#you can see a bit of my sage in the second pic + I know he looks crispy but he is better now 😌

[eevvvaa]

Hello there! 🥰 I'm here for the get-to-know-me ask game 🙌❤️ I would like to know:

cactus ⇢ something you’re currently learning (about)?

sage ⇢ what ‘medium’ of art (poetry, music, fiction, paintings, statues etc.) is the most touching to you? why do you think that is?

camellia ⇢ what were you like when you were younger? do you think you’ve changed a lot?

palm tree ⇢ do you have a fictional villain you shouldn’t like but love regardless?

Sending you a big hug! 😊

Heeeey ! Sorry for answering just now ! 😘

cactus ⇢ something you’re currently learning (about)?

Huuum 🤔Does facing fears and stepping out of my comfort zone counts ? 😂 Because it’s somehting I’ve had to do for a little while now and definitely have to go through in two weeks 😨 

sage ⇢ what ‘medium’ of art (poetry, music, fiction, paintings, statues etc.) is the most touching to you? why do you think that is?

I’m not sure cinema is a ‘medium’ art... but it’s the art that I’m so most reseptive to. The story and actors can moved me but the things that creates something in me the most is the visual. I mean, the colors or the lights. For example, I loved the movie La La Land but not necessarily because of the story but more because of everything that I saw in it.

Like :

Maybe I just love photography, really 🤔😊 Anyway, I don’t know if cinema and movies is a medium art but it’s definitely what’s touching me the most. But of course the music adds emotions and power to the scenes with those beautiful shots ! 🥰

But, if I had to choose one of the arts between paranthesis, maybe I’ll pick painting. I’ve always been so impressed when looking closely to a painting of a landscape, for example. Looking at all the tiny brush strokes that made it look like someone had taken a picture of the sea 😯

camellia ⇢ what were you like when you were younger? do you think you’ve changed a lot?

Oh, I was weird ahah I was a little strange, very sulky when things upset me, sensible and easily offended. Oh and I fell in love easily, having a crush on anyone passing by 🙈 

Well, I think I’ve changed on a few things, I grew up on the whole touchy/easily offended things, I worked on it even if I still take things the wrong way sometimes or sulk for a little moment when something hurts/upsets me. But I make efforts, I swear ! 😅 I’m still strange, a little, I have a weird sense of humor and sometimes I just add weird comments from out of nowhere ahah and I’m wayyyy too into fictional characters comparing to the people I know ! Like, I’m easily into the universe and the characters and read fics about it (now I write some ?!), I daydream constantly, I download pics of the characters/actors and that’s something I always did when I was a kid, I easily got attached to the fictional characters, feeling for them like they were real. Oh and for the ‘fall easily in love’ part ? I don’t actually fall in love with them but I can easily have a crush on people, get attached quickly or think about them even when nothing, nothing at all, happened.

I talked about this here once, but one day I came across a guy in the supermarket, he had only smiled at me and made a happy face because we were both wearing a hat (I know, it’s stupid ahah) and when he had walked passed me in a shelf and I was in his way, he gently put a hand on my shoulder and said “don’t worry, it’s me” when we didn’t know each other at all. And my stomach tightened and I blushed and was like “oh. It’s me. Like, me, even though I don’t know who me is at all. I wanna know who me is, now." And sometimes, when do the grocery shopping, I look around, trying to see if I see him again, somewhere 😂 As a kid, I had a crush on any guy passing by and who showed me a bit of attention or the dorky guy. And now that I’m older, it’s still the case ahah I think it’s reaaaaally easy to hit on me, I’d fall for it in a second and that’s definitely something that is present since I was a kid 😂🙈

So, I think that the kid I was made me the girl I am now, that I still have a lot of similarities with little Eva even if I worked on the flaws a little because I grew up. But my personality is the one I had when I was little, minus the optimism (unfortunately) and adding the anxiety 😬😅

palm tree ⇢ do you have a fictional villain you shouldn’t like but love regardless?

Ah ! I know that I love some vilains or horrible characters but it’s because they are made to be loved. There are vilains that are so horrible or disguting or bad that we can see why we they are so interesting but we don’t necessarily love them. And there are others where we know they are bad and horrible but it’s done in a way where we kinda like them a little ! I’m part of the second option 😶

Like, we can say that Hannibal Lecter is a vilain (I mean... he eats people 😬) but I loooooove his character. My favorite character of Prison Break was T-Bag and he does monstruous things to children ! but he also made me laugh a little, always wanting to team up with the good guys when he's a horrible human being 🙈 But there are other characters that are less horrible that I love, like Kai in The Vampire Diaries or Peter Hale in Teen Wolf. And in Supernatural, for example, I love Lucifer but he’s made to be loved. He can be funny but also scary from time to time, got the gift of the gab and all but he’s made to be loved, somehow. But on the other hand, I absolutely hate Chuck. (or maybe I hate the writers, but that’s another debate ahah) I hate Chuck even though at first I liked him, he was funny but when he turned into a bad guy, I hated him and I don’t think he was necessarily made to be loved when we learned he was the vilain. He was made to be the vilain and that’s all

Does what I’m saying makes sense ? 😅😂

I’m so sorry, my answer was sooooo long !!! But thank you so much for asking, it was fun 😁🥰

Send Me An Ask

#ask game #thank youuuu #avanatural #💕💕

[bataleurs]

european history work! ☕️

#mine #boldlystudy #fivestarstudy #headgirlstudy #heyargo #humscholar #sidhestudies #studyburst studies #studywphe #babystudyblr #new study blog #new studyblr #studyblr #studyspo #my desk #study notes #notespo #study space #study blog #you can see a bit of my sage in the second pic + I know he looks crispy but he is better now 😌

[fizzingwizard]

Episode 32 arrives! It’s, I gotta say, quite an improvement on what we’ve had lately. Quite an improvement. Even so, it’s nothing that’s gonna rock the world... but hey, I was so desperate for something different to happen that y’know what, I’ll take it.

Pic of the week:

A Digimon who just wants to roll around in the grass. Go’way, baddies.

More below!

So as you probably gather... we start with Takeru this week! Haha! Good riddance Taichi! I luv ya but I’ve had enough of ya! Take a break!

jk I totally missed him the whole thirty seconds he wasn’t on screen

Takeru and Patamon are running for their lives, of course! Patamon makes a valiant effort to evolve to protect Takeru but...

... Poor baby. He gave it the ol’ college try but he just ain’t as young as he used to be.

Things look grim until Komondomon shows up with a creepy disembodied hand sticking out of his fur!

Phew, it’s just Sora. Her brilliant plan to rescue Takeru is to grab his arm and drag him along with them... I mean... sure... Whiplash has been proven Not A Thing in this universe so...

After getting rid of their pursuer, the group checks in with the others. I’m reminded of how silly separations feel when you can just communicate with each other by walkie-talkie. Yamato’s been riding Garurumon for a long time now lol. At least we got to see him...

He sweetly encourages Takeru and tells him the best thing he can do to help Patamon with his evolution issues is be there to support him. Then he tells Taichi “I leave Takeru in your case.” Ok sure, like Sora’s not right there...

Taichi: In my care? Should I point out that I already lost one little sibling to the dark side? Nah...

Seriously, though... that’s the current situation. Taichi is actively going over SkullKnightmon to get Hikari back. If Takeru stays with him that just means Takeru gets to go into danger again too. Of course, it seems that the dark side is suddenly uninterested in Takeru and Patamon so... I guess it’s okay 9_9

We then check in with Mimi! Who is being her awesome Mimi-tastic self. Ugh I love her.

Wondered what happened to Golemon. Turns out there was nothing much to worry about because no one loves a macho boxing match like Tachikawa Mimi. If there’s ever a season where these kids grow up, I hope Mimi is like, a big fan of sumo or something.

Taichi: O... kay... well... Mimi sure is... an intersting person...

Agumon: Hey you should make her your girlfriend!

Taichi: what nOOO BAD IDEA ABORT ABORT

Meanwhile, the situation with Jou is, um, questionable to say the least...

(how is keeping that towel on)

Jou: HEEEEELP!!!

Taichi: ... you didn’t hear anything, did you? Me neither. *closes link*

Finally we check in with Koushirou. I’m sure I don’t need to tell you what he says. -__-;

At least we see him get bombed a bit. He’s okay though.

Meanwhile unconscious Patamon gets a visitor from baby angel Lopmon, who tells him about hist lost memories.

He adds that the other legendary warriors have lost their power and it’s up to Patamon and his bond with Takeru to save the world more or less.

He encourages Patamon to find his hope.

Patamon: Who am I? What am I? All before me is dark. I know not what path to take.

The others, having nothing better to do, peep on Patamon’s crisis of faith.

Takeru relates a story about learning to swim and being scared of the water, but Yamato stayed with him so eventually he was able to learn to do it. Aww. Not quite comparable to Hikari’s “I wet the bed and Taichi changed the sheets and then told our parents that he was the one that did it” from the 99 series but still pretty good.

The sweet moment is interrupted by a flash of light! Then dark! Then light! Then dark!

It’s another scary Digimon! Oh dear. It’s Kerberomon. A three-headed Cerberus as I’m sure you figured out. Once again, this show does not how to convey what the stakes are. After everything we’ve been through, it’s hard to take random nobody Digimon as serious as each episode wants us to take them... but it’s obvious from the build up here that Kerberomon’s going to be tough to beat for Reasons.

Greymon gets hit and says, “I let down my guard!” MAYBE DON’T DO THAT THEN

Also it is very windy.

Le ouch. This is the Digimon from earlier whose name I forgot to take down. He’s come back with his friend...

... Scarier-in-the-dark-mon.

They’re surrounded~ Oh noes and whatnot.

Taichi is a bit cool here, clinging to Komondomon’s helmet and directing the battle like a war general. Mostly he’s telling them how to avoid getting hit by Kerberomon’s powerful attacks but I like that we get to see him using his head like this.

What I think is happening here is, Komondomon isn’t as fast as the kids could be if they were on their own, so their speed is hampered and that plus the number of assailants makes this battle tough. I am sure we’re supposed to assume that the reason WarGreymon doesn’t appear is because it takes a lot of energy to bring him out, even though last time he appeared twice in the same episode -.-;

Sora decides to be useful and goes to help Takeru get to safety.

... She is immediately struck by an attack and collapses, badly hurt somehow. This is so dumb. First of all, they don’t even animate her getting hit. There’s a flash and then she’s down. She should at least get to throw herself over Takeru protectively or something. Geez. 90s anime did it so much better. She’s just standing there and gets hit. What, did she forget there was a battle raging around her?

Second, WE ALREADY HAD DAMSEL IN DISTRESS SORA. It was Jou’s motivation to be cool way back when this show was rather more interesting than it has been of late. Why do the boys need Sora to get SERIOUSLY INJURED to be able to fight?? WHY?? Like, Taichi gets caught in the line of fire ALL THE TIME, but he never gets injured to the point where he can’t continue on. (Except for that one time with Devimon but those were exceptional circumstances!)

Like, why are we making Sora so weak?? This is so unnecessary.

I guess Yamato was right by entrusting Takeru to Taichi instead of Sora though...

... Uhhh.... never mind X’D

Taichi: Whew... m-maybe no one saw that...

Our be-bibbed god reappears to offer sage advice.

Patamon recalls his final moments as Seraphimon... being enveloped into darkness.

This is cool - we see his angelic wings turn to demon ones briefly before he slides back to lower levels. Not sure if it means anything but we have been theorizing that Patamon could still be infected by the evil that wounded him in the past.

Patamon then recalls things that happened after he was reborn and I’m reminded for the billionth time how much harder the emotions around Angemon’s death hit in the 99 show...

Suddenly Patamon realizes - his hope is Takeru, and he is Takeru’s hope.

The boys put on their game faces. This is what I mean by Sora really didn’t need to get hurt here. I get that it gives Takeru a reason to be protective, but the thing that evolves Patamon is Patamon’s feelings, the same way Agumon’s feelings were what rescued them from Devimon etc. That’s an interesting thing about this show - the Digimon’s feelings seem as important to evolution as, if not more than, the kids’.

Patamon evolves!! Very creepily! But... not to Angemon!

He becomes Pegasusmon! Who... looks a lot bigger than I remember, even considering Takeru is very small... xD

So this is pretty cool! I’ve been wondering how on earth the show was gonna keep introducing evolutions after already using up so many key players, especially for Taichi. But it looks like Armor Digimon can appear, and that makes me think that we could see all kinds of evolutions for the entire team that we’ve never seen before. I like that idea, but I don’t really know if this show has time for it. Maybe it will just be Pegasusmon and Nefertimon who are available to Takeru and Hikari so the writers can preserve the angels for the most epic moments only. That seems the most likely way things will go here, and the only qualm I have with it is, they’ve played all of Taichi’s cards already, and he’s the main character. He has to have something else in the future...

He attac!!!!

Kerberomon doesn’t last long, although why is wholly inexplicable. What about Pegasusmon gives him the edge when MetalGreymon and Garudamon couldn’t handle it? Is it because he’s an Armor Digimon? That may be it but the show doesn’t bother to explain.

Another thing I’d love to see, if there are gonna be more than just one evolutionary tree for the partners, is the kids actually strategizing when they decide which evolution to use. One of the cool parts of Tamers was the kids actively supporting their partner with skill as well as heart. I don’t think that’s gonna happen in this season, but you know, a girl can dream.

Takeru: Hurray for murder!

The three Digimon work together to put the lid on Kerberomon. Garudamon has the coolest moment. Squash.

Taichi checks on Sora who seems fine now. Grrrrrrrrrrrr.

Aw, but these two really are adorable.

What a sweet ending card T_T I want more of these.

Okay so yeah, this episode was a much needed upper after the stream of “watch Taichi fight random forgettable monsters” episodes we’ve had lately. I’m glad we got it. I still, just, like, why can’t they get the emotional build up right?? I wouldn’t say 99 Adventure did anything insanely unusual in how it treated the various crises the kids faced, but it def did a better job than this show. In 99, they understood the importance of moments of reflection, of talking about things, of showing expressions and how other characters react... And I still feel like this reboot DID do that, at least somewhat better, in the beginning. Like what went down between Yamato and Taichi after Ogremon was killed. That was pretty good.

They’ve totally lost what makes Digimon great. I hope this episode is a sign that they’re gonna take it back, but, my heart just hearts y’all.

Next episode... I’m rather surprised since we are REALLY overdue some face time with Yamato, not to mention Mimi and Jou, but apparently we’re sticking with Taichi. At least it looks lke we’ll get some new plot stuff related to Hikari.

If this all leads up to something that makes sense, I will retract all my complaints, I swear. Except about the gratuitous nonstop fighting. But the rest, I will take back.

Taichi’s determined!! This is Digimon Adventure! Let’s go on a freaking adventure!!

#digimon adventure 2020 #digimon adventure: #digimon adventure reboot #digi spoilers #digimon #fizz watches digimon 2020

[therealsaintscully]

[TJLC] Distracted by AGRA (or the many hints about personification of death in The Six Thatchers)

PLEASE CONSIDER THIS A WORK IN PROGRESS. IT’S NOT PERFECT BUT  I HAVE SOME GOOD IDEAS HERE, I THINK, SO KEEPING IT FOR NOW.

A FEW DISCLAIMERS: - I’m not a native English speaker and this wasn’t betad, so excuse the less-than-perfect English (although you’re about to find out what native language actually is). - I’m very new in the fandom and in reading/writing meta, this would be my second meta post tbh, so excuse the amateurism. - Everything I’m about to write here is based on very quick and easy Google searches. I’m BY NO MEANS AN ACADEMIC! I’m not well versed enough in any form of literary analysis to claim more than that, but perhaps this post will be a breeding ground for new ideas. If you are an academic and you find these interesting - please go ahead and expand on them. - Lastly, this may have been picked up before by other meta writers and if so - I’m not aware of it, as I’m quite new to this fandom.

tl;dr: The Six Thatchers seems to be full of hints about the personification of death and cultural/religious representations of it, in a way that may even hint that that Mary = death, and/or that Moftiss were very preoccupied with the idea while writing it. It should be noted that I find these tidbits interesting in the context of well-established TJLC theories I’ve been reading up on a lot lately, namely EMP and M-Theory. I found these details interesting in the context of reading TST as something that’s happening in Sherlock’s MP as he’s dying and suspecting that Mary is dangerous and perhaps even linked to Moriarty.

AGRA > Samarra > The Four Angels of Death

As these things always go, I’ve been re-watching episodes while researching my WIP fic ‘Turned’. I have this new habit these days of only listening, instead of actually watching the episode in search of a fresh perspective. This time I was blown away, once again, by Sherlock and Mycroft’s conversation about AGRA. It’s a VERY odd conversation considering the topic, and what caught my ear this time was Mycroft mechanically reciting facts about the city of Agra. Why Agra, I asked? What’s so important about it? Nothing, the way I see it. One search led to another and I looked up Samarra, thinking perhaps I’ll find some connection between the two cities, but couldn’t.

