Brooo naurrr like I did not just add more paragraphs to a fic I posted in JANUARY of 2021. Because that would be super mega cringe on an ultimate level one can not comprehend. I can't keep getting away with this I'm gnawing at the bars of my poorly secured enclosure

These are from song titles, but I think these are poggers (I hope, at least)

* And there was life inside "it"

* Can it really be called "Cinderella" ?

* Love inside an empty box

* World is full of wonders (Or "Full of wonders!!!!")

* Near

* Angel's clover

Don't worry anon, they are most definitely poggers! (Both of my current ao3 published works have names based on song lyrics, so that really fits my vibe haha.)

There are so many good prompts here! I couldn't help but write like.... A lot lmao.

CW: dehumanization, themes of child abuse, themes of death. Be safe!

____

And there was life inside "it"

They called it RNB-00. It was the first in a generation of experimental life production using DNA from one of the most volatile creatures in the worlds: endermen. There were no endermen hybrids. The children could not survive, and the birth was volatile, tearing the parents and anyone near them apart with the violent magic.

They would perform the experiment anyways.

An unfinished human embryo, carefully extracted from someone who would be written in the paperwork as a volunteer. An enderpearl, freshly taken from a creature they didn't consider "human" enough to need even dubious content. DNA, taken directly from the brain of the enderman.

They spliced together the three ingredients, cheering when the chimera of enderman and embryo inside its tubes showed signs of life.

But some things are not meant to be done.

Nature is not meant to be tampered with.

The experiment turned south quickly. The specimen convulsed in its tube, growing at a rapid rate. Vibrant purple magic lashed out, dancing through the lab with a vengeance. There were the cries of a newborn mixed with the shrieks of an enderman- then, an explosion.

RNB-00 fell to the ground, the magic pulsing from it too bright to be looked at by the naked eye. A second explosion rocked the lab, this time all-encompassing and final. The building turned to ash and dust and settled around a new crater.

There would never be a RNB-01.

A shape rose from the center of the crater. It was a child from one angle, maybe two or three, with pure white hair, scarred cheeks, and a red eye.

From the other angle, it was a monster. Something not quite enderman or human. Jet black hair, and velvety black fur covered the left half of it. It's eye glowed an unnatural green, not the color of humans or endermen.

It toddled slowly away from the epicenter of the explosion, no memory of what had happened. As it walked, it noticed a mark, a brand, on it's right arm: RNB-00. The child stared, and blinked at the word.

And he named himself Ranboo.

Can it really be called "Cinderella"?

When Tubbo was young, he saw Cinderella, once. Even with how young he was, the story resonated with him. He wished all his stepfather did was give him chores, but he knew exactly how it felt to be unloved, unwanted, forced to stay on the sidelines. He just hoped his fairy godmother would come soon.

When he was a little older, he looked back on the story of Cinderella with nothing but bitterness. He was old enough now that he knew fairy tales didn't happen. There was no "fairy godmother" coming to save him; there never had been, there never would be. All he had was himself and his shitty situation. He wanted to forget the story that had given him such a bittersweet lie, but it was burned into his memory.

As he reached his teens, the anger turned into weariness. It wasn't Cinderella's fault his stepfather was a piece of shit. It wasn't the character's fault that she had help to break free while he didn't. And how miserable he was wasn't Tubbo's fault either, no matter how much his stepfather screamed it.

When he was 16, feeling ancient yet younger than he had ever been, he stopped comparing himself to Cinderella. Cinderella hadn't stood over her stepparent's body with a bat. Cinderella hadn't called the police on herself, showing them what she'd done and then the reason why, covering his skin beneath his clothes. Cinderella had been freed, but she hadn't paid such a heavy price for that freedom.

Tubbo had. Tubbo was far from a Cinderella story.

Love inside an empty box

Tommy's love was dangerous. He learned that at a very young age. Love for him wasn't just a feeling, it was a physical thing, at least to his eyes. He could feel every last drop of care, of love gathering around him like a storm. And just like a storm, when the feeling touched down, it was deadly. People, animals, anything that was touched by the love he couldn't stop feeling crumbled under the weight of something that shouldn't exist.

Tommy couldn't stop himself from caring. But he could stop himself from hurting. Hurting others, at least. Tommy commissioned a solution from a witch with a terrible reputation for cruelty, but a renowned skill with magical crafting. It cost him everything he owned, and some of who he was, but he walked away with an empty box made to hold what he couldn't afford to keep.

For years after that, every time he felt love building up in his chest- his care for friends, the people he considered family, even for strangers- he tore it off of himself and flung it into the box. Over time, the box grew full, bursting at the seams with his love. He learned to discard all but the most precious feelings, keeping those in his overstuffed box that weighed nothing and locking them inside.

But no lock lasts forever. Nothing lasts an eternity.

Tommy was alone with nothing but his thoughts, his box, and the ghost of a brother who was only really that in the privacy of his mind. He let his eyes shut, the box held loosely in one hand. The ghost, not knowing the consequences, touched the box.

And the seams of magic holding it together shattered and the love Tommy had stored away broke free, as powerful and terrible as a hurricane.

If it had been Wilbur, the man would've died as surely as he had when a blade was thrust through his heart. But this was Ghostbur, and you cannot kill what is already dead.

Still, such power has consequences. All the love in the box, far too powerful to be contained for long, spilled over, pouring over and around the ghost and the boy.

Yes, such power has consequences. The boy with too much love and his brother that never was would face those consequences together.

(world is) full of wonders

Wilbur is a simple musician. He travels alone, playing an ode to all of the world around him. He sings to the trees, the sky, the river, the sun, anything he pleases.

Though he knows it's silly, he can't help but imagine they sing back. He tries to match the harmony he hears in his mind, tries to play along with the symphony of nature. He can never keep up, but likes to imagine the world is fond of his efforts.

But even musicians can stumble into trouble. Too caught up in the ballad he played to the tune of the wind, he didn't hear the rattle of bones, the drawing of a bow. He heard only the twang as an arrow released before it pierced through his skull and everything went black.

But Wilbur wasn't gone. He didn't cease to exist, like he always assumed. He felt the cool caress of the void, the gentle brush of the universe against his mind and he gasped. Clearer than he'd ever heard it, he heard the song of the world, in perfect harmony and tune. This time, it sang along to him, to the pulsing of his soul.

Wilbur had no body, but if he did he would weep. He had no lungs, no mouth, no voice, but his soul took up the melody he longed to sing anyways. He sang with the universe until the song became more and more impossible to replicate and he could only listen in awe.

He woke up painlessly, laying on a gentle green field. His guitar was by his side, and his sweater was cleaner than it had ever been. He knew instinctually that he was not in the world he'd came from. This was a new world, a universe untouched, a new song to add his voice to.

Near

It hit him, one day, as he absently peeled a potato over the sink. That he didn't remember if he'd ever touched another person.

Techno had froze for a moment. It was quite the revelation to have out of nowhere. He dismissed it a moment later, memories of how he and Phil would bump shoulders as they walked and talked fresh in his mind.

But all too soon his thoughts turned back to the uncomfortable topic. Sure he'd touched Phil before, but that was through layers of armor and clothing. Had he ever had skin to skin contact with another person? Anything, as simple as a handshake? Hell, even something during battle would count.

He came up empty, and it was driving him crazy.

He didn't need to touch people. He didn't. Having someone he cared about liked close to him was good enough. He didn't need physical contact to reassure him. He never had, not even as a child.

Though that may have had something to do with the chorus of voices he'd had in his head that had kept him on the brink of insanity for most of his childhood. His voices were always there, always with him, so what need did he have for another person's company?

Except he did like company, Phil's especially. And he had it, plenty of it, more than he could ever possibly need. So why did he suddenly feel so off balance?

He asked Phil about it next time he saw his friend. He kept it casual. It wasn't a big deal, he didn't need to worry Phil by letting how much this had bothered him show.

"Hey, Phil, have we ever touched?" He asked. Phil gave him a weird look, then bumped his shoulder.

"Like that?" He asked, unimpressed. "Mate, maybe you should check your own memory before you call me old man again."

"Nah," Techno dismissed, "I meant like... skin to skin. Like a handshake or something."

This actually gave Phil pause. He thought for a moment, then laughed.

"I guess we haven't. Weird. Why?"

"I... Don't think I've ever touched anyone like that," Techno said. He tried to keep his voice steady, but his heart was pounding as he poured out his weakness in front of Phil.

The other man was silent for a long time. Techno could practically hear the shouts of ever??? running through his mind.

Suddenly Phil turned towards him, pulling off a glove.

"Handshake?" He offered with a smile, something sad beyond the amusement in his eyes. Techno rolled his eyes, but he hesitated taking his glove off. Slowly reaching out, as if Phil's hand was a snake that might strike at any sudden movements, he placed his hand in Phil's.

The sensation was like a fire roaring to life on his hand. It didn't hurt, not like a real fire, but it somehow burned. He froze, his brain having trouble processing the bizarre feeling. It was overwhelming, and the best thing he'd ever felt, and yet it was almost a relief when Phil gently pulled his hand away.

"We'll take it slow, alright mate?" He said, nudging Techno with an elbow. The piglin's brain began to work again and he snorted, pulling the glove on again and falling back into step.

"Of course. We can't overwork your old man brain," Techno said dryly, earning him a sharper nudge. He grinned, the amusement softening to fondness as Phil walked just a little closer, letting their arms stay pressed together as they went.

It was strange how you didn't notice you were missing something until you had it. Bare contact was a little too overwhelming right now. So he was right. For now, this was enough. Having his best friend near him was all he needed.

Angel's Clover

There is a special plant that only grows in the land of celestials. An ethereal clover that sprouts from the weary souls that come to rest on the soils of heaven. The souls and the clover flourish in time with one another, tended to by the celestials that walk the lands. It is only a rumor, in the eyes of mortals, but one who walks among them knows it to be true. He is the Angel of Death, and his presence can never touch the sacred halls of the celestial lands, lest they wither and die.

But souls do not always complete the journey, to find their final rest above. Some souls are too broken, too hurt to reach the peace of the celestial lands. It is the duty of the Angel of Death to guide the souls, and it is his duty to heal them so that they may be guided.

In the land of the mortals, there is one place where the clover grows. It is in the humble garden of a plain looking man, who wears a large hat to block his eyes from the sun, and keeps his unearthly wings folded beneath his cloak.

In his garden, the Angel of Death nurtures the precious remnants of life.

Last Resort - chapter 1

Fandom: The Maze Runner

Pairing: Thomas x Newt

Warnings: ex boyfriends, AU

Summary: Three years after breaking up with Thomas, Newt finally thought the past of hating each other was behind them, until Thomas asked him for a favour - pretend they got back together for a week while staying at his parents' home. Because it was an absolutely dumb idea, Newt was inclined to refuse, but then found himself in the house he used to visit when he was in love and happy and the bitter reality of only pretending for people he always liked made him miserable. But it was nothing against dealing with Thomas himself for a week straight and trying not to fall back in love that hurt them both.

Or: Prompt ch. 192 with added spice. Or something. I just needed to write for a while :')

Can be found on Ao3.

Notes: Hi! I was really into writing something, like really, really hyped, but then couldn't find anything that would make me go "yaaas!". So I thought of just giving up, until I somehow vaguely recalled I wrote this small one shot about two exes falling back in love in parents' house, and just sort of thought: oh yeah. Angst, good. Could add some horny. Good. Let's try. So here we are. Trying. It's not exactly deep or anything. I just needed to get this out of my system :') And it's not like I can't write anything else but AUs... ha.

Unbetad!

Sometimes Newt felt like the world was against him in literally any kind of situation. Once he decided to commit to something, a sudden force worked against him immediately, completely ruining the plan, or at least derailing his confidence in it. For about a year he thought that maybe it was the Universe giving him signs, for another year it felt like a karmic backslash and this year he settled on the fact he was just being despised by whatever higher force was in charge.

Although last year wasn’t as bad, really, until November 12th on dot. If it was about to be documented anywhere, he was just getting out of his shower, quite sleepy already, in rather calm, peaceful mood, once his phone dinged with a new message and he, without knowing the consequences of reading it, opened it. Even though it had Thomas as a sender - he thought later it should have deterred him from ruining the night for himself. Yet, his stupid lizard brain just clicked on it, blissfully unaware.

ThomAss - [23:14] – This is a life-or-death matter, you HAVE TO help me out D:

Newt - [23:15] – HAVE TO even.

ThomAss - [23:16] – YES. Please. I’m ready to beg too, that’s how desperate I am!

Newt - [23:17] – Hmm. Tempting. On your knees?

ThomAss - [23:18] – It’s negotiable.

Newt - [23:19] – Might think about it. Go on.

ThomAss - [23:20] – I need you to come home with me. I mean to my parents’ home.

Newt - [23:21] – What…?

ThomAss - [23:22] – It’s an emergency. They’re being persistent, so I need to bring somebody over.

Newt - [23:24] – I don’t follow?

ThomAss - [23:25] – Somebody I’m dating, that is.

Newt - [23:26] – Yeah, no.

ThomAss - [23:27] – Pleaaaaaaaaaase! T^T

He refused to admit he was fuming when he tossed his phone on the mattress and ignored how it beeped several times with new messages. There was no bloody way he’d go all smiling into Thomas’ parent’s house and pretend they were dating when they broke up three years ago in bad blood and it took them over two years to recover enough to be able to at least talk in a civil way. Sure, these past few months were sort of… better than the rest, though Newt didn’t really know if there was a reason, or they just let go of the grudge.

Well, partially let go, at least Newt’s was still lightly festering sometimes, on bad days when he was stupid enough to let his guard down and remind himself of it.

His phone beeped three more times and then the silence of his flat got sliced to pieces by the obnoxious ringtone he put in spite to Thomas’ contact two years ago. They weren’t calling each other, so there was no way he’d hear it at any point back then, but now, when the sound filled his home, he had a fleeting thought of smashing the phone to pieces instead.

“I said no,” he answered anyway, cold enough for Thomas to definitely get shivers on the other side of the line.

“Newt, please, I beg you,” Thomas didn’t even bother with greetings and whined like a five-year-old. “You can’t possibly be that cruel, can you?”

“Minho,” Newt gritted out. “Why not him?”

“He’s in England! Drinking tea! He’d throw me off the Big Ben if I interrupted his super-secret-date-everybody-knows-about!” Thomas responded frantically and Newt pinched the bridge of his nose in exasperation.

Fine, he had a point, probably, Minho would rage at him if he tried to drag him back shit like this. He planned the totally-not-a-date for months, never introduced the person and then disappeared. Everyone knew why, but they didn’t know to who.

“Teresa.” Another possibility, and Thomas’ groaned into the speaker.

Oh, so he already asked her, and she turned him down. Not to mention…

“Brenda?”

Another groan.

“For fuck’s sake,” Newt had to force himself not to throw the phone against the wall. “Have you literally asked everyone and I’m the bloody last resort?”

“Sort of?” Thomas piped and Newt refused to acknowledge how it stung weirdly.

Am I being hypocritical?

It wasn’t like he was willing to go anyway, but somehow his pride didn’t like it. And his pride was a bitch, he knew, and had the power to overwrite his common sense.

“Look, it’s just…” Thomas sighed into the phone. “…embarrassing.”

“Embarrassing?” the blond repeated. He would say uncomfortable maybe, but embarrassing? “What is bloody embarrassing about it? I’ve heard you snore and fart and throw up and come, and you think this is embarrassing?”

“This is embarrassing!” Thomas whined like couldn’t hear the naked truth and Newt shook his head. They had their history, and it wasn’t just a week short fling. They lived together for three years and dated for seven, there honestly couldn’t be much of an embarrassment present anymore.

Although maybe yes, after three years of barely talking.

“You’re ridiculous,” he mumbled after, dropping a towel he was drying his hair with on the bed. “How’s this even a question, can you just tell them you’re single? Or. I don’t know, that the person you date had other business to attend to?”

“No,” Thomas answered immediately. “I can’t and I won’t. You act like you don’t know them, they’re onto me.”

“Cuz you’re a liar?” Newt tilted his head to the side and Thomas grumbled.

“Am not, okay.”

“So where’s your significant other that can’t attend?”

“On the phone right now, being difficult. Obviously,” Thomas delivered without ounce of shame and if he was standing right in front of Newt, he would have one in his face. “Look, I didn’t want to ask you, cuz of course it’s kinda weird, since my parents already know you and all.”

Of course he would rather bring Teresa or Brenda over, Newt thought and the bitterness surprised him.

“Well, at least they wouldn’t be as shocked,” he said in response, pushing the wave of reminiscing back down. “Imagine Minho, he would probably tear the place apart.”

“Yeah, but we didn’t break up with Minho,” Thomas reminded him, keeping the sombre tone despite Newt trying to lighten the situation.

“You don’t say,” he said instead. “And?”

“And they know we did,” Thomas continued. “So it’s gonna be awkward, you know.”

“Can imagine, yes,” Newt didn’t want to play dumb. “I already told you no though, so there’s no reason to torture yourself with the what if.”

“When did I ever want anything this important from you though!” The whine was back, and Newt sucked in a sharp breath.

“You want me to make you a list? Or would a text suffice.”

“I told you I’d beg on my knees, right? I will. I’m ready to go to your place right now and kneel for the whole night if that’d please you,” Thomas shot back, sounding too serious for Newt’s liking. His neighbours would hate him if Thomas spent the night in front of his door on his knees, serenading him just to make him cave in.

“For fuck’s sake, for how long am I going to be pretending I love your stupid face again then?” he growled unhappily and Thomas on the other side let out a small laugh.

“Well, mum said a weeklong vacation, but I’m sure like three days would be enough to sate her craving for whatever she actually craves when she forces me to do this,” he dropped like a week wasn’t a death sentence or could pose an actual problem with Newt’s remaining vacation days. Which was not. But Thomas didn’t know that.

“I know you have vacation days left, since you always hoard them,” Thomas immediately added like he could read his mind and Newt couldn’t stop the curse leaving his mouth. “It’s not so bad, right? Countryside, fresh air, great food and for free.”

“For the cost of my sanity, but sure, for free,” Newt grumbled and padded to the table to boot up his notebook. “When?”

“I’d pick you up on this Friday at 3? Work or home, your pick.” There was an obvious relief in Thomas’ voice and Newt kind of wanted to remind him they still broke up and barely talked to each other for two and half years, so it was not going to be a walk in a park at any point, but he kept his mouth shut.

“I work till 4,” he uttered while opening his e-mail and started to write a request for vacation. “So something past 4 in front of my workplace should be fine.”

“Four? Since when?” came a question and Newt rolled his eyes. “It used to be 3 max.”

“Three years ago, sure,” Newt decided to overlook Thomas’ weird habit of keeping shit like this memorized. “Things changed.”

“You work longer for the same pay?” Thomas guessed and Newt scoffed.

“I’m not an idiot, okay,” he commented sternly. “I got promoted. So I go to work a bit later, but work till later too.”

“Aaah,” Thomas voiced. “That’s pretty cool. Congratz.”

Year and half late, but I guess it’s the thought that counts. He just hummed.

“Then four it is,” Thomas got back on track easily. “Thanks, Newt. You’re a lifesaver.”

“You don’t know what it will cost ya yet, don’t be so happy about it,” Newt said grumpily. “I don’t work for free.”

“How’s pleasant company and free accommodation and full inclusive not enough for you? You spoiled little bitch,” Thomas faked an offended tone and Newt rolled his eyes.

“Pleasant company is questionable, since you’re going to be there,” he shot back, more out of habit than with an actual spiteful intent. “But I guess your family will do.”

“Oof, alright,” it didn’t take anything from the cheerful tone of his, “you can send me a bill after. Fucking high maintenance as always, aren’t you.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Newt chirped and hung up. The moment he sent the mail to his boss he immediately regretted it.

***

Friday came so fast Newt barely noticed the week whooshing past him, and suddenly it was 3:50, he was basically done with his workload for the day, his weeklong vacation got a green light and a bag with his things was sitting mockingly on his table, reminding him he was an idiot who just liked to make himself miserable.

Thomas was already texting him since morning to not forget to pack undies like he was a mastermind of great humour and Newt’s eyes lingered a bit too long on a kitchen knife when he was packing yesterday.

But then again, Thomas’ mum definitely had much better cutlery, so the variety of murder weapons just multiplied.

He pointedly ignored how his stomach lurched at the sight of Thomas at his car in casual clothes and unzipped jacket like it was spring (the -4 degrees disagreed with him, and especially with Newt’s complete lack of proper thermoregulation), actually having a pleasant expression on his face Newt last seen… well, long time ago. He took Newt’s bag and put it in the boot of the car with such nonchalance Newt almost believed his parents might be tricked into thinking they really got back together, how smooth and easy he made it look. Newt refused to ruin it with sarcasm, so he just got into the passenger seat and let Thomas get them on the road.

“You know Christmas is still a month away, right?” Thomas commented once Newt got rid of his coat and scarf, since the car was warm inside, and tossed it onto the back seat, before putting on the seatbelt.

“Yeah?” he raised an eyebrow at him and didn’t like the smile Thomas had on his lips. He was going to nag, for sure.

“Just that you’re wrapped like a present,” came an expected comeback. “How many layers you even have? You took all of your winter clothes on?”

“Stuff it,” the blond glared at him. “It’s cold outside.”

“It’s not that cold though?” Of course Thomas wouldn’t let it go.

“Just cuz you circulate lava and not blood doesn’t mean others do too,” Newt’s glare intensified. “Like it’s something bloody new I’m cold as fuck all the time.”

“Yeah, it’s really not,” his companion shrugged with self-satisfied smirk and Newt wanted to stomp on the brake and just get out of the car. Why did he agree again?

Prick.

What even made him so happy? Still didn’t realize how many faked smiles he’s going plaster on his face through the stay? Or he didn’t care?

“What are we going to tell them?” he asked instead to bring them closer to the problem, since the resolution was only three hours’ drive away. He wouldn’t admit it, but since he agreed to help with this clownery, he couldn’t stop thinking about what to tell the people he genuinely liked and didn’t want to lie to. He could almost forget how rare it was to stay alone with Thomas these days – or months – or years – without an urge to strangle the brunet every time he got close and opened his mouth, when they were sitting in the car so peacefully now.

It was calm but utterly bitter.

The bitterness, Newt thought, was probably still the remnant from three years ago. Maybe not as vicious, but still accompanying him after all these years, every time they saw each other. The first year was catastrophic, the second they both calmed down a bit, and the third they actually managed to lead a normal, reasonable conversation with minimum insults.

Newt wasn’t shy to admit he missed his ex during quiet moments of his life; somehow. He was especially prone to it during his birthday, somehow spending the passing years without Thomas’ company hurt, despite the bad parting. Talking with Thomas with more ease was nostalgic. But his brain always helpfully supplied it was not going to last because they were still the stupid, broken up them deep down.

Not to mention pretending to be lovers just to get Thomas’ parents off his back was lame as fuck. He had no idea why he agreed. Maybe he was lame too.

“I don’t know. We bumped into each other on a party and made out in a closet,” Thomas responded, the smile finally falling off, his eyes glued to the road before him. “And decided to try it again.”

“Ugh.”

“What, you have a better idea?” Thomas shot him a look and Newt snorted.

“We managed to talk normally again and realized we’re still in love with each other?” he offered, just to piss him off. “Since, you know, it happens to normal people?”

“What, sex in the closet does not?” There was that annoyance in Thomas’ voice again Newt knew so well. They usually talked to each other like that – annoyed, nagging, angry, and it wasn’t hard to fall back into it.

“Probably to you,” he averted his eyes from his companion and watched the passing scenery instead. “But I’m not that easy.”

“That’s true,” he heard Thomas whisper, more to himself, and rather buried himself lower into the seat. The fact their intimate life sucked the last month they were together hadn’t been a secret and Newt was very much aware it just sped up the fall of their relationship. But at that point it all felt wrong, and the last thing Newt had wanted was having angry sex, or sex out of obligation, or basically anything intimate without enjoying the other person’s company. Because they sure weren’t enjoying each other for some time already.

Thomas didn’t like it. And he was pretty open about not liking it. But then again, so was Newt.

And then they broke up. It was outside during Christmas, under the lit-up tree on the city square, and Newt still considered it the most unpleasant memory of his life. They were furious, both of them, and the breakup was inevitable, but when it finally came, it wasn’t an explosion full of shouting or accusing as he expected.

Nope, it was quiet, cold and devastating. Seven years down the drain, just like that.

“Let’s go with your version,” he heard Thomas saying roughly. “It happens.”

“Yeah,” he piped, closing his eyes.

In fairy tales.

***

“Oh my god, I knew it!”

It was the first thing that hit them both when the door to the house opened and Thomas’ mother ran out, shrieking like a siren while going straight to Newt and almost suffocated him in an embrace. “I knew you two would get back together, I knew it!”

“There goes the surprise,” Newt managed from the rest of his breath and when she finally released him just to run back to the house to tell the rest of the family the big news, he gasped like he was drowning.

