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thebibliomancer · 3 years

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Essential Avengers: Avengers #246: GATHERINGS

August, 1984

Family feud! Guest-starring SERSI of the Eternals!

She comes!

A portent of times to come! I hear a faint rumbling of leather jackets from distant years...

Also, hey! She-Hulk! I missed you!

The Avengers have been through the Secret Wars and participated in the Wraith War! What’s next for our band of heroes?

Maybe parties? The cover makes it look like a party is going on before some Kirby-looking guys crashed.

But also? Vision’s vague scheming to raise the Avengers’ profile continues as he and Scarlet Witch take a trip to visit President Reagan and First Lady Reagan at the White House.

Weird thing is that we don’t get an unobscructed view of Reagan’s face. He’s either back to the ‘camera’ or cropped on the panel border. Weird, since this wasn’t a problem last time he appeared in this book. Y’know, the time some plant people tried to hold him for ransom? That time?

President Didn’t-Pay-for-the-Likeness-Rights thanks Vision for taking time to personally brief him on all the biz the Avengers have been up to.

President Reagan: “I wish we could talk like this more often! The National Security Council keeps me posted on your missions, but there’s nothing like getting the news firsthand.”

Vision: “I quite agree, Mr. President. In fact, I have a few suggestions for making the lines of communication between Avengers Mansion and the White House more... shall we say... direct?”

He suggests they speak in private which Reagan gladly agrees to, shooing Scarlet Witch and Mrs. Reagan out. To Scarlet Witch’s surprise because he sprang the trip on Washington on her and now he’s sprung this on her.

Also, every time Vision meets someone in private and the conversation takes place off-panel, they suddenly come around to his point of view so.... uh...

Well, I’m sure it’s fine.

Meanwhile, we get back to Captain Monica Marvel Rambeau’s subplot. Remember how she worried after getting back from Secret Wars that she had no explanation to give her family for being missing for several days? And was thinking of telling them about her secret superhero thing?

Well, she calls home to New Orleans and her presumably firefighter dad answers. I presume he’s a firefighter because there’s a firefighter hat and coat hanging up prominently in the background. We call that environmental storytelling.

Monica’s mom isn’t home so Monica asks for her parents to call her back when they’re both available.

Monica: “In a way, I’m glad momma wasn’t home. That gives me more time to figure out how I’m going to tell them that their ‘little girl’ is leading a double life... as an Avenger called Captain Marvel!”

... Geez, her costume looks so weird when there’s nobody in it.

Monica ponders just bringing it up casually by RECAPPING HER ENTIRE BACKSTORY! Which, in fairness, would be an appropriate way to handle it. But she decides that just going ‘yeah I was helping old family friend Professor LeClare investigate a secret lab on an oil platform, punched a machine, got powers, and then joined the Avengers’ would sound crazy and that there must be a better way to tell them.

I say, take it slow and ramp up. Start from ‘I have superpowers’, do a little pew pew flashlight beam and let their questions guide your explanation.

Meanwhile again but elsewhere, Wasp van Dyne is just chilling at Avengers Mansion, bumming herself out rereading the World According to Garp, and receiving a phone call from West Avengers Chairman Hawkeye.

He tells her that he found a great HQ for the new West Coast Avengers, some old silent film star’s home, and he’s overseeing renovations now.

This ongoing Hawkeye real estate subplot is to get you excited for the upcoming West Coast Avengers series. Are you?

I dread it.

Anyway, Starfox comes in after the phone call and recognizes that Janet is in a Mood. A very bored mood. A post-chairperson funk.

Wasp: “It’s just that Wanda and the Vision are in Washington... Hawkeye and his new wife are setting up a new team in California... Cap and Thor are away on missions of their own... Everybody’s doing something! Everybody but me! It’s funny, after all we’ve been through lately, especially with that horrible Magneto, you’d think I’d appreciate a little leisure time. But instead, I’m bored out of my mind!”

Magneto kissing her really teed her off if that’s what she’s focusing on from the whole Secret Wars thing and not having died.

Starfox has just the answer for Wasp’s post-Magneto-kissing blues though.

PARTY.

He was on his way to a great party and Wasp can be his plus one!

Meanwhile, on the Washington to New York plane, Vision and Scarlet Witch.

She’s confused why they didn’t just take the Quinjets that they have instead of flying on a commercial airline but Vision says that getting out among the people is just good public relations.

I mean, he’s not wrong. But also flying in public, in your costumes, seems like it runs the risk of aggroing a supervillain attack.

It doesn’t happen but I wouldn’t have been surprised if it did.

The flight attendant asks Vision if he drinks before course correcting into asking him if he wants a drink.

I don’t know what’s more amazing here. Wanda going ‘he never has coffee at home’ like that coffee ad that Airplane spoofed.

Or Vision patting himself on the back for connecting to the common man with his drink order.

Simply superb.

Back at the casa Rambeau, Maria Rambeau returns and then returns Monica’s call. Monica says she’s going to come over for dinner and then a panel later, she’s knocking on the door.

Her parents are confused because it’s a twenty-minute drive between Monica’s house and theirs but that’s just part of what Monica wants to explain to them.

I see Monica decided to just jump into her explanation.

Back in New York, Janet frets over whether she’s dressed right for the party but Starfox just dismisses that as one of Earth’s weird mores. Why, he only wears the one outfit and that’s just gonna have to be good enough.

They arrive at the party and it seems to be a hobnobbin’ sort of event, with people discussing court settlements and acting. Also, She-Hulk is there. Hi, She-Hulk!

Glad Stern found another excuse to include you after Byrne stole you away to the land of the Fantastic.

She-Hulk says she met the host at an exotic bakery shop just last week and that’s how she scored the invite.

I wonder what made these baked goods so exotic. And I’m wondering if it wasn’t actually erotic. Do I think that She-Hulk would purchase a butt cake? Yes, yes I do.

She asks Starfox how he knows the host and, well, he doesn’t. He heard about the party and decided to invite himself (and Wasp) along. I.e. crash.

But the host...

ITS SHE!

SERSI!

SHE COMES!

But the host, Sylvia Sersi, isn’t too bothered by the pair of party-crashing Avengers and has She-Hulk introduce them.

Starfox is enchanted to meet Sersi and she likewise but they’d best not be too enchanted to meet each other because I’m pretty sure they’re not too distant relations.

Mentor founded the Titan colony of the Eternals and the Eternals have all been around a while so there’s not that many branches between Starfox and Sersi, I don’t think.

Anyyyyyway.

A drunk man pauses before a mirror to tidy up his tie and gets a startle when a Watcher-looking guy that isn’t the Watcher because he has hair appears in the mirror instead of his own face.

When Sersi comes over to investigate she tells him he must have imagined it and sends the guy away for some air but then interrogates the mirror face man and calls him Domo.

Domo, in the mirror: “We need you here in Olympia! Everyone is needed for the final decision!”

Sersi: “I told you before, I don’t care! Go ahead and make your big decision! It won’t affect me, because I intend to go right on doing as I please!”

Then she turns the mirror into a picture of penguins??

Her powers are great indeed.

Although her investment in the community is less so.

Whatever this mysterious decision everyone is voting on, it is clearly less important than this rockin’ party. This party has a She-Hulk!

Back over at the Rambeaus, Monica decides to just rip off the band-aid and tell her parents that she’s Captain Marvel. They find it hard to believe so she just pulls out her costume and lightspeeds into it.

Harder to hold doubts when your daughter glows with an awesome power.

Frank Rambeau: “It’s true... my little girl’s an Avenger. Hey, that means... you’ve met Captain America!”

Frank jumping right to the important points.

Thankfully, Monica’s parents are very supportive. And actually like the Avengers. You have cool parents, Monica.

Frank Rambeau: “Monica, I don’t know what to say! The Avengers are heroes... like Cap and the Black Panther and Thor... They’re like a legend! To think that you’re one of them -- !”

Maria Rambeau: “We’re very, very proud of you, dear... Prouder than we ever thought possible!”

Very cool parents.

Meanwhile, back at the party, mirror spooked guy (apparently Harry) goes out for air like Sersi suggested and then sees something else which spooks him even harder!

He runs from the party babbling about seeing things or not seeing things and not sticking around to sort out which.

Then a bunch of goons crash the party by flying through the terrace doors.

Look at these total goons.

Starfox steps forward and tries to defuse the situation both by words

Starfox: “Easy, my friends! I’m sure you don’t want to hurt anyone!”

And by shooting pleasure beams from his mind.

Predictably, his pleasure beam, besides being creepy, can’t be allowed to be too effective.

If it actually worked we wouldn’t have conflict and plot.

So like the Hulk in Incredible Hulk #300, these dudes called Delphans just slap Starfox out of the way.

Then superhero number two steps up.

One of the Delphans say that they need to get “that witch” before she can cause them any grief and She-Hulk was in proximity and assumes they meant her and takes exception to that.

She-Hulk: “‘Witch’, huh? You wouldn’t mean me, would you? That’s a bad choice of words, but you’re right about one thing... I can give plenty of grief!”

The Delphan just immediately hits her with an energy pole which just pisses off She-Hulk and ruins her party dress. Thankfully she had the unstable molecules FF costume on underneath.

She dresses in layers.

Delphan: “You’re still standing? But that photon-burst would have stunned the mighty Karkas!”

She-Hulk: “You stupid jerk! Do you have any idea how hard it is to find nice things in my size?!”

She-Hulk and Starfox start beating on the Delphans but its Sersi’s party and she can shoot eye beams if she wants to, eye beams if she wants to.

Sersi: “I should have known Domo would send you Delphans after me! Well, it won’t work! You’re not taking me away without a fight!”

Not just eyebeams but apparently a piggifying beam!

A singing piggifying beam!

Oh, sure, the Delphan says that its a transmutive ability but I know whats what.

Her name is Sersi, which is like Cerci, and she can shoot pig beams at people, especially Greek soldiers.

Unfortunately, like other witches before her, she needs some wrist range of movement to do her business and grabbing her by the arms will just nullify her.

Sigh.

If only he didn’t have armored outpanties, she could kick him in the business.

But fortunately, Wasp “can blow up a small house” van Dyne won’t be stopped by armored outerwear and shoots the Delphan grabbing Sersi right in the butt.

That is, Wasp shoots him in the butt, not that he’s grabbing Sersi in the butt.

Meanwhile, over in the Vision and Scarlet Witch subplot, their plane lands at LaGuardia and they’re instantly accosted by journalists who wants Vision’s take on rumors that the president is going to make chairmanship of the Avengers a cabinet-level post.

Vision coyly tells them that he and the president discussed many things but he’s not at liberty to confirm anything.

Hmm.

Then Vision excuses himself, saying that he and Wanda have to get back to Avengers Mansion.

Scarlet Witch: “We certainly do!” And when we get there, we are going to have a little talk!

Seems Wanda is annoyed at all this being left out of the loop.

Back at the A-plot, where A stands for Avengers go to a party and then get into a fight, Sersi gets fed up with these shenanigans and threatens to turn the Delphans into worms but she gets grabbed by the wrists again, this time by power-dampening chonky handcuffs, and dragged away by the Delphans to their spaceship that was hovering right outside the party.

Starfox and Wasp fly out in pursuit, with non-flying She-Hulk complaining about being left behind.

Wasp: “After them, Starfox! We mustn’t let them get away!”

Starfox: “I quite agree! Hostesses such as Ms. Sersi are all too rare!”

Wasp: “No kidding! Once we rescue her, I want to find out how she does that trick with her eyes!”

... Really.

The eyes specifically? Not the singing pig beam?

Huh. To each their own.

The ship takes off shortly after Wasp and Starfox stow aboard and the two heroes resume beating Delphan ass to try to save Sersi.

Lead Delphan: “We have the advantage in number, but they’re still making us look like idiots! We can’t let them beat us now! Have to initiate transport... while there’s still a chance!”

The ship then disappears with a FWOF!

And reappears above the mountains of Northern Greece.

Apparently, Eternal transportation is like the kind in Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy because Starfox and Wasp are discombobulated and nauseated by the transport.

The Lead Delphan seizes the opportunity while the bull is hot and pulls the lever to make the ship just completely disassemble.

The Delphans take advantage of the heroes startlement to beat the shit out of Starfox in midair.

Clever. But rude.

Sometime later, Starfox comes to in Olympia to discover that he and Wasp are completely surrounded and in the shit.

Domo: “Citizens of Olympia!! At last, we all stand together... reunited with our Polar and Pacific cousins! Our destiny beckons! But before the ritual may begin, we must first deal with these two... who have intruded into the affairs of the Eternals!”

Hey, dick! They don’t come to a party you’re crashing and slap the host!

But I guess we’re going to meet all the Eternals next time.

What a fun coincidence that I’m hitting this point of the story when the Eternals movie is just a few months away.

Follow @essential-avengers because one day I’ll read comics about Sersi wearing a leather jacket. Like and reblog for the same reason or for different reasons.

#avengers #Eternals #Delphan Brothers #Sersi #Starfox #the Wasp #She Hulk #the Vision #Scarlet Witch #Captain Marvel #Monica Rambeau #the parents Rambeau #since when did Sersis have a first name?#essential avengers #essential marvel liveblogging #avengers can't even go to a party without it becoming a whole thing

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sepialunaris · 3 years

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Besides the crazy stupid plot twist and dumb character actions I think the big problen why Jurassic World is a failure of a narrative is that it constantly confuses its own tone and what idea it wants to convey. And as a whole it just sounds like singing praises to capitalism and pinning problems on other aspects instead of the root of the problem.

So JW is said to have been open for 15 years, and its said people are bored with classic InGen retrosaurs hence initiating the creation of Indominus, and yet from the other perspective people are enjoying the retrosaurs just fine? It is not even hinted a bit that they did not not enjoy them besides that bit of exposition.

