#ticklish!octane

[featherlight-touches]

No where to run.

Octane / Lifeline

a/n: Part two to Hold Still, very long overdue (totally didn't forget...) I hope you enjoy!

★・・・★・・・★・・・★

The sound of metallic feet hitting the floor echoed down the corridor as Octane sprinted in a frenzied panic. He didn’t dare to look behind him at the impending doom that chased after him and even resorted to using another stim to give him that extra boost.

He didn’t care who he rushed past, not even bothering to check if he knocked anyone over, only shouting back a quick “Lo siento!” and was already gone down the corridor before the conversation could continue.  

He didn’t know where to go, his room would be too obvious to hide in. That’s when an idea hit him; why not go to their room instead? Why would she look there? That would surely be the last place he would go to hide. It was genius!

Thankfully the recently injected stim got him towards said room fast enough and he was able to open the door and close it behind him. With a long exhale, he slumped back against the door and fell to the ground, he then reached up and removed his usual helmet and tousled his hair to fluff it out.

“That was a close one,” he chuckled to himself, lifting his goggles so only his mask remained. “She nearly got me that time.”

Without any warning, the door which he had been leaning against suddenly opened and his body tumbled backwards to the ground. With a gulp he looked up into the eyes that he was desperate to escape from.

“Uh oh…”

“Uh oh is right, Silva.” Ajay stood over him, a stern expression upon her face. “Bet yuh thought yuh were pretty smart running to my room, huh?”

“A little…”

“Sorry to rain on your parade, but yuh not getting away that easy,” she said, taking one step closer to the already down legend. The movement caused him to immediately scramble away from her.

“WhoaWhoa, hold on! Listen, I know you’re upset!” he said, arms held up defensively close to his torso. “I didn’t mean it, prometo!”

“Yuh said my drawin’s sucked.”

“No, I didn’t! I said you suck…” he paused. “Uh, that doesn’t help me, does it?”

Ajay hummed with a shake of her head.

“But you were tickling me, chica! Come on, it’s not like I didn’t have a reason,” he said, putting his hands together to plead with her. “You forgive me, right?”

At this, Ajay’s expression softened, and she gave a sigh, which gave a comforting sense of security to the daredevil, his defences lowered as their eyes locked in understanding. This moment was very short lived, however, as her fingers immediately reached out and grabbed onto his hips, pulling him close to her frame.

“Not yet, I don’t,” she grinned as she trapped him against her and used her nails to dance up and down his sides. The pen she used to draw on him tickled enough, but her nails sent him into immediate squeals and hysterics. “Maybe if I get enough pleas out of yuh, I might change my mind.”

“HAHAHA CHE! STAHAHAP!” Octavio cried out, his body squirming left to right desperately trying to escape her hold on him, but despite her smaller frame, she was quite strong. “POHOHOR FAVOHOHOR!”

“After all my hard work makin’ these body drawings look nice for yuh, and yuh go and insult me like this. Yuh hurt me, Silva.” She brought up fingers around from his sides to his abs and tummy, scribbling her nails all around. His laughter went up in pitch and his squirms became a lot more violent, this was definitely a weak spot of his, despite it always being on display.

“NOHOHOT THEHERE!” he squealed again once her nails started tracing around his belly button. His hands immediately grabbed onto hers to stop this torture. The laughter had weakened his strength a little, which was proven when she easily managed to escape his grasp.

There began a little mini war of flailing hands and arms, Octavio letting out nervous laughter whenever she was close to landing some tickles on him. “Chihihihca, come on! Deja de hacerme cosquillas!”

“I dunno, I can’t tell if yuh really are sorry,” she said, planning her next area to attack. “Besides, I haven’t heard yuh laugh like this in years.” Her fingers shot towards his underarms, a particularly sensitive spot if she remembered correctly and the loud eruption of laughter hoaxed from him confirmed that.

His arms crashed down to his sides to trap her hands almost instantly, his body thrashing wildly in her lap. There was still enough space for her nails to gently scritch at the soft, sensitive skin in his underarms which drove him nuts. His laughter went from loud and powerful to silent and hicuppy.

Ajay took this as her cue to finally stop and give him a break, letting a few chuckles escape herself. “I will never get tired of hearin’ how wild your laugh is when you get goin’, Silva.”

Octavio simply sprawled out across her lap in an exhausted heap, barely able to reply to her through his heavy breathing. “You’re … so mean!”

He flinched hard when she made a quick threatening motion with her fingers that she was about to strike, but it was harmless, and she only laughed at him in which he groaned lazily in response. Ajay decided to assist him in calming down by gently running her fingers through his locks.

“Yuh know, we’re probably goin’ to go through this every time yuh want body art for a game, right?” She said, smiling softly down at the small furrow of his brows.

“Yeah? Well, you’d better be prepared for some payback, chica!”

#apex legends #ticklish!octane #lee!octane #ler!lifeline #small oneshot #octane #lifeline #tickling

[angelatmidnight1]

Barked Up The Wrong Tree

A/N: This is part two to Let Sleeping Dogs Lie . I hope you like it.

No one disturbs Ole Fusey from his nap, and he’s out to teach Octane and Rampart a lesson. But, the pranksters’ alliance falls through; instead, both Walter and Ramya tickle Octavio.  

“Oho, man. That was awesome!”

Octane cheered, rounding just one more corner to make sure that he was far away from Fuse. Rampart brought up the rear, still laughing, and plopped down to the floor to catch her breath. 

“You’re tellin’ me. And here I thought Salvonians were known for kickin’ asses and takin’ names. Never thought that a lil’ tickling would have him bawlin for his mum.”

Octavio chuckled. “Think that’ll go down as the funnest prank I’ve pulled yet!” He continued, sprinting into Ramya’s workshop, which was their next destination. Since he didn’t have any games scheduled for a few days, Ramya offered to spruce up his legs a bit. Octane had so many cool mod ideas that he’d love to see on his legs; rockets, grenade launchers, maybe rockets and grenade launchers. 

It was even better that Ajay, who’d been scheduled for games the entire week, would be too busy to complain about what he added to his legs. He cared for his best friend deeply, but if he were being honest, she could be a real killjoy when she wanted to be. So, it felt really good that he could add some more pizazz to his babies without having to deal with her nagging. He was already yanking his left leg off when he noticed Rampart stopped in the doorway. Her brow was arched, and she had one hand on her hip.

“The best prank you pulled? I vaguely remember lendin’ you a hand…” She scoffed, heading to her workbench to gather the tools she needed. On her way over there, she snatched Octavio’s leg out of his hand. “I mean, let’s be real here, you would’ve mucked up the prank from here to Sunday if I didn’t help ya out.”

Octavio gave her an incredulous look before laughing. “Amiga, all you did was hold the feather! That’s not exactly what I’d call hard work.” He responded, preparing to pull his right leg off next. He was still riding high off of the adrenaline from pranking Fuse, so he had no issues in saying what he said next. “I guess I can see why it’d be a big deal to you, though. I know there ain’t much you do without Sheila.”

He heard Ramya drop something, most likely a wrench. His grin widened as she stared at him, dumbfounded. 

“What’d you say?”

The speedster snickered. “You heard me! I’m surprised you had the time to help out at all, since I know how much su bebé (your baby) keeps you busy.” He continued confidently. He knew he was headed into dangerous territory, but so what? What was she gonna do about it? If she grabbed Sheila to teach him a lesson, it’d prove his point. “Don’t get me wrong! Sheila is awesome. But pranks are where I shine, amiga. So you better not forget that.”

Ramya growled and marched from around her workbench, taking his leg along with her. “If that ain’t the biggest crock of shit I’ve heard--only thing you’re good at is running!” She argued. She got within a couple feet from him, ready to throttle him, but then she had a better idea. “...Which ya can’t do much of now, can ya?”

“...What?”

Octane gave her a bewildered look. But, before he could ask what she was talking about, she started to back away from him. And, he noticed, she moved his limb from one hand to the other. 

“Listen, mate. I don’t know what cliff ya dived off recently, but your leg here is banged up good. So, I’m just gonna hang onto it for, ya know…safe keepin’.”

Now Octavio wasn’t laughing. He quickly put his right leg back on and got up, albeit awkwardly. “Chill, Ramya. I need that!” He said, making a move to take the leg back. Rampart got out of the way, causing him to fall back down with a crash. She burst out laughing.

“Yikes, you’re quite the klutz, huh? Relax, I ain’t gonna keep it forever. Maybe just a few weeks?” Ramya grinned widely at the look on his face.

“Hell no! Give me my leg back!”

Now, Rampart wasn’t actually going to take his leg. She just wanted to keep it long enough until he offered her an apology, or until she laughed herself silly from watching him hobble around like a pirate. Ramya laughed hard enough to snort while he attempted to take his leg back. And each time, just before he could get a grip on it, Ramya would pull back and watch him tumble. Octane got tired of it and the next time he lunged, he went for her instead, which she wasn’t expecting. The modder didn’t move out of the way in time, so when his fingers jabbed into her ribs, she let out a loud scream. She dropped the leg, holding her arm against her side.

“Alright, alright, take your bloody leg back.” Ramya grumbled, rubbing where he’d poked. “I was just messin’ around.”

Octane put his leg back on and stared at her. He didn’t poke her that hard, so why’d she scream? The gears in his head turned as he poked her again, this time in her side, and she slapped his hands away. 

“I said I was joking, ya idiot.”

Octavio grinned. “I heard you. I was just thinkin’ how Elliott had mentioned how ticklish you were, but I didn’t believe him.” He explained. He hurried towards the modder to close the distance. “Thought he was just talkin’ loco. But it looks like he was right, huh?”

Rampart glowered and smacked his hands away again when he went to poke some more. “I couldn’t give a toss about what that plonker said! But you better quit pokin’ me, unless your mate can get you some new hands too…”

Octane paused, looking at both of his hands. He could have metal legs and hands? Why didn’t he think of that! He’d definitely have to blow his hands off next. But, for now, he was standing in front of a ticklish Legend who tried to steal his leg. A punishment was in order!

The speedster didn’t have the patience for a buildup, so he made yet another jab at her ribs. Rampart threw a hand up to stop him, just like he expected, which allowed him to grab her wrist. He held it away from her and, before she could block him with her other hand, he pinched at her lowermost rib. Ramya screamed, her face getting redder by the second, and she swatted at his hand multiple times. 

“Stohop! You prihick!” She gritted her teeth, trying not to laugh. She pushed her shoulder into his chest, wanting to push him over, but he wasn’t having it. He let go of her wrist so he could wrap both of his arms around her torso and scritch all over the length of her rib cage. The modder violently jolted and broke out into loud laughter. 

“YOHOUHUHU FFF--HAHAHAHAHA!” Ramya pounded on his hands, thrashing about in his hold. “LEHEHET GOHOHOHO!”

Octavio refused and, laughing, he pulled her down onto the ground with him. “Haha, I knew it!” He cheered. She’d swatted at his hands one too many times, so he gathered up her wrists in one hand, holding them above her head. “Elliott was right; you are crazy ticklish!”

Instead of staying on her sweet spot, he jumped to her side and kneaded along it. Then, he poked at her stomach, making her squeal, before his hand finally dug into her armpit. Ramya was cackling the entire time but, when he focused on her armpit, she giggled uncontrollably. It wasn’t as bad a spot as her ribs, but it was definitely sensitive. 

“I’m gohohohohnna kihihill yohohohohu!” She yelled, pulling against the speedster’s grip. “Juhust wahahait! I’ll kihihihck yohohour ahahahass wihihhth your own bloody lehehegs!”

Octane snickered and jabbed his nails into the center of her armpit, making her laugh harder. “Oh no, anything but that! Por favor!” He mocked, grinning. He took his thumbs and scratched at the hollows in circular motions. “And whatever you do, don’t sic Sheila on me! I know just how much you lean on her.”

Rampart yelled in protest as the speedster descended back into her ribs, tickling at the spaces between them. She thrashed against the ground, hollering with laughter. All of the commotion caught the attention of Fuse, who’d awoken from his nap a while ago, and was out to dole out some good ol’ Salvonian justice. He stepped into the workshop at a leisurely pace, smirking. Octavio was too invested in tickling Ramya to notice, but Ramya did. She fought against his grip, trying to warn him, but she fell into hysterics when he tickled even faster. 

“SAHAHAHAHAHA! HE---HE’S---OCTAHAHAHAHAHAVIO!”

Octavio snickered and dug his thumbs into the base of her ribs, making her laughter go silent. “Not so funny anymore, is it chica? That’s what you get for—”

He abruptly stopped talking, feeling a cold hand grip his arm. He was then lifted as if he were weightless. He yelped and struggled in the hold, moving to push at the arm, and that’s when he realized who it was. His eyes snapped up to Walter’s, and the Salvonian’s smirk only broadened. 

“G’day, mate. I was wonderin’ where you pups ran off to.” He said, easily scooping the speedster’s other arm within the same hand. “I hate to interrupt you kids’ fun, but I reckon we’ve got some unfinished business, ay?”

Octane immediately shook his head. He struggled to wrench his arm free out of Walter’s literal iron hold, but the explosives expert lifted him higher, so that he was dangling just above the ground. “Wait! Hold ohohohn!” He interjected, yelping when Fuse prodded at his sides. The severity of what was about to happen crashed into him, making him want to high tail it…but all his legs did was kick around in the air. 

“Nohoho! Dude, come ohohohon!” Octane tried to make his case, but Walter wasn’t hearing it. “It wahahas a johohohke! Whyhy cahahan’t yohuhu tahahake a JOHOHOKE—”

Fuse scratched at the speedster’s tummy, making him scream and arch his back. He chuckled. “I can take a joke just fine! What I can’t take is havin’ you lot botherin’ me while I’m gettin’ me beauty rest!” He retorted, pinching each of his hips before he returned to his stomach. Octavio cried out and sucked in his stomach to try and escape the tickling. 

“IT WAHAHAHSN’T JUHUHUHST MEHEHEHEHE!” He yelled, bucking his hips when Walter poked at his belly button. Walter smirked, wiggling his finger inside the spot some more, and he glanced at the recovering modder. 

“I know, I didn’t forget about your partner in crime. She’ll get what’s comin’ to her.” He answered. He continued scratching in and around his belly button, drawing out more panicked laughter from Octavio.

Rampart, however, had other plans. Once she caught her breath, she got off the floor and marched right up to the men. “Or, you can let me at this plonker right now.” She cut in, gripping Octavio’s sides and digging her thumbs into them. “For thinkin’ he can get one over on me.”

Octavio’s eyes snapped wide open and he yelled before laughing even louder. “NONONOHOHO! DOHOHON’T TOHOHOUCH MEHEHE, RAHAHAMYA!” He demanded. He twisted his torso around in Fuse’s hold, trying to shake her hands off, but she easily kept up with him. Fusey snickered; considering what he’d witnessed before he entered the scene, he wasn’t surprised that Rampart had a bone to pick with him. But, it was still amusing to watch their alliance crumple apart.

So, much to Octane’s shock, Walter didn’t stop her. He moved his hand up higher, poking between his ribs, while Ramya found every ticklish nerve along his sides. 

“Wahahahalter! Dohohohohn’t lehehehet hehehr dohohoho thihihihs!” He pleaded. He tested the man’s grip, a foolish thing to do with his metal arm, and was only answered with a smirk. 

“Nah, I feel she’s justified, mate.” Fuse chuckled, swiping all of his nails down his ribcage before he pinched at each one. “Sure ain’t off the hook, but I don’t blame her for wanting a lil revenge of her own.”

“WHAHAHAT?!”

Octavio couldn’t believe what he was hearing; for starters, he didn’t act alone! But most importantly, Fuse didn’t even see what Ramya did before he got there. He opened his mouth to protest, but he let out a screaming laugh instead when the modder scribbled her fingers along his tummy. 

“Besides,” Ramya grinned, spidering her nails into the sides of his stomach, where he seemed to be especially ticklish. “The whole thing was your show anyway, right?”

“NAHAHAHA! THAHAHAT’S SUHUHUHCH BULLSH--AH!”

All of a sudden, Fuse dragged him to the floor, with Rampart following immediately after. He did this for two reasons; one, to make it easier for Ramya to join in on the fun. And two, to make sure she didn’t get accidentally kicked. Octavio’s legs had been moving a mile a minute, maybe faster, and Walter knew for a fact that one blow from those could cause a serious injury. With Walter keeping Octavio’s arms pinned and Ramya taking a seat on his waist, the speedster was royally screwed. The explosives expert went back to pinching at each of his ribs, while Ramya honed in on the area just above his belly button.