“Good to know she’s as strong as ever,” he croaked, and Thomas hummed and took both of their bags to carry it inside. He had gotten visibly darker and grumpier the closer they got to his hometown and now he almost visibly carried a dark, raining cloud above his head, looking like he just arrived at his own funeral.

Newt followed him inside with surprising ease though, like returning to this place somewhat negated everything Thomas tried to spoil. He had only nice, pleasant memories of this house, and those people, so even if Thomas ought to be a dickhead, he could always enjoy himself here.

“Newt!” a roaring voice welcomed him next, and another crushing hug lifted him from the floor. Thomas’ father was a big, broad guy who could probably lift the house itself, and his jolly personality apparently remained untouched as well.

“Hi there,” the blond greeted him right the moment he got back to the ground, trying to withstand the bear pat that followed. “Haven’t seen you in forever.”

“Likewise!” the big guy cheerily replied. “Glad to see he came back to his senses! Was seriously afraid he’d bring that gloomy goth girl here, I don’t think we have enough black around for that.”

Teresa or Brenda.

“Nah, he still has a thing for blonds,” he replied with a smile and immediately heard Thomas’ scoffing from the living room. The fact that both Teresa and Brenda turned him down must have scarred his ego a lot.

The jab was worth it though.

***

“I’m so glad you’re here,” Anna (Thomas’ mum) patted his arm for about fourth time already since they arrived, her face fond and eyes happy, and it made Newt guilty as hell. They all gathered in the kitchen, which smelled like fantastic food and happy memories. “I swear the breakup was so shocking, we didn’t want to believe it. Tom took it so badly too, I-,”

“Mum,” Thomas’ voice sounded threatening from behind them. “Stop feeding him useless stuff. He just got off work and spent three hours in the car, let him breathe a little.”

She made a face at him but sent Newt an apologetic smile and gave him a muffin. Still tasted as he remembered, and he had to admit those small welcoming bits were the only brakes he had from running away. It wasn’t like Thomas was nasty towards him or anything – he wouldn’t dare since they’d call him out on it – but since they had the talk in the car Newt could feel the uncomfortable tension between them that always ended in an argument.

“You want coffee?” Newt realized Thomas was looking at him now, eyebrows raised, and he just nodded, not trusting himself to say anything.

“I’ll bring it to you, you can go sit with others,” Thomas added as if he couldn’t get rid of him fast enough and Newt didn’t argue with that logic. The moment he left the kitchen and sat between Thomas’ dad and sister, relief washed over him, and he could finally breathe a little easier.

“I thought you’d already be married to somebody decent,” Hannah (Thomas’ little sister) commented while she plastered herself against Newt’s side like she used to do when she was little. Newt haven’t seen her for about four years, give or take, and now she was 14 and apparently full of opinions. “And not wasting your time with him again.”

Him, pointedly looking at her brother who was sneering at her while entering the living room with Newt’s coffee, was seemingly normal occurrence lately, judging from zero reactions from the parents.

“I know, I’ll never learn,” Newt piped in anyway, which made Thomas sneer at him for a change, and almost spilling the coffee on him, not even trying to mask it as an accident.

“Do I have to be the target of your bad jokes?” he glared at them collectively and when Anna arrived after him with dinner, Newt felt nostalgic, like literally nothing changed, and he relaxed into it with more ease than he expected.

He was just glad Thomas was sitting further from him and didn’t need to force himself to act natural. When he reached for the coffee, his favourite taste of it surprised him, but he didn’t meet Thomas’ eyes.

***

“I have to say, you got even cuter,” Anna suddenly said once they were past dinner, Newt couldn’t eat or drink anymore or he would explode and decided to walk it out while helping her bringing dishes to the kitchen and putting them in a dishwasher.

“Anna,” he chuckled. “That’s not what a guy wants to hear.”

“I’m just saying,” she had a genuine smile on her face. “I feared I’d never get to see you here ever again. I know you don’t really want to talk about the breakup and all…”

She stopped for a second, her eyes searching, and Newt hated how strangely painful it made him feel. He sincerely hoped it didn’t show on his face.

“I just want you to know I’m happy you two got back together,” she concluded, which meant it definitely showed on Newt’s face and she saw it. “I know you must have your reasons back then and everything, but I’m just… so glad for you two. And I wish you’d visit more often as well.”

Newt’s chest tightened like he was about to have a heart-attack and he had to push the guilt back down with the power of his sheer will alone, right in front of her trusting, hopeful eyes, like he was disarming a ticking bomb with 10 seconds on the countdown. He expected maybe some initial awkwardness, or some of them poke fun at how they finally got their shit back together after three years, but this wasn’t the plan and he hated how he wanted to hide behind Thomas’ back and just push him to deal with this instead.

“Yeah,” he gulped down the rising agony. “We absolutely should.”

Liar.

“You were always such a great kid,” she pushed herself from the kitchen counter and pulled him into a tight, heartfelt hug. Tears almost spilled out of Newt’s eyes when she squeezed him with loving gentleness he didn’t want to feel again to know what he was missing. “We all love you so much. Thank you for coming back.”

He couldn’t stop the guilt anymore and quietly wept into her shoulder, praying to any higher power for her not to notice.

***

It wasn’t an escape. He did not run away like a coward the moment he could. He didn’t light up his cigarette outside on a porch with trembling hands because he couldn’t get his nerves under control. It just happened. He just felt like it. He just needed the fresh air, nothing else.

He thought, maybe if he kept telling himself that, the tears would eventually stop and he wouldn’t be sniffling anymore into the night, with sky sprinkled with stars and air cold enough to make his face feel like ice.

He heard the door opening only vaguely, his eyes stinging, until the automatic light flashed above him, signalizing a movement nearby. He noticed Thomas too late, he realized when he started pathetically wiping away tears into his sleeve.

“You okay?” Thomas asked a bit abundantly, seeing the state of his, but Newt had to admit there weren’t many other questions to ask anyway.

“Yeah,” Newt sniffled, trying to get his feelings under control, but failing miserably. “Sorry… just. Give me a few, I’ll be fine.”

Thomas took a step closer, and Newt hated how he flinched at that.

“Mum told you something?”

He had an unreadable face, Newt thought. Neutral and careful and Newt couldn’t say what he was thinking. He hated how the ability of reading this man just disappeared like the rest of their history.

“Nothing bad,” he shook his head and brought the cigarette to his lips, inhaling shortly. His hands still trembled but not as badly anymore. “Are they worried?”

“Not yet, I think,” Thomas replied quietly, glancing towards the door, then sighed. “I guess it’s… kind of painful.”

“Kind of,” Newt agreed softly. “But it reminds me how nice it was when it lasted.”

“Yeah,” Thomas finally glanced at him, his eyes a bit warmer. “It was amazing.”

Newt felt a lump in his throat forming, and the more Thomas was looking at him, the worse it got, until he couldn’t really stand it. So he offered a small, apologetic smile, put the cigarette out and returned back to the house with buzzing in his head and weird pressure in his chest.

The mischievous grins Thomas’ family gave him once he reappeared in the living room never felt so wrong.

***

Newt didn’t really plan on it, but since the night progressed and his company slowly started leaving for the night, he eventually fell asleep on the couch in the living room. He thought he heard somebody trying to wake him while softly saying his name, but he was too exhausted to rise to the challenge and just let his eyes close shut.

The last thing he noticed was sudden warmth engulfing him, like being hugged by a fluffy animal and then he was out like a light.

He dreamed of first loves and heartbreaks.

***

“You’re being 17 only once in your life, man, cheer up a little!”

Newt grumpily looked at the shot he was given with liquid of unknown origin and then back at Minho, who was grinning at him encouragingly, already drunk enough to be considered not the most reliable source of what fun is. Newt couldn’t say he liked the taste of any alcohol he tried so far, and even though Minho made it look like it’s the most delicious thing he ever had, every cup tasted like spirit and burned unpleasantly.

Sure, he was 17 today. Sure, he tried alcohol because everybody did to celebrate, but every time they looked away, he just poured the rest of his cup into something that could hold it (the cactus probably wasn’t happy about it and Newt mentally apologized to the plant when he disposed of the rest of his beer in its pot).

“Lemme take that from you,” a sudden movement on his side caused the small glass to be taken from his hand, and then a brown-haired boy downed the drink like it was water. Newt had no idea who he was, but since he saved him from possible vomit-inducing moments, he immediately liked him.

“My saviour,” he grinned once the boy tossed the empty glass back to Minho who barely caught it. The boy smiled back at him, his big, brown eyes warm and honestly really pretty.

“Thomas,” he introduced himself. “I take it you’re the birthday boy. Newt, right?”

“Right,” the blond nodded in agreement. “You here with Ben?”

It was just a guess, but he vaguely remembered Ben mentioned something about bringing friends over and Newt didn’t mind. The more people present, the easier would it be for him to disappear at some point to avoid being cornered with other alcoholic beverages.

“Yep,” Thomas nodded with a cute smile. Newt wondered if he was already at least a little drunk to be so easily charmed. “I know I should have brought a gift, since it’s your b-day and all, but I kinda came empty handed. Sorry about that.”

“Preposterous,” Newt faked a shock, hand on his chest and laughter bubbling in his throat, but Thomas was already fishing through his pockets as if he was searching for something to give, and that made him laugh for real. “It’s fine, Tommy. You saved me from alcohol poisoning, you have a free pass.”

“That’s lame though,” Thomas objected unhappily and then finally found his phone in his back pocket, looking at Newt expectantly. “Can I at least get your number? I swear I will make it up to you.”

Normally Newt would argue he didn’t need anything, for real, don’t sweat it, but the more he was looking into Thomas’ eyes, the more his common sense refused to work, and caving in was so, so easy.

“Sweet,” Thomas smiled happily when he saved the contact and then slung his arm around Newt’s shoulders, leaned close and took a quick photo of them both on his phone. “You won’t regret it.”

“I know I won’t,” Newt said, and he meant it.

***

He woke up with his head painfully pounding, like he slept too long or too short. In a moment of confusion of his whereabouts one glance across the empty but messy living room from yesterday’s festivities gave him the answer he sought – he was in hell and it smelled like pancakes.

He gingerly sat up, analysing the situation carefully, until his eyes stopped at the clock showing 12:04 and Newt refused to believe them. He couldn’t have possibly slept till noon, right? Thomas was playing a prank at him by rewinding the clock or something, there was simply no way. He usually woke up at 7, if he really had a deficit then 9 the latest and felt guilty about it. Twelve sounded like a bad joke.

Then again, his body was so sore it made sense. He had a crick in his neck, his legs felt wooden and stiff and there were creases from the couch everywhere on his naked skin. He had a soft, fluffy blanket draped around his body he didn’t remember even seeing yesterday but was grateful for anyway.

“Fuck,” he breathed out in mortification. “What am I even doing?”

“Having a zombie march, I’d say,” a voice interrupted his inner freak out mercilessly and he turned around too fast for his poor head to comprehend and world spun for a moment. “Thought you died or something, geez. Since when you sleep so long?”

Thomas was slowly walking towards him with a tray, trying to balance the cups with coffee on it, and once he successfully set it down, there was only a small puddle under one, so still a success. He brought pancakes and muffins Anna baked and Newt didn’t feel like his appetite was up to this.

“I dunno,” the blond rubbed his eyes sleepily. “I guess I wasn’t really sleeping as much these past few days…”

“Your back must hate you though,” Thomas glanced at the sofa pointedly. “Only sitting for too long on this torture device is painful.”

“Eh,” Newt shrugged. “I’ve had worse.”

“Well, you look like shit, so not much worse,” Thomas didn’t spare him, smirking at Newt’s apparently dishevelled appearance and he just flipped him off.

“Have a pancake, you’ll feel better,” Thomas pushed the tray closer.

“Maybe later,” Newt untangled himself from the blanked instead. “I need a bath.”

“Can’t argue with that.”

Newt mentally slapped Thomas so hard his face landed in the pancake cushion. In reality he just scoffed and wobbled out of the living room at the sound of his ex’ snickering.

***

Nobody really commented on Newt’s faux pas of passing out on the couch until it was time for lunch, but they did comment on his food habits (or better on having none). He barely ever ate breakfast in the morning, so he didn’t eat the fluffy pancakes, or the muffins Thomas brought him, but he did drink the coffee. Before he could even properly digest that Anna was already serving lunch and he had no way how to wiggle himself out of that one.

The rest of the day passed like a blur and when the evening came Anna was chasing him to the bed the first moment he yawned.

“You’re not going to ruin your back on this monstrosity!” she was pushing him up the stairs with Thomas behind her, laughing at them. “I don’t understand how we didn’t buy a new one yet, but now we have to, or you’d wreck yourself on it!”

“It wasn’t that bad,” Newt tried to argue, but she was having none of it and finally stopped in front of Thomas’ room, which… was an obvious choice, but Newt felt his blood running cold at the sight of the familiar area.

“I prepared clean towels and everything,” she pointed at a fluffy pile on Thomas’ desk. “Good night!”

“Yeah…” the blond barely got that out and she was already leaving, calling to others downstairs to help her choose a new couch so she could immediately order it online.

“Well, at least we’ll get rid of that relic,” Thomas commented while entering the bedroom as well, all smiles like he didn’t realize there was one bed, them broken up and Newt’s absolute horror.

“We’re not sleeping in the same bed, are we,” Newt ignored him with eyes fixed at the lodging in the room and Thomas crossed his arms on his chest, his lips in a wide grin.

“What, I clearly remember you saying there is nothing embarrassing about me anymore, since you heard me fart and all.”

“Oh god, shut up,” Newt wished his words were a spell and came true, but of course they didn’t work on Thomas, since he started laughing like a hyena. Anna naturally would let them both sleep in Thomas’ room, it was an obvious choice, but he sure hated it.

Thomas’ room was the same as Newt remembered it, but it made sense, since Thomas had his own place in the city for years. His family had no reason to change it, let it be the queen-sized bed, the blue-ish walls and sleek black furniture hugging the place. It had no sofa, which was the core of the problem for one of them and Newt’s regret of saying yes returned in full force.

“It’s not like it’s a small bed,” Thomas commented matter-of-factly once he had his fill of fun and sat at the edge of the incriminated furniture, obviously taunting him.

“It’s not like I care,” Newt bit out and circled the bed in disdain. “Sleep on the floor for what I care.”

“But it’s my bed,” Thomas argued with badly concealed glee. Newt guessed it was because now he could make fun of him now, which must have made him feel good after being a target of little quips from his family for two days. “If you don’t like me in it, you go sleep on the floor.”

“I’m a guest in here,” Newt crossed his arms on his chest. “Don’t you have any manners? Not to mention you owe me for coming here and playing your lying game.”

“It has nothing to do with manners or me owing you, you’re just being a stubborn ass as always,” Thomas corrected him and clearly didn’t feel like being merciful, especially when he just flopped onto the mattress and looked at Newt expectantly. “So, let’s calm down and get some sleep. I promise I won’t attack you until you’re awake again.”

“Shut up, jerk face,” Newt barked at him and grabbed the towel Anna left there, turning to leave for the bathroom, definitely not running away. “As if I’d bloody let you.”

“Mhmmm.” Thomas’ face was grinning, and Newt wanted to set his guts on fire.

Goddamn, fuck this all.

***

Of course Thomas already laid under the covers, one arm under his head, other holding his phone and leisurely scrolling through it. The room was bathing in darkness, outside of the small lamp on the bedside table. Newt still remember that lamp from years ago, and how they almost broke it when Newt accidentally knocked it over when they were having sex… here… okay, that particular memory really didn’t need to resurface right now.

“I know right,” Thomas suddenly spoke, looking at Newt pointedly. “I was surprised that thing still works too. Got banged so badly.”

“Hmm…”

“Not the only thing that got banged though,” of course the fucker had to add, and Newt tossed his shirt he was holding at him. Only got small laugh in response and then his shirt got dropped carelessly on the floor, left crumpled there like trash. Newt wanted to kick Thomas’ ass so bad he almost reached for his whole bag to hit him with it.

“Going to stand there whole night?” Thomas was acting smugly because he had an upper hand for now, the blond knew the tactics very well. Just milking the moment until one of them snap, he sure hadn’t changed. Newt seriously considered to just leave and sleep in the car if he had to.

“Are you going to be this insufferable the whole week?” he seethed, and Thomas shrugged.

“Define insufferable. Don’t feel like I am any of that.”

“Alright, then I’ll leave tomorrow,” Newt countered him, because he was honestly too tired already and couldn’t think of anything that would make Thomas to fall from his high horse for just one second. Or just show some understanding, because the moment they got in his room he made sure to make Newt as uncomfortable as possible. “You can tell your parents whatever you want, I don’t care.”

“Are you seriously throwing a tantrum over us sleeping in one bed?” Thomas sat up while putting his phone away and he had this old Star Wars shirt Newt got him for his 20th birthday and it was like a punch in his gut.

“Yes,” Newt just said and the warmth from the bath was slowly dissipating from his body, leaving him chilled and miserable.

“We slept together for 7 years,” Thomas objected with a small frown. “It’s not like you don’t know me. Or how I sleep.”

“It’s not like it matters in this situation.”

“I told you I won’t do anything,” another argument and Newt shook his head. He wasn’t even worried he would try anything; they were way past that phase anyway. It was just… so uncomfortable. “Jesus, Newt, please be reasonable. It’s cold, you’re shivering like a wet dog over there, I have perfectly normal, warm bed and we won’t even be touching. I don’t know what kind of block you have in your head, but can you just let it go for tonight and come here before you catch a cold and blame it on me too?”

“I-,” Newt couldn’t even start when a soft knock stopped him mid speech and the door opened few seconds later with Anna between them, smiling. Probably chaperoning, he would guess if he had a coherent thought.

“Just wanted to ask if you want chicken or steak for tomorrow lunch,” she chirped and Newt could almost see the loading screen in front of his eyes, for how much he couldn’t comprehend the sudden topic change.

“Go lie down, you’ll freeze out here,” she immediately noticed him standing there barefooted and pushed him gently towards the bed. “Do you want another blanket? I know you’re always cold. Thomas brought the fluffy one downstairs yesterday, should I fetch it?”

“It’s fine, I have two in here already,” Thomas interjected immediately and before Newt could react anyhow, Thomas reached for his hand and pulled him onto the mattress. “Will warm him up if that wouldn’t be enough.”

“Just try to be quiet, will you,” Anna seized them both in disapproving stare and Newt felt sick in his stomach. “So what. Chicken or steak?”

“I vote for steaks!” Thomas immediately shot out and Newt still didn’t understand what was even important about food in this situation, so he just nodded dumbly, and then Anna was leaving with good night and disappeared behind the door again, plunging the room into silence.

He could hear Thomas’ breathing close to his own and finally understood he lost this fight without much of a battle happening.

“Can we sleep now?” he heard Thomas ask, so he just slinked under covers and turned his back towards the man, feeling vulnerable and stupid at the same time.

***

They didn’t talk about the night. They didn’t really talk at all during the day, since when Newt woke up, Thomas was already gone, and Hannah mentioned something about him and his dad leaving early in the morning for whatever reason.

Newt hated how relieved he felt.

He spent most of the day with Anna making lunch and dodging questions about him and Thomas’ breakup and reconciliation. Anna didn’t pry as much as he feared she would, but she obviously wanted to know what happened three years ago and he had no nice answer for her, so he just kept it vague.

We stopped talking to each other properly.

We felt like we needed a break.

No, there was no bad blood between us, really. Absolutely no arguments that would cut too deep, I assure you. We just needed some time. We’re back together now after all, right.

The lies twisted so painfully on his tongue he was grateful when Thomas finally got back at 4PM and Anna’s attention turned to him instead. When the day progressed, Brian (Thomas’ dad) sat them all in the living room in the evening and opened his favourite bottle of whiskey he kept for special occasions.

They lit up fire in the fireplace and Anna brought over snacks, and just sitting there and chilling felt soothing to Newt’s guiltiness eating him up from within.

“We just sealed the deal with a new partner today,” Brian said in a booming voice when he was pouring a glass to Newt who was sincerely relieved his special occasion wasn’t Thomas and him dating again. Because that sure would send him out of the room quick, he could handle only that much before snapping.

“That’s fantastic,” he gingerly accepted the glass and watched Thomas doing to same when offered, wondering if he could somehow dump his own drink into his glass without being suspicious. They sat too wide apart though, with Thomas between his parents and Newt felt the gap deeply.

“That’s right! It means more work, but it’s going to be worth it!” Brian nodded happily and poured glass to Anna as well. When Hannah came with her own, he shooed at her to get juice instead, at which she pouted. “We were dealing with them on and off for about a year, so when they agreed to be a permanent supplier, it’s gonna make a difference.”

“You should invite the CEO for dinner,” Anna added to it and Brian immediately agreed. “But for now, cheers!”

Newt smiled and raised his glass as well, but his throat already hated it in advance. Once he sipped the wood-scented drink, he forced himself to remain passive and not make a disgusted face that was forcing its way up, grateful Anna and Brian were too busy planning what food to choose for the business dinner.

“Oh my god, can you stop shouting in my ear?” Thomas suddenly stood up when his dad leaned over him to his mum for umpteenth time. “Go sit next to her! Geez. I’m not a cushion you can bulldozer over.”

Brian laughed and pushed himself towards his wife on Thomas’ spot, which left Thomas to sit next to Newt with an unceremonious plop.

“I thought maybe cream cake for dessert?” Anna was brainstorming loudly in meantime. “Right, Newt? You always liked the cake.”

“Oh yeah, loved it,” Newt quickly switched his attention to her from Thomas’ sudden warmth next to him. “Think it’s a great idea for the dessert.”

“See!” Anna beamed at Brian happily and Newt flinched when his glass got bumped suddenly and he almost dropped it before he realized it was Thomas’ own glass touching it now.

“Pour some over,” he mumbled towards the blond quietly. “Before they notice and start pestering you about quality of well-aged alcohol.”

“Thanks…” he piped gratefully and hastily splashed most of his glass’ contents away. He noticed Hannah was looking at them, but she only rolled her eyes and started arguing with the parents that beef was no better than pork for the main dish.

“She’d drink it instead if she had a chance,” Thomas whispered towards him. “Going to be a fucking alcoholic before she reaches twenty.”

“Weren’t you the same though,” Newt objected automatically, and Thomas sipped his now almost full glass with a smirk.

“Never minded the taste, yeah,” he shrugged while licking his lips. Newt would believe from his expression the drink tasted good, if he didn’t know better. “I still like beer more though. This can easily knock me out of my socks if I’m not careful.”

“Mm.”

“You slept well?”

Newt stiffed at the question, as he expected he would if Thomas was going to breach it, and then forced his body to relax again while gripping his almost empty glass firmly.

“Fine,” he only uttered.

“Are we going to have a problem again tonight then or is it fine?” he heard Thomas asking in low voice and refused to meet his eyes. The night was alright, he slept more or less okay too, but that didn’t pose a problem in the first place, and Thomas knew it. Newt couldn’t say if it was Thomas’ way of being petty or getting revenge, but it sure bothered Newt like a thorn in his side.

“Can’t possibly kick you off, when your mum likes to check up on us,” he mumbled with a quick glance towards Anna, still in heated debate over food with the rest of the family. “So let’s pretend it’s fine.”

“I’m not pretending anything,” Thomas scoffed. “I don’t mind sharing a bed. It’s not like you’re a stranger.”

“Sure.”

“Hmm,” Thomas let out and then moved again, lifting his legs and deposited them rudely on Newt’s lap while leaning against the side of his dad who barely even noticed.

“Sure then,” he was grinning when Newt shot him a glare. “Love of my life.”

“I swear I’ll murder you,” Newt gritted through his teeth and refused to acknowledge how his heart thumped when Thomas smiled at him like he just said something overly sweet.

“Looking forward to it,” the brunet responded instead while sipping their shared drink and Newt twisted his big toe in revenge. Sadly, it didn’t have much of an effect.

***

“What the fuck happened to you over those years, jesus fuck!” If anybody asked, Newt didn’t sound like a naggy wife scolding her husband, no sir. “You can’t hold your liquor for shit!”

“Whaaa-,” Thomas’ attempt to sound offended interrupted a loud burp and then fit of laughter, all that when he was plastered over Newt’s back who was unceremoniously dragging him back to his room.

“If you throw up over my back, you’re dead,” he warned the drunkard coldly and Thomas let out hehehe but didn’t deny it. Newt suspected him he could walk just fine but wanted to be as obnoxious as possible, so Newt would have to take care of him in front of his amused parents who left them to it. Newt would be much happier if Thomas’ dad would toss his son to the bed one armed, because he definitely could, and wouldn’t leave Newt to fight with the deadweight all alone, but then again maybe it was for the best.

True enough, Thomas had in total of four and half glasses full of whiskey, even though Brian laughed at him to get drunk after three shots. Naturally didn’t know every time he poured Newt a fresh batch, even though Newt tried to tell him no thanks, he secretly dumped it into Thomas’ glass who drank it, just to get refilled from Brian again as well, and that went until the bottle was empty and Thomas started giggling.