The search for Samarra and the parable about it led me to the Appointment in Samarra wiki page, which mentions that the title of the book comes from a retelling of an ancient Mesopotamian tale by W. Somerset Maugham (the source of the next quote is here):

"The Appointment in Samarra" (as retold by W. Somerset Maugham [1933])

The speaker is Death

There was a merchant in Bagdad who sent his servant to market to buy provisions and in a little while the servant came back, white and trembling, and said, Master, just now when I was in the marketplace I was jostled by a woman in the crowd and when I turned I saw it was Death that jostled me. She looked at me and made a threatening gesture, now, lend me your horse, and I will ride away from this city and avoid my fate.  I will go to Samarra and there Death will not find me. The merchant lent him his horse, and the servant mounted it, and he dug his spurs in its flanks and as fast as the horse could gallop he went. Then the merchant went down to the marketplace and he saw me standing in the crowd and he came to me and said, Why did you make a threating getsture to my servant when you saw him this morning? That was not a threatening gesture, I said, it was only a start of surprise.  I was astonished to see him in Bagdad, for I had an appointment with him tonight in Samarra.

There is also a very interesting study guide link from this website, which asks some very interesting questions about tale, such as Maugham’s decision to make Death a non-omniscient narrator of this tale, as well as a woman. I’ll return to Death being referred to as a woman later. However, since I have no expertise in literary readings, I’ll leave it to others who might be to add some more here.

More below the cut:

The version of the story in TST is a bit different; the servant is absent from the tale; it is instead the merchant who has the nighttime appointment with Death in Samarra after being startled to see Death that morning in the Baghdad market. (This note was taking from a wikipedia entry about another - apparently-  very deterministic play by Maugham, Shepey.)

Anyway, the Appointment in Samarra wikipedia mentions that Maugham’s story comes from a much older version recorded in the Babylonian Talmud, Sukkah 53a.

The Talmud is the central text of Rabbinic Judaism. I’m a Hebrew speaking Jew, though an atheist one who isn’t well-read in religious texts at all, but I was intrigued enough to look up the Hebrew Talmud version of the text (in fact it’s originall in Aramaic, but wikipedia offers a Hebrew tranlsation). A quick Google search led me to the wikipedia page about the personification of death, and that’s when things got interesting.

Under the section about the grim reaper in Judaism, a story from the Talmud is mentioned, which seems to be another version of the Appointment in Samarra story. Here’s the story, translated by Google Translate, because I couldn’t find an English version:

The Babylonian Talmud tells of a sage, Rabbi Bibi, the son of Abiy, whose angel of death was often in his company. Rabbi Bibi heard the angel of death ask his emissary to name a woman named Miriam (Mary) who was a hair dresser (the future mother of Jesus). The messenger of death accidentally killed another woman named Miriam (Mary) who was a teacher. The angel of death said to his messenger: "I asked you to kill Miriam the barber and not Miriam the teacher." The messenger of death replied: Then I will bring Miriam the teacher back to life and bring before you Miriam the barber. The angel of death said to him: If you have already brought Miriam the teacher, leave her with me along with the rest of the dead. The angel of death asked his messenger: How did you manage to kill the teacher Miriam even though it was not her time to die? The messenger of death replied: She was killed before an opportunity to kill her - she was fiddling with the stove with ember in her hand to clean the stove. Inadvertently she caused a burn in her leg - and when a person was harmed and his determination of his time to die was undermined - so I had a chance to kill prematurely. The sage, Rabbi Bibi, asked the angel of death: Do you have permission to kill people before their pre-determined time has come? The angel of death answered, "Yes, for it is written, 'There is no one who has perished without judgment.' 

(According to wikipedia, this story is taken from תלמוד בבלי, מסכת חגיגה, דף ד, עמוד ב – דף ה, עמוד א).

AGR(A?M?)

Alright, I said, two Marys, escaping death but then meeting it eventually. It happens.

But as I read on… that Hebrew wikipedia page mentions another personification of death, the angel of death Azarel. Azarel has three ‘colleagues’ (e.g archangel) in Islam (and in some variations, they also exist in Judaism and Christianity): Jibrail (Gabriel), Israfil, commonly thought of as the counterpart of the Judeo-Christian archangel Raphael, and Mīkhā'īl (Michael).

So wait, that’s -- that’s Azarel, Gabriel, Raphael... as in AGR(A)?  Whoa.  That fourth angel mentioned in Islam is Michael - which doesn’t hold up with AGRA - but could that be a coincidence? We’re told two things about BBCSh’s AGRA, but we can’t really know they’re actually true. The first one is that Mary claims it’s her initials, which we later learn is possibly not true - John gets mad realizing it’s another lie. The other thing is that Mary claims to be ‘R’, for Rosamund, but we can’t be sure about that either. However, another cool detail: in Christianity, Raphael is generally associated with an unnamed angel mentioned in the Gospel of John, who stirs the water at the healing pool of Bethesda. Yes - I know, the M really doesn’t fit there, but M really is a character that stands out in the BBCSH universe, doesn’t it?

Moving on to more cultural references of the personification of death the Hebrew wikipedia page offers, note that I haven’t read the first and it’s been years since I watched the second:

Death with Interruptions

In Death with Interruptions by José Saramago, they mention, death is a woman, and she falls in love with one of her future victims. She decides to spare his life: Every time death sends him his letter [notifying him of his imminent death], it gets returned. Death discovers that, without reason, this man has mistakenly not been killed. Although originally intending merely to analyse this man and discover why he is unique, death eventually becomes infatuated with him, so much so that she takes on human form to meet him. Upon visiting the cellist, she plans to personally give him the letter; instead, she falls in love with him, and, by doing so, she becomes even more human-like.

Chess and The Seventh Seal

Another reference is the film The Seventh Seal, about a knight returning from a crusade, and discovers his land his ravaged by plague. The knight encounters Death, whom he challenges to a chess match, believing he can survive as long as the game continues. Does that remind you of any particular promo pics?

What I find interesting in all these references, is that they all seem to deal with questions regarding ‘dealing with death’ that, in the context of EMP for example, can be seen as Sherlock ‘running simulations’ (or asking philosophical questions) on how to deal with his current situations:

- ‘Do you have permission to kill people before their pre-determined time has come’? (Can people time die before their pre-determined time? Can people escape pre-determined death?)

- Can you interrupt death with love? Was Mary supposed to kill John, fell in love with him and thus his death was postponed? Is John still in danger?

- What can one do to postpone death - perhaps challenging it to a game, hoping for survival as you distract it?

Tagging other meta readers/writers who I think might enjoy this ; let me know if you don’t - I won’t tag you again): @sarahthecoat​​, @devoursjohnlock​​ @inevitably-johnlocked​​ @possiblyimbiassed​​ @waitedforgarridebs​​ @tjlcisthenewsexy​​  @loudest-subtext-in-tv​​ @therealsaintscully​ 

#meta #bbc sherlock meta #emp #m-theory #TJLC

[grimelords]

My March playlist is finished! This one is slightly more diverse than usual, swinging all the way from vibraphone jazz to Bhad Bhabie to black metal so I’ve taken the liberty of actually sequencing it properly for you. So if you’ve got 3 hours you can listen to this straight through and be taken for a hell of a ride. No matter what you like I’m sure you’ll find something in here that you love.

Tahiti - Milt Jackson: For an unknown reason I had a big jazz vibraphone phase this month and when you're talking jazz vibraphone you're talking the Wizard Of The Vibes himself, Milt Jackson. I feel insane even having an opinion on this but it's a shame that some of the best vibraphone performances were made at a time when the actual recording technology wasn't really there, they all have this very thin quality that I think misses a lot of the great character of the instrument.

Detour - Bill Le Sage: Like compare this from 1971 to Wizard Of The Vibes from 1952, the sounds is miles warmer and gives so much more of the full range and detail of the instrument. I also listened to this song five times in a row when I first heard it, the central refrain is just so fuckin good. Like I said, big vibes vibe and who knows why.

Blowin' The Blues Away - Buddy Rich And His Sextet: Superhuman playing aside, it's unbelievable how good these drums sound. The whole first minute just feels like a tour of each specific drum and I absolutely revel in it. I feel like flute and vibes is a relatively rare combo so it's extremely nice to hear Sam Most and Mike Manieri go ham in tandem.

Yama Yama - Yamasuki Singers: A friend sent me this song that he's had stuck in his head for ten years ever since it was in a beer ad from the days when beer ads were incredible strange for complicated legal reasons about not showing people enjoying the product or something https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ORfkh0OojxY and this incredible song is apparently from a 1971 French concept album where a couple of guys wrote a bunch of psychedelic songs in Japanese for an unknown reason that later became a massive drum and bass breaks album, and one of the guys was Thomas Bangalter from Daft Punk's dad! Music is crazy.

Alfonso Muskedunder - Todd Terje: I'm starting a petition to get Todd Terje to write the soundtrack for the next Mario Kart. I absolutely love this song and this whole album because it's so joyful and strange and it just sounds like nothing else I've ever heard. He seem to truly operate in a world entirely of his own.

Pala - Roland Tings: I love this song. It's like he wrote it with normal sounds and then went back and replaced every instrument with the party version. This song hands you a coconut and says welcome to the island where bad vibes are punishable by firing squad.

Keygen 13 - Haze Edit - Dubmood: There's a fucking album of keygen music on spotify and it's absolutely great and so good that someone's doing the work to recognize the value of the music this extremely weird scene produced and preserve it. If you don't know, back in the day when you pirated photoshop or whatever, you would download a license key generator which was a program made by extreme nerds who had cracked the license key algorithm to give you a fake one, and for unknown reasons they would make the keygen program play original chiptune music that someone in their nerd crew would compose. Who knows why but god bless them.

My Moon My Man (Boys Noize Remix) - Feist: The very concept of a Boys Noize remix of My Moon My Man is hilarious and it turns out it sounds absolutely amazing as well. Two great tastes that taste great together.

Low Blows - Meg Mac: I had a big Meg Mac phase this month too, listened to her album a lot and it's extremely solid. Great timing too cause her new one comes out in a month or so too. I really am excited to hear her next album because she's so good but I've always got this feeling that she hasn't reached her full potential yet, she's only going to get a million times better in an album or two.

Patience - Tame Impala: I love that the cover of this single is a pic of congas because it feels like that's the central thesis here. Kevin Parker bought some congas and is making disco Tame Impala now and I really couldn't be happier about it.

Unconditional (feat. Kitten) - Touch Sensitive: I love a 90s throwback done with love. There's nothing cynical or ironic about this it's just fun as hell!

Last Hurrah - Bebe Rexha: Get a fucking load of this Bebe Rexha song that interpolates Buy U A Drank by T-Pain for the chorus! It's a testament to how good that song is that she's using the verse melody as the chorus. T-Pain will quite literally never get the respect he deserves. Also this song goes for 2.5 minutes. There's something happening where pop songwriting is getting more and more compact, completely trimming the fat and ornamentation and it's very interesting.

Hi Bich - Bad Bhabie: Also I'm fully six months late on Hi Bich but I'm of the opinion that it's extremely fucking good. A perfect little reaction gif of a song and it only goes for 1m45!

Friends - Flume: I'm doubling down on my thesis about emo rap from last month but this song literally sounds like a Flume remix of a Hawthorne Heights song. The whole melody of it, the overlapping yelled/clean vocals. The lyrics obviously. I don't know it's just very odd how close it is. A sort of emo trojan horse to trick people into thinking The Used are cool again. 

How To Build A Relationship (feat. JPEGMAFIA) - Flume: I've been meaning to check out JPEGMAFIA (AKA Buttermilk Jesus AKA DJ Half-Court Violation AKA Lil' World Cup) for a while but this is the song that convinced me. There's just so much to digest in this. Every line is gold and delivered with massive conviction even when he realises it's total nonsense like 'dont call me unless I gave you my number'.

Bells & Circles (feat. Iggy Pop) - Underworld: Underworld alive 2019?? I love this song becuase Iggy Pop has been riding a fine line between punk provocateur and old man yells at cloud for a while now and this song is the perfect mix of both. You can't hijack airplanes and redirect them to cuba anymore and as a result it's over for liberal democracies. Just yelling about air travel for six minutes and it's good.

Guns Blazing (Drums Of Death Pt. 1) - UNKLE: This beat is some of my favourite DJ Shadow work I think. The menacing organ bass throughout, and especially the distorted drum freakout near the end. It's just great all the way through.

Homo Deus IV - Deantoni Parks: Another Deantoni Parks track like I was raving about last month. This whole album is great and flows together as a single piece of work amazingly. I love the purposefully limited sample palette of each track forcing an evolving groove throughout. He absolutely wrings every bit of variation he can get out of every single sound he uses and once you get into the groove of it it's absolutely mind blowing.

Boredom - The Drones: I love that The Drones can write a song about joining ISIS that's also a lot of fun. Spelling out radicalization in a way anyone can understand and sympathise with and then switching it in the second verse to spell out how we got into this situation anyway. 

Loinclothing - Hunters And Collectors: I love how much this song sounds like a voodoo celebration in christian hell.

The Fun Machine Took A Shit And Died - Queens Of The Stone Age: There's a good bit on the live dvd they put out after Lullabies To Paralyze where they play this song and they say it was supposed to be on the album but somebody stole the master recordings from the studio, which is an incredible and brazen crime. Then when they put it out on Era Vulgaris as a bonus track Josh Homme said in an interview "The tapes got lost. Actually, they were just at another studio, but we falsely accused everyone in the world of theft" which is extremely funny. This is really one of their best songs and I sort of really with it had been on Lullabies because it fits perfectly between The Blood Is Love and Someone's In The Wolf type of vibes, I love how it just kind of keeps shifting ideas and riffs throughout. An absolute jam overflowing with ideas.

10AM Automatic - The Black Keys: This song is an all time great in my opinion. It's so straightforward and so effective. I wonder if we'll get a blues rock revival ever or if Jack White still being alive and bad is souring everyone on that idea. This song also has one of my favourite guitar sounds in history I think - the outrageously huge sounding solo that comes out of nowhere and swallows up the rest of the mix like a swirling black hole near the end.

Gamma Knife - King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard: I've never gotten much into King Gizzard and because of their one million albums already it's hard to know where to start but I've been listening to Nonagon Infinity a bit and it's great, it's just good old fashioned 70s prog jams front to back.

Gina Works At Hearts - DZ Deathrays: I absolutely love this song and I absolutely love the second guitar sound in the chorus of this song that sounds like it's made out of thin steel.

Black Brick - Deafheaven: When I saw Deafheaven the other month I was right up the front and it was a life changingly great experience AND they played this new song live for the first time before it went up everywhere like three hours later which was very exciting to be given a sclusie like that. After they finished a guy behind me whispered to his friend "Slayer..." which was very funny to me.

Gemini - Elder: I found this band because one of my Spotify Daily Mixes was all stoner metal for a while, which is a good genre to see all lined up because it'll have Weedeater, Bongripper AND Uncle Acid & The Deadbeats right there in a row for you. Anyway this album is extremely good, the very best kind of stoner metal where it's groovy and fun and has big meaty riffs and ripping big solos and it's extremely easy to listen to three times in a row.

The Paradise Gallows - Inter Arma: My big obsession the past little while has been Inter Arma ever since Stereogum posted The Atavist's Meridian from their new album. It is just so fucking good and I can't believe I've never heard of them before. You know when you find out about an amazing band and then you find out they've been around for nearly ten years and you can't believe everyone in your life has been selfishly hiding them from you?

The Atavist's Meridian - Inter Arma: I think a big part of my enjoyment of this band has also been that I discovered them at the same time as I'm listening to an audiobook of the complete Conan The Barbarian omnibus so I'm very much in the brain space for music that sounds like it would be nice to swing an axe to.

Untoward Evocation - Impetuous Ritual: I love how halfway through this kind of just turns into a big swirling mist of dark sounds. It feels so formless and dark that it could just shake apart and dissipate at any moment and you'd look down to realise your skin is gone.

Eagle On A Pole - Conor Oberst: from Genius: 'In an interview with MTV news, Oberst stated “We were on the bus one day and a friend of ours that travels with us and works for the band kind of came out from the back of the bus and said that first line: ‘Saw an eagle on a pole… I think it was an eagle.’ And then this guy Simon Joyner, who is a great songwriter from Omaha and one of my great friends, he was on tour with us and sitting there and he was like, ‘You know, that’s a great name for a song.’ We kind of had a contest where he wrote a song with that first line, and [then] I did, and a couple of our other friends. We kind of all played them for each other. Simon’s is better than mine, but it is a good line to start a song.” Another version–Mystic Valley Band drummer Jason Boesel’s interpretation–is on the next album, Outer South.' The idea that such a good song has such a braindead origin only makes me love it more.

Lake Marie - John Prine: When I saw John Prine the other month he played this song that I had never heard before and I had to look it up after and now I'm completely obsessed with it. It feels like falling asleep during a movie and missing a critical plot point so the rest doesn't make sense when you wake up but is thrilling nonetheless. Also he absolutely screamed "SHADOWS!!!" when he played it which was a fucking cool thing to see a 72 year old man do.

Little White Dove - Jenny Lewis: The drums on this whole album are absolutely huge for some reason and I love it. My favourite recent sound is in the first chorus where there's a funny little pitch correction noise as she sings 'dove'. It's very strange and very very good.

Locked Up - The Ocean Party: I only found out The Ocean Party existed as they announced their farewell show this month which is a real shame but I'm glad I got to hear of them at all because they're very good. A very good song about that feeling we all know and love: driving for a long long time.

