#anyway. it's like 80 degrees here <3 this makes literally no sense but that is okay!

[citrinesparkles]

cold hands

jason todd x gender neutral reader. 789 words. notes: i started this in december i swear it was seasonally appropriate at the time warnings: n/a

he scooped your hands into his own, cupping them together and bringing them to his face smoothly.

he caught your eye with a small smirk. you knew him well enough to know he wasn't really smug- he was looking for your reaction, a silent is this okay wrapped up in his confident expression. the large, colorful lights strung across the shop front you had stopped in front of were reflected in his eyes, but he was focused entirely on you.

you slipped your thumb out of his hold and ran it over his own.

jason took it for the invitation it was and exhaled heavily over your frigid fingers, looking down to them.

you, though? you kept your gaze right where it was.

he was beautiful, you thought. a strong jaw and handful of faded scars were contrasted by the softness of his eyes, his red (garnet, you remembered him saying with a little self-aware grin, not red- that was a work color, and you weren't work) knit hat bringing out the green in them. he was bathed in an orangey-pink from the décor behind you, and you almost wanted to pull a hand back to take a picture.

almost.

"i'm buying you some damn gloves," he muttered without heat, laughter buried in his tone as he gently massaged your fingers.

"and put my personal hand warmer out of a job?"

"he's creative. he'll find another one."

you let out a small huff of laughter, the sound turning to fog between the two of you. you pulled your hands out of his grasp- earning a raised eyebrow- and pushed forward to take hold of the front of his jacket, gently pulling him into kissing range.

as always, he adapted almost instantly. "see?" he asked quietly, his palms finding your hips. "a new job opened up pretty quick."

"shut up," you mumbled fondly, pressing your lips to his.

the warmth in your chest absolutely erupted, the sweet, familiar feeling of his lips- of his presence- making your heart and mind go the same sugar-sweet shade of pink.

"i love you," you pulled back to whisper firmly, grip tightening on his jacket just to give some of the oomph in your veins somewhere to go.

you felt his chuckle under your fists and against your lips, like the bassline of your favorite song with the dial all the way up, rattling through the floor and into your ribs and threatening to turn you giddy. "i think that means i'm doing alright at my new job."

"you're doing wonderfully at your new job."

not much would be worth opening your eyes from such a spell, but you found that his smile made the list: crooked and fond and beautiful and somehow it was aimed at you.

"think i can clock in for another shift?" he asked lowly, playfully, sending another wave of butterflies through your system. they left quickly, replaced by a feeling of belonging, of home, of peace.

"yes," you answered simply, trying (and failing, judging by his little laugh) to keep your eagerness under control. "you should."

so he kissed you again, holding you close. sheltering you from the chill of gotham in the dead of winter. reflecting warm lights onto you and chasing shadows away. turning every beautiful, poetic thought you'd ever had about him into something literal and visible and tangible and not having a single clue.

--

so he kissed you again, basking in the affection in your eyes and letting it warm him straight to his bones. begging his mind to save the image of you bathed in orange and pink and magic, looking at him like he was even close to that kind of beautiful, tugging him towards you like there was nowhere else on the planet you'd rather he be.

and he tried to hold you as softly as you deserved, bringing a hand up to cup your jaw and tilt your head slightly and cherishing the way you immediately, confidently leaned into his touch like you trusted him to keep you upright.

it felt like someone cracked a glowstick where his heart should be.

no- that was too vivid, too harsh. this was like a candle, warm and steady and breathing and alive. this was something to look to in the dim and the dreary, something by which he could read; something to warm his hands over, something to turn to when the storms rolled through and the power failed and left him in the dark.

you were something to turn to in the dark.

he decided, then and there, pressed against your coat and your lips and your warmth, that you were getting the nicest gloves he could get his hands on.

#citrine writes #<- im so rusty thats not even a suggested tag anymore #anyway. it's like 80 degrees here <3 this makes literally no sense but that is okay! #i swear i tried Several other drafts but nothing was clicking tonight and i needed to write or i think i woulda gone batshit #its called a coping mechanism and sometimes you gotta turn your mind's clock back 6 months to give all your feelings a place to go. #so. bon appetit i suppose #jason todd #dc #imagines #jason todd imagine #x reader #dc imagine #jason todd x y/n #jason todd x reader #gn reader

[comradekatara]

omg do you have any ideas for the gaang + room decor (in a modern au ?? perhaps ??)

ok so aang wouldn’t really have that many material possessions, especially nothing flashy (though he probably has some art and assorted knickknacks) but his spaces would always have really warm vibes. like i picture his childhood bedroom walls being painted a kind of friendly, mustard yellow, and there being candles and blankets and pillows everywhere like when you’re in aang’s abode you just feel welcome and cozy and at peace

and then coupled with katara’s vibes, when they move in together as adults, it’s just extra warm and lovely and the walls are painted a light beige and there’s lots of indigenous art on the walls and seashells they’ve collected over the years on the mantle and on the coffee table and they’re both obsessed with candles which sokka claims is a fire hazard

katara’s childhood bedroom is entirely blue and purple because those are her favorite colors and she refuses to display anything in her rooms that does not match her particular colorscheme. she has lots of posters hanging on her walls, like she has a karl marx quote next to a picture of some boyband she’s obsessed with next to a poster of sea turtles she got at a climate change rally. also she would have one of those cutesy little landlines that is also purple and she twirls the cord around her finger while telling aang about her day, even though he was with her the whole time they still call each other every night just so she can twirl her phone cord around her finger

sokka’s room is extremely clean, like freakishly so, except for his desk which is an absolute fucking mess. he wouldn’t even know how to begin organizing it so he never bothers. half his closet space is dedicated to katara’s clothes (even tho she has her own closet) which he’s fine with because he only wears like three shirts, or just wears suki’s clothes anyway. he has a bunch of posters with science puns, and a periodic table poster, and a poster of uranus which is his favorite planet (everyone thinks it’s his favorite planet because he thinks the name is funny but it’s because he thinks it’s cool that it has a 98 degree axial tilt! she’s so unique.... so mysterious...) and also he has a really fluffy bright blue rug in the middle of his room that yue always insisted on lying down on even though the bed would have been objectively more comfortable. she liked sitting on the floor and getting lint all over her white sweaters, which her mother couldn’t stand. sokka gives the rug to katara after she dies because it reminds him too much of her looks kind of childish. katara had been eyeing that rug all her life (it’s fluffy and blue??? sign her tf up!!) so it actually worked out pretty well... all things considered. 

the only things toph wants in her room is things that her friends have given her that remind her of them. otherwise she hates material possessions of any kind (reminds her too much of her evil bougie family) and thinks furniture should exist to be comfortable, and that’s it. if she couldn’t fit everything she owned into a small backpack, then she wouldn’t be toph. 

zuko keeps everything because he gets sentimental over literally any object. no azula you can’t throw out that old leaf!!!!! he found that leaf in the park and it had a little caterpillar bite taken out of the side and don’t you see that leaf symbolizes him???? if he threw out that leaf it would be like parting with a piece of his soul!!!!! sokka’s like “oh so you’re a hoarder” which makes zuko even angrier because how is HOARDING if every object MEANS something even marie kondo would claim that if it sparks joy then it must be kept!!! and sokka’s like “....this empty sprite can sparks joy??” and zuko, deadpan, is just like. “IMMENSE joy.” katara hung out in his room one time and the clutter was so stressful for her that she just invited him back to her house every single time after that day. at one point mai just straight up says to zuko “maybe your weird little trash collection isn’t the problem, you just like feeling like you have some semblance of control over yourself and your life” and zuko immediately bristled at such a ridiculous, unfounded accusation and then refused to speak to her for three days, yknow, for no particular reason. 

no one knows where suki lives (though the most popular theory is that she was actually raised by wolves) so no one, including sokka, has actually seen the inside of her bedroom. they’ve seen the inside of her pickup truck, though, which is basically the same thing. it’s filled with empty chip packets and loose joints and underwear that is not hers and sports gear that is mostly hers. it smells distinctly of girl sweat, and the same playlist of indie rock angry sad girl bangers is always on in the background. she knows the words to every single song that comes on when in her car, and she isn’t afraid to sing along to them, which most people find endearing, but katara absolutely cannot stand. she enjoys driving with no destination in particular in mind, and she and sokka like going to secluded areas and lying in the back of her truck and getting high and stargazing, an activity which might resemble a date to the untrained eye, but is in fact, totally not a date, because that would mean they’re dating and they’re definitely not, okay??? 

azula, naturally, is all about the minimalist rich bitch aesthetic. her apartment as an adult is so cold and uninviting sleek and modern that people are amazed that she’s not depressed just living there (and honestly. isn’t she?). there just is so much empty space and modernist architecture, not even a single carpet or piece of art on the walls. normally people who are into modernism would at least have some modern art, or something, but azula doesn’t actually understand modern art because it’s too abstract and mystical, and all art, really, is some froufrou nonsense for people like zuzu who gaze into wells all day instead of knowing how to get ahead and make bank. most of her bookshelf is just books that look good on a bookshelf, her old law textbooks, the art of war, and of course, ayn rand. lots and lots of ayn rand. 

ty lee shares a living space with so many other girls that attempting to carve out her own distinct space for herself would be a fruitless endeavor. instead she makes a bunch of interior decor dreamboards for herself that comprise an inexplicable mix of gothic cathedrals, iconic 80s/90s teen girl bedrooms, cottagecore, and french rococo. yes, she knows it’s not aesthetically cohesive; sue her. 

mai really really hates her parents’ style of mcmansion with just enough diluted japanese influences that it somehow makes them seem more assimilated. she wishes her room had yellow wallpaper just so she could peel it. as an adult, she makes sure to hang art she actually likes on her walls, but her taste in art is strange and offputting to pretty much everyone. she’s like grunkle stan in that one scene. whatever. everyone is a bunch of filthy aesthetes; they can’t handle the real shit that actually says something. also she has a giant terrarium for her lizards that takes up like a quarter of her living room. what i’m basically saying is that she is the coolest girl in the world and also fundamentally undateable. 

when mai and ty lee ultimately move in together all of their stylistic interests clash with one another but they don’t care because their home is just filled with things they like, so it doesn’t matter. ty lee thinks that mai’s offputting art is amusing (mai’s like no it’s supposed to be DEEP but ty lee has a really twisted sense of humor so it’s just funny, the same way that horror movies are funny) and mai likes how eclectic ty lee’s tastes are. anyone who walks into their home only need to look around for 3 seconds maximum to be like “ah yes........... lesbians live here” 

#the gaang and #modern au #i got rly into this one lmao #i love these kinds of asks #just rly fun #asks #mrsmiroir

[intermundia]

Mr. Will, I saw that post about the burden of wanting to talk about SW all the time and now I’m curious…please will you tell me your favorite bit of obscure Star Wars lore that someone who hasn’t delved extensively into extra-canonical materials probably doesn’t know?!? 💜

Obscure lore, yes! I would love to talk about that! While reading the Star Wars Archives (1977-1983), I found this page of notes from a story meeting on 11/28/77 in the section 'Bring back Ben' and right before the invention of the role to be filled by Yoda—"Some of the force came from 'Tales of Power', Carlos Castaneda."

And I was like—who the fuck is Carlos Castaneda? Because you hear all the time about all the mythology research Lucas did, all the time with Campbell, etc., but I'd never seen this name anywhere else. So I looked him up. He's a California "anthropologist," a contemporary of Lucas, and oddly fascinating:

Starting with The Teachings of Don Juan in 1968, Castaneda wrote a series of books that purport to describe training in shamanism that he received under the tutelage of a supposed Yaqui "Man of Knowledge" named don Juan Matus. Doubts about the veracity of Castaneda's work existed from their original publication. There is belief among many that Castenda's books are works of fiction, and that it is unlikely that don Juan Matus existed. (Wikipedia)

His first person anthropology about time spent with a Mexican shaman reads like fiction, because it is fiction. An excellent survey of his sources is found here:

Lama Govinda's Fringe Tibetan Buddhism

Brinton's Paper On 'Nagualism'

Frank Waters Book of the Hopi

California Indian Anthropology Texts - especially those known to have been reviewed by CC

Wasson's works on Mushrooms

Eliade's works on Shamanism

Furst's works and lectures on Shamanism

Harner's works and lectures on Shamanism

Myerhoff's works on Shamanism and her contacts with Ramon Medina

UCLA Professor Garfinkel

Wittgenstein

So, we have this very California early-mid 70's New Age philosophy cocktail that was being presented as anthropology (I wish it were still so easy to fraud your way into a degree lmao). George Lucas was on UCLA campus as a graduate student making films at approximately the same time Castaneda was faking his way to this anthropology Ph.D., so when I say they are contemporaries, I mean I'm pretty sure they literally could have been walking around campus at the same time.

ANYWAY, so what if the Force is based on some fringe fake-Mexican-shamanism? So what? Well, first and foremost, Castaneda's books were very popular, and he uses the term "Sorcerer" very frequently, so when Ben Kenobi is called that in a New Hope, hip audiences in the 70's might have been clued in about what to expect. The idea of superhuman abilities rooted in flowing energy, the interplay of teacher and apprentice, and the sorcerer as a warrior (sounds pretty Jedi yeah?) —

A Man of Knowledge Was a Warrior: “The existence of a man of knowledge was an unceasing struggle, and the idea that he was a warrior, leading a warrior’s life, provided one with the means for achieving emotional stability. The idea of a man at war encompassed four concepts: (1) a man of knowledge had to have respect; (2) he had to have fear; (3) he had to be wide-awake; (4) he had to be self-confident. Hence, to be a warrior was a form of self-discipline which emphasized individual accomplishment; yet it was a stand in which personal interests were reduced to a minimum, as in most instances personal interest was incompatible with the rigor needed to perform any predetermined, obligatory act” (TDJ, 157).

Like................. it's even got the aspect of reducing personal interests and attachment to gain the rigor of discipline necessary to do what must be done as a sorcerer. But beyond the idea of a Jedi as a sorcerer/warrior, it's the metaphysics that kill me. Let's look further at this famous Yoda quote:

"My ally is the Force. And a powerful ally it is." — Listen, "ally" is a term from Castaneda, though he uses it about psychadelic drugs. Audiences in the early 80s would probably know that, too.

“An ally will make you see and understand things about which no human being could possibly enlighten you… It is neither a guardian nor a spirit. It is an aid… a power capable of carrying a man beyond the boundaries of himself. This is how an ally can reveal matters no human being could” (The Teachings of Don Juan 24-25).

“The manipulation of an ally had two aspects: (1) an ally was a vehicle; (2) an ally was a helper. An ally was a vehicle in the sense that it served to transport a sorcerer into the realm of non ordinary reality… To be a helper meant that an ally, after serving a sorcerer as a vehicle, was again usable as an aid or a guide to assist him in achieving whatever goal he had in mind in going to the realm of nonordinary reality” (TDJ 164-65).

"Life creates it and makes it grow. Its energy surrounds us and binds us. Luminous beings are we…not this crude matter." — The division of the Force into flowing animate and inanimate energy is in Castaneda, as is the concept of luminosity.

“Don Juan said that the energetic fact which was the cornerstone of the cognition of the shamans of ancient Mexico was that every nuance of the cosmos is an expression of energy. From their plateau of seeing energy directly, those shamans arrived at the energetic fact that the entire cosmos is composed of twin forces which are opposite and complementary to each other at the same time. They called those two forces animate energy and inanimate energy. They saw that inaninmate energy has no awareness. Awareness, for shamans, is a vibrating condition of animate energy.” (TDJ, xv)

“To perceive energy directly allowed the sorcery of don Juan’s lineage to see human beings as conglomerates of energy fields that have the appearance of luminous balls… the entire cosmos is made of luminous filaments that extend themselves infinitely” (TDJ, xvi-xvii).

