#I don’t think sentient is the right word in retrospect I mean that they can communicate and take care of themselves

[jtrbluv]

we’re not really strangers | pjm

summary: We’re Not Really Strangers is a purpose-driven card game and movement all about empowering meaningful connections. Three carefully crafted levels of questions and wildcards that allow you to deepen your existing relationships and create new ones. Ready?

or alternatively,

your furtive infatuation with your lifelong best friend proves to be hard to suppress when there’s (1) alcohol involved and (2) a card game that forces you to reveal more about yourself than you could ever wish for. in short, no, you are not ready.

[friends to lovers!au]

pairing: jimin x reader

genre: fluff, crack, slight angst

word count: 8.7k

warnings: swearing, alcohol consumption, two emotionally constipated best friend, PG-15

A/N: hi, i’ve been really excited about this fic for a while, and i’m genuinely so happy that i finally finished it! the card game is in fact real and i got inspired for this fic after i had played the game with a couple of friends myself. AHEM! @koushiningg​ ! we both cried and i do highly recommend to play it! but anyways, i hope you enjoy this fic because i had a lot of fun writing it! sending love always... jumi out!

EDIT: @bangtans-peaceful-piegon​ i’d also like to thank the lovely pidge for beta reading this 4 me as well! PIDGE I FUCKIN LOB U!!! 

PLAYLIST ; SEQUEL

♤ ♤ ♤

Not once in your life did you ever imagine a simple card game to become the bane of your existence. 

Yet Park Jimin was able to prove you wrong. 

Let’s play ‘We’re Not Really Strangers’ he said. It’ll be fun, he said.

You stare down at the card in front of you—everything else in your periphery was blurry in vision and you can audibly pinpoint the erratic beating of your heart. 

The card was practically taunting you, laughing in your face. It was as if there was a sentient being in the room who was aware of your own subconscious and the not so latent feelings you had for the boy sitting in front of you. 

Same said being loved to constantly place you in a state of trepidation concerning your current situation—your blood pressure skyrocketing—nearly feeling the muscular pink thing inside of you thrusting itself against your ribcage. 

The white card with crimson red writing made sure to leave an impact, making you feel the most ridiculed you’ve felt all night which says a lot—leaving your mind in a complete frenzy although you refused to let it be known. 

And so you sat there. Fiddling the card in between your fingers, feigning nonchalance. You were very much on the brink of cracking your facade—your sanity practically crumbling as the minutes ticked by. You didn’t think you’d last this long to be honest. Yet an hour and a half proved to be way too straining on your body, especially your heart. 

He simply sat there with his hands folded on the table—void of emotion, whistling a familiar top 50s tune you couldn’t quite put your finger on. You considered shifting your focuses on trying to comprehend the tune—hoping it would ease the concerning state of apprehension you were in. 

But then you remember that you aren’t that pathetic. Even though you both had probably been sitting in complete silence for about two minutes now. Up to the point where you could probably hear the crickets chirping outside his apartment, except the only sound that was filling your ears was your own conscience telling you how idiotic you were being. 

Your face may be gradually morphing the same shade of crimson as the writing inscribed onto the card itself, and you may have a whole line of sweat encompassing your hairline. But it’s just a stupid little card game. You could say any stupid little answer and the stupid not-so-little boy wouldn’t care. He wouldn’t care. So you shouldn’t care. 

When did you become so pathetic after all?

-one hour and a half ago-

“Why can’t we just play Mario Kart or Uno? This sounds like there’s too much thinking involved,” you whine, leaning against the side of his couch. 

“One, we always play that. And two, I always lose,” he grumbles, plopping down onto the floor.

Jimin rests his back on the frame of the couch as he sits in the small gap made by the large piece of furniture and the coffee table that resided in front of it. You decide to sit on the floor as well, around an arm’s length away from your friend. He places the red box down onto the table—opening the cap and revealing the contents with a mischievous glint in his irises. 

Within the box was a deck of cards, separated into three piles with two pencils on either side. Knowing Jimin, you assumed this game had an ulterior motive you were unaware of, and by the title of the game, you could already tell that you weren’t going to like it very much. 

“How do you even play this?” You ask, causing him to look up in return.

He bites his lip, taking a couple seconds to ponder on your question, “I don’t know it’s my first-time playing too,” he shrugs. “I was watching Jin and Namjoon playing it a couple of weeks ago and for some reason, Jungkook started crying.”

“He is a sap,” you hum in agreement, thinking in retrospect of Jungkook crying from various situations such as Iron Man dying or that one time Jin farted on his pillow and he got pink eye for a whole week. 

“The biggest,” he concurs, “Hm, there’s no instructions in here.” He mutters while shuffling through the cards. 

“Why don’t you just search it up?” You suggest, sliding the box to yourself as he nods and fishes his phone out of his pocket. 

While holding the box in the palm of your hand, you scan the contents—turning it around in your palm until your eyes narrow in on the words printed at the bottom. 

“Oh, it says something here.”

His head perks up. “Hm? What is it?”

You clear your throat at the sight of the long explanation. “We’re Not Really Strangers is a purpose-driven card game and movement all about empowering meaningful connections. Three carefully crafted levels of questions and wildcards that allow you to deepen your existing relationships and create new ones.” You internally grimace at the words. The game hasn’t even started and you already had a bad feeling about it all. “Ready?” You say through clenched teeth, purposely keeping your head hung low. 

Jimin’s lips quirk up into a cheerful grin, unaware of the piercing stare you were giving him. “Okay, I think I got it,” he declares, eyes zeroed in on his phone once more, ”There’s three levels—perception, connection, and reflection. Each level we pass, the deeper and more thought-provoking the questions get. Helping us make a deeper connection and get to know each other better yadda yadda yadda.”

You nod in understanding, sliding the box of cards back towards him—forcing the grimace that kept threatening to plaster itself onto your face into a small, smug smile. 

“The first thing we have to do,” he begins, taking out two pencils and two small pieces of paper, “is write messages to each other. We won’t be able to open these until after we leave.” He explains, sliding a pencil and paper towards you.

“Wow, very cryptic,” you tut, biting down on your bottom lip before more distasteful remarks decided to leave your lips. He doesn’t catch your reaction or your comment though because he’s already got his pencil in his hand, scribbling vigorously onto the tiny piece of paper. Knowing him it could very well be nonsensical insults and doodles, or a whole essay about your friendship and what you mean to him. Most likely ludicrous and full of thought, either way, just like him. 

Without much thought, you lazily jot onto the paper.

know that i love u, u fucker <3 

-y/n

The sound of your pencil falling against the table causes him to look up at you, eyes knit together in confusion. 

“You’re done already?”

You chuckle, “I mean, I wasn’t going to write an essay. You already know how I feel about you. But it seems like you’re writing one though.”

His eyes narrow in on you—giving you an indiscernible look before letting out a small ‘hmph’ and lowering his focus back down to his pencil and paper. You dismiss his enigmatic behavior—deciding to mindlessly scroll on your phone while waiting for him to finish his MLA formatted essay.

Two minutes pass and you hear the sound of his pencil being placed onto the table. “Done.”

“You added citations too right?”

He scoffs, “No, but i’ll gladly add some if you’d like.” 

You roll your eyes for what seems like the umpteenth time in the last five minutes, “Just start the goddamn game.”

He takes the first stack of cards and shuffles them between his hands. “In all three levels, there are wild cards or basically dares we have to complete. And for each level, we get two ‘dig deeper’ cards. Pretty self-explanatory. So this is the perception level. It’s basically designed for first encounters and strangers, and we’re gonna be asking each other questions about ourselves.”

Your eyes widen at the whole confidentiality of it all. “Are we going through all of those cards?” You blurt out, staring at what seemed to be like 50 cards in his hands. 

“Oh no,” he quickly refutes, “It would take hours. We’ll just do like 12 cards each.”

“Alright,” you huff, letting out a small breath of relief. 

“Yay! Okay I’ll go first,” he beams, his toothy smile evident as he places the deck in between the two of you while grabbing a card from the top, “What do you think my name is?”

You snort at the conspicuousness of the question, “Jamal.”

He immediately guffaws at your response, throwing his head back in addition. “Hey, I don’t mind that.”

“Are all of the questions like this?” You say in between hushed laughter. 

“Nah,” he shakes his head as you pick up another card from the deck, “now you ask me.”

“Alright, what’s the first thing you noticed about me?” You ask, slightly taken aback by the sudden earnestness of the question, causing you to become genuinely curious about what his answer was going to be.

He hums, taking a second to think it through. “I think your smile and your laugh. It’s always been really contagious since the day I met you.” He admits, almost matter-of-factly as if it was something you should’ve known by now, yet you did not. 

Your heart nearly disintegrates into a puddle of goop right then and there, but you manage to conceal your reaction, “Aw, you actually like me.” You tease. 

He scoffs with a playful grin on his lips. “Don’t flatter yourself. You still cackle like a damn hyena.”

Your eyebrows shoot up, “At least I don’t laugh at every single of Jin’s lame ass jokes.”

He gasps, jaw slack open due to your all too accurate truthbomb, “I did not ask to be attacked in my own residence.”

“Well, what are you gonna do about it then.”

He snorts. “Holy shit, do you remember when I banged my head on the corner of his coffee table.” 

“How could I forget? I had the picture of the bump on your head as my lockscreen for like a month.” You reminisce, resisting the urge to pull up the picture from your phone.

“Yeah, and that same month I bought and rotated between the same 10 hats.”

“Hey! It genuinely didn’t look as bad as you thought.”

He whips his head towards you, giving you a piercing glare that made you want to redact your statement immediately. 

He grins from ear to ear, the little shit, amused at the reaction he was able to garner from you. 

“Aha!” He suddenly guffaws, shooting out of the floor and prancing towards his fridge. He then takes out three bottles of lychee-flavored soju and makes his way back towards the table. 

Jimin being the borderline alcoholic he is, it doesn’t come as a surprise to you. Not even after he takes another trip back to the fridge to grab yet another three bottles of soju, mango-flavored to be exact. He has probably one of the stupidest grins etched onto his face as he held onto the bottles—meanwhile you were more concerned about the possibility of having to clean up a bunch of broken glass and wasted soju. Then again, it wouldn’t be the first time. 

“And do you plan on drinking all of this by yourself?” you say, gesturing towards the bottles.

“I know my liver is strong, but I don’t buy this shit just to enjoy alone,” he retorts. Out of the corner of his eye, he sees you shake your head as you click your tongue, “Playing this while tipsy just sounds ten times better don’t you think?.”

You shrug—although you had a strong hunch for what he was insinuating, “I mean I guess.”

He starts to pour soju into his shot glass, stopping just before it hits the brim. He slides the glass to you and you take it into your hand, eyeing the sparkling fluid and thinking about the way the contents would do its little all-too-familiar dance on your tongue. 

“Well, you know what they say,” he says, pouring a glass for himself, “drunk words are sober thoughts,” he finishes while dragging out the last word—downing the first shot in one quick swig. You follow his lead soon thereafter, refusing to let your mind linger on what he had just said and the viable likelihood of you spewing out the words that could just make or break your longstanding friendship and lead to a lifetime of regret. 

Obviously, everything’s going fine and dandy for you.

-

The next 20 minutes consisted of a plethora of superficial questions that would vary from:

“What's your favorite song lyric you can think of off the top of your head?”

Your head shoots up as if the lightbulb in your head just flashed on. “Easy. Shawty’s like a melody in my head that i cant keep out got me singing like-“

He lunges over to clap a hand over your mouth before you could sing the next line. “Na na na na no Y/N. Please stop.”

Or something along the lines of:

“What character do you think I'd play in a movie?” He asks with a smug smile. 

“You’d be the second male lead that everyone secretly wants to end up with the main character because you act all sweet and kind and and genuinely cares about her but instead she chooses the other guy because something about him draws her in and it was her ‘gut instinct’ or some shit like that.”

“So I would get second male lead syndrome?” He reiterates. 

“Yes.” 

He sets his shot glass back down with a glower, clearly taken aback. “That is the biggest insult I’ve ever gotten in my entire life.”

You also couldn’t forget about:

“Oh, this one says to create a secret handshake.”

“No.” You deadpan.

“And why not?”

“Your pinky‘s the size of a vienna sausa—“ 

He smacks you square in the cheek with a pillow before you could finish your sentence. You don’t even fight back because your mind was so slow to process what he had just done. The fact that you only slept for 5 hours last night didn’t help whatsoever. Your evident lack of energy causes him to jab his finger into your side, causing a loud shriek—your fight or flight response starts kicking in as you grab the back of his neck and slam his face against the fabric of the couch cushion. 

-

Soju was never able to make the two of you full on drunk—buzzed of course, but not enough for complete incoherency. And so you both down a bottle each before finishing the first round. 

“I’m surprised we didn’t get any wild cards that round,” he says while resting his head on the couch.

You purse your lips, “You spoke too soon.” 

His eyes flash open as he cranes his neck in an attempt to see the card. “Wait actually?”

You can feel your insides churn as you read the words in front of you, and you were sure that it wasn’t the alcohol talking. “Write down the three most important things to you in a relationship for 30 seconds and then compare.”

Jimin reaches over to grab two pieces of paper and pencils while unlocking his phone to find the timer app, “Okay, I’ll put a timer on for 30 seconds starting… now.”

And so the internal monologue in your head begins. 

Three most important things… only three? That’s not anywhere near enough to suffice. Wait, what would the first one even be… oh yeah, trust. Trust is very much important yes, yes, yes. What else? Um, communication? Yes of course, that’s essential. Okay, what would the last one be? 

You sneak a glance over at Jimin. His cheek is squished against the palm of his hand, making his cheek fat (an area in which he lacked in) more prominent and the pink, plush flesh of his lips appear even bigger than they already were. 

The ceiling light emitted a faint, ambient glow—the lights and shadows hitting all the slopes and curves of his face. You never understood how someone could be so effortlessly stunning. Even the mess atop his head that’s supposed to be his hair looks purposely tousled—the ebony strands sticking up in multiple directions was framing his temples and contrasted with the honey-like hues of his skin. 

Unlike the glow that radiated from the lights of the worn-down apartment and the radiance of whatever was beyond the glass of the window behind him, everything about him seemed to glow much brighter.

“Hello, earth to Y/N, your 30 seconds is up.” He interrupts pointedly, waving a hand in front of your face.

Blinking rapidly, you shake your head as well as all preceding thoughts that definitely weren’t consuming your mind a few seconds ago, “Sorry w-what?”

He laughs at your disoriented state, “Did you finish writing your three things?”

No, I wrote your name as number 3. “Yeah, I did. You can go first though.”

He nods with a small smile. “Oh, okay then let’s see. First, I put trust. I don’t know, I think everyone puts that to be honest. After that, I put communication. I feel like that’s just a given y’know. Another thing I feel like most people would say.”

You utter a timid “mhm” under your breath albeit zoning out and being unaware of what he was saying. Opportunely, you managed to scribble out his name with the mere seconds that had passed and now you were tapping the lead point of the pencil against the paper, littering the page with a bunch of grey, little dots—incognizant to the fact that he had his eyes focused on you the whole time. 

“I didn’t really know what to put last. Three things isn’t anywhere near enough in my opinion. But at the last second, I wrote down vulnerability,” he continues.

You look up upon hearing the last word. “Oh wow, that’s good. I didn’t even think about that.”

He chuckles unabashedly, clearly pleased with your reaction. “Right? I just figured. At first, I thought it would go in the same category as trust but then I thought about it more. Yeah, you can trust someone and someone can trust you, but to what extent does that all go to. Where does it start? And where does it even end? You need to be able to open up to the person I feel like. So I guess trust and vulnerability go hand in hand.”

Impressed with his words, you decide to chime in.  “Wouldn’t communication go along with it too?”

“Hm?”

You place your pencil down. “You would open up to each other by means of communication, becoming more vulnerable, and then overall gaining more trust in the end.”

His brows raise at your sudden revelation, “Wait, you’re so right, did you just wax poetic and full cycle all that?.”

You smile, “I mean I guess,” you respond humbly, “ it does make sense though, does it not?”

He hums in agreement while downing another shot, “It applies to us, right?”

You force out a chuckle, but it comes out a lot more faux-sounding than you would’ve liked. “Haha, yeah I guess it does, doesn’t it.” Once again, starting to dive deeper into the abyss of pitiful hope and unrequitedness. 

“Describe your perfect day.” He suddenly interjects.

You quirk a brow. “Didn’t I just go?”

“It’s okay, I’ll go for this one too.”

“Alright,” you say, foot tapping on the wooden floor as you look past him and out into the glass window of his living room, “well, I wouldn’t have school of course. And I think it would all depend on how I feel that day. If I was feeling particularly lazy, the day would probably consist of me binge-watching shows in bed while eating a shitton of carbs. And the other case would probably be galavanting around the city or going to an amusement park with friends.”

Jimin listens intently and smiles as you speak, causing you to avoid his stare before pigment threatened to rush to your cheeks, “Both of those scenarios sound really nice. I better be included too.”

You roll your eyes, turning away to hide the grin creeping up your cheeks, “We’ll see.”

He groans, standing up from his spot on the floor and falling onto his couch instead, “My asscheeks hurt.”

Your face contorts into a look of disgust, “And you want me to do what with that information?”

Scoffing lightly, he leans back into the cushions and tilts his head back, “It was a declaration, not a cry for help.”

“Yeah, and it’s the bony ass for me.”

His head perks up. “It’s having a flatter ass than their guy best friend for me.”

Gulping down the sad but unequivocal truth, “It’s kissing up to every teacher’s ass for me.”

His eyes narrow in pure chagrin, “It’s the crying on your teacher’s doorstep for them to round your grade for me.”

“It’s splitting your pants on orientation day for me.”

“Fuck you, people would pay to see this ass! It’s getting a concussion from falling down the main hall stairs for me.”

“For fuck’s sake, I told you that they waxed the floors that day!” You snap back.

“Okay, and who said it was a good idea to walk down three flights of stairs while trying to cram for a midterm? Yeah, exactly no one.” He says incisively, giving you an even bigger urge to push him off of the couch, yet you digress. 

“This could go on for hours.” You heave out.

“Is that the sound of someone giving up I’m hearing?”

“Is that the sound of a midget I’m hearing?”

“But I’m taller than you?!” He screeches petulantly, smacking your shoulder. You burst out into a fit of laughter—toppling onto the wooden floor with pure malice. 

Gasping for air, you attempt to stifle your laughter and regain your breath. “Wow, I’m on a roll today! I deserve another shot.”

He shakes his head, his anger quelling at the sight of your giddiness. “Remind me to not let you drink and play this game.”

You turn over from your side to lay on your back. “This will be the first and the last time I play this game with you.” You say almost immediately—the words involuntarily slipping from your mouth before you could stop it. 

He sinks in his spot on the couch, brows knitting at your comment. “Why?”

Sobriety crashes into you like a colossal wave —your irritation dissipates almost immediately. The exaggerated tone your voice begins to register through your head—as well as the fact that you sounded a lot more disapproving than you intended. 

Groaning at your hindered ability to think and process properly, you attempt to clear the air, “Sorry, I didn’t mean it like that. We just... practically know everything about each other I guess. What else is there to know?”

He hums. “You sure about that?”

What? “Wait what?”

“Nothing,” he chuckles awkwardly, “next question.”

The straightforwardness of the next question causes you to quirk a brow, “How are you, really?”

His eyes widen. “Well, that’s a deep one, isn’t it?”

You smile. “A little.” 

He sighs, a small grin lacing his features, “Hm, how am I,” he affirms, adjusting himself in his spot on the couch, “I feel content with where I am right now, I guess. Things can always be better, but at the same time they could be worse too.”