And our audience perspective character doesn't work. Gray and Zach seems to come from a middle-upper class family and yet they never visited the park for years despite having a family member as a high level staff? Knowing their son is obsessed with dinosaurs? And the only reason they were sent there was because it was an excuse to cover up their parent's divorce? In the case of Darius Bowman from CC it makes sense, but this is weird. It's kind of nitpicky, but okay my point is, what makes them ineffective is that they are new eyes to the park and Zach cannot represent "ahh ppl who already seen this many times get inspired to see the beauty of ugly 1993 retrosaurs" because he has never been there either. So its just weird to include their POV when it deosnt complement the Indominus narrative and if it does it feels forced and loose.

And its more bizarre when the movie seems to be more obsessed with showing "oh my god look at this capitalist paradise! John Hammond's gentrification deeam fulfilled!" and panning on random buildings and starbucks with the Jurassic Park theme. Besides "do you have dinosaurs in your dinosaur park" it just wooshes the anti-capitalist social commentary of JP, more crazy when its loads of product placement. I know that they did plan a panning shot with dinosaurs which would've been effective and narratively fitting rather than *pan to giant building* so idk why they even did that. And so idk if this movie wants to criticize capitalism and consumerism combined with the privatizing of the genetics could give way to ethical and environmental issues or do they want to say "god powers are allowed for capitalists if they are nice" (ahh and based on leaks for JWD, its the latter. They made John Hammond a messiah for protecting his unethical business from the 'bad capitalists' omg)

There's also the issue of 'authentic' dinosaurs (hence why I keep mentioning retrosaurs from the start 😂, i want to talk about this too). The scene with Wu and Masrani works, but ultimately the whole movie fails it. It is lifted from one of the few good scenes from the oroginal movel with Wu and Hammond, and concerns about how ALL dinosaurs from this park are genetic hybrids from the start. And well it would've worked well to explore the ethics and capitalism approach but honestly with the whole movie as comparison it just sounds like "guys this is the reason why they are not realistic and feathered please dont ask us about it again." The fact that they are hybridized retrosaurs get ignored and thrown under the rug besides that one scene, and we never again explore how unnatural all of them are as the movie time to time again keeps promoting a division between "legit" dinosaurs and Indominus, the character Lowery keeps pushing. And the latter... aslo shows how much they want to praise the first park and John Hammond despite it being a metaphor of capitalism failing from wanting to conquer nature, despite it being the exact same thing as modern JW. "They didnt need these hybrids they only had real dinosaurs" is already an errornous statement since all of them were frog hybrids, so if its wrong... what was the point of bringing it up? JP didn't just fail because Dennis Nedry sabotaged it, it was bound to fail for its attempt to control nature as Ian said. However JW attributes the singular creation of Indominus as the reason for its failure (and by attribute hoo boy how many plotholes did they engineer to pin it the blame. Suddenly it knows its being thermally monitored? Or does it just releases electromagnetic energy to make ppl around it dumb or jam cellphones, god im rambling), and if they continued making retrosaurs it would've been fine? So what was the message? "Its okay to mix dinosaur dna with frogs but don't add to much to the mixture"? "Its okay to play god with capitalism but dont go too far"? Instead of mentioning both concepts as unethical and the concept of Indominus as an already flawed concept pushed even more unethically, the increasing level of tolerance for playing god already shows a shift of morals from the JP and JW. So once again its 'capitalism is actually good, its just the evil ppl thats the problem'

It honestly just erases the brilliant potential of how that narrative could be engaged. Of course its obvious the park would want to promote their retrosaurs as legit and Indominus as a different flavor despite both being hybrids but the latter being pushed to the max, so both of them are bound to have intersecting problems. However not everyone would've been fooled by such promotion. And yet from our POV only Wu was aware of it; the view of them as retrosaurs is treated as an understatement to be ignored as we are only allowed to see things and agree with opinions from the POV of Lowery or the kids against Hoskins' cartoony "lets convince our president to use dinos to steal oil" idea.

It could've honestly touched on many aspects of de-extinction or concepts like the Chickenosaurus, as well as the complex moral dillema around many genetic issues, but the movie just wants to shy away from it and impose a black and white morality of "Indominus bad unnatural" and "retrosaurs good natural." Not unnesary military commentary that doesn't work (dinosaur's effect in the environment would be more devastating than them acting as military weapons so pro-US imperialists can be proud (one bullet will kill them, I swear yeah ik this is a 'scifi' franchise, but the logic hoops you need to jump from that. One raptor died from getting hit by a rocket launcher as they should. So what US wants to use these bags of flesh as weapons to steal oil? There is nothing they can do that dogs or dolphins can't do better). The only time its kinda shown is when Indominus is killing Apatosaurus for fun, but... real animals like humans, dolphins, chimps do that too. And the movie treats this as something unnatural or makes it evil. Scorpios rex despite being ugly actually accomplishes the ecological horror of having an invasive creature invade an ecosystem (despite the ecosystem itself alr being flawed and superficially created) and being able to reproduce through parthenogenesis). And I doubt they would touch on this in JWD despite the variance of animals they will show, as even Atrociraptor is not going to be called out by name in that film, that they can change its name in post production.

#jw negativity #anti jurassic world #jurassic world negativity #jurassic park #god i actually out this to words #that said if they wanted to even tackle moral dilemmas in the field of genetics i sont trust them at all #they will just sound racist and eugenic about it #jwd leaks #jwd leak

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starryknight09 · 3 years

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That’s not how Ironman goes out

Febuwhump Day 7: poisoning

Read on AO3.

________________________________________________________

Peter pulled his grey hoodie on, practically bouncing on his feet as he finished dressing. Today was going to be the best day. He was headed over to Ned’s this morning to work on the new Star Wars Lego set his friend had gotten for his birthday last week, and then he had plans to take MJ out to a new Mexican-Korean fusion restaurant she’d been talking about ever since it opened last month. They’d been together for almost three months now and he still loved seeing the look on her face whenever he surprised her.

“Peter can you come here for a minute?” Aunt May called from the living room.

“Yeah!” He answered, not thinking anything of it. He shoved his wallet in his back pocket and toed on his shoes, checking his phone for any messages before pocketing it as well.

He made a detour to the kitchen to grab an apple out of the bowl on the counter, enjoying the crunch of it as he took a huge bite before turning to find May sitting on the couch across the room.

“What’s up?” He asked, barely understandable, around a mouthful of apple.

“Come here.” May patted the couch cushion next to her. The oddness of the invitation made him stop and focus. He noticed a characteristic crinkling in the corner of May’s eyes, something she only did when she was worried and trying to hide it. It was an expression he’d seen more than a few times ever since she’d discovered his vigilante identity.

“What’s wrong?” He moved to stand in front of her.

“Sit down honey.”

“No, I’m good. I have to get going to Ned’s soon or I’m going to be late. I promised I’d be there by noon.” He said, checking his watch for show. The way May was acting made him want to escape. Made him afraid.

“I need you to sit down.” May patted the space next to her again.

He had the irrational urge to whine, ‘I don’t want to.’ To stamp his feet and refuse. Because no good news ever came from scenarios like this. But instead of refusing, he forced his knees to bend and hesitantly sat down next to his aunt.

May reached out to hold his hands. “Honey, I have to tell you something.”

His heart started racing. “May, you’re scaring me.”

“You know how Tony had that fundraiser last night?”

He nodded. Tony had invited him, but it was a stuffy black-tie event, which wasn’t really his thing, and Peter had already had a readymade excuse not to go. He’d made plans with MJ and hadn’t wanted to disappoint her by cancelling. Tony hadn’t minded because Peter was heading up to the cabin tomorrow to spend the weekend with him where there wouldn’t be a bunch of uptight old people milling around.

“Well,” May continued, “we’re not sure how it happened yet, but somehow someone managed to slip something into Tony’s drink.”

His stomach dropped out of his body. No.

“Is he dead?” His voice trembled, afraid to hear the answer. Afraid that the reason May had positioned him here was to deliver the news that his last remaining father figure was gone.

“No honey.” May reassured him and his eyes closed as he let out a sharp breath of relief. She squeezed his hands. “But he’s very sick, and they’re doing everything they can, but we just don’t know yet what’s going to happen.”

He bit his lower lip to keep it from quivering as tears welled up in his eyes. This couldn’t be happening.

“Why would someone do this?” He managed to choke out the question.

“Oh honey.” May tugged him forward into a hug. “I know. It doesn’t make any sense. They think it was someone from that ridiculous group.”

Peter clenched his jaw. He knew exactly what group she was talking about. After Tony had saved everyone, and almost died in the process, a group of zealots had become vocal about how reversing the snap had set back all the environmental progress Earth had made after losing half its population. They hated Tony for what he’d done. They believed life had been better before the reversal because the human race was no longer multiplying at a rate that the Earth couldn’t sustain. Apparently, there’d been less hunger. Less pollution. Less war. But infinitely more heart ache. Peter didn’t think any of the other stuff even came close to canceling that out.

“I think we should go see him.” May suggested, rubbing his back as she held him and the tears slid down his cheeks. “Just in case.”

In case he died. The words went unvoiced. The very thought that it was even a possibility made him want to scream. Because of some hate group. He should’ve gone to that party. Maybe he would’ve sensed something. Maybe his ‘Peter tingle’ would’ve caught on. But no, he’d chosen to hang out with MJ instead.

“Yeah.” He said, trying to get a handle on his emotions. “Let’s go.”

“Ok.” May gave him another tight squeeze before releasing him. “He’s at the compound. I’ll drive.”

It’d taken months, but they’d rebuilt the compound, like some sort of symbol, bigger and better, in the same place where it’d been desecrated. Peter usually felt some amount of awe whenever he drove up to it, but not today. A numbness had descended upon him ever since he’d gotten in the car. It was as if he couldn’t process any more emotion, good or bad, until he knew if Tony would be ok. Like a kind of limbo.

The clop of his sneakers on the immaculately polished floors echoed ominously throughout the silent halls. May had tried to throw her arm over his shoulders in support on the walk in but he’d shrugged it off. Even though he desired the comfort, he hadn’t wanted to be seen as weak by any other Avengers they might encounter. They already looked at him like a child.

He and May rounded the corner and Peter stopped up short. Tony’s door was at the end of the hall, and he was almost afraid to cross the remaining distance. He didn’t want to see him hooked up to machines with wires attached and tubes coming out of him. Seeing him like that was always hard. The man was supposed to be larger than life, so anytime something happened where he actually appeared mortal, it was like the cosmic forces were out of sync.

“Come on baby.” May nudged him forward with a hand against his back.

Peter took a deep breath and managed to put one foot in front of the other again. He could do this. He had to. He’d never forgive himself if he didn’t see Tony and something happened. When they got to his door, Peter paused again, but he forced his hand to grip the door handle and twist it open.

“Hey kid!” Tony greeted him cheerily, sitting up in bed and not looking at all close to death.

Peter froze, not quite believing his eyes. His gaze shot over to May, wondering if this had all been some sort of cruel trick, but she looked equally shocked. His eyes darted back to Tony, afraid to believe it. But the man seemed fine. Maybe a little drawn and tired but not on death’s door like he’d been led to believe.

He took a halting step forward, not quite ready to trust it, and worried that too much hope might shatter the mirage in front of him.

“What’s wrong Pete?” Tony frowned.

“You…you’re ok?” He asked, taking another step forward.

“Yeah I’m fine.” Tony held an arm out towards him, encouraging him to come closer.

Peter hurried over to him, grabbing Tony’s arm once he got close enough. He was real, solid and warm

“You’re ok.” He repeated as if in affirmation.

“That’s what I said. Try to keep up kid.” Tony smirked at him, and Peter felt his resolve crumble. Relieved sobs bubbled up and out of him, shaking his frame.

“Shit. Come here.” Tony pulled him into a comforting hug. “I’m fine. I promise I’m fine.”

A minute later Peter heard the familiar click of heels enter the room behind him, but he didn’t lift his head, still working on regaining his composure.

“Oh.” He heard Pepper say in surprise. “Oh May. I’m sorry. I forgot to call you back. As soon as I got off the phone with you Bruce figured out the antidote and an hour later Tony was fine. I can’t believe I forgot to let you know. I’m so sorry.”

“It’s ok. I’m sure you had a lot on your mind.” May reassured her.

“Still, that’s no excuse. Oh sweetie I’m sorry I scared you. It was touch and go there for awhile but Tony’s going to be fine.” Pepper placed her hand on his back. He really didn’t want her to feel bad. He tried to pull himself together. Tony was perfectly fine. He wasn’t going to die.

Peter took a deep breath and pulled away, wiping his eyes as he sniffled.

“Sorry. I didn’t mean to fall apart.” He gave them a tight smile. “I just— Well, we thought you were dying.”

“Dying? You told them I was dying?” Tony threw an accusatory look at Pepper.

She crossed her arms and raised her voice, “We thought you were dying.”

“Pfft. It’d take more than some crazy zealot to take me out. Don’t you know me at all honey?”

Pepper rolled her eyes.

“I mean seriously, poison? That’s not how Ironman goes out.” Tony shook his head and then looked at him with a smirk. “Right?”

“Right.” He agreed with a nod.

“If anything, it’ll be in a blaze of glory.”

It took every ounce of Peter’s being to not think about Thanos and Tony snapping the gauntlet, coming as close as anyone could to death.

“Yes, at the rate you’re going, you will probably blow yourself up someday.” Pepper deadpanned.

“Hey!” Tony said indignantly. Peter couldn’t help it. He snorted out a small laugh, the numbness and fear inside him finally melting away.

