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alreadyjackbestfriend · 2 years

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"Man eater"

Pairing: Jack Harlow x reader

Genre: angst, fluff

synopsis: your best friend knows she has to push your buttons for you to finally confess your love

Note: OBVIOUSLY I wrote this instead of reading the texts for the class I have today, so please let me know if you liked it so I know it was worth it🤣😭. on the other hand, I can't write anything other than angst it just comes out of me, sorry if it's a little repetitive 😭 (but I have an idea in my drafts and it will be just fluff🥰)

okay, enjoy!

You've known Marissa since you were two little girls; she came to you in the park and helped you make earthen castles, both mothers ended up looking horrified at seeing you both dirty, and then burst out laughing, after all, you were just kids.

Since then, 20 years have passed, 20 years in which you both grew into two completely different people despite having grown up together. For people who didn't like Marissa, she was a heartless “man eater”; while to people who didn't like you, you were… a prude. No one had told you that to your face, but you knew what they thought, although there weren't many people who didn't like you, unlike what happened with your best friend.

You never judged Marissa, however, you felt nervous every time you introduced her to a boy you liked, because even if she didn't want it, everyone fell at her feet.

When you were both fifteen, you introduced Marissa to your first crush, but since she didn't know, she kissed him a couple of days later. She caught you crying behind a tree, where you told her your secret and she apologized. After that, Marissa never tried anything with any boy she met through you, over time she learned to read your emotions without you having to say anything to her and you were very grateful for that. however, you couldn't always prevent Marissa from inadvertently charming the boys, so you ended up heartbroken more than once, even though nothing happened between them because Marissa refused.

Almost all your teenage years you wanted to be like her, even at one point you envied her, but soon both of you turned twenty you began to gain more confidence in yourself and things changed, because you were always beautiful, but you never knew how to polish your charms, until that moment. There was never a competition between you, but now you weren't afraid of losing guys to Marissa. Both were just as charming, but in different ways, you were still a little more introverted and looking for the man of your dreams, but now you could have fun while doing it, while Marissa remained the same as always.

But when Jack came into your life, you felt like a teenager again, you fell so deeply in love that you weren't able to tell him how you felt, and you hid his presence in your life as much as possible from Marissa. However, nothing lasts forever.

“Who’s Jack?” she said suddenly, and you felt your heart drop.

You looked at her from the kitchen with widen eyes, while she was on the couch in the living room of your small apartment, holding your phone, “give me that” you told her, walking to where she was and taking the phone out of her hand. You saw the message.

Jack 🥰: see you on saturday?

you sighed, and you wrote a reply without saying anything to your friend.

“so?” she asked again after a couple of minutes.

“He’s a friend” you answered as vaguely as possible.

“I know you well enough to know that you don't save your friends with little hearts emojis.”

“It’s just an emoji” you rolled your eyes, “I just…” You thought for a moment about telling her about your feelings, but that would make things too predictable, and you felt that it would hurt more to see Jack gawking without her even trying. maybe if he liked her after Marissa brought out all her artillery, it wouldn't be entirely his fault and it would hurt less, right?

You spent an hour telling Marissa about Jack, and how you'd met him five months ago. she didn't even have to ask, just hearing the way you talked about him, she knew you were in love. but what happened is that when your feelings became too deep, you returned to being the same shy girl as always, although this time, Marissa had a plan for you to finally come out of your shell and be happy, even if it meant that you suffered a little first.

“So, can I go with you to the party?” she asked with a big smile.

you sighed, “sure”.

***

you spent the whole week with a knot in your stomach, the moment you had dreaded since you met Jack was closer with each passing day. and finally arrived.

You and Marissa got out of the car after thanking the driver, both wearing black dresses; Marissa's had subtle shimmers, while yours was completely matte.

You entered the venue, and, as if you had a radar, the first thing you saw was Jack at one of the booths talking to Urban.

“there they are” you tell your friend, taking her hand to lead her there. Jack noticed you when you were halfway there and smiled broadly at you, you smiled back but it faded quickly by the time you arrived and your friend started talking.

“so you are the famous Jack” she said, sitting so close to him that Jack's body pushed into Urban's, who snorted and sat further away.

Well, your story with Jack was officially over.

Urban gave you a warm smile, like if he knew what you were feeling and you sat down next to him, resigned, but quickly returning your attention to the interaction between Jack and Marissa.

“Mmm, I guess” he said with a chuckle, gently moving his body away from your friend. but obviously you didn't notice his discomfort, your mind was clouded with all the memories of the past, making you see what your mind was used to seeing and not what was really happening.

When your friend put her hand on his arm, that's when you decided to order your first drink. For his part, Urban ordered a beer, while Jack simply ordered a glass of water, and your friend "the same as him, please”, you rolled your eyes and Urban suppressed a laugh. The scene was fascinating to him, just because he knew that his best friend was as in love with you as you were with him, although he was still a little worried about you. And the concern increased when you ordered your third mojito.

Jack tried his hardest to include you and Urban into the conversation, but your friend had a plan and she wasn't going to stop until she achieved her goal, she just had to push you a little bit more towards the edge, and when she put her hand on Jack's thigh and whispered something in his ear, she knew you'd hit your breaking point.

Your glass hit the table hard and you got up to get out of there. you walked as fast as your heels would allow you, cursing them under your breath.

Jack removed Marissa's hands from his thigh, paying no attention to her at all, and walked out after you. Your friend smiled widely, causing Urban to look at her in confusion.

“my plans always work” she said, winking at him.

you reached a back door and stepped out into what looked like a parking lot, a rainy breeze caressed your body, making you shiver. you tried with all your might, but you couldn't stop the tears from leaving your eyes making their way down your cheeks, a weak sob falling from your lips before you heard his voice behind you.

“y/n, what happened?” concern in his voice, you turned around and his expression increased when he saw your red eyes and your wet cheeks. He tried to hug you, but you didn't let him.

“I’m not mad at you” was the first thing you said after refusing his hug, you were so angry that you didn't know if your body would resist a hug, what you wanted was to scream everything you felt, “I’m mad at her, she always do this!” you said, your tears falling like waterfalls, and the wet breeze starting to turn into rain. “okay, I didn't say it explicitly, but it was so obvious! That's why I was so afraid to introduce you, that's why I hid you from her for five months, because i knew this was going to happen, but I was hoping that at least this time it wouldn't, that the boy I'm in love with would finally reject her, because this time, he was in love with me!”

“I’m so sorry y/n…” Jack said, his brain so focused on empathizing with you that for a moment it didn't process what you just said, “WAIT, you are in love with me?”

“What?”

Urban and Marissa had sneaked out to see what was happening with you and Jack, and both covered their mouths to contain their laughter at the scene that unfolded in front of their eyes, they couldn't believe what they were seeing. If Urban had known, he would have filmed the scene to make a romantic comedy movie.

“What are you talking about?” You said with a nervous laugh

“You just said that you were in love with me?” jack said, unsure.

“I didn’t…” your eyes widened. your friend put her hand on her forehead, unable to believe your stupidity, “Fuck. This is embarrassing” you said, looking around, seeing where you could escape to.

“Would it still be embarrassing if I told you that I'm in love with you too?” he said with a tender smile.

“Are you…?” you started, but he didn’t let you finish.

“of course i am” he said, closing the distance between you, finally kissing the lips he had wanted for five months.

your friend looked at the scene stunned, her hands under her chin and a tender look, “I have slept with many men, but I have never had a kiss in the rain” she said, with a small voice in a fake cry, making Urban laugh.

#jack harlow fic #jack harlow fanfic #jack harlow imagine #jack harlow one shot #jack harlow x reader #jack harlow x y/n #jack harlow x you #jack harlow angst #jack harlow fluff

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gir-posting · 2 years

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pls rant about tim burton, i gots to know

@y-lisse

(casually vibrates) my god what a rant you're gonna get

i was raised by two giant horror nerds so naturally i was pretty much raised on tim burton. so full disclosure this is coming from a place of disenchantment and sincere disappointment

i think the second i went to see ms peregrine's home for peculiar children is the exact second i got disenchanted with his stupid gimmick that hasn't worked for over 20 years now. because in the first five minutes they change exactly one word from the book that ruins the entire rest of the movie: very suspiciously they decided to make the protagonist polish instead of jewish! which is interesting! because ms. peregrine's is an entire story about the proliferation of antisemitism in the modern day which becomes completely pointless when you remove the jewish context from the story. and i know exactly why they did it too: they knew that they had to keep in something about world war 2, because IT IS A VERY BIG TOPIC IN THE STORY. but ohhhh nooo we can't make our protag a jew :( i know :) we'll make him polish instead the polish were oppressed by the nazis too :)) it immediately put a bad taste in my mouth and ive never been the fucking same with tim burton's bullshit since. (and that's not even getting into the fact that they made the only black character in the story one of the flesh eating monsters :/ which apparently aren't the nazis anymore because ohhh we can't discuss antisemitism actually sorry so where does that leave us. huh.)

speaking of antiblackness, did you know that in his willy wonka movie, he BROUGHT BACK the racist backstory for the oompa-loompas? the one that THEY FULLY CUT OUT in the 70s because of the civil rights movements going on? and all this combined with his comment that black people don't "fit his aesthetic" really just makes me want to bury him alive. lol!!

SPEAKING of his aesthetic: IT JUST FUCKING SUCKS. FOR TWENTY YEARS THIS "AESTHETIC" HES BEEN LEANING ON SO HARD HAS BEEN GARBAGE FROM A TOILET THAT'S ONLY EVER WORKED A SINGLE TIME. i hate the dim washed out gray tones with ~just a little pop of color~ because 9 times out of 10 he does NOTHING with it. it's just ugly! the only time i can genuinely think of where it was used in an actually interesting way was sleepy hollow cuz in that one apparently they made the fucked up blood in that tree bright orange to make it pop more. which is cool! IT HAS NEVER BEEN INTERESTING SINCE.

and the thing is i know he has the capability to make good interesting movies! unless beetlejuice was a fluke! which is a very likely chance! i can't understand how the man who made beetlejuice could possibly end up becoming the man who just KEEPS CHURNING OUT THE SAME SCHLOCK OVER AND OVER.

idk how to properly transition into this but i have to rant about this too: you know how people constantly have to correct others on who actually directed nightmare before christmas? how henry selick did literally all of the heavy lifting only for tim burton to slap his name on it and get all the credit, so that even today people still think it is Tim Burton's movie? well i watched a documentary on it (the movies that made us) and it actually gets so much worse than that! IT GETS WORSE!

not only did tim burton not actually direct the movie (complications with directing his batman movie which lead to him not Having Time for it i guess,) the only times he ever actually showed up for the production was to YELL AT PEOPLE. TO THROW AN ACTUAL FIT. during the documentary they went into how apparently a background artist showed up to give him some concept art and burton just...... threw all his work in the trash...... because the art wasn't as angular and colorless as he was imagining. IN THE TRASH.

the only other time he interacted with the crew was near the end of production where they showed him the ending they had worked on. in his stead the ending they wrote up was that the mad scientist was actually oogie boogie all along. is that kind of a weak ending? sure, i really don't like it myself, it doesn't make sense and kind of takes away from the other shit he does in the movie. do you know what i wouldn't do if i was presented with that kind of ending?

KICK

a FUCKING

HOLE

IN THE WALL

BECAUSE IT WASN'T EXACTLY WHAT I WAS PICTURING. do you know how this kind of direction could have been prevented? huh timmy? do you want my two cents? IF YOU HAD ACTUALLY HAD ANYTHING TO DO WITH THE MOVIE TO BEGIN WITH, maybe this WOULDN'T BE HAPPENING. YOU CANNOT GET ANGRY AT PEOPLE FOR DOING SOMETHING THAT YOU DIDN'T LIKE WHEN YOU WERE NOT THERE TO GIVE THAT GUIDANCE THE ENTIRE REST OF THE TIME. ARE YOU INSANE?

and either way i still reaaaaally don't think what he came up with was all that great either!

youtube

like maybe this is just my opinion, but the tone in this clip isn't present in ANY OTHER part of the movie. oogie boogie dissolving into thousands of disgusting bugs feels completely detached from the silly kind of uncanny musical ft danny elfman as a sad skeleton man. it's almost like..... the person who wrote it...... wasn't actually involved in the entire rest of the movie................ :///

needless to say the news about him getting his stupid hands on the addams family devastated me and i will not be touching that shit with a 30 foot pole. cool gomez! i don't trust you to treat him properly given your stupid racist history!

tldr: not only is tim burton a racist antisemitic uncreative artist i think the fact that he is this much of a bitch to work with just really puts a cherry on top of the whole thing. my god what a shitshow.

