norandro, eva/nora, amiris 👀❣️

NORANDRO:

i mean, starting off pretty strong with my favorite eskam couple. oh god. THEM. as someone who cannot stomach season 2 and also skipped william's clip and william's clip only when season 4 of skam came to an end... i will ALWAYS love what eskam did for this couple. i think i explain it pretty well on my season 3 review, but to sum up those thoughts: i think this is what noorhelm was truly supposed to be, they're both pretty flawed characters with great arcs who make their get-together super interesting and organic, alejandro is my baby and the most developed william and i'll die on this hill, etc.

especially i think that norandro, for a ship that got way less screentime that all their other counterparts, is by FAR the most developed couple in all of them and up there in eskam too, and although they weren't the focus of most of the show, it's clear as day that the writers really tried to tell a compelling story with these two - and they succeeded. it's shocking to me that eskam actually got to link the "everyone is fighting a battle" motto that has become a meme for how poorly incorporated it is on the skamverse, as alejandro effectively behaved around that motto: during season 3 and onwards, which is where i believe he's fully reformed as a character and love interest, he never hurts nora - nor anyone - in any way. he struggles to tell nora how he doesn't want a relationship because he doesn't want to hurt her, and in the miscommunication fest that their first clip of s3 is, i've always LOVED that nora calls alejandro a "fuckboy" still, and he's clearly annoyed by this, but doesn't bite back. he's always so mindful of her feelings even though he's struggling himself, BECAUSE he understands that his suffering is not the center of the world! because treating people with kindness is a strength in itself! and it continues like that for the rest of the season. like, at his most petty, he just sends a text to nora calling her a "fuckboy", which is honestly hilarious. he deals with a lot of jealousy because of nora's new relationship, yet he values her friendship so much that he never snaps at her, he never lets it show when he's talking to her, and he's never passive-aggressive about it - you can tell that he's so genuinely glad that they're still friends after all. god, the clip where he realizes that miquel is a shit boyfriend while he's talking to nora... imagine the things any other william would've said there. imagine the ways alejandro could've been petty or overprotective and fuck everything up. instead, he recognizes nora needs space and even though it hurts to be away from her, he does it because he understands it's what she needs - and his own feelings and entitlement (that he previously showed, too!) aren't the most important thing. it's beautiful. UGH. what a great character eskam crafted, there.

i like them well enough in s4, too. i think, for what they had to work with, they took them in a good direction and their happy ending feels deserved. it's just that... personally, i wish there was more introspection of nora's aftermath in s3, which is also one of my complaints with season 3 - and where characters like emma could've been SO good. although i understand the intentions, a lot of nora's internal turmoil regarding her abusive relationship with miquel are only tied to her desire to be with alejandro. it's frustrating that it became so boy-focused when the girl squad was the center of the emotional climax of nora's season. to me, the solution is still in giving the pov's to the girl squad and not... random characters lol, but oh well. i think eskam did good there and i still love this couple the most!!! i just wish there was an universe where their story doesn't have to be wrapped up in one season and we can get actual glimpses of a beautiful slow burn where they can finally get together and make their relationship work - and this is where the fanfic part comes in, i guess! as someone who loves the couple, i liked seeing them lovey-dovey in the background of s4, but also i wouldn't have been too mad if they held off from making them completely canon and only hinted their status as endgame, kinda how they did with eva and jorge. oh, and speaking of eva, i guess...

NOREVA:

i guess, the main thing with them is that i love norandro so much that i can't really see nora with any other love interest??????? now, platonically. UGH. 12/10. anyone who's seen season 3 should know and i shouldn't even have to explain it tbh. i love the focus that is put on their friendship and how emotionally charged it is when it comes to miquel and the aftermath of all that. like, a similar thing is done with norandro - because at that point, nora and alejandro were exclusively friends, but it becomes even more relevant when it's about eva. eva who, you know, was in a toxic relationship herself. i love that she herself brings up her relationship with jorge when she's talking about miquel, and how wary she is of everything that happening. the fact that she's the first one to sense it feels so right!!! i love that eskam really made them close and gave them the window scene, which is both so powerful on its message and a true love letter to female friendships.

i think eva is a really underrated eskam character as it is, like... people really don't understand how great of a character she is and how much she's grown. they are quick to call her a boring, ooc party girl once s2 rolls around, like eskam didn't spend TIME making eva herself declare that hooking up with cristian (and cristian ONLY!) was something she did out of fun and she was decided to stop as soon as it stopped being fun for her. moreover, eva is such a perceptive person: she's been that way since s1 and it has only carried across for the entirety of the show since then. and when pairing two really good characters together, like eva and nora, you really can't go wrong. their friendship brings great things out of both of them and it goes through its own arc during nora's season, whereas other seasons either dump eva as noora's bff midway through or just make them really close to introduce character drama but don't really do anything to their dynamic as it is.

romantically... sigh. i'm sorry LOL as much as i love girls kissing and wlw romance done right... i don't see potential for this relationship outside their platonic dynamic. which is, btw, incredibly strong and beautiful. i'm super contented with how eskam handled their friendship and therefore i wouldn't want anything else from them, and it's not like nooreva where the chemistry was THERE. however! i'm always open to see people's interpretations of what romantic noreva could be. wasn't it you who wrote that beautiful fic of nora realizing she's bi and falling for eva after season 3? because now THAT'S the shit i'm looking for. i think there's a lot of potential there which i'd like to see explored in fic, but other than that, i love their relationship how it is and i've never felt a desire to see them as each other romantic interests.

AMIRIS:

first things first: why did eskam NEVER confirm cris having an embarrassing, sweet, confusing childhood crush on amira? i mean, it's my headcanon that she'll later realize it and she'll jolt awake and think "holy FUCK" but like... it's a thing that isaks are into their jonases. why didn't it happen here :(((((

being honest, childhood friends to lovers has never been my thing? a simple friends to lovers doesn't do it for me: i like my relationships rocky, with lots of character moments and whose survival and success depend only on the people involved making efforts to change and do better. if you've seen s4... yeah, that's not really the case. it's just disappointing because damn, amiris is the realest thing indeed, but also... what case are the writers doing for them? because it was only irene and hajar doing the intense gazing and bringing all the chemistry home. s4 cris is a mess and a half, and while i like the idea of the bench scene featuring both of them, and being more about cris reminding amira the reasons she's made it this far instead of lecturing her about sucking it up better... the result is still lackluster. there are SO many issues on their friendship that were introduced and then dropped, and it's really nice that cris finally is there to comfort amira when shit goes down, it truly is! but what else is there? it's just a small part of s4 being a bunch of missed potential. they could've REALLY done something great with their relationship and bring back and close cris' development in the show, but we only got... well, nothing. back to 0. amira has to live with those problems, now. things like that really make it seem like once amira broadens her horizons, she won't really go back to her friendship with the girls, and cris will be a lingering wound of the past. oh well.

ehem. romantically!!!!!!! as i said, cris was totally crushing on amira at some point. like... canon really makes a point at making cris' brother amira's love interest, where dani has nothing to offer to amira than cris hasn't done yet. iftar on a rooftop? ha, loser, cris did it first. admiring her passion and her faith? cris does it arguably way better than dani. longtime pining? dude. go home. okay, i'll cut dani soto some slack since it's not about him lol. point is, if amira was charmed by all of those things, then what tells me that the option of her and cris being a thing is off the table? at the end of the day, they're indeed a relationship that needs a lot of work and patience to last. the 500k slow burn is writing itself, really.

(regardless of amiris' future, i still think irene and hajar have to do a cute romcom romance at some point. their chemistry is off the charts.)

Tony Stark Ends My MCU in Endgame

Just sharing some stuff I did on dreamwidth with a few updates. I’m new to tumblr, give me patience.

Here is why I'm never watching another MCU film or giving money to them or Marvel if I can help it. Tony Fucking Stark. The capitulation to and adoration of both RDJ and that character shows me that their brand of heroism is nothing I want to do with. Endgame validated his worldview and I can't reconcile. Look. I'm no big fan of Tony or Iron Man. Been tolerating since Avengers. Been outright thinking he deserved a tell off and comeuppance since Civil War. Did not believe he'd get it, but thought, well, thought at the least he'd still be not outright unchallenged or proven right. Basically, I was wrong in that I thought the films were conscious of his flaws they were highlighting, and that even if they could never be confirmed or explored while RDJ was onboard, because I think RDJ would never consent to looking bad because he's a narcissist and he has star power, they were there, canon, and recognized with subtlety. And I had other models of heroes in Steve and Thor to say Tony is not the only version of hero to emulate. Iron Man as a character through his movies and the Avengers film is a hero born of guilt and mired in a complex selfishness. I thought this always but especially with repeat viewings. He's fascinating because he does help people, and commit good acts, but it is born not from a desire to care for others. It's often a side-affect of his overwhelming ego. That is the kind of hero Tony is. A selfishly, not selflessly motivated one.

I eventually got very tired of Tony not seeing others around him that were hurt instead of helped by his brand of heroism. A replacement for his brand of weapons at Stark Industries or his rock-star persona. Or seeing others at all. It's something that regardless of results, I think society needs to re-examine the strength of. The ego. The self. An American world doesn't need more internal selfishness to admire. It should wear Tony down in a very different way than the MCU reflects. It should have a foil and a cost. Endgame has erased and ignored this, validated and lionized Tony as a hero role-model, to an awful degree. To start Tony is made weak in the opening and given his monologue goodbye to Pepper to garner sympathy. For him. Not for Pepper. Not for Nebula do they have kindly interaction together; we are squarely with and in Tony POV. It's re-occurring, this sainted POV of Tony in this film. You'll notice it especially in his funeral, when he’s already dead, as on-lookers who have no connection or tenuous relation to him gather and mourn because to the film he's the icon of the MCU and the hero.

This POV is not extended to others, say Natasha’s loss. The film has a central character it is focusing and idenitfying with, and it’s Tony Stark.

The main thrust of argument in the film is also weighted in Tony's favor. Tony gets off the ship on Earth. To be hugged and comforted by his foil Steve. He is fragile and we linger on his emaciated frame in his argument with Steve and the others. We linger on him in bed after, surrounded by caring loved ones. Held back by Rhodey. Our sympathy is supposed to be centered squarely on him. Yet his argument itself is devoid of logic or reason or compassion for others that are not himself. 1) Ultron was evil and the Iron Legion was causing civil unrest even before and is gone through no others decision. Tony never rebuilt it. 2) The reason the Avengers were not working together in Civil War and after was entirely because of Tony. It's Tony who got the olive branch of a phone Steve sent and hasn't used it. Indeed Steve came as soon as Bruce and Rhodey phoned. It's Tony who went to space and left the others behind. It's Tony who lost trust and therefore tracking of Vision causing him to go off-grid. It's Tony who agreed with the accords, has since broken the accords, and has since not done anything to demolish them. Accords which Ross wanted to use to stay hands in Infinity War as well. 3)Tony is in a room playing photos of the dusted, came with a woman who's sister is murdered, and can only focus on his hurt about the Snap. On losing Peter, because of what it means to him. Of the others not being with him to comfort him in his time of battle and loss. His priority is his pain alone. It's supremely selfish. It's given no rebuttal because the narrative agrees his pain is what matters. So characters feel sad for him instead of anger or their own hurt. If they don’t agree with him, no time is devoted to seeing that.This is where you expect an argument. A reflection by everyone. A hash-out on the priority of one's personal pain versus the whole universe's losses. None ever comes. The film avoids another interesting conflict on selfishness vs selflessness to approve of onlyTony when in the five year gap it celebrates in Tony's family, at the expense of everyone else refusing to move on. Only Tony gets happiness in time through his not thinking about others. Now Tony does regret Peter. So Tony decides to help reverse the Snap. But he is given zero push back on the decision to do so entirely for his benefit, that it is his alleviation of feeling Peter's loss, and not for the world's losses, or Peter's loss independant of Tony. Again it’s a selfish and self-motivatied choice. 

That Tony refuses to give up his 5 year family, which will come at the expense of 5 years lost to the returned, of the collateral we saw take place in Infinity War, at the deaths and changes since is not examined because the narrative doesn’t care to disagree with Tony. I'm not saying erasing Tony's family is right, heroic, or a choice he or the film should advocate for. But there is zero thought or discussion to the idea that Tony's family or pain is not all there is to consider in this plan. Where is Thor, saying how dare you value your happiness over all the dead of Asgard? Where's Natasha mad at her effort to keep everyone together, including world crisis prevention? Where is Carol with the universe as a whole perspective? Where is Banner saying help me at least not kill ourselves trying? Where is Clint not wanting to be a killer when his family comes back? Where is any nuance that just because Tony wants this in this way, it's not the only way everyone would feel. This film never puts anything above Tony's feelings. This extends to his heroic sacrifice at the end. The final two ways the film absolutely prides Tony's view versus anything else are his death and mourning. Tony is treated as the ultimate hero. Out of 14 million scenarios, it takes him alone to win. Him using the stones barehanded when all others couldn't. Him saving the world. His ultimate sacrifice and entirely his choice. All about him. It's not selfless that way. It's killing yourself yes, it’s saving others, but you are the ultimate universe saver. The ultimate avenger. You defeat the bad guy. Not bring people back in an act of return, but in an act of rightfulness you fix what you've been complaining others wouldn't let you and defeat evil all by yourself. Your entire motivation is rewarded, because you protect the universe by killing all your bad guy enemies. Rooted in how you feel and what you want. His final line "And I am Iron Man" a rebuke to anyone who doubts the greatness of him. Tony was right and perfect everyone. Listen up.  But there is no self-sacrifice here, because it's not about him losing. Oh, fans will mourn him. Lament Tony's lost family and happiness. Rally against his pain in dying. But Tony doesn't. There is no reflection in the film from him on the potential cost or the reality in the moment. No care is extended to the daughter's feelings or Pepper's or his friends. Nothing is about the impact or loss he'd feel of leaving them. Instead he's, like always, the focus. The film is entirely about losing him and how it's the worst for you and the world. That is what the film wants you to be sad about in these moments. Every character props him. Steve's tears. Peter's "Mr. Stark we won", and Pepper's "You can rest now." It's all about making Tony look good. This continues with the funeral. Morgan talking to Happy being about a callback to cheeseburgers Tony loved. Tony Stark 's first reactor is “Proof Tony Stark Has A Heart” floating away, wreathed in flowers. It's all tribute to the man and only about him. That's not selfless, it's self-aggrandizing. The character has gained no humility or grace. Just more fame. I'm not interested in that. In fact I'm angry. The overarching message of his rightness also destroys his foil, Steve. Who stands behind Pepper at the funeral? Steve. Who stands with Tony throughout the film? Steve. As his character's end, Steve adopts Tony's mindset of not being a selfless hero and chooses to do as Tony did and think only of what Steve currently wants. Peggy. In the past. At others expense. Steve chooses to be a selfish hero. As does Thor going off the rails in film and off with the guardians and abandoning his people. Marvel thinks that's the right way. A summation of all their films and a thing to look back on and celebrate as Tony hologram's monologue tells us. All heroes are reduced to the Tony Stark role model. It tells me they never thought Tony's world-view was a problem. And I disagree. Or they wanted to honor him so they warped everything else to work it. If they do it once, twice, always...well, what next? So I'm done.

Serious questions time (but take your time and gather your thoughts). How do you feel about "rich girl playing at rebelling" Ashe?

Please note, this does not take her spawn interactions into account. I have not heard them yet.

I’m very fond of her, despite it all, and I think her very interesting. I understand people’s disappointments with her release at this time, with her design, and with the weakness in her backstory compared to other post-release hero additions. I share these frustrations! However, I still find much to like in her narrative and character.

Personally, to briefly start with the negative, I think there is a huge missed opportunity to make her an older woman who served as Jesse’s surrogate mother and teacher during his time in Deadlock. I have a big investment in Jesse as a wayward student of a wayward teacher and a general love for cycles and repetition in narrative, so I think she might have been a stronger character if that was her starting point. As a counterpoint, I echo @officialjeffkaplan​‘s thoughts on how Ashe and her heavy makeup in her current design would make for an interesting character point if the ideas of vanity, use of makeup, and relationship to her physical image was doubled down on and pushed much farther.

But, I’d rather focus on what we have rather than on what could have been. I’d go crazy and become exhausted, otherwise. I do find Ashe an interesting character, and though I agree she isn’t the most complex character in the lore, I do find that she has more depth than many have given her credit for. Full disclosure, though, I find almost every character interesting—even ones I’m apathetic about, like Junkrat.

To get this out of the way, I don’t agree that her leap from emotional neglect to starting a gang to create a surrogate family a la Anne Hathaway joining a heist to make female friends in Ocean’s 8—and additionally get that thrill of the getaway—is particularly huge for this lore. Akande makes a similar leap into mercenary work, and ultimately Talon, in search of the thrill he lost when his competitive martial arts career ended. In non-motivational leaps, Hana makes a large occupational jump from esports to mech fighting, and Satya goes from architect to literal spy. It’s a leap, sure, but we’ve seen this specific leap before and seen stranger ones in this lore.

On the matter of her playing at rebelling, I don’t really think that’s an accurate assessment. She doesn’t pretend at rebellion at all as she doesn’t act like she’s out sticking it to The Man™ in any capacity. It’s clearly stated that the satisfaction she draws from being an outlaw is that “of outwitting her targets and the thrill of getting away with it” paired strongly with how it gives her an avenue to build the family she was never born into. There is an element of liking the attention it gives her, I think. As a child, it’s clearly implied she acted out—as many do—to express frustration and receive any attention she can get, and the life of an outlaw on the top of federal wanted lists buys her permanent federal attention and the eyes of history on her.

I find that the clear emotional neglect she suffered through her early life manifesting as an obsession with found family structures and apparent possessiveness of the surrogate family she created feels natural to me. She is iron-fisted in her management of Deadlock and, to me, that just feels naturally rooted not only in her background of wealth and privilege but also in a need to control her family situation around her to desperately make up for the family she never had. She clings tightly to the family she built because she is shaped so deeply by the absence of the one she was born into.

I’ve written briefly on this point, but I find her relationship with McCree deeply compelling. Her relationship with him is the first close relationship of literally any type that she’s ever had with another human being. Deadlock, and so the entire family she created for herself, has its foundations on the moment she and McCree formed a friendship and a partnership. From how they interact and the state of the photo of them on her bike (ripped up to get rid of McCree, then carefully taped back together), even though Chu states they never dated, it is strongly implied that the relationship was regardless emotionally close, extremely so. It’s clear she holds a lot of anger toward him. Judging by her fixation on found families, deeply rooted desire for group relationships, and emphasis on “always punish betrayal”, it is certain that she carries a deep-seated hurt as well.

No matter how it’s sliced, McCree becoming a man of the law is a betrayal of Deadlock, and because of the nature of their personal relationship and of her personal codes, she will always interpret his leaving for greener pastures to be a personal betrayal. Even if it isn’t a slight against her personally, she will always find it to be that personal. It’s a hurt that comes out of both personal trauma and possessiveness, a toxic mix that I find very compelling and personally interesting. But, given the fondness in the relationship, there seems to have been a component of a genuine tenderness and sincere friendship between them. It isn’t all one thing. Her sentimentality for and attachment to McCree, rooted in the emotionally deep relationship they’ve had, is also marked by her current anger, past possessiveness, and parental neglect. Her relationship with him is already not a simple one and has potential for more complexity as it is developed further.

As I stated in the post I linked (linked here again) and outlined above, I find it wholly understandable why she continues to carry a picture of him with her and why he continues to occupy a special place in her life after twenty years. He’s a deep formative influence on her life.

Her sentimentality for him also carries in it a familiar thematic nostalgia for things that linger well past their golden age has gone. This nostalgia exists also in McCree himself, particularly in his character design and his adherence to old value systems of justice, and in the Route 66 map, with its crumbling buildings and aesthetic references to the golden age of motorcycles and to the frontier age.

Overall, she’s constructed as a foil to McCree. Though she finds a family in Deadlock, a group she created with him, he ultimately finds a family that suits him better in Overwatch. That shift between found families he makes, exchanging Deadlock for Overwatch, I believe creates a complicated and interesting wrinkle in their relationship. Regardless of the circumstances of his leaving Deadlock and joining Overwatch, the emotional core of it is he was not emotionally satisfied by the family that satisfied her.

Personally, I always adore a gang run like it’s a corporation, and I’ve accidentally hit the nail on the head when I called Deadlock “practically a corporation” before Ashe’s introduction. And on the subject of her unifying the American Southwestern gangs, @raptorific​ has pointed out some good stuff about the history of the Hole-In-The-Wall Gang (Wikipedia) as a coalition of gangs who were using the same geographic feature as a hideout and base of operations. I think her as someone who organized that sort of coalition is a strong character point, and I think it continues to uphold the characterization of Deadlock as a powerful, organized, and clever threat in the American Southwest. (McCree easily dispatching her and five members of her gang, when he knows them well and has been trained very specifically over the past twenty years to combat 6 to 1 odds, I’m going to guess, is not exactly representative of how their fights usually go. McCree is an exceptional agent, formerly of espionage.) But she’s very ambitious.

