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makeste · 4 years

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the mortifying ordeal of being known... and rejected

or, how to create a self-fulfilling prophecy and get yourself stuck in a hole you’re too scared to try and pull yourself out of (by Bakugou Katsuki).

here is an observation: Bakugou often processes/hides/disguises fear...

uncertainty...

and even grief/guilt...

as anger.

the why, obviously, is because like most humans, he’s afraid of opening up and being vulnerable. but this post isn’t really about discussing the why. rather, it’s about the natural conclusion we can draw from this: that if the majority of Bakugou’s anger is in fact just his way of covering for his “weaker”, more vulnerable feelings, his doubts and fears, then that says a ton about Bakugou’s relationship with the one person he has always displayed the most hostility and aggression towards throughout his life.

so let’s talk about Bakugou’s actual feelings towards Deku.

disclaimer: I am not a therapist, or someone with any kind of psychology expertise; I am just a person that likes to read manga and think too much about fictional characters. so please keep in mind that even though I might not preface every single sentence here with “I think...” or “in my opinion...” obviously these are still just my guesses and interpretations and they may very well be wrong! the only one who knows for sure is the guy over in Japan drawing doodles of sentient flowers in his spare time, and I can’t very well ask him, so for now this will have to do.

so Katsuki and Izuku were childhood friends. let’s take this all the way back to the start. here we have two very young children who are introduced to each other at an age when they’re still young enough to have absolutely no secrets. they’re young enough to have not yet learned to be shy or self-conscious, or to downplay their enthusiasm so as not to let others know they care. kids that young don’t hide anything. they don’t lie or deceive. they don’t have agendas, and they assume that others don’t either. it is, in short, a very pure type of relationship in the sense that it’s honest and uncomplicated, that it is exactly what it appears to be at face value. their personalities are fully out there with no attempt at reining anything in. Katsuki witnesses the full force of Izuku’s boundless hero-worshipping energy and enthusiasm. Izuku witnesses the full extent of Katsuki’s relentless confidence and Peter Pan cockiness. both boys see each other for who they are in their entirety, and accept each other.

this is a fundamental bond. there is trust built between the two of them at a critical, formative age. it’s a relationship formed so early on that it’s likely that neither of them can actually recall a time before they met the other. they are and have always been a constant in each other’s lives. they’re a lot like siblings in terms of that kind of closeness and complete understanding of the other, both the good and the bad. in fact I’d say that Izuku’s use of “Kacchan” (and Katsuki’s automatic acceptance of it) isn’t that different from a younger brother’s use of “Niisan” for his older brother. it’s very revealing of the type of relationship they have. and that includes the typical sibling squabbles as well. it’s very much a relationship that’s taken for granted; there’s no filter, no effort to hold back, no attempt at trying to tone down their behavior around one another. there is whining and bragging and squabbling and name-calling and tears, just as much as there is cooperation and respect and trust. because at the end of the day, the assumption is that the relationship will endure no matter what, so they can go at each other as hard as they can and it doesn’t matter. the other one’s presence is just a given. that’s the kind of relationship that this term “childhood friends” really encapsulates, I think.

what I am trying to say here is that although it’s often viewed by fandom as an imbalanced relationship at best, and a toxic/broken one at worst, I think this is an incredibly important bond to the two of them. this is a relationship that has deep, irreplaceable value. the value lies in being known without having to suffer through the whole mortifying ordeal part. in the absolute, taken-for-granted surety that the other will always be there; in the constant, reassuring, and familiar presence; and in the security of knowing where they stand.

and what that in turn all means is that when four-year-old Bakugou Katsuki is struck by the thought that this relationship is being threatened, that the status quo may not always be quo, that the bond he’s come to rely on may have been built on a crumbling foundation, the emotional response which we are actually seeing here is not anger.

it’s fear.

this is the person who knows him better than anyone else does, and who, knowing all that, has always seemingly found something to admire in him. this is the person who’s always followed him no matter what. this is someone who looked up to him and believed in him, and whose belief and admiration perhaps more than anyone else’s filled him with pride and confidence. so the sudden fear, however ridiculous or unfounded (because at the end of the day he was just a preschooler, and that’s important to remember -- the fact that this fear, misplaced as it is, was based off of a scared four-year-old’s logic, and was incredibly real and overwhelming to said four-year-old), that Katsuki might lose this relationship -- or worse, the fear that the relationship was never real to begin with and was based on a lie and was unreciprocated and he was being strung along and laughed at behind his back the whole time -- is absolutely crushing to him.

because what he realizes in this moment is that in some ways, Izuku is already better than him at being a hero. and this realization, along with the fact that Izuku tries to help him and Katsuki misinterprets that as a gesture of pity or scorn, leads to a sudden cascade of other disastrous fears, including (1) the fear that Izuku is a sudden obstacle to his dream of becoming the number one hero, (2) fear that Izuku is looking down on him and not taking him seriously, and (3) fear that he won’t be able to catch up, because he doesn’t understand this mysterious quality that Izuku has, because that something isn’t physical strength, and that’s the only thing he’s ever considered up until now. and the one thing he does understand is that whatever it is (hint hint, it’s actually heart, and the determination to save and protect others), it’s something he himself lacks.

these are the fears which rise to the surface in this instant, and the fears which Katsuki is on some level at least aware of, and subsequently these are the fears which actually get confessed during Deku VS Kacchan Part 2 and are finally addressed. so all this is stuff we more or less already knew.

but here’s another thought: I believe that this whole time, there was actually a fourth underlying fear which has actually been at the core of all those other fears from the beginning, and which has stayed with him this entire time, and which is such a profoundly upsetting thought to him that he refuses to consciously acknowledge it at all, and yet at the same time also reconstructs his entire personality around it. and that fear is simply this: that Izuku is going to leave him behind.

that’s it. he fears being left behind and discarded by the one person who has always been there. and yeah, okay, I do realize that this is a particular take that will probably have some people going, “uh, what” and gesturing towards THE ENTIRETY OF BAKUGOU’S BEHAVIOR TOWARD DEKU THROUGHOUT THE WHOLE SERIES and raising their eyebrows. and look, yeah, I get it. the fuck kind of fanficcy, melodramatic “deep down the two of them were closer than anything” take is this. “you’re telling me Katsuki’s absolutely reprehensible behavior toward Izuku for a full ten years of their lives had less to do with him being full of himself and hating on Izuku for being quirkless, and more to do with him being sad and fearful and upset over the thought of losing his closest friend?”

but... yeah. that’s exactly what I’m telling you. because for starters, his reaction is about 50 times too over-the-top for it to be anything else. but because also, his reaction to this one fear is so starkly different from the way we’ve seen him react to all of those other fears. usually, when Katsuki is faced with a challenge, he has a very specific response:

so why, then, would his reaction toward Izuku throwing down the gauntlet be any different? hell, we’ve seen how he reacts toward people that are stronger than him (Todoroki), and towards people he thinks aren’t taking him seriously (again, Todoroki), and it’s completely different from how he treated Izuku. his entire personality shifted from being cocky and confident and nearly always having a grin plastered on his face, to him being hostile and defensive and antisocial and almost never, ever smiling. in fact he doesn’t ever really seem be happy at all.

so yeah. this is my take. he fears being left behind. it’s not just that he fears losing to Izuku; it’s that he fears losing Izuku. because of course he does, because given the significance of that bond as explained above, that’s the natural thing to fear. the two of them have always been together. he’s never not had Izuku there. and so he might bitch about it and act like he doesn’t care about it, but in truth it’s because he fears the loss of it so much that he lashes out defensively -- no you can’t push me away, if you even try I’m going to push you away first so you can’t hurt me.

because that’s what it is, isn’t it? bullying Izuku every time he gets too close. telling him over and over again to stop following him, and to not try and get into UA. Izuku, from his perspective, is looking down on him, so at the end of the day it’s just easier for him to convince himself that he doesn’t even like Izuku, that he’s just someone who’s in his way, and that Izuku isn’t the one leaving him behind, fuck that, he’s the one who’s going to leave Izuku behind. that it’s his choice. it just hurts less. fear as anger, because anger is just easier to deal with; anger gets you fired up and helps motivate you; and anger doesn’t leave you feeling as hollow inside. or at least it can help distract you from that feeling.

so. this is all pretty goddamn miserable, all things considered. and so it goes for the next decade of their lives. except Izuku never does go away. and then one day he goes and saves his life, and from there on out we basically know the rest.

fast forward to the present! or I guess technically three months ago, since as of chapter 257 the present is now Late March/DAWN OF THE FINAL DAY (24 HOURS REMAIN), apparently, and what I actually want to talk about now is the internship, and its impact on their relationship as seen since then.

I’ve already talked about the internship’s general impact on Katsuki in a previous essay, so I won’t really get into it at length again here, but basically the short version is that I think (or am at least hoping) that over the course of this whole thing, Katsuki finally started to broaden his perspective to be a little less self-focused. and as a result of that, I think that seeing Endeavor’s broken relationship with his family, and in particular watching Endeavor apologize to Natsuo and tell him “you don’t need to forgive me” (and Natsu being all WELL YEAH, I WASN’T GONNA) was kind of a much-needed kick in the pants for him as far as making him realize that his relationship with Deku, newly renovated and given a fresh coat of paint after the whole Ground Beta fight, and finally starting to look a bit like its old self again after all this time... maybe isn’t actually quite as sound as he thought it was.

and isn’t that a fun thought. because here they were finally starting to fix that shit after all this fucking time. after a decade of constantly worrying about Izuku surpassing him and passing him on by, he finally realized that this fear was unfounded the whole time... only to subsequently realize that there’s another reason now why that relationship might still be in jeopardy. that being the small fact that, oh right, Katsuki has been a straight up dick to him for the past ten years. oh shit.

this is something he never once thought about before. because previously he was too blinded by his own fears, and his conviction that he was the one being looked down on, and that Izuku was the one who instigated everything. and then once he finally realized he’d gotten it wrong, I think there was a delay before it finally hit him just how much hurt and harm he actually caused, simply because he’s not used to examining things from anyone else’s perspective other than his own. and then there’s also the fact that this entire time, Izuku has never once really shown any kind of lingering bitterness or hostility toward him in spite of everything. in fact he’s been seemingly overjoyed to finally have that friendship rekindled again, and he’s been more admiring toward Katsuki than ever.

in short, I’m pretty sure that up until very recently, Katsuki has just sort of been taking Izuku’s forgiveness for granted. just assuming that he already had been forgiven, even though yeah, okay, he was pretty bad. he just had no reason to think otherwise, because Izuku’s personality is so kind and accepting and understanding that he never even showed a hint of harboring any kind of bad feelings toward him over it. not to mention that all of the really bad stuff happened so long ago -- going on two years now! -- and Izuku has never once said anything about it! and so Katsuki, being the dumbass he is (and also subconsciously wanting to avoid the guilt, no doubt, because hoo boy, that is not a pleasant emotion at all), just sort of assumed that it was all right. that they were past it.

but... is that actually true? are they, really? or is he just telling himself that because it’s what he wants to think? after all, he did recently learn that he interpreted every single one of Izuku’s actions pretty much 100% wrong for about a dozen years. so fair to say he might not be so good at reading him. and, well... what he did to him was really bad. he was really fucking awful. regardless of how generous and kindhearted Izuku might be, Katsuki really has no right to just expect forgiveness, actually. he has no idea what kind of feelings are actually lurking there beneath that freckly surface. just look at all the resentment Endeavor’s kids have bottled up toward him for what he did. and maybe Izuku is only trying so hard to get along with him now because of what All Might said, about how the two of them are supposed to try and learn from each other. and isn’t it possible, and maybe even likely, that deep down he actually hates him as much as Natsuo hates Endeavor?

so there’s the bitter irony: Katsuki spent a dozen years believing that Izuku spited him, and trying his best to push him away so as not to feel the hurt of being spited, only to finally realize that the enmity between them was all in his head, and that in truth, he was the one driving the wedge in between them and chipping away at the cracks the entire time. that in reality he was the one doing the damage. that the thing he was so afraid of was never actually a real possibility until he brought it into existence, but that it does exist, now -- the possibility that their bond really might have been destroyed. and that it’s entirely his fault. that he created his own demons and dragged them into the light.

so now he’s afraid all over again, except that this time, he has absolutely no idea what to do. if he tries to push Izuku away again, he’ll only bring about the worst-case possible outcome that much faster. not to mention that he already played that song for more than a decade, and if there’s one thing it taught him, it’s that he hates that tune almost as much as the alternative.

so then what he should do, clearly, is apologize. that’s the right thing, obviously. the heroic thing. and I don’t think he’s incapable of moving past his pride in order to do it. and on top of that, I think he probably wants to apologize because he actually is sorry! but I do think there is something else that’s currently holding him back. and that something, once again, is fear.

