I wondered how starscream reacted to seeing Jetfire again
It’s not going great!
Woops! I wrote a drabble. Not sure how this conversation started but this is sure how it's decided to go!
"You were gone, Skyfire. I mourned you. I…"
"You burned Iacon to the ground! Destroyed our home!"
"I did it for you!"
Skyfire finally threw down his tools and turned on the seeker.
"In what world would I have ever wanted that??" He screamed, temper flaring.
"No, I wanted it!" Starscream retaliated, even as he took a step back. "I needed it, I couldn't move on otherwise."
"Yeah, because you definitely sound like a mech who’s been able to move on."
"I did! believe it or not. I became more than I ever was playing scientist at your precious little academy. I was the air commander of an entire army, second in command only to Lord Megatron. I was somebody to be respected, feared even! And then YOU had to come back and ruin it."
"How is any of this MY fault?"
"You were DEAD! You weren't supposed to come back! You weren't supposed to know about any of this. About…you LEFT me and I had to pick up the pieces and you dare judge me for how it played out?"
"Starscream, things dont just 'play out.' You made choices. Bad ones. You can't blame that on me."
"Haha! No, but I CAN blame you for betraying me! For choosing the Autobots over me! Like everything we had before meant nothing!"
"You SHOT me! For trying to protect the native lifeforms! Who does that?!"
Starscream sneered, hateful and ugly.
"As if you hadn’t already made up your mind about me by that point."
Skyfire looked at him, as though for the first time. He took in how the frame shook with each haggard vent, the lines of wear framing each restless optic, the tight aggressive cant of the wings.
"You've changed, Starscream. You’re not the same mech I knew."
"You’re right." Starscream said, voice dark with pride. "I’m stronger now."
"Are you? Or are you just more hurt and more bitter and more willing to hurt people? Face it, Starscream. You’ve had no one to rely on because you refuse to trust anyone. And look where that's gotten you."
Starscream glared at him.
"You don’t know anything," he hissed, before spinning on his heels and storming out of the lab.
Wheeljack coughed awkwardly, fiddling with his instruments. Skyfire looked around as the science team silently got back to work.
Skywarp's were the only pair of optics that met his from across the room; his quiet stare cold, hard, and unreadable.
taking the threshold of adulthood as 18, you are likely to spend at least 52 years as a fully grown adult
at the age of 30 you have lived less than one quarter of your adult life (12/52 years)
'middle age' is typically considered to be between 45-65
it is extremely common to switch careers, start new relationships, emigrate, go to college for the first or second time, or make other life-changing decisions in middle age
it's wild that I even have to spell it out, but older adults (60+) still have social lives and hobbies and interests.
you can still date when you get old. you can still fuck. you can still learn new skills, be fashionable, be competitive. you can still gossip, you can still travel, you can still read. you can still transition. you can still come out.
young doesn't mean peaked. you're inexperienced in your 20s! you're still learning and practicing! you're developing social skills and muscle memory that will last decades!
there are a million things to do in the world, and they don't vanish overnight because an imaginary number gets too big
The impression given to me as a high schooler was that expecting to be able to be a practicing Jew was demanding a privilege, and that I should only ask for it if it didn’t inconvenience anyone else
While I didn't grow up Jewish (convert), my experience in the workplace has been exactly the same. I have been very vocally Jewish in all of my jobs as an adult. I had an employer make a rule that only one person from the same department could request off at a time, and then the company moved me to be in the same department as the only other vocally Jewish person on the floor. A month before Rosh Hashanah. The two of us got together and made a plan for how we were going to notify them that we would both be out. Surprise surprise, we both put in a time off request for RH and Yom Kippur, and the company acted as if it were our fault that we didn't "plan better." They even told us that next year we would have to plan better to make it work.
Management knew that we were both practicing Jews, and even understood what it meant bc our manager has practicing Jewish family. But they still decided to move us to work together right before the holiest time of the year knowing their stupid attendance policy. I would have loved to take all Yom Tov days off but this company only gave us 5 planned (unpaid) days off *a year.* They had the audacity to call me in for an attendance meeting because I "used up so much of my time off so quickly" and then ask what I could do to improve my attendance. I told them in explicit terms that I already sacrificed so much of my religious life to be employed by them, I couldn't shave off any more time.
They told me that that was the reason why I was given planned time off, to account for differences in each individual's personal lives. But of course, we weren't open on Sunday or Christmas, and practically the whole workplace was appalled that we were open on Good Friday, so that was the only compromise that Christians and Cultural Christians had to make for their own observances.
Recently in my school district, those three groups did come together to lobby the school board to add their holidays to the school calendar so they’d be days off for everyone! Unfortunately they lost, but I hope they keep trying.
the more i watch star trek tos, the more it becomes abundantly clear that the reason why modern trek doesnt get kirk at all is because they dont utilise mccoy nearly as much anymore
in modern trek, they always present the idea of logic vs emotion, with spock being logic and kirk being emotion, but thats not how tos has it. in tos, the logic vs emption debate is spock vs mccoy. kirk is supposed to be the mediator between the two, sometimes siding with one side over the other, sometimes finding a middle ground between the two. thats why hes the captain, hes able to see all angles and pick the best course
when you make kirk the emotional one, it completely breaks the format, because 9 time out of 10, it means kirk has to be correct. theres no more balance
mccoy is just as important to tos as spock is, and while i do understand why spock is as popular as he is, without mccoy, the show doesnt work. you need them both. kirk spock and mccoy are the three leads of the show, and removing one requires you to change the others, which is whats happened to kirk
I can forgive SNW!Kirk somewhat b/c he’s not Captain yet. But “Into Darkness” really suffers from Kirk still being a kid.