#thank u for asking i am fully capable of ranting about this again ten times harder i think im just gonna have to make a video essay atp #i didn't even get into how much i hate corpse bride

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matashaw · 7 months

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why is the supa strikas spanish fandom so weird

so like for context, when i joined the fanfom i literally couldnt find anything supa strikas related, and i was in total pain cause wdym this series can have 7 seasons 20 minutes each ep??? and in wattpad i met this mexican girl which i ADORED

because finding someone that speaks the same language as you in a small fandom is hard af, you know??

bit the problem w this girl was that her fanfics were lowkey... something

she liked klausdor and shasta, nothing against klausdor, BUT SHASTA?

she wrote shasta smut and i did felt that something was wrong cause i was like "isnt shakes like a toddler compared to rasta??

and she DID know the age gap, snd she actually had a thing for it, because i remember that in one chapter the supa strikas team were going in a train, and there rasta told them about that him and shakes were dating, and it was something like this

"so, me and shakes are dating!"

north: but dude, isnt shakes 17?...

shakes: you know, love has no limits

the scrne was something like this or whatever and i was SHOCKED

cause first of all, NORTH WAS THE ONLY CHARACTER IN HER FANFICTIONS THAT ACTUALLY HAD A BRAIN???

amd second, the fact she had to say shakes was 17 when he in rookie season is 16 is creepy!!

does also the supa strikas polish fandom have these type if fans? cause im interested in knowing yall stories w these

#supa strikas

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takalzuoom · 2 years

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take this un-proofread, unedited, peace of dokey i wrote on the fly on my phone

“vil they’re not coming”

“hush epel- rook is out getting them now. they are going to come”

yeah right. what has it been- 20 minutes now? and there’s no way you’d voluntarily go with rook to some undisclosed location.

but as always, epel had to keep his mouth shut with an eye roll of course or he’d never hear the end of it from vil.

what were they doing might you ask? simple.

they were going to show you why you were made for vil. curtsy of rook’s genius master plan of getting you to kiss vil- who had apparently fallen under a sleeping spell after a fatal, unavoidable potions accident. true loves kiss being the only thing to cure said curse.

but yet, there was no true love here? 🤨

and epel had to wait by vil’s night table for 20 minutes now, and frankly- he was getting bored. he just wanted to go to his own room to lie down, take a nap- hell, maybe even peel some apples, who knew🤷🏻

but no. apparently he wasn’t allowed to leave until vil got his ‘happily ever after’.

and so here he was. bored asf.

and vil wasn’t holding up much better. polished nails drumming impatiently against the silk sheets that covered his body elegantly. staring up at the veil that was draped over his bed, he just wanted to storm out of his room, drag you by the wrist and get this over with.

BUT NO- YOU HAD ALREADY DECLINED HIS INVITATIONS TO SPEND QUALITY TIME TOGETHER SO HE WAS FORCED TO RESORT TO THIS

opening his mouth to speak, a bzzzt was heard as epel hurriedly took out his phone, face illuminating not just from the phones light, but from the notification.

“rook said he and the perfect just entered the dorm! they should be here in less than a minute!”

“perfect” was all vil said, getting comfortable again. patting the blankets out around his, flicking a stray out from his face, applying some smudge proof mascara and lip gloss epel robotically handed him. he knew - he was ready

there was a knock as they both jolted, epel more so as rook’s sing-song voice still creeped him out.

‘oh monsieur cherry apple! we are about to enter!”

as the door creeped open, epel nervously stared at vil, who’s eyes were already cluttered closed, and face relaxed on command- and if epel wasn’t in on the little scheme and didn’t watch vil shut himself off like a robot.

he really would’ve thought he was dead asleep

“are you sure i’m needed rook? i mean i haven’t really talked much to vil- oh hey epel”

“hey y/n”

fuck fuck fuck fuck this was hard.

no- vil agreed to no ballet lessons for a week if this went off without a hitch. so even if epel wanted to say something, he just couldn’t 😿

you’d understand, right?

right🤨

“roi du poison! comme tu es belle quand tu dors!”

(how beautiful you are when you sleep)

rook praised, hand in the air as all he needed was some skull to fit in with those weird theatre kids at home.

“how is our précieuse dorm leader doing monsieur cherry apple?”

“u uh h alright i suppose…. hasn’t really been able to do much”

“and yet he still looks magnifique as always! and it appears he just applied makeup to!”

rook you fuck.

“oh, yeah- you know how he is… he’d kill me when he wakes up if he knows it didn’t help him”

“if” you interrupted, now standing besides epel and overlooking the sleeping beauty “if he wakes up… we still don’t know if this is going to work”

“oh contray! true loves kiss prévaudra alors que nous célébrons l'union entre deux amants !”

you and epel shared a look

“right… are you sure this is okay? i don’t want vil to murder me if this works. and it just feels… wrong? to kiss someone when they’re asleep, oblivious to what’s going on” you fiddled with the wrinkle of the bedsheets before, eyes solely trained on the folds before you patted them down.

“i just don’t want to step on any toes”

epel could only sigh, just imagining the smirk his dorm leader would be wearing if he was able to have a word in this conversation ‘if only you knew’ he shook his head.

“better to explain yourself to a living vil, then a sleeping one, right!”

you shrugged “i guess”

and here we go. the real hard part- getting you to kiss vil.

from you getting cold feet, getting distracted by rook, changing the topic, pretending that you already did- it was a shit show

and frankly, mr,queen bee was growing tired of your hesitation. real tired. he’d have to work on that with you later down the line, but for now- he’s just have to hope rook- who was he kidding, rook is probably already doing something about this

oh and that he is

with a little gasp, and a feigned worried ‘oops’ he bumped into you, causing you to topple over the dorm leader and your lips to land smack on his lips

rook cheered as epel gasped, overlong his face as he saw vil twitch.

and like you’d just touch a bug on a picnic, you flew into epel, trying to get as much distance from vil as possible as you as incoherent mumbles left your lips

“oh my god im dead/ so dead- if vil doenst lill me than his fan girls will- oh. my god im gonna be all over twitter, if you even have the equivalent to twitter here, which i hope you don’t! cuase i don’t want any 14 year old vil fans to start dozing me and- oh my god and i gonna die”

“oh trickster! you will not die…” he trailed off, green eyes slanting as he slithered from behind you like a snake ensnaring it’s prey.

“unless you end up not being the one to wake out Belle au bois dormant…”

(sleeping beauty )

“o oh…” you chuckled nervously, muttering something else as you looked to epel for help. but even though he could feel your stare on him, he couldn’t do much expect look at vil, wondering when he was going to put a stop to this whole shared to (at this point) put you out of your misery

but as a minute passed- there was nothing.

mans all epel was left to wonder was ‘the fuck is he don’???’ like. okay.

we all know vil just loves his entrances, and has a knack for being fashionably late. but don’t you think it’s getting more late and less fashionable?????

like c’mon! even vil must see you were ready to keel over with rook’s ‘smiling’ face and tight grip on your shoulders.

this has to be some kind of pay back… maybe for saying no all those times? or cause you accidentally smudged his lipstick? was it both?

whatever it was epel was thinking of just putting an end to this whole charade.

“oh?”

with a flutter of his eyes, and a frown on his face, vil stirred, lazily turning his head to the side as he made immediate eye contact with epel.

😨

“bonjour roi dub poison! how was your sleep!”

“dreadful..” was all vil snipped out, gaze boring onto epel’s before he met yours.

“ah, potato. what are you doing here?” he fully sat up now, hair perfect as ever he sat up against the head broad.

“i… was just l”

“do you not remember?” rook gasped, head now resting on your shoulders with a pout

“our little trickster here was the one to break you free from your eternal slumber! isn’t that so monsiuer cherry apple?”

he nodded

“ah! is that so..” vil beckoned you over, a slight smirk on his face as you hesitantly took a step forward with rooks… guidance

“how vil of you potato. to kiss me like that when i am under a spell” he teased. epel shifted uncomfortably as he saw your face heat up in all different color hues of red. fingerings snapping in each direction at the ferocity you were ‘cracking them’.

“i didn’t mean to, really- they just said that you”

he held up his hand. immediately stopping your tangent as vil took your hands in his. “i am not some damsel y/n”

“i-“

“however” vil interrupted, motioning you to let him finish. “you did, in fact, save my life. and even though i’m not inclined to believe in the hogwash that are fairytales- it was by true loves kiss, wasn’t it?”

you stayed quiet for a moment, staring at your intertwined hand(s) before you felt vil’s curled index raise your chin.

“i suppose so..” you mumbled

he jumped in agreement, smile finally settling on his face as he glanced to rook. “tell y/n, why don’t you stay here for a little while, as my body still feels a bit sore from the after affects of the potion- if that is alright with you”

like a deer in headlights, you agreed. vil’s hand tightening around yours as his other one made sure to clasp around them.

rook couldn’t help but chuckle “venez monsiuer cherry apple!” shooing epel out as he walked behind him. he wasn’t able to take a glance back at you both as rook softly closed the door.

and all epel could say was- good luck charlie 👍

take this flaming load of trash while i continue with requests and over whelm myself 😻🫶

#anime x reader #takalzuoom 🌊#twst x reader #twisted wonderland #twisted wonderland x reader #pomefiore #pomefiore x reader #vil x reader #vil schoenheit

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dreaminginthedeepsouth · 6 months

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youtube

My youngest son came home today His friends marched with him all the way The flutes and drums beat out the time As in his box of polished pine Like dead meat on a butcher's tray My youngest son same home today

My youngest son was a fine young man With a wife, a daughter and a son A man he would have lived and died Till by a bullet sanctified Now he's a saint or so they say They brought their saint home today

Above the narrow Belfast streets An Irish sky looks down and weeps On children's blood in gutters spilled For dreams of freedom unfulfilled As part of freedom's price to pay My youngest son came home today

[I was about to post this piece when I heard the news of Ben Zussman's death. So, posted that instead. Now, here's this. I hope this war ends soon, so I can get back to writing about other things. Working on my novel. But this is where I am. So this is what I write. Also, if you read it all and decide to share, please paste Abu Saif's essay into the first two comments on your post as I do below.]

I'm pasting in the first two comments an essay from the NYT by عاطف ابوسيف(Atef abu Saif). I’m violating the paywall because it's so important and you might not have a subscription. Sue me. If you manage to read the title and can continue, read all the way to the end. If I believe in the idea of sin, I believe it is a sin to look away. I began to write an introduction, but it turned into something longer. A lot longer. The longest post I’ve ever written. So, feel free to skip my meandering and oh so sentimental musings and read the essay. In any case, I urge you to read his essay. More than that. I dare you. Especially if you support this war.

This post will be difficult for some to read. It sure as hell was difficult to write. There’s complexity here if you recognize the horrors the IDF is perpetrating in Gaza. Even if you, unlike me, stand with those who think them necessary and justified. It’s not simple to write then. But if you make your way through it and then read the essay in the comment, maybe you’ll understand something better. Though perhaps not more sympathetically. Just maybe a bit better.

I’m between the hammer and the anvil with regard to the IDF. I’m in no way an apologist. I’ve been clear with my son that I would support him if he refused. There’s no chance of that. But I wanted him to know. I’ll write something else about that later. These are issues about which I will repeat myself.

But I also reject that people serving in the IDF are like Nazi stormtroopers, or the majority of those serving in it are the equivalent of Hamas, even though I have friends I deeply respect who have presented me with those opinions explicitly. I hope that they are able to read this. It’s again about my children, as Abu Saif’s is in large part. War, for me, is always about children. Always. And, as I wrote last week, maybe if we all recognized that, there wouldn’t be more war.

We should all listen to Eric Bogle’s song “My Youngest Son Came Home Today” more often. Especially the rendition here by the PS22 chorus.

