So I think I'm finally getting a contract and I'm going to start my new studies (as a youth/school counselor) in my old school. I met the principal today and had a talk with him, and he said he was pleased to see me there and would like to have me there because I already know my way around and seemed to manage things just fine when I was still their student. So, that's great, I'm finally getting somewhere.

But I'll have to wait until Friday because he's still not quite sure who's going to be my supervisor, so he's going to have a talk with a couple of staff members about it at first.

And then my teacher in my new school is already pressing me with contract matters and stuff, wanting me to start earlier than I had originally planned or at least get the contract done by then, so uhh. I'm going to have a Teams meeting with her on Friday at 8 o'clock in the morning (I'm not a morning person at all), and I'm sure we're going to have such a lovely discussion about my schedule and study plans and all that stuff.

All this phone-calling and paperwork is giving me a headache. And I still have some school assignments to do and to return before next week, and guess what - ya girl just wants to read and write fanfiction all day and all night. 🤪 Priorities, I has them.

Hi there! I'm not sure if this is something you've talked about before in another post, but I just finished the first draft of my first novel, and I was wondering if you could talk about what your experience was like getting your first novel edited and published. I have this story that I'm excited about but no idea what to do with it now that I've reached "The End," do you have any advice on what my next step ought to be towards eventually getting it published? Thanks in advance!

First of all: thanks for asking. ...And now I have to warn you that I am possibly one of the worst possible people to ask about what their first novel's publication looked like... as it was completely atypical.

Not that that's going to stop me, mind you. (And you know what? I'm inserting a cut here, because this goes on a bit. Warning: contains [calculated] dissing by old friends, pulp non-fiction, unexpurgated language, unexpected awards nominations, and advice that's worth just what you're paying for it.)

What happened with me and my first book goes like this:...

In the late 1970s I was starting to burn out on psychiatric nursing, and was offered a job as assistant to the novelist and Star Trek ["The Trouble with Tribbles"] writer David Gerrold. I took it happily, as I was in a place in my life where I really needed some kind of change. The work with David was part-time; I also occasionally did special duty nursing shifts to help make ends meet.

Now during this period, I was writing for my own amusement (as I'd been doing all my life from about age eight onward). Right then I was working on a project I'd been tinkering with from my late high school years right through college, nursing school, and my first couple/few years of practice as an RN. This was the background worldbuilding for a vaguely Tolkienesque, somewhere-between-late-Medieval-and-early Renaissance fantasy scenario featuring a couple of moderately unusual magic systems, a sexually diverse culture, and a pair of "These Two Idiots"-style protagonists with complex interleaving problems.

While I was working for David, I had a lot of opportunity to observe, close up, what the life and workflow of a career writer looked like. Slowly, over a year or so, the realization crept up on me that what David was doing, I could do too. And it was at this point that I finally admitted to him that I thought I might want to write as well.

David's (as I later discovered, extremely calculated) eyeroll could probably have been seen from space. "Oy, not another one," he moaned. After which I went away from the abortive conversation pretty much resolved never to speak to him about this again... but also with a single thought filling my brain: You fucking supercilious sonofabitch, I'm going to show you that I'm not just another one.

...I'll never be able to thank him enough for that. Fury can be so motivating. :)

In the aftermath I got busy pulling together my background material with much more focused intent, and beating the most significant parts of it into something that started looking like a plot. It came together with surprising speed and unnerving insistence—one of the very few times in my career when a project, once begun, has simply flung me into the writing chair and insisted that it was the most important thing in my life and needed handling now. And when in the fullness of time David went on vacation, leaving me to house-sit at his place in LA, I immediately started using his very early computer to transcribe my novel's so-far-only-handwritten draft material.

I took what I thought was considerable care to cover my tracks... but not quite enough. On his return from vacation, when he was putting out the trash, David found some of my discarded draft pages, read them, and confronted me (with a certain amount of friendly teasing) about what had been going on. Then he said to me, "What I've seen of this thing doesn't look too bad. Let me see it when you're finished, and if it looks good enough, I'll ask one of my publishers if they want to take a look at it."

So that's what happened. I finished my first draft and a polish of it in about six weeks, and passed it to David. He read it and immediately handed it on to his editors at Dell, who were just starting a fantasy line for which they needed product. Two weeks later, they said they liked the novel and made an offer, which I accepted. Not a vast amount, but respectable enough. So there it was, my first sale: this book. Which then got me nominated two years running for the Astounding Award, and opened the door for the sale and publication of So You Want To Be A Wizard, as well as my earliest Star Trek work and my entry into the animation world.

I remember very little about the editing process, except that it was painless. What was not exactly painless was the book's cover, about which...well, the less said here the better. But the book came out to generally good reviews. So, with this series of events behind it, you can see why as regards first-publication stories, I'm a first-class outlier and should definitely not be counted. (Also to be avoided by new writers if at all possible: the experience of having half their strongly-selling first novel's initial print run pulped in the warehouse* because it was taking up room needed by a new book by a world-famous novelist.) (Whom I have long since forgiven, since it wasn't his fault, and...well, what can you do? Shit happens.)

...Anyway, that's more than enough about me. Now let's talk about you.

My first advice about what to do with the novel you've just finished? Stick it in a drawer (literally or figuratively speaking, whichever suits your case better) and don't look at it for at least a month. Two would be better. You can spend those two months thinking about your next moves... because you need to give those some consideration before you do anything else.

The question that you first need to answer is going to at least partially shape what you do next. And it's this:

Are you seriously considering making a career out of writing?

It's not that it can't be done! Of course it can. But it won't be easy... not at all. Anyone who tells you it will is either just outright lying through their teeth, or trying to sell you something. ...Or both.

Be honest with yourself as you consider this. If you aren't, you may be letting yourself in for considerable pain over a prolonged period... and I'd sooner you were spared that, if you can be. In particular, be clear about the difference between the statements "I want to write" and "I want to be a writer." Often enough people like the sound of the lifestyle and what they see as going with it—the signings, the book tours (physical or virtual), the interviews, the best-seller lists—without any real concept of the grueling, day-to-day, weekends-are-for-other-people, why-am-I-making-less-than-minimum-wage-most-of-the-time labor that underpins it.

If you simply want to write and be published—without the concept of a career necessarily being involved, or the lovely shimmering dreamlike vision of Giving Up The Day Job—you now have work pathways available to you that would've been unimaginable in the previous century. Self-publishing makes it possible for you to get your work in front of many, many eyes without necessarily having to submit yourself to the specific set of trials that go with achieving the initial stages of an intended career. Selfpubbing still has significant unique challenges of its own, of course, which have to be evaluated so that you can tell (as the commercials say) if they're right for you.

But if you're thinking of a career in what's usually being referred to these days as "traditional publishing", then you face a number of challenges that don't necessarily come with the self-publishing end of things. In particular: many publishing houses no longer consider manuscripts that come to them un-agented. So you're going to need to find an agent who's willing to represent your work... and this is a task that no longer looks anything like what it did when I found mine. (Or rather, when he found me, having been recommended to me by one of my editors. I've been with him for even longer than I've been with @petermorwood... and that's saying something. But this is yet another way in which my career's been wildly atypical.)

There is so much that could be said about this subject alone—the business of researching agencies to see which one seems like a good fit for you, the art of writing the perfect query letter to get their attention focused on a given book, and so much more—that I could hardly begin to even skim the surface of it here. There are whole websites devoted to shopping for agents, not to mention how to pitch yourself and your work to a given literary agency.

Let me leave this whole subject here for the moment. We can come back to it another time, because right now you need to be thinking this through. ...This I'll say, however. For the past six to nine months I've been pulling together links to various online resources that can be beneficial to new writers just getting started. These will be available as posts over at the FicFoundry.com site that I'm going to be bringing online before summer. I'm hoping to build that into kind of a compendium site or clearing house for online resources on this subject. We'll see how it goes.

Meanwhile, thanks for inquiring about this. You're standing at the first branching of what I'm hoping will be, for you at least, a fascinating variant of the Choose Your Own Adventure genre. :)

More on this later.

("Wait. Did she just call us idiots??")

*Now that we live in the era of just-in-time warehousing, this is something that fortunately doesn't happen much any more... as far as I know. But once upon a time, if somebody's new best-seller was going to the warehouse in its many thousands of copies, and your relatively-less-well-selling book was taking up space that could be used by the other author's "more valuable"/higher-priced titles, your books (5-10K of them, in my case) were simply thrown into a machine and turned into papery mush. And these go on your sales record as "unsold copies". (sigh) Some discussion of this phenomenon can be found over here.

rotating hazel and leon in my mind again....... but also thinking about hop!!!! (i'm playing SV with him in mind as the protagonist- so some spoilery-ish thoughts on the DLC will be below the cut! i am NOT finished with the DLC, so please, no Indigo Disk spoilers!)

so i'm rotating how i want Hazel's Paldea run to pan out

the focus really ends up being on Hop, because he's the protagonist, but i'm still trying to settle on how much attention i want to put on hazel (and leon) too

i think the way i'm gonna bridge it though is in a few ways-

i already decided i want to come up with a reason to give Miraidon to Hazel, and blend scarlet and violet into a single story for convenience reasons- while i COULD just choose the version i canonically played, i think it makes more sense here to play with the time travel aspect and combine both into one narrative (i.e. both box legendaries, both professors, etc.)

additionally, Sonia is gonna be present (and honestly, i should write her in more so she's not just a background character) and Hop is also still assisting her while she investigates the Terastal phenomenon here in Paldea- which gives Hazel and Leon an excuse to be around as they also help and look into things too

It's a little easier to include them in the main story because Hazel's going to be tackling the gym challenge for the badges (and Leon's also challenging the gyms because he's super interested in getting to battle La Primera herself) while the two of them are assisting teaching at the school (Hazel's working under Hassel as an assistant, and Leon's doing a few different classes but it's primarily Battle Theory with Dendra) they're still chaperoning for Hop, and also suddenly chaperoning for these weird kids Hop keeps befriending, too

(Nemona really wants to battle Leon, Leon's older brother instincts kick in with Arven, Hazel really understands Penny's anxiety, etc)

but the DLC on the other hand...... difficult. i haven't gotten far enough in the Indigo Disk yet to know what the hell is going on with Briar, but i'm thinkiiiing Hazel and Leon would probably be a little put off by her, and the academy, and would probably be doing their own digging while Hop's off learning.. (i imagine blueberry academy itself probably isn't nefarious by any means but i don't know that yet LOL;;;)

that said, on Hop's end, i'm loving imagining him as the protagonist because it??? honestly really works??? going to an academy to work on his education towards eventually becoming a pokemon professor (i'd imagine he'd be on a more accelerated/specialized track)

but uh. also. also the DLC. good lord. with poor Hop in mind, Kieran takes on a wholly different vibe..... imagine going through a difficult arc in your life, being able to get through it with support, and then going on a grand adventure only to meet someone who might as well be you if you took losing a LITTLE too hard....

Hop's still figuring himself out. He's young, he knows what he wants to be but not exactly what he wants to do, and now it's tough because he went through something so similar to Kieran, but between Ogerpon, Carmine and everything else, I can get the sense it'd be tough for him, especially since this is a new friend and he's. kind of on the other side of things now, where he's been considerably lucky, not unlike how Gloria was

but uh!!!!! i need to think about it some more, honestly! i always phrase these rambles as if i'm actively planning on writing it out as a fanfic but it's more me sorting it out in my head LOL;;; i write a little, it's unlikely that i'll end up releasing something (though not impossible, but usually if i write stuff i'll send it to friends and that's about it)

i gotta finish the DLC though, i want to get to what i have heard is a Very Silly epilogue

EDIT: OH YEAH ALSO HAZEL IS PSYCHED TO BE BACK IN UNOVA AGAIN. briefly disappointed they're not on mainland but it's fine because she can now order pizza anytime she wants and she SORELY missed castelia style deep dish pizza.

also if i can help it i still gotta figure out how to throw camila in for either a cameo or joining for the last part of the DLC............

