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yurimother · 10 months

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The 2023 Yuri Guide - Anime

Your ultimate guide to the best Yuri content with over 200 curated titles from every genre and medium.

Adachi and Shimamura

• School • Slice of Life • Romance • Friends to Lovers • Slow burn

Adachi and Shimamura's days of skipping school offer a new world to explore. But as these delinquents bond, unexpected emotions begin to blossom. Now if they could just admit how they feel…

Streaming on Crunchyroll (Sub/Dub)

BIRDIE WING -Golf Girls' Story-

• Sports • Comedy • Drama

Eve is an underground golfer who supports poor street orphans with the money she makes from illegal golfing matches. But her life is about to change forever when she meets a young golfer who's just arrived from Japan...

Streaming on Crunchyroll (Sub)

The Executioner and Her Way of Life

• Action • Fantasy • Isekai • Enemies to Lovers

When Menou, an Executioner of deadly interdimensional “Lost Ones,” encounters a Lost One named Akari who can cheat death, she sets out on a mission to kill the unkillable girl — but her newly stirring feelings might get in the way of her blade.

Streaming on HIDIVE (Sub/Dub)

Flip Flappers

• Fantasy • Action • Magical Girl • Love at First Sight

Cocona’s world is turned upside down with the appearance of Papika. They set off on an adventure in “Pure Illusion.” In the pursuit of the “Shards of Mimi,” obstacles arise, and the shards enable them to transform.

Streaming on HIDIVE (Sub/Dub)

If My Favorite Pop Idol Made it to the Budokan, I Would Die

• Comedy • Music • Multiple Couples • Love at First Sight

Two years ago, super-fan Eripiyo was hypnotized by Maina Ichii and her pop group ChamJam. Now Eri dreams of seeing her favorite group make it big, to the Budokan arena! Her passionate desire consumes money and time—but no cost is too high. This is fandom!

Streaming on Crunchyroll (Sub/Dub)

Inugami-san to Nekoyama-san

• School • Slice of Life • Comedy • Multiple Couples

A mutual friend introduces Yachiyo Inugami, a dog-like girl who loves cats, and Suzu Nekoyama, a cat-like girl who loves dogs. The girls find themselves drawn in by their opposite traits and the most outlandish relationship starts to take form in this wild comedy that will have you barking (and meowing?) with laughter.

Streaming on Crunchyroll (Sub)

The Magical Revolution of the Reincarnated Princess and the Genius Young Lady

• Fantasy • Romance • Comedy • Isekai

When noblewoman Euphyllia is unjustly stripped of her title as the kingdom’s next monarch, the buffoonish Princess Anisphia takes it upon herself to right this wrong. Despite being taken for a fool ’cause of her silly antics, Anisphia is a magic genius, and she has a plan to help Euphyllia regain her good name. But little do they know—their encounter will alter the kingdom and the entire world! Streaming on Crunchyroll (Sub)

Maria Watches Over Us

• School • Slice of Life • Senpai/Kouhai • Multiple Couples

Students at Lillian Girls’ Academy become “soeurs” to support each other during their time at school. Shy Yumi Fukuzawa never thought she’d attract a soeur like the beautiful Sachiko Ogasawara, but Sachiko has unexpectedly set her sights on Yumi!

Streaming on HIDIVE (sub)

Mobile Suit Gundam: The Witch from Mercury

• Sci-Fi • Mecha • Action • School • Drama • Marriage

A.S. (Ad Stella) 122― An era when a multitude of corporations have entered space and built a huge economic system. A lone girl from the remote planet Mercury transfers to the Asticassia School of Technology, run by the Beneritt Group which dominates the mobile suit industry. Her name is Suletta Mercury. With a scarlet light burning in her pure heart, this girl walks step by step through a new world.

Streaming on Crunchyroll (sub/dub)

Otherside Picnic

• Action • Sci-FI • Horror • Slow Burn

Moments from death, Sorawo is saved by the mysterious Toriko in the world of the Otherside. Entranced by its beauty, she discovers that this dimension is inhabited by monsters once thought imaginary. Joining with Toriko in her search for a missing friend, they set out to explore this nightmare realm and maybe make a little money. What they encounter could bring enlightenment—or drive them mad!

Streaming on Crunchyroll (Sub/Dub)

Puella Magi Madoka Magica

• Fantasy • Magical Girl • Horror • Tragedy • Fated Lovers • Multiple Couples

Madoka Kaname is an average 14-year-old girl who loves her family and friends. One fateful day, this all changes when she has a very magical encounter with a strange creature called a Kyubey. Kyubey have the power to grant one wish to chosen girls. However, in exchange, those chosen must become magical girls and use their powers to fight against witches, evil creatures born from darkness and catalysts of despair. Was this encounter by chance or fate? No matter the circumstance, this will surely change her destiny.

Movies Beginnings and Eternal retell this legendary and dark fantasy story with new and retouched animation and voice acting. The sequel film Rebellion follows Homura, unable to let her memories die, the magical girl continues to fight alone in the world that Madoka left behind, dreaming of meeting that nostalgic smiling face one more time...

TV - Streaming on Crunchyroll/Hulu (Sub) Films licensed by Aniplex of America

Revue Starlight

• School • Action • Drama • Weak Yuri

Childhood friends Karen and Hikari promised that they would one day become the next theatrical stars. Years later, the two finally have their chance during a mysterious audition, but they are not the only ones who have trained for this moment.

Streaming on HIDIVE (Sub/Dub)

Riddle Story of Devil (Akuma no Riddle)

• School • Action • Enemies to Lovers • Multiple Couples • Love at First Sight

Twelve female assassins are sent to a prestigious boarding school to compete against each other in a secret killing game. The winner will be granted anything her heart desires, but only one girl can come out on top. The mission is simple: send fellow student Haru Ichinose to an early grave. The task should be easy for heartless assassin, Toukaku Azuma – but everything changes when she finds herself strangely drawn to her naive target. Her decision to use her lethal skills to keep her new friend alive will raise the stakes of the game and push the girls closer together as the other beauties threaten to tear them apart.

Streaming on Funimation (Sub/dub)

Sakura Trick

• School • Slice of Life • Comedy • Friends to Lovers • Multiple Couples

Best friends Haruka and Yu are about to take their relationship from friendship to something more when they share a kiss! But when one kiss becomes two and three, how will their relationship change?