“SAHAHAHAHA! SHEHE--SHEHEHE STAHAHARTED IHIHIHT!” Octane whined. He was referring to what happened before he’d tickled Ramya, but was laughing too hard to elaborate. And, he wasn’t even being tickled on his worst spot. Not yet, anyways. Ramya grinned a smug grin and wriggled a finger back into his belly button. 

“Pfft, don’t get shy now, mate! You were mouthin’ off about how great this prank of yours was.” She chided. She made sure to get in deep, twisting her finger around like a screwdriver, and the speedster howled with laughter. She glanced at Fuse, still grinning. “You shoulda heard him. He said, and I quote ‘that’ll go down as the best prank I’ve pulled! Hell, maybe the best one in the Outlands!’” 

“I DIHIHIHD NOHOHOHOT!”

Now she was twisting his words! Octavio’s legs drummed against the floor as he flopped against the floor. He felt Fuse getting closer to his armpits, and he felt a deep seated panic in the pit of his stomach.

“WAITWAITWAIT! POR FAHAHAVOR, WAHAHAIT!” He pleaded, his entire body tensing up. Fuse, and surprisingly Rampart, both obliged. He breathed heavily, still giggling, especially when Walter flexed his fingers just underneath where his armpits started. “Plehehease dohohn’t tickle my armpihihits. Ramya’s twisting what I said, but I prohohomise I wohohon’t dohoho it AGAHAHAIN---”

Rampart didn’t let him finish; she ducked and blew a raspberry right in the center of his stomach. Octavio shrieked, making both Ramya and Walter laugh, and Walter dug underneath his left arm anyway. 

“Oh, I doubt that very much.” Fuse smirked, spidering his nails from one side of his armpit to the other. “Especially comin’ from you. You’re the very essence of trouble.” 

“Sure is.” Rampart chimed in, blowing another raspberry over his belly button. Octavio’s cackles filled up the entire workshop. He writhed in Walter’s hold, and bucked his hips as Ramya kept on blowing on his stomach. But despite his struggling, he couldn’t move away from the tickles, and it really tickled. 

“NOHOHAHAHAHA! STAHAHAHAHAHAP!” He screeched, laughing even harder as Fuse dug deeper into his hollows. Now, he was focusing on the center of his armpits, while Ramya dug her thumbs into his hips and waist. “POHOHOHOR FAHAHAHAVOR! I WOHOHOHOHN’T DOHOHOHOHO IHIHIHT!”

“Nah, I’ll have to think it over. Your track record says otherwise.” Walter insisted. He jumped to the speedster’s right armpit, earning another squeal, and used two fingers to scritch along the length of the spot. Octavio threw his head back; his right armpit was more sensitive than his left one, and he strained to pull his arms down. 

“NONONOHOHOHOHO! I SWEHEHEHEHEAR!” He pleaded, struggling with a renewed sense of energy. Fuse arched a brow; this time, he wasn’t even tickling that hard, and it seemed like Octavio wanted to pull his arm out of its socket, if it meant it went down. 

“Oh, c’mon, I’m barely touchin’ ya!” Fuse scoffed, poking his uppermost rib before he returned to the armpit. Ramya looked up from what she was doing; she thought the plonker’s stomach was his worst spot, but it looked like she was missing out on the real action!

“Yeah, he’s really laughin' up a storm, ain’t he?” 

That’s all Octane heard before he felt Ramya scoot up his waist, and bury her fingers into his left armpit. This next scream left him hoarse, and after that, all he could do was laugh and laugh. One hand on his armpits was bad; two were arguably unbearable. 

“PLEHEHEHEHEASE! STAHAHAHAHAHAHAP!” Octavio’s pleading finally gave way to hysterics as he kicked his legs against the ground. Walter opted for light, quick scratching along his right armpit. But Ramya was jabbing and poking all over the left one, so he couldn’t get used to either sensation. The tickling went on for a good five minutes; after that, Walter decided to ease up on the kid. His laughter had gotten silent, and he didn’t wanna kill him. 

“Alright, let’s give him a breather, ay?” Fuse stopped tickling him and gently nudged Ramya’s hand away. Rampart pouted; she was having a blast, but air was kind of important, and it looked like Octane needed a bunch of it. 

“Fine. Can’t have people dyin’ in here anyways. It’s bad for business.” She responded, snickering. She lightly ran her nails down Octavio’s tummy a few times before climbing off of his legs. Octavio snickered and panted, his chest rising and falling with each breath he took. 

“Bohohohth of yohuhu suck…” He complained, moving to pull his arms down…only to realize that Fuse hadn’t let go. Fuse grinned and looked down at the still-pinned speedster.

“Oh, ya think so? That’s alright, cause I never said I was lettin’ you go just yet.” 

It didn’t take very long for Octane to regenerate stamina, but all of that air he worked to bring in left him in one loud gasp. 

“No, doOOOHN’T--”

Walter poked his side, making him yelp, and he chuckled. “Hey, I was crystal clear! I said a breather. What, you thought you’d get off that easy?” 

Rampart blinked, not expecting the turn of events, but she was more than happy to continue. She plopped back down onto his legs, pressing her fingertips into his ribs, and wiggled away. 

“Nohohoho guhuhuhys! I’m sohohohohorry!”

Octavio’s apology fell on deaf ears; ole Fusey was bright eyed and bushy tailed, so he wouldn’t be going anywhere anytime soon.

#ticklish!octane #ticklish!octaviosilva #ticklish!octavio #ticklish!silva #fuse apex legends #rampart #rampart apex legends #fuse #walter fitzroy #ramya parekh #apex legends #apex legends tickle fic #octane apex legends #octavio silva #octane

[valorxdrive]

Gives his butt a pinch when passing by. Whistles, playing it off all innocent. [ super secret ask from @maregiis who is totally on break shh ]

♕ - Let’s see. His more casual, outgoing clothes freshly ironed and set? Check.

Brushing his teeth while sprucing it up further with a good session of trying to brush his unruly hair? Also check!

Preparing himself to give Kairi a dazzling smile in order to knock that luminous princess clear off her feet? Checks beyond checks.

Sora feels exactly in his element while he pats down his clothes, soothing them over with freshly melded heat magic, ensuring those wrinkles meet the depths of oblivion after finishing giving himself a proper check over in the mirror. Today held significance as a very important date night was now in the cards. He certainly wasn’t raised by his companions to be a slouch when the engines held a demand to go high octane!

That however, sure left him open for the unexpected. He was virtually wrapped up in his preparations, no different than a usual session of training while the sight of new dark and scarlet attire certainly checked all the boxes for him. “Alllright. Lesse, maybe I got a lil bit of time to squeeze in making a quick snack for us too. Not like the movies are gonna stop us--” He idly comments, only for the following action to practically snip his voice into silence, his eyes widening a touch as stir of heat from the rearside immediately transmits to a flourish of color upon his face.

That. That. Right now, that was definitely a tactical attack upon this hero’s butt.

By no meaning or definition was it painful, but the intimacy on the other hand, slammed into his mind with the force of his beloved space vessel going on hyperdrive. Ticklish and a touch pleasing, if not wholly embarrassing for this to be the way to snap him out of his focus. By the time he bristles, perks up and immediately snaps his head off to the side. That side of sun kissed scarlet glosses by his vision along with the familiar swing of a sight that never fails to melt his heart.

Kairi had certainly done her own work in getting prepared. Just seeing her in a dashing dress only amplified that excitement despite the curve ball she threw. And while it couldn’t be seen, Sora knew there was an undeniable grin of satisfaction lingering upon those glossed lips. A playful “Hey!” would finally be the sign she’s been caught red handed, followed by the chime of his laughter as he immediately tails after her, his attention swiftly placed on just goofing off with his girlfriend.

“And whose the pirate now! Here I was tryin’ to look extra good for ya y’know!”

@maregiis

#maregiis #| Bottle Mail #8TTT 1 V 1 HIM KAIRI #IN THE SMOOCHIN PIT

[ohthatsviolet]

I like to think that mirage loves to kiss every freckle on octanes stomach, but octane is very ticklish and always laughs when he does it

I love this and have the same HC!

Mirage has made it his personal mission to find every freckle and give it the love and kisses it deserves!

#apex legends #miroctane #answered ask

[crusadercorral]

Gibraltar and lifelines sibling relationship stuff:

-Lifeline did his makeup one time and he had it on the entire match. Revenant was a little confused but ignored it(like always)

-Races to the ships couch for the best corner spot

-secret handshake

-Mirage wants to know it but the two won’t show him

-Whoever loses buys lunch

-Octane is like the weird little brother

-even though Lifeline was hesitant, they all hang out and play games

-In the arena, they have a spot were they leave each other loot, mostly blue attachments

-Wattson likes to hang out with them a lot too, she brings little snacks :3

-“Get out of my dorm Ajay, it’s 5am.”

-“I’m not in your dorm, I’m in the hallway”

-Gibraltar is ticklish around his neck area, and when he (rarely) does something Lifeline doesn’t like, she pokes him there

-makes a weird “nYEHH” sound when she does

-If their on the same team, and if one is the MVP of the squad, they get first pickings on loot

-Pretend their absolutely not tired of Caustics and Revenants shit

-send each other obscure cat memes at very random times

That is it! Gibby and Ajay are the best and I love them a lot

#apex legends #apex hcs #apex lifeline #apex gibraltar #makoa gibraltar #ajay che

[shortythescreen]

Okay now that we have your Octane headcanons I'm extremely curious about any other headcanons you may have about other legends

ahhhh wolfeh!!!! hmmmmmmms loudly. 

i definitely have some legends more fleshed out in my mind than others lol. i’ll have to make a big post with headcanons for all of them sometime! right now i think i’m gonna give y’all bangalore tho bc i feel like i don’t write for her enough and i l o v e her. 

Bangalore Headcanons: 

- She’s way raunchier than she lets on. People in the military are fucking nasty sometimes and Anita is no exception. 

- This mean she curses a lot. Like a lot a lot. Not just with any swear words either, the shit that comes out of her mouth is creative. Will have mothers around the world clutching their pearls. 

- Is not ticklish. Literally at all. The most you’ll get out of her is an eye roll if you even try. 

- Of all the legends, gets along best with Gibraltar and Wattson. They’re both sunshiney people that treat others well, no matter their own attitude. (I.E. Wattson being kind enough to Caustic that he begins softening up around her)

- Anita has six nieces and nephews. Two are Jackson’s kids, both boys. They’re secretly her favorites.  

- She was the ‘surprise’ baby in her family. Her parents had her pretty late in life -- most likely their mid to late thirties. 

- Being the youngest of five children, Anita’s house was hectic while she was growing up. Between attending different sports, going to award ceremonies, and trying to spend time with their kids on top of it all, her parents ran themselves ragged. 

- Anita likes beer. Not often, or a ton of it, but when she goes out she’ll probably order herself a Heineken and sip on it for a majority of the evening. 

- She’s not tenderheaded at all, having grown up with a mother who absolutely annihilated her scalp. Her hair is thick and kinky and required a hell of a lot of maintenance, especially when she was a little girl. She’s had braids, buns, relaxers -- if you can think of it, Anita’s hair’s probably been through it. She shaved it all off when she turned eighteen and has kept it short ever since. 

- Makes stupid pop culture references, like, all the time. Might I point you to ‘the gucci of guns’?

- Two of her brothers are twins. 

- She definitely went through an emo phase when she was twelve. Wanted to dye her hair black and everything.

- Her mom is actually the one who was the soldier in the IMC. Her father was a combat medic. 

- She can’t sleep with the lights or TV on. Will wake up at the drop of a dime if she hears the slightest noise. Sleeping on the dropship between World’s Edge and King’s Canyon is hell. 

- Was obsessed with cowboys as a little girl. She went as one for Halloween three years in a row. She had a Jessie and Woody doll. 

- She fucked up her collarbone when she was a teenager. It’s not visible to the naked eye but if you press your hands to either sides of her neck, you can feel that one is still displaced to this day. 

- Her cool down after the games consists of a hot shower and white noise, among other things. 

- I personally HC her as a lesbian but I am also open to the idea of her being bi. 

- Loves the beach! Anita knows how to surf and misses catching rays. 

#bangalore #anita williams #apex bangalore #apex legends #apex legends imagines #headcanons #apex legends headcanons #apex headcanons #dargonwolfeh #shorty talks #shut up shorty

[callmearcturus]

hey want a fic preview?

this is one scene from the upcoming chapter of a steady hand, a delicate man, in which Jon and Martin finally get to use those body-safe paints they bought, and Martin contends with having an artist’s keen attention.

the fic overall is explicit, but scene is not. if I have done my work right, this is high octane self indulgence.

Martin took his and Jon's coats to hang up while Jon slid into his slippers and shuffled into the kitchen. There was the audible hum as the electric kettle was put on, and Martin followed to observe.

Jon took two mugs from the drying rack over his sink and sort of paused, staring at them with a slight frown.

"Do you want me to do it," Martin offered softly.

Jon's head tilted briefly. "No." He set to setting up teabags and sugar to specification before he turned, tucking his hair behind his ear. "You're right. I want to do this part. But no scene tonight."

"I'm fine with that," Martin said agreeably. "Do you want me to find a movie or something?"

Delicate fingers doled out sugar and tore open the sealed packets for tea. As he poured the water just under boiling into the cups, Jon said, "No. Actually, I wanted to try something. If you're willing."

While tea steeped, they went to the living room, and Martin helped Jon move the coffee table away to the corner. There was clearly a plan in mind, as Jon laid down a thin sheet of plastic over the floor, then a towel. After a moment's consideration, he adding some pillows, and covered them with the towel. "Disrobe to your comfort level and sit down," Jon said, and puttered back into the kitchen.

Unsure what was coming, Martin took off his shirt, then reluctantly his vest, folding them and putting them on the sofa. His belly stuck out a little over his trousers, much more noticeable now, so he unbuckled his belt and unzipped.

Holding the mugs, Jon returned, placing them on the floor nearby.

"What're we doing?" Martin asked, hands lingering on his belt.

"Art, hopefully," Jon said, and cast his eyes over Martin's body. "If that's all you want off, I understand, but I did hope to have access to your legs."

Oh, the paints. Martin had nearly forgotten. Now that he understood better, he finished stripping, though gooseflesh spread over his skin as he sat on a pillow.

Jon hummed under his breath, and left through the bedroom door. He brought Martin one of the bathrobes, draping it over his shoulders before settling down on another pillow, next to Martin, with a stack of little paint pots in his arm and a few paintbrushes in his hand.

Taking a sip of his tea, Martin tried to quell the butterflies in his stomach. Jon was an artist, it was his career, and he was going to apply paint to Martin. That was a lot to handle. 

Get a grip, Blackwood, Martin thought viciously.

Next to him, Jon opened the paints and examined them with an expression Martin hadn't seen outside of his studio, a very particular type of discerning judgement. He dabbed a brush very briefly into one pot and tapped the color against the plastic beyond the towel. He added another, and tapped his brush between the two hues, mixing them in careful degrees before nodding.

Lifting his head, he just reached out and grabbed Martin's ankle, pulling his leg out straight. "Hey, okay!" Martin yelped.

Jon let out a soft, amused snort before resting Martin's calf on his knee and leaning in.

The paint wasn't as cold as Martin feared, but the slick sensation of it against his skin still made him shiver. Great strokes of a dark green color cast up from his knee, ticklish against his hair as Jon spread it to his hip. He redabbed the paint, adjusting the colors, and adding darker shades around the edges, but the colors were harmonious and blended together smooth as a riverstone.

Jon set his brush aside and picked up another. Only, it wasn't a brush, but a wooden tool with slanted and curved bits. Leaning in closer, Jon dragged it against Martin's skin, creating perfect neat lines in the dark green that stood out brightly.

Martin's mouth felt a little dry as Jon held his leg steady and described curves and feathered lines against the paint. Slowly, an image appeared in the relief, the highlight of Martin's skin acting as the medium to an array of flowers. Gardenias, given the sharp little point in each petal.

By the time Jon sat back and shook out his arm, there was a great spill of them down Martin's thigh.

"Good enough," Jon decided in a low tone.

"Jon, that's beautiful," Martin managed, voice tight.

He only hummed again, looking down at the paints. "Can I have your arm?"

Next, Jon worked with his hand curled around Martin's wrist, holding him in place as he worked entirely with his other hand. Armed with new colors, he drenched Martin's arm in a dark violet color. Then, a slightly lighter, pinkish hue covering most of the violet. His brow was furrowed as he took care to carefully gradient and blur the colors together, until their transition was gradual and patient.