I could go on and on and discuss all of Castaneda's writings on detachment and the warrior's life and the awareness of death, but I think that would be a whole other thing. Honestly this subject is too much for a tumblr post. I just thought it was interesting. People always give Lucas both grief and credit for bastardizing philosophical traditions himself, but I would say it's more fair to say that he was more working off of a cheat sheet done by others in California in the 70s. There must have been something in the water lmao

#george lucas #California Groupthink in the 70s #birth of New Age bullshit #and Lucas is right in that group of people #so if you want more context #for where the Force came from #it's not just buddhism #it's also indigenous american beliefs that are put into the blender #not saying this is a good thing let me be clear #but it is a thing #it is lore #i guess #anyway hope that was interesting lmao #sw #long post

[lesbianrobin]

have u done an analysis on endgame st ships? a penny for ur thoughts

i have not!! i would like two pennies please. my thoughts are not actually worth that much but i think i deserve them anyway. i’m gonna talk about some stuff that may seem unrelated or only loosely related to the question but i prommy it’s relevant <3 warning this ended up being like a thousand words somehow idk how that happened but i’m putting it under a cut bc i’m nice like that.

so! something that’s kinda unique/interesting to me about stranger things is how all of their ships are so clearly telegraphed and quickly developed. there’s a sense of... impatience, for lack of a better word. on the surface, it appears to be largely an effect of the cinematic style of the show; there’s very little room for questioning who someone’s gonna end up with or for slowly developing a relationship over time when you only get eight episodes every like. twoish years. AND you have about a dozen main characters AND evil government forces AND monsters from another dimension. it’s a lot to juggle!

stranger things has a lot to accomplish in a pretty short amount of time. the timeline of a single season usually spans no more than a week (excluding flashbacks/end-of-season timeskips), and well... nobody wants the important stuff to happen offscreen! i’ll use the stoncy love triangle as an example: jancy was originally intended to get together at the end of s1 after steve’s death, but since they decided to let steve redeem himself and survive, there was just no time to separate stancy and get jancy together without it seeming wayyy too abrupt. since jancy was always their plan, they didn’t want to leave nancy with steve, but they knew they couldn’t just have that boyfriend swap occur offscreen... which is why s2 Had to have a stancy breakup plot in order for the writers to accomplish their goal of getting jancy together.

the main characters in stranger things tend to maintain homeostasis between seasons, their circumstances and relationships rarely changing any more than the audience might have just assumed they would anyway (like lucas and max dancing together + sharing a kiss at the end of s2 and officially dating by the start of s3). steve and nancy are dating at the end of s1, so they must still be dating at the start of s2, and thus we must break them up DURING s2. joyce and hopper are friends with some deeply buried feelings in s2, so they’re friends with Less Buried feelings that must become apparent during s3. excluding the stancy situation (for reasons which i think are obvious but i will talk more about later), momentum is always forwards. mileven, lumax, and jancy argue, but they come back together, presumably more mature and stronger than before. 

all of this is to say that stranger things has thus far been rather dedicated to their starting ships. there isn’t much misdirection; mike’s crush on el is obvious from the start, nancy and jonathan share charged moments even while she is with steve in the beginning, lucas shows interest in max immediately and shares more significant interactions with her than the other boys from early on in s2, and the deep loyalty and care between joyce and hop is always apparent. steve and robin (initially intended to be together romantically) hold hands quite early in s3 and dustin asks steve about whether he likes her. 

the point? stranger things doesn’t dick around when it comes to love! they handle their ships with remarkable efficiency. in each season, it tends to be pretty obvious from the start who’s going to end up with who, and heading into the show’s fourth season, almost everybody is paired off: mike and el, max and lucas, joyce and hop, nancy and jonathan. which leaves us asking... are all of them going to last until the end?

we’ve only had one true breakup on the show so far, and as i’ve said before, the stancy breakup is an anomaly as it was essentially “righting a wrong,” allowing jonathan and nancy to get together as they were intended to do from the start. the only other romantic relationship to end on the show was between joyce and bob, and well... we all know why that ended, and it started/ended within the confines of a single season. 

stranger things tends to treat each season as an extended film, right? they draw inspiration from classic 80′s films, and each subsequent season after s1 is treated as a sequel (they are Literally referred to as stranger things 2 and stranger things 3). when they introduce tension in a season, they’re inclined to resolve that tension by the season’s end so that people leave satisfied, while also providing a plot hook for the next “sequel” for audiences to theorize about. this hook is always part of the grander plot, not a will-they-won’t-they tease or something else of the sort. remember, they could have broken up steve and nancy in s2 and waited to get jancy together in s3, but they didn’t! they wanted to go ahead and resolve the tension! 

while there are narrative and practical incentives that i’ve covered for this impatience/efficiency/[insert better word i can’t think of here], i also think it kinda reveals something about the writers of the show. to some degree, they genuinely care about and want their ships to be together! we’ve watched them introduce new characters just to kill them off a couple of times now, and i think it’s fair to say that the writers might be a bit too attached to the mains to consider killing any of them off (at least prior to the series finale). maybe... this reluctance to kill their darlings extends to ships.

romance isn’t the primary draw of the show, but an indulgence, something that there may not always be time for but that the writers continue to prioritize as much as they can because they enjoy it, or feel that it is important to the overall product. if we accept this idea, that the inclusion of and focus on so many romantic relationships in stranger things is (to some degree) indicative of the writers’ own desires, then it might inform our speculation regarding endgame ships.

i’m not here to like... really actually assert that i know what’ll be endgame, because i don’t really know jack shit. however, i do think that the writers are pretty invested in all of the current canon st ships (and yes, i am including jopper in that, as their romantic development was explicit in s3). i also think that the writers like catering to fans, leaning into popular jokes (steve “the hair” harrington) and devoting more and more time to the ships fans obsess over (particularly mileven). 

with this all in mind... i really think that most if not all of the current canon ships will be endgame. 

i think that barring any extreme circumstances (i.e. a character Actually dying instead of just fake dying) jopper will be endgame. they’re the only ones that the writers have had the restraint to actually do a slow burn with, and i really can’t see them devoting so much to developing their dynamic just to say it was all for nothing in the end. 

i’m less confident on the others. there are some signs in canon that the remaining couples have some serious problems and may not last, but these issues are often dismissed, played for comedy or brushed over within the text itself, and many of the details within the text contradicting this dismissal are often so small that it’s unclear whether they’re intentional or not. while breaking up mileven might make perfect sense for a fan who reads into subtext and pays attention to unusual acting choices and subtle parallels, it would be a pretty risky move on the surface level. allowing these ships to remain canon for awhile and garner large fanbases only to break them up later would require both a willingness to actively contradict the desires of their audience as well as a certain degree of restraint in their romantic storytelling, which runs counter to the impression i personally have of the st writers (this is, of course, my own personal opinion).

there’s a good chance that at least one of the current canon ships will break up by the end, if only because i think that it would be a little boring if every relationship stayed the same for almost the entirety of the show’s run, and the stranger writers like to keep things new and exciting. perhaps long distance will kill jancy or mileven, or lucas and max will go off again and never come back on, but either way i wouldn’t be surprised if we got a breakup in s4. even with that, though, i think it’s somewhat likely that a current couple may break up in s4 and get back together for the series finale, just for the sake of a little suspense. overall, though, i feel like our current canon ships are going to be more or less the same at the end of the show.

that’s about it. i suppose i didn’t really... answer the question you asked skdndsdkjc i feel like you probably just wanted to know like if i’m a byler endgame truther (which i am not but i could happily be proven wrong). thank you for asking, though! i hope this made at least a little bit of sense.

#me answering an ask: yeah this is long as fuck and makes no sense drop it #asks #em talks #lesbianrobin.canon #stranger things

[simbinch]

celeb natal chart: matthew gray gubler

see this post for breakdowns on what the different planets mean. see this post for breakdowns on what the houses mean.

born on the ninth of march, nineteen eighty in las vegas, nevada

sun in pisces in the 9th house: everybody knows pisces as the emotional sign, and that is definitely true. pisces are known for being compassionate, empathetic, and big into fantasizing and dreamland. the negative traits of someone with this sun sign is that they might get caught in their dreamland and have trouble coming back to reality. they also might get mopey and turn all eeyore if they get overwhelmed with their feelings. sun placement in the 9th house are major learners and their big goal in life is to keep trying and doing new things.

moon in sagittarius in the 6th house: those with a sagittarius moon are naturally independent and free-thinking. they are the main character. they want to add more people to the cast and don’t hesitate to remove people they don’t find to be a good fit for their storyline. they love learning and adventures, always down to do something new or take on a new challenge. they take things day by day rather than think of one big goal they need to reach ASAP.

cancer ascendant/rising in cancer* in the 1st house: these people are known as being soft, sweet, and sentimental. not considered a man’s man by any means. highly emotional, cancer rising is happy in the moment, and not typically driven or determined to get things done. they are very sensitive and don’t share this with the world around them. they retreat back into their shell when they see conflict ahead. they’re incredibly faithful to a person they open themselves up to. they are loyal to the nth degree, even when their partner might be in the wrong. they have great relationships with their mothers as they relate to a nurturing figure. they are born followers and often play the role of the nurturer in the family. they want to find a partner that can provide for them, both literally and figuratively. they have great memories and like to make people feel special. they use their hands when speaking and emoting, to show that they are genuinely listening and care. 

the other option (based on just degrees of difference) was gemini rising. geminis are known to be really curious, want to learn new things, understand people on a deep level, and inspire those around them to be the best they can be. gemini rising in men is often associated with height and long fingers (seriously). highly attractive and a creative thinker. gemini in the 1st house means that they need to be mentally stimulated, otherwise they quickly get bored. gemini rising in men is often seen as a “player” because they are so charming and exciting, but often fall in and out of love quickly. they are hard to tie down unless they are absolutely sure there is nothing better out there for them, and that their life with a partner would be exciting enough to sustain them. doesn’t like to make promises unless they are absolutely sure they can keep them.

either of these rising signs could be made to fit mgg based on his interviews and general persona, especially the physical features associated with gemini. i didn’t know if i would consider him to be a born follower or having a lack of drive. what ultimately did it for me was the relationship with their families and the fact that gemini rising men tend towards centering themselves, whereas the cancer rising men center those around them. also gemini rising men are known as big cheaters and i didn’t want to hypothesize that for mgg lmao.

venus in taurus* in the 11th house: venus in taurus is known for valuing comfort and stability above all. very much commitment based people, highly traditional, looking for someone who can take care of them in an old-timey Leave It to Beaver style way. venus in taurus men don’t have to try hard to get women, they typically just flock to them. as a result, they have to be careful about who they choose to bring into their innermost circle, a common trait among those with venus in the 11th house. they are highly affectionate and patient, so they will look for someone they are really sure of before committing themselves to them. they clam up if someone insists they commit before they are ready. they enjoy being at home, in their own space, and having someone make meals for them. very drawn to a woman with curves, long hair, the works. classic feminine looks and style.

the other option was venus in aries, which would look for a more down to earth, tomboyish style woman. direct, confident, and straight up-no chaser kind of ladies. independent women who keep things interesting so they never get bored. venus in aries men are the type to love fast and hard, they will be the first to confess feelings and likely the first to break up. they look for women who will challenge them. they like the chase and get bored easily. when a relationship ends, those with venus in a fire sign are likely to blame everything on the other person.

i considered both options but felt that ultimately venus in taurus made the most sense. he has mentioned he likes strong women, and it makes sense that he would model a feminine ideal on his mother the boss lady. however, from what we have seen with his public relationships, they tend to last a while and he still has positive relationships with them via Instagram (so probably not putting all the blame for a relationship failure on them).

mercury in pisces in the 9th house: mercury in pisces makes for a good listener and pleasant conversationalist. active listening all day long. the friend you go to when you need a shoulder to cry on. they are also big talkers, but aren’t the type to necessarily dominate a conversation. mercury in the 9th house indicates an eternal optimist and a desire to always keep learning (lol). they are easily overwhelmed by serious topics, and tend to stray away from them for this reason.

mars in virgo* in the 3rd house: mars in virgo are organized and plan things out ahead of time to make sure they achieve their goals. mars in the third house indicates someone who is a quick conversationalist and comfortable standing their ground in a disagreement. they plot out goals and achieve them, and don’t like things standing in their way. when they come across a conflict they tend towards being calm. like most virgo placements, they are perfectionists and like to win, but want to do so in a dignified manner.

the other possibility here was mars in leo (which was just a few degrees away). mars in leo are big thinkers, highly creative, and great at debating. they are proud people and like to get things done and share them with others. these people tend towards bragging because they want a reward for the work that they’ve done. they are charismatic so they get away with it, but are known as the type that needs to get an award for everything they do.

i went with mars in virgo, because even though he is highly creative there is nothing to indicate that mgg likes to talk about himself and his accomplishments. on the contrary it looks like he tries to downplay them.

jupiter in virgo in the 3rd house: jupiter in virgo finds helping others to be the most rewarding thing in life. they are kind and loyal, and with jupiter in the third house they are always looking to learn something new. highly optimistic, often take on more than they should, but try to juggle it all anyway.

saturn in virgo in the 4th house: saturn in virgo occurs every 25-30 years or so, with the first recurrence being between 2007 and 2010. everyone is expected to have 3 saturn returns in their lifetime, and these are known as periods of self-realization. the next saturn return for virgo is between 2036 and 2039. those with saturn in the 4th house get things done and like to help others. they might have had insecure childhoods (who didn’t in the 80′s) and are looking to build an idealistic family life for themselves to replace what they never had. despite this, they struggle with commitment and being bogged down, so it’s a constant battle. 

uranus in scorpio in the 6th house: uranus in scorpio is for everyone born between 1974 and 1981. these are the babies of generation X, but too old to be millennials. they feel intensely, and often switch from one mood to another. highly adaptable, as they kind of needed to be when you account for the period they became adults (9/11, the recession, etc). placement in the sixth house means that you want to make a difference in the world, but are often scattered in how you get there. it isn’t that you hate work, just that you don’t thrive with structure and get distracted along the way. 

neptune in sagittarius in the 6th house: neptune is in sagittarius for those born between 1970 and 1984. these are idealistic, progressive people who want to see the best in others. neptune in the sixth house means that these people tend to put others at ease and might even have a deeper spiritual connection with the world.

pluto in libra in the 4th house: pluto in libra is a generational placement between 1971 and 1984. these people feel intensely and have difficulty in interpersonal relationships as a result. pluto in the fourth house indicates they avoid conflict if possible, and tend towards being more introverted when they struggle. they aren’t flashy with their pain preferring it to be in private. 

*note: this is a noon chart, meaning i am doing it without an exact birth time. this means that some of the placements could be slightly off when they are at the edge between signs. in those cases i’ve marked them as such and made an educated guess based on interviews. this is typically the process when someone doesn’t know their own birth time for whatever reason. i’ve also included a breakdown of what the alternative placement would suggest.

#matthew gray gubler #mgg #astrology #natal chart #birth chart #celebs #celebrities #pisces #zodiac sign #original #text

[steve0discusses]

Yugioh S4 Ep 25: Oh Hai Mai

Heyyy we’re back. Thank for bearing with me, it’s been kind of chaos over here. Everything from a pandemic (we are very sloooowly reopening over here but I’ve been quarantined so long I can french braid my damn leg hair.) to important political protests, to getting an evacuation order because an arsonist burned down 90 acres in the heat of summer (luckily we’re all fine), to a vole that ate everything in my pandemic self-care garden so I lost my entire mind and waged war and dug so many holes and put out 17 mouse traps and set off so many critter bombs under the ground trying to kill the little bastard like it was Caddyshack (It’s still alive, ps, I lost that war). These last 3 months have been the longest decades of my life. The only month longer was the one where I’m pretty sure I had mono and it made me positive that my basement was haunted.

Man, bring back my haunted basement, Sorry if this comes through in my writing, I tried but, I can’t edit it out. You get FML-Rachel today.

Lets get back to a good, mindless distraction, lets turn on Yugioh.

BUT------->it just so happens that this episode of Yugioh has cop stuff in it, I’m just going to be blunt. We’re going into Valon’s backstory, he’s very much a victim of problems within the bizarre Yugioh legal system, and much like a Gotham supervillain, he is a symptom of the problem more than the cause.

I’m not going to ignore that, but in case you are overwhelmed about that right now, if you want to like...save this for later--I have another FMA recap coming out soon that I wrote in a simpler time before....the corona freakin ruined us all.

Last we left off, we were on the heels of Joey Wheeler, who decided to book it down the street because he wants to murder the hell out of Valon.

Youknow...Joey is one hell of a protagonist. He just does...so MANY antagonistic things.

Joey has decided that although the world is ending, and everyone left alive will be absorbed into the Great Leviathon’s big yummy tummy, which can only be prevented by three people, of which he is one of--he’s going to go sprint in completely the other direction.

We even managed to get Kaiba on board. We were ready. We were done, but then Joey had to lose his freakin mind because that’s just what Joey Wheeler does sometimes.