Medical rant, like this is an unhinged diary entry y'all don't take anything serious underneath the cut I'm just pissed

Insurance companies are a fucking scam. I've said this shit since middle school. It's a way to make profit off of sick and desperate people. I'm not sure what qualifications some asshole behind a desk with an algorithm that assists them in approving or denying medication that's being prescribed to people needs but I highly doubt it's to the same quality or degree that a doctor needs.

A doctor that actually sees me in person, gives a diagnosis and then plans treatment accordingly. I fail to see how some random person who has never seen me, never seen a photo of me or my issues or even knows who the fuck I am aside from a file number has ANY right to approve or deny coverage for something I absolutely need.

And while we're on that isn't it kinda funny how pain meds don't go through these issues? They can give out oxi and Vicodin like mints but God forbid I need a specific medication for SOMETHING THAT CAN PHYSICALLY BE SEEN.

Bruh yea and this was already why I was apprehensive about receiving any fucking care for it in the first place because I didn't want to get my hopes up that we'd find something and it'd actually work with minimum side effects. And this is exactly why I will be doing nothing for my mental health. Y'all can't see physical symptoms of that so I highly doubt I'd get any sort of serious treatment for any of it unless I was totally brutally honest and then got my special expensive mandatory grippy sock vacation.

Fuck America, fuck the for profit system we have on people's lives, fuck everyone who defends insurance companies, fuck the person who denied my shit and ESPECIALLY fuck this person who waited until SATURDAY to tell me my shit was denied so now I can't do anything UNTIL FUCKING TUESDAY.

Fuck everything and everyone I wish this was a disease that could fucking kill me so I could die on the front steps of the CEO's mansion.

I dunno this just solidifies that no one really gives a shit and the worst part is that I have to rely on someone else to make this appeal for me. You like can't make the appeals yourself ITS MY FUCKING LIFE YOU'RE PLAYING WITH like?! I'm absolutely fucking confused how I'm going to rely on this person I've also never met to appeal this shit for me WHEN THEY COULDN'T EVEN GET MY GOD DAMN REQUEST OUT IN A TIMELY MANNER EITHER THEY COULDN'T EVEN REMEMBER IF THEY CALLED ME

I've been living off of samples and I know once this runs out I'll have built up an immunity to the drug once it's flushed out of my system and my disease is going to come back worse. I'm going to skin myself alive on the CEOs fucking front porch. I'm going to look them in the eyes and ask if this is enough evidence yet while letting it pile on her fucking feet. Least in jail I might actually get my fucking medication approved but probably not. I really do not care to live in a world where I am utterly powerless. I do not want to be here I have never asked to be here. I never asked for this disease or my other mental illnesses. I'm not trying to take this shit for fun I actually fucking need it and I already have a difficult time admitting I need something that I cannot actively get myself. This just goes to fucking show why try at all! Why do anything at all! Why suffer?!

The shoe is always going to fucking drop.

I wish it was an anvil, I wish it would just fucking kill me. For New years I'm gonna kiss a tree going 120 fucking A

Oh I see! Wow okay so like did you or others don't feel bad about being kicked out and like having to leave your parents when at some point after parents are too old to not be able to take care of themselves then who takes care of them? I am sorry if I am being intrusive or weird but I am just curious as I said. I would love to know how this works since my mom was complaining about me and my sibling the other day saying Americans have one thing really cool they just kick their children out so no more dealing with kids after 18 and children sucking parents' blood and other shit. Anyway, if you're comfortable please tell us more 🙃

It's okay! I was upset when I was kicked out because I had to go and live with a friend and her parents and that made me sad. But I think very broadly speaking, the expectation is most kids move out when they graduate high school and either move into dorms for college or they get a job and live on their own/with roommates. I don't know anyone who feels sadness about it? It's a cultural expectation, so like, there is excitement around being independent and having your own space. And of course not all parents enforce this expectation and there are people who live at home longer- but I do think the older you get in your 20s and still living with your parents, it comes with a stigma of like, being lazy or a failure, if that makes sense?

American's also don't care for the elderly the way they do in other cultures. We have assisted living facilities you pay to care for your aging parents, or nurses that can go in and assist with day to day living if your parents can mostly live on their own. My grandparents still live on their own, and the only one who didn't was my grandfather who went to an assisted facility when he had alzhiemers and needed more specialized care.

I think its a trade off? If you can't live with your parents once you become a legal adult (or they expect you to pay rent to live there), then they shouldn't expect you to care for them when they age? It'll vary person to person of course, but I don't think I'd let my mom move in with me

Crash Course in Romance (2023)

Really enjoyed this show. The writing and story felt familiar, but the actors were good enough that it still seems fresh. Could have done with 50% less obsessed crazy stalker people though.

What Worked

The leads were fun to watch both separately and together. The overall relationships were interesting and the drama does a good job of making something that should be rather dull (math class) seem exciting. Even the most detestable people in the show still had some moments of sympathy as well, which makes them seem like real people, and it also makes the show feel safer rather than super stressful.

What Didn't Work

The weird murder plot, but this was less offensive than most and they didn't allow it to take over the show.

The Performances

Jeon Do-yeon as Nam Haeng-seon. I'm not sure if it's groundbreaking to take a character that is super common in romance (the plucky young woman who just wants to take care of her family, but OMG life is terrible) and just age her up 15 years. Sadly, it kind of feels that way. In any case, this actor is great, she's apparently a big deal in K-film and I'm so glad we got to see her here.

Jung Kyung-ho as Choi Chi-yeol. He's not all that different from the character he played in Hospital Playlist (I enjoyed him in that), but his story is different enough that it still seemed interesting. Jung Kyung-ho did a great job as a lead, and I liked all the different character moments the writers put out there for him. Not all of them stuck (for example, the tragic student death that he seems to have forgotten about after five episodes), but overall it was more hits than misses.

Oh Eui-shik as Nam Jae-woo. Every time I see a character in these dramas who is on the Asperger's spectrum, I start to wonder if the writers are ticking a box or something. But as long as they make sure and put in the work to make the character feel real, then I'm okay with it. Oh Eui-shik did the work, and I was okay with it.

Lee Bong-ryun as Kim Young-joo. I enjoyed seeing her in Hometown Cha x 3 and she did a great job here (though her character is a little more one-note here). I felt her romance arc at the end was actually kind of nice.

Roh Yoon-seo as Nam Hae-yi. Really good job by a young actress who was only in her second drama. Hopefully, she'll have a long career, because she was fun to watch and the character was well done as well.

Jang Young-nam as Jang Seo-jin. The only other role I've seen her in was as kind of a bad person in IOK2NBO. She wasn't a great person here, but I had alot more sympathy for her, partly because the actor did a good job of making her relatable even during all the crazy plot stuff. I'm glad the writers left the character in a pretty good place overall.

Kim Mi-kyung as Haeng-seon's mother. I have already raved about how cool this actor is in other places. She was only in two episodes, and her character didn't even get a real name, but it was still just nice to see her on screen.

The High School Kiddos. I think they all did a good job. The writers didn't try and make them too cutesy or turn it into an afterschool special. They were fun to watch when they were on screen, and they all had good moments in the show.

The Gang of Bad Mothers With Money. I kind of enjoyed their antics, even if it felt like the writers were giving them the job of creating pointless drama at times. They were funny when they needed to be, and detestable when they needed to be, but none of them were too memorable.

The Evil Baddie Assistant Guy. Kind of a spoiler though it's not really a huge secret. I think the actor did a decent job of playing subtle with a character that slowly turns into a mustache twirling villain by the end of the series. I didn't need an interesting villain, in fact I'd rather not bother with him at all, but if you have to have a murder spree in your drama, this guy is an acceptable choice.

TL; DR:

Fun little romance / relationship drama with good casting that hit a sweet spot between familiar and fresh. Had some funny moments, and a few genuine feels but you knew going in that you'd end up with a HEA.

The longer I think about it the more I think I'm definitely some degree of autistic but I don't want to Say So and not Know for sure because I feel out of place speaking on autistic issues, and while I don't need to Prove to anyone I'm autistic, the internet just Be Like That and I also want undeniable proof for myself if that makes sense.

But like

Sensory sensitivity, ESPECIALLY with hearing and somewhat to sight. Touch but ONLY around my thighs which makes clothes shopping Really Fucking Inconvenient because god forbid a woman doesn't wear smth that shows off her every curve and sticks to her figure. I absolutely HAVE to have specific hearing conditions (my digital audio needs to sound a specific way), I get anxiety attacks about my sight worsening, I literally cannot STAND jeans or leggings or anything that clings to me from the waist down aside from socks.

Weird not quite apathy but definite emotional Weirdness where I just. Don't feel things intensely or literally can't process things that should evoke specific emotions. I'm really weird about grief and have only cried over losing pets basically. When I was younger (and even present day somewhat) I didn't realize how serious some things like r*pe are

I stim and Might have small tics on occasions or when stressed. But this could definitely be ADHD brand stimming

I was one of those gifted kids that excelled early but now I'm So Over School and want to be DONE with it. I wouldn't call it burnout but I'm definitely not the star student anymore nor did I want anything to do with fancy higher ed programs. I was eligible to skip kindergarten but my parents kept me with kids my age

This isn't a symptom but literally from 1st grade to the end of high school I was always naturally drawn to befriend the "special education" kids and kids who needed assistants to help them out which is kinda. Huh.

I could probably pick out some hyperfixations that might actually be special interests. I'm not actually sure if there's a difference between the two but my brain definitely perceives them as different things

There's days where I FEEL how neurodivergent I am in public. I just stick out So Badly and I don't think I'd feel this if I was just having Ha Ha Ay Dee Ayche Dee moments. I just can't describe this self awareness but I can just Tell I'm not "normal" yknow??