Streaming on HIDIVE (Sub)

Strawberry Panic

• School • Drama • Romance • Senpai/Kouhai • Multiple Couples • Love at First Sight

Nagisa has just transferred to a prestigious all-girls school that happens to share a campus with two other elite academies for young women. The new surroundings are overwhelming but Nagisa quickly adapts to life in Strawberry Hall with the help of her new friends. However, when Nagisa catches the eye of the mysterious Shizuma, the respected representative of all three schools, both their lives are forever changed. A bond beyond mere friendship develops between the two ladies amidst a chaotic school year full of heated conflicts, petty jealousies, and crossed boundaries.

Streaming on Crunchyroll/RetroCrush (Sub)

Sweet Blue Flowers

• School • Romance • Drama • Friends to Lovers

Fumi Manjoume enters Kamakura's accelerated high school - Matsuoka All-Girls High School. While waiting at the Kamakura station on the day of her entrance ceremony, she runs into an old childhood friend whom she had not seen in 10 years: Akira Okudaira. As their friendship is rekindled and they start falling back into the rhythm of friends again, it starts a delicate love story...

Streaming on Crunchyroll (Sub)

Volicia of Pluto

• Action • Indie • Sci-Fi • Mecha

In 2006, Akiko Hoshigami’s dreams of track-and-field stardom are dashed after a leg injury. She enters high school with her best friend, Ayano Umisoe, and between club activites and meeting new friends, the empty Akio begins to resember her former self. Until one day, Ayano suddenly dissapears.

Streaming on YouTube (Sub)

Yurikuma Arashi

• School • Drama • Sci-Fi • Enemies to Lovers • Multiple Couples

In a world divided between humans and hyper-intelligent, man-eating bears, Kureha attends an all-girls school and holds onto a simple wish—to spend the rest of her life with her classmate and soul mate, Sumika. But after a secret rendezvous ends in tragedy, Kureha vows to never back down on her love and put a bullet in any bear she meets.

Streaming on Funimation (Sub/Dub)

YuruYuri

• School • Slice of Life • Comedy • Multiple Couples

Four students decide to occupy the room of the defunct tea ceremony club, dubbing it the ‘Amusement Club.’ While the Student Council does its best to eliminate this club, their endless energy, happiness, and comedy will keep audiences smiling all season long!

Streaming on Crunchyroll (Sub)

Read More of the 2023 Yuri Guide

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#lesbian #yuri #girls love #lgbt #gay #lgbtq #gl #queer #anime #manga #sapphic #wlw

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haggishlyhagging · 11 months

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“By 1900 child mortality was already declining—not because of anything the medical profession had accomplished, but because of general improvements in sanitation and nutrition. Meanwhile the birthrate had dropped to an average of about three and a half; women expected each baby to live and were already taking measures to prevent more than the desired number of pregnancies. From a strictly biological standpoint then, children were beginning to come into their own.

Economic changes too pushed the child into sudden prominence at the turn of the century. Those fabled, pre-industrial children who were "seen, but not heard," were, most of the time, hard at work—weeding, sewing, fetching water and kindling, feeding the animals, watching the baby. Today, a four-year-old who can tie his or her own shoes is impressive. In colonial times, four-year-old girls knitted stockings and mittens and could produce intricate embroidery; at age six they spun wool. A good, industrious little girl was called "Mrs." instead of "Miss" in appreciation of her contribution to the family economy: she was not, strictly speaking, a child.

But when production left the houschold, sweeping away the dozens of chores which had filled the child's day, childhood began to stand out as a distinct and fascinating phase of life. It was as if the late Victorian imagination, still unsettled by Darwin's apes, suddenly looked down and discovered, right at knee-level, the evolutionary missing link. Here was the pristine innocence which adult men romanticized, and of course, here, in miniature, was the future which today's adult men could not hope to enter in person. In the child lay the key to the control of human evolution. Its habits, its pastimes, its companions were no longer trivial matters, but issues of gravest importance to the entire species.

This sudden fascination with the child came at a time in American history when child abuse—in the most literal and physical sense—was becoming an institutional feature of the expanding industrial economy. Near the turn of the century, an estimated 2,250,000 American children under fifteen were full-time laborers—in coal mines, glass factories, textile mills, canning factories, in the cigar industry, and in the homes of the wealthy—in short, wherever cheap and docile labor could be used. There can be no comparison between the conditions of work for a farm child (who was also in most cases a beloved family member) and the conditions of work for industrial child laborers. Four-year-olds worked sixteen-hour days sorting beads or rolling cigars in New York City tenements; five-year-old girls worked the night shift in southern cotton mills.

So long as enough girls can be kept working, and only a few of them faint, the mills are kept going; but when faintings are so many and so frequent that it does not pay to keep going, the mills are closed.

These children grew up hunched and rickety, sometimes blinded by fine work or the intense heat of furnaces, lungs ruined by coal dust or cotton dust—when they grew up at all. Not for them the "century of the child," or childhood in any form:

The golf links lie so near the mill

That almost every day

The laboring children can look out

And see the men at play.

Child labor had its ideological defenders: educational philosophers who extolled the lessons of factory discipline, the Catholic hierarchy which argued that it was a father's patriarchal right to dispose of his children's labor, and of course the mill owners themselves. But for the reform-oriented, middle-class citizen the spectacle of machines tearing at baby flesh, of factories sucking in files of hunched-over children each morning, inspired not only public indignation, but a kind of personal horror. Here was the ultimate "rationalization" contained in the logic of the Market: all members of the family reduced alike to wage slavery, all human relations, including the most ancient and intimate, dissolved in the cash nexus. Who could refute the logic of it? There was no rationale (within the terms of the Market) for supporting idle, dependent children. There were no ties of economic self-interest to preserve the family. Child labor represented a long step toward that ultimate "anti-utopia" which always seemed to be germinating in capitalist development: a world engorged by the Market, a world without love.”

-Barbara Ehrenreich and Deirdre English, For Her Own Good: 150 Years of the Experts’ Advice to Women

#barbara ehrenreich #Deirdre English #child labor #capitalism #patriarchy #amerika #industrial revolution

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eddies-house · 5 months

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Older!Rockstar!Eddie Munson x Fem!reader

(Slight breeding kink, Eddie and reader are parents, a little bit of smut at the end)

You and older!rockstar!eddie who have moved to Palm Springs for a quieter life and have a full house of five kids, three of them teenagers and two pre teens. LA is where the industry is and although you and Eddie loved your life there, you especially being from there, you needed a change in pace and what better place to move than the desert where majority of the population are old people who only care about golf. Paparazzi are no where to be found and Eddie can go to the grocery store without being hounded by fans. Not that he minded too much before, it was the life he longed for in the end after all, but it feels like a breath of fresh air when he can shop for eggs without feeling someone’s stare at the back of his head.