Katsuki is normally one to face his fears head on. in fact, I’ve previously gone on record as saying that he would apologize without hesitation once he realized how badly he fucked up, because he’s not one to shy away from accepting responsibility no matter what the consequences. but now, though, I think that I was wrong. it’s not that he doesn’t want to take responsibility, or that he doesn’t think an apology is owed. rather, I think I underestimated just how great this one, last, biggest fear of his is. the fear of that possible rejection. the idea that Izuku might not accept. that he might say no. that it might simply be too little, too late.

it’s the one thing Katsuki has never been able to face. the fear that started this all to begin with. it’s the one fear that has shaped him since his childhood, and the one fear that he stands frozen and powerless against. the fear of having the one person who’s always admired him no matter what revealing that in truth, he doesn’t. the fear of having all his deepest doubts and fears confirmed. if he isn’t seen as redeemable or worthy to Izuku, who knows him best, who’s seen him at both his highest and lowest and understands him to a degree which one else does, not All Might (whose approval, by the way, also runs through Deku and which he also stands to lose) or his parents or teachers or his other friends... if he’s seen as beyond forgiveness by him, then that’s a blow he can’t recover from.

so now he’s stuck here in this precarious position with Izuku where he doesn’t want to take a step backwards again, but is too afraid to try and move forward. which brings us to the current chapter, where for the time being it seems like he’s decided to simply embrace the status quo, which in his mind is “rivals.”

so he’s leaning hard into that now, and simply pretending like things between him and Izuku have already been fixed, without actually taking the steps necessary to really move past it, because in the end it’s just easier. and I think that he will continue as is until that status quo either becomes too difficult or painful to maintain (i.e. the guilt becomes too much to bear), or until something happens to finally trigger a boost of courage in him, or a realization that he needs to stop being selfish and own up to his actions.

but eventually that will happen. and I think he knows that deep down. if nothing else, this is something that’s currently standing in the way of him becoming the number one. he has no right to ever call himself a hero if he can’t even muster up the courage to apologize, and to accept whatever consequences may come with that, just as Endeavor did, even if it potentially means being shut down and cast aside. he has no right to expect or demand anything else.

but at the end of the day, Katsuki is still only human, and still a young one at that. and he has only just gotten his friend back. and I can tell you right now that Izuku is not the only one who feels relief and even gratitude at being able to have a “normal-ish” conversation with the other after all this time, regardless of whether or not Katsuki might deny it. and really, there’s no rush. he’ll have to face it soon enough, and he knows.

but for now, this is nice.

#bnha 257 #bnha meta #bakugou katsuki #midoriya izuku #bakudeku #bnha #boku no hero academia #bnha spoilers #mha spoilers #makeste reads bnha #bakugou meta

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cancerfairy · 2 years

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Hi I'm here for the game and i want to break rule no 1 bc ur a bitch bro no cap and ur acc gives me very pretty vibes as i told you earlier when u changed ur themes like literally so pretty, too bad it's associated w you💔💔💔 super pretty theme feels like I'm in the Alice in Wonderland garden but ur scamming people anyways my initials are AR and here's an emoji ✨

the nonstop slander is crazy omg you're lucky i'm answering this you bum <3 i should just put your worst qualities tbh

☁︎︎ your best qualities:

one of your best qualities is your determination and drive. you seem to be someone with a lot of ambitions in life and you're set on achieving them no matter what. there's also a lot of duality to you as well. for example, you can be very observant and ambitious but you also have an ability to be carefree and playful. you're very optimistic, as well as charming and lovable. people really like being around you and you make others laugh easily. you have a very childlike personality and it allows others to be comfortable in your presence though you can be a bit chaotic at times. i'm getting that you're someone who makes choices from their heart rather than their head. this might cause a few fights with others but you definitely always speak your truth. also you have really good intuition and you're someone is very connected to your soul and you're deeply spiritual. you are someone who loves deeply and always listens to their inner voice. if someone gives you bad vibes you can always pick up on it. you have substance and depth to you that makes you wise beyond your years. you're very creative and someone who wants to head into the unknown. you might like taking risks and seeing what comes out on the other side. you like to try new things and likely get bored after experiencing them or you lose interest after the initial excitement has worn off. i think you believe in karma a lot? anyway.. you're very generous. you're very much a give and take person. you believe in balance and equality but sometimes you might give too much to others. you take care of others and deep down you have a very gentle nature.

☁︎︎ your worst qualities:

you're very indecisive but because you most likely listen to your heart when making decisions this could make you quite impulsive. you just charge forward without looking back or actually putting much thought into a decision. there's also a problem of staying stuck in the past and not establishing boundaries with others. also you might focus too much on drama. i'm seeing that you can be very sneaky and dishonest. you tend to put your nose in other peoples business quite frequently and yet you are also very suspicious of others. you often display erratic or imbalanced behavior and you're not very kind to yourself. you might have emotional outbursts when things get too hard for you or when you fight with others. i think you're someone who gets really irritated quickly or you get annoyed when people tell you what to do. it's highly likely that you dislike authority figures and you lack patience most of the time. you're someone who needs to learn how to control their temper. you have too much ego and tend to blame others when things go wrong but you hide your insecurities behind a funny or prideful posterior and you're always in "fight mode". even tho you're so intuitive you sometimes forget to listen to your intuition and your guides. i'm also getting that you can be quite miserable or even a loner when you're feeling down. you get really exhausted and lose the strength to continue on with things you're entangled with. yeah.. you just get very irritable and angry and it's like you want peace and quiet but there's never any of that around so it leaves you feeling exhausted and something or someone in your life drives you crazy. the advice here is to sit down and have serious patience with yourself. also stop being so suspicious of others! even tho it's understandable, give yourself reasons why you feel distrust and disbelief towards others. "knowing your own darkness is the best method for dealing with the darkness of other people". recognize your own faults and try to drop your ego so you can work on healing your deep rooted trauma. be kind to yourself and allow yourself to move away from things that cause you to feel off balance with yourself. lastly, trust your intuition and listen properly to your guides when they speak <3

#tarot game #shelly <3 #thank you for joining ♡︎#actually no #don't join next time <3

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twaktoe · 4 years

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Loyalty:

Okay so I tend to go on a liking spree on the awesome blogs that I follow once I hit my daily post limit.

And today whilst doing so, around 9-10 of the blogs had this common post “Loyalty is enough”

I wanted to reblog it sharing my thoughts but then it’d just be me adding to the post & in a way personally I think when I reblog something I’m supporting it or I resonate with that. Now I’m writing this post here coz I definitely don’t resonate nor connect with that feeling & like generally I put myself in the other person’s shoes & try seeing it and I’m like okay I disagree but yeah I can see where that opinion/view is coming from and I respect it even tho I don’t agree with it. Now coming to that post & I don’t mean any disrespect but jeez ? “Loyalty is enough” like really ?

I tried that statement in a ‘Friends’ perspective as well as ‘Relationship’ perspective. Now it’s not just this post in particular, there’s numerous other posts about loyalty and trust being an important factor for successful relationships & friendships.

That is completely BS. Loyalty & Trust is not an ASPECT of a relationship. It’s a GIVEN. In a friendship I can see that both trust & loyalty are a big factor and fine, friendships often get influenced by other friends/groups & slowly it fades but in a relationship ? I mean if Loyalty is enough, you’re better off just getting a Baskin Robbins loyalty card where you get a free scoop for the 5th time and 2 free scoops for the 10th time. Or Boost or Chatime or any food app that gives loyalty points. Where you stick with your favourite choice and you get rewarded after a certain time.

But in a relationship ? Hello ?!! It ain’t a bloody store where you walk in, purchase something, like it and give a guarantee to keep coming back only to that store/brand just because you liked the product/service. It’s a fricking ‘Life’ that you are willing to share yours with. I absolutely hate it when people say stuff like ‘I want to be with someone Trustworthy’. The moment you say that, you’re just chucking all the other qualities out of the window. I mean if you can’t trust someone or feel they could be disloyal, forget a relationship, I wouldn’t even recommend to have them in your life. Like seriously ? And LOYALTY is a word that should be used to describe for Dogs coz (1) they are THE BEST & (2) that’s just how they are. loyal. The second you give them a home, without a second thought you become their world and they abide with that. How can you even connect that to being a quality in a relationship ? Just take it, crumple it like a piece of paper and KOBE it into the bin as a 3-pointer.

Coming to TRUST. Now this is not about cheating or being loyal. Once again, trust is a given in a relationship & it should always be there between two partners but many a times it’s not just about behaviour. It’s also about feelings & emotions. At the beginning of the relationships when you feel safe, you feel warm - we always say ‘I trust you’ & I guarantee you 98.56% of the times no matter who says it, they don’t say it in a context of “ i trust you won’t cheat me & walk away with someone else” or “I trust you in a sense that you aren’t playing with me” but it’s in a context of “I trust my feelings with you” “I trust you to be my goofy, dorky sense which I can’t be in the society or simply don’t trust others to understand me being myself’ it’s always about one’s inner feelings & emotions.

Many often, this trust breaks & not because a girl/guy cheats & walks away. If they do that, they are simply assholes and were pretending to be someone else. And they will eventually get what’s coming to them but in true, genuine relationships - trust often gets imbalanced because one feels comfortable or enjoys doing something but knows that the other would dislike it or to an extent even get hurt about it. And that’s where the hiding or lying comes in. For eg. Smoking. I mean I get that the other person has the best interests & doesn’t want the other persons life to get shortened coz ‘Smoking definitely kills’ but in a way they also understand why the person smoking smokes & the other person caring dislikes it. Many a times even tho the smoker lies, the other somehow just knows that yup he(often it’s the guy) smoked but still doesn’t confront coz they understand. These little instances aren’t called a break of trust but more so of a silent trust between the two. And it’s upon every individual on how they’d react. Like me for instance, if I found out about the smoking, it would be like CONFRONT then and there. But it won’t be about the fact that “how dare you lie”, it’d be like “how dare you smoke again” or something in that context. But that’s not like “oh you are not a trustworthy partner” You know, I did try seeing from the other perspective here when they say “loyalty is enough” or “trust is an important factor” because obviously they been hurt to an extreme extent where they could have been cheated upon or horribly lied to all the time be it friend or an significant other but that does not imply you have to make them factors for the other person. Yes, there’s going to be horrible trust issues but you cannot let that be a factor of a relationship. Firstly you can date someone & they could be pretending but if you can’t trust that person while dating or even communicating, why on earth would you even picture a tiny picture in your head with them? And if your answer is “but I don’t trust anyone because of my trust issues” then I’m sorry but you have to work on that first. Forget a relationship. And if the argument is “all my last relationships I’ve been cheated upon” then I’m sorry that your luck sucked. It’s not your choice that sucked or that you made a bad decision. It was just lame misfortune that some fucking asshole or assholes (if there was more then 1 guy/gal) pretended to be someone else. But I can assure you, that not everyone in the world is untrustworthy. But if you don’t communicate about why it’s hard for you to open up & it’s not easy to talk openly in order to not get hurt again you’d simply just be disappointing the hopes of a wonderful person who actually cares about you & wants to know how you behave & think alone rather then how you portray yourself in the society. I’m really very sorry to anyone who has trust issues, to all those who say “I want someone trustworthy”, “loyalty is very important in a relationship”. I really am sorry about what happened in the past but please PLEASE don’t make that a quality or even an aspect of a relationship. Trust is basically a given & if you can’t trust someone you just take that person out of your life. Forget about a relationship but they don’t even deserve to be in your life in general. When you build towards a perfect relationship, as you grow together you keep adding steps one after the other with different qualities & aspects but Trust & loyalty are none of those. They are the foundation of your relationship & basically you start your steps from there.

The only time, your partners should be lying is when they planning a surprise. Apart from that nah!

Not that I’m a relationship expert to be preaching this, but it’s really sad that some amazing people I follow or even in general would have been cheated or lied upon to such a horrible extent that they make stuff like trust and loyalty an aspect. Please don’t(repetition, I know)

It’s not like either of my exes ever lied/cheated & I haven’t felt what the folks who’ve been cheated/lied to felt. And all the above is coming from a guy whose been scammed not once but TWICE. And that’s just another big story to tell but Il leave it at that. AND NO I’m not that gullible that people walk over me. I’m just saying that “keep an open mind & an open heart” if it’s hurt, take all the time you need to heal. But unless you feel you can trust people, don’t think about being with anyone. You got to be able to Trust in general before you think about trusting to be with someone. Well as for the guys/gals that broke your trust, Il just share this amazing scene from an amazing movie My Name is Khan. (If you hear it in SRK’s voice it’l hit you even harder) “My mom always said, there’s two types of people in this world. Bad people who do bad things & good people who do good things.”

If your experience has been with the bad people, you can TRUST me on this, the good people are out there.

#personal thoughts

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sorbet--shark · 6 years

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Werewolf!Virgil

I really want to participate in Sanders Sides Spooky month from @sanderssidesspook so I decided to write a human au with a werewolf!virgil for the monsters prompt. If people enjoy it, I might continue the story, so enjoy!

This is Part One, Part Two, Part Three

Ever since he was a child, Virgil had been cursed with a certain... affliction. This affliction had caused him to be wary of his location at night, and shun sleep overs entirely in his adolescent years. But now, his three partners wanted to move in together, and he couldn’t avoid it. If he moved in with them, he couldn’t avoid sleepy movie nights and cuddle parties, or star gazing on cold crisp nights full of laughter and hot cocoa. He couldn’t protect his boyfriends from himself. He would have to tell Logan, Patton, and Roman that he was a werewolf, or end everything to keep his secret. Virgil sat on his bed contemplating this, as he had for a week now. Suddenly, his phone buzzed, and Virgil picked it up.

One Notification

Night fall in a half an hour

Oh shit, Virgil thought, Gotta get to the basement.

Three Messages From Patton

Going out for pizza soon, wanna come :)

We’re leaving now, last chance!

Virg, we’re worried about you, are you having second thoughts about moving?

Virgil felt guilty tears prick at his eyes as he typed out a hasty, ‘Talk tomorrow, have a good time.’ Plugging in his phone, he picked himself up, and went to the basement. He locked the heavy metal door, and put the heavy collar around his neck. It was loose now, but in a few minutes, it would keep him in place, an extra safeguard against him breaking out into the neighborhood and causing damage and pain. He traced the claw marks on the cold cement as he was wracked with pain. His face and body shook as he transformed, and his human qualities were replaced by something stronger and more wild.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“Oh Lo Lo!” Patton laughed, hanging on Logan and Roman “That was so much fun! We should have pizza night every night!”

“While that would be ideal,” Logan states, “That would not be good for your health.”

“I just wish our Chemically Imbalanced Romance were here to enjoy the beautiful evening,” Roman mused, draping himself dramatically over Patton and Logan’s shoulders.

“You know,” Logan said thoughtfully, “He did give us his house key a while ago, we could check in on him.”

“Ok!” Patton shouted gleefully, “To the car, Batman!”

After a drive from the pizza place to Virgil’s house filled with singing from Roman, the three men hopped out of the car.