Normally heroes avoid the call to duty because of a severe lack of self confidence, but this is Joey, and he’s going to avoid the call to duty because of too much self confidence.

And so Joey and his Chaperone turn a corner and walk into this random orc who’s just casually living his best life and touring SF.

One of my worst fears walking through SF, tbh. Running into high school people. Not so much the orcs.

Yo, I wonder what the bushman was doing through all of this? So IRL, we have this guy who just...hides in a bush and jump-scares tourists. I can’t imagine what it must be like to be in a bush and then just...all these orcs show up and you’re all.

...oh no, now I’m the fool...

I just want to know if bushman made it, or if he’s in a paper card that’s just a picture of foliage.

(read more under the cut)

Anyway, Joey was already in the process of running, so they just turned around on this street of...so much parking.

Like y’all there is SO MUCH PARKING this episode. I was trying to pay attention to anything else, but like...do you see this!? It takes nearly half an hour usually to get a spot but this--this right here?

And the crazy thing is, recently my bro had to go pick up some old guy from a cruise that...got quarantined...and so bro had to go the Pier and like--this is what the city looked like. This is a pandemic, it’s just lots of parking, so I want to criticize Yugioh, and I normally would, but I can’t. I’ve seen the receipts. They called it. This is what the endtimes look like and it’s so much parking.

Also, they were too lazy to draw cars but damn, they called it.

So, left with no other option, Joey decides to...be Joey, and punches a huge orc covered in armor.

So Valon’s here, because apparently SF has just...no one left alive in it except for these few kids and that one Uber Eats driver. I imagine it’s a lot easier to find Joey if you just follow the only one screaming in Japanese in a Brooklyn accent at the top of his lungs.

And Valon decides that this one way street isn’t good enough, and that they must duel somewhere else.

I assumed it would be a tall structure, but considering Kaiba just blew up the tallest structures in the Financial District...I was like...what else is tall? And bear in mind, I’m a mess, so I was like...OMG I wish it were Macy’s!!!

Now I hear you saying that’s weird, and we shouldn’t have a very fancy Macy’s in 2020, and you’re correct. but we still have one, and the top floor is just...a massive Cheesecake factory, and I can’t think of anything more 00′s than a Yugioh duel on top of that specific Cheesecake Factory.

And I’ve never really thought before about where the best Yugioh duel would be, and it’s there. It’s at the high rise Cheesecake. Listen Yugioh, if you need an insider to choose locations for your Netflix remake of S4--call me.

So anyways, instead of doing the right thing and going to the Cheesecake Factory on top of Macy’s like any other self respecting 00′s teenager, Valon and Joey are going to drive through the most boring parts of town.

They had an opportunity to go chase eachother through any tourist attraction, Lombard street, Ghirardelli Square, the Palace of Fine Arts, China town, reuse some assets and drive through Japan town, that fountain that looks like Yoda--but no...they decided to drive through literal trash.

Just...a missed opportunity, and it should have been a Cheesecake Factory.

Also, I totally and fully acknowledge that a strange nostalgic affection for the Cheesecake Factory is a weird Millennial thing (much like our weird encyclopedic knowledge of Sailor Moon) but listen. You have your thing, too. You go do you, I’m gonna soak my sorrows in a bowl of Chinese chicken salad so wide, it’ll last me 3 days.

Anyways, Joey’s gonna steal that guy’s bike.

Yugioh just predicting the future in 2003. We actually have a HUGE problem right now with vehicle theft in the city to an almost comedic degree, which is partly why the parking situation has gotten so incredibly dire. It’s kind of incredible that this guy left his bike out because after about 1 day in the city you learn pretty fast that you need to be constantly checking on your street parked vehicle--I mean, that guy was just asking for it, honestly. If Joey hadn’t taken it, some other guy would have absolutely taken it, (even that orc would’ve taken it, the city has no consideration for cars.)

Sorry --one sec-- that was an earthquake just now. As I’m typing this. Just a little guy. Just a little treat for me...

...but still like...c’mon. I’m also getting this weird issue where Tumblr doesn’t save my drafts so like...this is like the 3rd time I’ve had to write this like...I just want to make a Yugioh post for my tiny funtime tv blog, Universe. Don’t @ me right now, Universe.

SO MUCH FREAKIN PARKING.

...is it the space between two piers? What is this? We don’t have rivers in SF, it is a peninsula covered in very steep hills. Like very VERY steep hills. All water just rolls into the ocean and there’s a couple of lake thingies but...no rivers that I know of (And like maybe this is a thing, and I just haven’t seen it? Learn something new every day.)

*loud, audible sigh* home. Where we belong. At the warehousssssssse.

Back at the RV base, Duke Devlin is still babysitting. Maybe this is to make up for the two seasons he spent trying to date a girl Rebecca’s age, that they felt like going out of their way to show that he has indeed no longer horny now. Got to hand it to them, that’s a lot of character development right there. Although at the same time, it has made Duke Devlin a very non-character.

But imagine how insanely complicated would it have been if Duke got involved in that bizarre love-square that is Yugi, Tea, and the Ghost that killed Yugi by accident.

PS that’s either a freeway onramp (which is too far South from where they were, I think) or it sure does look like old Embarcadero behind them. Youknow, that lifted street from the 80′s that fell down in Loma Prieta and was never rebuilt? I just freakin love that it’s still here in 2003. This bizarre Yugioh alternate California.

Anyway, because this is alternate California, Seto set a massive fire and the entire city didn’t immediately go up in flames. Apparently they just kinda ran away from the explosion and damage before anyone noticed.

Probably because most people on Earth are dead anyway, so what more can these two actually do?

And so Yami ends up getting lectured by the wife.

And justifiably, the wife seems to have absolutely no confidence that Yami will be able to do a damn thing right.

Wifes all around this episode.

Speaking of,

At this point, Arthur Hawkins senses that Yami’s nearby, so he opens the door just to freakin dump some guilt on him.

...Rebecca seems to be a character that’s mostly there to recap the lore and also to dump on Yami. I don’t mind that. Yami needs to get dunked more often, and I’m saying that in S4, where the entire season’s tagline is “how many times can we dunk on Yami?”

So lets check on Yugi, how’s that kid doing? It’s been quite a number of episodes since we last saw him.

Yep, still hanging out in the Han Solo cosplay room.

And then, because I guess everyone is just hanging out in the same 4 blocks, Mai and Tristan have a heart-to-heart.

In the show, this conversation was Mai (who is now a serial killer) saying “Oh hey, Tristan, where’s Joey?” and Tristan saying “It’s ALL YOUR FAULT he wants to kill Valon--thanks a lot, Mai! GODS!” all indignant like.

Not how you would ordinarily talk to a serial killer, just saying. No one from the Yugi crew fears this woman...at all...and she has killed over 20 people in front of them and is trying very hard to kill Joey Wheeler all the time.

Like what would it actually take for them to fear this woman? They can’t, right?

Meanwhile, Valon is trying to explain to Joey that his obsession with Mai is in fact damaging any relationship they could have had.

So then when you’re like OK...this is actually very valid points on Valon’s part, and Joey really does need to step back and let people make their mistakes considering Joey was barely a part of her life to begin with. But then, Valon just turns a 180 and...it becomes a catty love triangle where only one person in the triangle even feels romantic emotions.

I just...so Valon is doing this fight because he thinks Mai is in love with Joey.

This whole time I was like “well maybe it’s more that Valon is trying to defend Mai’s right to make her own choices” but no...he just straight up thinks Mai is in love with Joey. And, in fighting Joey, Valon himself is ignoring Mai’s life choices

Just a whole lot of misunderstanding that would have been fixed with better ways than dueling with cards. At least that one guy in S2 who tried to marry Mai actually dueled HER instead of some random guy.

It just really feels like these boys are having a pissing contest and Mai was never let in on the deets that this was even happening.

Mai needs to hang out with older men. Set her up with Roland, this is ridiculous.

Back at the RV, which got very, very big in this shot, Seto has an odd convo with Mokuba about how they are probably not going to get Kaiba Corp back. And then no one really argued with him about that.

He’s taking it really well. Maybe because this isn’t even the first time or the second time or even really the third time Seto’s lost everything. Kid’s really freakin great at failure. At least this time Mokuba isn’t currently abducted, which is really good improvement for these two.

Outside the RV, Tristan has decided to...give up as well, just right here, in the middle of traffic. Then he gets Orc’d...these orcs are kind of like Slenderman, in that they kinda...show up...but then that’s all they do because the designers didn’t actually want to animate anything.

And then this happens.

God bless this story boarder for this random series of events presented in just this way.

Also here’s yet another example where Tea just has...no fear. She’s actually only out here because she was like “that’s it, we’re getting another driver” and was going to chew out Duke Devlin. The Orc being in the middle of the road was not the reason she walked out here.

Anyways, Yami killed it because everyone here can just throw cards forever, these things are not threatening.

The subplot of everyone refusing to drive with Duke Devlin after he busted his car in Death Valley is still ongoing, and it’s still low key hilarious that no one will outright say “Duke, your driving is just so bad” and instead, Duke just has to sit there and watch Joey STEAL A MOTORCYCLE just so he won’t have to drive shotgun with Duke Devlin.

Rebecca, our plot-dump device, then informs us that Valon has Special Rules.

Because Valon, if you’ve forgotten, has a card that allows him to physically punch his opponent in the face.

They should have invented that card a long time ago TBH.

SO, lets get into Valons tragic backstory. First off, go turn on your Les Mis Soundtrack, because this is some old school cop stuff.

So apparently Valon, as a child just...stayed in the system forever. We don’t know why yet, but lets just assume that it’s tragic and heavy handed. If he steals a loaf of bread and ends up in 12 Juvies (which is a line from the show and not an exaggeration--12 Juvies) then I will expect him to be singing by the end of this and I will be very disappointed if he does not.

Anyways, he was such an asshole, that he caught the attention of some very illegal rich bastard who was trying to turn prisoners into...card murders. (it was Dartz.) because apparently...Dartz also funds prisons and that is...that is some deep lore.

And so probably about the same time that Yugi was Dueling to the death on Pegasus’ Island, and about the same time that Marik was hanging out in the ocean next to Pegasus’ Island with a pair of binoculars, and about the same time that Noah was underneath Pegasus’ Island just watching Pegasus steal KaibaCorp, Dartz decided to make his OWN murder island--because I guess he got jealous.

Anyway, Valon won, and didn’t even need to set anyone on fire.

Those little green things there--those are all souls of prison inmates.

YUGIOH.

Millennials got DARK, OK? Freakin...we had a show for 9 year olds that went deep into the school-to-prison pipeline and didn’t even try to hide it under any layers of symbolism. Like Hunger Games at least had two people survive.

This was a show to sell PAPER CARDS.

+++++++++++THIS IS A RANT WHERE I WENT OFF ABOUT PRISON TALK IN KID’S SHOWS FEEL FREE TO SKIP++++++++++++++++++++

Now, there’s a lot of good conversation going on right now about errors in the modern justice system on not just a local scale, but on a global scale, especially regarding racial profiling and criminalization of poor, sick, and young, and we better keep pushing it. But it’s surprising when people pretend like this hasn’t been talked about for a long time. Because...we’ve been talking about it in kids and YA shows for a long time. This is not something that just popped up in 2020.

Like millennials didn’t invent this obsession with dark and gritty stories with uncomfortable themes. It’s been around for thousands of years, but back in the 90′s and 00′s, a lot of shows for YA and younger enjoyed talking about the problems with prisons and abuse of power with our justice systems--a lot. Batman, X-men, Death Note, so so many, hell, even the OC.

And like, don’t get me wrong, we still have these shows running around, but I’ve been there’s been a trend of stories (not saying names) where just...nothing bad happens. And, that’s kind of sad because...they CAN have small elements that are more progressive in them, but only brought forth with a very risk-free cotton candy fluffy coating to make the majority of the population happy.

I could go long about this, and I’m getting very cryptic. If a kid escapes to more colorful worlds where nothing bad ever happens, that’s OK--sometimes you need that, but when nothing bad ever happens surrounding certain experiences where bad things normally happen--the meaning of the story changes because it isn’t a real experience anymore.

Like I don’t want to tangent too much, and I just had to delete a lot of examples, but I know a lot of people want to write stories about misrepresented minorities and about real deal serious situations and are just so afraid of misrepresentation that they go in completely the wrong direction by not putting in anything uncomfortable at all. I think it’s important to look at the work and ask yourself is this about the minority the work should be about--or is this work about patting the majority of the population on the back and saying neat, we’ve achieved utopia without having to even do anything?

...anyway, obvi I’m ranting, but I feel like we’re taking a step backwards when it comes to the importance of kids programming and that we do need to talk to kids about prison again. This is a show about paper cards, and they don’t do a great job at talking about...the reality of prison, this was exaggerated with genre stereotypes, but at least they didn’t cover it with rainbows and unicorns, because this isn’t about how great Joey and the “normal” people are at saving Valon, this is about how society screwed Valon beyond repair, and I am 99% certain we will see this guy’s soul stuffed in a brick above Dartz’ snake fireplace.

Like, yeah he duels to the death on an island, but that’s imagery that is very close to real life prison issues. We don’t talk to kids a lot about how a lot of inmates get enlisted into the military during war times (and quite literally...duel to their death...on islands). We don’t talk about how we use inmates to betray eachother for a chance at maybe getting amnesty. We don’t talk about how a lot of the victims of this system are essentially children, and have been caught in a system of endless prison for what will probably be the rest of their lives. We don’t talk about how we’re systematically turning kids into criminals so much in kid’s shows of late...and Freakin Yugioh just did in a filler season. 

....................I think our standard for modern kids programming to talk about serious issues is way too low if Yugioh just threw this out there in a filler season, is all I’m saying.

++++++++++++++++++END OF PRISON RANT++++++++++++++++++++++

 So, Valon is free but...is he?

Not really, he’s just gone from one jailer to another, but at least this time he gets his own room. Don’t blame him for latching onto Dartz’ dream to end the world, because the world for him has been one behind bars. He doesn’t know it. Never been there.

It’s just interesting juxtaposed to Joey because Joey had some sort of Season Zero history with a gang and I haven’t watched that episode yet.

So that’s it for now, again, I’m very slooow lately. I slept for 3 hours today...and I don’t know why. But hey--we all got through three (four???) months of this...we just gotta go...one month at a time.

That and I accidentally did my taxes early so there’s that. See? Good things still happen.

Also, because I only slightly referenced the most incredible movie ever made on San Fransisco soil, I’ll just leave this here. The true hallmark of our city.

Anyway you know the drill, here’s the link

#Yugioh #ygo #recap #photo recap #tw cop #tw police #tw coronavirus #joey wheeler #valon #mai valentine #tristan taylor #seto kaiba #mokuba kaiba #Yami #rebecca hawkins #arthur hawkins #duke devlin #just everyone is here #s4 #ep 25 #tw politics

[letmemendthepast]

what is captain harlock and how do i look into it 😳

ALRIGHT. so he's space pirate captain harlock, and, believe it or not, he's a pirate... and he's also in space. this is my only interest i feel like i can actually discuss to some degree of accuracy so here goes!!

tl;dr harlock is a space pirate captain, popularized by anime and manga released in the late 70s and early 80s, who fights for his ideals, rebels against the government, and saves the world a few times. no big deal

i'm mostly familiar with harlock anime, but you could start with the original series space pirate captain harlock (42 eps) or you could watch endless orbit ssx (22 eps).

space pirate captain harlock is the main character of the eponymous 1977 manga by leiji matsumoto. he looks like this lol:

i still haven’t read the original manga, but the first harlock anime, also called space pirate captain harlock, was adapted from it! it was the first harlock media i consumed, and it is 42 episodes of PURE space opera. UNADULTERATED galactic drama. set some time in the distant future, an alien race seeks to claim earth as their own. with an apathetic populace and a government that refuses to acknowledge the threat, earth is fucked. or it WOULD be, were it not for captain harlock and the crew of the arcadia. the motley band of space pirates gains a new member at the beginning of the story, and the audience learns about the arcadia's mission along with him.

i personally thought it started off strong, like in the first few episodes it absolutely intrigued me, but others have said it starts off very slowly and has a lot of filler eps. a lot of blatant worldbuilding happens at the beginning, but once the setting is well established things start to pick up. if you're not interested by maybe episode 3 or 4, it's probably not your thing. which it very well may not be, i guess it might be what you would expect from the 70s!!

i think you’ll be able to tell right off the bat whether or not you can handle watching the animation. some of the space backgrounds are very pretty though, and the old tech art is an aesthetic of its own.

i’d have to do a rewatch to list more specific triggers, but there’s some violence and death, nothing too graphic. some, maybe most, of the fighting is done in space though, so there are spaceships exploding and that kind of thing. there are also a few instances of nudity (just tits out i’m pretty sure).

