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bluejay1009 · 2 years

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Hello, this is very late night for me but I just wanted to write another post about the Hidden World and mainly focus on the message of the overall movie. I have been reading a lot of post both here on Tumblr and on Reddit about the message of the movie both in a positive way and a negative way. I wanted to give my own opinion of the message that the movie delivers because I find the message that movie brings about at the end shows the realism of the world that is the only part that I agree with. But, I found that the message was to cynical if it is intended for a child audience to be concerning. Also the way that Hiccup has just gave up on his goal for humans and dragons to coexist and just how close he was but one villain who wasn't even as powerful as Drago manages to just break that resolved. Also leaving nothing for other to pick up and start were he have left off in the future and armed with the knowledge to not make the same mistakes that he made. Simply just waiting for change to occur in humans to accept the dragons. In my own personal opinion change would not happened but just sitting still and waiting for people to change their viewpoint. Do you think MLK sat still waited until people of colored got their rights and equality? Do you think that LGBTQ sat still and waited for people to accept gays and same sex marriages? They didn't wait for change to happened they made moves to start changes that had a impact in our society today. They fought to make changes in our society and it was a battle with lots of up's and downs but they perceive and had the determination to continue to fight which has led us to were we are and those who they left to continue their work are still fighting to continue to promote change.

That should have been the message that the hidden world should have left off rather than such a message doesn't make sense when you have the last two movies because their is no connection whatsoever. Is this the message that younger generations should have that they should just sit still and wait for the world to get better on it's because to me that is very unrealistic.

Also just the humans that should learn to accept the dragons but the dragons as well with the human because they're also dragons who are evil such as the "Red Death" so I find the concept that humans are the only greedy creatures that very vile to be very unrealistic because we see the dragons capable of these same things if we think of them as their own people and civilization rather than just animals which is what Hiccup have always promoted that dragons are more than just beast.

Also the dragons going into hiding and waiting for humans to change their ways would achieve nothing because the humans would forget their existence and would have progress into the technology we have today as well as our economies becoming more expansive to which there won't be room for a beneficial coexistence with the dragons because humans would benefit nothing from it because we have developed technology to help carried us in so many ways and capacities than the dragons can. Also if war were to break out we have developed ways for which we can defend ourselves and kill dragons much more easily without even been present such as drones and long distance weaponry like missiles and rocket launchers.

If dragons were not made to be a myth and there was evidence humans and dragons have coexisted peacefully and that they still exists I think their would have been a large conservation to reintroduce them to their habitats and also transport them to distant lands that require more biodiversity in which we have destroyed. I feel that would have been very beneficial into keeping the planet's balance healthy and prompt the environment to thrive. Also humans in modern society wouldn't try to exploit the use of dragons because we have technologies that surpassed the abilities of the dragons themselves. But, I can see us exploiting the gronckles for the iron that they produce which would mean we have to less drill the planet to look for more minerals. But it would also mean that boulder class dragons benefit from being fed high rich ores and rocks which would be very beneficial for their health.

This is how I would have liked for the hidden world to have been different and I am actually considering in writting a story but with a U.S soldier been transported in HTTYD universe before the first movie by a very strange storm in a middle of a training exercise. Let me know what you guys thinks and what your opinions are.

Also I wanted to add a bit more to the movie that is not about the message but on how toothless was acting when the light fury attacked hiccup because he should have reacted negatively to that instead he just lets it happened without a second thought. The movie manage to under developed the bond that hiccup and toothless have that made it the post star of the entire franchise and it just gets dissolve into nothing as if a soul bond was never ever required to happened in the first place which I find irritating and annoying. I just wanted to get that out of the way since I wanted to add more but I do not want to make this post super long.

#httyd movies #the hidden world #2022 #hiccup #toothless #light fury

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lesserfandomappreciation · 3 years

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Ariadne and why the Mycenaeans can fuck right off

Warning: Includes brief mentions of r*pe, cultural destruction, ancient patriarchy reminding us why no woman would ever time-travel more than 5 years into the past if that and a great deal of spite for male historians/public education history/mythology classes.

Possible side effects may include a sudden intense rage for an ancient society equivalent to the innate rage one has for the Romans burning the library of Alexandria, a distinct hatred for ancient men not being able to let anyone have nice things, and a sudden fascination for Minoa.

Usually, I stick to writing imagines and being happy with that. It’s fun! I love it! But every now and again, in an attempt to escape the crushing forces known as reality and responsibilities I’ll put on a few cutscenes from games I’m: A) Too lazy to play B) Too broke to play C) Too unskilled to play D) All of the above

because cutscenes are free and why torture yourself with impossible levels when its free on Youtube?* *In all seriousness please support video games and video game creators, but no shame to those of us who prefer cutscenes to gameplay. A few weeks ago I added the game Hades made by Supergiant to the list because the cutscenes were bomb and the characters are so much fun! Intricate as all hell! Hella cute too but that’s unrelated! Now my pretty little simp patootie is especially a big fan of Dionysus and his gorgeous design so the cutscenes with him are my favorite.

I’m re-watching his cutscenes a few nights ago for fun as background when he has a certain line about Theseus. Don’t quote me on this since my memory is foggy at best but roughly it was: Dionysus: Good job with Theseus. Never cared much for him- what he did to that girl was just horrible.*

*I know that’s not his exact line but this is clearly a rant post fueled by spite and ADD-hyper-focused obsessions with ancient civilizations so let’s not worry too too much about the semantics here.

Now, I like mythology! Personally, I prefer the Norse mythology due to the general lack of very very gross dynamics that several other ancient mythologies seem to include, but I’m decently familiar with Greek mythos. Enough to go - “Why does the God of Wine give a single fuck about the frat bro of Greek heroes being a dick to a woman? Grossness is embedded into the very DNA of all distant relatives of Zeus, a woman being harassed by Zeus or his bastard army is a typical Tuesday in ancient Greece.”

Wikipedia confirms that Ariadne is the only woman in the story of Theseus and the Minotaur, which I kinda knew already so unless Theseus did some f’ed up shit to some other princess of Minos, Dionysus could only be referring to her. Disregarding what I know about Wikipedia and how it can suck you down the rabbit hole of rabbit holes through sheer fury I stupidly clicked the link to Ariadne’s article.

By the time we get to the end of this shitstorm, I will have two separate plotlines for two separate stories based of Ariadne, 2k+ notes (and going) on an ancient civilization prior to a week ago I didn’t know existed and within me there will be a rage towards a different ancient civilization I vaguely recall learning about in high school.

Here’s how this shit went down.

First of all, apparently after Theseus abandoned Ariadne on an island to die (yep! He did that! To the one person who is the only reason he defeated the minotaur! Fuck this guy.) there are multiple storylines where Dionysus takes a single look at Ariadne and falls in love.

“A god falls in love?” you say, aware of how most love stories in Greek mythos can be summed up with Unfortunately, Zeus got horny and Hera is a firm believer in victim blaming. “This poor woman is about to go through hell!” I thought so too! And in one variation of the story, Dionysus does his daddy proud by being an absolute tool to Ariadne. In the majority though? He woos the fuck out of her, and ultimately marries her by consent!

Her consent!

In ancient Greece!

The party dude of the Greek pantheon knows more about consent then his father and modern day frat brothers!

Okay! That’s interesting, so I keep reading.

Ariadne getting hitched to Dionysus is a big deal in Olympus, to the point of getting a crown made of the Aurora Borealis from Aphrodite who is bro-fisting Dionysus, beyond glad she didn’t have to give him the talk about consent. The rest of the gods are pissy especially Hera who doesn’t like Dionysus much since he is the son of Zeus and Semele but they don’t do much. Ariadne ascends to godhood, becomes the goddess of Labyrinths with the snake and bull as her symbol and that’s that on that.

Colorin, colorado, este cuento se acabado. And they lived happily ever after. That’s the end of the post right?

NO! Because curiosity has made me their bitch and there’s more to this calling me.

Also, I was pissed! Still am! Why the fuck-a-doodle-do did I have to learn about the time Poseidon r*ped a priestess instead of the arguably healthiest relationship in the entirety of the pantheon? Why is Persephone and Hades’ story (which has improved since it was first written and I like more modern versions of it, no hate) the only healthy-ish Greek love story I had to learn when Dionysus and Ariadne were right there? The rage of having endured several grade levels of “Zeus got horny and Hera found out” stories in the nightmare of public education led me to keep looking into this.

There’s this wonderful Youtube channel called Overly Sarcastic Productions that I highly recommend that delves a lot into mythology, and I have seen their bombass video about Dionysus and how his godhood has changed since he was potentially first written in a language we comprehend.

Did ya’ll know this man is the heir apparent to Zeus? ‘Cause I didn’t know that!

YEA! Dionysus, man of parties, king of hangovers and inducer of madness, is set to inherit the throne of Olympus! Ariadne didn’t husband up the God of Wine, she husbanded up the Prince of Olympus and heir apparent to the throne! Holy shit! No wonder some of the gods were against her marriage to Dionysus - can you imagine the drama of an ex-mortal woman sitting on the Queen’s throne of Olympus? Hera must have been pissed.

BUT WAIT.

There’s more.

The reason we know Dionysus is a very important god and is possibly even more important than we think is because of a handy-dandy language known as Linear B, otherwise known as the language of the Mycenaeans!

For those of you fortunate enough to have normal hobbies and interests, the Mycenaeans were the beta version of the Greeks. Their written language of Linear B is one of, if not the first recorded instance of a written Indo-European language. This language, having been translated, gives us an interesting look at what the Greek gods were like back in their beta-stages before they fixed the coding and released the pantheon.

Interesting side facts of the Mycenaean Greek gods include:

Poseidon being the head god with an emphasis on his Earthquake aspect, and being much more of a cthonic god in general.

Take that Zeus, for being so gross.

The gods in general being more cthonic, as Mycenaeans were obsessed with cthonic gods (probably due to all the earthquakes and natural disasters in Greece and Crete at that time)

Several of the gods and goddesses that we know being listed, alongside some that we don’t consider as important (Dione)

The first mention of Kore, later Persephone, but no Hades because since a lot of gods were cthonic, there would be no need for one, specific cthonic god to represent the majority of death-related rituals.

That’s not what we’re focusing on though! What we’re focusing on is a specific translated portion of Linear B that we have. One of the translated portions of Linear B that for the life of me I can’t find (someone please help me find it and send the link so I can edit this post) says an interesting phrase. “Honey to the gods. Honey to the Mistress of Labyrinths.”

One more time. “Honey to the gods. Honey to the Mistress of Labyrinths.”

Mistress of Labyrinths.

Now wait a gosh darn minute. Isn’t there a goddess of labyrinths in the Greek mythos? Why yes! Yes there is! Ariadne!

Here’s a question for you. If Ariadne is but a minor god in the pantheon, a wife to a more predominant god, why is it that while all the other gods and goddesses are bunched together in a sentence of praise, the so-called ex-mortal gets a whole-ass sentence to herself singing praises?

And thus, we have arrived to Minoa!

What is Minoa, you ask? Minoa is to Rome what Rome is to us. An old-ass civilization either older than or younger by a hundred years to ancient Egypt. Egypt, that started in 3200 B.C-ish depending on who you ask. That’s old. Old as balls. They were contemporaries to their trading partner, Egypt until 1450 BC-ish. A 2000 year old civilization.

Minoa was founded on the island of Crete, and was by what artifacts we have found a merchant civilization with its central economy centered on the cultivation of saffron and the development of bronze/iron statues of bulls. Most of what we know about them comes from artifacts and frescoes found on Crete that managed to survive everything else I will mention later, but what matters is that we know a few things about them.

Obsessed with marine life for some time, given their pottery.

Had the first palaces in all of Europe, some of them ridiculously big.

Wrote in Linear A and Cretan Hieroglyphs, both still untranslated languages.

Had a ritual involving jumping over a bull, for some reason.

Firm believers in “Suns out, Tits out.”

You’d think I’m kidding on the last one but no! No no no! All the women apparently rocked the tits-out look in Minoa!

^^^^One of many, many Minoan works featuring women giving their titties fresh air. ^^^^

“Wait a second Pinks! What does this have to do with Ariadne being the Mistress of labyrinths?”

Well you see dear wonderful darling, while we know very little about Minoan religion because Mycenaeans (we will get to those bastards in a second), we do know this:

All the religious figures appear to be exclusively women.

The most important figures of their religion seem to be goddesses as there are few artifacts featuring male gods.

Because of the religion, the culture may have been an equal society or even a matriarchy! Historians who are male aren’t sure.

A frankly ridiculous amount of their temples, including the ones in caves in the middle of fuck-all feature labyrinths. A lot of labyrinths!

Their head god is a goddess! Whose temples have labyrinths and whose main symbols are snakes and bulls. Who do we know is a) the mistress of labyrinths and b) is symbolized a lot by snakes and bulls?

ARI-fucking-ADNE THAT’S WHO!

Ariadne didn’t upgrade by marrying the prince of Olympus! Dionysus wifed up possibly the most important goddess in all of Crete and becoming her boy-toy!

I’m not even kidding, most Minoan depictions of the goddess’ consort features a boy/man who cycles through the stages of death. Dionysus himself in several myths goes through the same cycle - life, being crushed, death, rebirth, repeat. Cycles the consort goes through in Minoan legend depictions too!

Okay, that’s great, but what does that have to do with the Mycenaeans? Why do you want to single-handedly go back in time and strangle the beta-Greeks with the nearest belt?

Everything I just said about Ariadne being a Minoan goddess, the Mistress of Labyrinths being hella important on Minoa, is all theoretical. The Mycenaeans are partially to blame for making it theoretical.

Minoa thrived for 2000 years but it had a lot of issues, mostly caused by natural disasters. Towards the end of their civilization (1500 BC-ish), the nearby island of Thera, today known as Santorini, decided to blow up. The island was a hella-active volcano that when erupted, destroyed a lot.

How big was the eruption? Well when Pompeii was wasted by Mt. Vesuvius, the blast was heard from roughly 120 miles away, 200 km.

The blast on Thera was heard from 3000 miles away. 4800 km away.

Fuck me, the environmental effects of the explosion were felt in imperialistic CHINA.

Holy shit that would waste anybody! And it did! Minoa went from being a powerhouse in the Mediterranean to scrambling to recover from losing 40,000 citizens and who knows how many cities. Tsunamis may have followed the blast, further destroying ports which for a navy-powerhouse of an island nation is a bad thing and the theorized temperature drops caused by a cloud of ash lingering for a while would have destroyed crops for the year.

Minoa was fucked.

The Mycenaeans and all their bullshit made it worse.

Up until a few hundred years prior to Thera’s explosion, Minoan artifacts don’t depict much in terms of military power. Why would it? Crete is a natural defense post. Sheer cliffs, high mountains and a few semi-fortified areas would make it pointless to invade. It’s only when the Mycenaeans in all their bullshit decided to attack/compete that Minoa really needed any army to speak of.

Guess who decided to invade while Minoa was reeling from an incredibly shitty year? Mycenaea!

Guess who won?

Also Mycenaea!

Nobody knows how this shit went down though because wouldn’t you know it, the Mycenaeans in all their superiority-complex glory decided to destroy most written accounts about Minoa, a good junk of the temples and culturally eliminated most of Minoan beliefs.

Minoa isn’t even the real name of the civilization! It’s just the name Arthur Evans, the guy who re-motivate interest in Minoan archaeology, gave to the civilization because the writings that would have included the name of the civilization were destroyed.

“That sucks!” Fuck yes that sucks! “What does that have to do with Ariadne though?”

Oh ho ho. Strap in because you’re about to be pissed.

Those of us unfortunate enough to be aware of all the bullshit the Christians pulled on the European pagan belief system are familiar with the concept of cultural, religious destruction. There’s a special name for it I don’t know but if I did I would curse it to be absorbed by the horrendous will of fungi.

An example: Christianity was not the most popular of religions amongst the Vikings. A monotheistic religion that is heavily controlled did not strongly appeal to anyone with a pantheon as rad as the Norse one.

In order to appeal to the Vikings, what monks would do is they would write down traditionally Viking stories which up until that point were orally passed down. Beowulf, the story of the most Viking Viking to have every Vikinged, was one of these first stories.

However! Did these monks write Beowulf as closely to the original oral transcript as possible? Of course not! They took liberties! While Norse features such as trolls and dragons and all sorts of Norse magic occur, there is a lot of Christian features added in.

This happened across all Pagan religions that Christianity came into contact with in Europe. Stories would be altered when written down to be more Christian (this happened to the Greek Pantheon too btw), holidays that were Pagan magically lined up with ones the Vatican just happened to suddenly have. Even names of mythological figures were taken and added onto Christian figure names. Consequently, a lot of pagan religions they did this to got erased over time, with many of their traditions and details being lost forever, and the details we do know being tinted by Christianity.

The Mycenaeans were likely no different.

Minoa and Mycenaea were as culturally opposite as can be. Minoa is theorized to be a matriarchal or equal society*. Mycenaea and most of early Greece absolutely was not. In fact, during early stages of their religion where they believed in reincarnation, the Mycenaeans believed the worst thing to come back as was a woman.

Did you get that? With your options ranging from man to ever single animal on Earth, a woman was ranked as beneath literal animals in Mycenaean society.

Fuck the Mycenaeans.

* This is not to say Minoa was without fault, as a society that is matriarchal or equal can still have rampant issues such as privilege, classism, racism, sexism and more, but when history has a shortage of civilizations that didn’t treat women like shit, you find yourself rooting for them more.

What do you do then, when you take over a society that is very much the opposite of a nightmare of a patriarchy? You fold their beliefs into your own to bait them into yours. Going back to the Linear B line about “Mistress of Labyrinths” that line would/could have been an early tactic of incorporating Minoan belief into Mycenaean belief. Other goddesses and gods were made into aspects of Mycenaean gods. Bristomartis, the Minoan goddess of the hunt, would become Artmeis. Velchanos, a god of the sky, would become Zeus.

With more time, the religion shifted more into Mycenaean and eventually into ancient Greece as we know it. Through trade other gods and goddesses would continue to shift and change, some being straight up imported (Aphrodite for example). Dionysus himself changed a lot too, going from a God representing freedom and attracting slaves, women and those with limited power into his cult, to a God of parties for the wealthy.

Theseus and the Minotaur was a myth likely based on a Mycenaean myth based on a Minoan myth that changes Ariadne from an important, possibly the important goddess of an ancient religion and relegates her to a side character in a pantheon so vast that she would be lost within it.

All of this brings us to today. Today, where as soon as work ended I spent most of the day, as well as the past two days, looking up everything I can on Minoan civilization and added it to my notes. Spite is fueling me to write two possible different stories for two different fandoms where Minoa dunks of Mycenaea and it is giving me life. Expect an update within the next two weeks folks as I lose control of my writing life once more.

In summary: Ariadne deserves more respect, fuck the public education system for skipping over the good parts of Greek mythology instead of the r*pey as shit parts, the Mycenaeans can eat my shorts, and a world were Minoa became the predominant power instead of Greece would be an amazing world to live in.

Thank you for coming to my TedTalk. Pink out.