Plain & Sane & Simple Melody - Ted Lucas: I found out about this song from Emma Ruth Rundle's Amoeba Records video and she makes a good point about this whole album sounding like something's gone wrong and it got accidentally pitched down slightly in the recording process. It's unclear if that's what happened or that's just how he sounds but it adds a very softly spooky undercurrent to a very nice song.​ 

listen here

#playlists

[mumblingsage]

brotherhoodoftheslice replied to your post “[[MOR] :D My sub/girlfriend/boytoy is aware of the various posts I...”

I've been enjoying these posts as well! If you're ever inclined, I'd love to know more about your approach to dating apps and profiles, because I've had zero luck as a woman with similar interests :/

Sage’s Approach to Dating Profiles as a Dominant Woman:

Step 1: Date vanilla guys who asked you out and wonder why you’re not more excited about life

Step 2: Let your sister badger you into starting an OKCupid profile (for the sake of example)

Step 3: Pick profile photos that make you look well-rounded, put your best qualities forward, etc. Bonus points I think if you can look a little distinctive so you stand out from possible herds of similar people on OKCupid. In 75% of my profile pics I’m in some sort of costume; in my “civilian” clothes I’m at my volunteer work and grinning into the camera with a direct but friendly gaze.

Step 4: Fill out the profile bits. Don’t mention you’re kinky until like the 3rd or 4th question (well...it’s how I did it. Not saying it’s what works best. My sister suggests that you say the magic words “dominant/top/etc” in answer to the OKCupid question “What’s the most personal thing you’re willing to admit?”)

Step 5: Answer soooo many of the compatibility questions. Just lose an afternoon of your life answering them. (Again, how I did it. Not actually saying you should.)

Step 6: Regularly browse possible matches. Send messages to those you’d really like to know better. 

Step 7: Notice one possible match has an interesting name and uncanny resemblance to Tom Hiddleston in his profile pic

Step 8: Click profile, see second word of it is “submissive”. Slam that like button (after reading the rest of the profile). Discover you and this ethereal vision have mutually liked each other. Squee and hide because good things happening is scary.

[So what worked for my sub was: nice profile pic, interesting name--helps if you’re the kind of weirdo who chooses your own name, as he is--and put your kink orientation in the first 3 words of the profile.]

Step 9: Get a message from the submissive ethereal vision asking about books you like.

Step 10: Keep talking about books until the vision makes a throwaway comment about being submissive, pounce on that.

Step 11: Ask to book club date. Enjoy it.

Step 12: Ask to follow-up date for sushi.

Step 13: Go collar shopping (we...may have...jumped a little quick on this?)

Step 14: Post on Tumblr all about it.

Oh, I missed the step in there--6.5 or so--where you have a mild breakdown in your therapist’s appointment, have your therapist suggest you give searching for dates a break since if you’re not enthusiastic you won’t find it profitable, text your sister in confusion and despair, and get her feedback to the effect that “Dating actually doesn’t feel like work when it’s with someone you genuinely enjoy being around” which just completely took the pressure off. 

Boiling that down into 3-4 tips, it’d be:

1. Include kink in your list of interests, but don’t make it your *only* interest on your profile. Consider bits of info about you that can make good conversational openers (and when contacting other people you’re interested in, read their profiles to find a conversational opener. It doesn’t need to be smooth. My sub literally contacted me with “What are your favorite science fiction novels? Mine are X, Y, and Z.” He’s silver-tongued in other circumstances but that opening message was refreshingly unpolished and got the ball rolling.) 

2. Answer as many compatibility questions as you can; whatever weird magic goes into those really does seem to work.

3. “Like” people you genuinely feel a spark of interest in/attraction toward. Don’t like people just to like them. I guess...”don’t make an effort” is actually my advice here. As someone put it, “With the right person, you can’t do anything wrong; with the wrong person, you can’t do anything right.”

4. It does help to be lucky, and might help to have my sister as a sister/dating coach? In lieu of her I guess you have me. I wish you the best of luck!

5. Actually, other advice from my sister: “You don’t need to prove the kind of relationship you want is popular; you only need to find one other person who also wants it”; “The ratio of dominant women to submissive men* is in the ladies’ favor, and submission makes any boy more attractive” 

[*For that matter, I’m bi and listed as such on OKCupid so I got a fair bit of attention from cute girls as well! Also I checked the “don’t see or be seen by straight people” and checked *every* other gender & sexuality option, which may have helped narrow things down to find my bisexual bigender boytoy/girlfriend.] 

Then again the story of how my sis got *her* current submissive is a) not mine to tell but b) a bit more interesting than meeting on OKCupid. But she did find a fair number of cool people through the site was well. I suspect non-monogamy worked in our favor a bit too, but there are plenty of monogamous kinksters as well (and at the moment I’m monogamous in practice because this wonderful relationship is, emotionally, a lot). 

#brotherhoodoftheslice #long post #life and times of sage

[klanced]

here are all my dnd episode hot takes bc i love it so much

I’m guessing that, besides being the team’s mascot/furry, Lance also functions as a tracker of sorts. 

His posture (squatting on the ground), the fact that he looks like he’s holding something (like mayhaps a scooped up bit of dirt), the way he’s looking over his shoulder as he gives the team his Opinion, the way they all seem decidedly unimpressed at his deductions considering he only sniffed dirt- Fantasy Tracker™, Babey!

Anyway, going off that, it looks like the party is trying to track something (a monster? Lotor’s character? Keith’s?).

I bet Pidge’s armor makes her super top-heavy. If she fell over, she’d look like a turtle on its back.

Also I can’t get over her CHICKEN ARMS and her BIGASS double-bladed axe like. She really is going all out huh.

I’m also digging the fact that Shiro is wearing a full-on black cloak in the middle of a somewhat sunny forest while hanging with his crew. King of wishing he stayed home! King of withdrawing from others!

I’m already in love with this episode like this is DEFINITELY going to be one of my top five favorite episodes. I feel it in my nerd loving bones.

I sincerely hope that whatever their riding is some big scary monster that scared the pants off everyone except for Allura, who immediately befriended it. Bonus points if there’s a scene where she rubs its tummy.

Maybe it’s some personification/manifestation of the White Lion? Idk, I never finished Season 5 so I don’t really know what’s up with Allura and the White Lion, but this could be a reference to that ep.

I saw a post where someone said that could be Keith’s character which is hilarious and I fully endorse.

... Y’know what? I bet whatever the team is tracking in the first pic ends up being the animal they’re riding in the second.

This is your daily reminder that I am a BIG lesbian who is in LOVE with Allura! 

LIKE HELLO? THE PURPLE BODYSUIT? FLAWLESS. THE HAIR? CURLED AND FLOWING. HER EARS? POINTER THAN HER ARROWS, AND TWICE AS DEADLY. LEGOLAS SAW HER OUT OF THE CORNER OF HIS EYE AND IMMEDIATELY WENT HOME.

I love her.

But seriously, just LOOK at her. She woke up that morning and she decided that yes, actually, she IS going to be That Bitch™! She’s winning the award for best dressed, and she damn well knows it.

I’m also still not over that one curled bang like UGH. YES. And the purple theme she’s rocking?? The way they almost match her pastel glowing marks? Her arrow feathers???? Cupid lined up the shot at my heart, and Her aim was true!

Correct me if I’m wrong, but aren’t Allura’s eyes a bit bluer than normal??? Are these.... Fantasy Contacts™?

This is pure speculation, but in my opinion it looks like Allura’s character isn’t a princess. Her armory is fancy, but she lacks Allura’s usual “crown” (it’s not really a crown, but I can’t find the proper word for it lol). Which is interesting! And if true, would confirm some of my meta on Allura lol.

........... I just realized that Hunk isn’t actually bald at the top of his head, but is instead wearing a green hat. And you know what? I’ll take the Rock Lee look over the monk bowl cut any day.

He still looks like Doctor Strange took a vacation in the Earth Kingdom, but y’know what? We still stan. I mean, the beard alone is absolutely legendary, so quite frankly? Hunk’s outfit may be weird as hell, but he still looks good. Case closed! Legends only!

Hunk’s collar is popped because he’s too busy mmmmmmmmmmblockin out the haters.

His belly button is glowing. Absolute legends only.

Also what the hell, Hunk’s sideburns look so good??? His Fantasy Barber™ is a god????? Like OOF, that cut? That fade? Can he please call his barber and ask them to fix Kuron’s hair?? Lol.

Hunk lookes like he’s playing as some kind of monk/sage class, which really tickles my fancy because Hunk as a defensive magic user is (Allura voice) absolutely divine. I mean, just look at that staff! He could either heal you or hurt you with that borderline club, let’s leave it at that.

The longer I stare at his beard the more unbelievable it gets. How did he cultivate such a majestic lock of hair? He has absolutely no facial except for this single 1″ by 1″ square. Hunk is incredibly powerful.

Voltron really wants me dead, huh. Like, they want to loot my wallet from my cold dead corpse and spend my last two dollars at Starbucks. That’s the only explanation for... this.

He looks like if Kaden from Fire Emblem Fates had a baby with Odd from Code Lyoko and that baby raided the closet of Mako from Legend of Korra.

If he has a tail, I will go full on nuclear winter, mark my fucking words.

If his ears so much as TWITCH I will really lose it I am not joking. Voltron has gone TOO FAR, and I will be the one to end it.

Okay I might be imagining things but in the picture on the left, it looks like Lance still has a right earlobe/right ear, so uh. What’s up with that. Does Lance just have four goddamn ears. Are his furry ears fake? Oh my god, is Lance faking being furry kin?

If he has claws tho, I can accept that because that’s cool as hell. I’ll also tolerate Lance having sharp canines, but only if he’s constantly biting his tongue lol.

Lance is wearing quite a bit of jewelry for someone whose clothes look like shit which begs the question of how... he has them. 

If Voltron makes Lance’s dnd character a thief we riot.

Also his facial markings look like Krolia’s which is either a funny coincidence, OR the dnd episode takes place after Keith reunites with the team and introduces them to Krolia, and Lance’s markings are inspired by hers. Which is cute.

I honestly cannot tell if she’s wearing a furry cape or if that’s just her hair, but either way I’m loving it. You go, you fierce little warrior you!

I JUST NOTICED THAT HER SHOULDERS ARE AS BROAD/BROADER THAN HUNK’S NOW GHSKDGHDJGSDGDS

I mentioned this in a different post but I genuinely thought Pidge was going to be a rogue or some sort of magic user, so DPS/Tank Pidge has completely blindsided me and I’m loving every second of it.

Pidge doesn’t roleplay based on her actual self and personality. No, she’s creating Fantasy Pidge™ for a Fantasy World™ which means living out every wild dream she’s ever had!!! She’s chaotic neutral bitch and LOVING it.

She has a DOUBLE-BLADED AXE and it it’s not at least 3/4 her size then what, pray tell, is the point. I want Pidge to heft her axe around like it’s nothing, and then when she puts it down it literally shakes the ground. That’s the ultimate power move.

Lance being a goddamn furry PROVES the existence of other Fantasy Races™ so fingers crossed that Pidge decides to play a dwarven character to explain why she’s so short ghdkjsghdkjs

Pidge looks so happy in the second pic. This really is the best day of her life. 

(ZOOMS IN ON THE SECOND PICTURE) YO IS THAT A CROWN???? 👀👀

Okay but seriously, if Shiro’s character is a prince/king I will EXPLODE!!!! Let Shiro make a dnd character with an unnecessarily tragic and dramatic backstory!! Let Shiro roleplay as a prince on a mission to avenge his fallen kingdom and free his people!!!!!!!!!!!!!

That would also explain why Shiro is constantly wearing a black cloak and hiding his beautiful, perfect face. Because he’s on the run and has to stay undercover, bitch!

NGL, I’m a lesbian but I stared at the second picture of Shiro for a good ten seconds. Mostly because Shiro’s hair looks really, really good, and it’s a balm to my eyes after season 4 and 5.

Also, I just realized, his crown/coronet/WHATEVER is in the same place/represents his tuft of white hair! You can see this most clearly in the first pic :3c That’s so cute!

I’ll admit, I’m a little disappointed because at first, I thought Shiro was wielding a gigantic two-handed sword, which is absolutely badass and kickass. However, on closer examination I can see what looks to be a shield strapped to Shiro’s back (apparently over the cloak, which is weird lol), so Shiro most likely wields a so-called “one-handed” sword.

I won’t lie, for a hot second I thought Shiro might be wielding a club or something because I couldn’t see a sword hilt, but if you look at the left picture really closely, you can see what looks to be a black sword hilt. I did some googling, because swords are cool, and I’d guess Shiro’s sword is based off a knightly sword.

#voltron #allura #pidge #hunk #lance #shiro #voltron spoilers #long post #REALLY long post lol #image #shitpost #caps #header text #italics

[one-of-us-blog]

Die Another Day (2002)

Today Drew is forced to watch and recap 2002’s Die Another Day, the twentieth James Bond adventure. Bond is captured and tortured by some bad guys, and now 007 is out for revenge! Can Bond handle going rogue, or will MI6 shut down his quest for vengeance before it can even begin? Will Bond find those responsible for his imprisonment? Why is it so sunny in here?

Keep reading to find out…

Eli, I loved your last two recaps so much! I know there was a stretch of less-than-stellar episodes for you to wade through, but I’m so glad you enjoyed these last two romps! I still can’t believe how close you are to the end of the show, but, speaking of, I’m close to the end of an era myself. This is the final Bond film before the big reboot, and it’s crazy to think of how far we’ve come over the course of this blog! I can’t stand it anymore, the anticipation has me way too excited to lay out any other preamble!

Buttocks tight!

Screenplay by Neal Purvis & Robert Wade, film directed by Lee Tamahori

We start with a shockingly three-dimensional gun barrel sequence, and then we jump to the coast of Pukch’ŏng County, North Korea. Bond, alongside two of his fellow MI6 agents, surf into North Korea and attract the attention of a helicopter, which they quickly commandeer. This helicopter was bound for the headquarters of Colonel Tan-Sun Moon (Will Yun Lee), located in the Korean demilitarized zone, and Bond soon arrives after placing some explosives in a suitcase full of diamonds that the helicopter’s original passenger was transporting. Just to give you an idea of how comically evil a villain Moon is going to be, the first time we see him he’s beating up his anger management therapist for lecturing him. Bond is greeted at Moon’s HQ by the surly Zao, who surreptitiously snaps a pic of 007 when he arrives. Bond and Moon meet, and it’s really driven home that Moon is a rude, crude dude with a bad attitude when it’s revealed he’s trading weapons for African blood diamonds. Moon shows off the weapons Bond’s supposed to get for the blood diamonds, but turns out Zao wasn’t taking Bond’s picture just so he could add it to his scrapbook. He’s done a background check on 007, and since Bond is the worst secret agent in the world it doesn’t take any time at all for Zao to inform Moon of Bond’s true identity. Moon blows up Bond’s helicopter, but he’s distracted by a call from his daddy, General Moon (Kenneth Tsang). He leaves the killing of Bond to Zao while he scrambles to hide all the illegal weapons he’s got in the demilitarized zone before his dad finds them and he gets grounded. Thinking, “Why the hell not?” Bond triggers the explosive in the suitcase full of diamonds, causing and explosion that allows him to escape and results in Zao getting a high-velocity diamond facial. Bond escapes on one of Moon’s hovercrafts (why not) and blows up most of his headquarters before chasing after Moon as he races across the mine-laced demilitarized zone. There’s a lot of shooting, some mines get blown up and Moon fires off a flamethrower for no good reason before Bond and Moon end up on the same hovercraft and Bond kills Moon by driving the hovercraft off a waterfall. Moon’s zaddy arrives, and he’s none too pleased about his dumb kid getting killed.

General Moon has Bond waterboarded while we finally head to the opening credits. This credits sequence is… troubling. Madonna sings out the mediocre techno ballad “Die Another Day” while we’re treated to scenes of Bond being brutally tortured interspersed with CGI ladies comprised of ice, fire and electricity dance around and some scorpions just kind of crawl around and mind their own business. Also diamonds. It’s a mess, and honestly the dime-store techno bassline makes it a little hard for me to get too invested in the vignettes of Bond being beaten and sodomoized with a hot poker by a sexy Korean woman in jackboots.

After what feels like a lifetime this bit is finally over, and a bearded, bedraggled Bond is brought before General Moon. Bond has managed not to break in all the time he’s been held here, and Moon lets him know it’s time for him to go. Bond is taken to a bridge where it seems he’s going to be shot, but then Moon’s goons lower their weapons and we find out this is all actually a prisoner exchange. Bond is being traded for the bedazzled Zao, and the two share pleasantries while they make their way back to their respective governments. On the British side, Bond is greeted by Damian Falco (Michael Madsen) from the NSA and…oh, my stars and garters, could it really be? Dare I dream?

That’s right, folks, Charles Robinson is back, babey!!! And not a moment too soon! I have no doubt he singlehandedly wrestled Zao into custody after Bond was done bonering everything up. Charles Robinson didn’t become the most valuable man in MI6 by being reckless, and he leaves nothing to chance. He has Bond sedated so that he can be checked for any kind of biological weapons. M, no doubt having met with Charles Robinson to mine his formidable intellect, goes to meet with Bond through a sheet of glass. M doesn’t mince words and lets Bond know that if she’d had her druthers he’d still be getting dicked by scorpions back in North Korea. She thinks they paid too high a price for Bond’s freedom by letting Zao go, but Bond didn’t ask to be traded and couldn’t kill himself because he… I don’t know, cut out? ripped out? his cyanide capsule years ago.

