#online professional expectations of broadcasting myself
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The youngest adult generation and the most online generation is frustrated with being surveilled and embarrassed by attention-seeking behaviors. This has instigated a retreat into smaller internet spaces and secret-sharing apps, as well as a mini-renaissance for Tumblr, where users rarely use their full names. (The majority of new users are Gen Z, according to Chenda Ngak, a spokesperson for Tumblr’s parent company.) The voice- and text-chat app Discord, known for a culture of anonymous and pseudonymous discussion, now has 150 million users; anonymously run hyper-niche meme accounts are suddenly the coolest, most exciting follows on Instagram. The group-therapy app Chill Pill offers a “world of future friends and better days” but does not permit the sharing of any personally identifying information. (I downloaded the app but can’t make a real account—I’m over the age limit, which is 24.)
Something has shifted online: We’ve arrived at a new era of anonymity, in which it feels natural to be inscrutable and confusing—forget the burden of crafting a coherent, persistent personal brand. There just isn’t any good reason to use your real name anymore. “In the mid 2010s, ambiguity died online—not of natural causes, it was hunted and killed,” the writer and podcast host Biz Sherbert observed recently. Now young people are trying to bring it back. I find this sort of exciting, but also unnerving. What are they going to do with their newfound freedom?
In part, the trend is a response to security concerns. During the Black Lives Matter protests in the summer of 2020, young people downloaded the encrypted messaging app Signal by the millions to avoid the surveillance they considered possible or probable on other platforms. The anonymous hacker group Anonymous made a buzzy return and was embraced by K-pop fans, many of them anonymous, while engaging in pranks that doubled as acts of civil disobedience. Other activists disseminated tools for blurring protesters’ faces in Instagram Stories, and tried to steer one another off mainstream apps and onto smaller, decentralized ones where users have more control of the data they create and share.
Anonymity can also be ideological. Crypto culture, now known as Web3 culture, was founded on the idea that transactions can be made online without the exchange of personally identifying information. It also has a newer norm of replacing one’s human face with a cartoon. In crypto circles, mentioning a very rich and successful person’s real name can amount to “doxxing,” and even those who aren’t well known are cautious about sharing the barest personal details. At a recent party sponsored by a new Web3 platform, a guest with about 5,000 Twitter followers explained to me that people online do know what he looks like—he “shows face,” as he put it—but that he has never shared a single photo of his girlfriend. Too dangerous.
But in the end, a return to anonymity is just a return to form. Hiding your identity has always been important for getting through the horror of being a person under the age of 24 on the internet. The gradual reveal of personal information, even building up to a “face reveal,” was once a give-and-take among people who shared the same online space for a long time, fostering trust. When Instagram and TikTok arrived and made it possible to make a lot of money from your face, personality, thoughts, beliefs, and personal trauma, young people forgot how good it felt to be no one in particular, or to try on various identities. In the past few years, they have been coming back around.
“It seems like Gen Z is getting really tired of presentation culture, as you might call it,” Zeke, a 21-year-old biologist and frequent Discord chatter, told me. “The idea that everything you do has to be a representation of your personal identity.” Obviously, he did not want me to publish his full name—he’s applying to lab-tech jobs right now, he said, and though nothing he was going to say to me would be scandalous or might put off a potential employer, he did not want to “risk it.”
Zeke does not have any active social-media accounts with his full name attached to them, but he is in many Discord servers pertaining to his interests, including art, writing, and science. He spends a lot of time there sharing interesting or funny photos of animals, and he met his longtime boyfriend while Discord-chatting under a pseudonym that is a play on Kermit the Frog. The site is “chill,” he told me. The servers that he likes best have 100 to 200 users, so the conversation is always lively, but it doesn’t get out of control or competitive. Sometimes people anonymously say disgusting things—the worst things he has ever read! (That well-established tendency has contributed to the collapse of anonymous social platforms in the past.) But mostly they just drop cool pictures and funny memes, and discuss or riff on them. “There’s an understanding that, like, you’re not going to kick each other, you’re not going to judge each other,” he said. “You’re not here to represent your identity; you’re just here to chill.”
The surprising recent popularity of Discord suggests a nostalgia among members of Gen Z for IRC and forum cultures that existed mostly before they were born. The return to Tumblr reflects a longing for the more recent past—just before the age of the influencer. “I’ve been on Tumblr for about 11 years because I was 11 when I got it,” Maya, an aspiring artist and photographer, told me. She asked to go by her first name only, as she does on Instagram. On Tumblr, where she feels most comfortable, she goes by the username coldstonedreamery—a reference to an episode of This American Life that she heard long ago in her mom’s car. She remains anonymous partly for artistic reasons: Being an enigma is good for world building and creating a mystique around her work, she said. She wants to be known for her point of view, not for her face or even her personality. “I mean, there are embarrassing YouTube videos of me playing guitar when I was 12 under my real name,” she added.
Being an enigma can produce strange results: Teenage girls on Instagram sometimes borrow selfies of Maya that don’t have her face in them and present them as their own. Most of the time, though, Maya sees her anonymity as being cozy. “I probably get 20 anonymous messages and questions a day, and I feel fine answering them and exposing all these intimate details of my life,” she said. “The people asking the questions probably don’t know what I look like, probably don’t know where I am or how old I am. I feel safer. There’s like a cloak over me.”
Even on Instagram, classic influencer culture is falling out of style. Among the well-known, generally beautiful faces who go by their real names, there are now thousands of niche meme accounts run by anonymous proprietors. Members of this latter group sometimes reveal their true identities when it becomes financially appealing to do so—if they’re offered a book deal, for example, they have to reveal themselves to someone. If they land a profile in The New York Times’ Style section, then everyone is in on the secret. But many more of them just post away from behind a curtain. (The more niche the content gets, the less likely it is that financial incentives will be in play, and the more likely the anonymity will last.)
The 24-year-old meme-maker behind an Instagram account called @neoliberalheaven makes pop-culture-inflected collages overlaid with parodies of online political discourse. (His profile picture is of the meme-literate musician Phoebe Bridgers.) He asked to remain anonymous for this story because he doesn’t want to limit future job opportunities and because being anonymous is part of his whole deal. The people who come across his feed can appreciate his work for its own sake, he told me, and they don’t care who he is. He also observed that anonymous accounts, by foreclosing on the possibility of becoming a personal brand, come off to some viewers as more “authentic,” or as “a new source of genuineness” online because they aren’t selling anything or trying to become stars. The internet’s prizing of authenticity has gone through the looking glass.
As a person who loves the internet, this all makes sense to me. Why should everyone have to live and write and think publicly at all times? Why should they be limited in that way? As a journalist who reports about the internet, I’ve found it frustrating too. In the past few years, more and more sources have been asking for anonymity on principle—not because they are afraid of specific or likely consequences, but because being named just doesn’t seem worth it. I can’t help but see this as unwillingness to say something and really mean it—and the portent of a sort of sad, slightly paranoid near future, in which everyone is cool, very cool, and impossible to pin down.
#technology#yet another way#that gen z is mirroring gen x#as a gen x#I remember being HORRIFIED#when millennials were not only encouraged#(by zuckbook)#to share all their RL deets online#but they actually -- gasp -- did#and then there was an attack of people in the 00s who remained pseudonymous#as SCARE QUOTES HiDinG SomEThinG#which is also why i retreated into fandom#and#refused to participate in#online professional expectations of broadcasting myself#(but- also- my employers were happy to have us NOT be brands online#for reasons of safety and other nonsense#because they didn't want news coverage#etc etc#)#...and I mean-- duh-- obvious there are people of all ages and generations#who were very pseudonymous online vs very PUBLIC online#there are always#TWO KINDS OF PEOPLE#but I have been welcoming this swing back#to my original comfort zone
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F, N, T?
F - What’s the longest you’ve ever been in a fandom?
Well this is the hockey sideblog and I’ve been active over here since around 2017. I transitioned from omgcp and yuri on ice to primarily hockey around 2018-2020 and I’ve been here since. There’s fluctuations in interest and my levels of fandom participation but y’know it’s weird being able to say I’ve actively been here for around 5 years.
For passive fandom I’ve been a fan of dc/teen titans since the OG cartoon and when they rebooted teen titans after Donna’s death. So like I’ve been a passive Tim Drake+ fan for some 15-20 years, I’m just not active in dc comics fandom outside of like reading fanfic. Idk if I could call that my longest fandom since I’m not creating any content. If reading a thing counts I’ve also been actively reading Girl Genius for over 10 years.
N - Name three things you wish you saw more or in your main fandom (or a fandom of choice).
*stares deep into the middle distance and contemplates how much I want to whack the hornets nest* Hope you’re prepared for more hockey.
More love/interest for non-superstar players. Everyone has their guy, their blorbo, their favorite, but that’s very frequently the big guys on the team y’know. The emotional support depth forward or third D deserves love too
This feels very silly since I’m talking about professional sports but a thing I see people struggling with when posting about sports online is emotional regulation in regards to losses. Watching your special guys lose sucks. The serotonin broadcast didn’t make the happy win chemical. It can be worse if you spent money to see it live. That’s hard to deal with. I repeat, it’s really hard to deal with if you’re new to it and deep in the hyperfixation. I’ve struggled with it myself. The place I see issues is that some people make that others’ problem either by doomspiraling or baiting. It’s not the job of a stranger on the internet to tell you how to manage your emotions and expectations. Losing happens. Losing streaks happen. How you deal with it is a reflection on you. I understand that sometimes we get folks who are experiencing baby’s first fandom and haven’t figured out how not to make their emotions everyone else’s problem, but it’s an absolutely essential skill in any fandom or interpersonal context.
This is aimed at the more fannish side of things but I wish there was more variation. I see a lot of team mom and nesting omega jokes and I’m like why is it always the same person getting written as feminized/sub/bottom/omega. Why are we recreating cishet gender nonsense for mlm ships? Where’s the alpha/alpha? The switching? Why does everything have to be rigid? Where’s the fluidity in who does what? In interpretations? Where is the fluidity of human sexuality? I feel like people are sometimes holding so tightly to a headcanon that they forget to be playful with it. Or maybe the tightness is the playfulness and that’s how you see the guy. It doesn’t match up with how I see them but that’s fine. I just feel like there’s so much emphasis on getting it right that we aren’t exploring what else right could look like.
T - Do you have any hard and fast headcanons that you will die defending?
Oh tons. I’ve partaken in “he would not fucking say that” a bunch. There’s lots of stuff for any number of fandoms that are tightly held and I’ll die on this hill. I’m also very flexible most of the time. I’m both very specific about my headcanons and also willing to change based on what’s going on. I contain multitudes and so does fandom.
Heck occasionally I have two ride or die headcanons that are contradictory because thats just how it is sometimes. I’m trying to think of an example but I’m not coming up with anything specific. The joy of fandom is defending my headcanons to the death and then getting up and finding another hill to die on. Fandom should be about joy and play. If it doesn’t spark joy I should figure out why and what I can do about it and move on. No use dwelling on a thing that isn’t making me happy unless it’s like an angst headcanon in which case I’m getting joy from the saddness.
Letter Asks
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Miedema Volkskrant interview
Interesting interview with Vivianne Miedema in the Dutch paper De Volkskrant, December 29th 2020.
She is the socially-minded top shooter among women's soccer players. Vivianne Miedema (24) has been an ambassador for War Child, which cares about the suffering of children in war zones, for a year now.
Vivianne Miedema is the top marksman in the English women's league with an average of one goal per game: 53 goals in 52 duels. The striker of Arsenal and Oranje is the face of the English league. These days in London they recognize her on the street. 'If I turn on the TV, there's a good chance I'll see myself within five minutes.' With a laugh: 'That's why the TV is off now. But I also enjoy it and I'm in a position to make women's soccer bigger. I take that opportunity.'
Miedema is a self-confident, young woman with self-mockery and ability to put things into perspective. 'We are also frustrated that no one can come to our matches, that I can't go home for Christmas, but that's all part of it. We have to set the right example.'
What is it, one time not going to Holland, compared to the situation of teammate Jennifer Beattie, who was recently diagnosed with breast cancer? She had surgery and immediately said she wanted to play soccer again. 'We are supporting her as best we can.'
Miedema let the year 2020 come to mind. In the beginning, when corona had just broken out, you saw solidarity everywhere, fighting for a better world. Now it's more me me me again. It's just a difficult situation for everyone.'
Black Lives Matter
While soccer lay dormant for a time, sport raised its voice against injustice. 'Black Lives Matter, for example, in which America and the United Kingdom are leading the way. We still kneel before games. Soccer is a great example where everything and everyone can come together. You see that in our team as well.'
She knows that men's soccer is more diverse. 'Women's soccer is several years behind. In youth leagues you see more and more mixed, dark teams. That development is positive. At Arsenal we don't have any dark-skinned players at the moment. Ten years ago it was unthinkable for many black families to allow their daughters to play soccer. In the next ten years that's going to change.'
A lot has changed since Miedema made her entrance into professional life as a girl. 'Nobody expected the growth of women's soccer to be so great. That also has to do with developments in the world, with women power. That movement is also helping us. At the same time, the level is rising, while we still have 100,000 steps to take. As for myself, I have an excellent income and can save easily. Girls in the Netherlands, and also in England, don't earn much yet and often have to do something on the side.
That is going to change, she thinks. It continues to grow, especially with three consecutive tournaments three years in a row: Olympic Games, European Championship and World Championship. That's great. Becoming more visible. Take the Champions League: the NOS broadcasted it for the first time via a live stream. Until recently it was nowhere to be seen. If that changes, it's easier for sponsors to get on board, to get recognition.'
Matches in the English league can be seen on the app FA Player, on BT, commercial TV, and sometimes on the BBC. 'We have world stars running around in the Dutch national team these days. That's inspiring for young girls. It's up to us routiniers to bring youngsters in and make them feel comfortable to be able to give as many players a good future as possible. I don't play soccer for money. I also pass that on to young girls. If you base your choices on that, you have forgotten who you are and what you are playing soccer for. Money should never be the driving force.'
Fit and hungry
The 24-year-old Miedema remains fit and hungry, no matter how hypothermic she celebrates her goals. Six months without soccer, from March to September, has done her good, after all those double years with club soccer and internationals. With friend and teammate Lisa Evans, she took the car to Scotland, where Evans is from.
We spent four or five months there. Switching off from soccer for a while. I've never enjoyed exercises in the gym and running so much. That says it all. I play soccer because I like the game. Tactically I just want to be good enough that you don't have to run alone. But during the lockdown it was the only option, to not have to sit inside.
'Lisa was my pt, my personal trainer. We were super fit for the new season. In Scotland we had so much freedom. We went hiking, walking. Soccer, tennis, padel. For six months it was a normal human life.'
She started studying: for the Uefa B trainer's diploma, plus a master's in Football Business. That's the first time since she left for Germany as a 17-year-old to play soccer at Bayern. 'I never had the energy, the will and the time to study again. Now I do, and it's fun.'
Constantly broadening her horizons is one of her goals. For example, she has been an ambassador for War Child for a year now, which cares about the suffering of children in war zones. She already noticed during the World Cup in France (2019) that children were following her. I already loved War Child as a child. My mother was an assistant mother at school. Of course I could play a little sport. At every charity run it was up to me whether we raised enough money.
My mother made me aware of the fact that we in the Netherlands, I in any case, have a good position, and that in the rest of the world it is not so easy. During the World Cup I was in my bubble, but after that I saw pictures and movies. Sport is a distraction for many children, which allows them to eliminate suffering and have fun.'
She was previously with the Dutch national team in South Africa, where the team visited townships in Cape Town. 'When you see how much fun you can give children with sport, you want to do it as often as possible. I will never forget how two girls of about 9 years old ran up to me afterwards and wanted to hug me, as a thank you. That was so special, they didn't have to think about danger or violence. With War Child I hope to make a nice trip.
Gigantic response
By necessity, in 2020 she was an ambassador who stayed inside. 'Online I was able to do a lot. Movies, videos with examples of exercises. I get a huge response from all over the world. Not only from children, also from parents, from people who like what I do. For me, recording a video like this is a small thing and I can make a lot of people happy with it. Stretching, moving, playing soccer, playing sports. And sometimes get to interact by putting everyone else to work.'Children also take initiatives by raising money. 'It's nice to see kids showing social agility, especially now that we have to keep today's youth somewhat in check and steer them in the right direction.'She laughs a little at that term, youth of today. 'If you are a part of something, you are all in it together. That's why I play soccer and I don't play tennis. Kids push each other to do the best they can for other kids.'Now the season is back in full swing. She is top marksman of all time in the English Premier League and was recently chosen again in Fifa's team of the year. European champion, second in the world. And then she still has a soccer life ahead of her. 'I would like to say that I will continue for another ten years, but you never know. I would prefer to stop at my peak.'Again with a laugh: 'I've broken quite a few records, so maybe I'm already at my peak. But I'm definitely not someone who wants to continue at the highest level if I can't take it anymore. I also hope that people around me will then say: Viv, it's not sitting out anymore, please, stop it.'Miedema bettered Nikita Parris' British goalscoring record in October, with the difference that her predecessor scored about one goal every two games, while Miedema needs one game for a goal. 'I can only run out, but above all I want to help the team. One hundred goals for the national team would be very nice.' She is on 70 and is the all-time record holder. Most of the goals I can still remember. They are all in my head.'
https://www.volkskrant.nl/sport/topschutter-vivianne-miedema-voetbal-niet-voor-het-geld-leer-ik-jonge-meiden~b27b2994/
#vivianne miedema#miedema#fawsl#arsenal wfc#arsenal women#woso#women's soccer#women's football#football
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In Focus: The Robinhood IPO Pt II
In 2012 a company the entire world was waiting on to go public finally did. It priced its IPO at $38 a share and went public on May 18 of that year, and out of the gate it was a dud.
The stock would trade downwards over the next 16 weeks falling below $20 a share. Again, this was a company a large portion of the investment community was waiting on to go public. Many expected the stock to go to the moon right out of the gate, but it didn't. 22 weeks after the IPO, the stock started to catch its footing and would go on a massive run upwards. That company was Facebook (FB), and the stock price now is $365.30 per share.
This week Robinhood (HOOD) went public at $38 per share and it wasn't a great outing. The stock currently trades at $35.15 as of this writing and there has been a lot said about Robinhood and its IPO. At its IPO price Robinhood was valued at $35 billion, and that may have turned some investors off. At $35 billions Robinhood would be more valuable than American Airlines (AAL) ($13 billion) and United Airlines (UAL) ($15.6 billion) combined, and more valuable thanAmerica's number one pure play grocer Kroger (KR) ($30 billion). Robinhood has value, but investors weren't convinced that $32 billion was it, and for good reason.
In Robinhood's S1 filing it noted 18 million accounts with $81 billion of assets under custody. In 2020 Morgan Stanley (MS) paid $13 billion for E-Trade, which had only 5 million accounts but $360 billion in assets. Looking at it that way, the numbers don't add up for Robinhood.
Then there's the payment for order flow issue. It's the reason why Robinhood can offer commission free trading and the reason the company became public enemy number one earlier in the year. Never forget, Ted Cruz and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez were concerned and on the same side on the same issue, and the issue revolved around Robinhood.
There's a belief that there are major changes in the works around payment for order flow, and that the practice could be banned in the U.S. as it is in the U.K. In Q1 2021, more than 80% of Robinhood's revenue came from order flow. If the practice were to be banned, that would be a massive hit to Robinhood, and the company would be a shell of its former self, and may not be able to survive without being acquired.
$35 Billion?
When Robinhood's IPO price started to make the news, I asked myself why does Robinhood's founders and its underwriters believe it's a $30 billion company? Then I remembered, it's because it's tech, and in this day and age investors are overpaying for "tech." Don't believe me, compare GM (GM), Ford (F), and Tesla (TSLA), an $82 billion company, a $56 billion company, and a $680 billion company respectively. In 2019 GM delivered 2.8 million vehicles, Ford sold 2.4 million vehicles, and Tesla delivered 376,000 vehicles. GM and Ford have long been considered automobile manufacturers, but Tesla, Tesla is a tech company that makes cars, like Apple (AAPL) is a tech company that makes phones and Netflix (NFLX) is a tech company that leases, produces, and displays content. In the old days, Netflix would be a broadcast company or a movie studio, but today it's a tech firm, so we'll pay 53x earnings to own it over the 9x earnings to own ViacomCBS (VIAC), a simple broadcast company.
Since around the time of 2012, it didn't matter what a company did, what mattered was what box we put the company in, and this is why Robinhood's stock will be a winner in the end.
Remember E-Trade was acquired for $13 billion dollars, and while it offered everything Robinhood does and more, it was considered a discount brokerage firm, not a tech firm and not a FinTech, just a plain old boring brokerage. Same for TD Ameritrade, another company with more assets ($1.3 trillion) but less accounts (12 million) than Robinhood. TD was acquired by Charles Schwab (SCHW) for $26 billion, and like E-Trade, TD offered everything Robinhood offers and more, but it wasn't considered tech. That simple four letter word, "tech" makes all the difference in how Wall Street values a company.
For Robinhood, unfortunately, their tech isn't as free to grow as "tech" in some other industries. Robinhood has major regulations to abide by that prevent it from spreading its wings as far as it wants to. Remember how long it took the company to get its cryptocurrency purchasing arm online and how long it took the company to offer debit cards to its account holders. Being a steward of the public's money comes with serious restrictions, and Robinhood has to balance that with the tech attitude of go fast and break things.