#minoa #minoan #crete #ancient history #ariadne #mycenaea #mycenaean #I hate #HATE #HATE HATE HATE the Greeks so much #homer is a dick #So much spite and curiosity went into this #if I ever get a time machine I will travel to the first years of Mycenaea for the express purpose of burning it to the ground before #they get a chance #the opportunity #to look at Minoa wrong

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annewritesfic · 3 years

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Happy Endings Don’t Exist

this au is not dead!!!!!!!!!!!! wow!!!!!!!!!

it has been. a month. i am so sorry.

fun fact: i actually wrote this like a month ago but never actually posted this yes hellbrain is still suffering from writer’s block it’s not wonderful i am fine

uhhhhh word count: 2823

tw: oh god uh, mentions of guns/bullet holes, blood, tyrannical rulers, death, parent death, mentions of stabbing, mentions of hospital rooms, please tell me if i missed anything

Kate ran a hand over the smooth rock that the throne was carved from, relishing the silence. The throne room itself was a mess, furniture still strewn across the floor, marked with bullet holes, and it reeked of the cleaning supplies that had been used to scrub the blood from the floor. Kate’s blood, Levana’s blood, Farrah’s blood, Mattie’s blood… so much blood. But it was quiet and otherwise empty, so Kate had escaped there.

So many things had happened in this room. Kate shivered when they thought about it, about all the people who’d sat in this chair before her. Levana, most recently. Before her, Kate’s own mother. Channary and Levana’s parents, Kate’s grandparents.

Kate thought about Channary a lot. In one of the palace’s hallways, there was a line of holographic portraits of past kings and queens, names Kate didn’t want to know but that their system committed to memory anyway. At the end of the line was Channary Blackburn, and Kate had sat in front of her holographic portrait for an hour, staring at the face of her mother. A woman Kate had no memory of - she’d died just weeks before Kate’s first birthday. She’d been queen for just about two years before she’d died, leaving Levana as queen regent, and Kate’s system had put together an entire file in their head with all the articles and papers and history there was about Queen Channary. But the articles didn’t tell Kate as much as the people who remembered her did.

Queen Channary had died fifteen years ago, so there weren’t many people left who’d also worked under her, but Kate had asked to see everyone who had. There was Clark’s father, Garrison Winslett, a tall palace guard with a soft voice and kind eyes. He’d made Kate feel safe, but he’d refused to share many details, claiming Kate didn’t need to know.

“That’s in the past now, Your Highness,” he’d said. “You need only concern yourself with Luna’s future.”

Which, while that hadn’t told Kate any of the details that they’d been looking for, did say volumes about what kind of queen Channary had been.

As Kate met the rest of Channary’s former subjects, they learned more and more about her. When Kate was a kid, living with Adri, they’d used to spend the bad nights imagining what her mother would have been like before the hover crash she’d been told had killed their parents. She’d imagined a kind, loving woman, with a soft voice and a gentle smile, who’d loved Kate with her entire heart. Kate had imagined walking home from school and telling their mother about their day while she listened attentively, a hand stroking Kate’s hair as they walked together. Snowy days where Kate’s mother would take her sledding at a neighborhood park, then bring her home and wrap them in a blanket and tell stories until Kate fell asleep.

Sitting in that dark, abandoned hallway, face lit up by the gentle light from the hologram, Kate thought about those old daydreams and scoffed a little bit. That’s not who Channary was.

Channary was beautiful and cruel. She was impulsive and vain and saw being queen as a right, not a privilege, not a responsibility. She didn’t care much about improving Luna, about helping the citizens she was sworn to protect. Instead, she threw dozens of lavish parties and flirted with just about every man that entered the palace and left most of the important decisions to the thaumaturges and to her younger sister, Princess Levana.

Honestly, it wasn’t a surprise that Levana had so easily won over the Lunar population. While she was terrifying, murderous, and corrupt, at least at the beginning she’d been dedicated to the job and did help grow Luna’s economy, which was probably a relief after Channary’s lazy, unproductive, brief rule.

Kate had sat alone in the hallway with the smiling image of her mother for exactly an hour, seven minutes, and eighteen seconds, according to their internal clock, before Eva appeared around the corner, calling Kate’s name. Kate glanced up at her, then looked back at Channary, and didn’t watch Eva while she came and sat next to them on the cold marble floor.

“Whatcha thinking about?” Eva asked softly.

Kate didn’t touch her - normally, she was comforting, but Kate couldn’t handle being touched right now. “My mom.”

They didn’t speak for a moment.

“She was a really terrible queen,” Kate murmured eventually. “And a shitty person.”

“I read up a little on her, when I was on the Rampion with you guys,” Eva said softly. “I just… I knew a bunch about your aunt, but not about her, so…”

“I almost did. I was too scared, though.” Kate thought for a moment, then dryly laughed. “I had reason to be scared. She fucking sucked.”

“She sort of did,” Eva agreed.

They were quiet for a few more minutes.

“She looks a lot like me, doesn’t she?” Kate asked softly. “But, like… a thousand times more beautiful.”

“She looks like…” Eva hesitated. “Your glamour. At the ball. When you fell and your glamour came up… you looked like that. Almost exactly.”

“Oh.” Kate hugged their knees, a headache pulsing behind her eyes.

They sat awkwardly in silence for a while, before eventually Kate couldn’t take it anymore. “Can we go?”

Eva let Kate help her to her feet. “Let’s go.”

That was yesterday. Now, Kate sat in the throne room, Luna’s artificial night darkening the corners, a crescent Earth visible in the dark sky beyond the protective dome. Sitting on the throne made Kate think of Channary, wonder how many meetings they’d attended as a baby, but this was also the room where Levana had finally been dethroned.

Those last few minutes were sort of a blur. Kate remembered firing the gun, remembered Levana pretending to surrender, and then there was just a flash of pain through their chest, and warnings flashing across her vision, and Eva screaming, and then… nothing. Waking up in that small, white, sterile room with a stranger bent over her left hand and Eva holding their right.

But Kate was told what happened. That Levana died and Kate didn’t. And Queen Selene finally took her throne.

Kate leaned her head back against the hard marble throne and breathed a shaky sigh.

“I thought you’d be in here,” said a familiar voice. Kate didn’t open their eyes but smiled. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine.” Kate tapped their human fingers against the arm of the throne. “Just… wanted to be alone. Did you know that when you’re a queen, it’s surprisingly hard to find alone time?”

“Crazy,” Eva said flatly. “I never would’ve thought.”

Kate scrunched her nose, eyes still closed. “I mean, I get it. There’s a lot to be done, a lot I’m responsible for fixing, but… I just needed a minute. So I’m hiding.”

Eva laughed a little and walked into the room, her footsteps echoing off the walls. Kate finally looked at her, taking her in, her gentle smile and soft eyes, one hand behind her back. “A hoodie makes a pretty good disguise, you know. Wanna borrow mine?”

“Ugh, please.” Kate tucked their legs up, curling up on the throne. “Did you bring it with you?”

“I did, actually.” Eva shrugged. “It’s, like, a comfort object at this point.” She turned to look out the window, at the view Kate was staring at. “It’s so weird to see Earth where I feel like the moon should be.”

“It’s beautiful.” Kate leaned their head against the chair again, smiling softly when Eva turned back to look at her.

Eva bit her lip. “I have to tell you something.”

Kate’s smile faded. “You’re leaving.”

“Not now. But yeah, I am.” Eva scuffed the floor with her shoe. “My ship is supposed to leave the port in about 46 hours.”

Less than two days.

Kate looked away, at a crack in the wall. Mattie, Farrah, Chess, and Cairo had left yesterday. About a week from now, Annleigh and Clark would leave for their first ambassadorial mission to Earth. And now Eva was leaving, and Kate (and Reese, they supposed) would be left alone.

“I don’t want you to go,” she whispered, angry at how small and pathetic it sounded. “I mean, I know you have to, and you have your own country to worry about, but…”

“I know.” Eva’s voice was gentle and understanding. “I don’t- I’m not looking forward to being so far away from you, but I have to.”

“Sometimes I forget, you know?” Kate admitted. “That we’re… you know. Monarchs. Revolutionaries. Whatever. Like, people know us, know our names, and we’re responsible for them, but it’s hard to remember that sometimes. You’re just… you. You’re just Eva, you’re my girlfriend and you’re dorky and sweet and awkward and I love you, a lot, and I really like it when the world is just you and me.”

“Me, too.” Eva sighed. “Maybe- maybe you should come and visit soon? It could be, like, symbolic of the new alliance, or I could make up some sort of political crisis…?”

Kate smiled. “We’d never pull it off.”

“We could try.”

Kate laughed a little, and Eva did too, and for a second, things were better again, but then the reality crashed right back into Kate like a wave. “I’m going to miss you. So much.”

“Being a queen might not leave much time for being lonely.”

“I doubt that.” Kate suddenly felt awkward sitting on the throne, and stood up, coming to stand beside Eva, close enough to touch - but not quite touching, not yet. Two more days just… wasn’t enough time. Kate wanted more - wanted Eva every damn minute of every day. Wanted to hold her close and never let go. Wanted to grab her and drag her onto a ship and just leave, live forever in the stars, just the two of them.

But they couldn’t.

“You know,” Eva said thoughtfully, slipping her hand into Kate’s, “I spent so long avoiding a marriage alliance with Luna. But now, when it’s no longer necessary, it doesn’t seem so bad anymore.”

Kate lightly nudged her. “Stop that.”

“It’s a shame you can’t blush.” Eva leaned over and brushed a light kiss against Kate’s temple. “I’m not saying I didn’t mean it, though.”

Kate bit their lip and rolled her eyes.

“I have something for you.”

“I swear to fuck, it had better not be an engagement ring,” Kate threatened.

Eva grinned mischieviously and stepped back, kneeling on one knee.

Kate crossed their arms, tamping down the flutter in her stomach. “Eva-”

“I’ve been waiting a long time to give this to you.”

“Eva, wait-”

Eva pulled her hand from behind her back, revealing a small metal foot. A cluster of wires stuck up from the cavity, and the whole thing had smudges of grease.

“I hate you,” Kate muttered.

“Are you, like, disappointed?” Eva asked. “Because if you want, I bet Luna has some great jewelry stores-”

“Shut up.” Kate took the cyborg foot from her, studying it. It was so familiar, yet so foreign. “Why the hell do you even have this?”

“I don’t know, really. I kinda wondered…” Eva went a little bit pink. “I thought maybe if I could find the cyborg who fit this foot, it would be a sign we were meant for each other? But then I realized it would probably only fit an eight-year-old.”

“Eleven.”

“Close enough.” She bit her lip. “But really, I just… it was all I had when I thought you were- when I thought I’d never see you again. I couldn’t let you go that easily.”

Kate studied it for another moment, then glanced up at Eva, one eyebrow raised. “Why are you still kneeling?”

“You’ll have to get used to people kneeling to you. Happens a lot when you’re royalty,” Eva said, standing up.

Kate reached for her hand. “Maybe I should make a rule that the proper way to address your monarch is with a high-five.”

“Genius. I’m gonna do that too.”

Kate stepped closer, just an inch from Eva’s face. “Maybe I’ll also make a rule that the proper way for the queen of Luna to greet the empress of the Eastern Commonwealth is a kiss.”

“Even better.” Eva kissed them, and Kate reveled in it, in the feeling of finally, unapologetically loving Eva the way she wanted to love her, and being loved back just as much. “Although,” Eva murmured as they broke apart, “I doubt it’d be relevant in a hundred years or so. Might be a bit awkward.”

“Actually, about that…” Kate led Eva to the edge of the room and sat down, both of them dangling their legs over the edge of the balcony, over Artemisia Lake. “Can I ask your opinion on something?”

“Anything.”

“I think…” Kate took a deep breath. “I want to dissolve the Lunar monarchy.”

Eva didn’t react with horror or surprise, just smiled and put an arm around Kate and said, “When?”

“Not now. That’s too much of a change, too soon after… you know.” Kate leaned into Eva’s side. “But once things have settled down, started getting better. When I think Luna can handle a change in power. As soon as possible. I don’t- I can’t risk another Levana.” They hesitated. “Or another Channary.”

Eva pressed a kiss into her hair. “It won’t be easy. The people will be pissed. And they have that whole superstition. But you’re right. Luna needs a checks and balances system.”

Kate breathed a sigh of relief and snuggled even closer. “Okay. Thank you.”

“So what are you planning to do after you abdicate?”

Kate blinked. “Oh- I guess I hadn’t really thought that far ahead? Maybe Farrah would want a full time mechanic.”

“Or…” Eva rubbed Kate’s shoulder. “You could come stay in the Eastern Commonwealth as an ambassador. A show of good faith. Prove Luna and Earth can work together, side by side.”

“And be with you?”

“And be with me,” Eva agreed.

Kate considered it. “I think the Eastern Commonwealth hates me.”

“Hates you? You saved them from Levana. I think there’s a toy company that wants to make action figures of you, and Torin just showed me an article suggesting a statue where your booth used to be at the market.”

Kate shuddered.

Eva smiled and kissed the spot right next to Kate’s eye. “I promise, if you decide to come back, you’ll be welcomed with open arms.” She pressed her lips against Kate’s hair. “And if you want to come to the Annual Peace Ball next year, you’ll have hundreds of people begging to take you.”

“Oh, God.”

“I thought I might as well get my name on the list now. Maybe I’ll even have time to teach you to dance.”

Kate tried not to smile.

“Please say yes?”

Kate pretended to consider it. “Do I have to wear a dress?”

“Not if you don’t want to.”

“Maybe I’ll come in cargo pants.”

“I’d be so okay with that.”

Kate made a little humming noise. “Can I bring my friends?”

“Absolutely. I’ll extend a personal invitation to the entire crew.”

“Even Reese? Because there’s a rule against androids coming to the ball.”

“I might know someone who can change that rule.”

Kate couldn’t resist a smile. Going back to the ball, facing all those people who’d so openly hated them for years, should’ve sounded terrifying, but the idea of doing it with Eva sounded perfect. “Yes, I’ll go to the ball with you.”

“What about those dance lessons?”

“Mm, I wouldn’t push your luck if I were you.”

“Fair enough.” They kissed again, and Kate sighed against Eva’s lips, tired but happy.

Eva pulled away eventually and pressed her forehead against Kate’s. “Katie, I know- you’re a great ruler already. You’ll be even better till you abdicate. But… I know you never really wanted this.”

Kate chose to stay quiet.

“But… maybe, one day… would you consider being an empress?”

The silence hung in the air, but wasn’t necessarily uncomfortable.

“Maybe,” Kate eventually assented. “One day.”

Maybe meant yes, and both of them knew it.

Eva was right - Kate didn’t want to be a ruler. Didn’t want to be in that position of power, making real decisions that impacted real people. But Kate did want Eva, more than anything, and Eva came with an entire country, whether or not Kate liked it. And Eva was worth it. Eva was worth anything.

Kate leaned against Eva’s chest and looked back down at the foot. This too small foot had hurt for years, had made it hard to walk, and had represented everything Kate hated about being cyborg. It had never done anything but make Kate feel like shit.

Kate held the cyborg foot over the shining water of Artemisia Lake and let go.

#we are the tigers #the lunar chronicles #kate dalton #eva sanchez #kateva #blood tw #gun tw #stabbing tw #hospital rooms tw #death tw #parents tw #ask to tag #again: PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE tell me if i missed anything #anyways i love them so much #they deserve the world

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simsadventures · 4 years

Text

Not Me: Chapter 4: More of This

CEO! Bucky x Wife! Reader

Summary: You finally have enough, and do the thing that you feel like will help you take matters into your own hands. In the meantime, Bucky is finding out things he never knew would be true, and some new issues appear.

Warnings: angst, confusion, swearing

Word Count: 2608

A/N: New chapter is finally here. Again, sorry for the delay, hope some of your questions will be answered after this chapter, and there is sooo much more coming!! Love you all guys!! xx

Series Masterlist __ Masterlist

< Previous Chapter

A week went by before you were able to function as usual. You and Bucky didn’t share any more moments at home, like the first day of your sickness, and, as a matter of fact, you didn’t even see him that much that week. You assumed he was at work, or at one of his bitches’ place. And you didn’t even care anymore. All you cared about was to finally do something for yourself. You’ve had enough of the abuse your father and Bucky put you through, and you were ready to free yourself.

You still wanted to work at Barnes & Clark, because it was something you’ve always wanted to do, but you knew you would have to give it time before it was even a possibility. So the first logical step was to find a place on your own. You didn’t want to share a living space with James anymore.

And although you haven’t work for some time, you also didn’t spend your own money during the marriage, so you could rent a place on your own without further issues. You knew you would be able to afford only about 6 months of life without a job alone in an apartment in New York, but you were also confident that with your background it couldn’t be that difficult to find another job if Barnes & Clark weren’t an option anymore.

You came across a studio in Brooklyn, and although the location wasn’t the greatest, the apartment itself looked cosy and warm, something you couldn’t say about your current house. You got in touch with the real estate agent, and when she showed it to you, you fell in love with it.

The whole process only took another week, and so it only took around two weeks after the house party for you to start doing your own thing. Bucky was still nowhere to be found, and if you heard him coming home, you scurried to your own room, not really having the energy to fake smiles in front of him anymore. Not when you had such a great plan on your mind.

Your father tried to reach during all that time, but you didn’t want to listen to him anymore. You only picked it up two more times, to listen to him scold you for something he remembered about the party, and whenever he’d ask about you and James, you would say that everything was perfect and that you resolved the issues, naturally, and you were a good wife once again. Just like he liked.

You wanted to tell James, just for the old-time sakes. To tell him that you couldn’t do this anymore and that you wanted a divorce, and that you were moving out. But he was nowhere to be found, and he didn’t pick up his phone. You wanted to be worried, and you would if he didn’t do that for the last 12 months- ignoring you every way he could. So you just sighed and picked up the last boxes on the floor, and marched out of the house, ready to start a new chapter in your life.

Bucky was exhausted. Between doing his normal job, trying to keep the company up and running even in the darker times for the economy, and trying to find any evidence that you were either behind or not involved in the things going on in his life, there was very little me-time he was getting. He rarely even came back home, he would just stay in his office where he used his sofa as a provisional bed. And it showed on his back which was hurting like the devil himself. But he knew he couldn’t stop now.

There were things that needed his attention more than himself. He could get a good sleep when this was all over, one way or another.

Bucky had a board meeting that day, and he honestly couldn’t imagine worse days than that. Board meetings were not only dull as fuck, but Bucky also hated to explain himself for the decisions he made. He knew he made them with the company’s best interest in mind, and even though they sometimes didn’t go as planned, Bucky would all make them again, if he had the chance.

When he came into the room, the board was already there. The board consisted of a few investors that have been with the company for years now, the director of the sales who was there more as moral support to Bucky and then his and your fathers. Even though they were both retired by now, they still held onto some percentage of the interests of the company, and so they were always there at the meetings.

At first, Bucky thought they were there to make sure that Bucky wasn’t doing anything stupid and that he was keeping everything in line. But the more time passed, the more Bucky started to notice that some questions and some ideas coming from your fathers weren’t as straight as Bucky would have wished. But he always ignored it, thinking the dads were just giving him a hard time in those meetings for the sake of it.

The meeting was mostly all about a potential deal they could strike with a Japanese publisher, that would help them distribute their books in Asia as well. Bucky saw it as a huge opportunity and was all in, but the longer the conversations went, the more obvious it was that the fathers weren’t too excited about it.

“We could publish them ourselves. All it takes is for you to grow a pair and decide that we build a publishing house there as well. What are you afraid of, son?” Mr Barnes asked Bucky, who was staring at him as if he just fell out of the sky.

“Because that would take too many resources and we cannot be sure we would do well there. Wouldn’t it be better if we signed a short-term deal with this buyer, we would see how it’d go over there, and if the profits were as great as you think they will, we could do all that? I don’t see a fucking point in building something so fucking expensive when we don’t know if it works or not,” Bucky hissed, clenching his fists under the table.

“Alright, let’s vote, if that’s what you want, son,” your father said with an amused smirk.