A dark bloody orange was laid over the pink, and spread up the same way. Then, a dark, dark blue. As it came together, Martin realized it was a sunset cascading up. With new colors each time, Jon added pinpricks of stars amid the violet and clouds the color of wildfire.

Martin lifted his free hand and rubbed at his eyes.

Jon stilled upon finishing up his new painting, looking steadily into Martin's face. "Should I stop? Is this bad?"

"No," Martin croaked, and cleared his throat. "On both counts, no. It's just lovely."

"Right." Jon nodded, looking away as he set his brush down again. "Ah, do you want to lay back? I wanted to try something a little less impressionistic."

"I don't know what that means, but sure. Hand me an extra pillow."

They rearranged, Jon guiding Martin to lay back with a throw pillow under his head, careful not to jostle his painted arm or leg. Jon moved the paints to new spots and sat at Martin's hip, picking up a wider brush and twirling it between his fingers for a moment. "Try to relax," Jon murmured. "This might take some time."

The wet brush came down against Martin's ribs, and he shut his eyes for a while.

It was really getting to him, for some reason. Having Jon's attention so narrow on him was thrilling, but it kept catching in Martin's throat. Jon like this, painting, doing what he did best, felt so unbelievably precious. Especially since Martin knew Jon… did not actually paint much. For whatever reason, Jon didn't do original pieces, focusing on his restorations instead.

Yet, with a little time and some body paints, he was making beautiful things out of Martin. Things that would come off in the wash and slip down the drain and be gone. It felt wasteful.

Breathing hitching a little, Martin opened his eyes and looked down at Jon's work.

It took a while to understand what he was doing. It wasn't flowers or sunsets this time. Jon used the wide span of his brush to stroke short, varied blots of color against Martin's skin. There were so many hues at play: green bruise colors, lavendered pinks, pale porcelain blues. They were layered over and over, the edges of each blot covered by another.

He wasn't making shapes. It was just the curve of Martin's body, recreated in a wider palette. It was like magic, how so many disparate colors worked to remake him.

Martin felt around for the bathrobe and found the sleeve, dabbing his face as his eyes teared up horribly.

"Martin," Jon breathed. His fingertips were warm and soft against Martin's cheek. "Hey, hey, don't… why are you crying?"

He sniffed, loud and embarrassing. "Sorry."

"No, it's alright. I didn't mean to… this wasn't meant to hurt." His hand shifted, pulling at Martin's shoulder. "Here, sit up, come on."

"I'll smudge it," Martin protested weakly.

"Who cares," Jon said, and drew Martin up. Without a care for his clothes, Jon wrapped his arms around Martin and held him. "Shh, it's alright. I'm sorry, I didn't check in with you."

"I'm still green," Martin said, his voice thick with emotion. "Jon, I just…" Jon's fingers stroked through Martin's hair as he continued to gently shush him. "It's just beautiful, and it's on me."

Jon rumbled something that wasn't quite words, his nose against Martin's tousled hair.

#tma #jonmartin #my fic

[ask-octane-mirage]

Careful where you tickle the boy is pretty beat up

Mirage: Yeah, I didn't torture him too much. [Laughs].

Octane: Maybe I'll tickle you back.

Mirage: Maybe I'll tickle you again.

Octane: Here I come...

Mirage: Hehe. I'm not as ticklish as you though.

Octane: Are you sure about that?

Mirage: Yup. Heh.

Octane: I'll crack you...eventually.

Mirage: You're funny.

Octane: Yeah?

Mirage: Mmm.

Octane: [Leans in].

Mirage: W-wait. That's not what I...

Octane: Oh...I thought...

Mirage: It's...I'm...it's too soon. Sorry.

Octane: Yeah...yeah. Of course it is. [Looks away]. I'm...sorry. Sorry.

#apex legends octane #apex legends mirage #miroctane

[mirage-is-trans]

((loved the octane headcanons !! how about some bhxmirage love now?? meybe with cuddling hcs as well))

YES ty okay this will start w just some headcanons and slide into cuddles

Mirage is very for PDA. Bloodhound almost never visibly reacts to any of his flirtations or touches, but on occasion when they do brush his arm or murmur hushed words in public he’ll stall and stumble like a deer in the headlights. In private they are much more openly affectionate. And teasing.

Bloodhound and Mrs. Witt get along very well. Too well. It scares Elliott. as the same person who’s probably seen you naked with being best friends with your mom WOULD be 

Elliott can make drinks but fucking SUCKS at cooking. Bloodhound however is very good! Elliott is very picky, but he eats voraciously, and had absolutely cried his eyes out when Hound make him porkchops once.

Elliott and Bloodhound are around the same height, meaning their very fluffy hood is head level, and that boy sure does stick his face in it during hugs. 

Speaking of their coat, Elliott takes it. Frequently. 

Bloodhound is always very cold, like their blood isn’t circulating as it should. Elliott, however, is a human radiator, creating a symbiotic relationship between heatsource and heat-leech 

Elliott laughs when being kissed on the neck. He’s very ticklish (and also happy laugh kisses are the best)

Elliott giggles when getting kissed on the nose!! 

Bloodhound MELTS to gentle back touches. 

Hound likes to press their head against his, press their cheek against his, just generally very...animal-like affection. Sometimes when Mirage is working on his holo-tech Bloodhound will come in, sit besides him, and lay their head on his lap and sleep. Usual result is Elliott petting their head/absently playing with their hair while he works.

Bloodhound is the big spoon most of the time

Bloodhound wraps their limbs around Elliott in like...a human cage when they’re sleeping. And though they’re a very light sleeper (unlike Elliott) they’ll sometimes pretend to be asleep when he wakes up and struggles out of their grip because they like to tease him.

gonna stop em here bc this post will get WAY too long if i keep going but. cuddles!! sappy!! love them

#headcanon #apex legends #mirage #bloodhound #miragehound #eliottt witt #imagines #quips.txt #ask #anon #Anonymous

[ask-mydearwattson]

are you ticklish Wattson? Octane is very ticklish and Elliot not so much, but what about you hmm?

Ah, but why make this about me, mon ami? Besides, people who try to find out are usually in for a shock.

#askwattson #wattson #apex legends

[featherlight-touches]

Hold still

“O, I’m not tellin’ yuh again,” Lifeline impatiently demands, lowering her pen. “Hold still.”

The daredevil known as Octane, was very fidgety, his leg bouncing up and down with eagerness to get going. Much to the annoyance of his lifelong friend, Ajay – who was trying to draw a pattern on his skin. 

“Can’t you hurry it up, Chica?” He groaned, checking the arm which she was working on. “This is so boring!”

“Yuh want this to look good, don’tcha?” She brought her hands to her hips, brow raised towards him. After all, this was his idea in the first place. He wanted a funky pattern drawn into their skin to go along with their new outfits.

If not for his mask and goggles, she would be able to see the pout on his face as he nodded in response. “Then stop yuh complainin’ and hold still, boy!”

Octane mocked her sentence by repeating it childishly. He then pulled out his phone to keep himself distracted from the boredom of having to wait for Ajay to finish her artwork.

A few minutes went by, and Octavio was still as impatient as ever for the duration of that time. Finally, Ajay was finally finished with his arm.

“Hey, not bad, Chica!” He checked out the artwork by holding out his arm in front of himself, turning it around to get a better view of the patterns she had drawn. Ajay was quite satisfied with it, herself. “This looks awesome! I wonder if anyone has come up with this idea- Even so, I bet it won’t look as good as this, Che!“

He began to rant on, and Lifeline gave a small roll of her eyes, amused by his compliments but also targeting her next spot of art – which happened to be his revealed midriff. She had completely tuned out his rambling and leaned down before him, pressing the pen directly onto his abs and beginning to draw.

“-AYE!” He startled, jumping back a step which startled Ajay as well.

“Now what’s wrong with yuh?” She questioned; her head tilted in confusion.

“You could have warned me you were drawing there, amiga!” His hand gently rubbed at the spot. “Dios mío...”

He was then met with a frown from the medic, who did not see what the big deal was with drawing in a spot before telling him. She drew everywhere else just fine, albeit the fidgeting and complaining about taking too long.

Octavio could see the confusion within her frown and sighed. “It’s ticklish!”

“Oh,” Ajay replied. Of course, how could she have forgotten that Octavio was quite sensitive. Memories suddenly flooded her head of when they were younger, they always engaged in tickle fights. She always won, of course, because he was far more ticklish that her. “I’ll try and be more careful then.”

She resumed her position in front of him and went back to drawing, but as soon as the pen drew one line onto his abs, he jumped away again. “O!”

“Lo siento!” he breathed out a laugh and tried to compose himself. “Okay, I’m ready!” Ajay didn’t even make it to bring the pen to his skin before he broke down into nervous giggles. “Wait, wait-“

“Silva, I swear-“

“I can’t help it!” he countered, throwing his arms up into the air. “Maybe we can forget this area?”

“Or maybe,” Ajay stood up, her eyes piercing into his goggles which struck fear into Octane’s body. He knew he was in danger. “Yuh shut up and hold still!” She lunged at him, tackling him back onto the ground so that he was on his back and Ajay lay on top. Limbs were thrashing from both, one set trying to get away while the other trying to keep them steady on the ground.

“Estas loca!” Octavio cried, desperately trying to escape her grasp but Ajay was having none of it. She kept him pinned under her body and brought the pen to his abs once more to resume drawing. This unleashed a wave of giggles from the daredevil. “Hehehehe! Stop!”

“Yuh bugged me all day to do this! Yuh gettin’ this done, Silva!” Ajay stubbornly responded, not letting him get away with the annoyances he caused her all day.

“I don’t want it!” He said through his giggles, trying to grab the pen from her grasp but found both his hands suddenly pinned to his chest. She was surprisingly strong, and the giggling was distracting him from using his full strength against her. “Come on!”

His giggles amused Ajay, which was mainly the reason she wanted to keep going. It was good revenge and she wanted to milk every moment she could.

“Almost done,” she teased.

It was a lie; she wasn’t nearly done. When she was done with the drawing, she would then switch to using her fingers and really give him something to laugh about. But she kept that to herself until she was ready to strike and left a giggling Octane completely unaware of what was to come.

tbc .... 

#tickletober #apex #lee!octane #ler!lifeline #small oneshot #octane #lifeline #tickling

[angelatmidnight1]

Do you have any lee Bloodhound headcannons?

Omg yes, lee!Hound is my favorite! I added some ler headcanons too if that’s okay because I think they’re mischievous on the down low.

Bloodhound Tickle Headcanons

Lee-

You think the famed hunter of the Outlands is ticklish?

Because you’d be right.

It’s not something that they think about often, though; they keep to themselves and keep the other Legends at a comfortable distance.

So when they get a swift reminder from Fusey, or a more mischievous Legend like Octane, they nearly jump outta their skin.

They’re very sensitive.

It’s difficult to tickle them with all the armor they wear; so, you have to go for a less padded spot like their armpits, ribs, or hips.

Poking them will make them gasp and snicker.

Once their cover is blown, they get a 6th sense and become more vigilant to tickle attacks.

If you really wanna get them, you have to wait until a) they are engrossed in a task and momentarily let their guard down. Or b) you just go for it, because you most likely won’t get another opportunity.

Their giggles start out quiet and they try to reason with you.

“(Y/N) plehehease, I beg of you. Dohohon’t do this.”

Their hips are their worst spot, and not even the Allfather can help them reel in the burst of laughter when tickled there.

Steady laughter will turn into desperate cackles if you tickle their hips long enough.

At that point, the ticklish sensations increase tenfold.

Teasing them makes them even more flustered since it draws attention to their sensitivity.

Overall, Hound isn’t an easy target for tickles but once you get them, you’ve got ‘em good.

Ler-

Hound doesn’t typically partake in tickling; they’re very reserved, and keep a comfortable distance from the other Legends. 

Even when others are being tickled, they usually don’t like to get involved, and will leave the room. 

They only intervened once in a tickle fight, trying to save you from Octane’s wrath, and Octane got them back so bad, they didn’t do it again. 

That is, until Fuse entered the equation. It took some time, a lot of time, but Hound eventually grew accustomed to allowing certain people into their space. 

So, they typically will not tickle anyone that they’re not close to…unless they’re out for retribution.

They’re more likely to hold a target still for someone else to tickle, ignoring any pleading, and will wait patiently until the ‘ler is finished. 

But, every now and then, Hound gets involved. They’ve been on the receiving end of tickling enough to have some familiarity into doing it to someone else. 

They’re a gentle, but methodical ‘ler; they pay close attention to the spots that make their lee squeal, but won’t attack them outright.

Instead, they take a slower and steadier approach to tickling. They squeeze and prod into less sensitive areas, and then descend on their lees’ worst spots without warning.

They’ve held many prey down on their own, and can usually keep their lees pinned with ease.

Their lee will know if they’re on Hound’s radar, and it’s super important to be vigilant, otherwise they’ll be ambushed. 

...Chances are, Hound’s lee will be ambushed anyway. Stealthy tickles are where they thrive.

They’re patient and will wait until their lee is alone and distracted. Then, they pounce. 

Again, Hound usually goes after those who’ve tickled them first, and they’ll only stop when they feel like the lee won’t pull the stunt again. 

But, if the lee is someone they’re closer to, like Fuse, Hound lets their walls down and becomes kind of playful. 

Training and tickling end up going hand and hand, and Hound usually ends up on top. They’ll tickle their lee and will urge them to try and fight back with the skills they’ve learned. 

If they don’t, or rather can’t, Hound backs off and thanks them for participating in a training session with them. 

But, just before everything is said and done, Hound will wait for their lee to be distracted again. Then, they’ll approach them and poke their side, saying something along the lines of…

““Your undivided attention is needed during the hunt, fèlagi fighter.”

#apex legends #bloodhound apex legends #bloodhound #bloth hoondr #bloth hundr #ticklish!bloodhound #apex legends tickle head canon #ler!bloodhound

[valorxdrive]

she may have the higher ground, reclining on the couch he was content to rest his back against as he lounged on the floor and aimlessly meddled with the games on his phone, but it did nothing to deter her from silently shifting. arms crept forward, wrapping around his neck, pulling her unsuspecting boyfriend into a soft hug as she nuzzled his hair, "are you winning?"

-

♕ -  Right now his trial was at the last breath! That odd habit of peeking his tongue out, having it perked upward and rigid was shown, proof of his concentration with the small contraption in hand. Alongside of the sea salty breeze creeping in through the window, the constant sounds of screen tapping and archaically aged games could be heard, adding a sense of serenity after their playful quips and bouts of laughter the moment prior. He’s holding a long road of experience to catch up with and having the light of his life settled in the vicinity only added to that plumes of light like heat inside.

Close!

Another close dodge with Mickey mouse!

Duck, duck!

All of this finds itself coming to a close the moment he feels a slender pair of incredibly warm arms to draw their welcoming embrace around his being. A gentle breath escapes, that small lapses of concentration being exactly what he needs for some old aged noise of damage to ring out. It only adds to the irony of it all while being drawn back in order to draw attention to a source he finds infinitely more important. The noise that spills from Sora is split between clear ‘annoyance’ of his fall from high octane grace to the almost lovesick sigh that wanted to spill at being welcomed into her comfort. Leaning back a touch further, the couch underneath them creaks as he feels himself drawn into a loving hold.

That upstart of a boy back then could be felt internally jumping to the skies in joy, the present him..? Honestly, he was no different. The princess’s question drifts with what he swears is a tinge of amusement while the flashing letters of ‘GAME OVER’ blinked at him repeatedly from the front of the Gummi phone. For a second he’s quiet, contemplative, unconsciously leaning back to let her know with the push of weight that his heart aches for more. Always yet never enough.  How did such a contradicting feeling persists when it comes to having her feelings bared to him time and time again?

His heart prickled with warmth at feeling what did make contact nuzzle closer, marking her wish to stay forever, and lighting up a cascading rush of unbridled energy through both heart and soul. In some grim ways it was nostalgic. Just like this, Sora could fondly remember how her voice managed to cut through any abyssal void that stood between their way. Her fingers teeming with starlight and an honest love managed to make visceral and cold emotions burn away in order to draw him back into the light. Glancing at that digital display, wasn’t the answer clear, how endings made by a dark scythe always managed to be stopped short for him?