My three children came to me for Shabbat dinner this past Friday. We're all still getting used to the divorce. One meal with me, one at home with their mother, a 20 minute walk from my place. Sometimes, it’s dinner with me and lunch with her. Sometimes vice versa. Once in a while, all five of us together. Their mother sees them more on Shabbat. It’s the nature of things. That’s their home. I see them for two hours. Precious hours. But I see them.

We generally have a very nice time. But even when not, I’d rather have a horrible time with them than a wonderful time with anyone else. They are never eager to walk those 20 minutes, as much, I think because of what that time and distance represents as the effort required to make the short trek. Sometimes one or more of them arrives grumpy. They are teenagers, after all, in the wake of a domestic disruption. But usually, even then, things loosen up. I make food they like. I make sure things are clean and orderly and calm. That things feel stable and safe.

Finally, in the past few weeks, I have prevailed on them to enter without knocking. “It's your father's home,” I tell them. “You don't need to knock to enter your father's home. You aren't guests. You have a place here. Always.” I don’t know if it makes a difference to them. But it does to me. I hate it when they knock. They’re my kids.

I only see my elder daughter on Shabbat. She was recently inducted into the education corps for her compulsory service. (The army aspires to be a source of knowledge for people who have been deprived.) She began her service just a few weeks before October 7th. A member of her course was from Kibbutz Beeri. He was home for Shabbat and caught up in the massacre. Even in the education corps, one may be connected to the dead.

But she’s nowhere near any danger. She says she’s a bit embarrassed when she’s in uniform on the street, or on a bus, and people bid her “watch over yourself”. Or “May the Name guard you.” I tell her she’s a member of a corporate body that puts itself in danger to keep them safe, even if that’s not her posting. They are wishing her well because they need to wish all of our soldiers well. Because, often, they can’t wish family members and friends and friends’ children well at that moment. They need to say it. For themselves. And she provides them with an occasion. A sort of gift she can give them. Also, I want everyone to bless my children. To wish them safety and protection. To want their wellbeing. Who wouldn’t?

Sometimes, the one who gives the blessing benefits more than the one who receives it. Every Shabbat when I see them, before we eat, like many Jewish parents, I move from one to the next, in order of their birth, place my hands upon their heads, and recite the tripartite priestly blessing from the Book of Numbers. Three blessings in one. An ancient bargain!

May The LORD bless you and guard you. May The LORD shine His face upon you and grant you favor. May The LORD raise His face to you and grant you peace.

My favorite moment of the week. Routine, a formula, but never formulaic. The regularity never diminishes its emotional charge. They are often distracted or bored or grumpy. Though when he was little, my son, who was born with a galaxy-sized heart – when he was two, one of his caregivers told us “he’s simply full of love” – would respond by putting one hand on my head and one on his mother’s. And we would grin and sometimes giggle a bit. And feel blessed. Even when I’m irritable or tired, blessing them always redirects me toward meaning, if only for a moment.

I remember the first time I did this. In a hospital recovery room. Their mother looked up at me, tired beyond tired, and said “should we give our daughter a b’rakhah?” A blessing. We’d been preparing for nine months. In some senses longer than that. Since we were engaged and hoping to give one another children. So, I’d been waiting for the right moment, and I was about to say something. Our daughter had been born on Friday morning. We’d lost track of time. The labor had been so long, and the delivery had not been easy. But Shabbat, commencing with sundown, pulled us back on schedule. We always measure time from Shabbat to Shabbat. From that moment on, I would measure it from blessing to blessing.

I had been about to say something about it being time. Our first time. But she preempted me. It was right for her to claim the prerogative to prompt us. Earned. Childbirth is never egalitarian. And despite the long anticipation of this moment I’d imagined, even dreamed, the substance of its performance, the special mix of gravity and joy, the glow of it felt surprising. We’d placed our fingertips on her small, warm, downy head. So delicate. So fragile. With barely any pressure. She was in a deep sleep. Being born is very hard work. Especially when it takes so long. In a matter of weeks, if not days, we’d be longing for her to finally sleep. So, we could collapse or work or read or watch TV. Mostly collapse. But at that moment, I wanted her to be awake. I wanted her to hear us. I wanted her to watch us and feel our hands upon her, blessing her with a wish of peace. Shalom. A more expansive term than peace that also connotes health and fullness and well-being. A blessing that channels something beyond language, something language can only summon but not contain. I wanted her to feel it. I remember crying a little. I think I did. I hope I did.

I wonder how Atef Abu Saif blesses his children.

I don’t connect so much to the idea of a “personal God.” Sometimes I wish I did. I wish I had an almighty and benevolent addressee who would hear me. “Nigh is The LORD to all who call upon Him,” as the psalmist says. But I’ve never really felt it. That presence. I’ve studied some theology. A body of knowledge I admire. I wrote my Bachelor thesis on Maimonides’ reading of Job in his Guide of the Perplexed. A dazzling text that I never found as cold as some find its rationalism. Rather, it’s literary and bold and charged with a kind of passion, with humanity, even as the author, that monumental Sage and philosopher strives to distinguish God absolutely from anything human. A deity so far beyond humanity that ascriptions of physicality to him in scripture must be read strictly and scrupulously as metaphors. Yet his text sings with humanity. I’ve studied mystical theologies as well. They have moved me in similar fashion. Though a different flavor.

But despite all the humanity in theology, I’ve never felt that immediacy of touch or attention or found the arguments compelling enough to engender belief in God’s objective existence (and now the RaMBaM, the acronym by which we refer to Maimonides, is shouting in my head that God is not an object, and the idea of His objective existence is idolatrous). Yet if God is so elusive for me personally, I still find the conceit powerful. Imputing a name and a face to the Cosmos, with apologies again to the RaMBaM, whether or not it’s an intentional power, is very alluring. So, in that hospital room, my fingers timid on that little head, the regularity of my hours-old daughter’s breathing so miraculous, we pronounced the ancient formula. Please God, let her be well. Let her be whole. Let her have peace. And then we had a son. And then another daughter. Each a blessing. And every week I bless them.

So, once again, this past Friday night I blessed them. Let them have peace. Shalom. Wellbeing. Let everything be well with them. I know it won’t always be. There will be struggles and illnesses and disappointments. Maybe heartbreak. Certainly heartbreak of some sort. I’ve had more than my fair share. Not only recently. Atef Abu Saif, whom I hope you will read below, has had more. Much more. Hard to imagine any Gazan who hasn’t. There are so many kinds of heartbreak. It’s endemic to humanity. To life. Only a babe who dies very shortly after birth never knows heartbreak. Not to know heartbreak seems inhuman. “Nigh is The LORD to the brokenhearted,” says he psalmist. But nonetheless. Please spare them that. Please. When I bless them, I want to feel power flowing through me, pouring out of my hands onto them. Enveloping them in radiance. I want to be a conduit for divine favor. Let God’s face recognize them, let them be seen by the Cosmos, and be received in kindness, and receive kindness. As I said, giving a blessing can be more for the one blessing than for the blessed.

This Friday night, they barely broke their chatter when I went around to bless them. As usual. I did it quickly. I usually do. But it never undercuts the profundity of it. And like many parents, I kissed the tops of their heads as I removed my hands. My son, who recently surpassed me in height by a few centimeters, now bends his head down so I can do this.

These days, that final word in the mystic formula, shalom, feels particularly powerful, particularly heavy. Even more than usual. Despite its range of abstract meanings, it always feels so specific and concrete as their heads round into my palms. And I stand in a posture of power. The ultimate patriarchal pose (though, of course, many women, like their mother, do it as well). But perversely, it makes my powerlessness palpable. I won’t be able to preserve them from suffering and deprivation and disappointment. I have, myself, presented them with such experiences already. It has been a difficult few years. And as my yearning for power underscores my powerlessness, the blessing becomes a plea. Please. Bless them with peace. Please. Please. Please. Always. But especially now. Shalom.

My daughter had told me earlier that day that because of “the situation”, they are going to start sending members of her unit home with rifles when they set out for their near weekly Shabbat furloughs. I think it's ridiculous. She’s in the education corps. It seems both thematically incongruous and useless in a practical sense for her to travel with a semi-automatic assault rifle. A machine gun. I tell her she’ll never use it. And she shouldn’t. The only place she might do so would be if “something happens” on the way. But fifty more visits to the shooting range wouldn’t equip her for that situation. Excellent field soldiers sometimes fail to pass anti-terror training, teaching people how to use a weapon in the middle of an attack in a civilian area. Though we send armed soldiers into civilian areas right now. We always have and we always do. But those aren’t ‘our’ civilians. Aren’t we supposed to hold every human life as equally sacred? We claim to. We don’t. Obviously. No army does. Laws and ethics of warfare don’t. But that doesn’t make it ok.

She mentions the attack that happened the previous day. Two Palestinians from East Jerusalem opened fire on a bus stop at the entrance to West Jerusalem. And two soldiers and one civilian shot them dead. Three civilians died. Four, actually. I’ll get to that in a moment. Several are in the hospital. I admitted that maybe then. If she had a clear shot. But that’s crap. The presence of mind to operate a weapon under pressure without extensive training? I imagine her quickly swinging her rifle around to the front of her body, quickly inserting a magazine, cocking it, bracing the butt against her shoulder, aiming, finding a clear sight line, and pulling the trigger. All while under fire herself. Yeah. That’s not happening. She should get herself behind a very solid object or lie flat on the ground with her hands over her head.

Then my son mentions that one of the people who was killed, the fourth, had jumped from his car and it was he who shot the terrorists. A 38-year-old lawyer named Yuval Kestleman who served in a reserve combat unit and carried a licensed handgun. I saw the security footage. As the two off-duty soldiers had turned and trained their weapons on him, he'd dropped his gun, sunk to his knees, ripped open his jacket so they could see he wasn’t wearing an explosive belt, all the while calling out to them in Hebrew, identifying himself as a Jew and an Israeli. And one of the soldiers, a member of the radical right-wing settler “hilltop youth” who was on his way back to Gaza, shot him dead.

There’s a controversy over whether the soldier who shot him can be excused. Part of a broader controversy about what constitutes a “neutralized” suspect or perpetrator and the ruled of engagement. Some, like the awful Chief Rabbi of Safed, explicitly support summary executions. Even if they are lying unconscious. Just shoot them. The ideological community this soldier affiliates with holds this position. And if you get it wrong, well, as our Prime Minister initially said about this incident, “that’s life”. Really.

I don’t know the soldier. Just his ethos. And he expressed glee at having killed someone, at least before he found out whom he killed. “Everyone wants an ‘x’.” A kill. A lie. Many if not most hope they never have to. But he did. It’s hard for me to believe he couldn’t see Yuval Kestleman drop his weapon, fall to his knees, and raise his hands over his head, hear him calling out in Hebrew.

I’ve already argued about it with one total stranger, a security guard at a building I was entering, holding forth with another security guard about the case. I couldn’t help myself. “You don’t fire at someone if they are on their knees with their hands above their head.” He responded with “and what if it had been a terrorist?” I repeated that you don’t shoot someone on their knees with their hands over their head. And the footage is quite clear. My daughter would never do that, even if she could get in position to do it. My son wouldn’t. None of their friends would. I can’t imagine any of he people I served with doing that. Though it’s been a long time. Maybe some would. Certainly not those I trained and commanded. But we send lots of people like this soldier and this security guard to Gaza. And sometimes people like Atef Abu Saif and his son and his mother face soldiers like these.

My son is 16, a year old than Atef Abu Saif's son, about whom you will read below, if you have the courage to witness. You should try. The act of witnessing is a sacred act. And sometimes, it’s all we can do. I know that telling people what they should do is both strategically and morally a sketchy thing. Lots of things these days are strategically and morally sketchy. I suppose it will be much easier for those who don’t live here, haven’t served, don’t have children serving in Gaza, or know children of friends serving in Gaza, or have neighbors serving in Gaza, or. . .well basically almost everyone who lives here. Barring ultra-Orthodox and Arab communities. He’s an elite athlete, a student at an academy for dedicated and ambitious and highly disciplined basketball players located 40 minutes from Gaza, much closer than his older sister’s army base.

My youngest is 13, the only one who lives with their mother full time. I see her once in the middle of the week as well. She comes for dinner. Or we go out. We always have fun. Last week, I made a pasta she loves, and we watched The Godfather. She shares much more with me now than she did when I lived with her. And I feel guilty that her mother shoulders most of the hard parenting bits, though we both try to share those as well. Some things are overdetermined by the physics of space and time. And sometimes a distance of 20 minutes might as well be 500 kilometers.