I haven’t gotten around to writing about Jesse and regeneration through violence, an important concept developed by Richard Slotkin in the book of the same name (Regeneration Through Violence) about American narratives, particularly the Western, but it’s a concept that Ashe also shares. We see her starting fights in elementary school and lapsing into juvenile delinquency in her teens—as is common of children who are neglected to act out in this way to get the emotional attention they sorely need—but her reinvention of herself through a partnership with McCree and outlaw acts, especially in the visual language of a Western, moves it into territory of regenerative violence: “self-renewal or self-creation through acts of violence”. One day, I’ll write about how important this concept is for Jesse and now Ashe.

Overall, she isn’t a likeable person. She’s bossy, astringent, possessive, spoiled, cynical. She’s also ambitious, sentimental, emotionally conflicted, focused, shrewd. Though I absolutely understand why people are disappointed with her or don’t like her even when taken on her own merits, I do find her to have some interesting depths and I find many aspects of her story compelling.

all of them all the max arcana asks

I. The Magician — What does your muse consider theirself an expert in?Biochemistry and being a dumbass.II. The High Priestess — How does your muse feel about religion?He is an atheist, but comes from a somewhat religious background. His father is Jewish, and he considers his Jewish heritage to be an important part of his cultural makeup, even if he does not follow really any Jewish practices. (He does participate in most High Holidays, but mostly for his father’s sake.) His mother comes from an Irish Catholic family, but again, that always felt more cultural than actually religious. In fact, his mother was a dabbler, taking from all sorts of religious systems for her own personal beliefs and practices. Basically, religion is not for him, and he does not believe in any sort of divine creator, but he does feel that religion holds cultural value, especially for his family. III. The Empress — Describe your muse’s relationship with their mother.Daniel acknowledges that he idol-worships his mother, but she did die violently when he was eleven, so. He remembers her as being uncommonly kind, wickedly funny, and generally perfect. He was absolutely a momma’s boy growing up, and her loss was devastating. IV. The Emperor — Describe your muse’s relationship with their father.Daniel’s relationship with his father is...complex. He also idolized his dad, but more in a ‘I wanna be you when I grow up’ kind of way. His father instilled in him his love of science, and of course, set him on his path to becoming Hydra. After his mother’s death, Daniel and his father’s relationship never fully recovered. Matthew did his best to care for his son, but he didn’t know how to be a mom, and Daniel, always too smart for the world around him, didn’t know how to be “normal,” but they both tried their best. Matthew was never neglectful, just a little distant. Once Daniel found out that Hydra was, you know, evil, their relationship exploded. Daniel couldn’t forgive his father for leading him down a path that lead to people getting hurt. They’re still not back to where they were. They barely talk now. V. The Hierophant —  Who does your muse turn to when they’re in desperate need of help?  His best friends, Connor and Jonathan, and his maternal grandmother, whom he calls Mimi. VI. The Lovers — What’s your muses feelings about love?Daniel wants desperately to love, to be loved, to have love in his life, but after his disastrous, abusive first relationship, he is nervous about opening up his heart again. VII. The Chariot — Describe one of your muses coping mechanisms.Daniel is a naturally gregarious and talkative person, but when he is nervous or scared or tense, he falls silent. He is the type to curl in on himself when he thinks he isn’t safe. This is a direct result of the aforementioned abusive relationship. If Daniel is being uncharacteristically silent, he does not feel safe in whatever situation he’s in. VIII. Strength — Describe how your muse handles trauma.Push through it, work harder, be better, don’t let people down. He takes everything on himself and shoves it all down deep. When he was being abused, he focused even harder on his studies, making sure that he was the best in everything, one less thing to be a disappointment in. He needs therapy, and he knows he needs therapy, but he has convinced himself that because he is doing fine in his life, he can go without. IX. The Hermit — Describe how your muse deals with personal issues.Daniel is fairly quick to cut people out of his life if he feels they are not healthy for him. He lingered in an abusive relationship longer than he thinks he should have, and that is a constant source of shame for him. Now, when he starts to have problems with people, he jumps the gun on cutting them out, to save himself the heartache of staying longer than he should. X. Wheel of Fortune — Has your muse ever had to start over, or have they ever wanted to?When Hydra was outed by Natasha Romanoff, Daniel’s entire professional career imploded. He had to start over in S.H.I.E.L.D., the very organization he grew up not trusting. XI. Justice — Describe a time when your muse received just desserts - regardless of if that was what they wanted.One time Daniel tried to prank his best friend Jonathan by setting off a stink bomb in his room in the apartment but the thing accidentally went off in Daniel’s closet. He never quite got the smell out of his clothes. XII. The Hanged Man — Describe a time where your muse felt persecuted.I mean, his organization’s files were dumped onto the web for the world to see, so...XIII. Death — Describe a time where your muse felt like they lost a major part of their life.Again, his mother died when he was eleven, and he had to navigate the rest of his life without her guidance. XIV. Temperance — Does your muse feel like they have their life in order?Mostly, but not entirely. XV. The Devil — Has your muse ever given into temptation?Of course. XVI. The Tower — What does your muse consider to be the worst thing that ever happened to them?Rape and abuse. XVII. The Star — Describe the type of art that your muse is drawn towards.Daniel loves music, listening to it and creating it. He plays the piano and the guitar, and he sings very well. He’s really into most types of music, especially weird stuff that crosses genres. XVIII. The Moon — Describe an uneasy time in your muse’s life.He started high school when he was ten, which was obviously pretty stressful. Most of his classmates tended to ignore him, or perhaps treat him like an odd pet, but some liked to remind him of how strange and unaccepted he was. XIX. The Sun — Describe a happy moment in your muse’s life.When he graduated with his Ph.D. in biochemistry at age 20, his father told him that there was a job waiting for him at the very lab that he had grown up in, following in his father’s footsteps. Nothing could have made him prouder. XX. Judgement — Describe a time where your muse had to make a difficult decision.When the investigations into Hydra began, Daniel had to decide whether or not he was going to voluntarily help investigators pursue justice, and he did. XXI. The World — What are your muses biggest dreams, and how do they plan to achieve them?More than anything, he wants to leave this world better than the way he found it. He wants the good he does to always outweigh the bad, and for him, it’s always going to be the little decisions, the little choices that make the biggest impact. XXII/0. The Fool — Has your muse ever faced a high risk high reward opportunity that could potentially leave them ruined? Describe that opportunity and whether or not they took it.I can’t think of one, and honestly, he’s not a risk-taker. He likes to play things safe. 

You'd Be Amazed At The Cultural Divides That Develop After Four Million Years of War

... by Fall Out Boy

Prompt: @tfspeedwriting: Prompt 1: A character outstays their welcome and Prompt 5: Write a story with two main characters and tell in two parts - from first one character’s POV and then the other. Writing two prompts was accidental, I swear Continuity: IDW Pairing: one-sided oblivious & unrequited Starscream/Wheeljack Wordcount: 2000-ish? Notes: If anybody out there has any more Starjack fics with Starscream unrequitedly pining for Wheeljack... hit me up. Need me some Screamer pain. Summary: Wheeljack thinks Starscream is interrupting his day off to demand a tour of his current projects. Starscream thinks he's taking Wheeljack on a date. Neither one bothers to clarify.

Double doors slammed open with a grandly declared "So!"

Wheeljack started, dropping his wrench, and almost swore. Frag. Starscream. Wheeljack wasn't expecting Starscream. Why would he expect Starscream to barge into his personal lab?

Okay, maybe he should have been expecting Starscream.

Yesterday Starscream had said, idly, that he ought to drop by Wheeljack's lab soon—not the lab space he shared with several others at the capitol, but his private lab, his off-duty lab—and see what he was up to when he wasn't working the space bridge. Wheeljack had said, sure, he probably should come by and see. He'd half meant it—he was working on things that could eventually be useful to Cybertron—but Wheeljack hadn't thought Starscream meant it. Much less that he meant it so soon, and without warning or invitation.

Wheeljack had thought promising to come by had been more or less a politician's promise—something he said to make one of his citizens think he gave half a slag about what was going on with him, with no intent of following up on it.

Wheeljack should have expected Starscream to mean it. Wheeljack could name a new governing law of probability after their illustrious leader. Starscream's Law: if given the choice between doing and not doing one thing, regardless of whether or not Starscream says he'll do it, the one he actually ends up doing is either 1) the option most surprising, or 2) the option most inconvenient, whichever value is greater. Usually both. This? Was both surprising and inconvenient. Very inconvenient.

Wheeljack set down his current project and turned to face Starscream. "Can I help you?"

"I certainly hope so! I came all the way across Iacon on the expectation that you could, after all."

Wheeljack didn't think he'd be getting to pick his project back up again for a while. Duty ever calls. "With what?"

"Well—" Starscream gestured down the length of the lab, with the type of overdramatic flourish he usually reserved for speeches where he was referring to the great people of Cybertron, or our friends and allies among the stars, or such things. Big, sweeping, and all-encompassing. "A tour, ideally. You said that you'd show me your lab, after all. You implied that you had some things I'd quite like to see."

Had Wheeljack implied that? He didn't think he'd gone anywhere near that far. One last longing look at his discarded project, and he got to his feet. "Yeah, yeah—sure. Of course." Fine. This was an inevitability, after all. Eventually he'd be trying to show Starscream all this. Why not now?

Starscream waited for Wheeljack to cross the lab to him (the lab was an odd, long shape, with a door at the far end; the easiest thing Wheeljack could find to rent in this part of town that he could modify to meet his safety standards) with a hand on one cocked hip, the very picture of arrogant impatience. "This really is out of the way, you know," Starscream said, as though Wheeljack had personally and deliberately made his life harder by choosing where to put his lab. "You're practically out in the Decepticon slums. I've offered you lab space in Metroplex's cephalocomplex, it's where you do all your other work."

"Yeah, well—thank you for the offer—but this place is for my non-governmental works," Wheeljack said. "I don't want politics leaking into my personal projects." He gave Starscream a very pointed look.

"Why—" Starscream turned back to the doors, as if checking he hadn't left them ajar to let a draft in, and then turned back to Wheeljack. "Surely you don't think I'm going to let any politics sneak in?" He tapped the top of his head, "See, I even left my crown at home. This tour is all about you."

"Uh-huh." Sure it was.

So. What did Starscream want, really? Maybe it really was a tour—but if it was only a tour, then he wouldn't have crossed the city, unannounced, without so much as a warning, much less an appointment. He'd probably wanted to catch Wheeljack off guard—that was the sort of thing Starscream did. Why? To intimidate him—to remind him that he knew where he kept his private lab and that he could and would invite himself in at any time? To try to catch him with some subversive projects laying out? (Joke was on him; Wheeljack wasn't working on any subversive projects.)

"So." Starscream hopped up to sit on the nearest lab table, crossing one leg over the other, like he thought he owned the place and could plant himself anywhere he liked. "What's the first stop on this grand tour?"

Wheeljack crossed his arms. "Well, let's start with lab safety."

Starscream's optics flickered in disbelief. "'Lab safety'?" He scoffed. "Really? We're beginning with the basics?"

"I think we should. It's important stuff—you know, things like, 'Don't sit your skidplate on strange tables in strange labs if you don't know what might have been spilled on them.'"

Starscream bolted up like somebody had set off a firecracker under his seat. "Lab safety. Got it."

The tour dragged on for an excruciating two hours. Wheeljack had thought he could've kept it to fifteen minutes. He could have just swept Starscream through an overview of his current major works—among other things: a small engine that didn't do anything but spin a fan, which he was using to study some Camien designs for more efficient energon-to-electricity conversion for inanimate machines; a tiny explosion powered by Ore-1 that he was planning to set off next week that had been popping in and out of existence in one corner for the past four weeks; a prototype for a shield that could absorb laser fire and use it to charge—

"Well, originally it was going to charge another laser," Wheeljack said, lifting the shield-generating forearm brace with the gun attached—the project he'd been working on when Starscream had barged in. "But that seemed kind of—I don't know, eventually you just get two guys shooting back and forth at each other forever, you know?"

Starscream—who, to see the project up close, was leaning as far over Wheeljack's lab table as he could without actually violating Wheeljack's for-Primussake-stop-touching-all-my-tables rule—said, "What about a sword? Some kind of energy sword."

And this was why a fifteen minute tour had taken two hours. Because Starscream would not stop asking questions and making suggestions. Every one-sentence explanation was dragged out with incessant questions for clarification into a ten-paragraph explanation, which was followed—at Starscream's insistence—by a two-sentence-quickly-turned-five-paragraph explanation of the potential practical applications for some project, even when he had no practical applications yet, and then Starscream started throwing recommendations at him—for how he should proceed, for what tweaks he should add, for ways it could be applied—and then Wheeljack had to patiently explain that most of them wouldn't work, and then Starscream asked why. At this point, Wheeljack had an entirely new theory for what it was Starscream wanted here, a theory that had shot quickly to the top of his list: he was trying to distract Wheeljack while something Starscream desperately wanted to keep hidden from him was going on somewhere else in the building. Wheeljack was going to be spending the next few days sniffing for any lingering signs that Rattrap had been nearby.

This was the last suggestion Wheeljack was willing to take. He was tired of this and tired of humoring Starscream. "I'm not making a sword," Wheeljack said tersely.

"But you coul—"

"I could, but I'm not going to. The energy expended by constantly extending a sword would rapidly use up any energy absorbed by the shield. Unless the shield is taking a constant stream of shots, the sword'll immediately splutter and die." He was talking fast, impatiently, and at this point he didn't care how impatient he sounded—he'd never requested suggestions in the first place. "I'm deciding what's going into the project, and—and it's not up for official review! It's my project!"

Wheeljack knew he sounded petulant. But it worked; Starscream straightened up immediately. "Of course. Far be it from me to try to barge in on your little project." ("Ha!" Wheeljack scoffed.) "I only meant—" Starscream didn't finish the statement. What? Out of explanations? Not going to try to claim he was being helpful when they both knew full well that that wasn't why he was here?

Because that sure as hell wasn't why Starscream was here.

"I think that's enough of a tour for today. The next time you want to see my lab, schedule a meeting. And I'd deeply appreciate it if it isn't scheduled on one of my few days off."

Starscream opened his mouth, shut it, and nodded dumbly.

"Thanks." He looked down at his shield. Energy sword. Pfft. Stupid.

Starscream looked lost for a moment—wasn't expecting Wheeljack to not take his pestering? even he had his limits—but then rallied, chest puffed up again. "Well. Then. I suppose I'll see you—whenever I next visit the space bridge. Or you come to my office, whichever—"

"You don't need me to show you where the door is."

Starscream laughed humorlessly. "No. You don't."

Wheeljack didn't look up from the shield project as Starscream walked to the other end of the lab. He heard the doors open, but not shut. "I'll leave you to the rest of your day off, then."

"Goodbye, Starscream."

The doors shut.

Starscream leaned against Wheeljack's lab doors, staring at his feet.

His spark was spinning like a top, too fast and teetering, sending static anxiety down his arms. His fingertips tapped nervously against Wheeljack's door—quietly, quietly. He didn't want Wheeljack to hear him and know he hadn't left yet.

But he couldn't bring himself to leave yet. He couldn't move. His fuel tank was twisted up like a crumpled engex can with the bottom punched out. He regretted convincing Bumblebee to leave him the hell alone while he was visiting Wheeljack—he hadn't expected to come out of the experience this… lost.

Collect yourself, Starscream. That's what you do. That's who you are—you're collected. You don't need Bumblebee; talking to him is only talking to yourself. So go on. Talk to yourself. Work through this.

Okay. Working through this. That… Okay. That—didn't go well. So. What… what had he done wrong, exactly?

True, Starscream hadn't gone on a date in… yikes. Okay. Longer than he wanted to think about. Fair. He was rusty. Rusty and—

And not very popular.

But he'd done everything right, hadn't he? He'd informed Wheeljack of his interest in spending time with him outside of work. He'd made a point of proposing a place that Wheeljack knew better than Starscream–he'd practically handed him power over their interaction. That was as non-threatening as he could make a date offer. That was—that was laying himself down at Wheeljack's feet. And Wheeljack had okayed it.

Starscream had showed up on a day that both he and Wheeljack had off (Starscream had had to give himself a day off just for this) and immediately made it clear that this was not a work thing. He'd shown interest in Wheeljack's non-work projects. Abundant, detailed interest. He had flirted his spark out. He had spent the last two hours preening and posing and showing off while he asked Wheeljack about his projects. He hadn't talked about himself once.

Wheeljack hadn't asked him about himself, once. That should have been Starscream's first clue that the interest wasn't reciprocal, shouldn't it?

But why? What had he done wrong? He'd thought the date was going great, but—

Maybe he was misreading this. Maybe this wasn't how Autobots did dates. Or how grounders did dates. Or—or how scientists did dates?

But no. No, Starscream had—he'd said he should come over to see Wheeljack's projects, and Wheeljack had agreed. He wouldn't have done that—not on his private projects—if he hadn't known Starscream was proposing a date. Why else would he have welcomed Starscream showing up in his own lab?

Right?

Which meant the problem was Starscream. Wheeljack had agreed to the date—he'd agreed to give Starscream a shot to prove himself—and… Starscream blew it. He didn't prove himself. He'd bored Wheeljack. He wasn't interesting enough. He wasn't interested enough. Who knew what? It could have been any of a hundred factors.

Starscream shouldn't have expected anything else. There was only so far he should have expected Wheeljack to be willing to be kind to him.

Hmph. It would have been nicer if Wheeljack hadn't been so kind to him. Wouldn't it? At least then Starscream could have sealed his armor against him from the start, the way he did with everyone else. But nooo, no, Wheeljack just had to—had to listen to Starscream, had to—respect him, to give him a chance. Had to coax Starscream into peeling up a corner of his armor and letting Wheeljack slide underneath. Where it hurt when he finally rejected Starscream.

Not that it was Wheeljack's fault, was it. No, Starscream was the one who'd let that armor peel up. Starscream was the one who gave Wheeljack room to hurt him. Starscream was the one who'd taken the chance Wheeljack had given him, and—and failed to live up to it, somehow.

Don't let people get close, Starscream. You know that. They're only going to let you down. You're only going to let them down.

He sighed in irritation at himself, pushed himself off of Wheeljack's doors, and trudged for the exit.

If you want a tiny fic/story, buy me a coffee and leave a prompt in the comments!

(Feel free to reblog/add comments)

15 + Ziall ! :)

“Things You Said with Too Many Miles Between Us” 

Zayn’s been having the “nut up and leave the band” conversation with himself for about six months and it never quite seems to take. It’ll be after a rehearsal, or in the car being shuttled between promo events, just him and the lads, and he’ll have it all planned out: he’ll tell them how run down he is; they’ll understand; he’ll still be in their lives, just in a different way. He’s got a dozen potential scripts for exactly where to start.

And then just as he’s taking a breath to speak, something will happen: Liam will tackle Louis to the floor, laughing madly, and Zayn will be struck by how much they used to hate each other and his heart will go all tender for them; Harry will surprise them all by looking up from his phone and telling one of his endless, meandering knock knock jokes; Niall will reach across the car to bump his knuckles just under Zayn’s chin, and give him one of those gut-rot sweet smiles that he seems to save up for when Zayn needs them, and Zayn… Well he won’t want to stay in the band, really, but he’ll want to want to.

It had been enough to want to want to, for a while.

So this drive to get out has been closing around him like a fist, like when he moves or breathes he can feel its edges drawing closer and closer. And it was stupid, not to say anything before now, but at first he thought… It had been stupid, really stupid. He’d just hoped, the way a dog hopes it’ll be fed, that if he just waited long enough somebody would notice his needs and relieve him. Somebody from management would look at Zayn and see the gaunt, bruised face Zayn sees when he can’t avoid a mirror and they’d put him out to pasture, send him to the farm where retired boyband members go to live out the rest of their days in peace. He could make friends with Chris Kirkpatrick, or like... Peter Tork.

It hasn’t happened yet.

So Zayn waits, and he tries not to squirm because this need to get out is one of those dime-store finger traps where the more you struggle the tighter it goes. Maybe he can’t blame anybody for not noticing how miserable he is.

At the end of tour they’re all sat in Harry’s hotel room with a gratuitous amount of take-out curry on the table and Louis and Niall yelling at each other over a match on telly. Harry’s got his phone in one hand and has summoned a tumbler of whiskey from somewhere. He looks, as he always does on nights like this, effortless, tipping his chair back on two legs and frowning as he composes a caption for his Instagram.