M explains that an American prisoner was killed in Bond’s prison a week ago, and they think Bond broke under torture and was mined for intel by the North Koreans. M gives him a vote of confidence by entering his glass prison to let him know she doesn’t think he’ll kill her, but she tells him he’s going for an evaluation and won’t be sent into the field any time soon. Bond… Okay, listen, Bond, like, meditates or something and lowers his heartrate to the point that the monitors he’s hooked up to think he’s dead. Some medical staff rush in to save them, he jolts them with an EKG machine and makes a break for it. Just go with me here.

Bond, now officially gone rogue, heads to a hotel he’s known at and gets a shave, haircut and new suit. The hotel manager, Mr. Chang (Ho Yi), sends up a masseuse to entertain 007, but Bond knows she’s packin’ heat and Chang, who’s actually with Chinese Intelligence (maybe he and Wai Lin have worked together?), is filming him from behind a half-silvered mirror. Bond tells Chang he won’t hold a grudge over all this if Chang can get him into North Korea so he can get his hands on Zao. Chang finds out Zao isn’t in North Korea anymore, though, he’s in Havana. Bond heads to Cuba and meets up with a British sleeper agent/cigar factory owner, Raoul (Emilio Echevarría). Raoul lets Bond know he can find Zao on an island which sports and unusual gene therapy clinic. Bond heads to a hotel which sports a view of the strange island, and there he catches sight of Giacinta “Jinx” Johnson (Halle Berry), who emerges from the ocean like the second coming of Honey Ryder.

Bond and Johnson seem to really hit it off, by which I mean they immediately hit the sheets, but the next morning Bond is left alone as Johnson sets sail for the clinic on Isla Los Organos. Bond knocks out another hotel guest and uses his ticket to get a ride to the island as well. He loads his new unconscious friend into a wheelchair and brings him along to the island, where he causes a distraction by hurling the man and his chair into a wall. He then finds a secret, mirror-lined passage and slinks his way through. Johnson, meanwhile, is apparently getting a consultation for gene therapy. Just kidding, though, she immediately kills the doctor, burns the evidence of her being there and lets us know she’s definitely a spy.

Bond finds Zao in the middle of a procedure that’s meant to rewrite his DNA to make him look like a white dude right as Johnson finds Zao’s file an stops the procedure right in the middle of things and leaves Zao looking like a naked mole rat of a man. Zao wakes up and he and Bond fight, but Zao gets away while Johnson sets off a bomb to shut down the whole facility. Bond and Johnson both chase after Zao, but he gets away in a helicopter. Johnson is almost killed by some guards, who don’t seem to notice Bond, but she avoids death by disrobing and then cliff diving down to an awaiting speedboat. Bond examines a bullet which Zao was wearing as a fun, festive necklace until Bond yoinked it off during their fight. Inside the bullet are some diamonds, which Bond has Raoul examine. The diamonds are being sold by Gustav Graves, who alleges to have found them in Iceland a year ago despite Raoul being able to definitively identify them (somehow) as African blood diamonds. Hey, that sounds familiar!

Who cares about all of that, though, because the most important man in MI6, Charles Robinson, arrives at work just in time to catch Miss Moneypenny spying on a conversation between M and Falco from the NSA. Falco thinks M played a part in Bond’s escape, and Charles Robinson sagely watches on as M shoulders the weight of Falco’s threats to make things right at MI6. Bond, meanwhile looks some stuff on Gustav Graves (Toby Stephens), who makes an interest by parachuting down to meet up with his publicist Miranda Frost (Rosamund Pike) in front of a bunch of reporters (and Bond). Bond tracks Graves and Frost to a fencing… club? academy? class? I don’t know. It’s hosted by Verity (Madonna in the cameo no one asked for), who introduces Bond to Graves. Bond, despite being on the run from MI6 and, like, a secret agent, uses his real name because why not.

Bond and Graves immediately get into a cock measuring contest via proxy in the form of a fencing match, during which Bond lets Graves know he’s figured out that Graves is selling blood diamonds. Graves challenges Bond to up the stakes and the two start fighting with real swords and completely wrecking Verity’s swordfight clubhouse. Frost eventually breaks up the fight and Graves invites Bonds to a science demonstration. A bellboy gives Bond a mysterious envelope with a key in it, and he goes to an abandoned subway station to meet up with M. M’s not here to capture Bond, though, she just wants to compare notes on Graves. M warns Bond about Graves’ political connections and agrees to give him some unsanctioned help.

Bond arrives at MI6, only to find Moneypenny dead from a gunshot to the head. He takes out several attackers and is joined by Charles Robinson himself, so you just know everything’s going to be alright. But then the unthinkable, the impossible, the inconceivable happens and Charles Robinson, the unshakable foundation upon which the stability of the British government rests, is gunned down. No, I can’t accept it! I won’t! And I don’t have to, because this is all a training session taking place in the VR Zone. C’mon, you know a Q-Branch simulation is the only place a facsimile of Charles Robinson could ever be bested! Q (née R) brings Bond safely out of the VR Zone and takes him to his workshop in the subway, where Bond proceeds to touch everything like a five-year-old at a toy store. Bond is outfitted with a sonic ring that can smash unbreakable glass and, get ready for this, a car that turn invisible.

We’re due for a twist, so we get to sit in on a meeting with M and Frost, who, it turns out, is an MI6 agent spying on Graves. Frost things Graves will blow her cover, but M says that in all her time spying on Graves Frost has turned up dick all and M wants Bond to go in and shake some shit up a bit. Bond heads to Graves’ ice palace in Iceland where he’s greeted by the imaginatively named Mr. Kil (Lawrence Makoare) before Graves scoots up in his super speedy sled car thing. We get another mention of Graves never sleeping, which is a thing that just keeps getting brought up. The famous Jinx Johnson arrives while Bond heads to the bar before his DTs can get too out of hand. Bond and Johnson meet up while Zao arrives at the ice palace. He pulls Graves out of a crazy dream machine which he has to use to stay sane due to his permanent insomnia, and it turns out Graves is actually Moon post-gene alteration.

The shindig finally gets underway and Graves unveils Icarus, a satellite which can reflect Sol’s light toward Earth and function as a second sun. Bond hides out in his magical invisible car so he can snoop around in Graves’ private business, but immediately gets caught because he’s just no good at stealth. Frost saves Bond from being discovered by Mr. Kil by making out with him while Johnson Mission Impossibles her way into Graves’ inner sanctum. While Frost and Bond are busy getting busy, Johnson is doing some actual work. Unfortunately she finds Zao waiting in Graves’ dream machine instead of Graves himself, who sneaks up behind her and electrocutes her with a souped-up Power Glove.

Zao and Mr. Kil interrogate Johnson, but she ain’t a canary and she ain’t in the mood to sing, so Zao leaves Mr. Kil to slice her up with a mining laser (paging Dr. Goldfinger). Bond finally arrives at Graves’ greenhouse lair in time to save Johnson, but first he has to deal with Mr. Kil. Bond gets his ass handed to him, but the still-restrained Johnson manages to kill Mr. Kil with the mining laser. Bond sends Johnson off to find Frost and get in touch with MI6 while Bond confronts Graves and reveal he finally knows the dude is actually Moon. Frost arrives, only to turn her gun on Bond. Turns out Frost set Bond up in North Korea and she’s been a double agent the whole time. Frost is about to execute Bond, but luckily he’s got his glass-shattering ring which allows him to… well, shatter some glass. Specifically the glass floor of the green house. You get it.

Bond escapes in Graves’ super sled, but Graves brings in some North Korean generals so he can demonstrate the destructive capability of Icarus to them. Icarus hyper-focuses the sun’s like way beyond what could be useful for a farmer trying to get that sweet wheat all year ‘round, and Bond barely out maneuvers the solar death beam by driving the sled off the side of an ice shelf and using the sled’s anchor (?) to keep himself from falling into the frigid sea. Graves solves this problem by just carving off the whole chunk of ice and making a prophetically topical joke about global warming. Bond survives, though, by jumping into a Nintendo 64 surfing game and shredding away to safety.

Johnson is discovered by Frost and Zao, who inform her she’s going to die… eventually. Bond steals a Ski-Doo and makes it back to the ice palace where he retrieves his inviso-mobile, which is useful for about a minute until another Ski-Doo crashes into it. Zao uses the thermal vision of his own car to spot Bond, and the two set off on a merry chase while the now-abandoned ice castle begins to rumble around Johnson. Graves fires up Icarus and begins to melt the ice palace, but not before Bond crashes into it (the car chase is still going on, BTW). Bond tricks Zao into driving into a pool formed out of melted ice and then shoots a chandelier down onto him instead of just shooting him in the head.

Bond retrieves the almost-drowned Johnson and gets her into the warmth of the greenhouse in time to save her. The two head to a US bunker on the South Korean side of the demilitarized zone where they’re greeted by the one, the only, the legend, the icon, Charles Robinson. With a mind to rival Watson, Charles Robinson lays down the skinny in no time flat. Graves and Frost are in North Korea, and neither the American nor the British governments can go get him before Icarus is used to destroy any of North Korea’s enemies (i.e. everypony). M’s sending in Bond anyway, and Falco decides he needs a reason to be in this movie so he sends Johnson in too. The two are airdropped in, and Charles Robinson, with the sage, cautious wisdom of an old barn owl, worries that they’ll be detected. Falco’s dumbass has the nerve, the gal, the audacity to tell Charles Robinson to “relax”, so you know that sonofabitch has some comeuppance headed his way.

The missiles Falco has sent to destroy Icarus are instantly destroyed by the mirror’s solar laser, because of course they are you dumb stupid idiot. Bond and Johnson, meanwhile, have landed and stowaway on Graves’ plane. Graves calls for his zaddy to be brought down, where he reveals himself in his new white face and shows off a plastic mech suit that allows him to control Icarus via a computer mouse trackball installed in his Power Glove. He fires up Icarus to show off and make his papa proud, but General Moon tells him the other countries will nuke the hell out of North Korea to shut this shit down. Graves doesn’t take paternal rejection well and 86es his dear old dad. Bond tries to shoot Graves but his shot is deflected, resulting in a window getting blown out and the plane violently depressurizing.

Johnson manages to stop the plane from crashing, but then Frost is there to hold her at swordpoint and of course she’s wearing an ornate bra and elbow-length gloves for no damn reason. Who even cares at this point. Icarus’ death beam is still going, by the by, and Charles Robinson, with the time-keeping prowess of the White Rabbit, lets everyone know it’s headed right their way. Johnson flies the plane right into the beam’s path, giving her time to get the better of Frost. Johnson and Frost fight with blades while Bond and Graves just ineffectually punch each other. Johnson eventually gets the better of Frost and kills her (with a very saucy, “Bitch!” thrown in for good measure) while Graves gets the better of Bond and prepares to escape the falling plane. Bond prematurely triggers Graves’ parachute, which results in Graves being sucked into the plane’s engines and most definitely dying.

Bond and Johnson find a helicopter hidden in the plane, Inception style, and manage to ride it out of the exploding plane in time to avoid death by ground. Bond makes what I think has to be a weird 69 joke before the two fly off into the sky with a crate of diamonds in the back of the helicopter.

Moneypenny uses Q’s VR shades to live out a fantasy involving Bond banging her at MI6, because that’s all this movie has to say about her character, but Q interrupts her before she can rub one out. Glad everyone thought this scene definitely needed to be in this already-over-two-hours movie.

Bond and Johnson have sex on top of the stolen diamonds (imagine how uncomfortable that would be) and we’re finally done here.