There are issues, but I'm still a believer in Robinhood and it's primarily because of its social status. The company is everywhere, good news or bad news, Robinhood always seems to find its way into an important timeline or news feed.
While many of us, myself included, tend to harp on the GameStop debacle that Robinhood created, there was a lot of good happening on the app before they halted trading on GameStop and other meme stocks that week. Before the halt, regular people were making big money, and enticing others who had never thought about investing before to join in. Those new investors signed up to Robinhood, because that's the user interface they saw on their timelines. When people see +$10,000 of total returns on a green and white background, they're not going to go and open a WeBull or Public account, they're going to open a Robinhood account.
As bad as the GameStop debacle was at the time, and as much as people say they're still upset about it, people are still using Robinhood and finding their way to Robinhood. When the next meme stock takes off, it will only attract more people to sign up to the platform.
Assuming that the government does nothing about payment for order flow (which I don't think they will), Robinhood's best days are ahead of it. For many young companies, investors who buy in at the growth stages have little to no idea what the destination is for the company. When Netflix was delivering DVDs, we didn't know it would transition into a streaming giant. We didn't know the iPod would turn into the iPhone or that Google search would turn into Google Maps, Google Docs, G-Mail, and Android, or that Musical.ly would turn into Tik Tok, but we know exactly where Robinhood can go.
Robinhood has to grow into the "tech" version of E-Trade and TD Ameritrade. It also has to convince its 18 million users to not leave for better platforms when those customers build up their accounts. There is still this idea that having $5,000 in a Robinhood account is okay, but $50,000 needs a better place to rest, and Robinhood has to tackle that kind of thinking. That's the goal for Robinhood, that's what you're hoping for if you're a Robinhood investor now, that the company will continue to expand its offerings, grow its customer base, keep more of its users than it loses from quarter-to-quarter, and hopefully be properly funded so that it can be on the right of history when the next GameStop comes around, and it will come around.
Since the Facebook IPO, I've been attracted to big names with slow starts out of the gate and Robinhood fits the bill. Overthe past few years I've done well grabbing Corsair (CRSR), Palantir (PLTR), and Slack (CRM) after their not so spectacular debuts, and all have performed great. What I learned watching Facebook is that professional money managers are like kids, they like it if someone else likes it, but no one wants to say they like it first. Robinhood definitely has its issues, but hey, it's tech.
#Stocks#Investing#Investments#Investment Education#Financial Education#Money#MoneyEducation#Robinhood#Robinhood IPO#Reddit#GameStop#StocksToWatch#Corsair#Tesla#Slack#Tech#TechInvesting
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How to gain experience in your field of expertise for FREE! | #ZimJobs&EXPERIENCE
When I was on the verge of launching my first startup, I realized that in as much as I knew about #Business I had no clue of this ‘seemingly little’ thing called #MARKETING. Fortunately, I have mentioned the importance of #Marketing when you’re a #business owner in one of my recent articles.
Now because I was so very much eager to make myself #successful in #business, I began to study #Marketing. To be honest, I am not sure if I knew what I was doing when I started the online course. I studied and before I was even done with the first course, I started to feel like what I was doing was just filling my head with a bunch of new knowledge but #HOW I was going to use this information for the #success of my #business, I HAD NO IDEA.
Now this is why I commend the practice of #SocialCapitalism.
Due to the strong determination to become a part of the #business people community, I had begun to build relationships with ‘influential’ people to make a strong #network that would benefit me in the long run. Note: this was even before I knew what kind of #business I wanted to do, all I knew was that I wanted to be a #business man :-)ha-ha.
Gaining experience for #FREE.
I started to contact some of those people in what I could call by then ‘my #network’. I recall the first message I sent was to Mrs. Nyarambi of FCMC Global Broadcasting Hope. She is a Christian author who has written several books and cartoon scripts for UK based cartoon television networks (among other things). I pitched myself and told her that I was still a student / amateur and that I was looking to gain experience and exposure in the field of #marketing and also that I wanted to work with her, helping her to #market and sell her books. My pitch wasn’t even close to professional neither was it luring enough to get me a job with anyone, not until I included this last part. “I would be willing to practice my skills absolutely #free of charge”.
I did not only stop there, but I began to sell my skills for #free to people, #advertising as a #freelancer in order to gain as much exposure as I could.
To be honest, I had so very high expectations because I thought it would be easy but it wasn’t. I remember for the second client that I worked with, I made my first sale after 2 months of hard work.
Understand this, if it took me so much time to make sales, for some clients that I worked with I never even made a single #conversion, #businesses are being run to make profits and not to teach graduates how to put the theory into practice so they can start being productive.
The reason why #Zimbabwean companies are demanding #experience is because they want to hire people who have already mastered the skill that is required for the vacancy open so they can immediately start being productive and earn the company some money. You find out if you have the skill (in our language we call it experience) companies will not hesitate to hire you for any amount because they know they will get higher returns by ‘investing’ in you. We can call that a high #ROI.
If you lack the exposure and #experience, companies have to take you through induction training and all kinds of expenses because when you start there is 70% chance you will make bad decisions at some point that will cost the company and not every #business owner is willing to take that chance.
So, this is how you gain experience, SELL YOUR SKILLS FOR #FREE FIRST. If you feel like it’s too much then maybe sell them for half the price a person would normally charge. Once you get the opportunity to practice these skills don’t wait to be moved around like a pawn. Make valuable initiatives in the organization that you’re working for/with. Make sound contributions. Put into practice every single thing you ever learned in school or wherever to see if it’s realistic, do a trial and error of hypothesis’ but obviously be smart about it because you don’t want to lose your #FREE job J after wasting resources.
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Speech overlap in conversation between close male friends
((So this is the final paper I did for my Gender and Language course, looking at an All Work No Play clip with the conversation between Sam and Liam. Posting it here now, because why not. Word count: 1913 words.))
Introduction
Too many things are incorrectly ascribed to gender. So many relevant variables, from power to intimacy to social status, are all folded into “gender” like it's the real reason for any finding, even without gender stereotypes interfering with what researchers believe they see. I felt that what we were given as features of female conversation, particularly between friends, was not due to gender, rather openness between the parties involved. In our society, unfortunately, emotional intimacy between men is often stigmatized, leading to some avoiding it for fear of repercussions; there is also pressure on them to constantly posture their masculinity and heterosexuality.
If one looked specifically at close male friends, would their conversational features be the same as those of female friends who aren't afraid to be open with each other?
I selected speech overlap as a focus, because it encompasses a wide variety of purposes, from supportive back-channelling to violative interruption. I chose a pair of friends whose interactions were already on publicly-available video, whose work and relationship I was familiar with, who were conversationally proficient, and who didn't subscribe to toxic masculinity.
Methods
Liam O'Brien and Sam Riegel, the participants for this paper, are colleagues and close friends. They are both white cis men in their 40s, reasonably well off, and established voice actors noted for their involvement in Critical Role.
I chose for analysis a clip from the beginning of “All Work No Play: Sword Fighting”, the first video in an online series that follows Sam Riegal and Liam O'Brien as they chat about whatever comes to mind, engage in various activities, and discuss “the fun [they] done”. This clip begins with them talking about their earlier podcast and how this show began, and goes to such varied places as the identity of a particular Schwarzenegger movie, children's birthday parties, geocaching, and finally introduces the sword fighting they had done. The conversation took place in a studio, with both participants sitting across from each other at a round table. They had beverage available throughout, presumably alcoholic.
The total duration of the analyzed clip was 11:42. Except for one hard cut done as a joke, and one sound effect added, the video has unbroken unedited audio, of an unscripted conversation between friends. The visuals switched between camera sources, but only the auditory aspects are under consideration here.
I transcribed the clip, and noted any overlaps. I classified the overlaps according to five categories:
"simple" overlap, where the second speaker began before the first speaker was entirely finished, but after the meaning was clear
successful interruption, where the second speaker took a turn from the first speaker before that one was done
failed interruption, where the second speaker tried, unsuccessfully,
back-channelling, or supportive listening
"additional", which covers both "interruptions" to add information with no intent of seizing the turn, and instances where both parties are talking at once with nobody yielding; the former corresponds to Coates' (1988) Type V
I came up with those classifications myself, in absence of prior widespread definitions. With the exception of "additional", I noted who initiated each overlap.
Results
Failed interruptions are, by far, the least common type, with only five instances out of a total of 111 overlaps. Back-channelling was the most common type of overlap, primarily due to Liam's contributions. “Additional” had the second-highest frequency, possibly due to its use by me as a “catch-all” category.
As shown in the table, Sam and Liam have similar total numbers of overlaps, but they differ when broken down by category. Simple overlaps and failed interruptions occur in roughly equal number between participants; there are faint trends, but not to a significant enough degree to justify declaring, as those might be pure randomness.
Liam has a drastically higher amount of verbal back-channelling, while Sam had substantially more successful interruptions.
Of interest is the fact that Liam has roughly the same amount of failed and successful interruptions, which shall be discussed further later on.
Some other results aren't apparent from the table, being qualitative rather than quantitative. While many topics occurred as a result of natural conversational drift, some were brought up intentionally; and in all four instances, this was done by Sam. None of the overlaps or interruptions was received negatively by either person; this accords with both Hunt (2005) and Coates (1988). The division and location of back-channelling will also be discussed later.
Conclusion/discussion
Although “knowledge of being observed and recorded” can change people's speech behaviours, I have reason to believe that such was not the case here, making this video a valid representation of their casual conversations. The participants are professional voice actors, who have also had their weekly D&D games filmed and broadcast for the past four years. Having watched almost all of said D&D game broadcasts, which often run for four hours per session unscripted, I can confidently say that their verbal behaviour, in the examined video, does not appear to differ from that which I have previously seen, at least when they are not acting in-character.
Asymmetry in conversation, even across multiple features, is not unusual, and greater or lesser use of one feature is not necessarily linked to usage of a different feature (Freed et al., 1996). However, I only have the one pair to work from. There might or might not be a general correlation between frequency of back-channelling and simple overlap and failed and successful interruptions; I have no data to tell me one way or the other.
The conversation in question is very obviously cooperative and not competitive. Aside from the usual purpose of social bonding, and that All Work No Play is designed as an “excuse” for these two to hang out, this conversation was also explicitly filmed for fans of a show that both Liam and Sam appear on, so that they can see them interact.
“Interruptions” can be violative, an attempt to steal a turn, or they can be from enthusiasm. Prior knowledge of Sam's behaviour, along with Liam's reaction or lack thereof, leads me to believe that his “interruptions” are the latter kind. Sam has an outgoing and “active” nature, he always needs to be doing something; and I am like that too.
Liam has roughly equal (low) numbers of failed and successful interruptions, and Sam has a much higher number of successful interruptions than Liam. For an interruption to be successful, it requires two things: an attempt, and acquiescence on behalf of the other party. These pieces of information tell a story about the relative natures and dynamics of the participants. Sam feels a greater urgency to speak than Liam does, and Liam is happy to play along with it. I would expect this pattern to continue whenever active extroverts and more passive introverts are friends and have a conversation together, although I have no data to back that up, only intuition; this could be the subject of a future study.
Even though Liam had the highest rate of back-channelling, Sam still did a decent number. Back-channelling, by definition, is supportive and displays involvement in the conversation. However, a high amount of back-channelling alone does not denote a friendly conversation. Hunt (2005) recorded a group of three friends who had a similar rate of back-channelling to this study, but only if laughter and sound effects were included as such, whereas I did not count them.
Something interesting concerns instances of narration by each person, and how the other responded to it. Sam's longest stretch of narration, describing a birthday party he attended recently, was frequently interspersed with Liam's back-channelling. Liam has comparatively long uninterrupted stretches of speech, where he describes geocaching, or how birthdays change as children age. This cannot be explained simply as Sam being less supportive than Liam, when viewed in context. Liam's narratives are intended to convey information, while Sam's described an experience of his. Sam also left much more room for responses in his narrative. This difference in how they narrated might or might not be responsible for the difference in amount of back-channelling.
Not much can be definitively said from this about the overall nature of gender and conversation, although it provides evidence for features between two particular people. Some of the relevant apparent features of female friend conversation are simultaneous speech due to high involvement, high rates of back-channelling, and cooperative conversation-building. All of those were found here.
There is evidence to support that gender matters less than specific variables, when it comes to speech outside of public contexts. As follows, two studies examined pairs, controlling for conversational needs and other factors.
Freed et al. (1996) looked at pairs of same-sex friends, and usage of “you know” and various types of questions. They found that “you know” was used in the same ways, at the same frequency, regardless of gender, and its variation depended upon discourse needs, what type of talk there was. Question frequency did not vary by gender, although particular types of questions were used somewhat more often by the male or female pairs. They concluded that most of the observed gender differences, in natural environments, came from how gender affects what discourse requirements one is exposed to, and therefore how one would speak.
Kollock et al. (1985) looked at same-sex and opposite-sex intimate couples who live together, and found that for most features, dominance was more important than gender. Much of those results are outside the scope of this study, but it provides additional evidence that “gender” is often a confounding variable. One interesting tidbit is that in their study, less than half of the interruption attempts were successful, a start contrast to my findings, where the vast majority were successful. There are however some substantial differences in situation between their and my research, such as the nature of the participants' relationships (couples vs friends), and their research methods invoked potential conflict between members of a pair.
There are five great limitations in this study. First, although there have been attempts to create a system for classifying types of overlaps (Roger et al., 1988), nothing has of yet been commonly accepted. Therefore, one cannot easily compare results between studies, including my own, at least not in a statistically valid manner. Second, I only looked at a segment of one conversation, between one pair; I don't have as much data as I would like. Third, there is little-to-nothing available with which I can compare my results. My results may be generally applicable to all male friends of similar closeness, or they may be unique to Liam and Sam, I have no empirical evidence to direct me one way or another, only vaguely similar studies, and gut instinct. Aside from that, I only know two studies that examined conversational features between female friends, both of which I cited here; they are separated by a continent and two decades, and look at vastly different participants, so their actual comparative value is limited. Fourth, my classification system was flawed, specifically with the “additional” type; I should have noted an added comment or question along with its attribution, and kept the unattributed type for instances where it's unclear whose “turn” it might be. Fifth, I failed to account for transition-relevant places specifically.
Despite those, the overall findings of my research are valid, even if they could be better.
In conclusion: while I may not have conclusively proven my hypothesis, I have provided evidence that supports it, and taken a much-needed look at an understudied field.
References
Coates, J., Cameron, D., & Coates, J. (1988). Gossip revisited: Language in all-female groups. Women in Their Speech Communities: New Perspectives on Language & Sex, 94–121.
Critical Role. (2018, September 30). All Work No Play: Sword Fighting. Retrieved March 18, 2019, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CD1CXWE7KwM
Freed, A. F., & Greenwood, A. (1996). Women, Men, and Type of Talk: What Makes the Difference? Language in Society, 25(1), 1-26.
Hunt, S. (2005). Some (more) features of conversation amongst women friends. Southern African Linguistics & Applied Language Studies, 23(4), 445–458.
Kollock, P., Blumstein, P., & Schwartz, P. (1985). Sex and power in interaction: conversational privileges and duties. American Sociological Review, 50, 34–46.
Roger, D., Bull, P., & Smith, S. (1988). The Development of a Comprehensive System for Classifying Interruptions. Journal of Language & Social Psychology, 7(1), 27–34.
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Unacceptable on the Streets, Expected in the Ring: Sports Violence
Have you ever come across those YouTube videos where boxers get knocked out in the boxing ring? I suspect most of us have. There are also videos online where people get knocked out in the streets, and I suspect some of you will have watched these too. The short video below represents both cases of people fighting in the street and athletes fighting in the ring. Have a quick watch and then we can start discussing the issues emerging within that.
youtube
Why?
The main reason why I have decided to write a blog about sports violence is because I myself happened to be in a situation where a man was threatening to fight me on the street. Thankfully I was able to walk away from the situation safely, but it made me realise that walking away is not the case for everyone. As a matter of fact, it inspired me to ask myself questions such as: why do people on the street fight? Why would someone want to fight for a living? How is fighting on the street different to fighting in an environment designed for fighting?
Key concepts
I would like to mention a couple of concepts, in order to be able to analyse and understand why people behave in a certain way, especially in this risky body culture.
One article talks about bodies as weapons. Its point is to basically try and describe how people use their own bodies to destroy and damage another person’s body. If you think about it, it makes sense that one might use his arms and sometimes even legs to consciously harm their opponent, for several motives. However, the ideology behind bodies as weapons is very different in two specific scenarios.
The first scenario is the UFC octagon for instance as we could see in the video. The terminology can be applied to this exact setting. Let me explain. Two athletes agree to fight each other, sometimes even months prior to the actual fight. They have a whole team of couches, nutritionists, sports psychologists and so on, who prepare them for this one fight. The athletes train for months. The environment where the fight takes place is designed to be safer for two fighters, the floors are softer and fighters wear gloves. Most importantly, their motivation to win is either money, competition or similar. At the end, one of the athletes is considered a winner, and when the match is over, both parties shake hands and go home.
On the other hand, if we took the same two athletes, placed them on the street during the day and let them fight like those two guys in the video, many issues would arise. The reason why it is not okay for people to fight in the street is because their bodies serve as weapons to kill or seriously harm their opponent. Whereas athletes damage their bodies by damaging the opponent’s body to win and become the best in their competition for example. On the street people usually tend to harm, sometimes fatally injure other people. However, at the end, they might end up in prison, and usually a police unit would investigate what happened. That is why we cannot compare street fights with violent sports, in terms of bodies as weapons.
Picture obtained from fighttips.com
Most people see athletes as rich and lucky people, according to another article, even though they are still just athletes as workers. People look at pictures of their favourite fighters in luxurious cars, wearing all sorts of jewellery and expensive clothes. The public does not realise however, that even if these athletes are millionaires, they are athletes as workers. Yes, they are still workers who chose to damage their bodies for sport and money. So how come people remain fighting? How are the two fights different in the video?
The differences between street and professional fights
The two most obvious differences in street and professional fights are:
1. Medialisation
Professional UFC or boxing matches are becoming more popular amongst its audience. Due to experienced marketing and social media companies, this sport has grown its popularity, which resulted in increased media and TV coverage. Let me give a great example of how medialised this sport is. I remember the first time I started to realise that UFC is a sport and that there is a guy called McGregor was in 2017. It was the famous McGregor vs Mayweather fight. Everyone was talking about the fight; it was the epicentre of attention at that time and almost nobody talked about any other sport at that time. The promotion of the event was so successful that the fight generated 4.3 million pay per views.
2. Money
In professional setting, companies and brands pay huge amounts of money to get their logos onto the surface of the octagon. As we can see in the video above, the athlete gets knocked out and lands right on “Monster” logo. The amount of time that the broadcasting camera is on the athlete and the logo itself is very beneficial for Monster and their promotion. Another way how money is related to professional fights is betting. Betting companies are making more profit each year as the medialisation and promotion of this sport increases.
In terms of street fights, there is almost no money and medialisation. Interestingly, in one setting athletes get paid for fighting and people watch these fights with pleasure, on the other hand, people on the streets that fight are usually punished and there are no rewards after winning a fight. Is it ethically okay to accept the behaviour of two athletes fighting for the pleasure of the audience and the money?
Take Home Message
I hope the next time you watch a UFC or a boxing match, you will not only look at the performance of the athletes, but do try to keep in mind the things that were mentioned today, which are usually happening “behind the scenes”. Finally, a campaign called “Love Fighting Hate Violence” could be helpful for those who are struggling with finding the right balance between fighting and violence.
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Creepy America Episode 1: Worlds of Wonder
Introduction
Today marks the twelve year anniversary of the last episode of Creepy America. I know this because of the article I'm reading, recounting the strange and bizarre tale of the webshow. My webshow. My life, for the better part of four years. And even though it arguably destroyed me, brought me to this point where I live alone, working hard jobs to keep this tiny, shitty one person apartment, news of Creepy America never ceases to bring me joy.
Except today.
Which brings me to the reason I am writing.
This morning, I received a letter saying that the server charges for the official Creepy America website had gone up once again, this time to a level that I couldn't even convince myself into thinking I could pay. My complaints have been ignored; I am positive that a silent actor has been forcing the charges to increase, regardless of the actual cost of maintaining the site. This is no doubt the same person who broke into my apartment and storage locker and stole every remaining physical copy of the Creepy America episodes. I wish I could muster the energy to be outraged, or even horrified, but I knew this day would come sometime.
Barring any action from my co-host to stop these actions, something I know will never happen, this would be where the webshow dies. But I'm a stubborn bastard and I'll be damned if it does.
So here I am, alone, in a small, dark room, writing my memoirs of the craziest, scariest, most dangerous, and happiest years of my life. My goal is to preserve the memories of "Creepy America": those days and nights spent in the R.V., traveling from city to city, investigating, finding, and recording the secret places that the world does their best to keep hidden. It's only this way that those days will stay alive. Files corrupt. Memories fade. Even history can be re-written. But if the show has proved anything, it's that words will exist forever, even if they aren't supposed to.
To the Newcomers:
I imagine that most people who track down these stories will be the life-long fans. However, I imagine that some will simply stumble onto these stories by accident. That's okay; it's actually what I'm counting on.