Speaking of, I'm incredibly self aware but also an oblivious dumbfuck at the same time

Occasionally I have a hard time empathizing with people, mostly about things I have 0 sensitivity to like certain triggers or topics

I overshare a lot without meaning to. Which could be an ADHD thing but I know this is another sorta overlappy thing with autism

Certain forms of change make me sick to my stomach and spike my anxiety. Especially if they're changes I have no control over or can't fix. My laptop has to work the way I'm used to, my glasses have to be a certain way (I went INSANE for MONTHS about getting new lenses and having light reflections I couldn't get rid of in them that weren't in my previous ones)

I have that cursed desperation to overexplain and overclarify myself about practically everything, especially to strangers (and online where nobody has decent reading comprehension) I can't tell if this is another ADHD overlap thing, a result of my emotionally abusive father being a bitch, or another red flag that I'm autistic

Sometimes I have auditory processing issues where I cannot for the life of me understand what someone said to me. Sometimes I have to rewatch the entirety of a series of media to understand certain parts I didn't process the first time be it because I didn't connect dots or didn't understand them right

There's probably more things I haven't thought of that might also point to autism but like. This is already quite a list as it is. Oh god.

yeah so basically i'm gonna lose it soon probably. i think i'm finally ready to give up on my current "successes", like having a job and semi-functioning. i'm ready to get in contact with the crisis line, possibly end up in a mental health facility, and get better. i was diagnosed as autistic at 10. i've received little to no support over the years. the most support i have is through funding, which has given me an iphone, an ipad, an apple watch, and a pair of galaxy buds when i still had a samsung. it'll allow me to claim back certain travel expenses, and go to things like concerts to improve my quality of life. but i never received support in my education. support in learning how to unmask. i even went to a private special education school because it was the only place i could cope with. guess what? i masked the whole time. i didn't learn shit because my teacher didn't want to acknowledge that i finally understood my sensory needs a little more. she thought i was lazy but i couldn't do my school work in the classroom i was shoved into. that school, by the way, is shutting down soon because they were doing so rough financially. they may have failed me but they didn't fail a lot of their higher needs students.

so, as us autistics know, when left undiagnosed and untreated/neglected for too long, no accommodations in sight, what happens? that's right! other shit develops! i have symptoms that align with bpd now. it could just be the autistic burnout doing abnormal shit, but it's definitely in-line with how bpd can appear, and i even have childhood trauma to accompany that. there's other folks out there who end up with other cluster-b disorders, other various mental illnesses, but the fact that i was diagnosed at an early enough age to actually prevent this... and i'm ending up like everyone else that had a late diagnosis? it's so depressing. it makes me so upset. they caught it early. and i knew i had autism from the age of ten. but since i was "smart" and "performed well at school" and i was "well behaved", i never got assistance because it made me not eligible for anything like a teacher aide, like the non-verbal and high support needs student just across the class from me had all day. he got all the support he needed, which he should've, just because his disability was visible. i got ignored because i had "aspergers" and "was high functioning".

i don't remember ever having a good enough break from school, or more recently work, to where i could rest. where i could recover from my burnout. i got maybe a month and a half during summer school holidays as a kid during school. and two weeks between terms. but now that i'm working, even if it's only part time, i never take that two weeks off because i can't afford to. i don't get that month and a half off because i can't afford to. my old workplace was accommodating, but my fixed term ended at the end of february. my current workplace, with all its confusing and overwhelming bullshit, also required me to explain to my manager what autism is. she didn't even bother to google it between our first and second interview.

i'm going to work tomorrow, to cover a shift. then thursday, i'll be gathering all my necessary shit together to hopefully apply for a benefit. then, after my work week is finished, i'll have my mum call the crisis line for me, to see if i can organize going to a mental health facility before i lose my mind entirely. i can feel it getting worse, the autistic burnout i never got a chance to recover from. i've probably been experiencing the same burnout that i've never recovered from for, i'd like to say at least seven or eight years? since i was a child? it'd always just come back and bite me in the ass again after a while. summer holidays were never really enough, i need a year or two off. and i need my mental health back in order.

Seasons and Reasons

Getting older comes with loss. But we can hold space and make space at the same time, because life goes on in its way and all we can do is try to honour all of it's seasons.

Just this past week alone, I learned of the death of someone once very dear, reconnected with someone else very special from long ago, and ended a 27 year aspect of my self-identity.

About 35 years ago I developed an autoimmune illness that took 3 years to diagnose and another year or so to learn to manage. It was a scary and unpredictable time, but I was eventually able to return to school to become a masseuse and reflexologist, the thinking being that portable self-employment would give me the flexibility to deal with health flares as they came. It was a very good decision and those skills took me places I might not otherwise have experienced: including hospice palliative care. The personal mission I developed was to make hands-on body work accessible to people who might experience personal barriers due to physical and/or emotional trauma, dysmorphia, etc. I simply wanted to provide muscle comfort in a safe space. I understood through my own experiences the many barriers to becoming comfortable in one's own body. Everybody who ever graced my table taught me a great deal. I'd like to think that they helped me become more as a person, more empathetic, inclusive, and compassionate.

After 27 years, my neck and my hands have let me know they've had enough, through wrist cysts and compressed discs. If I am lucky I will get another 25-30 years on the planet and I don't want to spend them in pain because I didn't listen to my own body. I have been reducing my practice slowly for months, and a couple of days ago I finished strong with two 90-minute sessions back to back. I gave myself every advantage beforehand, a B12 shot, extra rest, Advil and lots of water. It was important to me to maintain my A game right till the final flourish. I came away very satisfied and of course a little sad. I sold my travel table, gave away a few tools of the trade and am deciding what to do with what's left. I will keep a few things around to help myself and my Beloved deal with our own aches and stiffness. I will continue to make my special salve. But, I also know that I will need to find something to fill the gap left by retirement of this sort; we tend to choose the professions we stand to gain the most from, and for 27 years, through assisting others, I came to some peace with my own traumas, my own body, my own sense of safety and comfort.

As we travel, we grow distant from certain people and places out of necessity and/or circumstance. I got word that someone who had been key in my younger adult life had died of an illness I wasn't even aware they had. While I express my condolences to her family and friends, I also selfishly wonder why I hadn't heard about it sooner, and if i could have helped make that transition any smoother. I wish I'd had some opportunity to say goodbye and a few other things. There is no doubt in my mind that she was very well supported.

Among the few people who did reach out to tell me about this individual's death was someone I would not have expected to hear from. Someone I'd hurt a long time ago , and whom I know has had some major losses and challenges of her own. The conversation was brief but kind, and I feel we both came away with the understanding that scar tissue, given time,becomes its own strength.

Between the two experiences, my mind overflowed with memories of a time in my life that was by turns, selfish and exhilarating. In our 20s, few of us have any clue as to who we are let alone who we might become or the effect we have on other people. At 62, I have a better idea, and I cannot help but cringe at so many of the things I did then that I would do so much differently now. That is what maturity brings; a bittersweet perspective. Forgiving myself is something I'm still figuring out. Funny how we can be kinder to others more easily than we can to the face in the mirror. We forget sometimes that we are mirrors of one another but seem to need a separate subset of rules. I think back to those youthful days and cannot help but smile at the antics, the drama, the sense of entitlement and immortality. In spite of my arrogant mistakes, I am grateful for the lessons that came with them. Grateful for a sense of humor that endures, and the unbelievable patience of those who have loved me in spite of myself. There is no going back. Wonderful memories soften the edges if we let them.

I'm figuring out how to make a living, most self-employed people have no pension to rely on and must keep working to satisfy needs that are far more important than financial. We define ourselves to a great extent by the work that we do and the company we keep. I am so damned lucky to have always found myself in good company even when I didn't know it at the time. The work with come, and so will more mistakes, more lessons, more understanding. Letting go, for the best of reasons, or even when we have no choice, is a lesson in humility. Its all about the threads in the tapestry we weave as we live; which by the time we die, will be substantial enough to keep us warm in the memories of others.

The American experience is embracing you're already dead either physically or you have no financial future the second you get sick. That's the privatized healthcare experience. I have no hope for my future. Either I die or I lose any hope at having a financial future.

Two days ago I pinned down that I have a tooth that might be absessed. It might just be an infection. This is my second experience going through this without going to a doctor because the fear of creating that medical debt is more crippling to me than the idea of dying. The good news is it was probably just an infection. But that's only the first in a list of health issues I have. I'm going to ramble into the void because I just need to talk and ha what's therapy can't afford that.

This won't be in any specific order. I just need to talk.

I've got so much mental shit going on that I can't work a proper full time job, but I make too much at my part time job (16.50/hr at 28ish hours a week paying 435/month of my portion of the utilities and bills in a house with 6 other people, not including food) to qualify for state insurance or food stamps. I can't get diagnosed with any of the psychological shit to get help that would make it at least partially possible to work full time because I can't get state insurance because I supposedly make too much to qualify for state programs. If I wanted to sign up for healthcare at the start of the year, it would have cost me almost 200/month.

Growing up, I had constant health issues. My doctor never managed to pin down the exact cause but I was sick fairly often. Weak immune system? Who knows. After I dropped out of high school and stopped being forced into public settings I stopped getting sick on the regular. Then I had to get a job and I started getting sick again. Considering I got my first job in 2020 and I wore a mask, I got sick less than I did in school but it was still fairly often. I imagine if I was in a state that didn't treat COVID like a joke from the start (hello from Oklahoma) I might've had a better time. Who knows? What I do know is I get sick. Way more than I should. I would love to see a doctor about this. I'd love to see a doctor about so many problems I've had. A few months ago, I discovered a lump in my chest tissue. I ignored it like my dysphoric ass does with anything in that region. I was in the shower the other night and I think it's gotten worse. I looked into getting an examination and it would cost me almost 200$ out of pocket. I can barely afford gas food and household expenses.

I don't even know what this is about. I've barely scratched the surface and I know this story isn't special. It's scraping the top of a massive problem. The thing is, this shouldn't be the standard. Why in the fuck is this our standard? Why do people think it's okay for people to just accept that they're probably going to die? Why is this the American experience? The answer is simple of course but that doesn't make it okay. I don't want to be in the mindset I've reached where dying is the better alternative to crippling medical debt. I'm so, so tired.

I'm also making a call out post. To those people that say Republicans and Democrats are two sides of the same coin. Fuck you. Red state life quality is detrimental. I'd qualify for bare bones assistance in literally any of the blue states. It would be hell and a half to utilize but a situation like this is a fucking joke. I fucking hate it here.

After the budget cut to federal public universities, I kinda feel I really need to talk. So, I majored in French at federal university, and I'm currently enrolled in a specialization about bilingual and multilingual education in the same university.

In case y'all don't know, public universities in Brazil are 100% free. You have to take the national exam, have a good grade, apply for a university through SISU, and if you are accepted, you won't have to pay for anything else. It's also relevant that public universities are the best, occupying national and international rankings, and they also lead research in the country, even though "scientist" is not even recognized as a profession in Brazil.

Of course, there are social programs that allow students in poor conditions to go to private universities. For example, the PROUNI offers scholarships, and the FIES gives you a student loan that you'll have to pay after your graduation.

Talking about my experience as a student at a public university. This budget cut will deterioate the situation in the universities. I'm going to say the truth, the current budget isn't even enough. The universities are in bad conditions. I've lost count of how many times I had class in the heat because the air conditioner was broken. During winter? Well, it rains inside some classrooms. The infrastructure is awful. The education I received there, though? The best. The curriculum is more complete and you learn a lot while doing research, the professors are excellent, and they motivate me to not stop at an undergraduation. They helped me to go after more, to go after a master and a PhD. They motivated me to never stop studying.

Besides that, I had financial support from university through programs. When I start there, I received R$ 400 for a teaching-learning program for licenciate students, aka PIBID. After my diagnosis, I'd spend all day at uni and I needed to eat well in order to control my blood sugars, so the social workers granted me free lunch and dinner at the university restaurant, which was really helpful and made a lot of difference in my treatment. When the pandemic started and my internship contract was over, I got a R$ 400 assistance from the PIBIC, program that encourages scientific research for students. I also learned a lot doing research all these years, and I'm better professional because of that. So I will always defend public universities.

I have a coworker who opted for a student loan through FIES. He's a psychologist, currently working as an English Teacher at the same school I work at. He was saying how he worried he is about paying his loan, which costs R$ 54,000. He says he doesn't know when he'll start paying it, he also said he's thankful for the loan, but at the same time he regrets starting his adult life with this debt. We are both 23 years old. And I can only say that I'm so grateful to have had the opportunity to get a degree at a federal university.