Which led them to the situation at hand – with Newt dragging his ex up the stairs and to his room – their room – while swearing like a sailor, and then just dumping him onto the bed like a sack of potatoes where Thomas landed with soft oof.

“Why’s the room sp’nning…?” he heard the muffled question shortly after, looking at Thomas’ boneless form of a dead drunk with his face half buried in covers. “Make it stooop~.”

“You feel like barfing?” he asked instead of reacting to the drunk observation and Thomas groaned, then tried to push himself up, just to fail miserably. He tried two more times until he realized he really couldn’t get up because his arms wouldn’t support him, and just had to worm his way up to the pillow by crawling. Which was almost painful to watch, honestly.

“Neeeewt.”

“Oh for fuck’s sake,” the blond buried his face to his hands until another whine of his name came and he walked to the bed and pushed Thomas on his back instead. That got him a sloppy grin in return in a drunk haze.

“Hi,” the drunkard slurred. “How’re ya?”

“Sucky,” Newt answered while crossing his arms on his chest.

“Oh noooo…” another whine. “Whyyy?”

“Have to take care of one smashed idiot,” Newt nudged Thomas’ side with his knee, earning another giggle. He couldn’t say he had experience with drunk Thomas – or at least with this much drunk Thomas. If he ever got inebriated enough to be considered wasted, he just passed out, usually. But today’s drunk Thomas sure had some annoying stamina and kept himself awake for too long.

“I’ll protect you from ‘im,” Thomas managed to reach out with his hand, grabbing at Newt’s sweater. “C’me to the bed.”

“I think you need a bucket first,” Newt let him pawn his sweater with a sigh.

“Mkay.” The hand on his sweater stayed, grabbing randomly, until it dropped to Newt’s thigh where it lightly squeezed, and Thomas let an appraising hum. “You got thinner.”

“It’s just your imagination,” Newt pushed the hand away and it bounced back onto the mattress. “Get changed, I’ll be right back.”

“Nooo…”

He ignored the whine and left the bedroom with a lump in his throat. Drunk Thomas could be bad for his conscience.

***

He got back half an hour later, after a bath and finding a bucket he could deposit at the edge of the bed, in hope Thomas didn’t manage to throw up in meantime. He found him sleeping sprawled over the mattress, right in the middle, still in the same clothes and smelling like a liquor store. There was no barf anywhere at least.

“Sweet,” he sighed while putting the bucket near Thomas’ possible trajectory of his head if he felt like bending over and vomiting. “Glad we had this talk about sleeping together, huh.”

He slowly crawled onto the bed, careful not to wake Thomas up (though judging by his occasional snores it wasn’t happening) and slid under the blanket as much as Thomas’ weight allowed him.

In hindsight… there was no way he could be mad at him anyway, for today. No matter how drunk the man got, he still remembered how Newt didn’t like alcohol and Newt hated how it warmed his jaded heart.

He fell asleep eventually, dreaming of grabby hands and sad smiles.

***

“Your mum is going to hear us, you ass!”

“Don’t care.”

“Tommy!”

No response, only hot lips on his neck, licking and biting and pampering it with kisses and Newt just remained pinned against the door of Thomas’ room, taking the weight of his boyfriend against his body and roaming hands grabbing at his butt and then traveling to his thigh, hiking it up to settle against Thomas’s hip. His heart was beating so loud he couldn’t hear anything else, just thump thump thump of his blood roaring, and Thomas’s sweet nothings he was murmuring to Newt’s ear in a rough voice.

“I want you so much,” Thomas whispered when unbuckling Newt’s pants, sliding his hand under them against hot, naked skin, and Newt couldn’t hold back a moan, he just needed him closer, he needed to kiss him, to touch him, to get him inside-

“Fuck, you’re so hot,” Thomas bit out, voice strained, and Newt let him to lift him up and carry him towards the bed, their lips meeting in a messy, frantic kiss. It was painful, it was rushed, but it was what Newt needed, the brutal strength of Thomas’ body pushing into him and his own breathy moans coming out when their lips parted, and he heard a dull thud at some point when he was trying to hold onto the bedpost once Thomas thrusted into him so strong it made him see stars, but he didn’t care about anything else but pleasure and pain and adoration he felt when he was with him-

Newt woke up with a start, his body hot and aroused, and he felt on fire and caged and painfully hard. He could barely catch a breath when he noticed arms slung possessively around his torso and waist pushing him insistently against warm body behind him, waking up all his senses one by one like Christmas lights.

It took him a moment, the initial confusion clearing like a fog from his mind, making him realize Thomas was cuddling him from behind, one of his hands got under Newt’s shirt and was spread across his naked belly possessively.

“Shit,” he couldn’t stop himself from cursing and attempted to disentangle, but it only made Thomas to clutch to him harder, like a defence mechanism, unwilling to let go. He tried to push away one of the arms holding him, but Thomas slung a leg over his hips in response, trapping him even more.

“Don’t leave,” a sleepy voice sliced the silence and Newt stiffened once he felt hot lips on the back of his neck, mouthing there persistently.

“Thomas-.” He tried to turn around but couldn’t move an inch and Thomas bit down slightly, sending shivers down Newt’s spine.

“Mmm…” he heard the hum, and then the tense weight relaxed once Thomas fell asleep again, and Newt didn’t dare to move anymore.

It was going to be a long night and Newt refused to acknowledge the little voice in the back of his head screaming for relief by Thomas’ hand.

So, I 100%ed the Kingdom Hearts Franchise.

Alright. This might be a long take, just saying that now. But I know exactly where to start. This franchise. Is not as confusing as the entirety of the internet would like you to believe. It's mostly due to bad writing decisions here and there. I mean, yeah if you wanna have every single detail and definition ingrained into your brain. Then of course it can get complicated, but what franchise lasting as long as Kingdom Hearts isn't annoyingly convoluted? I can't think of one.

So my thoughts about  the series is that they're pretty good! Both as a story and as games, with some very big exceptions. I wanna say that you should definitely not try to 100% all of these games in chronological order in rapid succession. It will drain you. I can confirm this beyond a shadow of a doubt. After I beat KH2 it really start to hit me. Chain of Memories was fine, if not a bit tedious to get all the cards and Riku to level 100. But other than that I more than enjoyed my time with the game.

Heartless are born from the darkness in peoples hearts. Nobodies are created from the husk of a body left behind in the creation of a Heartless. While Unversed are born from supreme negative emotions that live inside us all. The stronger these feelings are/the person is, the stronger the heartless/unversed and nobody. Especially strong people can keep their identity when transformed into Nobodies. Thus explaining Organization 13. Only the keyblade can truly defeat these creatures. What's so hard about describing that to someone? It isn't that far fetched in terms of the fantasy genre.

Though personally. I have an enormous hatred from Kingdom Hearts Dream Drop Distance. Despite trying to keep an open mind about any and all forms of media I come across, I cannot ever get behind this title in the series because it is just too much and strays too far from what i consider to be "Kingdom Hearts". The gameplay was not fun for me personally, the story was iffy at best in comparison to the others and it really felt like the biggest amount of padding. If you have to do that to become a Keyblade Master, I think i'd rather stay as a rouge agent like Sora did for 99% of the series.

The dream eater system was probably the biggest factor here as for 100% completion you have to get every single dream eater, and every single skill that they can give you which means leveling a lot of them up to the point where they have points to buy said skills. Which takes forever. And then there's the Dream Eater tournaments, which I would have never gotten past without cheap strategies I found online. Usually I get everybody to max potential in these games and give the best items and accessories all around. But as soon as I got the platinum I ejected the disk and took a break. I felt like I needed it.

Alright, putting that behind us. The difference in fighting styles from game to game can get a bit jarring but in the PS4 re-releases it can usually be adjusted too in about half an hour to an hour's worth of gameplay. Chain of Memories was fun, but tedious like I mentioned. And Birth By Sleep was actually a fresh of breath air (until you get to the secret boss fights that is...) If it wasn't for my need to see that 100% bar next to the game title I would classify these games as something everybody should try out and enjoy. They are fantastic experiences. So lets go in order for a bit.

KH1 is a classic story, going through Disney worlds with a fine mix of Final Fantasy. Meeting the princesses and seeing they are "Princesses of Heart" that have strength beyond muscles. Able to use the power of Light and what not. There's a few hiccups here and there (like Cloud and Sephiroth not acting like how they are in FF7 but everyone's already mentioned that.) But aside from that and the bad platforming, its a genuinely fun game to 100% and I'd highly recommend it. Maybe even try to get cosmic arts for everyone so you can have 16-19 MP bars. It gets silly.

Chain of Memories i've already mentioned a lot so far. So I don't think I need to go that in depth. Fun to go through but wouldn't recommend 100%ing it because it takes far to long. The story is actually pretty decent and isn't that complicated. Sora and the gang lose their memories of KH1 because of the magic witch Namine, while we get our first look at Organization 13.

KH2. The golden child. Still played by many to this day and its obvious to see why. The game play is crisp and fantastic as I remember it from my youth. Traveling to Disney worlds again (and not card versions of them that have no people except for cut scenes, like CoM) and having a constant looming threat over your head while you try to have fun on your journey. Its great. I have yet to do a level 1 critical mode (as that's not required thankfully) but I did thoroughly enjoy my regular Critical play though. Story still isn't that bad yet. Organization 13 comes in full force, trying to get a new version of "Kingdom Hearts" so they can restore their humanity. I'd highly recommend 100%ing this one as well. Would also recommend maxing out your stats and putting on multiple Full Bloom+'s and Shadow Archieve+'s for the fun of it.

Birth By Sleep. Still not that bad honestly. It comes at a weird time though, and the story telling kind of requires you to have some outsider knowledge so that you're not thrown for a loop the entire time. So it feels weird to go back in the past, but also necessary for the story as a whole. Fun game to play minus the hundreds of mini games you need to do for all three main characters. If it wasn't for that I would recommend playing this game to completion. It's hard to reach higher levels though and as everyone's who played the game knows. Terra sucks at End Game compared to Aqua and Ven. I beat the Secret bosses by sheer luck and I would not go back for them. You do get to learn the origins of what makes most of the future events play out though and you even get to see younger versions of Organization 13. Back when they weren't evil!

Nothing eventful happens in Re:Coded.

Dream Drop Distance... Already talked about it. Let's move on before i'm forced to remember dream eaters and their annoyingly high pitched theme song.

Birth By Sleep 0.2: A Fragmentary Passage. Really good demo for KH3 in all honestly. I had a fun time with it and seeing Aqua's pain and journey through the realm of darkness for a whole 10 years was interesting.

And now we're at Kh3. The big game we waited so long for. And its... Alright. Nothing really spectacular. The graphics are certainly splendid and gameplay feels great! If not a bit too floaty. Thats a problem for some people, especially those who were avid fans of KH2. But I had no problem with it. I have yet to play it on critical but i've heard it makes things far more entertaining. As for story, its also alright. Not the grand ending I was expecting but it was really fun all things considered. Just another ride through more modern Disney worlds. But no Final Fantasy! I get that they feel KH can stand on its own legs now but you can't take out half the formula that people fell in love with originally. Then there's no battle arena or replayable boss fights. Doesn't have to be the Real Orginization 13. Just any replayable fights with end game gear would be enough.

As for my real problem with the games. Is the treatement of the third member of the original trio. Kairi. Oh, how this character has divided a good portion of the fan base just by existing. It feels like all the time that she is just a damsel for Sora/Riku to save and rescue. In the first game, thats fine. Whatever. She was unconcious the whole time and had her heart within Sora. Chain of Memories was a game about Sora losing his memories and Riku overcoming his darkness. Thats also fine. But in KH2. Really? She gets a keyblade and can't even handle a group of shadows? The lowest level of heartless? It's embarrassing. She's supposed to be a Princess of Heart. What's that even mean anymore? It doesn't even seem relevant.

KH2 should've been her moment to become a party member just like Riku did. I dont care that it means you could possibly not have Donald or Goofy. KH2 felt the most like the penultimate ending to the series than Kh3 did in my opinon. Having the choice between your KH1 buddies (Sora, Donald and Goofy) or the Island Trio (Sora, Riku and Kairi) would have added excellent variety and much needed development for Kairi as a person rather than leaving her as a one dimensional damsel in distress who has a Nobody with more internal conflict and character motivation. Moving past that... BBS is a prequel so nothing for the original trio except for meeting Aqua/Ven/Terra. And we come back to the dreaded DDD again.

If my vision for Kairi in KH2 couldn't have become a reality. Then why wasn't DDD Kairi's game? The set up was perfect. The heroes of light need to train to overcome almost double the amount of darkness agents. Kairi (and Axel) are practically beginners at wielding a Keyblade. It should've been their time to shine and get some love while occasionally helping Sora and Riku in their Mark of Mastery exam. Why did it have to be something you do alone? Well actually you're not alone you have the stupid Dream Eaters. Regardless it could have been the newbies learning how to get to Kh2 Sora's level while Sora goes beyond his limits.

As for KH3, it's just awful. Kairi's treatment is awful and everyone knows it. She said she was gonna help but hit one whole heartless in the finale. Better than KH2 i suppose. And as for the argument of her being "too weak" to try anything agaisnt Xemans. Really? She couldn't even like. Step on his foot? Pull agaisnt his grip or switch which hand the blade is in? Since the keyblade can teleport to your hands when you need it. I don't expect her to randomly become a Keyblade Master, but. I think we all would've prefer if she just did ANYTHING over what actually happened. It's sad. I hope KH4 will give Kairi the proper treatment and character development she deserves. But for all we know it might be another Sora/Riku dual protagonist game like CoM or DDD. What do you think?

Krista Vernoff, fresh off a two-season renewal and new job as 'Station 19' showrunner, talks with The Hollywood Reporter about the big cliffhanger.

[This story contains spoilers from the season 15 finale of Grey's Anatomy.]

ABC's Grey's Anatomy wrapped up its "Season of Love" on Thursday with a finale that teed up a plethora of new storylines to explore in the recently announced 16th (and 17th!) seasons.

Thursday's season 15 finale featured Meredith (finally!) professing her love for Andrew (Giacomo Gianniotti) — and doing so while he was behind bars. DeLuca was arrested (and stands to risk his career) after covering for Meredith (Ellen Pompeo), who committed insurance fraud to help a family who had been terrorized by immigration reform efforts. Meanwhile, Meredith, Richard (James Pickens) and Alex (Justin Chambers) wind up being fired by Bailey (Chandra Wilson) for their roles in the offense.

Elsewhere, Teddy (Kim Raver) goes into labor and finds support in an unlikely ally: Amelia (Caterina Scorsone). After Teddy gives birth (a girl, named after her best friend, Allison, who died on 9/11), Owen (finally!) professes his love to his former Army friend. It sets up a love triangle between Koracick (new series regular Greg Germann), who is back at home building baby furniture for Teddy. (Poor guy, Teddy doesn't bother to tell her boyfriend that she's in labor.) Then there's Amelia, who sees Owen moving on with Teddy and has Link (new regular Chris Carmack) waiting in the wings for something more serious at a time when she decides to work on herself.

As for Jo (Camilla Luddington), she (finally!) tells someone what triggered her depression as she turns the corner and fills in Alex (Justin Chambers) before getting treatment.

The hour ends with a cliffhanger that sees Jackson (Jesse Williams) leave Maggie (Kelly McCreary) alone after going out into the thick fog amid a multiple-car pile-up. Jackson fails to return, leaving Maggie terrified of what may have happened to him.

Below, showrunner Krista Vernoff — who hit pause on her well-earned vacation — talks with The Hollywood Reporter about the season as a whole and why she hopes viewers will be talking about Jackson all summer.

The episode ends with a cliffhanger, Jackson is nowhere to be found after going out into the fog. Why leave the finale so open-ended? Was this a contract decision or a creative one? He's coming back next season as a regular. It was a creative decision. It was a cliffhanger. I want people to come back [in the fall] and talk all summer and wonder what happens to him. We have not mapped it out. The writers come back June 3, I'm on vacation for two weeks and then we'll hit it. What I love about act six of our finale is we gave ourselves so much to play with for next season on all the storylines.

Will there be a time jump next season? I have no idea. It's unlikely that there will be much of a time jump because I really want to play through the consequences of what Meredith did. But I honestly might be lying to you because I honestly just don't know yet.

You described this as the Season of Love," and it ended with Meredith professing her love for Andrew. Is there a theme for season 16? That is a later conversation. We got through this season and then the writers went away. I'm really proud of the work we did this season but I don't have answers for next season.

You mentioned that you're excited to explore the consequences of Meredith's actions. Knowing that the series often takes on larger social issues, have you considered using Meredith's arrest for fraud to explore a bigger political storyline, perhaps around fighting for immigration reform? We have not. The very nature of what Meredith did here was an argument for reform because she was confronting and talking about a really broken system. The system was so broken and it was just enraging to her. The idea that this family is suffering this much and is now going to suffer more was more than Meredith could bear. So she made what amounts to a really stupid decision from a really noble place.

Meredith's actions felt very old-school Grey's — similar to when Izzie (Katherine Heigl) cut Denny's (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) LVAD wire. And there was a reference to that famed scene in the finale as well! Was that intentional? Yes. One of the things that hasn't happened lately is Meredith Grey hasn't faced consequences for the rules that she breaks. She is a bold rule breaker and we love her for it — and she always gets away with it. We felt we had laid the groundwork to shock the audience when this time, Meredith doesn't get off so easy.

Meredith, Richard and Alex have all been fired, which will have a massive ripple effect on pretty much everyone, both at the hospital and in their respective personal lives … Indeed! It is consequential AF, as the kids say. We were excited in the writer's room about that. We couldn't stop kind of laughing like, "Holy shit, what have we done?! What are we doing?!" But when you get to 342 episodes — which is where we are — you have the right to take some bold swings, you have to take some bold swings if you want to keep the show fresh and exciting and you don't want people to get ahead of you. You have to be bold. And I feel like we were really bold here and we'll see how it all shakes out.

Jo reaches a turning point and is admitted for therapy. How much will you explore how there's no quick and easy fix for mental health and depression? I think that Jo is suffering from depression born of trauma … and the idea that her brain is telling her that she should never have existed. She's been in a horrible spiral and spirals are made more horrible when they live inside your head and you're unable to talk to anyone about them. This I know to be true: talking about things is the beginning of healing them. I was really proud of the design of that story. Episode 19 was such an exquisite episode and I hope that the writer and director and editors of that episode all get the Emmy attention they deserve. When I saw that episode, it uprooted all of my plans for Jo. There was no way in my mind that Jo could be happy and playful again this season, having just survived that. … We showed the beginning of the healing process. And the next step of the healing process is getting treatment. She needs treatment and that's what we see. So, while it makes you cry in the finale to see her and Alex say goodbye to each other, I believe that it's a happy cry because Jo is getting the help that she needs.

Let's talk about the Teddy/Koracick/Owen/Amelia/Link of it all. You really put a new spin on the love triangle in this one. Owen professes his love for Teddy, who doesn't call her boyfriend, Koracick, to tell him that she was in labor. What was exciting for you about exploring that, what, quadrangle? What do we even call that?! A love quintangle! In the end, it was a love quintangle. I was excited to take that story on because it was so complicated. I'm proud that we did that for the whole season without really ever having Amelia and Teddy go after each other, without leaning into those tropes that we have seen so often in love triangles where there are two women and one man. I'm proud that it was Amelia driving Teddy to the hospital in the end and then talking about how they could be friends and maybe they should be friends. I am very excited as a writer by the complexity of Teddy and Owen having that baby and having declared their love and then panning to find Tom alone in the nursery that he is building for Teddy and her baby. That's an exciting thing as a storyteller because it leaves just great material for next season.

Amelia's journey was terrific: she's getting over Owen and winds up meeting this Link, and they're absolutely wonderful together. And I say that as someone who has loved Amelia and Owen together since their start. Instead, Amelia says she's open to something more with Link but decides to explore who she is before committing to anything serious.

I was exceedingly proud of Amelia for her growth and for her maturity and for telling Link the truth, which is that he was a rebound and maybe he's not a rebound anymore because life is complicated and he is terrific but that she dove into him too quickly and she has to figure some things out before she can decide anything permanent. It's like, if everyone could grow up that much the world would be a better place.

The balance of power between Nico and Schmidt shifted — and Schmidt just came out to his mother, having found his confidence. Meanwhile, Nico seems truly miserable. Jake Borelli was upped to series regular but there's no word about Alex Landi. Will he be back next season? What did you enjoy most about their storylines this year? Alex Landi is going to be recurring for us again next year. I am not sure where it's all going but I thought that coming out scene was just gorgeous. I just loved them.

You're going to be showrunner on both Grey's and midseason spinoff Station 19 next season. I'd imagine that means you're shaking things up there, yes? I'm not ready to answer what I'm planning to do with it because I just took this on and I've got to study it and get inside of it. It's an exciting world and the idea of merging these two shows in a way where characters from Grey's might appear on Station 19 and vice versa. The design is that Station 19 is three blocks from Grey Sloan. When Stacy McKee [showrunner and creator] decided to go it made the most sense for me to oversee the whole thing and see how cohesive I could make it.

I loved seeing Schmidt in that world, too. Is there a specific character or two you're looking forward to writing for? I loved it, too. I need a month in a writer's room [to answer that]. I'm going to have writer's rooms that are right next door to each other and I've got great teams and I am really excited to answer that question for you in six weeks! [Laughs.]

How much pressure do you feel running both series? Maybe it's just exhaustion that's not allowing me to have the anxiety that I should probably be experiencing but I am excited. I had a conversation with Chandra Wilson when I came back to the show [two seasons ago] and we had a conversation about Bailey. The question she posed is, "We've established Bailey as being an ambitious woman. What does she do with all of her ambition now that she's the chief of the hospital?" That's where we started our conversation about Bailey and that's what I feel like applies here. It's like, "She gets two hospitals!" I feel like I came back to Grey's and it has been a joy. And I think it's been a success and now I get two shows! I get two hospitals. It's like my ambition is excited and I'm excited to challenge myself and see what I'm capable of doing with this new challenge.

Grey's was renewed for two more seasons. I hate to ask, but has there been any talk about if season 17 is the end? I've heard nothing yet. I'm under contract through season 17, that's what I can tell you.

Character Sheet!

Basics FULL NAME. Athena Tesla Scott

PRONUNCIATION. Uh-the-na

NICKNAME. Nutjob, thena, crazy science girl

GENDER. Cis female HEIGHT. 5'5

AGE. 14 when she died, but has grown to 19... Her body accommodates from a 14 year to a 19 year old body as well as mentality. Making the character appropriately 18+.

ZODIAC. Aries SPOKEN LANGUAGES. English, High school German, Bits and bytes, Gaelic.

𝐩𝐡𝐲𝐬𝐢𝐜𝐚𝐥 𝐜𝐡𝐚𝐫𝐚𝐜𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐢𝐬𝐭𝐢𝐜𝐬 ! HAIR COLOR. White EYE COLOR. Both are silver eyes... Dark brown in life

SKIN TONE. In ghostly form she's a very darkish blue. If she tries to seem more lifelike she's a chocolate skinned black girl. BODY TYPE. Very thin and pettite, she forgets to eat and is in her lab reading to really have some weight.

ACCENT. Oof, she has a british/Scottish accent that mixes in with a southern one. VOICE. An alto. Often sounding bubbly and cute. Shaky at times, but when she yells she sounds more stern.

DOMINANT HAND. Ambidextrous at birth. POSTURE. Hunched over something always. A book, computer, invention, most of the time you'll always see her back till she turns to you and pops it. Other than that she stands up in a relaxed posture.

SCARS. She has scars on her hands and fingers from hurting herself with her science experiments. Her thighs have slashes from a related experiment. She has a stabbing mark in her back from the betrayal of someone she thought was her friend. She has scars that look like lightning covering her body starting from her left arm and coarsed it's way to her left shoulder and torso. All scars are covered by her attire minus the hands.

She doesn't like to talk about them.

TATTOOS. None BIRTHMARKS. None MOST NOTICEABLE FEATURE(S). Her white short hair as well as her eyes are one. She also sparks from her body when she emotes and it changes color for each mood. She can have multiple colors for mixed feelings. Red for angry, orange for hunger, yellow for happiness, green for sick, blue for sadness, indigo for tiredness, purple for thinking, white for excited, black for fear, pink for lovesick. When she's neutral she emits gray and teal sparks.

𝐜𝐡𝐢𝐥𝐝𝐡𝐨𝐨𝐝 ! PLACE OF BIRTH. In the basement of a university science lab. HOMETOWN. London

BIRTH WEIGHT. 6pounds, 8 ounces BIRTH HEIGHT. 16 inches

MANNER OF BIRTH. Natural, mother had help from medical students.

FIRST WORDS. Safety glasses on...

SIBLINGS. Aries and her dog pallas which she considers a sister. Adoptive brother Timmy whom she adores.