Your number one defense mechanism as of late has been to constantly tease and make jokes at the poor guy—essentially using him as your own mental punching bag. He went along with it out of the assumption that it was all caused by your stress from school while you knew the true origins of your behavior. 

You smile at his optimism, "Hey, that's always good to hear."

He chuckles, shifting his position on the couch so he could face you directly, "I don't know, maybe it's the new sense of freedom. Or all the amazing people I've gotten to meet and the opportunities that are offered here. Or the fact that I'm still going to the same school as my best friend after all this damn time."

"Chim, don't get sappy on me man." You warn him while pouting exaggeratedly— slumping onto the frame of the couch while he takes a strand of your hair in between his fingers. You bask in the moment, your eyes shutting close. 

"Hey, I'm just being honest! For some reason, it all makes up for the impending student debt and draining lectures and professors that have a superiority complex as fat as their paycheck."

"Too bad their paycheck still isn't as fat as your ass."

An audible gasp coming from the only other person in the room causes your eyes to flutter open.

"Aw," he coos, ruffling the hair atop of your head, "that’s the nicest thing you’ve said to me all night. Admit it, you love me."

Out of instinct, you opt to stick your tongue at him instead of replying with a witty comeback. You turn away from him before mumbling to yourself, "More than you'll ever know buddy."

"What was that?"

Shit. "Nothing. Next question!"

-

After twenty questions and a whopping 10 empty soju bottles later, you are quite literally about to implode.

Your eyes stare down at the card in front of you—everything that surrounds it is blurry in vision and you can audibly pinpoint the erratic beating of your heart.

The card was practically taunting you, laughing in your face. It was as if there was a sentient being in the universe who was aware of your own subconscious and the not so latent feelings you had for the boy sitting in front of you. Same said being loved to constantly place you in a state of trepidation concerning your current situation—your blood pressure skyrocketing—nearly feeling the muscular pink thing inside of you thrusting itself against your ribcage.

The imminent headache was starting to spread towards your temples and you practically felt like you could feel your brain shifting inside your head at this point. Although you felt groggy, you were certain that your heart was at a rate that is way faster than it should be. And sitting on your legs has caused them to lose all feeling from the tips of your toes all the way up to your kneecaps. One attempt at standing and you would come crashing to the floor in a heartbeat.

The white card with crimson red writing made sure to leave an impact, making you feel the most ridiculed you’ve felt all night which says a lot—leaving your mind in a complete frenzy although you refused to let it be known.

To say you were mad was an understatement. Out of all the times throughout the entirety of this hour and a half that you were playing this game, he decided that now would be the best time to use his 'dig deeper' card.

There it was.

Admit something.

"Okay fine, I was the one who stuck pink hair dye in your shampoo last semester."

"Y/N, did you really think I didn't know? C’mon I know there’s something else in there.”

You scowl, brows furrowing, “Why would I keep something from you?”

“Why are you getting so defensive over this?”

"What the hell is there for me to admit to you?" You snap back in exasperation, the harsh tone of your voice rendering the two of you speechless. 

He averts his gaze, closing his eyes while inhaling a deep sigh. "Ever since we started college, why have you been treating me so differently?"

Your eyes widen in disbelief, stumped. Yet you refuse to wither out of this. 

 "I– are you mad?"

"No. Of course not," he quickly digresses, softening his gaze, "I just noticed after all this time that you've only been acting differently towards me. Did I do something wrong?"

"No, you didn't do anything wrong Jimin. You never have."

His eyes narrow, giving you yet another indecipherable look, "I'm using my 'dig deeper' card." He deadpans.

And so you sat there. Fiddling the card in between your fingers, feigning nonchalance. You were very much on the brink of cracking your facade—your sanity practically crumbling as the minutes ticked by. You didn’t think you’d last this long, to be honest. Yet an hour and a half proved to be way too straining on you in a variety of different ways.

He simply sat there with his hands folded on the table—void of emotion, whistling a familiar top 50s tune you couldn’t quite put your finger on.

You considered shifting your focuses on trying to comprehend the tune—hoping it would ease the concerning state of apprehension you were in. But then you assured yourself that you haven't reached that level of patheticism yet.

Even though you both had probably been sitting in complete silence for about two minutes now —practically anyone else could detect was the crickets chirping outside his apartment, yet the only sound that was filling your eardrums was your own conscience telling you how idiotic you were being.

This was it. There was no point in trying to weasel yourself out of this situation. If you tried, your more than futile attempt could very well end up causing more problems than if you were to go with the latter.

So instead of constantly wracking your brain with witty banter and deceitful ways to gaslight your feelings for the man sitting in front of you, you come to terms with the fact that your time had run out. You internally commend yourself for putting up a good fight, as well as internally become accosted at how immature you were at handling the whole situation.

You sharply inhale through your nose, peering at the man sitting in front of you as his eyes meet your own, "Alright."

He offers you a small yet empathetic smile in return, giving you the tiniest sliver of reassurance. His hand pats the couch cushion next to him, motioning for you to sit down next to him.

You push yourself up from the floor, immediately propping a leg onto the couch to avoid your numb limbs to be the cause of your embarrassment.

You inhale slowly through your nose and out through your mouth. "This is going to sound really absurd. Like more than absurd. Possibly borderline hysterical." No Y/N, why would you say that?

He interjects, placing a hand on your forearm. "I'm beginning to think you're becoming borderline hysterical," he lets out a small chuckle, "slow down Y/N. One thought at a time."

Your jaw is still slack open due to your previous rambling. "I'm sorry, I just—I don't think I've ever felt this anxious… around you at least."

He bites his lip, eyes trailing away from yours as he tries to think of a way to aid you, "Will it help if I turn around?

"Maybe." You reply timidly, smiling to yourself as his back came into view.

“It’ll be pretty funny if we don’t remember this in the morning,” you start off with, “I shouldn’t be saying that either I’m sorry. Stupid alcohol.”

He snickers at your drunken state, it was adorable. “Pretend I’m not here Y/N. Like you’re talking to a wall.” He advises, back still turned. 

You nod although he can’t see you. “Okay. Well, hi Mr. Wall. I’ve been keeping a secret from my best friend for as long as I’ve known him and I don’t know what to do about it. I’ve suppressed it all this time in hopes that it would eventually fade away, and it almost did. No really, it actually almost did. But now it’s back again and all the same feelings came, but like freaking twofold. No, tenfold. No, like a hundred fucking fold.”

Jimin tries excruciatingly hard to stifle his laughter, cupping a hand to his mouth so he wouldn’t move and distract you.

“I’m literally in love with my freaking best friend when I know he doesn’t see me in that light nor will he ever. If he did, we wouldn’t be where we are right now because I am so shitty at hiding my feelings that I am more than certain that I’ve let the truth slip a couple of times.” You say all in one breath.

He slowly detaches his hand from his mouth, eyebrows raising in disbelief in the words you had just said. His body urges him to turn around. Yet you continue to think out loud. So he digresses. 

“Towards the end of high school, I think my feelings started to become more dormant because I had become more concerned over finishing high school and transitioning into college. I was content and I convinced myself that my feelings were fleeting for once.” You begin with, allowing whatever thoughts that you consumed your mind to spill all out for Mr. Wall to hear. 

You sigh, taking a pillow from his couch and squeezing onto it for dear life. “That was until we ended up getting into our top picks and going to the same school. I couldn’t believe it. My stupid head tried to convince me that life had always just paired the two of us up together for some reason. And that maybe, just maybe I had a chance. But whatever I guess. I don’t know.”

A notification causes your eyes to trail to your phone. Really, Professor La, this is not a good time to tell me to finish my research paper. You swipe at the notification, revealing your lock screen—a photo of you and Jimin at an amusement park back at your hometown, sporting matching university hoodies with bright smiles on your faces that were captured mid-laughter.

Setting your phone down, you lean into the couch—letting your head fall into the cushions as your eyelids slowly start to droop shut. “What also didn’t help is how college life just seems to suit him perfectly. He just always looks so happy now. Like yeah, he’s always been a social butterfly. Yet in addition to that he has top notch grades. He charms professors. For fuck’s sake the Dean treats him like a son. His passion, his laughter, his love, his happiness. It’s always been so infectious. But college just made the effect he has on people grow even stronger. I-,” you stammer, pausing breathlessly, “it just looks like he truly belongs here. Like college was just made for him.”

He sits there in a complete stupor—still trying to process all the words that he had just heard. His body is itching to turn around, take you into his arms, whisper soft nothings into your ear. Anythings. Everything. He never wanted you to feel anxious about his feelings for you ever again.  

“Mr. Wall, that was a lot, I’m sorry. But I’m really… really tired.” You utter quietly, a long yawn escaping your lips. You fall asleep. 

Ten seconds pass until Jimin sneaks a glance over his shoulder, scanning your body as he notices your shut eyes and timid grip on his pillow. 

“Y/N?”

You’re unresponsive. 

He grins at the sight. Getting up from his seat, he makes his way toward you—slowly prying the pillow from your grasp as you carefully slides his hands under your body and picks you up from the couch. 

Instinctively, you wrap your arms around his neck and bury your face into his shoulder as he carries you to his bedroom. You are very much still asleep, yet you always had the habit of needing something to hold onto while you were unconscious. 

Kicking the sheets aside, he makes room for you to lie down as he gently places you onto his bed. He quickly scurries to the other side, slipping into the covers himself as he lays down beside you. 

The sudden contact causes you to shift in your sleep—suddenly wrapping an arm around his torso. He lays there, completely stunned at your actions and begins to heavily debate whether he should give into his desires or not. 

The internal conflict lasts about two seconds before he turns to his side—placing his free hand on the small of your back and pulling you into his chest, leaving a small pocket of space in between your two bodies. 

Unknowingly, you close the gap almost immediately—nestling your head into the crook of his neck as your arm that was lazily slung over his torso starts to tighten its hold around his body. 

His arm slings over your unconscious form, his hands making his way to your back as he basks in the foreign feeling, being this close in proximity to you. It was different. Yet it almost felt like it was where he belonged. And he was scared because he didn’t want it to end. 

While gently placing his chin on the top of your head, he begins to stroke your hair as fatigue starts to wash over him as well. “Things will make sense soon Y/N, I swear.”

He retracts, craning his neck in an attempt to see your sleeping form. His attempt proves to be futile when an indecipherable groan leaves your lips—brows knitting slightly and lips curling downward from the sudden lack of warmth. 

His soft laughter fills the room as he obliges—carefully pressing a small kiss to your forehead before reverting back to his original position. 

“For now, just know that I love you too.”

-

The intolerable throbbing sensation in your temples caused you to stir in your sleep.

The only events you could recall from last night was being at Jimin’s apartment, playing that stupid card game, and downing the most soju you’ve ever had in one sitting.

It only occurs to you that you’re wrapped in someone’s arms when you open your eyes and the only thing in your periphery is a firm chest, steadily heaving each time they take a breath.

Your legs were messily entangled with theirs—arms slung around each other’s torsos as you felt a strange yet dense weight on the top of your head.

Carefully, you try to pry yourself from their grasp albeit your haphazard state of mind. You pull back ever so slightly, making sure not to wake them up in the process, discovering that the excess weight was actually their chin that had been resting on top of your head. Their fingers were still twined in your hair as you pulled back, making you freeze in your spot. Curious, you tilt your head, peering upwards and catching a glimpse of their face.

The boy is undoubtedly still asleep. Eyes shut and ample lips slightly parted. Your timid movement, to your luck, which hadn’t phased him in the slightest, as he was unperceptive and nearly immobile at this point. 

If it weren't for your abhorrent headache and the even more abhorrent symptoms that had rooted from your hangover, it would be an understatement to say that you would be freaking out right about now.  In reality,

You'd be in a complete state of manic.

Because of the fact that your body was paying for the despicable amount of alcohol you had decided to consume the night before, an influx of any intense emotion would cause your body to exacerbate itself even more. And the last thing you needed was to puke all over the poor guy after sleeping together for the first time.

While you were physically experiencing withdrawals, your mind felt slightly inebriated nonetheless. You weren't quite sure if it was from last night's affluence of liquor or the way everything's starting to come back to you. And the longer your eyes linger on the boy's face, the clearer everything starts to become. From the foolish banter to your childish outbursts leading up to your intoxicated yet conscientious confession.

You left your heart all out for him to witness last night, and now the only thing you could do is wait for a response.

Taking a deep sigh, you retreat back to his body—deciding not to ponder any longer on the matter and wait until you had felt physically capable of doing so. 

-

Steaming hot streams of water splash against his back. He stands under the shower head while massaging soap into his hair, replaying the events that had happened last night on loop. 

The words that left your mouth were engraved into his mind as they involuntarily kept replaying over and over again—particularly your inebriated confession, which kept garnering the same reaction of both hope and frustration within him. 

The solution should be simple. In reality it is, yet he still felt so internally scattered. 

“—he doesn’t see me in that light nor will he ever...”

That was the singular line that he just couldn’t wrap his head around. There was never a moment where he would hesitate to drop everything he was doing to be there for you and make sure you were okay. 

Yes, he knew that you two were best friends and that it was natural. But what best friend drives across town at 2am because you had the stomach flu and your parents were out of town. Keep in mind it was his mom’s birthday that day. 

What best friend ditches their prom date when yours had stood you up. Or coax the drama teacher into giving you the lead in the school play because he saw the ways your eyes glimmered when you saw the words ‘High School Musical’. And damn, weren’t you justthe greatest Gabriella he’s ever seen.

Little did you know that in reality, he always wanted you to be the Gabriella to his Troy, and not Chad. Yet you seemed to have believed the latter all along. 

But in the end, what the hell kind of best friend remains oblivious to the fact that for years, past exes have consistently broken up with him for the same reason.

“Your heart belongs to someone else.”

Or alternatively,

“I’m not the right person for you.”

Straight A’s don’t mean shit when no teacher has ever taught him how to realize that he was irrevocably in love with his best friend, and that she had always, almost candidly, felt the same way.

He shuts his eyes tightly, hands aggressively running through his soaked hair as he comes to a conclusion. 

Being strangers could never be an option. Being friends, or moreso, best friends was fine. But that’s it. It was just fine. It was normalcy. It has been for years.

And that just wasn’t going to cut it for him anymore.

-

Your arm traces along the fabric of the bedsheets, alerting you that there was a void of space and lack of warmth from the other side of the bed. Your eyes spring open to see that there was no one laying beside you. 

A long yawn escapes your lips as you stretch your limbs, body sprawling all over the bed before selfishly tugging the sheets all to yourself. 

Soft hissing from which you assume was coming from his shower was confirmed to be true when your eyes spot the closed bathroom door and the small beam of light that was emitting from it. 

A small, folded piece of paper that was taking up the space of where his head was resting was where your eyes shift to next. 

y/n <3

You knit your brows together, knowing that it was most likely put there strategically rather than a piece of trash that had slipped out of his pocket.

It was addressed to you after all and so you grab it while making a futile attempt to rub the sleep out of your eyes. Your throbbing headache and churning insides had significantly died down. Regardless of your recovery time you internally make a promise to yourself to never get this wasted ever again. The chances of you sticking to it?  Highly debatable considering the current situation you’re in. 

Blinking rapidly, you finally are able to decipher whatever is written onto the paper. And it says:

hi y/n, i can already tell by the looks that you’re giving me that you already despise this game and im sorry. all i wanna say is that by the time you read this, i hope that we remain close as ever even though what i plan on saying tonight could obliterate all of that. i wanted to play this game bc i know we’re both hiding stuff from each other and it’s about time we get it out. at least for me. whatever happens, i love you. always will. 

- chim :)

EDIT: for fuck’s sake y/n i’m FUCKING IN LOVE WITH YOU TOO I WAS SUPPOSED TO CONFESS TO U FIRST LOSER NOT THE OTHER WAY AROUND T-T

-

“Finally awake?” You hear a familiar voice call out. He walks out of the bathroom, fully clothed (to your dismay) while drying his hair with a towel, eyes immediately softening as they connect with yours. 

You swallow down your nerves, “Yeah, I’ve been.”

He walks over to the edge of the bed, eyes shifting to the piece of paper in your hand before reverting his focus back to your face, “What are you reading there?” 

“I don’t know,” you huff, feigning ignorance, “why don’t you tell me.”

A soft chortle leaves his lips as he throws the towel to the side, smiling as wide as ever as he jumps onto the vacant spot on his bed right next to you.

Propping himself up, he sits against the headboard, letting out a content sigh before looking down at you once more. “Come here.” He says, reaching his arms out in hopes that you’d fill the idle gap.

And you do, shaking the sheets off of your body as you place yourself in his arms, freshly revelling in the comfort. You wrap your arms snugly around his waist, letting your head rest on his chest while he clutches onto you tightly. 

“I’m sorry for pushing the subject so hard onto you last night.” He starts off with, “I guess I just never fathomed the fact that you could return the feeling, and I was too stubborn to even admit it to you in the first place.” He expresses while stroking your back,  “I didn’t mean to confront you so harshly, it’s unlike me, and I’m really sorry about it Y/N.”

“Do you think I’m mad about that Jimin?” You inquire, just barely above a whisper.

He pulls back slightly, peering down at you, “Are you?”

“Of course not. I should be the one apologizing anyways for being even more stubborn and resorting to such childish ways.” You disclose whilst mentally beating yourself up.

“Hey, there’s no use in beating ourselves up over it. Look where we are now.” 

“Where exactly are we Jimin?” You inquire timidly, head still resting on his chest. 

His fingers brush over the base of your chin, gently tilting your head up until your eyes found his. 

“Y/N, it’s honestly hard for me to formulate the words but all I know is that I think I’m in love with you. And I think I have been for a long time, no scratch that, I have been for a long time,” he says all in one breath, making you smile at how high-strung he was acting. 

The grin remains plastered onto your face, “I’m not drunk still right because did I just hear you say that you’ve been in love with me?”

“Y/N…” he whines, jutting out his bottom lip as he drags out the last syllable of your name.

You can’t help but laugh. “I’m sorry! I’m sorry! Go on please.” 

He bites his lip, “I honestly had a whole speech prepared in the shower but I forgot all of it.”

“It’s alright, I barely remember half the stuff I spewed out last night,” you chortle.

He chuckles, “Well, if you were wondering, you’re cute as fuck when you’re piss drunk.”

The compliment makes your breath hitch in your throat—your heart starting to pick up speed dangerously quick.

A few seconds pass, allowing you to slightly gain back some of your composure, “Why did you um– I mean– when do you think you fell in love with me?” You stutter. 

“I was actually trying to figure that out too,” he starts, “in the shower. Well, this is going to sound dumb,” he admits, sharply exhaling out of his nose, “But do you remember when we went on a field trip to that amusement park in 8th grade? Around halloween time.”

“I think so… but what about it?”

He nods. “I still remember that night so vividly for some reason,” he pauses, collecting his thoughts, “There were haunted houses all over the park. And they were all different themes. And I think the first one we went into together was—”

“The clown one.” You deadpan. 

“Yeah!” He beams, laughing at the way you shudder after your words, “Anyways, you were walking behind me with your hands on my shoulders, but you had a razor grip and I thought my arms were going to fall off, so I made you walk next to me instead. We had our arms interlocked and you were gripping onto me so closely and you had your head buried in my shoulder the whole time.” He explains, the smile never ceasing to leave his lips.

You don’t take his eyes off of him—smiling sweetly as he explains the retrospective moment that you never knew had held so much significance to him.

“All of a sudden, you grabbed my hand, and honestly, I think that was the scariest part of the whole experience,” he admits, chuckling softly. 