Bucky didn’t see the point, and he also didn’t get why suddenly, there had to be a vote. Until now, there was no voting in the board meetings. They would sinus the best approach, agree on something and move on. But voting? That was a first.

“Fine, whatever,” Bucky said tightly and waited. People around the room raised their hands in favour of Bucky’s idea, because, just as Bucky thought, it was the more logical one. But when he looked at the fathers in front of him, he could see that their smirks were still plastered on their faces.

“We don’t do this gladly, but we veto your vote, son. We truly believe that you shouldn’t be so coward-like and do something bold, accept the consequences and just, do something,” Mr Barnes said, and gasps could be heard from all around the room.

“You what? I’m the fucking CEO if I remember correctly. The majority is on my side, you can’t just waltz in here and veto something all of us agree on.”

“Oh, but we can. Haven’t you read the entire contract you signed when we gave you the company? We don’t want to do it, but we still built this company from scratch. And so when we think that you’re leading it to certain death, we step in. And that’s exactly what we just did. We’ll let you think about it, and we meet again next week and see if you all gained some perspective,” your father said, and with that, they both stood up and walked out of the door.

Bucky was staring at their backs, trying to find the right words for what just happened. Not only did he not see the clause in the contract, but he also didn’t see them using it to undermine him in front of everyone. To say he was seething would be the understatement of the century. He let the people in the office go and just sat there, breathing deeply, trying to regain his composure.

When he finally felt like he wouldn’t kill the first person he met on the hall, he got up and marched into his own office, looking for the contract. He wanted to see if there were other clauses like this one that he missed due to the elated state he was in when he first signed it.

He only got through the first two pages of the document before a knock sounded from the door. He didn’t feel like answering it, but he knew that as a CEO (if he even was that) he had to take care of the company, no matter how betrayed or angry he felt.

But when he saw that it was his father again, he regretted ever saying come in.

“Son, don’t be too angry. Just think about what we proposed, and we can talk about it again next week. You wouldn’t want such a thing to run the company? Or worse, the family, would you? Don’t go around being mad at your own dad!” Mr Barnes smiled at his son patting his shoulder, and Bucky just shook his head in response. Bucky was tired of always fighting everyone, so he remained quiet.

“But that’s not why I’m here. New... issue appeared, so it seems. We’ve received another bunch of photos, and there is a new request so that they don’t get posted online,” Mr Barnes said, and Bucky’s blood ran cold, suddenly.

There haven’t been any photos or videos for some time now, and Bucky thought that it was all resolved.

“What is the request this time?” Bucky asked angrily. He couldn’t understand how the same woman who seemed so meek and exasperated at home would be the same one sending him requests through family members.

Bucky’s father pulled out his phone and showed him the photos of his sister, Rebecca in new compromising positions. While she was still heavily using, Rebecca, his sweet, sweet Rebecca made some decisions, which weren’t the greatest, to say the least. She’s been with a man that took photos of her, she’s been at BDSM parties without signing any contracts beforehand, so there were multiple photos and videos of his beloved sister, splayed naked, doing God-knows-what with mostly various men.

Bucky felt physically sick, staring at the photos, and he had to look away.

His father took it as his cue, and he spoke up again.

“This time, your beloved wife wants something much more, I’m afraid. But she also insinuated that if you do this, it would be the last thing she ever asked of you, and she would give us all the materials she had on your sister.”

“So. What. Is. It?!” Bucky accented every word, and not-so-patiently waited for what his father would say next.

“Now, she wants to have a baby with you. She wrote that she’s been thinking about it for some time and that she thought a baby would make her happy. She said that right after the party she thought it could save your relationship, and she was probably scheming the whole thing in the meantime,” his father said, and when Bucky didn’t reply, he got up.

“Just do this, and your sister§s reputation will be clean. We can buy the information the other people have of her, and she will finally be free of all of this. Be a good son, a good brother, and just sleep with your wife. But remember, don’t ever talk about it with her. She’s crazy enough to actually post everything if you ever talked to her about this deal she stroke with us,” and with that Mr Barnes left Bucky’s office.

Bucky’s brain couldn’t wrap around the whole thing. In the year of your marriage, you proved to be a vial person, through the point of view of your fathers and the image they were providing to Bucky.

But, suddenly, something didn’t seem to add up to the whole story. Bucky saw you at home. You were seriously sick with the flu, and he could see that you couldn’t even watch Netflix because of how tired you were. Even when you didn’t see him, he would check up on you just to be sure you didn’t die from the fever. And you were always asleep. So when did you have the time to think about something so stupid as a child? Especially after the fight you two had in the kitchen the night of the party.

Bucky didn’t waste any more time and headed home. He was resolved to confront you, even if it meant you would publish some photos of Becca. Bucky needed answers, and he needed them now!

He practised the speech he wanted to give you the whole ride home, changing words and whole sentences not to make you too mad and to try and talk to you about your reasoning behind all of this. If you didn’t demand the marriage year prior, and if you didn’t do it through your fathers, Bucky actually thought you two could strike up some romance.

He thought about it all as he opened the door, but upon coming to the living room, he could sense that something has changed. He couldn’t put his finger on what it was, but the longer he stood in the room, the more it seems as if everything changed there.

And then it hit him. Some of the things you brought there were gone. The fluffy pillows you loved so much, and you would always cuddle them when you were watching something on TV in the living room as if to shield yourself from the outside world.

Your old coffee cups your grandma gave you a few years ago were also gone. Bucky almost ran through the whole apartment, finding things missing, and he was on the verge of calling the police that there was a robbery in his house, when he came into your room.

It was empty except for a piece of paper sitting on the bed.

Bucky took one last glance around and grabbed the paper, unfolding it to read what the person writing had to say.

Dear James,

I know you don’t care one bit about my whereabouts, but I felt like I should at least tell you that I’m not dead. I called you a few times today, but just like any other times, you didn’t pick up. I know you hate me, and although I can’t figure out why, I just wanted to tell you that I finally moved out. The house is all yours, and you can bring anyone there, like Natasha, for example. I don’t care anymore. I can’t act like I’m a happy housewife when every day in that house was pure hell for me. So I’m gone from your life, and I will file for divorce in the next few days. Please, just be so kind as to sign it when it comes and don’t make our lives even more miserable than they already are. I hope we will be able to find a way for me to work at the company because I miss it terribly. I miss working, I miss being independent.

Take care.

Sincerely

Y/N

/ Next Chapter >

Not Me:

@jennmurawski13 @lovely-geek @vogueworthy-barnes @veronawrites @loser-alert @trumpettay @thesoldierrogers @girlbehindthecameraposts @little-smurf @jesseswartzwelder @fuckwhateverfuck @learisa @karla-silva @blowing-mikey @afterlaughter27 @93generation @ungratefultroll @maybeisthemoon @greenprisca @geeksareunique @champagnesugamama @hailqueenconquer @grincheveryday @mc225g @thatweirdwalangpake @neerness @ntlmundy @captainchrisstan @sspider-parker @cap-just-said-language @nd1998sc @cltex84 @eliza5616 @clearlysaltybeard @joannie95 @angel-of-blue @hailmary-yramliah @rohaintahquil @ilovemysupersoldiers @xbuckxnastyx @jemimah-b99 @imcreepininyourheartbabe @welovecaptainamericaass @void-imaginations @what-is-your-plan-today @nikishadow @ariesmadness97 @sarcastic-and-cool @asiaaisa77 @supermassiveblackhope @fifiyau105 @littlemissporter @yanderedarkfics @inquisitor-selvala @onl-you

Bucky Taglist

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Marvel Taglist

@voltage-my2dlove @kneel-begyourpardon @lumar014 @ptrs-prkrs

Forever Tag:

@eileenalone @sasbb23 @p8tn0lish @coffeebooksandfandom @waiting4inspiration @caswinchester2000 @mogaruke @justthatfangirloverthere @mushyjellybeans @livsheph @sebbbystaaan @notyourtypicalrose @itsunclebucky @rinkashirikitateku @leosandbuckysgirl @miraclesoflove @keithseabrook27

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amphtaminedreams · 3 years

Text

COVID-19, Negligent Manslaughter, and a Timeline of Tory Indifference

“I feel sorry for Boris Johnson. He is doing the best he can in the situation and I don’t think anybody else could have done a better job.”

[exhibit A: a gem somebody that I’m Facebook friends with reposted earlier]

It’s a sentiment that I cannot quite wrap my head around. I sit here hopeless and furious and trying to hold back tears because it’s been almost a year since England first went into lockdown and yet here we are, almost 100,000 dead, in an even worse position than we were before whilst other countries begin to slowly return to normality. It is clear to me who is to blame for this, however there are a large proportion of people who don’t want to “politicise” the actions of the PRIME MINISTER with regards to his approach towards handling a virus sweeping the country he GOVERNS.

Typically, these kind of posts making the rounds on social media will be accompanied by some kind of photo of Boris Johnson looking somber as if to suggest that the way things have played out were beyond his control and that he is some kind of broken man beleaguered by the suffering he has, despite good intentions, inadvertently caused.

This one in particular of Johnson with his head in his hands is a staple. In reality, this is a photo taken back in 2018 whilst he was receiving flack from party members for comparing Theresa May to a suicide bomber (for her handling of Brexit, ironically) as well as from the papers due to his rumoured (now also proven, in a completely non-surprising turn of events, to be true) affair with his former aide, Carrie Symonds.

So let’s shut this narrative-where we should feel for Boris because he’s doing his best, and apparently a better job than anybody else could’ve done in his situation- down right here. In a supposedly developed country with one of the world’s largest economies, if we’re talking by proportion, our COVID-19 death toll is up there with the worst of them. It seems that every other state figurehead (bar a small handful), and I mean almost every single one of them, is doing a better job. People love to throw figures out there about how densely populated we are to combat damning statistics as if we haven’t got just as many factors playing to our advantage, as if it’s unfair to compare our response to Germany’s or Japan’s or Singapore’s (both of which are far more densely populated) or New Zealand’s or Vietnam’s, but we are an ISLAND with world-leading technology and infrastructure and healthcare equipment and professionals and a relatively high standard of living. In what world is almost 70,000 dead in a country with abundant time and means to prepare a response reflective of said country’s leaders doing a good job?

Apparently we’re supposed to believe that Johnson feels some sense of moral responsibility for this astronomical failure. A man who refuses to acknowledge the multiple children he has fathered outside of his marriages and who has had repeatedly engaged in affairs and one-night stands throughout said marriages. A man who continued to cheat whilst his most recent wife was receiving treatment for cervical cancer, for fuck’s sake. Yep, a real stand-up guy.

So where does this idea that Johnson must feel remorseful for this catastrophe come from? We haven’t seen a second of remorse or a hint of accountability for the lives lost from him nor any members of his cabinet. That much is really no surprise; I have this hypothesis, and it’s not a stretch, that these people do not have an ounce of empathy in their bodies. These ridiculously privileged, privately-educated individuals who have had everything handed to them their entire lives simply cannot put themselves in the shoes of the average working person and that is the problem. Unable to recognise that what distinguishes them from most others is little more than the luck of being born into wealth and the abundance of recourses and connections that has entailed throughout their lives, they see us as beneath them-as less intelligent, less driven, and thus less deserving of the status and respect they enjoy. They see us as a bunch of whining, unmotivated idiots who do not recognise the chokehold they have over our media nor the fact that everything they do is a desperate grab to keep money and power within the hands of a select group of people, an exclusive members club from which most of us are barred (just take a simple Google search and watch Jacob Rees-Mogg’s opinion of the Grenfell victims or the buried Johnson speech where he talks about how inequality is essential). They know that we will squabble amongst ourselves about who is to blame rather than wising up to the truth which is that every decision they make is fuelled by cronyism and the inability to make and follow through with difficult choices, the pandemic being no exception. The supposedly self-made elite see the life of the average working class person as having far less value than their own, and their parties actions over the last 10 years have made that very clear.

It was in December 2019 that the first case of COVID-19 was declared to the World Health Organisation and on March the 11th that they announced they considered it as a pandemic. In Wuhan, people were dying of pneumonia in their clusters. And what was Boris Johnson doing in this time? Well for starters, here in the UK we didn’t even have a pandemic committee-Johnson had scrapped it six months before. If years of benefits cuts and defunding of the NHS in favour of funding nuclear weapon programs, keeping British troops on other people’s lands, and tax breaks for the mega corporations that donate to their party didn’t convince you that the Conservatives have little regard for human life, them getting rid of this committee-whilst a pandemic has been declared year after year as the greatest threat to mankind-should have been the first sign of trouble. As if that wasn’t enough, he also skipped five of the COBRA (meetings are made up of a cross-departmental committee put together to respond to national emergencies and PMs routinely attend those pertaining to crises on the scale of COVID-19) meetings addressing the situation. Whilst other countries were closing their borders and stocking up on PPE, Johnson and his ministers were selling PPE abroad and simply telling people to wash their hands to the length of the tune of happy birthday. Their only policy was one of “herd immunity”, which was in fact not a policy but just an abandonment of their party’s public duty disguised as one, intentionally obfuscated with pseudoscientific jargon.

Even thinking the absolute worst of politicians you would hope that when it came to the point where the UK’s non-response to COVID-19 was becoming an international disgrace, Johnson and his ministers would take proper protective measures if only to save face. But when they eventually seemed to do so, it became clear that the priority was not the safety of the ordinary people affected by the virus. Outsourcing their test and traces system to companies such as Serco, Sitel, Deloitte and G4S rather than public health services, Conservative ministers could not resist attempting to line the pockets of their friends and benefactors in the process. According to the Guardian, instead of reaching out to the experts or using publicly funded services to handle COVID containment measures, the Conservative party has awarded a disgusting £1.5 BILLION WORTH of contracts to businesses with explicit connections to its MPs and donors, the majority of which lack any relative experience of the tasks they’ve been trusted to carry out. Unsurprisingly, the National Audit office found that when awarding contracts relating to the production of COVID-19 protection measures and treatment needs, there was a “high-priority lane” for suppliers referred by senior politicians and officials; companies with a political referral were 10 times more likely to end up winning a government contract than those without. On top of this, it is not hard to draw a link between the late initiation of lockdown measures and preemptive openings of pubs and restaurants against scientific advice to the interests of frequent donors such as Wetherspoons owner Tim Martin. Even if one chooses to ignore the blatantly obvious correlation between the owners of the businesses whose profits were prioritised over safety concerns and the number of those owners who donate to the Conservatives, party officials at the very least were reluctant to follow the lead of many other countries in financing furlough schemes themselves and instead avoided this responsibility by using loose lockdown measures to leave it down to the discretion of small business owners, who couldn’t themselves afford to furlough staff, whether or not to stay open.

Time and time again, as the government flounder and fuck about, favouring personal desires to keep their powerful, high-paying jobs and to satisfy the corporate allies who make this possible, blame has been shifted from the public to care homes to NHS workers and back again whilst we, the public, make the biggest sacrifices of all under the illusion that we were being guided out of this pandemic rather than lied to and thrown under the bus. Whilst the elite continue to pick and choose what rules apply to them, it’s students and the elderly and the vulnerable paying the fines and scrabbling to afford basic living costs and hoping that they don’t lose someone dear to them.

Don’t get me wrong, a large proportion of the public have contributed to the spread too with their selfishness and entitlement and the arrogance it takes to develop a sudden refusal to acknowledge basic science from experts who have studied in the field their whole lives so that they can justify their need to go to the pub (speaking of, it’s absolutely HILARIOUS how many “mental health advocates” are suddenly coming out of the woodworks on football avi Twitter after they’ve spent years calling people on mental health Twitter attention seekers). And don't get me wrong, there were inevitably going to be casualties of this pandemic. But it didn't have to spread to this many people, and there didn’t have to be so many deaths due to a lack of preparation, and this wouldn’t have been the case if it weren’t for the inherent apathy of the Conservative party towards the lives of people of lesser status than them, the reluctance to put those lives before party interests. I wish I felt like there was an end in sight, I wish there was some positive takeaway from all of this, but even now, we continue to see corners being cut with the vaccine lauded as our saving grace and anti-maskers gathering outside hospitals to chant about how “oppressive” it is to be urged to wear a bit of cloth over their faces for the short periods of time in which they leave their houses and all I can think of is the selfishness that runs like poison through our country. It makes me sick and leaves me to question desperately where we go from here. I don’t like unanswered questions, I don’t like feeling politically directionless, and I don’t like the growing fear I have about the state of the world which seems to intensify every single day. In the UK at least, it’s starting to feel like nothing will ever change-we’re told we live in a democracy and yet mainstream media is owned by the people whose interest is to keep their Conservative friends in power. The stronghold they have over print media in particular allows them to continually get away with smearing and defaming every person who comes along and seems to want to actually help ordinary people, without being challenged, to the point where the only kind of “opposition” we’re left with promises nothing but a big boss approved tactical reshuffling of the status quo (which they call “electability”); it doesn’t feel like democracy when the majority of the country are being fed misleading information and convinced against voting in their best interests.

This is the result of that. The state we find ourselves in is the inevitable result of being manipulated into helping the elite build their protective wall whilst the rest of us scrabble to get in and step on each others heads along the way, the people inside shouting over that it’s those even more vulnerable than ourselves that are taking our places. Outside the wall, the earth is falling from beneath our feet, and instead of throwing over the ropes to help us out, the people inside are stockpiling them so they can secure their firm place above ground and then later flog the rest. How many more people have to die before we reach some kind of widespread realisation of that? Where do we go from here and what do we do? Well for one, we can stop spreading those god-fucking-awful textposts on Facebook and get our heads out of our arses. Wear our masks over and wear them over our fucking noses. Have some fucking consideration for others. Don’t wait til an issue affects you personally to give a fuck about it. AND START HOLDING THE FUCKING PRIME MINISTER AND HIS MINISTERS AND HIS ENTIRE PARTY AS WELL AS THE OPPOSITION MPS THAT HAVE SAT BY THE SIDELINES AND ALLOWED THIS TO GO ON WITHOUT PROTEST ACCOUNTABLE. That would be a good start.

I’m so tired. Things didn’t need to be this way, and yet because of the selfishness of the few, thousands upon thousands are dead. It’s not about “throwing around blame”, it’s not about “throwing around” anything, it’s about expecting a leader to do his best to protect lives. If that is “throwing blame”, let’s get things clear, I have no issue with hurtling it torpedo style at those who handed out a death sentence to so many in this country rather than do anything that might compromise their own privilege. Honestly, pass me the shovel after and I’ll happily bury the wreckage in the ground. Who wants to join?:-)

#rant #politics #anti capitalism #anticapitalist #covid-19 #covid #england #labour #socialism #fuck the tories #fuck the torys #fuck boris #rant post

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historic-old-guard-lover · 4 years

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The emperor has to be god-king Andy. Also like since nicky and Joe obv have to have the lovers why not have andy and quyhn kissing as the empress.

Another related ask (potentially by the same person):

Also since the fool is a journey's beginning I'd almost want to pick Nile for it. As well there are four characters who commonly have swords (or an axe but close enough) and cards have four corners. So one sword each corner, nicky, joe, andy, and quyhn.

So. Someone has good ideas. Here’s the post that prompted these asks. This made me pull out my tarot deck and go through the cards. Below the cut is a break down of the entire tarot deck. There will be an explanation of the (standard) interpretation of the cards, good then less good, and then my associated headcannon (or more than one if I couldn’t decide). The source is my experience with tarot. I’m trying to minimize repeats, but historic and modern Old Guard members are counted separately. Enjoy.