Eddie’s long since cut his long curls as well, insisting that he’s getting old and although he’s not even in his fifties yet, it’s a hassle to comb out his curls, his joints not as oiled up as they used to be. You mourned his brunette curls, saying a dramatic goodbye to them the day he chopped them off himself in your shared bathroom. All grief left the room the second he padded into the kitchen with a reinvented look, shaggy curls still falling from his head, only a shorter variation of his signature style. You didn’t think he could get any sexier but he’d proven you wrong. The way he shook his hair out like a shaggy dog would usually have you scolding him, yelling at him to at least let you get out of the splash zone first. Instead you stare at the new version of your sweet Eddie, the haircut doing him several favors as your eyes move down his tattooed torso, the shine of his nipple rings catching your eye, trailing along every detail you’ve already memorized time and time again. Your thirst for him never wavered, not once in your time together and when he smirked at you like that as he recognized the far off look on your face, your knees nearly gave out.

though his haircut aided in disguising him a little better in public spaces, people caught on quickly and he was suddenly “Eddie Munson sporting sexy new haircut”. Needless to say it was time for a change and you both knew it, Eddie telling you that with all the fame and everything he’s ever wanted, now he just wanted to have a normal suburban life. He never thought he’d see the day where those words came out of his mouth.

Especially not when he grew up loathing suburban picket fence families, the trailer park coming to be the only thing he knew. Those people were assholes anyway, he never ever wanted to be associated with them. And now he was buying a house in a gorgeous neighborhood with his doting wife, he himself being a doting husband and quietly he swore he was not going to lose his roots, he hasn’t lost touch this far into his career and he wasn’t going to start now. He only wanted what was good for his family, also something he never thought he’d utter to himself, fully convinced in his early twenties that a family would never be in his future. To be fair he’d never had one other than Wayne so who was he to envision one for his future self?

Fast forward to when you’ve moved in, the house finally all unpacked and decorated. It’s Christmas Eve and you’re making dinner, your entire family littered around the giant kitchen island also helping out. One of them is making tik tok after tik tok like their life depends on it, their siblings jumping in here and there. Occasionally they ask you to make an appearance but you’d always been camera shy, even in the spotlight that came with Eddie’s career so you avoided it as much as you could. And then Eddie gets involved, learning the dances and just being his rambunctious self, making his kids and yourself laugh.

When your daughter complains that you won’t jump into one of the tik toks one of the other kids sparks an idea and they go a little too quiet but you don’t think too much of it. A few minutes later they’re playing the song that you and Eddie always dance to around the house when it comes on. They play it through the speaker while one sneakily sets up the phone and records. You and Eddie have no idea as Eddie approaches you, picking you up and spinning you in his arms, you with a mixing bowl still in hand while you shriek in surprise.

Eddie sets you down to pluck the bowl out of your hands and discard it on top of the counter, pulling you close to dance and bounce around with you, giving your butt a few love taps which earns a series of “ews” from your audience. Neither of you tear your eyes away from each other, swaying together throughout the kitchen. Eddie has no shame, pressing kisses to your lips repeatedly while singing the lyrics under his breath. He doesn’t care about your kids groaning from across the kitchen, barely even hears them, figures he must be doing something right if his kids are grossed out by his affection for you.

Later he calls them little shitheads when he finds out they recorded and uploaded a video but has a big stupid grin on his face the whole time he scolds them. He knows how nervous you get about stuff like this but he can’t help smiling as he watched the two of you over and over just be so…in love. So enamored with each other. You can’t even be mad either, finding it so cute that your kids would be fond enough of their parents to post them on their tik tok like that.

that night you and Eddie sit in bed with a stupid Christmas movie on while sharing cookies you’d baked with your kids downstairs earlier. He’s moaning about how good they are and you receive endless chocolate flavored kisses. Somehow you end up under him, his hips pressed into yours while he thrusts slowly and deeply into you, his lips gently trailing along your neck, tickling your ear just how you like that forces the sweetest sounds out of your pretty mouth, just how he likes. The praises he mumbles into your skin have you writhing and whimpering beneath him.

“My gorgeous wife, I’m still not over calling you that, y’know that?”

“Taking me so well, you want me to fill you up? Want me to fuck another baby into you? Huh?”

“Gonna fuckin’ spoil you for the rest of my goddamn life baby.”

And you know Eddie is a man of his word. He’ll make good on that promise. And who cares if come the morning, your kids are all waiting by the tree to open gifts with scowls on their face cause they knew what you got up to the night before? It becomes Eddie’s responsibility to keep you quiet in the bedroom.

#idk what this is but it popped into my head and I need it to be my reality real bad #I don’t desire having kids rn but for him I would #AGHHH I LOVE HIM I JUST WANNA TALK ABOUT HIM ALL DAY #eddie munson x reader #eddie munson #eddie munson fluff #eddie munson fic #eddie munson smut #eddie x reader #rockstar!eddie munson #eddie munson au

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maklodes · 2 months

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One thing I sometimes wonder about to myself: where can we, as a society, afford to have more stupidity and incompetence? I sometimes see writing about, for instance, education: that if we want better education, we have to make teaching a more prestigious and better compensated job, appealing to people who have a lot of other well-paying, prestigious options. This seems plausible – currently, in the US, people getting master’s degrees in education tend not to be, on average, high scorers on tests like the GREs. (Averages do not give complete information about extremes, of course, and there’s more to intelligence and competence than GRE test-taking ability, but still.) Also, just, like, remember your time in school. Another example might be police – insofar as we want better police rather than fewer police or the like, we might have to pay more.

They’ve got to be drawn from elsewhere, though. We obviously can’t say “every sector will be filled with the most talented, intelligent, competent people.” Where should society employ the math teacher who told you that sqrt(-1) = i, but was dumbfounded when you asked what sqrt(i) was? (Replace as appropriate with a school anecdote of your choice as needed.)

Finance sometimes comes up (at at least used to come up like a decade ago?): the idea that not only is the talent of bright quants being squandered, but it’s being put to actively destructive use, and that we were better off in the days when bankers were privileged, slightly dull, risk-averse people who played lots of golf, didn’t think too much about fancy new financial derivatives, and were satisfied with making what in 2023-terms might be a $200,000 salary in a cozy, closely regulated industry.