“No,” May smiled, joining in the fun, “it’s going to be—”

“Old age.” Peter interrupted, not wanting to think of any other possibility at the moment, not even in jest.

They all quieted down, and Tony looked at him, a soft smile on his face and eyes alive and twinkling. “Yeah. Old age. That could work.”

#febuwhump2021 #febuwhump #irondad

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sunflowerhae · 4 years

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I’m not in love 🎆🌌

Collegeboy!haechan x female!reader

->A.

⚠️Warnings *PLEASE READ!⚠️

->this story contains heavy themes including drug abuse, alcohol, drug overdose, blood, self hate, character death, and a funeral. There is also strong language used by both major characters. Please continue with these in mind.

⚠️I will put an astric (*) when shit starts getting real.

“So what, do you not love me anymore?”

If it wasn’t the deep blue and dark red lighting illuminating the hallway full of drunk teenagers and one second love stories that made y/n feel claustrophobic, it was the fact that she was currently questioning the past two and a half years of her love life with Haechan, the guilty looking boy in front of her.

This party was supposed to be good for them.

It was supposed to be a chance to temporarily escape the struggles of their everyday lives as juniors in college, and give them an opportunity to actually see each other longer than an hour or two - something that was rare for them, what with y/n’s intense school and work schedule, and Haechans priorities in his fraternity, Nu Cappa Ti, and as the tailback of the schools football team.

Y/n and Haechan met the first week of college. Haechan was rushing for NCT, and y/n’s roommate just so happened to be fucking NCT’s president. When Haechan got a cut from being punched by a guy with a ring in front of a crowd of drunk college students, y/n was there to happily clean the beautiful boy’s - that had caught her eye from across the room, not even one hour before - face. From then on, y/n let herself fall for this boy that she knew was destined to break her heart, and haechan let himself become dependent on this beautiful girl that he knew would hurt him eventually.

But, for the past two and a half years, things had been going pretty okay. I mean, as okay as it can go for two twenty year olds in love, but no time to show it. That’s why this party was supposed to be a thing good for them.

And for a while, it was.

Until the clock hit 12am, and Haechan downed his fifth shot, while y/n sat in the corner of the room, looking pissed and feeling too sober for this shit.

She didn’t understand. She looked hot, the vibe was hot, and Haechan was looking fine, like always. She didn’t understand why he wasn’t talking to her. She didn’t usually go to these parties. She had had a problem with drinking and drugs when she was in high school, and had tried to steer clear of them since coming to college. She thought Haechan understood. And he did. Y/n told him about her past when they first started dating. Haechan never pressured her to join him at the mandatory parties his frat hosted that he had to attend, once every other week or so. He never forced her to drink with him and his friends during his birthdays, or any holidays. He loved her, and he genuinely wanted the best for her.

And that’s not saying that y/n didn’t sometimes engage in a shot or two, or that she didn’t sometimes do a line of coke when she had done particularly bad on a chem test. She didn’t see anything wrong with testing the waters of relapsing, as long as she didn’t go overboard.

As long as she didn’t overdose.

But this party was feeling pretty fucking dry to her, as she watched Haechan slam another empty shot glass on the table tennis top. She saw the eyes that the other girls at the party gave him, and she didn’t miss the smirks and eyefucks he gave them back. Yeah, y/n was feeling pretty upset.

And for once, she wanted Haechan to know.

The only logical thing she could think to do was storm over to him, grab his arm, and drag him away from his dumb friends and their dumb faces and the dumb whores at this dumb party that she stupidly attended because her dumb boyfriend asked her too, and she - like a dumbass - loved him, and would therefore walk off a bridge if he asked her to.

Haechan really wanted to forget that y/n was there.

He loved her, and he was aware that he was the one that asked her to come. But she could feel pretty suffocating when she sat in the corner, with crossed arms while glaring at anyone who caught her eye. Haechan wanted to have fun with her, but y/n didn’t want to be at the party - she wanted to be in her boyfriends arms while binge watching the HBO show “Euphoria” that everyone raved about. That was her version of fun.

However, neither of them would describe fun as yelling at each other in a darkly lit hallway of a smelly frat house at 1 am. One was too drunk, one was too sober; both were extremely pissed. Haechan would have said anything to get away from her at that moment, and y/n would have said anything to get him to stay.

“Look y/n, I think we might need a break.” In retrospect, Haechan was right. They did need a break from each other. Time to re-evaluate their relationship; their needs. But unfortunately for everyone, y/n had very easily replaced the emptiness in her heart from drugs and alcohol with her love for Haechan; and addiction is unhealthy- no matter what it is you’re addicted to.

“Why do we need a break? Why, do you not want to be around me?”

“Maybe not! I don’t know, y/n!”

“Well fuck you! I’m your fucking girlfriend-“

“-fuck you too! You’re fucking obsessed with me-“

“-I’m not obsessed with you, I just love you! I just want to be with you! Hang out with you, not this drunk half assed excuse of a man-“

“-oh what? And you’re such a woman? It’s not my fault you replaced drugs with me, y/n! That’s not my fucking fault-“

“-oh that’s rich coming from you! You’re fucking drunk right now, haechan! You’re a fucking hypocrite-“

“-I don’t want to be with you-“

“-what?” The silence between the two felt so suffocating and intense and loud, y/n couldn’t help but wonder if everyone else in the room was choking like her. The music was loud, and everyone around her was in their own worlds, but y/n and Haechan were dead silent, and that felt suffocating.

“You don’t wanna- you don’t wanna be with me?”

Haechan looked down at the ground, and scratched his neck. “Fuck, I don’t know y/n. I don’t know-“

“So what, do you not love me anymore?”

Haechan didn’t say anything.

The blue lights suddenly reminded y/n of a time in her life when she would wake up feeling like she was being choked every morning. and she wondered if she had just died, and this was her own, personal hell as the choking feeling comes back up into her chest. She could feel herself walk away from him, into the kitchen, where she immediately turned on the sink and splashed cold water in her face. She could see Haechan shake his head and walk away from their spot in the hallway, and she could hear a boy who she had Environmental science with ask her if she’s okay. She could see herself ask him to hand her the fireball bottle on his right, she could see herself drink the whole thing, then do some coke, then take some pills she didn’t even know the name of. She could see herself walk through the party with hazed eyes and focused gaze on the colored walls that seemed to be moving. She could hear her friends asking her where she had been in her ear, she could feel her feet moving around the living room, dancing with her friends to the music she’s never heard before. And when she paid just enough attention and sat just still enough on the couch with the almost empty liquor bottle cold against her thigh, she could feel her heart turning into liquid itself, and falling into her acidic stomach; never to be seen again. She looked around the room, trying to find the eyes of someone - anyone - who could comfort her; hold her. But all she got for comfort and affection were the hot tears that rolled down her face and the inability to stop her chin from wobbling as she broke down on the couch of a frat house at 3am, while the purple and red lights warped her vision to picture a happy life for herself, with Haechan, that she could see dripping down the drain.

Having just enough consciousness to know she had to find her boyfriend, she used the bottle to push herself off the couch, where she then threw the bottle back down and started shuffling around the still crowded party.

She eventually did find Haechan. He was sitting in the corner of a different room, surrounded by a couple of his frat brothers, a couple other friends of his, and a couple girls that were ready to step in and take your place in Haechan’s life at the drop of a hat - or better yet, at the drop of you. He was laughing at something Renjun - a good friend of yours, as well as Haechans - said, when you shuffled up to him and put your hands on his thighs, almost falling in the process.

“Haechan, haechan, I need help. I don’t feel good.” You looked like a crazy lady. You were looking at Haechan with wide eyes, and were repeatingly smacking his thighs with every word.

Haechan was more drunk that he was earlier, and he had had a bit of Jaemin’s coke at this point. He didn’t think you were being that serious, and he figured you were being helpless for no other reason other than you didn’t know what else to do to get him back. Also, he couldn’t help but let the poison from his frat brothers mouths - directed at you - earlier get to him.

“Get off.” Haechan took your hands off his thighs and threw them by your side. Everyone who was sitting around Haechan and his friends were looking on in interest, and as you looked around, you saw that only Renjun looked worried for you in the least bit.

“Haechan, please my stomach feels really fucked up and my head-“

“Just go to my room and clean yourself up. God you’re a fucking embarrassment, y/n.” Haechan hadn’t even looked at you yet, except for when you surprised and slightly scared him earlier when you walked up. He just rolled his eyes, and started whispering in the girl sitting to his lefts ear, something funny, seeing as she giggled and started giving you slide glances. You didn’t have to ask to know that you were the punch-line.

You gave Haechan one more look of surprise, and stumbled away from the group of 20 year olds with shaky hands and bugged eyes.

(*) Something Haechan thinks about a lot, later in life, is this moment, as he finally looks up and sees your back as you stumbled out of the room and to the stairs. He thinks about what he would have said to you, if he knew it was the last time he would ever talk to you. He had eventually come to the conclusion that he would take your warm hands in his, and just hug you. Just to feel your hot breathe on his neck, and your hands in his, one last time. He would have said he loved you, just to hear you say it back once more. He would apologize for the careless words before, and he would give you all the comfort you deserved, and then some.

Sometimes, on the random nights where he isn’t having a nightmare about you, he dreams of this moment. He dreams that he got up, ran to your figure already halfway up the stairs, and pulled you into his arms. He would run his hands down your hair, and drag you to the closest bathroom, where he would shove his fingers down your throat until you threw up into the toilet all the toxins in your system. He would be crying, and mumbling, “please survive this, please survive this, please survive this...” until you were no longer throwing up. He would dial 911, and force you to down a bunch of water bottles, before you were taken to the hospital, and saved. But everytime, before he got the chance to kiss you again, he’d wake up, and he’d be alone in the dark, like always.

You had stumbled up to Haechan’s room, and slammed the door closed with all the power you had in you, not forgetting to lock the door behind you.

You’re body felt like it was on fire. It felt like the acid in your stomach had expanded, and was spreading to every part of your skin, and burning you from the inside-out. You wanted to throw up, run to the bathroom, and faint all at once. You were trying your hardest - and failing - to cool yourself down by fanning you face with your hands. You looked into Haechans mirror on his dresser, and saw that you were not only sweating like a spy being interrogated, but your face was extremely red, and your makeup was running down your face. You pulled your hair into a makeshift ponytail, and ripped your shirt off as fast as you could.

You were surprised nobody could hear your moaning and whimpering from out in the hallway. You felt like screaming, felt like calling for help, but you couldn’t open your mouth without a groan coming out. You put your hands above your head and looked for something - anything - to focus your attention on. Your eyes locked on a photo of you and haechan that was taped to the corner of his mirror. It was taken over the summer before your sophomore year of college - although you remember it like it was yesterday. Haechan and your’s close friend group had a tradition of going up to Santa Cruz on the last week of summer, and staying at a friends beach house for a couple days. The photo was taken on the first night. You were all sitting on the beach at night; the bonfire you all wrapped around lit your faces. Haechan had only had one drink, and you opted for a coke. You were both extremely happy, as shown in the photo by both of yours large smiles. You remember that around an hour before the photo had been taken, you had given yourself to Haechan for the first time. You had been dating him for almost a year at this point, and you both felt like it was time. In the photo, haechan had his arm wrapped around you, and you had your head on his right shoulder. Your eyes were bright red due to the cameras shitty quality. Haechan had complained at the time about why Jaemin felt the need to bring not one, not two, not even four, but FIVE disposable cameras; but when the time came to look through the printed pictures, Haechan had a smile on his face and stole every single one with your face in it, par like four or five due to Jaemin’s yelling at him.

“We need y/n to be represented!”

“She can be represented by being here, though!”

“Haechan, she might not be here, ya know. You can’t tell the future.”

“Shut up. I’m going to marry her one day.”

You had never had a bigger smile on your face then that moment. Sure, Haechan had told you before that he wanted to marry you one day. But hearing him so willingly say to your friends that he was; that was big.

Now, you couldn’t help but fear that that would never happen.

You tore the photo off the wall, and started staring at it with tears running down your face. You were sobbing at this point. Sobbing so bad that you thought snot started coming out of your nose, yet when you went to wipe it and return your hand to the side of the photo, the blood trail on your hand let you know that it was indeed not snot.

“Shit shit shit,” you whimpered out.

You knew the signs of an overdose. You had to go to rehab when you were 17, and it was pretty fucking traumatizing. The worst part was when they filed you all into another white brick room with shitty lighting and flies buzzing around the tv, and taught you all the tell tale signs of an OD. You had nightmares after that for weeks. It was the only thing that got into your head enough to make you want to be sober. Just so that you wouldn’t have to experience that.

Looks like that plan was flawed.

You wanted Haechan. You needed him. You needed to get to him and tell him you needed a hospital. Yet, when your legs went to take a step towards the door, you finally felt it. You could feel your brain just, die. You fell to the floor - almost like fainting - and started convulsing. The last thing you felt was foom pooling out of your mouth, and the last thing you saw was the photo of you and Haechan, that day at the beach. Haechan’s wide smile brought you to a blissful sleep with open eyes.

(Please take a second to collect yourself before you continue reading. Thank you.)

Haechan was getting really fucking bored of this party. He had stopped drinking once you walked away, and that had been maybe three hours ago, so he was feeling way more sober. The sun was glaring at the mountains now, and peaking through on the town below. Upon looking at the time on his almost dead phone with a deep sigh, he saw it was nearing 6am.

Haechan regretted what he said to you. He hadn’t seen you since you walked away, and he didn’t know if you had left, or fallen asleep on his bed. He hoped it was the latter, that way he could cuddle up to you and silently beg your forgiveness for his drunken and harsh words. He finally started walking up the stairs after saying goodnight - or, good morning - to his friends; Renjun’s final words to him actually kind of scaring him.