So, yes, the budget cut will have a big impact in the universities. We already can see this happening since Bolsonaro won the elections in 2018. Besides that, take a moment to research about all the other budget cuts in education and healthcare, it's just an absurd.

seeing my old friend group that abandoned me when i became addicted use the same drugs now just.....idek anymore.....like, i was a dirty junkie, but NOW it's cool if they do it? WHY????? the same people that shamed me and distanced themselves from me when i was using, post stuff glorifying doing lines etc now. when i do it, i'm too much, weird.......but when they do it, it's just fun! they're just partying! it actually makes me sick. i used to end up in the hospital from using all the time. i could very well be dead right now. and they all knew. and nobody cared. nobody even asked if i was fine. also, nobody texted me when they knew i was in rehab. not even when my fucking girlfriend died. nothing. addiction, everything that comes with it like sex work, death, homelessness etc is gross and weird and worth leaving someone over, someone you considered a 'friend' during the hardest and most traumatizing part of their life, but they can use hard drugs! haha, christiane f uwu....(*gag*) my friend, one of the only people that i consider my friend, used to call my other friend and me junks. was disgusted by how broken our life and bodies and minds were because of drugs. now she does the same drugs. posts about it. NOW it's fine? didn't even tried to reach me when i was battling drug induced psychosis. was homeless. had no one but my mom and my 'junk' friend. fuck this shit. like that heartbreaking tik tok sound that goes like "why is being japanese special on her and bad on me?WHY?" ...yeah idk, that's how i feel lol. it hurts. why am i always worse than everyone else....i struggled to survive and everybody left. i was closer to death than to life. i now suffer from ptsd from my sex work, and when they do it it's cool. i honestly can't believe it. well, i can. my ex tried to force himself on me (in my underwear). i told our friend group. nobody really cared that much. told me to talk to him about it. done. few months later he does the exact same thing to someone else from our friend group. the exact same thing. suddenly he was kicked out. called an abuser. well, he sucks so i'm glad he got what he deserved, but WHY TF wasn't it abuse when he did it to me? why did everyone stay friends with him when it happened to me? WHY? my 'friends' didn't care if i was abused. if i was traumatized. if i was DYING. just seeing it confirmed that it's really just.....me. i am the reason they didn't care about things that would've mattered the WORLD if it happened to ANYBODY else. ouch. seriously ouch. i wanna die. i wanna kill myself. i wanna kill THEM. i wanna make them pay for seeing me as worthless. entirely worthless. god, my old school shooter fantasy goes BRRRRRR. i wish i was dead. i can't even talk to anyone about this. i have no one backing me up anymore. well, i guess 'anymore' is the wrong word here. they never fucking did. good thing i'm starving, otherwise i'd have to completly butcher my entire body. the pain of knowing that i am never good enough. not even good enough to not get abused. i don't know why i'm surprised.... i was HOMELESS and nobody took me in. nobody even asked if i was fine. but i saw THEIR big, happy sleepovers on their stories. ouch. big fucking ouch. oh god kill me. please i wanna leave my existence behind. it's too pathetic and humiliating....i can't take it anymore. god, i'm so lonely. and hurt. and rejected. i feel like my heart is gonna burst, in a bad way. 2023 there's gonna be assisted suicide in canada for patients suffering from bpd. honestly i'm gonna go for that lol. i'm serious. and if i have to live there for months or years before i can do that. idk, maybe you need to be a canadian citizen. i'll do whatever i have to do. my anti depressants,which i was originally wanted to kill myself with,apparently make you hallucinate,panic when you overdose on them. also pain. and it just MIGHT work. so fuck this shit. fuck it. heroin+benzos. just a lot. make me pass out, then stop breathing. that's similar to how my gf died. well, then i can finally be with her again. i can't stand being alive any longer.

Here is the 2012 Detail Magazine interview with chris evans:

The Avengers' Chris Evans: Just Your Average Beer-Swilling, Babe-Loving Buddhist

The 30-year-old Bud Light-chugging, Beantown-bred star of The Avengers is widely perceived as the ultimate guy's guy. But beneath the bro persona lies a serious student of Buddhism, an unrepentant song-and-dance man, and a guy who talks to his mom about sex. And farts.

By Adam Sachs,

Photographs by Norman Jean Roy

May 2012 Issue

"Should we just kill him and bury his body?" Chris Evans is stage whispering into the impassive blinking light of my digital recorder.

"Chris!" shouts his mother, her tone a familiar-to-anyone-with-a-mother mix of coddling and concern. "Don't say that! What if something happened?"

We're at Evans' apartment, an expansive but not overly tricked-out bachelor-pad-ish loft in a semi-industrial nowheresville part of Boston, hard by Chinatown, near an area sometimes called the Combat Zone. Evans has a fuzzy, floppy, slept-in-his-clothes aspect that'd be nearly unrecognizable if you knew him only by the upright, spit-polished bearing of the onscreen hero. His dog, East, a sweet and slobbery American bulldog, is spread out on a couch in front of the TV. The shelves of his fridge are neatly stacked with much of the world's supply of Bud Light in cans and little else.

On the counter sit a few buckets of muscle-making whey-protein powder that belong to Evans' roommate, Zach Jarvis, an old pal who sometimes tags along on set as a paid "assistant" and a personal trainer who bulked Evans up for his role as the super-ripped patriot in last summer's blockbuster Captain America: The First Avenger. A giant clock on the exposed-brick wall says it's early evening, but Evans operates on his own sense of time. Between gigs, his schedule's all his, which usually translates into long stretches of alone time during the day and longer social nights for the 30-year-old.

"I could just make this . . . disappear," says Josh Peck, another old pal and occasional on-set assistant, in a deadpan mumble, poking at the voice recorder I'd left on the table while I was in the bathroom.

Evans' mom, Lisa, now speaks directly into the microphone: "Don't listen to them—I'm trying to get them not to say these things!"

But not saying things isn't in the Evans DNA. They're an infectiously gregarious clan. Irish-Italians, proud Bostoners, close-knit, and innately theatrical. "We all act, we sing," Evans says. "It was like the fucking von Trapps." Mom was a dancer and now runs a children's theater. First-born Carly directed the family puppet shows and studied theater at NYU. Younger brother Scott has parts on One Life to Live and Law & Order under his belt and lives in Los Angeles full-time—something Evans stopped doing several years back. Rounding out the circle are baby sister Shanna and a pair of "strays" the family brought into their Sudbury, Massachusetts, home: Josh, who went from mowing the lawn to moving in when his folks relocated during his senior year in high school; and Demery, who was Evans' roommate until recently.

"Our house was like a hotel," Evans says. "It was a loony-tunes household. If you got arrested in high school, everyone knew: 'Call Mrs. Evans, she'll bail you out.'"

Growing up, they had a special floor put in the basement where all the kids practiced tap-dancing. The party-ready rec room also had a Ping-Pong table and a separate entrance. This was the house kids in the neighborhood wanted to hang at, and this was the kind of family you wanted to be adopted by. Spend an afternoon listening to them dish old dirt and talk over each other and it's easy to see why. Now they're worried they've said too much, laid bare the tender soul of the actor behind the star-spangled superhero outfit, so there's talk of offing the interviewer. I can hear all this from the bathroom, which, of course, is the point of a good stage whisper.

To be sure, no one's said too much, and the more you're brought into the embrace of this boisterous, funny, shit-slinging, demonstrably loving extended family, the more likable and enviable the whole dynamic is.

Sample exchange from today's lunch of baked ziti at a family-style Italian restaurant:

Mom: When he was a kid, he asked me, 'Mom, will I ever think farting isn't funny?'

Chris: You're throwing me under the bus, Ma! Thank you.

Mom: Well, if a dog farts you still find it funny.

Then, back at the apartment, where Mrs. Evans tries to give me good-natured dirt on her son without freaking him out:

Mom: You always tell me when you think a girl is attractive. You'll call me up so excited. Is that okay to say?

Chris: Nothing wrong with that.

Mom: And can I say all the girls you've brought to the house have been very sweet and wonderful? Of course, those are the ones that make it to the house. It's been a long time, hasn't it?

Chris: Looooong time.

Mom: The last one at our house? Was it six years ago?

Chris: No names, Ma!

Mom: But she knocked it out of the park.

Chris: She got drunk and puked at Auntie Pam's house! And she puked on the way home and she puked at our place.

Mom: And that's when I fell in love with her. Because she was real.

We're operating under a no-names rule, so I'm not asking if it's Jessica Biel who made this memorable first impression. She and Evans were serious for a couple of years. But I don't want to picture lovely Jessica Biel getting sick at Auntie Pam's or in the car or, really, anywhere.

East the bulldog ambles over to the table, begging for food.

"That dog is the love of his life," Mrs. Evans says. "Which tells me he'll be an unbelievable parent, but I don't want him to get married right now." She turns to Chris. "The way you are, I just don't think you're ready."

Some other things I learn about Evans from his mom: He hates going to the gym; he was so wound-up as a kid she'd let him stand during dinner, his legs shaking like caged greyhounds; he suffered weekly "Sunday-night meltdowns" over schoolwork and the angst of the sensitive middle-schooler; after she and his father split and he was making money from acting, he bought her the Sudbury family homestead rather than let her leave it.

Eventually his mom and Josh depart, and Evans and I go to work depleting his stash of Bud Light. It feels like we drink Bud Light and talk for days, because we basically do. I arrived early Friday evening; it's Saturday night now and it'll be sunup Sunday before I sleeplessly make my way to catch a train back to New York City. Somewhere in between we slip free of the gravitational pull of the bachelor pad and there's bottle service at a club and a long walk with entourage in tow back to Evans' apartment, where there is some earnest-yet-surreal group singing, piano playing, and chitchat. Evans is fun to talk to, partly because he's an open, self-mocking guy with an explosive laugh and no apparent need to sleep, and partly because when you cut just below the surface, it's clear he's not quite the dude's dude he sometimes plays onscreen and in TV appearances.

From a distance, Chris Evans the movie star seems a predictable, nearly inevitable piece of successful Hollywood packaging come to market. There's his major-release debut as the dorkily unaware jock Jake in the guilty pleasure Not Another Teen Movie (in one memorable scene, Evans has whipped cream on his chest and a banana up his ass). The female-friendly hunk appeal—his character in The Nanny Diaries is named simply Harvard Hottie—is balanced by a kind of casual-Friday, I'm-from-Boston regular-dudeness. Following the siren song of comic-book cash, he was the Human Torch in two Fantastic Four films. As with scrawny Steve Rogers, the Captain America suit beefed up his stature as a formidable screen presence, a bankable leading man, all of which leads us to The Avengers, this season's megabudget, megawatt ensemble in which he stars alongside Scarlett Johansson, Mark Ruffalo, Robert Downey Jr., and Chris Hemsworth.

It all feels inevitable—and yet it nearly didn't happen. Evans repeatedly turned down the Captain America role, fearing he'd be locked into what was originally a nine-picture deal. He was shooting Puncture, about a drug-addicted lawyer, at the time. Most actors doing small-budget legal dramas would jump at the chance to play the lead in a Marvel franchise, but Evans saw a decade of his life flash before his eyes.

What he remembers thinking is this: "What if the movie comes out and it's a success and I just reject all of this? What if I want to move to the fucking woods?"

By "the woods," he doesn't mean a quiet life away from the spotlight, some general metaphorical life escape route. He means the actual woods. "For a long time all I wanted for Christmas were books about outdoor survival," he says. "I was convinced that I was going to move to the woods. I camped a lot, I took classes. At 18, I told myself if I don't live in the woods by the time I'm 25, I have failed."

Evans has described his hesitation at signing on for Captain America. Usually he talks about the time commitment, the loss of what remained of his relative anonymity. On the junkets for the movie, he was open about needing therapy after the studio reduced the deal to six movies and he took the leap. What he doesn't usually mention is that he was racked with anxiety before the job came up.

"I get very nervous," Evans explains. "I shit the bed if I have to present something on stage or if I'm doing press. Because it's just you." He's been known to walk out of press conferences, to freeze up and go silent during the kind of relaxed-yet-high-stakes meetings an actor of his stature is expected to attend: "Do you know how badly I audition? Fifty percent of the time I have to walk out of the room. I'm naturally very pale, so I turn red and sweat. And I have to literally walk out. Sometimes mid-audition. You start having these conversations in your brain. 'Chris, don't do this. Chris, take it easy. You're just sitting in a room with a person saying some words, this isn't life. And you're letting this affect you? Shame on you.'"

