’s their problem anymore, is it?” It remains to be seen how this year’s cohort of bakers will fare. Airing in the United Kingdom continued through October, and this year’s crop of bakers appear as chipper as ever, even online. So far, trolling appears to be minimal—maybe the bakers can avoid it if they subscribe more closely to normative gender expectations. “When I went on the Bake Off I wasn’t worried about my hair or my makeup or what I was wearing,” says Hart. “Maybe if I had made more of an effort, people would have been nicer to me.”

#Bitch Media #Bitch Magazine #The Great British Bake Off #The Great British Baking Show #`❦

[ollyarchive]

My son the global pop star? Olly Alexander's mum Vicki Thornton talks about growing up gay in Gloucestershire, Gogglebox and Glastonbury

Olly Alexander's mum speaks candidly about being mother of the flamboyant Years and Years frontman

Watching Vicki Thornton on the Celebrity Gogglebox sofa it would be easy to imagine that having a famous child is an easy passport to the good life.

Every Friday night for weeks the Forest of Dean mum-of-two has been on TV  sipping Prosecco while commenting on TV programmes with son Olly Alexander, the flamboyant frontman with the chart-topping band Years & Years.

On the face of it it’s been a charmed motherhood. First she watched the talented young man leave college to succeed as an actor, treading the boards as Peter Pan in a play with Judi Dench and appearing in movies such as Gulliver’s Travels, The Riot Club and Great Expectations.

Within a few years he appeared to seamlessly achieve global musical success with a chart-topping band and which led to a much applauded appearance on the Pyramid stage at Glastonbury Festival 2019. This weekend he is appearing on the same stage as Ariana Grande at Manchester Pride.

Yet anybody who follows Olly knows it’s not all been red carpet premieres,  backstage passes and Gogglebox for Vicky, it’s also been about hearing uncomfortable truths about a son who has used his growing success as a platform to publicly campaign for LGBT rights.

Growing Up Gay

Not only has she had to listen to how he secretly self-harmed and developed bulimia as a closet gay teenager growing up in the Forest of Dean, but in 2017 she also bravely agreed to appear in an an emotional BBC Three documentary about how it can lead to mental health issues.

In Growing Up Gay Olly admitted that just driving home back to sleepy Coleford with the film crew stirred up such painful memories that it made him feel physically sick.

If that wasn’t difficult enough to hear, Vicki learned that Olly, who attended St  John’s Cof E Primary School in Coleford and Monmouth Comprehensive, had been unable to tell anyone that he was being bullied from a young age because he had long hair and seemed gay.

“When he asked if I would do the documentary, it was a bit of a decision to make because I knew it would mean digging up the past and going further into the reasons for the problem,”  said community artist Vicki.

“ I knew that having to face up to issues  I was not aware of at the time was going to be a very difficult process, but if it was going to help Olly and other people in similar situations I had to do it.

“I had to be  open and honest about everything which meant confronting my own feelings of guilt. You have to openly accept that you may have made some bad choices and decisions but you are human. It’s not about making excuses, it’s about learning from your mistakes.”

The documentary was so painful that the producers had Vicki assessed psychologically to make sure she could deal with the deeply personal issues it raised and arranged for her to have counselling beforehand.

Still a much watched video on iPlayer, it shows them sifting through photographs and videos of what his mum thought was a happy, innocent childhood on a beautiful part of the world.

“Going through the family history you see all these little happy, innocent little faces” said Vicky who also has an older son who has aspergers syndrome. “It’s terrible to think somebody could be hurting them.

“I think the bullying was mostly mental but when someone is full of joy and happiness and somebody else comes along and closes that down, it is the saddest thing.

“As parents you think you know what’s going on, you think that they are safe, they are happy, they are fed, all the boxes are ticked. But you don’t know the half of it.

“The  little things I heard about what happened to Olly that he and his brother have talked about, are awful.”

Everyone thinks their child is amazing but I knew Olly was special

Community artist Vicki said she knew “in her bones” even before Olly, 29, was born that he would go on do great things.

“Every mother thinks that, and every child is amazing, but I knew that this child was different, there was something there,” she said.

“Olly was always a bright, funny, happy child, full of life. He was such a bouncy, lovely little cherub  that I could never get cross with him,  ever.

“On the rare occasion that he would throw a tantrum I would find it funny and just laugh at him. He would just stand and scream blue murder and it was just hilarious.”

Life in the Forest of Dean

Their early days were spent living near theme parks that his father promoted but in 1997 the family moved to the Forest of Dean where his parents set about creating a model village tourist attraction.

It was a musical, creative, left leaning household and although he loves Rihanna, and famously met the singer on the Graham Norton show,  Olly, credits much of his influences to listening to his mother’s tapes of Nina Simone, Joni Mitchell and Stevie Wonder. She was one of the founders of the local music festival where Olly cut his teeth.

“I used to be a puppeteer actor in an education travelling theatre company in the late 1980s," said Vicky when asked about her bohemian background.

“When I was younger I was also a backing singer in a band called Innamanna. We played the Marquee in London and did some recording but when we had to decide ‘do we stick with this or carry on with our careers?’ it folded.

"But I couldn’t stand on a stage in front of thousands of people like Olly does. I would die.”

Olly as a boy

It was clear that Olly had inherited her artistic streak and although a talented gymnast and able academic, he concentrated on music and drama, later saying it was because he felt at home with the weird kids.

Vicki remembers him being very driven, open minded and very focussed.

“Olly taught himself to play the piano and to sing and there was always a healthy competition with his best friend Joe to get the best parts in the school plays,” recalled Vicki

“He was always singing all over the house.  He loved Disney and he would get old song books full of the classics and teach himself on the piano.

“He did not want to be in musicals but loved the singing and performance side of it.”

I did not realise there was so much pain going on inside.

In the documentary the talented singer songwriter says that  he did not have the vocabulary to put how he was feeling into words and  felt too ashamed to admit it anybody he was gay. Even his mother. He desperately wanted to be straight so he never admitted it.

“On the surface he was a real high achiever so I  had no idea there was so much starting to bubble up as a young teenager,” said Vicki.

“I thought the sky was the limit for him. I thought he could do anything he could put his mind to but I did not realise there was so much pain going on inside.”

“Because he was always fun happy, smiley,  lovely child achieving lots of things at school, I thought things were fine.

“Probably my eye was  off the ball because I was going through a lot of life changes at the time and maybe I was in denial that there was something going wrong.”

Marriage split

In an interview last year with the former Labour spin doctor Alastair Campbell, Olly says his diaries show a clear link between his father leaving and creating a “family implosion” and his mental health health issues developing around he age of 13.

They are estranged but met up when his father contacted Olly through Twitter and in subsequent interviews it’s clear the singer was less than impressed with the reality as opposed to the imagined version of an aspiring musician father who he had always wanted to impress.

“Splitting up with their dad made life a lot harder, definitely financially, and so life was a big struggle,” said Vicki.

“That’s probably part of the reason why I had my eye off the ball. I was distracted doing other things, so we were a bit dysfunctional or a while, which I feel guilty about.

“But I don’t feel guilty about that relationship ending at all, both for the boys and myself.”

Coming out

She says although from the outside it looked like Olly was enjoying a glittering lifestyle after leaving sixth form college to travel abroad filming the movie Summerhill, he was often penniless and had to take jobs such as selling hot dogs on the South Bank in between the contracts. She wasn’t in a position to help pay the rent either.

He was 18 or 19 and involved in the gay party scene in London when he plucked up the courage to pick up the phone and tell her outright that he was gay.

Vicki said: “He had said to me once ‘I don’t think you are going to have any grandchildren’. Not taking the hint, I said ‘well never say never’.

“He obviously got to the point where he thought ‘I’d better actually say it to mum because she doesn’t get it’.

“He phoned me up and said ‘you do know I am gay don’t you?’ . I said ‘Are you? OK’ and that was it really. I suppose I had a feeling he might be but maybe I didn’t want to confirm that because of fear about what his life might become because of all the homophobia out there.”

Vicky told told her elderly mother,  who sang on Broadway with the D’ Oyly opera company before cutting her career short to get married and have a family.

“Her immediate reaction was ‘but he will not be able to go to Africa, it’s illegal in Africa’, laughed Vicky about her 89-year-old mother who follows her grandson avidly on social media and has even seen Years & Years in concert.

“Like me, she doesn’t want to see him marginalised because marginalised sections of society can  attract a lot of negative behaviour. Nobody wants to see their nearest and dearest suffer from that.”

I just hope kids today aren’t going through the same thing

From that moment on Vicky has worried about her son being the victim of homophobia and although she is intensely proud, she still fears that being a figurehead for equality could make him a target.

“I wish he felt he could have talked  to me and maybe I could have prevented all of that, but I understand that is very difficult for young people,” she said.

“I remember that feeling of not being able to talk to my parents  and I just hope kids today aren’t going through the same thing. They get more support at school than they did 15 years ago but bullying and social media trolling still happens.

“I do worry about him being exposed to bigotry and homophobia. it’s not nice to think about your child living in fear.”

In an interview last year Olly was asked if he ever wanted to confront the bullies who made his life miserable growing up but he said he doesn’t think about it much any more because his life had changed so much.

He said he still takes anti-depressants, has weekly therapy sessions and works out a lot to keep his mental and physical health on track.

While campaigning for more to be done to prevent male suicide after being named as GQ Man of the Year,  he admitted he still has occasional days when he doesn’t want to get out of bed because his life does not feel worth living and can be too frightened to go on stage, or cries when he comes off. He hides behind outlandish costumes and make up.

The fun side of having a famous son

It's clear that there is a close bond between mother and son and Olly likes her to share in his successes.

For instance in the early days the pop star  arranged for her to wear an expensive diamond necklace to the red carpet premiere of Great Expectations in which he played Herbert Pocket.

“It was insane,” said Vicki. “ We had taxi from where he lived to the red carpet and there was all these people at the barriers.

“I thought they are going to be so disappointed when I get out because I’m no-one. Somebody took me to one side while Olly went off to meet the paparazzi and because it was raining they put a brolly over my head.

“Then we went in and watched the film which was mind-blowing because I was sat next to some of the actor’s. When it was finished we went to the after-party which was all very very glam.”

Naturally shy, Vicky was overawed to meet the likes of Jeremy Irvine, who starred in War Horse.

“I was quite overwhelmed by it all at first but I have got more relaxed about being in that kind of environment,” she said.

“The whole thing is a bit surreal really. It’s a bit  like a film in itself. Once I was this close to Helen Bonham Carter who I think is fantastic, but you don’t want to go up to people saying ‘I love you’.

“Olly told me once, that when they started filming he actually said to her ‘I love you Helen Bonham Carter’ and and she said ‘I would love you too if I knew who you were’, but she later came to the stage door to congratulate him after Alice and Peter.”

More recently Vicky was overwhelmed when she was introduced the men from one of her favourite TV programmes, the Netflix series Queer Eye, at Radio One’s Big Weekend in Swansea.

“I love watching them but when Olly introduced me I didn’t know what to say and was stuck for words because I get so tongue tied,” she admitted.

Gogglebox

The star is protective of Vickyi who does not even like speaking on the stage at Coleford Music Festival but told her it was time for her to come out of her shell for Gogglebox.

“It’s different because there isn’t anybody else in the room and it’s all about Olly because that’s who they are interested in,” she said of the TV show.

“It feels really nice sitting there together eating snacks, drinking Prosecco and enjoying each other’s company, but I don’t think I have anything really  interesting to say.

“You are thinking ‘should I be on my best behaviour because I’m on tele or should I be like I am at home?’. There is a little conflict going on in your head but it’s really good fun.

“It’s weird watching yourself back,  seeing what you do, what you sound like and the faces you pull. I didn’t realise I pulled so many weird faces.”

Every week she has to decide on a comfortable top for sitting on the  sofa and says they did initially consider getting matching onesies and really mad slippers but decided against it.

She shares TV tastes with her son who loves programmes such as Killing Eve and Stranger Things and Fleabag. They also love Gogglebox, especially Rylan Clark Neal and his mother and Chris Eubank and his son. She was delighted when Rylan sent a lovely message to Olly about her.

“If Olly likes something I will give it a go because I know I will probably like it,” she says. “I would never have watched Love Island if Olly hadn’t watched it. “

Staying true to yourself

Before the Years and Years single Communion catapulted the band into into the charts, Vicky had another important phone call from the Shine singer.

“He said they didn’t want him to say he was gay and he was really cross about it because didn’t want to pretend to be something he wasn’t” she said.

“I told him to stick to his guns, that you have to be true to yourself for anything to be real. I have taught them that if they are kind, truthful and respectful to other people, everything else will follow.”

Olly took her advice and when she first went to Glastonbury to see him burst onto the John Peel stage in 2015 wearing a rainbow, Pride suit he was involved in a very public relationship with Neil Milan from Clean Bandit who were playing the Pyramid stage.

Although in  pop star mode he is happy to speak openly about his own sexuality and  ongoing struggles with anxiety, Olly also admits that the fairytale of fame and fortune has not proved the antidote to depression and he remains a leading advocate for mental health issues.

In fact Gay Times described him as one of the most influential gay pop stars of this generation and added: "All hail the King!”

Glastonbury 2019

Vicky was astounded by how big it has become since the days she used to go and got lost for hours on the first night after deciding to camp for the weekend.

On Sunday Olly arranged for Vicky, her partner Kev and Coleford Mayor Nick Penny to go backstage and then watch from the Pyramid Stage balcony as he gave a widely-applauded, eloquent moving speech marking the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall riots.

Many say the speech appealing for compassion and a society that does not leave anybody behind was the highlight of the festival.

“It’s not the best view because you cannot see what’s happening from the front, but just to be there looking  out from the stage and seeing all those thousands and thousands of people who are all there to see Years and Years and Olly, well it was just mesmerising,” she said.

“That whole feeling of emotion, the pride, It’s like when you see your child in a nativity play but  a million times over.

“I knew he was going to make a speech and I knew that knowing Olly it was going to be special, but I did not  did not know the content or when he was going to say it.