The End

~~~~~

Woof! I know way back in my introductory post I mentioned that I’d seen this movie (or at least parts of it) at some point in my checkered past, but, lemme tell ya, there was a whole lot that I’d forgotten/suppressed about Die Another Day. Just to start out with some positives, I actually really liked the design of Zao’s diamond-encrusted face, and I really liked seeing Halle Berry here. She didn’t get anything worthy of her talents to work with, but still. Then there were things that started out neat, but didn’t work in the end. I liked Frost a lot when she was introduced, but then she got reduced to a sword-wielding lunatic in a bra for the final conflict with Jinx. Icarus seemed fun, but then I remembered that this is not the first, not the second but the third Brosnan Bond film with a satellite at the heart of its narrative. We had GoldenEye, then Carver’s dumb satellite news network and now Icarus. That’s three out of four Brosnan films with satellites as key players. I love space as much as the next gay, but, I mean, get a new shtick already! Then there’s stuff that was just silly. Bond stopping his heartbeat? The Power Glove? The ice palace? The invisible car? That Madonna song? C’mon. I know you have to suspend disbelief for any of these movies, but jeez louise. And while I know I don’t normally dwell on the technical side of things during my recaps, but the special effects in this movie were very bad. If we weren’t getting some unnecessary slow-mo, we were having shots like the one of Jinx cliff diving or the truly horrendous kiteboarding scene that legitimately made me gasp when it first started. While there were definitely some fun moments and some little touches I liked, on the whole this flick is a mess and a far, far fall from the glory days of GoldenEye.

I feel I can only give Die Another Day QQ on the Five Q Scale.

We’ll see you again in a hot minute as Eli serves up a couple of fresh recaps of the next two episodes of The Golden Palace, “Say Goodbye, Rose” and “You’ve Lost That Livin’ Feeling”, and after that it’ll be time for me to move onto a brand new Bond as I tackle the next James Bond adventure, Casino Royale (and maybe you can look forward to a few special treats before then, who can say?).

Until then, as always, thank you for reading, thank you for analyzing this (Sigmund Freud) and thank you for being One of Us!

#one of us #007 #james bond

[theantibridezilla]

Test Drives: Tarte, e.l.f., NYX, NudeStix & Profusion

So, over the weekend I attended a family wedding and I had an awesome makeup look for it. Unfortunately, we were running behind so I didn’t have a chance to take a pic of my makeup or my new hair color (not the ombre wig from my last beauty post). And since today was a fairly low key day for me, I decided to recreate the look and show off a new hair color. Well, I didn’t do a complete recreation of my wedding guest makeup but I decided to rock a look inspired by something I saw on IG from Jordan Liberty. I’m a pretty big fan of him because I feel like his philosophy is “skin is in”. He barely uses foundation on his models and he doesn’t do any of the over the top IG type makeup tricks, which is really refreshing.

I say “inspired” rather than “recreate” because what I did is definitely a reverse of his and halfway through I decided to do some things differently so this is a loose translation. More importantly, today I finally had some time to test out a few things that have been piling up in my makeup arsenal. We’ll be discussing Tarte’s Shape Tape Contour Concealer, e.l.f. Cosmetics’ Correct & Set Eye Powder, NudeStix’s Nudies, NYX Cosmetics’ Strobe of Genius Illuminating Palette, and Profusion Cosmetics’ Highlight & Contour Palette. As usual, I’ll let you know what I bought and what was gifted to me by the brand, and full makeup details will be at the end.

Tarte Cosmetics Shape Tape Concealer in Tan-Deep (purchased)

So, pretty much everyone loves this concealer and I can see why. It has serious staying power and is perfect for contouring because it doesn’t crease and will last all day. It blends/buffs away very easily and a little can go a long way. It’s a liquid cream so it goes where you need it to and the applicator allows for precision placement as well. I genuinely do like how this does a pretty good job of hiding my under eye bags and dark circles (even when I forgot to use my orange color corrector).

My one gripe with Shape Tape is why in the love of all that’s holy did the product development team at Tarte think that this thing needed to be loaded with cheap fragrance. I really have to wonder what this product smelled like before the fragrance is added that caused everyone who smelled it to think it was too offensive for the product to hit the shelves without it. Although it doesn’t stop me from wanting to use it, I just find adding fragrance to color cosmetics to be strange and very unnecessary.

e.l.f. Cosmetics Correct & Set Eye Powder in Banana/Deep Tone (purchased)

This is e.l.f.’s answer to a flashback-free setting powder that can also double for baking. It’s meant to be a budget friendly accessible option for those who can’t get Ben Nye’s Banana Powder, Sacha Cosmetics’ Buttercup Powder or even Laura Mercier’s setting powder. It’s actually available in three shades to try to meet the needs of multiple skin tones. While I think this is an honorable endeavor, I’m not crazy about this powder.

First, it’s not really yellow but more of a peach-ish shade. And for me, yellow really is preferred if I’m going to prevent the dreaded flashback. This is important because when I bought this in the store last week, the floor assistant made a point of telling me that I could use this for baking. But it’s been my experience as a clearly brown girl, that if I use a setting powder that’s too pale, I get flashback. Second, this is an incredibly small container. At $4, I understand not getting something massive. But it’s so small that if you’re going to bake and use a sponge to apply that powder, good luck getting a sponge with enough surface area to fit into that jar. Third, it left a slight ashen cast to my skin where I applied it (under eyes, bridge of nose, chin & forehead) which was visible under my ring light. So, halfway through taking pics with my ring light, I went back and completely touched up my face with my Laura Mercier setting powder to correct that problem.

Profusion Highlight & Contour Palette (gifted)

About a month ago I finally swatched this palette for review. I liked it, but I remember at the time complaining about how I felt these weren’t richly pigmented. Well I stand corrected! Today I used the Profusion palette in place of my Kevyn Aucoin Flame or Sahara highlight. Profusion is very pigmented, and a little can go a long way. I used the color Baked on my cheekbones, bridge of my nose, chin, cupid’s bow and brow bone. It’s a great, warm gold tone which is in my opinion ideal for warmer skin tones or brown skin girls.

NYX Cosmetics Strobe of Genius Palette (gifted)

Earlier this year, I swatched these colors from NYX and was on the fence about whether I liked them or not. My concern was that the purple shade was a tad pale, and it turns out I was right. It’s not really ideal for warmer skin tones like mine. I ended up looking a bit ashen when I initially applied and I had to buff quite a bit to blend it out so it wasn’t so stark. Although I went on NYX’s site and saw that they also have Strobe of Genius in a warm palette, so that might create better results for people with warmer tones.

NudeStix Nudies in Naughty ‘n Spice (gifted)

I got this from The Makeup Show earlier this year and decided to give it a try. Originally, I was thinking of using this as a lip color because it’s meant to be an all over stick that can double as blush, eye shadow or a lip color. But the dusty rose hue was a bit too stark against the bold blue eye I created. So, for this particular look, it was a no go. I ended up using NYX’s Lip Lingerie in Teddy because it offered a better neutral for me. But I like that this stick is very creamy and even though it offers a matte payoff, it’s also pretty hydrating.

Winners & Losers:

This time e.l.f. and NYX came up short because of too-pale formulations. While I hate the fact that Tarte thinks chemical fragrances are a good idea, I do love the Shape Tape and will be keeping it in my core beauty arsenal. Profusion made me take back my original impression so I’m a believer in them now. And on a day where I’m doing a less colorful eye, I’ll definitely test the NudeStix Nudies again in the hopes that it’ll work with a more neutral eye.

Makeup Details:

Primer: e.l.f. Cosmetics Poreless Finish Face Primer Foundation: NYX Total Control Drop Foundation in Deep Sable Brows: NYX Love Contours All Deep Brown Brow Shade Brow Concealer: ELF Cosmetics Complete Coverage Concealer in Dark Eyeshadow: Lid Base—Makeup Forever (M-600), Lower Lid—Sephora (Blue Lagoon), Lid Crease—Kat Von D Strobe & Light Eye Palette (Sytry), Center Lid—Kevyn Aucoin Electropop Palette (Hardwire), Outer Corner—Pixi Beauty Fairy Dust, Inner Corner—Naked Cosmetics (Sierra Nevada), Lower Liner: Kat Von D Shade & Light Eye Contour Quad in Sage (Define) Eye Liner: Wet ‘n Wild Megalast Liquid Liner in Black Lashes: Kawaii Girl Cosmetics in Odaiba + Ebisu Under Eye & Contour Concealer: Tarte Cosmetics Shape Tape in Tan-Deep Setting Powder: e.l.f. Cosmetics Correct & Set Eye Powder in Banana, Laura Mercier Translucent Loose Setting Powder in Deep Blush: NYX Cosmetics Ombre Blush in Feel the Heat Contour: e.l.f. Cosmetics Aqua Beauty Blush & Bronzer in Bronzed Violet Highlight/Bronzer: Profusion Cosmetics Highlight & Contour Palette, NYX Cosmetics Strobe of Genius Palette. Lips: NYX Cosmetics Lip Lingerie in Teddy

Full disclosure: I’m an influencer for Kevyn Aucoin, Pixi Beauty, and e.l.f. Cosmetics. I am also the owner/founder of Kawaii Girl Cosmetics. Occasionally I post affiliate links so I may receive compensation on some of my posts.

#beauty #makeup review #makeup look #jordan liberty #product review #beauty review #NYX COSMETICS #elf cosmetics #profusion cosmetics #nudestix #tarte cosmetics #makeup for melanin girls #cocoa swatches #bridal beauty #wedding makeup #bridal makeup #bridal #wedding

[forever-dreaming-cullen]

Windy’s Fanfiction Master Post 2018

So, I have gained some new followers lately (thank you all for following!). I am sure that you are all here to see pics of this guy:

And yes, I reblog a lot of Cullen pics. I am in Cullen-hell, as you can see. But, in case you didn’t know, I also write Cullen-fanfic. You can find all of my works on AO3, but I thought I might make a sort-of fic master post on Tumblr for my new followers who may not have read any of my pieces.

Updated with latest fics – 5/7/2018

Call Me Home – a Collection of Drabbles – A collection of drabbles based on Tumblr prompts. This fic will be updated with prompts as I write them. Currently ongoing.

Bound to Burn – Written with Laraslandlockedblues. A trip to Redcliffe to make reparations for the Mage Rebellion brings more complications than expected when rooms run short and the naive Inquisitor finds herself in close quarters with the man she can't possibly ever have - her smirking Commander. Currently ongoing,

Look What You’ve Done to Me -  Inquisitor Brittany loves the sound of her Commander's voice. It's too bad that she doesn't always pay attention to his actual words. He takes exception to her inattention and leaves the War Room in a huff, but she can't leave well enough alone. She visits him in his tower and gets more than she bargained for, and everything she wanted at the same time.

The Strength That Keeps Me Walking –  (Formerly Lavender, Peppermint, Verbena, & Fennel) A retelling of Parsley, Sage, Rosemary, and Thyme from Cullen’s POV. Currently ongoing.

Sin in Heaven – Cullen is a recovering lyrium addict in this modern AU set in modern Thedas. He moves into an affordable apartment, but his roommate turns out to be a drop-dead gorgeous young college student. Can he resist her while he tries to pull his life together, or will he surrender to sin in heaven? Currently ongoing,

 The Intimidating Commander and the Reluctant Messenger: Featuring a female Trevelyan who is a little scared of the stern Commander because she is a Mage and knows he used to be a Templar. This is my first DA fanfic and is quite rough around the edges. I might revisit it someday to expand it into a proper story. Fun fact: this idea came about because when I first played DA-I, I was a little intimidated by Cullen. Lol

Cullen’s Treat: A Trevelyan Mage Inquisitor treats Cullen to a special massage after he’s had a particularly rough week. This came from a Kink-meme prompt, one of the first I did. If you read enough of my stories, then you’ll quickly find out that I enjoy writing about taking care of Cullen, because he deserves it.

It Happened on a Night at Halamshiral: This one-shot came out of a kink-meme prompt about Cullen’s Orlesian admirers getting a bit more forceful with their desires than they do in canon. This story does include non-con sex, so if that triggers you in any way, please do not read this. It was very tough to write, but I am quite proud of this story and feel that it expanded my depth as a writer.

Fall Into Your Sunlight Featuring Cullen and a Female Trevelyan enjoying life after Trespasser. This came about because I was inspired by a Cullen romance video that someone made, and this just spilled out of me. It’s a smutty, fluffy, feel-good fic if you’re into that.

Trying Not To Love You: This is my first attempt at a proper long-ish fic and features a female Mage Trevelyan Inquisitor, and of course, the Commander.Told from the first person perspective of Cullen himself, it tells the story of how he falls in love with his young and beautiful. Inquisitor, even though he knows he shouldn’t. I had fun writing this, so I hope that if you haven’t read it already, you’ll give it a try.

Learning to Please Him: Featuring the same Evelyn and her Commander from Trying Not To Love You, young Evelyn wants to learn how to please Cullen orally. Yes, it’s a blowjob fic. Lol

One Good Turn Deserves Another (Or Cullen Repays the Inquisitor): Again featuring the lovebirds from Trying Not To Love You and Learning to Please Him, this fic is about Cullenlingus, and that’s all I’ll say.

Oil and Fantasy: Cullen takes himself in hand. Enough said.

Oakmoss and Elderflower and The Girl Can’t Help It are related to the headcanon about Cullen using oakmoss and elderflower as a remedy for his aches and pains due to his lyrium withdrawal. This headcanon came out as a result of a snippet of dialogue from an NPC in DA-I multiplayer about how the Commander smells of oakmoss and elderflower. See? I really do love writing about caring for Cullen. His pain makes my heart hurt!

Parsley, Sage, Rosemary, and Thyme: Featuring the OC I created in The Girl Can’t Help It, a healer is assigned to take care of the Commander, and ends up falling in love with him. The problem is, he’s in love with someone else. Is there any hope for healer Eala, or is she doomed to heartbreak? And yes, this fic features copious caring for Cullen. It’s my kink, okay?

And the Stars Belong to Us: This fic is an add-on to Parsley and features Eala and Cullen enjoying some alone time. I wrote it in response to a question I received in the comments of the main fic.

One Night in Skyhold: Another kink-meme related fic, this one features a frustrated Cullen taking what he wants from his beautiful female Trevelyan Inquisitor. She loves it.

In the Heat of Summer: A vague female Inquisitor watches her Commander sparring with the Iron Bull on a hot summer’s day. Cullen is not wearing his shirt. This is a shameless excuse for describing Cullen shirtless. I admit it. I am trash.

A Soft Place to Fall: Umm, this one-shot is set vaguely in modern Thedas and features Cullen and a female Trevelyan letting off some steam together. Cullen is kind of dark in this — IDK — I was listening to a lot of angsty music when I came up with this.

Right Here: This angsty one-shot examines the question of how Cullen would react if Lavellan becomes involved with him after Solas leaves and subsequently marries him in Trespasser only to ultimately abandon him for Solas. This fic features suicide, so if you are sensitive to that subject, please do not read this.

Shiver: The first and only second-person pov fic I have ever written. You and Cullen have some special time alone together. That’s all. ;)

The Commander and His Hand  The Commander releasing a little tension told from his first-person perspective. Yeah, I really am trash.

The Voyeur: This little two-chapter fic started out as a one-shot featuring a young Trevelyan Inquisitor who gets tricked by Sera into entering the Commander’s quarters when he’s not there and winds up seeing him taking care of business. It turned into more when some commenters requested a follow-up chapter. I am so much Cullen-trash, at this point, there is no hope for me.

#my writing #fanfic master post #cullen rutherford

[dramallamadingdang]

Replies!

These go back a bit, because...yeah. *sheepish smile* 

For @elfpuddle, @nimitwinklesims, @penig, @acquiresimoleons, @pixelated-world, @holleyberry, @timeparadoxsims, @pensblr, @an-elegant-simblr, @yarerakai, @celebkiriedhel, @mrningbrd, @princess-arystyl21, and @sim-boo. Whew! :) 

elfpuddle replied to your photoset “By request, here is the “invisible” roads default I made to match my...”

In theory, then, a person could replace the road textures for each terrain with the default textures and have no roads anywhere? Does modding out signs and traffic happen only in lush hoods, or would that need to be repeated as well?

Modding out traffic is a global thing. If you put in that mod I linked to, you’ll have no neighborhood traffic in any of your neighborhoods, so long as the mod is in your downloads. You have to manually remove the intersection stop signs, though. (They’re just neighborhood deco, perfectly OK to remove as you would any other piece of deco.) But yes, you can have a road default for each type of terrain in the game and you can have multiple different ones that you can switch in and out, although you can only have one road default for each terrain type in your game at a time. So, if you use Maxis terrains, you’d just need four road defaults (one for each terrain type) with the road “pieces” painted to match the terrain.

I tried to make a road default that just consisted of all empty, transparent textures, the goal being to make it “universal,” with the roads being invisible on any terrain, but it didn’t look right. So, it is what it is, but, yes, you could take that default and replace the images with ones from any terrain you use in your game to make it match those terrains. Then you can switch your road defaults in and out as needed for different neighborhoods. That’s the nice thing about defaults. :)

elfpuddle replied to your post “Ugh, I’m so far behind on my dashboard, I don’t think I’ll ever catch...”

ICad is not a bad blogger; she needs to take care of herself first and foremost.

Yeah, I know. It just sucks being sort of chronically not-well. I want to do stuff, and the body doesn’t always cooperate. It’d almost be easier if it was always uncooperative, because then I’d get used to it and be resigned to it and learn to live with it, but it isn’t always like that. More often (at least for now) I have energy to spare and feel perfectly healthy, but sometimes I don’t, and I can’t figure out any rhyme or reason to it. If there was a pattern or a cycle to it, like a menstrual cycle sort of thing or if it was related to eating something or not eating something, then I could know what to expect and when. But there isn’t. It’s very frustrating.

Cherish your liver, people! Baby that sucker! 

nimitwinklesims replied to your photo “Ahahahah! A non-ocean (as in no-waves) beach lot! This is something...”

Yay, very cool! As I just built the fisher's shack on a beach lot on a river, I'm just going to pretend the surf comes from the nearby sea... Even though they're on the mouth of the river... Yeah, well. xD But now I know about this trick for next time! \0/

It is a pretty neat thing. And I discovered it completely by accident, too! I just wanted an off-road beach lot, so I did the moving around. I figured that “Beach Lot” option in the Lot Adjuster would turn it into a beach lot, but I figured it’d generate surf, too. But it didn’t, and I was like, “Hey, cool.” But then a test Sim couldn’t swim, and I was like “Bummer!” But then I remembered the beach portals, which I’d used once before, many years ago, on a non-beach lot that edged neighborhood water, and I’m pretty sure that when I used them there, surf was generated. So, I figured the portals would generate surf on this lot, too. But they didn’t, and I was like, “YEEEESSSSSSSS!” *fist pump* Yay, serendipity! :)

penig replied to your photo “And there’s Amelia Shankel, granddaughter of Goopy GilsCarbo and Sandy...”

Maybe the cook used to know her parents and thinks she looks familiar?

Maybe! I mean, it’s the same cook in every dorm, I think, so she would have known Amelia’s parents. And she’ll probably know Amelia’s great-great-great-great-etc.-grandchildren, too. Immortal undead dorm cooks, yay! Maybe that’s how the manage to work 20 hours a day every day without, you know, dying. :)

acquiresimoleons replied to your photo “Aaron GilsCarbo, grandson of Goopy GilsCarbo and Sandy Bruty, all...”

He's fine!

Yeah, he’s definitely the neighborhood’s hottie! :) Too bad he’s gay, ‘cuz those genes really oughtta be passed around. But, perhaps he’ll get himself abducted by aliens at some point. Of course, then his genes will be eaten by the alien’s, but...

pixelated-world replied to your photoset “Sage had opening-of-the household wants to hire a maid and to…buy a...”

"the little mustache makes him look stereotypically French" -> me : (^・ω・^ ) I just laughed so much at this mustache...