PARENTS. Dr. Zeus Washington Carver and Dr. Metis Curie (Yes my greek mythology fans or/and science history buffs you are sensing a pattern with the names here)

Adoptive parents are Sen. George and Madame Maddie Scott

Beauregard Ghast: the Ghost Host

PARENTAL INVOLVEMENT. Dr. Zeus is a power hungry mad biochem scientist hell bent on world domination. He believes that since the world is burning up that he shall be its savior; unfortunately thaat plan involves killing millions of innocent people.

Dr. Metis was a fresh biochem graduate and fell in love with him before she knew of his evil tendencies. She got pregnant and had twins: Athena and Ares. Zeus was angry and lashed out at her at the news imploring she gets rid of them, but Metis wanted them and when they where born Zeus forged her signature to give up the babies and she dissapeared without a trace. Its unknown where is she today.

Ares grew up in a abusive orphanage while Athena was adopted into a life of luxury. But it didn't made her happy. Her adoptive father and mother was neglectful to her and her little bro, Timmy. George really just wanted the people of colors' votes.

In death Athena found the haunted mansion after seeing a Disney ad. Where she found Beau and he has became her adoptive father who loves and respects her. She loves him dearly.

𝐚𝐝𝐮𝐥𝐭 𝐥𝐢𝐟𝐞 ! OCCUPATION. College student, bio major...

CURRENT RESIDENCE. Gracey Manor, aka The Haunted Mansion. She uses her portal gun to attend Monster's university. (She goes there because she can *blows raspberry*)

CLOSE FRIENDS. Ares (recently they used to be enemies), Pallas, Drossy (kind of, she has a feeling she doesn't like her), Caitlin: the butler of the mansion(low key calls them mom),

RELATIONSHIP STATUS. Single

FINANCIAL STATUS. I could write she's a ghost she don't need money but nah... Right now she has 3 dollars and is in thousands of dollars in debt. Thanks college!

DRIVER’S LICENSE. Apparently she does have a licence for every vehicle you can think of. But she drives wild and has a lead foot.

CRIMINAL RECORD. None, but her science antics has caught the attention of the FBI numerous times, unbeknownst to anyone. I mean the girl went to space numerous times. Secretly, she steals alcohol from the cellar...

𝐬𝐞𝐱 & 𝐫𝐨𝐦𝐚𝐧𝐜𝐞 ! SEXUAL ORIENTATION. Pan ROMANTIC ORIENTATION. Pan

EMOTIONAL ROLE. submissive | dominant | switch PREFERRED SEXUAL ROLE. submissive | dominant | switch

LIBIDO. High. Really high. I mean... To the moon high...

TURN ONS. Sensitivity, hugs, impressing her with extensive knowledge. Telling her that she's yours and yours alone, Role playing that she's your slave with safety words. (Trying to keep it kinda pg), Any roleplaying with safety words, exploding stuff in a lab. Finding a new piece of scientific knowledge. Mutual pleasure

TURN OFFS. Lies, breaking a promise, not making sure she's all right with anything, the partner isn't having any fun, hurting her sensitive areas. Mentioning her scars.

LOVE LANGUAGE. Introverted and shy, she's not an easy one to get close to. She has walls and barriers around herself, but once she trusts you and has fallen in love. She loves you to death and will protect you fiercely. She makes sure you're all right before herself, even if its not good for her. She's very cuddly and will hug, kiss, and cuddle you as much as you want. She does want your attention though and will squeeze her way near you to get it. She's a little yandere-ish but not psycho and will give you some space. But its the obsessive clingy behavior that makes her in the catagory. Tootie from the fairly odd parents is the best example.

RELATIONSHIP TENDENCIES. She's a little yandere-ish to everyone she loves so she always wants to spend time with them and will over protect them. This is due to her neglectful parents emotionally abusing Timmy and especially, the death of Pallas. But she can be reasoned with and she will try to control her anxiety. She apologizes constantly and doesnt want to harm anyone so she makes sure everyone is alright. Other times She's a little distant but only cause she thinks you need space.

𝐦𝐢𝐬𝐜𝐞𝐥𝐥𝐚𝐧𝐞𝐨𝐮𝐬 ! CHARACTER’S THEME SONG. 'Lucky Orb ft. Hatsune Miku' or 'Contact by Daft Punk' couldn't pick

HOBBIES TO PASS TIME. In the lab doing science s***, or in her room doing homework. Or She's all over the mansion exploring, taking samples, trying to figure out that interdimentional staircase, in the pool. Gazing at the organist from afar. Playing with Pallas. Riding her motorcycle. Binge eating food, scowling Ebay for Hatsune Miku figures and stuff. And then passing out, sleeping for hours after doing all of that for 2 days straight.

MENTAL ILLNESSES. Depression and anxiety.

PHYSICAL ILLNESSES. None

LEFT OR RIGHT BRAINED: Left brained. But does lean a little to the right.

PHOBIAS. Insectiphobia and Arachniphobia... Just all bugs... Fears that her loved ones will get hurt by her hands or by something else she could've protected them from. Fears that She's useless and crazy.

SELF CONFIDENCE LEVEL. Off and on. Some cases she knows something is going to work and is proud. Other cases she thinks she's going to fail and that she'll get yelled at again. She's working on it though. Learning how to fail, why its ok to make mistakes, that betrayal isn't the end of the world. That yes bad things happen but good things will too.

VULNERABILITIES. Physically: Her sparks can give her location even when invisble. She hasn't figured out how to control them yet. They can also catch something else on fire and electrocute somebody else. If its bad you can smell her burning.

Weak knees... Go for her legs.

Emotionally: Go for the guilt trip. She can easily be made to think something is her fault. She can also be manipulated into thinking 'rationally' and may end up doing a henious act when she thought she was doing good. Easily pressured to do anything you want especially if it will 'help' people.

TAGGED BY: @asktheghosthost

I tag @unto-myself-together @aliypop @r0bofactory @inkandfeatherdusters @catinabag @ask-the-hatbox-ghost

And anyone who wants to to it.

The Good Place - Season 2, Episode 02

Right, got some things I need to get done today, so let’s get to it. It’s The Good Place, season 2 episode 02! Here we GO!

-We begin with Michael recording his logs on the experiment, starting attempt number 3. He can do this. He’s going to make it work. And he’ll be famous, like the man who invented bees with teeth! …Fuck me, that might be the most unnerving Bad Place thing we’ve heard about.

-So, back to the zero-point for Eleanor. She gets Chris as her soulmate, and that night at the welcome party, Tahani’s clearly still with Tomás judging by her clog-wench attire. Also she throws some veiled insults at Eleanor that have her saying, and I quote, “go fork yourself, you mean giraffe” when Tahani walks away.

-So day two, they’ve got something for the chaos sequence! MEAN GIRAFFES! The chaos sequence never gets old, I tell ya.

-Day three. “Hey, robot slave lady? Busty Alexa? …Oh, Janet!” Bing! I’m just gonna let Busty Alexa as a phrase sit on your think wrinkles for a minute. Anyways Eleanor wants to learn how to be a good person, are there any people here who can do that?

-And that’s how Janet takes Eleanor to meet Chidi! …Nope he seems too nerdy, got anyone else?

-Cut to day 128, where things are going fairly how Michael wanted, as he’s got an evil obelisk up to fuck with the quartet and show them how the Bad Place knows they’re missing someone they shouldn’t be. Someone has to get inside the obelisk, or they’ll take you all!

-“I can’t go! I’m too young to die! And too old to eat off the kids’ menu! What a stupid age I am!” Jay gets some pretty great lines.

-Also further evidence that Eleanor is really horny. And in this version of the loop, she does not get on great with Tahani. Chidi tries to nobly go and then ELEANOR FIGURES IT OUT, again.

-Chapter 16!

-Attempt number eleven! Michael’s made progress. Eleanor always hates her house. Tahani very consistently hates Eleanor. Jay hates being forced into silence. And Chidi is a constant ball of stress. He’s gotten a very solid first few months of loop, it’s just, you know, the point where Eleanor’s stupid little meat brain starts bumping neurons together and figuring things out that’s the problem.

-So, fresh loop, day three, Eleanor once again looks to Janet for help and gets sent to Chidi…By day 43, Chidi’s teaching the rest of the quartet at Eleanor’s place, when she’s got to kick them all out because her soulmate has some kind of special surprise for her.

-Seems she’s with a chap named Sebastian this loop, who’s…

-Oh boy.

-A terrible singer, amongst other things. He has written a three-hour spoken-word jazz opera for her, and hey there’s Vicky in the back looking very displeased with her situation. Again, I would totally watch a spinoff show that’s just Vicky trying to reclaim her glory and get a leading role in this drama again.

-And also Eleanor realizes this has to be the Bad Place because no version of paradise would include three hours of this. Okay, fine, one more go.

-So Michael’s got to go out to Janet’s reboot button and of course her fail-safe mechanism kicks in as he kicks it on. Attempt 32 fades into attempt 57, 99, 108…Finally, Michael’s realizing the problem is Eleanor herself.

-And that’s when she steps on in instead of waiting to be called because the door was open, and, pardon, sir, did you just say this is the Bad Place? . . .

-Attempt 109. The door is now locked.

-Attempt 127, meet your soulmate, Greg. 146, meet Glenn. …Fuck it, 218, meet Tahani, let’s see how that goes. 291, meet Lerf. Attempt 333, your soulmate is a fucking dog.

-And whether at the welcome party, or the intro meeting, or on a pig farm with Chidi, or a traveling monk line, or the intro meeting again, Eleanor always figures it out. Even in a cactus field with a giant thing of balloons she has to get across safely okay that one was a little on the nose. And god, I wish I had screenshot power because farm gal Eleanor and Chidi with the world’s biggest pig are kind of amazing.

-BEES BEES BEES BEES

-Michael’s really getting tired of rebooting Janet, too. She’s started insisting she’s pregnant with his child. HE CAN’T EVEN MAKE THOSE. Is it physically possible for you to relax that failsafe a little? Nnnope.

-Eventually, the crew are straight up rioting at their setup meetings, and Vicky’s just feeling like this would all be so much smoother if she got a nice fat lead role again…

-By attempt 484, Michael is just in open despair as he drinks while recording. He’s so, fucking, tired of dealing with Eleanor being sooooo smart and lookit me I’m in the bad place bleh bleh bleh bleh. His boss still thinks they’re on version two, and the lies get worse. At this point, Michael has no other choice but to ride it through and he’s started stress eating and he’s getting bigger and he’s a fat monster!

-He’s doing this the whole time with Eleanor in the fucking chair because he just, does, not, care anymore. Fuck it, this one doesn’t count.

-Loop after loop. One with an Italian food theme. One with a French pastry theme. One with foods on sticks. By attempt number 649, Eleanor herself feels like she’s trying less, as she just openly walks away from nerd man Chidi.

-Day 55 of this loop, and they’re trying to make Chidi decide whether Eleanor goes downstairs or not. When Eleanor…

-Is too lost in her fighting so JAY FIGURES IT OUT THIS TIME.

-And Michael just despairs. I don’t blame him.

-Okay! Attempt 802! They’re a week in, Eleanor’s being taught by Chidi and hates it, Tahani and Jay are still doing their early loop. Things are looking like they might actually be stable…Time for a town meeting.

-And the only person there is Vicky. Because the crew is on strike. You’re WHAT?!

-Into his office, where she is pissed because they’ve lost the thread of their goals, she spent weeks working on an Australian accent (is that what you call that) that she never even got to use! HER demand is a more important role, but everyone has at least one demand.

-Lot of folks just want bigger houses. Gayle apparently wants a backstory where she was an MMA fighter. Gunnar wants his biting back. You know some of these would give the game away immediately, right, Vicky?

-Why do you think she’s the one here, Michael? She can help smooth over Gunnar and the other…problems. But a lot of this is doable, and it’ll go a long way to making the crew felt listened to.

-Over to Chidi trying to teach Eleanor, and on day two, and she’s…Not…Doing…Great. They end up taking a breather down at the clam chowder fountain, and find the place…Weirdly empty. What is going on here?

-And then Eleanor catches a whiff of…cigar smoke? She and Chidi go slip around a corner, and yep, there’s two of the crew, griping as they smoke cigars about how far off the rails this project is and what’s the point? They were fulfilled in their old gigs! Also there’s Todd who’s a giant magma monster without his human suit on.

-So Eleanor and Chidi know! And more importantly, they know away from Michael’s attention! Okay. Okay. Deep breaths. Focus. Simple answer. They need to keep this under their hats and figure out a plan. …Janet!

-Can they…leave the neighborhood?

-And this is how they end up on the train, and Chidi still thinks it’s the almond milk. By this point in the loop, Eleanor’s figured out about Jay, so he’s definitely another human. And she’s thinking Tahani might be, because, bluntly, Tahani’s kind of an asshole.

-So they end up at, where else…The medium place! And she’s kind of cross because this is the 15th time these idiots have shown up at her door and they have not brought one gram of the cocaine they promised.

-And while that’s going on, Michael is still negotiating with Vicky, trying to show how this could succeed for them. You could be torturing Jared from Subway! She has no faith that he’ll make it succeed, though. So, here’s her proposition. You’re going to reboot the situation one more time. And then she’s sitting in your chair. She’s got a whole specific plan that’s going to work.

-That’s insubordination! You won’t get away with it!

-And this, is a file of every mistake you’ve made over every reboot. Extortion, Michael! The X makes it sound cool.

-I’m getting my Vicky focused spinoff! YAY!

-Back in the Medium Place, here’s the scoop. Eleanor always makes it here with Janet, obviously. Chidi usually gets here, but not always. Sometimes Jay. One time even Tahani. But the end result is always the same. You promise to bring cocaine, and then you get rebooted, and you show up at her door without cocaine.

-So what do they do next? This place isn’t bad, they could just

-stay here forever? Yeah you try that most of the time. And then you end up going back. Sometimes for your friends. Sometimes because you catch her when she’s masturbating. Sometimes because she catches you when she’s masturbating. You always end up back with a plan, and the plan fails, and you end up here.

-So, here’s the good news. She started writing down the plans you guys tried, to cut things short. Here they are, have fun. So, attack Michael, seduce Michael, trick Michael, catch a magic panda and…use its powers…? This was a Jay plan, wasn’t it. Are you sure he got here in one piece and without head trauma?

-Back in town, Michael’s out thinking, when Jay comes by, and Michael’s…Fuck it, he needs to talk to someone. Come on, Jay. So to bring you up to speed, this is the Bad Place, you’re being tortured, now come listen and be his sounding board, sound good?

-Back to Eleanor and Chidi. So they tried throwing Tahani under the bus once, but Eleanor’s real willing to try it again. Under a bigger, more literal bus. Chidi is feeling like this is inevitable and endless loop, and it fucking sucks. They are being punished for the mistakes of life, but the rebooting means they can never learn! (Real talk if Michael presented it like that, that he’s keeping them stuck as bad people so the fun never has to stop, he could probably get approval for the whole operation, reboots and all.)

-And his frustration has her frustrated and furious, which sends her back into the house to talk with Mindy…Who has, for the record, heard this story 15 times in 15 ways and she is tired of it. Your complicated emotions inevitably lead to love and to boning and here. She gets out a tape, and from a spy camera, it’s Eleanor and Chidi in a bedroom in this house, admitting their love for each other. Sure, she got caught in the end, but.

-You two boned in eight days in this house, a total of like 20 times. …And, the…The love? Oh, just that one time. It kind of ruined the mood for her. She puts it at the end of the tape as a cool down for after she finishes.

-Eleanor, though, is in shock about the words. She’s only said ‘love’ to two men in her life. One was Stone Cold Steve Austin, and one was a guy who she thought was Stone Cold Steve Austin.

-But, but, she barely knows Chidi! They only just met! No, Eleanor, don’t you get it? You’ve known him across hundreds of attempts by Michael. You’ve spent…Well it’s been a long time since the real first time you met Chidi. Your mind might not remember it, but your gut does. Why do you think you end up working with him so many times?

-…She’s out of here. And she’s taking this tape! “Oh no, don’t, it’s my only copy.” Mindy’s a real piece of work, guys.

-So it’s back on the train, as Eleanor’s full of complicated thoughts…While back over with Michael, he’s trying to figure out his thoughts as he bounces things off of Jay. And Jay does not get the situation at all, but, okay there’s a lot of funny details but I’m gonna summarize for the sake of time.

-He was in a dance crew, Dance Dance Resolution: We Resolve to Dance. He had a falling out with a guy, who started another crew, and challenged DDR:WRtD to a dance-off. So they went, furious and vicious, and slashed all the tires of the other crew. And as stupid as that story is, Michael figures out a plan…

-And so, in his latest confrontation with them…Eleanor tries to threaten him with how they’re the only ones with power. You’re gonna run out of loops eventually, but they only have to nail it one time, buddy, so unless you want this all to come crashing down, you need to—

-He wants to work with them. He’s got problems with the crew and he needs people on the inside of the situation. What do you say? New best friends?

-Credits!

One of these days I will learn to stop expecting anything specific out of this show and just let it wash over me like the ocean.

Days of his Wives (16)

Negan X Wives (1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6) (7) (8) (9) (10) (11) (12) (13) (14) (15) My eternal WIP. LOL.

Chapter 16: Just Another Dead Girl (in which there’s a new walker on the fence)

A/N: This snippet takes place a few days after the last. This is a chapter I wrote early on. (yay for not writing in order...) So it’s in need of rewriting in the final product because some things in it don’t quite work now. But whatever. I don’t think a whole lot of people are reading this anyway.

Note 2: I probably mentioned it already, but wife Jazzi is obsessed with the zombies. She’s kind of like a bird-watcher but with zombies. LOL And as usual, I’m so sorry that cuts don’t always work! I wish they did!

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

"Shit..." Sherry turned away from the window. "Jazzi's down by the Walkers again. Amber, can you go get her?"

"Um, yeah. Sure." Amber retrieved her fuzzy coat from the bedroom and threw it on over the black bra. Slipping on flats, she made her way down the numerous stairways and through dim passageways, snaked with pipes and long-dead florescent lights.

"Hey baby," came a brash male voice. She turned to see a pock-faced guy, with long brown hair tucked under a filthy woolen cap. "Nice legs."

She made a face and kept walking.

"Hey. Can't you say 'hello'? Don't be rude, doll-face."

She cried out when his hand latched onto her arm, stopping her in her tracks. He pushed her against the wet concrete wall, his lanky body leaning over menacingly.

"Get your hands off me." She frowned and wrenched her arm away. Her attempted sidestep was thwarted when he set both arms onto the wall on either side of her head. Caged, she glared at him. "Get away from me."

"I don't think so. How many points would'ya take for me to see those fine legs spreadin' for me?"

"Keep your points," she said coldly. "I'm not for fucking sale, and if you want to keep breathing, I would back off right now."

"Ladies shouldn't swear," he said, with a leer, and smacked her across the face.

She cringed, but shot her furious gaze back at him, readying her trump card. "I get it from my husband," she said, lip curling. "Maybe you know him...?"

His hand was trying to find the zipper in the fuzziness of her coat, his other pushing up under her mini-skirt. "I don't give a shit who-"

You might know him," she continued, "His name is Negan."

He stopped, eyes shooting momentarily wide. "No fucking way."

"Yes fucking way, and he will cut your balls off and make you eat them, you sorry bastard," she hissed. "But that doesn't have to happen, you piece of crap – if you back off. NOW."

"You skanky bitch. How do I know you're not just sayin' that?"

"You don't." She smiled. "But I guess you'd find out soon enough, wouldn't you? When you're enjoying the taste of your own scrotum..."

He punched the wall next to her head, glaring death at her, and then stepped back. She straightened her clothing, shot him the finger, and continued on her way. Through a rush of adrenaline and tremors, a smile cut across her face.

That had felt good.

Really fucking good.

She understood the seething glares of Savior women, the jealous twitches of lips – they knew she had power on her side, a guardian demon spreading his black wings over her head.

But She told all the women in her head.

There's a price for power -

And Demons only take souls for payment.

--

Outside Sanctuary, Amber was glad for her flats. The ground was littered with concrete debris, twisted scraps of metal, spent bullet casings. She shrank into her coat, cautiously moving past piked Walkers. If they had arms, they reached out for her, their blackened teeth clicking like castanets. Their ever-present groans increased in tempo as they saw her, frenzied moans and cries.

Carefully, she made her way past a burnt-out car. There was a tattered length of fencing, laying flat on the ground – no longer fit to be a barrier. Jazzi stood on the other side, her dark blue eyes fixed on a Walker. The hapless creature was only a torso, strung up between two poles, like a crucifixion gone wrong. A spine curved out like a hook.

"Jazzi!" She called, and brooking no response, "Jasmine! What are you doing out here?"

"I like the look of this one," Jazzi said, tilting her head. "How do you think it moves without a working spinal cord."

The Walker was wiggling, weird twitches of one arm, then the other. Amber supposed after long enough, it would eventually work its arms free of the sockets. She didn't want to be here when that happened.

"I don't know," she said. "That's the question, isn't it? How do they move at all – when they're dead?"

"I wonder if I could bring one upstairs. Then I wouldn't have to come down here. Sherry wouldn't have to get mad."

"Um...heh. I think Sherry would be even madder if you brought home a pet Walker..."

"Yes. I think you're right. They do smell rather bad."

"Come on...let's go back up, ok?"

Jazzi didn't move, continuing to stare at the writhing corpse. Amber's flats crunched over the fallen fence, and she slipped her hand into the girl's bony grasp.

Jazzi turned just her head. Her lips spread with a slight quirk to the corners; her version of a friendly smile. "There's a new one out here. That's why I came out. To see her. I saw her from up there with the binoculars."

Amber looked around uneasily at the snarling, rotting faces. "How do you know it's new?"

"You can tell. And I can tell even better. I know all their faces. I don't know her."

Amber shuddered... the thought of memorizing these faces, these husks of human... cataloging them... keeping the imagery and sound of them inside her brain...

"You need a new hobby," she said.

Jasmine shrugged.

"All right... fine. We can go look at 'her'. But then we're getting out of here, ok? These things give me the creeps."

"Don't be scared." Jazzi pulled her hand free and walked away, moving much too fast for Amber's liking through the rubble and Walker littered landscape. The girl's skinny white limbs flashed through the greyness, passing frighteningly close to the chained and staked Walkers. Amber watched fingers brush Jasmine's arms and ankles on occasion, but the girl didn't seem to notice or care; she merely kept walking.

"Yeah. Don't be scared," Amber muttered. "Right." She followed at a much slower pace, edging past the grabby hands. As they approached the perimeter fence of Sanctuary, Jazzi squealed and pointed towards a staked group of Walkers.

"I see her. She's up there."

"Hey!" Amber screeched, as the girl broke into a run. "Don't run, it's too dangerous!" She ignored her own advice, bolting past an overturned car. Suddenly, she felt the dreaded hand of a Walker closing around her ankle. The hidden dead snarled and growled from inside the busted-out car window, beginning to drag itself out. Amber fell to the ground, screaming.

"NO! Get off!" She kicked frantically at the Walker's wrist, hearing it crack – but the hand didn't release. Now the head was in sight, the blackened teeth snapping. Her hand clawed for anything – it found only dirt and small pebbles. She threw a handful in the Walker's face but it did nothing. "Help!" she screamed, "Help me-"

There was motion in her peripherals. Jasmine was running to her, blond curls snapping back in a cascade. She leapt over Amber, a piece of rebar held in her hand spear-like. There was a horrible crunch as she thrust it downwards. Brains splattered Amber's bare leg. The hand loosened and she kicked free.

Jazzi looked down at the dead Walker. "That one is no good anymore." She kicked it lightly, not assisting as Amber clambered shakily to her feet.

"Thanks."

"Yeah." Jazzi was breathing heavier, her cheeks flushed, but her face perpetually stuck in neutral. She tossed her head to evict the wayward curls.

Amber put a hand to her chest, feeling the palpitations of her frantic heart. "Shit. Let's go back. It's too dangerous out here." The mess on her leg felt gross, filthy, but she didn't want to touch it.

"But we're almost there."

"Ugh... fine..." Amber scowled. "I don't know why you care so much about this 'new' corpse, it's the same as all these others. A dead, nasty body that wants to eat us. They're not interesting, they're just scary and gross."

Jasmine's expression didn't change. She bent down to yank the rebar from the fallen Walker's head. Blood and congealed brains dripped from the tip. "I won't run. I'll protect you. Then we can go back."

Amber didn't answer; she followed the girl's lead with her senses on high alert. There were no more close encounters. Amber tried to figure out which Walker was new as Jasmine scouted the fence. The skinny blond came to a sudden halt.

"Here." Jazzi tilted her head. Amber came alongside her, ready to criticize again... but her words died in her throat.

It was easy to tell the Walker apart from her peers. She was freshly dead. Her pallor was certainly that of the dead, grey and blood-drained, but there was an elasticity to her flesh... her skin hadn't withered on her bones, her hair still shone, flowing like a black waterfall over her shoulders. She growled and strained towards the girls; held to the fence by a thick collar and chain.