BEYOND THE ORIGINAL SERIES, there's a movie and another, shorter series from the early 80s. 

arcadia of my youth is the prequel to this second series and tells harlock's origin story. i should say ONE of his origin stories because there are quite a few variations of literally everything regarding harlock. and ok this is going to sound fucking horrible but. i paid absolutely no attention to the movie when i watched it. i don’t remember this movie at all. i honestly can’t tell you whether that’s due to me just being an idiot or the movie just not being any good. (will update you when i watch it again?)

anyways. you don’t have to watch the movie (you probably should, i just forgot everything that happens in it because i’m built different), but it sets up for the plot of endless orbit ssx. this second series, at 22 episodes, is much shorter than the original series; it was supposed to be around 40 episodes as well, but it had to be cut short because cultural focus had shifted from this type of romanticized space drama to shows like gundam (which is why i have yet to touch any gundam stuff—i hold a slight grudge against the mecha genre in general for this lol). i was expecting a really shitty ending due to that, but as a whole the show is still very enjoyable and the ending is fine, if clearly rushed.

endless orbit ssx was i think a bit heavier than the main series. earth has fallen under control of aliens, so this time harlock & co’s goal is to find arcadia, the mythical planet where they can all just live in peace and whatnot (a change of pace from the original series, i guess they know there’s no chance of saving earth this time around?), but along the way, as you can guess, they're opposed by the reigning alien race.

admittedly, i'm VERY biased when it comes to how good ssx is, simply because tochiro gets a lot of spotlight in the show. you should recognize him from somewhere ;)

he is just a fantastic little guy, i adore him, and his design in ssx is very very good (he just looks like a weird little man in some other media. full offense). he's smart, impulsive, and has a sense of humor, which makes him an excellent complement to harlock, who is often shown as the stoic, emotionless hero. they're best friends, like they have this bond where they’re pursuing their shared dream and all that. pretty cool i think :)

even aside from tochiro, ssx is still very good. in terms of writing and plot, i think it’s about on par with (or maybe better than) the original series, and there’s less room for filler. also, things get going much faster, so i’d say you could only give it an episode or two before you decide whether to keep going or drop it.

ALRIGHT SO. that's what i have to say about harlock, condensed as much as i could manage (and hopefully put in words a normal person might use). there are plenty of gaps in my knowledge, and a few shows and movies i haven't even bothered to watch myself. obviously the harlock stuff isn't for everyone, so. good luck i guess

you can find everything i’ve discussed here on 9anime.to!

#i only just started gun frontier #which is from idk early 2000s #and i can't recommend it. it's about tochiro so i was obviously hoping it would be really good #but the weird casual racism and sexism is offputting #that kind of thing was NOT prevalent in the other series which is why i can say they were good #anyways. smiling through the pain #also i have yet to touch the 2013 movie it looks. somewhat uncomfortable #not too bad though. i'll get around to watching it someday #anyways. Aaron i already said this but you're such an enabler. i love you #asks #jezzo #captain harlock #space pirate captain harlock #leijiverse #wait this probably wont show up in the tags bc links... oh well #i've edited this like 50 times since i first posted it help

[themjinterviews-blog]

48. Put your hands in the air and say hell yeah. Captain Jack! Johnny Depp!

What motivates you to do what you do? Sheer necessity, usually.

What was the weather like the last time you went out? Hot. It’s Arizona so it’s probably near 100 + sunny.

Do you go for walks often? I’m pretty lazy and try to avoid it. You sorta gotta trick me into walking, like take me to a big shopping mall or something so I inadvertently walk around it whilst shopping.

What color shirt are you wearing? Gray.

What is your favorite type of youtube video to watch? I don’t really watch any. I just use it to occasionally look up songs or to record snippets of stuff to remix songs.

Do you need any new clothes right now? I got plenty.

What’s the next project you are excited to start? I’m working on a nonsensical Adult Coloring Book featuring animals committing crimes.

Do you collect anything? If so, what? Used to collect rocks and Pokémon cards. I suppose in a sense I collect all sorts of art/office supplies.

^and if not, what would you like to collect? Nothing really.

What was the last disappointing thing that happened to you? I don’t know. Suppose work being closed for renovation for 2 weeks kinda sucks because I sort of need cash.

What is something God has healed you of? I don’t really do the whole God/Religion rigamarole... Chances are if we are healed of something, there is a psychological, sociological biological or generally rational explanation.

Have you ever experienced a miracle? Like, a phenomenal coincidence? I think as much as I hate to be a downer, there's probably a lot to do with our perceptions of events

What was the last thing you ate? Lucky Charms.

Do you ever eat food that’s intended for kids? Well, Lucky Charms. I also love pizza rolls and chicken nuggets. But I’m not eating Gerber Peas&Carrot baby foods or anything crazy like that.

What was the last stupid thing you did? Define “stupid”? Most things I do are probably stupid to others but perfectly acceptable to me.

Do you get embarrassed easily? Sometimes.

Are you wearing pants or shorts right now? I never wear shorts.

What are your top three names you like for a daughter? Elliot (this is also my pick for a boy name), Tara, Hazel.

Would you ever film a vlog of yourself giving birth? Ew. Fuck no. Honestly, adopting/fostering sounds way more my style anyway. To be totally frank, pregnancy sounds gross and being unable to take my adderall sounds awful. I’d gain like, a million pounds.

Do you like getting caught in the rain? It’s usually a refreshing break from the heat out here.

Do you think your hair looks best straight, wavy, or curly? Messy, or in a side-pony.

What was the last craft project you completed?: Coloring books for my friends’ kid.

Name 3 youtubers you would like to meet in person: I don’t know any.

Has anyone ever spread an untrue rumor about you? Sociopath ex. Not sure he actually said them aloud to people other than myself, but I was constantly being accused of weird stuff I absolutely did not do.

What’s one rumor you’ve heard about yourself, and is it true? N/A. No idea. Not aware of any relevant or applicable rumors. I literally just keep to myself and do crafts.

What color are your nails painted currently? Not painted.

Do you use a pill box? Jesus, I’m not 80.

List 3 people you know who were loving and then turned cold: it’s kind of generic to assume either of those things as permanent traits. But probably most flings or whatever. It always feels cold when one party loses interest.

Have you filmed a youtube video today? Never filmed one in my life.

Do you leave the house when you’re on your period? Um yes. Life doesn’t stop just because I have cramps.

^If not, why not? -

Have you ever felt threatened for your life? Yeah. Sociopath ex would get overtly paranoid and mistake harmless or unrelated things I did or said to be conspiracies against him. And occasionally my imaginary betrayals would lead to violent words or actions. Like, a bundle of index cards with Carrabba’s menu items and their ingredients, word for word, from the Carrabba’s menu, was somehow coded plots to who the fuck knows to have him killed. Irrational stuff like that.

What are you behind on? Student loans. And when I say behind, I really mean that I actively chose not to pay them.

Do you get enough sleep each night? No because night is my time to be productive, uninterrupted and without bothering anyone. I hate having to stop my thoughts just because other people are making noise or trying to converse with me.

Which did you like better: high school or college? Absolutely college.

Which year of your life stands out to you as the most significant so far? Probably last year or two.

…and why? Big personal transitions and revelations in my life philosophy.

What was the last store you shopped at? Walmart, most likely.

Do you have a favorite pharmacist? I used to back in NY. Her name was Evie. She wished a customer Happy Thanksgiving on Valentine’s Day accidentally once and it cracked me up and we had a running joke about it.

Do you have a favorite cashier at the grocery store? I don’t shop frequently enough and I switch up stores when I do.

What was the last thing you ordered at Starbucks? Probably a toffee nut Frappuccino.

What’s something you discovered recently?

What makes you more creative? Emotional turbulence, certain drugs.

What’s the last magical thing you experienced? Um…Magical? The herd of unicorns crossing the I-10.

What is the theme of your bedroom? None. We are staying in a spare room at a friend’s. But we're actually moving this week because being micromanaged and constantly scrutinized was getting old.

Have you ever lived in a dorm? Yes, for a few years

Who is someone whom you admire, and why? I guess the lady at work, Amanda. She’s like 64 and works open-close every day, and still has a great attitude.

When was the last time you stepped outside of your comfort zone? I don’t know. I test the waters every once in awhile.

Where would you like to travel to next? Nowhere crazy. Just back to New York for the Renaissance Faire.

If you could win three dream vacations to anywhere, where would you go? Portugal—New Zealand—Ireland.

Would you rather ride a camel or an elephant? Camel. They’re fuzzy.

Are you a free spirit? I don’t know what that even constitutes. I think outside the box and I question social conformity and other preset patterns of thought. But I don’t know that has much to do with my spirit.

Do you want to lose weight? I think I’m okay for now.

Which insects scare you, if any? They don’t scare me, they just creep me out …spiders, centipedes, millipedes, roaches…ugh.

Do you think it’s silly to be afraid of a tiny insect? It’s not like I think they’re going to murk me with a sawed off shot gun. I know they’re harmless and therefor not technically scary…but they’re still creepy and unsettling somehow.

Have you ever experienced paranoia? To some degree.

Have you ever hallucinated? Indeed.

Were you raised religious? We were raised Roman Catholic. Didn’t stick.

Have you ever been abused? Psychologically, emotionally, physically and sexually. #sociopathic ex.

Do you think the cops should do more about bullying? I think cops have enough shit to worry about as is and don’t know how effective extensive police interference would even be. I think the anti-bullying message is stronger when conveyed by people closer to kids like teachers, parents, siblings or a celebrity figure they idolize.

Is there a coffee shop you like better than Starbucks? I like them all about the same.

If you could afford to get your hair professionally done, what would you get? Probably dye and highlights. Definite trim of my bangs.

If you had a lot of money, do you think you would use it wisely? Absolutely not. I have little to no money now and I don’t even use *that* wisely.

Do you know any rich people who are very irresponsible? I don’t know many people to begin with.

List five careers that you’d like to have: Lawyer (like A.D.A. Barba!)...Graphic Designer...Psychologist...Self-Help writer...and oddly wouldn't mind being a waitress still.

List five far-out things that you’d like to do before you die: I genuinely do not have a bucket list. If I stumble upon something that seems cool, I do it. Making unrealistic lists won't help my quality of life very much.

Do you dream big? Quite the opposite. I sort of just fly by the seat of my pants. Weird expression. Can’t recall ever having very fixated dreams or visions for myself.

What was your first imaginary friend’s name? N/A

What was the name of the first pet that you loved? Comet. <3

What was the first work uniform that you had to wear? Waitress uniform of sorts. I wanna say it was white button down and black pants.

Do you like to go barefoot? Usually. On some surfaces it’s intolerable and I hate the texture, though.

Do you like the same colors now that you did as a kid? Pretty much.

Do you have a blog? You’re on it, buddy. This is a survey blog.

Do you have a youtube channel? What would I even post videos about?? I assure you, I do nothing that the general public would find entertaining.

#survey

[captainbebold-blog]

Blog post numero 2

So, following on from my previous and very first blog post last month, I would firstly like to say how genuinely surprised I was by the amazing comments and words that people fed back to me. I would like to thank those individuals and to anyone who took the precious time to read what I wrote as I really hadn’t thought ahead of any consequence after posting the blog.

I would also like to add how great it felt to open my mind and heart and just blurt out words that were there for all to see, I found it therapeutic and I would urge anyone else who is thinking of doing something similar.

You will come to learn that by reading what I write, if you didn’t already know, I am honest, perhaps a little too much, but I love that about myself (oh yes, a woman in 2019 affirming a positive quality about herself without the need of validation from anyone else). And by being honest I will say that this blog post was particularly difficult for me to get started on. Not difficult in the sense that I found it emotionally testing but perhaps in trying to articulate myself genuinely.  

The topic that I would like to talk about this month is school, jobs and careers. Funnily enough, the definition of the word “work” as a synonym can also be known as “exerting oneself” or “to slave away”. The word “career” can be defined as “an occupation undertaken for a significant period of a person’s life and with opportunities for progress.” Now, I’m not sure what thoughts or opinions will cross people’s minds when they read this to themselves, but for me, here’s why I have trouble accepting both definitions.

Let me start from the beginning, buckle up.

From a young age, I was never really interested in school, I mean realistically why would a four-year old child who has spent the only years of their life so far playing and being free, understand or let alone choose why they had to go to a place called “school”.

But I knew and believed that it was important for my future. I believed so based on the values that my mum had taught me and that it was important for me to study hard and pay attention. My Mum had a difficult childhood and upbringing and therefore she never really got the opportunity or better still, the choice whether she wanted to go to school or not. So out of respect and love for my Mum, as well as sensing that she wanted to ensure I got the opportunities that she didn’t.

The school years are a blur from the age of 4 right up to high school and then university. The things that I enjoyed outside of lessons were dance class, singing (I cannot sing but that didn’t stop me) and reading. I remember being called a book worm and my teacher once called me his human dictionary. I would despise doing homework and think it was a load of crap. All I wanted to do was read, and read aloud to anyone who would listen, I would follow my mum around the kitchen reading aloud to her frequently.

As I got older, I enjoyed art class and it was the only hobby I happily and actively chose to do, I was good at art, I think it was the only subject in my entire life I ever achieved an A in.  All the hobbies that I have mentioned above all have one thing in common, they are all creative and imaginative activities. Yet, that wasn’t enough for me to realise.

Throughout my teenage years, I didn’t excel in anything at school, along with raging hormones and my primary concerns being if my trousers were tight enough on my arse (I didn’t have one back then) or if the vending machines would have sold out of Chocolate Milk by the time I got to the canteen at lunchtime.

 For me, I was at school because what else was there? It’s not like I had a choice to do anything else, or did I? I had a great social life. Life was carefree in comparison to now and “being an adult”. You aren’t taught life skills or what to expect once you leave school. To a certain extent you are protected in this bubble where there is no need to think outside of that. Teachers and parents alike would say, school will help you get a good job/career like it is the only thing that matters on planet Earth.

When high school finished at the age of 16, I still had no idea what career I wanted to pursue or what I wanted to be. I felt an element of pressure for that, like I would slip behind in life if I didn’t decide quickly. I often thought, when will I know what I want to do, or I would ask myself what was wrong with me? I told myself that the best way for me to have a successful career was to educate myself more, and by doing so I chose to go to college and study for A Levels. I told myself, Dayna you didn’t put your all in before but now is your chance to get higher grades and I cannot accept failure because then where will I get in life?

For my A levels I chose to do Psychology, Travel and Tourism and Health and Social Care. I was happy with these subjects because for the first time in my academic life, I was given the choice to decide for myself.

I loved Psychology, I absolutely loved it, it helped that my teacher was bonkers and 80% of his vocabulary was the word “fuck”. He had worked in prisons with sexual offenders for most of his career and once he even brought in a schizophrenic patient with multiple personalities to class. I have always had a real interest in how people operate and theories etc. Travel and tourism was something else I was interested in because I am a real geek when it comes to travelling, and not in the way that you think either. You could be thinking that it’s because I want to see the world (who the fuck doesn’t?) but that wasn’t the driving reason. It’s because I’m a massive geek and I have a weird genuine interest in modes of transport; planes, trains, you name it (but mainly those two). Again, I unashamedly love that about me. And, lastly, Health and Social Care was for me personally, the least interesting choice, I think I chose it at the time in case I decided to work with children or the elderly.

  Anyways – I don’t want to bore you with my every single life choice I had made by the time I was 17 but I did my A levels and I was still not getting higher grades. Not because I wasn’t capable, but because I was lazy and couldn’t be bothered. Sure, I loved listening to the facts and information that I was being taught but I used to think, why do I have to write an essay about this topic that I have just learnt. What does it prove? I remember thinking to myself, I don’t want to do this. But I would also be thinking that I was lazy and that I was sabotaging myself for not caring enough about my future. In hindsight, I have since realised and learnt that the schooling system is just wrong. On so many levels. It makes me smile when I think back as a few of my closest friends made the decision to leave college before the first year was over to go down a different route in life, i.e. get a job etc and I remember my mindset at the time was; omg they are going to fail at life (quite literally).