“This is weird,” Roman said, “I always thought Virgil was a night owl, but there isn’t a single light on.”

“Well,” Patton responded, “He could have gotten sleepy early, and decided to get a full night’s rest! After all, we have been telling him to get more sleep?”

Logan and Roman nodded and muttered in agreement, and Logan unlocked the door. The three men heard a whining echoing in the house. They all shared glances and looks of nervousness.

“Virg!” Patton shouted “Is everything ok?” The whining changed to howling, and the three shuddered as they heard the sound of clinking metal.

“I didn’t think Virgil had a dog...” Roman trailed off.

“Let’s find out if he’s ok,�� Patton said desperately.

“Maybe we should go. This could be why he’s so hesitant about night plans, or why he doesn’t want to move in, or why he always looks exhausted in the morning. It might be better to talk to him tomor-”

“No,” Patton stated with a look of steel that shut up Logan. “We’re finding him.”

“Okay,” Roman declared, “Let’s protect our Dark and Stormy Knight!”

After a bunch of searching, Virgil was nowhere to be found. Despite this, Roman stumbled across a heavy metal door locked by a pass code, seemingly the source of the strange noises.

“Guys, come over here, I think I found something,” Roman shouted, “Should we try to guess the code?”

“I suppose if we want to find Virgil, that would be the only place we haven’t looked,” Logan pondered, “But, there could be some danger down there. Think, if this were a horror movie, this would probably be the opening scene where three bumbling idiots unleash the evil and get killed.”

“Well yeah,” Patton said, voice wavering, “But this is Virgil, and we would do anything to help and protect him, like he would do for us! Plus, what if he has a serious problem? What if he needs our help but he’s too afraid to ask?”

“That’s enough convincing for me!” Roman said boisterously, “Let’s crack that code!” After several attempts to guess the pass code, the three finally got it with the date that all four of them officially started dating. Cautiously, they pushed the door open and crept down the stairs. Patton gasped as he reached the floor. A large, dark brown wolf was chained down to the ground by a heavy metal collar. It had purple eyes, and was whining while chewing on Virgil’s favorite hoodie. Logan came down next and stammered quietly, “Wh-what the, what on Earth is going on here,” and Roman almost shrieked, but covered his mouth.

The wolf looked up, and strained harder against his chain and collar, looking directly at Patton. As Patton stood, petrified, he recognized the wolf’s eyes. “Virgil, buddy? Is that you?” Patton put his hand out allowing the wolf to sniff it. “How-” Logan stammered and Roman gaped as Patton rested his hand on the wolf’s forehead. He whimpered and closed his eyes. Everybody was silent for a moment, until the wolf grew agitated. “Patton get back-” Logan began, but it was too late. He knocked Patton to the ground with his large paw, and ripped the chain clear off the wall. In a moment of what looked like regret, the wolf looked towards Patton, gasping for breath on the floor, but then he sprinted up the stairs and off into the night.

“Patton,” Logan asked after a moment passed, “Are you ok?” Patton nodded and pushed himself up dizzily. When the trio eventually went back upstairs, the wolf was long gone, the front door broken in half. They could only look down the street and wonder what had just happened.

#virgil sanders #patton sanders #roman sanders #logan sanders #lamp sanders #calm sanders #catsie writes

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etherealblasphemy · 6 years

Text

Falling Slowly

So I made a thing because pre-calc sucks and I wish it were summer already.

(based off the song “Falling Slowly” from the musical Once- go check it out, it’s awesome!) (apologies if the text messaging is difficult to understand. i spent an hour trying to format it in HTML but that didn’t work so here we are.)

update: here’s where you can read the sequel, Africa!

…

“I don’t know you,

But I want you”

…

He knew he should’ve brought an umbrella. He had glanced up at the darkening sky as he closed the door of his townhouse and shrugged, figuring it was simply overcast, as it had been for the past week. He hadn’t expected his bus to be more than half an hour late, nor had he expected for the clouds to open up and let out a torrent of rain beating down on the roof of the little shelter. The bakery wasn’t more than a minute’s walk away from the stop he got off at, but he would’ve preferred keeping his hair dry.

Virgil pulled out his phone once more, trying to update the bus schedule to see how much longer he’d have to wait for the absent bus. Out of the corner of his eyes, he saw someone sit down on the other end of the bench, dripping wet and coughing. He chanced a look at them and nearly dropped his phone in the puddle of rainwater at his feet.

The man was gorgeous. His skin was perfectly smooth, almost like a statue sculpted by the gods. His hair was soaking wet, droplets of water rolling down his face as he flicked his head, throwing the curly brown locks out of his eyes. A tooth peeked out of his lips, biting down on the pink flesh as a soft sigh escaped his mouth. His eyes- holy shit, his eyes- were the color of hazelnuts, full of warmth and laughter and met his for a fraction of a second before they flickered to the rain pouring from the heavens like the tears of some divine being.

The man slipped off a red jacket, shaking it. Virgil continued to watch him out of the corner of his eyes, entranced with this beautiful newcomer. His phone buzzed, making him yelp as he saw a text message appear on the lock screen.

“Hey, kiddo! I checked WMATA’s website, your bus seems to have broken down about a mile away! They’ve almost got it fixed, it shouldn’t be more than 30, but i thought i’d let you know so you don’t worry! See you at the bakery, kiddo!! :DDDD!!!” it read. Virgil smiled at his friend’s kindness, almost able to hear Patton right behind him, telling another awful dad joke that would still make him snort.

At least he knew now when the bus would come. He felt his gaze wander back towards the pretty man, a blush creeping onto his pale cheeks as he caught notice of the man’s tight white shirt slightly tugging at the muscles underneath.

“Dammit, Logan,” he whispered, adjusting his shirt. “I told you, this is a hand wash shirt; it can’t be thrown in with the colors, it’ll just shrink.” Virgil would never admit it, but he secretly thanked whoever this Logan person was for making the shirt caress the planes of his body just so, altering his mortal appearance into that of a god. The blush on his face spread to his collarbones. Ah, fuck.

Virgil averted his eyes, dragging them back his phone were they should be. If he focused enough, he could hear the man’s quiet breaths over the sound of the patter of raindrops. NO. No. No, Virgil, show some restraint. He stared intently at the little white lights on the screen, willing the little butterflies in his stomach to fuck off. His last relationship hadn’t ended well, to say the least.

He jammed earbuds into his pierced ears, playing his list of rainy day songs on shuffle. He nearly gagged as the first song turned out to Falling Slowly. The first line, mournful and bittersweet, swam through his ears as his eyes glanced back to the man sitting opposite-

Holy shit.

Virgil blinked hard, tilting his head more to confirm, yes, really, the man had scooted down the bench. Closer to him. He made some awkward sound of surprise, grabbing the man’s attention.

“Bless you,” he mumbled as Virgil muttered a thank you, hiding his blushing head in the blinding lights of social media. The man fiddled with the arms of his jacket as Virgil watched from the corner of his eyes.

Virgil’s heart was hammering. Ooh, he was in deep. Chewing his lip, he sent an SOS to Patton.

[chat log: he regretti the spaghetti]

chemically imbalanced: patton help cute boy @ bus stop

he regretti the spaghetti: Omigosh WHAT?!! PICS PLEASE

[chemically imbalanced has sent one image]

chemically imbalanced: sorry quality sucks

he regretti the spaghetti: Don’t tell me you’re crushing…?

chemically imbalanced: fuck that sixth sense of yours

and.

yes. i think i’m crushing

he regretti the spaghetti: JSABJGFHKJ YES

WAIT TIL I TELL REMY

chemically imbalanced: he scooted closer, what do?

he regretti the spaghetti: Scoot closer, of course!

chemically imbalanced: WAT.

NONONONO WHAT IF HE FINDS IT WEIRD?

he regretti the spaghetti: Virge.

i can hear your typing from here,

Don’t worry!

I will physically fight him if he hurts my son

chemically imbalanced: pfft

shit i think he heard me laugh

eeeerrrrgh he’s smiling at his phone what if he has a bf????

he regretti the spaghetti: Well you can break them apart! :D

chemically imbalanced: patton wtf

he regretti the spaghetti: I’m kidding! :)

Anyways

Back on subject

SCOOT.

THE BOOTCH.

chemically imbalanced: if i move closer will you never use that phrase again

he regretti the spaghetti: DEAL :D

Virgil sighed as he turned off his phone, feeling his anxiety swell. He gave him a side glance and saw him still entranced with his phone, shaking his head as he let out a little sigh. If he actually did have a boyfriend… he shut down that thought.

He took a deep breath. Here goes nothing. Slowly, he shuffled down the bench as his anxiety screamed this was a horrible idea. He kept his eyes trained on the falling rain, chewing his lip faster as he stilled his movements, his eyes flickering quickly to the man, who hadn’t looked up from his phone.

All at once, the silence was interrupted by a loud voice. Virgil startled, clapping a hand over his mouth to muffle his shriek. The man sheepishly answers the call, cutting off General Shang in the middle of his belting as Virgil paused the music he was listening to.

“‘Sup, Logan?” he answered. Oh, God. Logan might be his boyfriend, which would explain why he was washing this man’s clothes, though maybe they were roommates, but maybe he actually- Virgil let out a whistle of air between his teeth, breathing firmly.

“Oh, come on, nerd, I’m not that late to band practice… Well, it’s not my fault the bus broke down! ...Yeah… Elliot’s on their way, they shot me a text just now.” So that’s who had him smiling at his phone. Were they…? “Yeah, they were telling about some more of October’s antics. I swear, that kid has too much energy for the morning. Apparently they met some kid named Ed in school yesterday and wouldn’t stop talking about hamsters or something? I’m not really sure what happened.” The man laughed, throwing his head back, flicking away the rain that still clung to his hair.

Virgil felt his heart skip a beat. Oh, sweet MCR, he was cute.

“Don’t you fret, dear noble,” the man said suddenly in a theatrical manner. “Your prince shall arrive to rescue from distress!” Virgil unconsciously scooted closer to hear Logan’s response.

“...last name…” was all he heard.

Virgil crossed his legs, hoping to draw attention away from his colored cheeks. He studied an ad on the side of the bus shelter, promoting a new show at the local theater. Maybe he’d check it out.

“Alright, Calculator, I gotta go. Keep that guitar tuned for me!” The man gave another chuckle that gave Virgil a storm of butterflies in his stomach. With a start, he realized he had moved closer to the man, almost able to reach out and touch this divine figure sitting beside him.

He pretended to look for the bus, stealing a glance at the man. Up close, Virgil could see hints of a golden eyeliner, making his hazelnuts eyes stand out against dark eyelashes that enticed Virgil to touch them and see just how soft they were. His eyes seemed to smile at Virgil, promising him a tomorrow and a today and a yesterday and an always.

[chat log: he regretti the spaghetti]

chemically imbalanced: i swear on the holy emo trinity i’m love with him

he regretti the spaghetti: Woah, that’s pretty serious, Virge

Are you sure, kiddo?

After, y’know...

chemically imbalanced: i don’t know

...

what am i supposed to do?

he regretti the spaghetti: Try talking with him

chemically imbalanced: holy shit he just scooted

we’re almost touching

he regretti the spaghetti: IS THIS A DRILL

VIRGE, THIS IS GREAT!!

chemically imbalanced: NO IT’S NOT

WHAT IF I LED HIM ON AND HE GETS MAD

he regretti the spaghetti: If he’s a good person, he won’t

Good people understand if you explain

chemically imbalanced: HOLY FUCK HIS HAND IS JUST THERE

AT HIS SIDE

LIKE HE WANTS TO HOLD MINE

he regretti the spaghetti: THIS IS NOT A DRILL

I REPEAT, THIS IS NOT jfhgashel

chemically imbalanced: patton?

he regretti the spaghetti: vee, it’s remy get to work and stop distracting patton

chemically imbalanced: yessir

he regretti the spaghetti: and you better tell me everything when you get here

chemically imbalanced: fuck

He was breathing too fast. His heart was beating too hard. His mind was racing. His cheeks were blushing. He could hear Patton in the back of his mind, telling him to breathe. To focus on one thing and one thing only. He concentrated on the rain, still pouring from the sky like whoever was up there had a broken heart.

He unpaused his music, the sounds of Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova crooning together filling his ears as he tuned out everything else- except the man beside him. His hand was right there. Right. There.

Virgil swallowed thickly, and dared to put his hand down on the bench. He held his breath. He could see the man’s hand out of the corner of his eye. Their pinkies had but a breath between them. If any one of them moved, their hands would touch. The thought made his heart skip a beat, and made his stomach crawl. What the hell had he gotten himself into?

He saw movement and panicked.

He stood up suddenly, startling the man, who yanked his hand away as if it had been bitten by some venomous creature. “I’m sorry,” he blurted out, hating how his voice noticeably cracked. Virgil grabbed his bag and ran, the rain soaking his face mixing with the storm pouring out from his eyes.

…

“Raise your hopeful voice

You had the choice

You’ve made it now”

…

Others would have been brokenhearted. Even others would have been mad, distraught, or confused. But not Roman. He took it as a challenge, this mysterious shadowling who had fled from the bus shelter, soaking his beautiful ebony locks tied back in a small ponytail at the nape of his neck.

Every day, he went back to the bus stop. Normally he’d walk to band practice, but after that chance encounter with fledgeling thunderstorm, he couldn’t help himself from going back to the bus stop everyday to see if the man who listened to Falling Slowly loud enough for him to hear was back. Something in him yearned to see his enigmatic eyes again, to unravel all the secrets of this pretty mystery, to learn his name and treasure it like gold.

It had been almost a month now. Either the guy had just been looking for an escape from the downpour, or he was avoiding Roman. Roman didn’t know which thought made his heart hurt more.

Roman walked sullenly to the bus stop today. It was overcast and chilly, much like that fateful day, and the gloom of the world was starting to make him doubt that the shadowling would ever turn up again. He looked up from the slate sidewalk as he neared the stop and choked on his breath.