“Dude, y/n didn’t look so good.”

“Eh, I’m sure she was fine. Probably tripping or something.” Haechan shrugged off Renjuns fear as he took another swig from his water bottle.

“Nah, man. She looked, like, really fucked up.”

When Haechan got to his door, he turned the knob, only to find that it was locked. Figuring you were asleep, he gave a couple hard knocks, so that it could jolt you awake. “Y/n, baby. Open the door. I wanna go to bed.”

You didn’t answer.

Haechan knocked a couple more times. “Y/nnnnn, wake up!”

You didn’t answer. It was quiet. Eerily quiet, actually. You were a light sleeper, and you couldn’t have been drunk, right?

Haechans knocks were a little louder, and a little faster. “Y/n!”

Haechan kept knocking for what felt like forever. He was slightly panicking at this point.

What was wrong?

“Y/n, this isn’t funny. Open the fucking door!” He was full on pounding now.

“Fuck this.” He mumbled, before turning around and walking through the party, which had significantly less people, but still quite a lot. Finally, he set his eyes on who he was looking for.

“Johnny!” He sternly called, while walking up to the drunken giant.

“Yyyahhhh?” Johnny laughed. He was surrounded by Doyoung, Taeyong, and Jaehyun, who were all older members of the frat; Taeyong being the president.

“Y/n locked herself in my room, and she’s not answering. Can you help me break down the door?” Johnny always saw y/n as his little sister. Haechan was the youngest member of the frat with a steady girlfriend, making y/n the youngest of the girls intertwined with the boys. Johnny, being the oldest member, always took a kind of protective role over her. He himself had a younger sister, and she was just a bit younger than y/n; therefore he had a small soft spot for her. At the sound of y/n possibly being in trouble, Johnny sobered up quite a bit, and gave Haechan a curt nod, before following him upstairs; the rest of the boys who were aware of the situation following him.

At the sight of the white door, Haechan’s stomach dropped like a rollercoaster dip.

What if y/n really was in trouble?

Johnny took a place on the right side of the door, while Haechan took the left. While he wasn’t the strongest out of the current men there, he wanted to be the first one in the door.

“Okay, after three. Ready? 1, 2, 3!”

Both bodies slammed into the door. It didn’t budge.

“One more.

3”

“Fuck! Y/n?”

“Baby! Baby can you hear me? FUCK! SOMEONE CALL 911!

Baby! Hey! DON’T YOU FUCKING DIE ON ME!” Haechan tried shoving his hands down your throat, he tried to give you CPR, - which he didn’t even know - but nothing worked. You had foam laying out of your open mouth, and your eyes were wide open, with your hands laying outward. Haechan caught site of the picture in your hand, and moved it out of the way, before grabbing your hand and bring it up to kiss it.

“Please. Please survive this.” He sobbed, while placing his forehead on your chest.

“Time of Death, 3:46am.” The words echoed in Haechans ears like a gunshot. He couldn’t help but hate himself. If he had actually taken her concerned words seriously, would she be alive right now? She was dead long before he got there, around two and a half hours, to be specific.

The words still echoed in his head while he stood in a bright graveyard in your hometown on a sunny spring day, your favorite season. The black suit he wore made him feel hot, but it didn’t matter to him. The huge bouquet of roses in his hands were heavy, but he didn’t care. Nothing mattered. Not when he couldn’t stop staring at your parents broken frames. Not when your older brother and sisters couldn’t stop crying and holding their loved ones, having just lost their baby sister. Not when Johnny couldn’t keep the tears in his eyes as he grabbed Taeyongs hand. Not when the weight of Renjun’s hand on his shoulder felt heavier than any bouquet Haechan would ever carry. Not when Haechan felt like the air in his lungs left, and wouldn’t return again. Not when he refused to cry until he was alone, because if he did, he wouldn’t know if he could stop.

Not when he felt like he just lost his soulmate.

He silently placed the roses next to your grave when the ceremony was done. He didn’t want to say much. He knew he’d be back here soon, anyway. He finally snapped out of his daze when he felt a soft hand being placed on his shoulder, and turned to come face to face with the lady that raised you.

“She loved you so much. She talked about you all the time. I was always worried about her when she left for college, but then she started talking about this boy she met who changed how she thought of the world, and then I met you, and I knew she was in safe hands. Thank you, Donghyuck. For giving my daughter a reason to live.” Your mom brought her handkerchief back up to her eyes, and wiped more tears that refused to stop falling. Your father, who was standing behind your mom, stepped forward and hugged Haechan, while mumbling in his ear “don’t be a stranger, please,” before grabbing his wife’s hand and walking towards the car. Haechan wanted to take their words to heart, really. But he couldn’t get the thoughts out of his head. When he had focused his attention on your moms tears, did you cry? When he couldn’t stop looking at your parents holding hands as they walked away, he would never be able to hold your hand again. When he was your father place a kiss to his moms forehead before opening her door for her, you died alone.

Haechan turned to hear his name being called by Taeil, a graduated member of NCT who drove him to the funeral, and shuffled to the car with his head down.

When they got back to the dorm, Haechan did what he had been doing for the past two weeks since your passing. He kept his eyes on the floor as he walked to his room, not being able to look at the door without going back to the last moment of blissful ignorance he had; yet he looked up when he went into his room, not being able to look at the last spot he saw you in. He flopped onto his bed with a sigh, and picked up the picture of himself and you on the beach, it being the last thing you consciously touched. He plugged in his AirPods, and put on the playlist you had made for him a year ago, that you added to whenever you wanted, like he did with yours. The intro for “Exist for Love” by AURORA came in, and Haechan finally let himself cry for the first time that day. He turned over, and inhaled the scent of your pillow on his bed. Haechan didn’t want to live this life anymore. He didn’t know what life he wanted, but this wasn’t it. He couldn’t stop thinking about it as he heard the door creak open. He knew who it was without having to look up. Wordlessly, Renjun, Jaemin, and Jeno all climbed in to the bed. There was literally no room for the four boys to comfortably lay down, but they liked it like that. It meant they had to hold and hug each other, which made the pain numb just a bit.

Haechan took a deep breath. He didn’t want to exist, but he would. He would continue to exist, because you didn’t get to.

Fin.

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starfoxrry · 2 years

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It’s funny how as each day passes it becomes clear that a lot of people were wrong about who Louis is , he nothing more than a crypto interested asshole. Of course he is into nfts despite the fact that he must know how harmful they are to the environment. People have pretended that this man was an innocent socialist for to long. The guy is millionaires of course he doesn’t actually care. People like to make him the good cop while Harry the bad cop when it is plain obvious that while Harry has spent years after one direction breaking up bettering himself as a man who is not only inclusive of everyone despite their background but a man who himself has explored what that inclusivity means to him as a man. That why is unapologetic about who he is is willing to defy gender role why Louis throws bitch fit about flowers being given to him because his masculinity is that fragile. I always excused how crazy he acted when someone suggested that he might be gay when he wore the apple T-shirt, then I realized that Harry was right there unapologetically saying that the sex of who he is with isn’t important. Harry’s is out there making sure that even his band and crew members include people of different races sexuality and genders and then you Louis and all white supreme glory, is he goons work with and hire poc nope, is he goons hire people of different sexualities nope, their gay disease might run off on him. Now I see why that just like you video was so fucking pretentious, he can’t relate to shit. Louies love to give him this soft image and bitch about those bharries making him the dildo of that gross relationship when it’s clear why? Of course they are gonna make the darker one and Harry the softer one because guess what that’s how they actually are in real life, Louis would probably rather choke than to even consider wearing a dress or patenting his nails. It’s not macho enough for him 🥺🥺🥺, yet we really are out here having people treating him in ways that Harry actually is. It’s fucking weird. Louis is nothing more than a person people have deluded themselves into believing is a sweet heart based on beliefs that he is part of a community that he is not a part of and has done absolutely nothing for. This nft is just the tip of the ice burg he will lose what ever little fans he had that stuck around because they think the is fucking his ex band mate. even his own most loyal fans are bored one look at their page and you want see a single thing about louis, they are fed up, why stick around for something that isn’t worth it . How funny is it that while Harry is making cruelty and environmental friendly brands louis is making the earth worst than it already is. So much for the sweet one

#MISS THING I HAVENT BEEN ON TUMBLR IN A YEAR AND U SENT ME THIS FOR WHAT NXJWZJNDND #answered

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umbraja · 4 years

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2020: Vindication for Losing My Mind in 2016

Have you ever made a prediction that was really a warning but everyone you told just blew you off? They called you paranoid, alarmist, or even crazy. They said it could never happen to us. You’re just over-reacting. It’s not going to change a damn thing. So they went about their normal lives completely oblivious to the absolute disaster you saw coming.

That was me in 2016.

Not in November like a lot of liberals. I went crazy in June. The first ones to dismiss me were the ones that lost it in November. They didn’t think America would elect such a cartoonish bigot. They still had faith left in humanity and didn’t realize just how bad things had already gotten. It only took a few months to prove them wrong. Sadly, a lot of them still missed the point. They found scapegoats and excuses to explain how this anomaly could have happened without taking credit for their part in the deal. Of course they’ve spent the time since doing nothing to fix it.

The people that believed me about the election took longer to prove out. They knew the silent majority was real or at least Clinton was unelectable but they didn’t think Trump would really be that bad. They figured he would be yet another lame duck and maybe send a message to DC that they need to give us better candidates next time. Some of them even voted for him. Some of those still don’t regret it. They’re so wrapped up in their party loyalty and fear mongering conservative narrative that they no longer live in the same world as liberals do.

I am not surprised.

2016 was unprecedented but it wasn’t unpredictable. It was actually inevitable. The logical progression of centuries of elitist politicians all fighting for the rich man’s favor while leaving the people behind. Then the Cold War came along and turned the people against each other creating a polarized climate of us vs them that crippled America’s ability to support social programs while also draining our resources on hapless foreign wars. The 80’s brought us Law and Order politics which allowed racists to criminalize parts of minority culture, exacerbating the already vicious cycle of generational poverty. The 90s saw globalization and automation reduce American jobs which widened the wealth gap and gave racists an excuse to blame immigrants for it. 9/11 scared America into giving up personal freedoms and militarizing the police for a War on Terror which galvanized conservatives under God and Guns while liberals struggled to agree on a direction, let alone a catchy slogan. 2008 gave us a black president and liberals called anyone who criticised him a racist which incensed conservatives into creating a movement of aggressive anti-intellectual propaganda using social media echo chambers to oppose the “liberal bias” of mainstream media. Around the same time the Great Recession of 08 exposed government and corporate corruption that had been eroding the middle class for decades and turned the people against the establishment. So the silent majority elected enough Republicans for Congress in 2012 and 2014 to give them their largest lead since the Great Depression. By 2016 the Republican party had already been taken over by alt-right extremists but Democrats were too out of touch to see them as a credible threat.

It’s no wonder that a narcissistic conman like Trump would take advantage of all this to make himself the most powerful man in the world. Nor is it surprising that foreign powers would use the existing chaos to further divide this nation. Or that bigots would scare reasonable people into supporting their oppressive agendas. History is full of things like this. In America and all over the world, from beginning to end, history repeats itself. History also tells us that you can only sit on a powder keg for so long before someone lights the fuse.

Now it’s 2020 and the world is on fire.

Pretty much everything I was afraid would happen as a result of 2016 has. I tried to warn people about it but no one listened. I lost friends and haven’t seriously spoken to much of my family for years because they refuse to pull their heads out of their echo chambers and listen to reason. Yet I am considered the crazy one. I am the one that had a mental breakdown in 2016. I am the one with depression and anxiety and PTSD. I am the one who saw it coming and had to watch as they waved torches around the bomb.

They said it couldn’t happen but the last four years have seen nearly all my predictions come true:

Racist policies became norm, embolden racists to open bigotry

Mass shootings and domestic terrorism are on the rise

Trump abused the office for personal gain in so many ways

Environmental regulations rolled back, climate change denied

Financial regulations returned to what caused Great Recession

Democrats forgot to listen to the American people - again

Republicans pardoned Trump for everything regardless of facts

Fact and Truth have lost all meaning to “fake news”

Trump's conspiracy theories and lies further divided America

Trump protected his cronies and “fired” anyone that disagrees

Trump appointed two Supreme Court Justices, turn conservative

States proposed abortion bans that make it a capital crime

Tax cuts for the rich did not help the average American

The federal deficit has soared to new heights

American tax dollars were wasted on a big, dumb wall

Immigration policies separate families in camps, children die

Trump’s love of dictators let foreign powers manipulate him

Trump played hardball with Iran and nearly started WWIII

America first policy alienate allies, abdicate global power

China stepped in to the fill the power vacuum left by America

China has reduced human rights enforcement around the world

Trump levied tariffs on foreign goods that hurt the economy

Trump started an unwinnable trade war with China

China used this trade war to gain political allies

Trump yells about China for wrong reasons, hides real threat

Democrats didn’t learn, are running an establishment candidate

Racial and political tensions increased enough to cause riots

Federal officers were sent in to silence peaceful protestors

Political dissidents are being targeted by law enforcement

Trump followed the Fascist Playbook, emulated 1939 Germany

Trump put his own vanity above the safety of American people

Trump unable to handle crisis, thousands of Americans died

The only two things I predicted that haven’t happened yet are: Trump causes a war and Trump doesn’t give up power at the end. The year’s not over yet. We’re sitting on a radioactive powderkeg and the politicians are playing with matches. I’ve been predicting the fall of ‘Murcia for over a decade now but 2016 made me realize it might happen sooner than I thought.

It might happen in 2020

I really hope I’m wrong this time.