Shades of "Sunday-night meltdowns." Luckily the nerves never follow him to the set. "You do your neuroses beforehand, so when they yell 'Action' you can be present," he says.

Okay, there was one on-set panic attack—while Evans was shooting Puncture. "We were getting ready to do a court scene in front of a bunch of people, and I don't know what happened," he says. "It's just your brain playing games with you. 'Hey, you know how we sometimes freak out? What if we did it right now?'"

One of the people who advised Evans to take the Captain America role was his eventual Avengers costar Robert Downey Jr. "I'd seen him around," Downey says. "We share an agent. I like to spend a lot of my free time talking to my agent about his other clients—I just had a feeling about him."

What he told Evans was: This puppy is going to be big, and when it is you're going to get to make the movies you want to make. "In the marathon obstacle course of a career," Downey says, "it's just good to have all the stats on paper for why you're not only a team player but also why it makes sense to support you in the projects you want to do—because you've made so much damned money for the studio."

There's also the fact that Evans had a chance to sign on for something likely to be a kind of watershed moment in the comic-book fascination of our time. "I do think The Avengers is the crescendo of this superhero phase in entertainment—except of course for Iron Man 3," Downey says. "It'll take a lot of innovation to keep it alive after this."

Captain America is the only person left who was truly close to Howard Stark, father of Tony Stark (a.k.a. Iron Man), which meant that Evans' and Downey's story lines are closely linked, and in the course of doing a lot of scenes together, they got to be pals. Downey diagnoses his friend with what he terms "low-grade red-carpet anxiety disorder."

"He just hates the game-show aspect of doing PR," Downey says. "Obviously there's pressure for anyone in this transition he's in. But he will easily triple that pressure to make sure he's not being lazy. That's why I respect the guy. I wouldn't necessarily want to be in his skin. But his motives are pure. He just needs to drink some red-carpet chamomile."

"The majority of the world is empty space," Chris Evans says, watching me as if my brain might explode on hearing this news—or like he might have to fight me if I try to contradict him. We're back at his apartment after a cigarette run through the Combat Zone.

"Empty space!" he says again, slapping the table and sort of yelling. Then, in a slow, breathy whisper, he repeats: "Empty space, empty space. All that we see in the world, the life, the animals, plants, people, it's all empty space. That's amazing!" He slaps the table again. "You want another beer? Gotta be Bud Light. Get dirty—you're in Boston. Okay, organize your thoughts. I gotta take a piss . . ."

My thoughts are this: That this guy who is hugging his dog and talking to me about space and mortality and the trouble with Boston girls who believe crazy gossip about him—this is not the guy I expected to meet. I figured he'd be a meatball. Though, truthfully, I'd never called anyone a meatball until Evans turned me on to the put-down. As in: "My sister Shanna dates meatballs." And, more to the point: "When I do interviews, I'd rather just be the beer-drinking dude from Boston and not get into the complex shit, because I don't want every meatball saying, 'So hey, whaddyathink about Buddhism?'"

At 17, Evans came across a copy of Hermann Hesse's Siddhartha and began his spiritual questing. It's a path of study and struggle that, he says, defines his true purpose in life. "I love acting. It's my playground, it lets me explore. But my happiness in this world, my level of peace, is never going to be dictated by acting," he says. "My goal in life is to detach from the egoic mind. Do you know anything about Eastern philosophy?"

I sip some Bud Light and shake my head sheepishly. "They talk about the egoic mind, the part of you that's self-aware, the watcher, the person you think is driving this machine," he says. "And that separation from self and mind is the root of suffering. There are ways of retraining the way you think. This isn't really supported in Western society, which is focused on 'Go get it, earn it, win it, marry it.'"

Scarlett Johansson says that one of the things she appreciates about Evans is how he steers clear of industry chat when they see each other. "Basically every actor," she says, "including myself, when we finish a job we're like, 'Well, that's it for me. Had a good run. Put me out to pasture.' But Chris doesn't strike me as someone who frets about the next job." The two met on the set of The Perfect Score when they were teenagers and have stayed close; The Avengers is their third movie together. "He has this obviously masculine presence—a dude's dude—and we're used to seeing him play heroic characters," Johansson says, "but he's also surprisingly sensitive. He has close female friends, and you can talk to him about anything. Plus there's that secret song-and-dance, jazz-hands side of Chris. I feel like he grew up with the Partridge Family. He'd be just as happy doing Guys and Dolls as he would Captain America 2."

East needs to do his business, so Evans and I take him up to the roof deck. Evans bought this apartment in 2010 when living in L.A. full-time no longer appealed to him. He came back to stay close to his extended family and the intimate circle of Boston pals he's maintained since high school. The move also seems like a pretty clear keep-it-real hedge against the manic ego-stroking distractions of Hollywood.

"I think my daytime person is different than my nighttime person," Evans says. "With my high-school buddies, we drink beer and talk sports and it's great. The kids in my Buddhism class in L.A., they're wildly intelligent, and I love being around them, but they're not talking about the Celtics. And that's part of me. It's a strange dichotomy. I don't mind being a certain way with some people and having this other piece of me that's just for me."

I asked Downey about Evans' outward regular-Joe persona. "It's complete horseshit," Downey says. "There's an inherent street-smart intelligence there. I don't think he tries to hide it. But he's much more evolved and much more culturally aware than he lets on."

Perhaps the meatball and the meditation can coexist. We argue about our egoic brains and the tao of Boston girls. "I love wet hair and sweatpants," he says in their defense. "I like sneakers and ponytails. I like girls who aren't so la-di-da. L.A. is so la-di-da. I like Boston girls who shit on me. Not literally. Girls who give me a hard time, bust my chops a little."

The chief buster of Evans' chops is, of course, Evans himself. "The problem is, the brain I'm using to dissect this world is a brain formed by it," he says. "We're born into confusion, and we get the blessing of letting go of it." Then he adds: "I think this shit by day. And then night comes and it's like, 'Fuck it, let's drink.'"

And so we do. It's getting late. Again. We should have eaten dinner, but Evans sometimes forgets to eat: "If I could just take a pill to make me full forever, I wouldn't think twice."

We talk about his dog and camping with his dog and why he loves being alone more than almost anything except maybe not being alone. "I swear to God, if you saw me when I am by myself in the woods, I'm a lunatic," he says. "I sing, I dance. I do crazy shit."

Evans' unflagging, all-encompassing enthusiasm is impressive, itself a kind of social intelligence. "If you want to have a good conversation with him, don't talk about the fact that he's famous" was the advice I got from Mark Kassen, who codirected Puncture. "He's a blast, a guy who can hang. For quite a long time. Many hours in a row."

I've stopped looking at the clock. We've stopped talking philosophy and moved into more emotional territory. He asks questions about my 9-month-old son, and then Captain America gets teary when I talk about the wonder of his birth. "I weep at everything," he says. "I emote. I love things so much—I just never want to dilute that."

He talks about how close he feels to his family, how open they all are with each other. About everything. All the time. "The first time I had sex," he says, "I raced home and was like, 'Mom, I just had sex! Where's the clit?'"

Wait, I ask—did she ever tell you?

"Still don't know where it is, man," he says, then breaks into a smile composed of equal parts shit-eating grin and inner peace. "I just don't know. Make some movies, you don't have to know…"

Here is the 2012 Detail Magazine interview with chris evans:

The Avengers' Chris Evans: Just Your Average Beer-Swilling, Babe-Loving Buddhist

The 30-year-old Bud Light-chugging, Beantown-bred star of The Avengers is widely perceived as the ultimate guy's guy. But beneath the bro persona lies a serious student of Buddhism, an unrepentant song-and-dance man, and a guy who talks to his mom about sex. And farts.

By Adam Sachs,

Photographs by Norman Jean Roy

May 2012 Issue

"Should we just kill him and bury his body?" Chris Evans is stage whispering into the impassive blinking light of my digital recorder.

"Chris!" shouts his mother, her tone a familiar-to-anyone-with-a-mother mix of coddling and concern. "Don't say that! What if something happened?"

We're at Evans' apartment, an expansive but not overly tricked-out bachelor-pad-ish loft in a semi-industrial nowheresville part of Boston, hard by Chinatown, near an area sometimes called the Combat Zone. Evans has a fuzzy, floppy, slept-in-his-clothes aspect that'd be nearly unrecognizable if you knew him only by the upright, spit-polished bearing of the onscreen hero. His dog, East, a sweet and slobbery American bulldog, is spread out on a couch in front of the TV. The shelves of his fridge are neatly stacked with much of the world's supply of Bud Light in cans and little else.

On the counter sit a few buckets of muscle-making whey-protein powder that belong to Evans' roommate, Zach Jarvis, an old pal who sometimes tags along on set as a paid "assistant" and a personal trainer who bulked Evans up for his role as the super-ripped patriot in last summer's blockbuster Captain America: The First Avenger. A giant clock on the exposed-brick wall says it's early evening, but Evans operates on his own sense of time. Between gigs, his schedule's all his, which usually translates into long stretches of alone time during the day and longer social nights for the 30-year-old.

"I could just make this . . . disappear," says Josh Peck, another old pal and occasional on-set assistant, in a deadpan mumble, poking at the voice recorder I'd left on the table while I was in the bathroom.

Evans' mom, Lisa, now speaks directly into the microphone: "Don't listen to them—I'm trying to get them not to say these things!"

But not saying things isn't in the Evans DNA. They're an infectiously gregarious clan. Irish-Italians, proud Bostoners, close-knit, and innately theatrical. "We all act, we sing," Evans says. "It was like the fucking von Trapps." Mom was a dancer and now runs a children's theater. First-born Carly directed the family puppet shows and studied theater at NYU. Younger brother Scott has parts on One Life to Live and Law & Order under his belt and lives in Los Angeles full-time—something Evans stopped doing several years back. Rounding out the circle are baby sister Shanna and a pair of "strays" the family brought into their Sudbury, Massachusetts, home: Josh, who went from mowing the lawn to moving in when his folks relocated during his senior year in high school; and Demery, who was Evans' roommate until recently.

"Our house was like a hotel," Evans says. "It was a loony-tunes household. If you got arrested in high school, everyone knew: 'Call Mrs. Evans, she'll bail you out.'"

Growing up, they had a special floor put in the basement where all the kids practiced tap-dancing. The party-ready rec room also had a Ping-Pong table and a separate entrance. This was the house kids in the neighborhood wanted to hang at, and this was the kind of family you wanted to be adopted by. Spend an afternoon listening to them dish old dirt and talk over each other and it's easy to see why. Now they're worried they've said too much, laid bare the tender soul of the actor behind the star-spangled superhero outfit, so there's talk of offing the interviewer. I can hear all this from the bathroom, which, of course, is the point of a good stage whisper.

To be sure, no one's said too much, and the more you're brought into the embrace of this boisterous, funny, shit-slinging, demonstrably loving extended family, the more likable and enviable the whole dynamic is.

Sample exchange from today's lunch of baked ziti at a family-style Italian restaurant:

Mom: When he was a kid, he asked me, 'Mom, will I ever think farting isn't funny?'

Chris: You're throwing me under the bus, Ma! Thank you.

Mom: Well, if a dog farts you still find it funny.

Then, back at the apartment, where Mrs. Evans tries to give me good-natured dirt on her son without freaking him out:

Mom: You always tell me when you think a girl is attractive. You'll call me up so excited. Is that okay to say?

Chris: Nothing wrong with that.

Mom: And can I say all the girls you've brought to the house have been very sweet and wonderful? Of course, those are the ones that make it to the house. It's been a long time, hasn't it?

Chris: Looooong time.

Mom: The last one at our house? Was it six years ago?

Chris: No names, Ma!

Mom: But she knocked it out of the park.

Chris: She got drunk and puked at Auntie Pam's house! And she puked on the way home and she puked at our place.