There he was, lissome as always, the tintinnabulation of his earrings enrapturing Roman immediately. He was focused on his phone, typing away rapidly. Roman sighed happily, sitting down on the bench opposite this enigma as discreetly as possible.

[chat log: dic(k)tionary]

prince charming: Logan.

Logan.

Logan!

dic(k)tionary: I’m not talking until you tell me where my glasses are.

prince charming: NO TIME LOGAN

HE’S HERE <333333

dic(k)tionary: Who?

Oh, is it ‘Hot Topic’?

prince charming: Obviously hun

[prince charming has sent one image]

dic(k)tionary: If you want advice, give it up.

Where are my glasses, you CENTURION?

prince charming: *sigh*

they’re in your I Believe mug.

dic(k)tionary: Thank you.

And also why did you actually type out “*sigh*”?

prince charming: Why do you actually type out grammar corrections?

dic(k)tionary): Fair enough.

My advice to you is to see what he does.

Perhaps you were being too forward last time.

Let him make the first move.

If he shows indications of romantic interest,

you can take things from there.

See you at band practice.

…

Good luck. :)

prince charming: WHY DIDN’T I THINK OF THAT THANK YOU

THIS IS WHY WE’RE FRIENDS

LOVE YOU NERD

:DDD <3333

Oh. Now he had to wait. Great.

Roman twiddled his thumbs as he leaned back against the bench, sighing. He peeked at the mysterious man, who had yet to look up from his phone. He looked up towards the sky, which was growing darker and darker by the second. Good thing he brought an umbrella.

As it would turn out, the bus was late again, up to its usual antics, as per usual. Roman saw the first few drops of rain splatter the pavement a few minutes later, the calming pitter-patter soon escalating to a full-on northern downpour.

He chanced a glimpse at the one he had fondly nicknamed Hot Topic and felt his heart sink. Nothing had changed. Should he really wait for Hot Topic to make the first move? What if Roman had been leading the poor man on? He brushed his curly bangs out of his face, deflating. Perhaps the man didn’t even like, and the whole thing had been a trick of the mind-

He heard something shuffle. His eyes went wide, his breath hitching, his heart swelling with the possibility that maybe, just maybe, this whole not-exactly-a-plan of his would work. He waited a beat before briefly turning his head to look. His heart soared, an eagle navigating the dusty skies of the savanna.

Hot Topic had slid down the bench, still as a statue as though waiting for some sort of reaction from Roman. Holy shit. Holy shit, this was happening. He wasn’t dreaming, of that he was sure. Roman let out a breathy giggle, quiet beneath the steady drumming of rain on the roof of the bus shelter.

[chat log: dic(k)tionary]

prince charming: LOGAN HE DID IT

HE SLID CLOSER

WHAT SHOULD I DO???

dic(k)tionary: I told you.

“If he shows indications of romantic interest,

you can take things from there.”

prince charming: BUT WHAT DO I DO

dic(k)tionary: Roman.

You do whatever your heart tells you.

For lack of a better word,

duh.

Roman held his breath, and moved over on the bench. He could feel his palms sweating beyond belief as he bounced his leg rapidly in hopes of quelling the anxiety rising up inside him. He let out a rush of air. Do what his heart told him, eh?

Well, his heart told him to run off with this dream of a man, riding upon a majestic horse off into the sunset of a thousand hues. And Roman was pretty sure that’s not what Logan had meant.

His attention was grabbed by someone coughing. He looked up at the man and held his gaze, his eyes met two violet irises filled with wonder and hope that whispered to him tales of a day by the beach, resting in each other’s arms, of a day in bed, cuddling together, of a day spent sneaking glances at each other when the other wasn’t looking, creeping closer together on a bench of a bus shelter they just happened to be in together on a rainy day.

They broke their gaze at the same time, faces flushing with color and painted with hopeful smiles. Roman was struck with an idea. He took a deep breath and began to sing. “Take this sinking boat and point it home, we’ve still got time.” He heard a gasp from the pretty mystery as he joined in.

“Raise your hopeful voice, you had the choice, you’ve made it now.” Without thinking, Roman slid the remaining distance to the man and crashed into him, the touch of their shoulders electrifying and invigorating and everything he ever hoped it would be.

They finished the song, falling into silence that brought youthful hearts to the brink of madness, wondering who would speak first.

Roman’s hand fell back to bench, jolting slightly when it touched warm flesh rather than the cold bench. He saw the pale hand and followed the path of the arm attached to it to meet with those awe-inspiring violet eyes that made his heart tremble with want.

He knew what he had to do.

He turned his whole body towards this mysterious man and stuck out his hand, smiling genuinely. “My name is Roman Prince. What’s yours?”

The rain calmed down, two crepuscular rays of light breaking through the storm clouds to greet the two strangers waiting side by side at bus stop, strangers no longer, but two people falling slowly.

…

“Falling slowly

sing your melody

I'll sing along”

…

#prinxiety #fanfic #Sanders Sides #Sanders Sides AU #human AU #falling slowly #my writing #Virgil Sanders #Roman Sanders #look at my references #I tried to format it all cool and fancy but tumblr said fuck that #so now I just spent half an hour of my life adding chat names #and I don't regret a single thing #Patton Sanders #Logan Sanders

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driftingglass · 7 years

Note

You: I want to protect Deku from all the harm in the world!! / Also you: *ships him with the very person who caused him suffering for 10 years*... huh, okay

I actually kind of want to thank you for being cordial about this instead of just… insulting me anonymously like others.

Granted, I just ignore them/delete them, but still. It’s appreciated.

Since you honestly seem a little bit curious and confused, I want to answer this with a more specific response! So thank you for being reasonable about it.

There are some things I want to clear up first.

You’re completely entitled to your opinion on a ship, my anonymous friend, and I also respect and understand why people hate the ship and even Bakugou as a character.

Do I share the same feelings? No, not at all, but I definitely understand it.

It would be dreadfully boring if every human who experienced the same artistic medium had the same exact opinions and points of views on a character/ship, no?

At least, I would think so. I love the variety in opinion and watching different people fall in love with anime/books/movies, whatever, in totally different ways and coming out of them with multiple conclusions is wonderful to witness.

It… almost feels similar to getting angry with someone for picking green as their favorite color, and because it’s not your favorite color you argue about how the different shades don’t make sense and shouldn’t be acknowledged as a favorite.

(Not you, specifically, Anon, but more of a general “you,” if that makes sense.)

Alright. So.

What draws me to the the Bakugou Katsuki / Izuku Midoriya ship, and the two characters individually (as well as their canon dynamic) is based on the concept of healing, forgiveness, growth, redemption, understanding, mutual respect, and genuine deep-rooted pain and realistic acknowledgement of the gratuitous and toxic elements of their relationship.

And this only scratches the surface, believe it or not.

Yes, Bakugou Katsuki treated Izuku horribly while growing up (hell, he’s still an egotistical asshole). The infamous line in the manga/anime with Katsuki suggesting Izuku “find a Quirk in the next life” is inexcusable, and he should be held accountable for this.

We’ve been allowed glimpses of their dismantled friendship at Katsuki’s doing, and Izuku’s equally flawed and dangerous perspective in placing Katsuki on a pedestal for his admiration.

Before I go further with this, I want to touch on things about how I view Izuku as a character, since something in your anonymous message struck me, with the quote you had written:

“You: I want to protect Deku from all the harm in the world!!”

The thing is, when it comes to characters, and Izuku in particular… I don’t think I’ve ever adopted the mindset of “must protect the precious baby,” because I personally view Izuku as a very relatable and human character.

I know that this doesn’t cancel one idea out from the other, since many wonderful authors/readers/viewers/consumers, whatever, who like BNHA have this same viewpoint. Clearing this up so that nothing is miscommunicated.

So.

This may seem strange, and a bit… actually yeah this is a little weird, but as a viewer, I see him as someone who strives for an incredible goal, is very determined, much stronger than he appears (and believes) both emotionally and physically, and it’s slowly becoming a surprise to both himself and everyone around him.

But I see him as not just a character, per say, but a definite reflection of the other side to his dynamic to Bakugou Katsuki.

(Will touch more on this later.)

He’s been acknowledged as a beloved presence, and I actually don’t like viewing Izuku as a “precious cinnamon roll,” because he’s so much more than that.

QUICK NOTE HERE: I do not think it’s wrong to think of him this way. This is how I personally think, and how I want to hopefully portray the character in fics I write, or just in a general acknowledgement of him.

He’s a character that thrives on a complex personality and series of motivations that make sense for a character his age, with his history, and with his flaws and strengths as a protagonist.

Izuku being “adorable” falls to the very bottom of my list of reasons why I love and relate to him as a character, and when he engages in horrible situations that challenge him, I live for those moments.

(I know I’m not alone in this. Bear with me.)

I love seeing characters like this suffer and get thrashed and struggle in the face of their darkest times. It shows depth, and a sense of darkness that defies the overly comfortable image that comes across in an anime that is, quite objectively, a bit less of a risk-taker in the earlier arcs in comparison to others.

So, with that in mind… it makes sense why people can’t stand Bakugou Katsuki as a character for treating Izuku like he does, and it also makes sense why Izuku is shipped with just about anyone who can grant him that feeling of “must protect.”

Again, there is nothing wrong with this.

In fact, I want to point out, for the sake of people who can’t stand BakuDeku and enjoy other ships, that I see, respect, and completely understand why you feel the way you feel.

There’s even a strong sense of admiration for it, because you wonderful people are coming from a place that wants Izuku Midoriya to have a stable dynamic.

This is an incredible, awesome, respectful thing, and shows so much love for Izuku as a character.

So at this point, it may seem that I’m arguing against myself. That I’m shoving my own argument into the ground for why BakuDeku is my Number Two OTP, and how I’m arguing for its validity.

But, this is where I want to put some light onto the perspective that I have for this ship, and I don’t think I’ve ever gone this deep before on Tumblr.

I mentioned a little bit earlier that part of what makes Izuku shine as a character is how he affects other people. He brings out elements of characters that they won’t even realize themselves. (Todoroki Shouto, Shinsou Hitoshi, and All Might are both huge, and popular, examples of this, even though they’re not the only ones).

His drive and his motivations are directed towards an incredible goal that is founded in the roots of his passion. And this aspect of Izuku? This passion, this drive, this embodiment of equal strengths and flaws balancing and cancelling each other out as he grows and learns?

They are reflected in none other than Bakugou Katsuki.

I’m in love with the depth to this dynamic, with the potential that’s built on what they could accomplish together.

Izuku cares deeply for Katsuki, and admires him and respects him, but even with that in mind he knows that Katsuki is an asshole. It’s important to acknowledge this, that Izuku will not let Katsuki take advantage of him in any way.

And Katsuki, quite evidently, hasn’t attempted to take advantage of Izuku at all; in fact, he’s been only focused on what he wants to accomplish, and is overly obsessed with Izuku potentially surpassing him and “looking down on him” (as confirmed in the story.)

Katsuki is dreadfully immature in a lot of ways, but the fact that they contain so many similar ambitions, balanced on top of a quite impressive tower of flaws that parallel each other perfectly… this, is what draws me to them.

Izuku and Katsuki are both incredibly ambitious and determined. They both work exceptionally hard.

I wrote a list awhile back that needs to be updated again anyway, so…

Here are some general contrasts/parallels to them:

Izuku is humble, while Katsuki is egotistical.

Katsuki is prodigiously talented, while Izuku had to go the extra mile, despite them both being hard workers.

Izuku lacks self-preservation, and Katsuki looks out for himself, first and foremost, and how he will accomplish his goal.

Katsuki exhibits elements of both an intense superiority/inferiority complex, while Izuku… doesn’t.

Katsuki is more instinctive with his actions, while Izuku is analytical and a definite planner.

Izuku’s Quirk is more focused on the all-embodying element, like a supercharged mechanism that can both protect and damage in spurts. Katsuki’s Quirk is designed as more of a shield for himself only, and can release constant bursts of power. The more they develop, the more similar their Quirks can become in terms of balance.

Katsuki is exaggeratedly egotistical and lacking humility, pushing others away and immediately accepting himself as the greatest priority. Izuku is the exact opposite, but with a quality just as exaggerated and vast: his anxious hesitation and lack of confidence in himself and only believing that he can succeed with others.

Izuku’s struggles in confidence is mostly internal and how he thinks of himself. Katsuki’s confidence is both too bloated for him to handle and in the exact same plane as Izuku’s.

Izuku admires All-Might for being the ultimate protector and savior of lives with a smile on his face. Katsuki is focused on the idea of winning, and how heroes always prevail in the end.

I could go on and on with this… but yeah.

Something I noticed, as well, while writing this, is that Katsuki and Izuku’s contrasts, while very prevalent, are often rooted in similar, if not the same, bedrock of emotions that affect them differently because of their personalities.

Sometimes their points of views and emotions are so balanced and imbalanced at the same time that it takes awhile to look back and think through all of those individual moments.

And so, before this gets too unbearably wrong, I’m going to bring this home with emphasizing the main point of why I love writing this ship: it’s a challenge.

A huge. Fucking. Challenge.

It begs the question: how can you make this ship work? How can you make their potential dynamic come together and brush through those layers of misunderstandings and reckless emotions?

How can Bakugou Katsuki pull his head out of his ass and realistically come into his own while learning to appreciate the person who’s respected and admired him for so long?

How can Izuku Midoriya learn to stick up for himself when it comes to Katsuki and allow them both to be on equal ground, rather than Izuku always chasing the other?

How can they get over their differences, and develop something beautiful and, dare I say it, healthy, after a possible length of years and years of mending?

For me, this ship demonstrates the gray areas of relationships, and the possibility of redemption for even the vilest people.

For me, this ship revels in the depths of Izuku’s character as well as Katsuki’s, and how their dynamic can develop into something founded on equal respect, grounding, and healing.