#politics #2020 #i told you so

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life-in-techni-colour-blog1 · 5 years

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Marseille, August 2019

After the life-changing experience I had in Marseille in July, same year, my heart was craving to go back to that city and expand the universe of episodes I have lived. I had the feeling, well, I still do, that Marseille has become a kind of sanctuary for me.

Is it the Mediterranean sea? Is it that I love bathing at la Plage du Prado?

Is it the chance to stare at beautiful sunsets every evening?

Is it the fact, that Marseille is the city in France with the most of sunny days during the year?

Is it that the sun kisses my skin and I feel that it injects me with interminable cosmic energy?

Or is it the language? That language that I started learning as a teenager and somehow never managed to speak fluently.

Or the Mediterranean culture? Is it the fact, that still in Europe, the “way of living” is similar to that in my country?

Or even the fact that I find Marseille highly erotic? That people show their bodies in a self-confident manner, expressing sensuality and sultriness?

Is it the sexy local accent?

Is it the sun tanning that makes the locals look similar to ancient Greek heroes?

Is it that I love seeing so many cultures sharing the same physical space, so well-integrated and functioning altogether in a chaotic, but charming environment?

Is it that people are loud, emotional, and like gesticulating and using their hands whilst talking?

Or that families watch the sunset at the beach, whilst kiddos play around?

Or the music that is played at the city centre every evening?

Or a combination of all of them?

I feel home in this sanctuary. I belong. I feel alive. My heart beats fast.

I have lust for life.

I most accept that it took me some days to decide if I really wanted to go back “so soon”. I guess I was afraid that my previous experience was just too good, that my expectation would be difficult to be met.

It was all met, in new ways.

I arrived. I left the airplane. I picked up my baggage. I went out of the terminal station.

As soon as the warm humid breeze touched my skin, I screamed loudly: “I am back Marseille, I am back for good”. I thanked life, I thanked the universe.

On the way from the airport to the city, listening the music that the bus driver had on, a question came to my head: how many people are able to do what I was just doing? How many people in this world have the possibility to take a flight, book a hotel, and just escape to their sanctuary?

Does everyone has a sanctuary? Is a sanctuary necessary at all?

How many people can decide where to go?

I felt blessed. And responsible.

I am free. I can decide. I have the means to chose and to execute.

How many people cannot do that? Can’t they, or they simply do not want to?

What to do with this blessing? Enjoy it on my own?

Or is there any way in which I could share it with the world? If so, how?

Besides being in my sanctuary, Marseille gives me new life lessons, some of them have become one-in-a-lifetime experiences.

And this second visit was not an exception.

Firstly. I had my first “date in French”. A real date.

Greg (Grégory, his fullname) had beautiful green eyes. His lips were thin and suggestive.

He had the characteristic sun tanning of a real Marseillais. He was indeed a local guy, born and raised in Marseille, with that wicked local accent.

The date was planned rather sporadically.

It was a Sunday, as I was on my way to the beach. La Plage du Prado is a rather common spot to go on a Sunday for bathing. Not the best beach in the city, nor my recommendation, but quite convenient as it is easily reached and you have all required amenities.

He called me. I did not pick up as I was on the bus. Well, that was the excuse. In reality, I was not picking any of his calls because I was terrified of speaking in French with him. I had the idea that my French would not be good enough for a conversation, and even worse, that I would make that noticeable to the other passengers on the bus.

Yes, even now that I am more awaken, such banalities and lack of confidence-moments appear in my life. Not so often anymore, but still present from time to time…

I knew that it would not bring me much to keep postponing the call, and based on the fact that I really wanted to get to know him, I called him back once I reached my destination.

I told him where I was and that I was planning to spend some at the beach and he offered himself to come over for few hours.

I accepted.

I felt so happy at the moment.

Opposite to what you might be thinking, I was not happy because I was about to meet a very good looking guy, but because I was brave enough to overcome my fear of speaking more than a couple of sentences in French. It was such a rewarding feeling.

After about one hour, he arrived with a bunch of things for a proper picnic.

He was, as already mentioned, charming. We talked about himself, myself, my interest for Marseille and my plans to visit more regularly the city.

We spend about three hours together and he needed to leave.

Regrettably, there was not a kind of funk between us, so we lost contact after that picnic.

What was the learning out of this experience?

Well, I made myself vulnerable, accepting that my French might not be fluent and error-free, and as a reward I had a picnic next to Mediterranean see. Me! Alejandro! That guy who many times felt not good enough.

Isn’t life a beautiful box of surprises, once you give it a try?

The second new learning that I had during that week involves a sex-shop.

The reasoning for me visiting the sex-shop is not relevant and therefore, not to be disclosed.

What I can tell you, in case you, yourself, have never entered to one: there is nothing special about them. I even fooled around with the employee who supported with my purchasing, who made some recommendations as well.

To be really honest, I was not afraid of the sex shop itself.

I was terrified of “what people would think of me” when entering and when leaving the shop. As this shop is located on a major avenue of the city, and I went there around 18 hrs on a regular working day, you can imagine that the probability of people seeing someone entering or leaving the shop was rather high.

Learning? A very basic one. No ones gives a fuck about what I do. If I enter or leave or stay for decades in a shop.

As I went it, I came out. No one really cared about it.

Isn’t is crazy all the ideas that I still have in my head? Terrified for what people would say?!

They did not even know me. They will probably not see me again. And I was still terrified.

Alejandro: so much for you still to learn.

Now we get a bit more serious.

Third learning during that week: I am blessed.

So, on the second weekend in Marseille, before departing back to Frankfurt, I decided to spend one day in the natural park Les Calanques. Go to your favourite web browser now and type “Les Calanques”. You will be stunned by the beautiful sceneries of this park.

Calanques are narrow inlets that are developed in limestone that are found along the Mediterranean coast. Because of fluvial erosion, these Calanques take the shape of valleys, which converge mostly into the sea. You will see some pictures attached to this post.

What do I like from them the most? The contrast between their colour and the intense blue of the sea.

So that Saturday morning I took the bus and arrive to one (very) small town called Les Goudes. Even if Les Goudes is a picturesque and cosy place, I saw most of it in less than one hour. As it was barely midday, I decided to walk on the coast with direction to the Calanques.

After few minutes I knew that I had made a very good decision.

My eyes saw a perfect colour-balance between beige and blue: on one site the massive Calanques in their beautiful beige colour and just next to it, a green-blue sea. Both fighting for physical space, and at the same time, embracing together in a perfect synergy.

I kept walking. As the time was passing by, more and more people were arriving. All of them astonished by the beautiful scenery. All of us making pictures, which will never be able to replace reality.

Even if I look at those pictures now, they cannot equal the still vivid images in my head.

Because it is not only about the colours, but the sound of wind (le mistral), the environmental humidity, the sun, the heat…

I spent quite some time making pictures and walking along the rocky coastline, until I felt hungry.

I was lucky that I had food in my bag, same that I bought that same morning in the only store I found in Les Goudes. Amongst those articles: a slice of pizza (I will elaborate more about my experience with pizza in Marseille in upcoming posts), a bottle of water, a bottle of orange juice and some cookies (Navettes à l’anis) that I still had in my bag.

I started looking for a place where to seat down and eat calmly. That was apparently not possible at the coastline, as it was already full with tourists (I do not consider myself a tourist in Marseille anymore) and families eating already (that just made me think of Greg and our picnic).

My eyes went then to the mountains themselves. Almost everyone was on the coast, but few were climbing to the mountains. I spotted at least three places that were perfect to seat down and have some lunch. So I decided to move there.

After few minutes I was about 300m above the sea level and from there, I had a beautiful scenery in front of my eyes. I could even see part of the city (Marseille).

I ate. Not only the food and beverages were feeding my body, but my soul was at the same time catered by what I was just discerning.

I felt a funk of happiness moving through my body. Was it the very first time that I had a love-attack? Yes, they exist, just as the panic-attacks do.

I ate, I observed, I felt happy.

When I finished, I decided to move further to the mountains. I sang, I spoke to myself, I made pictures.

After about 30 minutes walking to the top of the mountain, I found a valley, around 800m above level sea, I guess. Maybe a bit more.

From that valley I could see other Calanque in front of me, few houses at its bottom, gently placed next to the green-blue sea. Behind me only rocks and Les Goudes still in sight, although from the distance, the houses look pretty tiny.

To my right the blue sea. To my left three massive mountains.

I though of researching for their name whilst writing these lines, but I consider their names quite irrelevant, so no naming them for now.

In the background, I could hear the Cigales. The sound came from all directions. Even if the wind was strong and loud enough, that characteristic sound from the Cigales was louder.

So, I was there, on a Saturday afternoon, standing in front of three massive mountains. I looked at them, whilst listening to the Cigales.

My whole life cross my head as movie whilst standing there. That movie last at least 10 minutes. In that time I just stared at those three peeks.

I though of my way up. I though of everyone who helped me reaching the very best of me. I thought of the sacrifices my family made, especially my mom. I thought that she would have been astound as well, in case she would have got the chance to see those mountains herself.

She rarely left our town. She never left our country. She was never on the sea. She never got to walk barefoot on the sand.

I thought of my brother. Of the time we spent together as kids and the time we did not spent, as I left Mexico.

What would have happened if I have stayed in Mexico?

Would I have spent more time with him?

Would we love each other more just by being closer physically?

I thought of the friends that have shared the road with me. I thought of those that have been years with me, and those who appeared and disappeared because their mission in my life was over.

I thought of my dreams as a kid, as a teenager.

Of the man I have become.

I thought of Gustavo. I thought of Mark. I though of the people I have unintentionally hurt on my way up.

Moreover, I though of how blessed I am.

Blessed because of what the life has given me, sometimes even without requesting for it.

I cried tears of joy.

The fourth learning of that week is related to music.

By mere coincidence, I downloaded the latest album of the French singer Zazie. The album is called Essenciel and I can just recommend it to you. One of the few albums that I can hear from the very first track until the last one.

The first song of the album is called <Speed>. This song verbalises some of the characteristics of our contemporary society: a) living to work, b) spending our life in the own cages we have created for our ourselves, c) waiting for the day to end, imagining of a better future and pursuing happiness based on accomplishments, d) thinking that we are “too old” to do certain things, e) living in automatic mode…

Listen it for yourself and let the magic happens.

This song gives me hope.

It gives me hope that I am not the only one awakening.

It makes me feel energised and pushes me towards my complete realisation.

The song of my summer – so far.

Allez hop!

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crackcrocs · 3 years

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DEATH WILL ONLY BE THE BEGINNING #4

4. Maggot Brain

I’m so grateful to have people around me that are willing to carry my pain as their own, I’m so out of love with myself but beginning to fill my soul with what I’ve been lacking.

it’s difficult, having undergone such a traumatic situation, spending years to convince myself this nightmare was nothing but a pigment of my imagination, but finally saying it out loud is a process I’m willing to go through. I might go as far as to say this could be about the bravest thing i could’ve done in this life. i wasn't the problem. it wasn't my fault. in no way am i responsible for my own rape.

abuse is never acceptable and i do not deserve it despite thinking I did for a majority of the short time I’ve walked the face of this earth; but neither does anyone and I mean anyone. Everyone responds differently to trauma, even worse when you’ve been gaslighted for so many years of your life that you doubt your own sanity, you blame yourself & you feel crazy- when really you’re just traumatised. I’ve been abused in every sense on multiple other occasions & now I’m scared, I’ve lived my life in fear; that’s why I speak up.

I still feel weak; it still eats away at my brain like a maggot-but I feel good about saying it, not guilty, not like my fault, just right. I would have weird triggers for years and have those triggers feel invalid or dumb. I would put all the abuse I’ve gone through into one category rather than separate the occasions because it made me feel disgusting amplified 4 times rather than just 1. My views became distorted, I became paranoid & began to watch a cycle of abusive manipulators enter my life & never stopped to question why, because I didn’t want to believe why or where this could’ve stemmed from. Until now, I didn’t want to connect the dots but I knew if I never did it might be too late, I’d lose the desire to address it & live, and the guilty would never be proved guilty. I feel really rude that i cant go back in time and save my younger self, how I let such a poison control me- but I still breathe, I still strut my feet, I keep moving. I’m still alive.

men can be bloody awful, but for once I want something that’s says, yes women can be bad too; more than just that-women can abuse men domestically too. in order to understand our present existence it all goes back to past environmental morals, principles & values. Unfortunately I can’t question or study my violators and I can’t sit and police anyone or talk about anyone else’s experiences or contributing factors as to why they are the way they are. I can only talk & direct this or let this be inspired by my experiences, I’ve been raped twice by two separate men on two separate occasions-excluding a covert narcissist I dated & my childhood abuser.

I have an element of personal pride yet sometimes I wonder if it’s an inherent part of my character that I taught myself to enjoy/ find happiness in solitude- or if it stems from feeling inescapably lonely in the first place.