“But then I intertwined fingers with you. And I liked it. Thinking about it now, I probably loved it. It felt almost borderline euphoric. Like as if I was riding a high, and when we detached hands, it felt like there was just something missing. And I guess I never really put the pieces together because it just became a normal thing after that. And when our skinship kept evolving from there, I just kept dismissing it over and over again. Like as if that feeling was a normal thing to happen between friends, because I genuinely thought it was. Yeah, I think that’s the moment I pretty much fell in love with you.” He finishes, giving you a close-mouthed smile while he tucks a loose strand of hair behind your ear. 

Astounded was an understatement. You couldn’t believe that you both had been suppressing these feelings for so long. Yet somehow, this whole confession didn’t seem out of place or time, it was as if everything that had happened beforehand had led up to this very moment. 

“Wow, Jimin I– I don’t know what to say.” You reply.

He shakes his head. “You don’t have to say anything Y/N. I’m sorry for making you wait for so long, after all.”

You interject, “Please don’t say sorry, I think we were definitely both in the wrong here.”

He smiles, except this time his eyes crinkle up all the way, “Alright, but can you at least let me make it up to you?”

“I’m listening.” You jokingly reply.

“Let’s go on a date,” he declares brazenly, “but tonight, after we’ve recovered from our hangovers and what not.”

The corners of your lips upturn so high that your cheekbones sting, “Jimin, I’d love to–”

“Ah, wait! I’m not done.” He cuts you off, head inching forward, leaning in so close that you could feel his breath tickle your ear and the heat rushing up to your cheeks. 

“And at the very end of the night, I’ll make certain that you won’t be able to walk normally by tomorrow.” He whispers into your ear— voice low and full of lust.

Shivers run through your body as it feels like all the wind had just gotten knocked out of you. Yeah, this was definitely worth the wait.

-

-

-

MASTERLIST ; SEQUEL

#bts #bts ff #btswritingcafe #btsghostie #bts smut #btswriterscollective #btsbookclub #bts angst #bts fluff #bts scenarios #jimin ff #jimin fluff #bts fake texts #bts imagines #bts x reader #jimin smut #jimin scenarios #jimin fanfic #bts smau #jimin x reader #bts updates #jimin fake texts #jimin imagines #jimin angst #jimin #park jimin #bts fanfiction #bts fanfic

[robininthelabyrinth]

I love your story with LW and JC raising LS! Do you plan on writing more?

Delight in Misery (ao3) - part 1, part 2

-

“So, I have a problem,” Jiang Cheng said, bursting into the room.

Sometimes Lan Wangji wondered if Jiang Cheng had ever heard of any other way to enter a room. Through the window, perhaps, since clearly walking wasn’t seen as a valid alternative.

“Just one?” he asked, not looking up from where he was repositioning A-Yuan’s hand on the guqin.

“No, I – hey!”

A-Yuan giggled, and that made Jin Ling, currently nestled in blankets next to the guqin, giggle as well, and predictably, Jiang Cheng forgot all else in front of such adorableness, immediately crouching down to make faces at Jin Ling.

“Your problem?” Lan Wangji prompted after a few moments.

“Ah..? Oh! Yes. Remember how I got into a fight with – what’s his name, that idiot?”

Lan Wangji pointedly remained silent. Jiang Cheng got into any number of fights, given his temper, and those were only the ones he told Lan Wangji about – and he wasn’t always reliable on that score, either.

The doctor that came to visit every week was not given to gossip, as Jiang Cheng had promised, but his assistant who waited outside the door, never entering, sometimes said things.

Disturbing things, sometimes.

Lan Wangji had not yet found a way to ask Jiang Cheng if he really did capture and torture demonic cultivators to death – mostly because he didn’t know what he’d do if the answer was ‘yes’.

He knew Jiang Cheng believed that Wei Wuxian had been corrupted by demonic cultivation into something unrecognizable, that he believed it was his own fault for not having stopped him sooner, that he thought it was his responsibility to stop demonic cultivators before other innocent people suffered the way he had because of Wei Wuxian; he knew that Jiang Cheng both longed and feared any success in finding Wei Wuxian’s spirit, wanting desperately to have any hint of him again and yet terrified by the possibility that it had been Wei Wuxian, in the end, that had destroyed him utterly. There were many flaws in his thinking, but without that defense mechanism, Jiang Cheng’s psyche would collapse.

When Jiang Cheng was a little steadier, he’d bring it up, Lan Wangji promised himself. When things were a little calmer. 

Soon.

“Right, right, I fight with too many to count,” Jiang Cheng said, grimacing. The expression made Jin Ling giggle again, as if it had been made to amuse him, and that lifted Jiang Cheng’s mood a little. “The one who called me a filthy cutsleeve that shouldn’t be allowed around children.”

Lan Wangji remembered. Even if Jiang Cheng hadn’t told him, A-Yuan would have: he’d been full of excitement at how Jiang Cheng had foregone even whipping the man with Zidian and just punched him full in the face with a fist full of purple sparks. And then there’d been some kicking, according to A-Yuan, and a great deal of shouting about how people who abused children were people who abused children and that being a monster had nothing at all to do with anyone’s preferences in bed.

That poor man – he might have escaped with fewer broken bones if his timing hadn’t been so bad. That confrontation had taken place just after Lan Wangji had finally confessed aloud that his feelings about Wei Wuxian were, in fact, of a romantic nature. Amusingly enough, Jiang Cheng had not guessed it – he’d spluttered and waved his hands and said really?! at least six times – which in retrospect was in line with his general level of obliviousness. After he’d finally realized Lan Wangji was serious, though, he’d responded well enough: he hadn’t said a word about cutsleeves or anything like that, not a single word. Instead, he’d immediately leapt into criticizing Lan Wangji’s poor taste in men, claiming that actually living with Wei Wuxian would have driven him mad within weeks.

He hadn’t said that Lan Wangji could do better, though. They both knew that that was impossible.

“I remember.”

“Well, all sorts of rumors got started after that – no, don’t look at me like that, I told you that I don’t care one way or another! I don’t even want a wife right now; could I even handle having a wife the way I am now, more nightmares than sleep and no ability to control my temper?”

Lan Wangji shrugged and continued to strum the guqin in a repetitive motion, demonstrating to A-Yuan. Jiang Cheng would remember to get to the point eventually.

“Anyway. Rumors. People have started – asking.”

Lan Wangji’s hands paused. “You’ve been propositioned?”

“No! Well, I mean, yes, but dealing with propositions from men is the same as from women; you just glare until they go away –”

Sometimes Lan Wangji felt certain that Jiang Cheng would never find a wife.

After all, one would have to put up with him long enough to find the tolerable parts buried deep (deep) under all the prickliness and bad temper, and that was a task fit only for the inhumanly patient.

“– and anyway, no, I meant…someone asked me for help.”

Lan Wangji finally turned his head to look at him. “Help?”

Jiang Cheng sat down next to him. “Jin Guangshan’s bastard, the new one – Mo Xuanyu. He came to me during one of the conferences recently. He’s…he’s not fit for Lanling.”

Lan Wangji frowned.

“He’s getting bullied at Koi Tower, and pretty badly, too,” Jiang Cheng said. “He gave me some examples. Nothing truly intolerable in isolation, but when you put it all together…He’s very weak. Sensitive.”

“And he approached you?”

“I know,” Jiang Cheng said, long-suffering. “What’s the point of being infamously bad-tempered if people still approach you to ask for things…? He said that he trusts me because he thinks I’m, you know, like him.”

“A cutsleeve?”

“Exactly. It’s not looked on favorably in Lanling, to say the least.” He sighed. “Sometimes I wish we were all like Qinghe. I’m pretty sure if Nie Huaisang announced that he was marrying a sentient rosebush, Chifeng-zun’s primary concern would be how good its saber skills were.”

Lan Wangji felt a similar pang. His own sect elders, at Gusu, were not especially favorable to the idea either – Lan Xichen had long ago warned him that he would need to keep his inclinations to himself and that, if he ever found a partner, it would be best if the two of them could maintain low profile, pretending as much as possible to be merely brothers or close friends.

He’d thought that had all sounded quite reasonable, right up until he met Wei Wuxian, and little by little the idea of denying the way he felt had become utterly repulsive to him.

“Anyway, I feel like I should do something? But I can’t interfere with anything in Lanling, you know that.”

Lan Wangji knew. Matters between the Jiang sect and the Jin sect remained highly precarious. Jiang Cheng’s agreement not to marry or have children had maintained the alliance between them, but there was always the looming pressure that they could one day revoke the agreement and reclaim Jin Ling – perhaps even going so far as to bar them from seeing him again.

It was one of Jiang Cheng’s many nightmares.

“I can’t not do something,” Jiang Cheng was saying, waving his hands, and that was sign enough that whatever Mo Xuanyu had told him had made an impact. Normally if something touched on Jiang Cheng’s bottom line – Lanling and its threats – he stopped thinking about it immediately. “If this isn’t stopped, it’ll only get worse and worse, and the kid’s unstable as it is…I wouldn’t be surprised if he killed himself. Maybe not immediately, maybe not for years and years, but – one day.”

The Lan sect prioritized the preservation of human life over all else.

Lan Wangji considered his options.

“But then we get back to the fact that it’s Lanling. It’d be one thing if he were a nobody, but he’s Jin Guangshan’s son – I probably wouldn’t even be able to get near him, usually –”

“Brother could.”

Jiang Cheng twisted to look at him. “What?”

“Brother could,” Lan Wangji said. “He is sworn brothers with Lianfeng-zun; he has an entry token into Lanling and is familiar with much of Koi Tower.”

Jiang Cheng blinked. “And this helps me…how? I don’t think even Zewu-jun, however kind, would make trouble over a second-hand story that’s not even objectively that bad.”

“He would believe me.”

Jiang Cheng went quiet for a moment, and there was nothing but the innocent plinking of A-Yuan’s fingers on the guqin.

“This had better not be one of your attempts at self-sacrifice,” he finally said. “I don’t want you to feel like you have to – especially for Mo Xuanyu, of all people, you don’t even know him – ”

“I am ready,” Lan Wangji said, and Jiang Cheng looked abruptly stricken. Lan Wangji didn’t understand why until he saw the way Jiang Cheng’s eyes flickered towards A-Yuan, then away, and then back again – as if he were simultaneously trying to memorize his features and also distance himself. “To speak with him only. I will not return to the Cloud Recesses at this time.”

Jiang Cheng gave a guilty start. “Really? You know you don’t have to –”

“I have decided,” Lan Wangji said simply.

Jiang Cheng rubbed his nose. “Well, good,” he said, not looking at Lan Wangji. “It’s better for A-Yuan to get a good grounding in the basics in one place before you move him around. You can always reconsider later, when he’s older.”

Lan Wangji hummed in agreement and looked back down at the guqin. “You may choose how to tell him.”

“Wait, what? Me?” Jiang Cheng asked, looking appropriately horrified by the idea. “Are you crazy? You remember that I have only the most passing familiarity with tact, right?”

“It will probably be better that way,” Lan Wangji said, and even mostly believed it. A letter would be too impersonal, a passed-along message almost certain to get garbled – he had never been eloquent in his terseness.

Jiang Cheng, however tactless, would at least be able to offer some context.

Besides, Jiang Cheng’s inevitable rant about the Lan sect’s mistreatment of Lan Wangji would likely take up several minutes, giving Lan Xichen time to recover from the shock and for his mixed emotions to settle into joy at finding Lan Wangji again. He had made his brother suffer, he knew, and he would have to explain himself and account for that – but enough time had passed, time spent here in the room where his beloved had lived, where they might have lived together if the world had been different, that Lan Wangji felt that he could do it without fear.

He was fairly sure Lan Xichen would respect his request not to share his location with the rest of the sect, and accept his refusal to return – and if he didn’t, well, possession was nine-tenths of the law. It would be very difficult for them to force him to return through anything other than emotional pressure.

A-Yuan broke a string and yelped, making Jin Ling start fussing, and Jiang Cheng immediately panicked, all other thoughts forgotten, and even as he unfolded himself to go over and make peace, Lan Wangji thought to himself that there was enough here to make resisting that pressure worthwhile.

Besides – if it came right down to it, Lan Wangji suspected he would look quite well in purple.

#mdzs #lan wangji #jiang cheng #my fic #my fics #delight in misery #Anonymous

[anexplanationofunfortunateevents]

supreme dysfunction

A lot of the politics around the Supreme Court has a kind of soft-focus, sepia-toned Before Times deceptiveness about it. The obfuscation is as thick and persistent as it is because the situation is extremely simple. Several decades ago, Republicans realized they could not win fair and square, so they put a lot of institutional focus and an obscene amount of money into rigging the courts. Cheating is the secret sauce. I realize that’s not a satisfying explanation for years of political dysfunction, but it is what it is.

And yet here we are, six weeks from Election Day, facing the prospect of a Trump-brand replacement for the irreplaceable Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

What you need to do is keep your head for the next few weeks. If that means putting this out of your mind as soon as possible, fine. All you need to know is that anyone this criminal would nominate to the court will be a disaster and anyone who would accept a nomination under these circumstances is wildly unfit to judge a dog and pony show. Republicans really did tell loud and insulting lies all throughout 2016 about why they wouldn’t confirm the replacement for a Supreme Court justice who passed away nearly a year before an election, and they really are out here now mocking the idea that anyone might have had to pretend to believe them then. They will probably succeed in pushing through a sentient garbage fire before the election, but we have to try to make it hurt. All you need to do is call your senators and tell them to honor Justice Ginsburg’s wish by refusing to confirm anyone Trump nominates. Either you’ll hear that they’re trying to do the right thing, which might make you feel better, or you’ll get an opportunity to call a Republican a fascist pig, which always makes me feel better.

If you are going to be following this farce, out of interest or because you can’t block it out, let me help you prepare for some of the bullshit that’s coming at you.

One of the foundational assumptions commentators make is that Democrats don’t “care” about the courts in the way Republicans do. Whenever you hit that assumption, think of this article:

Hillary Clinton Just Delivered the Strongest Speech of Her Campaign—and the Media Barely Noticed

Madison, Wisconsin—Hillary Clinton delivered the strongest speech of her 2016 campaign in Wisconsin this week, and the media barely noticed.

At the time (March 31, 2016) this article was just one of the many passive-aggressive subtweets from responsible commentators that their colleagues were ignoring policy for spectacle. After 2016, when Clinton’s supposed failure to go to Wisconsin has been waved like a talisman against any retrospective concern about whether the presidential election was even free (questionable) and fair (definitely not), it’s the fact that the press ignored a campaign event in Wisconsin which gives it that twist of dramatic irony. But it is also relevant because Clinton’s speech was about why anyone who truly cares about a progressive agenda must prioritize the federal courts as an issue. Since then, the press – who were called out AT THE TIME for ignoring substance generally and this speech specifically – have settled on “Republicans have seized the federal courts because Democrats don’t talk about the courts” as their new just-so rationalization for Moscow Mitch’s latest crime against democracy.

It’s bad enough that influential commentators ignore the substance of Democratic campaigns in favor of airing Trump’s empty podium and then use their own failures as an excuse to lie about whether or not Democratic politicians talk about the courts or any other issue. But the reality is even worse: in 2016 the Democratic candidate gave a brutally prescient speech about the courts, and our blue-check betters collectively decided to lie about WHETHER SHE WAS EVEN PRESENT AT HER OWN SPEECH. Then they used that lie to derail any chance of accountability for the MULTIPLE CRIMINAL CONSPIRACIES her opponent’s campaign committed, or even the slightest hint that they probably shouldn’t have allowed an autocratic regime that regularly murders actual journalists to be their assignment editor at the most important moment of their careers. “I wouldn’t have spent four months helping Russian intelligence dox Clinton campaign employees if only they’d gone to Wisconsin!” is a thing you can say without losing an ounce of standing in the pundit-industrial complex; of course lying about Democratic campaign messaging on the justice system carries even less of a penalty.

I’m ranting a little because RBG deserved to live three hundred years and these gaslighting bootlickers deserved to be flayed alive, boiled in oil, and fed to rabid vampire squirrels. But I also think people should absorb my point about just how rotten the information environment is. There is every political incentive for Democrats not to bother talking about they courts. They do it anyway because they know it’s important.

That terrible information environment has the predictable consequence of misinforming people. Even if you are trying to encourage people to act on this issue because you sincerely care about it, you end up saying ridiculous things sometimes.

Senate Democrats could have stopped Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation by sacrificing a virgin basilisk under a harvest moon to summon the wrath of the Old Ones, but they didn’t even try!

This is, to put it kindly, rewriting history. Senate Democrats made a herculean effort against Kavanaugh. Even before Christine Blasey Ford’s and Deborah Ramirez’s stories came out, Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee made the best case possible for the Senate to reject his confirmation.* After Dr. Ford was outed against her wishes, Democrats used every tool they had to force as much of an investigation as they could get, which drew maximum blood from Republicans, who were always going to do the wrong thing no matter what. Because Democrats did the work, voters got the point in the 2018 midterms. The Kavanaugh spectacle kept Republicans from gaining too much ground in the Senate in a year they should have cleaned up, and it radicalized the educated suburban voters who gave Democrats an unprecedented victory in the House.

None of this worked because Senate Democrats are in the minority, but they did try everything they could possibly have done. It’s true that they did not invent time travel and go back to re-run the 2014 midterms or rewrite the laws of mathematics to make 48 more than 52, because those things are impossible.

When people do the thing you supposedly want them to do, and you respond by stubbornly insisting they never did it, you’re not motivating them to do a better job. You’re telling them they should ignore you because you don’t actually care what they do.

I’m using this tweet as an example of a problem I see a lot, but my point isn’t to dunk too hard on this rando. We’re all a little emotional right now and who amongst us has never responded to stress by being Wrong Online; more importantly, it’s not entirely this person’s fault that they’re misinformed. You’re not supposed to have to be a huge nerd that actually watches Senate committee hearings! You’re supposed to be able to rely on the news to give you a reliable idea of what’s happening!! That’s literally their job!!!

AAAArgh. Okay. I’m back.

So. Okay. There are pervasive failings in news coverage of the politics around the federal courts, which leads to a lot of silly misunderstandings in the public more generally. Even if you work your way through all that nonsense and get to a reasonable understanding, you will find a fairly persistent asymmetry. The Republican establishment really does put a wildly disproportionate amount of effort into building conservative movement infrastructure for right wing lawyers and judges, and until recently, Republican voters really were much more likely than Democratic voters to tell pollsters that they were highly motivated by judicial nominations. Taking these things on face value and saying “oh, well, Republicans care more about the courts” obscures some really important, though disturbing, underlying dynamics.

The professional and intellectual ecosystem behind the conservative legal establishment is one of those situations where you really have to apply the Trunchbull principle. There really are millions and millions of dollars pumped into think tanks which invent bizarre excuses for radical right-wing subversion of the public interest by judicial fiat, extravagant “retreats” where sitting judges are alternatively pampered and bombarded with the resulting propaganda, and clubs which indoctrinate young conservative law students and vet them for career advancement based on their fealty to right-wing dogma. Describing what the Republican establishment is doing sounds fevered, conspiratorial hyperbole. I wish it were! If you don’t want to take my word for it – and I really wouldn’t blame you – you can get a lot of gory details from Vox.com’s courts and justice editor Ian Millhiser and Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI).

Senator Whitehouse’s main thesis is that these radical right-wing interests understand that a hostile takeover of the federal judiciary is in their financial interests, and that’s definitely sufficient to explain it. My personal sense is that there’s a second, even more unsettling, dimension to this. Article III of the Constitution deliberately insulates the federal judiciary from political pressure as much as possible. Another way of saying that, of course, is that the federal judiciary is removed from democratic accountability. I don’t think it’s just that the economic policies they want are unpopular. I think the investment in this judicial takeover project is motivated in part by the American right wing’s dark authoritarian streak. They value the judiciary because it’s the most leverage they can get against the electorate. “Judges!” is anti-democratic and that’s why they like it. It’s not just that they want things the voters don’t want so they have to get creative; it’s that they resent the voters for even having the ability to get in their way.