Sora’s mind comfortably settles with an image of that bubbly smile he could feel attempting to press into his hair. Drawing the phone closer, part of that answer would be made through actions, a feeling of warm screen tapping against her fingertip as continue was pressed.

”You know it. I’ll never lose, not as long as I have you by my side.”

Both in a matter so simplistic yet complex and long as their lives was declared then and there. Breathed into his being was a feeling in pride that comes with allowing his heart to sing true, to share with the special heart connected to his, tucked in the whimsy of their moments where they truly felt separated from the world at large. It was their private oasis; times and experiences where secrets destined solely for them were shared, embraced, loved. Caring little if it’d be a little ticklish by tilting his head a little to the side, the call of the heart was impossible to ignore.

He just had to get a peek. To see hints of that iridescent smile settled between multiple little stars flecked upon her skin. Impulse drove his desire to be realized, the hot presence of his lips grazing tenderly at the corner of her own, shimmering and sweet. A loud thump of the heart managed to echo within his ears as the phone briefly remains briefly forgotten, tilted within his hand as he momentarily savors the haphazard view of her shining complexion after ebbing back. Tilted upon his lips would be a broad grin surrounded by the allure of his flustered complexion. That giddiness scrambling within jolts all throughout his nerves as a single hand reaches up to place a hand along the back of her’s. Eyes drifting close after offering the share of his devotion upon the altar of her lips, Sora savors the warmth, leaning his hand against Kairi’s while slow brushes drift along her fingers, a silent plea to just grip their hands together for a little longer, to remained tangled a lot longer.

She always had a magical way of always bringing him back. That little act upon the game was a hinting testament to that message.

“I love you, Kairi.”

True victory was always staying by her side.

@coruscantide

#coruscantide #| Bottle Mail #( ☆ — when you and i are together; i've never felt so at home ┊ kairi. / coruscantide. )

[diyunho]

The Joker x Reader -”Venom” Part 2

The Joker broke into a top secret lab to steal vials with an experimental pathogen and what he found in there was actually Venom. From that moment on life has been more complicated, but thankfully chaos is The King of Gotham’s trademark style.

Part 1: http://diyunho(dot)tumblr.com/post/179365800921/the-joker-x-reader-venom

-- You and The Joker are spending the day at the beach with Venom. The symbiote is frying in the scorching sun while the couple found refuge beneath the huge umbrella.

“Aren’t you hot?” you address the alien and he turns on his side, enjoying the outdoors.

“No. On my planet we have 10 suns like this one so I’m cold.”

“Wow, that’s amazing! Did you hear that?” you enthusiastically elbow J. He’s currently dozing off with his head on your tummy because he wants to feel the baby kicking. I mean, you're one month pregnant and there’s really nothing going on yet but The King of Gotham dismissed the obvious.

“Huh?” The Joker opens one eye, unhappy to be woken up.

“On Venom’s planet they have 10 suns!” you repeat, super passionate on the subject.

“Fascinating,” J growls under his breath. “Aren’t they on the verge of extinction if they only have 10 young males in their world?”

“What?!” you frown, not understanding what he means.

“You said they have 10 sons,” J gets annoyed since it’s not clicking for you.

How does he always misinterprets everything?!

“No, not 10 sons as in kids, 10 suns as in celestial bodies!” you flare your arms around, pointing at the shiny globe in the sky.

“Stop wiggling around, the baby might move and I’ll miss it!” J gets pissed and holds you tighter.

“The baby won’t move. There’s barely anything in here!” you poke your tummy. “We don’t even know if it’s a boy or a girl, too early to tell.”

Venom yawns and extends one of his arms to touch your tummy for a few moments, carefully listening.

“The little human is going to be like you, Y/N.”

You gasp and The Joker lifts his head up, suddenly alert.

“You mean a girl?!” your boyfriend’s mouth opens in amazement.

The alien licks some sand because he loves the taste, then nods in agreement.

“Yes. Mmmmm…crunchy…” Venom shoves more sand in his face, savoring the exquisite flavor.

“We’re gonna have a girl!” you scream and kiss The Joker, while he’s still stunned. “We should start decorating the nursery! Let’s go on a heist tonight!”

“Great idea, Pumpkin!” he agrees, already having a place in mind.

-- Yeah…it didn’t happen. Y/N and J had a huge fight and she left to spend the night at the hideout near the Bridge of Angels. She’s actually contemplating spending the rest of her life there…

If only!

You took a hot shower and just began reading a book, not that you can concentrate on the words dancing in front of your eyes.

You jump when the sound of broken glass interrupts your quiet night. Something else is being smashed, then another object. You creep out from behind the wall to take a peak in the main warehouse only to see Venom on a rampage, shattering a bunch of your favorite art pieces.

“What the hell are you doing?!” you barge in as the alien prepares to wreck a valuable Ming Dynasty ceremonial vase, gifted to you by the Joker two months ago. “That’s part of my collection!” you yell at him and Venom brings you up to date:

“This is how we woo females on my planet: we destroy everything they like!” and without further comment: Bam! your beloved vase is history. Literally.  

You are so outraged you forgot to breathe.

“If you touch one more thing I’ll never talk to you again!!”

The symbiote doesn’t have any doubts about his courtship skills, but hearing your serious threat makes him have second thoughts: 

“It didn’t work…” Venom whispers to The King of Gotham.

“Did he put you up to this?” you sulk and prepare to let out an outpour of indignation.

“No. I told him what my kind does to get the attention of a female and he said it’s a great idea, plus that we should also blow up your car after we’re done here to seal the deal.”

“Excuse me?!” you get on your toes in order to be closer to Venom’s face.

Uh-oh, you seem super mad.

“You’re on your own,” the alien immediately disappears, leaving his host completely exposed to an angry Y/N.

“Goddamn traitor,” The Joker shrieks through his clenched jaw.

You and J glare at each other with contempt, ready to fight again.

“Why are you here?” you pout and as usually, your boyfriend blames another:

“Venom dragged me out of The Penthouse in the middle of the night against my will! I didn’t want to see you!”

“We missed you and he couldn’t sleep,” the alien’s voice spits out.

“Shut up!” J growls and Venom has more information:

“He was afraid you’re not coming back and panicked. So we decided to come for you.”

“These are aberrations,” the feisty Joker casually scratches his thigh, accidentally pulling down on his gold boxers that happen to be your favorite. The elastic fabric nicely hugs all his perfect curves, not that you noticed such a trivial detail.

“What are you doing?” Venom hisses in his host’s ear.

“Zip it! This is how we woo women on this planet!” The Clown prince of Crime grumbles as your eyes check him out.

-- “Go home…” you kick his shin, your defense lowered due to the skimpy attire he’s wearing.

“He says you are his home,” Venom reads The Joker’s mind and decides to share.

“I didn’t say such nonsense!” J straightens his back, proudly disclosing his perspective on the matter.

“You were thinking it,” the symbiote blurs out. “And he really missed you.”

“I was only gone for three hours,” you pout and The Joker scolds the alien:

“Stay put and shut your trap!”

Y/N is contemplating her existential choices while The Joker crosses his arms on his chest, mentioning the main hardship:

“I’m cold!”

“Maybe you should have worn more clothes than a pair of tight boxers,” you unconsciously bite on your lip.

“It’s none of your business how I decide to dress myself,” J blows a rebellious strand of green hair off his face, indifferently resting his arms on his hips now, this way you can see the tattoos in all their glory.

Not to mention the soft skin you certainly don’t care about.

You’re still hesitating so it needs to be reinforced:

“I said I’m cold!”

A second look at those boxers and you pout more.

“Come to bed then…” you drag your feet on the concrete and the boyfriend follows with a huge smirk.

“I can’t believe you did something right!” Venom is sincerely amazed at the Joker’s strategy.

“Give me five!” J extends his hand in the air and the alien hisses:

“Five what?”

“Ugh, you’re killing me!”

“No, I’m not. Our DNAs are a match. I’m not harmful to you; quite the opposite.”

“Seriously now!” J gets annoyed because sometimes Venom doesn’t get the meaning of Earth’s entire vocabulary.

“I’m always serious,” the symbiote doesn’t get this one either.

J is short on patience and doesn’t have time to explain the meaning of words in different contexts so he teases:

“If you’re always serious, come out and have a serious talk with Y/N.”

“No way,” the alien refuses. “My survival instincts advise of the opposite. On my planet we don’t mess with enraged members of the opposite sex: they’re very dangerous.”

“Pfft, you guys are sissies, you don’t know how to handle them,” J expresses his conviction on a subject he has no clue about.

“But you don’t know how to handle Y/N, you mess up all the time. Aren’t you a sissy too?” the symbiote innocently concludes.

The Joker is absolutely, indubitably and unquestionably shocked at the remark.

“How dare you?! I’m The Joker and…”

“We are Venom!” the alien argues.

“No, we are Joker!”

“Venom!”

“Joker!”

“Not again!” the annoyed girlfriend crawls on her side of the bed, fed up with her shitty night.

-- You keep your distance and J pulls you on top of him without any extra effort.

“Warm me up!” he slides his fingers in your pajama shorts, gropes your butt and keeps his hands there. “First you’re gonna warm me up because it improves my dexterity, then we’re gonna full around and then I’ll listen to the baby,” a new schedule is laid out.

“There’s nothing to listen to, our daughter is just a small bean,” you grouchily mutter. “And I don’t want to full around, I’m upset.”

“Then get off me, Y/N!” The Joker smells your hair, holding you tighter.

“No…” you adjust your body on top of his, squirming around since it’s nice to feel him close.

“I bet in 10 minutes you’ll rip my boxers to pieces; I know you want me, you’re just playing hard to get.”

You sniffle and bury your face in his neck; such a strange coincidence he’s wearing your favorite cologne.

“Mark my words: 10 minutes!” The Joker’s prediction resonates in your exhausted brain.

In about 7 minutes you’re both out, tired after the eventful evening; Venom finally emerges, testing the waters.

You’re snoring with your mouth opened, also drooling a little bit and one dark tentacle gently pushes up your chin.

Snoring intensifies.

“Such beautiful sounds coming out of her,” Venom admires the noise and curls around the King and Queen of Gotham. “Nice humans,” he licks your foreheads, pleased the cringe worthy octanes flowing out of Y/N are getting louder and louder.

-- “We have company!” you warn your boyfriend and Venom is more than excited: he took over for tonight’s robbery at the baby store, this way everything runs smoother. Batsy’s cape is floating on the top of the opposite building and the alien opens one of the huge windows, waving at the masked vigilante.

The Batman’s body is transformed into Venom’s favorite relative, the creature expanding until it reaches over.

“This is my cousin Poison,” the symbiote presents him to a totally smitten Y/N.

“Oh… my…. God… so cute!” you squeal and Venom adds:

“It’s a burden that cursed the entire family.”

“I like your girlfriend,” Poison wraps himself around your waist and you giggle, ticklish at his touch. “We’re still single,” he gestures towards Bruce Wayne. “He ordered a new pair of tights so I guess we’ll be busy for a while.”

Venom lets The Joker out because he wants to get his nemesis’s attention:

“Hey, hey!!” J flares his arms around. “Hey, loser!!! How are the stretchy pants fitting, huh?” he maliciously snickers and Batsy gets worked up at the innuendos.

“What did you say, Clown??!!”

“STREEETCHY PAAAANNTTTSSS!” The Joker has no problem yelling back the insult.

“I had enough of his crap!! Let’s get him!!” Batman commands his alien without success:

“I’m not engaging in any type of combat with cousin Venom!”

“We’re going to beat that jerk to a pulp!” J fumes as his symbiote yanks him away from the imminent altercation:

“No, I’m not fighting cousin Poison! I told you we like each other!”

-- Jeez, such a mess: The Joker was furious at the missed opportunity, not to count your disappointment that the first encounter with Venom’s cousin was abruptly ended over some stupid stretchy pants.

Things calmed down in the household after you started talking about baby names again, all three parties involved finally agreeing on the first name: Emma.

But the last name… that’s a different story.

“Emma Von Joker sounds very royal,” J scoffs and arrogantly ignores your displeased attitude.

“Emma Von Venom is better!” the alien clings to you, softly petting your knees in order to get your approval.

“Von Joker!”

“Von Venom!”

You wish there was a way you could beam them both into outer space because they’re driving you nuts. 

Thankfully, you might have a solution to end the useless conflict:

“What if we use that couple name you came up with last week?”

“JoVen?” The Joker gets pumped up since it was his idea.

“Emma Von JoVen,” the symbiote debates, then exposes all his 89 teeth in what you might call a smile. “It sounds good.”

“Hmmm…. has a certain ring to it,” J takes the bait.

“What if we skip the “Von” and we just go straight to Emma JoVen?” you manipulate the conversation in order to get what you want. You caress Venom’s big head and seductively wink at your boyfriend, puckering your lips in the process.

The Joker is so eager to get laid after falling asleep last night he’s not fussing for once:

“Alright, we can do that.”

“OK,” the alien is fast to agree, happy he has your affection again.

Despite everything, Venom and his host are pretty lucky to have a woman they don’t know how to handle.

Not bad for two sissies.

 Also read: Masterlist

http://diyunho(dot)tumblr(dot)com/post/153664676321/joker-x-reader-masterlist

#the joker x reader #the joker imagine #the joker fanfiction #the joker jared leto #the joker #venom #venom x reader #venom x you #venom x joker #the joker x venom #the joker x reader x venom #joker #joker fanfiction #joker suicide squad #mister j #Mistah J #dc #DC comics

[mintiemarmalade]

GET TO KNOW ME TAG

Rules: Post a picture of your simself with your traits and answer the questions so your followers can get to know you better!

I was tagged by the lovely @surreysimmer, @racingllama​ + @storylegacysims​! Thank you so much bbs. ♡

I tag @pixeloasis​, @simsiecakes​ + @gottacatchemallsims​.

This has literally been sitting in my drafts halfway finished for the past week. Tbh I completely forgot about it until @storylegacysims​ tagged me this morning. 🙈

Anywhooo, this is my simself. I’ve given her the geek, goofball + foodie traits. (Truthfully, glutton would probably be more accurate but your simself is supposed to be a better, more ideal version of yourself, right?)

Questions below the cut ↴

1. What is your name?

Kayla

2. What is your nickname?

My family calls me Katy / Katy bug, for some reason.

3. Birthday?

June 17, 1994

4. What is your favorite book series?

Harry Potter, duh.

5. Do you believe in aliens or ghosts?

Yes

6. Who is your favorite author?

J.K. Rowling, duh.

7. What is your favorite radio station?

Octane, Pop2K, and PopRocks on Sirius XM.

8. What is your favorite flavor of anything?

Chocolate, banana, or pumpkin.

9. What word would you use often to describe something great or wonderful?

Lovely, wonderful, superb, idk all are viable options.

10. What is your current favorite song?

I honestly don’t even know.

11. What is your favorite word?

TUFT

12. What was the last song you listened to?

Misery Business by Paramore (I have my beloved throwback playlist playing.)

13. What TV show would you recommend for everybody to watch?

Boy Meets World - I firmly believe that the world would be a much better place if everyone had Mr. Feeny as a teacher.

14. What is your favorite movie to watch when you’re feeling down?

Harry Potter or pretty much any Disney / Pixar movie.

15. Do you play video games?

Way too much, if I’m being honest.

16. What is your biggest fear?

Being alone, rejection, socializing, tight / crowded spaces, etc. I’m a big scaredy cat, okay. Leave me alone.

17. What is your best quality, in your opinion?

I’m hilarious. I’m incredibly caring and loyal.

18. What is your worst quality, in your opinion?

My crippling anxiety.

9. Do you like cats or dogs better?

DOGS but cats are nice too.

20. What is your favorite season?

Fall - I sweat less and all the bugs die.

21. Are you in a relationship?

N O P E

22. What is something you miss from your childhood?

Innocence, being naive to how terrible the world actually is.

23. Who is your best friend?

Hannah ♡

24. What is your eye color?

Green

25. What is your hair color?

Auburn

26. Who is someone you love?

My dog

27. Who is someone you trust?

Hannah

28. Who is someone you think about often?

My sims

29. Are you currently excited about/for something?

CHRISTMAS

30. What is your biggest obsession?

The Sims, probably.

31. What was your favorite TV show as a child?

Boy Meets World

32. Who of the opposite gender can you tell anything to, if anyone?

Aaron and Joe, I suppose.

33. Are you superstitious?

Nope

34. Do you have any unusual phobias?

Fun fact, butterflies cause me a lot of anxiety for some reason. Conveniently, I found this out while in a one of those butterfly sanctuaries at the zoo.