Liam’s been asleep for about twenty minutes. Truly, the one of the lot of them who knows best how to live. Zayn’s just thinking idly how he might join him, nudge him over on Harry’s bed and just pass out next to him, when there’s a tug on the cuff of his jeans. It’s Niall, not even looking at him, just reaching back from where he’s sprawled on the floor to check in with him. Zayn takes a steadying breath.

“Y’alright, Zayner?” Niall does look back then, his expressive mouth twisted to one side, both eyebrows up. “Look tired.”

Zayn needs to get out of this band or he’s going to die. It is a complete surety. He has never felt a conviction so strongly in his life, and the urge to say it, now, to go wake Liam up and gather them together and just tell them is almost gagging him.

“‘M good,” he says instead. He should eat something. He should try to sleep this off. “Thanks, though.”

Niall looks doubtfully at him. “‘Kay,” he says finally, and turns back to the match, but keeps his hand just on Zayn’s ankle. It’s gentle, and so tender Zayn wants to cry. Wishes it was worth it to stay here, for these people he loves so much. Knows it’s rotting him.

-

They’re three weeks into break when Zayn makes up his mind. He hasn’t left his house in days. It’s partly the cloud of paparazzi lingering on the street outside, partly the sort of delirious relief of having nothing to do and nowhere to go, at least for the moment. That unfamiliar feeling of belonging entirely to himself.

Towards the end of tour, if he’s honest, he’d begun to doubt his own existence. He was a body, a vessel for a voice, and the people in charge of him kept him in repair and placed him onstage and brought him off again. And whatever bright thing that had once inhabited him, illuminated him from within to make him as animate and real as Harry, or Liam, had been taken out for repairs and misplaced somewhere. He was a bottle of wine, but he had been uncorked and emptied out, so the wind could blow across him, and he could sing.

His phone vibrates dully on the bedside table.

Zayn puts on Netflix in the background - it’s whatever Safaa had been watching last, he guesses, halfway through an episode of Orange is the New Black. He hasn’t seen the rest of it, doesn’t know the context, but having noise in the apartment is a relief regardless.

His phone vibrates again, not just the percussive blip of a text message, but a series of Morse code-like bleats that mean somebody’s actually trying to call him. A publicist, or a label representative - somebody who needs him to have an opinion on a subject he couldn’t care less about, fragrance marketing or magazine covers or promo for the album. 

He leans up and checks the call ID anyway, and is startled to find it’s later than he’d realized - after ten, already - and that the call isn’t from anyone who could possibly want anything from him. Nothing he wouldn’t willingly part with, anyway. 

“Niall,” he says into the receiver. He hasn’t spoken all day, it feels like. His voice takes coaxing to form the words. “Y’alright?” 

“Zaaayn,” Niall says. He’s got that over-bright burr in his voice that means he’s drunk, and pleased about it. There’s the unmistakable noise of a well-populated pub behind him. “Not been answering my texts, Zayn.” 

It’s true: Niall’s sent him his typical smattering of life updates - photos of the new driving gloves he’s bought himself, a blurry selfie with Bobby, stories about the Mullingar crowd reconvening for the holidays. Louis’ birthday has come and gone. Zayn’s, next week, draws up around his neck like a noose. 

“Been busy,” Zayn says lamely. He can almost hear Niall hand-waving it away. 

“Busy, busy,” he says. “Listen, d’you have birthday plans? ‘Cos I thought you could come out here, y’know, fresh air and all that.” 

There’s a noisy rustle that makes Zayn tilt the phone away from his ear, it’s so sharp. He can hear Niall breathing as he moves about, phone still pressed to the side of his face. The pub noise falls away, replaced by the staticky sound of a breeze against the receiver. Niall must’ve stepped outside. He’s probably not even wearing a coat, probably hasn’t noticed it’s winter no matter how drunk you are. 

“Niall,” Zayn says. “You’ll catch cold.” 

Niall laughs his hyena laugh and Zayn can imagine him on some twilit street in Ireland, his head thrown back so his throat bobs in the moonlight. The way his pale eyelashes flutter when he’s had too much to drink, and how his face goes ruddy and tempting. 

“That’s not an answer,” Niall says, finally. How he always can cut right to the point with Zayn, even when he’s raucous and drunk, even when there’s naught but a phone line threading them together over the expanse of the Irish sea. 

“I know,” Zayn says. He doesn’t have it in him, just now, to lie to Niall. It’s impossible to lie to any of them, really, but it pains him with Niall most of all. Niall, who values honesty in his friends over any other quality. Niall, who can be so guarded, still, that meeting him halfway requires a certain kind of radical honesty that Zayn craves and fears in equal measure. 

“You’re not doing well,” Niall says finally. It lances through Zayn. The relief he feels is enormous and terrifying. If Niall knows... this is the endgame, isn’t it. He’ll either have to change or leave, and he’s known for months now that only one of those is a real solution. “I wanted to say something sooner,” Niall continues, his giddy drunk voice being subsumed by his quieter, more thoughtful one. “I didn’t, like... I thought I was letting you work up to it, but.” 

“I’m sorry,” Zayn says. It’s not going to change anything - no matter what he does, how long he forces himself to stay, it’s still going to bring down hell on the lot of them. They’d been so young, signing contracts without building in emergency exits. He won’t be free of this for years. 

None of them will. 

“Zayn,” Niall says again, quieter. He could be beside Zayn in the bed, his voice is so soft. It makes Zayn turn onto his back and remember, when they were first starting out, how he used to wake up with Niall wrapped around him like a sloth, a column of heat all along the side of him. How they’d clung together for wont of any other comforts. 

How he’d used to think about waking Niall up with a kiss, or a caress to the side of his face, before the lumbering machine of their careers had carried them further apart and made thoughts like that seem ludicrous. 

“I love you,” Zayn says, because it seems important. “Go inside, you must be freezing.” 

“Don’t -” Niall says, and Zayn sighs into the phone, a gust of static. 

“We’ll talk, okay?” he says, and he hears the rustle of Niall nodding against the phone, forgetting, for a moment, that they can’t see one another. 

Maybe they will. More likely, they won’t. Zayn rings off and plugs his phone in before setting it to do not disturb. He wonders if he’s going to die in this band.

3. What are some of your character’s most significant connections with others?

This took months to answer but I did it >>;For Lin, it’s first his fellow Jedi and friends, but most specifically his adopted family. Syo in particular; his Master (unofficially) has been part of his life since he was small and Lin is very VERY attached to him (albeit not outwardly). He sees Syo as his father figure outside his biological and adoptive ones, possibly more so. Syo is both role model and friend, and Lin will always love him. As such, he was crushed to learn the truth of the First Son, and strove to save Syo instead of ending him like Master Kaeden initially wanted (another can of worms for Lin but that’s unimportant and more a personal headcanon from my trash self lol). Even afterwards, despite being successful, Lin is saddened deeply when he’s still forced to say goodbye to Syo for the last time. It’s both a memorable moment and a learning lesson for him; letting go. Now to be fair, he isn’t Anakin (he’s not deep rooted in fear of loss), but he does struggle with attachments like the average person. But he understood, being raised as a Jedi, the importance of letting go and respected that, should it boil down to it, he’d let Syo die because that’s what Syo would rather have than let the First Son linger. Even so… Lin was still too attached to take that route, passing it off as a “last resort” over and over again because he still clung to the hope that Syo would be saved. But upon the victory and seeing just how exhausted Syo was, Lin realized how hard pressed this reluctance to “do the Jedi thing and not place his personal affairs into his decision making” was. It teaches him that, though he loves deeply, sometimes he HAS to make the right decision and let his loved ones go when its their time. Syo’s wasn’t that case but others will be. All in all, his heart broke when Syo sent him his last letter of gratitude and Lin may or may not have shed tears over the final severe between his and Syo’s bond as Jedi, marking Lin as a freshly minted Jedi Master on his own.… And then he meets Theron. Oh boy. Theron is both his light and foil to his Jedi person. Despite SoR details, Lin and Theron actually meet once before, on Coruscant during a gala (shortly after RotHC) to which the Council and SIS were attending. Theron was brought along by Marcus as a guest for his hard work (and attempt to get him out of his apartment for at least one night). Lin was sent alongside Kiwiiks and the Grandmaster to represent the Jedi at the event. Halfway through the night, Theron wandered off from Marcus to grab food when he bumped into a crowd of Senators and Jedi, Lin among them. He was introduce to Lin as the Barsen’thor and newest appointment Council member, and after a quick handshake, they part. They obviously meet again on the Fleet at the start of SoR, but its that meeting that spurs Theron to look into Lin’s credentials while seeking potential candidates for the Assault on Korriban. The rest is history :PNow Theron and Lin’s relationship is sweet but its not flawless. They both love the hell out of each other and simultaneously drive each other up the damn wall. Theron adores how sweet and kind Lin is, his quirks and bizarre behaviour that surfaces (genetic thing from his witch mother I’m not getting into) from time to time. He also hates how easy Lin gives in to others and lets people walk all over him. Especially his brother, Coxio, though Lin will stand up to him when pushed. Lin tries to please everyone and Theron tries time and time again to tell him WHY he can’t/how it’s not possible. He sees Lin blunder when Lin doesn’t listen to him and it irks him to no end because this is his husband, he should at the very least give some consideration to what Theron is saying. On the opposite end of the scale, Lin adores Theron for who he is, social ungraces and all. However, he gets annoyed by Theron’s “solo mode” attitude when it comes to both work and home life. He understands Theron’s issues with commitment and relationships, but it does bother him when Theron insists time after time that he can “cook dinner by himself” when Lin is trying to subtly imply that he wants to BOND with this activity together, dammit. Then comes work; Lin easily gets pissed by Theron’s insistence to DO THINGS ALONE. Especially missions that require team effort or at the very least LIN’S KNOWLEDGE (looking at you, Nathemia…).Then comes the belief conflictions; Lin, of course, being Jedi still holds to some of their ideals even if he doesn’t consider himself one any longer (he’s broken the Code and frankly has no desire to mend that fracture at this point in his life). “Letting go” is one; he feels that, should someone want it, they should be respected (hypocrite alert; he believes in it unless its on his call… yeah he learned a lesson but its a behaviour he still doesn’t curb or try to curb yet will remark on it like he has the right -_-; ). Problem is, he dubs this to himself more than others (see?). He’d rather give his life for his cause and people than let them go for him (his conscious is a guilty one, a bit selfishly too… realllyyyy regretting Torian rn TTATT). Theron, on the other hand, disagrees; this ties in with Lin trying to please everyone, Theron has issue with him trying to “play the big hero” because he can’t and shouldn’t, he’s worth more than throwing his life away for others just for the sake of sacrifice. (He’s aware too that Lin would rather live than die, a bit cowardice there but eh who isn’t with something in life?). This has spurred bigger arguments than the two would like to admit. Nathemia being a prime example; Theron’s attachment to Lin causing him to run a solo undercover so deep even a sarlacc couldn’t burrow as far irked Lin to no end, because if it would have spared the galaxy his blunders come the months after Umbara then maybe it was meant to be from the Force. Cue big hellish fight that ends with both exhausted. They reconcile and come to an agreement to not go this far again, but its not a good fight. Lin, being the doormat he is, forgives Theron in the end because he does know Theron did it out of love and is truly regretful. This time though the careless behaviour on Lin’s part doesn’t piss off Theron, it pisses off Coxio. Especially considering how Theron takes the answer without question, Coxio feels Shan does not respect his brother nor understand the damage he’s done and takes Lin for granted. (Yeah that… does not go over well the next time Coxio corners Theron in the war room…)Outside that, minor things that bad habits and leaving dishes and datapads lying around (and Lin over spoiling the damn cat) are all that the two bicker about. Oh and Lin not using his damn inhaler (asthma from lung damage via carbonite poisoning) when he’s supposed to, insisting “he’s fine, he doesn’t need it now” and Theron refusing proper med care, “just kolto spray and go, its cool”, which drive LANA nuts. End of the day, they love each other; but as with all marriages, its not always flowers and sunshine. They fight, they argue, they kiss and make up, they’re a couple as any other are. They come home, they spend time together with their cat, its good. Now comes Lana. In some instances, Lana is the wife of both Theron and Lin, others just the exasperated best friend. For Lin, she’s his best friend and protector. Sith or not, she’s one of the few whose stuck by his side regardless of every stupid mistake and decision he’s made, even as she calls him out on it. He trusts her like no other, even with some things he doesn’t tell Theron about. She’s also one of the few to mother hen him unconditionally, especially regarding important factors like “TAKE YOUR KRIFFING INHALER BEFORE I FORCE SHOVE IT DOWN YOUR THROAT!” and “I SWEAR TO THE STARS IF YOU KEEP GRAZING FOOD, I WILL STRAP YOU TO THE TABLE, FINISH YOUR DINNER!” (directed at both Theron and Lin equally) and “STOP RUNNING HEADLONG INTO BLASTER FIRE!”. He loves her and its through her that he comes to realize that the Empire are a people too, like the Republic, and becomes more receptive of its members, even if he disagrees with a number of their policies (slavery and discrimination for two…).Now comes family, and for this I will go with Coxio. Like the rest of his family, Lin did not know Coxio until adulthood, when they face off first against Malgus on Ilum together and then SoR before meeting again years later during KOTFE. Hell, he wasn’t even aware that they were brothers despite similarities in appearance (like his dad Arol, Lin’s a little dense…). All in all, his relationship with Coxio is… complicated. Coxio, despite his careless attitude and being a complete shit-disturber, values family over all else and loves his little brother unconditionally. This stems back to early childhood, when Lin was first born and Coxio was introduced to his new brother. In the short time before their family was torn apart, he was protective and loving to the newest family member, promising his father with six-year-old vigor that he’d always look out for Lin. A promise that made its way to adulthood, even if Coxio recognizes that its not as imagined. Lin, on the other hand, doesn’t care much for his brother at all, both from lack of familial relation and disagreement with Coxio’s actions as a person. He gets into more arguments than talks with his brother, which end in frustration on his end because Coxio blows him off and yet still insists on treating him like little kid when Lin is clearly not for that. Coxio knows this; he recognizes that due to fate and circumstances, they may never be close as brother, if brothers at all. As heartbreaking at that is for him, who spent his life quietly loving Lin even when he didn’t know what happened to him, he understands why and despite that factor, still loves Lin unconditionally and would give his life to protect his brother in a hearbeat. Lin… hard to say if he would; he would die for Coxio like he would his fellow Alliance members, but from a Jedi standpoint than family, which is more an insult than a reassurance. Even so, deep down part of Lin does love Coxio. Despite being exasperated most of the time, he does not hate Coxio; Lin wants to love his brother, tries to, but Coxio’s personality clashing with his and his constant harassment of Theron (who Coxio believes isn’t the best choice of lover for his naive little brother) put him at odds. It’s also due in part to Lin not really knowing Coxio at all and Coxio pushing boundaries by treating Lin as if he knows him inside out, which makes Lin uncomfortable since he does this from the get go instead of letting Lin slowly acquaint himself with Coxio. (Granted, after Nathemia, Coxio and Lin’s relationship does improve and Lin accepts Coxio as his brother, even if he drives him nuts. Post Nathemia its put under strain again for a short time, but eventually improves again). There are others, like Acina (whom Lin forms a very close friendship to until Iokath erodes it) but this point is long as it is so I’ll stop here lol

How To Live A More Relaxed And Productive Life

Many of us feel overwhelmed with busyness. Whether it’s our smartphone and the eternal ping of urgent emails or our domestic life and all its attendant demands, there’s always something vying for our attention. What we sorely lack is time to relax and do what we want with our days. But, even when we do have time to ourselves, we often spend it worrying that we’re not accomplishing as much as we should, or wondering what the next item on our agenda is.

So how can we create a life that’s both productive and enjoyable? To find out, we’ll need to explore why some people feel as though they have all the time in the world while others never seem to have enough.

In this post, you’ll learn why most modern workplaces have developed cultures of busyness, and why it’s now normal to have much of your free time monopolized by meaningless meetings. Furthermore, you’ll learn how you can change your attitude toward time, so that you can become more relaxed and make time in your busy life for the people that matter to you. You’ll also learn what you can do right now to feel less busy and get more done.

Learn exactly what you’re doing with your time, even if it scares you, by keeping a log.

We may not readily admit it, but most of us have an obsession. Laura, for instance, is obsessed with time, and the ways in which we pass it. She’s so obsessed, in fact, that she’s spent years logging how much time she spends on different activities. Her logbook is extremely precise. For example, she could tell you that, on Friday, July 14th, 2017 she got up at precisely 6:45 a.m., spent exactly 45 minutes on paperwork from her child’s school and later, for 30 minutes, dealt with her mail.

Prior to logging her time, Laura thought she had a pretty good handle on how she spent her days. Her logbook, however, quickly showed her that she had had no clue.

For instance, despite often telling people she worked 50 hours a week, she was shocked to discover that she was actually averaging only 40 hours. And she’s not the only one prone to this overestimation. In 2011, a study by the Bureau of Labour Statistics found that people claiming to work more than 75 hours a week were typically overestimating by around 25 hours.

This raises an important question: If we’re not working as much as we think we are, where is our time really going?

Surprisingly, many people don’t want to know the answer to this question. Although rigorous time tracking provides a deeper understanding of how you’re actually spending each week, many of us are resistant to the idea.

For starters, we may worry that tracking time will show us just how many hours we’re wasting on things that aren’t meaningful or beneficial to us or our loved ones. Second, we may fear that tracking our time will constantly remind us of our finite time on earth, which will lead to anxiety about misspending each minute.

Despite these potential downsides, it is found that time tracking allows us to recalibrate our lives. Armed with greater knowledge, we can make positive changes in how we spent our time.

For instance, Jane discovered she was spending almost 327 hours per year on reading trashy magazines, she became motivated to carve out time to plan her reading habits more carefully. After making lists of good books and scheduling time to buy them, she replaced her consumption of celebrity gossip with a more nourishing diet of quality titles.

Make your hours memorable by filling them with exciting moments.

We all have memories, good and bad, which shape who we are today. Interestingly, our memories also play an important role in how we perceive time.

In general, the more memories we make, the more time we’ll feel we’ve had. The reason comes down to how the human brain processes its environment and archives what happens in it.

As we move through daily life, much of what happens to us is quickly archived in the depths of our brain, or thrown out completely. For instance, can you recall what you were doing on today’s date three years ago? Perhaps you can if something particularly noteworthy happened, but if it was a routine day like any other, you probably can’t. Why? Because we don’t think about our established routines. In fact, this lack of thought is why our routines feel so comfortable.

Unfortunately, the result of this lack of thought is that our brains don’t catalogue our routine time. For instance, if you take the same work commute 235 days of the year for around four years, then your brain will typically decide to store all these commutes – approximately one thousand of them – as a single trip! And just like that, one thousand of your precious hours have been whittled down to one. Worryingly, if your brain receives too much sameness such as this, entire years can vanish into memory black holes.

So how can you stretch your perception of time and avoid losing the hours to your routine? The key is to create memories that are intense or novel in some way. Taking vacations, for instance, is a surefire way to generate such memories. Our brains make memories out of novel experiences because they can’t be sure what they’ll need to remember in the future. As a result, they store everything that’s new.

Therefore, if you want to stretch time, have an adventure. For example, in our everyday lives, we may well remember just a handful of interesting occurrences in the course of a fortnight. But by vacationing in an exotic place, you’ll probably obtain that number of novel experiences before you’ve sat down to breakfast.

Our own insecurities keep us constantly busy, so learn to free up your calendar.

Most of us feel so busy all the time that we naturally assume every other hardworking professional must feel the same way. When scheduling a meeting with Jeff Heath, a senior director in a technology company, Laura was shocked when, after asking him when he would be available for an interview, he breezily replied that he was free all week, so when was good for her? How did a senior professional have so much free time?

When pressed on how he managed to keep blank spaces in his schedule, despite working in corporate America, Jeff replied that it was all thanks to his mind-set.

Crucially, he avoids the mental trap that so many other professionals get caught up in. Jeff thinks that despite their lamentations about not having enough free time, most professionals actually don’t like having white space on their calendar. Why? Because having a jammed schedule gives people mental reassurance that they’re doing something productive with their time. For instance, we spend so much time in meetings because they make us feel busy and useful.

According to this busy-is-good attitude, if something is scheduled at a particular time, with particular people, it’s automatically more important than unscheduled events.

Imagine that a couple has arranged for a plumber to deal with a leak in their apartment. The partner who has nothing in his calendar at work that day is much more likely to stay home and let the plumber in than the partner who has several scheduled meetings. But let’s think a little deeper. Are those meetings really more important than the uninterrupted time the other partner might have spent thinking about his biggest work dilemmas? Possibly not.