The Major Arcana (aka the cards most people have heard about)

0. The Fool - the seeker. Naivety. Courage. Living in the moment. Journey’s beginning. All paths available. Folly. Apathy.

Nile. Anon convinced me. Though Booker has got the folly, apathy, and madness down, Nile is ultimately the beginning. She’s naïve but headstrong, and quite frankly a perfect match.

I. The Magician - the trickster. Power, skill, talent. Mastery, self-control, willpower. Subtlety. Divine connection and inspiration. Self-reliant.

Modern Nicky. Definitely Nicky. Just. He’s a formerly very religious man who just says these things. Also sniper.

II. The High Priestess - the moon goddess. Intuition, wisdom, foresight, divination, prophecy. Enlightenment, understanding, intelligence, education. Pride, emotional instability, unforgiving.

Historic Quynh. Her name means “night-blooming flower”, which is very moon goddess vibes to me. Also, I’d say over 500 years in a box turns understanding and enlightenment into emotional instability and unforgiveness.

III. The Empress - the queen. Feminine power, matriarch, mother. Fertility, pleasure, beauty. Success, evolution, movement. Marriage, wealth. Overattachment, domestic upheaval, delay.

Quynh. The counterpart to Andy’s emperor card.

Nile. Let’s be honest, she’s going to take over from Andy some day.

IV. The Emperor - the king. Masculine power, patriarch, father. Authority, leadership, proficiency. Wealth, stability, effectiveness. Perseverance, logic, endurance, experience. Lack of ability, weak character, immature, rebellious.

Modern Andy. She is the leader who’s short-comings effect her entire team. And who doesn’t love a little gender bending? (and her film look is already soft butch)

V. The Hierophant - the religious leader. Tradition, convention, ritual symbolism. Ceremony, religion, morality, philosophy. Mercy, goodness, forgiveness, humility, vulnerability, Impotence, Religious tyranny.

Historic Nicky. I mean, former priest (enough said).

Historic Andy. “I was once worshipped as a god” (enough said).

VI. The Lovers - the lovers. Love, attraction. Compatibility, harmony, choice. Triumph over trials, vacillation. Entanglement, enmeshment. Infidelity, moral lapse, vice, separation, quarrels, inadequacy, failing tests.

Andromaquynh. *peeks out from behind barricade* I know that most people would just put Kaysanova as this card, but look at all the negatives it is associated with. Sounds a lot more like our immortal wives can really cover the gamut. They have the range....I am a sucker for Kaysanova, though. Even though the beginning of their relationship is rocky, I’d like to think it’s been fairly constant over the years. But let’s reverse the uhaul lesbians and fickle gay men tropes! Sorry, Book of Nile fans. That ship just isn’t established enough for this, I’d say. Maybe one day?

VII. The Chariot - the journey. Ordeal, obstacles, competition. High stakes, ambition, discipline. Conquest, victory, greatness. Right action prevails, overwhelming odds, sudden defeat.

Merrick and/or Dr. Kozak. I mean, this is literally their characters in a nutshell. Merrick is the journey/ordeal for the old guard. He is driven by his ambition, thinks he’s won over impossible odds, and then has a sudden defeat.

VIII. Justice - the balance. Equilibrium, equality, symmetry, harmony. Integrity, honor, fairness, neutrality, moderation. Vindication, self-righteousness, bigotry, prejudice, favoritism.

Nile. This is the woman with a sword card. She brings a balance to the team, she clearly moderates conflict, and I’d love to see BLM art of her in this style. Just sayin.

IX. The Hermit - the seeker-sage. Wisdom, inspiration, contemplation, discretion, understanding. Safety, protection, spiritual quest. Seeking truth and justice. Self-denial, timidity, fear.

Historic Joe. The idealized warrior poet? Definitely just a form of the hermit. Helps explain why a Magrebhi trader/artist fought at the Siege of Jerusalem: spiritual quest. I also like the idea of Joe having a secret reserved side.

X. The Wheel of Fortune - cycles of life. Destiney, evolution and progress, advancement. Manifestation, unexpected events. Success, sudden luck. Ups and downs.

Modern Quynh. There is nothing that better encapsulates her storyline than the wheel of fortune. One day you’re roaming the world with your immortal wife. The next, you’re drowning for over 500 years. The next you’re in Booker’s shitty Paris apartment.

XI. Strength - fortitude. Resilience, courage, resolve, confidence. Integrity, moral victory, endurance. Energy, action, vitality. Power, force, violence. Abuse of power, disgrace, impotence.

Lykon. Do I love this character beyong measure and reason? Maybe so. We have so little to go on about him, however, that the only things we do know bely his strengths. Also, he becomes ultimately the weakest when he dies and encapsulates both “extremes” of the card.

XII. The Hanged Man - the tested. Delay, sacrifice, abandonment, rejection. Betrayal. Reversals, restrained or bound, limbo, trials. Falseness.

Booker. If the fact that his first death was by hanging didn’t convince you? Read that description again. His character arc is literally working through being the hanged man.

XIII. Death - the loss or parting. Alteration, transformation, transition. Boredom, depression, stagnation, failure or disaster. Bereavement, recovery, immobility.

Lykon. He literally represents the fear of death to the remaining immortals. It is HE that they invoke when they discuss it. Also, I’m still mourning my favorite underdeveloped character.

XIV. Temperance - the moderation. Self-control, economy, patience, coordination. Consolidation, harmony, friendship, recuperation. Unfulfilled desires, discord, stubbornness, hostility, clashing of interests. Time, seasons, and climate.

A Safehouse. I don’t think any of the people really capture the tempered essence of this card, the constancy throughout all seasons of life. An actual physical building that rises and falls with (regular) humanity, though, seems to do the trick.

XV. The Devil - the arcane. Magic, strange occurrences, prophecy, fate. Catastrophe, downfall, negative attitude, Temptations, sins, obsessions. Enslavement, bondage, misplaced loyalty, violence, fatality.

Honestly? I’m so torn. I feel like a major commentary of the movie is that our demons are the way people react more so than the people themselves. Maybe the armored van?

XVI. The Tower - the House of God. Disruption, expulsion from an earthly paradise, divine wrath. Punishment (of pride), loss, destructive rivalry, plans ruined. Need to start again, bankruptcy.

The Iron Coffin. While this doesn’t capture the religious undertones quite right, the coffin is the Tower for Andromaquynh, It is (divine? or very human?) wrath brought on by pride since the two probably thought that they would be fine. It is loss and painful new beginnings.

XVII. The Star - the bright promise. Hope, faith, light of the spirit. Recovery, symbols of immortality. Gifts, good prospects, new dawn, frustrated expectations.

Nile. The new immortal, enough said.

Historic Andy/Lykon. In a way, the first immortal would also be a great choice of representation.

XVIII, The Moon - the hidden forces. Twilight, illusion, deception, trickery. Dishonesty, danger, uncertainty, terror. Developments, particularly somewhat concealed. Errors, powerful feelings.

Copley. I know, I know. “He’s the moon when I’m lost in darkness” and all that jazz. But look at this card’s interpretation and notice it’s pretty negative. Copley’s entire role is to pull the strings behind the scenes. He makes headway on problems in secrets, he lies and deceives everyone in the film at some point.

XIX. The Sun - the work’s rewards. Daylight, co-creation, union “of male and female”. Peace, joy, pleasure, love, contentment. Accomplishment, achievement, success.

Joe. Not only is he the sun, he also fits this card perfectly. He is creation and happiness. Enough said.

XX Judgement - the rebirth. Judgement, sentence. Rejuvenation, renewal, resurrection, call to the new from the old, rehabilitation. Creation, promotion.

Historic Booker. I feel like his backstory with his family helped highlight the theme of rebirth for the Old Guard. They must be willing to give up what they have left behind to move forward. Also, there’s the more literal play as well since Booker was a conscripted criminal.

XXI The World - the long journey. Perfection, completion, conclusion. Power through intelligence and wisdom. The universe and the material world.

A group photo, of course! Beyond that? Who knows.

Historic Andy? She’s seen so much of it. Like just her eyes portray the history of the world.

The Minor Arcana (aka the rest of the cards)

Since most people are only familiar with the major arcana, I’ll just briefly explain it. The minor arcana are actually the majority of a tarot deck. There are four suits associated with the four elements. Each suit has ten number cards and four court/face cards (traditionally modelled either based on one person or different interpretations of similar costuming). Each number or face has its own meaning, each suit has its own meaning, and their combination mostly explains what the card should be interpreted as. Quite frankly, the minor arcana are vastly underrated in popular understandings of tarot.

Suit of Wands - fire. Spontaneity, action, passion, adrenaline, life force, stroke of genius.

Guns? It’d be a bit of a niche take, but I associate guns with fires.

Staffs? More traditional in shape.

Suit of Coins - earth. Solid growth, material interests, possessions, profit, business, labor, slow and considerate.

Historic currency. Enough said.

Suit of Cups - water. Heartfelt involvements, imagination, spirituality, love, friendship, family.

Fountains around the world. Enough said.

Suit of Swords - air. Worry, trouble, boundaries, objectivity, the power of truth.

Obviously, their weapons of choice. I would go into more detail about who best represents each number, but I don’t want to bore you.

Court of Kings - mature men. Leaders, authority, status-quo, taking responsibility.

Again, most tarot is very gendered. But members in tuxes?

Court of Queens - mature women. Reflective and active, concerned with security/foundations, supportive, focused.

Members in dresses/gowns/anything that glitters?

Court of Knights/Cavaliers - young men. Dynamic, adventurous, intensive, revolutionary.

Tactical gear. Or historical armor. But it’s easier to do tactical gear right than accidentally draw a 15th century helmet on a 14th century suit of armor.

Court of Knaves/Pages - younger women, teenagers, and children. Students, apprentices, trainees, messengers, new opportunities.

Casual clothes.

#asks #lovely anon #tarot #reference #niche headcannons #major and minor arcana #i really thought this would have more kaysanova #but tarot is for wlw i guess? who knows

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medea10 · 3 years

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Medea’s Worst Year of All-Time Anime/Game Superlative

Nobody saw this year coming…except for maybe Barbara Walters! Who could have predicted that this year would bless us with Australia burning, the entire west coast of the U.S. set on fire, stupid people setting fires because they wanted to reveal a baby’s gender, murder hornets, Ruth Bader Ginsburg dying, an almost war with Iran, serial killer mascots arrested, policemen killing unarmed black folks for having a counterfit $20, policemen killing unarmed black folks for breaking up a fight, policemen killing black folks for holding sandwiches, policemen killing unarmed black folks for fucking sleeping, a wide variety of “Karens” coming out of the woodworks, the end of Bojack, the end of Steven Universe, the end of Empire, and a pandemic so huge it’s killed the economy, canceled fun, and given the U.S. president the dumb-fuck idea of injecting bleach to kill the virus!?

SERIOUSLY, WHO COULD HAVE PREDICTED ALL OF THIS WAS GOING TO FALL IN OUR LAPS LIKE HOT COFFEE ON THE CROTCH?!

At least there was anime this year.

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At least there was SOME anime this year.

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Biden won the election and Vickeblanca came out with Black Catcher this year.

Hey internet, it’s Medea here to give you her trashy opinion on this years anime and games that she’s watched or played. Because for some reason, my loser-ass loves to do out-dated as fuck memes! I shouldn’t complain, this shit brings a lot of attention to my page every year when I do this. Yes, 2020 was a complete dumpster fire so large that Domestic Girlfriend is crying foul. Many of us had to go on lockdown and ended up binge-watching the entire 957+ episodes of One Piece. I did no such thing. I am one of those “essential workers” so I didn’t hunker down for 9 months straight. But when I was home, I was watching anime. Actually, I would have done that even without the pandemic. I’m an introvert and find the human race to be deplorable.

You all know how this goes. I go over the best this year had to offer me. I had to search really hard to find the good in this year, especially in the anime world. Many things had to be put on hiatus or were delayed to a later date. Just a reminder, I don’t discriminate in what year the anime or game came out. If something came out in the happier times of 2007, that anime or game counts! Let’s get at it!

First Fandom of 2020: Interspecies Reviewers

Did anyone expect a fan-favorite of 2020 was going to be a hentai? Did anyone have on their batshit 2020 bingo card that a hentai was going to grab everybody’s attention? At the beginning of the year, my mind was set on the Railgun sequel and Eizoken. It wasn’t until licensors, streaming sites, and TV stations in Japan dropped this series that I started to pay attention. And got immediately hooked! It’s about three men going to different brothels and reviewing their time with the ladies. And these ladies are of different species! So with every bang comes possible enlightenment, new kinks, or a night of having your dick sucked off more than humanly possible. This anime blew away all of my skepticism and first impressions right out the window. Maybe it’s because I’m a degenerate and am often curious about sexual content, but this was a guilty pleasure of mine this year.

Favorite Main Character of 2020: Moroha from Yashahime

I know the majority of this story is going to revolve around Towa and Setsuna, but can we please focus a little more energy on the spunky, quarter-demon girl?! I know they’re pitting Moroha as the comic relief, but I’m hopeful that she’s going to surprise us one day. We fans of InuYasha would spend the past decade and some change wondering what InuYasha and Kagome’s daughter would be like. This year, we got our answer with Moroha. She’s got this wild side to her, probably due to the fact that she’s spent her entire life on her own. And while she’s silly at times, she can get down to business in a pinch. She has her father’s sense of smell. She has a sword. She’s able to shoot sacred arrows much like her mother. And to top it all off, she has this special rouge that if she puts it on, she’s able to unleash that ¼ demon power inside her and become Beniyasha! Yeah, I know the power only lasts a minute, she’s only 14, give her a break! I will gladly go through another week scratching my head at the confusion this story gives me if I get to see one more second of Moroha and her crazy antics or her bad-ass slaying.

Favorite Villain of 2020: The Devil Believers from Black Clover

This was one hell of a year for Black Clover. It would have been an easy choice to pick the devil and possible super devil that appeared during the elf fight. But I’d like to give a nod to the filler arc villains. And you can’t blame this group for wanting the power of the devil. They’re literally the bottom-rung of the Clover Kingdom and ones with little to no power or mana. So I can agree with why they would want the power of the devil. For one thing, they’d have more power. And for another thing, they’d be able to exact revenge on those who have wronged them. On some occasions I agree with exacting revenge and when it comes to the nobles and some characters in Black Clover, some folks do deserve death. I mean, have you met the king of the Clover Kingdom? Plus, this town and many other poorer towns get looked over by the kingdom. Peasant uprise! Anyways, I thought these people were really crafty in their crimes. I mean, they were able to knock Asta out on his ass with specially made poisons. I was actually hooked to this story of Black Clover (despite it being a filler arc). I know we’ll never see them again as they have been exiled, but it did have me semi-rooting for them.

Favorite Video Game Character of 2020: Honey from Pokemon – Sword & Shield (Expansion Pass)

Sorry Raymond from Animal Crossing!

Honey is the saucy wife of Mustard…I did not expect that to come out the way it did, but here we are! She has one hell of a team you can fight once a day. She looks out for her husband, the dojo, and the students of the dojo like they were her own children by providing food, drinks, and others. However that does come at a price as you do have to give up a sizable chunk of your watts that you collect in raid dens. I’m sure a bunch of MILF chasers were more than happy enough to give her all their hard-earned watts just so they can have their one-on-one moment on the beach with Honey.

What won me over was when that one guy from a rival dojo bad-mouthed her husband’s dojo and she…I think she kicked this guy’s ass herself. I don’t think she used any of her pokemon. Game Freak won’t show it, but we all know she kicked this guy’s ass to a point where he’s begging for mercy.

Honey, for the win!

Favorite Game of 2020: Animal Crossing New Horizons

This game was just Zen for me. I know the release of this game came with some controversy like Gamestop saying it’s an essential business and will remain open for people to get their copies of the game. Hell, I was one of those assholes in line waiting to get a copy on March 20th. Did I predict that a pandemic was going to rage out of control when I got a prepay copy of this for Christmas 2019? NO! I only predict political things, not deadly pandemics! The good news, we social distanced, didn’t catch the covid and got the game.

Anyways, this game has been a non-stop calming and fun ride. I can even forgive their botch-up of Bunny Day. They even have events for holidays I never thought they would ever touch. I mean, does anybody know when Museum Day is? Probably not until Animal Crossing had an event for it! I’ve been able to let my freak-flag fly with designing my island. And this goes way beyond New Leaf for the 3DS. I can make a sign post with the words “Fuck Trump” on it and post it in my yard. I can dig up trees and plant them elsewhere. I can poop in a toilet. I can craft furniture and put my own design on it. My furniture can have Tracey Sketchit’s beautiful mug on it. I can sit on Tracey Sketchit’s face. I am a sick fuck and I don’t care. I can give Raymond and Bob maid outfits. Magical time in my game! My hopes for next year…I don’t know, get the Festivale furniture, get Papi and Olivia to join my island, maybe visit Danny Trejo’s island, who knows, sky’s da limit!

Favorite Het Couple of 2020: Nasa and Tsukasa Yuzaki from Tonikawa

This is one of the most unorthodox marriages I’ve ever seen. But in this 90 Day Fiance world we’re living in, I shouldn’t pass judgement on these two getting married in episode one and not knowing much about each other. Nasa meets Tsukasa as he was about to be plowed by a truck. Tsukasa saves his life. Nasa says she’s beautiful. Tsukasa says she’ll be his girlfriend if they get married. He agrees. She disappears. Four years later, Tsukasa appears in front of Nasa’s front door with a marriage registration form. Congratulations buddy, you’ve got yourself a waifu! In some way, this felt like watching Yamato and Takeo from My Love Story. I was fascinated with them progressing through their relationship. The only difference is that Yamato and Takeo took the old-fashioned route. This couple did everything ass-backwards in terms of having a relationship. But I couldn’t take my eyes off Nasa and Tsukasa’s relationship during each episode. I find them cute.

Favorite Yuri Couple of 2020: Karin Asaka x Emma Verde from Love Live Nijigasaki High School Idol Club

AAAAAAAAAH! I’M IN IDOL HELL AGAIN! Yeah, no kidding! I came this close to putting Miu x Nicole from that abomination 22/7. But thank God for Love Live! There’s no telling if any of the girls from the Love Live franchise are confirmed to be lesbians. But fuck it, all of them attend all-girl schools, no males exist anywhere, and Sunshine gave us Kanan x Mari! Yeah, you know Kanan and Mari is canon as fuck, don’t at me. So naturally, I found more third-years to ship in the new Love Live series. Now I know I should have put up Ai x Rina or Ayumu x Yuu. Especially the latter due to recent events! But Emma x Karin is my OTP.

Now Emma is an exchange student from Switzerland and in coming to Nijigasaki, she first meets Karin and they became instant friends. When Emma said she wants to become an idol, Karin helped her quite a bit. Even though Karin had no interest in being an idol as her modeling career is starting up, Karin would occasionally help Emma out. And surprise, surprise, Karin ends up fascinated with the idol world and Emma helps her come to the light to be herself there. Okay, I’m totally reading this in some fragmented way, but I’m currently playing Love Live School Idol Festival All Stars and the app game has a lot more stuff involving stuff the anime has yet to talk about. Confirmed or not, Karin x Emma for the win!