I don’t know 1) whether that’s accurate, or 2) whether that’s enough, though.

#intelligence #economics

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seat-safety-switch · 3 months

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If you're unfamiliar with the auto industry, you might be surprised to hear that cars are almost never involved in the construction and shipping of cars. Big ol' trucks carry them to your local dealership, sure, but there's an invisible network of cranes, big-ass cargo ships, trains, and random dockworking weirdos involved in getting your car to that point.

This might not sound unusual until you think about almost everything else in existence. Computers are used to make computers. People are used to make people. Elephants are used to make elephants. Pencils are... probably used to draw pictures of other pencils that they want to make in the future? That last one isn't really holding water, but let's keep going.

When it comes to a car, though, you hardly ever see one at a car factory. Sure, you see them in the parking lot, ferrying the workers to the factory to use the giant machines. Hell, you see more golf carts in use, driving managers around in their little dumb-ass perfectly immaculate sticker-free hard-hats, looking for a penny to pinch or a cost to optimize. After that, it's all trucks, ships, trains, big vehicles all hauling those helpless little baby cars to the dealership.

Is this a problem to fix? Big Car says no, that's stupid, trucks haul a whole lot of cars at the same time. Thing is, though, Big Car hasn't been right about everything. That's why I'm proposing a new factory in my backyard, where we'll let cars a(?)-sexually reproduce. It's already borne some fruit: I swear to all that is holy that I only had seven Belvederes in there, but I went out there this morning and counted at least ten.

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birdsaretoddlers · 2 months

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okay everyone promised to be niceys about it so here's a snippet of the first chapter of the neo-noir whatever the fuck i'm writing. everyone be nice or else i'll explode into a puddle of tears ok?

Red Vixen Returns! After what appears to have been a two year hiatus, famed cat burglar ‘Red Vixen’ has struck again, this time taking a stab at Overeasy Industries! Newest reports claim that the Phosphoril Rose was stolen last night out of its exhibit at the Museum of Earth Sciences. The CEO of Overeasy Industries has promised that any credible claim to it’s whereabouts that lead to the recovery of the artifact will be rewarded handsomely-

“Turn that off, would you, Vette?”

The television cycled off the news and on to a different news station, then more news, and finally, a gossip tabloid that, again, was covering the news. With a disgruntled hawk in her throat, the bartender tossed the remote onto the countertop, unable to escape chippy newscasters with dead eyes and fake cheer. “If you can find any channel not showin’ that, you’re welcome to it.”

The remote slid, spinning, over the scarred, heavily-lacquered wood. The man at the bar stopped it with the hand not currently holding his glass, tapped the channel buttons a time or two, and eventually settled on golf. The tournament lasted for all of fifteen seconds before the breaking news bled overtop of it, too. He finally turned the whole system off instead.

“Don’t know what you were expecting, Mars. It’s Overeasy. They’ve bought every station we get out here.”

“Mm,” said Mars. “Can’t hurt to try.”

“Awfully hopeful, coming out of you. Careful, someone might just try to steal that off ya.”

Knocking back the remnants of his drink, he set his empty glass an inch over the invisible line that begged for a refill. “Welcome to it. Not sure who I lifted it from myself.”

Vette smirked and pulled a pair of dirty bottles from the rack behind her, grey hair tied out of her face with a black leather cord. “Probably the Valentines, if I had to guess. Julio’s always got some to spare.”

“Julio’s full of spare parts. His brother and his sister in law aren’t much better.” Mars waited patiently as Vette offloaded old stock into his cup, then took it back with two fingers. “Dunno why you let your boy run around with ‘em. Gang types, through and through.”

Vette shrugged her shoulders and replaced the liquors to the shelf, sending up a puff of dust as she did. “Who cares where they came from? Keeps Tommy out from underfoot. Better he go knocking over trash cans with them three than the neighborhood boys. At least the Valentines know how to handle a weapon.”

Mars gave his head an acquiescing little tilt. “Just thought you’d stay away from cats that reek of a family, that’s all.”

Vette leaned over the bar with one arm, gesturing at the establishment, as much as it could be called that, with the other. “Hey, here at the Dog, everyone’s family as long as they leave their guns at the door. Doesn’t matter who killed who, what corp fucked over the next, anyone that wants a drink or somethin’ to eat can get it as long as they have the money to pay and don’t spill bad blood within two feet of the doorstep.”

That was true. This dive was the only place that was truly neutral in the entire town. The bartender looked and acted like she’d shoot you, along with her husband and the entire waitstaff, so nobody dared cause any trouble within the doors of the Sighthound. Otherwise called ‘the Dog’, by anyone who had been here more than once. The walls, floors, even the tables were stained with the arguments of generations of enemies who had come together to dine as strained equals, along with a hefty dose of grime. Smoke hung low in the air, mixing with the rank scent of desperation. The opened front door only did so much to clear it out, but hey, if having health insurance was mandatory by law, why not make good use of it?

Mars removed his hat to fan it under his nose anyway. He couldn’t smell the ethanol of his drink through this haze. Vette rolled her eyes, made a comment about his failing constitution, and wandered off without waiting for him to bite out a retort. “Sure, sure. Have to be the one born this minute to start anything here. You’d have ‘em sharing a scientific classification with a colander in a second.”

“Damn right.” Vette turned the television on again, though Mars hadn’t seen her swipe the remote out from under his sleeve. The news bulletin had faded, golf proceeded apace. She pulled a face and started looking for anything else. Mars sipped his highball and did not pull one, though tequila rose was not a proper ingredient no matter what old swill Vette was trying to cycle through the inventory tab. “That’s why we say two feet away from the door. Gives us enough time to close it before we start gettin’ stains on the hardwood.”

With a subtle glance behind him, Mars studied the floors. It was hard to tell there was wood under the inch of grit and mud, but he’d take her word for it. They were almost alone here. The ‘enforcers’ that were the Valentines were playing babysitter, the owner of the bar was up in his office, and who drank at two o’clock on a Tuesday?

Other than him, of course. And the guy that just walked in the door.

Vette looked up, blue eyes a-blinking. “Oh, that’s gotta be the lunch order. Hold that thought, Capone.”