Avoid this detrimental mind-set by ignoring the temptation to fill all your spare time. You don’t have to value busyness just because the world does. Don’t say yes to meetings simply because you’re theoretically available. And if you’re feeling guilty for declining them, remember that the dirty secret about meetings is that, more often than not, they take up more time than is justified by the issue they’re addressing.

Don’t believe it? Just look at the meetings on your agenda and you’ll probably see that they’re all 30 minutes or an hour long, regardless of how much they need to accomplish. So say no, unless they’re genuinely important.

Spending time with loved ones can stretch our perception of time, and may even increase our lifespan.

Friends enrich our lives, make life feel less lonely and give it more meaning. But what does the time-management literature have to say about lingering with our treasured companions? A strict time-management schedule is incompatible with spending long afternoons and leisurely evenings with friends, right?

It’s a common misconception that time management is incompatible with leisure time with friends. In fact, a smart way to manage your time is to make friendships your priority. Why? Because devoting more time to your important relationships not only makes you happier; it can actually create a perception of having more time.

For example, in a survey of how people spent one particular day, those who spent the most time with family and friends on this day were also most likely to report feeling that they had the most amount of time in general. Conversely, those who felt they had the least amount of time in general were also the most likely to report spending less time with family and friends during this day.

Importantly, it was not the case that those with the lowest time-perception scores actually had less time than any other respondents; rather, it’s that spending time with friends and family is usually a relaxing, feel-good experience, and it therefore makes you feel as though you have all the time in the world. Time spent on, say, Twitter, won’t produce this feeling.

Furthermore, in another survey, those who strongly agreed with the statement “Yesterday, I made time for my loved ones” were 15 percent more likely to also say that, generally, they had enough time in their lives for everything they wanted to do.

Importantly, making time for those you care about may not only stretch your perception of time, but may also, in the long run, literally stretch your time. How? Well, research has shown that people with stronger social connections tend to have a longer life expectancy than those without such social connections.

This is likely the case, because good friends and close family encourage you to look after yourself, as well as care for you when you get ill. These healthy upsides to friendships mean that, when it comes to longevity, maintaining tight relationships is approximately equivalent to stopping smoking.

Accept the constraints on your time and lower your expectations.

Like many of us, Laura has a big family and a hectic life. During a recent and particularly chaotic week, she found herself thinking of those authors who seem to spend months away from their families in secluded garrets, with oodles of time to write. Why wasn’t she able to spend her time like that? Many of us have experienced this uncomfortable disconnect between our expectations and reality, but what can we do to overcome it?

The best thing to do is to alter our expectations of how we should be spending our time.

Importantly, once Laura made a conscious effort to lower her expectations about how much she should accomplish, she seemed magically able to achieve more in the little time she did have. For instance, she found she was suddenly able to write a first draft of a magazine article in a few hours, and could edit that draft in 90-minute windows of time between other domestic commitments.

How did this miracle happen? Well, when we lower our expectations of how much we can achieve, we no longer waste time worrying that we should be doing more. We often cause ourselves pain when our expectations become bigger than reality. This self-imposed suffering then leads to hours of worry about our unproductivity, which, in turn, prevents us from savoring the time we actually have.

Therefore, rather than holding big expectations about all the time you should be spending on your work, the key to long-term success is to consistently set and meet low expectations.

Consider the advances that a small child makes in learning language. Their development is not a matter of long hours of strict language lessons and harsh punishments for gradual progress. Rather, children advance slowly, and are praised for every new word acquired and for each minor linguistic breakthrough. To make a similar amount of progress toward our own goals, we adults should also adopt expectations of slow and gradual advancement.

Spend your money on enlarging pleasant experiences and minimizing bad ones.

We each have an equal amount of time allotted to us – 168 hours a week to be exact. However, while our weeks contain the same number of hours, our bank accounts don’t contain equal funds. But where does our bank balance figure in our quest for happiness? Does money make us happy, or is it simply the case that the more money we have, the more problems we can expect?

Interestingly, when it comes to money and happiness, it’s how you use your money – not how much money you have – that matters.

Money can boost happiness if you use it to buy things that facilitate pleasant experiences. These experiences later become fond memories – continuous wells of pleasure from which we can draw mental sustenance. Importantly, cherished memories aren’t subject to the diminishing returns of happiness that physical objects usually are. For instance, a child given a new toy will initially be excited to play with it. After a while, though, she will likely grow bored and stop using it. In other words, it will stop bringing her joy. In contrast, if you buy a tent and then use it to go camping, that tent may bring you lasting happiness. Why? Because you will forever remember the starry nights and campfires of that trip.

Additionally, if money is used to boost our happiness, we must rethink how we measure such happiness.

When we consider how happy we are, we often think only of life satisfaction, which refers to how well we think our life is going in general.

So, if you have a great job and a good house, you may consider yourself happy. However, this life satisfaction may not be the best measure of your happiness. Indeed, your moods are often much more driven by your hour-to-hour experiences than by your overall life satisfaction. For instance, your mood may often be depressed if you have a grueling daily commute to that dream job.

With this reality in mind, we can begin to assess which of our daily activities bring us happiness, and which make us miserable. We can then strategically use our money to either enlarge or minimize these activities. For instance, research has shown that commuting to work is often the unhappiest time of a person’s day. If this is true for you, too, then you could use your money to move closer to the office, thus reducing that commute and boosting your mood. Though this may cost a significant amount of money, it would be an important investment in your happiness.

Have time for adventures.

Ever feel like time just slips from one end of the hourglass to the other? No one can make more time, but a few simple strategies can make the time we have feel richer and fuller. Here are five tips on how to feel less busy while getting more done.

1. Figure out where the time really goes. People tell themselves plenty of stories about where the time goes (“I’m so busy! I have no free time at all!”) but why not find out for sure? Try tracking your time for a week. You can use an app, a spreadsheet, a notebook – whatever works. Most people discover that they have some pockets of time that can be redeployed for meaningful activities if they wish.

2. Plan in little adventures. When time isn’t memorable, we don’t remember it. That’s how whole years can disappear into memory sinkholes. Try planning in little adventures to make the days stand out from each other. These adventures don’t have to be elaborate. Grab colleagues for a picnic lunch. Take the kids to a playground after dinner. Just do something to switch up the routine.

3. Be careful with “yes.” If you want to have time for adventures, you can’t pack your schedule with things you don’t want to do. One strategy? When asked to do something in the future, ask yourself if you’d do it tomorrow. That makes the opportunity costs clearer. If the answer is that you’d move things around or cancel things to fit in this new obligation, then by all means say yes. But if the answer is absolutely no for tomorrow, probably that should be your answer for the future, too.

4. Slow down. Rushing just makes you feel rushed. Try noticing a moment when all is calm. Consciously call your attention to sights, sounds, details. Take deep breaths. Savoring good moments makes them seem longer – and that can stretch the experience of time.

5.Put friends on your calendar. People who spend lots of time with family and friends actually feel like they have more time than people who spend equivalent quantities of time watching TV or perusing social media. A dinner party takes effort, but it’s more rewarding than looking at photos on Instagram of other people’s dinner parties. Aim to schedule in relaxed time with friends this week. You’ll look forward to it – and feel like you’re the kind of person who has the time to get together with friends. That will make you feel less busy right there.

We all have the same amount of time each week, but our mind-set can greatly influence our perception of that time. Spending time with family and friends, and making fond memories, makes us feel as if we have more time. In contrast, worrying about our productivity and going through the motions of a boring routine can make us feel like we have less. In order to make the most of our time, it’s important to stop worrying, ditch the routine and start having adventures with those we love.

Episode start.

Emotions run high whenever a beloved one leaves. Beloved to the audience, and beloved to the fellow contestants who may have called her a “friend.” Viewers see once more a renewal of painful dismissal, of So Jisub selecting a bottom three from the last episode’s challenge and declaring that Lee Jieun be the one sent home. What they haven’t seen is fresh: the camera lingering on the eliminated contestant as she brings the microphone up to her lips to speak a final farewell.

“I… learned a lot. This is my second survival show, but it feels like starting anew. And it is, actually. I learned a lot from my peers, who took their time to teach me whenever I needed. And Yoo Jaekyung-ssaem, who always believed in my skills even though I’m lacking. As well as the other mentors at Royal, who taught me to be confident in myself. It’s a shame that I have to leave so soon, but I don’t regret coming here at all. I’m thankful for the experience, and of course, to you, sajangnim.”

“It’s true that I am primarily a dancer, but I’m proud to be a dancer, and I would not have it any other way. Well, maybe other than a dancer with better vocals. There’s so much more to do, but I know I have more to showcase in the future, whenever that happens. And for now, I just want to tell the other girls… all the best. Regardless of whatever the outcome is, regardless of major or minor, you all are performers in your own way.”

“Royal, fighting!”

Even Royal’s CEO is visibly moved by the speech as he listens. A soft, fond smile appears as he nods in approval to Jieun’s gracious farewell words. He doesn’t regret choosing this girl to be in his company, for Jisub values a positive, optimistic character above all else, and for that reason, he intends to watch Jieun’s skills independently improve on the side. If she shows sincere growth during this time… well, who knows. Anything, really, is possible.

But, for now, his attention rightfully goes to the girls who are left standing on the stage. Eunae and Lisa have survived the elimination and now they must all face their current challenge: the solo 1v1 battles that will determine their fit for the future group’s positions. As important as this challenge is for them, it’s even more crucial for the CEO; in a show with so many great vocalists, dancers, and rappers, he must watch them comparatively and decide who will be best suited for the spot. There’s no denying he’s ripe with anticipation for the next filming and encourages all girls to do their best to impress.

October 15th, 2017.

When the day of the challenges arrive, So Jisub finds himself the most anxious of all. With having given the girls free rein to show him anything, there would be little doubt that ‘surprises’ would be the main course of the day. His producers had approved all contestants’ concepts ahead of time, but Jisub had explicitly directed them not to tell him what the performances were, if only so he could feel this same jittery anticipation that the audience at home would later feel when the episode aired. When it’s time, he goes to his familiar table and sits down. Notes and contestant profiles are stacked neatly upon the table’s surface and Jisub gives himself a silent reminder to thank the efficient staff that provides for all of this show’s needs.

“Are we ready?” the head producer asks the CEO, with an old-fashioned clipboard in his hand. Jisub steadily observes the cameras in their positions, the looks of the crew who are on standby, and then lastly to the producer to whom Jisub gives an approving nod. The camera that focuses (and stays) directly on the CEO turns on for the recording and Jisub speaks out towards the stage. “I’m very excited for this,” he admits aloud, quietly chuckling at the aerial silks he sees now hanging suspended from the light beams above the stage. “Kim Yubin, you’re first up.”

Yubin’s aerial dance to Lady Gaga’s “Applause” does leave Jisub and the surrounding crew breathless as they watch. It’s a risky routine, with drops that are gracefully avoided with elegant movements, and it’s also a routine that leaves the CEO perplexed by the unexpected decision Yubin has made. For someone so strong in rapping, he would have preferred to see her do it. However, there’s merit to performances that are meant to shock and awe the viewers: if the routine gets audiences buzzing, the better. When Yubin concludes her performance, Jisub thanks her aloud for the performance. The recording turns off then, for the crew behind the scenes to clear the stage and prepare for Elly’s stage next.

Filming days are normally incredibly tedious to him, with all the stops and starts of the crew adjusting lighting and props, but today So Jisub has to admit it’s a fascinating process. When Yubin’s things are cleared, Elly’s preparations of a loop station appear on the center stage. Jisub looks on with interest as Ahn Hyojin looks over the final details and then presents herself as being ready. He gives the producer a nod and the cameras are turned on once more to focus on the second rapper.

“Elly, you may begin.”

But, yet again, what he gets from the duo of rappers is not at all what he expects. It’s a bittersweet realization for, on one hand, Jisub is grateful for the girls’ desire to show him the aspects of themselves he wouldn’t have otherwise known of them. Yubin’s dance is mesmerizing, to say the least, and Elly’s creativity and instrumental talent is undoubtedly praiseworthy to discover. And yet, there’s inevitable disappointment, too, for the lack of rap skills in these routines that he’d been hoping for. For deciding who would be the rapper of his group, this was too necessary a criteria for him to be without. “Ladies,” he calls out to the two once both performances have finished. The cameras single out the two who are directed to stand together, side-by-side, in front of Elly’s loop station. “That was… terrific, actually.” A quiet chuckle leaves Jisub as he looks first to Yubin, and then to Elly. “If you were hoping to surprise me, and the audience, that was definitely the way to do it.”

However, he’s now stuck with a problem he hadn’t foreseen. Without admitting this aloud to anyone, Jisub only curls his fingers tighter around his microphone before speaking again. “It’s important that a rapper have other talents to bring to the table and both of you certainly have met that criteria. Yubin, your dance with the aerial silks was tremendous-- and nearly gave me a scare when you did your freefalls. And Elly, the creativity of your song was stunning, to say the least. I loved the addition of the instruments as well as you letting me hear how much you’ve improved with your singing over these last few weeks.” He pauses, visibly weighing his options between the two. “For that reason of improvement, the winner of this challenge… is Ahn Hyojin. Congratulations, Elly, you will move to Major group.” Jisub looks then to Yubin with a small, apologetic smile. “You did very well also, Yubin. I truly am impressed with your talent. Unfortunately, though, this result means you will move to the Minor group with the five other girls tonight for a possible elimination. Please wait until later.”

The next two performances, to Jisub’s gratification, are exactly what he’s hoping for from these competitors. First up, Seolhyun, whose dancing and singing to Nicole’s “Mama” gets most of the male crew nervous just by watching-- an admission that her charisma is up to par with Lisa’s, and the latter whose daring routine to perform two skills she’s weaker at: also dancing and singing, coaxes out an impressed glance from the CEO as he watches. In truth, his purpose for pitting these two together was to see this comparison for himself. One girl who already had all the natural talent and knew what to do with it, and the other who continually improved on her skills week after week. It’s an equally tough decision as before and Jisub’s hesitation is noticeably longer as he weighs the pros and cons of this match-up.

“Well… I’m glad you both got to see what you’re up against,” he says with an indulgent laugh when the camera focuses back on him. “In a group dynamic, you two would certainly be fighting for the position of face of the group-- as I’m pretty sure you both have the potential to grab the public’s attention with very little effort if left up to your own devices.” He’s proud of both of his Royal trainees and this pride is obvious in his expression as he looks back and forth between one and the other. “Lisa, I’m really glad to see a continual improvement in your skills... but I’m unsure that you’re going to be ready in time to debut with the level of skills I’m hoping for out of my group.” he critiques her seriously. “I’m rooting for you as your CEO, but you just saw what Seolhyun is already capable of. If you realistically can’t match the technique level of your competitor, then what you should have done was show me what makes you so uniquely Lisa that I can’t find that quality in anybody else.” He gives Lisa a reassuring smile but nods in Seolhyun’s direction. “The winner of this challenge will be Seolhyun. Lisa, you will join Yubin tonight for the possible elimination round. I’m sorry, but please wait backstage until then.”  

The stage clears and Jisub momentarily wonders if more silks will be hung for another dance routine. Just the memory of Yubin’s routine has him smiling to himself (in the end, he really did enjoy that one) and he waits until Park Chaeyoung takes her place on the stage. As before, the instructions are tossed back and forth between crew and producer until the latter informs Jisub that they’re ready to begin. To the viewing audience, these performances would be easily seen switching from one to the other with very little delay in between, but to those who experience it in the flesh, it’s a different experience entirely. How could the cameras adequately capture the nerves that Jisub can see and sense permeating from his contestants as they watch their stages being set-up before their performances? What are they thinking about? he wonders silently. When Rose is ready, the camera lights turn red and Jisub tells her out loud to begin.

The song Rose picks is certainly a surprising one, and the male’s eyes widen (an expression that, thankfully, is not shown in the television-edited version) as he listens. The first thing he thinks is that her singing tone is beautiful, and secondly, that the song choice doesn’t mean as much as the first point does. He finds himself listening effortlessly, a smile growing larger on his face until the end of her performance. It’s good and Jisub nods approvingly to her before switching his attention politely to her rival: Yang Jiwon. To pair these two together wasn’t just to test their friendship (which, admittedly, was a large reason thanks to the producers’ meddling) but also because of their similar skill-set. When choosing a lead vocalist to round out his debut group, these two possessed enough close abilities to be each other’s most threatening competitor-- if they realized that. By the way Jiwon and Rose briefly touch hands in front of his eyes, the CEO wonders if they’ll be more stubborn about their futures than is wise. “Go ahead, Jiwon,” he tells her when she’s ready.

Attitude, and a lot of it, is the first impression he receives. In a direct contrast to Rose’s subtly sweet performance, Jiwon is all defiance from the words sung out of her mouth to the tips of her toes. It startles out a laugh from Jisub, who watches Jiwon perform with increasing interest as she pushes deeper into her song. Directed towards him, perhaps? She’s mad about something, he guesses, and this is the kind of response from a contestant that only makes him happier. Here, channeled through her song choice, is the spirit of Jiwon he’d glimpsed through her audition video many weeks before. She’d been hidden behind the others thus far, a problem with too many in number around her, maybe, but now she was more prominent than ever when she is up alone on the stage by herself.

“The winner is Yang Jiwon,” he announces once both performances are concluded. Jisub looks to Rose and tells her kindly, “Rose, you reminded me when I was listening to you of the reason why I cast you into my company in the first place. Both you and Jiwon have beautiful voices… emotional and that really touch the heart. Unfortunately, it’s my burden that I can only pick one of you to continue forward. Rose, please join Lisa and Yubin for the elimination group tonight. I will see you again later.”

After a brief break for dinner for all of them, cast and crew, they all return to the venue to pick up where they left off: with the battle royale between the show’s four main vocalist contestants. It’s a competition the CEO is looking very much forward to, and he eagerly waits as Lee Soohyun comes to the stage with her prepared outfit. He has to bite back a laugh at the sight of her-- a sound of pleasant amusement, as Soohyun’s personality absolutely shines (as usual) with her chosen appearance. One of the few contestants who knows exactly what he means about showing off her unique qualities, Jisub settles back to listen to what she has to offer. When it’s over, he finally does allow himself to grin towards her before calling Jihyun up next.

“Jihyun, go ahead.”

A true study of contrasts is Jihyun versus Soohyun. Anyone can see the differences between them, the cuteness youthful quality that Soohyun brings to the table when Jihyun brings experience and sensuality. The two are tremendous when they’re solo but it’s Jisub’s thoughts on the future group that divides them. For he does have a concept in mind, and it’s this concept that brings concern chewing on his lower lip as he watches Jihyun’s performance to “Love Me Right.” While both of them could handle the responsibility of a main vocal, the fact was, only one of them could handle the concept he was envisioning for this immediate future. Jisub inwardly sighs, but keeps his chaotic thoughts to himself as he waits until the end of the song to speak.  “The winner of this challenge… is Jihyun. Both of you did well, amazingly well, but Jihyun’s technique is the best in this competition and she is, unfortunately, a hard one to beat by anyone. Soohyun, if I really could I’d pick you both. But, seeing as how I can only choose one of you to win this challenge, I will go with Jihyun. Don’t be too disappointed though, you make me genuinely happy to have you as one of the singers in my company. Please go join Yubin, Lisa, and Rose in the elimination group. We’ll talk later.”

Nam Dawon approaches the stage next and So Jisub considers her with a discerning eye as she steps up to the microphone. When she looks ready, the CEO gives her the verbal go-ahead and leans forward to listen. The jazzy beat of “1, 2, 3, 4’s” opening has him pleasantly surprised and Jisub listens through until the end, his head nodding unconsciously to the beat as Dawon sings. It’s not a song he’d envisioned from her (sue him, but he’d pegged her as the emotional slow ballad type) but Dawon is able to pull off vocally what very few of his trainees-- aside from Jihyun and Soohyun-- could do. His impressed expression says it all as he thanks her for the performance and waves for Jung Soojung to come up next.  

Here, with Soojung playing piano and singing along to “Reflection” is the ballad he’d been expecting out of these two competitors. Soojung’s voice is heavenly emotional and So Jisub suffers under the very difficult decision that settles upon his shoulders. It’s not only between Dawon and Soojung that he must decide, but also how which one will pair up with Jihyun and Soohyun in the end. Four he has and only two he will take with him until the very end. With each powerful performance from the four, the choice becomes that much harder to make. He’s reluctant when he picks up the microphone after Soojung’s performance but it’s a task that must be done and, worse, one done in front of the cameras and viewers. “Both of you are exquisite performers. You’re making it tough for this CEO to pick, you know, but a choice is what I have to make.” He considers them both carefully, the same as Soohyun/Jihyun before when he envisions the group’s future concept. Unlike before, both of these girls could suit it, which made the decision all the more challenging. In the end, he goes with his professional instinct. “The winner of this challenge will be Dawon. Soojung, take heart that your abilities have already improved since the first stage I saw you. You only get better with time and that’s very promising still. Please join the other girls from the Minor group.”