Mom: And that's when I fell in love with her. Because she was real.

We're operating under a no-names rule, so I'm not asking if it's Jessica Biel who made this memorable first impression. She and Evans were serious for a couple of years. But I don't want to picture lovely Jessica Biel getting sick at Auntie Pam's or in the car or, really, anywhere.

East the bulldog ambles over to the table, begging for food.

"That dog is the love of his life," Mrs. Evans says. "Which tells me he'll be an unbelievable parent, but I don't want him to get married right now." She turns to Chris. "The way you are, I just don't think you're ready."

Some other things I learn about Evans from his mom: He hates going to the gym; he was so wound-up as a kid she'd let him stand during dinner, his legs shaking like caged greyhounds; he suffered weekly "Sunday-night meltdowns" over schoolwork and the angst of the sensitive middle-schooler; after she and his father split and he was making money from acting, he bought her the Sudbury family homestead rather than let her leave it.

Eventually his mom and Josh depart, and Evans and I go to work depleting his stash of Bud Light. It feels like we drink Bud Light and talk for days, because we basically do. I arrived early Friday evening; it's Saturday night now and it'll be sunup Sunday before I sleeplessly make my way to catch a train back to New York City. Somewhere in between we slip free of the gravitational pull of the bachelor pad and there's bottle service at a club and a long walk with entourage in tow back to Evans' apartment, where there is some earnest-yet-surreal group singing, piano playing, and chitchat. Evans is fun to talk to, partly because he's an open, self-mocking guy with an explosive laugh and no apparent need to sleep, and partly because when you cut just below the surface, it's clear he's not quite the dude's dude he sometimes plays onscreen and in TV appearances.

From a distance, Chris Evans the movie star seems a predictable, nearly inevitable piece of successful Hollywood packaging come to market. There's his major-release debut as the dorkily unaware jock Jake in the guilty pleasure Not Another Teen Movie (in one memorable scene, Evans has whipped cream on his chest and a banana up his ass). The female-friendly hunk appeal—his character in The Nanny Diaries is named simply Harvard Hottie—is balanced by a kind of casual-Friday, I'm-from-Boston regular-dudeness. Following the siren song of comic-book cash, he was the Human Torch in two Fantastic Four films. As with scrawny Steve Rogers, the Captain America suit beefed up his stature as a formidable screen presence, a bankable leading man, all of which leads us to The Avengers, this season's megabudget, megawatt ensemble in which he stars alongside Scarlett Johansson, Mark Ruffalo, Robert Downey Jr., and Chris Hemsworth.

It all feels inevitable—and yet it nearly didn't happen. Evans repeatedly turned down the Captain America role, fearing he'd be locked into what was originally a nine-picture deal. He was shooting Puncture, about a drug-addicted lawyer, at the time. Most actors doing small-budget legal dramas would jump at the chance to play the lead in a Marvel franchise, but Evans saw a decade of his life flash before his eyes.

What he remembers thinking is this: "What if the movie comes out and it's a success and I just reject all of this? What if I want to move to the fucking woods?"

By "the woods," he doesn't mean a quiet life away from the spotlight, some general metaphorical life escape route. He means the actual woods. "For a long time all I wanted for Christmas were books about outdoor survival," he says. "I was convinced that I was going to move to the woods. I camped a lot, I took classes. At 18, I told myself if I don't live in the woods by the time I'm 25, I have failed."

Evans has described his hesitation at signing on for Captain America. Usually he talks about the time commitment, the loss of what remained of his relative anonymity. On the junkets for the movie, he was open about needing therapy after the studio reduced the deal to six movies and he took the leap. What he doesn't usually mention is that he was racked with anxiety before the job came up.

"I get very nervous," Evans explains. "I shit the bed if I have to present something on stage or if I'm doing press. Because it's just you." He's been known to walk out of press conferences, to freeze up and go silent during the kind of relaxed-yet-high-stakes meetings an actor of his stature is expected to attend: "Do you know how badly I audition? Fifty percent of the time I have to walk out of the room. I'm naturally very pale, so I turn red and sweat. And I have to literally walk out. Sometimes mid-audition. You start having these conversations in your brain. 'Chris, don't do this. Chris, take it easy. You're just sitting in a room with a person saying some words, this isn't life. And you're letting this affect you? Shame on you.'"

Shades of "Sunday-night meltdowns." Luckily the nerves never follow him to the set. "You do your neuroses beforehand, so when they yell 'Action' you can be present," he says.

Okay, there was one on-set panic attack—while Evans was shooting Puncture. "We were getting ready to do a court scene in front of a bunch of people, and I don't know what happened," he says. "It's just your brain playing games with you. 'Hey, you know how we sometimes freak out? What if we did it right now?'"

One of the people who advised Evans to take the Captain America role was his eventual Avengers costar Robert Downey Jr. "I'd seen him around," Downey says. "We share an agent. I like to spend a lot of my free time talking to my agent about his other clients—I just had a feeling about him."

What he told Evans was: This puppy is going to be big, and when it is you're going to get to make the movies you want to make. "In the marathon obstacle course of a career," Downey says, "it's just good to have all the stats on paper for why you're not only a team player but also why it makes sense to support you in the projects you want to do—because you've made so much damned money for the studio."

There's also the fact that Evans had a chance to sign on for something likely to be a kind of watershed moment in the comic-book fascination of our time. "I do think The Avengers is the crescendo of this superhero phase in entertainment—except of course for Iron Man 3," Downey says. "It'll take a lot of innovation to keep it alive after this."

Captain America is the only person left who was truly close to Howard Stark, father of Tony Stark (a.k.a. Iron Man), which meant that Evans' and Downey's story lines are closely linked, and in the course of doing a lot of scenes together, they got to be pals. Downey diagnoses his friend with what he terms "low-grade red-carpet anxiety disorder."

"He just hates the game-show aspect of doing PR," Downey says. "Obviously there's pressure for anyone in this transition he's in. But he will easily triple that pressure to make sure he's not being lazy. That's why I respect the guy. I wouldn't necessarily want to be in his skin. But his motives are pure. He just needs to drink some red-carpet chamomile."

"The majority of the world is empty space," Chris Evans says, watching me as if my brain might explode on hearing this news—or like he might have to fight me if I try to contradict him. We're back at his apartment after a cigarette run through the Combat Zone.

"Empty space!" he says again, slapping the table and sort of yelling. Then, in a slow, breathy whisper, he repeats: "Empty space, empty space. All that we see in the world, the life, the animals, plants, people, it's all empty space. That's amazing!" He slaps the table again. "You want another beer? Gotta be Bud Light. Get dirty—you're in Boston. Okay, organize your thoughts. I gotta take a piss . . ."

My thoughts are this: That this guy who is hugging his dog and talking to me about space and mortality and the trouble with Boston girls who believe crazy gossip about him—this is not the guy I expected to meet. I figured he'd be a meatball. Though, truthfully, I'd never called anyone a meatball until Evans turned me on to the put-down. As in: "My sister Shanna dates meatballs." And, more to the point: "When I do interviews, I'd rather just be the beer-drinking dude from Boston and not get into the complex shit, because I don't want every meatball saying, 'So hey, whaddyathink about Buddhism?'"

At 17, Evans came across a copy of Hermann Hesse's Siddhartha and began his spiritual questing. It's a path of study and struggle that, he says, defines his true purpose in life. "I love acting. It's my playground, it lets me explore. But my happiness in this world, my level of peace, is never going to be dictated by acting," he says. "My goal in life is to detach from the egoic mind. Do you know anything about Eastern philosophy?"

I sip some Bud Light and shake my head sheepishly. "They talk about the egoic mind, the part of you that's self-aware, the watcher, the person you think is driving this machine," he says. "And that separation from self and mind is the root of suffering. There are ways of retraining the way you think. This isn't really supported in Western society, which is focused on 'Go get it, earn it, win it, marry it.'"

Scarlett Johansson says that one of the things she appreciates about Evans is how he steers clear of industry chat when they see each other. "Basically every actor," she says, "including myself, when we finish a job we're like, 'Well, that's it for me. Had a good run. Put me out to pasture.' But Chris doesn't strike me as someone who frets about the next job." The two met on the set of The Perfect Score when they were teenagers and have stayed close; The Avengers is their third movie together. "He has this obviously masculine presence—a dude's dude—and we're used to seeing him play heroic characters," Johansson says, "but he's also surprisingly sensitive. He has close female friends, and you can talk to him about anything. Plus there's that secret song-and-dance, jazz-hands side of Chris. I feel like he grew up with the Partridge Family. He'd be just as happy doing Guys and Dolls as he would Captain America 2."

East needs to do his business, so Evans and I take him up to the roof deck. Evans bought this apartment in 2010 when living in L.A. full-time no longer appealed to him. He came back to stay close to his extended family and the intimate circle of Boston pals he's maintained since high school. The move also seems like a pretty clear keep-it-real hedge against the manic ego-stroking distractions of Hollywood.

"I think my daytime person is different than my nighttime person," Evans says. "With my high-school buddies, we drink beer and talk sports and it's great. The kids in my Buddhism class in L.A., they're wildly intelligent, and I love being around them, but they're not talking about the Celtics. And that's part of me. It's a strange dichotomy. I don't mind being a certain way with some people and having this other piece of me that's just for me."

I asked Downey about Evans' outward regular-Joe persona. "It's complete horseshit," Downey says. "There's an inherent street-smart intelligence there. I don't think he tries to hide it. But he's much more evolved and much more culturally aware than he lets on."

Perhaps the meatball and the meditation can coexist. We argue about our egoic brains and the tao of Boston girls. "I love wet hair and sweatpants," he says in their defense. "I like sneakers and ponytails. I like girls who aren't so la-di-da. L.A. is so la-di-da. I like Boston girls who shit on me. Not literally. Girls who give me a hard time, bust my chops a little."

The chief buster of Evans' chops is, of course, Evans himself. "The problem is, the brain I'm using to dissect this world is a brain formed by it," he says. "We're born into confusion, and we get the blessing of letting go of it." Then he adds: "I think this shit by day. And then night comes and it's like, 'Fuck it, let's drink.'"

And so we do. It's getting late. Again. We should have eaten dinner, but Evans sometimes forgets to eat: "If I could just take a pill to make me full forever, I wouldn't think twice."

We talk about his dog and camping with his dog and why he loves being alone more than almost anything except maybe not being alone. "I swear to God, if you saw me when I am by myself in the woods, I'm a lunatic," he says. "I sing, I dance. I do crazy shit."

Evans' unflagging, all-encompassing enthusiasm is impressive, itself a kind of social intelligence. "If you want to have a good conversation with him, don't talk about the fact that he's famous" was the advice I got from Mark Kassen, who codirected Puncture. "He's a blast, a guy who can hang. For quite a long time. Many hours in a row."

I've stopped looking at the clock. We've stopped talking philosophy and moved into more emotional territory. He asks questions about my 9-month-old son, and then Captain America gets teary when I talk about the wonder of his birth. "I weep at everything," he says. "I emote. I love things so much—I just never want to dilute that."

He talks about how close he feels to his family, how open they all are with each other. About everything. All the time. "The first time I had sex," he says, "I raced home and was like, 'Mom, I just had sex! Where's the clit?'"

Wait, I ask—did she ever tell you?

"Still don't know where it is, man," he says, then breaks into a smile composed of equal parts shit-eating grin and inner peace. "I just don't know. Make some movies, you don't have to know…"

If someone doesn't want to check the link, the anon sent the full interview!

Jouska [Hotch x Reader]

Chapter 1:

Gif credit: @tommyshelbcy

Warnings: Mentions of stalking/blood

Word count: 1363

———

"The end is in the beginning and lies far ahead." - Ralph Ellison

———

"Haley, listen, I'm gonna have to call you back, I'm about to meet with him right now."