During college I decided I would go on to university. I still couldn’t give a definitive answer about what I wanted to do long term as a career, but I did want to experience more and let’s be honest, university was a 4-year party. I started university at Leeds Metropolitan in September 2011 and graduated 4 years later with a degree in International Hospitality Management. I absolutely loved university. I still stand by the decision that university was hands down one of the best experiences of my life. Whilst I was at university, I had a part time job because I couldn’t afford to live without it. I worked as a Kitchen Assistant for Wetherspoons and for the most part I hated it. The main thing that made it worthwhile was that I worked with completely crazy people who were fun and had something to teach me as I had never met people similar in the past. Working in the kitchen helped me rule out a chef career and gave me an insight into the hard work, long hours and stress that chefs endure.

My university course was a sandwich course which meant that I had to complete a year’s work experience in the industry to count towards my degree. I always had a real interest in hotels and the way they operated so I decided I would apply for a receptionist role in a hotel in Leeds. I remember writing my CV and printing 50 copies, putting on a suit and then walking around the entirety of Leeds walking into each hotel handing in my CV to a member of staff. I would like to add that I could have easily just looked for jobs online and applied that way, but I thought that it showed willing by actively going in and introducing myself. I never heard back from any hotel, except for the one that I got the job in.

The hotel I worked in was a large hotel with 134 bedrooms and a leisure club and spa that had 5,000 external members alone. When I started it was tough and on my first day, I was so nervous I couldn’t even answer the phone. But I stuck at it and was promoted to Team Leader 8 months after I joined, and I worked there for just under 3 years. I remember when I started working there, I really enjoyed it. I would work long shifts, up to 12 hours per day and double shifts where I would finish at 11pm and be back in at 6am the next day. I would bend over backwards based on the knowledge that I was doing a great job. But then I began to realise that I wasn’t appreciated. I wasn’t appreciated through words or emotions, or through tangible elements such as pay incentives or reward. I write all of this for a reason, I began to realise, and things started to add up. I started to focus more on the employees and how they felt and what motivated them rather than the business or how many people I could sell an upgraded room type to.

Motivation is a word that can be defined in a thousand and one ways, I would know, I wrote 12,000 words for my dissertation on that topic alone.  Motivation is something that has been researched and built upon over the years and is something that all companies should take seriously.

For me personally, I am motivated intrinsically, I like to feel warm and gooey inside knowing that I have achieved something to be proud of or I have made someone else smile with my words etc.

Other people may be more motivated by objects and items, money, and what they can purchase with the money.

For example, you could argue that a Doctor or a nurse must be intrinsically motivated because we all know how little they are paid for the years of studying and ball breaking dedication they put into helping others and saving lives.

Eventually I realised which career path I wanted to embark on, Human Resources. It had clicked in my mind that I wanted to work with the employees of a company as my customers rather than the customers that were buying the products or services from a company. So, I started searching for HR roles within the hospitality industry, I still loved the hospitality industry so I wanted to remain there, but I wanted to work more with supporting the employees and by doing so, they would support the company. Richard Branson, one of the greatest entrepreneurs of all time says, “A company is people. Employees want to know, am I being listened to or am I a cog in the wheel? People really needed to feel wanted”. I got my first HR trainee role and relocated back home and started my first ever “real 9-5” job.

To cut another ultra-long story short, about a year after I had started the new HR role, even though I really loved it, I began to think to myself – is this all there is? You could call me overly ambitious but knowing myself I am just impatient. And somewhere along the lines, between graduating university with all the hopes and excitement that I first had and being a few years down the line in my career, reality set in and the little voice in my head said, be realistic.

But why should I tell myself to be realistic, I am a millennial. I come from an era where parents told us we could be anything that we wanted to be. When you are five years old and you dream of being an astronaut or a cowboy, your parents agree with you because it is harmless right? so why would you ever think that you were being unrealistic?

Working in HR I know that it is still widely frowned upon to look at an applicant’s CV and see that they have “job hopped” since they graduated. Recruiters and employers who aren’t willing to adapt to change believe that it shows a lack of stability and loyalty from a person if they change roles and companies every year or so. Well gone are the days where our grandparents would start a job at the age of 16 and do the same job until retirement at the ripe old age of 65. The world today is changing at an ever-increasing rate and who is to be certain of what tomorrow brings?

I am now in this process and point in my life where I have started to expose myself to new information and learn something that was foreign to me. As I said in my previous post, we don’t know what we don’t know. But when you start to focus your attention towards something, it manifests. Another core belief of mine is that everything happens for a reason, and that we are exposed to certain life events on purpose.

I have realised at the age of 27, that I don’t want to work for another 40 years until I can retire and live off state pension. I don’t want to work for someone else’s goals and objectives, I don’t want to be told how many hours I must work per week. I don’t want my financial stability to be in someone else’s hands. The list goes on and on.

It is fine to say, I don’t want this, I don’t want that, but the question is: do I have the power to change it? Absolutely. I revert to my previous comment about the fact that we tell children they can be anything they dream to be. So why is it that if I tell someone at the age of 27 that I am starting my own business and I am going to be an entrepreneur they look at me like I am batshit or tell me to be realistic? My grandma used to tell me when I was a teenager, study hard, why don’t you become a doctor. And even at a young age I would think in my mind, the only reason is because it would look and sound good to others so that she could say, “My granddaughter is a Doctor”.

I write all of this with no disrespect to a single soul. No disrespect to my loved ones or friends. Because 6 months ago, I was included in the 93% of the population that all live within the “rules” and norms of society. The rules being that you go to school, study hard, get good grades and then get a good job and jump through hoops for 40+ years of your life to provide for yourself and family and then you get to retire just a few years before death (if you make it that far). The late Jim Rohn, who was one of the world’s most famous entrepreneurs and motivational speakers said, “Formal education will make a living; self-education will make you a fortune”. It is correct, formal education does make you a living. I can honestly say hand on heart that I have never needed to use Algebra in my life since leaving school and that a calculator gets me through just fine. Self-education is what we choose freely, we have the choice to invest in ourselves or not.

One of my pet hates, which I am totally guilty of doing in the past is when people say, “Happy Friday” or “thank god it’s Friday”. Isn’t that sad? Society has created a monster, to the point where people may not even be necessarily conscious of what they are doing daily because it is like being on a hamster wheel. The daily commute to work at the same time every day, the same route, the same things that we see each day.

Maybe it is just me reading too much into it. But I do believe that to a certain extent, Instagram is also promoting the hamster wheel by having emojis that say “TGIF” or a Camel with the word Wednesday above it. I feel like people are wishing their life away, for 5 days of the week to be over, to then “live” for the other two.

I need to keep emphasising the point that I am not writing any of this as if I am better than anyone else, I have been doing most of the above for my entire life up until this point too. I am simply sharing what I have experienced and learnt and where I am at present in my life.

I have been at the point where I would wake up in the morning and would have rather done quite literally anything else but go to work because I hated my job, and I knew that I didn’t have a choice but to go because of one reason – money. Money was the primary reason and control over me having to go to a workplace. As Charles Bukowski famously says, “how in the hell could a man enjoy being awakened at 6:30am by an alarm clock, leap out of bed, force feed, shit, piss, get dressed and fight traffic to get to a place where essentially you made lots of money for somebody else and were asked to be grateful for the opportunity to do so?”

The reason that it strikes an emotional reaction inside me is because I have come from a family and background with little money. Most things have been a struggle. For example, when I turned 17, the legal age to drive a car, I didn’t pass my driving test straight away because my family couldn’t afford to fund the lessons, and neither could I. So, I passed my test when I was 19 instead, after I had earnt the money myself out of stubbornness. My mum offered to help me countless times, but I was adamant I would do it myself even when my friends would mock me for being lazy and not passing sooner. I have never had money chucked at me for things, holidays etc. And when I did have the financial capacity to have more freedom, I chose wrong and got myself into debt because I went to Ibiza and festivals etc. I don’t regret any of the decisions I made, because it was all a part of the learning process.

But since I started to invest in myself to become better, I realised that in the past, I had chosen to accept what was handed to me, instead of trying to create my own journey or spending time trying to find what my passions are to create a life that I chose, not that I slept walked through.

One of the most eye opening and invaluable books that I have read is “Rich Dad, Poor Dad” by Robert Kiyosaki. There’s an old saying, that the rich get richer and the poor get poorer, I used to believe that the rich were conniving and unjust. People say that the rich keep all the money and don’t help “the poor?” Why aren’t the poor doing anything to help themselves? Well, Robert also says that the word JOB stands for “Just Over Broke”. Perhaps I am being overly cynical but for me, this quote stands true as the sky is blue.

I find myself talking and talking so I guess I should wrap it up.

What I have learnt based on reflection and through changing what I pay attention to is that most of society is messed up. We are sent to school from a very young age and are kept there until the age of 18. We aren’t given the freedom or information to understand that we can think outside the box and that we don’t have to go to work for someone else. But then think of it another way, if everyone was taught at school that they could be an entrepreneur and teachers provided real life and world changing examples like Warren Buffet, Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos, Steve Jobs… then wouldn’t there be too many “successful people” in the world. But that wouldn’t happen because people are like sheep, they follow what is “normal” or they prefer living in their comfort zone.

The world is forever evolving and whilst it is scary, it is also so exciting. Mary Augustine says that we become happier in life when we realise that life is an opportunity rather than an obligation. The amazing entrepreneurs that I mentioned above should be the people we are thanking and counting our blessings for, for the opportunities they have provided to the entire world. Mark Zuckerberg for Facebook, Steve Jobs for Apple, Mike Krieger and Kevin Systrom for Instagram, to name a few. They have enriched so many people’s lives because of their innovative minds, for being brave enough to think outside of the box and push and believe in their dreams even when the fear of the unknown was greater. Astoundingly, millions of people choose to spend their precious time keeping up with the Kardashians plastic faces on Instagram, so if they became rich for doing nothing… then the world is our oyster!

Much love xxx

[homestucky]

  :^) 

>:^)

>:^D

hey guys i got a mark back today for the coursework i handed in recently which caused me a lot of stress, pain and multiple all-nighters. its 20% of one of my modules, but that module is worth 3 regular modules if that makes sense. also my grades from this year are weighted twice as much as last yr in how they go towards my FINAL DEGREE GRADE. so overall this ONE report was worth 120% of a 2nd yr module. it was worth 60% of a regular 3rd yr module. something like 10% of my ENTIRE DEGREE, i handed in printed on 13 sheets of paper 3 weeks ago. and i left it to the last minute to write bcaus like... depression. and i could barely read the sources i was writing about bcaus words feel like bees in my brain. and other people went to get their results and said the marking was really harsh, and doing a stem subject and it being an essay-type report, the expectation of how people did was ALREADY VERY LOW. bcaus we are dumb stem students who cant read or think critically! but hhhhhhhhh

not to be a smug bastard but...

i got 80% !!!!! :^0000000000

for context the top grade in the uk is a first, and the pass mark for it is 70%. that means my work was ‘Exceptional’!!!! wtfwtfwtfwtfwtftwtftwtftwtftwetftwtft

(i also got 74% in something i got back yesterday which i thought i totally blew which is decent. no its great!! so much better than expected. its a first!! wtf!!!)

so anyway thats crazy!!! like unbelievably so ! like i literally cannot believe it to be true. like im seeing the grade written there and im like ‘that says 80%, one in typed font and one in handwriting and both clearly say 80% and the markscheme says 80% is exceptional’ and im like i hear you but............... are we SURE. are we SURE this reflects on me in ANY way?

(chanting: fluke fluke fluke fluke)

dyou know what i mean? like i go though my degree assuming im the dumbest pos alive and definitely getting the worst grades. and dont get me wrong, it pains me to think about but i have gotten poor grades before. my grades vary a lot. ive failed modules and had to retake them. ive barely scraped by in some things. but  by now i should have enough evidence to prove to me that i am not stupid and i am capable when i try, sometimes even if i dont particularly. like, 74% is the lowest mark ive got so far this yr! ive got: 88%, 93.5%, 74%, 80%. those are legit like.... good grades. but every. single. time. im like phew!! what a lot of luck!!! cant believe nobody noticed me tricking them by pretending i know what im doing THIS TIME. onyl a matter of time before someone realises im stupid and says ‘not so fast dummy!! heres a nice fail for you’!!!!!

like idk. its so annoying. thinking lowly of myself makes me not want to try. its a self fulfilling prophecy. i know that. but i cant help but look at all my failures and all my successes.. and think hmm im gonna think about the failure pile a lot more actually, bcaus i feel like that pile really GETS me, yknow? like the success pile is such a funny weird lot of coincidences and accidents and luck. i dont know how this keeps happening!

idk. i just. sincerely have trouble internalising positive feedback about my intelligence. to the point where if i do well in a module i feel like its proof that the examination methods of the module are weak and ill-thought out enough to be unfairly generous. 

OK CASE IN POINT ABOUT ME BEING STUPID: as i was typing this out i got my toe stuck in a draw. ffs

#i passionately debate my own intelligence #dnt reblog if that wasnt obvious

[christinaroseandrews]

Part 4

If you want to know what you missed in You Don’t Know Me, you can read Parts One, Two, and Three. Or you can just jump into the deep end and go from here. I should have said spoiler alert, but at this point who cares. However there are Trigger Alerts of Dubious Consent, Alcohol Abuse, Sexual Harassment, and a crap ton of sexist and homophobic microaggressions. Suffice it to say this is NSFW.

This is the last summary bit, I promise. I mean we only have a quarter of the book to go and the shit just hit the fan in a big way. Normally I would say that the last quarter is spent fixing the problems revealed on the way to the happy ending. But in You Don’t Know Me’s case, I would be completely wrong.

Let’s dive in, shall we?

With Alec, Rue, and Jenna all finding their own way back to the U.S. after their adventures in Ibiza, we’re left with Repentant Asshole Jack and Magically Reappearing Sean to follow around.

Sean once again proves he is too good for this world. By calling out Jack and how he’s been behaving.

Unfortunately this is literally all of the discussion that we get because the plane runs into turbulence. It turns out the turbulence is being caused by a large group of thunderstorms in the Caribbean (which most air traffic controllers try to steer around unless there is a more pressing reason not to) and everything goes to hell. Literally.

Since this is a storm, that means the water is going to be choppy which seriously impacts the ability of the pilot to land safely (my uncle pilots small craft and my cousin is a business jet pilot). Not to mention it feels like the only reason that Hopkins threw this in there was so that Jack would get a “get out of jail free” card and not have to be accountable for his actions and what he did to Rue.

The plane starts to go down and we get this.

Who here remembers the safety demonstration at the beginning of each plane flight? One of the things they stress is to not inflate the vest until you’re outside of the plane.

There’s a reason for that. It has to do with the laws of physics.  Namely, that most people aren’t strong enough swimmers to be able to dive underwater while wearing a life vest and people get trapped in the sinking plane because they are floating not walking. I even saw a TV show on this that referenced Ethiopian Airlines Flight 961 and the memories of survivors who heard the life vests inflate and then saw people dying because they couldn’t get out.

Mean water.

So now that Jack and Sean are likely dead. Let’s check in with our favorite musician who we’ve yet to see do anything that warrants his celebrity, Alec.

He arrives at LAX and is immediately greeted by people exclaiming that “Yay! You’re not dead but your friends are!”

Which leaves him going “Huh?”

He dashes off to a bar and gets the news.

Alec then takes a page from the Tommy Wiseau school of acting and falls apart.

And there you have the problem. This grief feels overacted. Forced. Like Faleena has never actually lost someone she cared about and is going through the motions of grief.

We flip to Rue who has heard the news and decided that the best thing to do is to go to Jack and Sean’s house and try to comfort their grieving mother. Remember, this is the same woman whose husband cheated on her and Rue is a living reminder of that infidelity and betrayal. But sure, let’s go comfort Mrs. Stone.  That’s a great idea.

Rue goes on and on in her head about how much she loves her brothers. Despite only knowing them a week. And one of the brothers has done his level best to break her and succeeded.  Then we get this.

My parents went from Met to Engaged in literally 3 weeks. So I know it’s possible. But Rue hasn’t had the same kind of “get to know you” experiences. She’s had parties, and more parties, and that’s about it. The real problem is that the author didn’t show the bonding between any of her characters. Instead, she meandered from external plot device to external plot device without any character development. The number of times I can count Alec and Rue actually talking is non-existant. They don’t talk. They lust after each other.