-as a kid or teenager I would create alternative realities that I could go escape too because it was my coping mechanism..it sounds dumb to anyone who is has no deep escapism issues and isn’t affected by the ways of the world. i always wanted to make my own show or felt like it was up to me to write my own script because i didn’t understand what character i was assigned to be in the one on how to be a good girl and function normally in a shitty pedophilic infested rapey shan ass fuckin excuse of a society. lol i could only try maintain the front like the good girl i was. I knew from pretty young the script we were ‘supposed’ to follow was not all that, and eventually i began lusting to be as powerful as the people who overpowered me, but not in such a brutal way, still i was going to make them do what i wanted. in life i would have to slay some demonic reptiles that may come in my way (me thinking i’m a warrior) otherwise i would get eaten alive. yeah so i knew the script had a deeper meaning. real shady, conforming and sus. mines would be freeing, true and carefree.

so there’s obviously an awareness these realities aren’t real now but when you begin to look at life as a game, subconsciously even in adult hood, you take certain risks before putting the logical precautionary measures in place!! I always wish i could stay in line but i vowed to write my own script as soon as i got a pen licence in primary! sometimes i feel like its one of my personalities controlling that ‘i must control my destiny’ crap, however i literally do feel my brain split, i still ave my purpose and will achieve things, there’s just a time scale in my head which makes everything sticky. in most situations where i should be able to act with logic or just make a simple bloody decision, it’s kinda like the classic devil on ones shoulder with an angel on the other (in my head it’s more like fosters home for imaginary friends gang) we don’t always want to make the best decisions or know what is right.

anyhooOO sometimes good things come out of risky situations, sometimes you think you’ll get killed but it becomes all part of the game and you just hope you aren’t getting played and they haven’t been sent to ruin or test you. sometimes you get sent messiahs and griots, storytellers and healers. people are assigned symbols, memorable energies too will never be forgotten, be it aura colors or lucky numbers. anyways I live in my imaginatio still but apply some of that to my ‘reality’ whatever the fuck that is. I am baaaaad for ghosting but i want cuddles all the time when i’m not thinking about hitting my head against a wall. i want to read a poetry book or some shit with someone in the grass and eat jackfruit! & not run away from my issues when things feel too intense. Although it’s never a boring time when I’m away off sites other than tumblr i do miss when i was once a good communicator, now I really do specifically enjoy the isolated factor. but then I wonder how to differentiate an ingrained love of solitude from an acquired ability to thrive off loneliness.

I have seriously learned from it but i don’t need to be nourished by it forever- i want intimacy and honest expression really.. ; i just don’t know to what extent being alone is simply just a form of escapism to recharge or because i have always been convinced by something inside me that i wasn’t the same as others. either way i built contentment residing on my lonesome.

i'm nowhere near recovery. but i'm opening up about it. i'm no longer terrified to talk about it with the close ones that know. i'm trying not to feel ashamed due to the effects my trauma still has today. when in doubt, i have people to go to. i plan to join one to one therapy to help me accept & overcome it after and if things ever go back to some kind of normal that my brain can adapt to. I plan to free myself from this bondage.

#LCZABIBU #deathwillonlybethebeginning

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angstcollection · 4 years

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After some time, I’ve wondered why I become a mess once I have sought relationships filled with promises of love, understanding, and reasonable communication.

It turned into everything I wanted had to be and I disregarded what was happening in front of me, to the not caring enough and then turns out I came off like I didn’t care, to the giant turmoil of figuring out the toxic signs with a big hang up bent out on regrets.

As a strong believer of just knowing when to step aside or step up, is a big thing in the decision making world of your own.

My wonderful world, with love and intimacy in mind, is a ruler of my logical disputes within myself of how one goes about being outside of themselves. Other than their own desires how do they use it to what influences. Which option are they more likely to take based on recent events aside from their environmental development as a child, it’s a pattern or puzzle that I’ve obsessed myself with for years.

So with this one individual, I am afraid to let go with him because I don’t what high hopes brewing in my mind. There is an intensity that keeps me bogged down and then words confirm the terror within me.

My experiences are dull in the field of who I can recollect opening up to. I can be very cynical of other’s intentions. From the antics to the breaths they take, I indulge in the beauty of humanity.

I have registered love as a form of violence without passion and sex is my release of these deep seeded thoughts of if I’m even alive. It’s not a painful situation. It’s an epiphany of my fight to use this knowledge to guide, alert, and rebel against the forces to compromise on national standards.

This one knows.

This friend.

This situation.

This weird feeling whenever I feel them in my life.

I hate being accused by them in every part of my being. Especially in my view on them because I am terrified of being intimate with him due to my constant feel he wouldn’t ever care or love me more than I can love myself.

I’ve become vulnerable after being so afraid to be vulnerable for years and lift the chins of the warriors before me. I gobble up my moments of weaknesses and find my way of contributing, yet it depends on what field I am that will amount to success.

So what is this impression?

I guess I realize that he wants me to know he will not ever love me nor will love ever be on the table.

It’s tough to love a comrade that lies through their teeth in an attempt to conform. A reflection of what I use to crave at a young age, never seeking a husband but someone to kiss and have fun doing activities with. I don’t understand.

I didn’t care for the thought of companionship after I lost my virginity to be honest. Not one truth was heard beyond my desires and mindset of getting my money with my efforts, trades, charisma. I just needed good company and good dick to make for a decent love life and almost considered becoming asexual thanks to my solitude growing up.

Where I fucked up is that the experience that I got consumed is had a limit that I forgot to abide by.

So these impressions of me are interesting on the other side of the spectrum.

Drunk messages from a man who has ‘always’ been my friend for over 5 years, making these confessions that I overlooked because I chose not to believe him.

I chose to play the situation as I thought it was taken; just another sex game of enticement when shit was hitting the fan.

Everything becomes a blur when I’m around them, as if there is a flow where they see a new side of me from my perspective and yet, he doesn’t notice the antics I feel from an octave, alignment, vocabulary all the reveal a worthy excerpt of a desire.

What am I getting out of this?

Even when I am asked why I love them, the answer is diluted.

I love them because from the moment I’ve met them, they have been lively. Intoxication or not became less of a factor as long as outside world means were met. They worked, I worked, no IOUs, no heartbreak stories.

A movie, good conversations, and good intent.

Once I kept getting invited out, it felt weird to be treated nicely by a well-mannered, intelligent, and yet an alcoholic that has his eye on me for cuddles, laughs, and sex.

Another moment that caught me off guard was a kiss in front of a friend of his. I didn’t do that with fuck buddies nor fwb. Did he know that? I guess not.

Another moment turns into several of them of me being a shy mess with him, yet when other people would engage in conversation with me, it felt even more awkward.

These thoughts make this feel emotional from a different angle of how transparent I am of keeping my sex life in the down low.

I enjoy flirting and teasing; I’m not about it unless it’s a girls night and I get to hear their sex life too. So what is this impression that I am helplessly in love?

After I was ghosted, the friend became my boyfriend after several months of feeling nothing but a shell running on empty. I felt like I had done something wrong. As if what I asked or said or did at any level was the problem without a word from the only other one who could clear the air.

A little less than a year later...

I’m in a relationship where my concern became making money and starting my own business, I just didn’t know exactly what my niche was. Unfortunately I moved in with said friend/bf 3 months after dating and ended being foolish enough to let him move in thinking, this is my life & I didn’t expect to ever see him again.

Soon the confusion began. All I care to recap in this is that for 2 years, I have never felt so much in my entire life. My only focus was being a good friend while my said bf just wanted his advantages of just picking and choosing the strength of any situation for his ego. I was on a crazy verge of regretting the moment I let myself get talked into dating someone being nice to me.

I actually thought it might’ve been what I needed to move on since, again, my mind was set.

**the memory of them getting mad at me for finishing my anime episode rather than having sex once they finished their online gameplay. Even tho I then came back with giving them a blowjob after, I got shunned.**Oct 2014**

Back to the new highlight of now them coming over to my home to pick up almost weekly, started a relationship in front of me, attempted to stay with her for the same amount of time, they fought mainly over his drinking or antics, whatever is whatever because they can surely grow out of it.

I had my shit to focus on.

Then it all got confusing again when he would drink and would love to get my mouth shut every chance he could. It was an interesting reaction to my existence.

Even when I couldn’t stand him and I found every way to stay away from him. Eventually I would be warmed up to loosen up, not taking everything seriously. To me that meant not taking the person’s intentions towards me seriously after a milestone has been placed for me to see. From the moments he spent the nights where I stayed to filling his own void, there was a strong pressure in the air over him that everyone seemed to notice.

I convinced myself it wasn’t real.

It didn’t matter what he said to me back then.

I wouldn’t ever believe even if I were to ask everyone else to give me an idea. I didn’t believe either side of a story that was worse than hearing about a school shooting. That’s the intensity of how distracted I felt when his name would ring in my ear.

This voice and laughter was intoxicating.

Just the energy alone was alright even if I wasn’t right there, I didn’t like it but given the circumstances, I refuse to forfeit my love of indoor living until I feel like exploring. Something always pulled into the room with him, being spoken to or not being spoken to, to simple requests when they asked for a massage out of the blue.

He trusted me at some point of this entire encounter.

Did he think I trusted him?

Did I give that impression?

Did I trust him? Not once.

Even once his words came to me in waves of a sense of possibilities based on the time span of knowing them, I raised judgement to a personality crisis. Is he interested in something more with me?

What is he expecting of me when he confined in me the scars of his labors?

I bear as a witness of multiple confessions, unless my sense of self was occupied with friends that meant the world to me after I invested in my bank account and way of living. No nonsense, just results and discipline to just get the shit down. Don’t make an excuse for why you’re slacking off.

Roll up your sleeves and do what you know you can.

~In my top 5 favorite Ghibli films, ‘As The Wind Rises’ really stuck out to me when it came to having a passion in a niche that seems out of reach. It’s possible, just from different angles. ~

Instead, I let a barrier slip away once he advanced me with talking rather than flirty complicated physical advances. I didn’t want him. I didn’t pay attention to anything other than sleep, food, work, and again, good company. I don’t remember how long it was before I gave in to an opportunity to hang out alone, I guess.

The second time it was will power of commitment and blood boiling situations.

The third time was a moment of weakness to act like I learned a lesson. My attempts to be in a relationship while balancing this connection between he and I. I’m not sure if I thought of him as a friend to me.

It’s always felt like he saw me as something else.

I don’t know what it is. I try not to guess or assume because it’s none of my damn business.

I do know that each time my mind is clear, kissing him when it’s us feels like a relief.

We aren’t who we were then.

I’m not who I was back then.

I just remember being able to feel an intensity without an overly attached obligation to find fault.

I remember him saying I would die if he and I ever dated, curious it was made clear between us both.

Does he know I am afraid to love him intimately?

Does he not realize that the things I love about myself are shown in a different way?

The way I express myself is more than just a dramatic banter into the bottle or more arms to hold, I’m looking to escape my body.

I even kept thinking it must be the sex. So I glorified and made it evident that’s all it is and all it will ever be. That’s how it should be.

I planted this view on every soul that bothered to make haste in my line of vision. Questioned motives and observed the reactions to being able to speak my mind.

Moving on is the suggestion, yet something pulling me in that made me think for years of what I did wrong for him to ghost me.

I recall asking what our connection was outside of having sex since if I talked to someone else, I would end it then and there. If there was nothing going on then I would call it a day.

Next thing I know, I’m in the cataclysm of guys stemming from my encounter with him to someone thinking we were dating after I thought I made it clear I wasn’t interested. He knew when it came to my love life, I shut myself down after him.

To avoid the thought, I kept focusing in on work, enjoying life and keeping my head above water as much as I could. More guys came to take a shot and I am to blame for anticipation to possibly get a chance to talk to him. What would I say?

I kept getting this feeling of distraught after one person did nothing but talk bad about him. Back to back..kind words were out of the picture when it came to him. At that point, I became quiet and distant with anything dealing with thoughts of the fling back in July 2014 to Oct 2014. Losing work shortly after didn’t help since it was temporary.

‘I’m so happy for you and XXXX relationship, Kristin’ with honey gold eyes that came out on a rare case.

It has to be a delusion made from knowing that at any moment, someone could trip me up worse than I have ever been and I will not ever be convinced, so I won’t try it out.

Now, I am here thinking about the night I didn’t understand the weight of how much I messed up with being a complete asshole. Not wanting to hurt him yet also not wanting to be hurt by him.

I didn’t want to sacrifice myself to him. I don’t see him as an enemy.

I see him as someone that I know I must care about from a distance until I know he means anything.

I don’t question his knowledge as much as I do his tactics at times, then again, I know nothing other than he gets shit done. Period.

So what is this impression?

Does he know me?

Showing subtle signs or certain words he says makes me ponder for a few times before I confront the matter or not.

Even agreeing that my impulses will certainly be my demise if I keep it up. I am not afraid to admit if I have a thing for someone and it’s not that serious.

Then again, if he is looking for something of a committed relationship, why is a friendship on the table with little to nothing in common but two bad tempered shit talkers, anime loving, and possibly polar opposite individuals?

Even worse that I get pure butterflies with him where I small talk or attempt to stay clear of intimacy.

Then I give off the thought and I’m like fuck, am I trying to avoid it or expecting for that to be a thing?

I mean..I do feel touchy with those that I am true fwb (usually one person tbh) and then the whole predicament gets more complicated.

In my head.

With this flow.

I shouldn’t be thinking about it nor overthinking it.

I just wanted to figure out the best way to relieve my heavy heart filled with the unfortunate notion that I have met my first checkmate in a situationship.

{Picture Relation: He mentioned the Anime Bersek to me and ever since, I’m drawn to re-educating myself in the compassion of how this resonates with my always have been friend)

#me #lifestyle #situationship confessions #Pisces man Gemini female

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mirceakitsune · 6 years

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Artificial Intelligence: The baddest hoax in modern history

Over the years I've dealt with a good amount of crazy. I've seen more shit in nearly 3 decades than I imagined I could in 10 lifetimes, as far as sheer human madness is concerned. In the last few years it has rapidly gotten worse, and recently it seems to have reached new unprecedented heights.