Favorite Yaoi Couple of 2020: Eiji Okumura x Ash Lynx from Banana Fish

It took me a while to get here, but I finally made it to 2018’s overlooked gem. Forgive me for not being fully caught up, but from what I’m watching at the moment, I’m sticking to my guns and supporting the hell out of this. I mean, I could have mentioned The Titan’s Bride here…but fuck no, I ain’t goin’ down that mess! Ash has gone through a lot, I mean a helluva lot in his past. His cute boy looks have made him a target on the streets of New York, with mafia dons, and with prison inmates. But dude can kill if you mess with him. Then you have Eiji, who is just a literal example of a “pure cinnamon roll (until episode 8)”. These two are as opposite as you can possibly get. Ash is from New York and Eiji is from Japan. Ash likes hot dogs with everything on it. Eiji likes grilled fish and natto. Ash spent the majority of his life killing on the streets. Eiji was a track superstar. You get my meaning. But when we got these two together it’s quite adorable. Ash is really able to change when he’s around Eiji. Ash isn’t some heartless killer on the street about to kill a thug with prosthetic fingers. When he’s with Eiji, he’s a joker that can easily get scared of pumpkins. And even in later episodes, you got these two acting like a husband and wife.

Fandom That You Didn’t Expect to Get Into: Les Miserables – A Girl Named Cosette

Let me explain a little something. Les Mis! I have never seen the play, watched the movie, or read the novel prior to picking up this anime. Not a single one of those! And that’s a bit of a head-scratcher when you realize I was a bit of a musical theater nut in my teenage years. But one thing I do like is when Japan does an anime based on plays or historical events (like Romeo x Juliet or Rose of Versailles). The second I popped in Les Miserables the anime, I wanted to binge watch the whole 52 episode series. It is by no means a perfect adaptation of the Victor Hugo novel. Several key players end up surviving all the way up to the end of the story! But because this was my very first viewing of anything Les Mis, I took to the story of Cosette and was eager to see what was going to happen next in her tale. Unlike the movies and play, Cosette was the main focus of the story besides Jean Valjean and Javert. And thanks to watching the unfortunate stories of Cosette, Jean Valjean, the Thenadiers, Javert, Marius, and the rest, I thought it was time to watch the OTHER adaptations to Les Mis.

…

Russell Crowe sucks.

Fandom That Made An Unexpected Comeback: Higurashi no Naku Koro Ni

Higurashi or When They Cry is one of my favorite fandoms of all time! So naturally when we heard that it was making a comeback, I was excited. It was also very odd that Higurashi was given this sequel or reboot. Ahem! There’s another franchise that needs a face-lift. Umineko still deserves a better treatment. Plus, now that this series was out of the faulty hands of Studio Deen, Higurashi will get the special care it deserves. Believe it or not, it wasn’t just the anime that made a comeback for me, but the manga as well. Since 2009, I’ve read several volumes (out of order) and would every now and then come back to read the story. Back to the anime, this reboot or sequel…you know what, I’m gonna call it a “rebooqual”! This rebooqual sucked me back to the town of Hinamizawa and all the murders. Every week, I find myself comparing the current episode to one from the 2006 version. But then the fourth episode of each arc seems to catch me off guard.

Where are they going with this story and these twist endings to our favorite arcs? I did not expect Rena to turn a simple attempted murder into the end of School Days! I didn’t expect Rika to die in the most disgusting fashion they could think of. Could someone kill Teppei fucking Hojo? I will pay ¥5000 for someone to do that job. So yeah, because I know how much of this plays out and who does what, I’m usually watching and reading while making wise-ass remarks. But I still have fun with it.

Fandom That Inspired the Most Crack: Konosuba

In a year where I caught up with the popular Isekais like Shield Hero and Re:Zero, I found the wacky misadventures of Kazuma Satou to be amusing as all get-out. From the first 5 minutes, I found myself laughing at Kazuma’s misfortune. Seriously, how the fuck do you mistake a tractor for a car, have a heart attack, piss yourself, and fucking die in the first couple minutes to the series? You can only get away with this shit in gag animes! But it’s not just Kazuma’s dumbass, there’s a mage who only does explosions, but loses all her energy after one blow-up. Then there’s a busty, blonde who gets turned on by getting hurt and can’t strike anything with her sword. Anime’s biggest masochist or Cheryl Tunt incarnate, I haven’t decided which one to believe! Then you have this loud, crazy goddess chick named Aqua. She’s also useless about 86% of the time! Watching their unfortunate missions is all the crack that I need to get through this year. Seriously, Darkness is just all kinds of fucked up, but we love her.

Last Fandom of 2020: Yashahime

That’s right, the InuYasha sequel gets top spot here! Even though week after week I find myself asking more questions than when the episode started, I’m still hooked. If you’re like me, you watched and fell in love with the series InuYasha. So if they’re doing a sequel, you’re expecting to see all of your favorite characters from the prequel like InuYasha, Kagome, Miroku, Sango, Sesshomaru, Koga, Rin, and the rest. Actually, no! Quite the opposite! We’ve got Sesshomaru’s daughters, but no Sesshomaru. Rin is sleeping in a tree we think! We’ve got InuYasha and Kagome’s daughter, but they’re M.I.A. None of the girls even know a thing about their birth parents.

Now are these new characters a catch like the ones from the previous series? Some are! The three main girls, yes! Especially Moroha! I’ve already praised her name earlier in the superlative. Towa and Setsuna do take on some personality traits from their parents. Setsuna is definitely serious like Sesshomaru and Towa sometimes has a carefree yet loyal aura to her like Rin. I know I’m always skeptical when a series gives us a sequel featuring the offspring of the main characters. Especially when you’ve got some lame examples like Boruto and Eureka Seven AO (I might retract my diss on Boruto later)! As each week gives us a new episode, we’re unraveling new clues into a lot of things involving our old favorite characters, as well as the new ones. So I have high hopes for Yashahime for the time being!

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demonicintegrity · 4 years

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oKAY heres the details on that depressing Devildice human highschool au i made with a friend back around 2017/2018. Kinda a mess so bare with me. long post with themes of abuse, depression, and other nasty stuff.

- Lucifer Angelo grew up in a pretty bad place in Texas. The details werent fleshed out other than that it was a pretty ignorant place.

- The important fact of the matter is that his dad (who we never did settle on a name for lol) was a Christian preacher. Charismatic man, but an absolute shithead to Lucifer. Even with his other kids he was strict and pushed his ideals and plans onto them. Also had a temper and a loud voice.

- Preacher Angelo was once a pretty alright man, although very self-centered and was pretty condensing. He had a marriage early on in his life and had a few kids, named after archangels. Marriage fell through, and he starts drinking and moves on the next one a bit after. Have a couple more sons named after archangels. It also falls apart. On number 3? he has the final sons to complete his arch angel themed kids. At first it was just in honor/inspired by the angels and his Christian lifestyle, tho i think around the second marriage is where he just started getting delusional and started thinking himself as godlike and thought his sons will spread his word and whatever. Needlessly to say, his partners once they found this out went :/ and it went downhill from there.

- Man we really just took every flaw and worse thing to have in a parent and shoved it into this bastard lmao

- Lucifer was actually the product of an affair within his final marriage. Ofc cheating was a dealbreaker and they divorced. The girl he was cheating with stuck around a little bit, but died in childbirth due to complications. Thus he was left with this child that wAs BoRn FrOm SiN so he named him Lucifer. He would be his son of sin while his other sons would be Perfect People. (Even though they and their mothers started to want nothing to do with him lmao)

- He got by and took care of Lucifer decently but because this was an AU of Angst(TM) Preacher Dickhead became an alcoholic, had money troubles over time because economy troubles or whatever, and took out his temper on his son more and more. Luci was taken to church every Sunday by his dad.

- Kingsley Dyce was born in Lousiana to his parents Patrick and Fahri. We had a whole separate story for Fahri’s family and how they met, it was cute but that’s completely irrelevant right now. They lived modestly and were technically stable but there wasn’t always extra money for fun stuff and there were times were they were just getting by, but they never let Kingsley onto it.

- Kingsley (nicknamed King or KD by his friends) was a pretty cool kid. Had fun in Louisiana despite being a bit flamboyant and full of himself, made good friends. His relationship with his parents were fairly okay. He was a total mama’s boy, loves his mother to death and would do anything for her. As he became a teen his relationship with his father got a bit more strained because Patrick was a very Traditional person and into his teenage hood Kingsley had a habit of dancing not-so-masculine or modestly. He also was getting into makeup.

- Stepping back tho, as a kid he was in the church choir. His family is Catholic and his parents took him to church every Sunday. His favorite activity was to rollerskate. He and his friends were always skating to each other’s houses or skating at the rink. Skating, video games, and singing was his life.

- During his 6/7th grade his family moved to Maryland because of a job opportunity. King was suuuupper bummed. Maryland isn’t like Louisiana at all so there was an adjustment curve. Despite that, he didn’t have a hard time make friends. (insert humanized casino crew here)

- Side note: KD had a tooth gap as a kid and got braces during middle school to correct it. It gave him a lisp. He also had glasses and a questionable sense of fashion throughout middle school. This isn’t super relevant but its important to me that you can imagine this kid as the doofus he was. He also was roughly at an average height.

- In 8th grade there was a new kid that came into his class; Lucifer. Luci’s dad had also moved to Maryland for a job. Despite his entire class wondering what the hell was this southern emo kid’s problem, he wasn’t overtly bullied, just ignored. KD however, was intrigued by this asshole and made it his goal to figure out his issue and be all up in his business.

- Luci is currently dealing with some of his hardest years here. In Texas he had a hard time making friends, was bullied, and wasnt surrounded by the best sort of people. His abuse was getting worse as his father struggled more and more, and the move wasn’t the greatest fix considering he was still drinking and getting himself into debt. Luci didn’t care about school nor about life in general. But then this asshole waltz into his life and boy golly was he feeling things about it.

- The relationship at first just KD latching onto Luci and talking to him about any and everything and trying to drag him around town. Slowly, Lucifer began to be amused by this jerk and his friends. He also didn’t live too far away so KD was able to easily bike to his place even though he never wanted KD over.

- KD picked up on the abuse Luci was going through, and honestly didn’t know to confront it. At first it was just sharing food cuz Luci wouldn’t eat and chatting to him because he got uncomfortable seeing Luci alone with head down all the time. Eventually he talked to his mom about it and the two of them kept inviting Luci over. Fahri became the mom Luci never had and Patrick despite working long hours and extra shifts, would take time to give Luci practical lessons and be a better masculine figure in his life. Luci was slowly being given a family but he also was pulling away from it. He was in the midst of a depression and he was pretty mean to everyone to deal with it, and pulled to himself more as he began to love KD and his family. The new friendships doesn’t cure depression, nor was it helpful against abuse.

- TW under break for more details of abuse, neglect, depression, and suicide

- His abuse was verbal and physical. He got yelled at for being a failure, yelled at because he didnt care about school, drunk his fathers booze, got into trouble and lashed out. He got beat for back talking and whenever the drunk asshole wanted to fight with him. It had been going on for years. He was also neglected pretty bad. Food wasn’t super plentiful in the house, he lived on fast food and luci didnt know how to cook. There was more booze in fridge than food. Power/water would sometimes not be on if his father forgot about certain bills. It was bad.

- Some time during this 8th grade year he also developed a crush on KD, he didnt voice it because his dad was homophobic as shit but also because he certainly didnt know how to navigate love and didnt want to ruin his relationship with KD. So he repressed it.

- Also during this 8th grade year Luci tried to commit suicide. He had texted KD before hand too, with some note that boiled down to he cared a lot about KD but couldnt stand anything in the world/his dad/bringing KD down/whatever and it was obviously a suicide note. KD freaked out and immediately got his ass over there, kicked down the door, and found Luci in his dad’s room with his dad’s gun to his head. I don’t think we ever settled on the details of the situation but it was traumatizing for both individuals to say the least. KD was able to talk him out of it.

- That incident made them inseparable. Luci never had someone care for him like that, cry for him like that. KD had grown attached and close enough to consider him his best friends, the incident only solidify his want to make his best friend’s life better. It was a rough few months after that and KD was sworn to never tell his parents what happened.

- TBH that was about the worse of it, this was an high school AU and high school became a bit better for them in certain regards. KD got his braces off, got contacts, and had one helluva growth spurt going into HS. Luci went deep into a punk-emo phase his freshman year which killed his fashion, but was slowly becoming a bit more confident in himself. KD and his parents were able to help him a lot. Emotional support, practical life lessons, and food was always a given.

- Its a bit of an up and down throughout high school. KD gets into makeup, heels, dancing, and bisexuality and it causes a major strife with him and his dad who wanted a “real” son. The relationship went through major struggles and would take a couple years to really heal.

- Luci struggles a bit with drinking and deals drugs and booze to get his own spending money. He starts somewhat taking his school seriously, but even though he does work in class he doesnt always do homework or projects and whatnot. He has a habit of physically intimidating other students and occasionally tries to pick fights.

- The “casino gang” also have their own things going on. If a recall correctly, Wheezy was also in a neglectful house, Pip and Dot ( ??? and Dorothy) were twins from a wealthy well off family but were ignored and were terribly bratty, Piroeutta was just an quiet Russian outcast, Mango had 7 siblings and no space to himself and who was bullied for his large off-putting appearance, Chips was just loud, and i completely forgot what everyone else’s deal was. KD and Luci mainly hung out with Chips, Piro, Pip, and Dot. They were still pretty close to the others but those four were the only ones they regularly hung out with at lunch and outside of school.

- There are a couple things that could happen throughout high school. My personal fav i can remember is a particular angst with KD trying to get with another dude and Luci being Upset and lashing out at him at a party result and ugh that scenario was angsty but also turned very cute???

- Regardless, when they do get together they’re unstoppable tbh.

- and yes, the gang would readily throw hands with anyone who said shit. Barely any of them care about suspensions.

- I kinda forget a bit of stuff. I know misc. scenarios here and there both fluffy and angsty, but this post is already long enough lmao so feel free to hit up my ask box with any questions/comments. I dont really think Ill come back to this au?? If i do Im gonna edit a ton of stuff because looking back certain themes and scenarios seem borderline insensitive and/or poorly thought out. I did found a fic of this au on my phone with KD and Luci as adults tho and Im v tempted to rewrite some of it and finish it because it was good.

#long post #tw abuse #tw physical abuse #tw verbal abuse #tw suicide #suicide mention #cuphead dont deal with the devil #ch devil #King dice #devildice #snakeeyes

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thedaveandkimmershow · 4 years

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28 years married... you change a lot. Not only as a couple but as individuals. And all the things they don’t tell you about being married?

You find out all that stuff too.

It’s both wonderful...

And terrible.

And everything changes. I’m not just talking about obvious plot twists like global pandemics, shuttered economies, tear-gassing pepper-spraying fire-setting bottle-and-rock-hurling randomly-grabbing-people-off-the-streets riots, or the fact that we live in a country with a population that clearly doesn’t share a common understanding of reality.

I’m not just talking about those things because that was all this year.

But travel back with me twenty-eight years ago, when we got married, and you’ll notice right away how there were so many things that didn’t even exist. They hadn’t been invented let alone conceived of. In fact during the course of our marriage the iPod was invented and became obsolete. Replaced, essentially, by the phone in my pocket that does everything the iPod does plus... it’s also my camera. And my desktop computer, too.

A.I. also sprang to life, by the way. Artificial Intelligence somehow working its way into every day life. In ways we never imagined.

And cars started driving themselves.

Then social media. It burst into existence, fixed itself into every part of our lives, and then turned into Godzilla rampaging through downtown Tokyo setting everything on fire with his breath.

Politics looks nothing like what it was in 1992. Neither does religion, for that matter. And people, too, aren’t who they used to be.

28 years.

Time and experience have done a job on us, too. In wonderful and terrible ways.

For example, at this point in our lives, things that were once daunting and nearly impossible to navigate are simple To Do’s on our lists. We’re capable of so much more than we used to be. You can’t even imagine.

Heck. I couldn’t have imagined when we were just starting out.

The thing is... we gained these abilities — like boundaries, like advocating for ourselves — we gained these abilities, learned all these lessons, the hard way. Straight up... the hard way. For sure I would’ve preferred the easy way... but the hard way does have it’s own methodology of revealing what’s important and what’s not. What’s a priority and what’s not. What’s a right now thing... and what’s not.

So yeah. There are more things than there used to be that aren’t... what? That aren’t important. That aren’t priorities. That aren’t right now things.

Gosh. There are so many more things that aren’t our things, you know?

You do you, we’ll do us, and it’s all whatever it is. No harm, no foul.

Now I’d love to say we’ve become wise human beings over the years. Of course I would. But while it’s absolutely true that we’re packing more wisdom than the twenty-something versions of ourselves, that’s less a product of intentional inner discovery than it is a product of surviving life’s challenges and plot twists, trap doors, white water rapids, and category 5 hurricanes.

What can I say? You learn a lot getting roughed up and surviving getting roughed up. You learn a lot about how not to step on landmines and how to recover when you do step on one and it blows up.

So yeah. We’re waaaaaay more capable today than who we were back then.

28 years.

And what do we have to show for it?

Maybe some insight. A touch of understanding. Definitely a lot of experience... bumps and bruises, scars that are left over from a long time ago, bunch of photographs, tons of memories, and a few awards.

Oh yeah. And one helluva life.

For example, twenty-eight years is absolutely the best of what we imagined marriage would be. It’s also the most specifically terrible stuff that surely must’ve been concealed from us in the fine print. We didn't, after all, embark on wedded bliss inside a bubble that would actually shield us from the world. So death?

Yeah, death showed up in our lives. A bunch.

Suicide?

Yeah, suicide was there, too.

Teen suicide?

Took my breath away. It was, in fact, one of the very few times my daughter ever saw me weep openly.

So that happened.

It wasn’t all matters of life and death, of course. But there was sure stuff in there that wasn’t what we expected.

We struggled through confrontation. We weathered depression. We were assaulted by unemployment.

And money problems?

Dude.

We did that one first.

Dysfunctional relationships?

They turned up every year, near as I can tell.

Pies in the face?

Same deal.

Betrayal and abandonment and indignity?

Yes. Yes. And yes.

And other stuff, too.

Lots and lots of other stuff. Too.

But what about love? What about the big L?

Well, love’s definitely propelled us through nearly three decades. It’s certainly sustained us this long. So yeah... love breathes life.

But love also makes life harder, my friends. Meaning the more people in your life that you love, the more hostages to fortune you’re carrying. The more you bear the weight of everything that comes gunning not only for you… but for all those who are dearest to you.

And yeah. Not only have we taken it in the teeth, the people we love have taken it in the teeth. Repeatedly.

And we grieved their circumstances just as surely as we grieved our own.

We grieved all of it.

So.

Along the way I took to documenting the fun and funny in our lives. Most of it was small things, tiny things sometimes. Quick laughs, easily forgotten. Ephemeral in their own way. I took to documenting that stuff because the negative threads running through our lives so easily stained our perceptions and memories. Suicide. Unemployment. Dysfunctional relationships. There were times when these were the only things we could remember.

They colored everything black.

Seriously. The year a young friend of ours took his own life, I woulda sworn that whole year was a no good, terrible, horrible, very bad year.

Except...

It wasn't.

Because when I read over all the stuff we'd actually done that year, all the stuff that happened to us and, incidentally, all the stuff I’d forgotten…

Well, it really wasn't shrouded in darkness at all. Not every day. Heck, not even every month.

There was life in there, always. Light. Laughter. Love. Adventure. Between the cracks, sometimes, but always there.

Always there.

I wish I could tell you why that is.

Are we made this way? Are we just lucky?

No idea.

For real. No idea.

But at the very point reason abandons me, there's this, irrefutable fact. The woman I married is badass. She's funny. She's smart. She’s creative. She thinks out of the box in ways that produce answers, results, improvements... plus it’s a skill that’s seriously billable. She’s a renaissance woman. She's talented like crazy. She's beautiful in ways I couldn't imagine when we got married. She fills and fulfills my life in myriad ways. She surprises me.