For me, this ship focuses on the damaged elements to both characters and embraces the toxicity to their current circumstance, as well as the awful and wonderful elements of their relationship down the line.

For me, BakuDeku | KatsuDeku focuses on drama, realism, emotion, and the ultimate idea behind rebuilding, protecting, forgiving, and learning to pick up the pieces from one person to another.

There are no excuses for the damage done between these two.

But there is something really beautiful, and tragic, about the potential in the horizon.

So those are my thoughts.

Thank you for inboxing, Anon.

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the-cryptographer · 7 years

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on fathers and sons - an index of YGO abuse narratives

When discussing Noa’s arc, it seems like people place a lot of emphasis on this moment and declaration from Seto:

It’s a very stark and strong moment - Seto’s rejection of Gouzaburou, and I think it’s right to take this into account. But I think maybe we should be putting just as much, if not more weight, in the sequences in Noa’s arc following this. Particularly in the structure of Seto and Noa’s duel:

Make no mistake. This is a duel set up to run on Gouzaburou’s terms. Seto and Noa are fighting in the understanding that there’s only one living body between them, and the winner will have proven themselves superior and the rightful heir to Kaiba Corp. They are fighting for the right to Gouzaburou’s legacy, and the loser will be left behind in VR. To Lose is to Die.

Continued under the cut:

Noa believes he has the upper hand, both because he was born and bred for this job. And because he outstripped the boundaries of humanity when his mental capacities were enhanced living in VR.

Seto is not impressed with this line of reasoning.

Not only did Seto put in the hard work and struggle to inherit Kaiba Corp. Noa’s already dead. He’s already lost once by Gouzaburou’s terms. Seto accepts the challenge to duel in the understanding that Noa was the loser once, and a loser once is a loser always.

...Both ultimately betray Gouzaburou’s teachings during this duel - Noa by cheating, and Seto by both admitting there are things more important than his own life on the line here in deciding to save Mokuba, and in Atem helping him finish the duel after he’s petrified. (Notably the BC final duel also subverts Seto’s expectations for loss, in Atem’s ability to find a method to save Malik’s life in their shadow game.)

But before that moment of truth, you’ve certainly got a lot of trash talk, some of which seems to betray certain line of reasoning from Seto.

[Insert long speech about the value of humans having to struggle against the chaos of the real world versus this VR of Noa’s creation.]

“Of course Gouzaburou loved me more! Gouzaburou must have been confused if he even considered that you might bet the better or superior compared to me! How pathetic of either of you to even doubt! He acknowledged me as superior - and the result of duel is going to prove him right!”

Okay, I’m being hyperbolic but, contrary to what you’d believe from the first set of caps, I think what Seto says here, combined with the circumstances surrounding this duel, betray a certain amount of Seto deeply desiring recognition and acknowledgement from Gouzaburou. Or at least recognition and acknowledgement for having the qualities that Gouzaburou would have valued.

I’ve seen people pan the direction of this arc, and Noa as a villain, specifically on this basis. Seto should, in theory, not care about what Gouzaburou thought, and thus not care about stomping out Noa’s desire to prove himself the worthy son. Gouzaburou was his abuser, no real parent to Seto, and therefore Seto should not care. And, make no mistake, I think Seto’s hatred for his stepfather is clearly documented.

But I’m going to defend how Noa’s arc frames this conflict and Noa as a villain, and the idea that Seto may have feelings regarding Gouzaburou that are rooted in a desire for acknowledgement and affection. There is very little of Gouzaburou in manga canon, nothing that would generally suggest Seto having any conflicting fond feelings for him - although I think the fact that Seto continues to make decisions to build and destroy duel towers in the memory of Gouzaburou might be indicative of the fact that he cares a little too much.

But the reason I think this is a particularly good extrapolation from manga canon, is that it matches the themes we see in REPEATEDLY in the narratives of abuse that ygo offers to us.

I’m sure you’re aware that the surplus of absentee and abusive dads in DM, it’s… a bit of a joke. Even for characters for which you can assume a somewhat normal family life, such as Anzu and Honda, there’s a kind of sense in the story of a lack of presence from their parents. Which I would expect in a manga filled to the brim with ~adventure~ How are the characters gonna pile onto ships and blimps and go traipsing off to Egypt if their parents are always bugging them about school?

Well, I guess Yuugi has somehow managed to make it onto ships and blimps even with his mom bugging him about school…

There are multiple layers to this – The fact that absentee dads have become a norm in Japan given the increasing demands of corporate life. The fact that in a measure of personal experience a dead parent is much the same as an absent one – but dead parents make for better narrative drama. The fact that we never see Atem and his father together and are instead relayed an inherently biased posthumous recollection of their relationship. And the fact that there’s a kind of woefully imbalanced attribution of certain roles onto certain demographics of character. On that last point – I think it’s telling that, as a whole, it’s elder male children that are victimised in Takahashi’s narratives of family. It’s telling that mothers have an even smaller presence in Yu-Gi-Oh than fathers (and that when Yuugi’s mom hits him with a ladle up there, it’s framed as a joke). And it’s telling that father-daughter relationships are also very poorly defined. I’m going to give Shizuka a pass given the discrepancy in hers and Katsuya’s living situations, but I think it’s a pretty huge oversight that Isis’s relationship with her father is as unexplored as it is. (If I’m being brutally honest, I don’t think Takahashi empathises enough with his female characters to understand how they might, also, be deeply unhinged or affected by trauma.)

But, although I can critique the way Takahashi repeatedly approaches this same narrative – the narrative of a young man at odds with a cruel, violent, and single-minded father – I can’t help but love it, as I am perpetually surprised and enamoured with the amount of understanding, empathy, and realism Takahashi allows to his victims. This cuts in a lot of different ways, but there is one aspect that I particularly appreciate:

He not only understands that it’s normal for abused children to be angry and vengeful, but that it’s also normal for them to care about their parents regardless and to desire reconciliation with them, no matter how unlikely or misguided. And they are not shamed for it.

Jounouchi ended up being the prototype for this character in ygo canon, although these threads were dropped by the time the card game started. We see the gang caught of guard by an attack meant for Jounouchi.

And Honda confirms this behaviour is typical of Jounouchi’s dad.

But when we see Jounouchi’s attitude towards his dad, it’s warm and full of forgiveness. He enters a game show with the intention of winning money to pay off his father’s debts-

-specifically on the hopes that, by winning, he’ll be able to repair their relationship, and live together happily.

Gouzaburou was introduced next into the narrative, but Otogi and his father followed not far after.

Otogi’s father, Mr Clown, hits and berates him.

But, even so, Otogi continues to seek revenge on his father’s behalf.

And, beyond that, he’s very mild and apologetic.

Even when he’s pushing back against his dad, he’s apologising. This is framed as a harsh moment of rebellion - one that shocks Mr Clown - but all Otogi does is disobey his father’s request, and snatch the puzzle’s chain from his hand. And he’s still apologising while doing so. I think it goes to show how uncharacteristic it is for Otogi to express any harshness towards his father.

And, even when Mr Clown renounces Otogi as his son-

We see Otogi afterwards (on Jounouchi’s urging) hurry to cradle his father in his arms and and lead him to safety, and away from the fire that’s started in the Black Clown game shop.

But maybe the most persuasive show of Otogi’s desire to reconcile with his dad, is that he succeeds. They seem to be on good terms in Darkside of Dimensions, have opened a new business at the shopping plaza together.

I think Malik embodies this pattern most completely though. His abuse is portrayed with imagery more gruesome than the other characters on this list. His father’s whip, and the scars that were carved onto his back.

I’ve seen people operate under the impression his beef with the Pharaoh has to do with being confined to life underground, or having his back mutilated as part of the tombkeeper ritual, or for twisting his father’s personality into something terrible. I’m not going to say that those could not also be factors in Malik’s motivations. But the primary motivation for his behaviour in BC, is textually that he believes the Pharaoh’s spirit is responsible for killing the father that he loved. And being unable to accept the fact that the father he loved was also the father he hated enough to kill himself.

(Also, wow, panels that make much more sense after DSoD. If Bakura was surprised because Shada reappeared despite having been killed 3000 years ago, why was he not surprised to see modern incarnations of Isis and Set. Except in addition to killing Shada, he also killed Shadi ~5 years ago. Now his surprise makes sense.)

But, yeah, this vein is carried through to the end of Malik’s story arc. He’s not able to forgive himself for killing his father, no matter how abusive or terrible, he’s only able to decide, with encouragement from Rishid, that it’s preferable to keep on living.

Anyhow, insofar as Seto goes, as I’ve said, there’s scant evidence to draw from regarding his feelings about Gouzaburou. But I think it’s prudent to consider, as with the rest of these characters, his feelings are probably not limited to disdain. According to Takahashi’s commentary, Seto does consider Gouzaburou a father and is has been deeply haunted by his involvement in Gouzaburou’s downfall and death. Taking it a step further, it’s entirely likely that, he feels some form of fondness for his lost parent. No matter how misguided and futile such feelings would be.

#Kaiba Seto #Kaiba Noa #Jounouchi Katsuya #Otogi Ryuuji #Malik Ishtar #Kaiba Gouzaburou #Hank Ishtar #why is my tag for malik's dad 'hank ishtar' it's undermining how overly gd serious this post is #meta #DeLurk words the meta #save me from this card game hell #cw: abuse #i pulled these caps from here and there and everywhere #the Otogi ones I took pictures of myself which is why they're so bad #but thanks again @nenya for getting me the ones for the YBakura & YMalik duel and of Seto in front of the duel tower #i'm so sick of this post. i refuse to look at it any longer.#*sends out for other ppl to look at instead*

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fortunezed · 4 years

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5/23/2020

Summer break just started and it already feels mostly ruined.

Hey, look, a quality I don’t have!

“Strength reversed signifies weakness. You may be doubting your own journey and feeling vulnerable. Remember that you do have inner strength to call upon. Reconnect with the Chariot’s lesson of self-confidence to find balance. In love readings, [this] can be a positive sign that love is going well, though it may be imbalanced. Are you overestimating the strength of the love you’re receiving? Maybe it’s time to reflect on why. Be careful, and don’t push for something that doesn’t come naturally to the other person. [This card’s message] is patience and tolerance. This card[] can also mean that aggression is an issue for you. You need to take steps to learn how to control your raw emotions, or you will hurt someone you love.”

Hey look, more stuff to be insecure about! So today amounted to more disappointed talks from my family, spending about an hour crying, posting something that I had to quickly reassure people about because it looked like a suicide note I would probably write if the situation arose, getting ice cream, replaying a game I loved but was trash at, remembering how much I wanted the remastered version, and talking with my cousin while getting destroyed in 2K. Yeah, today was a mes and a half, but in a good way. Now to what the card says. Why yes, I am weak, thanks for noticing. There’s also the fact that I doubt most of anything about myself that can be construed as a positive quality. I also have a lot of anger issues, thankfully none that are expressed with physical actions, though my voice tends to pay the price. Definitely feel like getting angry at the wrong time is gonna screw me at some point though. Oh yeah, I also passed Physics, so I only have to retake the one class...I mean I’ll take it?

Accuracy rating: 4/5 - *insert self-deprecating not joke here*

Oh yeah, I’ve also been wondering about having an 8th card to forecast the week, and maybe that’ll warrant an extra post, I dunno.

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sshbpodcast · 6 years

Text

Tales from the Holodeck: Star Trek/Star Wars Mashup: Ames’s Story

In celebration of A Star to Steer Her By’s second anniversary, we broke out the "Tales from the Holodeck” fanfic again and wrote up some mashup stories combining Star Trek and Star Wars! We picked our series and allowed the force to guide us where we went from there. You can listen to all the fanfic on the podcast, or read them here! This is Ames’s short story written out. Live long, prosper, and may the force be with you.

[images © Lucasfilm, Disney, CBS, Paramount, etc.]

“The Solo Algorithm”

by Ames

Random Picks: Star Trek: TNG / Star Wars Anthology Series

I'd been staring at the plans for the Death Star for the entire morning, poring over every detail of the computer code until I could see them burning on the backs of my eyelids. My head buzzed. My office appeared blurry. This was easily the biggest project I'd worked on, so complex that I had to keep a cheatsheet next to my monitor with all the algorithms scrawled in my unsightly handwriting. My intercom shouted at me every few minutes with new requests until I had to turn on the auto-response so I could claw at the blueprints for some futile minutes in peace. I came to the determination that whoever had designed this project had fucked up.

I flipped the intercom back on. "You have 1001 messages!" screeched the mechanized voice of the auto-response system. "Press one to hear your messages!"

I dialed in the number for the inventory manager, whose line was also going to auto-response. A curt, concise: "Inventory. Please consult the database."

Rolling my office chair behind my desk, I bumped the rear wall of my cube. We were not allowed windows. We were not allowed doors. We were not allowed to see any of the other workers in untold other cubes, fitted only with enough room to sit at our computers and stare at the wall of monitors while we incessantly worked through what was assumably the workday. Sometimes I could hear the occupants of neighboring cubes bump against my wall and mutter some profanity, occasionally an apology. A tiny, simple houseplant I'd custom-designed and printed sat on my desk so that I wouldn't go stir crazy.

I brought up the database and started searching through it. We could build starships, we could design worlds, we could create artificial beings with personalities that could fool a Turing test, but whoever maintained the database was the true mastermind of this operation. The task sheet was several thousand pages of cells that delineated the job breakdown because we had to account for everything, no matter how minute, and whoever had bungled the Death Star would be on it somewhere.

It was afternoon when I'd tracked down the culprit out of everyone else developing the plans. I pulled up an extension number with no name – we didn't go by those – and called their intercom. They didn't have their auto-response on.

"Make it quick; I've got to finish this damn thing," came the genderless voice on the other line. I would never meet this person, as I would never meet any person here. It's possible I'd spoken with them many times on countless other projects, and just as possible our degrees of separation had been infinite until today.