“I was just so proud and when I got home I had to watch it over and over again.”

“I cannot believe how brave and strong Olly is about what he believes in. I admire that in him so much and have so much respect for him to be able to do that.”

The feeling is mutual and Olly has repeatedly spoken about how proud he was of his mum to speak so openly about his childhood in the documentary even though she is not to blame for his troubles.

Olly takes care of his family

Although he spends long periods touring with the band, when he is in London Olly has a small set of friends from home who he has known since primary school which Vickis believes it is good for his sanity.

He recently spoke about how good it has been going from being too skint to go out to be able to help his family out financially and pay for the drinks on a night out.

Thanks to Olly buying her a new house Vicky has moved from the small cottage in the centre of Coleford where she would get the odd knock on the door from Years and Years fans pretending to be looking for a non existent neighbour.

Speaking to her it’s clear that have a famous child is not too much different than having any other. You always feel guilty, you are very proud of their achievements, you want them to happy, you worry about them being safe and you lose your name. At one festival she spotted a flag saying “Olly’s Mum”, something parents all over the world can identify with.

“As a parent I think you always feel guilty, but  I’m proud that Olly has grown into this amazing human being,” says Vicki who has been on a journey alongside her famous son.

“It’s such an amazing thing to have happened that to try and get your head around it all is impossible, so you don’t bother.

“Lots of people ask about him and say things like  – ‘your boy’s doing well’ and I think ‘just a bit’. On the whole though, life just carries on as normal.”

#ollyalexander #years & years #yearsandyears #2019 #palo santo #photo #vicki #olly'smum #olly's mum #mum #articles #interviews

[incorrect-sides-quotes]

Darn, I was hoping to see "the sentence the word appears in" as in all the sentences the word appears in, but you had to do it the boring way -"the" anon

well, i can certainly go through all the “the”s that appear in the search bar if that’s what u want but i’m just going to do 50 of them because it’s a lot

also i now realize that a lot of these are in like. directions rather than dialogue or whatever but it’s ok

“It would appear that under the extreme circumstances, he managed to burn out all of his magic. All of it. Including whatever makes familiars … well. What makes them familiars.”

Caroline, putting an origami snake and box of chocolates on the next to the bed: are you feeling okay? 

“I make the stupid decision; I suffer the consequences.”

You are used to the glow of lava and the scorching air of your home, but her lips against yours burn in an entirely new way.

“ok there’s no easy way to say this but. *takes a deep breath* that was the tenth demon summoning this week, holy shit.”

“this isn’t about how you don’t understand how good cinnamon candles are, this is about the demon summoning”

There’s really no point in trying for the stereotypical front door kiss since you both live in the same house so you ask her when you get out of the car instead.

“The stars were made for us” Miranda says, stretching her arm up to the skies as though she could reach them. 

Laurel: the queen herself! to what do I owe the pleasure?

“And this lady accidentally knocked her coat off the back of her chair.”

I’m not sure how to convey the same emotion without the use of glasses.

Sky, jumpscaring the humans and the pretending-to-be human: what are you doing in my forest!

Everyone: *screaming or various other sounds of “What the fuuuuuck”*

Sky: *sighs* ghosts are a completely different division why do you humans lump all the supernatural together

Sky: I dunno. Never had anybody’s name before. Hey Jeannine, why don’t ya step off of the path for me?

Sky: clearly, Katniss, you don’t understand the gravity of the situation

 “Don’t make me get the big guns involved. Come on, even just 10 minutes away from the computer screen will help, I promise.”

Gemini bitch: the landlord said we’re allowed to have small pets… riiiiight???

Gemini bitch: I am not separating the children. They deserve a stable household! With multiple loving parents!

… Tall. : u know the whole nuclear family thing is bs right?

Gemini bitch: you’re my bestest fwiend in the whole entiwe wowwd~~~~

They’re not the perfect couples that media would have you believe though. Rarely do you ever see soulmates together. The strings are a tangled mess, just like everything else in life. 

the town had always been pretty superstitious.  and now they turned to superstition to explain the disappearance of a girl they had never cared about before.  there were always rumors that the fae lived in the woods outside of town.

but Nathan has convinced the two of you to help him go over the case.

Their memories are warped by time and exaggeration and the rumors and myths they had bene hearing for the past half a century.

“Heya! The name’s Miranda!  Can I get yours?”

“That’s right bitches; I’m the star of this show”

“And you thought coming to me was the best idea?”

Your days spent with her have been some of the greatest days in your life, through the arguments and the stress of college and everything.

You feel guilty that you’re relieved when she says she feels the same way

For years you’d wondered the context of those words tattooed on your right wrist and now you have the answer, you were at a fucking Mario Kart tournament.  At least it’s not as bad as “you can go to hell,” which are the words she’s had on her left wrist for twenty-some years.

“Deceit you bastard! What the hell did you do?” (oh look i guess there was some fanfic in there)

“In a viRTUAL REALITY?!!!?!” Laurel echoes. Quite loudly for an echo. “What the FUCK is this supposed to be? First it’s a televised TV show and now it’s a fucking virtual reality game?! Why the fuck won’t you let us leave!!!!”

Despite the very angry person yelling in her face, the lady seems unfazed.

L:“What the FUCK do you mean volunteered!?!!!!”

More flustered than you’ve ever seen him, Nathan tries to hide his face by retreating into the hospital bed sheets.

 Monokuma: I’m sure it’ll be of use to you in the near future~

“plus the author doesn’t know what romantic attraction is either so it’s rather difficult for me to actually tell you.”

“Oh good! You’re awake!” She exclaims before grabbing your hand and dragging you out to the living room

And somehow, she’s become the only person you trust in this fucked up game.

“The goal’s to hit the target you know!”

The night skies are so different in this fae realm and you think you could stare at them forever.

Okay, maybe hate’s the wrong word. 

You wonder what life is like for all the other universe versions of you. The ones that can fall in love.

Nathan does whatever the equivalent of a spit take is if you don’t have water. Probably just a lot of coughing.

The snakes visibly recoil.

“I felt a disturbance in the force,” M jokes, even though they’re all from universe that most definitely does not have Star Wars or even movies in it

Nathan: the one who made you a fae?

N: I’m glad I know you 😊 I’ll try not to kill you if we meet on the battlefield.

[Disaster bi 2: electric reboogaloo changed Gemini bitch’s name to “The original disaster bi”]

#asks #ask game #not a quote #not ts #tw deceit #long post

[mittensmorgul]

Lately I keep thinking about John, Mary, and Dean. We know Mary is a terrible cook -- I'm assuming that most of the time, John cooked, since things were tight financially for the Winchesters at the time, which leads me to think that he didn't ascribe to rigid gender roles and their marriage was egalitarian. But Dean did his best to become what he assumed was the perfect housewife (cooking, cleaning, child-rearing), which begs the question: where did these notions come from?

Hi there! This is an interesting question. :D

I’m not sure we have any evidence that John was a good cook, or that he did much cooking at all. We know that in the few scenes we have of Mary in the past:

in 4.03, Mary’s mother is the one preparing the meal they share with Dean. Mary herself is in no way involved with this preparation. We only see John eat a couple of times in diners.

in 5.13, Mary is preparing dinner for her and John when Sam and Dean show up on their doorstep. She even pulls the Mom Line of smacking John’s hand away from the basket of rolls on the table to tell him to wash up before dinner. What we learn in s12 about how she bought meatloaf and pie from the Piggly Wiggly leads us to believe that her “homemade” dinners were more often than not purchased pre-made and heated up at home.

We also learn about Mary making Dean tomato rice soup when he was sick as a child in this episode. But you know, Campbell’s makes tomato rice soup in a can, so it’s not likely something she slaved over from scratch, you know? But a small child wouldn’t understand or know that.

in 5.16, in Dean’s Heaven Memory, Mary makes him a PBJ and pours him a glass of milk, then offers him some pie. And again, we know now that she likely bought the pie already made.

in s14 we learn that the one thing Mary did actually make was a terrifying dish known as “Winchester Surprise.” And we’re led to assume that the “surprise” is actually surviving eating it. :P

But what do we really know about John cooking for Sam and Dean? Nothing, really, aside from one of Dean’s comment in 8.21:

“Alright, here we go. John Winchester’s famous cure-all kitchen sink stew. There you go. Enough cayenne pepper in there to burn your lips off, just like Dad used to make.“

So we know John at least cooked them one (1) thing. We also know both through flashbacks (like in 3.08 and 9.07) as well as comments Dean and Sam both have made throughout the series (marshmallow fluff mac and cheese! it’s exotic!) that Dean did a large portion of the food prep for him and Sam over the years.

But also, the recipe for kitchen sink stew (also known as “everything but the kitchen sink soup”) is basically “throw everything you have on hand into a pot and boil it for a while.” Rice, beans, noodles, veggies, meat… whatever you have, it goes in the pot. Making it isn’t really a demonstration of culinary mastery, especially if the main flavor that comes through in the end is “will burn your lips off.”

I’ve always felt that John was more likely to go for fast food, diner food, or low-prep food like the aforementioned stew, or the ubiquitous PBJ, or even like… stuff microwaved at the Gas N Sip that has often been described as a staple in the Hunter Diet. I don’t think we’ve ever had any indication that John ever really cooked.

And yeah, Dean did his best to learn to cook (and the rest of the stereotypical “housewife” chores) partly because he understood that John needed him to fill that role. Not that Dean ever understood how Mary may have relied on prepared meals from the Piggly Wiggly to cover her shortcomings in the kitchen, but he would’ve ASSUMED (especially based on his shock at Mary’s confession in 12.02 that she didn’t cook) that she was a good cook. I mean, where did Dean get most of his knowledge about the duties a mom was expected to fulfill? Mostly from television, from possibly observing other mothers in the wild, or from babysitters they had over the years (like Donna in 5.12 who watched them for months at a motel in Massachusetts when they were children).

So Dean did have Responsible Adult Behavior modeled for him, but never in an actual home setting in reality, you know? Donna’s JOB was cleaning and tidying the motel, so he would’ve picked up the how-tos while she was watching out for him and Sam. But he probably picked up even more from watching TV and movies.

Then it came to making their limited resources into something that wasn’t horrifically boring. When they only had a loaf of bread, some assorted sandwich fixings, a box of cereal, and some canned food to last them a week or two until John came back again, he had to get creative to keep from losing his damn mind, you know? There’s only so much spaghettios a person can eat before it’s like OKAY ANYTHING OTHER THAN THIS PLS.

Who knows, he may even have begun watching cooking shows on television in attempt to learn something about making their food taste better. Maybe he watched Julia Child or Justin Wilson or Graham Kerr (being three people who had regular cooking shows back in that era), and decided this was something worth devoting a bit of his time and attention to, for his own sake as well as Sam’s and John’s.

Imagine after the incident he related to Mary where he’d burned his attempt at Winchester Surprise, he realized he needed to actually get some proper training in this cooking thing before he either burned down their motel by accident or poisoned them all from cooking something wrong, you know?

There could’ve been a million reasons why he’d want to become good at cooking, not the least of which was because Dean himself really enjoys good food. I mean, look at the pleasure he takes in a good slice of pie or a well made burger. He appreciates what goes into cooking a tasty and satisfying meal, and he derives a lot of personal pleasure from eating.

@thejabberwock doesn’t come around these parts much anymore, but has a tag for “tactile dean” that I think this theory fits under, as well. Taste and pleasure through eating is just as much a part of this sensory fulfillment for Dean as physical touch. So of course he’d be interested in pursuing it when given the chance.

Such as during his year at Lisa’s. In the final scene of 5.22, he sits down at Lisa’s table to a meal she prepared, but by the montage at the beginning of 6.01, Dean himself is doing some of the cooking, entirely at home in Lisa’s kitchen and hosting backyard barbecues. He also demonstrates his mastery of the grill in 8.14, proving that with the resources to obtain good quality food, he’s just as competent as anyone else at preparing it well. Food is just important to Dean in ways that it’s not to Sam.

Sam eats to live, to be healthy, to maintain his body and fitness. Dean eats for the sheer pleasure of it. I think he’d enjoy cooking just for the pleasure of it, too. He was so damn proud of his “nesting burger” back in 8.14.

And heck, how many different schools did Dean cycle through over his educational career before he finally dropped out? Being in a town for a week here and there may have given him a bit of a chance to drop in on a few Home Ec classes along the way, too. Maybe he’d even specifically ask to be put in a cooking class in school– both because they were more often than not full of girls he could hit on, and because he might be allowed to take home his class projects and have something to feed Sam for dinner that he wouldn’t have to pay for.

But considering how often it seems Dean was left alone in charge of Sam when they were children, he had a vested interest in learning for himself how to “run a household,” including everything from cooking to cleaning to childcare, since it was all literally dumped on his shoulders, and nobody else was consistently there to do that stuff for him.

My guess, in tl;dr fashion, is that he picked it up from a combination of observing various babysitters over the years, from watching tv and movies, and out of the sheer necessity to make sure he and Sam didn’t draw suspicion from teachers or other locals that they were the victims of neglect and bringing unwanted attention from family services organizations. I mean, there’s deep-seated reasons he was antagonistic toward the social workers in 12.04, you know? John must’ve drilled it into him from an early age that they needed to maintain secrecy about their lives from “civilians,” and the need to protect themselves from well meaning but seriously unprepared social workers from trying to interfere in their lives.

All more than enough reason for Dean to make a study of all of this for himself.

#oh DEAN #the ghost of john winchester #mary f winchester #performing dean #spn 4.03 #spn 5.13 #spn 5.16 #spn 12.04 #spn 12.02 #spn 8.14 #spn 3.09 #spn 9.07 #spn 5.12 #spn 5.22 #spn 6.01 #spn 8.21 #spn 14.11 #spn 14.13 #Anonymous #heck i'm adding this in a tag... if you're interested in more of my headcanons along these lines #cooking classes are the exact sort of thing i imagine dean would've done in my fic Dean's Days Off

[romanthroughthestars]

Safe Place~Chapter 2

Ok so chapter three is where everything starts to fall apart and I’m sorryyy, so this is kind of just the calm before the storm I guess.