Right now I am firmly on the mother’s side.

Alec shows up about a minute later and lets himself and Rue in.

When he appears, the mother reappears - drugged out - and apologizes to Rue.

We then get some of the backstory of Rue’s father and mother.

Apparently the mother left and despite telling Rue’s dad that she never wanted to see him, he still loved her. He even wrote a note to his wife telling her that he never loved her and that Rue’s mom was his soulmate. The man is a piece of work.

Not to mention, I have concerns about just how much Rue’s mom wanted the affair and how much was coercion.  Because let’s be honest, it’s a power imbalance.

After this, we travel back in time to see what happened when the plane crashed. At this point, I am firmly convinced that Jack and Sean died despite what the author claims, and this is just a huge fantasy spun by Rue as part of the bargaining phase of grief. I mean, it makes as much sense as anything else.

The plane lands and Jack and Sean and the pilots manage to get out despite the rising water.

Once out of the plane they have to swim against the waves to get to the raft with an injured co-pilot.

At this point, I’m just chanting “Nope” so much that my dogs got concerned about my sanity and started bringing me toys in the effort to break me out of my fugue-state.

I have good dogs.

Of course Jack and Sean survive to reach the raft...

How do I know they’re near Cuba? It becomes a plot point later. But you want to know what else is near Cuba? The Gulf Stream.

Look at those water temps... Hmmm It’s almost like it’s warm in the Caribbean or something.

This water is definitely warmer than ANYTHING along the California coast. (LA average water temps in November are in the low 60s. The Florida Keys average water temperatures are in the upper 70s to low 80s during the same time.)

Sorry, my Earth Science degree is screaming. I’ll stop.

While they’re drifting they have a heart to heart and Sean reveals he’s gay.

Seriously, Jack is one of the most horrible people I’ve ever encountered that was supposed to be a redeemable character. There have been villains - Loki, Vegeta, Draco Malfoy, Darth Vader, Spike - who have had better redemption arcs and been better people than Jack.

Then this happens.

I actually went back and counted, from the time traveling reboot it literally was 8 pages from the start of that chapter with the actual plane crash and them being rescued. They were in the water for only a few hours or at least that’s what it feels like. The author is not good with time.

We return to Rue and Alec in California and get this...

Yep, the President calls to tell them Jack and Sean are safe.

There’s some very painful dialogue and then Mrs. Stone wanders off.

And one of Faleena Hopkins’ issues rears its head...

From here on, I imagined the entire scene was being listened to by Obama. It wasn’t pretty.

We start in on a “I am so happy my best friends are alive I must sex you up!” which I will spare you. Then Alec and Rue have a heart to heart and they decide that they can only be friends. Because she loves her brothers and she wants to make it work with them. I can get loving Sean. Sean is awesome. Jack can go rot. Have I mentioned I hate Jack?

Next we have a party to celebrate the return of Jack and Sean and my love of Sean wanes while my hatred of Jack and Alec rises. Jack because he’s a horrible human being. Alec because he spends his time moping about how wants Rue but can’t have her.

Sean wanders away and spends the next few minutes telling everyone he talks to that he‘s gay. Which I wouldn’t have a an issue with if this wasn’t billed as a straight romance. Sean rejoins the group and we get the following “Jack is terrible” things. 

Jack stops with his harassment of Jenna and has a talk with Rue. Revealing that he too tried to commit suicide.

You know. I hear counseling is a thing. Maybe you all should look into that.

Anyway after that, he gives permission for Alec to date Rue.

Because men giving permission for people to date their female relatives is so 2015... or 1915... or 1815. One of those. This is also sexist. I know there’s a bro code, but frankly Jack has been such an ass and literally he’s known Rue for like a week, I’m skeptical.

Alec is relieved and runs off to find Rue. But she’s trying to stick to her vow of only friends.

So when she tells him no twice, he does this.

This is what Faleena Hopkins considers sexy: abuse. Naturally Rue is turned on and they run off to have sex.

Horribly horribly written sex.

Thankfully the scene is short. And by I short I mean WTF short.

The chapter ends with Alec and Rue making a promise to try to make things work. And if the story had ended there, it could kind of squeak into romance. But it doesn’t.

Instead the story ends with Rue, Jack, and Sean going on a talk show and talking about their life.

And here’s the final line.

Yep...

Honestly, Sean’s story arc was the most developed and compelling. But when a secondary character’s plot takes over the core plot of your romantic leads, there is something wrong.

Unfortunately, I am literally running out of room so I’ll sum up in another post where I talk about the most salient problems.

If you’re enjoying these reviews, you can buy us a kofi.

#romance novels #romance reviews #new adult romance #billionaire romance #contemporary romance #faleena hopkins #cockygate #musician romance #that's not how it works #gods i hate this book #stab this book with a spoon #part four #I'm almost done #I promise #book review

[mimemindmine]

Emiya Chi Chapter 7 Script

I just submitted my translation script to Miden. The chapter’ll be out soon guys!

Here’s the script, in case you are interested: 

85

Panel 1-2

Rin: We've just have to go to a European-style resort.

Rin 2: The relaxed atmosphere is rather charming!

panel 4

Rin: The Water’s consistently at 33 ~34 Degrees!

Rin 2: It’s an all year long, all weather, indoor water resort....

Panel 5:

Rin: And we're here! Let's make a splash!

Rin written: ...At least that's what the billboard said.

Shirou: Thank you for them monologue, Toshaka.

86:

Chapter 7: Without further ado, here is your chilled O-Chazuke

87

Panel 1:

Rin: I'm...so dooone!

Panel 2:

Rin: Aaah. I don't wanna get up anymore.

Rin 2: I can't believe I'm this tired. We've been messing around for the entire day...

Panel 3:

Shirou: Thanks for coming.

Shirou 2: It was sudden, but I'm glad you came with us.

Outside: Have some tea

Panel 4

Rin: Well, I just happened to be free.

Rin outside: Thanks

Panel 5:

Rin: So, what did you think, Saber? Did you have fun?

Panel 6

Saber: Yes. I'd enjoyed myself.

Panel 7:

Rectangle box: Today

88

panel 1

Literal version

Shirou's thought 1:Because we were suddenly given these tickets,

Shirou's thought 2:Toshaka, Saber, and I were told to go to the pool in the Shinto District

Taiga 1(right): I was given these, but it doesn't look I'll be able to go before they expire. So, I'm giving them to you!

Taiga 2(bottom): And, look there's just happens to be three people here!

Taiga 3(left): And, I just happen to have three tickets! Isn't this perfect?

Panel 2:

Panel 1: We've enjoyed the water slides, joined a 3-person relay race,

Panel 2: and the wave pool. And even after that, we continued swimming.

Shirou's written aside: I shouldn't stare.

Panel 3:

Rider's aside: Well, if it isn't,

Rider's aside: Shirou, Rin and even Saber?

Panel 4:

Rin: Impressive as always, huh?

Panel 5:

Box 1: She intended to swim alone, but she ended up playing beach ball with us

Rin: Since's Rider is here, shouldn't we take advantage of this?

Rider: fu fu... I wonder if you are saying that to take advantageous of my height...

Shirou: Huh?

Saber: Hmmmmm

Panel 5:

Box 1: We've ran into two certain servants and before I knew, we've already start playing with them.

Box 2: I wonder why they bother coming here today?

Cu: Shouldn't you be pulling your punches?

Rin: He's definitely aiming for your head.

89

panel 1

Rin: Speaking of swimming, we were using muscles we don't typically use.

Rin 2:  We're probably going to be sore tomorrow, huh?

Shirou: My noses still hurts.

panel 2

Shirou: Anyways, we're going to have dinner soon, but…

Shirou 2: are you going to be able to eat anything, Toshaka?

*clunk

Panel 3:

Rin: Well, I'm so tired that I wouldn't have much an appetite.

Saber: That can be amended, Rin.  

panel 4

Shirou: Hmmmm

Panel 5:

Shirou: I've got it!

Panel 6

Clank*

Panel 7

Rin: Shirou? You know the barley tea's right here, right?

Panel 8

Shirou 1: You misunderstand. This is Dashi.

Panel 2: It's something I've already prepared.

Shirou: These containers are convenient, you know?

Panel 9:

Rin: ...typical.

Shirou: This is going to be the star for tonight's dinner.

Shirou 2: And I think it'll be something that you'll be able to eat.

Panel 10

Instruction 1: Speaking of the Dashi, here's how I made it.

Instruction 2:  Before using the konbu, you should gently wipe away any debris.

Written: Please do not scrub too forcefully

90

Panel 1

Instruction 1: Place the now cleaned konbu into one liter of water and leave it to soak overnight.

Panel 2

Instruction box 1: Take the water, transfer it into a pot, and then heat the mixture on a medium heat.

Instruction 2:

Just before the mixture boils, remove the konbu

Written sentence:　If the konbu isn't removed before the water boils, it won't taste as good

Panel 3

Instruction: Pour around 8 to 10 centi-liters of water into the stock to cool it down.

** the actual text says “80 to 100 Cubic Centimeters…but, that didn’t make sense to me. So, I converted it to something recognizable. If you feel this is more universally recognizable, feel free to convert it back to the 80 to 100 cc

It should ideally be about 90 degrees

Panel 4

Instruction 1: At this point, turn off the heat and then sprinkle in some Katsubushi

               Katsubushi: Drived bonito

Instruction 2: Once again, turn the fire on. Using a low heat, let the stock simmer until it's just about to boils

Written: Don't let the stock hit boiling point.

Panel 5:

Instruction: Remove any residue and turn the fire off

Panel 6:

Written outside the box: Tea-towel

Instruction box: When transferring the stock into another container, it is recommended that you use tools such as a strainer or a tea-towel. Most of the bonito will end up sticking to the pot.

Written note: Transfer the stock 1-2 minutes after you turn off the fire.

Panel 7:

Instruction 1: After the transfer, return the dashi back into the pot and add the salt, soy sauce, and the mirin. Again stew stock.

Instruction 2: Leave the dashi out to cool.  

Written: And now the dashi is now complete

91

Panel 1:

Shirou: ...What ingredients should I use?

Panel 2:

Instruction:

For this recipe, we'll begin by grilling the salmon. Once that is done, remove the bones and smash the fish into small pieces.  

Panel 3:

Instruction:

Dice the cucumber into thin slices

Panel 4:

Instruction: Shred both the ginger and the myoga**

Written Section: Make sure you do not mix the gingers together.

**I’ll add more details about this in the translator note

Panel 5:

Instruction:

First allow the dice cucumber soak in salt water. After it has soaked for a little while, the fruit’s natural sugars would have defused into the water. After that gently squeeze the cucumbers and set them back into the spa water. This is done to control the fruit’s moisture level.

Sound effect: Squeeze

Panel 6:

Shirou: Toshaka should be fine with this.

Panel 7:

Shirou: If this isn't enough for Saber and me, I could make something else later.

Panel 8:

Shirou: Toshaka, how's this?

PG 92

Panel 1:

Shirou: Chilled O-Chazuke.

Panel 2:

Shirou: A cool meal to eat when the refrigerated dashi or the tea is poured in. Even if you have no appetite, this'll be easy to eat.

Shirou 2:  Whenever its hot, people get a craving for shaved ice, right?

Panel 3:

Toshaka: Hmmm... I should be able to manage this.

Panel 4:

Shirou 1: Bits of Salmon, Myoga, Ginger, salted konbu, and miso

Shirou 2: have all been prepared for you. Add whatever you want, but please make sure you eat something.

93

Panel 2:

*Munch*

Rin: ....hmm

Panel 3:

Munch. Munch

Panel 4

Munch

Munch

*slurp*

Panel 5:

Rin: ...I've finished it.

Panel 6:

Saber: written:  Indeed

Saber: That’s wonderful.

Saber written 2: This is good dashi.

Rin: You know I wasn't lying about my appetite, right?

Panel 7:

Shirou: Toshaka

Panel 8:

Shirou: If you want another severing, there's still more, you know?

*smile*

Panel 9

*gulp

94:

Panel 2:

Rin: Please

Panel 3

Saber written: Shirou, I would also request another

Shirou: Yes. Yes.

Panel 4:

Rin: Hmm... The miso's pretty good

Saber: agreed!

Munch munch munch munch munch munch

panel 5

Rin: I'll be trying it with tea....

Rin 2: Is this my third bowl...?

Saber: The salted konbu is also good.

Shirou: I'm really enjoying the myoga and ginger.

Panel 6

Well

Rin: That was satisfying

Panel 8:

Rin: Sooome how, I'm feeling quite energetic now

Panel 9:

Rin 1: All right, Shirou!

Rin 2: Here's another request!

Rin 3:  If you give me a massage, I'll make a complete recovery!

Shirou: Seriously?

95

Without further ado, Chilled O-Chazuke

Left side

(Ingredients) for four people

As much rice as you want

2-3 servings of salted salmon

1-2 rolls of cucumber

1-2 buds of Myouga

1 piece of Ginger

A proper amount of salted konbu

A proper amount of white sesame

Dashi

1 L of Water

10 G Dashi Konbu

20-25 G of Katsuobushi

A:

1 Table spoon of natural salt

               (or 2/3 tea spoons of Refined salt)

A little bit of soy sauce

1 Tea spoon of Mirin

(Arrow underneath this box): Regarding the soy sauce's color and scent, a thin soy sauce is ideal for the stock. However, regular/dark soy sauce would also work in this recipe.

Sesame Miso paste

60 G (about 4 table spoons) of Miso

20 G (about 2 Table spoons) of white Sesame

1 Table spoon of Mirin

1. Grind the sesame with something like a mortar

2. Add the miso, mirin, and continue grinding until you can smell a pleasant aroma

(note) If you do not have a mortar, then you can crush the seeds with your fingers and mix the ingredients with a spoon

(note) If you use white miso paste, then Mirin becomes unnecessary

Right Side:

How to make the Dashi

1. Before using the konbu, you should gently wipe away any debris.(The white spots on the surface are actually quite flavorful and is where the amino acids build up on the konbu)

2. Place the now cleaned konbu into one liter of water and leave it to soak overnight.

               bubble connected to 2: If you are using instant dashi, then you can skip this step

3. Transfer the contents of step 2 into a pot and then turn the stove on medium heat.

Before boiling the mixture, remove the Konbu.

(Note) If you boil the mixture with the konbu, the konbu will lose its flavor.

Whenever you boil konbu, a sea-scented, but humid vapor will steam out as well

(Note) When you use something like Dashi konbu over regular konbu, you should know that the dashi konbu already has a milder flavor. Thus, letting the mixture (from step 2) sit overnight, the flavor would be light enough that heating it up wouldn't be necessary.

4. Add somewhere between 8 to 10 centiliters of water to cool (Ideally, you'll do this when the water is 90 Degrees Celsius)

5. Turn the fire off and add the Katsuobuji. Then turn the fire back on hot heat and heat the mix until it’s just about to boil.  

6. The heat will denature scum from the mixture. So, after you turn off the fire, use things like a tea-towel and a streamer to filter and transfer the dashi. While you are pouring the dashi, the katsubuji will stick to the bottom of the pot.

(note) After turning off the fire, it's recommended to wait about 1-2 minutes before transferring the mixture.

If the dashi is left out for too long, the taste will be negatively impacted and stink up the area you have left it in.

7. Return the dashi into the pot, add the ingredients from step A, and then let it boil. After that, let the dashi cool down. (Typical dashi will be finished at step 6)

 How to make the O-Chazuke

1. Grill the salmon, remove the bones from the body and chop up the body.

               Bubble: Canned Tuna, Roasted minced chicken, or something like eggs would also be delicious alternatives

2. Dice the cucumber into thin slices and shred both the ginger and myoga.

Soak the dice cucumber soak in salt water. After the sugar has defused into the water, regulate the cucumber's moisture by gently squeezing the fruit. After that, you may set the now lighter fruit back into the spa water.

3. To prepare the meal, set your favorite toppings onto the rice, pour the cool dashi or tea and then enjoy!! Depending on the weather and the temperature, you might enjoy adding ice to the meal.

(note) To those that mind sticky food, washing the rice in cold water will mitigate how sticky the dish will be.

 (Last topic box on the right) In Katsuou Dashi, the kind of Katsubushi used has some drastic differences

Arabushi-style bonito flakes typically used for things like udon. It is typically used in cooking that demands a richer flavor.