I know! I saw that little mustache and my brain just went off and imagined him doing all those silly stereotypical French things, like running around exclaiming, “Zut alors!” every other second. Or saying things like, “But I am le tired!” It’s all the mustache’s fault!

penig replied to your post “Ugh, I’m so far behind on my dashboard, I don’t think I’ll ever catch...”

Why do you feel guilty about this? We don't want to be a chore!

It’s not guilt so much as regret. I enjoy seeing and commenting on people’s pics and posts. Makes me feel connected to the world, I guess, and when I can’t do it for whatever reason, I just feel regret. Sadness. That sort of thing.

holleyberry replied to your post “Ugh, I’m so far behind on my dashboard, I don’t think I’ll ever catch...”

Sorry to hear you haven't been feeling well. No worries about the Dash. Everyone has RL things that happen.

Yeah, I know. It’s just frustrating. I’ve just been really tired, not really sick, per se, but just really, really lethargic, sleeping most of the day if I don’t deliberately keep myself awake. Stupid metabolic issues. I’d sit down at the computer with grand plans to do stuff...and then I find myself nodding off and occasionally literally headdesking. *sigh* It’s been better today, though. And at least I didn’t miss your Dossanina update! :D Which I’ll be off to read when I’m done with this. :)

timeparadoxsims replied to your post “WCIF Simon's hair please? I'm always on the lookout for nice long male...”

It's a conversion by Umi-Sims2 and it's been reuploaded by sims2packrat here: http://sims2packrat.tumblr.com/post/153963303471

Ahhhhh, that’s why I couldn’t find it then! Thank you! Maybe the “Simon’s hair anon” will see this. Or at least hopefully they’ll see your reply on the post. :)

penig replied to your photo “This is generally a house of slobs which is probably why it’s...”

She's keeping her immune system strong. I've found some sloppy kids do dishes out of an apparent desire to show off how grown up and in-charge they are.

Perhaps. Allison is definitely the bolder of the twins. Her brother’s kind of bookish and apparently happy to be up in his room, playing alone, even though he’s just as outgoing. But Allison’s in everyone’s faces all the time. Even the dogs’ faces.

pensblr replied to your photoset “This is a little thing I just made. Usually, I use a different phone...”

Yes! You have no idea how much I was just grumbling to myself about this very issue a couple of weeks ago. Thank you!

You’re welcome! I’ve been grumbling about it for years, off and on...but it only just then occurred to me that, hey, if I can make something be visible in hood view, surely I can make it invisible in hood view, too! Derp......

an-elegant-simblr replied to your photoset “This is a little thing I just made. Usually, I use a different phone...”

It’s very useful really, I hated that phone booth! I use defaults for the lot (before I just hid it under rocks or underground with an OMSP, but I have lots of witches in Strangetown and it was annoying when they arrived and got trapped), but the hood view wasn’t changed and it looked really ugly in the hood view.

Really? It still looks like that in hood view even if you use a default for the phone booth? That’s...annoying. :P But if that’s the case...Yeah, it’s more useful than I thought, then. It kind of sucks, I suppose, not to have any hood view at all rather than a proper one (especially if you use a default), but it’s better than that hideous yellow-and-blue thing screwing up your hood view in a medieval neighborhood or whatever.

yarerakai replied to your photo “Ahahahah! A non-ocean (as in no-waves) beach lot! This is something...”

Many thanks ! Sometimes it annoys me also when my sims live near a river and can't swim in it.

Or, they CAN swim in it, but that’s because it’s a beach lot with the waves and stuff. I didn’t want that. I wanted to be able to put trees right up to the edge and hanging over the water, like a real river. It looks kind of silly if you do that with ocean waves coming in. :p

celebkiriedhel replied to your photoset “Jupiter became an old, fugly dog. <3”

he is looking like he needs a good feed!

Yeah, I know! He always has. Poor thing has a skinny greyhound-type body and a bulky coonhound-type head. The bulk of his head makes his body look even skinnier. Ah, game. *shakes head*

mrningbrd replied to your post “Hey iCad! Are you still thinking about sharing a custom decorated...”

i would die for an icad neighborhood. i wish hoods werent so susceptible to corruption, im sure that would make it easier

*sigh* Yeah, it probably would. Outside of corruption issues, I wouldn’t worry so much about it, but I want to make it a sub-neighborhood template, so that it can be attached to other neighborhoods or be part of an uberhood or whatever. Can’t be that if it has stealth hoods attached to it, itself. :\ One of these days, I’m going to set up a new user account on this machine and test it out. Hopefully, it’ll work... 

princess-arystal21 replied to your photoset “House #1 for the new pseudo-Amish. It’s pretty much done on the...”

It's so....brown.

*laugh* Yes. Yes it is. :) But, that tends to happen with log construction. Unless it’s fake log construction and you have drywall and stuff inside that you can paint. I wanted “real” log construction, though.

sim-boo replied to your photo “When your dog has enough floof to hide in… Jupiter got his licks in,...”

I want a floof dog

I love floof dogs. I have a big, floofy Mastiff/St. Bernard mix, and I love cuddling with her and burying my face in her floof...when she���s clean. Which isn’t all that often. Which is one of the main problems with floof dogs. :) Especially when they really, really don’t like baths and they weigh more than you do. Bathing them is, like, a three-person job and everyone ends up soaked to the skin, not just the dog.

acquiresimoleons replied to your post “Some replies.”

nono not your recolors, the mesh set.

Ohhhhhhh! Maybe? But I didn’t think that Ray posted on MTS. Maybe someone included the meshes with a recolor set, though. Either way, though, it’s a beautiful set. Worth having twice, maybe! Well, OK, not because that doesn’t do you any good, but you know what I mean. :)

#replies

[hangryandlazy]

la + hawaii apr 19

back again at our favorite place! :) 

although we didn’t manage to cross all of the to do’s off of our lists, this turned out to be one of the best trips we’ve ever had. when it’s just alan and me on a trip, we tend to take the easy route. :P we play it safe and after exploring the city we chill out at the hotel room and milk it for what it’s worth hahaha.

soooo...alan and i had a night alone in LA before ada arrived. our first dinner was at a restaurant called sage plant-based bistro. i can’t remember which location we visited, but the cauliflower wings were BOMB af. also delicious were the avocado jackfruit carnitas and the baked eggplant farmesan. (see video for foodie pics)

the next day, we met up right at this restaurant called met her at a bar. it wasn’t a vegan restaurant although they offered many healthy plant-based options. we got buffalo cauliflower wings again, salads, burgers and french toast and waffles. (see video for pics again!)

this time round, we made our way up to the japanese garden up in van nuy. i was expecting it to be much bigger, it takes you about 20-30 minutes to walk around the entire park. it was stunning, although you can also catch a view of the sewage factory next door.

it was quite a relaxing visit anyway. :)

of course i had to make a pit stop at sip matcha to support the youtubers i’d been watching since high school! a bit too sweet for my taste, but i’d also forgotten to ask them to take it easy on the sugar levels, so that’s my bad. it was delicious regardless!

ada had been raving about this salad place called sweetgreen for years now, so of course we ended up ordering seamless that night! the pics aren’t that great so i’m leaving them out of this post, but damn that’s some good salad. 

another reason why we’d ordered in that night was because we had to head out early the next day to make our flight to big island. so *long story short* we had some misunderstandings and ended up having to fly to big island to transfer to honolulu. i’d been dreading the layover from the moment that we got our tickets issued, and we both ended up hating sitting around in that small outdoor airport for several hours (they had a power outage so the ice cream in the freezer was melting) that we bought one-way tickets immediately from honolulu back to los angeles to secure seats on a direct flight for when we head back a few days later. it was miserable! (yeah i know i’m a spoiled, high maintenance bish lolll)

when we finally landed in honolulu and picked up our rental car, it was about the same time that ada was supposed to land, so we headed back to the hotel together. we stayed at the modern honolulu together. alan and i had stayed there as well when we had visited 2 years ago, and we both loved the deco/aesthetic as it was (like its name suggests) much younger and more modern than the other hotels down the strip. the location was also quite nice because it’s right at the beginning of the strip, so we’re not stuck in the middle of a sea of tourists, but right on the edge of tourist city and local life.

we ordered in that night because we were pooped from traveling all day long, and we just wanted some comfort food and veg out in front of the tv before our big day the next day. what did we have in store for ourselves? WELL, we only had to wake up a tad bit earlier to drive over to the north shore to join a shark dive!!! we joined the one ocean diving team’s free diving expedition. i don’t think our program is really considered free diving, since we had snorkeling gear on, but it sure sounds a hell of a lot cooler than shark snorkeling, so i’m going to call it diving from this point onwards (although, if you look closely in the photo below, you’ll definitely notice that we don’t have diving tanks strapped to us and we’re just using flimsy snorkelling gear and flippers.

i was so proud of myself for taking the plunge and diving in right alongside everyone else. the waves were pretty rough, and i’m not familiar with using a snorkel, so it was actually quite confusing to me for a while. i had already warned ada and alan back in hong kong, before we’d even flown over, that there’d be a big chance i’d chicken out of the entire dive altogether. 

i ended up staying in water the longest! i almost didn’t want to leave. (i mean, it did take me a while to muster up the guts to even get in at all lol) it was such a thrilling experience, i’m so glad i went through with it.

when we got back to shore, we treated ourselves to smoothie bowls from haleiwa bowls. i’d been wanting to try this place out for ages, but the last time we were in hawaii we didn’t rent a car, so we didn’t want to venture out an hour north of the honolulu on an uber... turned out it was just a couple minutes walk from the shark snorkeling registration area, woohoo!

we got 3 bowls to share between the 3 of us (obviously more to share between me and ada lollll) we got a hapa bowl (acai/nana/strawbs/blueb smoothie with granola, fresh nanas, coconut flakes and hawaiian honey), a paniolo bowl (nana + pb + dates topped with granola, nanas, strawbs, cacao nibs and hawaiian honey), and also a blue majik spirulina chia pudding. honestly, they were delicious. not sure if it was because everything was hawaiian and fresh, or if it was because i’d seen their bowls on ig so many times before, or maybe we were just starved from all the adrenaline and excitement. 

we went hiking the second day, and as aesthetically pleasing this piña colada combo looks, they tasted pretty bleh. not refreshing or anything..

this was the diamond head lookout trail, although it was paved and quite easy so i’m not really sure at what point these pictures were taken. :p we stopped at a couple spots along the way.

before we headed off! (we threw away the fruits after the photo :p i know, a waste :( but no one wanted to lug them around on the hike)

on another day, we rented a jeep and drove up to the ho'omaluhia botanical garden to take some jurassic park themed photos :)

after we scouted out this spot and took a bunch of pictures here, other cars started to line up to make use of the backdrop as well hehehehe

we flew back to la to spend the rest of our holiday! for 420, we went to by chloe for vegan fast food (YUM) and then went off to universal studios. i didn’t realize until much much later that alan didn’t want to spend his 420 there, no clue why he didn’t just let us know sooner! i was pretty stoked that i won 2 toys at universal hehe.

our other best friend crystal was also in town, so of course we met up with her and ate more good food :P

(those are her hands grabbing the truffle pizza! haha)

and that concludes my la/hawaii trip! it was one of the best trips i’d ever been on, hands down! (even though it took me uhhhh 8 months to finally post about it hahahaha)

#tansworld #tanjas travels #tanjastravels #travel #traveller #travelgram #wanderlust #lala land #la la land #hawaii #hawaii sharks #shark dive #shark diving #save the sharks #one ocean diving #save the ocean #not your selfie prop #sharks are friends

[drzpodcasts]

Stories of Triumph, World Transplant Games 2019 episode 07 - Day 2 Cycling, small falls, big bumps

Stories of Triumph, World Transplant Games 2019 episode 07 - Day 2 Cycling, small falls, big bumps .For 11 months, I knew today was coming and I prepared for year to be here. But as the famous quote goes "Man plans and God laughs."   The day began magically. I arrived to the start line the cycling time trial competition, checked in, and headed out to the course one hour before the event. A swirl of colors on top of people's rotating legs were cycling around the bicycle course. 30-40 countries were represented on the cycling course that started on the Newcastle side traversed a draw bridge to the Gateshead side, rode next to the Sage (see below), next to the River Tyne, then back across with the Millennium Bridge (see below) and the Tyne Bridge in the background (see below)   Once the course was closed to begin the competition and I found my spot between the French, Italians, and the Canadians.  After some friend chat and with an hour before my start time (11.50) I found the mechanic's who were part of the event organizers (MLS) service. They put a bit of oil on my chain which was a bit dry and better aligned my back wheel. I had put my bike together upon my arrival but the rear derailleur was off by a few millimeters. After a few minutes, I was back on my back and I found a nice track to warm up my legs. Coming from Arizona my legs have always felt tight in the cooler temperatures of the north but they were getting warmer as I felt a mist of water blow off the Tyne River. It felt like rain for a few seconds, then it dissipated. Fleetingly, I wondered about how the water could interact with the oils on the ground and how together they can develop a thin layer of slickness on top of the street. It didn't bother me as I kicked up my speed from 28-34 kilometers per hour. I felt good with this speed as a warmup. When I came to the end of a street there was a turnaround in front of a food truck. I slowed down to turn and while going under 5 kilometers per hour, my tires gave out and I fell on my right hip. The workers shouted asking if I were alright and except for the sensation of the impact, I got on my bike after putting the chain on, and continued. While riding back, I thought for a second about going back to the mechanics but the bike seemed fine though the shifting seemed a tad off, but not enough to affect me while I rode hard around the course. I thought. I also didn't know if I had enough time and I didn't want to interrupt my rhythm.   I was right. By the time, I got back to the starting line, it was my turn to line up with about 6 minutes to spare. I shedded a couple of extra layers that were keeping my muscles warm and seemingly in an instant I was off. I had visualized my race early in the morning and for the first two kilometers, I felt strong while I strategically took the corners to maximize my speed. I navigated Turn 1 successfully, then picked up my speed. When I crossed the road

  and into the straightaway and into the wind, I began to weaken, a little, but I was still riding how I wanted race but shortly before the Turn 2, the Dutch rider who started behind yelled that he was approaching. I was surprised, but in racing you can sometimes go as fast as you can go and someone is just stronger but then I made my first mistake. My turn was slow -- I haven't yet mastered turning to the right in England, so it took awhile to pick up my speed and shortly thereafter I noticed Elmar Sprink who I had interviewed for Organ Oracles pass me. I was going 40 kilometers per hour and he must have been traveling 43. Still, I road my race, held good lines in my turns as I headed toward the first lap turnaround. I thought about my donors, my parents, as I again stood up to pick up speed. I took this hard turn better. The second lap felt harder, but I kept my focus as I crossed the draw bridge, then spun harder as I took the short, punchy hill, and completed a turn. It wasn't my best, but in time trials there is very little time to waste time thinking about imperfections. After the turn turn I began picking up speed as I approached the Turn 1 again. I swept a little to the left to give myself an easier turn and as I geared down, my chain came off the rear derailleur. Immediately, I stopped and attempted to put the chain back on the ring. Again, the chain wouldn't move. Twice more I tried the same thing until a teammate and volunteer were watching from the sideline saw that the chain had gotten stuck between the derailleur and the wheel. I had to turn my bike over, use my finger to pop out the chain, turn the bike over, put the chain on the crank in the front, then begin again. It must have have taken at least 60 seconds and as I began an Italian passed me. I could have been angry but there was no point. I had to finish the race. The Italian racer and I took turns passing each other on the straightaway while we were both careful not to draft off one another. It took me at least three minutes to get back the momentum I lost, but my legs moved well considering the fall I had taken before the race and mishap with the chain. I crossed the line, looked at my time, tried to subtract the time I lost and thought about what "would have been"my time but having been passed, I was happy for the other guys. They were really strong and in Elmar's case, he had a heart transplant. When I sat down, however, I noticed a large bulge start to appear on my right hip where I had fallen before the race (see pic). As the swelling grew, I found the medical tent where a physical therapist diagnosed my leg. My range of motion were fantastic and there was no pain, just swelling. Still, after a massage and ice, I decided to scratch my participation in the team trial event on the advice of the physical therapist which meant that my team (Team USA) wouldn't race. That's the worst part. It's one thing to get injured but when it affects the others. Ruben, the physical therapist, as it turns out was the same person who saw me during the 2017 World Transplant Games in Málaga. He had moved to the United Kingdom and he volunteered to be apart of the staff in Newcastle. We had a nice chat in English and Spanish, got a picture with him, and headed home. Life is often not as you expect it. A few hours after the race, I think the fall not only caused the swelling, but in retrospect it likely caused my chain to get caught. It really is the smallest and simplest things sometimes that affect results. But my mini-travail was in the midst of being in "heaven on earth" which is what I feel like during the World Transplant Games designed to celebrate the gift of life with over 1,500 athletes from more than 50 countries.   Read the full article

#Dr.ZacharyS.Brooks #DRZpodcasts #NewcastleGateshead #Trustee #worldtransplantgames #WorldTransplantGames2019 #WorldTransplantGamesFederation #worldtransplantgames.org #wtgf.org

[ciscoshairconditioner]

Texts Between Strangers

Note: female/woman ‘reader’

---

Hey, it was really nice meeting you last night. Maybe we can grab lunch tomorrow? This is Cisco btw.

The text pops up on your phone screen as you're scrolling through social media. You've been lounging in bed on this rainy Saturday morning planning on doing absolutely nothing for the rest of the day but binge watch The Walking Dead and order thai take out later. You just stare at the text for a minute, blinking.

You definitely didn't give your number to anyone last night because all you did yesterday was pull a double shift at Jitters because they've been short staffed lately. A long day at work usually left you looking a bit wrecked so you're damn sure there wasn't anyone slipping their digits your way either.

This person has the wrong number.

You frown a little bit for them because you wonder if the wrong number was intentional. You've had to give a creepy dude the wrong number on purpose before just so he'd leave you alone. You finally reply after another minute.

Hi I didn't give my number to anyone. Sorry dude, they gave you a wrong number.

You figure that will be the end of that and roll out of bed only to shuffle your way to your comfy couch for some TV time. The notification on your cell pings again and you glance at it, brows raising when you see it's wrong number guy.

For real? This isn't [Girl's Name]? And you weren't at Stanley's Bar last night?

You've actually been to Stanley's a lot over the past couple years since you moved to Central City but last night was not one of them.

My name is definitely not [Girl's Name] and even though I love Stanley's for the sole fact drunk me can make peanut shell confetti rain everywhere during karaoke and not get in trouble, I for real wasn't there last night.