Characters: Roman Prince, Virgil Dubh, Logan Gelee

Pairings: future prinxiety, future logicality (maybe?)

Warnings: Vague mentions of family troubles, mild cussing

Sum. – Roman sees Virgil wandering down the street around midnight. He quickly catches onto what’s happening when Virgil refuses to accept a ride home, so he invites him over and does everything in his power to make him feel safe and comfortable before Virgil has to go back and face his chaotic household.

Chapter 1

Word Count: 3,932

The next couple of hours were silent aside from the movies and Roman’s trip to switch DVDs. At about three in the morning he switched the TV back over to Disney channel, thinking that Virgil was probably asleep and wouldn’t notice. He leaned back in the corner of the couch a few feet away from Virgil and Khan, scrolling through Twitter and refusing to sleep until he knew that Virgil was completely out. A few minutes after he turned off the movie, Roman was barely able to keep his eyes open. He set his phone down and planned on going to sleep, but he forced himself awake again when he heard Virgil shuffling.

Virgil grumbled and flipped his head over onto his other shoulder, but his eyebrows furrowed together and he groggily opened his eyes.

“You good over there?” Roman mumbled, barely awake himself. Virgil closed his eyes again and flopped his hand on the back of the couch, only an inch or two away from Roman’s rested arm. He slowly moved his hand around until he felt Roman, then rested it on his forearm.

“Sorry, forgot where I was. Forgot who you were.” He squeezed Roman’s arm before letting his hand slide off. He lazily lowered himself down onto his side and curled up, hardly even opening his eyes to see what he was doing. He looked up again and felt around for a pillow, looking over to Roman when he couldn’t find one. Well now Roman was definitely paying attention. He smiled at Virgil’s disheveled hair and groggy expression before passing him one. Virgil took it and mumbled a ‘thanks’ before pulling the blanket up over his shoulders and curling his body up around pillow, resting his head on the edge of it.

Roman wasn’t sure if he was actually awake. He had no idea if that had actually just happened or not, but either way, his brain had kicked into overdrive. Staying true to his dramatic nature, he pulled a pillow up to his face and squealed, melting into a blushing mess.

“Woo. Okay Roman. Okay. All good. You can go to sleep now. It’s all good. He’s asleep. Woo okay.” He sighed and tossed the pillow aside, then quietly called Khan over. He wrapped his arms around the valiant fuzzball and was immediately swept away into a dream.

Roman woke up all too quickly. The dull morning sun beaming through the windows was enough to give him a headache the second he opened his eyes. At around 7:30 he got up to pull down the blinds and made sure the sun wouldn’t wake Virgil up as well. He planned on going back to sleep, but his body refused to let him after he’d already been up to walk around.

He laid down next to Khan again and resorted to staring at the floor until his body would let him sleep again. After a few minutes he gave up and looked to Khan for his sage wisdom and advice.

“What’ve I gotten myself into, Khan?” He propped his head up on his hand as he whispered to his dog. “Odds are he’s going to want to leave as soon as he wakes up, but it sounds like he doesn’t really has a great place to go. Maybe I can just take him to Logan’s house. That’s where he was going, right? Oh, right, you wouldn’t know. You weren’t even there.”

Khan stared at him with a blank expression. Roman scratched the top of the dog’s head before continuing on with his hushed one-sided conversation.

“He really didn’t want to go home. I don’t know, I guess I’m just worried that he won’t be safe. Maybe it’s not that bad, maybe he was just really bored and didn’t feel like going back. He just seemed so persistent though, and I feel like someone so anxious wouldn’t just go walking through the city alone at midnight without a reason.”

Khan, oblivious to Roman’s growing worry, dropped his head back onto his paws and started to drift off. Roman sighed and dropped his head back down onto the couch as well. He nestled his nose into Khan’s fur and tried to sleep again, but he couldn’t fight the uneasy feeling as he thought about what was to come.

It’ll be harder to talk to him now that he’s not all tired and loopy. No doubt he’ll be more guarded now that he’s fully awake. Shit, this is going to be really awkward.

No, it’s fine. You’re Roman Prince! You can talk your way through anything. You’ll be fine, just slap on that show stopping smile and talk to him like you did yesterday. Everything will be just fine!

Roman wiggled his way around the already asleep dog was about to make his way over to the kitchen, but he stopped dead in his tracks when he saw a light in his peripheral vision. He looked over to see Virgil, still laying on his side and wrapped up in the Lion King blanket, on his phone.

“Wait, how long have you been awake?” Oh shit oh shit oh shit he probably heard me talking to myself. Oh shit he probably heard me talking to myself about him.

“I dunno, like two minutes maybe. It looked like you were still asleep and I didn’t want to wake you up.” Oh thank God that means he didn’t hear anything.

Roman just nodded in response. Virgil dropped his phone down on top of his hoodie on the floor and looked up at him. Despite being known amongst his peers as the calm, confident, never shy actor, Roman had to admit that attention from Virgil was wildly different from the attention of an audience. It was just so much more personal, and everything about the way that Virgil looked at him made him want to melt.

Virgil still looked exhausted, but now, instead of seeming frantic and anxious, his expression seemed calm. He looked almost like he was enjoying being there. He had a kind smile on his face, and Roman, in his weary, nearly delirious state, couldn’t help but stare. He knew he’d hate himself for it later, but Virgil just looked so beautiful.

The morning sun shone still through the curtains, pouring along the floor, subtly lighting up the walls, and landing gracefully on Virgil’s face. His hair, still an absolute mess from having just woken up, fell softly over his eyes, almost covering the dark skin directly under them.

In reality, Roman knew that he and Virgil both looked like train wrecks. He knew that they’d probably just eat some cereal, make some awkward small talk, then part ways until Monday morning when Virgil came into the coffee shop and ordered his usual with as little conversing as possible.

But his imagination was running wild. Ideally, Virgil would stay for as long as possible. He’d talk to Roman about whatever he was running from at home. Ideally, he could just stay until Roman’s parents got home. They could watch more Disney movies and make a blanket fort to sleep in for the rest of the week. Ideally, they could exchange numbers and Roman could start driving him to and from school. He knew that Virgil had to wake up early to walk because he saw him sometimes when he was driving in the morning. Ideally, they could grow closer and get to know each other until Roman got a chance to explain how he felt.

But realistically, he had been staring at Virgil for like thirty seconds, and realistically he just needed to stop being a creep.

“Should I be concerned?” Virgil tilted his head and continued to stare up at Roman.

“Wha- about what?” Roman laughed, trying to cover up his nervousness.

“Hmm…” Virgil rolled his eyes up to glance at the ceiling before smiling and looking back down at Roman again. “Well for starters, you’ve zoned out like five million times in the three or so waking hours that we’ve spent together.”

“Just tired. Is that all you were worried about?”

“Well no, I said for starters. There’s definitely more.”

“Course there is.” Roman walked over and dropped down on the corner of the sectional a couple feet away from Virgil. He rested his feet on the coffee table in front of them and switched on the TV again.

“M’kay, what else?” He asked as he got himself comfortable in the corner.

Virgil acted like he was deep in thought for a few seconds before looking over at Roman again.

Roman knew that Virgil was talking- he could see his lips moving, but he couldn’t make out anything he was saying. All he could focus on was the way that he spoke. He gestured wildly with his hands, and his eyes seem to wander along every part of Roman’s face as he talked. The way he looked at him seemed almost like he was studying his responses, which Roman wouldn’t doubt after seeing how anxious he’d been for the past few years.

“-stupid face!” Virgil dropped his hands into his lap and looked at Roman eagerly for a response, a happy but slightly impatient smile on his face.

“Ok wait um-“

“OH my goodness gracious did you just zone out again?” He asked through giggles. “For all you know, I could’ve been talking bout how much I hate your stupid face. Or I could’ve been talking about how much I love it. I could’ve been describing your beauty in angry detail and you wouldn’t have even noticed.”

Well when did he get so confident. Hmmmmmok I wasn’t prepared for this.

Roman, too surprised to answer, just stuttered out an inaudible response.

“Oh calm down, Prince Charming.” Virgil continued. “I was just talking about how every time you zone out, you make that stupid face. Like the one you’re making right now- Roman!”

Virgil broke down with laughter, curling up on himself. Every doubt was cleared from Roman’s mind as soon as he heard Virgil laugh. Of course he’d heard him laugh a few times before- they’d gone to school together since freshman year. It would be impossible for Roman, in almost three years of knowing him, not to hear him laugh at least once. But this was different. It wasn’t just a hidden little laugh that he sometimes slipped from Virgil whenever Logan Gelee corrected teachers, or a quiet chuckle that he sometimes heard from the sound booth during play rehearsals. It was actual contagious, uncontrollable laughter.

“I’m just exhausted, don’t worry. Not quite unhinged yet.” Roman laughed a little as well.

They sat in silence for a minute or two before Virgil chirped up to call Khan and Roman regained enough composure to speak again.

“Alright, so do you want me to drive you home? We can stop and grab donuts or something on the way if you want.”

“Could you just take me to Logan’s? I can give you his address and you can just drop me off. I can pay you back for breakfast on Monday.”

“What? No. Insane. I’m paying.”

“There’s literally no reason for you-“

“Shhpshhsh. Let me be a gentleman.” Roman called out just a little bit louder than he’d planned to.

“Alright, alright, fine. You can pay.” Virgil jumped back slightly, holding is arms up in defense but chuckling at Roman’s eagerness.

Only a few more words were exchanged between the two before they left, and they talked even less in the car. The second half of the ride was almost completely silent conversation wise. Virgil ate his donut in peace and Roman quietly hummed along to the radio until they pulled onto Logan’s street.

Roman tried desperately to think of something to say before Virgil left, not wanting to miss his chance to talk to him again. He cleared his throat awkwardly before chirping up.

“Hey, I know you probably won’t take me up on this, but you can come over and hang out anytime you need to get out of the house. You know, like a safe place or something. My parents hardly ever care if I have friends over, and I really do enjoy the company.” He laughed nervously as they pulled up next to Logan’s house. “The only person I ever have over is Patton, and he can be a bit much sometimes. It’s kind of refreshing to have someone who’s more real about life sometimes, y’know? Plus, I’m sure my parents would be happy to see that I actually have more than one friend.”

He rubbed the back of his neck and shot Virgil a nervous glance. Virgil stuttered for a few seconds before stumbling over his own hands to pull out his phone. He unlocked it and held it out to Roman, who gave him a confused look.

“Uh- um- your… number.” His eyes trailed around uncomfortably, looking at anything but Roman. “You can- I can call you next weekend maybe if you’re not busy?”

“Oh, right, yeah of course.” Roman smiled and took the phone to type in his number.

“I’m always looking for an excuse to get out of that hell hole, so if you’re ever even just slightly bored or lonely I will probably be down to hang out.”

“Alright. I’ll keep that in mind.” He handed the phone back and nodded awkwardly.

“Okay… cool.” Virgil pursed his lips together and nodded back at him before climbing out of the car.

“Oh, wait!” Roman called before Virgil had a chance to close the door. “Did you ever tell Logan you were coming? Will he be okay with you just showing up?”

“Oh, don’t worry about that.” Virgil snickered. “There’s a tree next to his window and he’ll feel too guilty to let me sit out on the roof in the cold. He’ll let me in, don’t you worry.”

He shut the car door, leaving a baffled Roman behind him. Roman rolled down the window and leaned over into the passenger seat to talk to him again.

“Please don’t tell me you’re actually about to climb onto his roof.”

“Don’t you worry your pretty little mind, I’ve done this before.”

“Did you just quote Taylor Swift?” Did he just call me pretty?

“Mark Twain, now you can go.” He laughed and spun on his heel.

“Alright. Just be careful I guess.”

“Roooomaaan~” He called in a sing-songy voice. He stopped walking again and spun around to glare at him with fake annoyance.

“Alright, alright, I’ll stop momming.” He held his hands up and slid back into the driver’s seat. “Good luck!”

“Thanks!” Virgil gave a two-finger salute and made his way over to the tree. He climbed a few branches and pulled himself up onto the roof. He was about to text Logan to let him, but decided against it when he realized the opportunity to scare him. He slid his phone back into his pocket and slowly made his way over to the window. He tapped the back of his knuckles lightly and chuckled as Logan jumped and nearly fell off of his bed.

Virgil pushed up the screen and Logan came over to open the window for him.

“What he hell are you doing? Why are you on my roof? Wait, it’s only like 8:30, is everything ok? Why are you up so early? I thought your parents both worked on Saturdays, why did you have to leave?” Logan’s maundering turned from annoyance to concern as he watched Virgil climb into the room and flop down in his spinny chair.

“Don’t worry, Logan. I’m totally fine.” He smiled. “I was on my way over here last night, but someone stopped me on the street and offered me a place to stay for the night. You’ll never guess who.”

“Wait wait wait, was it that obnoxious theatre kid?” Logan rolled his eyes as he sat down on the bed across from Virgil.

“Psh, no. Wait…” Virgil abruptly stopped his spinning. “Wha- how’d-“

“Well I stayed at school late last night with my team to practice for our academic competition today. Speaking of, you have about half an hour to spill your gossip then get out before I have to leave for that.”

“Yeah, yeah, whatever-“

“I wasn’t finished.” He held up a hand to silence Virgil, who sighed dramatically and slid down in the desk chair. “Well I assumed that the person you’d met was probably someone you knew from a class because I know you wouldn’t go home with someone you’d never met. Well by the time I left, Roman was the only other student still there. He had been in the library with us all night. Of course, we didn’t talk to him.” He paused to give a scoff along with that, as if to say ‘obviously.’ “Well he was the only other student there, and I know you know him from all of your stage work.”

“Okay yeah, but it was Friday night. It could have been literally anyone-“

“BUT. Before I left, I heard Roman on the phone with someone. Someone named Patton, I believe. At least that’s what it sounded like.” He paused again to shake his head disapprovingly. “And goodness, was this guy loud. It was a little hard not to eavesdrop when this Patton guy was basically screaming through the phone.”