"Uh. Hi. Say, have you noticed something wrong with the Death Star plans?" I asked. I stared at my little houseplant and drummed my fingers on my desk.

My counterpart groaned. "You're obviously going to have to be a whole lot more specific than that." I could hear them typing nonstop through my earpiece, working endlessly even while we talked.

I pulled up the design plans again and zoomed in. The pixels fuzzed and then sharpened as I scrutinized a certain section that had gotten me scratching my head. "Well… Uh, take a look at the superlaser reactor," I started. "I'm kinda reviewing the code and, uh, if there were a pressurized explosion there-"

"The whole station will blow. Yep," they said, as matter-of-factly as possible.

"Oh, so you're working on it? I figured it was a mistake and I just wanted to make sure-"

"No, you don't get it. It's supposed to do that."

I stopped fidgeting in my chair and stared at the intercom as if I expected to see something there. My brow thoroughly furrowed, I managed a "Wha- Why?"

They snorted at me. "Players have to be able to beat the Death Star – it's the damn trigger for the next cut scene." It sounded really simple and obvious when they said it. We builders don't always think about the reasons behind the designs we construct; we just do them to check them off from the inexhaustible database, which assigns us a new project, and on and on into oblivion. They continued, "No one's gonna play the damn game if there's no way to beat this level. Didn't you read the wireframe specs? The flaw is there intentionally for the storyline to- Oh, goddammit shit on a fuck! Hang on!"

I jerked my chair away from my desk and smacked it against the wall. My adjacent unseen neighbor yelled something muffled and I could hear them give the wall a hit with the palm of their hand. "Sorry!" I called out.

In my earpiece, the codewriter on the intercom was still letting out a raucous stream of profanity. "Cockass fucking shithole piece of hell!" they shouted.

I hesitated between hanging up on them so they could get back to their obviously important work, and apologizing for existing in the first place to wreck their day so utterly. "Oh jeez," I stammered, "I shouldn't have brought it up; I- I- I'm sure you've got it under control. I, uh, I'm sorry to have bothered you."

"No, for fuck's sake, it's fine, dumbass. The Death Star is ready to roll out, dammit. It's just this other project just keeps not coming the hell together. I'm supposed to be coding Han Solo and he keeps coming out fucked up."

"I'm sorry," I squeaked.

"Stop apologizing! Now I've got to undo a day's worth of edits on his stupid charisma levels, but then his whole personality generator will be imbalanced and he'll just be too much of a miscreant for this assignment. This whole character sheet is fucking impossible. I wish I could just start from scratch and delete this son of a bitch."

My hands were shaking as I listened to them shout at me over the intercom, and I focused on my tiny potted plant. I had made it to give me something real to look at in this grey, claustrophobic mimicry of an office, otherwise made up of screens and machines. Everything else black or metal, even my hulking metal desk. The plant was just a couple tiny leaves, simple, uncluttered. I could have made a flower, but the greenness of the ittybitty leaves were just what I needed to make myself feel composed, justified. Like my existence in this world were validated. I took a quick breath before gliding my chair closer to my desk. "Well… Then why don't you?" I asked.

"Why don't I what?" came the clipped reply. I heard more frantic clattering which echoed from the keyboard, more muffled cursing.

"Start from scratch? I do it all the time."

"What are you talking about? That's a waste of time. I've already got so far into developing this feckless cad. You have no idea how long- how many hours I've spent staring at- ugh, and he's got this fucking idiot ponytail I'm just sick of too! I just want to cut it right off his damn head!"

I tried not to laugh. Smiling, I went on, "You don't know about the Star Trek universe, do you?"

"What? No. The what?"

All of the developers loved the Star Trek universe. It was enormous. It contained nearly everything we'd ever created to date. And everything in it came from mistake after mistake after mistake, growing and evolving into the most realistic world we'd all ever built. And it would never see the light of day.

"It's only where we've been dumping our botched projects for as long as I've ever known. What? You can't delete this Solo guy? Then I say scrap him for anything useful, rename the original file to anything else – uh, Okona or, I dunno, literally anything, – and dump it into the Trek ether. Here, I'll send you a link that a bunch of us have been using. I've got a ton of crap floating around in there."

I found the link to the virtual environment and messaged it to the developer's extension. Over my earpiece, I could hear the message pop up on their screen with a cartoonish bouncy sound. "This is a fuckin' live world?" they asked, incredulous.

"Yeah sure! I mean, it's programmed to never leave the test environment, so it'll never be found, but yeah. You put something in here, and you get it off your plate, and you can, I dunno, start over from the beginning . I do it all the time. I was on the Game of Thrones project and broke one of the Dothraki's foreheads somehow – really rough day, don't ask – so I renamed them Klingons and basically threw them in here. Now they're one of the biggest races in the universe."

"The garbage universe?"

"Ish? It's been running on its own for a long time now. And all the beings in there have their free will turned on, so they just sort of go, and write their own stories, and stuff like that. It's a downright lifesaver sometimes."

I'd heard about the Star Trek universe early on from another developer. This jury rigged quickfix had been passed along from person to person in this office as a way to work around efficiency checks and quality assurance, and it was rather brilliant. Another coder who kept bungling a Gandalf for the Lord of the Rings virtual reality game told me about it. They couldn't get the long white hair on the wizard to attach properly, so they just shaved it all off, renamed the file Jean Luc Picard, and shoved it in there. I heard that character's a starship captain now!

As far as I can tell, the first usage of the Star Trek universe was when someone was building The Master from the Doctor Who VR, accidentally overpowered the character, renamed him Q, and gave him sentience. After the coverup of that mistake, the whole galaxy started to come together on its own and turned into this enormous, complex behemoth where the characters have no idea that they are programs, the worlds are first drafts that have evolved into huge functioning civilizations, and the stories write themselves into the cosmos of what's effectively a galactic recycling bin.

My counterpart was silent on the other end of the line for a long time, without even more typing to be heard. They spoke in an awestruck whisper. "I'm looking at this universe, and holy shit."

"Yeah, I know."

"Thanks a shit-ton for showing me."

"Hey, no prob, really, just doing what anyone would do."

"Who are all these space elves I'm seeing?"

"I dunno. Probably Vulcans? They're sort of neat," I said.

"Why isn't THIS what we're building?" they finally exclaimed in ecstacy. "People would play the hell out of an open-world sandbox program like this! It's fucking majestic! It's… it's everything!"

I didn't have an answer for that. We developers try not to dwell too much on our purpose in life, spent forever logged into office cubes, staring at blinding monitors, where we create everything the database tells us to whenever a project calls for a new character or item or vehicle or anything, no matter how big or how small. We have to account for all of it while we literally build the world and everything represented in it.

"Yeah, it's pretty great." I hesitated for a second while I couldn't stop from smiling at the sheer splendor of the world we'd unknowingly nurtured. "Hey, can I tell you something, friend?"

"What's that?"

"Can you go check how a planet called Bynaus is doing?"

"Bynaus? Uh, sure. Let me see." I heard some clicking and waited for a reaction to what they might see. "There's a little humanoid being down there. Cute little shit."

I trembled, grinning, tears starting to form in the corners of my eyes. "That… That little humanoid… That's me."

"That's you? You built yourself?"

"Something like myself. Like, an interpretation of myself. I kinda wanted some version of me to exist somewhere in the playable universe. Maybe it's stupid-"

"Naw, it's not stupid, it's cool," they scolded me. "You named yourself 01?"

"It's from my extension number."

"Oh my god." There was another pause and more clicking I could hear. Finally, the other spoke up. "I'm gonna build myself to keep you company. I'm gonna be 10."

"Oh! You don't have to do that…" I was surely blushing, though the other developer would never know it.

"Already did. I just copied your file and mirror imaged it. Stupid easy."

I opened the universe and watched the two Bynars – me and a nearly identical programmer I would never meet – as they conversed rapidly to each other, going about their days as if they were real people, ignorant that they were just two pieces of code living in a virtual world.

"I should get back to my jackass Han Solo problem," they said. "I may keep the vest, but everything else is just horseshit."

"Sure."

"Nice talking with you."

"You too. Hey, another suggestion," I said.

"What's that?"

"You should print yourself a houseplant for your office. They're nice, I think."

I logged out of the office environment at the end of the workday, and pulled the virtual reality set from my head. I immediately felt ten pounds lighter. And that night, as I stared out my apartment window at a slightly pixelated setting sun and a program depicting a city full of apartment buildings implying masses and masses of people, I felt optimistic about the world for the first time in a long time. "Computer," I said, as I stretched my legs and shook out my arms, "load program Star Wars: Escape from Corellia."

Thanks for reading! If you’re hungry for more, check back here for Caitlin, Jake, and Chris’s stories, revisit our first batch of TOS fanfic here, keep listening to the podcast, and follow A Star to Steer Her By on Facebook and Twitter. Be sure to tip your yeoman!

#star trek #star trek TNG #fanfic #Star Trek Fanfiction #podcast #star trek podcast #star wars #han solo #okona #death star #black mirror #gaming #bynars #game of thrones #lord of the rings #doctor who #star wars fanfiction #rogue one

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365footballorg-blog · 6 years

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Armchair Analyst: Battle of East titans, Darwin's debut & more from Week 7

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April 15, 201810:21PM EDT

“To find out what one is fitted to do, and to secure an opportunity to do it, is the key to happiness.” – John Dewey

As I wrote last week, we’re not quite at “You are what your record says you are” territory just yet. The schedule’s been too imbalanced, the sample size is too small and there are too many other variables – including a still-open transfer window, a still-ongoing continental Cup competition, and a cadre of still-integrating offseason acquisitions.

But while we’re not yet at that truly measurable phase, we have just about hit the point where we’re figuring out if teams are figuring it out. The results are predictably mixed, but at the very least we have an idea of who’s on the road to improvement and who’s on the road to nowhere.

We are just under 20 percent of the way through the 2018 MLS season. There are three exceptional teams (you could argue a fourth depending upon how you feel about the Red Bulls) so far. It pays, at this stage, to be ruthlessly pragmatic about a team’s relative strengths and weaknesses. That way lies happiness.

This Must Be the Place

One of those exceptional teams will be playing in the Concacaf Champions League final on Tuesday night. The other two played in front of 45,000 screaming fans in Atlanta on Sunday night.

Atlanta United’s 2-2 draw against visiting NYCFC was riveting in just about every conceivable fashion. David Villa returned from injury (he’d played tune-up minutes Wednesday in a 4-0 destruction of RSL) and returned to the scoreboard. Ezequiel Barco finally got on the field. Alex Ring scored a golazo. Miguel Almiron was everywhere. The setting and the quality of play were both off the charts, and while the LA vs. LAFC game will linger longer in the minds of MLS fandom, I think this game was the best I’ve seen all year.

There are tons of reasons why, including the above. But the big ones for me were how 1) Patrick Vieira’s gameplan to eliminate central midfield caused the Five Stripes to have to make a major adjustment, and then 2) how they were able to make that adjustment on the fly in order to start pulling the Pigeons apart.

Through the first 23 minutes the game was something close to one-way traffic, with NYCFC dominating the ball and where either team could use it. That was the point where Almiron, Greg Garza and Leandro Gonzalez Pirez engaged in some on-field problem-solving:

Almiron having to drift toward the flank to get on the ball. Look at Garza pointing where to pass to.

Three minutes later, a similar sequence led to the first Atlanta United goal. Good problem solving with NYCFC taking away central midfield. #ATLvNYCpic.twitter.com/mRacgdcnEA

— Matthew Doyle (@MattDoyle76) April 15, 2018

Almiron was nominally a forward on the day, but NYCFC had so walled-off the midfield that he’d been starved for service and zero percent influential in the first quarter of the game. So then instead of having him drop back into central midfield in order to get on the ball, Almiron started flaring wide while Garza – a wingback – began pinching inside in order to create overloads and suck opposing defenders to him.

You can even see Garza pointing toward Almiron in that clip, telling Gonzalez Pirez where to pass to. A couple minutes later a similar sequence led to the game’s first goal.

NYCFC’s adjustment to Atlanta’s adjustment was twofold. First, right back Anton Tinnerholm stopped going forward, instead acting as more of a distributing hub rather than an overlapping threat. Second, Villa mostly pressed up higher instead of dropping back to get on the ball as they decided “You know, we’re probably good enough to get one if we just play through him, and it’ll give us a little bit more solidity.”

And that’s how you got to the final score of an exceptionally intricate, well-played game. I think these are the second and third-best teams in the league, and I’m pretty sure they just showed us all why.

Houses in Motion

I’m going to break my own rule and write about a single team in consecutive weeks here (I try to spread the love, but sometimes a story just persists and I feel compelled to keep picking it apart).

In this case, it’s FC Dallas. And FC Dallas are interesting first because they are one of the handful of teams in MLS that, I think, could reach the above level. It’s where they were at 12 months ago, and it’s where they were at for most of the two years prior to that. I’m not sure where they’ve been since mid-July of last year, but “First team in MLS history with back-to-back 60-point seasons” is still in there somewhere.

Secondly, they looked like they figured something out this weekend in a 1-0 win over a pretty feisty New England team. Dallas, as they often do on the road, came out in a low-block 4-4-2 designed for the counterattack. They generated some great chances that way, and Cristian Colman – stop me if you’ve heard this one before – left the bulk of those on the table. (I’d still like to see him get a run of six or seven straight games to see if he can’t find a finishing rhythm, and it’s perhaps telling that when Oscar Pareja had to make a sub to get out of the 4-4-2 and into a front-foot 4-3-3, it was Colman and not Maxi Urruti who stayed on the field).

But yeah, I just gave it away: Pareja changed the game when he changed the formation. Too often folks use “formation” as a stand-in for “tactics,” and it’s important to know that’s bad and wrong. Those are different things with different meanings.

At the same time, they’re often related and on Saturday they definitely were. The goal of going to the 4-3-3 was to push their own midfielders up higher, to close down any easy distribution from New England’s defenders, and to give Wilfried Zahibo one too many runners to keep track of in the final third.