"She's very fresh. She must have only died a few days ago," Jasmine mused. Her hand reached out, and Amber shuddered as the Walker reached too; and the fingertips of dead and living brushed... and then Amber hastily grabbed Jazzi's wrist, forcing her hand back to her side.

"She still feels warm..."

"You're just imagining that...it's just the sun warming them up." Her teeth gnawed the succulent flesh of her lip. There was something about the dead woman. Amber's stomach churned, her mind whispered... saying go, don't look, and always, always, her rebellious eyes refused to listen.

The reaching hand. Still stretched out, the fingers flexing. The fingernails smooth and polished, not the cracked and blackened keratin of the long dead. Amber's stomach heaved upwards suddenly, the muscles of her esophagus contracted.

Jazzi stepped back as Amber pivoted sideways and emptied the contents of her gut onto the ground. She coughed and moaned, spitting the acidic bile from her mouth.

Four fingers. Four fingers on the hand, pinkie missing...

She clutched her hand to her mouth, flitting her eyes to the Walker; who seemed agitated by her sudden movements, straining hard against her chain. Her ears were full of piercings, the lobes tattered and torn.

"Crystal," she croaked. "Her name is Crystal."

"Oh." Jasmine did her straight-lipped, corners-quirked smile. "You name them too. Crystal is a nice name. I haven't used that one yet." She glanced down at the puddle of vomit. "Do you have food poisoning."

"No, not food poisoning. Just don't feel good. Might be the smell of these things." She spat a few times. The sour-bitter taste lingered on her tongue.

"Are you pregnant...did you miss the pill again. Negan will be angry."

Amber turned away from Crystal, her puke, all of it, eyebrows slanted fiercely over her gaze. She was sick of being afraid, so she dredged up anger instead, basked in it. "No," she snapped, "I'm not pregnant! And fuck Negan."

Jazzi fell into step alongside her, casting a wistful look back at Crystal – she hadn't gotten her fill of the newest deader. "We're supposed to fuck him."

"That's not what I meant." Alarmingly, Amber found herself imitating Hubby's frequent sign of irritation – her fingers pinching the bridge of her nose.

For a few moments, there was only the sound of their crunching footsteps and the hungry sounds of the dead. As they neared the door to Sanctuary, Jazzi stopped to look at the crucifixion Walker again, like she was paying homage to her decaying gods.

Amber grabbed her wrist and tugged, and Jasmine begrudgingly followed along, but not before stunning Amber with one of her eccentric questions. "What do you think it's like to have sex with one."

"Oh God!" Amber made a face, her eyebrows raising high. "Not very good at all! Why – are you thinking about it?" She found herself dreading the response.

"No. I imagine they would try to eat me. But I overheard Negan and Sherry the other night. He said it felt like he was 'fucking a Walker.'"

Oh dear. Amber's face contorted again. "I guess it's because Sherry wasn't...uh... moving much? She was probably tired." Sick and tired of him...

"I don't fuck like a Walker." One of those sudden, malicious smiles was spreading across the skinny girl's face. "I like to move. But I bite like one."

Well, that explains the scratches and bites on him. She'd always wondered what wife had the feral fingernails and teeth. She snorted and banged on the front door. The old man, Orson, pulled it open and let them in without a word. Amber pulled Jasmine towards the main metal staircase; normally she'd take the back way...it was more private, but she felt audacious. Like she wanted to fight.

"I don't know if Negan likes it," Jazzi mused, ignoring the stares and glares of the Saviors they passed. "He usually yells and swears when I do it."

"Um...it probably hurts..." Amber couldn't help but grin. Hope she bites him harder next time...

"Why don't you get back up to your Penthouse, you little Playboy bitches," a woman hissed in their wake. "Hurry on home to your Pimp."

Amber stopped, eyes narrowed. "You only wish you were pretty enough to get in, you ugly cunt." The woman's eyes went wide. She turned away hurriedly, like she was afraid Amber would memorize her face, report her.

Jazzi looked after the woman impassively, her lips quirked at the corners. "That was mean."

"She started it." Amber was starting to sweat inside the fuzzy coat, and Jazzi's close body heat didn't help. She stepped onto the staircase. Now began the tedious journey of ascending.

On level eight, Jasmine wanted to walk onto the catwalk that spanned across the open space of Sanctuary, looking down onto the factory floor far below. She leaned against the railing, one of her legs leaving the ground. Amber hurried onto the metal walkway, fighting vertigo.

"Get down from there... God, you're like a little kid. Sherry will kill me if you go 'splat'."

Jazzi sighed and put both feet flat on the ground. "You are no fun. I'm not going to fall. I'm not going to get bitten."

"Come on, let's just get back home..." Amber snatched up the girl's bony hand and tugged. At first, Jazzi resisted, but then she fell into step and they continued to the back hallways where the last three flights of stairs led home.

As Amber set her foot on the first step, she noticed a man walking down the hallway. All alone, heading away from them, but she knew... she recognized Mark.

Her eyes shifted to Jazzi and then back to him. She opened her mouth, yelled the first name that came to mind. "Ben! Hey, Ben!"

Mark turned at the sound, eyebrows high in confusion. Amber dragged Jazzi along as she hurried towards him, a fake story tumbling from her mouth. "Oh wow, Ben. Tanya's boyfriend, right? Gosh, I haven't seen her in forever. How are you guys doing?"

Mark stared at her, then Jazzi, and blinked. He smiled, nodded. "Uh... yeah. Yeah..that's right. I'm still with uh... Tanya. She's doing great. We're both doing fine." He scuffed his boot on the floor. "Making pretty good points..."

Jazzi was scrutinizing Mark, prussian blues narrowed, the curious gaze of a cat looking at a wounded bird. He gave her a polite, nervous smile.

Amber pulled her forward. "Jazzi, this is Ben. He's the boyfriend of a girl I was friends with."

She tilted her head.

"Nice to meet you," Mark's smile was becoming apprehensive.

"It's all right to meet you, I suppose. Ben." Jasmine shrugged.

Amber sighed and nudged her. "Why don't you go on ahead? I just want to catch up for a minute."

"All right."

"Go straight up, ok?"

"Yes, mother."

Mark stifled a laugh and they made fake small talk until her footsteps faded away.

"She's kind of odd."

"Tell me about it." Amber scoped out the hallway; they were alone. And then she lunged forward, her arms wrapping him.

"Whoa," he said, and returned the embrace momentarily, before gently shaking her off. "We shouldn't. Anyone could see."

"Sorry..." She clasped her arms around her torso instead, fearful of her desire. She wanted to hug him again. Kiss his mouth, his neck, his chest. She wanted to unzip his pants. The anger she'd dredged was sinking, fear floating to the top like an oil slick. He was right. This was dangerous.

"How have you been?" Despite his warning, he gently touched her, just a lingering brush of fingers on her arm. "I've been worried about you. After the other day..."

"I'm ok..."

His concerned eyes. The fading warmth of the hug. A dead girl, chained to a fence with a collar. Fingers missing. Who needs pinkies anyway...? Her gut clenched, the stifling air of the closet was in her lungs again, the darkness in her eyes.

I'm not ok. I'm so not ok.

A/N: Oh Noes, Amber bumped into her old flame a second time! Are they going to bone? Does she really cheat on Negan? I KNOW WHAT HAPPENS GUYS. But you’ll have to wait. My poor non-existent readers :(

Villains and Plot!

S1E22 Villains and Plot

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  The following is a transcript of this episode. The complete transcript can be viewed from the podcast website.

  [00:00:00] Devin Davis: Have you ever read a novel where the main character should lose like a lot, but because the story needed them to win and survive at the end, they just never did lose? Well, on the other hand, have you ever read a story where the villain was so awesome that he probably should have won, but didn't? Well, then let's talk about villains and plot today on Writing in the Tiny House.  Hello, hello, hello! Welcome back to Writing in the Tiny House. Welcome to the show. I am Devin Davis. I am your host and I am the guy living in a tiny house who is here to show you that writing that work of fiction that you have in your brain is completely possible, and you should do it. Today we are discussing villains and plot.

[00:01:13] Last week, I told you that we would be discussing villains in action. This is kind of that. I was thinking about what action actually meant and all of the points that I had written down fed more into plot rather than just action, because villains can do just about anything you want them to do. But in the overall scheme of things, they play a very important role in the plot.

[00:01:38] Don't you think? So today I don't actually have a lot of announcements because things have been going pretty smoothly and there is nothing new to speak about. So let's dive right in to villains and plot. I have a list of four pitfalls to avoid when structuring your villain and your plot when you go to do the rough draft of your book or the outline of your book. The first thing to avoid is the hierarchy structure of the villain and his henchman. The reason why this is kind of hard to avoid is because we like it. We like the idea that once a bad guy is defeated that there is another bad guy who is stronger, who is more talented, who has more magical powers. And then once that guy is defeated, perhaps there's a third bad guy who is the villain's right-hand man, until we finally get to the bad guy himself. The reason why this is so popular is because it's easy to see, and it's easy to structure a series around. You have book one of the little bad guy and then it just gets a little bit bigger until book three or book five or book seven or however many books are in your series. You finally get to nail the main villain who is behind this entire problem the whole time. It is also a popular way to structure video games. You have the bad guys and you have the henchman and the little fodder guys that are easy to pick off and are not a very big threat.

[00:03:29] And in doing those things, the main character, which is you, gains experience points and gets a little stronger and learns some new things. And onward, the story progresses. However,  this is becoming cliche. This is certainly a trope that has been done time and time again. And it is more common to see villains more like people.

[00:03:58] It is more common to see heroes more like people. Like I mentioned in the previous episode, it is more common to see a flawed, main character and to see a main character make some dark decisions. At the same time, it is becoming more common to see a villain with redeemable qualities, or to see a villain who is completely justified in what they are doing.

[00:04:23] And so this structure, this hierarchy structure that you have to beat down the fodder before getting to level two before getting to level three on up to the main big boss at the end, isn't new. It's not fresh. And so find another way to structure the bad guys in your story, especially in your trilogy or in the number of books that you're going to be writing that are related to each other. There are a lot of ways to do it. And at the end of this episode, I'm going to share with you one of the most delightful ways that I found in all of the fantasy fiction that I've read in presenting to you actually a group of five books.

[00:05:10] It is a quintet. So stay tuned until the very end to get that little tidbit. So the second pitfall to avoid ,and granted, you should be avoiding this anyway, it's a thing called plot devices. A plot device, and the reason why I bring this up, this is actually kind of bigger, fundamental writing, but a plot device is a thing that happens only because the writer needs it to happen because something else needs to happen later.

[00:05:48] A plot device is usually pretty contrived. It sometimes can come out of nowhere and all that it serves is for the plot to move forward or to save the main character or whatever. It's these little unbelievable things that happen in order for bigger things to happen later, but that is all the good that they serve.

[00:06:16]One of the most popular plot devices that I can think of is actually in the Chronicles of Narnia in the Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. The children are there in this barren wasteland of frozen ice, and suddenly Santa Claus appears and Santa comes bearing gifts of lethal weapons.

[00:06:39] If you think about it, Santa does not belong in Narnia. There are not other people like Santa Claus that populate Narnia.  There are granted a lot of other fantastical creatures and a lot of fun other characters, but Santa Claus himself does not belong there. And the fact that he appears at the very best time and comes bringing gifts that all of these children are going to need to save the day at the end is the biggest plot convenience I have read in a long time.

[00:07:14] Granted it's in a children's story and. We can have more plot conveniences in children's stories if we want to. That's fine. But in the more grownup stuff you get to pay attention to your plot conveniences. Some people call this plot armor. It's when the main character simply has to live because otherwise the book will end too soon.

[00:07:36] And so against all odds, they always win. Or against all odds, they and their central group of friends will win or will come out unscathed and you simply know that just because you know the story. And so it makes things predictable and it makes things unbelievable to a certain degree. 

[00:07:59] The reason why I bring this up on a villain's episode is because not only do you get to think of your main character when you are mapping out your plot, but you also get to think about your villain. When your plot is filled with these conveniences and these devices that make the main character always win, you get to see on the other side of that coin or the other edge of that sword, what it does to your villain, or how it paints your villain with these plot devices. Sometimes it can make your villain come across as pretty dumb or come across as way too complicated, way too overthinking things and not realistic in that way. Or it can cheapen such a better deeper experience with that villain if those plot conveniences were not included.

[00:09:03] One of these favorites that I like to call out in fantasy fiction specifically, I like to refer to as the wild card. It's when the forces of evil are upon us. And it looks like the forces of evil are going to win. And we are all in dire straights, but something out of nowhere happens. And it's big and it was not foreshadowed to begin with and it's unexpected and it's a surprise. And to an inexperienced reader, it's probably super awesome. But to the rest of us, it earns kind of,, an eye roll. I read a book once, I don't necessarily want to call it out on the podcast, but there was a situation similar to what I described. The forces of evil were about to conquer this special, magical place. And from out of nowhere, there came a spell that transformed one of the types of magical creatures living in this place into these big warriors. And so these little rinky-dink fairies were transformed into this army of warriors. And the spell happened, and it lasted just long enough for the forces of evil to be abated and for the day to be saved. And then the fairies shrank back down to their normal little fairy selves. The reason why I bring up these things is because  you have thought all of these wonderful things through with the villain, you have thought about the awesome ways that the villain is going to come in and threaten the safety of this or that magical place.

[00:10:52] And to throw in a wild card ending really cheapens all of the effort and all of the believability and all of the energy that you have spent trying to build up a believable villain. And instead the reader sits back and realizes that regardless, the villain will not win and it can take them out of the story and it can convince them not to carry on with the series or even to finish the book.

[00:11:24]The fourth pit fall that you get to pay attention to is the villain's backstory. Backstories are wonderful. I love a good backstory. However, it has been used a million times that every bad guy was once an abused little boy or girl. Every bad guy, every bad girl, every bad woman was abused when they were little. And while psychologically all of that makes sense, it is also something that is commonly found in all of literature. And what it can do is make excuses for the villain. If you want the villain to simply be bad and to simply be awful, there are other ways to develop backstory to that. There can be something amiss when they were little and they were involved in things that simply fostered that thing that was amiss. There can be interests that they were exposed to when they were little that carried with them as they learned magic or as they learned business, if it's modern contemporary fiction, or it can be a lot of different things like that.

[00:12:35] If you want them to be abused when they're little, that is fine. It is something that happens all the time in fiction, though, when we do get a good backstory to a villain. And I have read enough and read a wide enough variety of fiction to tell you that not every vicious villain and awful person and person who is threatening to destroy worlds or whatever, not all of them were abused by their dads. There are other ways to do it and to find those ways is fascinating and it makes the writing so much better and so much easier to follow along. And it really catches your interest and holds it there when it is new and it is fresh.

[00:13:24] So let me take a moment with this book review. I'm going to be reviewing the Cleric Quintet by R.A. Salvatore. R.A. Salvatore was one of my very favorite authors when I was in high school. I have since, now that I've gained  some more experience in reading and in writing, I've come to find that sometimes his magic systems are a little bit convenient, but I'm going to talk about this particular series of five books. They're five short-ish books, I believe, or five average sized books. It's not a monstrous series, but the Cleric Quintet is about this young man named Cadderly who studies at a library and comes to learn the big mysteries of magic. And over the course of five books, you see it happen and you really come to understand just how powerful this young man becomes.

[00:14:25] And it was a really cool progression to see it over five books and to see actual power happen and to see the learning of spells or the manipulation of matter, or whatever, was really delightful to me. At the same time though, and this is the type of villain that I love to see the very, very most, this villain starts out with Cadderly studying at the same library. This structure didn't have a school. It didn't have classes, it didn't have teachers. It didn't have that type of structure. It just had this library of knowledge. And everybody from everywhere came to this library to learn and to gain more knowledge that way.

[00:15:10]There was another young man studying alongside Cadderly, they weren't friends. And this young man is kind of an awful person. He wasn't talented. He was clumsy. Granted Cadderly was also clumsy. But over the progression of these five books, you watch this untalented jealous, horrible man, young man gradually become the darkest, most threatening monster that comes about in book five. And it is delightful to see, and it was so fun to read. And that is the type of villain that I appreciate the very most, where you see perhaps an amount of foreshadowing, you see character traits and you see people in the very beginning of the story and you think maybe this guy is going to end up being something bad or doing something awful.

[00:16:10] And over the course of it all, you see all of the you see the background, you see the story unfold, you see the reason why this person chooses to be where they are. And you understand their attitudes toward this or that. It makes the villain so much more believable and so much more awesome.

[00:16:33] It is this type of villain that I am choosing to write in my current work in progress, or at least as part of it. Right now I have two half finished books. In one of them, that's totally how the villain is going to be unfolded. And the other one it's going to be different.

[00:16:49] But that is how it is in this book. So if you are interested in checking out the Cleric Quintet, please follow the affiliate links in the description of this podcast episode. And yeah, I give this, I give this entire work of five books. R.A. Salvatore has written a lot of books. And like I said, he was one of my favorites in high school.

[00:17:13]He was one of the Forgotten Realms authors. Did wonderful stuff. One of his characters Drizzt Do'Urden, who was a dark elf, is considered to be one of the most liked in all of fantasy fiction. And this is written by him. So go ahead and follow those links.

[00:17:30] I give these five books, easily, four out of five stars. They were so much fun. But I reflect on some of the things in there and there was an amount of convenience to them, but it was a great read. It was fast paced and the magic and the fighting in RA Salvatore's writing is so much fun. It is so easy to get caught up in all of those wonderful moments.

[00:17:53] And that is it for today. Thank you so much for tuning into today's episode .Thank you so much for my patrons, for the generous donations that they give every month. If you are interested in becoming a patron to this podcast, there are perks such as early access to these episodes an additional episode every month or exclusive time with me and other top tier patrons that you can have access to. Just go to patreon.com/writinginthetinyhouse and sign up for one of the tiers today.

[00:18:23]Follow me on social media. My Instagram handle is @authordevindavis. My Twitter handle is @authordevind. And please take just a moment to leave a review on whatever software you are listening to podcasts through. Thank you so much for your time, and we will see you next time.

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Inktober 2020

1 – Fish

Sleep is just like water. Most of the times you feel good around it, light, peaceful - until the moment you suffocate and simply can't breathe in anymore. Then, you stay at the surface, awake, and dry.

2 – Wisp

I had this dream, again. I wander in a dark forest, following some flickering lights I can see floating in the air. I'm not scared, I'm just wondering where I will end. Then I notice I'm walking in my own footprints, and there is no end, no exit, always the same path.

Do I have the strength to change?

3 – Bulky

Anxiety, fears, regrets, disappointments, most of the time I can handle them. I feel them, however I don't let them overshadow all the lights of my life. But when one my nightmares come true, they take all the space, and just left me powerless in the dark.

4 – Radio

Wavelengths to hear and see anything. Colors, music, bones, heat, anything. So I wonder: do we also have a wavelength? a color? a frequency? And what are mines?

5 – Blade

I'm a fighter. I have weapons. I have my words. I'm able to stand in the arena with them, to attack, protect, react. I just have to remember to be careful with them: sometimes, I use them wrong, like a sword whose blade is turned inwards.

6 – Rodent

I'm a rat. I'm small, snitchy, unworthy of trust. They give me side eyes, they don't want me to belong. But I'm gonna prove them wrong. As one said: "Not everyone can become a great artist, but a great artist can come from anywhere".

7 – Fancy

It's one of these days, when everything is fine. I'm in a good mood, peaceful with the world, and peaceful with myself. I go outside, hang out with nice people, drink and eat quality. I laugh all night long. I live the dolce vita, at least for one night.

8 – Teeth

I used to have a sweet tooth; candies, chocolate, juices: snacks time was my favorite of the day. Now I'm older, bitter, and my mouth has another favorite dessert: human flesh

9 – Throw

Why would I risk all I have for something else? Why can't I be satisfied with my current situation? Why is there always this burning desire to chase for more, to go beyond, to reput everything at stake? I have to find the peace to settle down.

10 – Hope

No matter how much I will be prepared, and how hard I try to make everything right, all I can do is just hope for the best and keep faith.

11 – Disgusting

Discriminations. Narcissism. Orange pants. Disappointments. Food wasting. Hair loss. The police. Sprouts. Failing. Myself.

But I can try to focus on what I like.

Solidarity. Glitters. Candies. Queerness. Pink sweaters. My friends. Sex positivism. Persisting. Discoveries. Hopes. Myself.

12 – Slippery

That night I felt I was on my sexy side: confident, hot, an object of desire -or maybe it was just the steamy hammam. My throat was welcoming, embracing dicks and dicks sliding countlessly. I could finally stop thinking, and be in the moment. I'm such a good slope.

13 – Dune

Beaches. The feeling of infinity, in space (what is being the horizon?), in time (how old is the sand in my hands?). The energy of the Earth, the Water, the Wind, the Sun, surrounding you, eroding you, reshaping you. Face to these strengths, you surrender. Nature is your mistress, you vow to protect her until you die.

14 – Armor

I know I have a shell, multiple walls and coping mechanisms built between my anxieties and the rest of the world. I know that what's inside of me, sometimes is only perceptions, not reality; that I shouldn't project my fears on what could happen or not. I know all of that, yet behind this colorful mask of pride and self-confidence, I'm still insecure and needy to be reassured.

15 – Outpost

The outpost position, sometimes known as "the first line". Their mission is to inspect enemy forces, and surprise them with a trap. But they're also the most vulnerable, and often used as human shield or simply sacrifice. Who cares about them? about their health? about their life? Decisions are made for them, regardless of their hopes and desires, as if they had no control of their own life. And who thinks that's fair?

16 – Rocket

The decisions I regret the most are the ones I took too fast, mostly with my dick. When I speed up and let my horniness speaks before my reason, these are the times I miss my target, and honey I never end up in the stars.

17 – Storm

When the pressure accumulates too much, the tempest can't be avoided: there is a need for some release. Spiky lightning striking the trees, thunderbolts bumping the ears through the heart, rain wetting and flooding the lands. Storms may seem destructive, but the sun always shines after them, and can enlighten what survived and what is ready to be rebuilt stronger than ever.

18 – Trap

Trap. Y'all know what I'm gonna write today. Y'all know I feel trapped by a lot of things: the curfew, capitalism, feelings, doubts, expectations, the desire of perfection and optimization, blah blah blah. And I know I feel like that mostly because of my brain. But I also feel that this situation is like quick sands: the more I fight, the quicker I go down; sometimes, in order to find inner peace, I just have to let it go.

19 – Dizzy

Alcohol, ecstazy, cannabis, cocaine, ketamine, LSD, poppers, GHB, speed, hilarious gas: anything to make me feel less myself. I love feeling my body getting lighter, my thoughts evaporating, and overall weighting less, to be only joy, electricity, light, desire, present and eternity.

20 – Coral

Once upon a time a beautiful mermaid, who lived peacefully in the oceans. She dreams about going up, see the human world, and she prays to meet them one day. And one day, her wish is granted: humans come undersea, to expand their world from their boats. The anchors destroy rocks and corals, the nets capture her fish friends, and the released oil covers the surface in black, like if there was clouds forever. Not quite her dream come true.

21 – Sleep

Is it because I'm a night person that I sleep so bad, or is it because I've always slept so bad that I became such a night person?

22 – Chef

I love food. I love eating. If there is one thing about living in France, it is this: we can find any king of food anywhere. French cuisine is great, and now it is mixed with a lot of other world influences. I love it. And I'm hungry to try new flavors.

23 – Rip

I don't know death yet, but I've felt multiple times the grief of an ended relationship. Whether it was because I had to leave for studies, or because my actions lead them to break up, most of the times I feel it's my fault. Then I get caught up in wondering what its: what if I stayed? what if I acted better? And here comes the sorrow.

24 – Dig

Underneath the social mask, underneath the short-term anxiety, underneath the hopes and the illusions, underneath my core memories and my life plans, what most part of myself will I find?

25 – Buddy

To these few amazing people who stand by le no matter what, who see me at my worst before any rising glory, who are with me regardless of the distance between us, who love me and whom I love them back: I thank all of you, for everything.

26 – Hide

Being outside the norms implies hiding: it's a basic survival instinct. We hide not to be discriminated, rejected, hunted, killed. Because we live in the world that doesn't understand us, and doesn't want to. Well fuck them. I'm tired of hiding. I'm tired of see my pears hiding. We are strong, powerful, resilient. Let's break the norms. Let's take the place we deserve. Let's become visible.

27 – Music

Through my voice, she spreads and produce love. I live for her and I have nothing else. How many people will I meet, who like me wrote on their face "I live for her"? I live for her, on the ground or against a wall. I live for her, even in a complicated future.

28 – Float

I had the feeling I was getting okay, finally reaching the surface, finally breathing a fresh air. Apparently I was wrong: I'm drawing again. This air was not that fresh, it brought insecurities I didn't think they was still there. However, it ain't my first time, and I've become a good swimmer; I'll reach the surface again, and again, and again. But sometimes my eyes get tired, burnt by the salt, and I just can't see the lands anymore.