At last, they come to the final two performances. Although they are the last, this battle in particular is one Jisub has his eyes on. Both Seoyoung and Eunae are strong individually, and he senses he won’t be disappointed with either one of their performances as Seoyoung approaches the stage first. Her outfit has his eyebrows raising in astonishment (as it certainly is a lot of feathers going on there) and Jisub waits expectantly until the girl gives the signal to him, and the crew, that she’s ready to begin. As before, Jisub calls her name out loud for the camera’s benefit (“Seoyoung, you may begin!”) before all eyes go straight to her and stay there. Her routine to “Full Moon” is much more sensual than he’s expecting but it’s not a bad thing, rather,  it reminds him of Rose’s earlier subtlety with her “Honey” performance. The more Jisub sees from these girls, the more he gains the opinion that some girls complement each other’s personal styles better than others. Rose and Seoyoung, for instance, would do well together in a group.

While Eunae and Jiwon, in contrast, would do better together. When it’s Eunae’s turn, this is what surfaces in Jisub’s thoughts as he watches her. Jiwon’s combative spirit is not unlike Eunae’s tomboyish charm here and the CEO reflects over it as he considers the rest of the girls in Major group thus far. Individually, these girls are talented beyond his greatest expectations, but how to get them all to function together as one unit at the same time? He studies Eunae and an approving smile appears upon her lips to hear her rap verses that serve her much better here than they had in the previous challenge. Not Yubin, but Eunae was Elly’s greatest threat in this competition. Had Elly noticed it yet?

“Both incredible performances once again,” Jisub compliments both girls with a warm expression. “Eunae, you did much better this time around than last week and I’m very impressed. This was the version of you I was hoping to see, and I’m glad I did.” He glances to Seoyoung and offers her equally fond words: “I wasn’t expecting this kind of image from you, Seoyoung, but I have to admit… this was exactly what I was looking for from you. No longer hidden in the back with the others, but forcing yourself out to the front to be seen. Very good, both of you.” Jisub leans back in his seat and takes his time debating over his decision, considering the benefits and weaknesses of this duo. “Congratulations, Eunae, you are the winner this week. You are rising quickly as a potential main rapper and that’s what I like to see. Seoyoung, unfortunately, I must ask you to wait with the other girls for a moment. I’ll be seeing the six of you very soon.”

Everyone is dismissed after this and the CEO remains sitting at his table, only observing quietly as most of the people in the room disperse for their next break. The elimination segment will be filmed soon and So Jisub spends the interim time tapping his pen against the contestant profiles. The six who wait for his judgment are ones he has grown to care deeply for since they’d begin this show: Yubin, whose senior experience and talent could be matched by none, Lisa’s stage presence that leaves everyone (including himself) in awe whenever she performs, Rose’s sweet singing voice whose memory still haunts him even now, Soohyun and Soojung who are both powerful vocalists in their own right and deserve so much more, and Seoyoung whose potential was obvious in her standing in Major group all this time.

What to do?

He mentally wars with the decision until the thirty-minute break concludes. The crew trickles back in and the producer comes to his side to catch him up with the rest of the schedule. To him, Jisub presents his conflict and the two quietly converse over the choice until the minutes tick away. At last, they finally reach a decision, and only then does the producer call the six girls, as well as the camera crew, back to their positions. Jisub, with weariness glittering in his eyes despite a perfectly made-up face for the camera, brings the microphone up to his lips. “Even though I did not mention an elimination last week, we’ve come to the point in the show where not everyone can stay indefinitely here. This episode’s challenge was to see how you fared against each other for the positions I have envisioned for the debut group, and I was not disappointed. Each one of you has impressed me with her performance and I spoke long and hard with the producers over which one of you must leave us tonight.”

Royal’s CEO takes a deep breath to compose himself before he continues to speak in an apologetic tone, “Yubin, I’m sorry, but this will be your last day. You have done incredibly well in the show thus far and it pains me greatly to have to let you go so soon. I wish you the best of luck with your career in the future, as I know you have the potential to go incredibly far.” But, in the end, it was his group he had to think of. Although he’d selfishly wanted Yubin’s talent to stay with him (thus manifesting into an argument with the producer) the CEO had to concede eventually that Tiger JK would surely serve Yubin’s interests the best in the long run. Regret is a heavy feeling sinking like a stone in his abdomen but the boss is one for a reason.

“Congratulations to the rest of you,” he acknowledges to the other girls afterwards. “You are safe for this week, even if you are not currently safe in this competition. Luckily, there’s plenty of challenges ahead for you to change your current standing and I greatly look forward to it.” The producer behind the scenes motions for the Major group of girls to join the others on stage to hear the rest of Jisub’s announcement. The CEO waits until all have gathered before forcing one last smile to his face. “Your next challenge will take place off the stage in an arena that idols cannot falter in: public interviews for the press that always watches you. You will be taught how to behave in front of reporters, as well as how to act in a professional manner that reflects your personal and your group’s reputation. More details will follow later in the week and, until then, I encourage you all to get some much-needed rest. You’ve done well today and I am proud of each and every one of you. Until we meet again.”

End of episode.

EPISODE 4, Writing Prompt:

As So Jisub explained at the end of the episode, this next challenge will not be a stage performance, but rather a personal test of a contestant’s behavior in front of the most influential people of an idol’s career: the press. How you behave in front of the press can make or break your career, as even the most accidental slight in word or expression can result in an unflattering news story to darken a reputation. In the next two weeks, the girls will undergo a specialized workshop headed by Royal Entertainment’s communication director, Seo Kyulhyun, who will instruct them on the correct way to sit for a formal interview (which is unlike the casual interview the girls have so far experienced individually), how to answer questions politely, and how to avoid answering direct questions intended to fish out secrets the company does not want them to reveal.

The “press interview” workshop will last a week, from 8am to 2pm on October 17th to the 24th. Afterwards, on October 25th-26th the girls will each be filmed for their “test” inside one of Royal’s large costume studios. The room will be spacious, with beautiful costumes and the surrounding work stations providing an interesting background as the girls are asked to sit in front of a standing camera. They will be supervised by a producer (acting the role of their “manager”) and joined by a camera operator as well as a genuine reporter from Dispatch. The girls will be asked real questions from the reporter which they will be expected to answer to the best of their abilities.

However, there is a plot twist.

In the spirit of Halloween, an elaborate prank has been rigged for the real challenge of this episode: to test a contestant’s true ability to react under spontaneous pressure. This will be OOC knowledge only, as the contestants IC must react faithfully to this event. Once a contestant has finished answering the prompted questions, the reporter, the cameraman, and the producer will all depart the room together with an excuse that they must “discuss further” about the contestant’s finished interview. This is aimed to leave the contestant alone in the room, where a hidden camera has been set up previously to watch her every move. After a minute has passed with the contestant left by herself, a nearby mannequin will begin to drift sideways. The mannequin has been rigged to fall apart on command and it will do so, toppling over and, in turn, tearing a large seam into the designer dress it’s wearing. Your contestant’s real challenge is to react to this, as well as react to when the designer of the dress immediately comes into the room not a minute later to see this disaster. The Dispatch reporter, as well as the producer, will come into the room with the designer as well. The designer will accuse your girl of causing this mess and it is her challenge to find an effective way out of this in a way that preserves her reputation in the best, professional way. This prank will not be revealed to be one until the feedback in Episode 5, so do your best until then! Happy Halloween!

For this episode’s writing opportunities:

Required: write a 300+ word performance solo about your muse answering the interview questions AND reacting to the dress-ripping incident. You are allowed to make up your own interview questions.

Optional: write a 300+ word preparation solo about the “press interview” workshop with Seo Kyulhyun or preparing for the Interview day.

The reward for writing the required solo is +5 SKILL POINTS TO BE DISTRIBUTED AS YOU WISH, +10 CHARISMA POINTS, and +5 DEBUT points, as well earning +1 week of a PROFESSIONAL NETWORKING or COMEDY achievement. Additionally, all girls will automatically receive +1 week VARIETY achievement for being present during Episode 4. Point forms will always be due the Wednesday after a deadline passes; this means for Episode 4, verification forms should be submitted after the Activity Check post on Wednesday, November 1st. These form dates have been added to the writing schedule, so refer to it periodically to make sure everything is being submitted on time!

ROYAL SURVIVAL EPISODE 4 (for the Nov 1st form)

[ x ]  *one 300+ word performance solo

+5 ____ POINTS

+10 CHARISMA POINTS

+5 DEBUT POINTS

+1 WK PROFESSIONAL NETWORKING or COMEDY ACHIEVEMENT (CURRENT LEVEL + NUMBER OF TIMES TAKEN)

+1 WK VARIETY ACHIEVEMENT (CURRENT LEVEL + NUMBER OF TIMES TAKEN)

+ NEW DEBUT POINTS TOTAL:

The deadline for all solos is midnight EST at the end of October 29th, and please tag each solo (including the interview) with #royalsurvival4. If you have any questions, feel free to send them to the Royal Survival inbox!

In a perfect world where you were hired to help write and direct the final movie of the new trilogy, how would you want Rise of Skywalker to go? What adjustments would you want made to either address anything from the previous films, or to avoid what has thus far been hinted at in trailers and interviews?

Oh, man, there’s SO much to think about here. Let’s start with, I think, things I’d want to change from previous films (either retconning them in RoS or providing context that makes them fundamentally changed)…

So, to that effect, here’s an itemized list!

Just as a precaution, I make some assumptions or pull from information I’ve seen around the internet. Some of these MIGHT turn out to be close to canon, so if you want to avoid anything, just steer clear of this post. I’m trying not to theorize too hard, and thus avoid spoilers myself, so I don’t know anything with any solid confirmation, so I could be wrong. Just wanted to cover my bases!

Without further ado, here’s the list!

1. I think I’d retcon out the idea that Luke would ever hurt Ben as a padawan. The general characterization of Luke felt very… off in The Last Jedi, and I wasn’t sure why the writers went in the directions they did for that. 

I’m not saying Luke can’t have a darker side– we know he struggled with a call to the Dark side during his training and feared it would overtake him– but the idea that he’d go as far as to even imagine killing a sleeping child, much less the son of his two most beloved people in the universe is… weird. And wrong. 

So I’d retcon that out with it being a false memory planted by, let’s say, Snoke or Palpatine, in order to create a rift between them and bring Ben to the Dark side. I think that would make a great deal of sense, frankly, and bring some much-needed closure and relief to the idea that Luke would ever hurt someone so defenseless.

2. On a similar note, while I understand that the thesis of TLJ was “making mistakes and learning from them”, I felt like most of the “mistakes” engineered into the movie didn’t actually make sense for the characters making them. Poe being “selfish” and “glory obsessed” doesn’t at all match with what we’d seen of him in TFA, nor does it match with any of the extended (and canonical) material about him.

He left the Republic Navy because they were too accepting of the idea of sacrificing their soldiers. In the military, that’s called “acceptable losses”: the amount of cannon-fodder that the military’s willing to wave off and accept as the “expected amount” of dead soldiers. If that idea enraged Poe enough to leave the Republic Navy, why would he be so accepting of the same idea for the Resistance? As far as I’m aware, the only life Poe is ever willing to sacrifice is his own; he wants everyone else safe. So why write him like he doesn’t care?

Here’s a direct quote about him from his official Star Wars Wookiepedia entry: 

“… Dameron developed a strong sense of commitment and duty, but had trouble with the line between his commitment to the Resistance and the commitment to his comrades, willing to disobey a direct order from his superior, General Organa, to make sure that the Millennium Falcon safely left Starkiller Base before its imminent destruction.”

Oh, yeah, that definitely sounds like the kind of guy to blindly let HUNDREDS of his comrades die. Yeah. For sure.

And then to act like he’s a bad person for not trusting a leader who isn’t making themselves clear in a time when clarity is of the utmost importance? To act like he’s a narcissist for trying to take the lead and help as best he can in a chaotic and, for all intents and purposes, leaderless situation? To frame him like he’s a bad guy for not trusting Holdo immediately, or acting like his distrust comes from a place of sexism or self-interest? Absolute rubbish.

So while I can’t retcon the whole “insubordinate bad listener self-obsessed narcissist” behavior that got written into TLJ, I’d try my best to re-contextualize Poe’s frustrations that he expressed in the film by showing why it would make sense for him to take the lead, to demand answers, to do his best to destroy the Dreadnought. 

For example, showing why it was important to take down the Dreadnought: he’s constantly concerned about civilian casualties at the hands of the First Order. With a Dreadnought still active, millions of people could be killed at the First Order’s whims; by taking the ship down, he saved millions of lives.

Another good way to dispell the idea of him as a self-centered hotshot willing to throw away lives is to show just how much he values the lives of others and wants to keep them away from harm; show his own self-sacrifice. Show him being willing to take the damage to protect someone else. Show him telling someone to get behind him, to stay safe, telling them “I’m not going to lose you, too”. I think that would be a helpful step away from the perception of him as a glory chaser; show that his self-sacrifice is genuine.

Honestly, I’d put so much effort into fixing the fallout from the Poe mischaracterization that I could go on forever about it, but I’m sure you all want to read other stuff, too, so let’s move on for now.

3. Absolutely retcon the shit out of the idea that the Force connection between Rey and Kylo was anything more than platonic or an intervention of Snoke. Sure, you can indicate that there’s still a lingering connection, but clarify that it’s more about the battle between the Light and the Dark, and the inherent connection that such mirror images will have to each other, but don’t get it twisted as some kind of galaxy-spanning love story. 

I’d put a lot of emphasis on Rey clearly expressing frustration with Kylo and saying “He’s failed himself. His pain is his own choice now; I tried to help him, but he rejected it, so it’s up to him to stop himself or we’ll do it for him” or something to that effect. And having her definitely avowedly denying any kind of “attraction” out loud. That’d be nice.

4. In a parallel train of thought, we gotta talk about Rey’s parents. While I’m certainly fine with the idea of Rey Nobody, because it’d be so great to have a Star Wars story where someone NOT from the Skywalker bloodline is just as strong as one of them, and is just as worthy and important, regardless of their bloodline or heritage, I’m also concerned that leaving her a Nobody would give credence to all that bullshit Kylo was spewing about her “not mattering” to anyone but him, ugh.

And it’d leave a door open for R*ylos to be like “WELL THEY’RE NOT RELATED SO OBVIOUSLY THEY CAN HAVE SEX!”, ew. 

So we’d have to give her some kind of actual backstory, and finally clear up what that is. It’s not something I actually want to do all that bad– I’m genuinely totally happy to not know everything about Rey’s parents, and the story would be fine without ever knowing anything about them– but I feel like so many people would demand it, and ensuring that Rey and Kylo are somehow related would finally put a cork in that insufferable bottle.

I don’t really have any great suggestions for how to deal with it, but I think there’s definitely the potential for a cool twist where Ben isn’t actually Leia and Han’s biological son, but Rey is their biological daughter. A sort of switched at birth idea, if that makes sense, and while it might be hard to believe (wouldn’t a mother know if she gave birth to a boy or girl?), there are lots of ways to work around it, and I think it could be a cool twist, though it does leave the loophole of them still not being related…

Hm. Well, at any rate, I’d have to iron it out with some other brainstormers, but I’m sure there are ways to fully cap off and prevent R*ylo from ever happening. Don’t worry, I’ll name some later in the list.

5. I’d also do my best to take away any lingering ideas about Finn being “goofy” or “cowardly”. TLJ decided to present him as this selfish weirdo more interested in wealth and himself than in the greater good, which was… odd. While he’s certainly careful about self-preservation, he also has a good heart, so I’d do a lot to emphasize his strong, heroic nature, and not just use him as a guy for all the gags to bounce off of. He deserves serious, thoughtful moments, heroic moments, AND silly, light-hearted moments. 

6. While on the topic of Finn, I’d also put FinnRose to rest and just… not have that be a ship. I’ve talked about it before, but I’ll summarize my basic issues with it: they just didn’t have any chemistry, it was a very forced and hasty relationship, and it didn’t make sense for either party.

Rose has a problem with hero worship; that much is evident. So why indulge her in it by pairing her with someone she childishly idolizes? Why not have her character arc be about finding her own personal bravery, not being reliant on others or their stories, but forging her own?

As for Finn, I’d love to see him end up staying close to Rey, possibly even beginning to walk the road towards their own relationship (though I do also value the idea of Rey not needing to have any romantic relationship in the saga at all), at the very least as friends. 

The whole “what we love” line in TLJ made no sense (except as a shoehorn to explain the validity of R*ylo in future films?), so I’d just have her explain in RoS that she was talking about “what we love” being belief systems that we fight to protect, like defending human decency, freedom, and peace, and that the kiss was a weird, juvenile decision that she’s embarrassed about in the same way one might be embarrassed about a childhood diary entry about a crush. It was just a fleeting moment of weirdness, but now that she’s more grown up and sturdy in her own personality and life, she doesn’t have to rely on the childish ideas of heroes and romance to keep her going.

I think that’s a long enough list of the retcons for now, so I’ll move into things I’d like to see happen in the movie and things I’d rather NOT see in the movie (i.e. things from the trailers that are being hinted at that I want GONE).

1. I’m just gonna get out in front of this: I don’t think I’m gonna like Zorri Bliss. I don’t. I’m really tired of “badass female characters” in that “badass female character” is such a boring stock trope by now. Skinny white woman who engages in violence and is flippant and emotionally removed, oh, joy, I’ll hold for applause. But what I’m really concerned about is the angle they’re trying to push with her and Poe; specifically, that Poe may not be “that good of a person” because he used to hang out with her, and she’s implied to be a smuggler or mercenary of some sorts.

Look, I get it. We don’t like “perfect” characters. I know that I love characters with oddities and quirks and flaws, and who make mistakes. But there’s a difference between that and fundamentally re-working a character so that they’re “not so nice” anymore. 

Poe already has flaws to work with and explore. Why make him have a “dark” backstory when he’s already interesting enough? And why make it connected to a “past relationship” with this random new woman?

I’m also concerned about them pushing a romance, which we simply don’t need, especially because it looks like it’s being done to finally quash any perceptions of Poe as queer. Which is just so shitty on so many levels, but I don’t have time to unpack them all.

So what I would do is probably just… cut Zorri altogether. We’re already introducing new characters in this film, and specifically adding Jannah to the roster, and tossing in new characters to an already crowded roster won’t really help. None of them will get enough screen time to properly reach catharsis in their arcs, so we just have to nip the least helpful bud, and Zorri’s seems like it’d be the first one to go, in my opinion. 

Maybe she’ll turn out to be great in the film. Who knows. But if it was up to me, I’d drop the whole subplot of her, and making Poe’s backstory a sullied one. I don’t need that.

Instead, I’d use that time to allow the main trio to DO THEIR THING. We need to see THEIR character journeys: not random newcomers.

2. No Bendemption.

This is gonna be a slightly controversial take, I guess, but I think a redemption for Kylo would be kinda hackneyed and forced.

That’s not to say I don’t think villain redemptions are possible, fun, interesting, or worth exploring. But I’m saying that I think this particular one just… wouldn’t work. 

Kylo doesn’t seem to be at all legitimately sorry for the things he’s done. He seems to be aware of his choices and capable of making them independently. Sure, the writers might force the idea that “oh, it was PALPATINE controlling him all along!”, but I feel like that would be so counterintuitive to the point of these stories.

The whole point is about choice: who we choose to be, what we choose to do. We can all choose to be kind, or we can choose to be cruel. We can choose to put others first or serve ourselves. We choose the Light or the Dark, and we get to decide what we do with that. Everything we do is a choice, and the Star Wars saga is about becoming out better selves and choosing to help those around us because it’s right.

So making the baddie secretly mind controlled would be… dumb. And hollow. And devoid of substance. So that’s out, not an option (if they want to tell a valid story).

So that just leaves us with Kylo Ren, Ben Solo, whatever, has been CHOOSING to be this way. And while he’s certainly felt pained by it, he also keeps making his choices; he’s now Supreme Leader, and he could choose to destroy the whole thing, leave, fight for good, but he doesn’t. 

So he can’t BE redeemed. Because he doesn’t want to be.

I mean, I’d honestly have to write a whole essay on just this singular topic to accurately convey my point, but here’s a shortened version of it:

I think a Bendemption wouldn’t be prudent at this point because he just doesn’t have the time to make a satisfying arc in one movie without it feeling forced, rushed, and out of character. So, to tie off the saga, he has to go out like Vader did: he has to die to be redeemed.