And so…

That’s Jacori Hayes’s first career goal, and he deserved it. He was the best player on the field.

The larger point is that Dallas showed a level of flexibility and intentionality in their approach to this game that’s largely been absent since last summer. They were far from perfect – the Revs had their chances, just like los Toros Tejanos did – and they’ll have to perform better in the coming weeks, and they’ll have to do the above with Mauro Diaz on the field. It’s not going to be easy.

And yet they’ve managed not to lose so far in 2018, which is a big step given how ugly 2017 was. Plus they’ve now collected road points, and they’ve done so in an unexpected but utterly rational way. It was fun and good.

Does this mean Dallas are back, or even that I expect Dallas to get back to where they were before the Big Gloom of the past nine months? I sitll have my doubts. But after that win I’ve got fewer than I did a week ago. FCD seem to know a little bit more about who they’re supposed to be, and few things bode as well as that in the long run.

A few more things to ponder…

10. As I mentioned in the first segment, RSL got killed midweek in a game that was neither as close nor as competitive as the very lopsided scoreline indicates. The Claret-and-Cobalt were completely undone by NYCFC’s decision to use Jesus Medina as a false 9, a tactical shift that highlighted the disconnect between the RSL central defense and central midfield.

It was more than just tactics, though. RSL didn’t track runners, didn’t close down passing lanes, and didn’t ever seem to work in tandem to clear danger. This is a team that still looks like they’re in preseason.

9. Philly don’t look like they’re still in preseason. They just look like they have no idea how to finish their chances, and that continued to be the case in a soul-crushing 2-0 home loss to Orlando City. Let’s let Montreal Impact and Canada legend Patrice Bernier diagnose part of the issue for the Union:

Forward and Midfield line to distant and spread out. Sapong often gets ball back to goal with no quick options/outlets around box. Could lead to shots from outside box and quick combination play and final pass to wingers also.

— Patrice Bernier (@pbernier10) April 14, 2018

Yup.

After scuffling along through most of March, Jason Kreis has mostly pulled the right levers over the past two weeks. In this case it was giving starts to Stefano Pinho and Chris Mueller, two of the heroes of Week 6’s epic comeback win over Portland. For the Purple Lions it seems like it’s about guys winning jobs, not just losing them – an important and valuable distinction.

8. Friday night’s other encounter was up in Vancouver, where LAFC broke their two-game losing streak and hung a 2-0 loss on the punchless Whitecaps.

Vancouver didn’t have any ideas as to how to consistently advance the ball into the attacking third without Kei Kamara’s knockdowns. So they tried to possess more, and when they did that they opened themselves up to some danger via LAFC’s counter in the other direction.

Ultimately, though, it wasn’t the counter. It was Carlos Vela and Diego Rossi, the two LAFC DPs, doing what they’re paid to do.

By the way, as LAFC have taken nine points from the first five games of their franchise-opening six-game road trip, I’m willing to call said road trip a success no matter what happens in Montreal this coming weekend.

7. The other team in that group of three elites I mentioned are, of course, Toronto FC. They went to Colorado on Saturday, played most of the bottom half of their roster and lost 2-0 to the Rapids.

#COLvTOR summed up in one meme. pic.twitter.com/ybuifwmEw8

— Colorado Rapids (@ColoradoRapids) April 15, 2018

This was a pass/fail proposition for Colorado, with nothing more to be taken out of it than that. They passed. Onto the next one.

6. Three appearances, one start, two game-winning goals for Zlatan Ibrahimovic. There was nothing at all pretty to be taken from the Galaxy’s 1-0 win at Chicago on Saturday as it was played in the driving wind and rain that that gave the Second City its, um, other nickname.

That said, the Fire’s Dax McCarty is worried.

“That’s what we are,” he said after the game. “We’re below average right now. The results speak to that.”

Chicago are 10th in the East with four points from five games. They’ve won just one out of four at home, which is not great news for a team that traditionally struggles outside of Bridgeview.

5. D.C. United traditionally struggle outside of Washington, D.C., but they did manage to get a win in Annapolis on Saturday, beating the visiting Crew 1-0 at the Naval Academy. It’s D.C.’s last home game for three months, at which point Audi Field will open and they’ll have a big old hole to dig themselves out of in the second half of the season.

Columbus are skidding. They’ve lost three straight and been shut out in three straight on the road. The chances are there, but they’re just pounding the woodwork right now.

While I think they’ll be ok in the long run, it’s probably fair to start asking questions of DP winger Pedro Santos. His movement and vision are fantastic, but he’s managed just 1g/3a in 1688 MLS minutes (regular season and playoffs) which is simply not good enough for a player with his role. Columbus need goals from their wingers or they’ll drop down to the playoff line – and perhaps below it.

4. Yeah so my general take is that the Red Bulls are going to be fine. Tuesday night’s loss to Chivas was among the most disappointing in MLS history for literally any club, but they followed it up by thoroughly outclassing Montreal by 3-1 in Harrison on Saturday. Here, let’s argue about Kaku!

I understand Bobby’s point and, by extension, Jesse Marsch’s. But I’ll stand by my take: In big moments, you need players who have a little bit extra something special, and you need to play your best players in their best spots. To me, starting Kaku vs. Chivas would’ve given the Red Bulls a better shot at both of those.

3. Darwin Quintero’s debut was good stuff for Minnesota United. He got on the ball a ton, scored one goal and basically created the second, was willing and able to combine around the box, should’ve had an assist on a nifty chip to the back post that I still can’t believe Christian Ramirez wasn’t able to rise up for, and was often the best player on the pitch.

But the Loons lost 3-2 at the Timbers. Quintero isn’t going to solve the fundamental question this team’s been trying to answer since their first-ever MLS game (which also happened to be in Portland): Can they defend? So far the answer is a resounding “no.”

Same, by the way, for the Timbers. Portland’s actually conceded more goals than MNUFC this year – 14, which is tied with RSL for league worst. They seemed totally determined to let Minnesota back into a game they should’ve killed off multiple times, the continuation of a trend for Portland in 2018.

2. Our Face of the Week, courtesy of Q:

If your team talk doesn’t include the mascot, is it really a team talk? pic.twitter.com/WZji8psWoj

— Major League Soccer (@MLS) April 15, 2018

San Jose both blew a lead and came back in a 2-2 home draw against visiting Houston. This was a weird, game-state-y game that I felt like the Quakes were controlling for a ton of the time. Jackson Yueill started in central midfield and gave them the ability to spread the field around as they went away from the 4-4-2 and into a 4-3-3, and upon first viewing I thought it worked.

Then I watched it again and… honestly, Houston should’ve won. They generated way more chances – many of them very good – were committed in their movements in the final third, and once again seemed to have clarity with regard to their plan. The Dynamo didn’t seem as interested in “game flow” and “rhythm” as they were in potential decisive moments, and honest to god they won most of those outright.

They just didn’t finish as well as they should’ve. They let San Jose off the hook.

I think the next step for the Quakes is going to be moving Florian Jungwirth back to central defense.

1. And finally, our Pass of the Week courtesy of the other Roldan:

There are few things in this world I love more than a curling, properly weighted outside-of-the-boot pass into space. That was a lovely ball and a lovely goal.

Seattle got off the schneid with their 2-2 draw at SKC, who continue to look more fragile defensively than anyone had a right to think they would. They’re still fine – 14 points from seven games has them top of the West on both points and points per game – but I don’t see a team all that much closer to solving the defensive issues that plagued them throughout the bulk of March.

That might not be fatal in the West playoff race, but it’s something they’ve got to solve in the coming months if they want to have more than their annual token postseason appearance.

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Armchair Analyst: Battle of East titans, Darwin's debut & more from Week 7 was originally published on 365 Football

#Analyst #Armchair #battle #Darwin&039s #debut #East #from #more #titans #week

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chadpetersondatingblog · 7 years

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3 Signs Your Partner Is Falling Out Of Love With You & Things Aren’t Looking Good

If I could have any superpower, I would like the ability to read peoples’ minds. (Teleportation is a close second.) As an avid over-analyzer and paranoid human woman who assumes people are thinking the very worst about her at all times, I think mind reading — if painful —would actually calm me down. I could kiss the days of trying to figure out who’s mad at me via Venmo feed goodbye. Think about it: Rather than reading an article about signs he’s falling out of love with you, wouldn’t you rather just know?

Here’s the deal, though: We live in the real world and mind reading isn’t, well, real. If your partner isn’t in love with you anymore, they should grow a pair of balls or ovaries and break up with you. (Wow! What a novel idea.) Usually people aren’t this rational and straightforward, and that sucks. To be fair, crushing the soul of someone you once loved is uncomfortable AF. It’s much easier to stick around passive aggressively until your relationship detonates. How fun, amiright?

Time for some tough love, cuties. If you are wondering if your partner is falling out of love with you, they probably are. Or, they probably aren’t the right match for you. In a healthy relaysh, you should be confident in your SO’s love for you. On the other hand, you could be totes paranoid like me and your partner could be on the level, and you’re just on your worst “read too much into everything” behavior. I got you.

Here are some telltale signs your babe is actually falling out of love with you (I’m sorry):

1. They Seem Distant

How You Know When You're In Love.

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I know, be more vague, RIGHT? Point taken, so let me be clear: If your partner is going through a tough time at work or having a hard time with a loss or major change in their life, they may be distant even if they love you. Keeping quiet, seeming withdrawn, and spending more time alone are all totally normal things to feel during tough times in life.

If the lack of communication and gruffness lasts for a long time, or doesn’t seem to be changing at all, however, your partner may be distancing him or herself because they are no longer interested in the relationship. Remember that time you fell out of love with that other person? Didn’t you slowly pull away over time? Yeah. Major bummer, but a major sign of a shift. Talk to your partner about why they seem so distant.

2. They Don’t Make Time For You

Why Couples Shouldn’t Try To Recreate The Past

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This could fall under the “seeming distant” umbrella, but time is much more specific and measurable. While passion in a relationship can fade, making quality time— so, not watching Ezra Koenig’s weird new Netflix anime show Neo Yokio — is something partners who care about each other should always be able to do. If you are in a loving relationship, you show up for your partner when it counts.

If the amount time your partner spends with you changes substantively, again, it could have to do with an outside factor like a new job, or it could be that your partner is avoiding you. (I know, it’s awful, and I’m sending hugs.) If your gut is telling you that the time your partner is making for you versus the time you make for your partner is imbalanced, your partner could be struggling in your relationship. Again, TALK TO THEM. I insist because I don’t know your relationship or partner, and I speak for them as to whether they still love you or not.

3. They Avoid Physical Intimacy

Things Guys Can Do That Are More Intimate Than Sex

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Again, not a deal breaker that guarantees your partner is no longer in love with you, but not a great sign. If your partner has been avoiding getting physical — whether when it comes to sex or simply small gestures like a touch on the back — they are creating more space between the two of you, which might mean they aren’t feeling that “ponies and rainbows”-love anymore. Dry spells are real, so I don’t think you should accuse them of pulling away the first time they roll over and say “not tonight,” but I do think if the lack of touch continues, there’s something going on.

I’ll echo chamber myself and say it again: If you are not sure where your partner is at, in regards to love or anything in your relationship, talk to them. Talking is a great tool us humans have that allows us to shut our imaginations down and open our mouths to get clear on the facts of a situation. If your partner is lost and falling out of love, they might need an opening to express it. It’s not fair, but it’s reality. And wouldn’t you rather move on sooner rather than later? Before you go there, though, TALK TO THEM. Protect your heart. And finally, have a great weekend.

Check out the entire Gen Why series and other videos on Facebook and the Bustle app across Apple TV, Roku, and Amazon Fire TV.

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3 Signs Your Partner Is Falling Out Of Love With You & Things Aren’t Looking Good

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ashleyjacksonblog · 7 years

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3 Signs Your Partner Is Falling Out Of Love With You & Things Aren’t Looking Good

Here are some telltale signs your babe is actually falling out of love with you (I’m sorry):

1. They Seem Distant

How You Know When You're In Love.

2. They Don’t Make Time For You

Why Couples Shouldn’t Try To Recreate The Past

3. They Avoid Physical Intimacy

Things Guys Can Do That Are More Intimate Than Sex

Check out the entire Gen Why series and other videos on Facebook and the Bustle app across Apple TV, Roku, and Amazon Fire TV.

youtube

Subscribe to Elite Daily’s official newsletter, The Edge, for more stories you don’t want to miss.

3 Signs Your Partner Is Falling Out Of Love With You & Things Aren’t Looking Good

from Meet Positives http://ift.tt/2hAyw6t via IFTTT

#IFTTT #Meet Positives

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theworstbob · 7 years

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yellin’ at songs: week 32

brief reviews of the songs which debuted on the billboard hot 100 the weeks of 16 august 1997, 18 august 2007, and 19 august 2017

8.16.1997

6) "2 Become 1," by Spice Girls

This is just a '90s R&B song! This song doesn't even have the courtesy to be kitschy! This is completely indistinguishable from the rest of the '90s R&B, breathy whispered vocals about sex. There's no -- "Be a little bit wiser, baby/Put it on/Put it on" -- okay. OKAY. Sure. I guess that's something. If your song has no other value, might as well throw quality actionable advice in there. I hope the next song is some milquetoast R&B beat while people sing lines like "Your stomach takes a while to tell your brain it's full/Don't have that third slice of the ‘za, baby."

51) "All I Want," by 702

Oh hell yeah, I love this. I love that this is a Missy Elliott track, and I also love that this group did the titular song for Pootie Tang. I am way into this. This is a breezy summer jam that hits all the Good '90s R&B buttons.