But that means that there's a good chance that, if you're reading this, you don't know what "Creepy America" is. I don't want to delude myself into thinking that everyone who reads this will have memories of the show, especially given the fickleness of internet fame, so I want to take this time to explain what the show was; veteran Creepers, feel free to skip ahead.
Creepy America was a webshow, published and broadcasted online. It was big back in its day. The show generated enough revenue to make money off of, and it's popularity caused a few "War of the Worlds"-styled hoaxes.
To the outside world, the draw of the show was obvious. Based on the creepypasta explosion that made the world obsessed with Slenderman and others, Creepy America combined professional-level special and practical effects with the low-budget style of found footage to make for a scarily realistic horror series. The actual recording team was kept invisible, placing all attention and credit to the two co-hosts of the show. The mysterious mythos that was hinted at several times but never fully explained also added to its popularity and quite a few people praised us for our clever writing and dedication to preserving the illusion.
Of course, this couldn't be further from the truth. Creepy America was just a low-budget production. Zoey and I were the only ones who worked on the show. Nothing was scripted. As our show gained attention, a choice was demanded of us from powerful forces: stop filming, or tow the "fake" line. We chose what we believed to be the lesser of two evils.
Things escalated, though. I won't try to summarize the details here; they will be explained better in the stories to come. But twelve years ago, we were obligated to end it, and the show has slowly faded into obscurity since then.
To the Veteran Creepers:
Before we begin, I have to give you a warning: if you're looking for answers, this isn't the place to find them.
The events and things we uncovered during Creepy America remain unexplained to this day. I have spent the better part of twelve years researching various aspects of science and parascience trying to find those answers, and I am no closer to finding them than I was when we decided to stop our broadcast. Red Eyes, Reverend Jones, even the Archangel Foundation: I don't know what the truth is. So if you expect a book explaining how everything fits together perfectly like little puzzle pieces, I'm afraid you're going to be sorely disappointed. I have my theories, and I have my hunches, but, as I've stated on the show before, speculation without proof is worthless. As it is not my intention to further confuse an already bizarrely muddled and misunderstood set of facts, I will leave my ideas to myself and simply report on what happened.
What's inside is is a collection of my memories about the strange occurrences that we filmed in our four years on the road. I know that there have been many requests to elaborate on some of the details that were left out of the show: what happened during our streaming blackout, the exact location of Devil's County, what we learned about Voltaire's DNA sample from the scientists. I can answer a few of those questions, and I intend to. Some things, unfortunately, are gone. My records are lost, and even my memory is beginning to turn fuzzy. I have also lost contact with my associate, meaning that unless she publishes her own statements on these events, I have no witnesses to back up anything. Given how things ended between us, I doubt that will ever happen. You will simply have to trust that what I say is true. If you've stayed with me this far, though, I think that you're willing to take that leap of faith.
Which brings me to my last point: everything was true. Some of you believed, but everyone had doubts. I don't blame you. We marketed ourselves as clever writers whose fictional tales contained just enough details to seem plausible. After the threatened lawsuit, we had to place a disclaimer on our show's opening. Even those of you who are going to find these stories are going to find it described as "fiction". There are reasons we did so, good reasons, reasons that are detailed in this book. I'm tired of lying, though. Even lies told with the best of intentions will eat through your soul. I'm not sure how well this admission will go over with the higher powers in charge, but I no longer care. As Zoey herself once said in the show, consequences be damned.
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So to newcomers and old fans alike, here it is: the bare truth about "Creepy America", all three years of our journeys across the United States. Once more I say to you the line that began every episode since our second broadcast: get your flashlights out, and get ready to shine some light on the darkened corners of the world. Welcome to the America you never knew existed.
Welcome to Creepy America.
-Liam Foster, co-host of Creepy America
Creepy America
Episode 1
Worlds of Wonder
Hammond, Indiana
Perhaps one of the stranger tales to tell about our time creating Creepy America was simply how it got started. Unlike how it was sometimes insinuated, we didn't simply wake up one day with the idea and the passion to start the show. In fact, Creepy America wasn't supposed to be Creepy America at all. It was supposed to be "Faces of America", and it started with a simple question:
"Hey, do you want to do a road trip?"
We were sitting on the porch of Zoey's house, drinking beer and catching up. Zoey and I had been friends ever since grade school. Over the years we had gotten pretty close, especially during high school, but at this point it had been awhile since we had seen each other. I had gone to Indiana University because of a generous scholarship opportunity while Zoey went to our local community college. We remained friends on Facebook and messaged each other back and forth, but that summer we decided that I should go back to our hometown to meet for what might be the last time. We were both getting pretty far into our degrees and that meant that soon we were going to have to decide on jobs in those fields, at which point there would be no summers to catch up with.
"What do you mean, a road trip?" I asked. In case anyone is curious, I appeared the same way I always did in the show: curly brown hair, white skin, green eyes. It was a pretty hot night out, so I was wearing shorts. Other than that, I can't remember much.
Zoey took another swig of her beer. "You know, a road trip. A road. A trip. The works." She appeared the same as she always did, too. Pale skin, lots of silver piercings in her face, blond hair with one side dyed in neon rainbow colors. She smiled with one of those sweet smiles she always had.
I miss those smiles.
"Yeah, that sounds glamorous. Long hours on the road in a cramped car. Fast food every night. Seedy motels as far as the eye can see." I scoffed and downed some more beer.
"Actually, I was thinking of an R.V."
That caused me to raise an eyebrow. "You're serious aren't you?"
She picked up her laptop that she had beside her. "You remember that video essay I did for my Video Production class?"
"The 'Faces of Ivy Tech' one? Yeah, I remember. That one was pretty good"
"My teacher thought so too. So much so that he actually sent it to some fancy art group." She clicked on the track pad and squinted to read something. "The Film Board of America. They loved it so much that they want me to do another one, but across the country, with different people in each state. A 'Faces of America' thing. Even gave me a grant to do it with."
"How much?"
"Um… 50 grand, about-ish."
"Wow… that's uh, wow."
"Yeah, I know, right?" She closed the laptop. "Anyway I also have an uncle who sells used R.V.s He's willing to give me a pretty big discount if I pay cash for it. And then I remembered you. I figured we could take a year off and travel the countryside. You know, before I leave this town and you turn into one of those boring number people."
"Accountant" I corrected.
"Isn't that what I said?"
I sighed. "Zoey, I don't know. I'm in the middle of school and to just postpone my degree like that…"
She rolled her eyes at me. "Oh, come on Liam. You have the whole rest of your life to be a boring adult. This could be our one last chance to do something big and exciting before we get those stupid nine to fives. An adventure, right? Like what we talked about in fifth grade." She looked at me with bright eyes.
I paused.
"Well?" she asked.
"I… I'm sorry, I just can't. I've got too much to worry about right now."
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She frowned and looked down over the edge of the porch.
"Hey," I said. She looked back up at me. "I'm still gonna be here for the rest of the summer, okay? Let's try to enjoy that time."
She nodded, but the disappointment was still visible on her face.
A few days later we were shopping at a thrift store. Zoey had mentioned something about "various odds and ends for the R.V.", so we ended up driving to different Goodwills. We were at yet another one and the constant looking at towels and silverware was driving me a bit nuts, so I took a break from Zoey's company and headed over to the far corner of the building where a bunch of posters and paintings were located. I flipped through them. Most of them were pretty standard fare: big inspirational words and prints of famous artworks. One of them made me stop, though.
It was a smaller canvas and an actual painting. I could feel the texture of the brush strokes. The picture itself was done in various shades of blue and silver. Two large planets encircled in swirls of gas hung in the sky joined by a pale moon. Mountains surrounded a beach with a large palm tree off to the side. Two dolphins, mid jump and shiny gray, were suspended in the air, all completed by an illegible signature in white.
It felt oddly disturbing to look at. Like a CGI figure that's almost, but not quite, perfect. There was just something... not right about it. Curious, I turned the canvas over, hoping that there would be something on the other side to shed some light on who exactly painted this piece. On the back was a tiny printed sticker.
"Worlds of Wonder. #2 of 59."
I flipped it back over to study the artwork more and traced my finger over the signature. I couldn't even begin to make sense of it. All it appeared to be was a series of large messy loops. Glancing over the rest of the painting didn't help much, either. I'm no artist, so I couldn't really figure out anything that way. I stared at one of the dolphins.
I could almost picture it falling back into the ocean…
"Whatcha got?"
I jumped. I had been so engrossed that I didn't hear Zoey walk up behind me.
She laughed. "Sorry, didn't mean to sneak up on you like that."
"No, it's okay," I said. "I just… uh, got caught up in looking at this thing."
"Here, let me see." I handed the canvas over and she held it up. She smiled. "Wow, talk about strange."
"Yeah, I know." I walked over to the cart to see what Zoey had picked up while I was gone. As I prodded through some of the miscellaneous housewares in the basket, the painting suddenly joined them.
I raised an eyebrow and looked at Zoey. "Really? You're buying that?"
"What?" she asked. "I've got a niece who goes crazy over this kind of stuff."
"Dolphins on different planets?"
"Well, dolphins at least. Plus, she's like five. She'll flip over this."
"Are you sure? It looks kind of… creepy."
Zoey raised an eyebrow at me. "Creepy?"
"Yeah," I was beginning to feel stupid, but I soldiered on anyway. "Creepy. It just… I don't know, it doesn't look right."
She lifted the painting out of the cart and looked it over again. "I don't see anything 'creepy' about it. Weird, yeah. I mean, it is kind of out there, but…"
"Never mind, let's just go. These lights are beginning to hurt my eyes."
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Zoey ended up dropping me off at my house late. It was either midnight or one. I had bought a few things from the thrift stores, mostly just old paperbacks that had been on my list of things to read and, bags in hand, I walked up the steps of my parent's house, unlocked the door, and headed upstairs to my room. Once inside I put the bags down and started taking things out. That's when I noticed the painting again.
It was in one of the bags, lengthwise so it would fit, nestled in between two books. The cashier must have accidentally placed it in my bag when we were checking out. I picked it up and looked at it again.
The dolphin looked back at me. The black eye seemed to almost glisten,
I yawned, then shook my head. "I'm getting freaked out by fake dolphins. I need to go to bed." Painting under my arm, I headed back downstairs and leaned it against the front door so I would remember to give it back to Zoey. Then I headed upstairs, put the new books on my shelf, and flopped onto the bed, still in my clothes. I was out before my head hit the pillow.
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I felt very, very cold. I could only see black. I realized that my eyes were tightly closed, so I opened them.
I was standing on a beach at night. The whole landscape was awash with silver light. The white sand glowed with it. A few feet in front of me stood the water, tranquil and clear. Large blue palm trees swayed behind me, and behind them were grey mountains, also shining in the pale light. Looking up, I saw a huge multitude of stars, and hanging there like overripe fruit were two large gaseous planets.
I was inside of the painting.
Sure enough, just in time to punctuate my thought, a pair of dolphins leapt from the water. Diving back in, they swam away, chasing each other and leaping again.
The mist of the ocean combined with the night air made me shiver and I could see my breath in front of me. Clutching my arms, I turned around and almost tripped when my foot snagged something behind me. It was a sign. Well, sort of. It was more like two large planks of wood nailed together in a waist-high "T" shape. The top board had a shaky "2" drawn on it.
I figured it was just a weird dream. A very, very strange and vivid dream, but a dream nonetheless. My overactive mind had just taken the painting I had thought was so strange and was spending the night recreating it. No biggie.
Even so, I still felt a little on edge. I had this slight feeling of dread, like the kind you get at the beginning of a nightmare, where you realize something's wrong, but you're just not sure what, and you know something's coming, but you're just not sure when. The movement of the palm trees in the wind was making me jump when I saw it out of the corner of my eye. The planets overhead, hanging in midair and moving slowly, made me feel like I was being watched.
Again, I shrugged those feelings aside. So what if it was a weird dream? It was just a dream. Besides, I was lucid right now. I was in control. If anything scary did happen, I could just think it away.
A shiver went up my body. "Right," I said to myself, "let's get rid of this first". I closed my eyes and imagined warmth.
Nothing.
After waiting for a moment, I shrugged and said "okay then we'll just have to work on that later." I headed along the beach with the ocean to my right. After walking a while, the beach turned sharply to the left, and again buried in the sand was another T sign, this one reading "16". I looked over and the sand seemed to go on in a straight line forever.
There was a sudden splash to my right and ice-cold water washed over my skin. I stumbled backwards, falling over on my butt in the sand. One of the dolphins was in the water, about twenty feet away from me, splashing the surface with the flat of its tail. Once it saw that I noticed it, it made a strange chirping noise, like a cross between a regular dolphin sound and a cell phone ring, and disappeared back into the water.
"This is so bizarre."
A muffled noise sounded off to my left and I looked over. Very faintly, almost blended into the sand, was a figure in white, frantically waving his arms and yelling something. I brushed myself off and started to walk in that direction, but it was quickly growing darker. I looked up just in time to see one of the large planets eclipse the moon, and then the dream ended.
*******************************************************************************************
I awoke in bed with sunlight streaming into my room and cold sweat sticking to my skin. Even though I was under my blanket, I was shivering, and the bed felt slightly damp to the touch. I touched my forehead. Clammy skin.
Was I sick? Was that a fever dream?
I headed over to my shower and turned it as hot as I could stand. I stayed under the water for a long, long time. Gradually, I began to feel better. Almost human. A half hour later, I was fine. I stepped out of the shower feeling great. Placing my hand on my forehead again after drying off, it felt normal. Nothing indicated I was sick.
Strange.
Walking back into my bedroom, I found the bizarre painting propped up against my bed. I picked it back up and stared at it.
"I thought I put you by the front door."
Silence.
"Musta forgot." I threw it back on my bed. "I'll have to remember to take you to Zoey's when I visit her later."
The dolphin watched me as I got dressed. I took it downstairs and set it off to the side as I poured cereal into a bowl.
I noticed the dolphin out of the corner of my eye, still glaring at me.
I put my bowl down and looked at it. "Maybe, maybe I could head over right now. I've got nothing better to do anyways."
In this angle and light, the thing looked… almost angry.
I shuddered. "Yeah, definitely right now."
*******************************************************************************************
"I think it got put back in my bag by mistake."
"Huh. Whoops." Zoey said as she took it from me. "I was wondering where it went."
"What's your plans for today?"
"Camera shopping, mostly. Trying to find the best models at my budget. Usually I just make do, but I've got so much I can actually get a decent model this time around. Want to come?"
I had a flashback of the forks at Goodwill. "No thanks, I'll pass."
The dolphin caught my eye again.
"Are you sure you want to give that to your niece? Doesn't it seem… I don't know, a little strange?"
Zoey laughed. "Are you still freaked out about this thing?"
I decided not to tell her about the dream.
I spent the rest of the day just loafing around. It was summer, after all. That was kinda the point. I played some random video games that I had bought a long time ago but never tried. Once I got bored of those, I picked up a paperback I had bought from Goodwill. I munched on some food. Nothing crazy.
Over the course of the day, I managed to forget about the painting and the weird dream, the details slowly fading with every passing hour.
By the time I had laid my head on my pillow and slowly drifted into sleep, I had forgotten it had even happened.
*******************************************************************************************
It was cold. Again.
I sat up with a start, inhaling the freezing, salt-filled air. I was back on the beach. The moon, the planets, the dolphins. It was all there.
I was back.
"What the hell? What's going on?" I stood up and looked around.
As I did so, I saw a man behind me, leaning against a palm tree. He was a white guy with long greasy black hair and a beard to match. His face was gaunt and thin. He was wearing what I assumed used to be a very stylish white three piece suit with golden pinstripes, but it was now a dirty gray with rips and tatters everywhere. The whole outfit hung on him like a blanket. A very battered matching hat completed the ensemble.
Once he saw me looking at him, he straightened up. "Ah, you're awake!"
I immediately took a few steps back and hit something. I spun around to see the "2" sign again, then faced the man. "What's going on?"
"Calm down, I'm not going to hurt you, everything's fine."
"Who are you?!"
He raised his hands in the air in a show of non-hostility. "I'm Greg Thornstine. A guy who picked up a 'Worlds of Wonder' painting, just like you."
I stared at him. "Wait a minute, what?"
He smiled and lowered his arms. "Alright guys, it's cool. I think he's done freaking out."
Several people now came into view, standing up behind the small crest he was on. There was a Hispanic man dressed in shorts and a t-shirt, and older woman in a business suit, a teenage girl in black clothing, and another white guy in a camo jacket and pants. They all looked similar to Greg; thing faces, torn, baggy clothing, long hair and beards on the men. They watched me with a dull expression.
"Alright newcomer, welcome. This is Jose, Anne, Suzy, and Tom."
"Uh, hi?"
They stared at me in silence.
"Oh, um… I'm Liam, I guess. What's going on here?"
"Well," Greg started, "at some point, you picked up a 'Worlds of Wonder' painting, just like us. I'm assuming the sticker on the back said '2 of 59?'"
"Yeah…"
Greg pointed to the sign behind me.
"So what, every time I fall asleep I come here?"
Jose said something in Spanish.
"Calm down," Greg said, turning to Jose, "he doesn't know that yet." Then he looked back at me. "I'm afraid that's just the beginning. You've visited here once before, right?"
I remembered the white figure on the beach. "Yeah. Was that you waving at me?"
He nodded. "This place draws you in threes. First night's sleep, second night's sleep, then on the third day. At some point after you wake up, you're going to come back here. And that time, it'll be permanent."
I looked at the group. "I don't believe you."
The teenager shrugged. "Doesn't matter. You'll come here anyway."
"This is just some weird dream I keep having. That's all."
The business woman rolled her eyes. "I told you Greg, this will get us nowhere."
"Hush, Anne. It's worth a shot." Greg turned back to me. "Listen kid, you've got what we didn't have. Forewarning. So listen very closely to what I'm about to tell you."
I took a few steps closer and leaned in.
"When you wake up, grab food. Stuff your face like there's no tomorrow. Cram your pockets with anything you can think of. The higher the calories, the better, but try to diversify. Meat, fruit, candy. Don't worry about it spoiling, Just have as much on you when you come here. You'll thank me later."
I stared. Then I chuckled. I laughed for almost a minute straight. "You're crazy! Scratch that, I'M crazy, YOU'RE not real! This is a dream. I'm not gonna start binge eating just 'cause my dreams told me it was a good idea!"
Jose began muttering in Spanish again.
"I need you to listen to me. Please." Greg looked at me with concern. "This is your one shot here. This is going to happen. I can't stop it, and neither can you. This is your one chance to make sure your life isn't a living hell when you get here. Please just take it."
"Then answer me this: why has no one thought to try fishing?" I gestured to the ocean behind me, arms flailing.
At that moment, the dolphin jumped out of the water, chirping another mechanical sound.
"Ain't no fish in that ocean." The man in camo said darkly. "And before you go getting any bright ideas, there's nothing in those dolphins 'cept gears and springs. We've tried everything there is to try."
I lowered my arms. "What about escaping?"
The business woman shook her head. "This place is an island. Nowhere to go. And even if we knew where we could swim to, those… things" she spat, looking out at the waves "would tear us apart in no time flat."
"This is insane." I whispered.
"Insane or not, it's happening." Greg said. "And it's going to keep happening. For your own sake, Liam, do what I said."
I moved around the sign and began backing up. "No no no no no no no, this isn't happening. This isn't real. This is just a weird dream, this isn't…" I felt a sudden surge of cold around my ankles, Surprised, I lost my balance and fell backwards into the cool, dark water. I was buffed about by a wave, dragged farther in. I tried to swim up, but I couldn't. The air burned in my lungs. I screamed, and stinging salt water filled my chest. Struggling, I slowly lost consciousness…
…and awoke in my own bed.
It was soaked. Every movement I made caused the mattress to seep salt water, like an over-absorbed sponge. There was a thin layer of it trickling down my body, and I was violently shivering. Even my teeth were chattering.
"W-wh-wha-th-the-f-f-f-f-f" I stumbled out of my bed, fell on the floor, and scrambled back up, putting the shower on the highest heat possible, stripped out of my clothes and climbed in, too shocked to think. After an eternity standing under the blazing hot water, feeling returned to my fingers, and I turned the heat down just a bit. I started going over my options.
What the hell was I supposed to do? Go to the police? And tell them what? I'm going to get kidnapped by a painting? A theoretical physicist might be more help. Or a ghostbuster. I laughed. I felt like a lunatic. I suppose I was close to becoming one.
"Calm down" I said out loud. "We're going to approach this one option at a time. Just think of the next thing to do. After that's done, you can think of what to do after that."
Zoey. I'll ask her. She's handled the painting too. Maybe the same thing's been happening to her, but she just wrote it off like I did. At the very least, she might have an idea of what to do next.
I stepped out of the shower, dried off, and went back to my room.
The painting was hanging above my bed's headboard.
I looked at it, then touched it.
It fell to the ground. The wall behind it had no hooks or nails to keep it in place.
I grabbed the painting and rushed off to Zoey's place.
*******************************************************************************************
"Alright, one more time. Slower please."
I was at Zoey's house, in her living room. Her dad answered the door as he was leaving to go to work. She was still sleeping, so she was talking to me in her pajamas.
"I've told you three times already. Why don't you believe me?" I asked.
"I believe you. Or at least, I believe you think you're telling the truth. You are way too freaked out to be making this up right now."
"So what, I'm crazy?"
She looked at me. "That's definitely one possibility."
I waved the painting in the air. "Then how do you explain this?"