Think on that for a moment. Almost three decades later…

She still surprises me.

For those of you shopping around for a future wife or husband, I would say Friendship's gonna be number one with a bullet. Badass and Funny are definitely near the top of the list. Also keep a keen eye out for Compassion, Grace, and an ability for Peace. 'Cause you will run into terrible things, the both of you. And it takes more than graduate and post-graduate degrees, sometimes, to get through a single day, or even recover from one moment.

Passion... that's another one. And not just sexual, by the way, although that does make sex way more fun. ;-) But passionate about life. Passionate about people. Passionate about the things that are important to them.

Seriously. 'Til death do us part is longer than you think when you're a twenty-something. It completely helps when you both have the ability to never be bored. And be able to engage damn near anything.

It helps when you’re both compatible in ways none of us thinks about when we think about Love. When we think about Romance. When we think about Forever.

It’s important to think about those things, though, because Forever is a very long time, my friends.

And you can’t do that with just anybody.

I couldn’t do that with just anybody.

Which is why I said, "I do". Which is why she said, "I do". And which is how we were able to navigate the life that both unfolded and unraveled after that. A life that’s been breathtaking in wonderful and terrible ways.

And yeah of course we’re thankful for the Wonderful.

But when it comes to the Terrible…

We’re Thankful for each other.

:-)

#marriage #married #wedding #relationship #friendship #forever #love #laughter #wisdom #experience #learning #wonderful and terrible #wedding anniversary #things we learned #change #learning to deal #I do

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mapgiejournal · 4 years

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Note to an Aspiring Trumper

What do you think? was the question and I hope you are as open minded as you believe. I consider you a friend and as such, I will be honest.

YouTube, Facebook, Twitter and all the rest are not news and information sources. They are entertainment. While they may frequently offer interesting ideas, these ideas should be met with some amount of skepticism. The confusion among Trump supporters between anarchists (who don’t believe in government or property) Marxists (who believe in government ownership of all property) and Nazis (who were not socialists but who added the term after nationalism to describe the perfect marriage of state and corporate power) illustrates the shortcomings of social media as educational tool. Journalists report on verifiable facts that are are confirmed by more than one source. If you’d like a quick education on journalistic integrity, see “All the President’s Men,” or “The Pelican Brief.” These are both fictionalized accounts but they do illustrate the principles on which good journalism operates. Social media does not operate on the principles of journalism neither, for that matter, does Fox News. One good way of verifying integrity is having a look at how many times a news source retracts or corrects itself. The New York Times and Washington Post correct themselves daily. This is not an admission of guilt but one of fallibility. People are fallible. Good journalism recognizes this.

You say Trump is trimming regulation and returning power to the states. What regulations has he done away with that were impinging on your freedom? For forty years the Republican party has been merrily hacking its way through the social safety net under the guise of “freedom” which they regularly confuse with free enterprise. There is precisely nothing wrong with free enterprise. Free enterprise that is allowed to do whatever it wants while treating its employees, customers and the environment like garbage must be prevented and the only way to prevent it is regulation. Exploitation in the pursuit of capital is the worst of our human failings: The dollar should never be considered of higher value than life. Without regulation, we would not have clean air and water, we would not have Glacier National Park, we would not have even the shitty work conditions that you detest in your current employment.

Black Lives Matter is a reaction to the most extreme form of exploitation in the pursuit of capital - slavery and 400 years of institutionalized racism. I have marched in support, through the streets of Vail, and I’ve marched alongside police officers who agreed with the movement, and who feel the incredible amounts of death and pain and incarceration inflicted on black citizens of our society needs correcting. You say you oppose affirmative action. I can’t imagine why. It hasn’t diminished you in any way, it hasn’t taken anything away from you. If anything, it has lifted you up because it has enabled someone who would never have had the opportunities you and I take for granted to move ahead and contribute something meaningful, perhaps ground-breaking to society. Colin Powell comes to mind as someone who has contributed mightily to this country and who arrived in a position to make that contribution through hard work and because Affirmative Action gave him an opportunity to do so. Can you imagine how many incredible minds were wasted, how many great spirits vanquished because their skin was the wrong color? What a waste in a country that prides itself on diversity (E Pluribus Unum) and opportunity. The United States built the greatest economy and upwardly mobile society the world has ever known during the years after the Second World War. Can you imagine how much greater it might have been if black GI’s returning from war had been included in the GI Bill?

I can’t look on Donald J Trump as my “weird uncle.” I look at him as what he is - an empty, hollow shell seeking nothing but money and power. He is a narcissist in the extreme. You may have grown up near New York City, but I’ve spent time in the city with abrasive characters, ruthless capitalists and regular people. I’ve also met people who have had direct dealings with Trump and who have nothing pleasant to say about him. I find it very telling that the longest surviving member of Trump’s cabinet is Stephen Miller, an utter racist. It is also symptomatic that Trump fails to listen to any advice he doesn’t agree with even from people who know far more than he does. This in itself is remarkable - he is the President of the United States, the most brilliant minds in the world are immediately accessible to him and yet he fails to seek advice or listen when it is offered.

Throughout his presidency, Trump has coddled dictators and strongmen, encouraged racists (“Good people” among the Nazis and White Supremacists in Charlotte and Richmond), and done his best to divide Americans along every fault line he can imagine. He attacks any journalist who questions him or derides any report he doesn’t like as “Fake news” and now he is painting any person who protests his presidency as “anarchists” and “agitators.” Hitler did this before the Reichstag fire (which his supporters set), blamed the fire on those same “anarchists” and “agitators” and seized power. If you would like an education into the perils of thinking our country can’t slide into authoritarianism, I would suggest “The Banality of Evil.”

Today is July 30 and the Trump has suggested postponing the election though the Constitution specifically gives that power to Congress. Two of Trump’s enablers, his Attorney General and Secretary of State, have both answered that the law is not clear on whether or not the president can postpone an election. The law is quite clear and these are men who, along with Trump, have taken oaths to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States. Just another piece of paper if you haven’t actually read it, if you have no intention of maintaining the Republic on which it was founded, or who believe the president is above the law.

Trump has flouted the law since before he was elected. His associates knowingly colluded with foreign agents to influence the election; he has locked children in cages; he has used his office to line his pockets, those of his family and those of his allies; and he given comfort to the enemy in failing to take any action - or even addressing - the bounty placed on American military personnel in the Middle East by Russia, the very definition of High Treason; and he has never ceased lying to the American people since the day he took office. All of these facts are indisputable, verifiable and widely available. That so many choose to be willfully ignorant of those facts is a threat to the liberty and freedom of every citizen of this country and every lover of liberty and freedom worldwide. Trump cares not at all for America or Americans - there are over 150,000 dead Americans whose corpses can attest to that, a number that sadly grows daily due to the utter malfeasance and total incompetence of Donald J Trump.

Jonathan

#trump #magats #authoritarian regime

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tgai-spock · 4 years

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okay so before you read this a note - I wrote this before the BLM protests began

a second note, I had another almost identical slightly crazier version of this written before coronavirus. a minture of both and, bad judgement is leading my to post this.

consider this - the government is shit - why not just build a completely new one without even fighting to dismantle the other.

-----

Planned Land Name : Newski -

change available on suggestion of better name

When the Doctor was acted by David Tennent he had a line that stuck with me, all the ways we as humans could have decided to live, and this is what we choose. It wasn’t really a choice just a platform of life built over all the last ones, run with greed and fear, and a large portion of cruelty.

We took old models and added to them, and in a way if we continue this way we will deserve the destruction we get. On a singular basis most of us are mostly innocent, and yet, we won’t be for long.

I think now is the right time. Now its more blatant and obvious than ever before. Thirty years ago the government would have experimented on you, and left you for dead, without your consent, penniless. Before that they would have asked you to steadily walk into machine fun fire. The only difference now, is you know of that past. You don’t know of the decade that came next, or the one after that because it’s yet to be revealed. More information on this:

usa see:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unethical_human_experimentation_in_the_United_States

uk see

……..

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Porton_Down

is all i can find, the uk had a wiki list just like the usa, half as long (USA IS LONG) just as bad. all on purpose. this was here.. someones.. removed the wiki article?? Someone please give me the link. It must be on the internet somewhere still. Is it just me or has this … been deliberately hidden. Hidden in favour of articles on corona virus ‘vaccines’ ah.

anyway, this isn’t news, or even the whole point.

The economy, our very life and being is currently ruled by one question, which is always answered, with ease and purpose. What’s more important money, or a human life? Money or hundreds of thousands of people? The money is now what it always was, money. The prime minister of the UK has sent pople with non-vital jobs back to work. Some of these people will catch corona-virus and die, as a direct FORCED action from the government, as it is no longer an ability for people with those jobs to choose to risk themselves, and their familys. They must work, earn money for the economy (endanger their family and possibly die) or they can stay home loose their job, home (and then die.)

But was there ever a different option? Yeah. Just like the current looming global warming crisis, they were told about possible plague outbreaks. Instead of preparing for a possibility, they closed their. We will face this again when global warming makes its first attempts to claim lives.… well honestly, we’re already well past the first few, but when it starts hitting younger people, when not only the old suffer. When the temperature outside reaches 50c do you think you will be allowed to stay in your air conditioned home? Now we know at least. Not only will you be forced into an environment made uninhabitable by rich greedy bastards, but you’ll also be forced to work on non-necesery jobs (umm actually this show store is necessary because it’s technically a garden blah blah blah. Rich people are bored at home. So now, you must die.

But who wants to go war? - Note I wrote this before the BLM protests, and honestly guys, I’m so proud of you but so many innocent people are dying. Gauge their eyes out. Eradicate the police. BLM! BLM!

Who wants to go to prison, risk losing their job, their free time (oh which every second of is ever so precious because of what they’ve done) who wants to endanger their family? (BLM, heroes but you don’t deserve that. Keep up the good work though. They say all the police in the USA are the ones who are burning cars. Burn the police. burn the police.

Anyway: Instead of forcing a shitty government who takes way too long to make changes what I instead suggest is - make a new city.

Like start in the uk and then spread out, keep architecture unique to the area

Goals:

The sustainable continued existence of humans

Land that is self sufficient for all basic needs food/water/energy/medical care.

Sustaining and cleaning the environment

Creating 3 years worth of food back up for every Newski citizen in the event of catastrophe (plague/war/large volcanic eruption, dalek attack, ect.)

Sustaining and helping endangered animals caused by human interference

Developing cures to diseases that attack animals/environment in nature

Developing cures to diseases and ailments humans experience

Researching and developing cure/coping mechanisms for mental illnesses.

To interfere in other cultures that do not allow their own basic rights, for all citizens due to race/gender/religion/sexuality. (I support all different countries having their own way of life, but I draw the line at where a ‘way of life’ injures other humans. Lets not pretend to make this question harder than it is. It isn’t a hard question to answer. Volcano going to blow up and wipe out an entire civilisation of people who can’t help themself? Then help them.

To interfere in other cultures that force child marriages of those under 18. (Yes that includes the law allowing 16 years olds to get married in the uk! You know who mostly uses that now? Pedophiles, and people forcing their children into marriages. Ideally I’d raise it to 21, theres no reason anyone under that should be marrying.

Researching and creating a defence system for earth (dangerous comets, possibly aliens, mostly comets)

To create a bunker in the event of a large catastrophe where one will be needed for shelter

Creating off world self sustainable, peaceful settlements, and making sure the billionaire don’t spread hell to outterspace- can you honestly say with full certainty the won’t bring back slavery? they might even act like its not slavery if they splice humans with some other species…

To continue developing

Living in Newski

Government:

Newski is managed by 1 King or Queen, and a small Government. (nnnooo don’t be put off by the word king it’s more like a prime minister)

The King/Queen title is passed on to people when they wish to retire.

The King/Queen may train as many people (apprentices) as they wish but they must choose one person to takeover.

In the event the King/Queen is lost before an apprentice is chosen it will be down to the citizens to vote in one of the apprentices.

A King or Queen that has chosen an apprentice may give them the title Prince/Kinglet/Queenlet.

A King or Queen may unchoose their Prince/Kinglet/Queenlet, if they feel they have made a mistake, unless it is proved they are intoxicated or suffering from a severe illness, such as dementia. Other illness such as depression although severe are not just cause for ignoring the King/Queen.

A King/Queen is not required to have biological heirs however, there is nothing wrong with them naming their own children Prince/Kinglet/Queenlet, as long as they have been through sufficient training, and have been educated.

The King/Queen may be removed of their crown, given the government first votes to it with a 100% agree rate, and the citizens then vote with a 90% agree rate.

Only King (me) may not be removed of their crown, no matter the government votes.

On the death of King (me) expect their return with another body- wow I had a whole paragraph here about resurrection. weird.

The King/Queen may be respectfully retired given the government first votes to it with a 100% agree rate, with scientific evidence to suggest that they have a strong illness relating to memory/reality such as dementia. They may keep their crown and should still be respected as such but they are no longer allowed to walk in on government meetings or throw people in the stocks.

A new King/Queen may then be voted in by the citizens from any of the previous nominated apprentices, or a retired King/Queen in good mind has the right to single rename themselves King/Queen, or narrow down the selected apprentices to five individuals.

The Government is set up of twelve people each individually voted. The King/Queen can choose one person who will enter the government regardless of vote. Citizens will be free to vote in the other 11 from anyone who has nominated themselves.

All government nominees will be asked to fill out a list of what they stand for, and do not stand for, to be published in one easy to read leaflet, next to every other nominee, so voters may understand 100% who they vote for. Nominees who have written that they 100% agree with certain ideas but then vote against them may be placed in the stocks for shameful behaviour. They may also be removed from the government if a fair trial proved they have deliberately and with no good reason changed what they claimed to believe.

The government is to be revoted every 3 years, and the process will take up only 1 month.

There is no limit on the amount of time someone is allowed to be in the government, however if they are in the government for 9 years, they must take a 9 year brake before being nominated again.

The King/Queen may nominate themselves for government, but they cannot vote themselves in.

For new laws to pass there must be a 75% agree vote between themselves.

All meetings between the government are open for the public to view, including ones discussing pandemics and catastrophe. Only meetings discussing an ongoing war may be closed of to the public if they deem it appropeit.

The King/Queen may sit on whatever meeting they wish, unless they are not in a sober state.

The King/Queen may force new laws or regulations they want to create to be discussed first on a daily basis. The government may then choose to vote in the law (75% agreeing to it) or suspend it for 1 week, but it must then be voted on. Only 1 person need ask for a law review to be suspended for a week to put forth the motion.

Justice:

Citizens have a right to fair trial.

King/Queen or Prince/Kinglet/Queenlet are only ones allowed to sentence people for up to 2 weeks in the stocks without trial or other humiliating duties for misdemeanours, given they or her guards are witness to it. Most people will be put through to fair trial, this law is only for if King Opusername is about when it is witnessed.

Laws of the land

Human rights exist, many of that already associated with UK right laws will still exist but with the following permanent addition, food, water, medical care, and electricity needed ensure environmental conditions and basic food.

Rice is out

Potatoes are in

You may purchase avocados and other not Newski food as a treat.

Exceptions allowed only for people with many allergies/intolerance where this is not personally sustainable.

3. Basic human rights for prisoners exist, more advanced rights such as the right to vote are not available to prisoners sentenced to life in prison. Humans in the stocks have a right to water and shade/jumpers, and a 30 minute brake every 2 hours.

4. Criminal justice can vary from stocks and other humiliating duties, to re - introduction to society- to life in jail, and banishment. There is no death penalty…. ….. …. … … .. .. maybe a request for some prisoners to do the honroable thing and kill themselves. (pedos and nazis)

5. Fighting is allowed, but only within the arena, fighting outside is a serious crime, and assault. - yeah i think we should bring arenas back. I mean boxing still exists but I want to see my neighbours across the road fucking hash it out in the arena, I’m betting on billy.

6. False news, or deliberately misleading news is forbidden, reporters caught writing articles with no previous source to suggest they thought they were honestly writing the truth will be banned from journalistic jobs, spend time in the stocks or humiliating duties, jail time, and face possible banishment for being dishonourable.

7. Everyone of the age 14 or over must attend town or government meetings for at least 1 hour, 6 times a year. The 6 hours may not be ‘spent’ with in one week. This rule does not apply to those in extreme mental or physical illness that makes this impossible.

Home Owning/Renting:

All land is rented through the King/Queen.

Some homes can be rented for a monthly amount, with normal renting rules applied.

Other homes can be (“brought”) “rented” for their entire value, for an unlimited amount of years.

“Renters” who had paid the full value of their home will have full decorating privileges of the inside of their house open to them, and the owning of pets would be down to them. The decoration, or painting of outside of the house must first be granted permission, unless it redo decoration that has aged. Only the removal/addition of walls must first be granted.

“Renters” who have gardens have almost full decorating privileges to plant, whatever they like, however they wish. The only exceptions come with:

Large tree to close to houses that could cause damage

Ponds (planning permission need but most likely granted)

Pools (probably not granted.)

Covering the land with cement if forbidden

Covering the land with plastic grass if forbidden

The use of gravel in small quantities may be granted (permission needed.)

Objects that can be moved, tables, are free reign.

“Renters” who have paid in full and wish to sell their home may only do so to the King/Queen, but it being brought back is guaranteed. “Renters” will receive in full what they paid for it, possibly with the addition of inflation, or more if it well decorated. If the house is in need of repair, major cleaning, or some objects need replacing they may receive less for it.

It is down to “renters” who had paid the full price of the house to look after the house, if however the roof or something similar that will cause major damage is in need of urgent repair and they refuse to have it repaired, repairing will be arranged for them and they will be billed.

Cleaning of the outside walls of the house will be free, and mandatory, as these are for aesthetic purposes.

Home “owners” can be removed from their home in the case that they pose a threat, or are wildly mistreating their home. They will receive their money back for it. This will only happen in the case where they seem dangerous, or leave piles of rubbish in their garden, or animal poop (in the case of their own dog, this does not apply to chickens or other smaller animals) for an extended time and, have ignored 3 warnings to clean up.

Royal Businesses :

All business can be rented or “rented” from the King/Queen.

If a business is shite, the King or Queen can shut it down.

If the owners are miserable bastards their business can be shut down. Listen, I try to use small shops occasionally, and I walk in to see some ugly sad miserable bastards, then I ain’t gonna come again bitch, am gonna go to fucking tesco see wanker.

Unless the owners have a mental/physical illness that makes them appear to be miserable bastards. - a fair and just king/queen. No one else is excused, with the exception of book shop owners, and librarians, I mean I’d prefer if you weren’t but you do you. No one else do you.

All people working around food must wear hair and beard nets. Why are fast food places the only places getting this right. stop being groesss!!

OTHER

Guilds

Fish

fish

….fish? fish guilds.

Fighters guilds.