54) "To Make You Feel My Love," by Billy Joel

this sounds exactly like you think it would sound and is as pleasant to listen to as you think it would be and i'm just gonna bounce after 30 seconds because i get it, i see what he's trying to do here and don't want to stick around to see if he pulls it off

55) "Big Bad Mama," by Foxy Brown ft./Dru Hill

I don't disagree with this! I can't find any way to hook onto this, but I already called one thing a breezy summer jam because I didn't feel like thinking too hard about it, so I'm in a bit of a predicament here. Like, this song is OK. It has a memorable bass line, Foxy Brown's pretty great at her thing, and whichever member of Dru Hill showed up sure did the most singing of anyone in 1997!, but like I can see why we've left this behind. It's fine. No one needed this one unearthed, though. We've found some buried treasures, y'know? This is like finding a buried booklet of commemorative state quarters. Like, neat! But also, not even $15.

83) "Far from Yours," by O.C. ft./Yvette Michele

"I be the Chosen One/Beyond the Moet and Cristal/A son of King and a Queen/Therefore ability/For song run in my genetics/I gave ideas to L. Ron Hubbard to write books on Dianetics" ...Setting aside the major issues I have with this man's rhyme schemes, IS HE TAKING CREDIT FOR SCIENTOLOGY. IS THI -- IS HE SAYING THAT HE IS THE INSPIRATION FOR SCIENTOLOGY. What the fuck kind of boast. He's saying his raps are so powerful they inspired a crazy man to write books about bad science. I am flummoxed by this song. This would have been just another okay song by a rapper who honestly just seems like a normal-ass dude who somehow wandered into a recoriding studio, but HE'S TAKING CREDIT FOR L. RON HUBBARD'S IDEAS. WHAT THE FUCK KIND OF LUNATIC IS THIS MAN.

89) "Tide Is High," by Angelina

Someone went to the store and said, "OH BOY! Another new verson of 'Tide Is High!' I gotta pick up this new interpretation of this song, which is of course someone's favorite song ever because it's MY favorite song ever!" Also none of the back-up dancers in the video looked like they were trying their absolute best. They knew where they were. They knew it didn't matter. They took a few plays off and got that check. I have so much respect for those backup dancers. ROCK TO THE BEAT ROCK ROCK TO THE BEAT, ROCK TO THE BEAT ROCK ROCK TO THE BEAT and so forth

92) "Relax & Party," by Ivory

So I've been sick the past couple days, which is why this post is going up on Wednesday and why there's no Thing Journal for last week (SUNDAY DOUBLE) and real talk why this has been a weak edition of YAS so far, ‘cuz I'll be honest, I'm still in the doldrums. My back hurts, which is a fun side effect of getting sick in your late 20s, I've found. So I'm not. In a mood? Conducive to caring about this song. I'm sure this is OK, but honestly, right now, in this moment in which we find ourselves, me and this song, sharing the same space on this planet, I could not care less about the things it wants to bring to my life. It's a stupid song and doesn't do anything. It just goes on for four minutes. Great. Great! Hey, just release an album of that fucking bass line for fifty minutes, honestly, it's probably your best bet if you want me to at least respect you.

95) "Dancehall Queen," by Beenie Man ft./Chevelle Franklyn

So there are two different versions of the song "Dancehall Queen" that I could find. There is this one, but there is also one released more recently with Lady Sovereign as the featured artist. So I have a few questions about our beautiful ever-expanding dying universe: 1) What did Chevelle Franklyn do to get deposed? 2) Does Chevelle FRanklyn give input into the decisions Lady Sovreign makes? 3) Who gave Beenie Man the powers of coronation? As far as I can tell, he does not proclaim himself the Dancehall King. 4) How often does the Dancehall Queen title change hands? 5) Is there a library that has data on the Dancehall Queen history which I can look up? 6) What are some books on the Dancehall Queen succession which you would recommend? Let me know in the comments! Hit that follow button and LIKE THIS POST!

8.18.2007

28) "Me Love," Sean Kingston

This is like a song you enjoy if you've never enjoyed a song before. If you're someone who appreciates music and attends symphonies and has opinions on concertos, and you're approached with this song, you'll probably use snooty music language to say, "This is a delightful confection!" Or like, if your musical diet consists entirely of Gary Jules' cover of Mad World and songs of that ilk, if the only songs you've been allowed to enjoy in this life are Gary Jules' "Mad World" cover and other songs which could have been selected for the Donnie Darko soundtrack, and you hear this song for the first time, this is probably the most amazing thing you've ever heard. This would sound so revolutionary. But if you've even heard one other fun pop song, you know this is useless.

89) "Free and Easy (Down the Road I Go)," Dierks Bentley

it is good when things are nice! at last, a song that says what none of us are brave to say out loud

90) "All My Friends Say," Luke Bryan

I think a couple months ago I tabbed this as a semi-iconic Luke Bryan song, in the sense that it's a song I hear and immediately attribute to Luke Bryan, which is something I can't do for any Blake Shelton song. But like, this is the song that establishes Luke Bryan's persona -- he's a free-wheelin' sumbitch who's gonna drink too much and try not to drunk-dial any ex-girls. There's personality in this song, a hack and shitty personality, but hey at least he hacked up and/or shitted out an identifiable character. All Blake Shelton's songs are about a man who wishes things would either be better or remain the same, depending on how good they presently are. The song is garbage and Luke Bryan only ever got worse, sure, but it is undeniably a product of Luke Bryan’s particular brand of dunderheaded twanging.

100) "Can U Believe," Robin Thicke

There is a long list of things I need to do with my life. Near the top are items like "only wear a suit at your little sister's wedding," "learn the lttp any% nmg speedrun," and "write a whole good thing," you know, standard stuff, standard life goals, and then there's a million pages of things I will never accomplish. Nowhere on that list was "listen to Robin Thicke tell you that I don't know when someone's watching." I did not need to hear Robin Thicke tell me he was stalking me before I died. I could have learned the Blind script with this time. Maybe this is about God? But it's not even vaguley Christian, he just randomly starts saying you never know when someone's watching, which is only something anyone says WHEN THEY ARE PRESENTLY LOOKING AT YOU THROUGH A TWO-WAY MIRROR. Been a decade of garbage with this man, my gosh.

8.19.2017

(38) "You Da Baddest," by Future ft./Nicki Minaj

Beach Future is such a weird thing to consider. I'm on the record as being pro-Beach Future in general, it's not as random a pivot as the time Lil Wayne picked up the electric guitar and said "OH YEAH! THIS IS A THING!" but it's still hard to get the brain around the idea of Beach Future after, what, three years and roughly 20 albums of morose, despondent Future? All of the Future songs I know are about the nightmare of being Famous and codeine, and now he's dropped two songs that are just, "Yeah, man, chillax! Life's pretty breezy, friends, pull up a chair, let's just enjoy a sunset together!" I'm into it? But it feels like the world is imbalanced right now. Beach Future has completely thrown off my equilibrium and I am Scared.

(68) "Unforgettable," by Thomas Rhett

Ah. Balance! After making a surprisingly hot '80s jam earlier this year, Thomas Rhett just sort of bleats over an acoustic guitar for two and a half bland minutes. This song tries to turn the word "mangorita" into a stirring kick-off to its chorus, and while I recognize the enormity of the task it placed upon itself, that doesn't mean it didn't fail to accomplish its goals. "From your blue jeans to your shoes/Girl, the night was just like you/Unforgettable." I'D NEVER SEEN JEANS JUST THAT BLUE BEFORE. I NEVER EVEN KNEW THEY MADE BLUE JEANS IN THAT PARTICULAR SHADE OF BLUE. WHY, THEY WERE... DARE I SAY? TURQUOISE! ALL HISTORY'S SCULPTORS DEVOTED THEIR LIVES TRYING TO MOLD YOU

(85) "When it Rains it Pours," by Luke Combs

A lot of the reason I don’t mind Rascal Flatts and Keith Urban when we run through 2007 is because, when I was growing up, my mom would only listen to country music, and those artists are the ones I minded the least when we were on the half-hour rides to and from church. I forged deep and lasting connections with the dudes I minded the least of anyone else. This song is definitely "best song on the ride to church" quality. It has a Toby Keith-y sense of humor which is more or less agreeable -- I can't imagine any scenario that a waitress at Hooters is impressed enough by any customer at Hooters to leave their number, but here I am, complaining that my suspension of disbelief in a country song was interrupted -- and it's unique, I haven't heard a lot of "fuck her, she's outta my hair!" songs from dude country artists this year. It’s not “I’m Gonna Miss Her,” but what is? Once again, Luke Combs has made a song that's unique enough that I can appreciate its charm, but not so intriguing that I'm gonna seek him out on my own. I'll give his next album a spin, see if he takes the right lessons to heart, but the one he’s got out now, I think I’m good!

(87) "They Don't Know," by Jason Aldean

"Just another field/Just another farm/No, it's the place we grew up on." Jason Aldean is a multi-millionaire who owns several hundred acres of land in a major metropolitan area nad has the chutzpah to speak for the common man. Fuck this dude and fuck him for this Trump-vote of a song.

(88) "Honest," by The Chainsmokers

hey guys the chainsmokers made a song about how they're sensitive boys who're sad about breakup, wow what a fascinating new look for these cats, truly evolving as artists before our very eyes. see, this is the one where they go "whoa-oh." i don't think they've gone "woah-oh" in a song yet. this is a pony certainly capable of developing a second trick!

(89) "The Weekend," by SZA

"What kind of deal is two days?/I need me at least 'bout for of 'em" is one of the single-saddest lyrics 2017 has produced. This song is so good. SZA in general is so good, but I never had to deal with how good this song is, given how much there is to parse with Ctrl. When's the last time we heard from a side piece's perspective, y'know? When's the last time we heard how a booty call felt about being a booty call? We heard "Booty Call," which was about the act of engaging in a booty call, but we don't know anything about the booty call's wants and desires outside of that moment. I enjoy hearing this perspective on the events, hearing from the girl the '90s R&B dude has to apologize for seeing, because that's a person, too, that's a person who's alive and lives a life of their own. It took us until 2017 to get the side piece's take on things. What were the rest of us doing?

(90) "New Rules," by Dua Lipa

This is really enjoyable. Nothing terribly complex, just a "don't fuck your ex" jam, but it's confidently delivered (I get the sense that Dua Lipa is a much better singer than the current musical trends are going to let her be), and I love the subtle horn drop. Evidently, the producer of this song was also involved with "Bad Liar" and "Now and Later," so I'm getting on the Ian Kirkpatrick train. I approve! Great work, all.

(93) "I Wish I Knew You," by The Revivalists

oh wow fuck everything about this. where did this come from? why am i listening to this? did 13 reasons why drop another season? who wanted this. who wanted another indie band biting the hell out of franz ferdinand. they're not even biting franz ferdinand, they're biting all those bands that were biting from franz ferdinand a few years ago, except they're doing so nakedly, "the revivalists" is code for "we have no original ideas." way to revive 2013, yeah dude, it was so long since i heard the neighbourhood, i'm so happy you're reviving four years ago. also this willy wonka-ass muthafucka's hat is stupid. i'm honestly not sure i'm reacting to the song as much as i am the stupid goddamn hat in the music video. (also: i'm not into this song, despite the presence of a saxophone. i have limits. i'm not gonna go home with just any brass instrument, you guys.) white men ruin everything.

(94) "Every Little Thing," by Carly Pearce

Well, number one, it's a country music song with actual drums, so it's automatically starting with 95 points out of a possible 100. This is dope. "They say time is the only healer/God, I hope that isn't right/'Cause right now I'd die to not remember." Fuck, man. That is heavy. And this is a solidly-produced song, too, there's enough going on that the song feels rich and lived-in, but not so much so that it's distracting, it's definitely in the backseat wearing a seatbelt so the lyrics and what might be the saddest fucking voice in 2017 country music can drive in peace. More from this woman, and more from other women, look how good you are when you let women do things, country music!

(97) "Learn to Let Go," by Kesha

I think this is fine. I'm not as into EDM-lite Kesha as I am Kesha declaring her womanhood backed by a million beautiful horns, but this is fine! Three songs. Three songs is enough distance to start delivering back-handed not-criticisms. But no, like, I wouldn't mind this as the opening track to the album, this sets a tone and opens up the possibility for cooler things to come, but on its own, hey! It's just alright, and that's fine! I'm just glad Kesha's making music, y'know?

(98) "All the Pretty Girls," by Kenny Chesney

this song wasn't even released in 2016, what is it doing here, what, why would, i don't, how did we end up here? what do we hope to accomplish while we're here? did he just say "don't blow my cover on freedom night?" what is freedom night? i don't -- you know what country radio, you batted .400 this week. that's ted williams hype, right there. .400 is better than any of us ever could have anticipated, and i can appreciate that you got things as right as you ever possibly could. please tell me what freedom night is, though.

(99) "For Her," by Chris Lane

...adjust that number down to .333. i'm sorry. i saw the haircut and assumed edm, which you'll agree is a fair assumption to make. this dude sucks. he is trying his best with that falsetto but, and i hate to repeat myself, you can't make your own outsized ambition an excuse for your failure. know your limits. i'm sorry i was ever lukewarm about any kesha song. i kinda feel bad for saying those things about the revivalists' hat. this was a good week apart from the bro country! "For her I would walk a straight line/Wear out the soles of my shoes for her." WOAH! SLOW DOWN, BUDDY! LET'S NOT MAKE ANY PROMISES WE CAN'T KEEP, NOW! Careful! Girls remember things you say to them! Imagine how disappointed she'll be when every day she spends with you your shoes still shine as bright as they did the day she met you.

Who won the week?

Well, 2007′s best song was a Luke Bryan joint, so that’s out. Think we gotta give it to 2017. Four shitty country songs, yeah, but 1997 countered with Spice Girls and a Billy Joel cover of a Bob Dylan song, so those cancel out, and the cream of 2017 was much better than the best 1997 gave us this week. I’m still thinking about that Carly Pearce joint, that was really cool, and it anchors an earned win for 2017. THE STANDINGS: 2017: 12 1997: 11 2007: 9 Next week: keep your heart, Three Stacks.

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