It’s not just the dedication to getting judges they agree with on the courts. It’s also the degree to which they expect those judges to humiliate themselves. They’ve had ten years and roughly the GDP of a small country at their disposal to come up with a challenge to the Affordable Care Act which did not sound like unhinged gibberish. Instead, they came up with the legal equivalent of a drunk guy trying to write a sonnet in Dothraki with a yellow crayon. (Actually that might be an improvement, so NOBODY TELL THEM ABOUT DRUNK DOTHRAKI CRAYON SONNET GUY.) It’s such a stinker that you hav to wonder if it isn’t the same phenomenon as what drives Trump and other autocrats to tell such blatant and ridiculous lies: it’s a power trip that shows off how they don’t even have to care about what “is true” or “makes sense,” because fuck you, that’s why. So what if an overwhelming majority of the American people have successfully convinced their elected representatives that health care costs were too much of a driver of economic inequality and limits on that are a good thing? We can still wreck it, because [*long fart noise*].

And if you listen to what Republicans say about the Supreme Court with that in mind, it starts to make a lot more sense. Under cover of mainstream apathy or even approval, the court gives conservatives unearned victory after unearned victory. If you’re a conservative, you’ll want to avoid killing that golden goose by making the court’s bias toward you completely undeniable. But if you’re a fascist, your priority is getting the court to commit. Any concession to truth or democracy, even if it’s just lip service, seems like a crack in the wall that your enemies can exploit, because it is.** As funny as it is to watch their little Pravda knockoff cry about John Roberts, Leftist Judas, this is what they mean: sometimes he tries to preserve the fiction that he hasn’t turned the Supreme Court into an arm of the radical right, which means they don’t win 100% of what they want immediately. Even Neil Gorsuch – hack, sadist, full-time Mayor Wilkins impersonator – can actually be cajoled into doing the right thing occasionally by lawyers who can craft an argument that fits into his crimped, cherry-picked definition of logic.

Like I said. Dark. I don’t want to overwhelm and discourage you. I think their absolutism and desperation is because even they know the victories they’ve won can slip away fast. But deluding ourselves hasn’t been constructive.

For their part, rank-and-file Republicans say they care about the courts. Fine. Republicans say a lot of things. They don’t think saying true things is important; if they did, they wouldn’t be Trump voters. Years before Trump, Republican voters learned how to give reporters and pollsters certain buzzwords to make their worst views sound more palatable. People are starting to grasp this with the “pro-life” white evangelicals who say they care about abortion on religious grounds. They support Trump as strongly as ever, despite the babies in cages, forced hysterectomies, and hundreds of thousands of COVID-19 deaths proving that neither he nor his party are in any way “pro-life.” It’s because “abortion” is the way they can get away with saying they support white patriarchy. Trump isn’t their guy despite his sleaziness, it’s because “grab ‘em by the pussy” has always been their actual preferred policy. “Law and order” is their dogwhistle for anti-Black racism. “Immigration” is the world they use when they mean they want more racism generally; pre-Obama, the preferred code phrase was “national security” but we’ve all seen how much of a shit they give about that.

As code words go, “judges” is less direct. Some commentators who try to parse it say it’s really about Roe v. Wade, but as we just went over, they don’t actually give a shit about that either. For some of them, “judges” is a sufficiently abstract rationalization for supporting Republicans when they know it is morally indefensible. This was probably a more pronounced issue than usual in 2016, both because it was so much harder to defend a vote for Trump and because of his inconvenient habit of giving the game away on the usual shibboleths. For others, “judges” represents the same thing it does for Republican elites.

I don’t know how conscious any of this is. I’m sure plenty of them have convinced themselves of whatever rationalization they give. Because we’re pretty good at fooling ourselves, what people say in opinion polls doesn’t necessarily tell us more than what they do when they’re not being prompted by pollsters. When Justice Scalia died four years ago, you didn’t thousands of people coming out to grieve for days on end. Little kids don’t dress up on Halloween as Chief Justice Roberts. RBG didn’t inspire that devotion by being a warm and gracious soul, although by all accounts she was. Liberals and progressives developed our sincere admiration of her because of her work on the bench. That is to say, Democratic voters care a great deal about the court. We just have to get our act together and do something about it.

The bad news is that winning in November is going to be the easy part. The good news is, we are getting organized behind some reforms that have been needed for many years. It’s not just Extremely Online progressives who are pushing for this. Even cool-headed institutionalist Democrats are openly advocating radical action. Democratic leadership are unlikely to get too specific right now – and they probably shouldn’t – but if voters do our job in November, some big and important changes are on the table.

*Footnoted because it isn’t really relevant, but Senate Democrats flawlessly executed a precise and coordinated strategy against Kavanaugh. The first few members to question Kavanaugh each focused on a specific issue tailor-made to give one or two of their Republican colleagues a reason to do the right thing. Then, boom, sucker-punch, Cory Booker started releasing the embarrassing emails Republicans were abusing committee rules to hide. Then, bam, left hook, Kamala Harris tripped him up by making him try to deny having been asked for assurances on the Mueller investigation. They did a great job, which everyone forgot about when someone threw Dr. Ford to the wolves.

**This is also a big part of why conservatives feel so instinctively victimized by the existence of a “liberal media” no matter how hard the political press bends over backwards to pound both thumbs on the scale for them. A free press actually is necessary for the functioning of the whole post-Enlightenment idea that people should have some say in how they are governed. If you’re an authoritarian who genuinely does feel that might makes right, then a somewhat functioning news media does at least pose a hypothetical threat to your power and even your worldview.

#supreme court #ruth bader ginsburg

[marshmallowgoop]

What Kumoricon’s Promare Panel Told Me About Kill la Kill

[This post was originally written as a Twitter thread. The Promare cosplay image above was posted on Studio Trigger’s Twitter account.]

Now that NaNo is over, I can finally work on my Kumoricon Promare panel write-up without feeling guilty, but tbh, it might just be another project that never happens. There's also an excellent, beautifully detailed report you can already read right here!

I got my degree in creative writing, not journalism, so my intentions for my own report was (is?) to be on the more personal side. There is a lot I want to analyze and discuss about what was said at the panel, and since I've also had the opportunity to attend three other Promare-y panels in the past couple of years, I've wanted to combine info and sum up what I know.  

Like I said, it might never happen. But there is one thing I do really wanna get out there. And that's what the Kumoricon Promare panel told me about Kill la Kill.

Near the start of the panel, it was mentioned that an early concept for Promare involved a human befriending a fire creature. Through their friendship, the two would be able to fuse together into one entity. The panelists explicitly made a comparison to Kill la Kill here: just as Kill la Kill is focused on the friendship between a human and sentient clothes, Promare was imagined as a story focused on the friendship between a human and sentient flames.

However (and minor Promare spoilers to follow)....

As the panel progressed, it was revealed that this original concept was transformed into the Promare we know now. It was said that collaborations between director Hiroyuki Imaishi and writer Kazuki Nakashima work best when focused on human connections, not connections between humans and creatures. 

The duo's earlier work in Gurren Lagann and Kill la Kill were mentioned. Gurren Lagann was described as a "boy meets boy" story (presumably with Simon meeting Kamina), and Kill la Kill was described as a "girl meets girl" story (presumably with Ryuko meeting Satsuki).

Which threw me for a loop! Wasn't it stated only minutes before that Kill la Kill is indeed focused on the connection between a human and a creature? Isn't it all about the friendship between a human and her sentient clothes?

I've written a lot in the past that as much as I love Kill la Kill, its intentions have felt confused and unfocused. This Promare panel validated those feelings. There is a clear tension here. Is Kill la Kill's focal relationship the one shared between Ryuko and Senketsu? Or is it the one shared between Ryuko and Satsuki?

In my earlier writing on Promare, I argued that the film essentially combines the Senketsu and Satsuki character into one. 

And Kumoricon's Promare panel? Well, let's just say that I think the info supplied very much supports my theory. 

Promare's concept went from a human befriending a fire creature to a human befriending a human who had merged with a fire creature. In this way, Galo and Lio's dynamic still has a lot of the same elements as a "human meets creature"-type story. Lio's fire powers mean that many view him as not human. Plus, despite noting that the "boy meets flame" concept was scrapped, a spread in PASH! magazine seems to say otherwise:

Further, like the "human meets creature" story in Kill la Kill, Galo and Lio also "synchronize" and fight as one—an act even Galo describes as the combining of "oil and water." Following the rules of their world, it's a partnership that shouldn't happen. But it does.

And just as Ryuko and Senketsu use their partnership to save the planet, so too do Galo and Lio. In fact, Lio de Galon was even confirmed in a live-drawing session to purposely resemble Kamui.

But Lio has something Senketsu doesn't: a human appearance. While Promare feels very much to me like a "human meets creature" story, it's kind of not because the Burnish are just regular humans who suddenly got fire superpowers. It's not like being born a magical talking shirt.

And on that note, I can see why Promare was changed. There are similarities between Senketsu and Lio, but unlike Lio, Senketsu is easily the most ignored main character in Kill la Kill. I even received nasty messages for comparing the two and their relationships with the hero, which is maybe sadly funny in retrospect, considering that the creative team behind both works have noted this connection explicitly. 

But in any case, the drafted fire creature had the appearance of a cute, mascot-type character, maybe not too unlike Senketsu. 

And that's... not usually the type of character who's half of the focal relationship of a work. It's hard to take seriously. Believe me, I understand this well. 

So, Promare changed. It's ultimately about the bond between Galo and Lio, a human and a human, just as Kill la Kill could be argued—and in fact was argued at the panel!—to be ultimately about the bond between Ryuko and Satsuki, both humans themselves.

And unlike with Ryuko and Senketsu, I think comparisons of the Galo-Lio relationship and the Ryuko-Satsuki relationship have been widely recognized. You know, it's that whole rivals-to-friends/lovers deal. The character archetypes are similar, too: Galo is very much the impulsive Red Oni to Lio's (mostly) calmer Blue Oni, just as Ryuko is the rash Red Oni to Satsuki's calculating Blue Oni.

This post's a little all over the place, but as much as I adore Senketsu and Satsuki and would never wish for either of their characters to be sacrificed in a reboot or alternate telling of Kill la Kill, I think Promare did the right thing by essentially combining those roles.

And I mean, kinda literally, too! The human Lio fused with the sentient fire creature, and it's the fused-human and human relationship that became the core of the work. 

The resulting film thus lacks the tension that Kill la Kill has. Our attention is not split between a "human meets creature" story and a "human meets human" story. As far as I know, there aren't the same conflicting statements from the staff, either, with director Imaishi arguing that the focus is the drama between the human leads and writer Nakashima noting, "You could say that Kill la Kill tells the story of a lonely young woman meeting and losing an irreplaceable partner" in the Kamui Bansho. 

With Promare, I think everyone agrees. It's all about Galo and Lio. There is no debate. Promare is focused in a way that Kill la Kill ain't. 

And I get why Promare changed in development the way it did to give it that clarity. But I also think (obviously!) that Trigger made a fantastic "human meets creature" narrative with Kill la Kill.

In fact, it's my complete and total infatuation with that narrative that got me to the Promare panel at all. I never went to cons before I fell in love with Kill la Kill, and my love for Kill la Kill literally stems from this one frame of Ryuko hugging Senketsu, which I think I made a pretty amusing Tweet about:

Tweet transcription: For real though this one frame made me fall so in love with Kill la Kill that I have since written over half a million words about it, spent like $2,000 on merchandise, and edited like 2,000 GIFs.

Yes, I am really THAT emotional about a girl hugging her sailor uniform.

So, needless to say, I support Nakashima's desire for "human meets creature" stories. I can't speak for anyone else, but it is the "human meets creature" aspect of Kill la Kill that affected me more than anything else about it. I think it's something Trigger should be proud of.

And I would love to see more of those types of stories from the studio—especially if the creature in question doesn't resemble a human! People don't have to look alike for their love to be strong and real, and stories focusing on that... well. They're the reason for this essay.

#promare #kill la kill #lio fotia #galo thymos #ryuko matoi #senketsu #kumoricon 2019 #gifs i made #spoilers #promare spoilers #klk spoilers #shut up goop #ramblings #yes i do take constructive criticism please @ me

[legobiwan]

There’s a large meta I would love to write comparing TPM and Master and Apprentice, but I’m a little too delirious with fever to do something that intelligent at the moment, some I’m just going to bullet point some things I noticed in my 5 hour rewatch of TPM (due to intermittent napping and shotgunning Dayquil).

Qui-gon and Obi-wan spend a fair amount of their on-screen time disagreeing, and one of Qui-gon’s first acts of the movie is to dismiss Obi-wan’s “bad feeling about this,” which, in retrospect, Jinn, was maybe not the best idea. This is very much in line with the way they are portrayed in Master and Apprentice, where Qui-gon and Obi-wan cannot seem to see eye-to-eye on things, how Qui-gon constantly is questioning Obi-wan and his abilities. 

I feel like Obi-wan spends a fair amount of this movie swallowing his reactions to Qui-gon’s increasing ridiculousness, like when they travel to the Gungan city with Jar Jar. Obi-wan immediately tries to negotiate with Boss Nass and when that does not immediately prove fruitful, Qui-gon bursts in with his favorite strategy, the Jedi Mind Trick. Obes doesn’t seem too pleased with Qui-gon’s tactics, nor to be undermined like that.

(this is not the face of a happy man)

Someone reblogged some other meta of mine commenting that Qui-gon (and much of the Lineage) has a savior complex, and don’t they’re all that far off. Qui-gon places himself as the ultimate authority on so many occasions in this movie, and while yes, he is the ranking Jedi Master on site, one might think he is a little too certain in the Force, in his abilities, in prophecy to always make sound judgments. 

(Narrator’s voice: she doesn't. And this is not the first time Qui-gon will say something like this. Which leads to Anakin coming to Coruscant, and well, you know how it went from there.)

On a different note altogether, it was lovely to watch this with the subtitles. Anakin’s statement that Padmé looks like an angel akes a lot more sense when you know he’s comparing her to the Angels of Iego, which we have seen (who Obi-wan and Anakin spoke with) in the underrated episode, Mystery of a 1,000 Moons.

(one has to wonder if Anakin made the correlation when he and Obi-wan *actually* traveled to Iego)

Speaking of other friends, I laughed (and coughed) very hard when Darth Maul uttered one of the very few spoken lines he has in this movie.

(Maul, you have no idea how much that is *not* going to work out for you, buddy.)

I feel like Shmi Skywalker is the only sane person in this whole cavalcade of characters. I love how she handles Qui-gon’s request that Anakin go to Coruscant. 

(“The choice is yours alone.” Not “This is your destiny,” or “this is your fate.” This is your choice, Anakin Skywalker, just as turning to the Dark Side was a Choice, not Fate, not Prophecy, just as Qui-gon’s devotion to Prophecy was his choice, just as Obi-wan made a very conscious decision to make himself believe in prophecy out of devotion to his Master. And in that way, choices become self-fulfilling prophecies.)

And again, we see this when Anakin leaves Tatooine. Shmi asks Anakin what is in his heart because it is what he desires, and as that old quote goes, “if something is that important, you’ll make time for it.” Not prophecy, not fate, but Agency. 

(And you have to wonder if part of the reason the Order is so caught up in prophecy and visions is because their ability to act independently is somewhat stymied by things like the Ruusan Reformation and their relationship with the Senate, because they tread this very fine line between being active and passive, both in government and their day-to-day activities.)

“Master Qui-gon, more to say, have you?” Man, if I were Kenobi, I’d be pissed at this point, and we haven’t even gotten to the scene where Qui-gon basically casts off Obi-wan in front of the Council. We see this again and again in Master and Apprentice, where Obi-wan just chokes down a lot of his true feelings, due to deference and self-esteem and Qui-gon, as well-meaning as he is, just...kinda does what he wants.

(”Not this again, I’m going to need to break into the Corellian whiskey.”)

As I’ve pointed out before, Rael was 5 when he came to the Temple, Obi-wan 3, and yet now Qui-gon seems to have no problem with an 8-year-old Anakin coming in. Oh, Qui-gon.

Qui-gon promises a lot of things to a lot of people. It’s interesting, because Obi-wan gets very upset at Anakin in the Clone Wars: Gambit and Siege books for promising people he would help them. Aside from the fact that it is never a good idea to promise anything to anyone (I personally avoid ever saying that word) and Obi-wan is aware of this, I feel like this upset may also harken back to Qui-gon’s disturbing habit of promising things and then using almost any means necessary to make those things happen. Like Anakin winning the race and becoming a Jedi, for instance. All done out of good intentions, but come on, Jinn.

(I mean, yeeeeaaaah? I’d be afraid, too, if I were 8 years old surrounded by these guys. Chill, Yoda.)

I just need to include a picture of Palpy’s shit-eating grin here. He is so smarmy in this movie, I love it.

I’m not going to post screencaps of the Council scene because we all know what goes down there. Qui-gon takes Anakin as his student, and Obi-wan’s heart gets trod upon again, although he puts up a brave front because it’s Obi-wan and he is repressing a lot.

“Your focus determines your reality.” It’s really great advice. Qui-gon should listen to himself, as his focus (on prophecy) has determined his reality.

(Come on, Qui-gon. Throw the man a bone. Maybe say, “Hey, I *think* you’re going to become a great Jedi! I believe in you, Obi-wan! Good job!” instead of “I forsee...” I mean, okay, everyone has a distinct manner of meting out praise and Qui-gon does say Obi-wan is wiser than he ((without actually listening to that wisdom)), but even Obi-wan, who catches a fair amount of flak for being reserved, gives Anakin more direct praise than this. You have to wonder where this comes from, if it goes back to how Dooku raised Qui-gon, which is *totally* possible.)

(Can we just sit and appreciate that one of Anakin’s first acts for the Republic is to blow up this droid control ship that had a fair amount of sentients on board? That’s our little murder machine!)

(Ouch. I can’t even imagine what is going through Obi-wan’s mind here. This is probably the only time we see him make a promise. And by the Force, he is going to keep it. But Qui-gon’s last words are about Anakin, and Obi-wan is obviously distraught over this, over Qui-gon’s death, over everything. He loves Qui-gon, despite all their differences, because Qui-gon meant well for him, for everyone around him, and to think Obi-wan has the gumption to demand to train Anakin right after all of this...just, poor Obes.)

I feel like I’ve really been on Qui-gon’s case lately. He is a fascinating character, and he makes a lot of good points about the Council and the Republic, but he is so blind to his own faults and I think that’s where my personal frustration comes in with the man. And he wants to do good in the galaxy, you can see he wants to free all the slaves on Tatooine, but probably knows right now he can’t, has learned his lesson from Pijal. He doesn’t want to necessarily get suckered back into prophecy, but then there’s Anakin staring him right in the face. And Anakin is powerful, but is he the Chosen One or was he molded into that role by expectation?

The lightsaber duel with Obi-wan, Qui-gon and Maul is still my absolute favorite live-action fight scene in Star Wars. So. Good.

Guys, I forgot how much I love this movie, I mean everything including Jar Jar and child!Anakin.

I really appreciate how consistent Claudia Gray made Obi-wan and Qui-gon’s characters through her book, linking Jedi Apprentice and TPM. There’s so much more to read into with TPM now having Master and Apprentice in the background.