#mars capone and the red vixen #bird droppings #birds original words

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babygirlbenji · 1 year

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can't take my eyes off you - mason mount | ch 1

this has been inspired by one of my favourite songs ever! can't take my eyes off you by moreton harket, listen here <3 i think i kinda went to town on this one, i promise there will be more mason x reader content in the next chapter! enjoy!

wc 1.9k

You can vividly remember the day you knew you wanted to be a sports journalist. You were 6, at a football match with your dad, and you were watching the journalists interview the players after a big game. Declaring to your father that you wanted to be ‘the person with the big stick thing’ (he assumed you meant the journalists), and despite his worries that you would be out of your depth, being a woman in a very much male-dominated environment, he assured you that he and your mother would do their best to make sure you got to wherever you wanted to be.

Just as your mum and dad had promised, you graduated with a degree in journalism and media studies at the University of Portsmouth. Your dad was with you every step of the way, from your orientation day right up until you walked across the stage to receive your degree. He had beamed up at you as you smiled proudly for your photo, scroll in hand.

All of these moments led up to your first few days of interning at BBC Sport. You were the bottom of the pack, the runt. If the producer wanted coffee, you got it. No questions asked. If the director needed a different camera, you ran to get it. If the editor needed a re-take, you were the one to break the news to the producer, and dealt with the brunt of the shouting. It gave you a thick skin, and built character, as you laughed about it with your family at the end of the day.

Little did you know that this moment, in turn, would lead to you finding the love of your life.

‘Y/L/N!’ Your boss barked from his office. You loved your job, but you couldn’t help but feel that your genuine talent was being wasted. You had been there for three months, and the most you had done was assisted with editing a package for some golf competition. You wanted to be out in the field, you wanted to be meeting players, you wanted to be networking, doing actual journalism. Nevertheless, you hurried into your boss’s office.

‘Yes?’

‘Olivia is going to Stamford Bridge to do a package for the Premier League, are you in?’ Your mouth opened and closed like a goldfish. ‘Well?’ His tone was brash; you hated being spoken to like this.

‘Yes, yes! Of course!’ He instructed you to take a camera and microphone in case Olivia’s equipment broke, so you ran to the kit room, hurriedly packed a kit bag and ran out to the car park.

You had worked with Olivia, one of the lead BBC Sport journalists, only a handful of times. She was very nice, knew and loved her job, and enjoyed nurturing people who were new to the industry.

‘Y/N, hi, the boss told me you were shadowing me today.’ You hoped your nervousness didn’t convey too much in your smile.

‘Yep, you’ve got me today! Stamford Bridge, right?’

‘Indeed! You ready to go?’ Olivia checked she had everything in the back of the car, before hopping in on the driver’s side.

‘Absolutely!’

The drive to the Bridge took about half an hour, and Olivia was soon pulling up into the visitor’s car park. Nerves were fluttering around in your stomach, but you pushed them away. This was your chance to prove that you had what it took to be a BBC Sports journalist, something you’d been dreaming about for over a decade. You weren’t about to let this opportunity go just because you were nervous.

You and Olivia were shown around the premises, her asking questions to your guide about the best places to film, while you were staring in awe at the beauty of it. It may have been one of England’s oldest stadiums, but it was still stunningly beautiful. You could practically feel the years of history looking down at you.

What you didn’t realise was someone was staring in awe… at you. You’d reached the pitch, which was so much bigger than it did on TV, and there were a few footballers at the other end of the pitch. You heard snippets of the plan for today, things about angles, lunch breaks, which footballer was going to be interviewed and when…

‘Here we are, boys, this is Olivia and Y/N, ladies, I’m sure you know who these boys are already but just to avoid any confusion, this is Ben Chilwell, Reece James, and Mason Mount.’ You shook hands with all of them, Mason’s eyes lingering on you just a fraction of a second longer than they should have done. You missed this completely, though, having focused your attention back on Olivia as she ran the footballers through what the plan for the day was.

First came general shots of the boys walking through Stamford Bridge, down the grandstands, onto the field and ready for their interviews, which came second. Your job was simple: assist Olivia.

‘Right, Mason and Ben, if you want to start walking towards Reece, you need to act like you’re meeting each other at the start of the day. Think bro hugs, fist bumps, big smiles, that sort of thing.’ The boys obediently followed Olivia’s instruction, and you were secretly glad you weren’t the lead journalist on this one, because the boys somehow always managed to find ways to make each other laugh and ruin the shot.

Eventually, Olivia had reached her limit and she called for a short break. Which meant that she got to sit down for 15 minutes, while you tidied up the gear and made sure the camera was charged up ready for the next few shots.

‘Hey,’ a somewhat-nervous voice came from behind you. You squeaked slightly, turning around and then wishing you hadn’t squeaked. Mason Mount was standing behind you, a small smile teasing his lips. ‘How come you’re not taking a break like your colleague?’ You shrugged.

‘I’m an intern, so I don’t really get any breaks.’ You sounded like a complete loser, but you couldn’t help it; he was so handsome. You had seen interviews with him, you had stalked his Instagram the night before, and he still took your breath away in person. His brown eyes were like chocolate fondant, and they made you gooey in the middle just like your favourite dessert. ‘It’s okay, though, it gets me experience and connections, and that’s what I’m here for! Not everyone earns tens of thousands of pounds a week.’ You hadn’t meant to say the last bit. You meant to think it. Not say it. Out loud. ‘Oh my god, that came out wrong. Oh no, I’m sorry, that was so rude, I’m sorry…’ You skirted away from Mason and ran towards Olivia. Mason looked at your retreating back. What you had said was right. He didn’t think it was rude.

Mason looked back at Ben and Reece;

‘You alright, hun?’ She asked lightly as she took a bite of her chocolate muffin.

‘How much more do we have left to do?’ She laughed.

‘We finish when we finish. No time limit to journalism.’ Your shoulders sagged.

‘I said something I shouldn’t have said.’

‘Oh well, everyone fucks up sometimes, babe. Think about how many journalists he meets a month, he’ll probably have forgotten your name by tomorrow.’

The break ended, and you and Olivia went back to work. The boys were, by and large, much better behaved in this session, to your relief. Throughout the session, though, you couldn’t help but notice that your eyes wandered back to Mason every spare chance they got. It wasn’t like you could control it; it just… happened. And you couldn’t help but notice that Mason’s eyes often came back to you. Olivia directed him to walk towards the camera, and you were standing behind her. His eyes stayed practically glued to you the whole time.

You practically sighed with relief when Olivia started to put her stuff away. You followed suit, collapsing the tripods, turning off the cameras and making sure to put the memory cards in their holders.