He can either die a villain or die a hero, but regardless, I think he just… needs to die in order to properly close the book on him. It needs to end with sacrifice, and either he sacrifices himself or someone else makes a sacrifice of him. Only then do we reach the catharsis.

And, look, I know the Bendemption is gonna happen. But if I was writing it, I wouldn’t let it happen: he’d have to have his Vader death. At the very best, it could be a noble one. At the worst, he’d die as he deserved to. But it would finally be over.

3. No grey Jedi Rey.

I don’t really love this whole cultural direction we’re taking with our movies where “the bad guys are secretly good and the good guys are secretly bad and the real truth is just to be in the middle!” because it’s so unhelpful.

Yes, extremism is bad and blindly believing any one group is the best and most moral, without ever questioning that, often prevents people from critically analyzing their choices, but it’s not that there isn’t an objective truth in the world; there is. There are objectively good and evil things to do. So we can’t pretend that relativity is universally applicable, because it isn’t.

So having Rey “accept the Dark and the Light” would be… difficult without seeming clownishly college-philosophy-student-y. 

While it would be important for her to accept that the Dark can exist in all of us, and that it’s not inherently evil to be tempted or to acknowledge it, the difference is in choice. She shouldn’t be allowed to have the best of both worlds because that isn’t how it works in real life, either. 

Indulging in our worst impulses, darkest desires, or lowest cruelties doesn’t make us more “real”, it makes us worse people. So having her “use the Dark side” would also just feel like this weird attempt to allow her to love Kylo or accept evil as “alright because we’re all bad inside”.

This isn’t to say she has to live in a world of harsh absolutes, but rather that she should, ultimately, choose the Light, kindness, and a journey towards making sure that she is keeping herself in check, as well as making sure that she is doing her best work for herself and others. 

So I’d write a clear moral line in: anyone can change, yes, but the important part is to change for the better, not just to accept the worst and stagnate in one’s most awful, darkest qualities. 

The idea would be lenience by extending kindness, which anyone can choose to accept, not just “you’ve been evil but I love you anyway”. Nah. We can’t just tolerate people’s evil behavior and let it continue: we have to extend the possibility of mercy and tell the person they can come to the Light if they so choose, but we won’t descend to them. They rise, or they fall, and it’s in their own hands.

4. On a less philosophical note, DON’T make Finn, Jannah, and Lando all related. 

A lot of the content I’ve seen circling for them seems to imply a familial relationship, possibly that Finn is Jannah’s lost brother, and that Jannah is Lando’s daughter. And, yes, while I’d love to see Finn reunited with his family and given a chance at a happy life… it’d be kinda cringey and bad to imply that the few black characters in Star Wars are all related.

I get that Star Wars is a dynastic story centered on families and genealogies and inheritances. But holy shit, it’s kinda racist to imply that the, like, only three black people in the series are going to be related.

It’s a galaxy full of people.

Not all of them have to be related just because they have similar melanin.

5. As for the overall plot, I think what I’d just want is the final triumph of good over evil. I really need to see that. I don’t need an ambiguous ending, I don’t need a dark one, I need one where the Light wins out, because that’s what we need to see, what we need to believe, and what we need to strive for.

The First Order NEEDS to fall. Kylo NEEDS to be out of power. And there NEEDS to be an emphasis on the value of lives, on the importance of taking care of the people in our universe, and on the belief that good does prevail, even when it doesn’t necessarily seem like it will. 

I’m not too bogged down with details– planet-hopping is fine, traveling to new worlds and seeing new people is all cool– but more concerned about the overall message. The MESSAGE is what I’m most interested in. And we all know what my message would be.

6. Oh, and just focus on keeping the trio together. Structurally, I’d just need to see them working as a team; we’ve had way too much time of them apart, so it’d be nice to see how they interact and function as a group. I’d like that.

Anyway, this is just a short-list of things. If I were to actually talk about this, I’d need, like, a whole essay just to unpack my thoughts. Oh, and I’d probably prepare a full alternate script. Just because.

I have plenty of other ideas for things I’d love to see happen, but this is just a list of things I don’t want or things I’d do to prevent things I don’t want. LMAO.

I’ll come back to this idea, this list-ish format of thoughts, after the film is out and after I’ve seen it, in order to talk more about things I’d have done differently or changed (provided there’s anything I would have done differently or changed), but for now, this is just a handful of my ideas about things I’m concerned with. 

Let me know what you guys are thinking; I’d love to be able to discuss this and kinda get a feel for what other people are thinking about, concerned about, worried about, or excited about. 

Thranduil’s Queen Headcanons

Okay everyone, sit tight, because I’m going to unleash a year’s worth of headcanons. 

General Headcanon about Elves

Since Tolkien did say that Middle Earth was our Earth in the distant past, the geographies should roughly line up. the twilit mere of Cuivienen would roughly be situated around the Caspian Sea area in Central Asia. Thus, I’d imagine that the earliest elves as well as the Avari who refused to depart from Cuivienen to have more Asian features, with slanted eyes and darker hair. 

Following the same logic, the Silvan elves who settled east of the Misty Mountains, and that area would roughly correspond to Central Europe, which is dominated by, you guessed it, temperate forests. The Sindar elves who settled in Beleriand would occupy Western Europe. 

The argument becomes a little more tenuous for the Vanyar and Noldor, most of whom (or in the case of the Vanyar, all) sailed to the West, which, pre-eleventh century, was considered the Great Unknown. 

Though blonde hair is not particularly prevalent in Central Asia, it does occur, and I’d like to think that the Vanyar were a group of elves who had such genetic predispositions. 

As for the strain of silver hair that runs in Telerin royal houses, that might just be due to a genetic lack of pigmentation.

Regarding Thranduil’s golden hair, he might have had an ancestor who was a Vanya (we can assume that elves married outside of their clans with the case of Indis and Finwe, a Vanyarin lady who married the High King of the Noldor). 

If only I put this much effort into my actual research. 

Okay, so this brings us to the main topic of this post: Thranduil’s queen. 

Since Thranduil in the Third Age relocates his kingdom and builds an underground cave complex/palace not unlike Menegroth, it’s safe to say that he was alive and lived (not just born) in the First Age. This makes sense because his father, Oropher, is described to have come from Doriath. 

Thranduil’s queen is Tatharel, a Sindarin noble and a daughter of Doriath. She was born in F.A. 472. 

Her father, born on the Great Journey and to whom Cuivienen was only a backwards glance. Her father, a particularly skilled marksman, by electing to wait for Thingol and thus be sundered from his own parents (who joined the host of Olwe), gained Thingol’s favor and was name High Councilor along with Saeros before the latter’s death. 

Her mother was of the house of Elmo, the same line as that of Celeborn. Tatharel's maternal grandfather, Galathil, was killed in the First Battle of Beleriand, and her grandmother faded from grief. Her mother was taken under the tutelage of Celeborn, Galathil's brother. Tatharel's mother is therefore the sister to Nimloth, Second Queen of Doriath, and Tatharel herself is first cousin to Elwing, mother of Elrond.

With such a lineage and her father's position in court, Tatharel is well-versed in diplomacy and is taught to bear herself with dignity and pride befitting of her position. She values logic and intuition, as well as a quid pro quo method of handling affairs.

Oropher was born in the Year of the Trees and occupied a minor position in court. His wife and son lived in East Doriath. In F.A. 495, when times grow dark, Oropher moves his household to Menegroth, and that's when Thranduil and Tatharel met.  

In F.A. 495, Oropher moves his household to Menegroth. Thranduil and Tatharel meet for the first time, and Thranduil mistakes Tatharel for Luthien. 

Tatharel’s initial impression of Thranduil is that he’s a country bumpkin, but comes to appreciate his quirks and finds them refreshing from the splendor and excesses of court. Similarly, Tatharel doesn’t fit Thranduil’s idea of a court lady and finds her to be intriguing. 

They spend more time together and become friends, though solidly denying any rumors of being lovers. 

In F.A. 502, Thingol is slain due to the quarrel with the dwarves of Nogrod over the Silmaril. The court is severely disrupted, and Tatharel’s father maintains control until Dior and his family arrive the next year. 

Since Tatharel’s aunt is the queen of Doriath, she gains considerable respect and jealousy 

Thranduil and Tatharel survive the sackings of Doriath, first by the dwarves of Nogrod and then by the Feanorians, and flee to the Havens of Sirion. There, they basically wait out the rest of the war.

Tatharel, regardless of her later titles, has always considered herself to be foremost Doriathrim. The destruction of her home and the sinking of Beleriand contributes to her eventual melancholy and her bitter regret.

At the end of the First Age, her parents and Thranduil's mother decide to sail West. However, Tatharel, wishing to see more of Arda, decides to remain and with the other Sindarin survivors, join Celeborn's fiefdom in Harlindon. Celeborn (perhaps because she is kin) offers her a seat on his council, of which Oropher is also a member. Unsurprisingly, since Harlindon is technically under the rule Gil-galad, the Noldorin councilors have more political clout. Oropher, disliking this power imbalance, decides to migrate east to Rhovanion. Tatharel follows because she has started a tentative relationship ("friends") with Thranduil.

As the Second Age passed, Oropher continuously moved the capital north, from Amon Lanc to north of the Gladden Fields then to Emyn Duir. She saw this as the beginning of isolationism, but held her tongue. However, the memory of Doriath, the Fenced Land, lingered her mind, for it was that same isolationism and hostility that led to its ruin.

Tatharel and Thranduil further pursue their relationship, and towards the end of the Second Age, he was hinting at a marriage proposal. When Oropher decides to join Gil-galad in the Last Alliance, Thranduil proposes, but she hesitates. Only when the Woodland army was preparing to depart did she run in front of Thranduil, promising that when he returns, she would marry him.

When Thranduil came back from the war, he was haunted by his father's death and the horrors of war. He delayed the issue for two hundred years before marrying Tatharel who was crowned the Queen of the Woodland Realm.

After the War of the Last Alliance, the Silvan elves suffered a significant decrease in their population, particularly able-bodied males, who were the usual demographic to partake in politics. The Sindar, with their experience of warfare and positions as officers, experienced little decline. The ratio of Sindar to Silvans increased, and that's what mostly triggered the Sindar to actively demand more rights. 

So up until now, the Silvans and Sindar have coexisted peacefully, for it was the Silvans who gave land and lordship to the Sindar, a social contract of sorts.  The Sindarin rightists followed Oropher east because they were eager for power. These elves were by no means a majority, but they were a considerable plurality and were mid-tier at Thingol's court. In Harlindon, despite the population mostly being Sindar, they were often overlooked in favor of the Noldorin lords, and it was only powerful Sindarin nobles like Celeborn and to a lesser degree Tatharel, one of the few who can claim kinship to Thingol, have their voices heard. But in a new realm, these rightists would see an increase in their power without the presence of the Noldor. It was a fresh start. Obviously, when they first entreated the Silvans, they couldn't assert themselves too highly because the Silvans, seeing the inequality, would refuse the Sindar to settle on their lands. They had to settle for relative equality at first, but that seed of ambition always remained.

Now, the Sindarin rightists want more privileges and sought to do so by making the Silvans second-class citizens. Sindarins would receive the upper government and military positions, would be taxed less (regressive income tax brackets, oh my), etc. Tatharel opposed such a policy, as did Thranduil, for such a course of actions would undermine his father's original intentions. This earned Tatharel some enemies.

Thranduil, like Tatharel, is torn about the growing gap between his people. On one hand, he understands his father's intention in sincerely adopting the Silvan culture (c.f. rightists who take advantage of Oropher's actions to elevate themselves). On the other hand, he sees the reasoning behind having more Sindar in positions of power because they were more experienced with warfare and statecraft as well as they supported his father in Doriath and Harlindon.

Rather than taking action, Thranduil becomes passive, first granting more Sindarin military officers to protect the realm. Then he offers more council seats to the Sindar who had such experience previously. It's not something he does intentionally; he acts with the welfare of the kingdom in mind, but his actions quickly become a slippery slope which benefits the rightists.

Although Tatharel is a bit more forgiving towards the Noldor since some of them are kin by marriage (e.g. cousin-in-law Earendil, grandaunt Galadriel), Thranduil's not particularly fond of the Noldor. He, like many Sindar, believe that the wars that ended the First and Second Ages were caused by the meddling of the Noldor. In fact, due to the massive losses of the Woodland army in the War of the Last Alliance, he believes that he was shorted by Gil-galad. He doesn't like Galadriel very much, even though she's technically related to him through marriage. This anti-Noldorin worldview and disdain for their meddling causes Thranduil to ban correspondence to the west where the Noldor dwelled.

Thranduil isn't as right as the rightists but he's much more right than Tatharel who's centrist.

The politics at Thranduil's court is really a holdover from Doriath. Ironically, Tatharel held a higher position than Thranduil and the rightists in Doriath, and she knows them better than Thranduil, who lived in Doriath for a very brief time. She understands them, their motives and potential underhandedness, and is not obligated by a bond of gratitude like Thranduil is.

Regarding Tatharel's stance on the cultural-political divide, she isn't against the Silvans. In fact, she's divided on whom to support, but she knows that Thranduil's passiveness and the slippery slope that's happening is wrong. She doesn't actively support the Silvans because to her, they with their wild ways contradict everything she's been taught in Doriath. Yet she doesn't believe that they should be subjugated in order for an elite Sindarin class to emerge.

A potential cause for her disfavor of the Silvans would be that they pushed forward a Silvan as a candidate for queen during the two centuries between Thranduil's return from the war and his marriage to Tatharel. The Silvans also recognized that the Sindar would begin to attempt to grapple for more power and wanted a Silvan queen as a reassurance of their continued prestige, even though it was widely known before the war that Thranduil and Tatharel were quite close. 

In the end, Thranduil married Tatharel because she understood him, braved the fires of the Second Kinslaying with him, and followed him east though her immediate family departed for Valinor. It was this loyalty and intimacy that compelled Thranduil to choose Tatharel. The Silvans saw this rejection of their plea, and both peoples contributed to the growing divide.

Despite Tatharel's personal aversion for the Silvans, she knew rationally that this rift was dangerous and could prove to be disastrous if it were to be manipulated by outside forces.

Around T.A. 1000, Thranduil and Tatharel's marriage became strained. She was tired of seeing Thranduil granting more and more privileges to the Sindar as if he was repaying them for an old debt.

When she was heavily pregnant with Legolas, she and Thranduil had a particularly nasty spat, in which Thranduil, scarred from war and in a moment of fury, struck Tatharel. She, in retaliation, told him that his court was filled with a nest of vipers and that he should have married his Silvan queen (basically reneging their marriage). That marked the beginning of the end of their relationship. Both regretted their words and actions later, but the deed was done.

Thranduil’s retreat to his underground palace, built in the memory of Menegroth for his queen causes Tatharel to fully see an echo of Doriath, and when Thranduil forbids all correspondence to the west, she can no remain silent. She drafts a letter to her kinsman Celeborn expressing her concern regarding Thranduil's isolationism, the divide between the people, and how Celeborn manages a similar situation in Lothlorien. The cultural divide, her troubled marriage, and the growing darkness she included in her letter to Celeborn. She lamented the glory days in Doriath, how Thranduil was so blinded in his rule, and how she felt so suffocated in the Woodland Realm. She wondered if she would have been better off if she sailed after the War of Wrath, among other grievances and regrets. Her letter is intercepted, and she is charged by the council for treason as well as insubordination, for which the punishment is death. However, considering that she has been a wise and just ruler, the council agrees to lessen her sentence to exile. She agrees, much to Thranduil's dismay, and goes into self-exile, leaving the king with an infant son. 

This letter wasn't treasonous in its intent, which was to seek advice from Celeborn, but the rightists twisted it to make it seem like an act of treason. Also, the fact that she directly rebuffed Thranduil's edict and sent a letter west didn't help. 

To escape and forget her plight, Tatharel travels east, past Rhun and the great deserts to the magnificent cities of the Far East. It’s only after two thousand years did she return to Middle Earth near the end of the War of the Ring. She lives with her kinsman Celeborn for a short while. When Celeborn meets Thranduil to redraw the boundaries between their realms, she accompanies Celeborn and meets Thranduil. 

◆Out Of Character Information◆

Name/Age: Marie, 20 Preferred Pronouns: She/her Timezone: GMT+2 Desired Character: Jiaying

◆Character Information◆

(1)  What pronouns will your character be using? Would you like to list their sexuality at this time?: She/her. I go back and forth on her sexuality all the time, and therefore I’d love to explore it through writing.

(2)  Any changes or comments?  None!

(3) Why this character? When I read through the characters, Jiaying was the one that stood out to me the most. I love her plot regarding the Emerald Hand, and I find her to be an incredibly interesting and complex character. She is very clever and calculated, which might be what I love the most about her. I would love to explore her in depth as well as writing her plots out. I’m excited to see what direction she can take the Emerald Hand, and see whether or not the members will find out about her being responsible for several of her members being in jail at the moment.

(4) Interpret this character:

+ Confident, clever, quick-thinking, charismatic, efficient, humorous

-/+ seemingly careless/laid-back

- Manipulative, selfish, materialistic, insensitive, impatient

Jiaying is a daughter of a mercenary, which becomes clear in more ways than one. She is quick and precise in her movements, mirrored from the times she practiced with him herself when she was younger. Her father often let her tag along while making deals, watching him push the prices higher than what the mission was worth. She picked up much and more from these trips, and it has undoubtedly shaped her persona; she is incredibly charismatic in combination of being clever and manipulative. She is able to put on the appropriate masks for the situation, and act out a different character if she needs to in order to gain trust or other advantages of the trade. While she did not follow in his footsteps, she meets similar situations as the Tyche, and her fine skills of persuasion have let her escape sticky situations more than once, and take the upper hand in others.

A thing both her mother and her father’s professions have in common is rather large amounts of money. She has grown up in a household that values it greatly, and Jiaying is just like her parents it that regard. Her love for it only grew with age, as she realised the true worth of a golden coin. Perhaps a little materialistic, but she can’t bring herself to care – everybody lusts for it, after all. The difference is who dares to say it aloud and who is determined to keep their pride, whatever that means. It is this mindset and her love for money that have made her and Lord Theodore to become friends, despite everything. Jiaying knows the art of being subtle. She will take advantage of it both in her profession and when talking to people – being brash and forth-right might burn some bridges that she otherwise had the possibility to build. She can twist her words, lie and manipulate if it means she will gain a an advantage from it, whether it would be information, money, or – best of all – trust. While she might take advantage of this later, depending on who they are and how close she is with this person, she is incredibly loyal to the Emerald Hand. She can’t help but think that now that she is the Tyche, its success lies in her hands. Jiaying knows she has to potential to be a great leader. It is a reason she was chosen over the lieutenant, after all, and she believes the decision was right. With that, she is not dim-witted; she knows they’re a band of thieves and misfits. With things starting to look sour for the guild, with more accidents and troubles than before, she is careful. A misstep could lead to disaster, and thus she won’t take any risks without knowing her members are loyal to the Emerald Hand as well. Failure is not something she wants to risk.

If you happen to get to know Jiaying, you will admit she is rather insensitive at times. She has no patience with overly sensitive people, and while she can forgive people’s bad days, she finds herself annoyed wherever she’s in the company of particularly sensitive, sulky or irritable people. It is a waste of time, quite honestly, and it’s one of the few things that might set a stopper to her otherwise good mood.

Headcanons:

- Jiaying generally find herself annoyed by people who act before they think - she believes every situation could be bettered by taking just half a second to think it through before acting. Additionally, this is a trait she finds highly unattractive - she values cleverness, wit and quick thinking.

- She is not very romantic. Romance is simply not on her list of priorities at the moment, and only counts it as a possible distraction from her task regarding the Emerald Hand.

- Rules do not apply to her like they do other people. Well, technically they do, and she has them memorised along with the loop holes she can take advantage of should she be caught. She does whatever she likes most of the time.

- She doesn’t care much for the monarchy. They’re all rich snobs who think their heritage makes them important enough to make other people bow and do their work for them. They might have some of the same values, however, and she will admit that. Additionally, she is open for negotiations with them if it should occur, if there is a promise of gold and improving the guild in some aspect.

- Supernaturals are lucky. They have something valuable that can’t be stolen or taken away from them. She has made it her mission to take advantage of it if she can.

◆ Interview Questions ◆

(1) Question One:

Don’t you think that your guild members will find out that you have a direct role in sending some of them to jail? Can’t you trust them?

“Don’t you think that your guild members will find out? Don’t you think they will know you have a direct role in sending some of them to jail?”