At some point, as was inevitable, the conversation shifted to “the situation”. My son says he believes this war is necessary. That it will make us safer. That the civilians dying in Gaza, with whom he says he sympathizes, are all Hamas' fault. ‘Look what they made us do!’ He says his opinions have changed since October 7th. I think that's Hamas' fault. His older sister says she trusts the army that they are doing everything they can and know what they are doing and she thinks we must all have faith in its commanders. She’s very firm about this. Too firm? Does she really think this? Or does she need to believe it? They have friends serving in Gaza. They know people who were murdered on October 7th. They know someone who is being held hostage.

My youngest offers that for every Hamas member we kill, we make three more. A common saying among war skeptics and opposers. Maybe she heard it somewhere. Maybe the formulation is obvious. Maybe she uses the number three because our minds so commonly divide things into threes. Lots of theories about that. Aristotle, in his Poetics, says all stories must have a beginning, a middle, and an end. We invoke the names of three patriarchs in our liturgy. It takes Abraham and Isaac three days to reach Moriah, where the former, a father, binds the latter, his son, on an altar and raises a knife over him. Three blessings make up the blessing I bestow upon them every Shabbat as a plea for their shalom, their wellbeing. Three bears. Three pigs. Three caskets in Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice. Some say you surface three times before you drown. Like Emily Dickinson.

Three times, 'tis said, a sinking man Comes up to face the skies, And then declines forever To that abhorred abode.

Kill one and make three, she says. I say I agree with her. I tell them that I don't believe that the situation you will read about, if you dare, in Abu Saif’s essay below makes us safer. It's at best a strategically and morally sketchy endeavor. A sketchy calculus. And suddenly I realize how calamitously insufficient the word sketchy is here.

I don't say much more to my elder daughter and son. It won't help to argue and correct them. And they already know my politics. It’s one of the reasons they are unloading on me. Sometimes they are uncomfortable with how far outside the mainstream I am. Sometimes they are confused by my orientation and commitments. It's not easy to have a parent so far outside consensus. A member of a dissenting minority. Who sometimes even dissents from the dissenters. They want to belong. They want to feel at home in their social world, their society, their culture, their history, their people. I used to want that. Sometimes I still do. I have friends with activist children. Mine are not. I don't know why they aren't. Maybe it’s a parenting failure. I haven't always been as stable and present a parent as I intended and always wanted to be. I had serious struggles. I’m better now. Much better. And there’s no deficit of love between us. But I obviously failed to present them with a compelling model for engagement the way I would have liked.

So I let them unload their fear and anger. Posing a question here and there. Offering a brief comment that I strain to phrase in a way that isn't argumentative. I'm not good at that, so I stay mostly quiet. They know what I think. And they are speaking with that knowledge. Fighting with them won't help. They are in the middle of a crisis. Their trauma is unfolding. Though not like Abu Saif’s son’s trauma. Nowhere near that.

I noted that my son was now standing on his feet. I was distressed at the turn it had taken. For selfish reasons. These hours are indescribably precious to me. I want them to be pleasant. But this, too, is part of parenting. A part I don’t want to miss. There were stories and laughter. Sometimes, even my stories and their laughter. With no accompanying eyerolls. I have some talent for telling stories. But when they began to unload, I reminded myself: say less, listen more, as their mother would often urge me with extreme exasperation. If I had been able to do that, would they be coming with me to rallies and demonstrations? Or, the deeper question, would they be splitting their Shabbat meals between me and their mother now?

We moved onto the blessings after the meal. As always, we prefaced them by singing Psalm 126. ‘He goes forth weeping, the planter bearing his store of seeds; come, he will surely come back in joyous song bearing sheaves.’ Tell that to the loved ones of the victims on October 7th. What about all the kids whose lives were cut short like sheaves, before they could plant their own seeds? Still, I sang with them. Then, this morning, I read Atef Abu Saif’s essay. Tell that to him. I dare you.

https://www.nytimes.com/.../gaza-family-palestinian...

And listen to "My Youngest Son Came Home Today"

‘I Want to Be Awake When I Die’

Dec. 2, 2023

[Atef Abu Saif was visiting family members in Gaza with his 15-year-old son, Yasser, before Oct. 7 and has kept a diary of the war since it began. Here is his entry for Nov. 21, the day he decided to leave the Jabaliya neighborhood in the north of the territory for southern Gaza, en route to the Rafah crossing into Egypt.]

We cannot stay here any longer. We have decided.

The shells over the last two nights have been so close to the apartment we are staying in that I didn’t just see the light and hear the thunder of their explosions. I saw them pass right by my window. The Israelis are getting closer every minute. Most of the outer regions of the camp are under full occupation now. Overnight, troops advanced a couple of streets closer from the north. Our street came under continuous shelling from the tanks.

I never closed my eyes. “I want to be awake when I die,” I told my brother Mohammed, who has been with us for most of the war. “I want to see it happening.” Before going to sleep, my son Yasser said he felt more afraid than ever. For the last 45 days, he has shown great strength in the face of everything, but we all have our limits. “Let’s see,” I told him. “In the morning we’ll decide.”

This was two nights ago. So, yesterday morning, I went to see my dad to ask if he’d consider moving with us. It was a hard “no.”

“But most people have left already,” I said. He’s staying put, he insisted, come what may. Then, as I was leaving he shouted back to me: “Get that boy to safety.”

That helped convince me. As I lay on my mattress last night, I realized it was not fair that my 15-year-old son should pay for my decision to come to Gaza and stay so long in the north. He might have survived 45 days, but would he survive the next 45? The chances of escaping death are growing narrower and narrower. I do not have the right to decide for him. In her last call to me from our home in Ramallah, on the West Bank, my wife, Hanna, said simply: “I want my boy. You took him to Gaza. You bring him back.”

Talk of a truce fills the news, and this might be a good time to head south to Rafah and be near the border with Egypt in case it opens. I have a job in the ministry in Ramallah to get back to, after all.

The sight of the shells flying past my window the night before also made it clear that it was time to leave: sometimes it is better to be wise than correct, if that makes sense. The wise thing is to give everyone a chance to live, even if the correct thing is to not let the Israelis get away with a second Nakba — yet another expulsion from our land.

When this morning finally comes, the driver we have hired for the first leg of our journey arrives. My father-in-law Mostafa and his wife Widdad, who uses a wheelchair, are traveling with us. My in-laws want to stay with their granddaughter Wissam, 23, at the European Gaza Hospital in Khan Younis, in the south. Wissam is recovering from triple amputation surgery, after surviving a bombing in the first week that killed her parents and most of her siblings. Wissam’s surviving sister, also named Widdad, can take care of her grandmother as well as Wissam.

I carry my mother-in-law into the car. As the car sets off, we all try to prepare ourselves mentally for the long journey ahead. We get out at the Kuwait traffic junction and negotiate the hire of two donkey carts to carry us all to a gathering area along Salah al-Din Street, the main north-south route already called “New Nakba Road” by some.

#Scotch/Irish folk song #singing #songs #Ori Hanan Weisberg #words and writing #Israel Hamas war #anti-war #human #humanism #humanity #Youtube

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lunayuu · 11 months

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This is just me getting a bit emotional over the Technoversary so I'm putting it under a cut :D

In 9 hours and ~50 minutes it will be the exact time and date that I heard the news (6:20A.M) I remember waking up early for the last day of my school term and going on to tumblr, and the first thing I saw on my dash was art, beautiful art, art that I cannot tell you who made, who reblogged to get it on my dash, but I can remember what it looked like. It was c!Tommy, hugging a greyed-out c!(piglin!)Techno And my heart sank Either I was too sleepy from just waking a few minutes prior or too panicked but I went to twitter, where rather than looking at the trending page, I typed in his name, letter by letter And then I saw a tweet from a games journalist saying that he was dead It was the first time that year I cried out of sheer grief and loss, and for a man I had no personal relation too, no less(!) I saw the video about 20 minutes after, and - amusingly - I can remember none of what was said in the video, however, I do fully remember that he had 10.4M subs at the time I remember the rest of the day went by in a bit of a blur, I had to bear the news to a friend of mine on the bus, and as we shared our first class, we went together to meet up with another mutual friend who got the news a bit after me I vividly remember him asking me if I had, quote, "Thought of anything else that day"

I had not

But I said I did so as to not make him worry

Every time I saw someone wearing pink in the hallways or in a class, I mostly-non-jokingly winced

In Art, we did nothing, as customary at the end of term, so I ‘painted’ my nails red with a fineliner I had in my bag

At the end of the day, all 3 of us went to my house for a few hours, making a ‘podcast’ using a voice memo app on my phone that was 18 minutes long, ruining other people’s experience on the bus they unfortunately shared with us.

It was the first time that day I properly smiled

When we got over to my house, I got a few shades of red nail polish from my room and offered to paint my friends (and my) nails. I did all nails but the right thumb, that the mutual friend had, I’m not too sure what the point of that was but it was nice, something about sharing our grief probably.

That was a year ago

It really doesn’t feel like it

I guess all I can say is that you’re never alone in your grief, especially not now, one year on, and we’ve found our community, and we’re all grieving together from all over the world! How wild is that!! From New Zealand (fun fact it's the geographical opposite of the UK) to Scotland there are people who recognise their grief - your grief - as valid and legitimate and ok to feel

Technoblade Never Dies because we are here to uphold his legacy

And it’s perfectly ok to grieve, or not, we all go about this in different ways, after all

I wrote this in Notes- not my finest work but whatever

#technoblade #tw grief #i dont really feel like crying #but i still feel off #grief can do that ig #happy one yeaaarrrrrr #oh joyous day /j #hoo boy i may delete this later im feeling preemptively embarassed #fun! /j

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anniekong · 1 year

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1) I saw the job posting and expressed my interest in applying to S.

2) S knows the hiring manager and makes the introductions via email. ( I've also reached out to others who may know him to gain insights)

3) Admin schedules the introductory meeting on the same day-it was a snow day too

4) I went to this initial introductory meeting a little underprepared to meet M

5) I went home and worked late that night. E saw that I was online and we had a quick catch up call. I told him about my day and my job search process and it turns out that M was his mentor during his time in the US. E offers to put in a good word for me.

6) I wrote a thank you note to M and inquired about the predecessor to learn more about the role.

7) It was SA and I write him a cold email and set up an initial call. I met with him to gain further insights on the role such as the day to day.

8) S puts in a good word for me explaining my performance rating in 2022 but M expresses his concerns due to lack of marketing experience and leadership skills.

9) I applied for the job and resumed working.

10) I went to Zurich to give a workshop and I saw the interview meeting pop up on my calendar for the following week. It’s a panel interview of three people in total. I shared the news with J who was co-hosting the workshop with me. She was extremely happy for me and offered to help shape my stories during my time in commercial operations. "All you have to be is yourself," she said. I wish it was that easy. We are both big believers that things happen for a reason so a rejection would not be the end of the world.

11) Exhausted after a long week, I crafted and practiced my stories on the plane ride back and continued to practice until the night before. ( Everything from my tone, hand gestures, eye contact, eyebrow twitch etc).

12) It was D-day and my first hybrid interview. I have not had an in- person interview since 2019. I had to balance looking at the screen and addressing the folks in the room. It started out well just as I've practiced. However, I was stump on questions like why should we pick you over someone else, what does success look like for you in this role, most people start from sales and work their way up to global/corporate- why are you going in the other direction, what do you hope to deliver in 18 months. I must’ve looked like a deer in headlights. They were asking me what my favorite color was and I answered 28. The interview took an hour vs the initial 45 mins meeting, which further portrayed how inefficient I was in conveying what they wanted to hear. They were challenging me and I wasn’t given them the right answers. I might have redeemed myself with the questions I’ve asked towards the end but felt defeated completely.

13) I was pretty sure I didn’t get the job at this time and shared my experiences with my work besties starting with I and sharing the questions that had stumped me and my tired and jet lag brain. “The why would they choose you is a personal branding question! You are supposed to showcase your strengths”, she said. Well it makes sense now, since you put it like that wishing that I had known that 20 minutes earlier. I took it as a learning opportunity.

14) The day after, S asked how the interview went. The corporate response for I bombed it is "This helped me understand the level of detail that is necessary to really standout in those interviews."