‘Right guys, thanks for today. Nice to meet you all. Package should be out by the end of next week.’ You all shook hands, and you noticed your hand tingling after Mason shook it. Olivia started striding towards the exit, and you turned to follow her, but you felt a hand take yours and pull you back.

‘Y/N…’ Your eyes looked up to meet Mason’s. ‘It is Y/N, isn’t it?’

‘Y-yes, or Y/N/N for short, if you prefer that.’ You didn’t know why you added the last part. Nerves did that to you. ‘And I’m sorry. For what I said earlier. It was out of order and so unprofessional, I’m sorry.’ He chuckled.

‘Don’t worry, love, we all say things we don’t mean sometimes. Doesn’t mean it’s not true though, you’re right.’ You smiled shyly. His pet-name made you weak at the knees (not that you would ever openly admit that), and he seemed like a really genuine guy. The kind of guy your mum would like you to bring home. ‘I can keep an ear out for jobs here if you would like? You seem talented.’ You couldn’t help but raise your eyebrows.

‘And you know this how…?’ He joined in with your cheeky laughter, your eyes dancing with mirth. He could listen to your laugh for hours on end and not grow tired.

‘I am the all knowing power of media, didn’t you know?’

‘Alright Mason, back to football.’ It was so easy to laugh with him. Now you’ve passed the initial awkward stage, you could see more and more of your traits in him. You couldn’t help but want to learn more and more about him.

He could tell you were guarded, and he guessed that you had been burned before. He wanted to treat you right, like the most fragile piece of glass that would break if he so much as moved it an inch.

‘Do you want to maybe get a…’ His sentence was cut off by Olivia shouting your name across the pitch. You suddenly remembered that you were on the clock.

‘Oh god, I’m sorry, I need to go, I’ll see you soon!’ He was about to call after you as you ran off, to try and get your number, but you had surprisingly good pace. He made a mental note to challenge you to a sprint when he next saw you.

You sat in the car with Olivia, who kept looking over at you.

‘Alright, what is it?’ you asked, semi-teasingly. ‘Out with it, come on!’ She laughed. Although she was 20 years older than you, she had the air of a teenager sometimes.

‘You, Mason, Mason, you…’ She teased back.

‘Oh come on, he’d never go for someone like me. He just flirts with everyone, I’ve read the articles.’

‘Y/N, he could not take his eyes off you. Surely that counts for something?’

Her words echoed in your mind as you crawled down the motorway, which had slowed to a walking pace with all the roadworks going on. It made you think of one of your dad’s favourite songs.

You’re just too good to be true,

Can’t take my eyes off you,

You’d be like heaven to touch,

I wanna hold you so much,

You’re just too good to be true,

Can’t take my eyes off you…

You knew that you would meet Mason again. It was just a matter of time.

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justinspoliticalcorner · 6 days

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Sara Boboltz and Ryan Grenoble at HuffPost:

Stormy Daniels, the porn actor who maintains she once had an affair with former President Donald Trump, took the stand Tuesday in his New York criminal trial.

Daniels’ testimony is expected to be key to the prosecution’s case against Trump, who is accused of falsifying New York state business records to conceal a hush money payment to her in the days before the 2016 presidential election. Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg and his office have argued that this payment was made to influence the outcome of the election, meaning Trump could potentially be convicted of felonies and sentenced to prison. Trump looked away from the witness stand as she began speaking, staring instead at the monitor in front of him that showed her testifying. Asked if she could identify Trump in the courtroom Tuesday, Daniels extended her right arm and pointer finger in his direction. From the stand, Daniels recalled that she and other adult film stars met Trump at a celebrity golf tournament held near Lake Tahoe in 2006. She and Trump had two casual encounters in passing, she said; later, his security guard approached and asked if she’d like to have dinner with Trump.

Her initial response to the invite: “F no.” Then, clarifying for jurors: “No, but with an expletive in front.” After chatting with her publicist, she said, she reconsidered dinner with Trump. Plus, she said, it would be a “really good excuse” to skip a work-related function she didn’t want to attend. “What could go wrong?” she recalled telling a friend of the invite. Daniels said she “didn’t really have any expectations” about the dinner, except that she would meet Trump at his hotel room before going down to a restaurant. She recalled the foyer of Trump’s penthouse room having a black-and-white tile floor and a “beautiful wood table” with a “big flower arrangement” on top. “This hotel room was three times the size of my apartment,” she said. Trump answered the door in “silk or satin” pajamas, prompting her to make fun of him.

“Does Hugh Hefner know you stole his pajamas?” she asked. She said he “very politely” agreed to change his clothes. Later, seated at the dining room table, she told him about her childhood and career, she said. “He was very interested in a lot of the business aspects of [the adult film industry], which I thought was very cool,” Daniels testified. “These were very thought-out business questions,” she said, in stark contrast to what most people ask about, like “the sexy stuff, the dirty stuff, they want to know the salacious things.” Daniels, impatient for dinner, interrupted Trump while he talked endlessly about himself and showed off a copy of a new magazine that featured him. “Are you always this rude?” Daniels said she told Trump. “You don’t even know how to have a conversation,” she recalled telling him. Daniels said she told Trump that someone should “slap” him with the magazine, and he ended up allowing her to do so “right on the butt.” Trump’s demeanor relaxed afterward, she said. [...]

She said the two had sex and kept the recollection brief at the urging of Judge Juan Merchan. Upon mention of the “missionary position,” an attorney for the defense voiced an objection, which Merchan sustained. Daniels said Trump was not wearing a condom. She stared up at the ceiling during the encounter. Upon her departure, Trump called her “honeybunch,” she testified, adding that he suggested they meet up again soon. The two never ended up actually eating dinner. Daniels said Trump kept calling her afterward, however, and dangled an “Apprentice” opportunity that kept her interested.

A brief 2007 meeting at Trump Tower about a potential “Apprentice” appearance didn’t bear fruit. The two saw each other once more in person, she said, in Los Angeles that summer. He propositioned her for sex again and she declined, telling jurors she felt “ashamed” of the earlier encounter. In 2011, In Touch magazine expressed interest in a story about her relationship with Trump, she said. While the magazine didn’t publish anything, it did lead to a threatening encounter with a man in a Las Vegas parking lot who, she said, “threatened me not to continue to tell my story.” Earlier in the trial, jurors heard testimony from David Pecker, former head of National Enquirer publisher American Media Inc., about how he agreed to use his tabloid empire to help Trump’s campaign in 2015 and 2016. Part of that agreement meant keeping an eye on the “marketplace” of scandalous stories for anything that could damage Trump and his candidacy. While traditional media eschews so-called “checkbook journalism,” Pecker said, his outlets commonly paid cash for story rights.