35. Do you prefer to be in front of the camera or behind it?

Behind. I’m quite literally the least photogenic person ever.

36. What is your favorite hobby?

Playing video games, eating, sleeping. Do those count?

37. What was the last book you read?

I... actually don’t know?

38. What was the last movie you watched?

Crimes of Grindelwald.....

39. What musical instruments do you play, if any?

I mean, not to brag or anything but I played the recorder in fourth grade~

40. What is your favorite animal?

SLOTHS

41. What are your top 5 favorite Tumblr blogs that you follow?

You can’t make me choose.

42. What superpower do you wish you had?

Teleportation

43. When and where do you feel most at peace?

When I’m with Hannah tbh.

44. What makes you smile?

Making other people smile / laugh.

45. What sports do you play, if any?

Sports hurt.

46. What is your favorite drink?

Sweet tea

47. When was the last time you wrote a hand-written letter or note to somebody?

I have no idea.

48. Are you afraid of heights?

My fear of heights is directly correlated with my probability of falling.

49. What is your biggest pet peeve?

People who are rude to food service / retail employees.

50. Have you ever been to a concert?

Yes

51. Are you vegan/vegetarian?

I could never.

52. When you were little, what did you want to be when you grew up?

Teacher

53. What fictional world would you like to live in?

Stars Hollow

54. What is something you worry about?

Literally everything.

55. Are you scared of the dark?

Sometimes, it depends.

56. Do you like to sing?

Like to, yes. Am I any good? Not at all.

57. Have you ever skipped school?

Yes

58. What is your favorite place on the planet?

Wherever my friends are.

59. Where would you like to live?

I care less about where exactly and more about having the people I love near me.

60. Do you have any pets?

Yes, one doggo named Neville.

61. Are you more of an early bird or a night owl?

NIGHT OWL

62. Do you like sunrises or sunsets better?

Sunsets

63. Do you know how to drive?

Yes

64. Do you prefer earbuds or headphones?

Earbuds - headphones make my ears feel claustrophobic.

65. Have you ever had braces?

Nope

66. What is your favorite genre of music?

Early to mid 2000′s punk~ I never outgrew my emo phase, sorry mom.

67. Who is your hero?

My mom

68. Do you read comic books?

No

69. What makes you the most angry?

Seeing those I love get hurt / taken advantage of.

70. Do you prefer to read on an electronic device or with a real book?

I prefer the experience of a real book but I do appreciate the convenience of an electronic device.

71. What is your favorite subject in school?

Psychology

72. Do you have any siblings?

One brother + one sister

73. What was the last thing you bought?

Christmas presents!

74. How tall are you?

5′4

75. Can you cook?

I mean, I can follow a recipe sometimes.

76. What are three things that you love?

My mom, my friends, and my dog.

77. What are three things that you hate?

Tomatoes, socks, and loud noises.

78. Do you have more female friends or more male friends?

Well, I guess more male friends, with a ratio of 2:1. (I only have three friends lol.) Unless we’re also counting internet friends, then the females far outnumber the males.

79. What is your sexual orientation?

Straight

80. Where do you currently live?

Southern Illinois

81. Who was the last person you texted?

Hannah

82. When was the last time you cried?

Probably yesterday over something stupid. I cry a lot lol.

83. Who is your favorite YouTuber?

Jenna Marbles

84. Do you like to take selfies?

Not really, no.

85. What is your favorite app?

DISCORD

86. What is your relationship with your parent(s) like?

Mom - decent. Dad - non-existent.

87. What is your favorite foreign accent?

All of them. Accents are so cute OMG.

88. What is a place that you've never been to, but you want to visit?

Japan

89. What is your favorite number?

2

90. Can you juggle?

Lol no.

91. Are you religious?

Yes

92. Do you find outer space or the deep ocean to be more interesting?

SPACE

93. Do you consider yourself to be a daredevil?

Not at all

94. Are you allergic to anything?

Deathly allergic to sulfa - the doctors almost killed me when I was a baby.

95. Can you curl your tongue?

Yes

96. Can you wiggle your ears?

Nope

97. How often do you admit that you were wrong about something?

This is complicated because I doubt myself a LOT but I’m also incredibly stubborn.

98. Do you prefer the forest or the beach?

Beach

99. What is your favorite piece of advice that anyone has ever given you?

On the last day of my senior year, my history teacher left us with two words of advice before we departed: 1) never tattoo your face, and 2) don’t give your kids a stupid name. It still makes me laugh whenever I think about it.

100. Are you a good liar?

NO

101. What is your Hogwarts House?

HUFFLEPUFF ♡

102. Do you talk to yourself?

Pfft she and I have full-blown conversations sometimes~

103. Are you an introvert or an extrovert?

More accurately, I would consider myself an ambivert.

104. Do you keep a journal/diary?

I’ve never been able to keep up with one.

105. Do you believe in second chances?

I do, and it kicks me in the ass more often than not.

106. If you found a wallet full of money on the ground, what would you do?

Try to return it.

107. Do you believe that people are capable of change?

Yes, but the person must be willing to change.

108. Are you ticklish?

Yes

109. Have you ever been on a plane?

Once, when I was five.

110. Do you have any piercings?

Nope

111. What fictional character do you wish was real?

CatDog, I have so many questions~

112. Do you have any tattoos?

No

113. What is the best decision that you've made in your life so far?

To love myself

114. Do you believe in karma?

I don’t know, maybe.

115. Do you wear glasses or contacts?

Glasses - I’ve never worn contacts.

116. Do you want children?

Eventually, yes...

117. Who is the smartest person you know?

Aaron’s a pretty smart dude, I suppose.

118. What is your most embarrassing memory?

My existence in and of itself is embarrassing tbh.

119. Have you ever pulled an all-nighter?

Many, many times. I stay up for 48+ hours sometimes~

120. What color are most of you clothes?

I own a lot of blue apparently.

121. Do you like adventures?

Yes, as long as they don’t involve any strenuous activity.

122. Have you ever been on TV?

Not that I know of.

123. How old are you?

24

124. What is your favorite movie quote?

I honestly don’t know.

125. Sweet or savory?

SAVORY

#this was so long omg #but FUN #personal #non sims

[cstesttaken]

Cool It: You Don’t Have to Be on Every Social Media App

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Author: Jon Mooallem. Culture

03.14.17

11:30 am

CHRISTOPH NIEMANN

Do I have to try every social media app?

You’ve Got Mail starred Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan and was an awful movie. I watched it in a hotel room recently and found myself thinking about you—thinking about all of us, really. To summarize: It is 1998. Hanks is the cocky, hard-charging scion of a massive Barnes & Noble-ish bookstore chain, about to open a new location on the Upper West Side. Ryan, meanwhile—vulnerable, sappy, like a human kitten—owns a tiny children’s bookstore nearby called the Shop Around the Corner. Ryan’s shop is everything that Hanks’ is not: quaint, neighborly, beloved. And, of course, it stands to be crushed by this encroaching tentacle of Hanks’ Machiavellian empire.

There’s a lot of anxiety in the air. Thematically, the film is concerned with what modernity (symbolized by Hanks and maybe also his high-octane girlfriend, who literally shouts, “Hurry, hurry, hurry!” at her espresso machine) might be doing to our souls (symbolized by Ryan and her boyfriend, who is referred to at a party as the “greatest living expert on Julius and Ethel Rosenberg”). This anxiety is everywhere. It’s a shame kids don’t know what handkerchiefs are, someone says. When office workers play solitaire on their computers, it’s lamented as “the end of Western civilization.”

It’s all so heavy-handed. But here’s the thing: As the bitter Hanks-Ryan bookstore rivalry escalates on the street, Hanks and Ryan are falling in love with each other via email, anonymously. They meet in some kind of chat room and begin emailing each other relentlessly, pouring out their feelings and the poignant whispers of their simpleton hearts. It’s dramatic irony, you see—they love each other in cyberspace, hate each other in meatspace—and the filmmakers milk it for all it’s worth. Scene after scene cuts back and forth between Hanks and Ryan, reading emails on their laughably briefcaselike laptops. Every time that cheery voice tells them “Welcome. You’ve got mail,” it’s a Pavlovian cue that flutters their stomachs and tingles their privates. It’s hard to think of two happier people in the history of film.

But you know what? Joke’s on them. Because what Hanks and Ryan do not know, and can’t possibly predict, is that the same series of tubes that’s serving as a conduit for their love will soon obliterate both their businesses! Soon they’ll both be irrelevant! They’re just too blissed out by each other’s electronic mail messages to recognize that this thing in front of them—this Internet—is also a merciless destroyer of worlds.

Reader, they are us; we are them. We’re blind to the transience of so many things we feel attached to, or else we are so attuned to their transience that we don’t allow ourselves to get attached. The truth is, even as I type this, laughing and smirking at You’ve Got Mail, I understand that someone in the near future will be similarly laughing and smirking at me. (“Typing?!” they’ll say.)

Are you obligated to try new social media apps? Not at all. Use what you enjoy. Try what you think you’d enjoy. Or don’t. You alone get to map out the borders of your online life. But you are, I think, obligated to stay open to exploring new social media apps—to keep yourself from becoming too jaded, too dismissive—and to always entertain the possibility that one of them might become meaningful and useful to you. I mean, I sunk a lot of time into Friendster back in the day, and I don’t regret it. I recognize that, like Hanks and Ryan, I was merely living contentedly in the present, without knowing that the magic of that moment would inevitably crumble—or even worrying about whether it might.

“Sometimes I wonder about my life. I lead a small life … And sometimes I wonder, do I do it because I like it or because I haven’t been brave?” Ryan typed that, sent it to Hanks. Now I’m putting the question to you.

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Author: Jon Mooallem. Culture

03.10.17

11:00 am

Christoph Niemann

I’m horrible at emoji—it’s like a foreign language for me. I always get “???” replies from friends. What should I do?

In 1918, a moderately but fleetingly famous Belgian man named Jean Pierre Pierard published an intriguing column in an American newspaper. Pierard was an actor, sometimes billed as “Le Colosse,” since he happened to weigh 342 pounds. (He was just a tremendous, tremendous fellow.) He was also the “Most Married Man in the World,” and this was the particular expertise with which he was writing. What does it mean to be the Most Married Man in the World? Well, at the time, Pierard was on his 23rd wife. Since 1886 he’d averaged one marriage every 1.4 years. But still, he felt strongly that “it is not good for man to be alone.”

This is the most important thing for you to know about Pierard—and I mean you specifically, my weird emoji-aphasic friend: Jean Pierre Pierard loved being married. He loved the institution of marriage—held it in the highest esteem—and felt a strong obligation to defend and venerate it against anyone who was starting to view it with the least bit of cynicism. “I believe in marriage,” he wrote. Deep down in the hallows of his giant being, the man was a romantic. And an optimist. And nothing about the clumsiness with which his optimism or romanticism kept colliding with reality was going to drain those feelings out of him. “It may surprise you to hear it,” Pierard wrote, “but it’s the truth, that every one of these 23 times I’ve taken out a marriage license I’ve done so with the same glow of hope and faith that I had the first time.” Being married brought him joy, so he kept getting married, even if he was lousy at it. Then he kept getting married some more.

I assume that you see where I’m going. It should be obvious, especially since I’ve written it all in not-fun alphabet letters. You’re correct that emoji are essentially a foreign language. So the only way to increase your fluency in them is with real-world practice—which is to say, by failing a lot, but paying enough attention to your failures to learn from them, and by asking more skillful speakers, people you feel totally supported and unjudged by, for help and safe opportunities to practice. But most important, don’t let anyone, with their snide ???s, spoil the pleasure those emoji bring to you. Don’t be ashamed!

OK? Just one more thing about Pierard: For a time, he attempted a career as a professional wrestler. It seems like the ideal job for Le Colosse—he could just fall on people and flatten them—and yet he was terrible at this too, maybe even more terrible than he was at marriage. Because he was ticklish—tremendously ticklish. He simply could not “permit of any contact with his ribs while wrestling,” The New York Times wrote, without being debilitated by his own giggling. All that his opponents had to do, no matter how small they were, was flutter their fingers around Le Colosse’s colossal midsection, topple him, and hold him down for the count. It was basically over before it began.

And, honestly, that’s how I’d love to picture you: joyously thumb-typing your syntactically jumbled, incomprehensible kissy faces, fires, whales, and eggplants without a care in the world, pinned on the mat but laughing and laughing and laughing. Do that and you’re .

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Author: Jon Mooallem. Culture

03.09.17

11:00 am

CHRISTOPH NIEMANN

My girlfriend got me a Fitbit, but the data makes me feel lazy and ashamed. Do I have to keep using it?

I was in my kitchen the other night, slow dancing with my toddler before bedtime, when the Coldplay song “Fix You” came on—a song, I remembered reading, that Chris Martin wrote for then-girlfriend Gwyneth Paltrow after her father died—and I found myself feeling genuinely bummed, all over again, that Chris and Gwyneth had split up. I wondered what had torn them apart or whether—as these things often go—they hadn’t been torn apart but slowly undone by some dark, unspoken dissatisfaction or resentment that gradually multiplied until there was so much cumulative darkness between them that it blotted out whatever had been luminescent about their love. And that’s when I thought about you and your girlfriend and your Fitbit.

I also thought about Steve Etkin. Etkin is an engineer by training and by temperament who enjoys walking. And so a year ago, his daughter, Jordan, bought him a Fitbit. It seemed like the perfect gift. “I started receiving daily updates,” she told me, “about the number of steps he walked, the stairs he climbed. After a few weeks, I was like, ‘Hey, Dad, you’re really treating this like a job.’ ” (She was also like, hey, Dad, I don’t need all these updates.)

Anyway, it got her thinking. And, because she studies consumer behavior at Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business, she designed a study to test whether, as she put it to me, trackers like Fitbits have the capacity to “suck the enjoyment” out of previously pleasurable activities. Guess what. They do.

Etkin’s study was published in the Journal of Consumer Research. She ran a series of six experiments. In one, for example, she gave her subjects a 16-pack of Crayolas, then made a big show of tracking how many shapes one group colored in while letting others color freely, unencumbered by quantification. She did similar experiments with walking and reading, and in every one discovered the same basic result. “Measurement led participants to color more shapes, walk more steps, and read more pages. At the same time, however, it led people to enjoy coloring, walking, and reading less.” In short, people did more but felt worse doing it. Tracking redefined fun activities as work.

One problem here is that by focusing on quantifiable outcomes, trackers can diminish intrinsic motivation, which makes people stick with activities. Therefore, “measurement may sometimes actually undermine sustainable behavior change,” Etkin writes. Those insurance companies giving Fitbits to their policyholders might be shooting themselves in the (demotivated, stationary) foot.

But you know all this. It’s precisely the cycle of incentivizing and disincentivizing, of judgment and anxiety, afflicting you: that feeling that you can never take enough steps or unlock enough REM sleep. (“When you try your best but you don’t succeed … When you feel so tired but you can’t sleep.”) And, as it afflicts you, it widens the emotional space between you and your girlfriend—it feeds a smoldering grudge, because she handcuffed you with this thing. She tried to fix you, my friend. But her fixing made you feel more broken.

So you’ve got to talk to your girlfriend and take the Fitbit off, even though Etkin’s research suggests this is the worst thing you could do. (When people start tracking then suddenly stop, the fun is still ruined, but they also lose the benefit of increased output—a double whammy of underperformance and joylessness.) But who cares? It could be the only way for you and your partner to remain consciously coupled.

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Author: Jon Mooallem. Culture

03.08.17

7:00 am

Christoph Niemann

When my 5-year-old asks a question, is there a difference between looking it up in a book and just using my phone?

Recently, I watched David Kwong do some sleight of hand in a crowded theater lobby. Kwong is a magician who often consults on Hollywood films. (When a director needs, say, Jesse Eisenberg to learn a magic trick, they send him to Kwong.) Anyway, Kwong sauntered over to a guy with a deck of cards and asked him to pick one.

Honestly, I don’t know how to describe what happened next. For 30 minutes, Kwong made cards materialize in outrageous, stupefying ways, as though he were nonchalantly sliding them in and out of a parallel universe. Someone’s card flew out of the deck, spinning through the air. Another turned up in a guy’s back pocket—and not just in his back pocket, but buried deep, between his wallet and a bundle of crumpled receipts. Kwong asked someone to rip a card into four pieces, then hold them in his fist; when he opened his hand, the card was reassembled!