#also #this is all so GREAT for future chapters of hung #which i haven't forgotten about #just have been insanely busy #but now I am super pumped to write the next part #maybe if i'm not half delirious tomorrow i can go for that #phantom menace #obi wan kenobi #qui gon jinn #damnit qui gon #ugh guys i really don't feel that hot #meta #long post #forgive me guys i'm rather garrulous on the topic of star wars right now

[stevenuniversallyreviews]

Episode 115: Adventures in Light Distortion

”There's no time.”

Steven recently had a really long day. It began with checking out an art exhibit at the barn, and ended in a spaceship grappling with his mother’s dark and secret past. It had its moments, like fusing into Smoky Quartz, but all in all it was life-changingly bad. It’s not fair that another such day has come for him so soon, but here he is.

We don’t have a moment to waste as this follow-up to Steven’s Dream opens, because every second spent on Earth is a second where Greg is speeding further from it. Steven is already blaming himself for the abduction, adding a more personal sense of rush to the affair. The irony is that while Blue Diamond’s actions aren’t his fault, the guilt he harbors causes serious mistakes that are his fault. But considering the dire circumstances, who could blame him? 

Even the exposition here is swift and economical, as Garnet gives Amethyst and Pearl the lowdown on our last episode and Pearl dusts off her old Pearlsplaining cap from Season 1 to tell us about the Zoo. As is standard to this show, we learn important plot details while developing the character relaying them: in this case, on top of being a great showcase of Pearl’s nerves (“Amethyst, turn into a chair, I need to sit down!”), we add new wrinkles to her past. Her terror is informed by how anxious she was at seeing the palanquin in Steven’s Dream, and that brief moment of her eyes darting away from “When I still served...Homeworld” speaks volumes. We’ll go into more detail later about the implications of the Zoo and Pink Diamond’s efforts to help Earth through half-measures before going full Rose, but for now, it’s a terrific beat in retrospect that Pearl only knows where Greg was taken because she served the creator of his new prison.

With the Gems all caught up, we get straight to business prepping for takeoff, and it’s here that Steven makes his first two mistakes. First, he brushes off Peridot, the planet’s most qualified expert in modern Gem space travel. He doesn’t even invite her along, despite how obviously helpful she would be. Impatience trumps any sense of caution, and while it doesn’t make much sense for him to leave a helpful ally behind even in his frazzled state, her inability to grasp the importance of the situation (mixing serious travel concerns with pointless aesthetic quibbles) perhaps makes her a liability in his mind. Regardless, his second mistake is even bigger when it comes to his personal life, and it also involves leaving someone behind.

Yes, there’s no time to waste. So no, he probably shouldn’t have waited for Connie. He even tasks her with defending Beach City, showing that he does value her as a fighter as well as a friend. By itself, this probably wouldn’t be that big of a deal. But alongside his second foray into space down the line, it’s understandable that Connie starts to think that Steven doesn’t take her as seriously as he should. While there’s truth to that, the bigger issue is that Steven thinks that he alone should bear the burden of his perceived mistakes, and while it’s only hinted at now, that sense of martyrdom only gets worse as his guilt grows. This is a throwaway moment in the episode, but has major ramifications down the line.

And then we’re off! I’m honestly not into the gag of Pearl still not getting that 70 years is a long time for humans—it works early on, such as in Space Race, but she definitely would know better by now—and it’s joined by her not knowing the word for “birthday” despite several episodes introducing her to the concept. She’s grown a lot, and at times the show doesn’t seem to want to reflect this when an easy joke can be made. But at least she’s good at winding her way through a variety of space rocks, including tiny sentient ones.

Upon remembering the whole reality warping element of modern Gem space travel, Steven makes another hasty decision in boosting the speed, despite acknowledging that it might kill him. I mean, he makes a joke about how syrup can go with his new pancaked form, but it’s still an acknowledgment that self-sacrifice is a badge he’s proud to wear. And while it’s obviously a good thing that he survives, it can’t be healthy for his self-image to be proven right when he takes actions that might hurt or kill himself to help others.

Perhaps not wanting to delve too deeply into that topic quite yet, we get an extended comedy bit about the weird distortions the Gems face as physics gets wonky, as well as a small lesson about how light constructs work (complete with unusually cartoony diagrams, such as the one above comparing heights). I’m surprised by how effective the humor is; it’s not riotously funny to me or anything, but considering the stakes it really ought to feel annoying and in the way, and it works just fine. Part of the reason is that there’s nothing else to do while we’re waiting for the ship to arrive, so nothing feels interrupted. But I also appreciate it because it finally starts to show how destructive Steven’s rashness can be.

Activating the gravity engine was a choice that was reckless, but made sense: Steven needed to get to his dad in fewer than 70 years. But frantically pressing buttons he doesn’t understand to fix the Gems, instead of letting a more experienced hand figure it out, is almost frustratingly dumb. I say “almost” because it’s crystal clear by now that Steven is losing it, and the sight gags of our growing and shrinking Gems can’t hide that something is going to go wrong. When it inevitably does, and Steven is alone for the first time since Greg’s abduction, all that manic energy collapses into the grief he’s been trying to put at bay.

After the little visualized diagrams and the distorting forms of the Gems, we get an even more impressive animation-exclusive sequence: the striking use of onion skinning to convey the mindbending speed of the ship. Together with the ruby red lighting and the immediate disappearance of the Gems’ bodies, the tone lurches from one form of alarm to another. What was once a frenzied dash to fix things becomes a life-threatening race against the clock, and allows for one of the best performances of Zach Callison’s tenure on the show.

Steven has panicked before, but the greatest asset of this episode is Callison’s ability to crank it up a notch and sell the sheer stupefying terror of not knowing what to do in a crisis. He’s amazing throughout the episode as he practically hyperventilates his lines without delving into overdramatic emoting, but his despair as he’s left all alone on a doomed ship is heartwrenching.

It takes a strong performer and good, earnest writing to make a scene like this work, because verbally laying out all of your problems could come across as just telling instead of showing, and openly weeping can falter in any number of ways. It could’ve been melodramatic, it could’ve been overly childish, it could’ve been incoherent, and instead it’s a raw and moving outburst of sorrow after an episode where huge tears were a reaction to danger instead of emotion.

It’s also a great choice to follow up this moment of anguish with quieter determination. Instead of narrating his newfound resolve as he tries again to turn off the warp speed, this time eventually succeeding, the sequence is wordless and tense. Steven doesn’t need to tell us why he’s trying so hard, and after such a strong speech there’s no need to gild the lily when visuals work on their own.

The return of the Gems coincides with the return of regular light and animation, creating a palpable sense of relief despite it being sort of a given that they weren’t really going to kill off three main characters in this episode. Garnet provides Steven some much-needed reassurance, and while it doesn’t solve his martyr complex forever, it’s a welcome capper to the episode.

The logistics of an episode that’s literally just getting our characters from one place to another can’t be easy to navigate. If the crew wanted, we could’ve used that warp speed to jump straight to the action. Still, despite moving faster than light, it’s nice to slow down from the huge cliffhanger of Steven’s Dream to let our hero have a moment to collect his thoughts. Now that the initial shock has had a chance to pass, we can proceed with the rescue operation with a competent Steven that isn’t unrealistically okay with how things are going, and as a bonus we get our second episode since Bubbled that explores Steven’s increasingly sacrificial mindset. Everything working out for the best may seem like a neat way to finish Adventures in Light Distortion, but we’ll see the downsides in time.

Future Vision!

Yes, Steven leaving Connie behind is a catalyst for the Breakup Arc. But perhaps more importantly, they combine with Garnet similarly tasking Peridot and Lapis to protect Beach City to form the Crystal Temps!

We’re the one, we’re the ONE! TWO! THREE! FOUR!

A perfectly good entry in the Steven Universe catalog, bolstered by an amazing performance from Zach Callison, but ultimately an episode that isn’t too special on its own. It needs Steven’s Dream to pack its full punch, and the victory at the end is just reaching our next episode safely. Still, I like it!

Top Twenty

Steven and the Stevens

Hit the Diamond

Mirror Gem

Lion 3: Straight to Video

Alone Together

Last One Out of Beach City

The Return

Jailbreak

The Answer

Mindful Education

Sworn to the Sword

Rose’s Scabbard

Earthlings

Mr. Greg

Coach Steven

Giant Woman

Beach City Drift

Winter Forecast

Bismuth

Steven’s Dream

Love ‘em

Laser Light Cannon

Bubble Buddies

Tiger Millionaire

Lion 2: The Movie

Rose’s Room

An Indirect Kiss

Ocean Gem

Space Race

Garnet’s Universe

Warp Tour

The Test

Future Vision

On the Run

Maximum Capacity

Marble Madness

Political Power

Full Disclosure

Joy Ride

Keeping It Together

We Need to Talk

Chille Tid

Cry for Help

Keystone Motel

Catch and Release

When It Rains

Back to the Barn

Steven’s Birthday

It Could’ve Been Great

Message Received

Log Date 7 15 2

Same Old World

The New Lars

Monster Reunion

Alone at Sea

Crack the Whip

Beta

Back to the Moon

Kindergarten Kid

Buddy’s Book

Gem Harvest

Three Gems and a Baby

Like ‘em

Gem Glow

Frybo

Arcade Mania

So Many Birthdays

Lars and the Cool Kids

Onion Trade

Steven the Sword Fighter

Beach Party

Monster Buddies

Keep Beach City Weird

Watermelon Steven

The Message

Open Book

Story for Steven

Shirt Club

Love Letters

Reformed

Rising Tides, Crashing Tides

Onion Friend

Historical Friction

Friend Ship

Nightmare Hospital

Too Far

Barn Mates

Steven Floats

Drop Beat Dad

Too Short to Ride

Restaurant Wars

Kiki’s Pizza Delivery Service

Greg the Babysitter

Gem Hunt

Steven vs. Amethyst

Bubbled

Adventures in Light Distortion

Enh

Cheeseburger Backpack

Together Breakfast

Cat Fingers

Serious Steven

Steven’s Lion

Joking Victim

Secret Team

Say Uncle

Super Watermelon Island

Gem Drill

Know Your Fusion

Future Boy Zoltron

No Thanks!

     6. Horror Club      5. Fusion Cuisine      4. House Guest      3. Onion Gang      2. Sadie’s Song      1. Island Adventure

#adventures in light distortion #steven universe #su #steven universally #review

[jaggedwolf]

agent wu isn’t on duty tonight (or: tscosi 1x10)

because I remember when I did this for wearp and it was fun so here we go with arbitrary section headings again

Top 3 things I had feelings about, in reverse order, or: in which jaggedwolf is deeply predictable

3. "But I like it when you talk" + the speech it was in response to. I'm just picturing Arkady standing there injured and tired but with a kinda silly smile on her face as she listens to Violet ramble and at no point thinking to herself "perhaps Violet's statement calls for a response". nope. she could just hang out there forever listening to Violet alternately say flattering things about her and go on about whatever. 

Violet’s entire rambling? Amazing

“Normally I’d take this as a sign of disinterest but with you it can go both ways” Ha!

Have I mentioned that my real OTP for this show is Violet’s weird sincerity (even when using sarcasm to cope) colliding with Arkady’s barely held together recoiling from any sincerity? Because it is.

“Dating in a romantic sense?”

what the hell, Arkady

Violet would have been 100% in her rights to have made a terrible carbon dating joke here and I’m half-disappointed she didn’t

low-key mourning the loss of a good slow-burn, but also knew it wasn’t tenable as soon as Krejjh mentioned the kissing

2. The Rumor is no more ;_; look it makes good sense as a plan which my head acknowledges, but my heart is mostly going "but Sana mADE IT". 

though that brings up another question: did she like, always have that self-destruct fail-safe or did they jerry-rig that in two weeks because I am completely on-board with either possibility

I’m equally here for Sana making spaceships ad Sana stealing spaceships so I guess I just like Sana and spaceships content in general

I imagine that once your home’s been invaded by invisible brain-washed nanobots, it probably is a little easier to let it go

let us all mourn the remains of the hammock

how much of their stuff did they manage to move to the new ship during the blip in security footage?

1. The scene with General Frederick, Violet and Arkady. Sometimes all you want is Arkady getting shot to make Violet blab and I was anticipating it as soon as "Source A apprehended" was said. Good stuff. 

Totally would not have minded that scene going longer and Arkady getting more hurt. :)

me: already contemplating scenarios where Violet gets shot instead? Of course. (naturally, it couldn’t be for the same tactic on either side)

Important (to me) facts we learned:

Brian is capable of carrying Krejjh (easily, I would think, given that no one offers to help.)

Sana was arrested for hot-wiring spaceships

I like to learn more about that plural

McCabe guessed "revolution" the same time at which my brain thought it

McCabe is an excellent shot

Unsurprisingly, the answer to my question about the IGR’s college-to-spying pipeline is: spy college

wonder if my answer to McCabe’s daemon question should change to something more akin to hunting dog

I admit, I was a teensy bit hoping for McCabe to die, purely for narrative reasons, but this is cool too

In a meta-joke, Ensign Best was the real traitor all along

this makes Ensign Best Ricky Q's contact and that's so funny to me

At least according to Violet, Arkady looks good in a tank top

we all subliminally knew this already, but still, good to have confirmation.

Stabbing people with needles is indeed a Violet Liu-style plan.

Arkady still had her IGR jacket

possibly for scams, possibly to broodily stare at while thinking about her past, who knows

Dwarnians have at least one knee

More under the cut, because I am incapable of shutting up. 

Things I did not see coming

Agent Park coming back, let alone as a pirate

I assume plans were made for Shelly but I still hope she’s okay

Brian talking to the bots

 in retrospect, was very telegraphed

 I am just very bad at thinking of the swarm as as sentient and sapient as they are

The bots didn’t attack Park and McCabe, who as far as I can tell were still in uniform and still holding their weapons?

hmm if any of the agents had listened to the live audio of the crew during the episode, pre-bot reset, I wonder if it would’ve changed things

everyone saying their own names for the credits was very cute and I hope that sticks around

COWABUNGA

You know, if Dwarnian soldiers in general have a tendency to just yell dramatic lines while also being very good at shooting humans, I feel like humanity’s terror at them is pretty justified

I want to know how much Krejjh enjoyed their fake death

Agent Park going “humankind” very dramatically while shooting into the floor? Krejjh has got to be a little impressed once they got over the whole almost dying thing

Injured but is definitely still the person piloting them off-planet, if their legs don’t work Crewman Jeeter will be their legs

Sana: Capable of flying a ship. Uninjured. Also clearly confident that even an injured Krejjh is their best shot or she would’ve said something, I presume

Side-note: Was vaguely hoping for a mention of Dwarnian blood colour, a guy can dream.

we love you :)

once a caterer, got shot at a lot

is as always, very chill even when all the things are happening

probably the only human to say “we/I love you” to the swarm

the swarm has not had a good time so they probably appreciated that

sometimes your knowledge of advanced xeno-linguistics does save the day (in the background: krejjh, still a little embarassed at how bad their vree-chel-noke is)

the angry angry general

if I heard right, the agent said she was only down, not dead right?

Good

I want her to come back and menace people again, she’s a good menacer and great to hate.

the invisible blue-collar

how many spaceships did Sana get away with hot-wiring by playing the old “I’m just here for repairs” trick anyway

I assume it’s a more involved process than hot-wiring a car but I don’t know much about that either

has had several different versions of that post-mission inspiring speech in her pocket and is very glad she got to use the version she did

the Iris!

I mean, I knew that name was coming as soon as they got a new ship but I’m still delighted

Sana to the IGR: -the universal i’m watching you gesture-

I hope she gets to reconcile with soup man (I almost called him tomato man because the other day I was thinking about him growing tomatoes. I am sorry)

she can change her own dressings (no she can’t)

Already mentioned this but Arkady getting shot as leverage over Violet? Delicious. 

Also is too sensible for a dramatic kiss goodbye and I approve of that 

not sensible enough to acknowledge she can’t change her own dressings. on one hand, she got shot in the thigh. on the other hand, embarrassment is not a good reason to risk an infection, you fool!

the “That’s not possible” at the general saying Krejjh was dead was very good 

I’m not sure Arkady believes Krejjh capable of dying, deep down

report 1: violet liu

forget ship names, the true full circle is Violet starting the season ramble-flirting with a girl and also ending it that way

her entire exchange with the general 

“swayed by moonshine and some pretty words” is such a fun accusation to throw at Violet because it’s true. those things just mean more than their literal definitions.

channeling her very real reaction to Arkady getting shot into a long-winded spiel that actually reveals nothing <3

it wasn’t until she literally asked that I realized that duh, Violet doesn’t know any of their Source designations

she was supposed to die in space alone. slowly, as the air supply ran out. maybe quickly if something else in the ship failed. knowing that no one was coming for her. not knowing it was because of a paperwork mix-up. filled with the belief that, whelp, this is the sum of her tiny insignificant life.

it isn’t

#tscosi #the rumor crew #tcosi spoilers #mine #this was supposed to be posted later today but #i woke up sick and sad with no discernible reason for either #and am thus at home #so my hand slipped #this is too many words but that's just how i distract myself from nausea and an utterly random sense of melancholy both of which have been #annoying since yesterday #tscosi rambles

[colorofmymindposts]

Hope for the Stars

Fandom: Doctor Who 

Pairings: Twelfth Doctor/Missy

Warnings: Major Character Death, Alternate Ending to series 10, Major Canon Divergence, Description of a Corpse 

Rating: Teen and Up Audiences

Status: Complete but part three of my The Doctor Falls series. Reading part one is pretty optional but I definitely recommend checking out part two before reading this. 

Word Count: 2134 

Chapter: 1/2. 

Summary: A final goodbye between the oldest friends in the universe seems as though it's the last chapter. But with the Doctor, every end comes with a beginning.

Tags: Heavy Angst, Messy Feelings, Coping with Death, Funeral, Grieving Missy, Twelve is very dead

I don’t know if the tagging system is still messed up, but you can read this work on ao3 under my username colorofmymind! Kudos and comments will be much appreciated!

The silence is deafening, save for the intermittent low hums of the TARDIS. Her hands drift and glide over the console as she circles round it, making no effort to start for any destination. A destination would require a plan. Missy has none.

What was the original plan, exactly? Redeem herself in everyone’s eyes, and then? No more tentative friendship. Renew their pact. Midnight, with the stars and him. It had been absolutely too vague, almost totally meaningless. And yet it was something. Now, there is nothing, no friend, without hope, without witness.

“Without reward, indeed,” Missy chokes out, voice hoarse from disuse and grief, realizing now she never precisely knew what that meant until this moment. Her death at least would have allowed her to escape from the shallow, crude reality of it all. Missy makes the mistake of looking down at the Doctor’s lifeless body. The sight alone is enough for her hands to tremor, knees to buckle, eyes to water and weep openly, now that the privacy allows for it. It takes much more time than she’d like to find the lapels of his jacket, fisting them in her hands for purchase. It doesn’t do much other than prevent her from strangling him, or herself.

“You absolute imbecile!” she cries out, venom behind each word. “I would have stayed here, the Vault, anywhere you would have liked for the rest of those thousand years! Two thousand even. You’d be there at least. You’d be alive.

But we were always so impatient, weren’t we? We couldn’t keep to the confines of Gallifrey or the Vault. We just wanted the universe. I wanted you.” Those last three words fall out her mouth without her permission, and she knows full well what she communicated with them. The humans always wait, desperate for that confession, that one word: love. There isn’t even a comparable translation for it in Gallifreyan; what is the need of such a word to Time Lords? Time Lords are supposed to have two hearts that are full of nothing.  

She wants to rip her hearts right out of her chest, stamp them into mincemeat under her boots, and wail with the confidence and indignity of a newborn babe until she keels over. Or maybe she could cut her hearts out, carefully, scientifically, and transplant them into the Doctor, make him breathe, live again; he could cry over her body, but at least that’d be familiar for the both of them.