Stormy Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford, testified in the People of New York v. Trump business records falsification/election interference trial today.

Daniels’s testimony reveals what we know: Donald Trump is a perverted creep and a sexual assaulter.

#People of New York v. Trump #Stormy Daniels #Donald Trump #Stormy Daniels/Donald Trump Affair #Alvin Bragg #David Pecker #American Media Inc.#National Enquirer #Stephanie Clifford

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untilthenexttee · 9 months

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(via Introducing the TaylorMade Milled Grind 4 (MG4) Wedge with All-New Spin Tread Technology for Enhanced Spin in Wet Conditions)

#golf #golf equipment #golf news #golf industry news #taylormadegolf.taylormade golf news #milled grind 4 wedges #fightandgrind #fyp #golf business #rory mcilroy #brooke henderson #nelly korda #seeuonthenexttee

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flashfuture · 3 months

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(Robin vol 2 #11)

(Detective Comics #619)

Since Jack and Janet's company was so nebulous but they were involved apparently in archeological excavations. I think it would be cool if a review of the past story for Tim sorted out that Jack and Janet's company stole destroyed vital for the magic users in Haiti and they want money for it. And during this Tim discovers that Drake Industries wasn't dealing in spreading medicine like he assumed. But instead going to the global south to excavate and find natural resources and then take anything cool they find home to sell/display/give to museums. As a fun bonus it could be said Billy Batson's parents worked for Drake Industries when they died and then could be a Shazam team up

There is of course precedent for "Jack Drake takes stuff from dig sites"

(Robin 80 page giant)

Here we see Jack is with Dana and he steals a plot relevant amulet from a dig site and takes it home and ends up giving it to her. I also like Jack being like yeah I don't think my new wife would like working with me (what tore apart his marriage with Janet). And I can't remember the comic but Jack casually at one point had some ancient golden staff in his closet with his golf clubs. Jack owning a sketchy company that steals resources and then wanting to pretend he's Indiana Jones feels very canon too

Anyways I just think that Tim should get to dig a little deeper into who his parents were because it is first established in canon he didn't know them well, never knew where they were, and was not very clear on what the company did.

#dc comics #tim drake #robin #jack drake #janet drake

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detroit-grand-prix · 8 months

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thistle and weeds - susie wolff x oc

i. in the wind and the rain

Summary: Maree McInnes is finally content with her life, she thinks. She felt stuck in a marriage that made her feel lonely, and in a job that made her feel horrible. Two years later, she's divorced and content with the place she is in her career, until a surprise reassignment at work leads to her to working directly under the person that indirectly made her realize that she didn't have to accept the circumstances she was given and that she could ask for more out of life.

Tags/warnings: brief mention of suicidal ideation, later implied polyamory/polyfidelity, no infidelity involved

Author’s note: A new series has landed. A few of you requested more stories with Susie and her assistant!Reader continuing at F1 Academy, but I actually find F1 x reader stories sort of clumsy to read and write, so instead, we have a new OC. This is intended to be a more mature, grown-up sort of fanfiction, and there probably won't be any drivers involved because it mostly centers around Susie and the F1 Academy.

Anyway, I hope you enjoy this. Please let me know what you think!

Maree couldn’t sleep.

Her body was crackling with the kind of feeling that she used to feel on the first day of school every year, as if she was a loaded spring, poised to fling her headlong into the unknown.

Tomorrow wasn’t the first day of school, or even the first day of a new job. She would be driving to the same expensive-looking building in Bromley that she’d been commuting to for five years now, charmingly called Sapphire House, though it was neither sapphire in color, nor was it a house. She’d park her Volkswagen Golf in the same spot in the car park she always did, say hello to the same receptionist she always saw, scan her badge at the same doors to go into the same office, and sit at the same desk in the same office she always sat in.

But she was still stepping into the unknown.

Two weeks earlier, the day she returned to the office after the holiday break, Maree’s boss called her into his office to discuss a future project.

After they discussed their holidays, Maree’s boss, James, told her that she had done outstanding work for Formula 2 and Formula 3, and a new feeder series needed a programme manager with her talent and experience. He told Maree that the managing director needed someone who could make things possible when the circumstances were impossible. Apparently, James said, hers was the first name that came to mind.

“As of January 31st, you’ll be working on the F1 Academy project.”

Maree could feel her face blanch. “Why is this happening so soon?” she asked, surprised. She tilted her head, trying to remember the planning meeting they’d had to discuss projects for the 2024 season, when The F1 Academy series was discussed. “I knew the Academy series was in the pipeline, but I thought it wasn’t planned to go live until next year.”

“I asked Stefano the same thing. He said that with the W-Series going into administration, there was a gap in the market that needed to be filled right away. And, they said with the right managing director, it would be doable to start in the spring. Fortunately, we found the right managing director.”

She remembered hearing the news that the W-Series, an open-wheel racing series just for young women trying to break into the higher echelons of motorsport, was insolvent. The series’ financial issues had been the industry’s worst-kept secret, but even Formula 1’s upper management expected the series to last for one more season. They came up with the idea for a similar series, under the Formula 1 umbrella as Formula 2 and Formula 3 were, to start in 2024.

“Oh, who did they hire? I didn’t even know they already had candidates lined up. Was it an internal hire?”

“They’re bringing in Susie Wolff.”

Hearing the name felt like someone had poured ice water down the back of Maree’s neck.

It wasn’t as if she was starstruck by the prospect of working with her. Maybe if someone had told her this two years ago, but she’d met Susie a few times since she’d started her current job. The world of Formula 1 was small, and they’d been introduced at some point by a mutual professional acquaintance who thought it was funny, for some reason, that he now knew two people from the Scottish highlands. But Maree was from Inverness, which was on the opposite side of the country from Susie’s native Oban, so it’s not as if they’d grown up together or were probably distant cousins, as the man introducing them implied. Their interaction was limited to a handshake and shared confusion at the things a Londoner found funny.

No, her nerves, the sinking feeling in her stomach… it came from the realization that she would now be working directly under the woman who was, without even knowing it, the catalyst for the avalanche of changes Maree’s life had seen in the past half-decade.