15) I caught up with N at the cafe and M sees me and waves at me walking in one direction. S comes walking from the opposite direction and they meet in the middle. S had asked how the interview went then and there…not awkward at all. (I found out about this later but somehow I had a feeling they were talking about me and shared my uneasiness feelings with N since it was too soon!)

16) S shared that he’s still interviewing and there’s a McKinsey consultant that they are also considering. Well that's nice… I thought. He/she will definitely be a thousand times more polish than me. S also recommended that I ask L to reach out to M to endorse me on my performance.

17) I’ve never done this before and had to double check with someone who has worked with HR to see if this is normal (I realized how risk adverse I am during this process). She convinced me that it's not only normal, but a necessity when applying internally. I wrote an email to L, having saw her and caught up with her in the office the day before.

18) L replied and to my surprise, said she was proud that I was asking for endorsement when most people shy away from it. She mentioned that she had already put in a good word for me.

19) I started applying for other jobs because I was coming to terms with not getting the job.

20) S follows up with M the following week. I’m embarrassed at this point because he was pushing for an answer and I’m pretty sure he doesn’t have an answer because I got rejected.

21) 8 days from the interview date, I’m sitting at lunch with a neighboring finance team and shared my interview experience during this busy time at work. When I got to my desk, M pings me and asked if I have time to chat. I replied asap and he called me right away.

22) “I got some feedback for you,” he said. “I welcome any feedback you have,” I replied, having already made peace with myself that I will have to resume the job hunt. “ You got the role,” he said….and I haven’t stopped smiling since that moment.

I wanted to highlight the amount of effort it took to apply for one role. I could have easily gotten rejected and this process would have to occur again before I land on my next role.

I understand the power of networking, sponsorship and personal branding.

Although the future is exciting, I’m even more touched by the amount of people who are willing to help me, expecting nothing in return throughout this process- most notably, all of my sponsors ( S, L, A & E), E who is an informal mentor to me, D who consistently sent me job postings, AD who offered to help with interviewing, I connecting me to everyone she knows on the Global Oncology team. The countless number of coffee chats with the oncology marketing team who took time out of their day to educate me with nothing to gain.

I pinged I when I received the good news and she was so happy and excited for me. "You did all the magic," she said. "Not at all, it felt like a teamwork." It sure wasn't because of my stellar interviewing skills.

I’m so thankful for them and will continue to pay it forward.

As J and I agreed on, it's this cycle of good karma and positivity that will continue to expand.

“Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity”

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oneefin · 3 months

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parts: 1, 2, 3, ...

mit mystery hunt 2024 writeup 3: text adventure

so the puzzles in the rest of the earlygame weren't bad, but the next thing that i remember being a really strong highlight was past them. our team unlocked the midgame on saturday afternoon, and after solving a handful of puzzles from it, the Hell, Missouri round unlocked. tons of people wrote about this round being a standout for them and now it's my turn!

i'll discuss the puzzle text adventure from that round in particular. you're not likely to solve this puzzle without understanding the round gimmick, so although the task would be gargantuan, you could try it yourself here: https://mythstoryhunt.world/puzzles/text-adventure (if you get a 404, click "Public Access" and then come back and try this link again).

spoilers for the entire hell, missouri round follow.

so basically, the puzzle is a text adventure containing six classic riddle-type puzzles, but changed in a way that makes them impossible, including:

The river crossing puzzle with the wolf/goat/cabbage but there's an extra vegetable

The 5-ring tower of hanoi puzzle but you only have 20 moves

The bridge crossing puzzle with four people who walk at different speeds and one flashlight, but you get 1 less minute

The fuse burning puzzle but you have to measure 85 seconds instead of 45

so that's wild. it wasn't immediately obvious to us what to do...

...until we're looking at this other puzzle in the round called "chemistry", and we extract "STEAL SCEPTER" from it.

one of the subpuzzles does have a scepter in it. it has some word manipulation spells with stupid names like "ieditedit" which are supposed to be used on the word MUU written on a scroll (it's a thing don't ask). yeah, turns out you can steal it. yoink

so that ieditedit spell takes a word and doubles it minus its first letter, eg "scepter" becomes "sceptercepter", "gödel" becomes "gödelödel", and,

it turns out you can use this on a box labeled "alfa" in one of the subpuzzles to create alfalfa, which is a third vegetable you can bring into the bridge crossing puzzle. but crucially, the alfalfa doesn't need to make it out alive, so you can give it to the goat and ensure it doesn't eat the other two vegetables. easy solve from there!

the things we had to do for the rest of the subpuzzles were also cool and funny, although they were on slightly different lines:

to solve the tower of hanoi puzzle, you have to find more poles to put the discs on. it turns out that chopin and copernicus count as poles (they're polish) and you can have them hold discs for you. incredible gag honestly

the bridge puzzle and the fuse puzzle cheese each other: the fuses serve as extra light sources for the bridge crossing, and crossing the bridge serves as an extra timing mechanism to get 85 seconds.

that scepter puzzle? you have to cast ieditedit over and over and crash the game lmao right ok

but the best moment was definitely the path to the river crossing puzzle. finding that sequence was an amazing moment of gradual discovery for me, having to combine so many elements from so many places. pieces like that are the reason this round was so cool in general.

okay, so i should mention the round in general. the way it worked is that every pair of puzzles had a unique answer, found by bringing some info from one puzzle into another puzzle to extract it. so answers from this round filled the upper half of a matrix:

so it was super interesting! my overarching thoughts on this round in no particular order are:

the connectedness of everything incentivized going for 100%, since we had to touch all of the puzzles in order to solve any one puzzle. this we eventually did, which was very gratifying

on the other hand, it took us a very long time to fully solve any one puzzle - we had 5/6 on multiple puzzles for quite a while

i liked that it was asymmetric - one puzzle (matchmaker) was always the supplier of the info, another puzzle (blanks) was always the receiver of the info, and others were somewhere in between, and i found the variety of that very interesting

the mechanic of the meta was super understandable also, i managed to zero in on the idea pretty quickly without getting stuck, which made for a smooth experience

it wasn't all smooth though - there was stuff on the chemistry puzzle that no one on the team could figure out because this topic tends to be pretty difficult to research. we were stuck trying to find the word CARBONYL for a very long time

it seemed like on the most competitive teams, the unlock timing of this round would have landed directly in my sleeping hours. as such, i'm really happy that i hunted on a slower team so that i had a chance to dig deep into this round. got the most out of it

as i understand, this round was the brainchild of one primary author (devjoe!), so mad props to them for making such a well-knit collection of super neat ideas. it made for a really good mitmh midgame, about as good as i could ask for.

#puzzle #puzzle hunt #mit mystery hunt #text adventure #riddles

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kawa-kir · 4 months

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It currently a little over 1:40 AM right now, wrote my thoughts about yesterday. Mostly my anxieties.

I've had a spur of productivity and made a few drawings and some new projects.

Polished a whole minute and a half of animationi that was meant to be just 8 frames.

I still dont know how these "5 minute adventure" projects end up becoming week long polishing-and-revising-and-polishing-again things.

I see animations that are, like, maybe 4 pictures if you count the one with a hastly edited cut out stock image hand, and then i try to make something similar, but it becomes this behemoth of a project every time. Smoothing out every movement, always animating on ones, that single pixel that appears for less than 0.1 seconds looks wack, better restart the whole 20 seconds.

I have so many of them too.

Gyros animation i've been working since june of last year, Maya, Otto, Charles, Abe, Bell and Polū drawings, fanart that i never finished, stories that i never ended, animations without frames, songs without melodies, tunes without purpose and its just...

Too much.

The anxieties of not making something good enough to show the world gnaw at my core while i repeat to myself in vain that it doesnt matter how good it is.

My attention keeps jumping from one topic the other, making maybe a frame or two before stopping completelly to switch a song from my playlist but oh wait there is a message about a youtube video on why some ants start walking in circles and that reminds me of a lemon demon song called Spiral of Ants and then i go to listen to his album only to see a meme and then i scroll down for half and hour and... what was i doing again?

Still.

Progress was being made.

Frame by frame.

Block by block.

At least im glad i finished one, i am still smiling about it now, even made a bit tune to go with it.

Maybe i'll start an album of bit tunes for my animations and drawings.

Already thought of a name.

All Planes.

Gonna make the cover art after some sleep.

Think im gonna start making drawings of my characters and just putting some lore in them.

I told myself i was gonna post everyday and stopped at week 2 out of 56.

But the year isnt over yet.

Gonna start making more pixel art stuff too. Not animations, just still images.

My brain works better with motion than with drawings, so i tend to make evem the smallest of projects an animation, even if it wouldnt fit.

Also funguary, said i was gonna do it and i will.

Pulling all the courage to tackle a beast greater than my inability to draw the same design twice: Digital drawings.

Last time i used it for real was i think in halloween 2022.

Rusty is an euphemism, so im gonna start slow.

Mushroom men await my pen and paper.

But first bed.

Thanks for reading.

#adhd problems #its 2am #im tired #but happy #progress is being made #slowly but surely #things are going to be okay

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misskasu · 1 year

Text

Module 2: Blog Assignment

Today’s digital media diary was slightly different from the one posted about two weeks ago. The first thing I usually do is check my Gmail from both accounts around 7 am. This I decided to bravely kill two birds with one stone finish this blog assignment along with the extra credit today before 7 am unlike my last post.

5:20 am - logged into Canvas. And watched " In a Nutshell Zuboff: surveillance capitalism and Democracy on YouTube, " about a 17-minute video. After watching the video, I better understand how technology has shaped our lives. I also became aware of the potential hazards of data used in our society. I am now more conscious of the importance of data privacy, even if I have nothing to hide.

YouTube link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5AvtUrHxg8A&ab_channel=AlexandervonHumboldtInstitutf%C3%BCrInternetundGesellschaft

5:40 - 6:10 Read the article "Surveillance Capitalism: What It Is and How It Impacts Democracy" and created a mind map of surveillance capitalism. Started writing an essay on the topic. Developed a thesis statement. Researched more information about this topic. Checked the essay for errors. As part of the essay, I wrote a conclusion and submitted it.

6:10 - I posted the final result online on my Tumblr page.

6:26- Responded to Melissa Radojevic by mentioning that I was aware of the issue of data metrics, and posting at such a young age was a blessing. And since then, I have taken extra steps to protect my personal information. I have also been more conscious of my content. Further, I have taken the necessary steps to ensure that my accounts are private and that I only connect with people I trust.

7: 30- 8:15 AM After I shower, I always start my morning with maintenance. I check my email out as much in the spam and check in with all the clubs and my grandmother. I like to do wordle/digits from the New Times. My Grandmother lives in Michigan, so she almost will Always do it before me and often gives me hints. But today, I finished before she did. I also cleaned out my spam from both email accounts and double-checked assignments from my other classes

10:00 am to 12:30 — Pandora (in the background)

I turn on Pandora working on while I work on today’s blog diary and take a look at the extra credit. I turn on Pandora working on while I work on today’s blog diary and look at the extra credit. I make sure to take breaks every 15 minutes to stretch and clear my head. I review the content I wrote and make any necessary changes. At 12:30, I'm done with the line, almost done polishing, fixing, and editing grammatical mistakes along the image layout before I post on my Tumblr account.

At 12:45, I'm done with the blog and publish it. I take a break to reward myself for a job well done. I grab leftovers for lunch and a cup of water before moving on to my next task with 3 episodes of Flash.

2:00 p.m. — Finished lunch break after watching 3 episodes of Netflix series (in this class, the Flash. No spoilers, please I am only on Season 2, Episode 13 I have binge watching prior to this post). After lunch, I felt energized and ready to finish the remaining tasks for the day. I then took a quick swim to get some fresh air and get back to work!

I finish up at 4:45 p.m. — Revising my to-do list for tomorrow. Some assignments take longer, especially if they are papers or essays with multiple responses to that one assignment.I try to make sure I'm done with the assignments that require a lot more effort before I leave. That way, I don't have to worry about them the next day and can focus on the smaller tasks. If I need more time, I'll stay a bit later.

5:00 p.m. — I check my emails and respond to any urgent messages.

7:30 pm - 9:00 pm - I finish this assignment and prepare for tomorrow. Didn't have time to do my daily night reading.