“Geez, Logan.” Virgil draped himself farther on the chair. “Get on with it so I can tell you what happened!”

“Alright, alright, fine. So they were on the phone, and this guy, Patton, was apologizing about not being able to hang out. And keep in mind it was like 9:30, so Roman seemed kind of upset to have planned canceled so late. He joked that he would just go get a coffee and take a lonely drive because Patton had ‘abandoned him.’ Talked about just driving around until he was too tired to drive and needed to go home.”

“Well it still could’ve been anyone.”

“Most people wouldn’t just be driving around alone on a Friday night with nowhere to go. They hang out with friends, and if they’re alone they at least have somewhere that they need to be. People don’t just drive aimlessly for fun. Well apparently Roman does.”

“There’s no way you thought through all of that in the half second between ‘you’ll never guess who’ and ‘wait.’” Virgil looked at him skeptically. “Did you just spend all that time explaining that to me just to let me down by telling me that you took a shot in the dark and thought through it after?”

“Excuse you, I never make guesses without thinking. That was an educated guess.”

“Whatever, now shut up so I can tell you about this.”

“Fine.” Logan pushed himself back on the bed to lean against the headboard and got ready to listen to Virgil ramble.

“Ok so first off, he’s kinda hot. Just gotta get that one out of the way.”

“Oh my- Virgil!” Logan rolled his eyes.

“Shut up and let me talk, Specs!” Virgil leaned forward in the chair and rested his arms on the edge of the bed frame.

“I told you not to sit like that. You’re going to hurt yourself if that chair rolls back when you’re not paying attention.”

“Logan shut up and let me talk about my boy problems. Ok, so he offered me a ride home, right?” He continued to ramble about everything that had happened. The drive to Roman’s house, Roman’s adorable dog and beautiful house, the Disney mural, everything that he could think of.

“And this morning, you’ll never believe what happened before he dropped me off-“

“Okay wait a second. Pause.” Logan held up his hand again and leaned forward to get closer to eye level with Virgil. “I thought you hated this guy.”

“Okay well that was before I got to know him.” Virgil slid his elbows off of the bedframe and leaned back into the chair again. “He was actually very nice, alright?”

“Doubt it.”

“Logan. Boy problems. Just listen so I can tell you what happened. Okay so right before we got here, he told me I could come over to his house if I ever needed somewhere to go. So I got his number in case I ever wanted to text him to hang out.” Logan couldn’t help but smile at the way Virgil’s face lit up as he talked about Roman.

“Well maybe he’s not that bad.”

“He’s amazing! And now I have somewhere to go if I can’t come here, which is like all the time.”

“Speaking of, my dad should be leaving soon, so you can go downstairs before we leave if you want to say hi to Thomas.”

“Ah yes, the wise Thomas Gelee. Don’t mind if I do.” He pushed himself up off of the chair to look out the window and check the driveway.

“He left already. I’ll go bother Thomas so you can get ready for your Nerd Bowl.”

“You can stay in here if you-“

“Nope, Thomas is my favorite.” Virgil shot him one last smile as he made his way out of the room to go see Thomas.

Thomas was a year above them, but he was a theatre kid. Virgil was pretty sure he seen him with Roman before, so he’d probably be able to vouch for Roman’s character. He sauntered down the steps and stops in front of Thomas’s door, knocking quietly before running in and jumping face first onto the bed. Thomas was sitting on the floor with his laptop on his legs. He seemed completely unphased by Virgil’s energy.

“What’s up kiddo?” He asked as he typed away on his computer.

“Boy problems.” Virgil mumbled through the pillows.

“Ooo, do tell.” He looked up from his laptop and smiled. Virgil rolled over so he could speak better before starting his rant.

“Do you know Roman Prince?” He sighed.

“Oh my goodness, yes I do.” Thomas said excitedly as he set his laptop aside and jumped up to sit by Virgil. “Scoot over. Now tell me everything.”

Virgil gave him the brief summary of the night. Thomas nodded along quietly until he was finished. He bit back a smile as he watched Virgil get progressively more excited.

“Well, do you think you’re going to hang out with him again?”

“Yeah, of course. You know how things are with my family. I couldn’t be happier to have a free excuse to get out of the house. And now you won’t have to make late night and early morning trips to take me home when I need to get out of the house.” Virgil beamed.

“So, speaking of, do you need a ride home?”

“Uhhhh…mmm…” He hopped off of the bed and shuffled over to the door to poke his head out. “Hey Lo?”

“Yes?”

“Are you dropping me off at home?”

“I guess so.” Logan sighed as he made his way down the steps. He straightened his tie and pulled out his phone to check the time. “But we need to leave soon if I am.”

“Alright. Thanks for the company, Favorite Senior.” Virgil turned back into the room to wave to Thomas.

Thomas fell back onto his bed at gave Virgil an upside-down smile. “No problem, Favorite Junior.”

“Not even going to ask.” Logan rolled his eyes and pulled Virgil out of the room, sending Thomas a quick wave before he shut the door. “You can talk about Roman as much as you want on the way home.”

“Oh believe me, I will.”

Taglist: @ab-artist

#romanthroughthewriting #prinxiety #roman sanders #virgil sanders #logan sanders #thomas sanders #sanders sides

[nostalgiaispeace]

622.

5000 Question Survey Pt. 31

2901. have you ever written a letter to: a friend: yeah a lover: no a celebrity: yes. congress/house/reps: no the president/leader of your country: no. 2902. Why are cigarette companies allowed to manufacture and sell cigarettes when they are so unhealthy and dangerous? same reason alcohol companies can i guess. 2903. Do you chat with people in an elevator? no 2904. What’s your favorite Jack Nicholson movie? hmm...The Departed?

2905. Who should play the part of Superman? don’t care. wouldn’t watch it. 2906. Do you like when your friends and your mate’s friends hang out? i don’t care? 2907. Doritos or Cheetos? doritos 2910. Do you brush your teeth three times a day? no 2911. Should I stop making questions with multiple parts and just count each actual question as a question? i don’t care 2912. What gives your ego a boost? dunno 2913. What knocks your ego down? bullying 2914. Live and let live or live and let die? dunno 2915. What do you think of Damien Hirst’s art piece Mother and Child, which is half a cow in formaldedhyde? dunno it. 2916. Why is it that 70 percent of americans Do Not want to go to war with Iraq and yet we are going to war with Iraq anyway? ummm Is this democracy? no 2917. Imagine you have two choices of what life you can live: One: You are provided with meals, medicine, clothes and shelter. You are always with your family. You can lie in the sun and smoke, drink, play, cook, etc.. There will be certain rules you must follow such as no killing, no hurting others, no leaving the commune you were born in, no stealing, no tv, no newspapers and no books. OR Two: You are turned loose in the world with nothing. You start out cold and hungry. You may stay cold and hungry forever but you also have the opportunity to try and make a life for yourself. This will take a lot of hard work and there is no guarantee you will ever live comfortably. Which life do you choose? both seem shitty WHY? because first has no books and the second i’ll be cold 2918. Why is there no ‘Mr. America’ pageant? who cares Should there be? no. pageant life seems stupid. What qualities would YOU look for in a Mr. America if such a contest were to exist (like miss america he would have to be a role model)? pageants are stupid. 2919. If something offends you do you feel that it has no right to exist? sure. but that’s not reality 2920. Why do advertisers seem to believe that guys will buy any product that a hot girl in a bikini is sitting next too? because sex sells 2921. What would you do if your mom had a fight with a male acquaintance and you heard an answering machine message he left her cursing at her, calling her names and being very disrespectful? i’d call him and cuss him out 2922. What do you represent? myself? 2923. What message does ___ send when given as a birthday present?flowers: nice? slippers: i dunno but i love love it candles: you didn’t know what to get me? diamond necklace: you like me alot? gift certificate: you know what i like cash: you know what i like books: you really know what i like 2924. Have you ever completed a paint by number? probably If yes of what? i dunno 2925. How long has it been since you colored in a coloring book? years 2926. What have you been caught doing? dunno? 2927. Does temptation make you do what you love? no 2928. Do you have an gadgets in the house that you don’t know how to use? What? probably...technology 2929. Do you read the instructions to things or skip them? skip 2930. Will you ever reach your full potential? probably not 2931. Who is your biggest fan? no idea. 2932. Who do you take care of? myself and my husband Who takes care of you? same as above, and my mom 2933. Do you think that lawyers should only argue cases when they feel like the client is in the right? i think they should do their job. If you were a lawyer would you argue cases when you felt like your client was completely wrong? same as above 2934. Is it sexy in here or is it just me? it’s just you. 2935. You are giving out your phone number to a HOTTIE by writing it on a napkin. Do you write a little note or draw a picture too? If yes, what? i wouldn’t do this. 2936. Can you fold paper into anything (a hat, a swan, a boat, etc)? What? no 2937. How can a girl get a guy-she-is-dating’s mom to like her better? i don’t know? 2938. What is one theory about life or anything that you came up with that no one else has? no 2939. Do you like answering questions about: (bold) your life? your taste? tv? music? art? politics? life? religion? issues? sex? loved ones? favorites? objects? math? philosophy? hypothetical situations? things that require lots of thought? 2940. The mortuary science department is having a bake sale. Does this strike you as funny? no 2941. What would you think of a new reality tv game show where real life criminals on death row competed in life threatening tasks for the prize of a reduced sentence? that’s stupid as fuck. Did you know that they are considering making this a show? no Would you watch it? no 2942. What was the last song you looked up the words to? dunno 2943. What Saturday morning cartoons do you like? i don’t have cable 2944. If anything’s possible, then is it possible that nothing’s possible? no..? 2944. What does the T in T-Shirt really mean? dunno 2945. Would you alter your routine if there was a sniper in your area? probably? If so how? i wouldn’t leave the house 2946. Is castration a good punishment for extreme or repeat sexual offenders? just put them in prison and keep them there. 2947. If you are a girl have you ever experienced penis envy? no If you are a guy would you still want to live if you had to be castrated? 2948. Imagine you are teaching a class of sixth graders. A the start of the year you tell them, “If you come away with class and have learned only ONE THING, I hope that you learned….(finish the sentence) no 2949. If you were being interviewed for a job in a clothing store how would you sell yourself to the prospective employers? lolol i wouldn’t work in a clothing store 2950. How do you stop pop up ads? adblock...i think 2951. You are alone. You take a bus to the mall. The stop is right in the mall parking lot. You window-shop. You don’t buy anything. You want to get back on the bus to go home when you realize you have lost all your money. You have no cell phone. All the payphones are jammed with gum. You can not get it out. How do you get the $1.50 you need to get on the bus and get home??? i would ask someone to borrow a phone to call someone 2952. How long would it take you to organize your bedroom? probably a whole dat 2953. Make up a nickname for your bedroom: no 2954. What comes after: I’ve got a love-a-lee bunch of coconuts (diddly dee) There they are a-standing in a row. Big ones, small ones, some as big as your head… 2955. Where ARE the wild things? our imagination 2956. You get a six cd changer for the car, only problem is that you know that once you put in six cd’s you can NEVER take them out. Which 6 cd’s do you put in? oh god fuck you 2957. Let’s play Jeapordy. (Do-Do-Do-Do-Do-Do-Dooooo-) I’ll give some answers..you give the questions. Ready? Begin. The answer is: Purple what colour is barney the dinosaur? Yellow what colour is a banana? Candle what’s something you can light up during a romantic dinner? Pepsi who’s coke’s biggest competitor? Peace i dunno Lisa what’s the name of the eldest simpsons daughter? Cotton what type of fabric are most t-shirts made out of? Flag what does america take too seriously? 42 i dont know 2958. Pick a letter. A List some great words starting with that letter: no 2959. Is eight days a week enough to show you care? no 2960. Have you told your parents you love them today? no. 2961. What is the difference between a number two pencil and any other kind of pencil? no idea. 2962. Have you ever cross-dressed? no. 2963. Are we living in a world without end? seems like it 2964. What do you think of that couple that was just on the news who kidnapped a 16 year old girl for a week and forced her to be their sex slave? that’s disgusting. 2965. Wanna watch a movie about a cheerleading competition? no 2966. Are you singing in the rain? no but i love that film 2967. Should the sopranos actors have been allowed to march in the St Patrick’s Day parade? i don’t care 2968. Is oral sex, anal sex or regular sex more intimate? regular. 2969. Is it time to switch to Decaf? never 2970. Why is it that the truth hurts? some people are pussies 2971. How do you feel about: ticketmaster? meh scalpers? i don’t trust them 2972. What are you guilty of? being a bitch 2973. Have you ever done any of the following in order to catch a buzz or get high? sniffed glue: no sniffed magic markers: nope. ate paste: no. drank Nyquil, rRobitussen or any other Over-the-counter drug: no. 'huffed’ (inhaled or sniffed) any kind of fabric softner, cooking spray or other household product: no. whip-its: no. 2974. What gives you inner strength? dunno 2975. ::eyes you suspiciously::Where have all the COOKIES gone? i don’t have any cookies ever so 2976. What is a good gift for someone you don’t like so that it SEEMS to be nice but really 'gets’ them somehow? they don’t get gifts 2977. If you don’t like the service at a restaurant would you skip the tip? they would get a small one Why or why not? because they wouldn’t deserve a good one. 2978. Apples or peaches or pumpkin pie? none. 2979. What Race/nationality was Jesus? Jewish 2980. What was one evening you’ll never forget? getting proposed to 2981. Name 13 ways to look at a blackbird: no. 2982. Trick or Treat? treat. 2983. If you had money to burn, what 'toy’ would you spend your money on (think monopoly game with real money, luxory boat, a train layout that takes up a house, etc.)? probably something harry potter related 2984. Are you having trouble with aol 8.0? LOL what? how old is this. Or if you don’t have aol…have you ever been to a podiatrist? no 2985. If you could write your own ten commandments, what would they be? 1 no 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 2986. When people lose weight, where does it go? don’t care 2987. Your mate/partner/wife or husband/longterm boy or girlfriend/etc. has SOMEHOW gotten his or her FAVORITE celebrity’s attention. Your sweetie has always thought this celeb was so sexy and now the celeb kinda fancies your sweety as well(although the celeb is not interested enough to stick around for more than one night). Your sweetie wants to have a one night stand with the celeb. Knowing that this is your sweeties one and only chance to bang (or even hang out with) a celebrity (ESPECIALLY their FAVORITE celebrity) you would say: do your thing. 2988. Have you ever seen an Ed Wood film? probably? maybe? it’s possible. i watch a lot of films. if yes, what one(s) and what did you think? If no, aren’t you curious to see a movie by the person known as the worst director of all time? 2989. What kind of bread do you like to eat (white, rye, potatoe, grain, whole wheat, etc)? honey wheat 2990. Are you emotionally articulate? maybe 2991. Does everything happen for a reason? seems like it. 2992. Do you take a piece of those you have loved and carry it around forever? yeah If yes, than aren’t they still with you even when you are gone?