"Oh my God, you always do this, Aaron, you promised we-"

"- Yeah, we will, I promise but I really gotta go. Bye." He rushes out in a low voice as he sets the telephone down. He gathers himself, buttoning his suit jacket as he strides confidently towards the steps, butterflies in his stomach.

His first official assignment, and he was determined to make it count. Months of gruelling training, exams and physicals were finally going to allow him to get his foot in the door and get to where he wanted to be. He takes a steadying breath before knocking on the door three times and waiting for the voice inside.

"Yeah. Come in." Barnes lifts his gaze from the paperwork he was engrossed in to beckon Aaron forward. "Take a seat."

"Yes sir, you wanted to see me?" He wrings his hands unconsciously.

He sees the bright eyed agent’s behaviour betraying him and smiles knowingly. “It's alright, no need to be nervous, son. This here's good news for you. In fact, these are your transcripts and reports I'm looking at." He smiles. "You were one of the most promising cadets during your training stint, and the work I've seen from you so far is more than I'd expect from a fairly new recruit."

Hotch lets out a half- breath, half laugh of relief as he lets his shoulders relax. "Thank you, sir. It means a lot coming from you." He smiles almost bashfully, the words ringing unfamiliar in his ears. Praise had always been a foreign concept to him thus far.

"Not so fast, I still need to tell you why I called you in today." He sets his pen down now, looking Hotch in the eyes as he tells him, "your talent hasn't gone unnoticed, which is why I'm assigning you to the personal and home security detail of the US Ambassador of France while he's stateside."

His heart pounds. Barnes' talk of his team and responsibilities feel far away now and Aaron tries to rapidly take in everything that he's saying. This is it. The opportunity he'd been waiting for to prove himself as an agent of the bureau and not just a trainee. Barnes brings him out his mind by asking him if he has any questions and tells him to go meet with his new team. He shakes Barnes' hand and thanks him for the opportunity, before quickly excusing himself.

Barnes interrupts him as he's leaving. He turns to face his superior as he tells him, "I'm trusting you on this one, Hotchner. The Ambassador will explain when you meet him but this one's personal."

"Yes, Sir." He ducks his head out of respect and turns to leave to be briefed with his team.

————

"Alright everybody, you know the drill. Make your introductions, follow protocol and see the Ambassador's staff for your assignments." McCall commands over the comms.

He directs Aaron to take the next left as the SUV's pull into the driveway of the sprawling estate, lined with perfectly groomed grass and trees. As they step out of the cars, the double doors open as your father and his assistants step out. A large man in stature, the Ambassador demands attention but his smile is welcoming - warm, even. Eight agents in total make their way over the man as he walks them through the grand foyer of the home.

Hotch has a strange feeling in his stomach, half excitement, half dread. He feels out of his depth. Small. And he doesn't like that feeling.

Niceties exchanged and introductions made, the Ambassador beckons McCall over to him while the other agents speak with his staff. McCall leans over and tells Aaron to come with him as the three of them step into an office.

"Sir, it's lovely to see you again. This is Agent Hotchner, the one Agent Barnes told you about." McCalls explains. Hotch steps forward to offer your father a firm handshake but still doesn't quite understand what is happening as he looks around confused.

The Ambassador lets out a short laugh. "I take it Barnes didn't quite explain the scope of your duties here. He has a tendency to be quite dramatic."

Hotch shakes his head as he laughs slightly, and explains that he was told he would be informed of his duties once the initial meeting had taken place.

"Well, alongside the standard home and personal security, I have an additional, sort of special request." The Ambassador takes a beat and asks McCall and Aaron to take a seat. "My daughter, she-. She was due to take off to Yale this summer, but it appears that somebody has been following her. And for some time."

He pulls out his desk drawer and takes two Manila folders, placing them in front of McCall and Hotch. "As you can see these photos go back to last summer, outside of my daughter's apartment, the gym, her school." He rubs a hand over his stubbled chin and sighs. "Then came the mysterious packages delivered to her door. Sometimes flowers, her favourite chocolates, jewellery. And then the notes."

The two agents flick through the folder to find photocopies of notes, dotted with specks of blood. Hotch mumbles the last words written on one of the notes. "Watch me earn you."

"That last note was delivered with all of the pictures of my daughter. It's because of this, that I advised my daughter to defer for a year, until we can find this man and asked her to move back home, here with me." He looks tired.

Hotch looks from McCall to the Ambassador and back again in confusion. "Pardon me, Sir, and I mean no disrespect at all, but why me? I'm still fairly new at this, and while I would be honoured to take this on, I just want to make sure that you think I'm the right man for the job."

"Well, I know you've taken the profiling course over at Quantico and you come highly recommended from Barnes." He reassures Hotch. "I have faith in you and McCall. Your job is twofold I suppose, as well as providing a security detail, you'll also be tasked with investigating this whole thing and getting to the bottom of this person's identity. And because of your age, the person who's following my daughter will simply think you're a new friend instead of law enforcement."

It finally sinks in for Hotch now. He nods his agreement slowly and thanks him for the opportunity. There's a knock at the door and the Ambassador calls out for whoever is on the other end to come in.

"Ah speaking of my daughter, here she is!" He stands up with a smile. McCall and Hotch turn to face you as you walk into the room and close the door behind you. you feel a pair of eyes following you as you do. The agents both stand as your father makes his way over to you to hug you. "We were just talking about you sweetheart." He tells you as he places a kiss on your temple.

"All good things, I hope!" You tease as you step forward to shake their hands and introduce yourself. You shake Agent Hotchner's hand as he towers over you, holding your gaze, your hand small in his. "Call me Aaron. Or Hotch, whichever works." He chuckles.

You smile as you share a moment but he looks down quickly and lets go of your hand. He's handsome, you think. He stands at 6'2 with broad shoulders and chest, dressed in a suit and tie and his slight beard and fluffy hair gives him a rugged look. His cheekbones and jawline are sharp and he has a disarming smile.

"These are the agents I told you about, honey. They'll be accompanying you while we get to the bottom of this." Your father says.

"Yes ma'am, rest assured we will do everything we can to catch this man." Hotch says as he looks into your eyes, his gaze flickering to your lips for a quick second before looking away.

This should be interesting, you think.

<Prev | > Next

Omigosh thank you 🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺 Albie— Albie just has my heart, his paws are just so cute I'm sobbing.

oh that's okay love!! Hmm, yeah I guess you could call it winter break, although there's no winter :P we just call it the end-of-the-year break, and we start again on the 20th of January.

Ikr. Dodol is such an odd name. tbh, most of the food names here are slightly strange, but they taste absolutely delicious :D so that's good haha. I'd love to try them with you too. There's 14 states and each has their own special delicacies.

Oh God I agree. The paperwork is TEDIOUS. So you know I work, right? Well, my job is basically to just do the doctor's paperwork at a clinic 😭🤚 things would be so much easier if it were computerized, but alas, it isn't. Who knows? Maybe if you become one, you could hire an assistant to do it for you :P 😭😔 God you're so sweet. No I'd not get hurt around you, at least I'd try my best not to. Why waste a second being injured when I could instead use it to do exciting things with you? :D

thank you!! Have you ever thought of doing something like that too? I'm not very good with young kids (I actually don't really even get along with them so much because they're quite a nuisance) but from experience, the older ones are okay, especially if they're all quiet and polite 😝💖

😭I'm glad they're enough. For now. BUT SOMEDAY I really will hug you !! and someone will probably have to tear me away because I don't think I'll let go 😼

a... dried?? Blobfish?? 😭 Interesting. I don't even wanna know where he got it either omg.

yes. So so so gorgeous 😭💖 I saw an ash lynx one a while ago on Instagram but then it disappeared (I'll find it again I hope) and it was the most beautiful art breeder I've EVER seen.

you're not uneducated hush >:(( you're such a smart person, I really really look up to you grrr. and yeah they're actually different. People acknowledge that fairy tails are fiction, wherelse myths were believed to be true, or at least have a ring of truth to them. :(

I wish you were here too. AND NOOOO KURO WAIT NOOOOOOOO. HOW AM I SUPPOSED TO HUG HIM IF HE HAS NO LIMBS 😭😭😭

Cashews are delicious!! I don't like all nuts, but some are great. Like peanuts and walnuts. Though I have braces, so I haven't eaten them in a long time, since they hurt my mouth. I'll take them out by march, I hope, and then you bet I'm just gonna eat all of those xD I've tried Baklava!! A friend went to Turkey once, and she brought some back. It's delicious, I hope I'll try it again in the future. tho omg yes!! You're so lucky, the snacks must be to-die-for there😚😚💖💖💖💖 what other types can you get?

CHISHIYA IS ACTUALLY A CATBOY ‼️‼️ THOSE PICTURES JUST CONFIRMED IT.

I hope you enjoy your rewatch!! Coincidentally, I'm rewatching a favourite of mine too. It's called She-Ra and it's on netflix. And here's a few frames of the show I want to share with you 😿💖

I MEAN. First of all; (they're not even canon) BUT THEY'RE SO PRETTY TOGETHER. Secondly, one of them's a catgirl?? And her suit is so pretty?? And thirdly... THE DIP?? I'm dying sorry 😭😭💖

—☃️☃️ (us ü)

Yes yes !!! He's so extremely adorable and I'm kqkkkdkakkd

Оhh, I see !! That's a lot, we're going back to class at tenth, or earlier maybe. I'm glad you guys have a long break!!! You deserve it:D

Оhh, 14!! We also have 14 states (uh, provinces?) Though I dont think every one has a separate delicacy. That's so cool, though!! The more food there is, the better xD

Ackk, I know right. I did paperwork, like, once in my life and it was so exhausting?? I feel bad for you😭 I'd rather become a freelancer 😝

Fair enough! I'd do my best to have you up and straight, so you wouldn't get injured even if you wanted to (though I dont think you would)😋

Well, I've been thinking about helping kids my age with languages. But, well, I'm so bad at teaching. I'm that kind of person to go "how do you not understand this" after two times of explaining. So I try not to do that, because I dont want the teens to think I'm uncool XD

Hehe no one will have to tear you away because I'd love to hug you just as long😭😭😭💕

Aahhh!! I really hope you come across it again!! It sucks to see something gorgeous only to never encounter it again😭

Awhh, that's so sweet of you!!! 🥺🥺 I also look up to you!! You're so hardworking and responsible, couldn't be me😭 but yeah, I really get confused sometimes, people say they're the same and I'm like ????

BWNSJQJD dont worry he's all bark one bite😭😭 he'll hit me but that's all he can do, really

Yeah!!! I adore walnuts, they're my favorite. Peanuts get stuck in my teeth a lot, I still love them though💔 March is in... three months? Huhh that's a while😭 I wouldn't survive for so long without them

Hell yeah, another thing I need to make you in the future!!!! I've also tried turkish delight, the orange and the strawberry ones are my favorite. I dont like the peanut ones tho, they're too sweet😭 we also tried maklube (mac-looh-beh), and it's to die for. Tastes even better when we make it with teh whole class XD our school also has special "keklube" and "tavuklube" versions, which are totally made up names, but basically they're just cake and chicken versions of maklube

I'm forty seconds away from writing an article about why Chishiya is not so secretly a catboy XD

Aaaa I forgot about She-ra qkekkqkd!!! I wanted to watch it as well but then I got into my anime phase 😭😭 they look so good though omg😍😍 I really hope watch it soon~ I hope you're enjoying it!!!

The best Guide to Reddit Marketing around 2019

"Yep, i do all my modelling in C4D as I just know the tools so well there. I do minimal retopology in Zbrush on organic shapes but any hard surfaces I make in C4D. I'd recommend the "Introduction to Subdivision modelling in C4D" by Shane Benson on Vimeo (he goes by Sheppard O'Neill on YouTube if you prefer that) and it was his tuts that got me into box and subdiv modelling.