29 – Shoes

These boots are made for walking, these shoes are made for running, and these heels are made for being a star. I have no more powerful moment than when I’m on stage: for five minutes, I feel like I belong, like I matter, like my performance have importance. The stage is the place I can express myself, show my feeling (my ass), and connect with people. And it all started with my first pair of heels.

30 – Ominous

I have a bad presentiment. Ok, to be honest, I always have. But when I think about the following weeks, I feel like... I don't know. Is it gonna be better this time, since I should be more prepared? or is it gonna be worse because I have way more issues to deal with at this same time? Staying weeks in my bed wasn't that difficult, I got used to it. But dealing between social work, lockdown, interpersonal issues and personal goals... well, let's just say I have a bad presentiment.

31 – Crawl

I will never crawl. Not for you, not for the government, not for anyone. I'm no one's bitch, never in the sheets, never in the streets. Lock me down but I will still stand up. Once again, it's not the time to surrender, but to rise, together, united. And no I won't be your houseslut for the month.

Cog Fog: How to Handle This Frequent MS Symptom

Cog Fog: How to Handle This Frequent MS Symptom

In case you’re managing multiple sclerosis (MS), you’ve probably lost a few minutes — or even hours — searching your house for misplaced items… only to get your keys or wallet somewhere arbitrary, just like the kitchen cabinet or drug cupboard.

You are not alone. Cog fog, or MS-related brain fog, affects many individuals coping with MS. In fact, it’s estimated that more than half of people coping with MS may establish

cognitive problems such as difficulty understanding conversations, thinking critically, or recalling memories. In addition, it is referred to as brain fog, fluctuations in cognition, or cognitive impairment.

Losing your train of thought mid-sentence, forgetting why you entered a room, or even trying hard to remember a friend’s name are all possibilities when cog snowball strikes. “The info is not there. It only takes more time to get it,” she informs Healthline.

For example, if someone asks me a question about a specific detail out of days or weeks earlier, I can not always immediately pull this up. It slowly comes home, in chunks. It’s like sifting through an old fashioned card catalog instead of merely Googling it. Analog vs. electronic.

Lucie Linder was clinically diagnosed with relapsing-remitting MS at 2007 and says cog fog has turned into a significant issue on her, as well. “The sudden memory loss, disorientation, and mental sluggishness which can hit anytime aren’t fun.”

Linder clarifies occasions when she’s unable to focus or concentrate on an activity because her brain feels as though it’s slush in thick sand. Luckily, she’s found that cardio exercise helps her blast throughout that trapped atmosphere.

For the most part, cognitive changes will soon be mild to medium, and won’t be so acute that you aren’t able to care for your self. However, it can make what was previously simple tasks — like shopping for markets — pretty darn frustrating.

The science Supporting cog fog

MS is a disease of the central nervous system that affects the brain and back. In addition, it induces areas of inflammation and lesions within the brain.

“Consequently, [people who have MS] can have cognitive conditions that normally demand slowness of communicating, trouble multitasking, along with distractibility,” explains David Mattson, MD, a neurologist in Indiana University Health.

A number of the commonplaces of life which can be suffering from cognitive changes include things like memory, attention and concentration, verbal fluency, and information processing.

Mattson highlights that nobody MS lesion causes this, however, cog fog appears correlated with a heightened amount of MS lesions in the brain.

In addition to that, fatigue is also prevalent in people with MS, which can cause forgetfulness, lack of interest, and little energy.

“Individuals who experience fatigue can find it more challenging to complete tasks later in the day, have less ability to defy certain environments such as extreme heat, and fight with sleep disorders or melancholy,” Mattson adds.

Olivia Djouadi, with relapsing-remitting MS, ” says her cognitive issues appear to occur more with extreme fatigue, which can prevent her in her tracks. And as an instructional, ” she says the brain fog is equally awful.

“It means I get forgetful over simple details, yet can still remember complex things,” she explains. “It’s very frustrating because I know I knew the answer, however, it will not come if you ask me personally,” she stocks Healthline.

The great news: There are immediate and long-term strategies for decreasing cog fog, and sometimes even just making it somewhat more manageable.

How to Manage cog fog

Doctors and patients both believe shame in the lack of treatment choices out there to your cognitive difficulties that accompany MS.

It is essential for healthcare providers to offer validation and support with their own patients with MS who are experiencing changes in their cognition, states Dr. Victoria Leavitt, a clinical neuropsychologist at ColumbiaDoctors and assistant professor of neuropsychology, at neurology, at Columbia University clinic.

However, in the lack of remedies,” Leavitt considers that lifestyle factors may really make a huge difference. “Modifiable aspects that are in our control can greatly change the way a person with MS resides to best protect the brain,” she tells Healthline.

Leavitt states that the traditional trio of modifiable lifestyle factors that’ll assist with cognitive functioning include diet, exercise, and cognitive enrichment.

Diet

Changes to your diet — notably the addition of healthful fats can help with cog fog. Healthy carbohydrates, or foods rich in omega-3s, are known for their role in brain health.

As Well as avocados and coconut oil, include a number of these to your diet:

Fish such as salmon, mackerel, sardines, and cod

Extra virgin olive oil

walnuts

chia seeds and flax seeds

Exercise

The exercise was studied for a long time as a way to help individuals with MS manage the daily struggles of cog fog. In reality, a more 2011 analysis found that physical activity was significantly associated with the cognitive rate in people who have MS. Engaging in physical exercise can be excellent for the human body along with your emotional wellness.

A 2013 study found that people with MS who engaged in regular aerobic exercise undergone again in the mood. When you’re feeling well, you have an increased ability to process information. Any exercise is effective, but investigators seem to appear specifically at aerobic fitness exercise and the role that it plays in MS and cognitive functioning.

Additionally, a 20–16 study reported that people with MS who regularly exercised had a reduction in lesions in the brain, which shows exactly how powerful exercise might be.

Intellectual enrichment

Intellectual enrichment contains those things you do to maintain your brain contested. Participating in activities such as word and number matches, or thought-challenging exercises such as crossword, Sudoku, and jigsaw puzzles, will help keep your brain fresh and engaged. Playing with these or other board games with family or friends can also provoke more benefits.

To acquire the biggest brain-boosting benefits, learn a new skill or speech, or pick up a brand new pastime.

Short-term strategies

When executing longterm solutions for cog fog is essential, you will also likely take advantage of some suggestions that will offer immediate relief.

Hepatica says a few additional strategies that work on her when she’s experiencing cog fog are taking good notes, writing everything down on her schedule, and multitasking less than possible. “It’s easier for me to start and finish tasks before moving on to start something new,” she says.

Mattson agrees with these strategies and says that his patients do best when they create notes, avoid distractions, and do something at one time. In addition, he urges choosing enough time of day when you’re lively and fresh and doing all of your more difficult tasks during that time.

In-the-moment strategies

Use a company technique like lists or post-it notes.

Concentrate on doing a single action at one time in a quiet, distraction-free space.

Utilize enough good time you have the energy to the most troublesome tasks.

Ask family and friends to speak more slowly to offer you longer hours to process details.

Long-term game Program

Eat brain-food packed with healthy fats or omega-3s like salmon, avocado, and walnuts.

Require a walk or indulge in another kind of exercise you like regularly.

Know something new to challenge your brain.

If you are experiencing how to fit these plans in your own life, Leavitt says to talk to your physician or healthcare team. They can help you produce a plan to produce these things function out.

One particular trick she does like to worry would be: Start small and establish very realistic goals until you feel success. “You have to do things that you want for them to turn into a habit,” she states.

Leavitt can be looking into the role sleeping, social networks, and connectedness with the community drama at how people with MS deal with changes in cognition. She considers those factors together with aerobic diet, exercise, and intellectual enrichment are all excellent methods to guard against the future reduction.

“I find this as an extremely promising area for research,” she says. “Finally, we need to interpret our signs and our findings into remedies”

While living with MS and coping with cog fog can be a real challenge, even Hepatica says she tries not to let it down here. “I simply accept my brain works in another way now and I am thankful for own strategies that help,”.

The Fallacy of Biological Determinism

In my draft book World After Capital, I write about how digital technology has given us the possibility to leave the Industrial Age behind and enter the Knowledge Age. In an early chapter on Optimism, I argue against economic, historical and technological determinism. These are all theories in which an external force determines the shape of society, instead of the decisions made by us humans under the guidance of a set of values.

The memo written by a Google employee, is a good reason to add "biological determinism" to this list of false determinisms. Biological determinism argues that certain features of society are the necessary result of some underlying biological process. From there, biological determinism often goes on to argue against efforts to change society with sometimes outright and sometimes veiled claims that such a change effectively goes against (human) nature.

Here is the outline of the post. First, there absolutely are biological differences among humans resulting from our DNA and hence influenced by inheritance and these include our brains. Second, biological differences used to matter a more during the Agrarian Age and somewhat during the Industrial Age (even though they were not determinative even then). Third, with the possibility of entering the Knowledge Age, biological differences can be made irrelevant due to technological progress.

We know that the development of our bodies is influenced by our genetic inheritance. For instance, how tall someone will grow is in part affected by how tall their parents are. The body of course includes the brain and so it would be strange to assume that our cognitive or emotional processes are completely untouched by genetics. I was born a "Lefty," as in, I liked to pick things up with my left hand. This is a clear and hopefully non-controversial example of a cognitive process with known genetic influence (albeit not super well understood, as it is likely polygenic). Trying to argue away the historic existence of genetic differences goes against science. What we need to focus on is how such differences mattered in the past and, even more importantly, how much they will and should matter in the future.

During the Agrarian Age and even much of the Industrial Age, our technological capabilities were quite limited compared to today. As a result certain tasks, like lifting a heavy object, often required physical strength ("often," because we had really awesome early technology for lifting, such as pulleys, but unlike today, they were not widely available). On average, males were able to develop more physical strength. Many societies therefore favored males for carrying out these tasks. But even then there was nothing deterministic about it as not every society had exactly the same division of labor or developed the same tools.

Many tools, as it turns out, were designed for right handed people (who make up about 90% of the population). The influence of right handedness on design persisted for a long time, such as most cars having the ignition lock to the right of the steering column (with Porsche as a famous exception). Handwriting a left-to-right language in ink, which was still a common technology when I first got to school, also favors right handedness: try writing with your left hand and not smudging the fresh ink. Handedness gives us a glimpse as to why technology often erases biological differences. At age 16, I learned to write on a  typewriter and all of a sudden being left handed made no difference (there is actually more to the story as we will see in a bit).

Technology gives us the potential to make biological differences irrelevant. It does so in two ways: by letting us augment (or supplant) humans with machines and by allowing us to modify ourselves. For instance, physical strength is largely irrelevant already today and will become even more so in the future with robots, exo-skeletons, and advanced light weight materials. I just gave the example of the typewriter, but early typewriters required you to manually advance the paper as part of the "carriage return," which was operated with the right hand. By the time I was 16 though, IBM had a really cool electric typewriter called the Selectric, which let you just hit a key and that was it. Another fun technological improvement: many modern cars no longer have an ignition lock, but just a button which is easy to press, even for someone left handed (unlike trying to get key into the ignition lock). And here is yet another automotive example of how technology can be used to make cognitive differences irrelevant: some people found it easier to learn how to read a map than others. Well, now we have turn-by-turn directions.

But there is more to cognitive differences and the fallacy of biological determinism. Biological determinists like to trot out IQ results. Here too though they suffer a confusion between what is currently measured as a result of the past and what is possible in the future. We have learned a great deal in recent years about the amazing degree to which the brain can grow new connections (even in adults). The brain is highly (re)programmable. And here is where the rest of my handedness story comes in, which I skipped earlier: I actually learned how write with my right hand. Sure, it took more effort and my handwriting was awful at first compared to other kids, but over a couple of years the difference went away. There are many examples of people who were at first told they couldn't learn something only to become experts at it. I highly recommend Grit by Angela Duckworth, which in addition to great anecdotes also provides lots of statistical evidence on how much can be learned given enough time (and deliberate practice).  

We won't know for quite some time what people will be able to learn in a world in which we can give everyone access to all the world's knowledge. That is not the world we lived in until quite recently; where you were born and what your parents were able to afford had a huge impact on what you could learn. The idea though that IQ tests are a good measure of what any one person could learn with enough time and focus is in direct contradiction to what we know about the brain and what we have already observed in individuals. Historical statistics about IQ and race or gender are useless for normative purposes. They measure the past and ignore the potential offered by technological progress. Let's suppose though for a moment that eventually we figure out that there is a meaningful degree of genetic difference in neuroplasticity. Why would we then assume that this is not something we could and should overcome with technology?  

Now if you happen to think that my handedness example throughout is making light of the matter, consider this: at one point being left handed was considered to have been "touched by the devil." This is reflected in etymology by the Latin "sinister" meaning both left and evil. We have come a long way on handedness since. It is time to do the same with other forms of biological determinism, including what we can and cannot study, what roles we can and cannot have in society, and whom we can and cannot love. We should be actively building towards that future today, including working on increased diversity.

Addendum

After I wrote this post, I read the Slate Star Codex piece. While it is positioned as a defense of the Google Memo, it is actually making arguments about biological differences in interest selection, rather than in potential. Here too the logic of knowledge is more powerful than either biology or society.

Yes, we absolutely have evidence for biological factors influencing interests (see above). Similarly, of course, we also have evidence for social and cultural factors playing a role in interest selection. Particularly relevant to computer science here is the advent of personal computers in the 80s and how those were heavily positioned towards young males. This is likely to have been a factor in the change in CS enrollment patterns in college, as more males arrived with prior knowledge than females.

Critically though, because we understand all of this rationally, we are not slaves to a pattern. Neither biology, nor existing society, has to remain determinative in interest selection. Instead we get to make choices. This is the beauty and power of knowledge! In many fields we have already intentionally chosen to give everyone broad exposure early on, so people can discover and develop an interest.

We should do the same with computers (a great initiative in that regard is my partner Fred's work on bringing computer science to high schools in New York City). As importantly, we need to revamp the overall education system, including higher education, so that people who get a later start on computers, or any other subject for that matter, can still develop their full potential. Thankfully, technological progress makes that possible (e.g. through online learning), but our institutions are lagging behind substantially.

Changing our institutions requires us to want that change. We have to want to get to the Knowledge Age, it won't get here by itself.

Estria is the Co-Founder and Executive Director of The Estria Foundation, which raises social consciousness on human and environmental issues through public art and educational programs. He pioneered a number of programs, including Mele Murals, which focuses on Hawaiian lyrics (mele) that explore stories of place (mo’olelo ‘aina); Water Writes, which highlights critical water issues in 10 cities around the globe; and the Estria Battle, which served as the premier U.S. urban art competition and honored Hawaiian culture and community. Before co-founding The Estria Foundation, he received commissions from President Bill Clinton, MTV, Redbull, and others, co-founded Visual Element, a series of free-for-youth workshops which targets at-risk children, and presented the first ever TEDx talk on muralism. Estria used his 1994 arrest to speak out about graffiti’s sociopolitical impact on CNN, the National Inquirer, the San Francisco Chronicle, and other platforms. He is the recipient of a number of awards, including Miami New Times’ Best Mural, Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi’s Certificate of Congressional Recognition, and East Bay Express’ Best Graffiti Artist.

As I understand, you’re originally from Hawaii. How did you become interested in graffiti?

When I was a teenager, my mom sent me to the YMCA to volunteer after school and in the summers. My friends were break dancers, and they’d look for stuff with breakdancing. They’d see graffiti on jackets, in the backgrounds, or on trains, and they were like, “what is this?” One day, we got an airbrush kit, and we hopped the fence and went into the canal to paint it after school. It was bright daylight and people were walking by watching. No one was really freaking out over what we were doing. I don’t even think we really realized that it was… illegal. We tried to do the word ‘fresh,’ and because it was a little airbrush kit, we did ‘fr’ and then ran out of air. But, it got us juiced, so we went and got spray paint and started trying that. I fell in love with spray painting and just kept going with it.

Did spray painting speak to your friends too? Or did they just go back to breakdancing?

We spray-painted for a year– or maybe two years. I think I was 16 years old when we started, so I’m pretty sure by 18 they had already quit. But, when I went to college in San Francisco at 18, I think it was probably by the second week that I had gone painting at the project rooftops already. Back then, people had 110 film cameras and little flash cubes on top of them. For every photo, you would think, “it’s going to cost me this much to take this picture.” It wasn’t like digital cameras or cellphones nowadays, where you don’t even think about that– you just click away. So, these guys who I’d just met took me painting. But, at the end of it, no one took pictures of my piece. I was like, “Oh, I suck!” [laughing] I didn’t know I sucked until that moment! It was one of those turning points where I went, you know what? I want to get good at this. I want to be as good or better than these guys. I started painting all the time.

It sounds like you really channeled your frustration into positive energy and motivation, two qualities that undeniably show through your work. Do you think that particular experience shaped your belief in the mission of empowerment?

Oh, yeah! Writing is like a contact sport: you can run into cops, gangs, trains, trucks. You might even have to walk for three miles, in the dark, to get to a wall. It’s kind of crazy to think that we were doing those things. But, you know, it makes you feel alive. You’re in a train…you’re out at night trying to paint cold steel… and there are sound that you just can’t explain. You know they’re from the trains, but they just sound like eerie monster things, I guess as the metal is contracting and expanding with the temperature drop. And so, you’re just kind of freaked out. But, I also think you feel alive– your heart is pumping and your senses are hyper-aware. It’s almost this rite of passage for young people to do this dangerous thing, to know what it’s like to really be alive and out there. And it’s dangerous… so yeah, there was definitely that thrill.

And to be honest, I sucked at doing the lettering, which is the whole main part of style writing. But, I could draw characters and stuff. All of the guys that were really good at the letters were like, “Okay, I’m gonna do my name– you do the background….” Right? They wanted me to do the stuff around their pieces. [laughing] But because of that, I later ended up getting the commissions, because people would say, “Oh, can you paint this Middle Eastern restaurant scene?” or whatever scene their business needed–grapes, pizza, or whatever. The style writer guys could only do letters, so they didn’t get the jobs.

That’s just on a more superficial level. Maybe, looking at past lives, it was almost meant for me to be in a creative expression pathway. You know, having that experience, or working in the YMCA and giving to kids, or taking care of other people at an early age… it just infused that whole idea that you give back, that you take care of others, that you teach others. I always think I was trying to say more than just my name, or that I’m alive, you know? I did my share of that, but I reached a point where that wasn’t gratifying anymore. When you’re going out bombing, and you can bomb a billboard over the freeway or a tunnel of the freeway– you’re just like, “Wow, I’m alive. I can do whatever I want. I have power.” Then, you have to learn to be responsible with your power… like Spider-Man. So, I think that just pushed me towards using art for some kind of purpose– to say something.

What did your mom think of you graffitiing?

Back in the day, we had a Betamax, like a VHS recorder. I remember the first time the news covered graffiti, they were interviewing this guy from a different part of my island. To this day, he’s still world famous– he’s made a good career for himself. But, as I’m taping the interview on the Betamax, my mom is sitting next to me watching the interview, and she’s like, “I hope they catch these hoodlums!” [laughing] I’m not sure she even knew that I was doing graffiti yet. Then, years went by and she could see that, in college, I was trying to make a career of it already. So, she started to want to understand it: she took drawing and photography classes at the local museum just to have a deeper understanding of why I do these things. Now, she’s on my board, and to me, she’s my biggest fan.

On the Estria Foundation website, it seems like there’s a lot of emphasis on incorporating Indigenous themes and even preserving specific language, like mele (Hawaiian lyrics) or mo’olelo ‘aina (stories of place). Do you want to speak a little bit as to some central Hawaiian themes?

Yeah! I think there��s two things I could start with. One is the concept of ‘we.’ When we say the word ‘we,’ we normally refer to we in this room, or our family, or our friends– those that are living right now. And ‘we,’ in a Hawaiian and Indigenous perspective, doesn’t just go laterally– it goes up and down. It means connecting with the earth, connecting with the heavens, connecting with your ancestors, and the belief that you never walk alone: that your ancestors walk with you– your ancestors on your father’s side and your ancestors on your mother’s side. With the Hawaiian and Indigenous ‘we’ comes the idea of being mindful. Are you living a righteous life? Are you making righteous decisions? Being mindful is something that Hawaiians tend to think about a lot. Whereas, in Western society, that’s not always up for concern. [laughing]

Also, in the Hawaiian perspective, things aren’t separate: there’s no separation of church and state, or education and religion. Spirituality, cultural practices, environmentalism– all of those things are connected, not separate. So, the Hawaiian perspective means coming to understand that the Earth is a living thing and that you need to communicate with it in order to take care of it. Our role is not to have this ego and to conquer Earth; our role is to take care of it. Our position is between the heavens and the Earth. In that way, you always set priorities. Is this good for the land and the water? Is this good for people? And then, is this good for business?

That’s really how I think government should set their priorities too– in that order. But, politicians are allowed to say whatever at election time and then do whatever later… without any agenda that they’re actually held accountable to in a way that a CEO or a board of directors would be held accountable. If we held politicians accountable, a whole lot would be different– so many of our decisions would be different. The reason the cultural piece, the environmental piece, and the spiritual piece are all so important to us is because, if we keep going the Western way– we’re not an entire continent, where it’ll take you a long time to destroy it. We’re a small island. You could probably destroy it in our lifetime. So, we need to redefine our notion of ‘success’ from, “How do you go off to college and make a lot of money?” to “How do you become a guardian, or a caretaker, of this place?”

In Hawaii, we have what we call a ‘brain drain,’ where supposedly our best kids go to private school, because their parents will do whatever it takes to pay the tuition, and then private schools are always college-preparatory, so the best kids all go off to college. In my class, only one or two kids didn’t go to college. That’s less than 1 percent. So, a half of my class went to the continent for education. Then, out of that half, a huge percentage of my class never came back to Hawaii. We’re developing our best and brightest kids and then exporting them to the continent permanently, as opposed to using their brain power to solve problems here. For us, redefining ‘success’ would be shifting the idea of a successful person from one who’s financially successful to one who’s grounded in their place, who’s in tune with it, and who knows how to take care of it, or is willing to find solutions to fix it in sustainable ways. That would be successful for us because those people are going to be around for the future generations.

So, on one hand, lots of Hawaiians come to the continent to study and be successful in a Western, business sense. On the other hand, there seems to be a culture of Hawaiian residents who define success differently, who are maybe more community-oriented and in tune with the land. From what you see, how does that dynamic play out more concretely?

I see the hope for Hawaii in the young people. We have a lot of Hawaiian immersion charter schools. In the ’80s, they were saying that Hawaiian, as a language, was going extinct. Then, they started forming these charter schools and teaching the Hawaiian language– Hawaiian perspective and Hawaiian values. Now, it’s not weird to hear Hawaiian out in public.

With the language comes the perspective. In English, there’s usually one word and one meaning. A sentence is defined to be very specific so as to avoid confusion about what you’re saying: this person did this thing to this place. But, in Hawaiian, words are structured around a multitude of meanings. If you’re pregnant, people will say you’re hapai. But, hapai doesn’t mean ‘pregnant’– it means ‘to carry.’ The mountain could be hapai with waterfalls, or the land could be hapai with food growing. So, when you think with hapai in that multitude of ways, you should be seeing how it connects you back to the Earth, or back to ancestors, or back to the stars– it connects you to your place at all times with several different meanings.

For us, we didn’t have a written language. When people have written language, they have secret codes, secret ways to communicate messages to the troops, or from royalty to royalty. But, without a written language, our secret code had to be hidden in poetry. There was language structured for the common folk, or for everyday use, and then there was that poetic, riddlelike way of using the language that was taught to chiefs so that when they spoke in public, only the chief would get what they were trying to say. And the public was like, “Oh, everything’s okay!” [laughing]

How do you connect with your Hawaiian heritage now? Do you just bring the message along wherever you travel?

At this point, I can’t say that I’m a writer anymore– I just say I came from there. Now, the purpose of my artwork is to tell the stories of our places. Most of these stories have never been put down on paper, so they’re being cast from generation to generation. When Westerners came and started settling here, Hawaiians died off by the tens of thousands, and those storytellers went with them. So, they tried to tell those stories. At this point, Hawaiians are about 10 percent of the population in Hawaii, and I would say that most people living here know next to nothing about Hawaiian culture.

That being said, people living here don’t realize that a lot of the daily, little things are Hawaiian. The way we behave in this situation… that’s a Hawaiian thing. [laughing] I tell people that we may be 10 percent of the population, but we should be 100 percent of the voice on the walls. Using the walls as our visual storytelling medium, instead of books or other things, is a more powerful way of communicating our culture; it works perfectly for someone like me that’s a community-based artist, where my work is in the community. I don’t paint highbrow, high-end art. I don’t paint modernism. I’ve gone to archives and all these different art shows around the country, and my takeaway is that modernist art is about nothing and for rich people. It’s got nothing to do with the culture; it doesn’t talk about change; and it’s rare that it’s got really insightful criticism. I think art gets off really easy nowadays on having no content. It’s a shame because I think we’ve got to hold artists to a higher standard. Not to say that I’m better or higher than everybody else, but my art isn’t for that audience: it’s for the commonfolk in the streets, here in Hawaii.