feels that way 2993. Is it true that the child is worth ten of the parent? i don’t know? 2994. Can you think of a door that has closed in your life? yes Can you think of a window that has opened? maybe 2995. What does this mean to you: 'Necessity is the mother of invention’? nothing

Do you believe that necessity is also the mother of: courage? idk survival skills? idk independence? idk 2996. What helps you to get over a Major heartache? i wish i knew 2997. Can you depend completely upon yourself? yes have you ever tried? i have to 2998. How can you tell the difference between the end of one part of your life and the beautiful beginning of the next part? i wish

2999. Have you ever read an stories by Kate Chopin? no If not, I suggest that you do. okay

3000. Do you often make the best discoveries when you really weren’t looking for anything (or anyone)? yes

#me #survey

[batterymonster2021]

The price of shame | Monica Lewinsky

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The price of shame | Monica Lewinsky

You’re watching at a girl who was publicly silent for a decade. Obviously, that is transformed, but most effective not too long ago. It used to be several months ago that I gave my very first principal public talk on the Forbes 30 beneath 30 summit: 1,500 exceptional humans, all underneath the age of 30. That supposed that in 1998, the oldest among the many staff have been only 14, and the youngest, simply 4. I joked with them that some could simplest have heard of me from rap songs. Yes, i am in rap songs. Almost 40 rap songs. (Laughter) however the night time of my speech, a stunning thing happened.On the age of 41, I was once hit on through a 27-12 months-ancient guy. I do know, correct? He was once charming and i was flattered, and i declined. You already know what his unsuccessful pickup line used to be? He would make me think 22 once more. (Laughter) (Applause) i noticed later that night, i’m ordinarily the only person over 40 who does now not wish to be 22 again. (Laughter) (Applause) on the age of twenty-two, I fell in love with my boss, and at the age of 24, I realized the devastating consequences. Am i able to see a exhibit of fingers of anyone here who failed to make a mistake or do whatever they regretted at 22? Yep.That is what I suggestion. So like me, at 22, a couple of of you could have additionally taken flawed turns and fallen in love with the unsuitable person, possibly even your boss. Unlike me, though, your boss by and large wasn’t the president of the united states of america. Of path, existence is filled with surprises. Not a day goes by using that i’m not reminded of my mistake, and that i remorse that mistake deeply. In 1998, after having been swept up into an unbelievable romance, I was once then swept up into the attention of a political, authorized and media maelstrom like we had not ever obvious before. Take into account, only some years earlier, information used to be consumed from just three places: reading a newspaper or magazine, paying attention to the radio, or watching television. That was once it. However that wasn’t my destiny. As an alternative, this scandal was once brought to you via the digital revolution.That meant we could entry all the information we wanted, once we wanted it, each time, wherever, and when the story broke in January 1998, it broke online. It used to be the first time the normal information used to be usurped through the web for a foremost news story, a click on that reverberated all over the world. What that meant for me personally was that overnight I went from being a utterly private determine to a publicly humiliated one international.I used to be patient zero of dropping a private repute on a world scale nearly immediately. This rush to judgment, enabled by using science, resulted in mobs of virtual stone-throwers. Granted, it used to be earlier than social media, but men and women would still remark online, e-mail stories, and, of path, electronic mail merciless jokes. News sources plastered pictures of me far and wide to sell newspapers, banner advertisements on-line, and to hold persons tuned to the tv. Do you recall a exact photograph of me, say, sporting a beret? Now, I admit I made errors, certainly sporting that beret. However the awareness and judgment that I acquired, not the story, but that I individually received, used to be unparalleled.I was branded as a tramp, tart, slut, whore, bimbo, and, of course, that lady. I was seen by way of many however surely known via few. And that i get it: it was once effortless to put out of your mind that that woman used to be dimensional, had a soul, and was once unbroken. When this occurred to me 17 years ago, there was once no identify for it. Now we call it cyberbullying and on-line harassment. Today, I need to share a few of my experience with you, speak about how that experience has helped shape my cultural observations, and how i’m hoping my prior expertise can lead to a transformation that outcome in much less suffering for others. In 1998, I misplaced my status and my dignity. I lost just about everything, and i virtually lost my life. Let me paint a photo for you. It’s September of 1998. I’m sitting in a windowless place of business room inside the office of the independent suggestions underneath buzzing fluorescent lights. I am listening to the sound of my voice, my voice on surreptitiously taped mobile calls that a supposed buddy had made the year earlier than. I am here due to the fact i’ve been legally required to personally authenticate all 20 hours of taped dialog.For the earlier eight months, the mysterious content material of those tapes has hung like the Sword of Damocles over my head. I mean, who can don’t forget what they mentioned a year in the past? Scared and mortified, I pay attention, hear as I prattle on about the flotsam and jetsam of the day; hear as I confess my love for the president, and, of direction, my heartbreak; take heed to my routinely catty, normally churlish, sometimes silly self being merciless, unforgiving, uncouth; hear, deeply, deeply ashamed, to the worst version of myself, a self i do not even appreciate.A few days later, the Starr report is launched to Congress, and all of those tapes and transcripts, those stolen phrases, kind a part of it. That persons can learn the transcripts is horrific enough, however a few weeks later, the audio tapes are aired on tv, and big parts made on hand on-line. The public humiliation was once excruciating. Lifestyles was just about unbearable. This was once no longer something that occurred with regularity back then in 1998, and via this, I imply the stealing of individuals’s personal words, actions, conversations or graphics, and then making them public — public without consent, public without context, and public with out compassion.Fast ahead 12 years to 2010, and now social media has been born. The panorama has alas become way more populated with situations like mine, whether or not someone virtually make a mistake, and now it can be for both public and exclusive individuals. The penalties for some have turn out to be dire, very dire. I was once on the cell with my mom in September of 2010, and we had been speakme concerning the information of a young school freshman from Rutgers university named Tyler Clementi. Sweet, touchy, ingenious Tyler was secretly webcammed by using his roommate at the same time being intimate with an additional man. When the online world realized of this incident, the ridicule and cyberbullying ignited. Just a few days later, Tyler jumped from the George Washington Bridge to his loss of life. He was once 18. My mother was beside herself about what occurred to Tyler and his household, and she or he was once gutted with affliction in a way that I just couldn’t really recognize, and then eventually i spotted she used to be reliving 1998, reliving a time when she sat via my mattress each night time, reliving a time when she made me bathe with the lavatory door open, and reliving a time when both of my father and mother feared that i would be humiliated to demise, actually.Today, too many mother and father have not had the hazard to step in and rescue their cherished ones. Too many have learned of their baby’s suffering and humiliation after it was too late. Tyler’s tragic, senseless death was once a turning point for me. It served to recontextualize my experiences, and i then began to appear on the world of humiliation and bullying around me and see some thing distinctive. In 1998, we had no approach of figuring out where this brave new technological know-how referred to as the web would take us. On account that then, it has related individuals in unattainable approaches, becoming a member of misplaced siblings, saving lives, launching revolutions, however the darkness, cyberbullying, and slut-shaming that I skilled had mushroomed. Daily on-line, persons, in particular younger folks who are usually not developmentally organized to manage this, are so abused and humiliated that they can’t imagine living to the next day to come, and some, tragically, don’t, and there may be nothing digital about that.ChildLine, a U.Okay. Nonprofit that is enthusiastic about serving to young humans on more than a few problems, launched a striking statistic late final year: From 2012 to 2013, there was an 87 percentage increase in calls and emails regarding cyberbullying. A meta-analysis executed out of the Netherlands showed that for the primary time, cyberbullying used to be main to suicidal ideations more drastically than offline bullying. And what stunned me, despite the fact that it do not have, was once different research final yr that determined humiliation used to be a more intensely felt emotion than either happiness or even anger.Cruelty to others is nothing new, however on-line, technologically improved shaming is amplified, uncontained, and completely available. The echo of embarrassment used to prolong best as far as your loved ones, village, institution or community, but now it is the web neighborhood too. Hundreds of thousands of people, traditionally anonymously, can stab you with their words, and that’s a lot of discomfort, and there are not any perimeters round what number of individuals can publicly notice you and put you in a public stockade. There’s a very personal price to public humiliation, and the progress of the internet has jacked up that price. For close to two a long time now, we now have slowly been sowing the seeds of shame and public humiliation in our cultural soil, both on- and offline.Gossip web pages, paparazzi, reality programming, politics, information retailers and sometimes hackers all site visitors in shame. It is led to desensitization and a permissive environment on-line which lends itself to trolling, invasion of privateness, and cyberbullying. This shift has created what Professor Nicolaus Mills calls a culture of humiliation. Do not forget just a few distinguished examples simply from the past six months on my own. Snapchat, the service which is used in general by way of more youthful generations and claims that its messages only have the lifespan of some seconds. That you may imagine the range of content that that will get. A third-social gathering app which Snapchatters use to maintain the lifespan of the messages was once hacked, and a hundred,000 private conversations, portraits, and movies were leaked online to now have a lifespan of without end. Jennifer Lawrence and a number of different actors had their iCloud debts hacked, and confidential, intimate, nude graphics were plastered across the internet without their permission. One gossip internet site had over 5 million hits for this one story. And what concerning the Sony photographs cyberhacking? The documents which bought probably the most concentration were confidential emails that had highest public embarrassment value.However in this culture of humiliation, there is an extra form of price tag connected to public shaming. The price does now not measure the rate to the victim, which Tyler and too many others, in particular ladies, minorities, and contributors of the LGBTQ community have paid, however the price measures the profit of individuals who prey on them. This invasion of others is a uncooked fabric, effectually and ruthlessly mined, packaged and bought at a revenue. A marketplace has emerged the place public humiliation is a commodity and shame is an industry.How is the cash made? Clicks. The extra disgrace, the more clicks. The extra clicks, the extra advertising bucks. We’re in a harmful cycle. The extra we click on this kind of gossip, the extra numb we get to the human lives at the back of it, and the extra numb we get, the more we click on. The entire even as, anyone is being profitable off of the back of anyone else’s suffering. With every click on, we make a choice. The extra we saturate our culture with public shaming, the more authorised it is, the more we will see habits like cyberbullying, trolling, some varieties of hacking, and online harassment. Why? Because all of them have humiliation at their cores. This conduct is a symptom of the culture now we have created. Simply suppose about it. Changing behavior starts offevolved with evolving beliefs. Now we have visible that to be proper with racism, homophobia, and plenty of other biases, today and in the past. As we have now transformed beliefs about equal-intercourse marriage, more men and women were furnished equal freedoms. When we started valuing sustainability, more people started to recycle. So so far as our culture of humiliation goes, what we want is a cultural revolution.Public shaming as a blood game has to stop, and it can be time for an intervention on the net and in our tradition. The shift starts offevolved with anything easy, but it surely’s now not easy. We must return to an extended-held price of compassion — compassion and empathy. Online, we have received a compassion deficit, an empathy drawback. Researcher Bren Brown mentioned, and i quote, "disgrace cannot survive empathy." disgrace cannot live on empathy. I’ve obvious some very dark days in my lifestyles, and it was once the compassion and empathy from my family, buddies, experts, and usually even strangers that saved me. Even empathy from one individual could make a difference. The idea of minority influence, proposed through social psychologist Serge Moscovici, says that even in small numbers, when there may be consistency over time, trade can happen. In the online world, we can foster minority impact by becoming upstanders. To turn out to be an upstander way as an alternative of bystander apathy, we will submit a confident remark for any individual or document a bullying quandary. Trust me, compassionate comments support abate the negativity. We are able to also counteract the culture through supporting firms that deal with these types of disorders, like the Tyler Clementi foundation in the U.S., in the U.Ok., there’s Anti-Bullying professional, and in Australia, there is undertaking Rockit.We talk so much about our right to freedom of expression, but we need to speak extra about our accountability to freedom of expression. We all wish to be heard, however let’s acknowledge the change between talking up with intention and speakme up for concentration. The web is the superhighway for the identity, but online, showing empathy to others benefits us all and helps create a safer and better world. We have to keep in touch on-line with compassion, consume information with compassion, and click on with compassion. Simply think running a mile in any individual else’s headline. I’d like to end on a individual note. In the past nine months, the question i have been asked essentially the most is why. Why now? Why was I sticking my head above the parapet? Which you can learn between the strains in those questions, and the reply has nothing to do with politics. The highest word answer was and is considering that it’s time: time to discontinue tip-toeing round my prior; time to stop residing a life of opprobrium; and time to take back my narrative.It is also now not just about saving myself. Anyone who’s affected by shame and public humiliation wants to understand one factor: that you could live to tell the tale it. I realize it’s rough. It might not be painless, quick or easy, however you could insist on yet another ending to your story. Have compassion for your self. All of us deserve compassion, and to are living both online and off in a more compassionate world. Thank you for listening. (Applause) .