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romantichomicide95 · 1 year

Note

Heyyyy bee! How about 18, 27, 33 for the writers ask? Please and thank you! Kisses 💕

hey dee (im just now realizing we are bee and dee lol)

18. What is your most and least favorite part of writing?

My least favorite is how shit I am with coming up with ideas sometimes. My most favorite is the amount of self indulgence I feel when writing for specific characters.

27. Do you share rough drafts or do you wait until it is all polished?

Honestly, I rewrite things like multiple times. Sometimes I leave things in my drafts for days. Other times it takes me 20 minutes to write. Fun fact, my most popular piece of writing (no nut november with gojo) I wrote in probably 25-30 minutes. Idk if that answers the question, I am dumb.

33. Do you start with the characters or the plot when writing?

Characters almost always. With Levi I always have plots in mind for him because I think about life with him so fucking much hhaa, so thats easier. Sometimes I get an idea for a plot and have to decide with character best suits it though.

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headdaniel06 · 2 years

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Getting My Is an RV Ceramic Coating Worth it? To Work

03-10-2020, 05:38 AM # 1 Junior Member Join Date: Mar 2016 Location: macomb Posts: 18 paint security worth it? Quote: @Riot_of_the_Month (on Sat, Sep 25, 2016 9:16:16 AM) ludacris wrote: If you look with the total image, you are going to view that there is actually simply a couple of little red dots that only are all the means in the middle. are going to be acquiring brand-new jayco x23b this weekend, questioning concerning the coating security sealant used. I've obtained a new jaycrown, and I presume I may perform it for at least another year. For now, it's worth checking out. The only thing left is that after purchasing it, I don't actually need to have it anymore, and I can easilyn't even utilize it to keep my head and take my eyes away coming from the camera. thanks __________________ 2016 dodge ram v6 3.55 2016 Jay Feather x19h 03-10-2020, 05:46 AM # 2 Senior Member Join Date: Mar 2017 Location: Wolverine Posts: 707 I bought a 2016 x254. A brand new 3.5" SLS (not the new 3.5", I'm thinking). Appears merely Fine. The SLS looks wonderful! Merely obtain a much better sell 4 or 5.5". I have not found any kind of photos. I got it after it sat brand-new in their great deal for two years, having bought it in February 2018. In June of 2017, I was alerted that I was prepared to pick up my brand-new L2. I was additionally asked for the right deal with, and I possessed a simple reply delivered coming from them – talking to me for the correct telephone amount. I received an update stating that they were not going to provide it a 2nd opportunity, and really wanted to provide it back a few hours later on.

I decided not to go with the coating defense and the outside still appears terrific. The frontal and bottom doors look terrific too as effectively. I purchased the total array of different colors coming from the Urban Decay website. One of the ideal point about Urban Decay is it has been the very first to use in any type of colorway. Every different colors that I have made use of over the previous year has been excellent, and in the past 2, 3 and 4 years my face has altered. I wouldn't bother BUT hang around for others to chime in that differ so you can easily get both edges of the tale. My experience in this area of mine has been pretty enjoyable - I have checked out books on religious beliefs, Judaism, Islam, and many various other things. I am not a religious person, therefore I possess my own perspectives about what they need to look like and what to point out. I am from a theological loved ones and I have functioned hard on a number of problems (i.e. "Stateboy" (Formerly "36fire412") SW Lower Michigan 2016 X254 2012 Toyota Tundra Crewmax TRD 4x4 03-10-2020, 06:30 AM # 3 Senior Member Join Date: Jul 2014 Posts: 957 If you're ready to polish it on a regular basis, no demand. Just look at how lots of of these individuals are going to have had a clean or complete trip in a while, and after that drop those people down to zero. I polish mine 2x/yr, normally when prepared up at the CG, provides me something to carry out as an alternative of sitting around all day and drinking beer. Supreme Auto Detailing 've never bought it, but I do observe after approximately five moments, I wake up on the bedroom and start massaging it carefully against it, just about taking me out. It then relocates it onto the lavatory and I have to store it limited against my palm for around ten minutes. It receives so hard that I can't even tell. I polish the TT and drink draft beer. I play as a gamer, get drunk along with other participants, even participate in a video game of Magic that seems incredibly improbable to receive numerous people to play it in purchase. Some actually excellent decks have produced the activity a lot more effective, but the gamers involved usually only don't feel they're receiving sufficient play.". Lorenzo has long been an frank innovator against overreaching decks in reasonable Magic. __________________ '08 Greyhawk 31SS Traded in 2018 MR2410RL Goodyear Endurance Equalizer WDH TV 2018 F150 FX4 SC 3.5EB TP/MT 03-10-2020, 06:45 AM # 4 Senior Member Join Date: Mar 2013 Location: Kansas City Posts: 1,697 Not worth it to me. I've acquired numerous autos which have all been operating and were performing the same thing. It's just another technique for the dealership to create more of a income off the sale. It's like a money-making gift for their suppliers.". The organization design is well-known in Canada, points out Eric Bourgeois, who handles real estate financial investments outside of the U.S., where he's a companion at B.E. 's global purchases arm Global Advisors. In 2014, in the U.S., he mentions, "it was just one huge trait on the horizon. Polish your rv once a year and it are going to be great. We sell our equipment at the very most reasonable expense including the most reasonable prices readily available. The only trait we do not suggest doing is to steer the camper to a car dealership. There are some local area dealers in your region that have a comparable standard. Therefore if you get one of these to use for a family picture shoot, there is actually definitely nothing wrong with creating it for the public, no need to do a lot else. When we traded it in, the house siding on our 5 year old 26BH looked the very same as the time we bough it.the factory coating is alright without any sort of specialized sealants. The front and bottom is coated with a high luster red (some were repainted with red from the inside) at that point the leading different colors is dark along with no special seals. The facility of this coating is white colored with no hues to find. I'm only interested what the red is created of. __________________ 2018 28BHBE 2017 Ford F250 XLT, 6.2 gasser 2013 26BH (traded) 03-10-2020, 07:04 AM # 5 Senior Member Join Date: May 2012 Location: Minnesota Posts: 8,775 There is actually not paint on a 23B. What I discovered was that this appears incredibly a lot like it was coated by 4 different managers and is no a lot longer functional (simply like the C7, 3D5, and thus on).

#ceramic coating for rv #rv detailing service #rv paint protection #ceramic coatings for RV

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hiccanna-tidbits · 3 years

Photo

So I woke up at 4 am last night and my brain went “What if Jackunzel...but sapphic???”

aND HERE WE ARE

Also look, yes, I know Jackie/Jacquelyn Frost is the go-to when it comes to fem!Jack Frost names, but I just...didn’t think it suited her??? I wanted something a bit more unique, and I liked the sound of Jaina! And then I got very inspired and wrote a ficlet, so ENJOY SOME LESBIAN JACKUNZEL

DON’T TELL ME THEY WOULDN’T BE THE PUREST FUCKING SAPPHICS YOU’VE EVER SEEN IN ALL YOUR LIFE

The first time Rapunzel met Jaina Frost, she asked her if she was a fairy.

She certainly looked like one of the winged creatures from Rapunzel’s storybooks. She floated just off the ground and could flit around the room quicker than a hummingbird. Her hair whipped around her in long white tendrils, thick waves like hills of freshly-fallen snow. It shone like it, too--nearly blindingly when the sun hit it, Rapunzel noticed.

She could ice up the entire floor with one sweep of her staff and would whoop and cheer and laugh so hard she snorted when she slid around on it on her bare feet. All behavior Mother would find very undignified, Rapunzel was sure.

Not that Jaina had ever cared in the least about dignity.

She’d nearly fallen out of the tower window when she first saw Rapunzel poised to hit her with a frying pan. Her next reactions had been even stranger--hooting and doing flips and jumping around because apparently, people didn’t normally see her.

It was nice to have a friend. Mother hadn’t warned Rapunzel off of other girls, although Rapunzel was certain that in practice she wouldn’t approve of them. Not that it mattered. They quickly found that Jaina was as invisible to Gothel as she apparently was to everyone else.

Perhaps it was selfish, but Rapunzel liked that. She had Jaina Frost all to herself.

Jaina gasped in horror when she heard Rapunzel had never touched snow. Her hammy overreaction only got more and more ridiculous as Rapunzel explained she had only ever seen winter from the confines of her tower--and Mother usually shut the window to keep the cold out, anyhow. Jaina clutched her heart at this, pretending to faint in her despair.

“Well, if you won’t just leave and go outside, like I keep telling you you should...” Jaina crossed spindly arms and glared at Rapunzel. “I guess I’ll have to bring the winter to you.”

And bring it she does. When Mother won’t be back until evening, Jaina swirls together soft, cotton clouds and makes it snow in Rapunzel’s room. They make snow angels on the floorboards and toss snowballs at one another from behind dressers and wardrobes and chairs, giggling all the while. Rapunzel’s decided she’s going to blame any water stains left behind on some kind of flooding.

Mother won’t be mad over that sort of thing. She’ll just fuss over her and breathe a sigh of relief when Rapunzel can still sing as beautifully as ever.

When Rapunzel’s birthday rolls around, she confides to Jaina about the floating lights. She’s pushing 18, and she still hasn’t left the tower. Jaina fixes her with a catlike smirk, and turns away.

When she sweeps her hands back, she’s holding some kind of ice-blue cylinder, made of swirling crystals and snow with a crescent moon etched on the side.

“They’re lanterns,” Jaina explains. “The kingdom does a festival with them every summer. I’ve flown over it plenty of times. I could...”

Jaina looks away, and Rapunzel could swear she sees her friend’s cheeks go a little pink.

“I could take you. You know. If you wanted.”

Rapunzel shakes her head. “I can’t. You know Mother would...”

Jaina groans and rolls her eyes. “You’re really way too beholden to that woman, Rae. But if you insist on staying...I might be able to do something almost as good.”

And so they sit on Rapunzel’s windowsill, legs dangling over the side (Jaina can catch Rapunzel if she falls), and Jaina Frost puts on a show. She makes dozens of frozen lanterns and whisks them into the sky, and they float and bobble and catch first the dying rays of the sunset and then the soft silver of moonlight.

Rapunzel’s never seen something so beautiful in all her life.

She glances over at Jaina once, and she’s looking at the blonde girl like she sprinkled all the stars across the night sky the same way she dappled them onto her tower walls. Jaina looks away almost immediately, face reddening.

After a while, Jaina takes to spending the night. It was by accident the first time--the girls were up late having stupid pillowfights and telling each other stories in Rapunzel’s bed, and at some point they both started to yawn.

Before she knew it, Rapunzel was waking up with a faceful of white waves smelling vaguely of wintergreen, cedarwood, and cashmere sweaters. Her arms were curled around a thin, sleek waist, and she felt her heart speed up tenfold.

She had no idea why being so very close to her best friend was making her incredibly nervous, but here she was.

It’s the first of many nights they’ll wake up wrapped up in each other. Always, they claim, by accident--but neither ever seem to mind.

It becomes a routine of sorts. Rapunzel wakes up early and untangles herself before she has to give too much thought to the nervous sweat that nearly breaks out at every point of contact. She tries to get Jaina up too to help with morning chores, and Jaina rolls onto her stomach with her face in the pillow and whines and bitches and moans until Rapunzel relents and lets her sleep for 10 more minutes.

As she sweeps the floor, Rapunzel tries not to think too hard about the placid expression on Jaina’s face as she sleeps. As she mops, she tries not to think too hard about the way Jaina’s face scrunches up when she’s having a nightmare, and the way it makes Rapunzel want to wrap herself around the other girl like a protective shell. As she polishes the staircase banister, she tries not to think too hard about the way Jaina’s eyes shine like sunlight on icicles when her entire face erupts into a grin.

It’s probably peculiar, thinking about your best friend in such excessive detail.

Two years pass, and Rapunzel is pushing 20. When she looks in the mirror, she notices nothing seems to be changing. She doesn’t look any older than when she first met Jaina. Maybe the changes are just too imperceptible for her to notice, but 17-year-old Rapunzel seems to be stuck in a kind of limbo.

She wonders if it has anything to do with her magic glowing hair--the hair that makes her mother’s wrinkles disappear whenever she sings a special song.

She knows it should alarm her, not aging. Instead, she feels a strange kind of relief. There are worse things than being stuck as the same age as Jaina Frost.