Karebushi-style bonito flakes is typically used for things like soups and stews. Use this when you wish to bring out the flavor of the other ingredients.

Bubble: While this recipe is written with the intention of using Karebushi, Arabushi is fine.

At the Japanese Super Market, you might notice that konbu product names are shortened to save space. So, if "Katsuofushi(かつおふし)" is written in Japanese, then it is Arabushi. If its "Katsuo Karebushi（かつおかれぶし）", then it is Karebushi.

96

(TL: it's time for a Jojo Reference!)

Menacing!

Menacing!

#Today's Menu For Emiya Family #Emiya-san Chi no Kyou no Gohan #translation

[yakumtsaki]

Take your hands off me, I don't belong to you, you see, and take a look at my face for the last time, I never knew you, you never knew me, say hello.. ♪

WAVE GOODBYE. 

WHADDUP PPL. Much like Ronroneo, we’re back from the dead and ready for a whole new generation of Union fuckery. We’re also officially.. drumroll.. MIDDLE CLASS. Our shiny new house is based on this one by frottana-sims​, which I downloaded but dumbassly forgot to install, and since loading the game takes a hot half-hour I opted for this poor recreation instead. We start the extreme home makeover with an incredible budget of..

...Yea, I see the value of getting 6 pets to the top of their careers now. Included in this insane sum is the 20k+ that Wyatt and Jojo brought with them moving in, and at first I’m worried that we’re way too rich for only generation 2. Well, careful what you wish for, cause here’s our post-remodeling budget:

LMAO. It’s as if not a day has passed since Vic started this legacy with a dream in her heart and crap to her name. Let’s check out the new digs!

Everything was purple.. his pills.. his hands.. his foyer. 

As eagle-eyed readers may observe, both the hall and the living room were designed with nothing else in mind but whether they matched our cat paintings. Per legacy rules I use as little cc as possible, which isn’t that hard since I feel this bizarre, angular and hugely impractical couch really encapsulates Jojo’s essence. Like if he was a servant in Beauty and the Beast this would be his furniture form.

Apparently the only things I deemed important enough to capture were the cat portraits, so it looks like my Komeization is finally complete! Here’s some floorplan shots tho so you don’t get disoriented in our labyrinth-like mansion. Please note our amazing pink-blue-purple kitchen! Barbie’s Dreamhouse who??

And here’s the second floor, which also illustrates the exact point I ran out of money. Honestly looking back I don’t understand how the fuck this place cost 70k?? Like nothing is particularly expensive except the amazing vintage batmobile which was around 30-40k and some of the paintings? But I guess all the small things add up in the end + I’m super bad with money..

..and I’m not the only one. Jojo GET A FUCKING GRIP and A JOB. Literally no comment @ your cat wants, you inherited the jaw, wasn’t that enough??? ANYWAY. I know the question on everyone’s mind is how is Wyatt going to fit in with the Unions.. and all I have to say about that..

..is LOL. Truly the perfect career for when your mother-in-law is a criminal mastermind and your husband is a serial killer! I mean the jokes practically write themselves. At least he doesn’t want 10 kids or any shit like that, cause I’ve seen hell and it was the result of mixing Jojo/Wyatt genes in cas.

On top of gifting us with his future-probably-fug children, Wyatt also gives us the gift of our first ever kitchen fire when he decides to make dinner with 1 cooking point. His generosity really knows no bounds.

It’s all fun and games now but Wyatt deadass almost died in the inferno and was about to take poor, stupid Komei with him, who of course ran to the fire even though he was in the yard. Meanwhile Victoria was safely watching tv and didn’t move while Jojo..

..was doing this in the next room. Two types of sims I guess!

-So Wyatt, you’ve been here for almost an hour now, burned down our kitchen and I still don’t see any grandchildren. I thought you were a family sim!

-Haha oh mom, you’re hilarious! Ignore her, Wyatt, let’s enjoy your delicious pasta.. It was definitely worth almost dying for.

-Your mama is right, mon cheri, not only do you have an obligatión to your famille but I rolled the want to have a bébé the second we graduated!

-Well it’s still gonna be there when we aren’t broke, Wyatt, god!

-But.. bébés, mon cheri! Tons of bébés I can have but never interact with, in typical famille sim fashión!

-UGH thanks a lot for opening this gate, mom. If only you had found your love of children when I was living on cat food.

-Well it’s different when they are your children, everyone knows that.

-THAT’S NOT WHY PEOPLE SAY THAT MOM

-Honestly, Jojό, I’m prouder of taking down your répugnant suitόrs than I am of graduating with honors!

-Aww Wyatt <3

-And if I have to souffrir through a childless existence to be with mon amour, so be it (:

-Aw- wait what?!

-Really, c’est bien, Jojό, marriage is all about compromise, nό? I mean, not that I would know since we’re not even married yet!

-Wyatt we’ve been here for 3 hours.

-My point précisément.. C’est bien though!

-Can’t believe I’m saying this but I really regret murdering Ti-Ning. 

That makes two of us, Jo. Honestly even Francis would be better than this. Family sim spouse??? Tf was I thinking. 

Ah, some things never change <3 It’s a new day and someone very special passes by our lot..

UGH NO not you asshole, once again delivering bills at the worst possible time.

-Miss me bitch?? Lolol

ONE OF THESE DAYS DAGMAR. ONE OF THESE DAYS ISTG

No, it’s mismatched beard townie, whose regular outfit is simply iconic, and he’s waving at me! What a sweetheart! TAKE SOME NOTES DAGMAR YOU FROZEN-FACED FREAK

-Umm he’s actually waving at me, moron.

-WRONG, he’s waving at me!

Ok it literally doesn’t matter who he’s waving at. 

-Well c’est moi. 

OK WHATEVER WYATT GOD. Just go off to work in a position you’re criminally unqualified for and try not to die ok??

-Why would I mourir?

Hm let’s see, maybe because you’re a ‘SWAT Team Leader’ straight out of college with a shocking lack of skill points?? Jfc college degrees in this game are so fucking op it’s legit making me resentful of my sims.

In other news, major dicks Sophie and Victor have started constantly beating each other up and the only thing surprising about this development is that it took this long. Honestly these fights are peak #TeamNoOne. Please note Alegra who continues to give 0 fucks @ the bloodshed. What a gal <3

Burning with religious fervor, fundamentalist nutjob Sophie emerges victorious!

-I WALK WITH GOD BITCH

Tears. Literal tears. Victor is the most unbelievable creature I have ever played.

-The rampant violence in this house is a violation of human rights! I AM OUTTA HERE

Literally still cannot believe this happened, like the sheer NERVE is killing me. Victor has started every fight he’s ever been in for an astounding total of 40-50 fights, and as you all know he almost always wins. Like this one was what? The fourth one he lost?? AND YET HE RUNS AWAY LIKE HE’S THE VICTIM I HATE/LOVE HIM SO MUCH

Meanwhile this happens which, of course. Leave it to me to finally get a chance card right for the only sim who doesn’t even deserve the job he currently has.

..Police Chief Wyatt reporting for duty! And crime increased 80% overnight. 

In actual good and not lawsuit-waiting-to happen news, Wyatt brought Amanda, Vic’s only friend/lesbian crush with him! Amanda has the distinct honor of being literally the only non-Union non-Jojo person Vic has ever genuinely liked and hasn’t had an affair with. YET THAT IS.

Man, these are some fat fucking flies. I’m talking 10 plagues of Egypt teas. 

-I KNOW, where the fuck is Komei, what are we paying him for?

-I’m over here honey, talking to my least favorite son for the second time in my life, since apparently he’s sticking around.

-Yes, thanks for requesting a recount of the heir vote, dad. I will remember it when I decide where to scatter your ashes. 

-I TOLD YOU I WANT THEM MIXED WITH THE CAT LITTER 

Ugh Komei, please stop trying to bond with your son and do something productive instead-

-like finally convincing Neo to bang Sophie. She has refused 3 TIMES because there’s a rule I have to earn kittens by suffering. I mean Alegra refusing to procreate with Victor made sense, it was Victor, wtf is Sophie’s excuse? Waiting for marriage?

ABOUT TIME

YAS. CAT GEN 3 ON THE WAY. Human gen 3 will have to wait till I’m in the mood to deal with screaming infants aka it might take a while.

The science career FINALLY SHOWS UP after 5 fucking days, jfc. Love how Wyatt’s dumb ass started as a swat team LEADER but Jojo who has half the skills maxed starts as a science teacher. Also love the idea of Jojo as a teacher in general, I mean just imagine having him teach you science in high school. I would literally drop out.

Jojo returns from work, brings this rando with him and doesn’t get promoted. We can’t all be Wyatt I guess! We’re not completely broke anymore tho so..

It is time.

Gunther, Melody and Max Flexor on one side..

Craig, Brit Brit, Ti-Ning and Daniel on the other. What a bunch of assholes, Craig obviously excluded. Remember him? I invited him because he and Jojo are still semi-friends thinking he wouldn’t show up and yet here he is! What a good guy. 

-It’s at moments like this, watching your high school boyfriend get married.. that you really get to thinking..

Awww.

-..there but for the grace of god go I.

Less awww. You’re not wrong tho, definitely dodged a sociopathic bullet..

..not everyone is that lucky. WE GET IT WYATT YOU’RE CRAZY AND IN LOVE

-Mon bien adoré, I vow to aimer and honόr you and not cheat on you again or at least be more discrete about it <3

-And I vow not to kill you and feed you to the cats for as long as we both shall live <3 

Ah, true love, you guys. 

Too bad half our guests are inside dancing-

-OR HAVING COMPLETELY INAPPROPRIATE AND UNTIMELY THOUGHTS. TI-NING SERIOUSLY GO TO HELL. I WAS ROOTING FOR YOU WE WERE ALL ROOTING FOR YOU HOW DARE YOU

Well at least Vic is excited which is more than I can say for Gunther who is literally LOOKING THE OTHER WAY. 

Time to cut the cake with the sky as our only witness, since everyone has taken a plate from the buffet and fucked off inside. Seriously WORST GUESTS EVER 

Not one to be outdone by his guests’ questionable behavior, Wyatt takes the time to remind us who he really is. 

-And n'est-ce pas forget it!

Despite all the obvious problems, like one of the grooms literally going to sleep, our party score is ‘good time’ which is a truly rare and exciting occurrence. With less than a minute left I’m feeling pretty confident that nothing can ruin this wedding!

Weirdly no one has touched the champagne even though sims in general are obsessed with it?? My best guess is everyone is at a loss for words at having to toast this union and who can blame them tbh. Thankfully Daniel steps up and I find it super sweet because I’ve forgotten that he and Wyatt are mortal enemies and it’s only by chance they haven’t beaten each other up on this instance like they have countless times before.

-Let’s all raise a glass to my beloved brother, Jojo, who generously woke up to attend his own wedding reception! Just one of many examples of his fine, giving character. Too bad he’s committing his life to a complete waste of space adulterous loser like Wyatt, who I’m not even convinced is really french, since his ability to speak and understand english fluctuates according to convenience. Man, I promised myself I wouldn’t cry, but this choice in spouse is just too tragic. Oh well! To Jojo!

NOICE, still a good time. SO CLOSE

AND YET SO FAR. Goddammit do you two mind killing each other on your own time and not literally 10 seconds before our wedding ends??

-DIE WHORE, THIS WILL TEACH YOU TO STEAL MY MAN

-THAT’S MY LINE SLUTBAG

-HA! ZUMBA, BITCH

-Wow, so glad I woke up for this, really got my bloodlust going! 

Indeed a roaring success if there ever was one. I mean how can this night possibly get any better?

.............of course.

Oh nice, I remembered to install an alarm for once! I’m also desperately trying to wake up Wyatt thinking that he’s fucking CHIEF OF POLICE so he might prove useful in this situation..

..especially since we get this cop of a completely untrustworthy Bieber hairstyle. Talk about striking fear in the heart.

Sadly it turns out that Wyatt could not give less of a shit that we’re getting robbed and picks this moment to head for wedding buffet leftovers-

-while Bieber cop prevails! This robber is awesomely named Russ Bear btw and I wish that was my name, sounds like a slavic medieval folkore hero. But I digress. Please prepare yourselves because our first robbery is about to take a dark turn.

-Ehh, you get at a certain level on la force, you just become desensitized to la criminalité..

-Oh don’t worry Wyatt, I totally understand.. I mean I’ve robbed so many houses in my time, I hardly blink anymore..

-So it looks like you and I are not so different after all.. ;)

.............

.....................

............................why. why has the universe chosen me for the greatest suffering the world has ever known. i try and i try but incestuous relationships just keep sprawling like mythical strangler vines. i bet this wouldn’t happen to someone named Russ Bear. fml

#ts2 #gen 2

[prfm-uk]

Get to Know Me Uncomfortably Well (Filled Out)

@southeastasyano wanted me to completely fill out these 100 questions and a bonus one, and an anonymous asker wanted me to answer just a few. So here ya go! Go on and stalk me, young ones.

For the questions below the cut, I tag: @southeastasyano, @fukigen-na-boy, @prfm-au, @prfm-us, @housekinoame, @cosmog-explorer, @jenmarii, @chrism-sol, @p-r-f-m, @securitylucy, @a-chan-san and @jeffhardys!

What is your middle name? I never use it on my passports or regularly, but I do have a middle name. But I don’t wanna say it >///<

How old are you? I am currently 17 years old!

When is your birthday? June 24th!

What is your zodiac sign? Cancer (yes, I’m that mentally unstable b*tch)

What is your favorite color? Green all the f*cking way!!

What’s your lucky number? 3

Do you have any pets? I had two fish, but they died when I was 11 :’(

Where are you from? While I was born in London, United Kingdom, my family originates from Sri Lanka

How tall are you? I am 6 foot 1 inch.

What shoe size are you? I am only UK size 7.

How many pairs of shoes do you own? I own only five pairs of shoes.

What was your last dream about? It was a dream in which my best friend committed suicide... Yeah, it was grim, and was more of a nightmare :(

What talents do you have? I am pretty good when it comes to learning foreign languages, and I play piano maybe kinda semi-decently well? I can also do that thing where I can show the red bit inside my eyes, and I can fit my whole fist in my mouth.

Are you psychic in any way? Ask @prfm-us

Favourite song? ‘New Americana’ by Halsey or ‘I Know Places’ by Taylor Swift or ‘Warm Blood’ by Carly Rae Jepsen...

Favourite movie? It would have to be ‘The Emoji Movie’

Who would be your ideal partner? James Wright <3 Well, he is my bf so, um, yay?

Do you want children? Yup, I’d love to see my kid go through life and me be like “ha, I remember when I went through that shizz”

Do you want a church wedding? Well, I’m a Buddhist and I don’t know how they do weddings, so I guess I’d be fine with a civil ceremony of sorts..?

Are you religious? Not at all, and I’m not really sad about it either.

Have you ever been to the hospital? So many f*cking times, honestly. Some weren’t as bad, whereas there is one in particular that will always be my worst ever day alive.

Have you ever got in trouble with the law? Nope, I’m pretty submissive with the law, I’m too scared of punishment haha

Have you ever met any celebrities? When I was in primary school, I was chosen to go meet the Queen and that was pretty cool. We gave her like this bouquet of flowers and she didn’t seem very appreciative. (Just kidding, I love you, Lizzie)

Baths or showers? I prefer baths, but I always have showers because otherwise I might never come out.

What colour socks are you wearing? I’m wearing black socks which say “Thursday” in green font. And yes, it is Thursday where I am, my OCD is too much.

Have you ever been famous? Well, Kyary tweeted my video once and I f*cking YELLED, but no, I’m pretty irrelevant!

Would you like to be a big celebrity? No haha, I wouldn’t be able to handle that much attention to be honest.

What type of music do you like? Electropop, I guess is what it is. I also like modern 80s pop (does that make sense) and also EDM.

Have you ever been skinny dipping? No, haha, I think that just isn’t a very common thing in Britain.

How many pillows do you sleep with? Just one, under my head.

What position do you usually sleep in? I sleep like a fetus does in the womb. Enjoy that mental image.

How big is your house? 3 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms. Not amazing, but my family is somewhat well-off.

What do you typically have for breakfast? Basic cereal, generally.

Have you ever fired a gun? Yup, I spent a short while in my school’s combined cadet force before deciding that it wasn’t for me.

Have you ever tried archery? No, I think I have terrible hand-eye co-ordination anyway haha

Favorite clean word? If you mean normal, random word, then my favourite is kumquat.