[zadzapfanfiction-blog]

They Corrupt them Chapter 1 (ZaDr)

The Control Brains are corrupt, they have been hiding something since the beginning of their existence, the Irkens are in danger and they don’t even know it and the few who know have been assassinated throughout the years. After telling Zim his mission is a lie and a video of his death is released the Tallest cannot remember the one event that caused them and all of Irk to hate the smallest Irken, along with the strange behavior that caused said event, along with the rest of their pasts. This is a story of love, a story of the Irken race, a story of secrets, a story of two enemies…well, no spoilers! Eventual ZaDr, RaPr and possibly other pairings in the future. 

All was peaceful on the Massive, aside from the slight bickering of the two Tallest who were fighting over the last doughnut while the rest of the crew watched on, waiting for one of them to drop the bag so they could have it. One of the Irkens behind the controls looked at the screen, ignoring the fact that their Tallest were arguing over the food; he groaned as they were getting a call from the one and only annoyance to all the Empire. “Excuse me my Tallest, but we are receiving a call from…Zim…” The blue eyed Irken said, a hint of annoyance in his voice.

Red groaned and let the bag go before turning his attention to the Irken who had interrupted them, doughnut forgotten by both Tallest at the mention of the smaller defective Irken; he turned to his co-tallest and crossed his arms. “I think it’s time we tell him that his mission was a lie, and we deactivate him for good.” He said.

Purple sighed. “We thought we deactivated him the last time but it didn’t work, how do you expect it to work this time?” He asked Red, curious as to what his plan was.

“Obviously we need to connect his computer to his PAK, it’ll have no choice but to listen to the Control Brains and deactivate him.” Red smirked, earning another from Purple, who obviously thought it was a good idea too. “That sounds like a good idea!” Purple said, excited. “This way he will not contact us again!”

~~~

It was quiet in Zim’s base, except for the small hum of Computer and the burst of giggling coming from the robot that was watching TV though it seemed someone was missing. In fact, the Irken we are thinking about is currently down in the lab working away at his project to show off; he wanted so much to impress his Tallest and hope they liked his plan. It had been a few years since he had landed on this planet and he felt he was close, close to finally succeeding his mission and getting off this planet once and for all.

Zim looked up, antenna twitched a little. “Computer! Contact the Tallest!” He said, feeling giddy on the inside, oh the plan he had this time…yes, the Tallest would be pleased!

As the Irken waited he leaned against the table with a confident smile, glad that he hadn’t had to deal with Dib for the past few weeks…though part of him wondered why. Why had the human just up and stopped trying to foil his plans; he couldn’t understand at all, did he not think Zim was worth his time?

The thought made him very upset, had the Dib just decided to go ahead and give up on Earth? He tried not to let it get to him but it worried him a little, after all; he and Dib had been fighting over Earth for a very long time now. The question should be; why does he even care if the human gives up fighting over the planet, not Zim of course…stupid human and his giving up...

Zim’s antenna perked when he heard the call connecting, geez it had taken a while…what was going on in the Massive to make his leaders take so long? Ah well, all that mattered now was that they were now answering the call. When the two tall Irkens appeared on the screen Zim smiled happily. “My Tallest I have something to show you, I’ve been working on it for a few months now you see, and I just wanted to show you what I was going to do-“ The Irken was interrupted by Red.

“Zim, that’s enough, we’ve heard your stupid plans for the last time, we do not have patience for your idiotic behavior.” Red started, glaring at Zim. Zim gasped, antenna going back in disbelief as he heard his leader speak to him this way. “B-but-“ He was interrupted yet again. “No, we have listened to this for far too long Zim, you were never supposed to find a planet, we sent you out to die like the pathetic defective you are and yet you just end up being an even more annoyance.” Red continued on.

The smaller Irken could feel tears leaving his eyes as he listened to his leader tell him how pathetic he was; he couldn’t understand why they were treating him this way, Zim was nothing but loyal to his Tallest…all he wanted to do was show that he could be the best Invader there ever was.

“N-No, please my Tallest…Zim will prove himself!” He cried out, watching as his computer as forced to do the actions he was commanded to do; he watched as the screen went blank and screamed in pain as electricity surged through his body. The computer let him go after a while, leaving Zim with a horrible clicking in his PAK; his body hurt all over and cringed when the clicking went on.

“I-I hand no control Master.” The computer said, trying to defend himself.

Zim looked up and panted; he didn’t blame his computer…no it was the Tallest. The Irken curled up in a ball and began crying, soon to be joined by Gir who tried his best to comfort his Master the only way he knew how. The Irken hugged his robot close and tried to calm himself down; he had to continue on with things as they were, maybe if he could get Dib to fight with him again then things would go back to normal or something. Dib wouldn’t even have to know.

~~~Weeks later~~~

It had been a couple years since Dib and Gaz had seen their so called father, family time just sort of became a thing of the past and he hadn’t been home in so long; Dib had made it his job to take care of Gaz along with trying to provide for the family he had left. The big headed teenager had decided to devote all his time to taking care of his sister, which meant he had no time to defend the Earth from Zim; he had begun to see no point in it.

What was the point in protecting people when none of those idiots believed him anyway? All was peaceful in the Membrane household this Sunday evening of course, Gaz was currently sitting on the couch playing on her Game Slave; Dib was in the kitchen cooking dinner. Over the years Dib had sort of started a vegetarian diet, it was healthier of course and as far as he knew Gaz didn’t mind it either; she had stopped complaining and beating the crap out of him.

It was a surprising fact after realizing their father had probably just straight up abandoned them; she would act annoyed most times, but there was no malice behind her words. Dib was glad their relationship was starting a new, hell he never knew his sister was like this; he smiled as he was deep in thought and started returning to reality and put his and Gaz’s food on the plates before calling her into the room. He heard her saving her game and then closing her Game Slave, then a few moments later she joined him in the kitchen and sat down to eat.

“After dinner do your homework.” He told her, knowing he needed to do a bit of his own though he may let it go for now so he could fix up the house a bit, or look for a job. The amount of money he had taken out of his father’s account wouldn’t last them forever, and he figured he better get a job now before they ran out. Admittedly Dib had taken quite a lot out of his father’s account, but he didn’t think the other would miss it or anything; he was a pretty rich scientist after all.

Gaz gave an acknowledging grumble as she ate, to be honest she had cooled down quite a lot after Dib had decided to mainly care for her; she hated how he sometimes ran himself ragged trying to do things at times. Sometimes she wondered if Dib would just take a break sometime, instead he just continues to work tirelessly; she had stopped being so mean too. What amazed her the most was that Dib had stopped trying to defeat Zim, admittedly he wasn’t that good of an invader anyway…but still.

“So…have you talked to Zim?” She decided to ask, it was strange to not hear her brother constantly talk about Zim and what his plans were; he had been concentrating on trying to take care of her and what little they had left after their dad had stopped coming home. It seemed her brother was starting to grow up, though she did sort of miss his bursts of insanity; she supposed that was life though. Gaz did wonder what Zim was up to though; she had seen him around school with an air of confidence around him, but lately it sort of dwindled a bit and she wondered if Dib was aware of the fact that Zim seemed to be upset about anything.

Dib looked up from his food. “No, I’ve been a bit busy, I don’t really have time to worry about his plans…”

In reality, Dib truly did worry about what the Irken was cooking up; he hadn’t seen him at school in a couple of days and when he was there he didn’t seem like himself. He brushed the thought from his mind and continued to eat his food, earning an eye roll from his sister; she obviously hadn’t wanted to hear any of that. What was he supposed to say? That he would just stop what he was doing and chase after him or something? He couldn’t, just couldn’t.

Their dinner was interrupted when Dib heard noise at the front door; he got up from the table only to see Zim coming in and glaring at him. “Why have you not been trying to foil Zim’s plans!?” The Irken said, crossing his arms. “Do you not thing Zim is worth your time anymore? Do you not see Zim as a threat? Do you not think I can take over this stupid planet?”

Dib frowned. “No…Zim that isn’t it at all. Look, things have been a bit…hectic around here, our dad hasn’t been home in a few years so we’re assuming he just up and abandoned us. I haven’t been able to foil anything of yours, as much as I want to Zim…it’s just that I’ve picked up a lot more responsibilities.”

Zim’s ruby eyes looked at Dib for a moment. “Y-your parental unit abandoned you? Just like Zim’s leaders abandoned him…” He frowned and looked away. “Zim is sorry to bother you Dib-human; he will leave you alone now…” The Irken turned to walk away but Dib grabbed his shoulder. “No Zim…why don’t you sit down and I’ll give you some food.” He said, wanting to speak with the Irken more about what had happened to him. He made Zim sit down and grabbed one of the extra burgers he made. “Don’t worry, this isn’t real meat.” He assured as he put it on some bread and then sat down himself.

Gaz decided to get up from the table to give them some privacy, whatever had happened was between them for now; she didn’t want to interrupt them.

Zim looked at the burger Dib was offering him and looked at him. “If this hurts Zim…” He said, unsure and Dib shook his head. “It won’t I promise.” He assured and sat back in the chair. “So…your Tallest abandoned you?” He wondered as he looked at the Irken, who seemed very upset as the took a bite of the food, surprised that it didn’t hurt him; he then looked at Dib with a sigh.

“They told Zim that his mission was a lie, they sent me out her to die…there wasn’t even supposed to be a planet out this way.” Zim said and looked at Dib with a sad sigh. “Y-you win Dib, take me to your Earth authorities.” He whispered, earning a scoff from the Dib who was shaking his head. “Forget about that, I’m calling a truce, I think we could be friends.” The human said, earning a confused look from the Irken, who was unsure about this. “Alright…a truce, Zim and Dib will be friends.” The Irken smiled and shook Dib’s hand.

Dib watched him a moment and sighed, deciding he would do anything in his power to keep Zim safe for as long as he could.

Next

#ZaDr #Zim #Dib #zimdib #Invader Zim #Fanfiction #ZaDr fanfiction

[neilthechiseler]

This Story Used To Be About Joan

(Or “How To Finish Writing A Story In Ten Easy Years”)

[Reveries of a wannabe writer after the cut.]

This story used to be about Joan. 

That was about a dozen drafts ago. For the purposes of this testimony, I’ve moved past Joan as a character, but since this used to be her story, I feel compelled to tell you that Joan was a sweet-natured, mildly trippy woman in her mid-to-late 20s who had just given up smoking and her boyfriend of seven years. It was over a clash of life approaches. For Joan, life was about singing the song of herself, because she contained multitudes, and what was true for her was good for anybody. Dennis, on the other hand, was hung up on the world. Petty things like keeping the power bill paid. Food in the refrigerator. You know, crap like that.

Since Joan was a free woman again, she’d gone back to her default mode of dressing like the best rack at Goodwill and furnishing her apartment like the worst end of large item pick-up day on the garbage route. She had dark bangs that she’d finally gotten right, just like the woman on TV. She was going to get an iPhone just like her (and that should tell you how long this has been on the to-do pile) until she realized that she’d screwed up her credit rating several years ago when she wasn’t paying attention to what she was signing. You see, she was really into textures at that particular moment, and the feel of the paper was a monumental distraction. Besides, minimum service agreements were tools of corporate hostility, and she felt the same way about paying early termination fees. Sunk again by philosophical differences.

In fact, it was as she was walking back from the cell phone store, tripping along to music that only she could hear, that she found a puppy, the kind her mom used to call a “Heinz 57 mutt”. It was sitting in a cardboard box which was apparently its current home, foraging in the garbage for its breakfast…which, being in the bin behind an appliance store, is drilling a dry hole, but dogs find a way. Joan picked up the little guy and got a flood of instant-validation affection. The decision was made. The dog was coming home.

From there, Joan’s story would be heading into the adventures being a single pixie in a fair-to-middling town and how she has to adjust to the puppy way of doing things, pulling Joan out of herself and dealing with the needs of another living thing for the first time in her life—never mind that she’d just shared a life with another living thing for seven years, because continuity is for cowards. The story would’ve been warm and kind, full of the wonderful lessons that animals can teach us, because they’re so like us, you know?  In other words, it would’ve been a copy of Chicken Soup For The Soul soaked overnight in an indie rock soundtrack until it was a soggy mess that just fell apart in your hands.

So you see why I had to ditch that crap with great speed.

Then I started thinking about the previous owner of the puppy. After all, somebody finds a puppy, somebody loses a puppy. Either that or somebody tells a puppy to get lost. So now we were on the story of a brown-haired boy with skinned knees and a crooked smile who promised his dad that yes, he could take care of a dog. His mom went behind the old man’s back and helped the boy pick out a dog from the shelter. 

While the boy was in the process of losing his mind, Liz, mother of one (“but some days it feels like two,” she usually tells her friends), noticed that her husband was looking on with an almost rictus grin. “It’s going to be fine, Tony,” she said, resting her head on his shoulder as they settled into the porch swing. “A boy that age needs something to get out of his own head. Care about things other than himself. Y’know?”

Tony finally snapped out of it, just enough to wrap his arm around Liz. “Yeah. We’ll just see about that.” 

The first three days were filled with the type of kid/dog romping that used to be underscored in family movies with a lonesome harmonica and guitar accompaniment. On day number four, however, the boy left the back gate open, and the puppy (who, even as a puppy, had become rightly freaked out by the boy’s strenuous, hands-on type of love) made a break for it.

It took the boy awhile to notice his mistake. He was busy burning ants with a magnifying glass, and wondering how long it would take to burn the squirrel that had ruined his pine cone bird feeder. When he finally figured out what had happened, an ungodly piercing wail of misery went through the air. The old man was on deck first.  “What’s got into you, champ?”

“Daaaaaaddy, the (blub) puppy (blub) got (snort) awaaaaay!” Through blubbing and snorting and snot bubbles, he relayed an edited version of the past hour that he thought would let him off the hook. “Help me find him?”

A kind of hardness crept into the father’s face, possibly because he had heard nothing but the puppy and the puppy and the puppy all week, and he was the one feeding the dog and cleaning its “peeps and poops”, as the rest of the household insisted on calling them. If this is a test, the boy’s failing, he told himself. And here comes a teachable moment. “I dunno, champ, this dog is your responsibility, so maybe it should be your responsibility to bring him home.” Then, just to twist the knife, “Better get your umbrella. Looks like a storm’s coming.”