It was a question that made her pause. Few things ever did. Yet this was a secret she kept sacred, one she knew could mean a large part of her guild turning on her of they found out. Admittedly, her first instinct was to get angry. This girl before her had no reason to know of this at all, yet she had figured it out. She was tempted to sneer at her, ask her how she could possibly know of such a thing. She knew better than so, however; responding with anger might give her a reason to tell it to more people than just her, if she had not done so already.

“They won’t if you keep your mouth closed about it,” she responded instead, keeping her voice calm. “Some might figure it out without your help, of course, as I assume you have managed to do.” She shot her a look. “The people who are in jail will be there for some time, and I will have figured out who to trust and who to send to accompany them by the time they will be out.” She let herself lean to a nearby tree, a careless attitude shining through despite everything. “As for before I’ve weeded them all out… well, if people got to know, I guess it would be easier to find out who lacks the loyalty I’m searching for.” The wary tone changed to one edged with humour. It was not a serious answer, but it was the best she could muster as this time.

“Can’t you trust them?”

“I thought it was obvious I don’t. We’re all thieves and most of us are in it for ourselves. I’m looking for people with any sense of loyalty to the guild. Certainly you can see a large heist go terribly wrong with people too selfish to follow up when they’re most needed, can’t you? It could possibly be disastrous. And don’t get me started on Ivar. I know he is bitter - I would be as well had the leadership been snatched away from me as it was from him.” Another smile followed, and she paused briefly before continuing. “I’m only doing what’s necessary.”

Then she stepped forwards, reaching into her pocket to find a golden coin. “Now keep quiet about it, will you? They can figure it out for themselves if they’re clever enough.”  

(2) Question Two:

Have you always wanted to be the leader of the Emerald Hand?

“I have another question for you.” It was the same girl as before. She was less wary now, knowing she had kept her promise of keeping her mouth shut since their previous talk.

“Alright.” She offered her a raised eyebrow.

“Have you always wanted to be the leader of the Emerald Hand?”

They were in Grimby - everyone had at the very least heard a rumour or two about her affiliation with the guild, yet she shot glances over to the nearby people so see if they had heard. Evidently, they did not. Though, it was not as if she really cared much if they heard the question, regardless. The guild was not as secret as they sometimes pretended it was. “I’ve known the guild my whole life. I knew I’d end up there, too. Being leader did not occur to me before I’d completed several missions, so always too strong a word. But for a long time? Well, perhaps.” She let the thought linger at that as she took a sip of her drink. “I’ve… dreamed about it, I suppose, but it didn’t hold any grasp in reality. I didn’t know what it entailed, but it seemed grand. It was simply a childish thought for a very long time. I thought I would have to build my way up through being a lieutenant first, like most people did. Seemed that once I had set my eyes on doing so, the title was simply handed to me.” She allowed a grin to grow across her features. Though it was meant as a joke, there was some truth to it. “They say the leader is lucky, yes. Even so, I’ve worked for the recognition ever since I entered it in the first place. People sometimes forget that.”

◆Writing Sample:◆

She was pacing back and forth across the floor of her room - patience was not her strongest suit when it came to things like these. Too much depended on everything going as planned. It could potentially leave a trace that could be tracked back to her, and that was truly the last thing she wanted.

Perhaps there was just nobody who would come to her to inform her that yet another of the guild members had been thrown behind bars. She had shown great dismay at the news every time it had happened, after all; she was an actress at heart. She had sent a very particular thief to get a rather valuable candlestick from a nobleman’s house. It was an easy task, really, as it was common knowledge this nobleman spent his late hours at the bar most of the time anyway. They both knew it was easy enough, and so nobody would think it suspicious sending him there alone. It was, however, a house the local guards passed by quite often. Additionally, they had received a letter with a time, a date and a place, and a promise of a good catch. If Gard, the thief she had sent out on this very mission, had not taken thrice the amount of gold allowed to during a mission - without telling her, of course, but she had her ways of knowing - that very letter would never have been written.

But it could not be the case that nobody wanted to tell her. Jiaying had made it clear from the start that honesty was something to be rewarded, and being the Tyche, people stood in line in order gain her trust. Whether or not to take advantage of it later on was something to keep an eye out for, however. No, it could not be the case. It could only mean–

A knock on the door was enough to make her snap out of her thoughts. She made two quick strides over to the door and locked it open.

She should have known it from the start. Outside the door stood none other but Gard himself, rather sweaty and dirty, but in good shape nonetheless. She felt her heart drop to her stomach. So her suspicions were true, then. The guards had failed at catching him, though it seemed as though they gave him a bit of trouble regardless. She hid the disappointment and annoyance at the sight of him behind a mask of a raised eyebrow and a slight playful smile. It took more willpower to do so than she would’ve liked to admit. “Took you long enough.”

“Long enough? Those guards were on m’ trail, ’m tellin’ ya! Fuckin’ hell, I ran my ass off so I woudn’t end up joinin’ the guys stuck in some rotten cellar - they almost had me!” There was anger in his eyes, but he seemed oblivious as to why the guards would be there and know of his presence in the area in the first place. It was something, at least, and it was enough to let some tension in her body go.

She paused and sighed, allowed the smile to fade and some of the annoyance shine through. “Look.” She stepped towards him, eyes unwavering. “They’re on our trails, and we all know it. We have to be damn careful, and I trusted you would know better - it was an easy task.” She paused half a second in order to give him time to let the words sink in. “Might’ve given them another trail to follow, too.” She only spoke the truth, or so it appeared to anyone who did not know better, and he seemed to acknowledge that. The guards would most likely not know much, but the threat that they may was one that made insecurity shine in Gard’s eyes.

She stepped back again, turning back to the room while leaving the door open. Half sitting, half leaning back to the desk in her room, she lazily crossed her arms over her chest and looked at him. “Did you get it?”

“Aye, did so.” He brought her the candlestick, silver plated and embroidered with rubies, along with a sack of gold. The latter was not something she had ordered him to get, but it was appreciated as long as it was not too much; the art was to take little enough to make the owner confused as to where it went in the first place. She suspected the sack was heavier when he first found it, but as long as the candlestick was in their possession, she cared little.

“Good work.” She offered him a flash of the smile that was usually found on her lips, even if it was forced upon them at this very moment. He only nodded, and as he saw no reason to stay, he turned. She went to the door to close it after him. A curse under her breath and a heavy sigh escaped her lips; she certainly had a job to do.

Love You Only (3/?)

Matsuoka Masahiro/Nagase Tomoya Tokio 2100~ words. Sfw.

If you asked Tomoya Nagase about colors, he would swear to you that he remembers them somehow, impossibly. Enter Masahiro Matsuoka, whose arms he ends up being pushed into, the man who sets his world alight with the rainbow. Neither of them can shake how familiar it feels, and as their journey through life and love continues, they begin to realize that sometimes love really can transcend anything put before it. For @chlance​, of course. A labor of love, and another soulmate AU no one asked for.

Tomo wants to tell someone. He wants to tell his parents, because they had doubted him for so long, had doubted that he had once been able to see the colors of the world, but he had, and now he knows this. Where others have marveled over the hues and shades around them, he feels a sense of peace, as if something once valuable was lost and has been restored to him.

The first name that comes to mind when he picks up his cell phone, though, is Tatsuya Yamaguchi. The two of them have been friends for the last few years. Tomo had met him on the train one day. A few men across the aisle had been intent on giving Tomo hell for the way he was dressed, and Tatsu had stepped in on his behalf for no reason other than that he could.

Since then, Tomo has come to value Tatsu’s friendship as deeply as any other. They get along well, and though Tomo has not quite found the confidence Tatsu is able to display when someone talks down to him, he would like to think he is getting there. He thinks it over, then opens his Contacts and hits Call, waiting for Tatsu to pick up on the other end of the line.

“Tomo,” the familiar voice of his best friend yawns. “Aren’t you calling a little bit early today?”

Tomo frowns, glancing at the clock on the stove. “No, Tatsu, it’s past noon already.”

He wonders if Tatsu and his girlfriend have been having trouble again. Though the two of them work hard to make their relationship work, Tomo has heard more often than not how things are not working properly between the two of them. They put in more effort than most do, and for that he does hope things work out for them… But he can only see Tatsu suffer so much without wondering if the right person for him is out there waiting for him to find them.

“Is it really? Damn, I didn’t mean to be in bed this late… Anyway, what did you want?” There are sounds on the other end, creaking and rustling, probably Tatsu getting up for the day.

“I wanted to tell you the good news, actually.” Tomo rocks back and forth on the balls of his feet, feeling so light, so happy. “I was at the market, and I… Tatsu, I found the one.”

There is a long silence on the other end of the line, punctuated by a gasp before Tatsu speaks. “Are you serious? Tell me, what’s it like, then? Does seeing color still feel familiar to you?”

“It does, actually. Like, I feel like I’ve seen these colors before. Not these exact colors, of course, but color in general? Yeah.” Tomo hooks his foot around the leg of one of the kitchen chairs and sits down heavily. “Some guys were giving me shit about my clothes. I got pushed into him.”

“You don’t need me to tell you how fucking dramatically and stupidly romantic that sounds,” Tatsu says, and Tomo laughs because he’s right. It sounds very dramatic.

“It’s true though,” he insists, and launches into the story while Tatsu is most likely getting dressed.

His stomach rumbles halfway through the story, so he pushes himself up so he can throw together an egg sandwich, not in the mood for anything heavier, and some coffee to wash it down. Tatsu has his flaws, but he listens patiently while Tomo goes over the hours he had spent with Mabo— just the name is enough to make his stomach tighten and his heart flutter— and their promise to spend some time together over the next two days. Time, Tomo hopes, that will strengthen their bond.

“You sound like you’ve already decided on you two staying together,” Tatsu says when Tomo has finished and has sat down to eat. “I really hope he decides the same thing. You deserve that.”

“Don’t be dumb, everyone deserves to find their soulmate if they can.” Tomo quickly clears his throat after saying it, remembering Tatsu’s insistence he would rather make it work with someone else rather than keep searching. “Well, you know what I mean. How’s your girlfriend doing?”

Tatsu laughs, and Tomo winces. Maybe it would have been better to let Tatsu volunteer the information instead of asking after her. “We just got into another fight last night, actually.”

It’s Tomo’s turn to sit quietly and listen, trying to chew and swallow with little to no noise so Tatsu doesn’t have to listen to him chewing in his ear. As he thought, Tatsu and his girlfriend are having problems. It seems they have no end of problems, and sometimes Tomo just wants to tell him that all of the love in the world cannot always solve everything, that sometimes people are not meant to be together. But right now, able to see the world in vivid color, he knows he can’t.

Tatsu has always respected him for wanting to look for his soulmate, but he has been firm that he does not believe that path is right for him. And Tomo can only respect Tatsu’s decisions, and support him to the best of his ability, even if it means watching Tatsu hurt himself in the process.

It probably isn’t right to wish for it, but he almost wishes that Tatsu would find his soulmate just so he knows he has options out there, people who would treat him better. Because she doesn’t, she doesn’t give him the support he needs when things are bad for him mentally, and Tomo knows this, because he has stepped in more than a few times to give Tatsu any form of support he can. Better a best friend than nothing, right? If it’s the only thing he can get… Tomo finishes his sandwich and pulls his mug closer to himself, and he knows he’s wrong for hoping Tatsu finds someone else when he has put so much of himself into this, but it’s not working anymore.

“But, you know, I’m sure we’ll figure out a way to sort everything out. We always do. Sometimes, it just takes a little more time than… Well, you know.” Tatsu trails off and Tomo hums, trying to be as convincing as possible, trying to make Tatsu think he believes him. Wondering if Tatsu is still lying to himself, or if he has given up on that, too. “I get to meet your guy soon, right?”

“If things work out well with him, then absolutely,” Tomo says. He wonders how Mabo and Tatsu will get along, if his best friend and his soulmate will like each other.

“If it makes you feel any better, regardless of what I think about the whole soulmate thing, I really hope that it does work out. Because I know it means a lot to you.” Tatsu is quiet on the other end of the line and Tomo presses the back of his hand to his own mouth, more than a little shocked at this coming from Tatsu of all people, but knowing how much more it means because it comes from him. “Good luck today. Let me know how it goes. If he hurts you, I’ll smack him.”

That makes Tomo laugh, and he pushes away his now empty mug as he stands up. “I will. I’m going to go shower and get dressed, and then I’ll see if he wants to do anything today.”

They say their goodbyes and Tomo heads upstairs, his eyes roving over every inch of his home in the process. He had been smart when designing this house, had hired someone who had found their soulmate and could see in color so that everything would be soft, and pretty, and easy on his eyes when he was able to see all of it for himself. He’s satisfied with his choices.

The bathroom in particular in its easy shades of blue with the butter yellow of the sunlight spilling through the window is beautiful, and he enjoys that for a moment before undressing and starting the water. Then he takes a long, good look at his own reflection in the mirror.

Looking at himself like this feels familiar, and feels not familiar, and that confuses him more than anything else. What had happened in his past, for this to feel like something that has occurred before? What kind of deja vu is this, and what could have possibly caused it?

He chooses not to linger— he has Mabo to see today, and a life to lead, and he wants to do his best to be the best soulmate he can possibly be— so he steps into the shower and takes care to wash every inch of his skin and scrub his hair all the way down to the roots. He does get distracted a few times, his eyes straying to the way the sunlight looks reflecting off of his wet skin, before reminding himself he has to get back down to business and get cleaned up.

In his bedroom, towel wrapped around his waist, he hesitates over his wardrobe. Mabo has already seen him dressed in a more feminine style, a style he prefers and tries to get away with as often as he can. He tries to talk himself out of the style— the last thing he wants to do is alienate Mabo, after all— but ends up settling on a white skirt almost as light as air.

“If he doesn’t like me the way I am, this isn’t going to work,” Tomo murmurs to himself, glancing at himself in the mirror. “I told myself a long time ago I wasn’t going to change for anyone.”

When he checks his phone, he already has text messages from Mabo and can’t help the little smile that tugs at his lips. Mabo has been thinking about him today, already, and even though it means next to nothing right now, he can’t help but feel a little lighter at the thought. He sits down on the edge of his bed, phone in hand, worrying his lower lip between his teeth as he reads over the messages a few times. They had talked about potential dinner, but Mabo would like to see him sooner, if possible. Tomo almost snorts at that; what else is he going to be doing today, anyway? He glances at the clock. They can meet whenever Mabo wants.

[I can pick you up now, if you’d like, then. Or as close to now as you want. I don’t want to rush you out of the house but I’d like to see you again as soon as possible.]

[I’m actually up and dressed so I wouldn’t mind if you wanted to come pick me up now. I don’t kow what you want to do, though. You haven’t said, yet.]

[We have an entire city spread out before us and most of the day to do whatever we want. I’m sure we can figure out some way to pass the time together.]

Together. The single word makes Tomo’s chest ache more than it should, more than he wants it to, and he has to press a hand over his mouth before he replies.

[I’ll be waiting, don’t keep me long =)]

He heads downstairs to wait, playing with his fingers, the bottom of his shirt.

Never in a million years did he think finding his soulmate would be like this, this insistent need to see Mabo, to want to speak to him. To blush over a few little text messages.

All this time, he thought he would be prepared for this moment. He thought he would be ready when he saw color (again, saw color again) but there was no being ready for this.

He plops down on his couch and lets his head fall forward into his hands, pushing inky black curls back behind his ears. Everything feels like so much all at once, and yet everything feels wonderful. He feels light and gauzy like a small breeze would be enough to blow him away.

And at the back of his mind is that sensation of deja vu, that this has happened before. He had attributed it to just the colors at first and had always wondered, but there’s more to it than that. Mabo feels familiar, like someone he knew before now, someone he had met somewhere else… But where? Surely he would have remembered someone like Mabo in his life.

The sound of a car outside cuts his thoughts off. He’ll worry about all of this later.

How To Live A More Relaxed And Productive Life.

Many of us feel overwhelmed with busyness. Whether it’s our smartphone and the eternal ping of urgent emails or our domestic life and all its attendant demands, there’s always something vying for our attention. What we sorely lack is time to relax and do what we want with our days. But, even when we do have time to ourselves, we often spend it worrying that we’re not accomplishing as much as we should, or wondering what the next item on our agenda is.

So how can we create a life that’s both productive and enjoyable? To find out, we’ll need to explore why some people feel as though they have all the time in the world while others never seem to have enough.

In this post, you’ll learn why most modern workplaces have developed cultures of busyness, and why it’s now normal to have much of your free time monopolized by meaningless meetings. Furthermore, you’ll learn how you can change your attitude toward time, so that you can become more relaxed and make time in your busy life for the people that matter to you. You’ll also learn what you can do right now to feel less busy and get more done.

Learn exactly what you’re doing with your time, even if it scares you, by keeping a log.

We may not readily admit it, but most of us have an obsession. Laura, for instance, is obsessed with time, and the ways in which we pass it. She’s so obsessed, in fact, that she’s spent years logging how much time she spends on different activities. Her logbook is extremely precise. For example, she could tell you that, on Friday, July 14th, 2017 she got up at precisely 6:45 a.m., spent exactly 45 minutes on paperwork from her child’s school and later, for 30 minutes, dealt with her mail.

Prior to logging her time, Laura thought she had a pretty good handle on how she spent her days. Her logbook, however, quickly showed her that she had had no clue.

For instance, despite often telling people she worked 50 hours a week, she was shocked to discover that she was actually averaging only 40 hours. And she’s not the only one prone to this overestimation. In 2011, a study by the Bureau of Labour Statistics found that people claiming to work more than 75 hours a week were typically overestimating by around 25 hours.

This raises an important question: If we’re not working as much as we think we are, where is our time really going?

Surprisingly, many people don’t want to know the answer to this question. Although rigorous time tracking provides a deeper understanding of how you’re actually spending each week, many of us are resistant to the idea.

For starters, we may worry that tracking time will show us just how many hours we’re wasting on things that aren’t meaningful or beneficial to us or our loved ones. Second, we may fear that tracking our time will constantly remind us of our finite time on earth, which will lead to anxiety about misspending each minute.

Despite these potential downsides, it is found that time tracking allows us to recalibrate our lives. Armed with greater knowledge, we can make positive changes in how we spent our time.

For instance, Jane discovered she was spending almost 327 hours per year on reading trashy magazines, she became motivated to carve out time to plan her reading habits more carefully. After making lists of good books and scheduling time to buy them, she replaced her consumption of celebrity gossip with a more nourishing diet of quality titles.

Make your hours memorable by filling them with exciting moments.

We all have memories, good and bad, which shape who we are today. Interestingly, our memories also play an important role in how we perceive time.

In general, the more memories we make, the more time we’ll feel we’ve had. The reason comes down to how the human brain processes its environment and archives what happens in it.

As we move through daily life, much of what happens to us is quickly archived in the depths of our brain, or thrown out completely. For instance, can you recall what you were doing on today’s date three years ago? Perhaps you can if something particularly noteworthy happened, but if it was a routine day like any other, you probably can’t. Why? Because we don’t think about our established routines. In fact, this lack of thought is why our routines feel so comfortable.

Unfortunately, the result of this lack of thought is that our brains don’t catalogue our routine time. For instance, if you take the same work commute 235 days of the year for around four years, then your brain will typically decide to store all these commutes – approximately one thousand of them – as a single trip! And just like that, one thousand of your precious hours have been whittled down to one. Worryingly, if your brain receives too much sameness such as this, entire years can vanish into memory black holes.

So how can you stretch your perception of time and avoid losing the hours to your routine? The key is to create memories that are intense or novel in some way. Taking vacations, for instance, is a surefire way to generate such memories. Our brains make memories out of novel experiences because they can’t be sure what they’ll need to remember in the future. As a result, they store everything that’s new.

Therefore, if you want to stretch time, have an adventure. For example, in our everyday lives, we may well remember just a handful of interesting occurrences in the course of a fortnight. But by vacationing in an exotic place, you’ll probably obtain that number of novel experiences before you’ve sat down to breakfast.

Our own insecurities keep us constantly busy, so learn to free up your calendar.

Most of us feel so busy all the time that we naturally assume every other hardworking professional must feel the same way. When scheduling a meeting with Jeff Heath, a senior director in a technology company, Laura was shocked when, after asking him when he would be available for an interview, he breezily replied that he was free all week, so when was good for her? How did a senior professional have so much free time?

When pressed on how he managed to keep blank spaces in his schedule, despite working in corporate America, Jeff replied that it was all thanks to his mind-set.

Crucially, he avoids the mental trap that so many other professionals get caught up in. Jeff thinks that despite their lamentations about not having enough free time, most professionals actually don’t like having white space on their calendar. Why? Because having a jammed schedule gives people mental reassurance that they’re doing something productive with their time. For instance, we spend so much time in meetings because they make us feel busy and useful.

According to this busy-is-good attitude, if something is scheduled at a particular time, with particular people, it’s automatically more important than unscheduled events.