In this episode, it's my displeasure to present to you the sentient computer... A.K.A. machine learning, A.K.A. artificial intelligence. No folks we aren't talking about a physical electronic brain... which may actually be possible one day, once scientists figure out how to reconstruct all neurons in the human brain and map them to a circuit of quantum bits. We're talking classic binary code running on your average 64 bit processor (C++ / Java / Whatever) which is supposedly capable of sentient processes... most notably recognizing the meanings and circumstances of objects in photos, up to facial recognition within complex images. Said functionality is supposedly achieved, I fucking kid you not, by training your computer like an animal or a human baby. This delusion seems to be embraced not only by ordinary people, but even programmers who are expected to know the matter at hand, and horrifyingly by government officials who believe this bullshit will give them some magical powers like in the movies. A few cases of this fairytale include, but are tragically not limited to:

Facebook supposedly recognizes who you are and automatically tags you whenever you upload a photo. Obviously this isn't because FB has money to throw at an army of moderators who stalk people in realtime to tag their shit, and because that's controversial and stupid they're hiding it behind an AI story, that would be crazy... it's the midget trapped in the body of a computer doing it!

The human-computer chimera may soon be "hired" by the airport, where it would scan the faces of travelers as they walk through the gate. Dozens of them... in a few seconds... in the same image.

British police are teaching an AI what child porn looks like. You can be sure it's not because they're looking for an excuse to play around with that material, hehe... it's just so the little man in the Windows system tray can learn how to "detect abused kids". Unfortunately for them the program is doing a bad job at singling out them kiddo butts, because it's confusing them with photos of sand dunes in the desert. But not to worry: The police is sure that the dead God is on their side, and their program will one day spot those sexy children without error! Hmmm... I wonder if mister computer man can develop a pedophilia fetish...

An old news article suggested an AI which, hold on to your horses everyone, was capable of detecting gay faces. Yep: If it sees any picture of you, it's able to tell whether you are homosexual or not.

Another AI can supposedly analyze the way you walk, determining if you have criminal intent based on how a camera sees you moving down the street. You better not be dancing back there dawg, the computer people will think you're gettin' ready to mug some homeboy!

An elaborate hoax known as Facerig has done an impressive job at convincing people that a program is capable of understanding not just your face, but your facial expressions... without even needing some super high-resolution video, just a shitty blurry webcam. Their hoaxed demos even show animated 3D characters imitating the facial expressions of someone in a camera... which I assume is either edited manually into the video, or the character is controlled in realtime by someone watching your face on camera (horrifying to think it might be without some users even knowing it).

At least a few of those articles managed to convince me that I couldn't possibly be a member of the human race, even if I look human when I see myself in the mirror (otherkin aspects aside). Nope; There's just no way I'm part of the same species as those creatures: My brain wouldn't be capable of coming up with this bullshit even as I'm dreaming at night, I must have been designed by aliens using a properly debugged brain structure! Jesus fucking Christ on a flying carpet... what in the ever loving fuck?

Now there are multiple reasons why this whole thing has become infuriating for me: One is the fact that whenever I try shedding a ray of reasoning on this trainwreck, I'm immediately attacked by virtually everyone who refuses to accept this is realm of fantasy. At the same time I worry about what is actually going on, seeing that a lot of effort and money were put into this hoax so it's obviously happening for a reason (likely a smoke screen for extreme mass surveillance plans). Further more it makes an unique mockery out of both biological life and programming alike, via the demented insinuation that a CPU is capable of emulating sentience which is a requirement for any content recognition of this degree. There was once a time when I was fascinated with the idea of AI and machine learning, and was planning to learn more about it and possibly play around with such code... today I'm disgusted to even hear about the subject, after those fuckers disfigured and diseased it too with their madness and refusal to understand basic logical limitations.

Because common sense doesn't seem to be obvious to everyone, I'm going to clarify why this is impossible, by explaining the impassible obstacles a computer would have to overcome in order to do something as unthinkably complex as facial recognition. For the proposed functionality, a mindless piece of code would have to do the following things, all on its own using only pixels of different colors from an image:

First of all it must determine what in the photo is a face, from numerous objects and complex structures that each represent all sorts of things. This is barely doable itself but okay.

Next it must work around the face being shot from any possible angle. The head may be rotated in any position relative to the camera, resulting in a radically different structure being visible in the image.

The person's face may be partly covered. Perhaps there's an obstacle between the face and the camera, like a structure or another person. Maybe they're wearing a scarf or glasses, which they weren't in other images. Maybe their hair is brushed differently and they have an emo haircut covering half of the face. Maybe they're wearing lipstick and the color of their lips is different.

People have different facial expressions in each photo. In one you may be smiling, in one you may be frowning... in one your mouth might be open, in the other it's closed. Faces are always shaped differently.

The lighting conditions are guaranteed to not be identical, both brightness and colors differ. Maybe it's day maybe it's night, maybe the environmental light is reddish maybe the atmosphere is blue, maybe different cameras that shot you used different color adjustment filters.

The average camera (even good ones) is still much more blurry than anything we see with the naked eye. Motion blur is also involved if either you or the camera are moving, if the environment is dark it gets worse. Noise is further introduced by a bit of jpeg compression, as no sane camera wrecks your drive space by saving in lossless png.

Many people still upload low resolution pictures of themselves on the internet. When your picture is 1024 x 768 and you're standing at a distance, there is nearly no usable detail to even attempt to work with on a PC.

Suppose it miraculously managed to single out a face throughout all those obstacles: It needs to measure something and use it as an identifying trait! What, how, why? The apparent distance between your eyes in pixels? How wide your mouth appears to be? How bulgy is your forehead? It doesn't even know what those things represent, not to mention anything can look like a head or eyes or a mouth!

Even if by total defiance of all logic, there was something that could be mathematically measured and the program did manage to calculate it on its own: The computer would also need to compare the data to what is probably trillions of photos in the database! Not only do people look similar so there would be millions of false positives, but doing so many pixel comparisons would require 100 times more memory and processing power than all computers on the planet combined today have!

Are you fucking kidding me? Someone is actually trying to tell me that in actual real life, a shitty piece of x64 code would be capable of doing ALL THAT? What the fuck are people smoking these days? No, really... just go take a walk in the park or meditate on the top off a cliff, then ask yourself the question: "How could I possibly be led to believe this crap"? It's 1000 times easier to board a space shuttle and go to Mars TOMORROW, compared to achieving something that gets even close to this. Even if Jesus himself was still alive and had his superpowers to heal the blind and spawn fish from a basket, even if Moses could make the waters split with his mighty staff... not even they could create something like this, even if they called God himself for reinforcements. If you open your bedroom window and leap right through it, you can be more confident that you'll fly like Peter Pan compared to this shit happening. THIS - IS - NOT - POSSIBLE!

And before people tell me "but the CIA has had facial recognition for decades": Yes they do and that's a totally different matter. Criminologists use one or two photos per suspect (frontal and side shot) which are taken in carefully controlled conditions: It's always from the same angle and distance, the suspect is told not to smile or open their mouth, the lighting is the same, etc. There are also only a few million photos of criminals in the database, rather than trillions of pictures from billions of people... if you have a 10 GHz processor you may be able to do a pixel-to-pixel comparison of one photo against all others in less than a day.

I'm sorry, but some harsh shit had needed to be said about this: Every time this pops up on EFF or other rights groups, I find myself compelled to speak out against a big fat lie seeing how everyone else refuses to. There is seriously no excuse for allowing fairytales and mass hysteria to spread all over the media, without one voice of reasoning exposing this obvious lunacy for many months! Also fuck humanity hard for ruining what could have been a beautiful domain of research if it was kept rational and serious and not turned into a distorted fantasy... especially since I'm a programmer, do not expect me to forgive this mockery, as they've put yet another cherry on the cake the way only this disgusting species is capable of doing.

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xottzot · 7 years

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2017-09(SEP)-15th-Friday--MY PREDICTIONS.....

I keep stating facts that are received as not being facts , despite the reality of it all smacking them all the face.

So here's a bunch of off-the-cuff forecasts of shit to come to try to convince you......

Masses of 'lesbians' and 'gays' will suddenly be demanding things that nobody else has. And they will demand them above and beyond anyone else. -- I'm not talking about real lesbians or real gays, but shitheads and criminals who see all of that as more criminal opportunities just for themselves and use it just for thier own advantage by PRETENDING to be lesbians, gays, or whatever.

You think I'm joking? - It's already been done with the criminal abo's. That apparently was how they years ago was able to establish the CRIMINAL HOUSEHOLD that was a spin-off from the abo drug dealer house which itself was a total bunch of lies and shit whilst always being a rampant drug dealer. That abo house used and used any and all bullshit to start the abo ghetto, of which the ghetto has grown and become worse creating more crime and criminals. And it's stayed that way, ever expanding...

Suddenly I forecast, there will be masses of people all suddenly claiming they are 'aboriginals' and so demand to be given SPECIAL treatment above and beyond all and everyone else. - It's already going on even off in far flung Tasmania, that previously had records of extremely few aboriginals until a recent census suddenly showed like a miracle, that the place was not just full of aboriginals, but more in comparision to other states in those geographical areas of Australia.

And do you know the reasons why? - Suddenly there was every man and his dog claiming to be aboriginal and were demanding compensation and free money and free everything......SOUND FAMILIAR?

Why not lets have masses of Tasmanian aboriginals of which suddenly ALL of Tasmania is NOW stated as solely comprised of if you were to only follow the data results from census information and departmental info. Which is quite amazing and telling since beforehand there was hardly any beforehand in all data from everywhere, governmental, Tasmanian, all....

Once all THAT is in the mainstream, it will get hammered as being fact, and hammered as being clear examples why 'chosen ones' should get more of anything than anyone else. And that NEW MANUFACTURED 'TRUTH' will then get subsequently hammered out and lorded over with as being 'proof' as to why subsequent things they demand should go through without question.....

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Suddenly, out of nowhere, there will be demands and threats to take over huge masses and sections of (already developed) land and for them to have total exclusion of, control over, more than anyone else has....

THAT is already happening throughout Australia.....

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Critters everywhere, of every type will be classed as free and open to kill but only by 'chosen kinds of people who's 'traditions' are of killing all critters without thought.......and any persons that they don't like or get in their way.....

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The 'chosen ones' everywhere, will be to be deemed to be free of any and all laws, completely, utterly, without any reservation whatsoever. They will be allowed to do anything they want, upon anything and anyone, and to whatever extent they want, including death. -- (THAT'S ALREADY GOING ON)

And as part of that, anyone THEy don't like and choose, they DEMAND they have the right to KILL anyone they want....becaue they claim, that's 'traditional'. -- (THAT'S ALREADY GOING ON IN THE WA NEWS)

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As above, it will also apply to being beyond any and all laws pertaining to any illegal drugs or any forms or alcohol severity of consumption. Any 'crimes' ever committed involving anything, will have these things used as 'excuses' for doing any crimes, and used in a manner that's so blatant they they'll claim that it was ONLY those inert things that did the crime and THOSE PEOPLE are not responsible.....

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As above, it will also apply to any forms of assault or violence upon any and all, to innocents, gentle, and anyone not in keeping with their 'kind'.....

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To distract people....all manner of garbage will be trotted out in the NEWS and will be held up as being so very much more important and utmost than anything else that EVERYONE should just forget about everything and concenrate on whaever constantly shifting topics they decide upon.

This includes sudden 'discoveries' of any politician, or anyone in power, that is deemed to no longer be in power or who tries to attain any power.

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Meanwhile, there will be inane 'good news stories. (THAT'S ALREADY GOING ON) and it's like clockwork for every week, there are new NEWS (or what they purport should be 'NEWS') stories of fantastical good news, showing that there is progress being made and that everyone should always think of only 'good news' whenever innocent people are the victims of crime and violence and to forget about the perpetrators of the crime and violence...because otherwise it might upset the perpetrators of the crime and violence who might do more crime and violence........(but who do more crime and violence anyway).....

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New press releases of wonderous new discoveries of invention are revealed......much fanfare will be featured and bandied about......only for all of it to wither away and fade into non-existance....

Other such proclamations are made......perhaps yet ANOTHER season of near-earth-like planets announced being discovered (as if we could just catch a bus and go to them on wekend trips), but then they'll also be told of as being so far away that we can't get to any to see if it 'might' be true or not.....so it's best to just forget about it all...meanwhile....other things just demand more interest......

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MORE natural disasters assault all over the world.....

MORE man-made disasters assault all over the world.....including MORE wars......

And MORE money and resources are demanded to deal with all that.....

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YOU will be demanded upon to make sacrifices of any of your income, lifestyle, health, and living whilst at the same time those very same demand are exempted to be followed by those who have power, poltics, and sway over so much more than they have ever had before......

And meanwhile, the most vulnerable still keep getting exploited and used-up....

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MORE military personnel will be demanding more humane conditions for themselves whilst and afterwards their services.....that extends to Police and other authorities......

And they will uter how terrible it all was them for them whlst they were serving.....but were absolutely prevented from ever saying or doing anything whilst being in service.

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MORE tales of woe will be be highlighted and thrust up into the public consciousness.

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MORE environmental destructions will occur. MORE environmental destructions will be threatened will soon occur.

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MORE things that were hitherto beforehand seemed totally crazy and adding to woe will be thrust forward as being the 'only' answers to the 'solutions' to everything.

ie.......in Australia, a place where terrible fires rage and destroy everything, it's AGAIN been recently claimed that the reason for all the fires occuring was because there had not been ENOUGH fires burning everything up, and therfore there is now great dangers (AGAIN) of everything going up in flames and of biblical destruction because there has not been enough burning......their sole solution....set fire to everything and burn it now.......this of course follows on from the previous massive deliberate burns they recently did to stop all the uncontrollable massive burns......

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Also in Australia, watch the HUGE bullshit all rollin as they lead up to yet another 'suprise' election...and apparently democracy will be at risk because of (yet again), 'hung Parliaments'....the tactics field tested and done so well using 'hung Parliaments' in Britain, and in countries everywhere else before arriving in Australia and being repeated over and over again.....

But it's getting a it 'stale' now...and apparent in the NEWS.....