There are worse things than not having to grow old and leave Jaina behind.

They’re lying in Rapunzel’s bed one afternoon, the blonde girl sprawled on top of Jaina to carefully brush on eyeshadow. It’s an elaborate picture--a beautiful deep twilight blue sprinkled with intricate snowflakes and rimmed with glittery white snow.

Rapunzel is the only one who will ever see it, but they’re both all right with that.

The eyeshadow is long done by now, Rapunzel getting carried away painting snowflakes and icicles and tiny pine trees on snowbanks dancing across Jaina’s cheeks and forehead. She smiles proudly and holds up a hand mirror. Jaina just snorts.

“You’re going to make me look like a clown, Rae.”

“Hmmmm.” Rapunzel puts the mirror down and continues adding a gleam to a white icicle on Jaina’s temple. “A very pretty clown.”

“You...think I’m pretty?”

Jaina’s gaze turns oddly serious. The timid way she asks it is unlike her.

Rapunzel stops, frowning. “I mean...yes. I always have.”

“Why?” Jaina wrinkles her nose. “I’m a mess. My hair’s always all over the place, and I can’t keep a room clean to save my life. All I can do is make ice, blow cold wind around, and leave a fucking wreck wherever I go. Why would you think I was...?”

“Jaina! Language!” Jaina just rolls her eyes.

“You don’t give yourself enough credit.” Rapunzel smiles again. “These have been the most fun years of my life, thanks to you. You stuck around here with me, even when you have the whole world to explore, and I can’t even imagine how boring it must seem in this tower. That’s worth more than you know. And for the record, I think you’re gorgeous.”

Jaina’s cheeks turn redder than chrysanthemums, standing out starkly against her pale skin. “Oh, stop it,” she mumbles. “I look like a gremlin next to you. World’s nicest hair, flawless skin, the face of some kind of Greek goddess or something. You’re a knockout. I couldn’t even hope to measure up.”

“You...think I’m a knockout?” Rapunzel feels a blush of her own coming on.

“Well, yeah.” Jaina smirks. “I thought it went without saying.”

“Nothing really ‘goes without saying’ when you’ve only ever met two people,” Rapunzel points out.

“I guess.” Jaina shrugs. “I forget you don’t have a huge frame of reference. But trust me, ask anyone from that kingdom on the other side of the forest and they’d say you’re really attractive. I doubt any passing knight on a steed would be able to resist you, if they saw your hair hanging out the window like some...cascading sunshine waterfall.”

Rapunzel bit her lip, feeling unsettled by the thought of men on horseback finding her tower. She’d never met a member of the male gender before, and she hadn’t exactly heard good things.

“I don’t know if I want that,” she admits.

“I don’t blame you,” Jaina says. “Half of them are stuffy, arrogant pricks, anyways. Or they’re so sappy and poetic it kind of makes you want to throw up.”

Rapunzel bites her lip, feeling nothing but mild discomfort at the thought of a strange man trying to serenade her. Maybe it wasn’t fair to rule out what she didn’t know, but...

“No, I mean. I don’t know if I want men. Like...at all.”

“Oh. Oh.” A hopeful gleam swims into Jaina’s ice-colored eyes. Tiny, almost imperceptible, but there.

“Wise choice, honestly,” she says nonchalantly. “Even being invisible, I haven’t met many I actually cared to know. I think I’d much rather be here with you.”

Rapunzel wonders if Jaina would feel the same if any men could see her. She wonders if Jaina would still choose her company if some free-spirited, energetic boy was able to see the frost sprite, and wrote her beautiful sonnets about her moon-white hair. Some boy not stuck in a tower with an overbearing mother, some boy who couldn’t hold her back.

The thought fills Rapunzel with an unexpectedly bitter wave of jealousy.

She shakes it off, reaching into the makeup kit beside her and feeling around until her fingers curl around a tube of lipstick. She smiles, pulling it out.

Jaina groans in mock annoyance. “Are we still doing this? Aren’t I going to look ridiculous?”

“Not at all.” Rapunzel uncaps the lipstick and gently slides it across Jaina’s mouth.

The blonde girl leans back and admires her handiwork. She holds the mirror up to Jaina again.

Her lips are a bright, icy blue, like the glaciers Rapunzel can only ever hope to know through the pictures in her books. Slowly, Jaina smiles.

“You look like you could deliver the kiss of death,” Rapunzel teases. “Freeze your true love on the spot instead of awakening them from eternal slumber.”

“Want to test that out?”

Jaina smirks, voice surprisingly bold. Rapunzel can’t help but notice the pink rushing to her friend’s cheeks, though, despite her best attempts to sound casual.

“Huh?” Rapunzel frowns down at her, confused.

Jaina’s smirk shrinks a little, the first traces of fear darting into her eyes.

“Only one way to figure out whether I actually carry the kiss of death.” Jaina shrugs, still trying to seen nonchalant but voice not nearly as confident as before.

“Ah.” Rapunzel smiles playfully. “But if it works, you’ll have to find a new best friend, won’t you? Sounds like a lot of trouble for you.”

“That’s okay, Pascal will just be my new best friend if I kiss you to an early grave!” The chameleon squeaks disapprovingly from the dresser nearby.

“Come on, Rae,” Jaina says. “I really have to know. The curiosity’s killing me here.”

Rapunzel can feel Jaina’s breaths against her own chest, quick and shallow. Scared, almost.

Jaina is a lot more nervous than she’s letting on.

Still, looking down at the curve of Jaina’s lips and the unfailingly cheeky gleam in her eyes, everything suddenly feels just right.

Rapunzel slides her arms onto either side of Jaina’s head. She leans down, and captures Jaina’s lips with her own.

She tastes cold and sweet--like frosty vanilla and mint chocolate chip ice cream. Her lips aren’t perfect--chapped in places, pricked with tiny ice crystals, moving with a sort of nervous frenzy that comes with disuse.

Nonetheless, they feel like home.

Rapunzel slides her fingers into white hair, and it’s silky like clouds. So soft. So perfect.

The only real thought Rapunzel can process is that she never wants to let go. Perhaps part of her is terrified if she does, Jaina will dissolve into the ghost she is to everyone else.

She feels Jaina wrap her hands around the collar of Rapunzel’s dress, pulling her closer. It’s more comforting than Jaina knows.

Jaina pulls away first, hands loosening and head tilting back. She meets Rapunzel’s eyes for a few moments, processing what just happened before breaking out in an enormous grin and a series of delighted giggles.

“You just--you look so dumb,” Jaina chortles. “Like you tried to eat the sky or something.”

Rapunzel glances into the hand mirror, now long since pushed aside. Her mouth is smeared with bright blue, trailing onto her skin in pale smudges.

She smiles. “I can live with that.”

Rapunzel leans down and kisses Jaina again.

Yes I used that one picture of the girl straddling the other girl while putting her makeup on for inspiration for this, what of it???

Also for whatever reason, I love the idea of Fem!Jack calling Rapunzel Rae? I feel like Fem!Jack’s teasing and pet names would be a tiny bit different than boy Jack’s, idk.

I JUST AKSJCUBWSYD

I KINDA WANNA DO MORE FEM!JACK X RAPUNZEL CONTENT

Pic credits available upon request!

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imonthinice · 3 years

Text

The Criminal Psychology Majors, Jason Todd x Fem!Reader Part 21/?

Word Count: 1.5k

Author's Note: Y/N - Your name

Hello! I'm back! Time for drama!

Idk if this is coming out at the right time, I deadass forgot what day it is and ughughughyh

Warnings: Swearing, Discussion of Mental Illness (undiagnosed), Injury Description, Taunting, Attempted Gaslighting, Attempted Manipulation, Kidnapping, No beta bitch we die like Jason Todd (I've missed saying that<3)

(Part 1) (Part 2) (Part 3) (Part 4) (Part 5) (Part 6) (Part 7) (Part 8) (Part 9) (Part 10) (Part 11) (Part 12) (Part 13) (Part 14) (Part 15) (Part 16) (Part 17) (Part 18) (Part 19) (Part 20) (Part 21)

Jason was stumbling over his words after telling Y/N that days were blurring together. When a decently loud crash was heard from the lower level of the Wayne Manor. Jason perked up, getting up and trying to stop Y/N from following him down the stairs.

Which was too late. When they turned to go down the hallway, they were both whacked off the back of their heads. Knocking the two of them out almost instantly. Y/N took a few seconds to catch up to Jason in being out, catching a glimpse of the fight going on down the hall. She thought it was Stephanie trying her best to fight off her attacker. But soon enough her vision blurred and blacked.

She fumbled herself awake in the room. She couldn't even take away anything from the room, it was just sawing and turning colours in front of her. She didn't notice anything in the room, the lights were blinding, she didn't even know if it was lighting.

"You're awake," she said.

And then it clicked. That was Aria's voice.

----------------------------------------

Days before the kidnapping of the Waynes.

Aria sat in her office. Clutching the book her twin gave her for Christmas. It was a journal, with details talking about the schedules of the Waynes. If only Y/N had known that the journal she lovingly gave her sister would end up the way it would.

She had doodles, floor plans, schedules. Everything. She wrote it all down from extensive stalking of the Waynes. She was not going to fail at kidnapping the Waynes. She was going to do it, get the ransom from Bruce, and possibly meet heroes. She was going to fight everyone to death who tried to rescue them.

She knew the morning after a Wayne Gala that the entire family would be off-guard. She knew they owned weapons from the fact of the attacks from September. So she had to catch them fully off-guard to pull off their plan.

She looked at her mask. She knew her sister had seen the mask, the cloak. She was still considering off-handedly that she should revamp it all, make it so her sister couldn't call her out. Maybe add a voice changer? She really didn't know.

If it came down to it, if she had the time, she would do it. If not, she would just hope that her sister didn't recognise anything. Crazy? Yes, she was. The brightest lightbulb in the box? Not a chance.

She went over her plans again, adding them to the massive board she already had of the Waynes. The red lines linking all of them, the paparazzi photos. She didn't realise she was that crazy. She didn't realise that she was that much of a cliche.

She thought this was normal. She thought this obsession was okay. She looked at the photos on the wall and the red lines thinking that this was perfect.

She didn't think her sister would even be bad at her for this. She thought her sister would understand, she would get it. She would forgive her and move on. She would understand her need to get close and with the vigilantes and the heroes. She would understand the need to befriend the villains and crooks.

She would. Aria swore she would.

She heard of the Wayne Gala occurring in a few days. She would prepare her weapons when she found out. Shine her scythe. Polish her guns. Polish her daggers. Clean her cloak. Only touch her mask with gloves on. Hour barely appeared in the sight of the vigilantes. They knew she was planning something.

She hoped that fact would make them come for her further.

"Ma'am?" one of her goblins asked.

"Yes. What do you want."

"Lexcorp is hiring," they shook.

"And? Relevance."

"Alter ego, ma'am."

"Noted."

"Ma'am?"

"Get... out!" she screeched.

"Yes ma'am," they said as they hurriedly closed her door.

Yelling was normal for the army she led. She would yell at them at any moment. For no reason.

She thought this was normal, too. She didn't realise people didn't yell at each other for no reason. She was raised to be yelled at. Y/N and Aria were always yelled at.

Y/N used the yelling to turn herself for the better. She thought of it as good parenting that she wouldn't replicate, ever, but she understood it.

Aria had a god complex. She only felt like she was worth it for 30 minutes of the day. And those 30 minutes were thrown into her work as Hour. She refused to work unless she was feeling her best, but if she was planning on kidnapping the Waynes, she'd have to learn to fake it.

Fake it all, fake nothing, fake everything. She was going to do what she wanted, maybe she'd extend those few and fatal 30 minutes of power into hours, into days. She didn't want to feel like this anymore.

She thought about how she was going to kidnap her own sister, her own flesh and blood, and possibly hurt her.

She pushed those thoughts away.

She refused to acknowledge the pain she was going to cause. She hoped there was none.

Y/N would understand, right?

---------------------------------------------

Aria groaned, getting up in her childhood room, the one she shared with Y/N. She blinked and tried to cling to her sleep, but to no avail. She was visiting their parents.

She looked over to Y/N's side. Her favourite colour painted the walls she had, all the woods matched. It looked far less messy than Aria's side. She figured it was because she was mentally ill, but not Y/N. But then she thought she wasn't mentally ill, and that Y/N was. Aria couldn't be mentally ill, she was doing the right thing.