The guards are like police- but they aren’t. ACAB!!! they’ll brake up a fight. help people with shopping, keep an eye out.

detective guild for crimes commited- like the guards are busy doing day to day stuff. It may sound extreme but imagine this. You are in the uk, your stuff is stolen. You phone the police. They come to your house, they give a nod and say, ‘yep thats stolen’ thats literally all that fucking happens. No police. just guards and detectives.

guards are mostly just going to be dragging drunk people to their homes, or holding incase they throw up and accidentally kill themselves.

mental health emergency guilds - listen, you can’t have a man in fucking armour to try and talk a jumper off a roof, or to help calm down a large man have a tantrum.

what if someone takes a jewellery store hostage? Thats… that going to need different different professional people, probably the outside/talking mental health worker would be better for that than any guard.

stop criminal scum - OR PAY WITH YOUR LIFE.- newski guard catchphrase.

other notes on why creating a self sustainable news is possible - it only takes 1 acres of potatoes to feed 1 person 3000 calories every day for a year. I mean.. i guess you could have some bread or something if u wanted...

also i know I'm totally gonna get roasted for this, but consider this, i spent a damn long time writing this

1 note · View note

very-virgil · 5 years

Text

Fearing Abnormalities (Roman’s Prologue)

Rising Over Skylines - Part One

Thomas Sanders lives in a world where having strange powers are not uncommon. However, they are punishable at the hands of a large corporation known as CASTE. In a world where being abnormal is a fate worse than death, Thomas Sanders exists as such, with his only sanctuary coming in the form of a young boy with golden wings

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Pairings: Platonic Thomas and Roman, endgame Logince, endgame Moxiety

Warnings: Child neglect

Notes: While this is Roman's prologue, a lot of Roman's main story revolves around Thomas' backstory so this mostly follows Thomas' origins.

Word Count: 3649

Harborview was nothing more than another city in a long line of obsessively, hurriedly built urbanized areas, built in a panic to best cope with an ever-growing population in an ever-collapsing economy.

The city has once been nothing more than a small fishing town affectionately named Harborview for the salt-stained piers reaching out into frothy oceans. Barnacled boats bobbed at the town’s shoreline, careening to one side with the weight of nets plump with fish. Few, but for the regular fishermen who made a living off catching fish and selling them to local shops, stayed there permanently. The town was more motel than permanent home, and many who came did so to sail out into the ocean, or buy some particularly organic bait, or sit out on the piers with loved ones to watch the sun paint the ocean gold as it sank deeper and deeper into the horizon. Then, they would pack their things back into vehicles and drive off in the direction of a less salty, more densely-populated area to quench their need for non-seafood centric meals or air which wasn’t littered with salt water and fish.

To the many fishermen who did call Harborview their permanent home, the sight of visitors leaving by the end of the day was always a relief. While many of the shopkeepers knew the tourists were valuable for a running business, no one wished for them to overextend their welcomes. They all lived in fear of visitors learning their small town’s secret; that being that their town was heavily populated by Eccentrics who had come to use the small, off the map town as a refuge from CASTE.

Jeremiah Sanders was one such Eccentric. He had been born in the town just as his father had been, and just as many generations would come to be as well. While many Eccentrics were sure to keep any abnormalities close to their chests, such a concern wasn’t upheld in Harborview. He, like many of his fellow fishermen, used his powers freely and without hesitation. After all, he had been born Eccentric. He had been gifted eccentricities—powers far greater than any human capability—and to not use them seemed a waste. Jeremiah Sanders was an Eccentric, and he was happy in Harborview.

That was, until one such visitor outed to CASTE the large number of Eccentrics which did take haven in Harborview. In the course of a few decades CASTE—a Corporation of Analysis, Specialization, and Testing of Eccentrics—became integrated into life at Harborview, and soon the inhabitants of this small town were sporting tags forcibly clipped onto their ears, conveying to all who saw them that they were different. Abnormal. Eccentric.

For this reason, Jeremiah was relieved to discover, upon his son’s birth, that he was not Eccentric. Young Theodore Sanders had been the upmost example of normal the family had ever seen and, for that reason, became one of the first to permanently inhabit Harborview without need for a tag.

Theodore would not be the last, though. Seeing the potential for business, CASTE eventually integrated a permanent location in Harborview, and with them populations followed. Businesses built, citizens bought apartments, and over the course of Theodore’s life he watched what his father had once affectionately called a small town evolve into a metropolitan area.

Air which once smelled of salt turned musty and thick with smoke. Waters once crystal clear turned brown and littered. Many fishermen who once spent their days on the piers or on ships, casting out lines and nets, eventually moved away in the direction of fish, leaving the piers to grow soggy under disuse, and for ships abandoned by fishermen to be eventually taken hostage by the dirtied, soiled ocean.

Regardless, Theodore found some enjoyment in their ever-changing city. He eventually fell in love with the daughter of a fisherman, Martha, another non-Eccentric who had refused to leave the city when her father had. Stubborn-headed and passionate, Theodore fell in love, a love which eventually resulted in a marriage, then a home, then, at last, a child.

Relief had met Theodore and Martha when their young Thomas showed no signs of the abnormal. He was born a decently average size, with decently average brown eyes, a head of decently average blond hair which would turn brown in his lifetime, and decently average dimples framing a decently average smile. He learned to walk at an average age, learned to speak at an average rate, did average in school, made the average amount of friends, and grew up to have an average love of theatricals. In a world where being above average could result in you being CASTE’s property for the remainder of your lifetime, his parents were thrilled.

Theodore and Martha spent much of Thomas’ early life determined he would remain average, a feat which would ultimately prove useless.

Thomas had been fifteen when a few students from school—fellow cast members from his school’s production of West Side Story— invited him out after stage rehearsal. Thrilled at the aspect of being invited to hang out, he quickly phoned his mother letting her know he’d be home late and followed his new friends out towards the pier.

For some time, the group only sat there, throwing stones into the water and catching trash which wadded by with sticks. They had managed a fairly impressive pile of waste removed by time Thomas became anxious enough to warrant asking, “What are we doing here?”

One of the other boys—the senior at school who Thomas had been briefly jealous of when he had landed the role of Tony—only chuckled, patting Thomas on the back without meeting his gaze. “You’ve just gotta wait, Sanders.”

“I know, it’s just that I told my mom I’d—”

His words were cut off at sight of bubbling beneath the water’s surface. For a moment Thomas sat there in fear, terrified of someone jumping from the water as a prank, or a large fish bursting from the water and grabbing their dangling legs to pull them in, but no change came. In time, Thomas joined his companions on the edge of the pier, peering into the murky waters below.

All Thomas could make out was the blurred, hazy image of a ring of gold glowing brightly from the water, like sunlight shining from beneath the ocean.

In a breathy voice, Thomas sighed. “What is it?”

“I dunno,” one of the other boys—the one who had been cast as Riff—said, “Why don’t you go check it out?”

Thomas’ heart raced and he quickly backed away from the edge, eyes wide. “Why me?”

“Aw, c’mon,” Tony said. “Think of it as an initiation. You poke the thing and we’ll, I dunno, put in a word with Mr. Hoppstead about getting you something more than an extra part in the next production.”

Thomas looked down at the water churning in the night, the only light coming from beneath it. Every echoing consciousness in his head screamed at him to turn away, that no part was worth nearly dying, but the light wasn’t too far down. Surely, he could get to it and up in one breath. Plus, the waves weren’t too bad tonight.

“I’m not sure…”

“We’ll be right here for you, Sanders” Tony said. He smiled brightly, patting Thomas’ arm and Thomas felt something in his chest flutter.

He stood up immediately, tearing off his shoes and socks and pealing his shirt off, knowing if he didn’t have dry clothes to change into the entire event would make him miserable. Then, with an affirming thumbs up by those around him, Thomas leapt into the water.

Icy waves surrounded him immediately, and almost he gasped, loosing what breath he had. The water was salty and he slimy with grime, and when he opened his eyes to gather his bearings they stung. Still, comfort came to him at sight of the golden something just beneath him.

He swam down towards it, finding it harder and harder to keep his eyes open both from the intensity of the light and the water stinging his face. Squinting, he pushed himself closer.

He still wasn’t sure what it was, though. The water around the golden mass was warm, and as the mass swirled the water moved around it, a whirlpool of light sucking the water inside. Thomas had to grab onto one of the pier posts, using what little strength he had not to be sucked inwards. The sight of the mass was nothing less than comforting, and the warm water whispered to Thomas to fall asleep and sink in with it, but he had a mission.

Trusting himself to tread water, Thomas released the post. He let the water pull him closer, and closer, dragging him towards the sight of the mass. For a moment, Thomas wondered if they were anxiously watching him above, wondering why he hadn’t come up for breath yet or preparing to call 911 incase anything went wrong. Pushing the thoughts from his head, Thomas touched it.

What happened next was disorienting.

The mass simultaneously exploded and imploded, both sucking water in far faster than earlier and expelling it all at once. Unfortunately for Thomas, the later was what affected him most and in a force which ripped the air from Thomas’ lungs he was thrown backwards. He shot out of the ocean in an geyser of water and landed hard on his back on the pier, his companions gathered around him.

He was soaked, as were they from the expulsion of water, and while the cold air nipping at his skin was certainly a concern for Thomas, he couldn’t shake the knowledge that landing on the pier should have hurt like hell.

Only, it hadn’t.

It was a few weeks before Thomas had managed to figure it out.

Suspicions had lingered in the times between them, however. Everyone in Harborview knew the dangers of interacting with strange phenomena no one could explain. Thomas could only assume that was why he had been pressed to investigate the glowing mass; he had been the test dummy. They had wanted to see if it were something which may have triggered the development of an eccentricity.

For the next two weeks Thomas took care to ensure the upmost presence of normalcy within himself. Growing up, he had been surrounded with endless stories of individuals unaware that they had powers up until an accident occurred and only by instinct their eccentricities were triggered, leaving the individual entirely exposed to the whims of CASTE and the disgraces of those around them. Thomas took every precaution manageable to ensure he wouldn’t unknowingly trigger a now-dormant eccentricity and distress his family. Despite his care, though, they still came.

He had been helping his mother with dinner, chopping vegetables when his hand slipped and the blade nicked his thumb. Thomas had winced, immediately pulling his hand away expecting to nurse a wound, but no blood spotted his finger. Instead, the blade itself had dented. It had been injured by him.

It was Thomas’ decision to turn himself into CASTE. His parents had gone back and forth about it for weeks on end—mostly when they had been certain Thomas couldn’t hear—but every time they left out Thomas’ own opinion. Everyone knew delaying turning oneself into CASTE was a recipe for a higher tagging; CASTE saw reluctancy as synonymous with dishonesty, and a dishonest Eccentric is a dangerous one.

So, it had been Thomas who had contacted the Collectors—a group dedicated to collecting Eccentrics and turning them into CASTE—and he had been marched from his home willingly and towards the towering building at the center of town where all CASTE agents resided.

He would then go on to spend two weeks in CASTE’s possession, living in cramped cell-like quarters, being moved to and from interrogation rooms and science labs by CASTE’s lacky Controllers, being prodded, poked, and scrutinized all as a means of CASTE determining just how dangerous to the general public Thomas could be.

That, Thomas thought, was the most ridiculous part of the entire endeavor. Throughout the ceaseless questionings and the undesirable experiments on himself which were ran, he wanted nothing more than to blurt out to those observing him that he was simply average. All his life his parents, his teachers, his friends had pushed him to take pride in what was surely a magnificent feat in this world.

Perhaps that is why the next chain of events which occurred were so alarming.

At the end of the two weeks—as is accustomed for every Eccentric brought in for tagging—Thomas was corralled into a small room empty but for a single table and a hanging light fixture which a man in a well-pressed suit sat behind. These procedures Thomas knew well, and while he was certain they would end in unavoidable pain, the comfort of being released back home in due time was far greater than that.

However, that was not quite what happened.

CASTE is quite proud of their system of tagging. Each Eccentric is to have a tag inserted onto the cartilage of their ear signify to those which were lucky enough to be born ordinary that this individual is different from them. The tag will be a certain color—red through purple—with red representing the most dangerous of Eccentrics and purple the most harmless. Each tag will then be etched with a number one through three. A one signifies an Eccentric with advanced, ordinary abilities—for instance, enhanced intelligence, strength, agility, etc. A two signifies someone who obtained their powers at some point in their lifetime—this is Thomas. A three, and the most feared, is someone unfortunately born with these advanced abilities, therefore permanently cleaving themselves from the rest of society.

Thomas knew he would be a two, and he doubted he deserved much more than a blue tag on account of his docile past and the lack of damage he could do with his abilities.

The man who sat across from him at the table had other ideas.

This well-dressed figure explained in simple words and a slow voice that Roman was a potential threat. While, sure, he lacked the ability to take outright action against any person, his newfound inability to be injured prevented him from being stopped should he want to. In that way he was a liability; a danger to all those around him.

Should he go rogue, there would be no controlling him. Therefore, he is dangerous enough to warrant constant observation, preferably from inside a cell.

Despite Thomas’ apparent revulsion at the concept, the well-dressed man went on.

There was, however, an alternative. As Harborview grows in size with it does CASTE, and the growth of CASTE always seems to predate the appearance of rogue Eccentrics who wish to use their powers for their own malicious gain. CASTE wished to implement the License to Hero program into Harborview by providing them with their own hero to guard the streets in ways Collectors and Controllers never could.

Thomas seemed to be the most likely candidate for this program.

In return to agreement, Thomas would be marked down to a yellow—a color far more accepted by society and free to live as they please. He would also be paid heavily in return for his services, with fine checks being mailed out to his guardians until he became old enough to accept them himself.

Thomas hadn’t the chance to discuss such a life changing decision with his parents, whom he had previously always trusted to guidance.

He was on his own, with only the time the well-dressed man granted to him in this bland room.

In the end, Thomas did accept. He walked away with not one but two tags pinned to his ear: a yellow one representing his capabilities and a golden one revealing to all those who cared to look that he was a hero.

For weeks his usual school curriculum became replaced with CASTE’s hero training program. He learned how better to use his abilities, received suits and gadgets to help him in the field, was taught to fight, and in time was introduced to the public as Impervious: Harborview’s resident hero.

Years passed of Thomas living this double life. His days became split between school and work in the morning and Impervious at night, with Impervious always seeming to take the greater of the cut.

Still, he was content. Not happy per se—CASTE’s controlling nature as well as the constant eating guilt that he was locked in a contract with one of the most tyrannical corporations which existed prevented that—but he considered himself far better off than he would be locked in a cell day and night as the well-dressed man had once threatened.

In time, Impervious became more of Thomas than Thomas did. He became enveloped by responsibilities he wanted to do right, fans he wanted to please, charities he wanted to support, and the word Impervious became a name rather than an alias.

That was, until he met Roman.

Thomas had been requested into CASTE’s hospital facilities nearly a decade after taking on the mantle of Impervious. Apparently, a child had been turned into CASTE by parents who had claimed to no longer want him, and best attempts to calm him all fell short. They could only hope a well-known figure would sway the child’s attitude.

Willing to help, as well as curious of the abandoned child, Thomas agreed and eventually came face to face with the child.

He was a small kid, skinny, but with bright brown eyes filled with an emotion which almost seemed out of place for a bed-ridden child. He was tanned as well, darker than Thomas himself, with a head of hair oddly red in the light. There was no asking the nurses and doctors working if the child was Eccentric; he could see it.

A pair of golden wings, corporeal and intangible, yet alive and moving all the same, rested at his back, twitching as he moved, thrashing when he did. Large wings framing such a small child.

The sight may have been magical were it not for the large bandage covering much of his forehead—an injury, the doctor’s said, which the parents hadn’t disclosed before dropping him, and which the child himself couldn’t seem to recall.

For a while, Thomas simply played the part of Impervious he knew to be. He spoke in a loud, regal voice, smiled as much as he could, he told tale of daring adventures which the child beamed at, nearly rolling off his bed in his excitement. The most progress, though, was made as Thomas.

It was made as he walked in one day, suit packed away, and simply had the opportunity to speak with the child.

He told Thomas his name—Roman Santiago—but that seemed the furthest extent of which he remembered save a few words of Spanish he often dropped mid-sentence. What the nurses had taken for distrust or reluctance had been true ignorance. Roman truly remembered nothing of before, not even how he had gotten his powers, or who his parents were.

He was a broken child with a broken mind to match.

There had been one night when a storm had rolled in over Harborview. The sea nearby had roared, waves threatened to wash their city out to sea, thunder shook the CASTE building repeatedly with lights flickering at every sight of lightning.

The child had been terrified.

Roman, a seven-year-old boy who had proclaimed loudly time and time again to be the bravest in the hospital (which wasn’t much competition, considering the only other residents were a few elderly Eccentrics who couldn’t handle on their own) had cowered near to the point of tears at sound of thunder crashing, and Thomas’ heart had broken.

He refused to leave Roman even as many assured him that the boy would be fine and Harborview needed him outside. He laid in bed alongside Roman, humming softly into the boy’s hair songs his mother used to sing and rubbing circles along his back, urging the storm to pass so that Roman might sleep.

The storm did pass, but not before Roman fell asleep in Thomas’ arms, clinging to his shirt with clenched fists and a face buried in his chest. Thomas, not having the heart to move, stayed there, holding the child tightly until he, too, fell away into sleep.

When Thomas had woken, the corporeal wings of Roman were gone, leaving nothing but the blue tag at the boy’s ear to suggest he was Eccentric.

After that moment, Thomas hadn’t the heart to be apart from Roman for much longer. When CASTE announced to Thomas that Roman was near being discharged and sent out to a foster home for further care Thomas had rioted, furious.

How was it fair to throw Roman into a home with people who wouldn’t care for him, at least not how Thomas did? Roman hadn’t made his parents throw him out. Roman hadn’t made himself Eccentric.

Roman didn’t deserve to be unwanted.

The CASTE workers above him argued against it. They thought it was stupid and Thomas should busy himself with being Impervious, not a father, but Thomas couldn’t be dissuaded. If CASTE wanted Impervious, Thomas needed Roman.

And Roman he got. He had taken great joy in guiding Roman home, showing him around the apartment building, helping him settle into the room Thomas had spent his last few paychecks on getting sorted.

Regardless, Roman hadn’t fallen asleep in that room his first night.

He had fallen asleep in Thomas’ arms, curled up in the chair which faced towards the window.