What was coming was a torrential downpour that flipped the child’s cheap plastic Ninja Turtle umbrella inside-out almost instantly. Because of the miserable visibility, he ended up walking well past his “safety zone”, calling for the dog with a name the animal would never recognize because the baby genius had never bothered to tell the dog what its name was. That was the least of his worries, though, because when he was barely 100 yards from his subdivision, the driver of a tractor-trailer, fresh as a chemically-preserved daisy on his 30th working hour without sleep, suddenly lost control of his rig.

And at this point, with the steel behemoth close to spilling its presumably-toxic-to-humans cargo all over the suburbs, its indifferent headlights staring down a child who didn’t think he’d have cause to regret not mulling over his life insurance options this early in the school year, and two years away from the divorce hearings that would take the boy upstate with his mother while the dad dedicated his basement to a massive train set that he was convinced would make everything right again, let’s take a brief intermission.  

You might have noticed that I never named that child, and there’s a good reason for that: the little punk was a unsentimental aggravation. In a “write what you know” sort of way, I used to be that kid…and I couldn’t stand me either. At the same time, if I actually did the kid in, I’d either be drawn and quartered by a sentimental public, or I’d run the risk of clicking with an audience who kind of gets off on stories about kids being run over by diesel-fueled death. Since their money spends just as well as anybody else’s, I’d have to find new and “exciting” ways to flatten children, and who wants that on his head? If that makes me a coward, then fine, I lost my nerve.

(Occasionally someone reminds me that there’s a third much more likely option, that people could continue to ignore all this noise. My response is always the same: “Who the hell gave you this address?”)

Anyway, this is the point where I started thinking about the truck driver. At the time there were reality shows, news reports, and darkly amusing YouTube videos about truckers and the grueling lives they lead. Why not the truck driver?

His name was “Sweet William” Dallas, entering his second decade of cross-country freight hauling. William’s nickname was from a Leon Redbone song, and he had a tattoo of the man himself from the cover of Double Time on his left bicep, both of which he regretted once he decided Lynyrd Skynyrd was a better fit for him. 

Bill, as he now begged friends and coworkers to call him (which was the primary reason why they didn’t), was trying to finish a big-money run a day ahead schedule because his silver-haired mother was fading fast. At least that’s the way she put it after spending a week dealing with his aggravating brother, who had broken an arm trying to fish the TV remote out from behind the big dresser. "Get Richie out of here,” she had texted him a few days ago. “He’s really screwing up the schedule for my krav maga lessons.”

That gave William at least two deadlines to beat, and to that end, a twitchy neighborhood kid sold him a cluster bomb of caffeine pills and other stimulants, which our driver had been popping like M&Ms since Fredericksburg. Bill was either so tweaked or so zonked that he thought Unnamed Kid was a deer (a deer in jeans and a Polo shirt) when his truck told him to screw off and turned itself into a telephone pole flattener. 

(At which point I tell myself “Now that’s a pathetic way to put a button on a story. What about the drug dealer? Yeah, the dealer, let’s roll with that for awhile.”)

Andy was as thin as nothing squared, wearing a Make America Great Again cap pulled down tight over his sweaty forehead and an army jacket from the dumpster behind Goodwill buttoned to his neck, even in summertime. As far back as he could remember—that’d be last Tuesday—he wanted to launch a career in recreational pharmaceuticals, and attempted to jump-start a weed concern. Unfortunately, not only did he have a “black thumb” for agriculture, but no sense of effective camouflage, as his arresting officer told him. So he ended up in the bottom-feeding world of ordering pills from the ads in the back of High Times and selling them with a markup to people who couldn’t find a better connection. His primary clientele was desperate people on a deadline (mostly reckless college students), but sometimes he got special cases, like a young twentysomething woman who was just coming off of a long-term relationship…

Hold on a minute. That’s Joan, isn’t it? You do remember Joan, don’t you? This used to be her story, you know.

Not only is Joan more tenacious than I thought, but she turned out to have a few more jagged angles than she appeared to on first blush. She claims that her plot refused to launch because it kept blowing sunshine up my ass. No argument there, but to remedy that, she decided to go dancing on a patch of ice, screw her back up, and get hooked on under-the-counter pain killers...a shocking number of them homeopathic, which is a hell of a trick if you can pull it off. Joan insists all that had nothing to do with me, but there’s this hopeful look in her eyes when she says it that, under the circumstances, scares the crap out of me. So negotiations with Joan have resumed, because as much as I don’t want fictional people to wreck themselves for attention, there’s a mercenary streak in me that wants to see if this goes anywhere marketable.

So watch this space. Maybe the next time you read this, it’ll be about Joan again. Who knows?

That kid’s not coming back, though.

--enw

#fiction #metafiction #original work #things that I'll definitely regret later #me trying to be David Sedaris #humor #or at least that's what it says on the box

[lovemesomesurveys]

On Saturdays, I like to… Do what I do everyday.

Where would you like to be a missionary to? I don’t know.

What’s better — toilet paper rolled over top or underneath? Over the top. It makes more sense.

Which Scooby-Doo character are you most like (Scooby, Shaggy, Daphne, Fred, Velma, the monster, Scrappy?) Shaggy and Scooby because I’m afraid of everything and I’m always hungry.

If you had to endure one natural disaster (i.e. hurricane, tornado, etc), what would you pick and why? Well, I’d rather not pick any of those to have to go through. I’ve never experienced any of those, and I’d like to keep it that way if possible.

What movie or TV show do you take guilty pleasure in watching? Reality TV.

If you had to describe your day as a traffic sign, what would it be? Stop. <<< Same.

What traditional stereotype would you classify yourself as? I’m just me.

What “group” did you belong to in high school? I didn’t belong to any group.

If you wrote a book about yourself…what would it be about? I wouldn’t write a book about myself. If your house were burning down, what would you take and why? My laptop, phone, purse, and anything else I could grab. That would be horrible because I have a ton of giraffe stuffed animals, and one 4ft tall one, and I’d be sad if I couldn’t take them all.

Describe your favorite pair of PJ’s. I don’t have a particular favorite. I like all my pjs, it’s what I pretty much live in.

How many handbags do you own? A few. Whenever I get a new one, I still keep the old one. I don’t know why. I’m just a hoarder and have to hold onto everything.

If this were your last day alive, what would you say to your friends? I really don’t know.

What is your very favorite part of your day? My morning cup of coffee and sleep.

What is your best scar? Tell the story of how you got it. I don’t consider any of my scars to be the “best” one. I don’t look at any of them in a positive way.

You win a million dollars, but you have to give half to a charity. Which charity do you pick, and what do you do with the rest of the money? Cancer research, animal related charities, food shelters and such, education... those are a few.

Describe your dream wedding where money is no option. I don’t know if I will ever get married. It’s not something that I’ve always dreamed of or anything. I seriously can’t imagine it happening for me.

What kind of deodorant do you use? Secret.

If you were a spy what would your alias be? I don’t know.

Do you have a birth mark? Where? Does it look like anything? Yeah, it’s on my right elbow.

You are planning the most awesome dinner party of your life. Which 3 celebrities/historical figures (past or present) would you add to your guest list to keep the dinner talk interesting? Alexander Skarsgård of course. I’ll have to think more about the other two guests.

What is your favorite sport, and which team of that sport do you cheer for? I honestly do not care for sports at all. <<< Me either.

Which would you rather have a kiss or a hug? Why? A kiss if it’s from a certain person. Hugs are nice as well.

If you could be a pair of jeans what style would you be?  Why? Skinny jeans.

You have multiple personalities, describe some of them. I have multiple moods that I experience in a day, but not personalities. I can’t get creative to think of a hypothetical answer for this either.

What is the best thing you have done in your life? I would say getting my bachelor’s degree, which I know isn’t something to sneeze at. It was hard work. I wanted to give up, I was overwhelmed and burnt out. I was dealing with health stuff as well, but I kept going. At the same time, I feel as though I made a mistake and the hard work feels like it was for nothing. My degree is collecting dust on a shelf. I don’t want to pursue a field in psychology anymore. I don’t know what the hell I want to do with my life. I wish I took a break before transferring to UC to get my bachelor’s. I should have reevaluated things and considered my options. I should have really thought about if psychology was something I still wanted to pursue. I just... I had planned on doing that since I was in high school. I felt like I had to keep going. Everyone knew that’s what I was going to do. I guess I kept hoping it would all come into place and I would figure it all out. :/ I also feared if I stopped, I wouldn’t want to go back to school. Then there’s the fact that I have no idea what else I would have pursued if not psychology. I guess it wouldn’t have mattered because I have my degree and I’m still unsure and not doing shit.

If you were blind for the rest of your life… what would you miss seeing the most? Oh man. I don’t know... everything.

What household chore do you hate the most? I’m not fond of any of them. It’s just one of those things.

What is your most disappointing moment in life? What I just explained. I feel like a complete and utter failure. I feel like a disappointment.

When have you laughed the hardest? Cried? Both times that I’ve played Taboo with family in the past couple weeks. I cried the hardest last Monday when I came out and saw that my dog had passed away. I absolutely lost it.

If you had a “theme song” that played whenever you walk into a room full of people, what would it be? I have no idea.

What is the first thing you notice about the opposite sex? General appearance, face. <<<< Yep.

What time period from the past would you most have liked to live in and why? Maybe the 80s.

What is the best reward anyone can give you? Support, love, encouragement.

If you had a band what would you name it? Hm...

Do you like fruit? Vegetables? I like more fruits than vegetables. I don’t eat either one very often, though.

What can someone do to encourage you? I don’t know. Just being there to support me and offer me... encouragement.

If you could be one for just 24 hours, what cereal box cartoon character would you be? Why? Hmm. The Trix bunny cause I’m still a kid at heart and Trix are for kids.

What was the best thing that happened to you this weekend? As much as I wasn’t feeling up to company, it turned out to be nice. We had family over and played a board game that always results in laughter.

What is your favorite animal? List three adjectives to explain your choice. Dogs and giraffes. Dogs: Loving, loyal, protective. Giraffes: Tall, graceful, majestic.

What is your favorite color? List three adjectives to explain your choice. Yellow, teal, and pastels. Nah.

It’s a very hot and muggy day. You desperately want something very cool and refreshing to quench your thirst and revitalize your body. What would you drink — either make your own or store-bought. I guess water.

You discover that the person you’re head-over-heels interested in loves a good homemade & handmade dessert. What will you concoct when you have this person over? Cupcakes. It’s what I bake most often. I’d make their favorite kind.

What would you leave in your will for the person you care about the most? I don’t know.

What do you consider to the most valuable thing you own: when you were a child/teenager/now? As a kid Barbies were my life. As a teenager and now it’s probably my laptop.

What’s the kindest act you have ever seen done? I don’t know.

If you could have any job in the world, which one would you want? One where I’m paid to sleep and fill out surveys. <<< Now there’s something I can do.

What are your best/worst subjects in school and what subjects would you want to learn now? My best was English, and my worst was always math.

What are you most talented at? Nothing.

What is your worst nightmare today? That things are always going to be the way they currently are.

How often do you clean between your toes? Every time I shower.

What is your favorite way to waste time at work without getting caught? I don’t have a job.

If you could have had the starring role in one film already made, which movie would you pick? One with Alexander Skarsgård. One that has some steamy scenes. Ha.

If you were to perform in the circus, what would you do? I don’t want to be apart of a circus. If you could eliminate one thing you do each day in the bathroom so that you never had to do it again, what would it be? Having to go to the bathroom.

You were just given a yacht. What would you name it? I have no clue.

If you could have been told one thing that you weren’t told when you were a teenager, what would you like to have heard? I don’t knowww.

You’ve just been hired to a promotions position at Kellog Co. What would you put in a new breakfast cereal box as a gimmick? I’m sucking at these questions.

Just like “Everybody Wang Chung tonight!”, what action would your name be if it were a verb? Sigh.

Name your favorite song. I don’t have a single favorite song at the moment. <<<< If you were to get a tattoo, what would it say or what would the graphic be? I’ve wanted to get free bird tattooed on me for years.

If you could play any musical instrument, what would it be and why? If you already play an instrument(s), what do you play and why? I just would have kept up with piano and took it more seriously. I wish I would have been more dedicated to it back when I had lessons. I think it’s beautiful and soothing.

When trick-or-treating as a kid, was there any kind of candy that you didn’t like to get? Stuff like Dots.

Why do you live in the Washington DC area? I don’t...

What is your favorite memory of Christmases past? As a kid when I woke up to all the new Barbie stuff Santa brought me.

What is the most outrageous thing you’ve done for God? Nothing outrageous.

If a movie was being made of your life and you could choose the actor/actress to play you, who would you choose and why? There wouldn’t be a movie about my life.

Paper or plastic? Paper. What was the weirdest food you’ve ever eaten? I don’t know. Nothing I consider weird.

What do you keep in the trunk of your car? I don’t have a car.

When you were in grade school, what did you want to be when you grew up? Why? When I was a kid I wanted to be a teacher. My cousins and I played school a lot, and I liked it. I liked helping my cousins and brother with their homework and such.

If you owned a CB radio what would your “handle” be? No idea.

If you were given 24 hrs to live, what would you do? I don’t like questions like this.

If you were in the “Miss America” talent competition, what would your talent be? (Note: both guys & gals have to answer this question) I’ve already said I don’t have any talents.

What do you think the most ultimate gift of the world is? Uhh.

What is your earliest childhood memory? I have some vague memories of preschool. Like little blimps of things.

What was your favorite TV show when you were growing up? I was obsessed with Barney when I was little.

If you had one extra hour of free time a day, how would you use it? I’d waste it like I do with the hours in a day that I do have. An extra hour of sleep would really be nice.

What CD is in your CD player right now? I don’t have a CD player.