Favorite swear word? My favourite swear word on it’s own is c*nt because I love how it rolls off the tongue, it just sounds like pure spite. In an insult, definitely f*cknut or f*cktard is a common resort for me.

What’s the longest you’ve ever gone without sleep? 4 days, powered by a coffee each day. And I wasn’t even tired, people basically forced me to have coffee.

Do you have any scars? I have one on my leg from a surgery where they put a metal screw in my hip to make sure that it grew straight (well I didn’t turn out straight, but my leg did). Also, I still have a few old ones on my thighs and wrists...

Have you ever had a secret admirer? Ahahahahahaha, as if anyone would go to that effort over someone like me.

Are you a good liar? If I do say so myself, yes, I am. Or was I lying there?!?!?!?!

Are you a good judge of character? Ask @prfm-us

Can you do any other accents other than your own? I can do an LA valley accent..?

Do you have a strong accent? I have a strong British accent, and then I have a semi-strong Essex accent layered on top, so words like “fam” and “lit” just sneak their way into my speech.

What is your favourite accent? Canadian and Australian are my favs!!

What is your personality type? Unstable, but caring..? <3

What is your most expensive piece of clothing? I have a £45 tie that someone gave me as a bday gift. Yes, I don’t get spending tons on clothes...

Can you curl your tongue? I can do it into a U shape and that weird W shape thingy.

Are you an innie or an outie? Innie. Is this really helpful information to you?

Left or right handed? Right handed!

Are you scared of spiders? DON’T GET ME STARTED. I get terrified of the world’s smalliest spiders and I will legit scream and chuck my phone across the room and everyone else will just be confused.

Favorite food? Profiteroles..?

Favorite foreign food? Um, maybe, poutine? Tim Horton’s? Basically I love Canada.

Are you a clean or messy person? Clean, always clean. I cannot function in a messy environment.

Most used phrase? “I put the SAD in Social Anxiety Disorder”. Yes, I am too real sometimes.

Most used word? Well, it’s probably “the”, “a” or “lopsided”

How long does it take for you to get ready? Literally around ten minutes.

Do you have much of an ego? I mean, I don’t have a shred of self-confidence, so no..?

Do you suck or bite lollipops? I don’t know what this shows about my gay self, but I suck... yeah.

Do you talk to yourself? When I’m intensely lonely or need to calm myself down.

Do you sing to yourself? All the time. I cannot listen to any music without dancing and/or singing to it.

Are you a good singer? Hell no!

Biggest fear? Losing those who are closest to me. Oh, and f*cking spiders.

Are you a gossip? Nope, I guess i’m just not in that circle.

Best dramatic movie you’ve seen? I can’t name the best I’ve ever watched, but I recently watched a British-made film called “I, Daniel Blake” and I really liked it.

Do you like long or short hair? Short hair.

Can you name all 50 states of America? No, I’m British.

Favourite school subject? German or Physics!

Extrovert or Introvert? Introvert 100%

Have you ever been scuba diving? Yup, I’ve been in Sri Lanka

What makes you nervous? The dark and silence.

Are you scared of the dark? Oh, I just accidentally answered that. Yes, I am.

Do you correct people when they make mistakes? Only when it’s appropriate, I don’t want to bother people!

Are you ticklish? VERY ticklish! If you touch my neck, I’ll be on the floor in a few seconds.

Have you ever started a rumour? No haha I’d get baited out so quickly.

Have you ever been in a position of authority? I was an editor for my school newspaper? I mean, it wasn’t that thrilling at all

Have you ever drank underage? In the UK, the legal drinking age is 18, I’m 17, and although I’ve never gotten hammered or drunk vodka and stuff like that, I have had very light alcohol for the taste!

Have you ever done drugs? God no, and I intend never to!

Who was your first real crush? Ugh, it seems so immature when I see it now, but there was this cute guy called Josh in my class who kept paying so much attention to me, so I asked him out, and he was like “How’d you know I was gay? Oh, and I’m not interested”. Yeah, I cried that night haha

How many piercings do you have? None!

Can you roll your ‘R’s? I can <3

How fast can you type? Around 75 words-per-minute (I used an online typing test just now!)

How fast can you run? I think I run pretty slow! In school, I was just average, in the middle, but I’m not going to be winning any fun-runs :P

What colour is your hair? Jet black, but any other colour would look out out place on my brown skin :D

What colour are your eyes? A relatively dark brown, but they are still visibly brown in the sun.

What are you allergic to? Nothing, as far as I know :)

Do you keep a journal? I keep a kinda mood tracking thingamajig through an app called ‘Pacifica’. It’s great for anyone tackling stress or any mental disorders such as depression, anxiety, bipolar, etc. But other than that, I don’t keep a journal as such, no.

What do your parents do? My father is a physiotherapist, and my mother is a fraud investigator; she works for the government to find people who are illegally claiming benefits.

Do you like your age? No, because it’s too ‘in the middle’! If I was below the age of 14, I’d be able to relax and be pretty carefree, and if I was above the age of, say 25, I wouldn’t be studying random crap that will never come up in the future and will actually be doing worthwhile things. Instead, I’m 17 and I need to study stuff that won’t come up even in my degree, and it’s almost impossible to find motivation right now.

What makes you angry? People making mistakes when I literally warned them not to; they were just that f*cking ignorant.

Do you like your own name? Some people know, but no, I don’t like my name. I feel like it just sounds a weird, so whenever I tell someone my name, I always include some disclaimer like ‘Oh, it’s a weird Asian name’.

Have you already thought of baby names, and if so what are they? Nope, I haven’t thought of any! I mean, unless I name my kids Dan and Phil...

Do you want a boy a girl for a child? Call me sexist, but I want a boy!

What are you strengths? I can fit my whole fist in my mouth, and I’m pretty good at languages.

What are your weaknesses? I’m quite sensitive and sometimes I get carried away with jokes.

How did you get your name? Well, my parents called over some kinda psychic name-giver as soon as I was born, and they’d use my star sign, read my palm and use God knows whatever info they could make up, and then name me based on it. That gave me ‘Yasath’, which I’m pretty sure means ‘treasure’ or something.

Were your ancestors royalty? No, but they were pretty high up in government jobs :]

Do you have any scars? That’s Question 39, so just refer back to that :3

Colour of your bedspread? It is white and brown. Hey, it’s like me! Sorry, bad joke.

Colour of your room? It has generic, textured cream (I think) wallpaper.

Does it ever get better? I like to think so, and it’s usually the only shred of hope I have left. But if you think it will never get better, then it won’t ever get better, because you won’t let it get better! So yeah, just have that small light at the end of the tunnel in mind whenever you’re starting to lose hope in yourself <3

Jeeeeeeez, that was long! I hope someone enjoyed that at least haha

#me #random facts #stalk #tag #filled out #prfmuk tags #sorry it's so long! #that's what she said

[invincible-selfxmade-punk]

Pull Me Under

Warning:  Long Post, no 

I really wanted to talk about what happened to me this week.

 Will I survive the night on my own?

I am a workaholic because my dad was a workaholic and he's the one who raised me I was raised and told that to ask for help is a sign of weakness. To show weakness is a sign of weakness, to tell the truth when someone asks you how you are is a sign of weakness, to slow down on any level is a sign of weakness.

 My dad live by these rules and unfortunately that caused him to die younger than he should have, falling cancer when he was normally pretty healthy.  It is also this mentality that allowed me to survive when I was left to be an orphan at the age of 20 and it is how I have lived my life since.

 However it is something that I feel needs to change now in order for me to live longer, You do not have to live your entire life in this fashion in order to survive or in order to impress people.

 I have always prided myself on not taking sick days on coming to work no matter how bad I felt and finishing my shifts because in the back of my mind I thought that any time I ever told my boss I was too sick to work they thought I was lazy, and I would go on the list of the first person to be fired if the opportunity came up.  It has always been my way to hide how I really feel, how sick I truly am, because in the long run no one cares but me anyway, and if somebody else can see that and use it as against me, somehow they're going to do it.  In the last TEN YEARS I have taken less than ten sick days from work.

 My first year teaching has changed all that because I got sick about every 2 months,  as soon as I was over one thing I was sick with something else. I had ten sick days to play with but I also had to work from 7 a.m. to 4 p.m. 5 days a week which meant I would have to take time off at some point doctor's appointments to keep myself healthy and that would eat up into my sick day time.  I think I ended the year with two days to spare and I was not going to mess with it.  

 I woke up Sunday morning knowing I was sick.  I had slept with the windows open and a cold front came in.  I could feel it growing colder but could do nothing because I was so exhausted I could not wake myself up enough to get out of bed and close them.  I woke up with chills, aches and a sore throat.  I ignored it.  I went to work.  I lasted until noon, went home and went to bed.  I should have called in for Tuesday but I did not I went to work. I had spent all of Monday freezing under 2 blankets with the heater turned up to 80 degrees.  But because I also did get some sleep and because that little bit of asleep I felt OK Tues. morning I made myself go to work.  I work the full day but  by the time it was time to go home,  I could not walk myself to my car.

 I have been fighting anxiety and dizzy spells for about a month-and-a-half so having to have someone walk me to my car really wasn't an alarm ball for me.  When I got home I tried to open some Gatorade and was shocked to find that I was too weak to get it open.  I don't own the thermometer which is something I need to change but I knew I was having a fever.  I started taking Tylenol PM but it did nothing it did not help my fever and it did not help me sleep.

 It would just so happen that I posted my symptoms to Facebook. A friend I barely knew that I had met through the Deuce fandom told me you need to go to the doctor right away you have pneumonia.  And I hate to say it but my first thought was “kid you're half my age what do you know?”.  But it did alarm me b/c he had the exact same symptoms. My sister Toni called and asked if I wanted her friend Cathy to take me to the dr.  Now normally I turn down offers like this.  Toni is now my only living sister, my family period really, and still sees me as being twelve.   And I would rather walk on broken glass than ask for help.  However I found myself agreeing to it ---maybe because of what the kid had said on Facebook--- but I still decided to go….. just not right away. I had not slept at all that night and I told my sister give me a chance to get some sleep.  The clinic I go to is open late, I could go in the afternoon .  However in the back of my own mind I was even thinking “well if you feel better after your nap just tell her you decide not to go and don't go.”

 The problem was, I couldn’t sleep, and I was getting worse. The appointed time came around I decided it was time to get out of bed………... only problem was I couldn't I couldn't make it more than two or three steps without being so overwhelmed so exhausted and dizzy I pretty much had to sit down wherever I was.  This was a problem because it is a long walk from where my house is to the driveway where you park your car as my house is in the middle of a field.  My sister’s bf Cathy is a small firecracker of a woman who could go toe to toe with the devil but is about one fourth my size.  I could not use her as a human crutch to get to the car. Again my first inclination was “go back to bed and sleep it off, go back to the doctor when you feel better” which is so ass-backwards it’s stupid, but I swear that’s how I felt.  I nearly called and told her not to come back but thank god I didn’t.  Cathy, being the resourceful woman that she is, drover her SUV through the field and up to my door.  I got into the car and she took me to the clinic.  At the clinic everyone stared because I needed a wheelchair to be brought in.

 Now let me discuss another component of why I have been reluctant to go to the doctor.  I have been going to a small clinic since I moved home and I really like it.  I recently found out that the guy I had a crush on my entire senior year of high school and freshman year of college is a nurse practitioner there whom I have not seen in 25 years. These stupid narcissistic fifteen-year-old in me would always say “Don’t go!  You look like shit and what if you get him as the one who sees you.”   I knew he worked there from calling in to get lab results from my last bouts with dizziness in April where I was given a clean bill of health.  I called the clinic to get my results only to have a friendly voice call me by my maiden name and ask (already knowing the damn answer) if I remembered him.

 So anyway at 3 pm Cathy wheels me in in the wheelchair and asked me if I want her to stay. I am already feeling guilty because she has offered to go get me some groceries which I desperately need and obviously can't get for myself so I tell her no there's no need for her to waste more time by waiting for me at the clinic just go ahead get the groceries I'll call her when the appointment is over just because I'm pretty sure they're just going to give me a prescription and send me back home.  The nurse takes my information, takes my blood pressure pulse and temperature then wheels me into another room where my worst nightmare comes true.  

 Lo and behold here comes My High School Crush. Only this time there is no witty banter no hey how you doing.  He looks at me and says   “You are very sick you need to be in the hospital.  If you were just dropped off here, I am going to call you an ambulance right now.”  He even gave me back my copay!   I know this is serious.   I called Cathy and told her she had to come back. Normal blood pressure is 120/80 and mine has always run just slightly lower than that.  A resting pulse rate for me is 85-99.   When my vitals were checked at the clinic my bp was 80/40, my pulse was 120 and I had 102 fever.

 I didn’t feel like my pulse was that fast, I wasn’t having no trouble breathing, I was just weak and tired.    BUT THAT’S JUST IT.  I’M A TEACHER, I AM ALWAYS FUCKING TIRED….just not hat bad. I got into the ER just as a trauma is coming in on an Angel Flight.  I know I’m going to be there a whle and tell Cathy to go home because there’s nothing she can do for me anymore anyway and I don’t want her to see me this sick.   My ex would never take me to the ER when I was sick, always made me go alone because he “hates hospitals, and get bored there’ so I was used to being in the ER alone. I wait about 30 min in the waiting room which honestly is not bad.   One they take my vitals they whisk me back to a bed.   They had to stick me 3 times to get an IV going, took blood, tried to catheterize me FIVE TIMES which left me literally screaming in pain (my lady parts are quite small and delicate).  I am given THREE bags of IV fluids before they can start to stabilize me.  But I’m too sick and exhausted to even be scared.

 I mean, I was scared, I knew it was serious and i prayed a lot but I literally did not have the energy to expend on being scared and worried. Those are the times I miss having someone with me.  Not in the waiting room but in the back to hold my hand when I’m getting stuck with needles and poked at and shit.  Just someone to tell me “It’s gonna be okay.”    But I didn’t have it and I haven’t that in so long I have learned to survive without it.    Every orderly, and nurse I saw (didn’t see a doctor for 4 hours) told me:  “You are one sick lady”.   But I was not in any pain, I could breathe fine, I was just so tired.

  A lady comes to go over my information.  I am asked if my sister Terri is still my emergency contact and I have to say the words “No she died two weeks ago” and it is hardest thing to say.  I wanted to follow it up “in this very ER” but I don’t.    As they are wheeling me down the halls to get a CAT scan on my chest I see the inside of the hospital really for the first time and it hits me fully:  THE LAST TIME I WAS IN THIS HOSPITAL WAS WHEN MY MOM DIED WHEN I WAS 12 AND NOTHING HAS CHANGED.   So now not only am I middle aged, helplessly sick and at the mercy of the world, I am also 12 years old, helpless, at the mercy of the world and watching my mom die.  Every door we pass looks like the door to the room she died in.

Now I know why I had nightmares of hospitals all the time when I was in college.  It never made sense then but it does now.  It was this hospital I was dreaming of and now I’m right back there.

 At 8 pm I am told I have pneumonia and am “septic”, which I had to literally google when I got home.  I knew it was not a good thing to be and always thought it meant your blood had been poisoned.    At 9 pm I am told I am being admitted.  At 10 pm I meet some of the nicest nurses I have ever met in my life in the ICU unit. The exact same ICU unit and quite possibly same room my mom spent a good deal of the last days of her life in as well.   On my fifth bag of IV fluid my pulse has only gone down to 108 and my blood pressure has only poked up to 96/56.   I am tied to so many machines I feel like I’m in the Matrix.  I don’t sleep for three days and getting out of bed to walk two steps to the toilet (which I am now having to do every 15 min b/c of the IV fluids) is enough to leave me out of breath and push my pulse rate back up.   This is also hard because of all the tubing and leads attached to me that I must pull, balance and not step on or let get tangled.  The bed is an ergonomic nightmare that is impossible to get up from even though it is just inches off the floor. It takes 10 bags of IV fluids, 3 bags of antibiotics, 3 shots in the stomach for blood thinner (PAINFUL) and three bags of potassium and magnesium before my vitals get to anywhere near the normal range. There are literally pages more I could write but I am still recovering and need some sleep.

#hospitals #sickness #family #being alone #living alone #fucking adulthood #medical #ER #ICU #hometown #experience #personal #story #long post #sicknes #education #work #labor #first year teaching #dream job? #stress #employment #post college #life