"Well, I'd rather not think you broke into my house and stole it…"
"Are you fucking serious! This is…"
Zoey grabbed the sides of my head and locked eyes with me. "Liam! Calm down! I said it was a possibility! I didn't say that this whole painting kidnapping thing wasn't also a possibility! Now, look at me."
I stopped flailing about and kept eye contact.
"You are NOT going to get stuck in that painting" she said loudly.
"But Greg said…"
She stared at me.
"Right, I'm not going to get stuck in this painting."
"Good." She let go of me and walked over to her dining room table, where her laptop and a bunch of cameras sat.
I jumped up and followed her. "So what are we going to do?"
"You're going to help me test this camera's ability to stream."
"What? Zoey, we need to do something about this!"
"This is something!" Zoey yelled back. Then she sighed and spoke in a much softer voice. "Look, I don't know what to do. This is the best I can think of. This way, I can keep tabs on you all day. If the day goes by and you're still on planet earth, we'll deal with you being crazy. If you vanish and the stream goes out, I figure out how to get you back."
"So that's your plan? Wait until I get vanished then figure out how to pull me back?"
"Until we can think of a better one."
I sighed. "Alright. I'll wait here for you to get dressed, I guess."
*******************************************************************************************
I was incredibly tense the whole rest of the day.
It was bad. I jumped at every little noise. Especially water. Anything moved, I immediately shouted at it. I alternated between filming and heading back to Zoey's computer to watch her compare the qualities of each footage capture. It didn't help that I was shaking the whole time, making the videos look pretty much incomprehensible.
The worst was when Zoey told me to go out into the neighborhood far away to test the range. Every time, she had to assure me that if the stream went out and I didn't come back for five minutes, she would assume the worst had happened. When I was done filming, she would text me to come back, and I would bolt. Even though it was only five minutes, I swear they took forever. Something about being alone made me feel vulnerable.
Zoey, for her part, was holding it together remarkably well. She alternated between shouting directions at me and calming me down, then do some stuff on her laptop like nothing was wrong. Still not 100 percent sure how she did it; my behavior alone should have been enough to unnerve her.
It was about five at this point and the sun was just barely beginning to set.
"Alright Liam, I need you to go behind that shed."
I looked over to the small building in her backyard. "That one?"
"Yeah" she looked over at me. "Don't worry, I'll be watching the footage the whole time."
I inhaled. "Okay." With the camera on my shoulder, I slowly crept up behind the shed and stepped around.
Darkness.
Suddenly, silver light bathed the landscape. It was that damn painting again. I twirled around, pointing the camera in every direction. "ZOEY! ZOE! ARE YOU SEEING…"
A fist suddenly landed square on my jaw. There wasn't a lot of power behind it, but it surprised me so much that it caused me to lose my balance, falling over on the sand. I looked down to see the gaunt Greg fishing through my pockets, with the rest of the group behind him.
"Damn it! Nothing! Not one single thing! WHY DIDN'T YOU LISTEN TO ME?" He slapped my face hard, hard enough to sting.
"I..what…who?"
"Come on, Greg, your little experiment didn't work." The business woman took out a sharpened shiv. "Time to do what we should have done originally."
He glared at me. "Not even a single pack of Oreos? Come on, are you trying to get yourself killed?"
The teen girl scoffed and she drew out a similar shiv. "Like we wouldn't have killed him if he did."
"No, but, fuck, I miss Oreos." Greg scowled and revealed a large hunting knife.
I panicked. Out of pure, primal reflex, I squirmed out from under Greg and kicked him in the face. He was surprisingly light and flew backwards, a sickening crunch coming from his face. I scurried to my feet and grabbed the camera, not sure why, and sprinted away on the beach.
"SHOOT HIM TOM!" I heard Greg yell from behind me.
"Only got four bullets left."
Spanish.
"No, but just sayin'…"
There was a bang of sound and I felt a stinging sensation at my arm. I saw blood running down it and had to readjust my grip to keep the camera. There was another, and I felt a similar sensation on my leg.
"AGAIN!"
"Stop it Greg! We've only got two bullets left! Let him bleed out."
I kept running, but the beach seemed to go on forever. My muscles felt sore, My lungs were on fire. I felt close to collapse. I tripped over my own feet and fell face-first in the sand, salt and grit going up my nostrils and into my mouth. I started to get up, but I couldn't. Despite the cold, I felt like I was burning up.
"See?"
"I'll get the fire going. Good eating for once."
The heat kept rising. My flesh felt like it was on fire. I began to scream as my vision turned red.
"What the hell?…"
Darkness overtook me.
I woke up in Zoey's back yard.
"Liam, Liam, holy shit are you alright?"
I coughed out bloody sand. "Never better. I'm just gonna…" My vision faded into black again.
"Hey, HEY!" Zoey slapped me. "Stay awake. C'mon, we're going to the hospital."
"Wonderful" I muttered as she dialed some numbers on her phone.
*******************************************************************************************
As we waited for the ambulance to get there, Zoey made me recite a cover story about how I had accidentally shot myself with her hunting rifle while she was showing it off to me. I later learned that this had two reasons: one, to keep me conscious until the paramedics could do their thing, and two, to give a good cover story to the police. As she told me later, "The last thing I wanted to have happen that day was to get my stuff ransacked from the Men in Black or something."
Because I kept trying to fall asleep on her, she made me recite it over and over again. Good thing, too; I ended up telling it so well that when the cops had finished taking my statement, one of them told me "Sorry to trouble you, but it's procedure. We just want to make sure this wasn't something else."
I smiled and told them I understood.
I spent a week or two in the ICU. The nurse told me that the shots were, luckily, grazes. Neither managed to strike any vessels, muscles, or bones, so all I needed was some blood and stitches, then some observation to make sure there were no complications.
My parents visited once or twice, and even Zoey's dad. Zoey, however, stayed the most by my side, usually in a corner fiddling with her cameras or laptop. When I told her she could go home, she just scoffed and went back to whatever she was doing.
On the second day, I started feeling better and actually started to stay up instead of briefly waking up and then passing out. When Zoey came back to my room to hang out, I smiled and waved at her.
"Hey, you were right."
"About what?" she asked.
"I didn't get stuck in the painting."
She shook her head and laughed. "Liam, I honestly thought you were crazy. I was gonna show you the stream footage after the day was over and then try to convince you to check into an asylum." She sat down across from me and filled me in on what happened from her end.
Apparently, when I went behind the shed, the streaming didn't stop. In fact, the camera showed Zoey everything that was happening: the beach, Greg, all of it. Later in the week, she played me the video that was taken, proof that I wasn't insane. It shows everything, including the air going orange, dark, and then suddenly reappearing in the backyard.
As soon as Zoey saw this landscape with me in it, she freaked. She ran upstairs, tore up the painting and broke the wood canvas, and ran back to the yard, where her laptop was. When that failed to do anything, she ran back inside and got the painting scraps, threw them in the backyard, and set them on fire. After a second or two, the fire erupted and doubled in size, and a few seconds after that, the video turned orange. The fire died down and I was lying there, unharmed with the exception of the gunshots. Somehow, I managed to hold onto the camera the whole time.
"Good thing too, or I would've thrown you back there" she joked.
Both the SD card in the camera and the stream footage recorded the same thing. We spent a long time talking about what had happened, and we ended up deciding not to show it to anyone else. At best, they probably thought we were trying to pull some elaborate prank. At worst… who knows?
It must have really stuck in Zoey's head, though, because after a few days, she asked if she could post it online, under the guise of a short horror film project and write out what had happened before that as a creepypasta-like story. She promised to change all the names. I didn't see a reason not to, so I said sure.
After a few days, when I was no longer recovering but just under observation, the visitors stopped coming, and even Zoey showed up less frequently. Bored, I spent some time online, looking up "Worlds of Wonder."
Nothing showed up.
The only thing I found was on Greg Thornstine. Apparently, he was once a multimillionaire heir and art enthusiast. He disappeared one night after acting irrationally and was never found. I read his whole story on an article entitled "10 of the Most Mysterious Missing Persons Cases in History." No mention of the painting.
I couldn't find anything on anyone else. Just a factoid that at any given time, around 90,000 people are missing in the United States.
I stopped searching after that.
*******************************************************************************************
One week later, I was out of the hospital. The doctor told me to avoid alcohol for the time being, so naturally, Zoey wanted to celebrate with beers at her place. I told her I'd come but not drink. She laughed and then told me she had something to show me.
We were once again sitting on her porch. With a flourish, she pulled out her laptop and showed it to me. It was the footage from the beach, uploaded to Youtube. It had 100,000 views.
"I just uploaded this, like, three days ago!" she exclaimed. "It's already blown up! This thing is everywhere! And everyone's talking about the story too! How it's so weird and creepy! It gave me an idea: why don't I do this stuff while I'm filming the 'Faces of America' thing? I'll already be going place to place. I could do this, like, video pod format where each episode is a different city or state and I'll talk about the urban legends and maybe even find something! Wouldn't that be cool?"
"Zoey…"
"Before you say anything, I'm not trying to rope you into it. I mean, I already know you can't come, but…"
"Zoey!"
She stopped.
"I'm in."
Zoey looked at me. "Liam, don't mess with me."
"I'm serious. Zoey, I just saw something that shouldn't exist. And nobody would know about that painting if you hadn't have posted it. It makes…" I could feel myself blushing a bit, but I continued. "It makes me wonder what else is out there."
Zoey didn't respond. She just looked at me. Then she hugged me. Hard.
That's how Creepy America started.
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.NHK LIVE BROADCAST
january 8 | 10:30am
Yuki: Good morning, viewers, and welcome to NHK Live. As I'm sure many of you are aware by now, the League of Villains released a lengthy video this morning that included footage of the mysterious attack on U.A. as well as what appears to be the torture of the Number Two Hero, Hawks. Joining us today is Monoma Neito: an individual whose family was mentioned by Hawks' attacker himself in his first ever interview regarding the matter---an NHK exclusive for all our viewers.
[The camera pans to reveal the guest, while keeping the news host within the frame.]
Yuki: Good morning, Monoma-san. It's an honor to have you here with us today to answer all the questions that the public has.
[Pale-faced even under all the make-up, Monoma only manages a weak smile, nodding his head just so.]
Monoma: Thank you. It's... a honor to be here.
[His smile falters and he glances down at his lap, hands starting to fidget as he sits.]
Yuki: Glad to hear that, glad to hear that. Let's speak more... generally first, shall we? The events at U.A. were, I'm sure, a traumatizing event for all of the students involved. Can you start by giving us your personal account about what really happened that fateful morning?
[Monoma nods at that, unsure.]
Monoma: I mean, you all saw what happened. I don't know how much I should say. ... What really happened...
[He looks off, off-camera, something catching his gaze that makes him frown slightly.]
Monoma: ... Well. I woke up, and I was in handcuffs. I think near everyone did, even if they were't necessarily targeted. And... well...
[Yuki nods intently during each of Monoma's pauses---an attempt to look sincere while encouraging him to elaborate.]
Yuki: Well...? What were you feeling in those moments? Take us through a little bit of your thought process.
Monoma: My thought process?... I wasn't really thinking about much. I thought it was a prank, honestly. It was kind of annoying, kind of funny. More annoying than funny. I was in a different room than I'd gone to bed in so that was kind of... funny. I'm sorry, I'm rambling, I don't know. It really wasn't all that interesting, how the day started-
Yuki: So what you're saying is that you initially thought that the greatest attack to ever be conducted on U.A. soil was a prank and that your first emotions of the day were those of humor.
[The interviewer nods once, leaning in a little closer to Monoma.]
Yuki: But what about when you realized that it wasn't a prank? [A pause. Some sympathy shines through in her eyes.] I know that a lot of this can be difficult to talk about, but these are things that the nation---no. The world needs to hear so that we can rally our police officers and professional heroes together to prevent something like this from happening again. And I'm sure you're well-aware of that, aren't you, Monoma-san?
[She shoots a subtle glance to someone off-screen.]
[Monoma only grows paler at how that sounds, desperately trying to interrupt as she speaks.]
Monoma: That's- that's not what I--
[Falling quiet again, his teeth grits and he bows his head, shoulders shaking slightly.]
Monoma: Of course. I'm sorry. I really am trying. I really didn't think-... It was... Someone had impersonated my friend. Someone with a shapeshifter quirk. They came into my room and I...
[He pauses, biting his lip raw, his eyes starting to shine from the memory.]
Monoma: I suppose I fell for it...
[Yuki puts what appears to be a gentle hand on his shoulder.]
Yuki: That must have been difficult, I'm sure.
[She keeps her hand there and waits for him to respond, expecting him to continue.]
[He flinches, just slightly.]
Monoma: The others had it worse, I think. I really only think of that. And how... maybe I should have been more perceptive, and then I wouldn't have-... I woke up after, the videos didn't show that. But I got free and I helped with what I could until the authorities managed to get on campus. I really did what I could.
Yuki: I'm sure that you did... Now, about how long would you estimate it took for authorities to arrive on the scene?
[Another long pause as he bites hard at his lip, clearly more nervous than he was only seconds ago.]
Monoma: I... I don't know. I never really was paying attention to the time. Maybe an hour? It all happened really fast, everything happened... really fast...
[She nods in response.]
Yuki: Yes, I can imagine... And so before the authorities arrived, what was it like on the scene? You mentioned that you were freed, but how did that come to happen?
Monoma: Um. Another student found me and woke me up. He had keys - to the handcuffs, I mean - and handed them to me so I could pass them off to other people once I'd been freed myself.
[The tension seems to ease in him just slightly once they're on this topic.]
Monoma: We pretty much did what we could as heroes in training to access the sitution and save each other. Keep each other stable while we waited.
Yuki: I see, I see...
[She turns to face the camera directly.]
Yuki: For those of you who are just tuning in, I'm here with Monoma Neito: one of the survivors of the U.A. attack and an individual who was mentioned by name in the footage released this morning. According to Monoma-san, U.A. students---who moved to the campus in order to be protected---were left defenseless and alone, scrambling to save themselves and their peers for approximately an hour before any professionals even arrived on scene. Not only that, but it seems that the people who attacked U.A. are able to mimic the actions of our loved ones in order to use our own emotions against us. It’s a dangerous time for our country indeed.
[She takes a moment to shoot the camera a silent, somber look.]
Yuki: This all becomes even more daunting when the only statements given to the public regarding the matter showcase that the school administration has made little to no progress with what must have become a private investigation of the attack. In fact, it seems as though there is a lot of in-fighting within the U.A. administration itself...but I suppose we’ll get more into that during the U.A. press conference later this week.
[Her attention returns to Monoma as she prepares to ask the next question.]
Yuki: Speaking of some of the professionals, there's one in particular that many people are now connecting you to---Hawks. In the footage released this morning, he seemed to take on a very defensive role when your name was mentioned. Could you please explain to us your relationship with the Number Two Hero?
[Monoma only slumps a little in his chair as she talks, hair hiding most of his expression as he quietly listens, though he looks... defeated, the spitting image of the gritty videos of before. He only really perks up as she directs her voice to him again, though the question itself only elicits a sheer look of horror on his face.]
Monoma: I--
[He glances straight towards the cameras, searching for- something. He looks panicked, fingers fidgetting.]
Monoma: No, I can't. I don't know why I was- why he said that. I've never really... I don't talk to him. Really. The only class he's ever been interested in was 1-A's, is what I thought, I've never been close to him-
[He's rambling now, babbling, clearly unable to really stop-]
[Yuki's eyes narrow as she struggles to make sense of Monoma's words.]
Yuki: So you're saying that you've met Hawks but you never thought he was interested in you? [She keeps her skeptical eyes trained on him as she continues.] The audio is very clear when the Monoma name is brought up... So are you insinuating that you're the wrong Monoma to be speaking to...?
Monoma: I haven't met him. I've-
[He grimaces, desperate.]
Monoma: I've been around him, maybe. I don't know. There's social media, he's popular online. I- I don't know if I'm the wrong-
[He looks frantically out over the cameras again.]
Monoma: I mean, he's a hero, all heroes tend to work with my family at some point. I don't know. I don't know why he said my name. I'm not trying to insinuate anything-
[She leans towards him once more, eyes narrowed.]
Yuki: This is a simple question, Monoma-san: do you or do you not have a personal relationship with the Number Two Hero, Hawks?
[Freezing a little, he just stares at her, stricken.]
Monoma: .. No.
[Yuki leans back in her chair, obviously perplexed. She manages a pointed look at someone off-screen before continuing.]
Yuki: I see... I suppose we'll have to arrange interviews with... Other members of the Monoma family then---to help set the record straight.
[A pause.]
Yuki: But regardless, it wasn't Hawks that brought up your name in the first place---the Number Two Hero only reacted to it, and I suppose he could have simply done so due to a hero's naturally protective nature... The real question I should have asked is if you recognize that man...
[She straightens up in her chair as she addresses the camera directly.]
Yuki: Earlier this morning, police were able to identify and arrest the individual responsible for Hawks' torture. Let's watch some of that never-before-seen footage now, shall we?
[On the screen behind Yuki and Monoma, a clip plays from outside the Midoriya family apartment. A middle-aged woman is being held back by police as she cries out for what viewers can assume to be her son. The boy in question looks wide-eyed with confusion as the cops lead him into a car.]
Yuki: Monoma-san... Do you recognize this man?
[The clip brings upon a palpatable reaction from him, as his mouth literally drops open as he watches Midoriya's mother be held back away from his child.]
Monoma: Midoriya...-kun...?
[Some sort of recognition appears in his eyes before he shakes his head, stammering out.]
Monoma: Wh-what is this, you... you arrested him...!? How-- how did you-
[She smiles.]
Yuki: Ah, so you do know him! Wonderful! [She claps her hands together with glee.] While NHK obviously isn't responsible for this arrest, we're more than happy to tell you that the vile man who clearly tortured pro hero Hawks is now in police custody. Monoma-san, please, elaborate on your relationship with the arrested felon, Midoriya Izuku.
[Monoma just keeps shaking his head before a hand reaches up, fisting a little into his hair.]
Monoma: No, no, you don't understand. That- that's- He's just a classmate of mine...! He-...
[He trails off, focus seeming to suddenly drift as he thinks.]
Monoma: ... It's hard to think that he could be capable of such a thing. It's really- it's really hard to believe. ...
[His hand leaves his hair, folding into his lap as he chews on his lip.]
Monoma: ... I really don't think the shapeshifter was caught, though. Who was at the attack. So. So I think it should be considered that maybe, maybe they are just... framing him... and that the police just have the wrong guy. Because while we may have had our differences-
[He winces, immediately acknowledging his words as a mistake.]
Monoma: I can't come to terms with the thought that he could ever hurt someone in that way... It's too hard to believe.
Yuki: Your differences, you say?
[It's clear that her interest has been piqued as she leans towards him once more.]
Yuki: While I suppose it's possible that the shapeshifter was framing Midoriya Izuku, let's suppose that that isn't the case---let's say that it really was Midoriya Izuku who kidnapped the Number Two Hero, tied him to a chair, and tortured him for the whole world to see... In the footage, he mentions that he, and I quote, "made you stronger"... Is there any possible way that your classmate might have done that to you?
[Monoma grits his teeth, suddenly and visibly frustrated.]
Monoma: No. I don't know what that means. Clearly, he's a lunatic and-- I don't know. Maybe a reference to our classes, if it's really him. We've had to fight in class before. That's it, that's all I can imagine it was about.
[Yuki blinks in surprise at the sudden change in his tone.]
Yuki: Wow... It seems like there's a lot of... animosity between you two, huh? [A pause.] So you're suggesting the possibility that U.A. is not only failing to protect its students---the shining ray of hope for the next hero generation---but that they're also pitting students together in a toxic atmosphere that may very well cause certain individuals to develop... "lunatic"-like behavior. Interesting... Very interesting indeed...
[She straightens up in her chair once more and turns to address the camera. As she does so, the frame adjusts so that Monoma is no longer pictured on-screen.]
Yuki: And there you have it, folks: not only is U.A.---the supposed "number one" school for future heroes---failing to protect its students---our children---but they're also crafting a dangerously competitive atmosphere that breeds and promotes unhealthy behavior, unqualified staff, and a lack of ability to do what they claim to be great at doing: saving others. In this morning's interview with Monoma Neito, we've gained insight on how their students were practically abandoned by their teachers for an entire hour during the November attack; how they've possibly driven poor, fledgling hero, Midoriya Izuku, to absolute insanity...
[She shakes her head, solemnly.]
Yuki: These are dark times that are facing our country... And as citizens, all we can do is rally together and insist that our heroes do better, insist that they do their jobs and return peace back to this society... insist that they assemble all of their resources and focus them on discovering the identity of the "mystery man" that supposedly spearheaded this attack on U.A. and have him arrested---at the least.
Yuki: ........ This is Kashimoto Yuki, signing off.
#[[ GOD THIS WAS SO MUCHSKDFJBGSDFJGDBGSJDFBGDJGDJSLSKJDF ]]#[[ shout-out to the lovely jess for writing for yuki who is the bane of mine and monoma's existence atm jfbgsjg ]]#monoma.docx#infamy.arc
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Assessment #2: Reflective journaling
The Creative Technologies experience I chose to apply the “Kolb cycle” to is the very first Introduction to Creative Technologies (ICT) project I was given, a vlog. The vlog was an individual activity where I had to describe my reasons behind my decision to become a Creative Technologist.