The thought still pained her. In a few days, she'd be putting out a ransom for her sister in the news. She'd be threatening her life. She'd be putting her under stress and their parents under stress. If she was caught-

No, she thought. No chance.

----------------------------------------

Present-day.

"Aria?" Y/N questioned, basically in disbelief.

"Shut up!" Aria boomed back at her, "You," she said, lifting up Y/N's head with her long claws. "You are my prized possession."

"Prized," she echoed back.

"Don't worry, love," she said. Y/N winced, she knew her sister called her that. She didn't want to think this was her sister. "You will be just fine. If your parents pay up, that is."

"My parents don't-"

"Did I say you could speak?!"

She shut up. Fuck, she thought. Fuck this. Fuck you. I know that's you, Aria. If you can hear me, I hope you rot.

She didn't even know if that was how she felt. Her brain was spinning, like someone put her on a merry-go-round and left her there, to pick up the pieces. She didn't know how to pick up the pieces of her broken heart. She didn't want this to be her sister, her flesh and blood, the person she shared a womb, a room, parents, cousins, aunts, uncles- she didn't want it to be true!

"Maybe you want to know why I'm doing this," Aria asked the air while pulling Y/N's head up again. "Well, love.

"This is what happens when you date a rich man.

"This is what happens when you flip off the press.

"This is what happens when you find yourself wrapped up in the mess known as the Justice League Association, do you know who they are?

"Of course you don't. They're Batman, The Flash, Green Arrow, Superman, Green Lantern, Martian Manhunter, Wonder Woman, Black Canary, Aquaman and more.

"And their proteges, oh my God! Their proteges! You have Nightwing, Red Hood, Red Robin, Robin, Batgirl, Spoiler, Orphan.

"And then Kid Flash and Impulse.

"Arrowette and Speedy.

"Superboy, Supergirl.

"Miss Martian.

"Wondergirl and Artemis.

"Aqualad.

"These people, my dear. These people are my nemeses. And I want them gone!" she maniacally laughed, "Dead! All of them!"

"You're... You're Insane!"

"So be it!" she yelled back, striking Y/N's face with her claws. The blood running down her cheek along with her tears. "If I'm insane, then at least I get paid!"

She laughed and left the room.

And there Y/N was, alone in a room where she couldn't even make out details, with blood running down her face. While she was aware that her attacker may even be her little sister. She was terrified. Petrified. Scared.

She wondered where the Waynes were, maybe they were all together? So that she could use them for ransom, maybe she couldn't use Y/N for ransom, so she was left alone in the room.

She wanted to know if they were all safe. Jason and she had only been dating for 6 months, but she did care- love- every member of the Wayne family so much. And she knew that most of the kids struggled with mental illnesses.

She knew them being alone would be detrimental to their mental health.

She also knew that she had no way, no way, of getting to any of them.

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lets-steal-an-archive · 3 years

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'Golden Girls' Polishes Its Scripts: Daily Revisions Geared to Sharpen Story and Hone Those Laugh Lines

TRUE OR FALSE:

Actresses Bea Arthur, Estelle Getty, Rue McClanahan and Betty White write their own dialogue for "The Golden Girls." (FALSE)

Older female writers write all 25 episodes each season because no one else could understand the problems of older females. (FALSE)

In order to keep the shows consistent from week to week, one writer prepares all the episodes. (FALSE)

Ten staff writers work together to prepare a season's worth of scripts. (TRUE)

It's a Monday morning in early October and on a sound stage at the small Renmar Studios in Hollywood, the "golden girls" have gathered to read a new script. This will be episode No. 60 of the series and it will air about three weeks later — on Halloween.

Everyone in the room has heard about this week's story line: Rose writes a letter to Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev. But apart from the writers, no one has seen the final script until now. It was completed on a Saturday, photocopied 150 times on Sunday and distributed this morning to NBC; co-producer Touchstone Pictures; the show's creator, Susan Harris; the show's lawyers and researchers, and the "Golden Girls" cast and crew.

"Hopefully, they'll laugh," murmurs head writer Kathy Speer as she prepares to hear the "table reading." "If they don't, we'll be here fixing the script for a long time."

The table reading really is at tables — eight of them arranged in a rectangle. The actresses and guest actors sit on one side, facing the writers. To the actresses' left are director Terry Hughes, executive producers Paul Junger Witt and Tony Thomas and co-executive producers/head writers Speer and Terry Grossman. To the actresses' right sit NBC representatives, the show's casting director and props and wardrobe personnel.

They begin. Director Hughes reads the stage directions: Interior, kitchen — day. Sophia is seated at table. She is reading book entitled 'Magic Made Easy.' Dorothy enters.

Bea Arthur, as Dorothy, reads: "Hi, Ma."

Estelle Getty, as Sophia, reads: "Give me your watch."

Another week is under way. As the actresses go through their lines, everyone else listens intently. They laugh (or don't laugh) and take notes. By the Friday-night tapings, this script will need to play at 22 minutes. But Friday is a long way off.

As soon as the table reading ends, the writers, producers, director and an NBC program executive huddle to discuss script changes. Then, while the actresses begin rehearsals using the first draft, the writers rush off to their yellow stucco two-story building nearby to begin rewriting.

"The secret of TV half-hour comedy shows is the revisions," explains Dean Valentine, NBC director of current comedy and also the program executive on "Golden Girls." "What they start out with is 75% away from what they end up with."

"I don't think this episode is going to need much work," co-head writer Terry Grossman announces cheerfully on his way back to his office. "It got a good response at the table. We just have to cut it, smooth out transitions and clarify some story points. New jokes will be the tough thing." He anticipates a few hours' work.

"Early in the first season we were throwing out whole scenes," he recalls. "Now we know what works for each lady and what she does best. That's the advantage of being in the third year of the show. The disadvantage is that stories are harder to come by."

Grossman heads into the office he shares with his wife Speer, who is also his writing partner. They are in charge of the writing staff. "That means we are the two who get yelled at the most when something goes wrong," he jokes.

Also piling into the conference-sized room are supervising producers Barry Fanaro and Mort Nathan and producer Winifred Hervey. Despite their titles, Grossman explains, "We're all writers."

"We are the five most dull people," Nathan insists.

"We're much funnier on paper," Hervey adds.

These five, all in their 30s, met when they worked on "Benson," an earlier Witt-Thomas-Harris series. They have been with "Golden Girls" since the beginning, and every Monday they jointly rewrite the script being taped that week. They jokingly call themselves The Gang of Five.

While they start rewriting, the show's other five staff writers — Chris Lloyd, Jeff Ferro, Frederic Weiss, Robert Bruce and Martin Weiss — go back to their own offices to work on new scripts.

"To keep quality, you like as many writers as you can afford," Speer explains. "This year, we have six 'entities' (writing teams) — four sets of partners and two individuals. And we also use a few free-lance scripts each season."

Approximately 25% of the show's budget goes to the writers, executive producer Tony Thomas says. Staff writers on a comedy series earn a weekly salary plus separate payments for completed scripts. A free-lance writer who does a story outline, a first draft and a second draft can earn about $11,000. (Note: All outside script submissions must come through agents.)

"A good comedy requires a lot of teamwork, a lot of people sitting in a room working together," Thomas emphasizes. "A good team is rare, but it's not extremely rare. It's like winning the NBA title. We had it in 'Soap,' and we had it for some years in 'Benson.' Obviously this is one of the most successful staffs we’ve ever put together."

Both Witt and Thomas deal with day-to-day details on "Golden Girls." Harris, who created the series, is less involved this season because, according to Thomas, "She is working on a feature for Disney with us. But she reads all the scripts and is familiar with most of the stories."

Flashback to the previous Friday, a week when "Golden Girls" wasn't taping. Every fourth week during the season, the show shuts down, giving the actors and crew a rest and allowing the writers to catch up.

The Gang of Five is trying to explain how their writing process works. They insist on telling, rather than showing, because, as they say, they're shy. "At the beginning of the season, even having our new writers in the meeting made me a little uncomfortable," Grossman admits. "It slowed down the process."

"One of the most important things that exists with this group is that the bottom line is making the show as good as possible. It's still very difficult when your script is read for the first time and the material doesn't work. It hurts for a moment. But there's no time to take it personally. It didn't work, and the clock is ticking. You better keep moving and get it right."

Like all sitcoms, "Golden Girls" has a "bible," a book that synopsizes everything that has happened on a series. Thus, new writers don't have to watch all the previous episodes. But there is no master plan of what will happen in the future.

The idea for "Letter to Gorbachev" surfaced last May at a beginning-of-the-season meeting of the writers and producers. "It was one of 20 or 30 story notions kicked around," Barry Fanaro recalls. The obvious similarity to Samantha Smith's letter to then-Soviet leader Yuri Andropov isn't mentioned.

"Most of them didn't work,” adds Fanaro's writing partner Mort Nathan, "but this one sounded amusing. Because Rose is a childlike character, we wondered what would happen if she wrote a letter to Gorbachev about world peace. We started fleshing it out, but we couldn't think of a second act. We went round and round, and finally six weeks later we came up with a way to make the story work."

"The five of us went over it scene by scene and agreed it was workable," Fanaro continues. "Then Mort and I went off and wrote it. It took about 10 days because we were also working on other things."

Each "Golden Girls” episode is written to a formula: "the idea, the act break and the resolution," Grossman explains. "Usually there's an 'A' story and a 'B' story going. It's the natural structure."

Although Fanaro and Nathan, who won a writing Emmy last year for a "Golden Girls" episode, wrote the basic Gorbachev script, the story the audience will see has gone through the usual "Golden Girls" grinder: The Gang of Five read and dissect the first draft, adding new scenes, new lines, new jokes. "It's really a team effort," Grossman stresses.

The jokes can be the easiest part — or the hardest. "They're only hard to write when you've got one that isn't working," Grossman says. "A joke in the middle of a scene can be weak, but the 'out joke' — a snappy one-liner that ends the scene on a laugh — has to be strong."

"We may decide a scene needs a new opening," Speer explains. "There will be a long moment of silence. Then someone will ask if anybody's eaten at some new restaurant. In the course of conversation, somebody will say, 'Wait a minute. I have an idea.'"

"With five of us, at least one of us is paying attention," Hervey deadpans.

"Good writers should be able to write for men, women, old or young," Grossman says. "We all draw on other people in our lives — parents, grandparents. Part of the reason for the show's popularity is that these are very vital people. The very same story you've seen 100 times on every sitcom takes on new light with characters in this age group. That makes life easier for us.

"Also, these four actresses are sensational. To have the entire cast be able to give such high-caliber performances means you don't have to adjust your material. You write the material, and they deliver. If they can't make it work, there's something wrong with the material."

The week goes by quickly. On Tuesday morning, the "golden girls" read over the revised script and discover that one scene has changed considerably. Some lines have been cut, while others have been sharpened. There are several new jokes. A press conference scene has been shifted from a hotel room to the ladies' living room.

On Tuesday night, the Gang of Five works late. During the day's rehearsals they realized that the revised scene didn’t play well so they jettisoned it and added some new dialogue and a few more jokes.

Following Wednesday's rehearsals, they hone the script a little more. Time is pressing. By the Thursday afternoon dress rehearsal, the actresses try to be script-perfect, although they often aren't. By now, the original 52-page script has been reduced to 50 pages, and almost every page has had at least one alteration.

For instance, on Monday when Blanche accidentally spat Coca-Cola on a Soviet Embassy official, he responded by saying, "No apology necessary." Now he says, "No need to apologize. In Moscow, we have to stand in line four hours to get this."

Late Friday afternoon, the audience files into Renmar Studios to watch the first taping. The writers are standing by, just in case a last-minute problem occurs. During the 90-minute dinner break, while a new audience is arriving, the cast, writers and producers calmly discuss how to improve the second taping. A few lines are cut, the taping is completed, and it’s on to the next week.

Source: Mills, Nancy. 1987. 'Golden Girls' Polishes Its Scripts: Daily Revisions Geared to Sharpen Story and Hone Those Laugh Lines. Los Angeles Times, October 30, https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1987-10-30-ca-11702-story.html

#the golden girls #how the sausage is made #from the archives #tv writing #i just thought it was neat #long post

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