You felt like you were a tad on the sassy side with that text but he was a stranger who apparently one girl had already blown off so you figured he must not be worth much niceties anyways. You were always for girl power so even though you had no idea who [Girl's Name] was, you were going to go with her assessment of wrong number guy, what'd he say his name was? You scrolled up in the message feed, ah—Cisco.

Best peanuts in CC, read his next text which came with a peanut and praise hands emojis.

You laughed and said aloud “Agreed.” as you typed the same reply.

You're flicking through saved episodes of Walking Dead on your DVR, trying to find where you left off when another text comes through. You already have a suspicion its him again before even looking.

I must have heard her say the wrong numbers, it was so loud in there last night :(

Your brow furrows at this one. You remember why you avoid Stanley's on Friday nights. It's usually two for ones and they aways try to get local rock bands to come play. It tends to get too crowded, too hot and yes—too noisy, in there. You read over the text again and find yourself frowning along with his sad emoji.

Next time, you gotta just hand her your phone. No mistakes can be made then. Unless you have an embarassing wallpaper.

His reply is immediate, Pfft no way. It's followed by a screenshot of his actual phone background and a typed No shame along with it.

You're not sure if its a Harry Potter lightning bolt or a reference to Central City's local hero, The Flash. Either way, you're impressed. Wizards or Superheros, a cute guy could totally score your number if you peeped that wallpaper on his phone. Well, the jury is still out on if this guy is cute, you think.

You're right, that is legit. Maybe you did just hear the numbers wrong.

Of course I did. You make it sound like something else. You can't tell if his text was meant to sound cocky or confused.

You bite your lip and reply. Well...

??? is shot back instantly and you sigh.

You decide to just keep it real with him. Guys tend to be overbearing when picking up women. You sure you weren't reading her wrong?

I happen to read people's vibes quite accuratley. She totally was feelin all of this. There's even a smirking emoji.

Alight, cocky it is. You laugh and decide to challenge it. All of what? You send the eyes emoji along with it and wait patiently for him to chicken out.

That's when he sends a picture. Your phone drops into your lap and your mouth hangs open.

It's him.

It's the Jitters customer you've been crushing on for the past year. And that's his name? Cisco?Everytime he places an order to go he always thinks it's hilarious to use the name of a famous fictional character. You've been trying to psych yourself up for months just to work up the courage to ask him for his name and maybe out on a date.

Your mind races with all the daydreams and fantasies you've had starring him. They range from adorable ones where you accidentally bump into him, coffee spilling all over him and you both blushing profusely while you attempt to clean him up; to downright explicit ones where you're the only one on closing shift and he's the last customer so you lock the doors and ravish him right there in one of the plush accent chairs.

You take a smooth five minutes to freak the hell out.

What finally pulls you away from your panic is the muffled sound of your cellphone. You hurridely dig it out from the depths of the couch.

You pass out from all the hotness huh? Lol

You just stare at the message. All language escaping you in that moment. You hadn't attempted flirting since coming to live in Central City. You left a pretty toxic relationship behind and wanted a fresh start. You had spent the past couple years focusing on finishing your MA but now that graduation was right around the corner, you suppose you could actually start dabbling in that real life stuff again. How many hours had you spent making unrequeited heart eyes at a stranger in a coffee shop? You weren't too sure about the mechanics of fate and destiny or whatever.

“Of all the wrong numbers in all the towns in all the world he texts mine,” You blink, “Err, or something like that.” You say to your phone.

You're startled out of your dramatic monologue by another text from Cisco. My self confidence is increasingly deflating  :|

Crap. You realize you haven't sent anything back to him in fifteen minutes. You just type fast and without much thought because you're scared if you think too hard on it you'll back out. Being behind a screen is supposed to make people a little more fearless, right?

Haha no it shouldn't. Its just that I've actually seen that handsome face before. :)

“That's only mildy creepy.” You say to yourself upon rereading your message.

That's... not creepy at all. Is his response, follwed by a How?

Well, we do live in the same city and I work at a popular hang out. You decide to tease him.

Oh, are you that redhead from Big Belly Burger? I told you the offer was flattering but I don't date high schoolers.

You have a good laugh at that before replying, Um, not a BBB employee or a high schooler. I assure you, you're texting a grown woman.

Oh yeah? A grown woman who can do whatever she wants? ;)

You think there's a Beyonce reference in there. Yes is your simple reply.

Idk. I could be getting catfished rn.

You scoff at that. If anyone could be getting catfished, it's me. You texted first.

True, but I genuinely did think you were someone else.

It's followed by another text. Hold up. On reinspection, I've actually have been incredibly generous. Ive given you my name, wallpaper AND my picture. The only thing I know is one place you don't work and that you're karaoke friendly. I think you have to pay some dues miss.

You scoff for a second but then realize you have withheld more than what he's given up in this conversation. You're nervous as you type back, What do you want?

Simple. Even trade. Name, wallpaper, and picture. Gimme.

Another text bubble appears, Please :D

You text him your name and hold your breath wondering if it will spark any memory. You have taken his order countless times at Jitters.

:D One down, two to go!

You sigh and nervously smile to yourself. You snap a screenshot of your phone background, which is just a quote thats partially obscured by your apps. You picked it to ground yourself, to make you never forget your self worth again. You haven't changed it since you moved to Central City. It simply reads 'I am too full of life to be half loved.' You send it on it's way and then go scrolling through your recent selfies to find a picture of yourself looking somewhat decent.

That's some sage advice. You should send me the actual pic so I can pin that to my quotes board on pinterest :)

You smile while sending over the original for him.

Thanks! Now last but not least...

You've picked a picture you took right before going out to a show a couple of weeks ago. You felt confident that night because of your new show stopping outfit and the fact that your hair did absolutely what you wanted it to do. You held your breath as you sent the picture, knowing that for sure he'd have to know who you were. The awkward, babbling barrista that often times tripped over her own two feet.

A minute went by without a reponse. Your nerves were catapulting all over the place while you just sat there and stared at your phone.

Finally a new message notification pinged and you swallowed hard as you opened it. Then, your heart stopped for a second.

Its you. The text simply reads.

What's that supposed to mean? You think. Before you can form a reply, he's sent another text.

I mean, you work at Jitters. I've definitely seen that beautiful face before. :) He mimics your reply to him earlier.

You feel a blush blooming across your face along with what your sure is a goofy smile. Yeah, surprise haha

Would it be weird to say my original question still stands?

You blink in confusion. Excuse me?

It's just that, I've always thought you were cute and you laugh at all my made up names when I order. It's a beautiful laugh btw. You're mouth has dropped open and you just reread the message a few times and then reply.

Hold up. Why haven't you asked me out before?

I've um... had some bad luck in the past with Jitters barristas. Figured I'd steer clear for a while.

And now?

Well now fate has given me your number so I figure I should just go with it :D

You bite your lip to try and control the goofy smile that's forming. Lunch sounds great.

Your phone slips free of your graps and you look up to stare out the window. The sky is clear and bright.

#cisco ramon x reader #cisco imagine #cisco ramon fan fiction #cisco x reader #cisco ramon

[juushika]

travel to first city > get out of habit of playing Zelda in sleep-deprived travel and recovery days > stall out > pick game back up same day we started playing Dark Souls III again and wow the games do not mesh > oh well > travel to other city again, can’t play Dark Souls while here > tl;dr finally beat The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time

My liveblog from ~50% to the end: game events, Navi as mechanic, time travel???, so much metadata, Gerudo are the very best, cyclical narrative are fascinating and I wish I wanted to play the other games, etc.; it is very long!

me:  hello dark Link is in this one 1) this is the 1.5 things i was not really spoiled for (in context of Ocarina) 2) oh my god i have so much fanart of this scene what a well-done sequence! really subtle and eerie effects/use of reflection and clever combat and like not skillful combat at all “don’t lock on, try and sort of flail until you get around him then stab his butt wildly” but pretty and the fade-out is really effective! so much really good subtextual-to-the-point-of-not-existing narrative; fights with shadow selves are best trope?? i looked at that art again and! it v good! i remember finding this dynamic compelling even before familiar with canon in any way! but it’s not explored, just, “you could explore this yourself, if you want”

me: where is Link keep iron boots when not wear that they don’t effect his weight just curious

Missy: don’t ask they magic also it really amuses me that your biggest connection to OoT is “i have sexy pics of Link and dark Link”

me: what is the logic of traveling BACK to kid Link??? (there is no logic, i know, i know) “you picked up the sword and were too young for it so we incubated you until ready” implies that Kingdom Hearts-esque he grew up in the jar, time passed but he wasn’t there for it but then no! and he can go back! and i get it would be awful to put collectables/shortcuts and then be like ARBITRARY UNPREDICTABLE CUT-OFF POINT being able to pop back is polite; and having offered that, tying it into plot is clever but ……..how???? it work?

[future Juu: Spirit Temple is best dungeon b/c it makes the time travel mechanic part of the core gameplay, aka the dungeons; but the time travel still fails to make sense, here or there or in the ending. maybe I read too much into chrysalis imagery b/c of my KH background? but the original wording, “we put you in sacred realm until you growed up,” just conflicts hugely with everything else time travel does in this game]

Missy: in the room with the rolly boulders HEY HEY HEY HEY HEY HEY GODDAMIT NAVI I GET WE NEED TO AVOID THE BOULDERS YOU DON’T HAVE TO YELL ABOUT THEM NONSTOP hey navi. you don’t like getting squished. i don’t like getting squished. HOW ABOUT YOU STOP SAYING HEY SO I DON’T JUST SQUISH YOU.

me: i am so 50/50 on why everyone found Navi so annoying i have this strong “it not her fault” feel “it the limit of her programing”

Missy: normally she fine but sometimes HEY HEY HEY  HEY

me: some of [the boy’s] retro game adventures in the time before waypoints are… interesting like it’s super immersive which is great more active exploration, less “mindlessly follow waypoint” but they forget that in the samey-textured-fucking-identical-rooms you just … can’t pathfind naturally i come away with this really strong sense of “oh that’s why we handhold” when actually! we could handhold less now that we can have unrecycled textures/assets and rooms that aren’t just boxes! but you still spend  the whole time (in retro games) wishing for a waypoint or a fucking HUD or anything in the world that tells you how go where [examples of retro games that fit this matrix: the original Thief series, the original Deus Ex] and i feel like Navi is that “in such a sprawling and potentially non-linear game, player needs an aid” Missy: esp when HEY WHERE DO I GO? HEY HEY LISTEN sorta useful me: yeah she's good for "how to begin next dungeon" stuff but for stuff like "what do these magic seeds do" "chickens????" she useless and then she breaks out the advice for "DID YOU KNOW BOULDER MAKE THE SQUISH" thanks navi, i had guessed

Missy: hehe yahh

me: there’s actually--and, let us still preserve my overall ehhhhhhhhh opinion of Undertale, but--there’s a great sort of hat-tip to that trope when helper NPC interrupts you while doing a puzzle so that you are forced to “fail” it (need to push three buttons; NPC: “I’ll help you with timing!!”; reminder re: timing forces you to fail timing lol) god aren’t vidya games cool they’re like 50% experience/feelings/narrative and 50% mechanics/game design it’s so interesting!!! i have feelings!!!! 

me: Bongo Bongo actually fav boss so far WITH savestates without, probably hell but with, save stating becomes another mechanic, another move to time, like saving after stunning second hand so i can make sure eye of truth + counter eye + dmg, and then reset to save state if i miss one of those steps which happens a lot pacing great with savestates, very tense without, probably just ragey

Missy: yes and yes

[future Juu: this became a consistent theme. I started using save states to avoid the constant walking back each time I returned to the game, but they universally made combat feel more strategic and dependent on my actions, and less flaily and dependent on ehhh controls]

me: hello yes the Gerudo are extremely interesting is very Amazons

Missy: yes except Ganondork

me: like in any single-sex society, even those created by feminists (Joanna Russ, Nicola Griffith) i want more interrogation of sex=gender, how gender binary works when part of the binary is super unrepresented, characters forgoing binary entirely, etc. esp. interesting here b/c they 1) do have very rare males 2) have contact with non-Gerudo men, so they’re exposed to a gender binary, but how does that impact their culture “occasionally a man and then he becomes king of everything” is super icky for obvious reasons but i wonder what the on-the-ground view of that is, like, they have their own leadership roles, 100 years is a long time to be periodically self-sustaining, does the average citizen even care is it a figurehead monarchy “they just wear the pretty crown and look important; meanwhile, we rule ourselves” system fucked up every cycle that Ganandorf shows up to be ~evil~

me: obviously they do enough breeding outside their race to sustain it, but their culture is actually pretty self-contained/even xenophobic, so how does culture sharing work, how does race work???? Gerudo have distinct skin tone, but are breeding with whiter people presumably a lot, what does mixed race look like??? or b/c ~magic~ is that not a thing, are the daughters all just Gerudo wiki says we unno if they have contact with bio fathers, is there any cultural sharing??? what does Gerudo family unit look like; j/k it’s a “a lesbian and her extended lesbian family”

Missy: Keep in mind Historically speaking *every* Gerudo male in known history is Ganondork Following every game And every timeline So the king of everything may not be so much icky political as Gerudo + triforce of power = Ganon king of Gerudo/evil = harbinger of end of world and Hyrule reset

me: so, Dark Souls-like, we’re sort of stuck in a timeline/event loop, looking at same sort of events in different times/iterations (maybe it’s a reverse Jesus, like, they had this prophecy indefinitely but it didn’t effect daily life, but when it’s realized via Ganon we begin a sort of cycle of the game series) Missy: Most interesting bits there are the Twilight Princess stuff Where the n64 Link is a shade waiting for end of world to pass on his knowledge before disappearing Because yeah--Ganon loop seems like public Gerudo knowledge But Link loop is less talked about. The hero of time is just the legend

me: i’m sort of mad that aesthetic/the plot is just hero’s journey/here have the same narrative 2023842 times makes me not want to play others while iterated narrative is such a great trope and does make me want to care

Missy: Zelda future is open world The narrative is apparently partially taking back seat So the future lore from Twilight Princess would be tasty for you (esp. since Hyrule is bigger and more history has been written) But then the open world of BotW is a different allure. You write your own story etc

me: but open world just so ……………tired the dumb shit one can do in BotW is interesting, i just i like, you know, a narrative or sense of purpose

me: i finish Ocarina i have questions so Zelda sends him back to original time, everyone happy in future, life beautiful, sages together & everyone seems to know what’s occurred or at least that evil gone now child Link shows up at temple, Navi is like bye bitch, child Link goes to see child Zelda does he tell her to not fuck up > Ganondorf doesn’t come to power in new alternate timeline???? b/c either she’s like, hey, i know you want to be an adult now, but time to be a child and live through the reign of terror until future you saves shit, OR they’re alternate timelining it and everything sages etc did won’t really exist, so why so long an epilogue focused on them either way the time travel still doesn’t make sense since all the sword does is pop Link in chrysalis until old enough to use it??????/ Missy: Ocarina -> timeline split the adult saved timeline is the one that leads to Wind Waker, i think tl;dr Link saves world and then goes poof oops

me: “Regardless, Ocarina of Time has always been one of the centerpoint games in the chronology, with the events at the end of the game, where Zelda sends Link back to his youth, splitting the timeline.” (source) okay okay that’s a thing

Missy: yeah so Twilight Princess is the other branch

me: Zelda: still fucking things up sorta gj Zelda she is the center of everything isn’t she, i guess, like, thus the title

Missy: yes she is Ganon-Link-Zelda triforce

me: “When the official timeline was revealed in Hyrule Historia, the placement of Ocarina of Time in the series was revealed to be of even greater value, as the events of the game actually split the series’s timeline into three branches.” (ibid.)

Missy: oh yeah third branch we fucked up branch as in you lose to Ganondork and then.. snes game?

me: god i love iterated narratives it really is a pity i don’t care about the worldbuilding (except lesbians obvs.) and also characters and also aesthetic and also hero’s journey and also gameplay “Link is sent back to his childhood, leaving this branch without a Hero, as told in the prologue to The Wind Waker. Ganondorf eventually overcomes the Sages’ seal and attempts to take over Hyrule, but with no Hero to face the evil,” GJ ZELDA JEEZE like tbf, Link telling Zelda > child timeline is also Link’s fault and Link failing to defeat Ganon > grimdark timeline is also him so he is central, triforce, etcetc but Zelda is actually interesting and Link is mostly fridge horror so, shrug that said, it some good fridge horror i propose alternate timeline for another fanfic i never gon’ write child Link almost warns Zelda, goes, wait, what about timeline shit, nvm, decides to just wait it out seven years of increasing darkness watching bad shit pile up actually seeing it from the ground instead of in summary, it worse than he thought, “i done fucked up”

Missy: do a triforce swap Ganon comes out with wisdom Zelda has power Link still courage

me: Ganon wisdom = grimest dark b/c he would be smart enough to succeed wisdom is power really, it’s more effective longterm than brute force then Hyrule rip

#Juu metadata #conversations with Missy #Juu plays #The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time #too many to tag #but uh: #Undertale #The Legend of Zelda #Dark Souls #Juu watches other people play #Thief #Deus Ex #Juu reads

[anneedmonsonus]

How to Work From Home With Little Kids

Wow – how things have changed lately. Without going on too much about all the negative things about COVID-19 – I know we all know it by now! – what it means for a lot of people is that we are working from home… and many of us with children home too.

For me, having to stay home with the kids because of coronavirus doesn’t really feel like a huge change or adjustment, more like a sort of resigned return to the familiar. I’ve worked from home for ten years now, and five of those have been with kids. So lately life sort of feels like a surreal version of school summer holidays, one without playdates and play centres and playgrounds and outings and the usual distractions I would ordinarily try to busy our days with.

Both kids have been coping better than I had thought they would (so far). Little Nerd, who is almost five, was disappointed when I said he wouldn’t be going to pre-school any more, which he loves, but he’s been good.

It was harder with Miss Nerd – but more for us than for her, I think. She is 18 months old now, and she had FINALLY got a two-day-a-week place in daycare two months ago. We were loving having more structure and kid-free time in our routine (me especially, as it made work so much easier) and then she finally got to that sweet spot where those heart-wrenching teary drop-offs were subsiding. She started to get excited about going and now she’s not going any more – that is hard. It’s a bummer but it is what it is. I’ve been trying to look on the bright side of the situation, because what else can you do? I think about things I’m grateful for – how lucky are we to have a big, messy garden (I’ve never been so grateful for all these weeds to pull up before!) our cubby house, two happy healthy kids, nice weather, things to paint, nature reserves to walk the dog, birds (little things can be big things). Working from home.