I was encouraged to creatively explain why I chose to study at University, why Auckland University of Technology in particular, what Creative Technologies is historically and what I envision this career path to be. Emphasis was also placed on my ideas in the vlog being original, critical, informed and broad.
This activity is experientially significant as a teaching tool as it teaches students to analyse their own thinking and reasoning towards their choices, helping them define their goals and causes them to research what it takes to achieve them.
The activity helps students understand the ramifications of the choices they’ve taken. It helps them understand their predecessors in that field; and what existing expectations and paradigms are waiting in the industry.
For myself, the vlog assignment was a steep learning curve. I had never edited before and had to learn how to use new editing software. I had never filmed before, yet alone on a smart phone and I had to learn how to record my voice as its own entity for the narration. The script had to be rewritten many times to express complicated reasoning behind the vlog’s purpose and compressing the various paths in my life to my current decision to study was also difficult.
The vocal recording and editing were particularly difficult as I soon found that pacing for filming and for my narrative reading was of great importance to the flow of the overall vlog. Projection and pronunciation were also unexpected difficulties in the editing and recording process.
Arguably, my difficulties arose due to my self-imposed limit of not wanting to be shown on camera. I had to face my own issues with self esteem and my own short comings as a creator and a person in order to complete the project. In a way, it was like a strange form of therapy – I had to face my own demons around low confidence to create a competent result.
It was a good creative exercise to work around this limit, however, the earlier discussed difficulties around narration and editing were birthed completely from this limit.
In the end, I did not film enough footage to fit with my narration and thus, had to be filmed anyway. The experience taught me to allow myself to be flexible with my limits and allow myself to be vulnerable on camera. It also taught me to approach my projects with a more unbiased view, to see my creations and myself as materials to achieve the desired outcome. It was more important for the points expressed in the narration to have a physical representation of my injury, it had more impact upon the viewer seeing the repercussions than just a disembodied voice speaking about the topic.
While completing the project I learned about the technical aspects, but I struggled with the academic purpose of why this project was useful to students – why a vlog was our assignment instead of an essay, for instance. To enlighten myself, I researched vlogging and the benefits thoroughly.
In a study of veterans’ vlogging, it was postulated that a therapeutic narrative could be achieved from collective commentary given from any of the community online who have an interest in the subject matter, not just an expert’s opinion as a person would receive from professional therapy (Schuman, Lawrence and Pope, 2019).
The study reported that vloggers were more open to sharing personal information, their faces and even stigmatising conditions in contrast to text-blogs or real life interactions as further reasoning for the deep therapeutic nature of the bond between vlogger and audience. They further postulate that vloggers turned to social media (in this case, Youtube) to process feelings of alienation, grief and loss of self and relationships.
A survey stipulated that vlogs can be used in more ways than text or audioblogs, e.g. in online education, online gaming, product marketing and news reporting (Gao, Tian, Huang and Yang, 2010).
Molyneux, Gibson, Singer and O’Donnell argue that “Vloggers also view vlogs; therefore vloggers engage with videos on several levels – they are both the encoders and the decoders, both producers and members of the audience and the Youtube community”. They emphasise how vlogging is a social activity, encouraging people to view and participate in vlog creation (Molyneux, Gibson, Singer and O’Donnell, 2008).
Vloggers attempting to connect with strangers after a loss of a loved one has been found to happen quickly; months, weeks, even days after the death, and shows that vlogging in a 24/7 online world where someone is ‘always there’ is a comfort (Gibson, 2016).
Gibson emphasises the interactive nature of vlogging, shown by the empathy expressed in comments of the vlogs. These commenters act as a substitute support system despite co-presence to the vlogger’s grief being impossible. Gibson further purports that a support network can be garnered from online communities where real world support is lacking.
An exploration of vlogging explains how vlogging can be a useful tool for identity experimentation for people transitioning genders (Raun, 2015). Raun postulates that vlogging is a continually reforming and changing form of storytelling, with feedback coming from the creator as well as the viewers. He argues that this makes the narrative of the vlogs more non-linear and democratic than written autobiographies.
After this research, I discovered various benefits to vlogging; it can be empathy from strangers to help with a healing, structured therapeutic narrative, that people are more open with themselves in a vlog than in a blog or in real life interactions, or that vlogging helped them process feelings that they could not in real life.
Vlogging can be more useful than text or audioblogs and connects people socially, through creativity and comforting support. It can help people figure out their identities, it’s as ever-changing as people themselves and can act as a way to monitor their progress, like a visual diary.
References:
Gibson, M. (2016). Youtube and bereavement vlogging: Emotional exchange between strangers. Journal of Sociology 52(4), 631-645. https://journals-sagepub-com.ezproxy.aut.ac.nz/doi/pdf/10.1177/1440783315573613
Molyneux, H. Gibson, K. Singer, J. O’Donnell, S. (2008). New Visual Media and Gender: A Content, Visual and Audience Analysis of Youtube Vlogs. Conference Papers – International Communication Association Annual Meeting, 1-12. http://web.a.ebscohost.com.ezproxy.aut.ac.nz/ehost/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?vid=5&sid=258c6212-018e-44a9-aa72-65aa55798a79%40sessionmgr4009
Raun, T. (2015). Video blogging as a vehicle of transformation: Exploring the intersection between trans identity and information technology. International Journal of Cultural Studies 18(3), 365-378. https://journals-sagepub-com.ezproxy.aut.ac.nz/doi/pdf/10.1177/1367877913513696
Schuman, D. L. Lawrence, K. A. Pope, N. (2019). Broadcasting War Trauma: An Exploratory Netnography of Veterans’ Youtube Vlogs. Qualitative Health Research 29(3), 357-370. http://dx.doi.org.ezproxy.aut.ac.nz/10.1177/1049732318797623
Wen, G. Yonghong, T. Tiejun, H. Qiang, Y. (2010). Vlogging: A Survey of Videoblogging Technology on the Web. ACM Computing Surveys 42(4), 15:1 – 15:57. http://eds.b.ebscohost.com.ezproxy.aut.ac.nz/eds/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?vid=4&sid=edca290d-1305-4408-bc98-241a4bd5fbc0%40pdc-v-sessmgr05
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YouTube Science Communication Syllabus
Biology / EvoS 283Q
2019 Summer Session 1
Meeting Times:
Mondays & Thursdays 10:00 – 12:00 PM
(plus 1 Wednesday 5/29 and one Friday 6/28)
List of Meeting Dates:
We meet 11 times in total :
May 29, 30
June 3, 6, 10, 13, 17, 20, 27, 28
All meetings are virtual and take place via video chat.
All meetings are required.
Instructor:
Maximus Thaler ([email protected])
Office hours by appointment – I am available for private video chats most times.
Course Description:
This is a 4 credit course about making evolutionarily themed educational Youtube videos, and about the 4 billion year history of life on our planet. The best way to learn is to teach, and so in this class every student becomes an instructor. Our subject of study is the epic history of the tree of life, and you will learn this history by making 9 short videos. You are not expected to know anything about video making, or about life’s phylogenetic history at the start of this class, but you are expected to work hard and demonstrate improvement by the end. The best videos in the class will be posted on the course youtube channel.
Course work consists of watching youtube videos made by professional science communicators, making videos of your own, and critiquing the videos of your peers. The majority of your grade is based on peer evaluation. The class is challenging, and requires significant time commitment. Consistent effort will be noticed and rewarded. By the end of the class you will walk away with a deeper understanding of the grand history of life and your place on life’s tree, as well as with foundational skills in video production and editing – a highly sought-after skillset in today’s job market.
Video course description can be found at: https://tinyurl.com/BUyoutubeclass.
Required Resources:
A computer built in 2015 or newer, with functioning webcam.
An optical mouse.
A smart phone, or higher quality digital camera.
A high speed internet connection (at least 10 mbps)
Zoom, Google Chrome & Google Hangouts.
Adobe Premier Pro.
A one month subscription for $29.99 is available at http://www.adobe.com/
Your computer will need significant processing power to run this software. Contact me if you are concerned your machine is not equipped.
Optional but Recommended Resources:
Tripod.
Microphone.
External hard drive.
OBS screen and webcam recorder.
Adobe Photoshop, After Effects, & Audition
A one month subscription to the full Adobe CC is available for $74.99 at http://www.adobe.com/
Class Format:
This course takes place completely online. Twice a week, on Mondays and Thursdays from 10:00 – 12:00 PM, we will virtually gather via Zoom to review each other’s videos Prior to each meeting you will receive an email with the URL video chat room.
Each meeting we will watch each other’s videos and then grade and critique them. A key component of the class is peer review. You are expected to think critically about your classmates’ videos and offer constructive criticism. The best way to get better at a new skill is to practice, and to listen openly to feedback from others about where you can improve.
Homework after each class is to watch assigned educational videos, and then to make a video of your own which responds to or summarizes the videos assigned. Course material will become more difficult as the course progresses, to keep pace with your expanding skillset.
4 credit online summer courses require 35 hours of work per week. Treat this class like a full-time job. We meet as a class for 4 hours a week, meaning you are expected to devote 31 hours a week to homework. This amounts to approximately 15 hours per video you make.
Throughout the course, in addition to the assigned videos, I will post other educational content or tutorials on making video. Watching these videos is required – they will be your primary source of information on how to do your video assignments. The videos I post will be made by myself and other professional science communicators. I am available for private sessions for help with video editing.
Course Schedule:
Wednesday May 29: Introductions. HW: What is life? vlog
Thursday May 30: Peer review What is life? vlogs. HW: Plant ID video
Monday June 3: Peer review Plant ID videos. HW: Fungus ID video
Thursday June 6: Peer Review Fungus ID videos. HW: Tinbergen’s 4 questions video
Monday June 10: Peer review Tinbergen’s 4 questions videos. HW: Origin of Life video
Thursday June 13: Peer review Origin of Life videos. HW: History of Life video
Monday June 17: Peer review History of Life videos. HW Symbiosis video
Thursday June 20: Peer review Symbiosis videos. HW: Final Video Proposal
Monday June 24: Peer review final video proposals. HW: Final Video
Thursday June 27: Peer review final videos. HW: Course review video
Friday June 28: Reflections and Conclusions
Evaluation:
Your grade is based out of 130 points. To keep things simple, any 1 point that you receive on assignments will be exactly equal to 1 point on your final grade.
Points are rewarded for completing the following tasks:
A) Attendance: 11 points
This class meets 11 times during summer session I. Each time you virtually attend a seminar you will receive 1 point.
Log in on time! The fact that the course is online does not remove the punctuality norms of a standard university class.
Missed broadcasts: If you have a legitimate reason for missing a seminar, you must contact me before class and arrange how to make it up.
B) Watching Educational Youtube Videos: 11 points
Throughout the course, I will be posting videos from a variety of science youtubers. I will also be posting tutorials I have made about how to complete specific assignments. You are required to watch all of these videos. Think of this as your textbook for the class.
There is much more excellent content on youtube that I could ever provide you links to. You are strongly encouraged to explore on your own. Watching many videos, from many genera and styles, is one of the best ways to improve your content and develop a unique video voice. You are also required to watch the videos your classmates make.
At the end of the class you will be asked to submit a word document enumerating a list of all the videos you watched during summer session 1. Here is a video tutorial about how to generate a list of watched videos from your youtube history.
Points will be rewarded based on the number of videos you watch. You will be rewarded between 1 and 11 points for this video list assignment. The more videos you watch, the higher this portion of your grade will be. If there are videos in your history you would prefer I do not know you have watched, simply remove them from the list before submitting it.
This is not meant to be tricky or invasive. I won’t be closely scrutinizing your watching decisions closely – I’m just going to skim the list at the end of the semester to make sure that you engaged with the content of the class.
C) Educational Videos: 72 points
You will be submitting 9 videos this semester, 7 of which will be graded by your peers. A video is due each lecture. Each peer reviewed video is worth 9 points, except your final video which is worth 18. Your final grade for each video will be the average of the grades your peers assign.
You will be provided with much more information in the coming days about what is expected from these videos. For now, here is an abbreviated rubric to give you a sense of how your videos will be evaluated.
Video grading rubric:
Your videos will be graded on a 9 point scale. Grades are based on the following qualities:
Clarity(1-3 points): Your communication should be clear and accurate. Use simple language. Focus on brevity. A video in this class should not be longer than 4 minutes unless absolutely necessary. Your communication should be quick, with no time wasted. Videos which are longer are usually boring. Make sure you have an explicitly stated focus. Your video should have an overall thesis, and every second of the video should be in service to that thesis.
Creativity(1-3 points): Your video should have aesthetic quality, and use novel techniques to keep the viewers’ attention. Use animations, props, and other secondary visual cues to make your point twice, once with words, once with visuals. Unusual titling, effective animation, illustrations, novel props, and innovative cinematography are some of the many ways to make your video unique.
Technical skill(1-3 points): Your videos should utilize basic editing and cinematography techniques to ensure your content is tight and easy to watch. Cuts should be clean, with no pauses in between shots. Speakers should be framed using the rule of thirds. Titles and other post production content should be well timed.
Descriptions of videos receiving various grades:
9: A video which receives the full 9 points will be promoted and published on the class youtube channel. A 9 point video is short, accurate, and has a clear thesis. The editing is clean, and it uses creative visual methods to reinforce the points made by the narrator. The video has an engaging thumbnail and title.
8: A 8 point video is accurate and clear, but may be slightly too long. The editing is clean, and efficient, but not necessarily innovative. Narration is reinforced by secondary visual cues effectively, but minimally. The video has an engaging thumbnail and title.
6: A 6 point video is mostly accurate and fairly easy to follow, but there may be small factual errors or ambiguities. Editing is clean, but could be better reinforced by more elaborate secondary visual cues. The video could be improved if it were shortened.
4: A 4 point video gets the job done, but there may be factual errors which undermine it. Or, while the details of the video may be accurate, it may be rather simple, and not explain very much. The video may lack a clear thesis or a sense of focus. Editing could be tightened, and the narration could be significantly improved by secondary visual cues.
3: A 3 point video needs improvement. It has factual errors and does not synthesize the subject into a cohesive story. If the video has a thesis, or much of the video is tangential and does not argue the thesis well. The pace of the video is slow, with little done during editing to hold the viewers’ attention.
0: A 0 point video is incomplete or never uploaded.
E) Effort and Improvement: 36 points
A critical note about grades: Grades do not represent your worth as a human being.
Grades exist for institutional reasons, not human reasons. Grades exist so that institutions can communicate about their educational caliber. Grades do not reflect how much you know, they reflect how well you were able to adapt your scholastic efforts to the university system.
I do not appreciate student concerns about low grades. I think worrying about your grade misses the point. Grades are there motivate you, not to measure you. If you receive a low grade, interpret the grade as a message to try harder, not a message that you are inadequate in some way. This point bears repeating: Grades in this class are a motivational tool, not a measurement.
The 36 points dedicated to effort and improvement are there to make the motivational purpose of grades explicit. These are points I will award to you at the end of the semester holistically, based on how hard you tried, and how much your videos improved over the course of the semester. In grading this section, I will pay particular attention to your first and last videos as an indication of your passion for the course material and your improvement over time.
I don’t care if your grades are high or low. I care that you are learning, and that you can do something at the end of this class that you could not do at the beginning. 36 points is the difference between a C and an A. As long as you demonstrate to me that you are trying your best, and that you are learning, then you will receive most of these 36 points.
So do not be concerned about low grades. The grading structure is built so that any student who is working hard will do well. If you do not work hard, you will not do well, and if you try your best, your final grade will reflect it. It’s really that simple.
Grade Summary:
11 (Attendance) + 11 (Video Watch History) + 72 (Videos) + 36 (Effort) = 130 points
A+ 126-130, A 121-125, A- 116-120, B+ 111-115, B 106-110, B- 101-105, C+ 96-100, C 91-95 C- 86-90, D+ 81-85
A note on writing:
The deliverables of this class come in video form, but this means that your writing actually needs to be of higher quality. The fact that you will be speaking your words doesn’t let you off the hook, it constrains what kind of things you can write so that they are clear and easily vocalizable. Script writing is hard. I recommend that you read everything aloud that you write, to make sure it sounds good. I am available for extra help on script writing by appointment.
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THE WWE'S GLASS CEILING IS JUST A FOOTNOTE FOR RENEE YOUNG
She's the first female color commentator in the history of the company. But don't expect Young to list "trailblazer" on her IG anytime soon. She has a bigger mission—to become the greatest to ever put on a headset.
After three grueling hours of fulfilling her role as WWE’s first ever female color commentator on Monday Night Raw’s live broadcast each week, there’s a good chance Renee Youngis going to have to sneak away to the restroom when it’s all over. The enormity of breaking one of professional wrestling’s thickest glass ceilings doesn’t faze her. It’s the smaller things, like not getting a chance to discreetly escape to the lavatory from the announce team’s perch adjacent to WWE’s massive LED stage that, she says, will take some getting used to.“It was one of the things I was legit the most stressed out about doing commentary,” she reveals. “‘But when do I pee?!’ But I feel like I’ve overcome it.”
Young says that since taking over the third chair on Monday Night Raw from Jonathan Coachman, she’s begun to limit her liquid intake throughout the day. She doesn’t really have all that much time to sip coffee anyway, as her new role requires hours of pre-show preparation and research. In addition to a mandatory production meeting where on-screen talent is briefed on storylines, scripts and talking points, Young takes the initiative to chat with the wrestlers one-on-one, getting a sense of who they are, what’s going on in their real lives and where they see their characters going that week. She also scours social media for any interactions between wrestlers or any trending pop culture stories she can reference.
It’s this kind of work ethic, and an ability to make adjustments on the fly, that has helped Young do something no other female broadcaster has ever accomplished in the 66-year history of WWE: co-piloting the company’s flagship broadcast. To some, that makes Young a trailblazer, but she downplays that label with her trademark self-deprecating, cheery sense of humor. “I’m not going to put it in my Instagram headline: ‘Renee Young, trailblazer.’ I do feel the responsibility of it, but it’s also a responsibility I asked for.”
Renee Young, born Renee Jane Paquette in Toronto, Canada, took one of the more circuitous routes imaginable to get to WWE. She grew up in a show business household; her father was a concert promoter and her mother a bookkeeper. When she was 10, Young was encouraged by a client of her mother’s to try her hand at modeling. “I didn’t even know what that meant,” she recalls. “I was like, ‘Sure, it sounds great.’ I would go meet with different talent agencies and different modeling agencies.”
In addition to modeling, however, Young had a penchant for making people laugh. When her parents divorced, Young found that a well-placed joke could defuse the roiling tension of a divided home. “Kind of taking away that spotlight and the awkwardness of the things that were happening,” she says. “Once I realized that’s something that worked for me, I loved nothing more.” That need to be irreverent would manifest itself at school, too. “I was getting kicked out of class regularly,” she says. “I wasn’t a bad kid. I was just loud. Getting kicked out and still trying to make people laugh in the hallway. I was always in kind of a little bit of a situation. I didn’t know when to shut up. Shocker.”
When she was 16, while bouncing around the modeling world, Young was handed a small pamphlet for the Second City improv training center. She would keep it in her bedroom drawer for years as a reminder of who she truly wanted to be. Finally, when she graduated high school in 2003, she asked her father for the $250 necessary to register for her first improv class.
Improv was her passion, and she fully embraced her time at Second City, hoping to transition to a career as a comedic actress. After a brief spell in Los Angeles when she was 19, she came back to Toronto to work in music videos and commercials before settling on a career hosting on Canada’s The Score sports network in 2009. There, she began fronting a wrestling talk show called Right After Wrestling. (The show aired directly after Monday Night Raw in Canada.) That got the attention of WWE, who brought her in for an audition and eventually hired her to conduct backstage interviews with the wrestlers.
WWE offered Young her biggest platform ever, as well as a very strict set of guidelines about what to say and how to say it. Many of the interactions audiences see on Monday Night Raw and SmackDown Live are heavily scripted by a team of writers. The performers are asked to get as close to reciting the lines verbatim as they can for their backstage interviews, in-ring promo segments and pre-taped vignettes. Before most interviews, Young would have to preface the exchange with, “Please welcome my guest at this time”—a catchphrase that’s become fodder for jokes within online wrestling fandom.
Despite her early struggles with the tried-and-true WWE formula, Young quickly found allies to help her push forward. Former announcer, and current mouthpiece for Brock Lesnar, Paul Heyman was an early supporter of Young. He helped her ease into what can be an overwhelming, esoteric world of wrestling jargon, high pressure and unceasing travel. “He’s had my back from the get-go,” Young says. “He did not need to do that. For whatever reason, he and I have always been close when it comes to talking about being better and wanting to be the best.”
Before her debut as an analyst on Monday Night Raw, Young hunkered down in the stands of the empty arena, where Heyman found her to give his sage counsel. “He just kind of gave me advice on how to be a little more succinct, how to create those little punchlines,” she remembers. “You’ve gotta think about what this is going to sound like in a video package. Make sure you’re saying their name instead of he or she. Just little nuggets like that that you might forget. And I do forget. Sometimes, I might be out there and catch myself saying, ‘Oh, he just speared him’ instead of ‘Roman Reigns just speared Braun Strowman.’”
For the former class clown, it’s not always easy to color inside the rigid lines of WWE’s corporate universe. “Prior to working for WWE, I was always in control of my own material [at The Score].” The commentary role on Raw allows for more off-the-cuff banter for Young, play-by-play announcer Michael Cole and color commentator Corey Graves. “I’ve been here for six years, but until now, I haven’t had many opportunities to flex that [improv] muscle. I’m trying to get back into that mode.”