I'm also releasing a modelling workshop in C4D and models from the kitchen scene that these belong to will be in there to learn. Just not these two as they belong to marketing for the workshop. very well "Brand new Reddit account with two extensive comments defending Boa Vista Orchards huh...? We joked earlier about spotting the Boa Vista account in here but it looks like we actually have lol! > I just talked to the dude who does the marketing for Apple Hill and he sent me this So you just randomly talked to the guy and he emailed over his entire statement...? " "I too wonder why they didn’t just create a new line and call it the mach-e instead of mustang, I believe it has something to do with the marketing department since they knew it’ll stir a lot of discussion" "Precedent suggests it depends on the marketing around the product being sold and the implied purpose. " "Wow, ha. The fact that you think that it’s ok for the government to strip away my personal health insurance so that I HAVE to be on the same shitty plan on everybody else is crazy. If healthcare is “free” and universal, the quality of healthcare is bound to decrease. I can choose to pay for whatever the fuck I want and whatever healthcare I want. I give to charity and I have plans on giving a lot more to charity as I get further in my career and start making more money. Believe it or not, you aren’t the only one that cares about people just because you want “free” healthcare for everybody. And there is also no such thing as free healthcare. It has to be paid somehow and middle class taxes will go up no matter how complicated you try to make the source of payment sound. And regarding free college, that will also raise middle class taxes. You keep bringing up this. 02% of financial transactions bullshit as if that’s going to cover all costs. Have you done studies on this yourself? Do you even know that? You act like all these things can be magically paid for without anybody in the middle class being negatively affected. I have a bachelor’s degree and I didn’t feel like college was very challenging. It was more like a series of annoying classes I didn’t need when all of college could have been boiled down into one year of the core classes of my major of marketing. College is a fuckin scam and it’s only truly necessary for a very limited amount of majors. You’re just another minion that kisses the feet of big-government Democrats that try to make us feel like horrible people for not allowing them to sucks insane amounts of money out of the economy and spend it how they would like to. inch "That's including the localization teams for every language though, as well as PR and marketing. >! Some of them might even be legacy accreditation for the Gen 6 models they're *still* using.! < " "Time is a cost and you should track where that cost is going. That said, if you are working on general administrative/nonbillable stuff within your own department, it's pretty easy to have that time automatically go to the right cost bucket, so generic entries for that sort of thing are fine imo. The stuff that really has to be tracked is anything for clients or for departments that are outside your default (e. g. engineer writes a blog post, that's marketing time etc). micron "I believe there are some lessons on Google Academy for Adss (now called Skillshop) but hands-on experience is tricky. Two ways are possible, 1) is for you to have your own website and use Google Ad Sense, but this is more from the advertiser side rather than publisher or technical side 2) ask a digital or marketing agency that is near you if you can shadow/assist/internship/work experience for a week or so. This may be difficult depending on where you live and agency people are always very busy, so if you do ask tell them how you could help THEM not the other way around. To be honest, start with Analytics and Paid Search as they are arguable more accessible and have more out there for you to learn" "We are in the same boat, but different industry. Here's my approach, starting this week: I'm joining business groups that my target clients are a part of, for example, manufacturer groups. Then I'm going to target that organization with our services. I'm then going to offer to speak about the service I offer and how it helps businesses. Not a marketing spiel, an educational talk. Good luck" "One might consider a lawsuit if a car or alcohol company advocated or implied the action of drinking and driving in their marketing" "This post has been removed for breaking Rule 1. No Spammy Titles. Do not mention anything about selling anything in the title. Absolutely ZERO marketing in the title. Do not even ask for people to contact you for more. Be enticing. Post quality pics with quality titles. Read the rules for info on how to market yourself here. If your posts keep getting removed then you will be banned. READ THE RULES! *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Remember to[contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/? to=/r/feetpics) if you have any questions or concerns. *" "I came of grew up and came of age in Chicago during Jordan's time with the Bulls and the shortest answer is that it's almost incomparable because the level of fame basketball players before Michael Jordan was laughably lower than now. Even today MJ has a logo that might be more identifiable than the company that created it. I would argue no athlete in any sport has surpassed MJ's level of fame. MJ pioneered so many avenues of endorsements, its like comparing planes in the era of propeller planes with jet planes. Jordan like most greats, stood on the shoulders of giants, specifically Larry Bird and Magic Johnson. Those two spent the better part of the late 70's and early to late 80's dominating the sport of basketball. Also add in Isiah Thomas of the Pistons and arguably "Dr. J" Julius Erving of the 76ers and those four were the superstars of the four teams that won EVERY NBA championship of the decade. Before Michael Jordan won his FIRST NBA Championship in 1991, he was arguably bigger than all of them. Before MJ, being a big name athlete meant getting your name on a breakfast cereal box called Wheaties, and doing the commercial saying the plug line "Gotta eat your Wheaties! " That's not a joke. Check 'em out on youtube, they're cringe worthy. MJ's meteoric rise in my opinion was helped by a few special advertising campaigns. I think first would have been his Nike commercials with Spike Lee, another pioneer. He just made "Do the right thing" at a time when black people making movies with black people in the movies wasn't really a thing. Spike Lee also happens to like playing characters in his own movies and Mars Blackmon was a character in that movie that Spike Lee chose to portray in a series of commericals with Michael Jordan. Again, pardon me for repeating, but I have to say it again for context. You have a supremely talented and charismatic young athlete being marketed by a young shoe company (Converse Chuck Taylors were still THE basketball shoe) hiring a visionary and ground breaking director to do something that had not been done before. And they crushed it. Again, at this time Michael Jordan wasn't winning NBA championships. He was having savant level performances, but get bounced out of the first round by the Celtics, or getting manhandled in the playoffs by the Pistons. By the time he did win it all in 91, MJ was doing things that no one had done in fields well outside basketball. Michael Jordan in Flight is one of the first videogames to have 3D. He had already supplanted Dr J in the one on one basketball video game with Larry Bird. Gatorade put out a marketing campaign with the song "Be Like Mike" and that song was the top song for the summer of 92 in Chicago on most radio stations regardless of genre. You're already familiar with Space Jam, but before Space Jam, the Looney Toons were relegated to afternoon after school syndicated (rerun) television stations. Michael Jordan made Bugs Bunny cool again to a whole new generation that knows of them only through MJ. I hope that helps. inches "Yeah I don't want to turn it around and criticize Musk over this or anything, but Tesla is great at PR and marketing while convincing people they don't actually try to be. inches "No, you dont need more parties, you need to ban all parties and establish government funded elections where everyone with a certain amount of support by the people can run using government money and marketing channels. Equal funding, equal marketing, equal candidacy, by the people, for the people. Sounds too good to be true? Well fuck you, because parties are corrupt barbaric cavemen shit. " " Funny Cartoon Images for website content - Family Funny Images and illustrations, Ultimate single panel funny cartoons used for websites, social media and emails https://www.freecartoonsdaily.com https://www.cartoons.cafe   www.cartoons.cafe www.acmeblanks.com sign up now! Funny Cartoons, Funny family cartoon images, Custom Cartoons, Niche Cartoons, Humorous Illustration Services, Business Cartoons, Medical Cartoons, Custom Comic Strips, Book Illustration Services, Political Cartoons, funny hospital cartoons, cartoons for marketing, corporate cartoons, work cartoons, business cartoons, Computer Cartoons, farmer cartoons, farm cartoons, tractor cartoons, Pig cartoons, pig farmer cartoons, cor farmer cartoons, wheat farmer cartoons, soybean farmer cartoons.... inch "That's including people associated with the marketing and promotion of Sword and Shield, which means people at Nintendo and the Pokemon Company rather than actual programmers at Game Freak working on the game itself. The same article you're looking at gives 200 at Game Freak - which is likely wrong since Game Freak had 143 employees, and Game Freak openly stated most were working on Town. You could include the modelers from Creatures Inc, but given that the models are the same as those developed for X and Y by Creatures Inc years ago, they are likely still being credited for "work" on this game that was actually done quite some time ago. " "Imagine what a lucky break JonTron was for FlexSeal. Their products are actually pretty decent, but their marketing was almost typical infomercial stuff that no-one over fifty would've seen. Next, out of nowhere, some YouTuber makes them famous amongst younger customers. People make "that's a lotta damage, " and "I sawed this boat in half, " memes. Everyone knows who they are. Chances are, when you need some stuff like this you'll at the very least know about their existence and you might buy their stuff because at least you know they're legit. Some people will buy it when they need something like that, literally for the meme. All they have to do is keep the ball rolling with tweets like these (because, of course, people actually follow them on Twitter now). " "That's my point. The pub you linked to is disney land. I'm looking for somewhere that recreates the  a more authentic historical experience. I think these places have got their marketing wrong which is why they are closing. They should be trying to recreate an experience closer to that in the Pathe news reel. If you just sold fresh baked bread, potted Hare, a variety of local ales you could heat with a poker while smoking a hilarious pipe you could capture a huge slice of the real ale / hipster / foodie market. " "No game in the genre had been competition for the Diablo franchise since it's inception. D3 no matter how you look at it was a huge commercial success being in the top 10 video games sold of all time at one point. Diablo now has become what WoW was before, tons of games saying they are a WoW killer and none of them doing it. So now we looming at Diablo killers but they all end up falling off somewhere because they don't get the same $$$ support / marketing. inch "8M opening weekend bad = bad marketing. Bad quality movie would be revealed in the multiplier (word of mouth and no rewatches). In this case I don’t think there was anything compelling from the movie they could focus the marketing around which led to the 8M OW. " "I’m in the same boat. I have to get 14 credits by may2020. In the last 2 weeks I did principle of marketing 3 credits score 66 and principal of management 3 credits score 62. This week I’ll take precalculas which is 5 credits and calculus which is 4 credits. I did not pay the $89 for the test because I did modernstates which pays the testing fee. It also reimburses me for the $20 testing fee" "Marketing. McAf€€ gets money from users, Micro$oft gets money from McAfee. They beget the green, motherfuckers that they are. Sometimes  http://tipofmytongue.topreddit.info  who install 3^^rd party stuff tho, it's not only Microsoft. Anyway, it's a motherfuckery of bloatware if not malware. "McAfee antivirus is one of the worst products on the planet" -John McAfee" "You're arguing entirely from marketing hype instead of actual quality, which is entirely stupid and comes down entirely to Sont having far greater of a userbase and them having less games to pump more money behind. Besides, let's not pretend Sony has an actual library of games here. Both Xbox and Sony have completely shit the bed this console generation in terms of exclusive libraries. Sony has had like, 8 good games this entire generation as exclusives. You have Death Stranding, Uncharted 4, Horizon, Until Dawn, Bloodborne, God of War, MLB The Show... That's about it? I guess you also have Detroit and Last Guardian depending on who you ask, but I defo don't wanna throw Days Gone on that list. But in any case, you could lump all of those games into loke 3-4 genres. Am I missing anything? But yeah, stop saying dumb shit like "Well its not a household name so its irrelevant" because you're entirely missing the point and reducing the entire industry to what can or can't be marketed. As well, its telling that Sony has stated their goal next-gen is to have less games release but have them be bigger, where Microsoft is going the opposite direction. Keep the the big titles, bur also have a little something for everyone. Diversity is important. Your Battletoads reboot might not sell as well, but its important to folks who like it. Games shouldn't be live or die based on how well they fit in established and marketable trends. Its absurdly reductive" "I actually never had injected one, whats the main difference? And is it really a big improvement or rather a marketing bait" "It’s all part of his NYC persona. Marketing. inches