TOS!Kirk had his emotions externalised and his emotional turmoil voiced by McCoy. He could stay cool and logical in absence of Spock when McCoy balanced him, he was softer and more emotive when McCoy wasn’t around, and yet McCoy could also be the logical one.
McCoy is often circumstantial, context-driven in what he expresses. We can argue that he’s not always right, but he’s the one who cares and the one who balances the scales and the one who says what Kirk maybe wants to say but has learned he can’t always focus on.
In “Immunity Syndrome” when Spock appeals to Kirk that they should abandon him it’s McCoy who tells him “Shut up, we’re rescuing you!”. Kirk smiles because he thought it, and it’s what he wants and they’ll make it work, but he can’t say it.
Kirk is at his worst when he’s acting or portrayed as the emotional and/or the one who always knows how to handle a situation.
ok i know i'm one to talk but genuinely if you think 👍 or ❤️ is "passive aggressive" you might be spending a bit too much time on your phone jeez louise
So I just simultaneously did, and possibly didn't lose my job today :)
Very much did in the sense that I literally do not know where my job is at the moment. But, for the time being I haven't been let go because nobody else including the store owner knows where it is either.
So, I don't wanna risk doxxing myself by posting pictures but goddamn am I tempted because this is not a believable event. This is a cartoon problem. For looneytoons.
But yeah, so, I work(ed?) at a kiosk selling boba tea, right? Freestanding kiosk in the mall with full water and electrical hookups and multiple fridges and sinks and a mini kitchen and the works. Fully functional tea shop. Very important to note that it was there last night, The work chat was discussing another issue last night at closing time. I'll get back to this.
It's been showing signs of being on the way out with how business is being handled lately and I've been considering other options, which is probably why I'm not as torn up about this as I should be, but maybe it just hasn't set in yet, but that's not the point. The point is there's been a lot of shit breaking and not being replaced and nobody mentioning anything about it until I walk into work in the morning and have to figure out why shit like the fucking cash register isn't there today. So I'm kinda used to having to ask questions about big things that nobody bothered to update me on. I was out for two weeks recovering from a surgery, so I came to work this morning assuming there'd be some kind of bullshit, yeah?
So, the question I had to ask the chat this morning was:
Not a text I ever thought I'd have to send in sincerity, but there it is. Because what I found instead was a fenced off patch of discolored tiles and a few holes in the floor where my entire place of employment used to be.
And the answer? Nobody knows! It was there last night when the mall closed, and every single trace of the structure and all its contents including drink making supplies and our safe and cashbox was gone when it opened again. And when I say nobody knows, I mean everyone from last night's closers to the actual (former?) owner of the store jad no fucking clue about this until getting that text from me this morning. For once I am actually the first to know. 🎉.
So. I guess I didn't so much lose my job as had it stolen. Not by AI, but good old fashioned hands-on human beings picking it up and carrying it away somehow. All mall security would tell me was that they were instructed not to tell me anything and have us contact our management. Who also don't know anything. And later on I came across some construction workers around the gravesite of the kiosk discussing filling in the holes, asked them about it, and was told that they "weren't at liberty to say".
So, not only is my job gone in the most literal physical sense of the word, but it was taken in some kind of super secret kiosk extraction in the dead of night without any warning or witnesses and nobody is allowed to speak of it. The store owner said she was gonna figure it out 10 hours ago and still no word back.
I don't know what else to say aside from I've been laughing all day and I'm gonna have a hell of a time explaining Schrodinger's Unemployment to the benefits office.
Update that is not an update because I'm basically certain this isn't what actually happened:
My mother in law thinks the FBI took it.
Not any of the other stores around the state. Just the one little kiosk.
Why? Because she loves a conspiracy and is just a little bit extra.
Also because she was around for the massive crackdown on Yakuza-owned businesses in Waikiki (in her homestate) that did actually involve the FBI seizing stores (no confirmation of making kiosks cleanly disappear in the middle of the night though).
Still no word from my job on what's actually going on, but the most likely theory so far is that maybe the kiosk was on lease and got repossessed? The mystery continues
(also shout out to the person who proposed Carmen Sandiego)
According to the owner, based on what she's been able to find out, the kiosk was not removed legally and they're starting a potentially long process of legal action. I hope she gets to sue the shit out of whoever did it but for now at least I know for sure I'm unemployed.
Really hoping for more details in terms of who/why/how, so I'll keep updating if I learn anything.
For now the summary is: An unnamed entity that is most likely mall management (on account of mall security cooperating with them) stole an entire kiosk and all the contents including money and machinery with barely a trace in the middle of the night grinch-style, with zero warning or explanation, and ensured the silence of both security and the construction crew, in an action that was definitely preplanned and illegal, and as far as I know nobody knows its whereabouts.
So now I'm officially out of a job. Because my workplace was literally stolen in the night.
Actually fuck it let's share some photos cause I wouldn't be inclined to believe this myself. It's not like anyone can stalk me at my job now and I'm not gonna have to see any coworkers that might find my tumblr.
Enjoy the unintentionally funniest text I've ever sent in my life
Aaand a close-up:
The last remains of a once Very Much Solid And Immobile Workplace
Hello there. Guess how much money I made last year? $28. I’m an investment banking analyst at a boutique firm, in M&A. I have my undergrad from the University of Chicago, one of the top schools in the country. With bonuses, sometimes I make even more. Are you jealous of that? Most people on Tumblr are usually jobless or they decided to major in the humanities and are poor.