In her six years with WWE, Young has done pretty much all there is to do besides actually work a wrestling match. She’s worked segments on Raw and SmackDown. She’s hosted an intimate, almost Oprah-style interview show on the WWE Network streaming service called Unfiltered. She’s co-hosted the SmackDown aftershow Talking Smack with former WWE champion Daniel Bryan, and she’s helmed the pre-shows leading up to WWE pay-per-view events.
Perhaps the strangest detour in Young’s career was a brief, season-long stint on the E! network reality series Total Divas, a series that follows WWE female talent like Nikki and Brie Bella, Natalya, Naomi Paige, and Lana through their day-to-day lives. Total Divas is not all that different from other E! reality franchises like Keeping Up with the Kardashians, with its various mundane real-life dramas set against the backdrop of the glamour of the entertainment industry. One of the main storylines of the show was the question of whether or not John Cena would marry Nikki Bella. The particulars of their coupling and the eventual dissolution of that couple was all fodder for the cameras.
As helpful as the show was for her personal profile, Young departed Total Divas after completing work on Season 7. “I think the hardest part for me, for doing Total Divas, was having my relationship be on display,” she says with a sigh.
Her husband, Jonathan Good, also known as Dean Ambrose, is intensely private, according to those who know him—a shy, reserved, sensitive man who only opens up once you’ve made yourself worthy of his trust. “It’s always a compliment when John has a conversation with me,” says Natalya Neidhart, Total Divas cast member and one of Young’s closest friends on the WWE roster. “He doesn’t talk to that many people, so when he talks to me, I’m so flattered.” Young is the opposite that attracted, still that same young person always trying to make others laugh with a one-liner. “[Renee] didn’t need someone who was going to compete with her, in the sense of being bubbly and charismatic. She needed someone who complemented her, and John is just so quiet. He very rarely lets people in.” That dynamic might not have been ideal for reality TV.
“I think [our relationship] was not something we wanted to pull the curtain back on,” Young says. “That made me uncomfortable as well, because the whole time I’m just saying he’s crazy and how do I deal with this crazy person [for story purposes], which is really not our dynamic. That was really odd to navigate as we were doing it.”
Until 2015, the heightened reality of Total Divas was one, if not the only, path to success for WWE’s women. Women’s wrestling simply wasn’t a major attraction on WWE TV until Stephanie McMahon debuted highly touted prospects Sasha Banks, Charlotte Flair and Becky Lynch to usher in the “Women's Revolution” campaign that gave female performers more to do than just pose for the camera and smile. But Young is a part of a class of performers who have become bona fide stars without that platform. Though she’s never competed in a wrestling match (the closest she’s gotten is a brief feud where she and Ambrose traded insults with The Miz and his wife, Maryse), Young has amassed a social media following on par with former world champions like Bayley and Alexa Bliss. “Renee is going to be a superstar at this,” says Michael Cole, who, in addition to being her cohort on Raw’s announce team, is also the person who oversees every announcer in WWE.
“When all is said and done, Renee is going to go down as one of the great analysts that we’ve ever had, because you have to stand out in this business,” Cole says. “Renee will stand out because she’s offering something that’s never been done before. Forget the fact that she’s a woman. Put that aside. That’s become a footnote now. She’s different because never before have we had in the wrestling business what Renee offers to the announce booth. It’s that innate ability to talk to people, to be able to dig underneath the surface and find out what makes these superstars tick.”
Her personality and charisma shined even if her on-screen character is mostly just a slightly toned-down version of the real Renee. “I just have to be a little bit more PG when I’m on a live microphone,” she says. The Evolution pay-per-view is something of a culmination of everything Young has been striving for since she joined the wrestling world. “When I was told I was going to be doing it, I was floored,” she says. “I feel like I can open up a door for other women, show other women and girls different paths to go down.”
Young has done her research into other women who’ve made it into the sports commentary world. She’s especially a fan of ESPN NBA analyst Doris Burke, another supreme talent who has a similarly rabid online following. “One of the things I took away [from my research] is that everyone is used to older white men doing commentary and anything that’s not has been deemed wrong. It’s not [wrong]. It’s just trying to change what people are used to hearing.”
Eventually, audiences will get used to Renee Young’s voice on commentary, if they haven’t already. In addition to her weekly job on Raw and the spot on Evolution, she’ll be calling WrestleMania in April. While Raw is three hours and the average pay-per-view is around four, WrestleMania tops out at a whopping seven hours from start to finish. When will Renee get to go to the bathroom then? “If that’s the biggest of Renee’s worries, she has nothing to be concerned about,” Cole says.
“I am not ready for that yet. I don’t think my bladder is quite prepared,” Young says with a chuckle. “We don’t travel with port-a-potties up there.” For every arena, Young has devised a route to the restroom, just in case. It’s absurd that we keep coming back to the issue, but as Young puts it, “This is real life” and she’s not one to hold back on what’s going on in her own head. “She’s relatable because she’s not perfect,” Neidhart says. In that life, as it is in her journey to relieve herself, Young’s mantra is simple: “You gotta navigate your path.”
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O'Toole concedes some Conservative MPs have caused 'confusion' over vaccines
Conservative Leader Erin O'Toole said today he expects his party's MPs to promote vaccines and leave the talk about their efficacy to the health experts — a comment that comes after a Conservative caucus member made some eyebrow-raising comments about COVID-19 shots over the weekend.
O'Toole and his team have been grappling with questions about vaccines for months as some of his party's MPs and senators have spoken out against mandatory shots or have avoided getting vaccinated altogether.
O'Toole has tried to walk a fine line — telling Canadians he supports the vaccination campaign while opposing mandatory vaccination rules for public servants and the travelling public.
O'Toole also has said his party will challenge a House of Commons Board of Internal Economy policy that requires all MPs attending Parliament in person to be vaccinated — but has refused to say how many Conservative caucus members are fully vaccinated.
A group of Conservative parliamentarians recently formed what they call a "civil liberties" working group to advocate for the unvaccinated. While promoting the group's work during an appearance on CTV, Conservative MP Marilyn Gladu suggested that polio — a disease largely eradicated in Canada through vaccinations — posed more of a threat than COVID-19.
"In terms of the risk, people that got polio, many of them died and many of them were crippled, and that is not the same frequency of risk that we see with COVID-19," she said in an interview on the network's Question Period program.
"I'm just receiving the information from medical experts that talk about the relative risk. I'm not a doctor myself." Between 1949 and 1954, 11,000 people in Canada incurred some degree of paralysis and 500 people died due to polio. More than 29,000 Canadians have died so far of COVID-19 since the onset of this health crisis in early 2020.
Gladu also said"multiple sources of data" must be reviewed to determine if vaccine mandates actually work to curb the spread of the virus.
"People are being forced to disclose and the question is, what is next?" she said. In an interview with CBC's Power & Politics, Gladu said vaccine mandates "infringe on people's rights" and that politicians "need to hear from all sides," including those who choose to go unvaccinated.
Asked about Gladu's comparison of COVID-19 to polio, O'Toole said Conservatives "take a professional approach to discussions on the safety of vaccines."
"That was not the case yesterday with Ms. Gladu. There is a big difference between the work you do as an MP for your constituents and questions involving reasonable accommodations and the matter of efficacy of vaccines."
With more than five million eligible Canadians still choosing to avoid vaccination, O'Toole said, politicians should be focused on helping the hesitant find answers to legitimate questions.
"Ms. Gladu's interview yesterday added more questions and I do not think that is helpful," he said. Gladu is not the first Conservative MP to speak out about vaccine policy.
Most health experts say vaccine coverage in this younger cohort will help Canada finally attain some form of herd immunity against the virus.
Tory MP Dean Allison, who represents the Ontario riding of Niagara West, has invited speakers challenging the widespread use of COVID-19 vaccines onto a show he broadcasts online.
"It's a great example of why members of Parliament, of all stripes, should let the professionals, the public health officials, the physicians, answer questions about the efficacy of vaccines or provincial programs on vaccines," O'Toole said when asked about the actions of these MPs.
O'Toole dodged questions about whether these MPs should be booted from caucus for questioning the advice of public health officials, saying caucus membership is not a choice for the leader alone.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau pounced on the Conservatives' disunity on vaccines ahead of a Liberal caucus meeting today. He said Conservative squabbling over vaccines threatens the country's pandemic recovery.
"Even as Canadians are moving forward, even as Canadians are continuing to get vaccinated at record rates, the Conservatives are really shifting backwards."
He said he would not tolerate Liberal MPs examining the Commons vaccine mandate. "I cannot imagine any of you putting up your hand and saying, 'Well, I deserve special treatment because I'm an MP.'
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Megatron’s Weed Dispensary: An Awful Fanfic I am Morally Obligated to Write
Because I noticed my grades weren’t good enough to get into my major, I issued myself an ultimatum: For every percent I get less than 80 for every class by the end of the school year, I will write one thousand words of terrible fanfiction over the summer, as suggested by random people online. You can send me your own unwritable prompts if you want, but bear in mind that the more requests I get, the shorter the stories, because I have 8000 words to get through all of them. (Total combined word count: 1889)
As promised:
Just as the first brittle rays of light shone over the horizon, the alarm went off. Megatron hauled himself out of the chair he shut down in last night while dealing with tax forms for too long. Pouring himself a cube of energon, Megatron made his way downstairs to the storefront. His past self would probably hate him. Shrieking like a predacon and promising to tear the entire planet apart just so everyone could suffer as he had, Megatron knew it was his own weakness and incompetence had led to their defeat, and was prepared for death. The Autobots, in all their soft and cowardly ways, had let them live in their new society, making sure he was protected from anyone seeking vengeance for the war, albeit with a few restrictions. Some mercy. He would prefer to be rotting in prison, exiled to some tiny asteroid, publicly executed, or even be forced to become a gladiator again. Instead, the great leader of the Decepticons is reduced to managing microeconomics in a tiny narcotics shop surrounded by too many gawking idiots too frightened to enter his shop and actually buy something.
The few Decepticons that had survived the last battle were also doing about as well as he did. Not destitute, but not allowed any amount of power, which he supposed they deserved. Soundwave works as a building electrician, granted the privilege of internal com reactivation for good behavior. Astrotrain joined one of the newly formed shipping companies. Knock Out became a broadcast host, getting all the attention he wants at the expense of reading out prewritten propaganda drivel. At least they weren't nearly as badly off as Starscream, who was last seen going to Earth to become a stripper or something and never spoke to them again. In the early days of their integration with society, the Decepticons constantly planned secret meetings and vandalized government property, but now, it had seemed that everyone got caught up in their mundane routines and completely forgot about their past lives.
Speaking of which, a seeker who had been nervously pacing through the crowd finally worked up enough courage to enter the shop. What was his name again? Nacelle. A low ranking grunt soldier who managed to survive the war by being overlooked. Now that the best fliers were dead, he finally had a chance to shine as a professional racer. Looking proudly down upon the Decepticon logo the flyer chose to keep, Megatron said, "Still have the mark? Good. What are you here for?" Nacelle cleared his throat in a long burst of static. "It's my fault. We had a chance and I blew it for all of you. I thought I could weave through without getting stuck and-" "What happened happened. It's all ancient history now. Don't let it bother you." The last battle was fought in a series of deep tunnels below Cybertron. The cramped spaces were barely enough to stand in, let alone transform and fly. There was nothing a seeker jet like him could do. "Hey. Um… Boss. I'm sorry, okay? If I wasn't-" "You could have gone to the big pharmacy, but you came here, and my life has gone to slag so hard that this action matters. Ha! You did good."
Nacelle started nervously chuckling, so Megatron had to throw his head back and guffaw as hard as he could in order to get the nervous flyer to laugh with him. Now significantly more cheered up, he said, "Hey! Because I got hurt in my last race, I just got my Level 3 insurance voucher approved! No more weak stuff for me." Nacelle peered greedily into the display cases. "I'll have two centagrams of crystal tetrathyllead, a bottle of uravorite-infused high grade, two octane-cookies, half a kilo-" "You idiot. Don't get yourself killed. You'd be better off following the doctor's orders. I recommend 85 kilograms of the good anticorrosives, not the diluted trash they pipe into you in hospitals, taken over the next six weeks. Pick the brand yourself."
Torn between extreme curiosity towards hard drugs and wanting to obey his leader, Nacelle anxiously shuffled around and took so long to decide on a bottle of Velocitron-synthesized DCI-4A that Megatron started to pity him. "You know what, I'll throw in one of these for free." He took out a case from under a desk and opened it to reveal tiny jars of even tinier gems ranging from ice blue to deep green. "A racer like you should know what these are." Nacelle was shaken from his panicky mood the instant he laid eyes on the little jewels. "Wow! Steamlights! I didn't know there were any of them left in the city! Most of us racers got scared off using them after Fireflight popped two in a row and crashed into the ground at Mach 3." Megatron carefully tweezed out one of the smaller steamlights, a tiny blue cylinder barely bigger than a basketball and dropped it in a vial. "This is amazing. But…wow. These things are super intense." Handing the vial to Nacelle, Megatron replied, "That's fine. If you can't deal with the boost and your turbines detonate midair, consider it the price of failing me in the tunnels. Don't use it until you have fully recovered." His plan of rebuilding Cybertronian society may have died valiantly, but Megatron was still going to look after his troops the best he could.
Megatron's good mood was almost immediately ruined by his next customer. Out of all the mecha to come through the doors, it had to be the Autobot poster boy himself, Ultra Magnus. Glitch. "Hello! I've been making rounds, checking up on the other Decepticons. I really am glad that you are all doing so well. It is a bit suspicious for a mech of my standing to be here, but here I am." After the war, Ultra Magnus, the ever-faithful soldier, had much less to do and had let himself go a little bit. His protoform increased in non-subspacable mass enough that gaps appeared in his armor, but not nearly enough to warrant Megatron's spark crushing insults.
"You morbidly obese son of a Yugo. The only reason I let you in my shop is to marvel at the medical miracle of your sustained existence." Ultra Magnus cracked a sickeningly genuine smile and said, "I'm sorry. I didn't catch what you were saying." The store made so much money off valuable goods that it could stay running from a single sale per day, so Megatron legitimately didn’t care about losing a potential customer. "I'll say it again in a way your idiot prototype cyberbrain can understand. You're a chunk and I hate you." Ultra Magnus was mildly shocked. "Well! I didn't expect you to overcome our mutual grievances this soon, so whatever you say is entirely forgivable. Also I met Shockwave today, and I'm glad to say he was very courteous. Do you want to know how he's doing?" "I can ask him myself. Go eat Optimus Prime's tailpipe. Maybe that's why you're so slagging fat."
"Don't act as though you are different from me." For a second, Megatron thought they were actually about to start fighting right there, then Ultra Magnus winked. "To be fully honest, being here to check on you gives me an excuse to gather a few treats for myself without being caught. You won't judge, right? I'll take half a kilo of hypervisco and three bottles of the ferroin Engex. Ooh. Baltic amber oil from Earth. I'll have fifteen liters of that too, thanks." Deciding that Ultra Magnus wasn't worth the effort to continue yelling at, Megatron measured out the orders and accepted the credits in silence.
Megatron briefly entertained the idea of contaminating all of his product with acid crystals and astatine, but decided against it. He might kill or sicken the slagger before he got caught, and then he'd spend a few centuries in prison, then Prime would argue to put him through another course of rehabilitation, then he'd be stuck in another dead end job under much higher supervision. Like it or not, this Primus-damned stall was all he had, and it mattered greatly to Megatron that he got to be his own boss, make his own decisions, and yell at as many customers as he wanted.
After Ultra Magnus left, the crowd outside thinned. It was getting dark. Nearly time to close. Megatron debated shutting the shop early before deciding to stay open in case a few late night partiers wanted to pick up something fun. Megatron was shaken from his daydream about what his legal consequences would be if he ate forty kilos of steamlights and went on a uncontrollable nitro-fuelled rampage when a minibot burst through the doors, vaulted over the counter, and grabbed a case containing sealed vials of concentrated Berserker Button. As bad as it was for the mighty Megatron to be robbed by a random mech, at least this meant he had something to do.
Leaping from behind the counter to the door in two massive steps, barely remembering to trigger the hard light door shield, Megatron unsheathed the energon blade from his wrist and turned to pursue the target. A pathetic weapon compared to his massive fusion cannon, but he was able to get it installed as a necessary tool of his profession. After all, it's not as if he was lying. With his massive stride compared the minibot's short steps, the thief barely made it one block before Megatron knocked him to the ground with a flying kick, a bit of overkill for such a tiny opponent. The bot pulled out a beam pistol. Caught up in the thrill of the chase, Megatron nearly decapitated the little bot out of instinct. The blade stabbed into the ground a single meter away from his neck. Interrupted by a regular police patrol, Megatron was more than happy to surrender the thief to them. The little bot had been so terrified the random drugstore he robbed was staffed by none other than Megatron himself that he confessed everything. The Berserker Button was confiscated as evidence, and Megatron was allowed to return home to await further legal procedures the next morning.
Even after the leisurely walk back, his coolant lines still pumped hard, preparing for a death battle that will never happen. Megatron laid face down on the ground for a few minutes, waiting for the feeling to pass. Able to think clearly, Megatron figured that the legal procedures tomorrow would be formality more than anything else, considering the overwhelming evidence in his favor. He'd likely get reimbursed for the Berserker Button, then things would go back to normal. The case was at most going to take three days, barring some stupid Autobot-Decepticon rivalry showing up. Looking back, this was probably not the best day to spew horrible insults at one of the most influential figures of society. Either way, there was nothing Megatron could do about it. He felt a pang of guilt. In the past, he and his army would have bulldozed anyone who dared inconvenience him, and now he was acting like a regular civilian. Just in a day in the life of an ordinary mech. At this point, what did the last six million years mean to him or anyone else?
#this is actually fanfiction#transformers#megatron#grades#study motivation#drugs#nacelle#ultra magnus#megatron is a literal ex-con#did you catch the redline reference
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Coming Home
(AO3 Link)
NSFW Warning!
ChikaYo smut
disclaimer: Yo is bi
It’s remarkable how much things can stay the same, even after years have passed.
Yo looks out of the window as she drives her pickup truck down the lazy roads of Uchiura. It’s like a page out of a history book; a lazy coastal town forgotten by the passage of time, forever trapped in an idyllic limbo. Even over the rumble of the engine, Yo can hear the nostalgic gurgle of the waves rushing up onto shore, ebbing and flowing in a mesmerizing pattern. She can smell the salt and slight sweetness in the air, a blend of the scents of mikan groves further uphill and the salty brine from the ocean blue. It’s the same squat houses lining the street, the same traditional shopfronts, maybe a little more worn and battered but still holding out.
Still, as she looks, she notices that inevitably civilization has crept its way into the little town. A few of the older stores have been replaced by newer stores, some of them chain stores from Numazu. The town must’ve refurbished some of the public facilities as well - she spots rows of benches, sometimes, and that old playground they always used to go to looks a little cleaner than before.
Spotting a familiar driveway, Yo coaxes the truck to a gentle stop, parking it in front of a large, traditionally constructed building. The front looks the same, at least, Yo muses, poking her head out of the window to look around. The dog houses seems to have multiplied even more, she notes, and the old flowers in the gardens swapped out for newer bushes. But otherwise everything looks like not a day has passed since Yo's last been here.
Yo tries to make an effort to visit, but work just piles up, and adulting is harder than she expected.
“Ah— Shiitake, no! You’re gonna leave drool all over my— Bad girl! Let go!”
Yo's ears perk up at the sound of a certain voice, burned into her memory since forever. Yo doesn’t think she could forget that voice even if she tried. A woman stumbles out of the front of the Tochiman inn, dragging along a large shaggy dog which has latched itself onto her leg. She struggles for a moment, before she looks up and notices Yo waiting.
“Yo, Yo!” She waves.
Yo rolls her eyes. “Are you ever going to stop using that line?” She asks, getting out of the truck and shutting the door behind her. Shiitake’s eyes seem to light up as Yo approaches, detaching itself from Chika and pouncing at Yo. “Whoa, girl! Down!”
Chika grins, shaking her head as she steps up to give Yo a hug. “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it; that’s the Takami family way. Well, mostly my way, but Takami family also!”
“I guess some things never change,” Yo says wryly, returning Chika’s hug after administering satisfactory belly rubs to Shiitake. She holds the hug for a moment, and Chika continues the hug for maybe a second longer than is necessary before she pulls away, giving Yo a brilliant smile, her eyes gleaming happily. “How are you doing, Chika? You look… different.”
Chika’s grown her hair out; she looks almost like Shima, but she still keeps part of her hair braided, and she still has a bit of an ahoge. Her figure has definitely filled out, though. While Yo's been busy working out and building up the physique of a professional athlete, Chika’s body has rounded out into a figure more fitting of a woman than a girl.
“Hey now, eyes up here, hotshot,” Chika says, and Yo's eyes shoot back up to Chika’s face, flustered by being caught. Her cheeks burn a little from embarrassment. “That a good different, then?”
“Yeah,” Yo nods. “Great different. Definitely.”
Chika smiles, satisfied. “Good.” She scans Yo up and down, noticeably brisker than Yo's appraisal. “You look good, too. You’ve been working out.”