Death is for other people, dear. Missy said that, once. She never dreamt that the Doctor would number among the others.

The grip she has on him slackens. With complete gracelessness and depravity, Missy collapses on top of him, her chest on his, face burying into the crook of his neck. The endless propulsion of loss and guilt wracks her body; the tears flow out as quickly as the notes to Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 20 in D minor K. 466 - 1. Allegro, one of the Doctor’s favorites that she used to play on the piano. The piano he gifted to her. Missy cannot form words even if she tries. So heavy is this sense of finality, and she’s drowning under it. Her friend is dead. Time levels and undulates and then ceases to be around them, and all Missy is aware of is the uncontrollable shaking and the gasping and crying like she’s being gutted from the inside out for existing at all and the fact that he’s gone, gone, gone forever and she’s the only one left...

It’s some time later that Missy finally awakens next to the Doctor, colder than he’s ever been. It’s not really him, she reminds herself. His essence, the playful and wonderful mind, they’re gone. Could she reclaim them, she would. She should, really. It’s the least she can do when this whole monumentally stupid test to prove herself was the very reason they had found themselves in that disaster, created by her former self, no less. Resurrection has its risks though, this she knows. The potential for a miscalculation or chemical imbalance is extremely high, and his entire body could irrevocably malform; of course the safer alternative, transferring the consciousness into a living host, is something the Doctor would have never even entertained whereas the Master had, ever so frequently when in a tight spot, regrettable now in retrospect.

The stinging pain in her back and abdomen from the Laser Screwdriver has lessened slightly with her rest, but her eyes feel terribly sore and dry from what was probably the greatest lapse into emotional breakdown of her life. There are no more tears to cry, now. Missy picks herself up, squeezing the Doctor’s hand before standing only to find it has become extremely stiff with the onset of rigor mortis. The realization leaves her nauseous and quite wishing she hadn’t done that.  

That does bring up the present dilemma. What to do with his body. A Time Lord’s body, particularly the DNA, would be a precious asset to almost any alien species. Burial and cryogenic freezing are right out then. The Doctor will have to burn.  

Somehow, she still manages to hobble over to the TARDIS console with that thought on her mind, pulling on the levers and buttons by mere muscle memory. Already, Missy has the perfect idea for the location for the Doctor’s funeral, a strange thing to be sentimental about, but if he were still part of the universe, she thinks he would appreciate it.  

“I’m almost certain you never prepared for this, my dear,” Missy begins, completely aware that the Doctor can no longer hear or respond to her. “I’m not talking about death, no, you practically begged for it when you were feeling particularly morose. What comes after is what I mean. Did you really think you could lie on a battlefield and that just be the end? It should take no more than a few centuries for a human exploratory crew or some other ship to find you with all your DNA and unleash terror on the universe. That just won’t do, not when you’ve put so much work into the place.”

The whole monologue was meant to calm her down, but she’s made an all too rational point. This is a universe without the Doctor, and it has been such a very long time since that was the reality. What will happen now, without that man roaming the stars, trying to bring kindness and goodness to the places and people he visits? As flawed as he could be while doing it, a small voice inside her offers.    

“Because one day everyone's just going to need you too much.” Bill was right. The universe will never survive without the Doctor.

The TARDIS hums somewhat admonishingly, and suddenly the psychic link is made between her and the ship, and a flurry of images and memories are the sole occupiers of her thoughts: the TARDIS landing unannounced and needing help for some unknown reason, Missy’s constant maintenance of the TARDIS, Missy trying to find a way out of the TARDIS doors to help the Doctor and his companions when he was about to sacrifice himself to the Cairn gate, and the moment she stepped out of those same doors declaring confidently “Hello I’m Doctor Who.”

Oh. Oh.

Missy smiles and tuts quietly at the now reicent sentient machine. Being, she corrects herself mentally. After, she and this Type 40 are going to have to get along if this is to work.

“You knew well before any of us, didn’t you? Oh, you clever girl,” she purrs.

The ship creaks and groans upon arriving to their destination. In all fairness, this is the most hectic point in time and space besides the literal end of the universe, and Missy’s been there before. Placing the stabilizers on as a precaution, Missy retreats down one of the corridors, hoping she’ll find what she’s looking for.

“Ah, there you are,” she says upon finding it. The casket’s exterior shines just as brightly as the wood from whence it came: the silver trees of Gallifrey. Adorning the side panels are the traditional Gallifreyan rites for the deceased. Measurements in this case are not necessary; Time Lord technology has once again thought ahead to accomodate for any particular regeneration--the dimensions are bigger on the inside. It’s a difficult task for someone of her stature and injured status to not drag the damned thing on the console flooring, but she manages it for the Doctor’s sake alone.

Upon placing the casket next to him, however, she cannot seem to find the strength in the moment to lift him into it and send him away for good. A hand of hers secures itself on one of the handles on the console to ascertain that she does not collapse again.

“Well, this is it then. Me, Missy, your oldest friend, assisting you with your death. Goodbye, effectively for the two of us. What am I even saying,” she finishes under her breath, beginning the process of lifting the Doctor’s body into the casket. For appearances’ sake, she brushes off the lingering dust and debris off his coat and trousers and face, though it won’t matter for much longer. No one else besides her will be viewing him, and he’ll be crisper in just a few minutes than she ever was back in the old days. From underneath the console, Missy locates four hover discs, placing one at each end of the casket to ensure his departure is as seamless as possible. For some inexplicable reason, she is unable to close the casket lid. There is something she must say first.

“We made a pact once, you and I. We were going to see the stars together and abandon all the trivial troubles of Gallifrey. But something went wrong in the plans. We went on separate paths. Well, you went on your own path, and I followed you. I followed you everywhere I could,” Missy confesses, tangling her fingers in her Doctor’s curls. “In some ways, I wish...I wish I hadn’t woken up from that shot, the one I should have died from. We both could have been dead martyrs together. Wouldn’t that have been nice? But I understand now why I couldn’t...join you. I never got the chance to, did I?” Her voice escapes her for several moments, and she blinks away the forthcoming tears she previously didn’t know she still had.

“Standing with you...was all I ever wanted, too. Thank you, Doctor, for trying. It worked. I am standing for something now, after this and evermore, and I’m sure it will kill me someday, for good.” Missy pauses to collect herself. If she’s giving him a closing testimony she’s making sure it’s a damn good one.

“This is the last chance you have to announce you’ve miraculously survived before I send you off into Dante’s Inferno, just so you know.” The silence that follows is answer enough to her request.

“It actually isn’t Dante’s Inferno. That place isn’t real. You wanted the stars, so I brought you to them. Every single one.”  

In a few quick steps, Missy is able to pull the doors open, revealing that they have indeed reached the intended destination. Gas clouds are just beginning to circulate and weave their ways, nebulas are brewing stars within their wombs, and galaxies expand their territory among the vast devoidness of empty space. The constellation of Kasterborous is just a few hundred million light-years away from forming.

“It isn’t the moment, not the singularity that started it all. Although, it’s reasonable enough to presume you’ve already been there. We’ve entered the structure formation period of the Big Bang, when stars began existing,” she explains.

“No star ever existed before this point or would be able to exist without this moment. Your casket will fly into one of those stars and burn with its light and passion, and your atoms be dispersed all around the universe and help bring life to all of creation. I think without a doubt this is the best surprise party I’ve ever thrown for you,” Missy claims, placing her hands on her hips with a certain sense of self-satisfaction in this truly bizarre and dizzying ceremony.

The casket hovers just by the TARDIS doors. All she has to do is guide it out, and discs will direct it over to that red dwarf star, his final resting place. With a certain solemnity and poise Missy has never reserved for anyone in her lives, she seals the casket shut.

In a whisper, hushed so only the infant forces of the universe behind the two of them can hear, she gives the Doctor her final farewell.

“Goodnight, my dear friend.”  

#my writing #fanfiction #twissy #thoschei #space spouses #best enemies #missy #the master #gomez!master #twelfth doctor #the doctor #doctor who

[sieben9]

“nothing to fear” impressions

{Quick request to anyone reading: I’m watching OUaT for the first time, and I want to avoid spoilers. So, if you want to discuss something spoilery, I’d be grateful if you could start a new post for that. Thank you!}

Today on Once Upon a Time in Wonderland: everything is great and nothing bad happens to anybody, ever. Look, people get engaged and there’s fireworks and everything.

it’s a party!

…look, this episode made me sad, let me have some forty words of denial here.

Cold, hard reality under the cut.

Damnit, show, I liked her.

I mean, don’t get me wrong, this wasn’t a bad character death, as these things go. Sometimes, you just gotta kill off that minor character to remind everyone that magic is inherently dangerous, no matter the intention, and that being a genie sucks. Still. Poor Lizard. (And yes, I totally caught that she was planning to magic Will into loving her before hearing that it isn’t possible, but still. Poor woman didn’t deserve that.)

I do love the monkey’s paw of “I wish you would feel something for me” picking grief as the “something”. I mean… it sure is a powerful emotion, and Will certainly felt that one. …also, I have made myself sad now.

To counter that: there was another instance of Wonderland’s really good incidental comedy with the fireworks going off outside when Lizard wished for “all of that”. Sure, it wasn’t the kind of fireworks Will meant, but she definitely got what she asked for.

(Oh, and just because I need to wave my fan-flag for a moment: all I kept thinking about during Will’s speech that he can’t love Lizard and can’t love anybody was the TLK in season 3 that Regina gave Henry without her heart in her chest. Just… holy crap. That one just gets more and more impressive as time goes on.)

So, like I said, being a genie sucks, as Will is rapidly finding out. And he was comparatively lucky, I might add. So far, the only people who found his lamp were ones who had a vested interest in his emotional and physical well-being. Somehow, I doubt that’s always the case.

And while we’re on the topic of Ana… is it wrong of me that I loved the whole kidnapping sequence? Just… the amount of intense introspection this forced on her, and how well it showed on her face (“There’s nobody” almost made me cry and I’m not ashamed to admit it), and the fact that she listened. That’s the big reveal at the end, really. Ana realised what an awful ruler she’s been and deciding to make amends, however small they might be. And what I found interesting as well was the fact that none of the other characters know that. Nobody present, except for her and the audience, knows what that man said to her. And the fact that she decided to stay, and even to tell everyone why she was doing it… well, that’s some good, good character development right there.

…yeah, I’m not going to make you fight Will for the “favourite character” spot, Ana. You’ll just have to both squeeze in there.

Actually, seeing how his newfound “geniedom” has affected Will casts some of Alice’s and Cyrus’s conversations about trust in a new light. The degree to which a genie is bound to their “master” was not entirely clear before this, and it’s actually impressive to see in retrospect how carefully Alice and Cyrus (and the writers, obviously) worked to make sure they were on as equal a footing as they possibly could be.

And speaking of which…

…not only was this second proposal very sweet, but I think it carried an additional meaning now that Cyrus is free of his bottle. With all the world to choose from, the place he wants to be most is still at Alice’s side and yes, I did tear up a tiny bit at the whole scene, shut up.

Another thing I found interesting was the relationship (such as it was) between Ana and Alice in this episode. Alice’s distaste for working with the Red Queen was to be expected, but I found Ana’s comment that Alice only ever cares for herself very interesting. I don’t think she’s right, at least not completely. Alice certainly does care for other people, and deeply so. The easiest example: the fact that she’s willing to stay in Wonderland to help out Cyrus’s brothers

the unofficial motto of this show may be “we don’t leave people behind”

That said, I don’t think Ana is entirely wrong, either. There is a distinct streak of selfishness to Alice, though I think she usually channels it positively. (In a “Do not touch these people, because they are mine” way, mostly) She’s still very set in her world view, and slow to accept someone into that circle of “her” people. And, let’s be honest, she’s got good reason to be angry with Ana, and very little incentive to forgive her, so… yeah, Ana may not be wrong, but I don’t think she’s in a position to judge, is what I’m coming up with, here.

And allll the way over in the B plot (C plot? D plot? Who even knows…), I need to have words with Jafar. Those words being: Never trust a magic sword!

yes, hello, I would like to report a disappointing lack in the “eyes of flame” department

I am dead serious, pal. Do not trust that thing. Do not trust that lady. And most of all, do not trust that wig. I think it’s both sentient and up to no good. I’ve seen enough of this show to know that the best way to deal with magic blades of any and all kinds is to stay as far away from them as humanly possible.

Anyway. The Jabberwock, huh? I have to say, this version seems a lot more interesting to me than Yet Another Dragon(/wyvern/whathaveyou). I’d also like to know what kind of Drama Llama decided that yes, the best way to hide this incredibly dangerous scary lady is obviously to pin her to the ceiling in a freely accessible tower. Couldn’t you at least have put a sign outside? “Beware of the Phobophage” or something like that? (Which is pure speculation on my side. I have no idea if she actually eats fear or if she can just cause it.)

no whiffling or burbling, either…

That said, I am immediately suspicious of why she didn’t, you know, just kill Jafar at this point. Obviously, there’s the possibility that she was grateful for her freedom and isn’t interested in randomly murdering people, but the pile of corpses on the ground tells a different story.

All in all, that plot provided some good set-up, but it doesn’t feel like anything else happened, as such. Although Jafar is now forbidden from any further head-related puns. Sorry, but he clearly can’t handle the responsibility.

#ouat #once upon a time in wonderland #nothing to fear #sieben watches ouatiwl #sieben talks #there's just... #an outrageous amount of image compilations in this one #just all over the place #what can i say #i got photoshop-happy

[teagrl]

Luke Skywalker and the Death Star Calculus

So one thing that I’m pretty interested in is deconstructing the hero and by this I don’t mean a simple subversion, I mean looking at what it means  to be a hero in terms of costs/sacrifices etc. 

Now my fave case (SURPRISE) for this is Luke because there’s so much interesting material to draw on and talk about. I like looking at him with respect to the motherfucking wreckage boyfriend leaves behind when push comes to shove. Spoiler alert: I’m going to end by drop kicking the Black Fleet crisis trilogy for lacking nuance and fucking up Luke’s characterization. Because I can’t talk about the EU without being a cranky asshole about it. I’m ok with that.

I’ll give it to Black Fleet that it deals with the Death Star calculus up front. 

But I want to start here with the TTT, with Luke’s reluctance there to kill. It’s pretty noted from the get-go in the first Nohgri attack when he wipes out the team sent to capture him before going to go to Han and Leia:

Luke took a shuddering breath. He’d done it. Not the way he’d wanted to, but he’d done it. Now, he could only hope he’d done it in time.

And this pops up more than a few times there and elsewhere. Reluctance to kill is very much a characterization constant for Luke Skywalker. Of course there’s the moral side of it, but there’s also the more practical consideration that as someone who is now trained in the Force Luke actually feels deaths (and this is as early as Truce at Bakura, one day after RotJ:

Two blasts of painfully familiar human anguish wrenched Luke’s spine and stomach and Alliance pilots died.

It’s not academic for him is my point.

Moving forward to my fave, Luke Skywalker and the Shadows of Mindor you have him do this:

He stayed with them while every stormtrooper in the entire system, all at once in all their thousands, sagged and shuddered. And died.

Luke felt every death.

This has a pretty severe cost on Luke’s mental health. This is how the dude who comes to interview Luke describes him after all that:

Skywalker pushed himself to his feet. His face was drawn, and far more deeply lined than Geptun had expected from a lad of twenty-four. He looked like he hadn’t been sleeping for some few days now. His movements were slightly unsteady, and the shadows under his eyes were shading toward purple—but they were nothing compared to the shadows within his eyes.

This whole scene is super relevant, you can read it here. Luke is...not himself. Anyone who hires and investigator to judge him as a mass murderer, we can agree is...not all there.

And one super interesting thing, is how Shadows of Mindor positions what I call the “Death Star calculus” inflicting terrible damage out of necessity, to prevent even greater loss. While Shadows of Mindor doesn’t explicitly address Luke taking down the Death Star, over and over Luke mentions rather ominously his “best trick.” At the end of the novel, we find out what it is:

Skywalker lifted his face from his hands and his eyes were dark. Wounded. Haunted by shadows. "My best trick is to do one thing--to make one small move, even a simple choice-- and kill thousands of people. Thousands."

More than thousands, but we all get his point. 

Now one of the annoying things from Black Fleet, as I mentioned here was how wrong it got Luke’s characterization, particularly the aforementioned Death Star calculus. I said:

...who is this Luke Skywalker who argues FOR force – to what seemed to me to be overly enthusiastic levels at times and makes light of the Death Star deaths like they’re a triviality? Sure, he then confesses to know the number of those killed but he’s a goddamn Jedi master in this timeline, I expect more restraint and self awareness/maturity and thoughtfulness from him.

I still feel that way, but let’s look at the text:

“Tagge—I remember now,” said Luke. “He was on the first Death Star when Leia was a prisoner.” He paused, then added, “He was probably still on board when my proton torpedo blew it to bits.”

Luke didn’t know what possessed him to make that claim before Akanah, and her response made him feel even more foolish for having done so. She stiffened as he spoke, and he could feel her withdrawing from him, though she barely moved.

“Do you seek honor from me for this? In time you  will understand that the Fallanassi honor no heroes for killing, not even killing one who has been our tormentor,” said Akanah.

“I’m sorry,” Luke said, and wondered at his own words. Everything suddenly seemed upside down. It was strange and unsettling that the deed for which he had been so lionized now became touched with regret—regret over the killing of an enemy who had been his own sister’s tormentor. 

Let’s rehearse some timelike. Unlike Truce at Bakura, Shadows of Mindor, and the TTT, the Black Fleet Crisis has Luke when he’s already a Jedi Master (16-17ABY) having trained several apprentices (his first class already “graduated”). Now Shadows of Mindor might be a more recent novel in the EU, BUT regardless, this is a callous, extremely foolish thing for Luke to say (even if he did feel like that reflexively, he knows who Akanah is and her rigid pacifism). It comes out of NOWHERE and the fact that the writer makes Luke aware of how ridiculous and cold it sounds does not in any way make it make any sense characterization-wise in that timeline. For Luke to be “touched with regret” over killing millions at THIS POINT in the timeline, a whopping SIXTEEN YEARS post Yavin makes him a fucking shitty and unaware Jedi Master. A goddamn hazard, if you ask me.

Black Fleet tries to walk that shit back. It’s almost like the writer knows he’s getting his characterization wrong (like yo bro  YOUR CHARACTER should be confused but your READERS shouldn’t), but didn’t know how to fix it. He does try and this attempt is better:

With no ready answer, Luke turned his gaze back toward the flyway ahead. It wasn’t until years after the Battle of Yavin that Luke had first become aware that the Death Star he had destroyed at Yavin had a complement—officers, crew, and support staff—of more than a million sentients.

In retrospect, it was something he should have realized without prompting. But it took a new Battle of Yavin display at the Museum of the Republic on Coruscant to point it out to him. When Luke thought of the Death Star, he associated it with Vader and Tagge and Grand Moff Tarkin, with the stormtroopers who’d tried to kill him in its corridors and the TIE pilots who’d tried to kill him above its surface, with the superlaser gun crews who had obliterated defenseless Alderaan.

But the signs at the massive cutaway model of the Death Star in the museum had  spelled out the numbers in its table of specifications, and Luke could still recite them: 25,800 stormtroopers, 27,048 officers, 774,576 crew, 378,685 support staff—

“One million, two hundred five thousand, one hundred nine,” Luke said quietly. “Not counting the droids.”The calm precision of the recitation brought a look of startled horror to [Akanah’s] face.