The great theologian Andy Warhol stated that everyone gets 15 minutes of fame.  What happened during your 15 minutes? I don’t want that.

Name the most famous person you’ve had a face to face encounter with. I’ve met Jamie Lee Curtis and Drake Bell.

Name your favorite children’s story. Hmm.

If you could spend 15 minutes with any living person, who would it be and why? You guys could probably guess that by now. I’ve mentioned this person a couple times in this survey.

What person in the Bible do you most closely identify with? I’m not familiar enough with the Bible.

What article of clothing most closely describes your personality? A hoodie because you can pull the hood over your head and hide away just like I’ve been doing for a long time.

If you were to write a book what would it be about? I don’t know.

How many rings before you answer the phone? I don’t let it ring a certain number of times, it just depends.

What is the first thing you think of when you wake in the morning? I’m just tired and in a daze until my body wakes up and then everything comes rushing back.

If you won a million dollars, what would you do with it? Donate to charity, pay off my debt, pay of my parents’ bills, buy us a new home, travel, any other thing we might want to get or do... I would also like to put some aside if possible.

If you had to, what part of your body would you get pierced? I’m good.

Who was your favorite teacher and why? My 4th grade teacher. He was just the best. He was really funny, and made everything fun and interesting. Everyone liked him. It was cool because when I got to 8th grade, it just so happened that they had him go from 4th grade to teaching 8th grade math and science, so I got to have him again. My parents got to know him from him being my teacher and they liked him, my brother and two of my cousins had him as well. He’s just really cool.

What makes you feel the most secure? My dog did, and my family.

Who do you admire the most? My mom and grandmother (she passed away ten years ago, but she is still someone I admire).

Have you ever had a reoccurring dream? What was it? I’ve had reoccurring dreams of my teeth falling out, having to go back to elementary or high school, and falling.

What was your nickname growing up? Noodles.

Who was your hero when you were a child, and what did you do to be like them? My mom. She still is.

Peanut or plain? Peanut or plain what?

What is your favorite cartoon character & why? Hmm.

How did you learn to ride a bicycle? I didn’t. I can’t.

Based on something you’ve already done, how might you make it into the Guinness Book of World Records? Doing the most surveys? Ha. I don’t know. I do a lot, but there are a few who do them more often.

What’s the closest you’ve come to becoming a pop star/winning an Oscar? Wtf. Not anywhere close. Not in the same realm. At all.

When was the last time you did something for the first time? What was it? I got a Ninja Coffee Bar for Christmas, so I’ve been making flavored lattes and stuff.

What is your concept of a fruitful day? Getting something done.

What was your favorite thing to play with as a child? Why? Barbiessss.

If you could be any animal in the world for 24 hours, which animal would you be? Why? A dog. I can run around and play and get so happy and animated about everything without a care in the world. Get treats and such.

Have you ever jumped out of a plane? Noooo.

If you could rid the world of one thing, what would it be? Oh man. Just one thing?

What is your best personal characteristic? Not sure.

What is your favorite quote? I don’t have one.

If you could be invisible for a day, what would you do? Get on a plane and travel to Sweden.

What is your favorite weird food combination? I don’t know. Ranch with spaghetti or lasagna? It’s not unusual to eat pizza with ranch, and spaghetti and lasagna aren’t that different.

If you had to be a flower, which one would you like to be and why? A rose just because.

If you were stranded on a desert island, what three books and three people would you take with you? Hmmm. I’d have to really think about that. As for people, I’d want my mom and two people who knew about survival and such and would be helpful in getting us off the island.

My biggest pet peeve is… Eating sounds. I cannot stand loud chewing. Like the smacking, slurping, sucking sounds... NO.

What is your favorite commercial? What commercial annoys you the most? The one with Mr. and Mrs. Potato Head. Mrs. Potato Head is hiding in the pantry grubbing on potato chips, and Mr. Potato Head comes home and finds her in total shock. He’s like, “*GASP* But you’re a potato!” Then he ends up joining her. As for annoying, I’d say the Progressive commercials with that Flo lady. Or ones with jingles that are successful at getting stuck in my head.

What’s the most interesting “Ice Breaker” Question you have ever been asked? I’m not sure.

If you could be an ice cream flavor, what would it be? Why? Not sure.

Name a turning point in your life that makes you smile/cry. A few years ago when a new health thing came about. I’m still dealing with things from that and will for the foreseeable future.

If there were a holiday in your honor what would it celebrate? I don’t know why there would be.

What clubs were you a member of in High School? Are you still interested in any of the same things? The movie club.

If you were to be on a reality TV show which one would you be on and why? I just like to watch them, I don’t want to be on it.

If you could be anything in the world, what would you be and why? Oh, I don’t know. I’m not ambitious. <<< Same.

If someone rented a billboard for you, what would you put on it? I don’t have anything I want to advertise.

If you had to enter a competition for the “Most Uselessly Unique Talent,” what would your talent be? Sigh. I don’t have any damn talents.

If you were a Smurf, what would your name be? Loser Smurf.

What is your worst personality characteristic? I’m just a shitty person.

If you had to be a teacher of something, what would you teach? English.

How would you like to be remembered? Hopefully in a good way.

What is one thing that you constantly think about (other than material things)? My health.

What do you like best about your hometown? The fact my family lives here. If we moved, there wouldn’t be anything I liked about this city. I want to leave.

Something interesting you might not know about me is… I haven’t seen The Notebook. Oh no.

#personal #text #survey #surveys

[movietvtechgeeks]

Latest story from https://movietvtechgeeks.com/lena-dunham-ready-american-horror-story-plus-blac-chyna-free/

Lena Dunham ready for 'American Horror' Story plus Blac Chyna free

Now that her show Girls has wrapped up, actress and outspoken starlet Lena Dunham is moving on to her next TV-related project. This week, it was announced that Lena has officially joined the cast of the one the most popular shows currently on TV. On Wednesday, Ryan Murphy, who is the mastermind behind the show American Crime Story, which airs on FX, tweeted out about Lena joining the cast of ACS. In the joyful tweet, Ryan posted, “Thrilled that my talented friend Lena Dunham is joining the AMERICAN HORROR STORY family. Always wanted to work together, and now we [are]!” Ryan Murphy, Twitter post: https://twitter.com/MrRPMurphy/status/887844862426468352 In addition to Lena, there are several other new stars that have been cast for the show’s upcoming season (which remains still, for the most part, under wraps). In fact, Ryan Murphy previously revealed that Scream Queens actress Billie Lourd would be joining the cast, as well as comedian Billie Eichner. Stay tuned for more details about the exciting new season of American Horror Story. In a brand new interview with People magazine, reality TV starlet Blac Chyna got candid about the relief she felt after ending her rocky relationship with Rob Kardashian. As you are probably well aware, Blac Chyna and Rob Kardashian’s romance was far from one out of a fairy tale. While the duo was quick to get engaged and have a baby together (a little girl named Dream), they were constantly fighting and breaking up. Over the last few weeks, the level of animosity between them bubbled to an all time high, as Rob took to his social media to completely slam his ex and post revealing photos of her for all of his followers to see. In her interview with People, Blac Chyna explained that there was “absolutely no” way that she and Rob would get back together. She stated, “I’m glad I’m relieved of [Rob], but damn, why did I have to get relief in this way? I feel like God does certain things – not to hurt you, but to show you your true strength. I fee like, if I can come out of this, I can come out of anything.” The cosmetic line creator went on to talk openly about her two young kids, King Cairo and Dream, who she shares with rapper Tyga and Rob, respectively. Chyna gushed, “I’m not going to take something that happened to me in the past into my future. First and foremost, I’m going to make myself happy because once I’m happy, then Dream can be happy and then King can be happy and then everybody else around me can be happy.” Later in the interview, Chyna slammed her ex (Rob) for posting revealing photos of her on social media in an attempt to shame her. The starlet ranted, “Words are words, but once you start posting actual pictures, then that’s just not right. It’s actually against the law. If I was to go and do a very artsy, high-end photo shoot exposing my breasts, that’s my choice. This is my body. It’s my right. Once somebody else does it, it’s just not right. I’m hoping that somehow, someday, this will let [more people] know, ‘Don’t do it.’” While Chyna has gone through a lot over the past few weeks, she is not going to let this whole scandal force her into hiding. The star told People, "When somebody that's actually been the closest to you says these things, other people are going to believe it. But the people that I actually care about, my family and friends, they're all I worry about. I'm not going to sit here and hide in my house over somebody else being hurt or jealous or insecure." Seacrest in! Ryan Seacrest will be back hosting "American Idol" when it returns for its first season on ABC. Kelly Ripa made the announcement on Thursday's "Live with Kelly and Ryan," which she has co-hosted with Seacrest since he joined her in May. "I am happy to confirm ... that Ryan Seacrest is returning as the host of 'American Idol,'" said Ripa as the studio audience whooped. Seacrest said he was excited to be doing it again. "I don't know if you've ever been in a 15-year relationship and then, for a reason that you really don't know, you break up," he said. "I thought, 'Gosh, it would be great to get back together at some point.'" Seacrest had a grand history with "Idol" during its smash-hit run on Fox from 2002 through 2016. Reclaiming that job now gives him an additional role in the Disney family, which owns ABC and produces the syndicated "Live." His potential return to "Idol" had sparked much speculation since ABC announced in May that it would revive the talent competition. The program airs from Los Angeles and "Live" airs weekday mornings from New York. But the 42-year-old Seacrest is no stranger to a packed work schedule and cross-country flights. "You can have all the tickets you want," he told Ripa, "and you can come back and forth with me any weekend." Seacrest will also continue his syndicated Los Angeles morning-drive-time radio show, as well as a nationally syndicated Top 40 radio show, from his iHeartMedia studio in the same Manhattan complex where "Live" is telecast. He also hosts and executive produces ABC's annual "Dick Clark's New Year's Rockin' Eve with Ryan Seacrest," and is a busy producer of series in which he doesn't appear, including "Keeping Up with the Kardashians" and its many spin-offs. ABC Entertainment President Channing Dungey called Seacrest's talent "limitless, and I can't think of a more appropriate person to honor the 'Idol' legacy as it takes on new life than the man who has been there through it all." On Fox, "Idol" dominated TV in the 2000s and minted stars like Carrie Underwood, Jennifer Hudson, and Kelly Clarkson, while making its judges, such as Randy Jackson and Simon Cowell, household names. It was the No. 1 series for nine years, peaking with 30 million viewers each episode in 2006. But by its last season the average audience had dipped to 11 million and skewed older, and NBC's "The Voice" surpassed it in popularity. Fox eliminated it. Even so, in today's television world, an audience of 11 million would rank it among TV's top 20 shows, a fact that clearly didn't escape ABC's notice. On the final Fox edition, a hopeful Seacrest told viewers, "Goodbye - for now." The nationwide search for the first ABC-aired "Idol" begins next month. ABC has not announced a premiere date. Oscar and Grammy winner Common surprised a group of New York students by donating $10,000 to help their teachers buy supplies like calculators and science kits. The rapper-actor partnered with the nonprofit AdoptAClassroom.org and Burlington Stores to give Renaissance School of the Arts in Harlem the funds on Thursday. Students cheered loudly after they learned the musician was at their school. Common was on-site with his mother, Dr. Mahalia Hines, an educator and member of the Chicago Board of Education. She said she remembered spending her own money to buy essential materials for her classroom. Common encouraged the students to keep their grades up and to persevere - in school and in life. Burlington has been raising money from its 599 stores to help other schools, asking customers to donate $1 or more. La La Anthony and Carmelo Anthony are going through a turbulent time in their marriage, but she claims they remain close. The “Power” actress opened up about her strained marriage — the two separated in April after he allegedly cheated and impregnated a stripper — and said she’s focusing on herself rather than her marital problems. “I’m having a good time. I’m living my life,” she said on “The Breakfast Club” Wednesday. “Hell, I’ve been through a lot, so I’m just enjoying it; having fun and just really happy about where my life is right now.” But when asked whether she’d move to Houston should Melo get transferred to the Rockets, La La stood firm on her love of New York. “I’m not moving anywhere,” La La declared. “I don’t know about those trick questions, but I’m staying in New York. “We’re not at that place right now,” she added when further prodded about whether she’d move with him if he moved. Despite it all, La La is keeping her head held high by focusing on the other important things in her life. “It’s good to have something to focus on. Whenever things are going crazy in life I usually put my energy on [my son] Kiyan and my work, which is what I’ve been doing,” she explained. “Kiyan has been doing amazing. He’s killing the basketball scene in a way that just blows my mind and my work is going great, so that’s where I put my focus.” The rest of the goings on in her life will figure themselves out, she said. “My [relationship] status right now is putting myself first, which I always say … whatever’s meant to happen will happen.” Until then, she’s not worried. “He’s my best friend. When you’re with someone for 13 years since they were 19 years old, and you have a 10-year-old child, you’d hope that you guys would be cool,” La La told the radio show. “We are the best of friends.” Following his controversial guest appearance on HBO’s “Game of Thrones” Season 7 premiere, Ed Sheeran has been making waves on social media. After his ill-timed deletion of his Twitter account, followed by its almost immediate return, the singer is shedding some light on the issue. Sheeran took to his Instagram account on Wednesday to address some reports that he deleted his Twitter account in the wake of the negative backlash his appearance on “Thrones” received from fans. “Last I’ll say on this,” he wrote. “I came off Twitter Coz [sic] I was always intending to come off Twitter, had nothing to do with what people said about my game of thrones cameo, because I am in game of thrones, why the hell would I worry what people thought about that. It’s clearly f—-g’ awesome. Timing was just a coincidence, but believe what you want.” The idea that Sheeran’s Twitter deletion had nothing to do with his “Thrones” appearance might seem convenient, but the singer did previously rail against the social network while speaking to The Sun. He told the outlet that he only uses his Twitter now to post his Instagram photos and finds it nothing but a place for people to say “mean things.”  

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#Blac Chyna #Common #Ed Sheeran #Featured #Game of Thrones #Lala Anthony #Lena Dunham #Ryan Seacrest