Yo flexes an arm. She’s buffer than ever, but she’s mindful of her routine so she’s not grossly ripped like those workout junkies. She doesn’t skip leg day, for one. Chika titters, but pushes Yo's arm down. “Spare me the gun show, Yo. God knows Kanan does it enough already.”
Yo laughs, and with a pat on the butt sends Shiitake back into the house. As much as she wants to catch up with the doggo, she promised Chika she’d take her for a joyride on her truck, and there’s only room for two in the pickup.
“I need to hit her up sometime. We haven’t had a proper talk in a while,” Yo says, sighing.
“Mm… who do you keep contact with? I barely see you online in the chatroom anymore,” Chika asks, as she circles around the truck to get to the passenger side. She pulls the door open, and gets into the truck. “Ooh. Soft seats. Comfy.”
“It’s well loved,” Yo laughs, patting the seat on the driver side before getting into the truck as well. As she starts the engine back up, she thinks about Chika’s question. “Well, Yoshiko’s still crashing in my apartment, but I don’t go home really often because training. Uh… When I have time I try to track down Ruby too, she’s still working at that fashion agency I think.”
“Well, I know for a fact that Kanan has time tomorrow, you can totally go see her then,” Chika says. “Mari’s probably there, too.”
“Tempting, but…” Yo shakes her head ruefully. “I gotta head back today. I don’t really have the time.”
“Aw. That’s a shame.” Chika sighs. “So… Yoshiko’s still trying to make it as a writer?”
“Yeah. It’s slow going but I think she managed to get the attention of a publisher a while back,” Yo says. She checks the mirror, and drives the truck back out onto the street. “She might be moving out soon. She mentioned maybe going to live with her girlfriend, but she’s not sure yet.”
“Dang. Look at her, having a meaningful relationship.” Chika says, kicking back to enjoy the ride. She glances at Yo. “So, where are you planning to take me, exactly?”
Yo shrugs. “Remember that time Mari took us all for a road trip, before the school closed down? It’s kinda like that. I just wanted to see you, I guess.”
“Aww. I missed you too.” Chika smiles.
Yo glances at Chika as she says that, and breathes out. “I’ve just been so busy recently.”
“Work?”
“That and school.”
Chika nods her head slowly, and the interior of the truck lapses into a comfortable silence.
Yo is a professional swimmer, but on the side she’s also furthering her studies in marine engineering. Chika once said she was being overambitious, but back then Yo had reassured her that nothing was going to change.
The frame of the truck rattles as it goes over a speed bump, and the µ’s bobbleheads on the dashboard jiggle vigorously. The truck gradually pulls away from the main street and into the outskirts of town, where there are more trees and hilly swells than houses.
“Oh, I saw your last competition,” Chika mentions.
“Did you now?”
“Well, I try to catch them whenever they’re being broadcasted.” Chika says. She gives Yo a small smile. “I want to know what my favourite person in the world is up to, you know? Especially if she doesn’t come online to chat.”
Yo's cheeks flush. “I said I was busy.”
“It can’t be that hard to come online once in a while,” Chika pouts. “Is competitive swimming really that intense?”
“Well I—” Yo starts, before she hesitates, falling silent for a moment. Finally she only meekly says, “Sorry. I’ll try harder in the future.”
“It gets kind of lonely here, now that Riko’s left for that concert tour,” Chika says. “I’d appreciate a call now and then.”
“I’ll call,” Yo nods. “I promise. I came back, didn’t I?”
“After what - a year of radio silence?” Chika says. “For a solid six months the only things I’ve heard of you came indirectly through Yoshiko and Ruby. The last private message I’ve got from you was from last year.”
Yo swallows, her mouth feeling dry.
There’s a quiet accusation in Chika’s tone; not openly hostile, more an undertone of disappointment. And it’s entirely justified. Chika’s acting as friendly as ever, but Yo is sure that she’s hurt Chika by avoiding her these few months.
“There was a lot going on,” Yo says weakly.
“Like what?” Chika says, her carefully controlled voice betraying just a hint of emotion.
“I, uh,” Yo breathes out slowly, keeping her eye on the road. She doesn’t dare look at what Chika’s expression is like. “It’s…” She falls silent, her mouth feeling dry.
“Yo,” Chika interjects, sensing her hesitation. Her voice is firm, but when she speaks again she’s gentle and supportive. “If there’s something going on, you know you can tell me.”
Yo glances at Chika. It’s easy to forget that, with how ditzy Chika can act even after graduating from college and settling down to run the inn, she’s always had this knack for noticing when things were wrong ever since they were kids. Chika’s surprisingly observant and sensitive like that.
Chika’s eyes seem to bore into her own, and Yo finds herself incapable of avoiding her gaze.
“…Fine.” Yo looks around for somewhere to stop. She spots a lay-by along the road, overlooking the ocean and the outskirts of town, and eases the truck into it. “It’s… kind of a long story.”
“We have time,” Chika says.
Yo glances at the clock on the dashboard. “True,” she admits. She leans back, sitting comfortably in the seat.
“I broke up with my boyfriend.”
Chika breathes in sharply.
Yo's been dating him since she was in college, and she’s even talked about possibly proposing. Chika’s tone softens immediately. “Oh…”
As though sensing Chika’s worry, Yo quickly shakes her head.
“No, it wasn’t like, bad or anything. It was sort of a long time coming. Between work, study, and everything else I just… didn’t have enough time. He said he couldn’t bear to see me run myself ragged trying to make time for him, too. Plus he wants kids, and I’m just… not ready for that kind of commitment. And… well, there’s just lots of little things that built up over time.”
Yo closes her eyes, recalling the night when they had talked over a home cooked dinner. It was a calm and reasonable affair, wherein they laid everything on the table and talked extensively about whether or not it was going to work out. Time was just one of the issues they discussed. After the decision was made, her ex left her apartment amicably, bidding her good luck in all of her future endeavours.
Yo had smiled and wished him the same, but once the door was shut the facade broke down and she bawled her eyes out. It wasn’t until Yoshiko got back after midnight that she got any consolation at all. The morning after Yo made Yoshiko promise not to tell anyone else what happened, because she didn’t want anyone to worry.
“How long ago was this?” Chika asks, quietly interrupting Yo's account.
“A couple months. But things were going downhill a long time before that.” Yo breathes out, and gives Chika a wry smile. “I guess you were right, going for that degree at the same time as going pro was a pretty terrible idea.”
Chika shakes her head incredulously. “I wish you’d believed me when I told you that last year, instead of putting yourself through this gauntlet.”
“Sorry,” Yo says weakly. “And… sorry for only coming back when things get messy. You deserve better.”
“Hey, listen. I’m always here, okay? I’m a little sad you’re too busy to talk more, but…” Chika gives Yo a comforting smile, putting a hand on her shoulder. “If you need a shoulder to lean on, I’ll always be there for you.”
“Thanks, Chika,” Yo sniffs, reaching out and holding Chika’s hand. Chika gives Yo's hand a soft squeeze. Yo takes a shuddering breath, and asks quietly, “I… did I make a mistake? Should I have fought harder for it to work?”
Chika bites her lower lip, hesitating for a moment before answering. “I… can’t really say, Yo. I wasn’t there. But I think you made the best decision you could have. You talked it out calmly, and… your ex agreed, didn’t he? Sometimes relationships just aren’t meant to last. Even if it was a good one. Like— me and Riko, right?”
Yo nods slowly. Chika and Riko had briefly gotten together after they graduated high school, and had a whirlwind romance for the next few months. She remembered how happy the two of them were. But it eventually became obvious that, with Riko having to study out of town, the distance was straining their relationship.
“I… guess,” Yo says hesitantly. She glanced at Riko. “How… did you deal with that?”
“Well, we kinda had the thought that it wouldn’t work. And sure, I was really upset for a while but eventually I realized it was healthier to be friends with Riko. I feel like recognizing that the change is positive is very important,” Chika says, “like for me, once I stopped fretting over Riko and our relationship I got rid of a lot of stress. I think you need to remind yourself why you two broke up in the first place. It’s because you didn’t have enough time, right?”
“Yeah…” Yo nods.
“You love diving. And I know better than anyone that you’re practically born for sailing,” Chika says kindly. “When it comes down to it, if you really do love those things… I don’t think it’s a mistake to keep pursuing them.”
Yo sighs. “But doesn’t that make me selfish?”
“Your ex wants you to be happy, Yo. It’s why he agreed with the decision. Can you honestly say that you won’t be miserable if you couldn’t do either of those things?” Chika asks. Yo grimaces, but eventually shakes her head. “See? It’s not selfish to want to pursue your passions. It’s not wrong to want to be happy.”
“I mean, I’m not saying you can’t be sad. It’s natural to be sad,” Chika adds hastily. “But… I don’t really want to see you being like this, all miserable like. You look better with a smile.”
Yo's reservations finally crumble under Chika’s optimism, and she sighs in defeat, before turning to give Chika a small smile. “Yeah, I guess you’re right. I’m pretty fed up with being downtrodden.”
Chika breathes out in relief, and grins sunnily. “I’m glad,” she says, and Yo believes her. One thing that hasn’t changed about her. Chika emanates positivity, inspires hope and optimism. The grin is infectious and Yo can’t help but smile wider.
“So what do we do now?” Chika asks, and Yo smirks.
She slams a foot on the gas, and the pick-up jerks forward, causing Chika to squeak in surprise as she’s flattened against the back of her seat. The engine roars, and with a chassis-shaking growl, the truck screeches down the road, the wind whipping past, audible even through the windows.
“I don’t know,” Yo says, her voice buzzing from adrenaline. “But I wanna get outta here.”
Chika laughs breathlessly, recovering from the shock of the start. “Sounds good.” She rolls down the window, and her orange hair gets whipped back by the wind, fluttering behind her like a fiery trail. “Can this rust bucket go any faster?” Chika shouts over the rushing air.
“You bet,” Yo floors the accelerator and the truck hurtles forward. Chika’s laughing, the noise muted and drowned by the wind, and Yo feels the cobwebs surrounding her heart loosen a little.
* * * * *
A few hours later, Yo and Chika stagger out of the pick-up, giggling and leaning on each other. At some point in the road trip Chika decided it was a great idea to stop by a shop to buy booze. A few drinks later both women are pretty tipsy, and Yo determines it’s a little dangerous to drive when the road is swaying. Parking in a lot for a secluded beach, they barely manage to stumble down the steps leading up to the beachfront.
Yo takes a tarp she has in the trunk and throws it onto the sand to serve as a makeshift mat, and Chika falls forward, the fall cushioned slightly by the loose sand under the tarp. She laughs and gestures for Yo to join her.
“The sand’s still warm,” Chika says. The sand’s been baking in the sun for the whole day, and despite the fact that the sun’s now setting the grains have retained some of the heat. She turns over belly-up, then extends her arms, lying down spread-eagled on the tarp. “It’s like a hot bed. Come on!”
Yo rolls her eyes at her antics, but sits down next to Chika, setting the half-finished pack of Sapporo beer down in the sand. The sand is warm, and she grins, running a hand through the grains. “You’re right,” She says. “It’s comfy.”
“You know, this is almost like the beach we used to play on as kids,” Chika says, looking up at Yo. “Remember?”
Yo laughs. “How could I not? That’s my childhood,” she pauses to take a drink. “Our childhood,” She corrects herself. “Remember when Kanan thought she saw a dolphin off the coast and tried to swim to it? It took the two of us to stop her.”
“Oh yeah, the tide was wild that day. Even Kanan couldn’t have handled it,” Chika grins toothily. “Hard to believe Kanan’s practically a homebody now.”
“Can’t believe she actually married Mari,” Yo hums, leaning back so she’s more comfortable. She stares over at the golden horizon, and the flecks of white over the waves. “I thought for sure her parents would object.”
“It’s Mari. I’m not sure her parents can do anything about it.”
“True,” Yo concedes, “she’s always done what she wanted.” She smiles. “Well, at least they’re happy, right?”
Chika nods. “I heard Mari’s planning to take Kanan to the Bahamas.”
“Rich people,” Yo snorts. “Well, Kanan’d like that. There’s good diving to be had there.”
“Mm…” Chika nods ponderously.
There’s a lull in the conversation as they fall silent, listening to the crashing waves.
Yo's cheeks feel hot from the alcohol. The sea breeze playing across her face and the rumbling of the surf is like a lullaby, and she finds herself getting drowsy. The sun continues to set, most of the glowing orb dipping into the horizon and leaving the sky a lovely dark purple.
“Hey Yo,” Chika says suddenly.
Yo looks away from the sun. “Hm?”
“Sit in seiza,” Chika says. Yo tilts her head questioningly, but obliges, folding her legs beneath her to sit formally. To her surprise, Chika lays her head on Yo's lap, giving her a mischievous grin. “The sand’s not very comfortable,” Chika says, as though that explains everything.
Yo shakes her head incredulously. Chika’s always like this. She complains about Mari doing whatever she wants, but Chika does that too. Still, without really thinking about it she starts to run her fingers through Chika’s hair, petting her in slow, long strokes. It just seems like the right thing to do.
Chika’s hair is really nice. Yo's almost jealous, but having long hair would get in the way of her sports. Yo wonders if Chika uses any product. Maybe it’s just the hot springs in the inn. Her skin is really smooth, too.
“Are you feeling a little better now?” Chika asks softly. There’s a love and affection in her voice that stems from some twenty years of friendship, and Yo's heart flutters slightly.
“Yeah,” Yo murmurs. “Thanks, Chika.”
Chika closes her eyes, the corners of her lips tugging up in a satisfied smile. “I’m glad. I really don’t want to see you sad.”
Yo absentmindedly brushes Chika’s cheek with a thumb as she continues. “I don’t think you realize how important you are to me,” Chika confesses. “I was so worried.”
“I’m sorry,” Yo apologizes weakly, glancing down at Chika.
“Don’t apologize.” Chika murmurs. “You’re here now, and that’s what matters.”
Yo's heart flutters again. Maybe it’s the sunset, tinting everything rosy gold. Maybe it’s the babbling waves putting her mind at ease, and reminding her of better times. Maybe it’s the realization that in the years they’ve lived apart, Chika has really gotten beautiful. Maybe, it’s just the alcohol.
Whatever the reason, Yo leans in and tilts Chika’s head up slightly, planting a gentle kiss on Chika’s lips. Chika’s eyes flutter open in surprise, and their gazes meet for a moment. For a moment Yo worries she overstepped her boundaries, but then Chika smiles and all her worries melt away.
“Y’know, I’ve always had a small crush on you,” Yo admits.
“Yeah?” Chika asks softly.
“Yeah.”
“Well,” Chika grins cheekily. “Go on, then. What’s next?”
A withheld laugh rumbles in Yo's chest as she kisses Chika again, this time firmer and more confident. Chika leans forward into the kiss, the ends of Yo's hair tickling her cheeks. Chika hums happily, a hand winding around Yo's neck and tangling in her hair, pushing her closer. Chika’s lips taste like hops, alcoholic. Yo can get drunk with that.
After a few seconds they move apart, a silver thread momentarily connecting their lips before breaking off. “Let’s get a little more comfortable,” Chika says, her voice low and husky. Yo is bent over herself trying to kiss Chika while she has her head on Yo's lap. Chika sits up, shifting so she’s half-kneeling and eye-level with Yo. “You want to do this, right?”
Yes, Yo wants to say immediately. God, yes. But the voice of reason in the back of her mind says this is Chika asking if Yo is really okay. She was so heartbroken just a few hours ago, is it really okay to do this with someone so soon? She’s still heartbroken.
But Chika’s there for her, and it’s like she said, he’d want her to be happy.
She reaches out, resting her hands on Chika’s waist. “Yes,” Yo murmurs. Chika grins, and pulls her close, their lips meeting halfway. It’s a little less tender now, needier, hungrier. Yo laps at Chika’s lips, parting them and venturing further. Her tongue touches Chika’s, glides over her teasingly, just barely staying out of reach. A game of cat and mouse.
Chika allows this go on for a few more moments before she attacks, catching Yo's tongue in her teeth and gently nibbling on the tip of it. Yo lets out a “mmm!” of surprise, and Chika resists the urge to laugh. The kiss is sloppy, but neither of them mind. There’s a heat coiling up inside Yo, and kissing Chika only feeds the flames.
Yo leans in, trying to reduce the distance between them even more. She sort of straddles one of Chika’s legs, pressing their bodies flush together. Chika’s hot - so hot, her skin feels like it’s going to catch on fire. Yo might be bright red.
The sun has set fully now, and Yo's glad. She doesn’t want Chika to see how furiously she’s blushing. They’re so far out in the middle of nowhere that the only light comes the stars starting to twinkle above, and the pale crescent moon overhead. Yo pulls away briefly to take a look at her partner.
Chika looks gorgeous lit by starlight, her long ginger hair cascading over her shoulders and back, her red eyes twinkling with a fierce affection. Yo feels like she has a lump stuck in her throat, momentarily at a loss for words. There’s a desire roaring inside her, the coiling heat now almost unbearable. She pushes back into a kiss, and Chika gladly acquiesces, allowing Yo's tongue entry to her mouth.
As she deepens the kiss, Yo suddenly feels Chika’s hand on her butt, and her knee grind up against her. Caught off guard, Yo moans into the kiss, an electric sensation passing through her nethers. Chika chuckles, breaking off the kiss to whisper in Yo's ear. “You like that?” She asks, her breath tickling Yo's skin.
It’s been so long since Yo has felt the intimate touch of another person. She nods, sensing a rapid shift in the mood. It’s still sensual, but there’s something else in the air now, a primal desire that Yo is more than willing to oblige.
“I want you,” Yo murmurs, and that’s all it takes. Chika almost tackles her, and Yo lets it happen, falling backward into the tarp. In a single smooth motion, Yo shrugs off her top, then reaches behind her and undoes the latch on her bra. Within moments her chest is bared to Chika, who eyes them hungrily, giving Yo a sly smirk before leaning down and taking a nipple into her mouth.
Yo takes a shuddering breath, her back lifting slightly off the ground as she leans into the pleasure. Chika grins, and flicks her tongue over the sensitive nub, relishing as Yo groans from the sensation. Cupping the other breast in her hand, Chika runs her thumb over the erect nipple as she starts to suckle on the one in her mouth, causing Yo to moan and writhe as pleasure fills her mind.
“Holy,” Yo pants, her voice degenerating into a low moan as Chika runs her teeth gently over her nipple, the other hand alternating between teasing pinches and brushes over the other teat. “Chika,” Yo moans, driving Chika wild with desire. “Please.”
Stopping her oral ministrations (and eliciting a small whine from Yo,) Chika takes a moment to appreciate Yo's toned body, running a hand along the lines of her abs, humming in approval. “God, Yo,” She murmurs. “You’re like a Greek goddess, hot damn.”
She reaches down, her fingers trailing a line down Yo's middle, past her belly button, resting right above the waist of Yo's jeans. “You should take these off, too,” Chika suggests, before leaning back to start stripping herself.
As she unbuttons her jeans and pushes them down, Yo watches Chika undress, pulling the sweater over her head and revealing her ample bust. Once there was a time when their sizes actually matched pretty well, but it was obvious Chika still had some growth left in her after high school; she’s at least a size larger than Yo, and her whole figure is soft and curvy. By the time Chika has stripped off her skirt as well, Yo has fully disrobed and eager to continue.
Chika smiles, and shuffles close, pressing their bodies flush together. Yo can feel Chika’s body heat, the softness of her skin, the beat of her heart through her chest. “Let’s keep things going,” she whispers in Yo's ear, then leaning in to gently nibble on her ear lobe. Yo gasps, her breath catching slightly at the sensation, though she starts even more when Chika sneaks a hand between her legs, teasing her entrance.
“You’re soaked,” Chika notes, sounding pleased. She gently brushes a finger over her slit, the lips parting slightly at the touch.
Yo whimpers, her hands clutching Chika’s shoulders. Chika smirks, and continues to tease Yo, rubbing up against her entrance, dragging a finger across, coming painfully close to her clit before drawing back again, relishing in the feeling of her finger coming away almost dripping.
Yo's breathing gets heavier and heavier as Chika goes on, her heart racing in her chest. She grips Chika tightly, and breathlessly whines, “Chika, please.”
“Please what?” Chika asks teasingly.
Yo's cheeks flush even more. “Chika…” She whines, before burying her face in the crook of Chika’s neck and muttering, “Please fuck me—!”
Her sentence ends in a strangled grasp as Chika presses her thumb against her clit. Her legs give out under her, and she ends up holding onto Chika for dear life as the woman pushes a finger inside, revelling in how hot Yo is inside.
Instinctually Yo bucks her hips, and Chika smirks, carefully sliding in another finger, before slowly pulling both fingers back again, stopping just before she pulls out completely. Yo whimpers at the torturous pleasure Chika’s inflicting on her, garbled words begging for Chika to just fuck her.
“Your wish is my command,” Chika says, thrusting her fingers back in. Yo gasps, falling forward as Chika works up a rhythm, thrusting in and out of her and trying her hardest just not to embarrass herself as her hips roll automatically in time with each thrust.
Her mind is so clouded she doesn’t even realize Chika gently laying her down, and with the new position, manage to thrust even deeper into her, causing her to cry out and arch her back from the pleasure of it all.
Yo's throat fails her, her words garbled as Chika pumps in and out, stretching her and filling her up with each deliberate motion. Chika drags her thumb against Yo's clit again, and she almost kicks out, digging her heels into the tarp and the sand beneath as waves of pleasure wracks her brain. She draws circles around the sensitive nub and Yo can’t do anything except desperately bucking her hips in time with Chika and babbling between ragged breaths.