The two had collapsed together—as they henceforth would always be—looking out at the skyline.

masterlist

---

@werefam-ily @trans-and-not-trending @kingwillow @sandersstuffsblog @hereforapathylogic @dannythehalfakid @panic-at-my-sexuality

#sanders sides #tw child neglect #thomas sanders #sanders sides fic #fanfic #ts sides #roman sanders #rising over skylines #sanders sides au

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rgr-pop · 5 years

Photo

LONG POST AIRING GRIEVANCES ABOUT DUMB SHIT IN BEAUTY COMMUNITY!!

oh my GOD. okay, so, small youtuber who is climbing. beloved by many small youtubers because she is a regular girl and very nice and FROM UPSTATE NEW YORK and has social justice interests, she also posts a lot of drama content and some people (including me tbh) really like the way she kind of ~~democratizes drama content. don’t @ me it’s whatever. reddit HATES her because her mother buys her a lot of makeup for her birthday (literally) and she is not into self-punishing no-buys which is the only thing people like right now very coincidentally (going on a no-buy is apparently how you end landfills).

this youtuber is fat and not conventionally pretty--I really hate even saying the latter because it is objectively not true and also an evil thing to say even nicely, but for example she is always talking about how she doesn’t really care that her lips are small and is not interested in overdrawing or “fixing” them, and getting flamed for it. in the community (the respectable arm of it, which is the rddt, where we are ostensibly not allowed to be like “she looks terrible”), where there is smoke there is fire, and “not skilled at makeup” + maybe some nebulous complaints about whininess = she is a fat girl, end her. (”rude” = black youtuber too much power, end her.)

i’m talking about sm*key gl*w whose name is hannah, hannah #1, i think it is interesting to contrast her with the other hannah that i talk about sometimes--i try not to talk about her too much because we sort of teechnically have real world social connections and, also, i just feel bad for her. i feel desperately bad for hannah #2, because she is in her thirties having lived in art communities and global urban centers but for the first time in her life having to reckon with things like--”it is not appropriate to talk about calories at dinner, etc.” that is the second hannah, and while she is sweet and interesting to many in the small youtube community precisely because she is very alien to them (has mfa), it’s very difficult to watch, and sometimes i think she is the most “toxic” youtuber i follow. she is not an originator in any way, but she found herself in the center of a so-called anticonsumerist movement in small beautube that is kind of taking over, which is related to but not exactly minimalism--you have probably heard me talk about this already, at length. a good example of this is that second hannah recently said in a video that she was thinking of doing a shopping “fast.” i don’t know how she became this person, and how she held onto this kind of personality in spite of being in lots of communities that i am also in or have friends in where i know that if you talked this way about dieting etc. at a social event, someone would probably softly scold you. she somehow insulated herself from this kind of learning, i don’t know, then she threw herself into beautube where a woman who maybe sort of likes art and writes poetry and has heard of “fair trade” before is an absolute anomaly, but that community--like literally, where people do liposuction and skinny teas!--has only encouraged this absolutely unreal nasty and BAD behavior. etc. i have a lot of feelings about this.

so first hannah is a fat girl who is not rich--we will get to that!--but spends her money primarily on makeup. people HATE her. second hannah is thin, possibly rich in family origin (i think she is) but basically your average working artist in life. she frames her so-called overconsumption not even precisely as an addiction but specifically as a lack of willpower that she also struggles with when it comes to sometimes eating sugar (really). both of these hannahs consume and talk about quite a lot of luxury makeup--second hannah is very openly committed to luxury purchase as part of her self-conception. second hannah sometimes goes on “shopping diets” though, so people praise her! it is evil.

above is the shit i hate day in and day out but the points below will have more to do with the screencap +...upstate new york, i guess. henceforth we are only talking about first hannah.

so this girl is from some kind of small town around rochester or syracuse--something up there. iirc she goes to a suny school i had never heard of (i looked it up and it is a “suny comprehensive college,” though i can’t remember if she transferred out of this school to a bigger school. but, as many of you know, sunys are cheap as hell and should be protected at all costs, this school costs well under half what my state school did, for residents anyway.) she is in her mid-twenties and not graduated yet, due to struggles she has had (and spoken openly about) as well as having gone to community college. they LOVE to bring up how she is too old to be a college student! she’s like...idk 24 or something. she is going to school to be a social worker in one of those accelerated programs, which she has found quite difficult (again, spoken openly about this) and which also requires, as many of you know!, lots of extra work, unpaid and paid. she said somewhere that she does not have student loans, but i don’t know if her parents paid for her college or just shouldered loans, or if she paid for it, or if it is all financial aid. (”not having student loans” is something that enrages people, ESPECIALLY when someone doesn’t have loans because they got need-based aid.) again, she probably had some financial catastrophes due to school failures (speaking from experience here), but: sunys is cheap as hell and there are a million reasons why someone could go to one and not be struggling with loans!

where was i...her parents. watching this has fascinated me! her dad was a school teacher and her mom is a social worker--absolutely public servant middle class. i thiiink (could be wrong) that her father retired already and ended up retiring from a principalship, so they were probably extremely comfortable by the time she was in college, but they are definitionally middle class. the biggest controversy around this youtuber is that for birthdays and christmas her mother goes fucking insane--probably spent two to four hundred dollars on her for her birthday. she talks about this all the time: her mother and her are very close and their hobby is shopping. people treat this like the bougiest fucking thing on earth and it is ba nanas. straight up, this girl has probably never even HEARD of anthropologie. listen, i can’t afford to live like her either but i recognize poor shopping when i see it. working class people like to blow their money on bullshit and to take issue with that is demonstrably racist and classist! i will not hear this conversation over again in 2019. for example, hannah made a video about her “high end bag” collection, in which she said she got a bcbg bag on sale for like $30 but had never heard of the brand before. she had once been gifted a kate spade bag and her DREAM was to purchase one on her own. she buys coach at the local coach outlet, which is a regional attraction. THIS GIRL IS NOT BOUGIE! THEY ARE JUST MAD THAT SHE OWNS CLOTHES AND IS ALSO FAT! she did a closet tour where she talked about how she has like 50 crop tops, they were ALL like forever 21. they are just mad about fat girl in crop tops. there is nothing to see here! does she have too much shit, and shop too much? sure. welcome to flyover country you dumb bitches. that is what I think about that!

so, she definitely makes money on youtube, but mostly enough to sustain youtube and makeup buying (possibly some savings? unsure. i know she said this in a video but i forget.) she has lived with this boyfriend of hers for a number of years and they are building a life together that doesn’t immediately include marriage, probably largely for financial reasons. i get the sense that his jobs pay a lot of their bills, but he just finished getting a teaching MA of some kind (i think he is a math teacher? i already forgot) and is entering the regular teaching job market. based on some of the following i think his parents might be wealthier than hers but i think they might also be teachers. as you can see in the screenshot above, people are enraged at this girl for apparently being a gold digger for getting a house with him before they are married!

people are SO pissed that she was “able to buy a house” at age 25, but they did not watch the video! in which she said that they had been dealing with the death of her bf’s step grandpa all year, and the family had decided that they should take over the step grandpa’s house. (step grandpa’s family does sound “richer” because, according to her, this house had been owned by a GREAT grandparent and paid off decades ago.) her descriptions of this house are confusing to me because she keeps referring to it as both “old” and “from the eighties,”; I think it is an actually old house that had not been “updated” since the eighties. seems like the family did not “gift” it to them as much as sign it over to them in exchange for them being the ones to take out the renovation loans, which allegedly she said are $50k. unclear to me if she and her bf got approved for that loan--probably not, I think it was taken out in the family’s name. ($50k is too much to put into a house in rochester imooo but I am reserving my judgment there! rochester has a very flyover housing economy, much like ours, but with a much higher end, I think?)

so anyway, these vultures are sociopaths. “ Who gives someone a house no matter how much they like them? That seems wild to me” ...p-parents? dead grandparents? is your will gonna be like “my kid has to buy their OWN house like i did!” who are these people

YES SOMETIMES YOU STOP NEEDING YOUR HOUSE, WHEN YOU DIE

anyway I’m done. I just thought this thing would be of interest in particular to the upstate new yorkers. the whole condition of the indebted working-middle class is just like inconceivable to people who consume only ideologically pure content by wealthy west coast whites all day long

#makeupblogger fandom

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douxreviews · 5 years

Text

The Good Place - ‘The Book of Dougs’ Review

By Lamounier

"We're four Oreos from heaven."

It turns out the Soul Squad landed on a side sector of the Good Place, just not the main area.

And that was enough to make Eleanor super anxious. How can you be this close to heaven and not make it? After all they have been through (and she just remembers a tiny portion of it), it's understandable that all she wants is just to rest in peace.

But there is more going on in Eleanor's mind, and it's brought to the surface when Chidi tries to cheer her up (by dressing up as a mailman and looking damn fine) and she bursts into tears. Because she has never been this happy and she fears it will go away. Eleanor never had a meaningful, lasting connection with anyone in her lifetime like the one she has with the members of the Soul Squad, especially with Chidi. She freaked out earlier in the season over the possibility of losing them, and her insecurity pops out here again. But as Chidi tells her, she should focus on the now. I love that quote by Tolstoy because it's so truthful. The past can't be changed and it's naive to think that we can assure the future will be a certain way. We never know what's coming next, and best we can do is live the now, the only time we have any power over. Eleanor gets the message, and since she can't guarantee she will be with Chidi forever, she decides they better off consume their love while they can. And so they hit the sheets.

Another character who has trouble dealing with her emotions is Janet, and it happens after she learns that Jason and Tahani discovered she has feelings for him. She's still exhausted from keeping the four humans inside her void and doesn't want to deal with emotions while pretending to be a Neutral Janet. I loved Tahani trying to take care of the situation, particularly her misguided attempt to end her marriage with Jason. Her certificate was adorable, albeit incorrect. I mean, death literally didn't part them, in fact, it brought them together in the first place, but, okay, that second part she doesn't remember.

I liked the resolution to that subplot, which focused more on the ladies and less on the man in the middle, and I also liked how the three of them just ended up group-crying, no matter how silly Jason's inclusion in the moment was. These people can keep being rebooted and they'll still grow the strongest ties to one another. Although, since we are talking about it, this season better not end on another reboot.

While the humans and Janet worked their issues, Michael continued his journey to save humanity and it was a rather frustrating experience since the Useless Committee of Uselessness did nothing to help him. I mean, 1,400 years to select and align an investigative team? I know the writers were poking fun at endless bureaucracy and supposedly good people that just sit around and do nothing useful, but come on. There you have a demon trying his hardest to save humanity against a bunch of self-proclaimed good guys who do nothing more than pass memorandum to each other saying how concerned they are (that was totally a jab at social media activists, right?). Are those guys just that clueless or are they not really good to begin with?

In any case, Michael realizes through a quick chat with Tahani that the Bad Place isn't tampering with the points system, but in reality the world has become so complex and people so interconnected that being a good person became harder. Buying your grandmother roses would earn a few points 500 years ago, but now it will actually lose you some points, because such an action will indirectly condone pollution of the planet and slavery.

Okay, so, I want to nitpick this a little bit. First, even though we are very connected now, there are still a few groups who are largely disconnected or completely isolated. I understand that the writers of The Good Place live in the super connected side of humanity, but that's not how it is for everyone. However, this is a fantasy show and I can let that issue slide if I assume that in the world of The Good Place everyone is connected, no exceptions. My biggest problem with the logic behind Michael's realization, though, is that our stand against slavery, for instance, is rather new. 500 years ago, slavery was normalized and voices against it were dissonant noises, not the choir. So if today the biggest problem for humanity is how complex the world has become, back then it would be the lack of a more consolidated notion of human rights. In both eras, though, I can see a handful of people making it to the Good Place.

But, again, this is a fantasy show and I'm probably being too dense, because, leaving logic aside, I was rather fascinated by the concept of how far the ramifications of our actions should be taken into our account. People become vegan when they stop and think about how much their eating habits contribute to the abuse of animals. I have a colleague at work who is a vegetarian, so not really a vegan, but he told me he has a few rules, such as buying the most expensive eggs (according to him, the cheaper the egg, the more the chicken suffered). But he'd still be totally forked in the points system, because transportation of the eggs probably polluted atmosphere and so on. We have been speculating for a while the likelihood of the points system setting the bar too high, and now we have proof that's exactly what it does. However, in our real world, should we put our actions under the microscope? Are we to blame for the unintended consequences of our good deeds? I love how this show keeps asking some really interesting moral questions as it takes us along the ride.

Favorite Things/Smells

Eleanor: Typhoon Falls, her favorite water park. "Chlorine, suntan lotion, Band-Aids and a thick cloud of teen hormones."

Chidi: either warm pretzels or the smell of absolute moral truth. They do smell alike, Janet confirmed.

Jason: Black Bortles holding the Super Bowl MVP trophy. Also, weed.

Tahani: a curtain closing between first class and economy.

Doorman: frogs, obviously.

Bonus: Eleanor's tears tasted like the nacho cheese from her favorite movie theater.

Too bad we didn't learn what Janet's and Michael's favorite things/smells were. Janet's would certainly have something to do with Jason.

Other Bits

- There is only one door for humans to enter the Good Place, the official entrance.

- Everything Eleanor used to try to unlock the other door to the Good Place turned to glitter.

- Jason spoke of the time they were in Janet's void as if it had been ages ago.

- Janet worried that her emotions would come out of her butt.

- Michael's jawline is indeed great.

- I'm usually annoyed at characters who are too naive, but Gwendolyn was adorable.

- The note on the champagne Eleanor and Chidi opened said: "Gwendolyn, here's some champagne for you for thanking me for thanking you for thanking me for thanking you for thanking me for the champagne you sent me." I wonder how many champagne bottles Gwendolyn and the writer of that note gave one another.

- Was it me or Jameela's delivery of "but we really didn't deal with my thing" was very Buffy-esque?

- Next stop: IHOP, Interdimensional Hole of Pancakes.

Quotes

Tahani: "Are you sure we're in the actual Good Place? It's rather carpeted."

Jason: "What kind of messed-up place would turn away refugees?"

Tahani: "Jason, you seem thoughtful. And that concerns me."

Jason: "It's nice to know I can talk about girls with my wife."

Chidi: "It's like when my parents would go to a symposium and I would sneak into their office and read the unabridged dictionary." Eleanor: "I can't believe I'm attracted to you."

Chidi: "Is this a horny cry?"

Chidi: "There is a quote I like by Tolstoy. 'There is only one time that is important. Now. It is the only time when we have any power.'" Eleanor: "I know that quote. An unverified Tyra Banks account posted that meme on Instagram." Chidi: "Well, now I hate it."

Michael: "The Titanic is sinking, and they're writing a strongly-worded letter to the iceberg."

Tahani: "There are so many unintended consequences to well-intentioned actions. It feels like a game you can't win."

Janet: "Why are you crying?" Tahani: "I don't know. I'm British, I never cry."

It's so unfair that there are only two more episodes left this season. Three out of four closed doors to heaven.

#The Good Place #Eleanor Shellstrop #Chidi Anagonye #Tahani Al-Jamil #Jason Mendoza #The Good Place Reviews #Doux Reviews #TV Reviews

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remastered-feedback · 5 years

Link

Alright, lets run down the problems here.

Many, like Butcher, say they’re in training. Others report disability. All are missing out on a hot labor market and crucial years on the job, ones traditionally filled with the promotions and raises that build the foundation for a career.

I don’t think it needs mentioning just how offensive lumping someone who’s on disability in with a group your article is centered around painting as making unwise career decisions. I’m pretty sure most of the people who are disabled would much rather be fully able-bodied and working.

Their absence from the working world has wider economic consequences. It marks a loss of human talent that dents potential growth. Young people who get a rocky start in the job market face a lasting pay penalty. And economists partly blame the decline in employed, marriageable men for the recent slide in nuptials and increase in out-of-wedlock births. Those trends foster economic insecurity among families, which could worsen outcomes for the next generation.

“How dare you not buy weddings you don’t want and houses you can’t afford!”

It’s difficult to pin down whether the demographic wants to remain on the sidelines or is kept there by a dearth of attractive options.

It’s the second one. As a member of the demographic in-question, I can tell you with 100% certainty that it’s the second one. I’d much rather be working, making money, saving up to move out. I spent all summer applying to entry-level jobs supposedly aimed at people with lower skill levels, as well as for jobs my degree should have me eminently qualified for. I’m not unemployed because I want to be, I’m unemployed because nothing is hiring that pays enough to have anything to save after taxes, bills, transit costs, student loans, etc.

Other social changes could be exacerbating the trend. Better video games might make leisure time more attractive, some economists hypothesize, and opioid use might make many less employable. Young adults increasingly live with their parents, and cohabitation might be providing a “different form of insurance,” said Erik Hurst, an economist at the University of Chicago.

“Clearly the problem isn’t a lack of competitive wages or work-life balance, it’s those damn videogames! That, and they’re all drug-addicted layabouts. Those are probably tied to the out-of-wedlock children we mentioned too...”

Replace “videogames” with “rock music” and you have literally the exact same argument that’s been made about every single generation for the past 70 years.

Young men have been reporting higher rates of school and training as a reason for their non-employment in a Labor Department survey, and a large share say that disability and illness are keeping them from work. Those factors explain much of the wider post-2007 participation gap between 25- to 34-year-olds and their older counterparts, according to an analysis by Evercore ISI economist Ernie Tedeschi.

“Those damn lazy millennials, ignoring this booming economy!”

“Actually, a lot of us are too sick to work, and a lot of those who are able to work are too busy getting more advanced training to get a job too. We spent 20-30 years watching our parents work themselves to death in jobs they hated, while they spent the entire time telling us that education and advanced training were the ticket to a better life than that.”

“Of course, it’s the videogames! That and the drugs...”

I can go on about this article for a while, but I have better things to do. Like, topically, applying for jobs. One last thing I want to touch on though is to give my personal experience about why I, a man between the ages of 25 and 34 who is ostensibly the target of this article, am currently unemployed and not partaking in that “hot labor market.”

I graduated college in 2015, and managed to get a job in my field a few months after graduation. I worked that job until mid-2017, when I quit to go back to school. The main reason I quit was because it became clear pretty quickly that there was no room for advancement in that company. Two annual reviews in, I was working the same entry-level part-time position that I started with, at the same entry-level hourly wage I started with. With the exception of Jewish holidays - which I think I made up for by coming in on Christmas and Easter - jury duty, two days I was bedridden, and that time there was literally an overturned truck blocking the highway, I never missed a day, and I never said no. They said jump, I said how high, did everything you were supposed to.

Both of my annual reviews were glowing, and yet in this job that, according to the article, was supposed to be full of raises and promotions, and doing work that, according to my manager, was top-notch, I repeatedly got passed over for both.

Annoyed that I was working borderline full-time hours - technically you’re not full-time unless you’re working 40+ hours a week, and I was routinely working 36-38 - without any of the benefits of full-time work, regularly getting at-most one day off a week, all just for an attaboy and a paycheck that barely covered commuting costs and student loans, I quit and went back to school.

I thought about getting a different job in the same field, but I decided school made more sense, because programming and network security, the two fields at the heart of Maryland Governor Larry Hogan’s jobs initiative, a jobs initiative he’s so proud of that it was one of the core pushes to his reelection campaign earlier this week, had much higher earnings potential than my old field.

To recap, I found a job, worked it for a year or two, did everything I was supposed to and then some according to my boss, yet got passed over for a raise or a promotion multiple times. Dissatisfied, and at the urging of my pro-business, pro-jobs governor, I left and went back to school to get certifications and complete coursework to change careers into the field he was aggressively pushing for more people in my state to change into. I did very well in my courses, got certified, and spent all summer applying to entry-level jobs in my new field. I got one call-back all summer, and it was for a company that wanted me to relocate to Northern Virginia for a job that paid less than $20,000 a year. Housing in northern VA is ridiculously expensive, with a median house value over $500k. To call that financial suicide would be an understatement, especially since my interviewer made it very clear that raises, promotions, or other advancements would not be happening for at least three years. Eventually, I got desperate enough to apply for jobs in my old field, and the only place that returned my call was the place I used to work. I’d prefer not to return there, but I’d be lying if I didn’t admit I’m considering it.

I’m not asking for pity. My ship will come in eventually, even if it’s less of a ship and more of a canoe, and even if I have to build the damn thing myself, board by board. All I’m asking is that instead of assuming that that millennials are out-of-work because we’re lazy drug-addicted gamers with unrealistic standards, consider that maybe we’re out-of-work because we’re getting next-to-no job offers, that the job offers we are getting pay so little that once you factor in the costs necessary to take them, they’re a net loss, and that when we do actually get a job, those raises and promotions you seem to think are so plentiful are nowhere to be found even after literal years of good, hard work.

Also, stop calling this a red-hot booming economy. Wages are stagnant and haven’t kept up with inflation in our lifetimes, housing has become prohibitively expensive in the majority of cities with jobs to offer, underemployment is at the highest it’s been in decades, and the vast majority of jobs that have been created since the recession are low-wage, part-time jobs with no potential for advancement or career prospects.

The only people this is a booming economy for are people who were already well off. For people trying to get started or who don’t have much money in the bank, the people that this article is criticizing for our lack of economic participation, this is a horrible economy where everything is expensive, home ownership is a pipe dream, nobody’s willing to hire anyone for more than minimum wage, and in the off chance you do land a job that’s not a dead end, they have no interest in giving you a raise or a promotion at any point.

#Drama ahoy!#Feed is mad

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