Maybe this doesn’t sound that impressive, written down. We all know card tricks are a thing. But the way Kwong kept relentlessly confronting us with the impossible—seeing this sorcery at close range—seemed to not just entertain people but to make them feel vulnerable and a little scared. People mewled and screamed, “No!” One poor man was reduced to crouching on the floor, laughing so euphorically he couldn’t catch his breath. (OK, that was me.) The guy with the ripped-up card in his fist refused to open it at first, shaking his head like a child terrified to look at his boo-boo, afraid of what he’d find. “He has total power over us,” one woman said quietly, gravely. She sounded creeped out. It was so much fun!

Now, I’m sure everyone in that crowd wondered how Kwong was doing it, but it’s a rare bird who goes home and actually labors to understand the mechanics of how such tricks are engineered. (Those rare birds become magicians—it’s how Kwong got his start.) Most of us perceive magic tricks to be unreplicable, to violate the reality we inhabit. They’re, you know, magic.

To a 5-year-old, phones are magic. The internet is magic. An older kid might be able to understand the technology and infrastructure involved, the nature of Wikipedia, and so on, but for a child so young, the answer just appears, miraculously, like a playing card yanked from a bystander’s back pocket. Leafing through a book together, by comparison, is a more collaborative, tactile, self-evident process. It’s a journey toward the answer, one that your child gets to go on.

What I’m talking about is the difference between learning and being told, between answering a specific question and getting a child excited about answering it on their own. It’s fun to amaze your 5-year-old, sure. But it’s more gratifying to set your kid up to one day amaze you.

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Author: Jon Mooallem. Culture

03.06.17

11:00 am

Christoph Niemann

Is flirting on LinkedIn less weird than on other social media? After all, it can vouch for you in a substantive way.

Whoa. Hang on. Let’s first poke at the premise of your question, because the implications here are huge. Notice how you casually presume your résumé offers a more substantive representation of your basic humanity than, say, all the tweets you’ve tweeted or all the digital artifacts amassed on your Facebook page. Think of the photos on Facebook alone: You in a rowboat with the gentle-looking man playing a banjo whom we understand to be your deceased (too young) father. You being silly—but not obnoxiously silly, just innocently, endearingly silly—in the Halloween aisle of a big-box store. You tagged in a photo of that kid you mentored that one summer, as he graduates from Berkeley. You climbing a goddamned mountain! Like, with pickaxes and stuff!

Do these not substantively communicate the substance of your life? Don’t they “vouch” for you to potential dates as a safe, noncreepy, sufficiently together human being, a sympathetic soul tumbling through the fundamental experience of being alive and looking for companionship? Or is that better captured with a line like this: “January 2013-November 2014, Senior Operations Associate, Mobitly Inc.”?

You seem to think it is. And I’ll admit—begrudgingly—that you may have a point. Because the lines have been blurred between our work lives and our emotional lives, our careers and our intrinsic selves. We subconsciously gauge a person’s character by their professional standing, and our experiences and attitude toward our work aren’t only sometimes relevant to our love lives. In fact, the two can feel crucially interwoven: The best startup founders are those who operate out of passion and devotion and with a kind of hyper-monogamous obsession. On the other hand, we all feel obligated to work on our relationships with the same myopic, idealistic intensity. And it can feel natural to apply the lessons we learn relating to people in one realm to our relationships in the other.

Take, for example, Jeff Weiner, LinkedIn’s CEO. I confess, I’m not a LinkedIn user, but I’ve been reading up on Weiner and, I have to say, he seems like a wonderful guy—a principled, thoughtful man who says very grounded, Jerry Maguire-type things like, “I’ve never been title-driven; for the most part, I’ve been purpose-driven.” He also reads books by the Dalai Lama, contemplates the difference between compassion and empathy, and practices mindfulness techniques like “being a spectator to my own thoughts,” which enhance his ability to relate to and motivate his employees. He calls his style “compassionate management.”

In an essay he wrote a few years ago, Weiner described leaving work one evening, feeling proud of the strides he’d made as a compassionate manager, only to be felled by the epiphany that he’d been very uncompassionately neglecting his wife. He was working so hard, he wrote, that at night, “when my wife would try to bring up her day, or talk about the things we need to get done, I would reflexively say something to the effect that it had been a long day, I was exhausted, and could we talk about it some other time?” In other words: “For as hard as I worked to manage compassionately at the office, I was not always actively applying the same approach with my family.” So Weiner applied the same compassionate management style to his marriage and made things right.

I worry that sounds off, like the emotionally tone-deaf insights of a stereotypical tech baron. But trust me, the way Weiner explained it, it sounded cool—real. (And know this too: Worried that I’d gush in this column about Weiner’s coolness and realness only to learn later that Weiner is actually not cool and not real and is, in truth, as imperious as Genghis Khan or a Grade A, misogynistic, steroidal jerk, I sat down and Googled “Jeff Weiner LinkedIn jerk” and was happy to find, as the first result, a post singling him out as a “counterweight” to the industry’s many other CEO-jerks. So that was reassuring—even if the post was published on LinkedIn. But even that can be interpreted as a testament to Weiner’s character, because it was Weiner, I learned, who had the vision to expand LinkedIn from a bland résumé farm into a successful publishing platform.)

I’ll go even further. I wouldn’t be surprised if a man as smart as Weiner already knows all this, knows that we live in an age where one of the prime, romantically reassuring things about another person—the thing that “vouches” for them best as a potential mate—is that they’re a trustworthy, hardworking, successful employee. And therefore, he also secretly knows that LinkedIn could be the ultimate dating site, though he wisely stops short of saying it. Instead, he just dog-whistles about that potential to attentive users and eagle-eyed investors, thus preserving the opportunity to pivot the company explicitly in that direction should the climate change and the need arise. Recently, for example, he told an interviewer, “Our core value proposition to members is to help them connect to opportunity,” and touted “the power of this as a platform to enable capital”—especially “human capital”—“to flow where it can best be leveraged.”

Isn’t he talking about dating, about setting people up? When Tevye and Golde’s daughters sang, “Matchmaker, matchmaker, make me a match,” weren’t they basically asking a kind of social networking platform to send their own human capital flowing toward whichever shtetl boy would give it the highest valuation and invest? Why shouldn’t you flirt on LinkedIn? Why shouldn’t love be one of the opportunities LinkedIn connects us with?

So, yes. You are right. And you’ve taught me a lot—you and Jeff Weiner both. I can see clearly now how we’ve all tied ourselves into a knot of careerism and affection and equity and sex, and maybe that’s just the way it has to be. I’m remembering now what happened when Jerry Maguire—the real Jerry Maguire—showed up in that living room, shivering, trying to win back his wife, who also happened to be his business partner at their new sports-agenting startup, how he told her, “You … you complete me.” But, more important, there was the line he slipped her right before that famous line. Suddenly, in the middle of his monologue, he was compelled to say, like a man giving a keynote at a conference, “We live in a cynical world, a cynical world, and we work in a business of tough competitors.”

Why? Why include that? What could Jerry Maguire possibly have meant? I think he meant: The internet is full of sinister strangers. It’s a hostile place in which to offer up your soul. But here I am. Look at me. View my profile. I’d like to connect with you on LinkedIn.

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Author: Jon Mooallem. Culture

03.03.17

11:00 am

Christoph Niemann

I work in a casual tech setting and I’m shocked by how much everyone swears. Should I say something?

Imagine what it was like to be a Puritan in 1642. You’ve come to America. The landscape is crude and endless; the soundtrack, all hissing insects and howling wolves. “Everything about the place seemed godforsaken,” writes the natural historian Tim Flannery in his book The Eternal Frontier. That lawless emptiness is why you’re here—it means freedom. But in all free and empty places, there’s also room for wickedness to grow. Everybody in your little settlement is aware of this, which is why they panic when, one day, someone happens upon a young man named Thomas Granger having sex with a horse.

It’s worse than you thought: When confronted, Granger rapidly admits he’s also had intercourse with three cows, two goats, five sheep, and a turkey. This behavior is so savage—and feels like such a threat to the ethical society you’re laboring to build there in the wild—that you respond with a campaign of ruthless cleansing. You round up each animal Granger has had sex with and force the young man to watch while you slaughter it. (Not the turkey, though; for some reason, Flannery notes, no one bothers with the turkey.) And since you can’t tell which of the village’s sheep were the particular sheep Granger penetrated—his descrip­tions are imprecise—you herd every sheep in front of him, like a police lineup, and force him to ID the five in question. Then you kill those five sheep too. Then you kill Granger. Then you throw all their bodies together in one big pit.

Now, fast-forward 373 years. Let’s talk about you.

It’s easy to imagine you, hunched in your tech company’s open floor plan, forced to sit on an inflatable ball or perhaps issued one of those iconoclastic standing desks without a chair at all. You are a wary pilgrim on the wild, godless edge of America’s economic frontier. And, as such, you under­stand that the foul language your colleagues are using isn’t just unpleasant but morally precarious; if it continues unchecked, it could lead you all—your entire industry, really—to much darker places. You know, just as the Puritans did, that this kind of impropriety needs to be nipped in the bud.

That’s how you feel, right? Well, you’re wrong.

You’re not the Puritans. You’re the kid shtupping the cows. Because the lesson of the Granger story—as I read it—isn’t that morality always wins. It’s that the mob always wins. The majority’s norms always beat back and outlast the minority’s. And the mob can be cruel: They’ll kill the thing you love right in front of you, then dump you in the ground.

I think you need to go along with the mob.

Does it matter if my kid’s handwriting is terrible?

Well, I happen to love handwriting. I think it’s curiously fun to look at and a considerable, if mostly esoteric, value-add to the written language—even in an era of tablets and smartwatches and speech-recognition software. But does it matter if your child writes illegibly? My answer is no, probably not. Handwriting is an old technology—about 5,000 years old. And as with newer old technologies (muskets or floppy disks or cars with human beings driving them), some people may inevitably feel a tinge of melancholy watching it sputter into oblivion. And yet the truth is that humanity has always replaced old tools with new ones, and often, once we’ve pushed through the emotionally charged transitional phase and come out the other end, everything feels fine again.

Take, for example, a woman named Kristin Gulick in Bend, Oregon, who often has trouble reading messages scribbled by her chronically illegible office receptionist. “Yesterday I tried to dial a number that she’d written down, and I couldn’t read it,” Gulick told me recently. “I had to go back out and ask, ‘What does this say?’” And the receptionist was just like, ha ha ha, I know my handwriting’s terrible—you know, giggling the annoyance away. Was Gulick peeved? Yes. But was this a fireable offense or some irrevocable inconvenience? Not even close. In fact, Gulick really had no choice but to laugh the whole thing off too. “Thank God she’s good at other things!” she said, and life went on.

So there’s your answer. But who is Kristin Gulick, anyway? So glad you asked!

Handwriting may be one of those fundamentally human abilities—one that binds us to our own identities.

Gulick has been an occupational therapist for 28 years, specializ­ing in arms and hands. She’s in private practice now, but shortly after 9/11 she found herself working at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, DC. A recent government report disclosed that more than 1,000 of the 50,000 soldiers who’ve been wounded in action in Iraq and Afghanistan—2.6 percent—have come back missing limbs, and Gulick was there to greet some of the first ones, helping them work around their loss and rejoin their life. Part of this work involved “transferring dominance” from one hand to the other; if a righty lost their right arm, say, they needed to learn to be a lefty now. And part of that was relearning handwriting—even just enough to fill out the deluge of hospital forms and sign their name.

Gulick found a total dearth of tools and curricula. Really, there was nothing. While she encouraged people to use first-grade handwriting primers early in her career, they were full of infantilizing penmanship exercises involving anthro­pomorphic animals. These books were not only unhelpful but degrading: Having lost a limb, many of these people were already feeling vulnerable and diminished. Now they were being treated—literally—like children. Gulick and an officer in the Army Medical Specialist Corps, Katie Yancosek, decided they could do better. “We’d give them exercises about balancing their checkbook and not about a little bunny or whatever,” Gulick said. The result was a six-week program, laid out in a workbook called Handwriting for Heroes. (The third edition was published this year.)

Look, I don’t mean to play some righteous, wounded-veteran card and make anyone feel bad. But I think we all see where this is going: It’s easy to write off handwriting only because most of us take it for granted. But I listened to Gulick talk about handwriting for a while, about what the ability to jot off a simple grocery list or be-right-back note for your spouse—functional but maybe also aesthetically pleasing or expressive, something you have created—does for a person’s sense of self-sufficiency and pride after working hard to regain that skill. How handwriting, really, may be one of those fundamentally human abilities—one that binds us, in a tiny way, to each other and to our own identities.

Your child won’t feel anything remotely like that sense of loss if they let their handwriting go to seed. Their lives will move forward in standardized fonts. If they absolutely have to write anything by hand, it may be disordered and illegible, but they can just laugh it off and explain (or text) what they meant. And that’s why I’ll stick with my first answer: It probably doesn’t matter. But I also think that, if we’re prepared to let handwriting go—to not care how ugly it gets—we should, at least, take a second to think about how beautiful it can be.

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Author: Jon Mooallem. Culture

03.01.17

11:00 am

Christoph Niemann

The same person keeps accidentally pocket-dialing me. Should I confront him?

Let's zoom out for a second: For more than 40 years, scientists have been debating whether we should be actively sending messages into outer space or just using projects like SETI to listen for messages sent to us—and not just whether we should broadcast anything, but what and how. Do we shoot out a bunch of math, to show aliens we understand math? Do we send pictures? Music? And if so, what math? What pictures? What music? There have been scientific workshops to hash this out in Toulouse, Paris, Zagreb, Houston, and Mountain View. There have been peer-reviewed journal articles with titles like “The Art and Science of Interstellar Message Composition.” It's a big, messy, excruciatingly meticulous back-and-forth.

And yet—all this time, while all those eggheads have been arguing—gobs and gobs of our satellite transmissions, television broadcasts, radio shows, and cell phone conversations have been quietly, sloppily spilling into outer space. It's all just oozing off our planet and into the cosmos like so much electromagnetic sewage—a phenomenon scientists call leakage. In other words, we're already beaming messages into the void—weak signals, but millions of them every day, without even realizing it or being careful about what we say. We are butt-dialing the universe!

Now say someone out there actually picks up that call. Wouldn't you like to know? Yes, it's embarrassing to realize we've made that sort of clumsy connection. But isn't it always just a little bit nice to know we've made a connection at all? So my advice is: Tell this person. Tell him he reached you. Tell him you were there.

CHRISTOPH NIEMANN

Is it unethical to crowdfund a project I don't totally believe in?

A month after the Boston Tea Party, in January 1774—with the idea of rebellion gaining momentum in Boston and patriots feeling more powerful than the remaining loyalists in town—a strange character who called himself Joyce Junior started stoking that new sense of boldness on the streets. Junior walked around elaborately costumed, like some anarchist harlequin, and posted flyers threatening any “vile ingrates” who were still loyal to the crown. Loyalists should be punished, he wrote. And he slyly suggested precisely how, signing his treatises: “Chairman of the Committee for Tarring and Feathering.”

Ten days later, a low-level British government customs official, John Malcom, got into an argument with a well-known patriot shoemaker on the street.

One thing led to another, and soon an angry mob had “swarmed around [Malcom's] house,” wrote Nathaniel Philbrick in his book Bunker Hill. Very quickly, all of Boston's frustration and resentment with England began to come down on this one middling bureaucrat. The rioters bum-rushed Malcom's home with ladders and axes. Once inside, they lashed him with sticks, then pushed him on a sled for hours through the snowy, unlit streets and bitter cold, collecting more irate Bostonians as they went. The mob mocked him. They threatened to cut off his ears. They beat him and beat him. Soon more than a thousand people had joined in. They ripped off Malcom's clothes. They coated his skin with steaming tar. They covered him with feathers.

The abuse went on for hours. When they finally dumped Malcom in front of his house, Philbrick wrote: “his frozen body had begun to thaw, his tarred flesh started to peel off in ‘steaks.’”

It was awful—all of it. And apparently, it was particularly distressing to Joyce Junior, the Wavy Gravy-esque performance artist who'd threatened British loyalists with tarring and feathering in the first place—the man who'd hammered that idea into the public consciousness, inspiring all that brutality. We know Junior felt culpable, because he immediately started doing damage control, scrambling to disown his idea. Junior issued another statement. It began: “This is to certify that the modern punishment lately inflicted on the ignoble John Malcom was not done by our order.”