I’ve worked from home since I ‘fell into’ freelance when I was 23. I had a job at a couple of magazines, which I initially loved, then began to hate. I felt really depressed there and had already been job-hunting for a couple of months. I was going to wait to leave until I had something else to move onto, but then one day I ended up snapping at the CEO and quit on the spot without giving it more than about two seconds thought other than knowing I was done. It felt like the BIGGEST weight off my shoulders. I was already freelancing on the side while I worked at the magazines, and decided to pick up more freelance feature writing while I continued to look for another full-time job. I got so much freelance work that I realised I could write full-time. A year later, I backpacked around Europe with my best friend and then I bought the house.

Sometimes I think ‘Ten years of freelance… that’s embarrassing.’ That’s a lot of alone time and conversations with my dog that I often muse have probably stunted my emotional maturity and made me (more) weird. But the introverted part of me really enjoys working from home and the quiet. I like the work-life balance, not being stuck in traffic, the flexibility working from home affords. There are cons, but there are so many pros.

For a good few years, my daily freelance schedule would usually go like this: I’d wake at 7.30, perhaps 8. I’d make my bed, breakfast and coffee, and shuffle to my desk overlooking the garden, where I’d sip coffee and answer emails in my pyjamas, then shower and get ready for my morning house walkthrough, if I had an appointments day. To avoid getting stuck in morning traffic, I’d only time all my appointments to be from 10am onwards. If I had a writing day, I’d write stories until 11am, then change into my exercise clothes and take Nala for a run. Come home, shower, make lunch. Evening – knock off at 5.30, take Nala to the dog park. Come home, cook dinner and watch a movie with Mr Nerd. Or I’d get ready to go out for dinner and a drink with a friend, then do a little bit more writing before bed. Or I’d go to indoor beach volleyball, or perhaps a Zumba class. The evening was my oyster.

And then I had kids.

Working from home with little kids is possibly one of the biggest PAINS IN THE ARSE you could experience. (I try not to swear on my blog, otherwise I would have used a choice swear word there).

But trying to be productive and lucrative while you have a really small, irritating version of yourself glued to your side asking inane questions or doing destructive things can be almost impossible.

I think most parents will understand that feeling when they’ve finally settled the baby down for a nap and thought, “Right! Now I can quickly get to x,” only to have the baby declare catnapping is trendy and wake just 20 minutes later, spoiling all your plans. Or maybe you’ve felt the fatigue as you’re typing a Very Important Email while gritting your teeth at the 498th, “Hey, Mummy…?” of the day. Or perhaps you could just about cry because it seems like your children are diabolical, deliberating trying to sabotage your career… surprisingly, they’re not. But it feels like they are.

Doing a job with kids at home is bloody HARD. No matter how organised I try to be, every day, there are still tasks I need to do, emails to be answered or calls to return, that require focused time at my desk, ideally without bloodcurdling screams and wails in the background. My husband is often on work trips, so I’ve always been extremely grateful to my mum, who helps me out a LOT with the kids, not to mention family, aunties and aunty-figures who also give me a hand. I have a lot of help. I also have a lot of wine Because juggling a job and trying to be a good parent can be really hard.

And now that I’ve said it, let’s move on to how we can manage it and try to make working at home with children work for us.

I’m going to use this highly idealised photo of me and Little Nerd that was taken for an online magazine a few years ago to illustrate this. IT’S NOT LIKE THIS AT ALL NOW I HAVE TWO KIDS so this pic makes me laugh.

Work in nap times.

I know this is so obvious that it probably doesn’t need stating, but if your little one has nap time, you get your coffee and you work. Don’t procrastinate and do household tasks. I know it’s SO tempting to tidy up the house first, maybe dawdle a little, check Instagram… don’t. Look, I am a Virgo, and a procrastinating one at that. NO-ONE understands the NEED to have a neatly colour-coordinated sock drawer before addressing that urgent deadline due at 5pm more than me. It’s very tempting to have a perfectly tidied, clean house before you sit down to work and to get that done while the baby is asleep, but I have lost count of the number of times I have thought, “I’ll just tidy up the kitchen…” and you’ve only just settled into your desk chair and the baby rouses and it’s game over. I try to do as much ‘brainless’ stuff as I can (like cleaning and folding laundry) when the kids are awake.

If you have toddlers, give up on the idea that you can do your best focused, productive work while they are awake.

Look, I know some people can do it – I don’t know how – but personally I find it SUPER difficult to try to get any REALLY focused work while the kids are with me. I can’t write while someone is yapping in my ear. So I don’t. Little Nerd is 4, and not SO bad, but at one-and-a-half, Miss Nerd is definitely too young to understand. I very rarely try to work while I’m looking after them. They’re not happy, I end up snipping at them, I can’t give my all to my work either, and I hate myself for being a snappy parent. I only jump onto my computer while they’re awake if I absolutely HAVE to. I just give in to spending time with them and busying ourselves while they are awake.

Plus, I think you will get MUCH more done in one hour of truly focused time than you can in four hours of trying to work while the kids are clawing at you and you want to rip your hair out.

Photo by Heather Robbins.

See if you can tag-team.

If your partner is also working from home, perhaps you can work out a routine so you each get focused time to work while the other distracts the kids.

Be nice to yourself.

“Be gentle to yourself”. “You are enough”. “You got this Mama”. Sometimes the clichéd Instagrammy affirmations make me vomit in my mouth a little, sometimes they make me burst into tears (this REALLY depends on what kind of week with the kids I’m having) but it is important to be kind to yourself, don’t stress the small stuff so much. When you’re upset, ask yourself, will this matter in a year? Probably not. You’ll have good days and bad days, but on the plus side, thousands of people are in the exact same boat as you.

Get outdoors and get fresh air every day – you and the kids.

Yes, even if it’s cold. (Although, we seem to be having the longest summer EVER in Perth, and it’s still not cold). This is the German side of me speaking. German people know the value of sun and fresh air, even when it’s freezing.

My mum, who hails from a tiny country town south of Bremen, always told me about how in Germany people bundle up the babies snug and warm in their prams and take them for a walk or just pop them out by the front door. “And at crèche, even when it’s cold, they put the thick jackets on and the boots and the hats on the kids, and they send them out to play in the woods,” my mum says sagely, and I’m like nodding enthusiastically about this slightly disconcerting woodland daycare: “YES, YES. PUT THE LITTLE BABIES IN THE WOODS.” Ok, I sound psychotic, but I am a freak about fresh air and some sun. It’s good for everyone, they’ll sleep better, you’ll sleep better and you’ll ALL feel better and less cabin-fever-y every day if you can get outside every day as much as you can.

I know I’m not the only one who often finds themselves having a bad day, but then you get outside in the fresh air and start moving and automatically you start to feel better. The staying at home rules have clamped down recently but at least in WA we are still allowed outside to walk the dog, run or ride bikes – make the most of it and do it every day, at least once a day. The moment you start you’ll feel so much better.

The kids were kindly gifted these amazing Globber scooters and as you can see they are a hit! They never need any encouragement to go outside. You can use the code word NERD for 15 percent off them from their site here.

Take care of your mental health.

Binge on Netflix. Do puzzles. Read. Work on projects around the house. Garden. Walk or run. Whatever it is you like to do that takes your mind off all your corona worries. Even juggling work at home, you can still ‘make the most of’ the time we’re having at home; and your mental wellbeing is paramount right now. If you have little kids at home and you’re still trying to juggle your own job, don’t stress too much about giving them this perfect, highly creative home schooling experience right now. I feel like there’s so much ‘social expectancy’ right now on often already-stressed out, anxious parents to be filling their kids’ days with all kinds of creative and fun and interesting educational activities while juggling their own jobs too. I’m impressed by people who can do it, but give yourself a break. All the kids will be fine.

A loose routine can be a good idea for your sanity – also, always try to start your day on a good note.

At this point I feel like I’m getting wary of sounding like another one of those people saying, “WHAT YOU SHOULD BE DOING WITH YOUR LIFE RIGHT NOW” because we all have enough on our plates right now than to worry about what we “should” be doing (other than staying home as much as possible). You only need to heed this if you feel like you are struggling to manage the chaos of working from home with kids. I’ve always been one of those frenetic, “I MUST BE DOING THINGS, the house must be tidy or I’m going to scream” people and so for me ‘doing things’ is my way of feeling ok. It might not be yours and that’s ok.

You don’t need to have a super-strict routine in place (unless this suits you and you enjoy it). But getting into a loose routine can be a good idea and for me anyway, I’ve always found it eases some of my stress, because then I know when I can get my work done. Like these days, I KNOW that when the baby naps at about 11am I will be able to head to my desk and get some work done and I should have at least two hours of focused time, and that makes me feel more in control.

Also, try to set yourself up to win. Do little things all the time rather than letting them pile up too much. With my hubby away quite a lot for work I’m often on my own with the kids. When he’s away every night I clean up the kitchen and try to do a quick tidy up and wipe down before I go to bed – no matter how tired I am. I am NOT a morning person, so the idea of doing this in the morning, with the kids yapping at me, makes me even more grumpy. Plus, I’m slow and stupid first thing in the morning, much more likely to break my favourite mug as I’m packing it into the dishwasher – or my ‘mother elixir goblet’ (*cough wine glass*). Do a load of laundry every day. Every time you leave a room take one piece of random crap with you and put it away. Have them do their schoolwork at the kitchen bench while you clean up and talk to them at whatever time in the day. Look for these small things that you can do so you don’t feel like you’re losing your mind.

Remember the dog rule – a tired dog is a happy dog.

One of my mates (hi Gabby!) runs her own business from home and juggles this around two little boys. I still remember her telling me, when I was pregnant with Miss Nerd, that the trick to managing two little kids is to treat them like dogs. “You need to run them hard, TWICE A DAY.” “The playground twice a day?” I groaned. “Every day,” said Gabby sagely. At present, we can’t go to the playground, but that doesn’t mean you still can’t get them tired in the garden – send them off on their scooters or bikes, put on the sprinklers, have a scavenger hunt through the house and make them find things of different colours, put washi tape on the floor through the house and have them do an obstacle course around the house, or play a fun game where they climb onto and jump off their toy trunk 35 times while you shout, “AGAIN” like a deranged ringmaster (not that I’ve done that).

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Work off somatic anxiety.

If I’m trying to work but I’m finding in one of those edgy, anxious moods and not really getting any writing of substance done – I don’t fight it. I stop and do something else. Honestly, sometimes it’s just NOT going to work, you’re not going to be in the right headspace, sometimes everything I try to write is complete shit. Rather than trying to force it, take a break (if you can).

I either do ‘admin’ with my brainless time – I send out invoices or answer emails. Or I give up on work entirely and go for a run to clear my head or I clean up, do household tasks or start dinner – basically anything that keeps you busy so you get rid of that nervous tension. You can come back to it later – often I stop and return when the kids are in bed and I feel so much better. Or make the next day your clean start.

Eat well and keep exercising.

I know this is also obvious, but I have learned, the hard way (and several times, over and over… because I clearly don’t learn lessons the first time round) to prioritise my own health and fitness as a working parent. So many people prioritise the kids and I’m guilty of this too – for example, making them a healthy balanced meal then being so tired once they’re in bed you fall into the mistake of eating crap . But when you are healthy and mentally you’re in a good place, you can look after your kids better. YOU are number one.

My new painting from Gail Dell.

Resist the lure of the couch! 

The kids are down, you’ve closed their bedroom doors and breathed a sigh of exhausted relief – now I know you’re tired and that it’s SO tempting to collapse on the couch and watch something mindless on Netflix while simultaneously scrolling and messaging friends, but once you do that, it’s going to be even harder to prise your butt off the couch and go to your desk. Trust me – I’ve made that mistake many, many times.

Don’t sit there! If you are really knackered, go to bed (I have to admit this is what my husband is always telling me, “Just go to bed! You can do it tomorrow when you’re fresh!”) but if you have some energy left and you know you could get a bit of your work done, you might feel better for it tomorrow. I know it’s not what we really want to be doing, but I often get a lot done at night when the kids are down. I used to do it a LOT when we only had one kid, but I find having two kids so much more exhausting than one, so I don’t as much any more (and I don’t really like to) but sometimes it’s the only way. You might only need to sacrifice a few nights in the week to make a dent in your work, and you can reward yourself the other nights with a Netflix binge.

To console your broken heart that really wants to be living its best iso life watching Tiger King and eating Twisties, make working at night as pleasurable as you can. Pour yourself a little wine, light a nice candle on your desk, or make yourself a cup of tea and get a chocolate-covered cookie from the secret place you’ve hidden them from your husband (please. Like I’m the only one who does this). It’s just like when you were a kid and it’s the weekend but you have a project due – you’ll feel so much better when it’s done, rather than it bugging you. Last night I knew I wouldn’t be able to work in the morning with the kids up, and I had a deadline this morning, so after the kids went to sleep, I worked til 11pm. Not what I wanted to do, ideally, but the other option would have been trying to do it in the morning with them both awake and annoying.

If your partner is also working from home, see if you can organise ‘shifts’ to swap childcare and work.

I long ago gave up on the idea of trying to get real, focused work done while I have a person under three awake and with me. Kids have a knack for just SENSING when you’re trying to do something important and will do whatever they can in their power to harangue you. I swear, I feel like mine could be happily playing some make believe game in their own little world for 40 minutes and I’ll think, “Ooh, maybe I’ll just quickly sit at my desk and sneak a little work in while they’re happy and engaged,” and the MOMENT I sit down, they both stop playing, the bigger one is asking some inane question like how many pockets does the moon have, the little one is clambering up onto my lap pretending she wants a cuddle while really she’s stealthily perma-deleting half my emails while I’m distracted by the big one asking me how many farts are in a cow’s bum.

Your kids might be old to start understanding why working, in peace, is important. I try to explain to our four year old the importance of Mummy and Daddy working because it gives us money. “Ooooh, for more toys?”

Get a police jacket.

My husband just last night told me about a colleague who now has to work from home. The kids bugged and interrupted him so much that he bought a police-uniform-like jacket. Then he informed the kids that when he was wearing the police jacket, he was doing very IMPORTANT work and he was NOT to be interrupted. Anyway, it worked. Now they tiptoe into his office, see him in the jacket and quietly walk out, I imagine in awed, respectful silence. GENIUS.

Also see if you can set up your home office in a space where you have a door. And a lock.

Scare them, bribe them, lie to them, whatever you need to do.

Currently, the Easter Bunny is my savior for encouraging good behavior. “Remember, the Easter Bunny is watching.”(The Easter Bunny is clearly like God, or Santa Claus).

I’ve also told Little Nerd that now he is doing school from home, his teacher has asked that I text her photos and tell her what we’ve been up to through the day. This is a lie, but he’s been very well-behaved (thank you Miss Whitehouse).

The other day he got stroppy when I asked him to put his jumper on for the fifth time and I sighed and picked up my phone and he shouted, aghast, “Don’t message that to Miss Whitehouse! I’ll put my jumper on!” I wasn’t texting Miss Whitehouse, I was planning to escape to Instagram, but I went with it and sighed, “Fiiiine. I won’t text her…. THIS TIME.”

Get your kids to pitch in with household and garden tasks.

I’m totally okay with sounding like a crazy slave driver. I know that sometimes kids do such a bad job of something, or take so long, or whinge so much about being asked to do something, that it’s easier to just think, “Ugh, I’ll just do it myself”. But I think if you can do your best to get them doing things, it will pay off in the long run. It will distract them in the meantime and one day they won’t be shit at it.

Make them do things around the house to help you out. Little Nerd is four and he is perfectly capable of helping me fold and put away laundry. If he wants to watch ABC Kids, he knows he has to pick up his toys, tidy his desk and maybe help me put away some laundry first. The other day his sister was napping and he kept complaining, “What can I DO? What can I DO?” Nothing I suggested appeased him and I was becoming more and more irritated until I suggested he cleaned the windows, which he enjoyed. Did he do a perfect, completely streak-free job? No. Were they still much cleaner than they were before he started and did he not bug me for a full 15 minutes? Yes. You have to count the little wins.

His little sister is 18 months and still useless, except for that one time she put her empty chip packet in the bin.

Try to keep TV as the ultimate bribe and distraction.

Ahhh, the electronic babysitter! My dear friend.

As much as I love the first few blissful minutes of uninterruption I get from turning on ABC Kids, Mr Nerd and I have always found that TV can be a slippery slope. With our two, the less TV they get, the less they ask and whinge for it. The more TV they get, the more it seems to sort of compound. You might get that initial peace and quiet while they’re watching, but after TV they are ALMOST ALWAYS EXTRA-ANNOYING, which is when I try to herd them outside again in the hope they’ll stop killing each other. I always weigh up the butthole factor – is it worth them watching TV so I can get something done, like meet my deadline or cook dinner on a stovetop without someone attached to my leg trying to bite me through my Lorna Janes? It often is. But to keep TV feeling like ‘a special treat’, don’t have it on all day; keep it as a lifeline so that when it’s on, they are GLUED to it, which will give you hopefully 20 minutes of focused time before they inevitably start annoying you again. Also, the rule is Little Nerd has to tidy up all his stuff if he wants to watch TV, which gives me one less thing to do. Crack that whip.

I feel like right now we all need TV, so use it and don’t feel guilty. No-one needs more parental guilt, especially now when lots of us already feel edgy!

Don’t forget! This is temporary.

It’s only a stage, and if you don’t ‘master’ working at home with kids (and I STILL haven’t after FIVE years!) – that’s ok, and normal. Even if it lasts for months, this stage is only a relatively short part of your life in the whole scheme of your life. It will pass.

I hope you’re all doing ok. Maya x

The post How to Work From Home With Little Kids appeared first on House Nerd.

from Home Improvement https://house-nerd.com/2020/04/02/working-from-home-with-kids/