Never mind, there's still LOTS of 'distractions' in election shit to roll out and fester over to be utter distractions to any populations in the world....Australia will soon be having a LOT of political bullshit going on, and is in the early stages of the throes of it already......

Things being massaged and evolving that damn people for suporting or failing to support anything trumped up.

All the attention gets sucked away from things that matter to EVERYONE whilst they fester on things that although at first look very worthy, are run out and drawn out and utilsied how it's all been previously planned for long long ago to have a resolution that's already long ago decided.

And AFTER the 'decisions' have been made, great social upheavels and turmoils everywhere...which only serves to aid what was previously planned out long long agao.

All great 'distractions' and 'social guidings' and pushes and shoves.....

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In the very short time since this list of shit has been on my system and befoe I posted this up, what do you know....there was a new NEWS story of raging fire in Westen Australia......"Bushfire emergency warning downgraded for Kimberley community"......

I never knew any of that before I was making up this list.

It's not even Sumer yet......this shit started within literaly a scant few days of the official Winter season in Australia ending......and it becoming officially Spring......but no....we gotta skip over it beng Spring and jump straight into Summer shit.......

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I also was going to state as prediction that 'strange' apparitions would be appearing in the sky, a large event seen by many.......

Oh dear, in todays NEWS (befoe I could post this up) what should appear but......

"Bright light likely space junk streaks across Central Australia night sky for more than a minute"

Because obviously 'space junk' fits in to this season NEWS cycles that they read off their schedule lists.....just as it did this time before......

'Space Junk' obviously is seasonal....like terrorist attacks are seasonal......

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Health woes from all the smoke and particulates and pollution will AGAIN be very rampant and AGAIN touted as being just simply minor inconveniences and that all minor numbers of insignificant people should take sanctary inside places and never got outside.

At the same time.....AGAIN vast numbers MORE than before of afflicted people with respiratory and breathing problems and conditions rise and become deadly. - And AGAIN there will be no explanation. And AGAIN, there will be a deamand for more money to be spent researching why all this could be occuring because apparently nobody has any idea why...none at all...absolutely none.

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Water......AGAIN it will be told that there is nothing left. And AGAIN everyone will be told/ordered/lorded over into obeying even more draconian laws whilst at the same time that business and industry uses even more as well as any governmental concerns.

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I WAS going to forecast a repeat of a terrorist attack in London again......but THAT apparently has hapened today.....AGAIN.

And once again, it's being all done according to everything that has come before it.

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Have we had yet another attack upon any USA military yet? - Maybe that's about to happen again and is the 'season' for that to occur.

Gotta have new cycles of disadater, woe, and despair going to replace the previous cycles of disaater, woe, and despair......

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Why not also throw in terrible things the useless womaniser USA el preidnte has been up to but has supposedy been kept hidden...until it was scheduled to be publicly known and utilised......

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Any news of disease plagues yet? - They love using that one too.

Hopw about 'surprise diseases' that they never knew about or just suddenly came about? - Those are always handy. Just like surprise natural disasters that are seasonally happening to suit them and their purposes....ala Mexico.

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I tried to sleep because I was so utterly exhausted and once again I was awoken because it got so very hot in/on the bed. Outside felt was as if the sun was still up.

And once AGAIN, the rain and wet weather they forecast for here, which they had up for many days as official forecasts, then quickly was re-done into the weather was supposed to going to be days of not much rain, then it chanegd to become days of not much rain at all, and now that forecast has changed again to promises of lots of rain to come but it'll be 'far off' several days to come to wait for that....

In other words, the official weather forecasts AGAIN just cannot be trusted AT ALL. NOT AT ALL....AGAIN.

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Endless repeating cycles of repeats of utter bullshit, crime, incidents (major, minor, personal, tragic), repeating NEWS, inclusions into the NEWS of even MORE inane crap that is anything but news, endless repating international 'incidents' (both major, minor, localised, international, and pithy),

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Now sit back an watch all the NEWS shit unfold...AGAIN....as has done so before.....

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P--I love you Fliss and so very very much want to be with you. - And if I am, I'll never have a blog ever again in my life. Not that anyone ever reads this anyway or cares about me........

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ntrending · 6 years

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Your guide to a Thanksgiving dinner without food waste

New Post has been published on https://nexcraft.co/your-guide-to-a-thanksgiving-dinner-without-food-waste/

Your guide to a Thanksgiving dinner without food waste

Even if you’ve spent the entire year cutting down on plastic, eating less red meat, and conserving water, you’re probably poised to have a wasteful Thanksgiving. It’s the nature of the holiday. We eat a lot, and that means we create a lot of garbage—and throw away a lot of food.

This year can be different. Here’s a step-by-step guide to minimizing your turkey day trash.

Step one: The planning phase

This should not come as a shock. As with most things, planning is key. But what should you prioritize when plotting a no-waste feast?

Know who’s coming, what they want, and how much they’ll eat

Unfortunately, having an open-house-style party isn’t the best option for cutting down on waste. Kick off your eco-conscious holiday by pinning down a guest list, stat. Then text or call everyone to ask what three or four foods they most want to eat. The dishes that get a shout out from more than three-quarters of your expected guests are the ones you should make. (Obviously, whoever is cooking gets veto power. But if no one else is interested in eating all five of your favorite foods, maybe you should just pick one or two of them.)

A firm guest count allows you to plan portions, which is where most Thanksgiving dinners really go off the rails. We want to create the perfect picture of a table veritably buckling with the bounty of this year’s harvest, but that often means making more food than we need.

Celebrity chef Jet Tila uses the following guidelines, per person per serving:

Proteins 4-8 oz (1/2 cup to 1 cup)

Starches 4-8 oz

Vegetables 4-6 oz

This is per serving, he noted in an email, so “big eaters” should be counted twice or three times in each dish.

If you want a quick and easy way to plot out the proper number of servings for each of your dishes, check out the Natural Resources Defence Council’s “Guest-imator” tool. This widget lets you enter the number of guests you expect (divided into appetite categories for added precision) and the types and number of dishes you hope to make, then spits out recommended servings for each recipe.

This might sound crazy, but consider ditching the turkey

Most chefs recommend a pound of turkey per guest. But you’d be hard-pressed to find a bird smaller than 10 pounds or so in your local grocery store, so smaller family gatherings are bound to end up with way too much meat. If you’re expecting fewer than a dozen people, consider some alternatives to a whole bird. You could make a stuffed turkey breast, spatchcock and roast a chicken instead, go with another sort of meat entirely, or go totally meat free—the sides are the best part, anyway!

Assuming you don’t swap the turkey for a giant piece of red meat, you’re almost certainly going to make your meal more environmentally friendly if you don’t gobble a gobbler.

Step two: Pick your recipes with care

It’s easy to open a hundred tabs’ worth of recipes and use Thanksgiving as an excuse to make them all. But being choosier with your menu can go a long way.

No one-off ingredients

One of the biggest tricks for minimizing waste is to make sure you don’t buy any ingredients that won’t factor into another dish. This doesn’t mean you can’t make a recipe with specialized components, but it does mean you should stop and ask yourself whether it’s possible to buy that ingredient in a small enough serving as to avoid shoving some into the back of your fridge. In a pinch, at least Google how best to preserve that food item for as long as possible. It’s possible you can store it in the freezer until another holiday.

Whole-food recipes

No, not those Whole Foods. Try to pick some recipes that use parts of the vegetable or bird that you’d usually toss. You can use turkey giblets to make delicious gravy, or make your mashed potatoes “dirty” (keep the skins on when you mash them). Various carrot soups will taste just as scrumptious with the tops in. The ends of cheeses used in other dishes can be combined to make an indulgent hors d’oeuvre spread. Make desserts with the bruised apples and bananas already knocking around your fridge. Cook and eat your beet greens. If a recipe requires that you throw away something edible, either find another use for that would-be trash or pick a different dish.

When in doubt, avoid meat

No one is asking you to have a vegan Thanksgiving (unless that’s what you’re into). But while butter and heavy cream may feel inevitable, meat doesn’t have to be. Whether you put out a showstopping protein main like turkey or chicken or stick to sides only, try to limit use of animal products to dishes where those flavors will have a real impact. In other words, don’t put sausage and cheese in everything just because it’s easy. You’ll cut down on the water and carbon emissions related to your meal if you make sure there’s more green than cream.

Step three: the grocery store is a battlefield

All your planning will be for naught if you don’t properly execute your shopping trip. Here are some guidelines:

Don’t grocery shop the week before

This will minimize the classic pile-up of leftovers once the meal is done. Your fridge should be as close to empty as possible when you make your Thanksgiving shopping trip. This will minimize headaches while you’re cooking and give you a shot at having well-organized leftovers. You don’t want your turkey day spoils to hide spoiling milk as November turns into December.

Shop in your fridge first

Now that your fridge and pantry is spic-and-span, open everything up and take a good hard look at the food that’s left. Definitely run through your recipe-related shopping lists to make sure you don’t already have ingredients you need. And if you’ve got a big heap of some food item or another left wilting in your crisper drawer, consider making a last-minute menu alteration in order to incorporate it. Remember: you’re probably going to end up ignoring whatever foods are in your fridge in favor of Thanksgiving leftovers. It’s worth it to find a way to mix them in. Check out these tips for reviving produce that’s past its prime.

Be less picky than usual (at least about the silly stuff)

A waste-free Thanksgiving isn’t just about cutting down on the stuff you throw away. A lot of the food America sends to landfills never even makes it into a fridge or cupboard. We like our produce to look pretty, which means shoppers tend to ignore bruised or soon-to-turn produce, and our fairly arbitrary system of sell-by and best-by dates means that stores often dump “bad” food out en masse.

Since you’re probably doing your Thanksgiving shopping pretty shortly before the holiday itself, go out of your way to pick items that have fast-approaching expiration dates. If a fruit or veggie is going to be sliced and diced or mashed and boiled, look for produce that looks a little funny. You don’t need the sweet potatoes you’re about to cover with marshmallows and brown sugar to be pretty. Aim to purchase all the Charlie Brown Christmas trees of the produce aisle.

For goodness sake, bring a shopping list

You are not as good at shopping on the fly as you think you are. If you make it this far only to wander around the crowded store without a perfectly-planned list, we can’t help you. If you want to go the extra mile, pick a store that allows you to use bulk containers. That way you can cut down on paper and plastic waste.

Step four: Cook consciously

Before you start your cooking extravaganza, set out containers for trash, recycling, and compostable waste. Ready, set, go.

Bones and veggie scraps are your friends

If you have a pressure cooker, now is its time to shine. Do your vegetable prepping first, and set aside any scraps you don’t plan on using elsewhere. Cover those bad boys with water and make some delicious veggie broth to use in … well, anything you’re making that calls for broth. Gravy is the obvious choice.

Bag up any veggie waste that shows up later in the game along with small turkey bones, then throw them into a pressure or slow cooker to make even more broth. This will come in handy when it’s time to deal with leftovers, which even the most meticulous chef is bound to have.

Compost, compost, compost!

If you don’t usually compost, now is a good time to start. All non-meat trash should end up in a container for composting. You can keep it all in the freezer if you don’t have your own composting operation. After the holiday, look up your nearest composting center and drop it all off. If you compost everything you can and take care to recycle as much of the other waste as possible, you’ll be miles ahead of most households in terms of eco-friendliness.

Use real dishes, but don’t hand-wash them

You might think you’re saving water, but you’re not. Just use the dang dishwasher. And it goes without saying that you’ll be more wasteful if you serve things on paper plates.

Step five: when it comes to the eating, pace yourself

On the one hand, food is only truly wasted if it ends up in the garbage. On the other hand, you’re probably eating more food than you need—or even actually want. I mean, how often do you not get a belly ache on Thanksgiving?

Americans tend to pack on a pound or two (at least) each holiday season, and it takes an entire year to get back down to your lowest weight. Cut down on food waste and weight gain in one fell swoop by starting off with smaller portions. You can always eat more later.

Step six: You’re gonna have leftovers

No matter how carefully you plan your feast, the fact that you’ll want to avoid the faux-pas of serving too little food means you’re going to have at least a few leftovers. Don’t let them sit in the fridge getting gross.

Make sure you’ve got a game plan

Check your larders for storage containers in a variety of shapes and sizes. If you’ve planned your cooking carefully—and minimized non-holiday food in the fridge—you should have plenty of room to stack up organized, labeled leftovers. Avoiding a jumble of tin-foil and half-eaten pies will make you more likely to notice and eat these second- and third-day treats. Put foods that will go bad more quickly in front. If you have a vacuum sealer, use it.

Get creative, then get even more creative

If you tend to throw away most of your leftovers, boredom is probably to blame. Take a look at your bounty on Thursday night and write down a few recipes that remix the most plentiful items, and commit to making them on Friday or Saturday.

The internet is bursting with ideas about this, but here are a few from us. Chef Jet Tila says he loves to use cranberry sauce to replace jam or jelly on everything—try it in oatmeal or on toast! PopSci Editor in Chief Joe Brown recommends Boxing Day Pie. Turkey soup is a given (just use the carcass as a base for stock, then add in some of the leftover meat), and Tila suggests amping the flavor up with a ham bone if you’ve got one. He also likes to use stuffing in place of breadcrumbs when making meatloaf, which frankly sounds obscenely delicious. You can also toast stuffing in the oven to make croutons, and fry up some pancakes with your leftover mashed potatoes. Desserts can be the hardest to remix, but here’s an amazing recipe for turning your pumpkin pie into turkey curry.

Thanksgiving is, at its core, a gluttonous holiday. But if you follow these steps—or even just follow one or two of them—you can enjoy your pie and give thanks for the planet’s bounty in a way that doesn’t help destroy it.

Written By Rachel Feltman

#Environment

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