The heat inside her is coiled tight beyond return now, wound up so much Yo feels like she’s going to explode.
“Chika,” she gasps, breathless and hoarse. “Chika, please, I- I’m—!”
Whatever she’s about to say is drowned out by a ragged cry as Chika presses down, hard, on her clit. She clamps down on Chika’s fingers and her whole body shudders, her back arched till her whole body is lifted off the tarp, fingers digging into Chika’s back and toes pointed.
She jerks once, twice, lets out a gasping breath, and falls heavily back onto the tarp, completely spent. She’s covered in a thin sheen of sweat, her breathing heavy and uneven. Her eyes are slightly glazed over as she lies there, trying to recover some semblance of control of her body.
For a minute or two she just lies there, trying to catch her breath.
“Was it that good?” Chika asks teasingly, leaning in to plant a tender kiss on her lips. Yo rolls her eyes, weakly pushing Chika away after the kiss.
“Shut up,” she mumbles, rising unevenly to her knees.
Her legs are still weak, but she’s quickly regaining control of her limbs. Shuffling over to Chika, she pushes Chika down onto her back, and gives her a grin. “I have to return the favour.”
As Yo drops down between Chika’s legs, Chika’s suddenly intimately aware of how wet she is, an aching need rising up inside her in the wake of Yo's orgasm. She spreads her legs wide, inviting Yo closer, a hand reaching up to cup her own breast.
Yo leans in, and tentatively, laps at Chika’s slit, her tongue just barely touching flesh. Even at the sparse contact Chika groans, and encouraged, Yo continues, running her tongue over Chika’s entrance again, this time savouring the bitter juices leaking from her. She smacks her lips, and just as Chika’s about to tell her to get going already, she dives in, causing Chika to moan and fall back as her tongue traces circles around Chika’s clit, drawing close but never quite getting there. From time to time she gives Chika’s clit a teasing flick with her tongue, causing a shock of pleasure that never quite lasts for long enough.
“Yo… c’mon, don’t do this to me,” Chika pleads, struggling to keep her head up and keeping eye contact with Yo. Yo simple grins, and dives right back in.
Chika hisses as Yo switches tactics, giving her clit a final flick before she drags her tongue straight down, drawing a line right over Chika’s labia from top to bottom. Then just as quickly she pulls her tongue back up again, for once giving her clit a slow, deliberate lick as she reaches the top. Chika moans loudly, her breathing hitched and uneven, and her back arches as Yo repeats the motion, working up a mind-blowing rhythm sliding her tongue up and down her slit.
“Fuck, Yo, since when did youUUuuUU—?” Chika chokes on her own words as Yo suddenly breaks off the motion and directly sucks on her clit, causing her entire body to jerk from the overwhelming sensation of pleasure. Her hands fly to Yo's head, fingers tangling in her hair as she practically shoves Yo’s face into her entrance. Her legs, too, curl in around Yo, trying to press Yo as close and far in as she can manage.
Yo wants to laugh at Chika’s reaction but with her face buried in between Chika’s legs all she can do is continue her ministrations, lapping and licking and sucking at Chika’s sensitive bud, relishing in the sensation of Chika’s moans and gasps and desperate cries reverberating through her entire body.
She shifts up a little, easing a finger into Chika, and Chika jerks her hips, her tongue lolling uselessly out of her mouth. She slips another finger into Chika, and begins to thrust, timing each thrust with a lazy lick of her clit.
She thrusts once, twice, then pushes deeper, three knuckles in, and she sucks on Chika’s clit and suddenly Chika practically screams, her fingers digging into Yo's scalp as she cries out and comes messily, a flood of warmth hitting Yo's tongue. She pulls her fingers out and continues to lap at Chika’s entrance until she stops shuddering, lying breathlessly on the tarp.
Yo carefully extricates herself from between Chika’s legs and crawls along the tarp, lying down beside her, her chest heaving as they both try to catch their breaths.
Chika’s hair is a mess, but probably so is hers, and her cheeks are flushed red and sweaty, but the way her ruby red eyes gaze into her own makes Yo feel loved in a way she hasn’t felt in months. Chika reaches out with a shaky hand, brushing a thumb across Yo's cheek.
“God, Yo,” She says, her voice hoarse and dry. “That was… amazing.”
“Mhmm.” Yo hums, snuggling close to Chika. They’re both gross and sweaty, but in the throes of their lovemaking Yo finally realizes the beach is starting to get cool. “You’re the best.”
“No you,” Chika says, and they both laugh because it’s like everything is fine, and they’re back to their old bantering selves.
Eventually though their laughing dies down and they both shift slightly to stare up at the starry sky above. It’s not as clear as it used to be years ago, the neighbouring city’s lights have finally begun to block out the natural light as the stars, but sitting where they are and looking up it’s like staring into a sea of glittering jewels.
“Kanan would know what these constellations are,” Yo murmurs idly. “But… even not knowing, they’re really pretty.”
She feels something brush against her hand and she instinctively holds on - it’s Chika’s hand, and their fingers move to interlace together. She can sort of feel Chika’s pulse through her palm, the frantic beat of her heart still trying to calm down.
“So what are you going to do now?” Chika asks, still staring up at the starry sky.
“Hmm?” Yo glances briefly over at Chika. “What do you mean?”
“You’re going to go back to Tokyo, right?” Chika says, “and I’m still staying here.”
There’s a lingering silence in the air as Yo considers her words.
“…I suppose so,” she says finally.
“Then,” Chika’s voice is even as she says, “is this… just for tonight, then?”
Yo breathes out slowly, the sky seeming to wheel about above her. “Do…” She pauses. “Do you want it to be just for tonight?”
Chika stays quiet for a few seconds before saying, “…Honestly? Not really. I want to try and make it work.”
“Me too,” Yo murmurs. But then she hesitates, and points out, “But then this’ll be just like the time with Riko. I’m going to be living in Tokyo, and you have to run the inn.”
“Well, things are different now. I’m not a kid fresh out of high school anymore.” Chika says. She shifts slightly so she’s looking at Yo, resting her head on her arm. “I think it could work. You won’t spend as much time on me either, if I’m all the way out here. Plus, we can still call and message each other.”
“We won’t meet much,” Yo warns.
“Are you worried that this is going to be a repeat of what you went through?” Chika asks gently. “If you’re not ready, that’s okay. I won’t hold it against you.”
After a long pause, Yo nods hesitantly, squeezing Chika’s hand. “I think I need a little time to think.”
“That’s okay,” Chika says softly. “I can wait. I’ll always be here, remember?”
Yo glances at Chika, giving her a small, grateful smile. She doesn’t deserve Chika, not really. Chika’s so kind, and welcoming, and optimistic. But just as she said, Yo does want to try and make it work. She’s just… not sure if she can do it right now.
As Yo thinks to herself, a cool breeze sweeps across the beach, and Chika sneezes. Yo laughs, and stands up. “We should get going. There should be a tap to hose all this sweat off somewhere.”
“Hey, Yo?” Chika tugs on Yo’s hand.
Yo stops, looking back at Chika.
“It’s pretty late,” Chika says slowly. “Why don’t you stay the night at my place?”
Yo hesitates, biting her lower lip contemplatively.
“Well…” She sighs, and gives Chika a small smile. “I guess if it’s just the night.”
“Then we can go see Kanan in the morning!”
“But I—” Yo stares at Chika, grinning widely back at her, and finally rolls her eyes. “Oh, fine. If it’s just the morning…”
“And the afternoon!”
“…And the afternoon…”
Chika laughs, and Yo can’t help but laugh along with her.
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PAH Today: Moving Forward - phaware® interview 357
SPECIAL EDITION: Moving Forward
The PAH Initiative and United Therapeutics are excited to bring you the PAH Today National Broadcast Series. This series of virtual events is intended for adult patients with pulmonary arterial hypertension (PAH) and their caregivers.
Advancements in the care and treatment of PAH are improving the lives of those impacted by this life-threatening disease. The National Broadcast Series will include insights and perspectives on today’s approaches to managing PAH from nationally recognized PAH healthcare providers. Join patients and caregivers across the nation to hear current considerations in the care of PAH.
This is the 4th of 4 PAH Today broadcasts to learn about how you can be empowered to stay informed, motivated, and focused on your future.
Presented by Dr. Lana Melendres-Groves the Director of the Pulmonary Hypertension Program at the University of New Mexico and PAH patients Denise B. & Lauren J. Learn more at: www.pahinitiative.com
Dr. Lana Melendres-Groves:
Good afternoon and welcome to the PAH Today National Broadcast Series. Today, we're moving forward. My name is Dr. Lana Melendres-Groves and I'm the Medical Director and an Associate Professor at the University of New Mexico.
On behalf of United Therapeutics, myself and everyone joining us today, I want to welcome you. Whether you were on your own PAH journey or here to support someone you love, I hope today's series is informative and helpful. This presentation is sponsored by and made on behalf of United Therapeutics. Healthcare professional speakers such as myself are compensated by UT. Not all drugs are appropriate for all patients, so speak with your healthcare professional to determine which treatment plan is right for you. Patient experiences relayed during this program may not represent the experiences of all patients.
If you've been with us throughout this series, you know that we've covered a lot of information, but today we really want to focus on helping you move forward on your PAH journey. We'll talk about three different areas. The first is going to be about getting informed and staying informed. Next, we'll talk about staying motivated, tips on how you might be able to do this because each of us, we all need a little help on certain days. Third, we'll focus on your goals, so that what you do today will help you through tomorrow.
All right, so let's talk about getting informed. I think that when any of us have something new to learn, it can feel overwhelming. I always think about it in terms of my daughter who's learning to read. Now, I know I can't walk up to her and hand her a novel and expect her to read it. Instead, I have to give her the basic tools to be able to. Those building blocks she needs to learn the sounds of letters. With those sounds, be able to make a word. With those words, be able to read a sentence so that someday she will read that novel.
When we think about it like this, in terms of PAH, we also need to learn the basics, those building blocks. In one of our earlier series, we talked about that. We talked about the heart, the lungs, the blood vessels, and how they all work together to keep us alive and how specifically in PAH they are working the correct way. By knowing those basics, we can then build off of that so that you're able to do your own research and find things that are important to you, or that you may have questions about. You'll be able to get those answers. More importantly even though, is to stay updated. This is a disease that we learn more and more about. Our treatments continue to expand. Over the past 25 years, how far we've come is tremendous. So knowing what may be new today can help you in your tomorrow.
Make sure that you feel like you can have an open and honest conversation with your healthcare provider, so that if you have questions, you feel like they're being answered. Let's talk a little bit about where you might be able to find some of those resources. Now, I mentioned talking to your healthcare provider. For me, I think that's the first place you should go, because they really should be the individual that you feel confident and comfortable with in terms of sharing your concerns or maybe gaps in your own knowledge. You have people right there in your own home potentially, or your community who can help. Your caregivers, they may not have the medical knowledge to answer your questions, but they're there to help. I'm sure they'll help you find that information.
That brings me to advocates. In some situation, the caregiver is your advocate and in others, that is a person who is helping you along your PAH journey. Now, I don't want to forget to mention the patient group meetings. These are essential to create a network for you while you're on your PAH journey, so that you can have others who may be able to share similar experiences or give you information on where they found something that was important for them. Some of the places that you might want to visit online are the PAH Initiative or the Pulmonary Hypertension Association. These are just several that have good information that may help you to learn more.
I do want to spend just a little bit more time on the www.PAHinitiative.com because this is a robust learning library with resources for all levels of patient education. I think it's wonderful because it has not only informative videos and interactive content, but continues to expand the information on a frequent basis, so important to visit it often. At this point, I think I've talked enough about what I think. Instead, I think it would be wonderful to hear what Lauren and Denise, who are two real patients on their PAH journeys, do to continue to stay informed about their disease.
Denise:
Hi, my name is Denise and I am a PAH patient.
Lauren:
Hi, I'm Lauren. I am a PAH patient. I've been diagnosed about 10 years now.
Denise:
As you know, there is so much happening in the PAH community and it is so important to stay informed.
Lauren:
I am excited to share a little piece of my story with you.
Denise:
I'm sharing my journey with you today. I hope you enjoy it. Thank you for listening. When I was first diagnosed, I didn't really know the difference between a cardiologist or my PAH specialist. In my personal opinion, I believe that seeing a PAH specialist is way more beneficial to somebody because they are the expertise in this field.
Lauren:
My relationship with my doctor is very good. I respond very well to people that are straightforward. There's no sugarcoating. She said, "I'm your specialist. I promise I will take the best care of you that I can, and this is what's happening right now."
Denise:
I think it's pretty important to stay on top of the research and to find out what's going on out there and you might talk to your doctor about the new things that's upcoming or different drugs that are out there. You can talk to them and see how they feel about something. Is it something that is going to be right for you?
Lauren:
Assessing your risk level goes hand in hand with being compliant as a patient. So when your doctor orders tests and appointments for you to show up at it is crucial that you show up and get those testing done, because based off that it shows how your PAH is in a current standing. So are you stable? Have things changed? Have your pressures gone up? Do we need to change medications?
Denise:
The most drastic changes for me personally, that I've had to make is that I'm not going to bend over and pull things out of the bottom of the cabinet, or you don't want to pull things off the top shelf. It's just learning your new normal and to be able to do different things.
Lauren:
The lifestyle modifications were quite a bit of a challenge too, like how do I hide my pump? All of that kind of stuff was more of a barrier that I dealt with on a daily basis.
Denise:
I see my PAH specialist about every six months. Usually when I prepare for my doctor's visits, I would just tell them if I had had chest pain or tightness, or if I feel like I was at a grocery store and by the time I got home, I couldn't even breathe.
Lauren:
I wear a heart rate monitor when I exercise and that way I can see what did I do that day. I can always show it and reflect to my doctor how I'm feeling based on where I'm at. You need to be clear in communication with your healthcare team and mention things way sooner than later. PAH is a very stubborn disease, and I think it is so important to stick to your plan with which you had made with your doctor in terms of medication and adherence to medications.
Dr. Lana Melendres-Groves:
Well, we've talked a bit about how we stay informed and become more informed. Now it's time to talk about staying motivated. Although I'm going to talk about goals, which may not seem the same as staying motivated, I think in a minute, hopefully you'll understand. A goal is something that drives you to move forward. We want to reach that goal. And in order to do that, trying to stay motivated. By making personal goals or treatment goals, it allows you to have that checkpoint in insight where it's not just one day after the next with no end. Instead it's, I would like to experience fewer symptoms like fatigue or shortness of breath. Maybe it's spending more time with family or friends or just being more active. All of those things may be an important goal for you. Then let's move over to treatment goals and these may seem completely foreign or different from your own personal goals.
Often this is where I think there's a disconnect between what a provider is talking about and what a patient is talking about. Well, I hope I'm able to align those for you today, because treatment goals may be something like improving how the right ventricle is functioning or slowing down the disease progression. By achieving those treatment goals, we're also potentially achieving some personal goals where when your heart is functioning better, you'll have fewer symptoms and be able to do more. So I think it’s important to start thinking about goals for yourself that are achievable. In doing that, it's really important that one, you write them down. I think that we often forget what we could do back when we felt normal. So it's important to remember back how you used to feel and what you used to be able to do and then you really think about how you feel today. And in talking with your healthcare provider, what might it be goals of three months from now, six months or a year from now, so that you really have something to look toward and to get to.
It's then important to check in often on, are you achieving those goals? Have you surpassed those goals and need to make new ones? These goals don't have to be groundbreaking. They may just be being able to bring your groceries in from the car. That is okay. That is the baby steps that turn into miles and miles of road behind you on your PAH journey.
So how can we bring those PAH goals to life? Well, this is where I think everybody is very individual. For me, if I wasn't in the medical field, I think I would have been a, probably struggling artist, but I love it. I love to express myself through creative means. So a vision board may be the right thing for me. I actually really liked poetry. So potentially writing a poem that had some of those things that you would like to be able to do again. Other people are more concrete. They may write themselves a contract because they can stick to that. But it's important, whatever works for you, you write it down. You look at it often, so that you can continue to move forward toward those goals. When I was looking through all of this and preparing to talk with you all today, I thought back about my mother when I was a child and how I used to hear her talking in the other room. Now, at first I thought she was talking to somebody. But later, I realized that she was actually just saying out loud that things that she planned to get done that day and over the course of the week. I thought it was funny as a little kid and now I realize that when you say something out loud, it is so much more meaningful.
So using positive language and encouraging yourself. Checking in regularly with other people so that you feel like everybody is helping you along that journey. Then, celebrate the successes. I think we're so hard on ourselves often. But we have to remember that whether it was a little one or a huge milestone, we have to be able to congratulate ourselves so that we can for at least that moment, breathe deeply and really feel as though we're moving in a positive direction. Checking in with our advocates. Celebrating ourselves. Those are things that I would really ask you not to forget to do.
So we've talked about how we might be able to stay motivated, write down goals. You may already be doing a huge amount to improve your PAH, but you should never stop asking, "Is there something more I can do for my future?" This is where you need to feel confident to want more for yourself and to talk to your healthcare providers in order to get there and to achieve that. To be able to ask yourself critically, "Am I feeling better? Are my symptoms the same? Do I feel as good as I could feel," so that you continue to reevaluate those goals and make new ones for yourself. This is where I'm going to get to invite Lauren and Denise to give us a little bit more information, because they are experiencing this on a day in and day out basis. It would be lovely to hear how they continue to stay motivated.
Denise:
I literally think I spent the first year on the couch, not because the doctor told me to, but I was scared to literally move. I wish somebody could have told me in the beginning that you don't need to be fragile, you're not going to break. I mean, I'm not telling you to run a marathon, just do a little something more positive tomorrow than you did today.
Lauren:
I think it's important to set improvement goals for yourself while you're working with the different therapies and all of that. What can you do to make things better? It's all about the fight, because if the fight isn't there, then what are you going to accomplish? Set your goals and then set them higher.
Denise:
Generally, it is a goal of mine to try to beat the last six minute walk test. The doctor comes in and he'll say, "Oh my gosh, you walked farther than you did the time before." It's definitely a good feeling.
Lauren:
A lot of staying positive for me is reaching for my daily goals. So a lot of that has to do with my exercise and I also am a practicing Yogi. So I do yoga probably twice a week. I do everything in my human power to make sure I'm in the best health that I'm in. So my husband and I have adopted a low sodium diet. It took a couple years to get used to the whole idea, but it was worth it.
Denise:
To be able to go to the grocery store on my own or drive that two hours to an event or different things, definitely is something that I wasn't sure I was going to be able to do. It's just learning your new normal.
Lauren:
There was one time I remember running up the stairs to my apartment and being like, "Wow, I can breathe. That hasn't happened in a while. That's pretty cool. I think things are working."
Denise:
One day I went to the beach and I was by myself and walking through the sand is hard enough, but with PAH it's hard to walk. But I walked pretty far. It was pretty amazing. It was like I had no limit that day.
Lauren:
My support network for me has been everything. A huge chunk of my support is my husband. He stuck with me through it all, even though I told him to run.
Denise:
I really think you need some kind of outlet, you need some person to talk to and find something, whether it be another PAH person or just somebody. I'm definitely looking for in advancements in PAH treatment. I hope we find a cure very soon.
Lauren:
Never stop achieving. Never stop reaching for your goals. It is so important to have the motivation and strive to reach for something. When you hit that, reach for the next goal. Never settle, own your health, talk with your doctors and you're not in this alone.
Dr. Lana Melendres-Groves:
So we had a chance to talk about staying informed and staying motivated. Now we're going to shift gears just a little bit and talk about staying focused on your goals. So what can you do today to impact your tomorrow? For me, the very first thing is finding a PAH expert who's right for you. Now it's important to know that PAH is a rare disease. So not all cardiologists who are heart specialists or pulmonologists who are lung specialists have expertise in treating it. That doesn't mean that they're not great physicians or providers. This may just not be their area of expertise. So make sure to seek out a health care provider and a treatment team with experience using all of the available types of PAH medicines.
This brings me to, if you find that person, feel confident that you can share information with them, good information or bad information. We understand. We all have slip ups along the way. So maybe you ate a little bit more salt in your diet and you have swelling. It's okay to talk to us about that. We're here to work together, not criticize, not critique, but instead to help make sure that your tomorrow is even better than today.
So how do we move toward a better future? Well, in most things, it's important to be empowered. For PAH, it's even more so. You need to feel that if you're still having symptoms, that you can talk to your healthcare provider, so that you can come up with ideas or management strategies or treatment options that might help you do better. Then, never discount today. Even if you feel as though getting up is just too overwhelming. Just a few steps every day, a few minutes even, to be able to improve your tomorrow. Continue to make strides so that your tomorrow is so much better than today and that your goals can be reached.
This concludes the 2020 PAH Today National Broadcast Series. To watch parts one through three in this series, visit www.PAHtoday.net. Also, consider joining the PAH Initiative at www.PAHinitiative.com, where you can stay informed, stay motivated, and stay focused on your future. Thank you.
Learn more about pulmonary hypertension trials at www.phaware.global/clinicaltrials. Never miss an episode with the phaware® podcast app. Follow us @phaware on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube & Linkedin Engage for a cure: www.phaware.global/donate #phaware #ClinicalTrials
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