BETTER. But why does this reflection happen AFTER he makes that incredibly flippant remark and thinks that it’s “upside down” to feel regret for it? Shouldn’t regret for this massive loss of life be the motherfucking DEFAULT? He’s not Joe Shmoe, he’s fucking Luke Skywalker, head of the goddamn Jedi Order. The first thing he should feel NOW is regret that such an action was necessary. 

You want the meta reason? It’s obvious. The writer wanted to pit Luke philosophically (violence is necessary sometimes) against Akanah (all pacifism all the time). He just didn’t have the chops to do it with nuance so Luke’s characterization takes a hit. Shame because there are some seeds worth considering, like Akanah asking Luke to give up his lightsaber:

“Not while I still call myself a Jedi. It’s more than a weapon—it’s a tool for training the mind and the body. And it’s become part of me—an extension of my will.”

“And a way to enforce your will on others.”

He shook his head. “Most of the discipline of the lightsaber has to do with defense.”

“What about the rest?”

“The rest—the rest requires that you  get close to your adversary, close enough to have to look them in the eye,” Luke said. “An old-fashioned idea, and a civilizing one. If all you want is to kill quickly, efficiently and impersonally, a blaster is a much better choice—the Emperor’s stormtroopers didn’t carry lightsabers, after all.”

Like we laugh at lightsabers (insta-decapitators/amputators) being “civilized,” but sure there is SOME logic to this ahah from a certain point of view.

But my general takeaway is to ignore the characterization faux pas and focus on Luke at some point early on (as in before he becomes a Jedi Master, probably right after the events in the OT) realizing what it means to have dusted the Death Star, even if back then he wasn’t sufficiently adept in the Force to feel the bad vibes, and even if he were totally aware of the necessity of his actions. I like to think of him reflecting on how much he would like to avoid doing such a thing again, now that he’s fully cognizant of what it means. 

And then Mindor happens.

#luke skywalker #meta #the EU #eufuckery

[dixonministry]

If I Ruled The World

The world would be quite a bit different if I were its supreme dictator. Oh yes, I am in favor of a dictatorship, as long as that dictator is me! And here's how it would go. 

A few disclaimers before we begin: 1) Keep your expectations low when you read this. You won’t like everything I list but you won’t hate it all either. This is due to me being neither a liberal or a conservative solely but rather bits and pieces of each. 2) I am making this rant for my own entertainment and the entertainment of the few people who enjoy it when I rant. I am not making this in hopes of starting a debate on what is right or wrong, stupid or smart. If I sound like an idiot to you, cool. Let me sound like an idiot in peace! With that said, keep your lame ass argumentative comments out of my inbox. Thanks. Ok on with the rant!

First of all, I'd have to setup a single worldwide government. The current rulers of all current nations would become representatives of their respective countries on my World Senate. Of course, being a dictator I don't really need a Senate, but it's nice to have. As long as they know that anything they decide can get shit-canned by me, then it's all good. Not Bush though. And definitely not T.rump. I would pass a law that no-one in the Bush/T.rump family is ever allowed to enter politics ever again. I'd make 0bama the President again so he could be the American Senator, cuz I liked him.  It goes without saying that I'd first pass all sorts of Youth Rights laws. Every age-based law would be abolished and replaced by laws that actually make sense. For example, the driving age would get axed and be replaced by a more rigorous driving test. In fact, we have way too many stupid drivers out there as it is, so the WHOLE driving test would have to be retaken by everyone. I would bring back beheading as the favorite execution style. Lethal Injections are for pussies. What the fuck is scary about getting a shot that puts you to sleep? Fuck no, if you did something bad enough that you deserve to die, you're gonna lose your head, bitch! Murderers get the death penalty, period. No life imprisonments for assholes who kill people. You kill someone, you die, that's all. (Note: DP would however only occur with a substantial amount of concrete evidence) Rapists get the death penalty. If she said no, then it's NO, motherfucker.  If you beat your kids, you get put in chains in the middle of Times Square and people can pay $1 for one punch or kick. The beatings stop when someone draws blood (cuz we don't wanna kill your ass). On the 3rd offense, an angry mob gets to beat your ass into a coma. If you come out of it, your kids can decide whether you should live or die. If you molest a kid, whatever part of your body touched them gets painted with acid. Then you go to the chopping block! If you steal from someone, you lose your rights and freedom for 1 year and become your victim's endentured servant. On the 3rd offense, you will work until you have paid for 10 times the value of the item stolen or for 5 years, whichever comes first. Marijuana is legal in Salt’s World. It will be tightly regulated and heavily taxed, because if you're gonna be a pothead, you're gonna fucking pay for it. Growing your own shit or selling it without a license will be considered stealing from the government and you get the punishment for theft (see above). Drunk drivers get no chances. First offense of drunk driving means you lose your license for life, in theory. I say "in theory" because it will work sort of like a life sentence in prison works. You can be brought up for "parole" and a committee will assess whether you deserve to get your license back. Such assessments will occur once every 10 years. If you beat your wife, I annul your marriage and place a restraining order against you. I don't care if she gives me that brainwashed crying bullshit "but he loves me, he didn't mean it, really he doesn't abuse me." You hit her, you lose her, and that's final. I will have my government scientists figure out an alternative to abortion that everyone can live with. Preferably, I'd like to see us be able to remove an embryo and continue to grow it in a lab. People who're trying to adopt always want babies and they always have to wait years for one. Not anymore. Furthermore, it seems that adoption is frowned upon due to it being so difficult to get approved and those who do get approved have a predisposition for choosing pretty, white INFANTS. Under my control, a new process will be drawn up to make it not only easier to adopt regardless of sexuality, marital status, etc but make it so that people don’t get to “select” which child they want. First come, first given, end of story. If you really want a child, you wouldn’t be that gdamn picky anyway. If you don’t want your child, that’s fine and well. We will literally take it out of your stomach (same concept as aborting) and grow it for you. Real abortions will only be allowed if a health risk to either mother or child comes up. This is how I would attempt to find middle ground, a compromise if you will. My government will fund cloning research. I want to be able to clone stem cells and body parts. If this can be done, maybe sick and dying patients won't have to wait year after year for suitable donors. In a world where everyone is part of the same government, there's not much need for massive armies. A global police force will be instituted as the next step above Federal officers. So, it would go, local cops, state cops, federal cops, global cops. Without an army to feed, clothe, etc. a shitload of money would be freed up to make people's lives better. There won't be anymore fucking hunger in my world. Every single farm worldwide will be required by law to give 5% of their yearly output to the government for distribution to the poor. They will, of course, receive a humongous tax break for doing this and any farm that voluntarily gives in excess of 15% will pay no taxes at all. Yes, I know this will make the cost of food rise globally. Too bad. You pay a dollar more for your T-bone and you can just cry about it, but at least some little Ethiopian can have some fucking potatoes that night. And in retrospect, under my administration, the percentage of poor people in the world should lower dramatically if not disappear altogether if you play your cards right. But until this global shitshow is corrected, that’s what would have to happen. Medicine will no longer be big business. All wealthy citizens under my rule will see a tax increase, which will pay for everyone's healthcare. No more private insurance companies, it's going government-issue, baby! And, by the way, under my rule the words "government issue" won't be a synonym for "piss poor." No one should be groaning about this because the minimum wage will also see an increase to an actual living wage proportional to the cost of living that will make workers and their families happy and also boost consumer sales, thus increasing the profits of businesses everywhere. The lack of insurance plans employers now have to provide for their employees will free up some of that extra cash. We're dismantling nuclear weapons and using their radioactive components as fuel. What the fuck do we need nukes for when all the world is united under one government? I will pass a law stating once and for all that all sentient life on this planet is entitled to equal treatment and protection under the law and that no law may be passed which contradicts this. Gay marriage: Legal. If you file a stupid lawsuit, we throw you in jail for 3 months. This includes suing the tobacco industry when you're the one who lit up 50 times a day for 30 years, moron. You also can't sue because you're fat. Watch what you eat and exercise if it bothers you so much! I will force Microsoft, Apple, and all those Google people to work together and create "The Uber OS." It'll run Windows programs and Mac programs (all versions) and Google programs (all flavors). All the drivers will work interchangeably. They will all be told that if the OS ever crashes, they each lose a family member! Mwahahahahaha. (kidding obvs). Every citizen will be allowed to carry a sidearm, as long as the sidearm is worn in plain view (like the old west). Every citizen carrying a gun had better remember the price they'll pay for murder. Unless it's self defense or defense of another's life, don't pull that gun! Significant resources will be diverted to build subway systems. City-wide, State-wide, Nation-wide, and World-wide systems will be built. Any system that is Interstate or beyond must be supersonic. The World-wide system must reach speeds of Mach 2 or greater (don't try standing up on the train, bitch!). The purpose of this subway network will not only be to facilitate free travel across the globe, but also to provide countless millions of new jobs that should adequately handle our planet's homelessness and unemployment problems. I should've mentioned taxes earlier, but here it is. The worldwide tax brackets will be as follows: everyone making 10k or less will owe 12% (you can omit the extra 2% with a financial hardship exemption form but it should be noted that no full-time adult worker should be making that much under my leadership so this should be doable without a person’s quality of life taking a hit), everyone making between 10,001-99,999 will owe 15%, everyone making $100k-$200k will owe 30%. Everyone over 200k will owe 50%. Surely you don't think the money for all these great improvements is just gonna fall from the sky? Recycling will become mandatory. We throw away far too much shit. Why chop down a rainforest when there's enough paper in a city dump to fill a library 10 times over?! We will also have to become far less dependent on fossil fuels. I'll work out a timetable for eventually outlawing fossil fuels in favor of electric, solar, and nuclear power. Go back to that city dump and imagine how many atoms are sitting their going to waste when we could be smashing them and reaping the benefits. Prison overcrowding? No problem! Legalizing weed and making drugs a medical issue instead of a criminal one should take care of this problem for the most part and as for the rest, well, Antarctica is just sitting there not doing a damn thing, it's time we put it to use. Remember the penal colony "Rura Penthe" from Star Trek VI? Yup, it'll be something like that. No guard towers, no fence, nothing. If you wanna escape, go ahead. You'll just freeze to death, idiot. Otherwise, you'll stay right there in prison and serve out your sentence. Imagine how many new jobs a prison that size will create? And the cost of feeding them will be negligible. They'll have giant heated greenhouses for growing everything they eat. They don't work to grow it, they don't eat. In other words, a prison sentence means you serve your time as a farmer in the middle of frozen fucking nowhere. Jon Stewart will be appointed as my press secretary. At least all my press releases will have the whole world laughing their asses off. Minimum Wage will be increased to $12.50/hr. I think Ronald McDonald can afford to buy used overhauls for a while so that his employees don't have to shop at the Salvation Army. Corruption in government would be gone. No one is allowed to spend more than $500 on their election campaigns. They can put up a fucking website and do grassroots shit. That way there's no big corporate donations and shit to deal with. Plus, politicians are gonna become like preachers: We give them a place to live and a minimal salary, that's it. No big bucks, no fancy cars, nothing. It's not gonna be about the money. All the money we cut from politicians can go to teachers, cops, firemen, etc. Y'know, the government employees who actually fucking DO something worthwhile and give back to society. Pro Athletes get capped at $90,000/yr. None of this being a rich bastard because you play a fucking game. Maybe then, only people who LOVE the sport and DON'T corrupt it will find their way in. Just like with the politicians, when it's not about the money only people who actually give a fuck will want the job. Ninety grand a year is still a damn good salary. It's not like they'll be poor. The RIAA and MPAA will be told once and for all to shut the fuck up about Peer-to-Peer. They should've jumped on the bandwagon when it got rolling, now they can just suck it up. By the way, musicians and actors are capped at $60,000/yr. They can still have the royalties on their music, movies, concerts, commercial deals, etc. Wouldn't be fair to take that away from them. However, the industry will still be encouraged to develop better copyright protection methods so that all the true geeks can still enjoy the immense thrill of breaking a copyright protection scheme only days after it's implemented. They've gotta have something to do on a dateless Saturday night. Wouldn't want to rob them of that. We'll be having a government-sponsored betting pool on how long it takes the industry to figure out that copyright protection is fucking useless (they spend years developing some new state-of-the-art system and once it's released, a 13yo breaks it in 2 days... get a clue). SPAM will be made illegal! The punishment for spamming is 5 years in the Antarctic Prison Colony! I think that just about covers the basics. Of course, I could probably go on all fucking night with this shit, but if I kept going I'd never get this rant posted. Just know that there's like a billion more cool things I'd do. I might just have to make a sequel to this rant. Until then....... Salt for president 2020.  

#text #weekly rant #salt rants #I mean it #stay out of my inbox

[davemcbadass]

Do all the cute and unique asks ☺️

Sure, will do, anon!1. have you ever been in love? - I think I've been in love, but it's always hard to tell in retrospect, you know?2. what are your favourite colours and why? - My favorite colors are probably Blue and Pink. Blue has been my favorite color since I was a little kid, and pink goes so well with blue that I started using the cotton candy combo for a whole bunch of stuff in my teenage years.3. who was the last person you held hands with? - That's a good question , I honestly have no idea! It might have been my mom to help her up the stairs, or something.4. what is your zodiac sign? - I am a cancer, which is a trait that seems to be obvious to some people after talking to me for ten minutes haha. 5. how many times have you read your favourite book? - I have read The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy at least five times, and I've listened to the audiobook once. 6. what are your favourite films? - I'm a sucker for all the Mel Brooks films, Spaceballs and Young Frankenstein being my standout favorites. Toy Story, Forrest Gump, and You've got Mail are up there too, so clearly I'm a Tom Hanks fan. 7. what kind of weather do you like? - I love most weather that isn't post-storm snow, which requires cleaning up haha. It's raining where I am right now and I am absolutely loving it!8. do you prefer sunrises or sunsets? - I think I prefer sunrises, if only because when I get to see one it's usually after an all-night adventure, so seeing the sun come up to end the night is always really memorable for me.9. what kind of weather represents who you are as a person? - Probably a warm summer rain, but not a downpour. The kind of rain you can walk outside without an umbrella and enjoy without getting ruined, but heavy enough that you can hear it very clearly hitting off things you walk by or under.10. what’s your favourite animal? - It's gotta be the mighty doggo, an 100% a dog person.11. what is your favourite song right now? - At the moment, I'm getting a kick out of Sithu Aye's "Anime as Leaders: The Woven Weeab." Because it's proggy as fuck and the title is perfect. 12. what is your favourite song of all time? - I think it's still probably "Crystallized" by Haken. Seriously, if you like progressive rock/metal, and you have 20 minutes to kill, it's an amazing song. I've seen it live three times and I've cried once. 13. do you like sunny days or rainy days better? - I like sunny days when I know I have something going on, but I will take a rainy day in playing video games or writing just as much of the time. 14. have you ever been heartbroken? Fuck yeah, who hasn't? It's certainly not fresh, though.15. what does the perfect kiss feel like? - It feels like surrender: like you've both allowed yourselves to each other in the warmest way. 16. what is your favourite poem? That is an incredibly hard question to answer: if you ask me again in a day or two I might have an answer for you ;)17. who are you most inspired by? - My friends inspire me the most, because at the end of the day I want to be the best me I can be for them, and the rest of the people in my life. 18. are you spiritual? - Maybe? In the sense that I believe the world has a movement of unseen energy to it that effects us all in one way or another, I suppose.19. what is your favourite plant? - THE MARIJUANA PLANT 4/20 BLAZE IT YEYEYEYE. But seriously, if you've got another plant that gets rid of my headaches and makes me funny, I'd love to see it.20. what is your favourite feeling? - The feeling of security, the absence of stress.21. what is your favourite word? - Lately it's 'Wholesome." Boy howdy do I like using the world wholesome in as many ways as possible in my every day life.22. are you an artist? -I'm a "poet", does that count?23. what is your favourite flower? - Hmm. I honestly don't know. If I knew the meanings behind giving certain flowers to people a little better I might have a clearer answer for you, though. 24. are you happy? - Eh, tough question. I'm happy with the progress I've made over the past year as a person, but I'm also not completely content as to where I am currently. 25. what are you thinking about right now? - How badly I want to take a nap in this amazing rain right now. 26. what emotion do you feel most often? - Is anxiety an emotion? Apprehension? If so, those. lol.27. what is your favourite season? - Probably Fall. Halloween + crisp air = happy Dave.28. are you in a relationship? - Ha, good one, anon. 29. are you an introvert or extrovert? - I think I'm a contextual extrovert. I can be the loudest person in the room, but I can also just as easily be the quietest if I don't know anyone. 30. do you prefer the moon or the stars? The stars, I think. I don't get to appreciate the stars quite as often as the moon. 31. what is your favourite scent? - The smell of cooking breakfast food, or petrichor. 32. where do you feel most at home? - My home, surprisingly. Sitting at my desk with my dog by my side.33. what scares you the most? - Death, and the concept of eventually losing everyone close to me.34. do you believe in soulmates? - Hmm, no. I believe that if two people care enough about each other that love can conquer any differences they might have, but I don't think any two people are necessarily pre-determined for each other. 35. what is your favourite thing about yourself? - Maybe my sense of humor? Or that I'm actually really good at listening and giving relevant advice.36. what is the nicest compliment you’ve received? - A week or two ago, a very good friend of mine kinda came out of the blue and gave me props for getting whre I am in my life with all of the shit that's been in my way. It's not very often that my progress as a person is acknowledged, so it really caught me off guard. 37. who is your favourite music artist? Haken! or Fair to Midland! or System of a Down! 38. what was your first kiss like? -Probably as short and as awkward as everyone else's. We kissed in the rain, I was like, 13, and we giggled a little afterwards.39. are you a sensitive person? - Oh god, yes. I am probably overly sensitive. 40. when was the last time you cried? Maybe a month and a half ago after a nasty fight with my mom.41. do you believe that love can last forever? I do. 42. what do you think happens to us when we die? - We go in the ground and it's black, more than likely. I'd like to believe our consciousness would exists as some form of energy that still exists somewhere out there, but that's being a little optimistic. 43. have you ever broken someone’s heart? Yeah, probably at least once. 44. what do you think about when you can’t fall asleep at night? EVEN MORE THINGS THAT MAKE ME NOT FALL ASLEEP. I dunno, my head goes a mile a minute as soon as I hit the pillow, so it could be a myriad of things. I have pretty heavy anxiety. 45. do you believe in aliens? I sure do. It's really hard to imagine we're the only truly sentient life out here in the universe. 46. what is the nicest thing anyone’s ever done for you? Man, just tolerate who I am as a person and be my friend, or try to love me.47. do you find it hard to trust? No, I think given the right person I can actually trust pretty easily.48. are you secretive? I'm definitely more of an open book kinda guy, but everyone has their secrets, you know?49. what colour are your eyes? My eyes are a green/blue, with blue taking priority most of the time.50. do you have a nickname? I have one nickname that's stuck with me since 2010 on the internet with my gaming friends, and that's Kitty. To the extent where when I flew out to Colorado to meet a few of them, we all called each other by our gaming handles. I have actually turned around and reacted to someone saying 'Kitty" before, lol. Aaaand that'll do it, thanks for taking interest, anon! :)

[elainescookingforthesoul]

TRANSCRIPT for Episode 1.06 “Robin’s Penne Bolognese” (PART 1/2)

ACT I

[INTRO MUSIC]

ELAINE: Hello and welcome back to Elaine's Cooking Podcast for the Soul. I am your host Elaine Martínez, and tonight...well, tonight listeners, in the interest of open communication, I've been feeling a little blue. I suspect it may be the temporary lockdown in place across LA making me a little stir-crazy...I've been stuck this dental office for the past three days. Or it could be the lean rations and the ongoing ban on bread. I don't know, sometimes I think it's just the death of most my friends and family after the rapid, haphazard exchange of nuclear weapons by now-extinct government bodies all those months ago...I hate to complain, but I know there might be other people feeling a little down, so thought it might be worth sharing. We all have ways of coping with sad emotions, but the best way for me is by cooking up something good and talking to myself! Today, however, I'm getting a little outside that old routine. Oh, I'm still cooking up something delicious, but this time around I'll be talking to a lovely new guest by the name of Robin Jones. Welcome, Robin! 