Imagine that a couple has arranged for a plumber to deal with a leak in their apartment. The partner who has nothing in his calendar at work that day is much more likely to stay home and let the plumber in than the partner who has several scheduled meetings. But let’s think a little deeper. Are those meetings really more important than the uninterrupted time the other partner might have spent thinking about his biggest work dilemmas? Possibly not.

Avoid this detrimental mind-set by ignoring the temptation to fill all your spare time. You don’t have to value busyness just because the world does. Don’t say yes to meetings simply because you’re theoretically available. And if you’re feeling guilty for declining them, remember that the dirty secret about meetings is that, more often than not, they take up more time than is justified by the issue they’re addressing.

Don’t believe it? Just look at the meetings on your agenda and you’ll probably see that they’re all 30 minutes or an hour long, regardless of how much they need to accomplish. So say no, unless they’re genuinely important.

Spending time with loved ones can stretch our perception of time, and may even increase our lifespan.

Friends enrich our lives, make life feel less lonely and give it more meaning. But what does the time-management literature have to say about lingering with our treasured companions? A strict time-management schedule is incompatible with spending long afternoons and leisurely evenings with friends, right?

It’s a common misconception that time management is incompatible with leisure time with friends. In fact, a smart way to manage your time is to make friendships your priority. Why? Because devoting more time to your important relationships not only makes you happier; it can actually create a perception of having more time.

For example, in a survey of how people spent one particular day, those who spent the most time with family and friends on this day were also most likely to report feeling that they had the most amount of time in general. Conversely, those who felt they had the least amount of time in general were also the most likely to report spending less time with family and friends during this day.

Importantly, it was not the case that those with the lowest time-perception scores actually had less time than any other respondents; rather, it’s that spending time with friends and family is usually a relaxing, feel-good experience, and it therefore makes you feel as though you have all the time in the world. Time spent on, say, Twitter, won’t produce this feeling.

Furthermore, in another survey, those who strongly agreed with the statement “Yesterday, I made time for my loved ones” were 15 percent more likely to also say that, generally, they had enough time in their lives for everything they wanted to do.

Importantly, making time for those you care about may not only stretch your perception of time, but may also, in the long run, literally stretch your time. How? Well, research has shown that people with stronger social connections tend to have a longer life expectancy than those without such social connections.

This is likely the case, because good friends and close family encourage you to look after yourself, as well as care for you when you get ill. These healthy upsides to friendships mean that, when it comes to longevity, maintaining tight relationships is approximately equivalent to stopping smoking.

Accept the constraints on your time and lower your expectations.

Like many of us, Laura has a big family and a hectic life. During a recent and particularly chaotic week, she found herself thinking of those authors who seem to spend months away from their families in secluded garrets, with oodles of time to write. Why wasn’t she able to spend her time like that? Many of us have experienced this uncomfortable disconnect between our expectations and reality, but what can we do to overcome it?

The best thing to do is to alter our expectations of how we should be spending our time.

Importantly, once Laura made a conscious effort to lower her expectations about how much she should accomplish, she seemed magically able to achieve more in the little time she did have. For instance, she found she was suddenly able to write a first draft of a magazine article in a few hours, and could edit that draft in 90-minute windows of time between other domestic commitments.

How did this miracle happen? Well, when we lower our expectations of how much we can achieve, we no longer waste time worrying that we should be doing more. We often cause ourselves pain when our expectations become bigger than reality. This self-imposed suffering then leads to hours of worry about our unproductivity, which, in turn, prevents us from savoring the time we actually have.

Therefore, rather than holding big expectations about all the time you should be spending on your work, the key to long-term success is to consistently set and meet low expectations.

Consider the advances that a small child makes in learning language. Their development is not a matter of long hours of strict language lessons and harsh punishments for gradual progress. Rather, children advance slowly, and are praised for every new word acquired and for each minor linguistic breakthrough. To make a similar amount of progress toward our own goals, we adults should also adopt expectations of slow and gradual advancement.

Spend your money on enlarging pleasant experiences and minimizing bad ones.

We each have an equal amount of time allotted to us – 168 hours a week to be exact. However, while our weeks contain the same number of hours, our bank accounts don’t contain equal funds. But where does our bank balance figure in our quest for happiness? Does money make us happy, or is it simply the case that the more money we have, the more problems we can expect?

Interestingly, when it comes to money and happiness, it’s how you use your money – not how much money you have – that matters.

Money can boost happiness if you use it to buy things that facilitate pleasant experiences. These experiences later become fond memories – continuous wells of pleasure from which we can draw mental sustenance. Importantly, cherished memories aren’t subject to the diminishing returns of happiness that physical objects usually are. For instance, a child given a new toy will initially be excited to play with it. After a while, though, she will likely grow bored and stop using it. In other words, it will stop bringing her joy. In contrast, if you buy a tent and then use it to go camping, that tent may bring you lasting happiness. Why? Because you will forever remember the starry nights and campfires of that trip.

Additionally, if money is used to boost our happiness, we must rethink how we measure such happiness.

When we consider how happy we are, we often think only of life satisfaction, which refers to how well we think our life is going in general.

So, if you have a great job and a good house, you may consider yourself happy. However, this life satisfaction may not be the best measure of your happiness. Indeed, your moods are often much more driven by your hour-to-hour experiences than by your overall life satisfaction. For instance, your mood may often be depressed if you have a grueling daily commute to that dream job.

With this reality in mind, we can begin to assess which of our daily activities bring us happiness, and which make us miserable. We can then strategically use our money to either enlarge or minimize these activities. For instance, research has shown that commuting to work is often the unhappiest time of a person’s day. If this is true for you, too, then you could use your money to move closer to the office, thus reducing that commute and boosting your mood. Though this may cost a significant amount of money, it would be an important investment in your happiness.

Have time for adventures.

Ever feel like time just slips from one end of the hourglass to the other? No one can make more time, but a few simple strategies can make the time we have feel richer and fuller. Here are five tips on how to feel less busy while getting more done.

1. Figure out where the time really goes. People tell themselves plenty of stories about where the time goes (“I’m so busy! I have no free time at all!”) but why not find out for sure? Try tracking your time for a week. You can use an app, a spreadsheet, a notebook – whatever works. Most people discover that they have some pockets of time that can be redeployed for meaningful activities if they wish.

2. Plan in little adventures. When time isn’t memorable, we don’t remember it. That’s how whole years can disappear into memory sinkholes. Try planning in little adventures to make the days stand out from each other. These adventures don’t have to be elaborate. Grab colleagues for a picnic lunch. Take the kids to a playground after dinner. Just do something to switch up the routine.

3. Be careful with “yes.” If you want to have time for adventures, you can’t pack your schedule with things you don’t want to do. One strategy? When asked to do something in the future, ask yourself if you’d do it tomorrow. That makes the opportunity costs clearer. If the answer is that you’d move things around or cancel things to fit in this new obligation, then by all means say yes. But if the answer is absolutely no for tomorrow, probably that should be your answer for the future, too.

4. Slow down. Rushing just makes you feel rushed. Try noticing a moment when all is calm. Consciously call your attention to sights, sounds, details. Take deep breaths. Savoring good moments makes them seem longer – and that can stretch the experience of time.

5.Put friends on your calendar. People who spend lots of time with family and friends actually feel like they have more time than people who spend equivalent quantities of time watching TV or perusing social media. A dinner party takes effort, but it’s more rewarding than looking at photos on Instagram of other people’s dinner parties. Aim to schedule in relaxed time with friends this week. You’ll look forward to it – and feel like you’re the kind of person who has the time to get together with friends. That will make you feel less busy right there.

We all have the same amount of time each week, but our mind-set can greatly influence our perception of that time. Spending time with family and friends, and making fond memories, makes us feel as if we have more time. In contrast, worrying about our productivity and going through the motions of a boring routine can make us feel like we have less. In order to make the most of our time, it’s important to stop worrying, ditch the routine and start having adventures with those we love.

How to live a more relaxed and productive life.

Many of us feel overwhelmed with busyness. Whether it’s our smartphone and the eternal ping of urgent emails or our domestic life and all its attendant demands, there’s always something vying for our attention. What we sorely lack is time to relax and do what we want with our days. But, even when we do have time to ourselves, we often spend it worrying that we’re not accomplishing as much as we should, or wondering what the next item on our agenda is.

So how can we create a life that’s both productive and enjoyable? To find out, we’ll need to explore why some people feel as though they have all the time in the world while others never seem to have enough.

In this post, you’ll learn why most modern workplaces have developed cultures of busyness, and why it’s now normal to have much of your free time monopolized by meaningless meetings. Furthermore, you’ll learn how you can change your attitude toward time, so that you can become more relaxed and make time in your busy life for the people that matter to you. You’ll also learn what you can do right now to feel less busy and get more done.

Learn exactly what you’re doing with your time, even if it scares you, by keeping a log.

We may not readily admit it, but most of us have an obsession. Laura, for instance, is obsessed with time, and the ways in which we pass it. She’s so obsessed, in fact, that she’s spent years logging how much time she spends on different activities. Her logbook is extremely precise. For example, she could tell you that, on Friday, July 14th, 2017 she got up at precisely 6:45 a.m., spent exactly 45 minutes on paperwork from her child’s school and later, for 30 minutes, dealt with her mail.

Prior to logging her time, Laura thought she had a pretty good handle on how she spent her days. Her logbook, however, quickly showed her that she had had no clue.

For instance, despite often telling people she worked 50 hours a week, she was shocked to discover that she was actually averaging only 40 hours. And she’s not the only one prone to this overestimation. In 2011, a study by the Bureau of Labour Statistics found that people claiming to work more than 75 hours a week were typically overestimating by around 25 hours.

This raises an important question: If we’re not working as much as we think we are, where is our time really going?

Surprisingly, many people don’t want to know the answer to this question. Although rigorous time tracking provides a deeper understanding of how you’re actually spending each week, many of us are resistant to the idea.

For starters, we may worry that tracking time will show us just how many hours we’re wasting on things that aren’t meaningful or beneficial to us or our loved ones. Second, we may fear that tracking our time will constantly remind us of our finite time on earth, which will lead to anxiety about misspending each minute.

Despite these potential downsides, it is found that time tracking allows us to recalibrate our lives. Armed with greater knowledge, we can make positive changes in how we spent our time.

For instance, Jane discovered she was spending almost 327 hours per year on reading trashy magazines, she became motivated to carve out time to plan her reading habits more carefully. After making lists of good books and scheduling time to buy them, she replaced her consumption of celebrity gossip with a more nourishing diet of quality titles.

Make your hours memorable by filling them with exciting moments.

We all have memories, good and bad, which shape who we are today. Interestingly, our memories also play an important role in how we perceive time.

In general, the more memories we make, the more time we’ll feel we’ve had. The reason comes down to how the human brain processes its environment and archives what happens in it.

As we move through daily life, much of what happens to us is quickly archived in the depths of our brain, or thrown out completely. For instance, can you recall what you were doing on today’s date three years ago? Perhaps you can if something particularly noteworthy happened, but if it was a routine day like any other, you probably can’t. Why? Because we don’t think about our established routines. In fact, this lack of thought is why our routines feel so comfortable.

Unfortunately, the result of this lack of thought is that our brains don’t catalogue our routine time. For instance, if you take the same work commute 235 days of the year for around four years, then your brain will typically decide to store all these commutes – approximately one thousand of them – as a single trip! And just like that, one thousand of your precious hours have been whittled down to one. Worryingly, if your brain receives too much sameness such as this, entire years can vanish into memory black holes.

So how can you stretch your perception of time and avoid losing the hours to your routine? The key is to create memories that are intense or novel in some way. Taking vacations, for instance, is a surefire way to generate such memories. Our brains make memories out of novel experiences because they can’t be sure what they’ll need to remember in the future. As a result, they store everything that’s new.

Therefore, if you want to stretch time, have an adventure. For example, in our everyday lives, we may well remember just a handful of interesting occurrences in the course of a fortnight. But by vacationing in an exotic place, you’ll probably obtain that number of novel experiences before you’ve sat down to breakfast.

Our own insecurities keep us constantly busy, so learn to free up your calendar.

Most of us feel so busy all the time that we naturally assume every other hardworking professional must feel the same way. When scheduling a meeting with Jeff Heath, a senior director in a technology company, Laura was shocked when, after asking him when he would be available for an interview, he breezily replied that he was free all week, so when was good for her? How did a senior professional have so much free time?

When pressed on how he managed to keep blank spaces in his schedule, despite working in corporate America, Jeff replied that it was all thanks to his mind-set.

Crucially, he avoids the mental trap that so many other professionals get caught up in. Jeff thinks that despite their lamentations about not having enough free time, most professionals actually don’t like having white space on their calendar. Why? Because having a jammed schedule gives people mental reassurance that they’re doing something productive with their time. For instance, we spend so much time in meetings because they make us feel busy and useful.

According to this busy-is-good attitude, if something is scheduled at a particular time, with particular people, it’s automatically more important than unscheduled events.

Imagine that a couple has arranged for a plumber to deal with a leak in their apartment. The partner who has nothing in his calendar at work that day is much more likely to stay home and let the plumber in than the partner who has several scheduled meetings. But let’s think a little deeper. Are those meetings really more important than the uninterrupted time the other partner might have spent thinking about his biggest work dilemmas? Possibly not.   

Avoid this detrimental mind-set by ignoring the temptation to fill all your spare time. You don’t have to value busyness just because the world does. Don’t say yes to meetings simply because you’re theoretically available. And if you’re feeling guilty for declining them, remember that the dirty secret about meetings is that, more often than not, they take up more time than is justified by the issue they’re addressing.

Don’t believe it? Just look at the meetings on your agenda and you’ll probably see that they’re all 30 minutes or an hour long, regardless of how much they need to accomplish. So say no, unless they’re genuinely important.

Spending time with loved ones can stretch our perception of time, and may even increase our lifespan.

Friends enrich our lives, make life feel less lonely and give it more meaning. But what does the time-management literature have to say about lingering with our treasured companions? A strict time-management schedule is incompatible with spending long afternoons and leisurely evenings with friends, right?

It’s a common misconception that time management is incompatible with leisure time with friends. In fact, a smart way to manage your time is to make friendships your priority. Why? Because devoting more time to your important relationships not only makes you happier; it can actually create a perception of having more time.  

For example, in a survey of how people spent one particular day, those who spent the most time with family and friends on this day were also most likely to report feeling that they had the most amount of time in general. Conversely, those who felt they had the least amount of time in general were also the most likely to report spending less time with family and friends during this day.

Importantly, it was not the case that those with the lowest time-perception scores actually had less time than any other respondents; rather, it’s that spending time with friends and family is usually a relaxing, feel-good experience, and it therefore makes you feel as though you have all the time in the world. Time spent on, say, Twitter, won’t produce this feeling.

Furthermore, in another survey, those who strongly agreed with the statement “Yesterday, I made time for my loved ones” were 15 percent more likely to also say that, generally, they had enough time in their lives for everything they wanted to do.

Importantly, making time for those you care about may not only stretch your perception of time, but may also, in the long run, literally stretch your time. How? Well, research has shown that people with stronger social connections tend to have a longer life expectancy than those without such social connections.

 This is likely the case, because good friends and close family encourage you to look after yourself, as well as care for you when you get ill. These healthy upsides to friendships mean that, when it comes to longevity, maintaining tight relationships is approximately equivalent to stopping smoking.

Accept the constraints on your time and lower your expectations.

Like many of us, Laura has a big family and a hectic life. During a recent and particularly chaotic week, she found herself thinking of those authors who seem to spend months away from their families in secluded garrets, with oodles of time to write. Why wasn’t she able to spend her time like that? Many of us have experienced this uncomfortable disconnect between our expectations and reality, but what can we do to overcome it?

The best thing to do is to alter our expectations of how we should be spending our time.

Importantly, once Laura made a conscious effort to lower her expectations about how much she should accomplish, she seemed magically able to achieve more in the little time she did have. For instance, she found she was suddenly able to write a first draft of a magazine article in a few hours, and could edit that draft in 90-minute windows of time between other domestic commitments.

How did this miracle happen? Well, when we lower our expectations of how much we can achieve, we no longer waste time worrying that we should be doing more. We often cause ourselves pain when our expectations become bigger than reality. This self-imposed suffering then leads to hours of worry about our unproductivity, which, in turn, prevents us from savoring the time we actually have.

Therefore, rather than holding big expectations about all the time you should be spending on your work, the key to long-term success is to consistently set and meet low expectations.

Consider the advances that a small child makes in learning language. Their development is not a matter of long hours of strict language lessons and harsh punishments for gradual progress. Rather, children advance slowly, and are praised for every new word acquired and for each minor linguistic breakthrough. To make a similar amount of progress toward our own goals, we adults should also adopt expectations of slow and gradual advancement.

Spend your money on enlarging pleasant experiences and minimizing bad ones.

We each have an equal amount of time allotted to us – 168 hours a week to be exact. However, while our weeks contain the same number of hours, our bank accounts don’t contain equal funds. But where does our bank balance figure in our quest for happiness? Does money make us happy, or is it simply the case that the more money we have, the more problems we can expect?

Interestingly, when it comes to money and happiness, it’s how you use your money – not how much money you have – that matters.

Money can boost happiness if you use it to buy things that facilitate pleasant experiences. These experiences later become fond memories – continuous wells of pleasure from which we can draw mental sustenance. Importantly, cherished memories aren’t subject to the diminishing returns of happiness that physical objects usually are. For instance, a child given a new toy will initially be excited to play with it. After a while, though, she will likely grow bored and stop using it. In other words, it will stop bringing her joy. In contrast, if you buy a tent and then use it to go camping, that tent may bring you lasting happiness. Why? Because you will forever remember the starry nights and campfires of that trip.

Additionally, if money is used to boost our happiness, we must rethink how we measure such happiness.

When we consider how happy we are, we often think only of life satisfaction, which refers to how well we think our life is going in general.

So, if you have a great job and a good house, you may consider yourself happy. However, this life satisfaction may not be the best measure of your happiness. Indeed, your moods are often much more driven by your hour-to-hour experiences than by your overall life satisfaction. For instance, your mood may often be depressed if you have a grueling daily commute to that dream job.  

With this reality in mind, we can begin to assess which of our daily activities bring us happiness, and which make us miserable. We can then strategically use our money to either enlarge or minimize these activities. For instance, research has shown that commuting to work is often the unhappiest time of a person’s day. If this is true for you, too, then you could use your money to move closer to the office, thus reducing that commute and boosting your mood. Though this may cost a significant amount of money, it would be an important investment in your happiness.

Have time for adventures.

Ever feel like time just slips from one end of the hourglass to the other? No one can make more time, but a few simple strategies can make the time we have feel richer and fuller. Here are five tips on how to feel less busy while getting more done.

1. Figure out where the time really goes. People tell themselves plenty of stories about where the time goes (“I’m so busy! I have no free time at all!”) but why not find out for sure? Try tracking your time for a week. You can use an app, a spreadsheet, a notebook – whatever works. Most people discover that they have some pockets of time that can be redeployed for meaningful activities if they wish.

2. Plan in little adventures. When time isn’t memorable, we don’t remember it. That’s how whole years can disappear into memory sinkholes. Try planning in little adventures to make the days stand out from each other. These adventures don’t have to be elaborate. Grab colleagues for a picnic lunch. Take the kids to a playground after dinner. Just do something to switch up the routine.

3. Be careful with “yes.” If you want to have time for adventures, you can’t pack your schedule with things you don’t want to do. One strategy? When asked to do something in the future, ask yourself if you’d do it tomorrow. That makes the opportunity costs clearer. If the answer is that you’d move things around or cancel things to fit in this new obligation, then by all means say yes. But if the answer is absolutely no for tomorrow, probably that should be your answer for the future, too.

4. Slow down. Rushing just makes you feel rushed. Try noticing a moment when all is calm. Consciously call your attention to sights, sounds, details. Take deep breaths. Savoring good moments makes them seem longer – and that can stretch the experience of time.

5.Put friends on your calendar. People who spend lots of time with family and friends actually feel like they have more time than people who spend equivalent quantities of time watching TV or perusing social media. A dinner party takes effort, but it’s more rewarding than looking at photos on Instagram of other people’s dinner parties. Aim to schedule in relaxed time with friends this week. You’ll look forward to it – and feel like you’re the kind of person who has the time to get together with friends. That will make you feel less busy right there.

We all have the same amount of time each week, but our mind-set can greatly influence our perception of that time. Spending time with family and friends, and making fond memories, makes us feel as if we have more time. In contrast, worrying about our productivity and going through the motions of a boring routine can make us feel like we have less. In order to make the most of our time, it’s important to stop worrying, ditch the routine and start having adventures with those we love.