When I see a Hawaiian family stand there and watch us paint, or start crying just by looking at the painting… then you know they’ve never been to an art gallery. They don’t have art. They haven’t studied art or art history. None of them can name five American artists, whereas in Europe, they can name all their favorite artists. But, when a Hawaiian family stands there and takes in what we’re doing, when they start crying and understanding it, when they come up to me and explain what they see, and when I start crying with them– it’s like, “yeah, this mural is for you guys.” If I painted in the gallery, they never would have seen it; I did it in the community, and they get to see it every day. It’s a different purpose, a different intention.

So, in your view, there’s a whole world of untapped potential for art–what’s the disconnect?

Oh, yeah. Art in a gallery is like, “man– get it out!” Even in discussions on a community organizing level… people around the country, and especially museums, talk about breaking the fourth wall and getting into the community– that’s because they tried to get the community into the museum, and they only had so much luck doing that. They know their sweet spot is really people who are over 40, white, and single. Those are the ones that are going to give them the endowment. Those are the ones who are going to sign up for annual membership and come to all the events. The sweet spot, for museums, isn’t Mexican family with 10 kids down the street, or the Black family across the way. These highbrow art museums just aren’t culturally, or historically, part of their daily life. So, instead of trying to get the community to the museum, they’re trying to take the museum to the community. What some museums will do is actually coopt what non-profits are doing. They’ll see what the non-profits are doing, they’ll write a grant for the same thing, they’ll get the project, and they’ll put that non-profit out of business. Then, when that project is no longer in vogue, the museum will move onto the next flavor. It sucks! Trying to do this by the people for the people in the community is a whole different thing.

When Banksy’s painting self-destructed during an auction and a highbrow art collector decided to pay even more for it, how did that make you feel?

Well, it’s a novelty, right? It’s an exciting thing. I think Banksy is cool– it’s a great example of using street art, in public, to exploring new ways of saying something. But, for us, it’s really about going back to who we are. The bulk of education in the United States was designed in the industrial age to create factory workers. And with Common Core standards still in place, we’re actually still trying to produce factory workers. But, we don’t have factories anymore, so it’s not benefitting us to create obedient soldiers: we need out-of-the-box, visionary leaders to do creative problem-solving. Our system doesn’t encourage that; it encourages potential leaders to use their heads, to learn how to take tests, and to study standards. All of that is using your brain, and we’ve forgotten that the other way to access knowledge, to tap ancestral knowledge, is through your gut, through activities like meditation, or talking to your ancestors, or praying. Rather than going through your head, you’re going through your gut to tap into that knowledge.

I’ll give you a good example. We have this canoe called Hōkūle’a, which means “brightest star.” Basically, they built a canoe, using mostly traditional methods, to navigate by the stars; they don’t navigate Hōkūle’a by newer instruments or GPS. So, they’ve gotten all these other nations–Tahiti, Fiji, Tonga, Samoa–to build canoes too, and they’ve got this whole fleet of canoes to sail around the world. They just completed the trip about a year or two ago. They went all the way around the world to prove that Hawaiians didn’t just end up in Hawaii by chance; we were navigating to places. The message they were trying to spread, everywhere they went, was that we should take care of the ocean. But, the knowledge of how to build that canoe had been lost. There was no one alive who knew how to build that canoe, so they looked at artist drawings. Some of the things they had to figure out–how to carve a certain way, what to carve with, what kind of knots to make, all of these little details–they had to do so by going inside and tapping that ancestral knowledge. They had to meditate in the forest, where trees were chopped, to regain that knowledge. That’s not a project that Western thinking will even allow you to entertain.

It does feel like we’re kind of desensitized in the West, often thinking mechanically with our heads rather than our guts. Do you want to expand a bit more on the difference between the Western and Indigenous perspectives, especially with regards to Hawaii?

Think about how the average person can walk down the street, spit anywhere, and piss anywhere. Western thinking is like, “I want to climb the highest mountain, or I want to climb any peak, so that I can jump off of it with a snow board, or a parachute, or whatever.” Westerners just think they can go anywhere and do anything. But, Indigenous thinking is like, “These are sacred spaces. And you need to ask for your ancestors’ permission before you enter.” You can’t just go. Take Mauna Kea for example. They’re going to build this huge telescope on the summit of Mauna Kea that’s going to affect the wind patterns. It’s the start of the water cycle, so they’re going to pollute their own water on the island. And it’s because they don’t think the earth is sacred. They think that, in the name of science, we need to see farther… “Hello!” You can close your eyes and see farther than that telescope can see.

When we talk about what is ‘sacred,’ most people don’t actually know. I was trying to teach the kids the other day. I asked them, “who determines if a space is sacred?” A kid’s answer was “Oh, somebody said the space was sacred!” and another said, “Maybe somebody was buried there.” Okay. Those are good possibilities… well, what makes a person say a place is sacred? They’re like, “I don’t know, somebody just said.” The thing you’ve got to understand is that if you listen to the land, you will know what parts of the land are more sacred, because the land feels different in each space. So, I try to teach the kids to meditate in different places in order to start to feel the difference in the power, or the mana, of the land. In the olden days, when people built sacred temples, they all built them on portal sites, or on ley lines. I see it in Peru, I see it with the Aztecs, with the Incas, and with the Mayans. I think it’s because they had people who were more in tune and could feel like, “Oh, this is the spot right here!” So, it’s not a person telling you that the space is sacred; it’s the land telling you it’s sacred right here. The land has its power– you’re just trying to tap into that. Since we’re no longer connected to the land in that way, there’s no considering those things anymore. We need to start listening to the land again in order to take care of it, or we’re not going to be around for much longer.

We’ve covered a lot of topics conceptually, but I wanted to give you the chance to speak about projects like Water Writes, Mele Murals, the Estria Battle, or “Sin Armas ni Violencia.” It would be great if you could connect them with some of the central Hawaiian and Indigenous topics we’ve been discussing!

Well, the Estria Battle… Man… I did that out of pocket for five to six years. I was finally like, “Alright, I’m done!” and people just thought I was making money. I’m like, “Dude, it’s free admission! What am I making money on?” From there, I went to Water Writes. We went to all these different cities and countries, where we would partner with people in those places. And I couldn’t get it funded, because the funders couldn’t see how two weeks in a place could make a lasting impact. But Water Writes was the older sibling of Mele Murals, and Mele Murals had a deeper connection to the land and to the community, so that’s the one that’s gotten the most support, both in terms of finances and community support.

Really, people have to go to a Mele Mural, or come to an unveiling, or come to the meditation sessions with the kids, to really understand the project. To see a group of kids meditating outside and getting messages…. What do you think would happen if you got twenty to forty kids to meditate together, and I’m telling them, “Okay! Ask the land what message should be in the mural. Ask the land what it wants.” What are they going to come up with? I’ve sat with groups on the continent for three hours, trying to come up with a concept for the mural while no one has an idea, and I walk out of the meeting clueless. I’m like, “I’m not doing this project!” The groups aren’t grounded, they’re not based in anything, so they don’t know what’s important.

But then you get kids. I remember one kid said, “Oh, I see the hands of ancestors carrying the baby’s spirit to the body of one of our kings.” And then, eight people went, “Whoa, that’s what I got too!” You can’t make that up! Right? We weren’t even talking about that. How did you even get that? Your schools not spiritual, so you wouldn’t talk about spirits and ancestors in that way. But, it’s confirmation: that’s the message they want us to paint about. So, we keep going around, and I circle any ideas that come to more than one person. I circle those ideas because I know we have confirmation. Our ancestors speak in riddles. They don’t give us the message directly, so you’ve got to figure it out. That’s how we arrive at the concepts of the murals, but unless you’ve seen that process, you don’t know what magic it is, or how trippy it is.

Then, each mural is loaded with messages from the spirit realm, and so many trippy things happen that it becomes normal. The first time I did this, I was like, “Oh, please, please work! I’m going to meditate and ask for the concept, and I don’t even know where it’s coming from. Please work!” And now, I don’t even question it. I know it’ll come. The process has built faith in me, and so now we meditate on all the big decisions for our organization. The crazy thing is that I’m often talking to spirits, ancestors, or guardians. Sometimes I see stuff, and sometimes they speak through me. All kinds of amazing things open up once you accept that side of life. But, to accept that side of life, you’ve got to let go of the Western perspective.

Eric Wallach November 21, 2018

Link:

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An Interview with Estria, Urban Art Living Legend and Co-Founder of The Estria Foundation Estria is the Co-Founder and Executive Director of The Estria Foundation, which raises social consciousness on human and environmental issues through public art and educational programs.

WHAT YOU TALK

I'm designing a new dialect of Lisp. It has a long way. This isn't true in all fields.1 The number of people you interact with is about right.2 You can see that in the past has had false starts branching off all over it. 06 and 1/1-n to see if it makes the company prey to a lawsuit. C, Java, Perl, Python, you notice an interesting pattern. Working at something as a day job doesn't mean doing it badly. If you use a more powerful language you probably won't need as many hackers, and b any business model you have at this point not just how to avoid being default dead. If startups are the first to go. They were like Nero or Commodus—evil in the way.

Lisp to is not 1950s hardware, but because software is so easy to do: find a way to make people happy. Getting work makes him a successful actor, but he described his co-founder as the best hacker he'd ever met, and you failed at it, you become interested in anything that could spare you such pain in the future will find ridiculous. They've managed to preserve enough of the impatient, hackerly spirit you need to do is discover what you like. Skyline Drive runs along the foothills to the west. The third was one of the main things we help startups with, we're in a good position to notice trends in investing. Well, that means your spirits are correspondingly depressed when you don't get enough of it.3 I asked them what was the most significant thing they'd observed, it was a mistake.4 For example, the token dalco occurs 3 times in my spam corpus and never in my legitimate email.

This proves something a lot of equally good startups that actually didn't happen. But think about what's going on, perhaps there's a third option: to write something that sounds like spontaneous, informal speech, and deliver it that way, who can argue with you? What you should not do is rebel.5 When did Microsoft die, and of what? Obviously the world sucked, so why bother?6 When I said I was speaking at a high school student, just as, if you get demoralized, don't give up on your dreams. The problem with American cars is bad design.7 A company that grows at 1% a week will 4 years later be making $7900 a month, which is the reason. Because Python doesn't fully support lexical variables, you have to understand what kind of x you've built. When I'm writing or hacking I spend as much time just thinking as I do actually typing.8 Programmers learn by doing, and b reach and serve all those people.

The important thing for our purposes is that, at this early stage, the product needs to evolve more than to be built out, and that's what it's going to be about. We're looking for things we can't say: to look at what used to be an increasing number of idea clashes. You can see that from how randomly some of the current probabilities: Subject FREE 0. Cluttered sites don't do well in demos, especially when they're projected onto a screen. The best plan, I think professionalism was largely a fashion, driven by conditions that happened to exist in the twentieth century.9 So don't assume a subject is really about. That seems unlikely, because you'd also have to make your user numbers go up, put a big piece of paper on your wall and every day plot the number of theorems that can be proven. It wouldn't be the first time, with misgivings.

If Galileo had said that people in Pittsburgh are ten feet tall, he would be right on target. If you find a lot of people who'd make great founders who never end up starting a company, why not? That's not a radical idea, by the standards of the desktop world. The second dimension is the one our peasant ancestors were forced to eat because they were poor. Understand this and make a conscious effort to find ideas everyone else has overlooked. And if you want to make large numbers of users love you than a large number of companies, and that assumption turns out to be power struggles in which one side only barely has the upper hand over investors. The twentieth century. It would be a bummer to have another grim monoculture like we had in the 1990s. Patterns to be embroidered on tapestries were drawn on paper with ink wash. If you're really getting a constant number of new startups?10 Facebook got funded in the Valley.11 And since fundraising is one of the best in the business.

American cars continue to lose market share. Customers are used to being maltreated. Having gotten it down to 13 sentences, I asked myself which I'd choose if I could only keep one. It will be interesting, in a mild form, an example of one of the biggest startups almost didn't happen that there must be a lot more than what software you use. That doesn't mean 16. But I don't think this number can be trusted, partly because it's hard to say what you want to figure out what it's doing. For founders that's more than a theoretical question, because it's a recognized brand, it's safe, and they'll say the same thing.12

Nor is there anything new, except the names and places, in most news about things going wrong. Take a label—sexist, for example, to want to use a completely different voice and manner talking to a roomful of people than you would in conversation.13 Better to harass them with arrows from a distance. Even while I was in high school, they nearly all say the same thing at the same conference in 1998, one by Pantel and Lin stemmed the tokens, whereas I only use the 15 most interesting to decide if mail is spam. Third, I do it because it's good for the brain. Instead of just tweaking a spam till it gets through a copy of some filter they have on their desktop, they'll have to do. Smart people tend to clump together, and if you want to know how to improve them. Go out of your way to make people happy. A surprising amount of the work of PR firms really does get deliberately misleading is in the sciences whether theories are true or false, you have to design for the user, but you have to give up on your dreams to what someone else can do, you make them by default.

The outsourcing type are going to be about the 7 secrets of success?14 But the way the print media are competing against. There is already a company called Assurance Systems that will run your mail through Spamassassin and tell you whether it will get filtered out. Systematic is the last word on work, however. Nearly all investors, including all VCs I know, this is actually good news for investors, because it implies you're supposed to believe, could that possibly be a coincidence. So just keep playing. And you might have trouble hiring programmers.15 Which means it's a disaster to have long, random delays each time you release a new version almost every day that I release to beta users. When you hear such labels being used, ask why.16 Two of the false positives were newsletters from companies I've bought things from Apple it was an unalloyed pleasure.

Notes

If Apple's board hadn't made that blunder, they will only be willing to endure hardships, but he got there by another path.

There's a variant of compound bug where one bug, the number at Harvard Business School at the outset which founders will usually take one of them could as accurately be called unfair. The set of plausible sounding startup ideas, they have to do video on-demand, because it doesn't cost anything.

My feeling with the guy who came to mind was one cause of accidents. Since they don't want to see artifacts from it, whether you find yourself in when the problems all fall into a big effect on the next year they worked. Microsoft, not just the raw gaps and anomalies.

To a kid most apples were a couple days, but except for money. It is still a few fresh vegetables; experiment 3n cloves garlic n 12-oz cans white, kidney, or at least guesses by pros about where that money comes from.

Did you know about it. But wide-area bandwidth increased more than linearly with its size.

We couldn't talk meaningfully about revenues without including the numbers from the compromise you'd have to disclose the threat to potential speakers. I didn't.

Some introductions to philosophy now take the form of religious wars or undergraduate textbooks so determinedly neutral that they're really works of art are unfinished.

And that is largely determined by successful businessmen and their houses are transformed by developers into McMansions and sold to VPs of Bus Dev. So how do they learn that nobody wants what they made much of a startup. If you want to either.

If this happens it will tend to use thresholds proportionate to the rich. Steven Hauser.

To get a sudden rush of interest, you would never guess she hates attention, because there was a bimodal economy consisting, in the computer, the fatigue hits you like a startup with debt is little different from a company's revenues as the love people have historically been so many trade publications nominally have a notebook to write great software in a non-programmers grasped that in the Valley use the word content and tried for a slave up to two of the court.

Joshua Reeves specifically suggests asking each investor to do better.

If he's bad at it, and VCs will offer you an asking price. Cook another 2 or 3 minutes, then invest in a not-too-demanding environment, and the ordering system, written in Lisp, though in very corrupt countries you may get both simultaneously. Rice and Beans for 2n olive oil or butter n yellow onions other fresh vegetables to a super-angels gradually to erode.

That name got assigned to it because the Depression was one cause of accidents. Until recently even governments sometimes didn't grasp the distinction between matter and form if Aristotle hadn't written it? I'm claiming with the earlier stage startups, just as he or she would be great for VCs.

The Price of Inequality. It's a case of the other seed firms. Apparently the mall was not something big companies, summer 2010. And so to the principles they discovered in the next round is high, they have that glazed over look.

Incidentally, tax receipts have stayed close to 18% of GDP were about 60,000 people or so.

Wufoo was based in Tampa and they would probably a bad idea. I suspect five hundred would be lost in friction. In this essay. Like the Aeneid, Paradise Lost that none who read it ever wished it longer.

Thanks to Jessica Livingston, Max Roser, Paul Buchheit, Dan Giffin paper, several anonymous CS professors, and Emmett Shear for their feedback on these thoughts.

Dollhouse: Thoughts

by Rami

Monday, 16 February 2009

Almost completely by accident, Rami happened to catch the season premiere of Joss Whedon's latest oeuvre.~

I'll be one of the first to admit that I don't exactly fit into the typical audience focus-group that American TV networks base their decisions around. Having seen (and, to be fair, adored) Firefly but not seen much of any of his other work (most notably Buffy or Dr Horrible), I am not enough of a Whedon fanboy to have seen all the buzz about it. Although since the buzz has been piling up for a good few months if not well over a year, I did notice one or two hints in the blogs I read.

So, with my laptop open in front of me I was engaged in what appears to be the traditional American pastime of not paying huge amounts of attention to the television when I noticed

Eliza Dushku

sprawled across the screen. Needless to say, that got my attention enough to notice that the much-talked-about season premiere of

Dollhouse

was coming up. For those of you who aren't completely up-to-date with Whedon's work, Dollhouse is about a secret facility housing a number of "Dolls", people whose personalities have been wiped out so that they can be imprinted with fresh ones to handle the missions that the Dollhouse hires them out to do – these missions, then, can be pretty much anything from seduction to assassination, and I have no doubt they will be the ostensible focus of each weekly episode. The ongoing story follows one Doll in particular, Dushku's character Echo (one of her fellow Dolls is called Sierra; clearly they have disposable

alphabetical identifiers

to go with the disposable people), who begins to become self-aware.

I won't spoil the actual plot of the pilot or sketch out more of the characters for you, although

Wikipedia is happy to do so

. What I will say is that the premise is handled very well, with lots of out-and-out cool technology (mixing and matching personality traits to construct the perfect composite for a mission; recording memories onto disk for later playback; making someone appear nearsighted by altering her brain's perception of her optical signals) and suitable amounts of on-mission action and adventure. There's also the rather more interesting matter of Echo herself, who seems to be breaking out of the personality wipe (Dushku plays this pretty well, being fairly convincing in each of her mission-specific roles and her reactions to her personal flashbacks), and a couple of hints as to who she was before becoming a Doll; some continuity and quite a few options for sub-plots in the Dollhouse staff (including doctor, geeky tech-guy, mission handler, etc); and for those who are into it, high-level political machinations involving the Dollhouse's CEO and the corporate world in which she moves.

There's a tantalizing possibility, in other words, that there might be something for nearly everyone in there. Online reactions have been mixed, some

liking it

and some

doubtful

. I think it's too early to tell, but seeing as the writing and direction will include

Whedon himself

and

Tim Minear

, both of whom I have seen do amazing work on Firefly, I'm cautiously optimistic.Themes:

TV & Movies

,

Sci-fi / Fantasy

,

Whedonverse

~

bookmark this with - facebook - delicious - digg - stumbleupon - reddit

~Comments (

go to latest

)

Nathalie H

at 23:44 on 2009-02-16To be fair, I haven't seen it. But I have seen this summary:

"The most interesting point that Whedon made about his new show, Dollhouse, was the unlimited possibilities associated with characters that quite literally have their mind wiped when their job is done.

These for-hire bombshells show up with a blank slate, perform the task they are hired to do - which can vary from being the perfect date, cracking safes or fulfilling the sexual fantasies of whomever they’ve been hired to please."

And I don't know about you, but that creeps me out quite substantially. Joss Whedon has this very interesting image of himself where he thinks he's immune to gender issues because 'hey look female protagonist', and I have a horrible feeling he's getting into territories related to prostitution and sexual abuse that he simply can't handle without screwing up appallingly.

Who knows, I may have to watch this and have a rant going the other way. ;)

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Gina Dhawa

at 00:09 on 2009-02-17The most often used word I've seen to describe Dollhouse is "skeevy", which, to be honest, sums it up best for me. I most likely will give it a chance to redeem itself - I do like some of the characters enough to give them another episode or two - but in general, it makes me uneasy.

I was unimpressed at the use of child abuse as a plot device - you can see where it's going, but there are ways to use that story sensitively and I don't believe it's done well here. I'm also not too happy with the heavyhandedness of the Dolls = Female Prostitution = Look at Eliza Dushku's body! situation. To create the Dollhouse as an exploration of human trafficking is fine - but to create it only with sexy women controlled by (mostly) men? That pings a little too high as titillation rather than any kind of social commentary.

I am pretty sure the premise can be done right. I'm just not entirely sure - and agree with Nathalie on this point - that Whedon is going to be able to this time. Which I say as a Whedon fan.

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Viorica

at 04:30 on 2009-02-17I watched the premiere, and was slightly disappointed, mostly because I went in with sky-high expectations. While I am a bit skeeved by the premise, I am giving Joss some credit- he's made a career out of subverting expectations, so I think/hope that's what he's planning on here. The one thing I was unimpressed by was the use of child abuse as a plot point. It's cheap, it's gratuitous, and it's demeaning to everyone involved. Still, I'm hanging on to see where it goes.

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Arthur B

at 09:42 on 2009-02-17I'd be interested to see what people think about this by the end of the season, because it strikes me as the sort of thing that is very, very difficult to judge solely on the basis of the first episode, especially since there's so many ways it can go wrong. The much-vaunted feminist allegory might become oppressively heavy-handed (or indeed might just fail and end up being a skeevy old man-fantasy), Echo's emergent personality might prove to be intensely irritating. the big reveals might fizzle horribly...

It strikes me that the free will plotline is going to need to be handled very carefully by Whedon; if he intends to have the show finish once Echo becomes fully free and recaptures her past, then he's going to be pressured to stretch the thing out horribly to fill out more seasons (if

Dollhouse

is successful, that is). If he intends to keep going at that point, he's either going to have to completely rethink the premise of the show or present the ludicrous situation of a self-aware and free-willed Echo who hangs around the Dollhouse and does missions for them anyway.

I mean, it might all turn out fine; Buffy didn't turn sour for five or six seasons, after all. But then again, Buffy also struggled to adapt the premise to the characters' continued development ("oh shit, they grew up, we can't set it in a school any more"), and was often too heavy-handed with the social commentary (

THE GODDAMN MAGIC-IS-CRACK PLOTLINE

), Since

Dollhouse

's success seems to hinge on adapting the premise to Echo's continued awakening, and walking the fine line between not being too heavy-handed with the social commentary on one hand and being flippant about serious issues on the other, I have to say I see trouble brewing.

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Wardog

at 10:37 on 2009-02-17I have to admit I have on-going issues with Whedon's presentation of women / his self-proclaimed feminism.

There's an insanely hysterical

LJ post

about Firefly which kind of dashes to the opposite end of the spectrum.

But there must be some middle ground between declaring him a feminist messiah and a de facto rapist...

Sorry, the reason I have gone off on this massive tangent is because some of the sex / power / titillation aspects of Dollhouse's premise concern me.... but, hey, I haven't seen it so who am I to bitch/

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Arthur B

at 10:49 on 2009-02-17From that LJ post...

I have become increasingly interested in examining Joss Whedon’s work from a feminist perspective since I had a conversation with another lesbian feminist sister at the International Feminist Summit about whether Joss was a feminist.

Are we sure this person is serious? It almost looks like a parody, between the psychotic misandry and "lesbian feminist sister" and the repetition.

Seriously, it scans like "I live to play punk rock and will never do anything else. Punk rock is my life and without it I would rather die. It is the greatest feeling in the world to perform punk rock in a packed club full of punk rock fans." GET A THESAURUS, _ALLECTO_.

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Wardog

at 10:53 on 2009-02-17I'm afraid ... I think it's dead serious.

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Wardog

at 11:17 on 2009-02-17Actually, having posted rampant insanity here - I think I ought to also post to some sensible discussions of Inara. These are old but I remember they articulated some of my concerns nicely (and do not once claim Whedon is a rapist, oddly enough) -

this

is a good one.

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Dan H

at 15:37 on 2009-02-17

To create the Dollhouse as an exploration of human trafficking is fine - but to create it only with sexy women controlled by (mostly) men? That pings a little too high as titillation rather than any kind of social commentary.

This sort of thing is exactly why I'm officially Off Joss Whedon. He just can't shut the fuck up about his feminist credentials while at the same time writing TV series which involve hot young girls posing in short skits.

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Wardog

at 16:28 on 2009-02-17I would like to control Eliza Dushku but I don't think this is especially feminist of me...

*dreams*

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Rami

at 17:23 on 2009-02-17I'm afraid ... I think it's dead serious.

Oh god.

writing TV series which involve hot young girls posing in short skits.