ROBIN: Hello, Elaine!

ELAINE: Robin, it is truly a pleasure to see you. Now we were once tangential acquaintances…

ROBIN: Yeah, I was your barista! Saw this babe every day for their chai tea latte. And now I get to hang out where you work! I didn't even know you were a dentist! Although I guess in retrospect, your scrubs and insistence that I use your #1 Dentist mug makes a little more sense.

ELAINE: Oh, I've missed those chai lattes, and I've missed your energy. Still have the cup though! See?

[CERAMIC MUG HITS TABLE]

ROBIN: Sick.

ELAINE: Well, what are we cooking up today, Miss Robin?

ROBIN: Firstly, before we get in too deep, I do prefer gender neutral pronouns such as they, them, or just Robin.

ELAINE: I hope I didn't offend you.

ROBIN: Nah, you didn't know! Now you do. Still prefer she and her?

ELAINE: That is correct. And secondly?

ROBIN: Secondly, let me just say when I heard you were doing a post-apocalyptic cooking podcast, I was like, okay, but there are only two ways to eat canned meat as far as I know: hot or cold, right? But then I remembered two very magical words: Penne Bolognese.

ELAINE: Italian!

ROBIN: Yup. The recipe I brought with me is a modified version of other, better versions. It uses only a can of diced tomatoes, a half cup of lentils, some tomato paste, a handful of illegal spices, and my least favorite noodle, the freaking tiny tube-ish one.

ELAINE: I see. Well your candor is much appreciated.

ROBIN: Sure sure, that's like my thing. Hey. Remember when you were talking about being sad and lonely?

ELAINE: Just a few moments ago?

ROBIN: Yeah.

ELAINE: Yes. Why?

ROBIN: Is that, like, the same as feeling bummed?

ELAINE: Maybe. What does feeling bummed feel like for you?

ROBIN: You know, bummed. For me it's like this engulfing wave thing that happens to my heart every once in a while when I remember everything I've lost. My mom, my sisters, my cats, my bluetooth earbuds...It feels like my heart is being squeezed, but also like I'm plummeting from the top of a roller coaster. But it's not fun at all.

ELAINE: Sounds like...and I am just a dentist and not a licensed therapist, psychologist, or medical doctor...but perhaps you are describing a panic attack brought on by feelings of sadness and isolation? 

ROBIN: Nah, I wasn't panicking at all though. I was just chilling in the abandoned Russian deli I've been living out of, sitting on the counter, eating some Sour Punch Straws and thinking about life.

ELAINE: Sure, but--

ROBIN: Like, for all intents and purposes, it was a pretty regular day.

ELAINE: My own anxiety has many triggers. Sometimes it seems to pop up quite randomly and can really lay me low.

ROBIN: Woof. Thank god I don't have that.

ELAINE: Right...Well, Robin, what I'd like to suggest is that you continue talking this out with a licensed therapist--I used to know many. But these days everyone of that ilk has been rounded up to work on those semi-sentient advertising robots.

ROBIN: You mean the Ad Ministers? Those things are...

ELAINE: Terrifying?

ROBIN: I was gonna say 'dope,' but yeah they're pretty fuckin terrifying.

ELAINE: Indeed. So since real methods of dealing with our declining mental health is temporarily unattainable, why don't we work through this by way of having a little fun cooking up some food and enjoying one another's company?  Why don't you share a little about this delightful dish with us!

ROBIN: Cool, I'll just like tamp those feelings down for now. Gimme a second.

ELAINE: Please, take your time.

ROBIN: Cool, all set. So for the dish there are basically two elements uniting here. We've got a real chunky tomato-ey sauce.

ELAINE: Plainly stated, I love it.

ROBIN: And we've got a noodle. 

ELAINE: Penne, to be precise.

ROBIN: Ugh, don't get me started. This dumb-looking tube is by far the least popular noodle, and it's impossible to trade at the ration swaps. Even wheat fettuccini noodles pull higher rank than this guy.

ELAINE: It is a very boring noodle. Let's get started on this sauce! Afterwards, we'll rinse out the pot and boil up the penne.

ROBIN: The sauce! Oh man, Elaine. I've really worked this one out. It's a huge step up from your regular jar of marinara. Lots more flavor, tons more protein. 

ELAINE: Ooh, and we certainly are not in a position to turn down protein.

ROBIN: No, we are not. So the sauce is real  simple. I brought with me a can of diced tomatoes. Will you open that?

ELAINE: Of course.

[CAN OPENER GRINDING]

ROBIN: And I guess I can get this hot plate thingy fired up...It's like a camping stove, huh?

[GAS/WHOOSH OF HOT PLATE]

ELAINE: Exactly. It gets that pot hot extremely fast. 

ROBIN: Perf. Just throw those tomatoes right on in, Elaine.

[SIZZLE]

ROBIN: And then we'll fill that can there with some water and add that as well. May I?

[WATER POURING]

ELAINE: Oh my. I never thought of using the water pick for cooking before.

ROBIN: Well, if we're gonna do this on top of a dental chair, we might as well use the whole hog, right? 

ELAINE: Very resourceful. 

ROBIN: Great. So we can just let that pot get hot...you weren't kidding. This thing works fast.

ELAINE: It is always an extremely high flame, and a very thin pot. 

ROBIN: Well alright. I guess it's time to add the tomato paste--just a squirt there, maybe a tablespoon's worth.

[SQUIRT AND SIZZLE]

ELAINE: Done. I'll just stir that in.

ROBIN: Great! And now we get to add all the illegal spices and herbs I bought and stole

ELAINE: So much candor.

ROBIN: It's my signature Sogbop spice. 

ELAINE: Sogbop. I can't say I have ever heard of that before.

ROBIN: Oh sure, that's because I made it up. It's a teaspoon each of salt, oregano, garlic powder, basil, onion powder, and parsley. All these herbs together make SOGBOP. It's like instant Italian.

ELAINE: Bellissimo!

ROBIN: Totinos! Pizza Roll-eys!

ELAINE: We should stop. We may be getting accidentally culturally insensitive.

ROBIN: Can I do one more?

ELAINE: No, we should return to the dish.

ROBIN: You're right. Anyway, I wanted to do that thing they always do in cooking shows where they have tiny little glass or ceramic bowls with the dosed out amounts of spice. But I just threw them all in this baby food jar here instead. Sorry it's less elegant. 

ELAINE: Not at all. I feel like a cooking show that is sustained without a visual element is entitled to certain shortcuts.

ROBIN: Totally. So at this point, the sauce is smelling pretty damn nice. The thing that's gonna make this an almost-Bolognese, though, is these lentils. I brought red lentils this time around, but brown lentils work fine too. 

ELAINE: Looks to be about half a cup.

ROBIN: Yup. We pour these bad boys in.

[LENTILS POUR]

ELAINE: We are nearing the capacity for this small one-quart pot.

ROBIN: And I think I'm gonna push it by adding even more water. 

[WATER SPRAYS IN]

ELAINE: Very nearly to the brim. 

ROBIN: Don't worry, the lentils will do their thing in a minute.

[WATER POURS OVER, SIZZLES]

ELAINE: If you say so. How long does it take to cook?

ROBIN:About ten or fifteen, I'd say. High flame, thin pot, right?

ELAINE: Right. Well perhaps we ought to take a quick break. Listeners, when we return we will be checking in on this delicious-smelling Bolognese sauce, boiling up some noodles, and conquering our anxiety and depression!

ROBIN: That's a tall order.

ELAINE: We'll start with the penne Bolognese and see if we have time for the other stuff.

ROBIN: Sounds good.

ELAINE: We'll be right back. Please stay still and do nothing, or other government-approved activities.

END OF ACT I

INTERLUDE/AD BREAK

ELAINE: Okay, listeners, please bear with me. As you probably know, every local business was assigned an Ad Minister--those patrolling android robot thingies? Anyway, I've locked mine in the lobby storage room because it's been playing this unbearably dull ad for that nondescript item nonstop all week, and--

AD MINISTER: Don't like this ad?

ELAINE: Oh...no, not really. I just--

AD MINISTER: I have heard every commercial. Generating new ad...ready.

ELAINE: Wow, great!

AD MINISTER: Lonely, but could be not blemishes! Have a local, organic body pore to leave you feeling full for hours! No money down, no soy, and NO sad. Happy here with kid-approved now! Try be and so good. Smooth, care, crunch. 

ELAINE

...okay. Well, back to the show!

[MUSICAL TRILL]

[douchebagbrainwaves]

THE MOST AMBITIOUS STUDENTS WILL AT THIS POINT BE ASKING: WHY WAIT TILL YOU GRADUATE

VisiCalc, the first spreadsheet. Think about your own experience: most links you follow lead to something lame. That was a social step no one with a 50% chance of winning, or no one will dominate server-based software.1 16% false positives means that it is, it will at least encourage a habit of impatience about the things you most want to do. Finally, they didn't bias against false positives. The startup is the opinion of one's peers is the most extreme case is developing programming languages, which doesn't pay at all, because people start to use it in different ways. The founders can't enrich themselves without also enriching the investors.2 But if it's a question, because now their honor was on the right track when people complain that you're unqualified, or that you've done something inappropriate. You may not at first make more than you spend.3

And PR firms give them what they want to be able to reach most of the time not to defend yourself. It would be like programming in a language with prefix syntax, any function you define is effectively an operator.4 And this tradition had so long to develop that nontechnical people like managers and VCs got to be about 15? These techniques are mostly orthogonal to Bill's; an optimal solution might incorporate both. They can practically read one another's minds. In 1976, everyone looked down on by everyone, including themselves.5 The 20th best player, causing him not to make the team, and his place to be taken by the 21st best player will be only slightly worse than the 20th best player, causing him not to make discoveries about statics. Which means that what matters is who you are, not when you do it like a label. There is always room for new stuff.6 And it applies to startups too. To anyone who has worked for the government knows, the important thing is not to be the one to discover its replacement. You'd think.

You may not realize they're startup ideas. And anyone who has worked on spam filters, this will seem a perverse decision. Most painters start with a blurry sketch and gradually refine it.7 For users, Web-based and desktop software is that you shouldn't relax just because you don't want to want, we consider technological progress good.8 But so do people who inherit money, and that means it has to be designed to suit human weaknesses, I don't mean you should release something minimal.9 My mother doesn't really need a desktop computer, you can just turn off the service. In a startup, and I'll be rich. I was someone else.10 So if you make it clear you're going to invest in startups, as there are in any domain, but they are an order of magnitude less important than solving the real problem. What made oil paint so exciting, when it first became popular in the fifteenth century, was that you could easily convince yourself that they all started from the same phenomenon.

Design by committee is a big pitfall, and not just how to make, and not just for humans, but for startups there's a unique problem: by definition the founders of successful startups don't need to be support for it at the language level. You can do this in software too. In fact, because bugs were rare and you had to look at a piece of shit; those fools will love it.11 It might help if they were sentient adversaries—as if you're a quiet, law-abiding citizen most of the work is so interesting that this is concealed, because what other people have the attitude that they're going to give this startup thing a shot for three months, and if one group is a minority in some population, pairs of them will amount to anything.12 One is to work somewhere that has a lot more than you realize.13 It would certainly be convenient, and mandatory type declarations are incompatible with a toplevel, then no language that makes type declarations mandatory could be convenient to program in.14 Back when desktop computers arrived, IBM was the giant that everyone was afraid of. As soon as we heard they'd been supporting themselves by selling Obama and McCain branded breakfast cereal, they were all essentially mechanics and shopkeepers at first. If you're an amateur mathematician and think you've solved a famous open problem, better go back and check. This article is derived from a talk at BBN Labs. How fast does a company have to grow to be considered startups. Most users probably don't.

More people are starting startups, people who wanted to buy them, however limited. If you're sufficiently perceptive you can grasp these things while you're still in school is to learn how startups work. You could combine one of these chips with some memory 256 bytes in the first Altair, and front panel switches, and you'd have a working computer. In an opera it's common for one person to write the application in the same way that not drinking anything would teach you how much an expert can know about it right away so that we could hire someone whose job was just to worry about—not even Google.15 It's a live thing, running on your servers right now. The world of startups.16 Give the Programmer as Much Control as Possible.17

Why should there be any limit to the number of new customers, but the difficulty of coming up with an idea for a small team of good, trusted programmers than it would take to write it yourself, then all that code is doing nothing but make your manual thick.18 Big companies try to hire the right person for the job.19 So in the future should not depend much on how you deal with html.20 And anyone who has worked on software. I explained before, this is a kind of axiom from which most of the time, will take whatever choice requires least work.21 As far as I know there's no word for something we like too much.22 The weak point of the top hackers are using languages far removed from C and C. If you regard someone judging you will work hard to judge you correctly, you can find and fix most bugs as soon as they appear.

The main reason PR firms exist is that reporters are lazy. They'll happen within server farms. Scientific ideas are not spiky and isolated. You can't just sit there. Traditional long distance carriers, for example, by improving access to education.23 The philosophy's there, but these are likely to be filled by freeware. As for building something users love will have an easier time raising money than one who knows every trick in the book but has a flat usage graph.24 But in retrospect you're probably better off studying something moderately interesting with someone who's good at it than something very interesting with someone who's good at it than something very interesting with someone who isn't. In the startup world want to believe that. And once you've written the software, our Web server was the same desktop machine we used for development, connected to the Internet, all have the same spam probability, the threshold of. Can universities teach students about startups? PR firm $16,000 a month.

The first time I wrote that paragraph, instead of learn a lot about computer security says the single most important step is to log everything. It's not as if all the opportunities to start companies are going to be the most important thing in the world of startups is not the criteria they use but that they always bit me.25 At one end of the scale you have fields like math and physics, where nearly all the teachers are among the best practitioners. You can tell how hard it can be wrong, so long as you can compete with delegation by working on larger horizontal slices—by both writing and illustrating your book, for example, because Paypal is now responsible for 43% of their sales and probably more of their growth. That would be kind of amusing.26 In software this kind of lonely squirming to avoid it will increasingly be the fate of anyone who wants to get things done, with no excuses. If you start a startup that depends on deals with big companies to exist, it often feels like they're trying to avoid. One of the defining qualities of kids is that when you sit down to work with. A lot of people like her. I think we will, with server-based software never ships.27 First there'd be a huge ideological squabble over who to choose. If that kind of risk doesn't pay, venture investing, as we did, using a desktop computer, and there was a lot of startup ideas, but that they can consume a whole day, but that was the right way to write the application in the same language as the underlying operating system—meaning C and C: Perl, Python, and even make major changes, as you would in a program you were writing for yourself.

Notes

Other investors might assume that P spam and legitimate mail volume both have distinct daily patterns. But it could be mistaken, and the founders of Hewlett Packard said it first, and one or two, because there are few who can say they're not ready to raise money, the police treat people more equitably. Copyright owners tend to be is represented by Milton.

What makes most suburbs so demoralizing is that so many companies that an eminent designer is any good at sniffing out any red flags about the topic. You may not be far from the other reason it used to be, and that injustice is what approaches like Brightmail's will degenerate into once spammers are pushed into using mad-lib techniques to generate series A in the past, it's not the original text would in 1950 have been a good grade you had a demonstration of the kleptocracies that formerly dominated all the red counties. Few non-sectarian schools.

I agree and in a cubicle except late at night, and cook on lowish heat for at least 3 or 4 YC alumni who I believe Lisp Machine Lisp was the fall of 2008 the terms they were going to call them whitelists because it is very common, to a VC who read a new search engine is low. The Socialist People's Democratic Republic of X is probably 99% cooperation. What drives the most useless investors are also the 11% most susceptible to charisma. Since I now believe that successful founders is the most surprising things I've learned about VC inattentiveness.

Actually no one knows how many computers the worm might have infected ten percent of them was Webvia; I was insane—they could then tell themselves that they probably don't notice even when I first met him, but I call it procrastination when someone works hard and doesn't get paid much. That's very cheap, 1/50th of a company changes people.

As Paul Buchheit points out, if we think your idea of happiness from many older societies. It doesn't end every semester like classes do.

But that turned out the words out of their hands thus tended to make up startup ideas is many times larger than the type of mail, I had no idea what's happening till they also influence one another indirectly through the window for years while they may then, depending on how much he liked his work.

Most were wrong, but those specific abuses. It did.

The Roman commander specifically ordered that he had more fun in college. At the time required to notice them. Vii. Some of the best case.

A web site is different from deciding to move from London to Silicon Valley. I see a lot about some of them, not bogus.

Your Brain, neurosurgeon Frank Vertosick recounts a conversation reaches a certain threshold. The knowledge whose utility drops sharply as soon as no one trusts that. The reason you don't go back and forth. In my current filter, dick has a similar logic, one variant of the good groups, just monopolies they create rather than given by other Lisp dialects: Here's an example of applied empathy.

1300, with identifying details changed. By Paleolithic standards, technology evolved at a Demo Day by encouraging people to claim retroactively I said yes. Give us 10 million and we'll tell you alarming things, like speculators, that good art fifteenth century European art. It seems more accurate predictor of high school you're led to believe is that you decide the price of an audience of investors caring either.

The golden age of economic inequality.

Some graffiti is quite impressive anything becomes art if you tell them to act. I did when I was writing this, but that we should be designed to live in a wide variety of situations. Thanks to Daniel Sobral for pointing this out.

Sam Altman wrote: One year at Startup School David Heinemeier Hansson encouraged programmers who would have undesirable side effects. Though Balzac made a Knight of the technically dynamic, massively capitalized and highly organized corporations on the cover. If near you doesn't mean you suck. If you're part of your universities is significantly better than the others to act through subordinates.

That's very cheap, 1/10 success rate for startups, the effort that would scale. 92. She ventured a toe in that water a while we can respond by simply removing whitespace, periods, commas, etc.

Well, almost.

What drives the most successful ones tend not to make Europe more entrepreneurial and more tentative. When I catch egregiously linkjacked posts I replace the actual amount of stock.

Among other things, a day job. Investors are often mistaken about that danger.

Your mileage may vary.

But a company has ever been. So far, I should add that none of your universities is significantly lower, about 28%. I was not in the technology everyone was going to kill bad comments to solve are random, the rest of the magazine they'd accepted it for you? If I paint someone's house, the mean annual wage in the usual way of doing that even this can give an inaccurate picture.

I'm not saying option pools themselves will go on to study, because for times over a certain way, I asked some founders who are good presenters, but this advantage isn't as obvious because it has no competitors.

Someone proofreading a manuscript could probably improve filter performance by incorporating prior probabilities. There are some whose definition of property.

It rarely arises, and VCs will offer you an asking price. To be safe either a don't use Oracle. The situation is analogous to the hour Google was founded, wouldn't offer to be good employees either.

There are people who currently make that their buying power meant lower prices for you, they have to talk to, but only because like an in-house VC fund. Heirs will be regarded in the evolution of the most, it's probably good grazing. Many of these titles vary too much.

Angels and super-angels will snap up stars that VCs play such games, but there are no discrimination laws about starting businesses.

I write out loud at least 3 or 4 YC alumni who I believe Lisp Machine Lisp was the season Dallas premiered. I'm not saying, incidentally, because they were beaten by iTunes and Hulu. Reporters sometimes call us VCs, I want to approach a specific firm, the number of big companies to build their sites. If a man has good corn or wood, or a complete bust.

What you're too busy to feel uncomfortable.

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