Now, I don't think this project you want to crowdfund is likely to inadvertently encourage an angry mob to parboil an innocent man in his own flesh, then blanket him with feathers. But it's important to remember that ideas are volatile, powerful things. And so are crowds. They have a way of infecting each other and taking on a life of their own. So all I'm saying is, be honest—be real. If you only kind of think it's a good idea, it's OK to say so. The crowd will decide for itself if you're right. And it may surprise you.

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Author: Jon Mooallem. Culture

02.28.17

11:00 am

Christoph Niemann

My dad leaves incredibly embarrassing comments under every photo I post to Facebook and Instagram. What should I do?

Let’s face it: Dads are embarrassing. I remember, a couple of years ago, reading a newspaper story about a boy named Brooklyn who was so distressed by the prospect of his friends catching sight of his dweeby father that he insisted his dad drop him off around the corner from school and stay out of view. Why was this a newspaper story, you ask? Don’t millions of mortified children do this every day? Yes, and that’s my point. In this case, however, the dad in question was David Beckham.

See, dad-­barrassment is universal—a condition of existence, like the weather. What matters is how well we endure it: whether we slough it off or allow it to seep inside us.

Consider another famous dad: Teddy Roosevelt. Yes, that guy—America’s first presidential man’s man. This is a guy who hunted bears and lions, who got into bar fights with cowboys, who resigned as assistant secretary of the Navy to actually fight a war rather than just plan one. Teddy Roosevelt loved war. War was his jam. As the historian Alexis Coe told me recently, “He treated everything like a battlefield.” In October 1912, Roosevelt was about to give a campaign speech in Milwaukee when a would-be assassin shot him in the chest. The bullet ripped through the copy of his speech in his pocket. There was a big bloody wound. Still, Roosevelt spoke for more than an hour, like a wounded infantryman still bayoneting people on the battlefield.

I’d called Coe after listening to the podcast , which she cohosts with former Daily Show head writer Elliott Kalan. Their Roosevelt episode suggested that Teddy’s warmongering machismo was bound up in his dad. During the Civil War, Roosevelt had watched his father, Theodore senior, pay for a surrogate to fight in his place. For Teddy, Coe says, “this was always a great source of shame. His celebration of masculinity and war, his romanticization of war as an experience to all men, is a reaction to his dad.” And if, to overcompensate for this excruciating embarrassment, Roosevelt felt compelled to speechify for over an hour while his torso hemorrhaged, then that’s his decision. But it also affected his own parenting.

Roosevelt had four sons, and he wanted his boys to be the valorous warriors his own father hadn’t been. When World War I broke out, the youngest, Quentin, memorized an eye chart to ensure he’d pass his exam and be able to serve. He was, in short order, shot down and killed by the Germans. Roosevelt was crestfallen. “To feel that one has inspired a boy to conduct that has resulted in his death has a pretty serious side for a father,” he wrote. He died himself six months later.

But the misery he wrought continued. One son, Archibald, had his knee ripped apart by a grenade. Another, Ted Jr., was wounded in France, then died of a heart attack while serving in World War II. Kermit, Roosevelt’s second son, served in both wars, then ultimately shot himself in the head on a base in Alaska.

You wrote because you didn’t like some comments on Instagram and Facebook. I’m talking about shame and war and death. It’s hardly fair, you’ll say, and you’re right. But this story shows, I think, that dad-­barrassment is a powerful and unpredictable force; it warps the imagination, it pollutes the soul. The perpetrators are, inevitably, also victims.

By all means, ask your father—gently—if he wouldn’t mind toning down the comments. Tell him to text you privately instead, if you’d prefer. But ultimately the onus is not on your father to stop embarrassing you, but on you to reconcile the embarrassment you feel. I worry you’ve started seeing your father primarily as an engine of embarrassment, not as a complex human being entitled to express his wit, his playfulness, his love.

So, stomach it. Take the bullet, carry on.

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Author: Jon Mooallem. Culture

02.27.17

11:00 am

Christoph Niemann

I’m an omnivore, but are there animals that are just too intelligent to eat?

During high school, I went to visit a friend in Louisiana. Because I was a Northerner who’d never been to the South, I was given a lot of exotically Southern stuff to eat, like alligator and rattlesnake. Then came the big Louisianan feast: heaps of spicy crayfish, which we savagely twisted the heads off of then washed down with gallons and gallons of Dr Pepper.

When I got up to go pee, one of the men at the table told me to be sure to wash my hands first. He said it with a tinge of darkness, a whiff of trauma. He explained that it was unwise for a man to go from handling spicy crayfish to handling his penis. He’d been careless once and paid the price. So I washed my hands. But I still remember how worried I was, unzipping, and how hesitantly I moved my hand down, like a kid playing Operation, dreading that horrible bzzz. I’d absorbed the trauma vicariously, but my anxiety was real.

I thought of this when I read that researchers at the University of Bordeaux in France detected a similar kind of intelligently learned anxiety in crayfish. (After suffering a trauma, the crayfish were reluctant to venture into brightly lit, risky areas.) The scientists also found they could alleviate that anxiety by giving the crayfish a Valium-style drug. And while the scientists were careful not to embellish these findings with any anthropomorphic presumptions, I think we all sense the underlying epiphany here: Crayfish are a little more like us than we expected.

These days, it seems, everybody wants to know how smart their meat is. There are all kinds of startling farm-­animal-cognition studies. We know that cows enjoy solving problems and have been known to jump into the air excitedly when they finally crack a tough one. Chickens are exceptionally good at delaying gratification, understand small numbers and basic physics, and can adroitly manage the thermostat of their coop. Sheep can remember and recognize as many as 50 human faces without making a mistake. Pigs excel at videogames played with special pig joysticks. And even opossums—yes, some people eat them—turn out to be excellent maze runners. One study ranked opossums’ “probability learning” skills second only to humans’ and higher than dogs’. Opossums! Those things that do very little and look dead most of the time!

The upshot, I’d argue, is that all animals are likely too intelligent to eat. Whether you go on eating them, with that knowledge, is up to you. You probably will. I do—proof that intelligence may be massively overrated.

Should I worry that my kid can’t spell? Does spelling matter anymore?

Did you hear about Thomas Hurley III? He was on Jeopardy! last year as an eighth grader—a likable kid from Connecticut with Peter Brady bangs and a blue dress shirt buttoned up to the jugular. He lost. And he lost, in part, because in Final Jeopardy, he wrote “Emanciptation Proclamation” instead of “Emancipation Proclamation.”

Does spelling matter anymore? Honestly, I don’t think so. I mean, initially, even schoolmarmy Alex Trebek read right over Hurley’s mistake. As a defiant Hurley told his local newspaper, “It was just a spelling error.”

Then again, spelling isn’t just about communicating. The culture still views it as a sign of intelligence, diligence, and sophistication. Bad, lackadaisical spellers are not looked at kindly. And neither was Hurley’s contention that he’d been “cheated.” (“Learn how to accept defeat, kid, or you will be disappointed for the rest of your life,” one Facebook comment read.) Clearly, autocorrect and other technologies have started a slow sea change, and maybe one day the persnickety spelling police among us will all have died out and we’ll be free to spel thingz howeEVA weeeeeeeeeee wonte. But, until that day, allowing your kids to blow off spelling may empower them to go against a societal norm without considering the day-to-day discomfort and judgment it could bring: the consequences for them but also for you, their parent.

“He was a little stunned by it,” Hurley’s mom said after the defeat. “He felt embarrassed. It was hard to watch.”

Should I give myself a weekend phone time-out? What if I miss important work?

What kind of job do you have? What kind of boss do you have? How tolerant? How demanding? One possibility is that you’re a senior adviser to the secretary of state, and your inability to be reached during a flare-up by a North African paramilitary group—because you’re lying in a park with a kale-and-bee-pollen smoothie and that copy of The Goldfinch you’ve been meaning to get to—leads to a severe diplomatic misstep and a weeks-long umbrage carnival on Fox News that can only be quelled by the semi-ritualistic firing and public shaming of the bureaucrat responsible: i.e., you. Another is that you’re a beverage distribution middle­man, and your boss—who happens to be triple-checking stuff at the office on a Saturday night because he’s going through a divorce and doesn’t know what to do with himself—discovers a niggling glitch in your paperwork that may have sent an extra case of Fresca to Denver, but because your phone’s off he calls Greta, and after a couple minutes of digging she assures him that all the Frescas are, in fact, where they need to be.

See the difference? You’ve given me absolutely no information—just dashed off your question as quickly as possible without a second of reflection. And this suggests that you’re whizzing recklessly through life and, still accelerating, throttled by permanent urgency. You need a break. Your soul needs a break. I have no idea what the consequences might be—how could I?—but I think you should switch off that phone.

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Author: Jon Mooallem. Culture

02.24.17

11:00 am

Christoph Niemann

I read that mice injected with blood from younger mice improve on cognitive tests. Should I bank my blood?

So yeah, I went and read about this too. I read that for years scientists have been taking an old mouse and a young mouse, putting them next to each other, and stitching their circulatory systems together, just like jump-starting a car. Then they let the blood of one mouse circulate through the other—a process called parabiosis. And introducing the young mouse's blood—or even just introducing one particular protein found in the blood, called GDF11—to an old mouse does all sorts of wonderful stuff: It allows the old mouse to run longer on a treadmill. It changes the old mouse's brain in ways that suggests its memory has been improved. I read that it even rejuvenates a crusty old-mouse heart. Like, voilà! The heart isn't crusty anymore.

I also read that a Harvard scientist named Amy Wagers was “already working to commercialize” GDF11, which is found in human blood too. And this was the eye-opener for me: Even as scientists are always cautioning the media that it's way to soon to speculate about their studies' implications, one of these scientists—the one named Wagers, aptly—was already placing her bet.

Good for her, I say. I'm all for capitalism! But I'm also all for hematological self-determination. (Or, say, blood freedom.) I'd hate, one day, to have to pay some multinational corporation for a synthetic knockoff of my own younger self's blood—the very stuff that was pumping through my body for decades without costing me a damn cent. What a dystopia that would be! There'd be kids on the corner with clipboards, asking for donations so Americans for Hematological Self-Determination could sue these corporations. There'd be Blood Freedom teach-ins and Blood Freedom protest songs—which would be hard because “Blood Freedom” really doesn't rhyme with much.

So my answer is yes, absolutely. Stockpile your blood now, as much as can be squirreled away at the proper temperature. Just in case. Think of it as a tiny hedge against the Wagers of the future.

I get a lot of swag from startups—messenger bags, fleeces, hats, T-shirts—and my girlfriend makes fun of me for wearing it. Which is the douchiest to wear? Like, is a fleece cooler than a hat?

Look, I don't care what you wear, but I do think that a startup fleece is definitely not cooler than a startup hat, because a startup fleece puts the name and logo of the startup in closer proximity to your heart than a startup hat would. My instinct is, keep this stuff away from your heart. Far away. The closer to your heart, the douchier.

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Author: Jon Mooallem. Culture

02.23.17

11:00 am

Christoph Niemann

My best friend dropped our Snapchat streak, and I’m hurt. What should I do?

Oof. I know how it feels. Streaks are magic; streaks are wild. There you are, you and your bestie, slinging those pictures and videos back and forth, getting that sacred pendulum of digital adorableness and hilarity moving between you, and you start to feel momentum, don’t you? A rhythmic bond—a fellowship, a closeness—taking hold. You’re in it together! And, better still, that little flaming number keeps ticking up, higher and higher. You’re watching your progress, reciprocally micro­dosing the endorphins. Then suddenly, all that excitement stops. You send a snap, and no snap comes back. It’s a gut punch. It’s over. You’re dropped.

Like I said: Oof. I empathize. And yet I can’t claim to understand the hurt of being dropped nearly as well as Maica Folch, who has been literally dropped and literally hurt from the dropping.

Folch is an aerialist in San Francisco who spent much of her adult life working as a trapeze artist. She started when she was just a teenager. Has Folch ever been dropped? Yes. Yes, she has. And, somewhere beneath the acute pain of impact, did she also feel something akin to the abandonment and resentment you’re dealing with? No, she did not.

It’s 1987, Barcelona. Dress rehearsal, the day before a big aerial dance performance. Folch has been hoisted 80 feet off the ground in a meticulously engineered elastic harness. And yet not so meticulously, because there’s been a miscalculation with the rigging and, before Folch can comprehend what’s happening, she sees the floor racing toward her.

She is falling, most likely to her death. And it’s just like everyone says: “I saw the movie of my life,” she tells me. She hears her gasping colleagues calling out as she speeds down at them. What happens next is unexpected, and yet it happens so naturally. “I was so peaceful,” Folch says. “And I fell down like a feather.”

She hits the ground. She bounces. Bounces! Remember, she’s basically tied to an enormous rubber band, and this serene feather of a woman bounces so high that she’s able to grab a rope up there and steady herself. “If I had freaked out and come down with an intense energy,” Folch says—if she’d stiffened and steeled herself—her body would have shattered. Instead she was bruised, like a fallen apple, but “didn’t break a bone.”

And here’s the most helpful part of the story: It never occurred to Folch, after being dropped, to feel jilted or angry. “When something goes wrong,” she says, “there is no one to blame.” It’s a kind of aerialist credo, really—put loyalty and trust first. You say to each other, “I love what I do, I love doing it with you, and if I start doing it with you, it’s because I trust you,” she explains.

“We don’t live in a perfect world,” Folch says. Carabiners fail. People fail. Friends don’t always return your snap. And it’s probably not because they don’t love you but likely just because none of us, zipping around on our phones and in real life simultaneously, swinging like trapeze artists between these two platforms of frenetic distraction, can be expected to do it all perfectly or to recognize the many distant and private emotional burdens our little snaps might bear. We will let each other down. It’s just a fact. But we all deserve some slack, some good faith—especially from our best friends.

The secret to a thriving trapeze partnership, Folch says, is not necessarily forgiveness but refusing to think of the inevitable disappointments of life as requiring forgiveness in the first place. “You create unconditional relationships. There is pain. There is guilt. But you don’t disappear from the picture.”

And so my answer is: Move on. You’re fine. Learn to love more. Learn from Folch, who knew, deep down, how to handle being dropped and how to bounce back too.

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Author: Jon Mooallem. Culture

10.28.16

7:00 am

Christoph Niemann

I pictured this Nest Cam looming over you—pictured its one dark eye, unblinking—and I immediately thought of that nasty old Cyclops who terrorizes Odysseus and his men in The Odyssey. What was his name? What was the story, exactly? I figured I better reread that bit.

In a nutshell, Odysseus and his men are returning from a long, atrocious war. Landing for a stopover on the island of the Cyclopes, Odysseus confesses he’s at a loss to understand this mountaintop-dwelling race of one-eyed savages: They don’t fear the gods! They have no laws! They are just too alien to be intelligible; Odysseus sees them only as “brutes,” beneath his regard. So he leads his men into a cave—the home of one particular Cyclops who isn’t home—and ransacks it. They build a fire and help themselves to all his many cheeses.

Well, the Cyclops—his name is Polyphemus—is pretty ticked off when he returns (the original “Who moved my cheese?”). And Odysseus suddenly turns diffident and cloying: “We’re at your knees in hopes of a warm welcome,” he tells the Cyclops. But does he apologize for what essentially amounts to home invasion? No, he does not. Instead, he demands a gift! That’s right, Odysseus asks the giant for a “guest-gift,” the giving of which, he explains, is a mandatory and sacred custom between guests and their hosts, as dictated by his Greek gods.

Let’s pause the narrative right there. I was sure the story had something instructive to say about what happens when the expectations of a guest and the expectations of his host don’t match up. Because your problem seems to be that you expect privacy, while your hosts expect to continue protecting their home with the latest Wi-Fi–enabled surveillance tools. They’d like to keep their minds at ease; you’d like to keep their eyes off your privates. And I felt obligated to defend their interests—privilege them—and conclude that the host-guest power dynamic is tilted toward the host and that, like it or not (and in your case I certainly wouldn’t like it either), being a guest means accepting a degree of powerlessness. Keeping the camera running is disrespectful to you, and creepy, but maybe that’s just how it’s got to be.

But then, back in The Odyssey, things escalated. Polyphemus bashes two of the men on the ground of his cave until “their brains gushed out all over,” then rips off their limbs and eats them. So Odysseus sharpens a stake, heats it in a fire, and stabs it through the Cyclops’ single peeper. It’s an ugly story, in other words. And its ugliness snapped me back to reality. Because you are not some pea-sized Odysseus trapped in a terrible colossus’s cave. You are a human being staying in another human being’s house, and part of what makes us human is our willingness to engage in empathic back-and-forths to reconcile conflicting expectations. We compro­mise. We try to act decently toward each other.