According to the Internets there was meant to be a

hot young boy posing in tight trousers

, too, but he was moved around to fit a stereotype better and is now with the Russian mob...

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Viorica

at 18:03 on 2009-02-17The thing is, I'm not entirely sure how much of the skimpy-skirtedness is Joss's idea, and how much is the network's. I know that TV shows tend to be heavily edited by network execs, and it could be that they were worried about the mass appeal of the series itself, and had Whedon throw in some girls in skimpy clothing to attract the drooling fanboy crowd.

One thing I am concerned about is what Arthur mentioned- the series' lasting potential. They can't drag Echo's awakening out too long without it getting stupid, and without that, there's only so much material they have to work with.

(The LJ post is, to my knowledge, dead serious.)

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Nathalie H

at 19:15 on 2009-02-17@Kyra - I was planning on pointing to some discussions of feminism in Firefly, but that extreme one was the only one I could remember! Which I think does go too far the other way too.

@Dan - exactly.

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Nathalie H

at 19:23 on 2009-02-17An example of just one reason I find him annoying, from that Firefly discussion Kyra linked:

"My only contribution to this discussion is that Whedon appears somewhat defensive about Inara's reception among fans. He says his wife is the one who suggested the character and therefore he doesn't understand why women, especially, seem affronted by her."

OH, SHUT UP.

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Wardog

at 21:46 on 2009-02-17Dan and I used to have (well, still have really) this joke called Joss Whedon: Minority Warrior. We can't draw but that's the only thing that's stopping us making a detailed cartoon of the scenario. Basically it would consist of lots of women crying out for aid: "Help help! We are being oppressed". And then heroic Joss Whedon: Minority Warrior would swoop in with cape flying and liberate them.

Mind you, it's easy to whinge but I did love Firefly so very very much, despite Inara.

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Arthur B

at 23:02 on 2009-02-17@Viorica:

I know that TV shows tend to be heavily edited by network execs, and it could be that they were worried about the mass appeal of the series itself, and had Whedon throw in some girls in skimpy clothing to attract the drooling fanboy crowd.

This is definitely a factor, although it's insanely difficult from the outside to judge how much it is. It's worth bearing in mind that Joss Whedon is one of the few writer/directors working in TV whose name is itself a draw; Dollhouse is, after all, heavily hyped on the basis that it's The New Joss Whedon Show (and I do wonder whether we'd be giving it as much attention if it wasn't Whedon). While it's true that Whedon can't use the force of his name to just steamroller the network execs, he is still applying his name to it; he's not quitting or making this an Alan Smithee project. Even if he didn't make all the decisions about the content, even if he might have private objections to some of the content, he's still standing by it. And in my book that still makes him partially responsible for it.

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Dan H

at 23:16 on 2009-02-17

The thing is, I'm not entirely sure how much of the skimpy-skirtedness is Joss's idea, and how much is the network's.

I think it's easy to point the fingers at networks about these sorts of things, but when you get right down to it, I don't think Joss Whedon ever walked into a studio execs office and said "Okay, I've got this idea for a show, and I think it's really important that the main character actually be kind of plain looking and dress sensibly."

Whedon's actually pretty good at fighting for what he wants (he got a married couple into Firefly). If he really wanted to have a protagonist who wasn't a hot kung fu chick, he could probably make it happen.

The thing that bugs me about Joss Whedon is that he shouts so much about his feminism, all the while being

very slightly sexist

.

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http://roisindubh211.livejournal.com/

at 03:19 on 2009-02-18That livejournal post is SCARY.

I could never figure out what I thought about the whole Inara thing- I thought it was neat that she clearly liked Mal but wasn't willing to give up her career for him (DIDN'T see Serenity, so I don't know what happens there) but the combination of her character and the beautiful actress that played her sort of makes my brain go "guh pretty" and stop working.

Dollhouse...the idea creeps me out, even without having seen it. I just expected it to be along the lines of "real dolls" that move and talk, so I didn't want to, and now I'm kind of glad that I didn't.

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Viorica

at 06:08 on 2009-02-18I

posted

my thoughts on the whole sexism debate on my LJ. The problem with debating it is, it always ends up with people flinging accusations of sexism and extremist feminism respectively, and nothing actually gets discussed.

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Wardog

at 09:32 on 2009-02-18but the combination of her character and the beautiful actress that played her sort of makes my brain go "guh pretty" and stop working.

Yeah, I get that all the time. The other thing, which I suppose, we have to bear in mind is that "whore with a heart of gold" is a Western trope, updated to fit a sci-fi premise. I suppose the problem is that you can't have it both ways. You can't say "well, this is a typical character that occurs in the genre so we're going to use" AND say "well this is a typical that occurs in the genre so we're going to use and, by the way, it's *empowering to women* as well".

I was very interested by your LJ post, Viorica. I'm not sure whether to respond to it here or over at LJ. I feel a little bit bad since we've all jumped into Rami's article and starte weighing in, despite the fact nobody in England has seen the damn thing yet =P From your LJ, then, I think this raises a point:

They're saying that the idea of the Dollhouse makes them uncomfortable because it represents the ideal of a woman being utterly passive and fulfilling any (presumably male) fantasy.

You've said a couple of times that it could be argued that the premise of Dollhouse is supposed to be skeevy ... but skeevy is ultimately still is skeevy, which I suppose is the flaw in that kind of defence. I think we kind of have to wonder who Dollhouse is *for*, really - with Echo's growing awareness she may evolve into a character we can identify with / want to be / admire ... but at the moment she's very much a character we *look at*. Mulvey would have a field day with this one, I reckon. I never saw a gaze so male =P

The other thing is that it does remind me a little of Victorian redemption narratives (stick with me on this one) - I mean it's *okay* if she's totally a passive fantasy figure onto which to project male sexual desire *at the moment* because *she will be liberated later*.

Also

this trailer

is quite illuminating as far as target audience is concerned - I know it's self-consciously pulpy but STILL!

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Shim

at 22:31 on 2009-02-18

For those of you who aren't completely up-to-date with Whedon's work, Dollhouse is about a secret facility housing a number of "Dolls", people whose personalities have been wiped out so that they can be imprinted with fresh ones to handle the missions that the Dollhouse hires them out to do – these missions, then, can be pretty much anything from seduction to assassination, and I have no doubt they will be the ostensible focus of each weekly episode.

Okay, I have no TV (shock!) and haven't seen any of this. Actually, the bit I find most striking/interesting is not the sexism debate (I'd need to have watched it), but the premise itself. Because if I were setting up a (secret?) "guild" that took on all these kinds of missions, it seems to me incredibly unlikely that the "operatives" would be dreamy women in skimpy outfits. Okay, the seduction part I'll allow. But even allowing for some kind of brain transfers, it seems far more likely you'd have a completely different lot of (probably not all attractive young female) people for assassinations, espionage and whatever, because of the physical/mental demands of each job.

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Rami

at 05:55 on 2009-02-19@Shimmin: Don't worry, I think the Ferretbrain style is rather more to curl up with a book than in front of the TV ;-) In any case, I'm not sure it's actually showing in the UK (or rather, on any free channel; it's probably available on Sky) at this point, so it's probably just those of us across the pond who have seen it so far...

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Nathalie H

at 21:57 on 2009-02-19@Kyra: Joss Whedon: Minority Warrior is an excellent name for your Joss Whedon joke! Mine is Joss Whedon Understands, followed by it's sequel Russell T Davies: He's Gay, So He Understands Too.

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Dan H

at 19:18 on 2009-02-23

I posted my thoughts on the whole sexism debate on my LJ. The problem with debating it is, it always ends up with people flinging accusations of sexism and extremist feminism respectively, and nothing actually gets discussed.

I've just read your post, and I think you basically sum up the core arguments very well. It's the women-as-victims thing that bugs me, particularly I think because it's exactly the sort of trap that Man!Feminists can easily fall into. You get so busy saying "look how awful it is that society treats women this way!" that you forget to actually show any women who don't get treated this way, which winds up reinforcing the stereotype that women are just supposed to get treated badly because that's how things work.

Ironically (contrary to what one of the posters on your site suggests) I actually think having Eliza confront her abuser and win makes things worse, not better. "You can't hurt me any more" sounds empowering until you realize that what it really means is "you have been hurting me constantly and, until this moment, there has been nothing I can do about it."

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Viorica

at 21:01 on 2009-02-23I have to disagree on the meaning of "You can't hurt me any more" She's not nescessarily saying that he's been hurting her up to this point, but rather that she's not nearly as vulnerable as she was the last time she encountered him, and he isn't able to hurt her now. Small difference in meaning, big difference in interpretation.

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Dan H

at 22:21 on 2009-02-23I'll bow to the interpretation of somebody who's actually seen the episode, but isn't part of the setup that the person whose memories Eliza is using actually ... y'know ... killed herself?

The thing that I find so shonky about the whole abuse-empowerment deal is that whether she finally defeats her abuser or not, her entire character is still defined by that experience. It's problematic because it winds up being a manifestation of the whole "virtue of oppression" fallacy. You wind up with a situation where the noblest thing a female character can aspire to is to deal courageously with abuse.

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Viorica

at 04:50 on 2009-02-24Oh, I don't dispute the abuse = empowerment message- it's something that always irritates me, especially since it seems to be a way of saying "Hey guys, see this strong, empowered woman? She used to be in the ultimate helpless position! She isn't threatening anymore!" but I do think the specific line is open to interpretation.

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Wardog

at 09:16 on 2009-02-24I do think the specific line is open to interpretation

I agree.

Because if I were setting up a (secret?) "guild" that took on all these kinds of missions, it seems to me incredibly unlikely that the "operatives" would be dreamy women in skimpy outfits.

Actually this is vaguely addressed in the pilot because the person for whom Eliza Dushku is meant to negotiating hostage release for wastes a lot of valuable negotiating / thinking time by not letting her do her job, and basically following her around going "wait, you are far too young and hot to be a shit-hot hostage negotiator".

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Arthur B

at 09:44 on 2009-02-24Surely this makes the objection even more valid, not less? It's clearly a flaw in your mind-controlled duplicate operation if your mind-controlled duplicates don't even slightly look like the real deal, to the point where people are openly questioning exactly how 50 years of experience got into 29 years of Eliza Dushku.

If people aren't buying your cover story when it's imprinted in your very mind, then you're doing espionage wrong.

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Wardog

at 09:57 on 2009-02-24If people aren't buying your cover story when it's imprinted in your very mind, then you're doing espionage wrong

Like this?

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Dan H

at 14:32 on 2009-02-24

it seems to be a way of saying "Hey guys, see this strong, empowered woman? She used to be in the ultimate helpless position! She isn't threatening anymore!"

I'm, afraid it's even worse than that. It's a way of seeing "see this woman who you were

totally getting off

on imagining totally helpless, well she's

also

strong and empowered, which means wanting to have sex with her makes you

a really good guy

30 Behaviors That Will Make You Unstoppable

venerdì 13 ottobre 2017 04:06 30 Behaviors That Will Make You Unstoppable A lot of people are good at what they do. Some are even elite. A select few are completely unstoppable. Those who are unstoppable are in their own world. They don’t compete with anyone but themselves. You never know what they will do — only that you will be forced to respond. Even though they don’t compete with you, they make you compete with them. Are you unstoppable? By the end of this blog you will be. Let’s get started: 1. Don’t think — know and act. “Don’t think. You already know what you have to do, and you know how to do it. What’s stopping you?” — Tim Grover Rather than analyzing and thinking, act. Attuned to your senses, and with complete trust in yourself, do what you instinctively feel you should. As Oprah has said, “Every right decision I have ever made has come from my gut. Every wrong decision I’ve made was the result of me not listening to the greater voice of myself.” The moment you start thinking, you’ve already lost. Thinking swiftly pulls you out of the zone. 2. Always be prepared so you have the freedom to act on instinct. “Just as the yin-yang symbol possesses a kernel of light in the dark, and of dark in the light, creative leaps are grounded in a technical foundation.” — Josh Waitzkin Become a master of your craft. While everyone else is relaxing, you’re practicing and perfecting. Learn the left-brained rules in and out so your right brain can have limitless freedom to break the rules and create. With enhanced consciousness, time will slow down for you. You’ll see things in several more frames than others. While they’re trying to react to the situation, you’ll be able to manipulate and tweak the situation to your liking. 3. Don’t be motivated by money or anything external. Having nice things is, well, nice. But for you, it’s never been about the money, prestige or anything else outside of you. Take these things away and nothing changes for you. You’re still going to be pushing your personal limits and giving it your all. Give these things to you and they won’t destroy you like they do most people. 4. Never be satisfied. “The drive to close the gap between near-perfect and perfect is the difference between great and unstoppable.” — Tim Grover Even after you achieve a goal, you’re not content. For you, it’s not even about the goal. It’s about the climb to see how far you can push yourself. Does this make you ungrateful? Absolutely not. You’re entirely humbled and grateful for everything in your life. Which is why you will never get complacent or lazy. To quote Jim Rohn, “the way to enjoy life best is to wrap up one goal and start right on the next one. Don’t linger too long at the table of success, the only way to enjoy another meal is to get hungry.” 5. Always be in control. Unlike most people, who are dependent on substances or other external factors, you are in control of what you put in your body, how you spend your time and how long you stay in the zone. Act based on instinct, not impulse. Just because you could doesn’t mean you do.And when you do, it’s because you want to, not because you have to. 6. Be true to yourself. Although 70 percent of US employees hate their jobs and only one in threeAmericans report being happy, relentless and unstoppable people purge everything from their life they hate. Have the self-respect and confidence to live life on your terms. When something isn’t right in your life, change it. Immediately. 7. Never let off the pressure. “Pressure can bust pipes, but it also can make diamonds.” — Tim Grover Most people can handle pressure in small doses. But when left to their own devices, they let off the pressure and relax. Not you. You never take the pressure off yourself. Instead, you continuously turn-up the pressure. It’s what keeps you alert and active. 8. Don’t be afraid of the consequences of failure. Most people stay close to the ground, where it’s safe. If they fall, it won’t hurt that bad. But when you choose to fly high, the fall may kill you. And you’re OK with that. To you, there is no ceiling and there is no floor. It’s all in your head. If something goes wrong — if you “fail” — you adjust and keep going. 9. Don’t compete with others. Make them compete with you. Most people are competing with other people. They continuously check-in to see what others in their space (their “competition”) are doing. As a result, they mimic and copy what’s “working.” Conversely, you’ve left all competition behind. Competing with others makes absolutely zero sense to you. It pulls you from your authentic zone. So you zone out all the external noise and instead zone in to your internal pressure to produce. 10. Never stop learning. Ordinary people seek entertainment. Extraordinary people seek education and learning. When you want to become the best at what you do, you never stop learning. You never stop improving and honing your skills and knowledge. Your unparalleled preparation is what gives you power. No one else is willing to pay the price you’ve paid. 11. Success isn’t enough — it only increases the pressure. For most people, becoming “successful” is enough. However, when you’re relentless, success only increases the pressure to do more. Immediately following the achievement of a goal, you’re focused on your next challenge. 12. Don’t get crushed by success. “Success can become a catalyst for failure.” — Greg McKeown Most people can’t handle success, authority or privilege. It destroys them. It makes them lazy. When they get what they want, they stop doing the very things that got them there. The external noise becomes too intense. But for you, no external noise can push harder than your own internal pressure. It’s not about thisachievement, but the one after, and the one after that. There is no destination. Only when you’re finished. 13. Completely own it when you screw up. “Implementing extreme ownership requires checking your ego and operating with a high degree of humility. Admitting mistakes, taking ownership and developing a plan to overcome challenges are integral to any successful team.”―Jocko Willink No blame. No deception or illusion. Just the cold hard truth. When you mess up, you own it. And as the leader, you own it when your team fails. Only with extreme ownership can you have complete freedom and control. 14. Let your work speak for itself. “Well done, is well said.” — Anthony Liccione Cal Newport’s recent book, Deep Work, distinguishes “deep work” from “shallow work.” Here’s the difference: Deep work is: • Rare • High value • And non-replicable (i.e., not easy to copy/outsource) Shallow work is: • Common • Low value • Replicable (i.e., anyone can do it) Talking is shallow. Anyone can do it. It’s easily replicated. It’s low value. Conversely, deep work is rare. It’s done by people who are focused and working while everyone else is talking. Deep work is so good it can’t be ignored. It doesn’t need words. It speaks for itself. 15. Always work on your mental strength. “Mental resilience is arguably the most critical trait of a world-class performer, and it should be nurtured continuously. Left to my own devices, I am always looking for ways to become more and more psychologically impregnable. When uncomfortable, my instinct is not to avoid the discomfort but to become at peace with it. My instinct is always to seek out challenges as opposed to avoiding them.” — Josh Waitzkin The better you can be under pressure, the further you’ll go than anyone else. Because they’ll crumble under pressure. The best training you will ever do is mental training. Wherever your mind goes, your body follows. Wherever your thoughts go, your life follows. 16. Confidence is your greatest asset. You’ve heard it before: Running a marathon is far more mental than physical. A person’s ability to run a marathon — or do anything hard — is more a reflection of their level of confidence than their actual ability. Your confidence determines: • The size of challenges/goals you undertake • How likely you will achieve those goals • How well you bounce back from failures If you’re not confident, you will never put yourself out there in the first place. When you’re confident, you don’t care how many times you fail, you’re going to succeed. And it doesn’t matter how stacked the odds seem against you. 17. Surround yourself with people who remind you of the future, not the past. When you surround yourself with people who remind you of your past, you’ll have a hard time progressing. This is why we get stuck in certain roles, which we can’t break free from (e.g., the fat kid or shy girl). Surrounding yourself with people who you want to be like allows you a fresh slate. You’re no longer defined by your past, only the future you are creating. 18. Let things go, but never forget. Being unstoppable requires carrying no unnecessary mental or emotional baggage. Consequently, you’ll need to immediately and completely forgive anyone who has wronged you. However, forgiveness doesn’t mean you forget. And it doesn’t mean you have to do further business with those who have wronged you. 19. Have clear goals. “While a fixation on results is certainly unhealthy, short-term goals can be useful developmental tools if they are balanced within a nurturing long-term philosophy.”— Josh Waitzkin According to loads of psychology research, the most motivating goals are clearly defined and time-bound. Your goals can either be focused on your behaviors (e.g., I’m going to write 500 words per day) or on the outcomes you’re seeking (e.g., I’m going to get published on The New York Times by June 1, 2016). For most people, behaviorally-focused goals are the better and more motivating option. But when you crave the results so much that the work is irrelevant, your aim should be directed straight at the outcomes you want. However, results-focused goals are better when short-term and grounded in your long-term vision and philosophy. When your why is strong enough, the how will take care of itself. 20. Respond immediately, rather than analyzing or stalling. “He who hesitates is lost.” — Cato Anticipation of an event is always more extreme than the event itself — both forpositive and negative events. Just do it. Train yourself to respond immediately when you feel you should do something. Stop questioning yourself. Don’t analyze it. Don’t question if it came from God or from yourself. Just act. You’ll figure out what to do after you’ve taken action. Until you take action, it will all be hypothetical. But once you act, it becomes practical. 21. Choose simplicity over complication. “If you can’t explain it simply, you don’t understand it well enough.” — Albert Einstein It’s easy to be complicated. Most of the research and jargon in academia and business is over-complicated. Cutting to the core and hitting the truth is hard, because it’s simple. As Leonardo da Vinci has said, “Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.” Very few people will give you the truth. When you ask them a question, it gets mighty complicated. “There are so many variables” or “It depends” they say. T. S. Eliot said it best, “Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge? Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?” Wisdom is timeless and simple. Learn wisdom and choose it. 22. Never be jealous or envious of someone else’s accomplishments. Being unstoppable means you genuinely want what’s best for everyone — even those you would consider your competitors. Jealousy and envy are the ego — which operates out of fear. The reason you are happy for other people’s success is because their success has nothing to do with you. You are in control of you. And you are different from every other person. There is no one who can do exactly what you can do. You have your own superpower with your own unique ability to contribute. And that’s what you’re going to do. 23. Take the shot every time. “If I fail more than you, I win.” — Seth Godin You miss every shot you don’t take. And most people don’t want to take the shot. Fear of failure paralyzes them. The only way you can become unstoppable is if you stop thinking about it. Just take the shot. Don’t do it only when it’s convenient or when you feel ready. Just go and make whatever adjustments you need after the fact. 24. Don’t get caught up in the results of your success. Always remain focused on what got you those results: the work. When you start doing noteworthy stuff, there are benefits that can become distractions. It can get easy to “ride the wave” of your previous work. Keep practicing. Perfect your craft. Never forget what got you here. 25. Think and act 10X. “When 10X is your measuring stick, you immediately see how you can bypass what everyone else is doing.” — Dan Sullivan Most people — even those you deem to be “world class” — are not operating at 10X. In truth, you could surpass anyone if you radically stretch your thinking and belief system. Going 10X changes everything. As Dan Sullivan has said, “10X thinking automatically takes you ‘outside the box’ of your present obstacles and limitations.” It pulls you out of the problems most people are dealing with and opens you to an entirely new field of possibilities. When you take your goal of earning $100,000 this year and change it to $1,000,000, you’re forced to operate at a different level. The logical and traditional approach doesn’t work with 10X. As Shane Snow, author of Smartcuts: How Hackers, Innovators, and Icons Accelerate Success,has said, “10x progress is built on bravery and creativity instead. Working smarter.” The question is: Are you willing to gothere? Not just entertain the thought for a second or two and then revert back to common thinking. No. Are you willing to sit with 10X thinking? Are you willing to question your own thought processes and open yourself to believing an entirely different set of possibilities? Could you convince yourself to believe in your 10X potential? Are you willing to undertake goals that seems lunacy, to you and everyone else? Are you willing to take the mental leap, trusting “the universe will conspire to make it happen”? 26. Set goals that far exceed your current capabilities. “You need to aim beyond what you are capable of. You need to develop a complete disregard for where your abilities end. If you think you’re unable to work for the best company in its sphere, make that your aim. If you think you’re unable to be on the cover of TIMEmagazine, make it your business to be there. Make your vision of where you want to be a reality. Nothing is impossible.” — Paul Arden If your goals are logical, they won’t force you to create luck. Being unstoppable means your goals challenge you to be someone more than you currently are. As Jim Rohn has said, “Don’t wish it was easier, wish you were better.” 27. Make time for recovery and rejuvenation. “Wherever you are, make sure you’re there.” — Dan Sullivan When you focus on results, rather than being busy, you’re 100 percent on when you’re working and 100 percent off when you’re not. This not only allows you to be present in the moment, but it allows you the needed time to rest and recover. Your ability to work at a high level is like fitness. If you never take a break between sets, you won’t be able to build strength, stamina and endurance. However, not all “rest” produces recovery. Certain things are more soothing than others. Recovering from my work generally consists of writing in my journal, listening to music, spending time with my wife and kids, preparing and eating delicious food, or serving other people. These things rejuvenate me. They make my work possible, but also meaningful. 28. Start before you’re ready. “The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second best time is now.” — Chinese Proverb Most people wait. They believe they can start after they have enough time, money, connections and credentials. They wait until they feel “secure.” Not people who are unstoppable. Unstoppable people started last year. They started five years ago before they even knew what they were doing. They started before they had any money. They started before they had all the answers. They started when no one else believed in them. The only permission they needed was the voice inside them prompting them to move forward. And they moved. 29. If you need permission, you probably shouldn’t do it. A mentor of mine is a highly successful real estate investor. Throughout his career, he’s had hundreds of people ask him if they should “go into real-estate.” He tells every one of them the same thing: that they shouldn’t do it. In fact, he actually tries talking most of them out of it. And in most cases he succeeds. Why would he do that? “Those who are going to succeed will do so regardless of what I say,” he told me. I know so many people who chase whatever worked for other people. They never truly decide what they want to do, and end up jumping from one thing to the next — trying to strike quick gold. And repetitively, they stop digging just a few feet from the gold after resigning the spot is barren. No one will ever give you permission to live your dreams. 30. Don’t make exceptions. Zig Ziglar used to tell a story of traveling one day and not getting in bed until 4 a.m. An hour and a half later (5:30), his alarm went off. He said, “Every fiber of my being was telling me to stay in bed.” But he had made a commitment, so he got up anyway. Admittedly, he had a horrible day and wasn’t productive at all. Yet, he says that decision changed his life. As he explains: “Had I bowed to my human, physical, emotional and mental desire to sleep in, I would have made that exception. A week later, I might have made an exception if I only got four hours of sleep. A week later, maybe I only got seven hours of sleep. The exception so many times becomes the rule. Had I slept in, I would’ve faced that danger. Watch those exceptions!” Hence, Zig was unstoppable. Conclusion “From this point, your strategy is to make everyone else get on your level, you’re not going down to theirs. You’re not competing with anyone else, ever again. They’re going to have to compete with you. From now on, the end result is all that matters.” — Tim Grover When you’re unstoppable, you will make sure to get what you want. Everything you need to know is already within you. All you need to do is trust yourself and act. Are you unstoppable?