And suddenly I pictured you, alone in another person’s cavernous house, with that ominous, unyielding eyeball trained on you 24/7, and I imagined how vulnerable and exposed you must feel—how stripped of self-respect—and also how resentful. Because why else would the first solution that occurred to you be, essentially, to blind the camera? No, you don’t have a right to do so. But couldn’t you take a more obvious, less defiant tack? Couldn’t you just respectfully ask your host to deactivate the camera? Or to program it around your daily schedule, so it only flicks on when you leave?

I really don’t think it will be a hard conversation to have; part of me assumes it never occurred to the homeowners how uncomfortable leaving that camera on would make you feel. But I get it: Sometimes we stew for so long that we get lost overthinking these things. Maybe what we learn from Homer, ultimately, is that not every problem is epic.

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Author: Jon Mooallem. Culture

09.25.16

6:40 am

christoph Niemann

My cat will only drink from a running tap—not even a cat fountain. But I live in a drought-stricken state. Help?

You’re familiar with the Misfits, I assume. They are iconic, the so-called horror-punk band that played hard and demonically fast while singer Glenn Danzig—a huge, dark creature from New Jersey with a forbidding curtain of long black hair—screamed. Danzig’s songs had titles like “Skulls” and “Die, Die My Darling” and, of course, “Mommy, Can I Go Out and Kill Tonight?” That last one could, arguably, be read as a bloodthirsty anthem written in solidarity with America’s imprisoned house cats because, as the world would eventually discover, Danzig is a cat fancier.

A few years ago, pockets of the Internet had a good laugh at Danzig’s expense when a photograph surfaced of him walking out of a grocery store carrying a tub of Fresh Step kitty litter. (If you don’t understand why this was funny, one incredibly left-brained commenter on the site Metalsucks.net provided this analysis: “It is funny because it is something of an ironic satire to see someone who has widely been written about as an offbeat satanist buying kitty litter.”) Danzig himself had another take: “Why do people even care?” he shot back. “Why are they wasting their lives on this?” He had a point. People laughed at him for not being punk enough; he outpunked them all by not caring.

“Glenn Danzig is my spirit animal,” Daniel Quagliozzi told me recently. Quagliozzi is the proprietor of Go, Cat, Go!, a feline behavioral consultancy in San Francisco; he comes to your house and troubleshoots your cat problems. DQ, as he’s known, also grew up in New Jersey and spent his formative years deep in the punk scene, whipping his then-­mohawked head around to the Misfits. “They don’t want to be told what to do. They don’t want your hands on them or their lifestyle,” DQ explains—and this, he adds, is precisely what he appreciates about cats as well.

“I relate to them. I relate to their F U attitude toward society. They make you wonder, ‘Why the hell did I invite them in the house in the first place?’” In fact, DQ has regularly seen owners of defiant felines reduced to “wearing shrouds of cardboard to protect themselves from their swatting cats, or carrying water pistols or air horns to blast their cats away.” One guy resigned himself to keeping the litter box on his couch, because that’s where the cat insisted on pissing and crapping. All too often, DQ says, people are “just not ready for the hostile takeover.”

When I asked DQ about your problem, he let out a long sigh and said, “The running water thing is so … God.” There are countless reasons why a cat would demand a running faucet. “Maybe the water in the bowl is stale or not the right temperature, or the bowl might be too small and it’s creating whisker stress.” (Yes, whisker stress: Google it.) Maybe the cat feels more secure on the counter. “Or it could be boredom.” Maybe your cat leads such a dreary life that trickling water qualifies as fun.

My advice? Hire DQ. Fly him in if you have to; frankly, the guy’s aptitude with cats blew me away. Otherwise, he suggested trying to “mimic what’s happening in the same location.” Start by putting a recirculating fountain next to the sink; often, DQ says, we overlook the importance of location when assessing cat problems. (Maybe, for example, your cat just wants its water separate from its food, or up off the ground.)

But most of all: Steel yourself for confrontation—for a kind of protracted, brutal brinkmanship. Your cat isn’t likely to go on strike and die of thirst, DQ says, but any change you make will likely leave the animal “anxious and unsettled.” And that is “definitely going to be harder on the guardian than it is on the cat.” That is, the cat will try to own you—belittle you. Find your inner Danzig and flip the script.

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Author: Jon Mooallem. Culture

05.24.16

9:00 am

I think someone is hate-retweeting me. She has 25K followers! Should I call her out?

Easy. Couldn’t be easier. Hate-favoriting and hate-retweeting is childish behavior. So if you want to be bold, by all means call her out. And if you want to be less bold but perhaps more effective, just block her: Game over.

And yet, can I be honest? This may be the most subtly perplexing question I’ve ever had to pretend to be a know-it-all about. Because if I push just a bit on your premise, it all goes soft. I can see ancillary dilemmas, qualifications, and niggling unknowns pile up until the kind of clear, objective truth I’m required to find gets hopelessly boxed in. There’s a lot here to pick apart. Let’s start with the corrosive, discombobulating nature of spite.

Ever heard of the Spite Fence? Go back to 1876. San Francisco’s Big Four—the four main bazillionaire railroad barons—all decided to build mansions on a scenic, empty hilltop: Nob Hill. At least, it was mostly empty. Bounded within the large property purchased by one of these magnates, Charles Crocker, was a little house on a small, separate parcel owned by an undertaker named Nicholas Yung. Crocker wanted Yung gone; Yung wouldn’t sell. Crocker, bewildered that his money hadn’t made this inconvenience go away, kept making offers. Yung kept declining. So Crocker—overcome with spite—started a flame war. Or a wall war.

Crocker built his mansion. Then he built a 30-foot-high wall on his land that effectively surrounded Yung’s property. It shut out the light. It shut Yung in. It was ridiculous looking, and people came from all over to gawk at it. There was a kind of class war brewing in the city at the time, and one activist pamphlet singled out Crocker’s fence as a “very obnoxious” symbol of “the domineering spirit” of the wealthy. The San Francisco Chronicle called the Spite Fence an “inartistic monument of resentment” and a “memorial of malignity and malevolence.” Yet Yung—the simple undertaker, just wanting to live his life, in his house—didn’t sell. The undertaker was himself essentially buried, though still aboveground. But he just took it, took the high road, and let that towering manifestation of Crocker’s out-of-control id speak for itself. Yung never even retaliated, though he thought about it. His wife said, “There are some things to which people like ourselves do not care to stoop.”

You must feel like Nicholas Yung: tweeting through your life in a pure, happy-go-lucky way, only to see a wall of spite building up in this other person’s timeline, one hateful retweet at a time, to rebuke you. And like I said at the outset: How nasty that is; how immature. But why do you think these likes and retweets are hate-likes and hate-retweets, as opposed to supportive likes and supportive retweets? What would lead you to this conclusion? I can’t help but wonder if there’s something you’re not telling me—if you yourself worry there’s an arrogant, airheaded, obnoxious, or self-congratulatory tone to what you’re tweeting, the sort of attitude that typically elicits that kind of resentment online. Are you, for example, relentlessly issuing tidbits like “So lucky my baby sleeps for 12 hours each night!!!!!! Almost enough time for tantric sex with my amazing partner!” or “Just had lunch with Bon Jovi! #blessed”?

I’m not saying you are. I’m just wondering. Honestly. I don’t want to blame the victim. My point is, the victim of one kind of obnoxiousness can be a perpetrator of another. You ought to give that a hard think and figure out which side of this Spite Fence you’re actually standing on, before you poke your head over and start shouting.

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Author: Jon Mooallem. Culture

04.07.16

11:00 am

Christoph Niemann

Two stories. Try to hold them together in your mind.

The first involves a man named Muki Bácsi, at a Hungarian wedding in 1879. Muki was a drunk, apparently, but a beloved and awe-inspiring one. He was the region’s “champion drinkist,” according to the London Telegraph. And so, arriving at the wedding banquet, Muki found a tremendous 3-pint glass at his place and was told that, as the party proceeded through toast after toast, he was expected, each time, to suck this hulking receptacle dry, then fill it up again.

Muki sighed. “Lads, I am about to die,” he began. He was certain he was on the verge of a stroke, and the last thing he wanted was to flood his ailing innards with wine. And yet, Muki also knew he was at a gosh darn wedding and that weddings are specially charged, sacred days that temporarily reorganize the universe entirely around love and joyousness and mirth. Muki considered this, considered his glass, and pushed a great gust of air out of his weathered lungs. His lips formed that air into words: “So be it! A man can die but once!” And then Muki started to drink and drink. He drank until 2 in the morning. Then Muki asked to be carried to a bed, groaned once, and died. He was, the paper reported, “the merriest wedding guest of them all.”

The second story is shorter: In 1912, Elizabeth Lang shot a woman dead in Indiana. The case was open-and-shut, according to The New York Times. Elizabeth offered a clear confession. “She said I was ugly. She said I was old. I killed her for that, and I am not a bit sorry for it,” she told police. If it sounds extreme, it is—I’m not going to excuse it. And yet, monitor the slight shift in your own understanding and feelings when I reveal that this incident occurred at Elizabeth’s wedding.

It’s possible these stories aren’t entirely true—that they are, instead, the truth extruded through the melodramatic, yellowish journalistic conventions of their time. But even as fables, they offer some relevant lessons.

From Muki, we learn that the ideal wedding guest is submissive. Making the day a success requires that, to some degree, everyone subsume their needs and join with a larger collective spirit of conviviality. We guests arrive when we’re told to. We wear what we’re told to. If Abba comes on, we dance to Abba—even subpar Abba, like “Fernando.” We do these things because we care; it’s the Muki in us.

And from Elizabeth, we learn never to piss off the bride and groom. Even as all of us guests work to put our individual feelings aside for the day, we must understand that the bride and groom’s desires can become grotesquely elephantine and should be allowed to carry extra weight.

These are extreme examples, of course. But you are not being asked to festively drink yourself to death. You are being asked to use a hashtag on Instagram. And if you didn’t use the hashtag, and the bride murdered you for it, that would be nuts. So no, I can’t claim you are “required” to use the hashtag. But whatever your objections, using it seems like such a trivial sacrifice. The couple is merely asking for help gathering your photos into a larger virtual collection, easily viewed by them, their guests, and their would-have-been guests (excluded by head count costs, travel expenses, family feuds, and so on).

Hashtags can be dumb. I get it, I do. But this hashtag genuinely feels like a force for good. Like the wedding itself, it’s a mechanism for bringing people together. Why stand in its way?

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Author: Jon Mooallem. Culture

02.10.16

4:35 pm

Christoph Niemann

I’ve declared evenings and weekends a digital holiday. Should I set up an email autoreply to let people know?

Compassion. Sensitivity. Openness. Tolerance. I’d like to think that these are the core values of the Mr. Know-It-All column—the imperturbable foundations on which, every month, I try to build this tiny chapel of words. I’m not going to lie: This job is intimidating! Your questions come ricocheting into my inbox from WIRED HQ, sweeping toward me like a flurry of screeching bats from the mouth of a dark cave. And it’s up to me—only me—to lasso one of those unruly mammal-birds and tame it, transmute it into something more approachable, a gentle, sweetly singing canary whose song is Truth. Admittedly, sometimes it goes better than others. (Like that weird bat-and-canary bit—that one kind of got away from me.) But my feeling is, if I approach your questions with an open heart—if I try to locate, within that cryptic line or two you’ve submitted, some glint of shared humanity and try to understand you—then I cannot fail.

But I don’t understand you. I just don’t. I read your question on Friday evening, after a hectic week. I typically like to get an early jump on knowing-it-all, but I figured—just this once—I could mull over your question all weekend and bang out a thoughtful answer just before it was due. Then I thought to myself: “Why wouldn’t you set up an email autoreply?” I assumed I was missing something.

I fell asleep wondering what it might be—wondering about you. I slept very well. On Saturday I woke up to discover my car was dead in the driveway. I jump-started it. Then my sister-in-law visited. I made some soup. Sunday: took my kids on a hike, learned to use a chain saw, caught a few minutes of The Bourne Ultimatum, cooked a so-so chicken dish.

Now it’s Monday morning. The sun is rising; the column is due. I still don’t understand you. Do you have a justifiable reason to not set up an autoreply? I can’t imagine one. (How much of an inconvenience can it be? It’s automated!) I also wondered if, in a society where we all seem slavishly and often necessarily tied to our devices—where so many of us feel perpetually on call—you worry that your obstinate rejection of email every weekend will come off, to the rest of us, as a preposterous, selfish luxury. Does an automated email responder rub your privilege in our faces?

Yes, maybe a little. But guess what else it does: IT TELLS US YOU’RE NOT THERE. Imagine if I’d reached out to you for clarification on your question on Friday. Now imagine me waiting for a reply, consulting my phone as I continued to turn your question over in my mind. Imagine how that would have colored my weekend—impinged, just a bit, on my enjoyment of my family, my soup, my chainsawing, my Jason Bourne, my chicken. And, as you depleted my various joys with your unresponsiveness all weekend long, imagine how I might have come to resent you for it.

But I don’t resent you. Because, although you say you’ve declared your weekends a digital holiday, you’ve so far only declared it to me. And thanks for that. It saved me some hassle. Me and you are totally cool.

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Author: Jon Mooallem. Culture

02.09.16

4:40 pm

Christoph Niemann

How long should you wait before shutting down someone’s Facebook account after they die?

“This is for all you lovers out there.” That’s how it begins—one of the most existentially horrifying moments in American cinema.

I’m talking about the Enchantment Under the Sea Dance in Back to the Future, in which we see a temporally displaced Marty McFly onstage, sitting in with the band on “Earth Angel” with a guitar, while his teenage parents, George and Lorraine, move toward their first kiss.

This is it: the precise, excruciatingly brief moment in which the cosmos will offer up the possibility for them to fall in love—a doorway they can step through or not step through. But if they do, it’s a straight shot from here through the sinews of the spacetime continuum to marriage, and to Marty’s birth, and to all the circumstances of life that Marty had always mistaken for the one and only, inviolable reality. But he’s wising up now. While traveling through time, he’s learning that his life, like all of our lives, is only an exquisite and provisional fluke—a haphazard product of so many collisions and coincidences that were never guaranteed. Up on the stage, he’s about to be confronted with this truth in a deep and terrible way.

You know the scene, right? It turns on an obnoxious redhead who tells George to “scram,” then cuts in between him and Lorraine and sweeps her away. Slowly, a warped and nightmarish score rises over “Earth Angel.” Marty becomes disoriented, diminished. His strength—his selfhood—is draining out of him as, out on the dance floor, that insufferable ginger cackles and whips Lorraine around like a rag doll. He is dragging Lorraine farther and farther from George—and dragging our universe (or maybe all of this is proof of a multiverse?) farther from its capacity to produce Marty’s life, diverting the sacred headwaters of his personal history.

Marty’s compromised hands batter his guitar, making a discordant mess of “Earth Angel.” He raises one hand and watches it turn … translucent! His face is stupefied, powerless. Somehow Michael J. Fox—that cocky scion of 1980s precociousness—pulls it off: this look of violated innocence and panic, of a carefree boy suddenly thrown down and dying on the battlefield of time.

What is happening to Marty? Doc Brown has already explained the process: Marty is being “erased from existence.” Stop and think about those words for a second. They are horrifying. (A thrash metal band from Belfast called Scimitar even wrote an abrasive, ear-­pummeling song called “Erased from Existence,” inspired by this scene. It’s very hard to listen to.) But the worst part isn’t even that Marty himself is being erased. The true, piercing horror comes when he looks at the photograph slipped through the strings of his guitar: the one of his brother and sister and him standing against a low rock wall. Earlier in the film we’ve seen the images of his two siblings vanish from that photo, and now Marty’s image is fading too. This is what it means to be erased from existence. And this is what frightens me most: not just that Marty is vanishing but that all evidence of his life will vanish. No one will know who he was, because—here’s the thing—he wasn’t.

You ask how long you should wait before shutting down the Facebook page of a loved one who’s died. I ask why you’d ever want to delete it. Consider the ripple effects—the many ways their absence would be felt across that platform, on so many other ­people’s pages and their community’s collective, digital memory. Everything the deceased had said, not just on their own page but on others, would be gone. And so would everything people had said to them. They’d be instantaneously untagged from hundreds or even thousands of other people’s photos, exiled into some anonymous interloper status: a nameless human void.

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Source

https://www.wired.com/2017/03/kia-social-media-apps/