“Susie Wolff?” Maree said. She felt like her head was buzzing. “I didn’t know she - I was wondering what she was doing after leaving Venturi, but I didn’t -”

It was an amazing hire, really. Susie was a former professional driver, was the first woman in almost three decades to come even close to a full-time F1 seat. After she retired from being a test and reserve driver, she moved on to being the team principal and CEO of a Formula E team. Nobody else had the history and experience she did to bring this series to life, and to give it the gravitas it would doubtlessly need to be taken seriously by sponsors, suppliers, teams, drivers, and even fans. If anyone else was leading it, there was a good chance it would share the fate of the W-Series, too.

“Yes, it was just finalized.” James murmured, glancing at something on his laptop. “Hasn’t been announced yet, obviously, but she’ll be here in early February, and since the first round of the series is scheduled for April, things are going to be moving quickly, but, I think you can handle it.”

Maree blushed a bit at the praise.

James and Maree spoke more about the particulars, and about the current projects in her purview, what could be wrapped up and what could be transitioned to other teams.

Not long after she’d gotten back to her desk and was focused on wading waist-deep into the mire of her expanded “to do” list in Jira, she was startled by an email notification from an “S. WOLFF”.

It was just a generic “welcome to the team” email, sent as a carbon copy to many other names (some of which Maree recognized, most of which she didn’t) with Susie introducing herself as the new managing director and a calendar invite for the first planning meeting attached, but it drove home that it was all real.

And so, as Maree lay awake, at 12:23 AM, January 31st, she let her mind travel back five years, to 2018, when Susie’s unknowing involvement in her life began.

She was visiting her parents at home in Inverness. It was the off-season for the Premier League, where she worked at the time, but a few behind-the scenes moves within the league’s middle management ensured that Maree had a new boss that, for some reason, seemed to dislike her, and showed it by not only significantly increasing her workload, but by offering her a stream of very-not-constructive criticism, usually in the middle of meetings when he could berate her with an audience. Eventually, Maree had a preferred stall in the women’s toilets to cry in, and began to weigh out the relative risks and benefits of stepping in front of the number 6 bus that she took to work every day. She needed a break, so she took a few days of holiday and headed home.

Rowan, her husband, opted not to join her, as usual. He frequently declined when offered the prospect of traveling outside of the confines of the home counties around London, never mind all the way up to Scotland. He usually moaned that it was too long of a trip and that there was nothing to do in Inverness, so Maree let it go instead of arguing. She learned long ago that trying to get Rowan to do something or go somewhere he didn’t want to was not worth the fight. She normally flew on her visits home, but decided to take the Caledonian Sleeper train. Seeing the country by rail over a twelve-hour trip would give her some time and space to clear her head, and not to arrive at her parents’ house wound up and agitated. Plus, it reminded her of her first journey down to London for University, when her life seemed ripe with possibility.

After a pleasant train ride and enjoying a giant breakfast that her mum, Moira, made before heading off to work, she joined her dad, Arthur, in his daily post-retirement ritual of watching The BBC Scotland in the sitting room until noon.

Maree was barely paying attention to the newscast when they announced an upcoming segment with an interview of Susie Wolff, a native Scot, as she was just announced as the team principal of something called the Venturi team in Formula E. Maree knew who Susie Wolff was, at least, she’d heard the name before. Neither of her parents liked motorsport, or sport in general, but the segment caught Maree’s interest when the interviewer started asking Susie questions about the challenges of working in a male-dominated sport at a high level.

For some reason, the interview was still on her mind even after she and her dad ate lunch together, and as she was joining him on his daily bike ride around the shores of the Moray Firth, where he would comb the beaches for interesting-looking rocks that had washed up on the shores.

“How’s work going?” her father asked, as he bent down to pick up something apparently worth examining. “Not so busy in the offseason? It is the offseason, right? I haven’t seen any adverts for football matches on the telly lately, so it must be.”

“Yeah, it is. It’s…” Maree sighed, turning her gaze out toward the lighthouse in the distance. “I’ll survive.”

“That doesn’t sound good,” he said, tossing the rock out into the water. “Just more limestone.” He mumbled.

“What are you looking for out here, anyway?” Maree said, looking quizzically back at her father. “Even I know it’s all limestone, and I’m not the retired geologist.”

“Retired marine geologist, thank you!” he said, standing back up with another stone. “And it mostly is, but once in a while you can find a lot of agates here, or things like pyrite or quartz crystals. See? I found this one a few minutes ago while you were down the shore.”

He stepped closer to the rock formation that Maree was sitting on to show her a gray stone from his pocket, glittering with sparkling square inclusions.

She nodded, recognizing the appearance of the “fool’s gold” in the rock.

“Now, scoot over, and tell yer dear ol’ da’ what’s bothering you,” he said, mustering up a stronger accent than he usually had, as he plopped down next to her on the outcropping. He took off his round horn-rimmed glasses to wipe the sea spray off of them with the sleeve of his woolen jumper. Between the jumper, and the salt-and-pepper beard he’d been growing out, and the wellingtons he was wearing, he looked more like the lobster fisherman she remembered seeing once on a family trip to the Orkney Isles than a geologist, retired or not.

“Oh, well, it’s just…” Maree said, letting her gaze drift off to the lighthouse at Chanonry Point once more. She took a deep breath of the salty air before starting. “I feel… stuck lately. I’ve done everything I should have, you know? Go to a good university, get a good industrial placement straight away, get a good job from that, move up the ranks and turn that into a good job somewhere else, get married to a nice man, get a nice apartment in a good location… neither of us want kids, so that’s fine, but lately, the thought of going to work every day turns my stomach, and Rowan says I should just deal with it, because it’s stable and it pays well. And lately, it seems like he’s been treating me like I’m invisible, you know? It’s not just been this trip, you know he doesn’t like coming up here, but…”

Maree’s throat started to tighten.

“I really do like the work I do. But it honestly feels like my boss is trying to drive me out. He’s been adding so much to my workload lately, and it seems like nothing I ever do is good enough, even after years of being told I’m doing great, it’s just… it’s awful. I don’t know what to do. I don’t think going to HR would help, and I can’t really request a transfer without people asking questions, so I’m -”

Without hesitation, Arthur interjected.

“Leave.”

“What?” Maree said, turning her head to look at her father. “Are you serious?”

“Yes. Leave. You’re an intelligent, talented woman, and you’ve got one hell of a CV. You went to King’s College, you worked at Chelsea, and then the Premier League. I don’t even follow football and I know those names, Mare. Every company and organization has programme managers these days, there’s no sense staying somewhere that makes you miserable. Life’s too short for that. Just leave.”

“I thought about it, but Rowan said I should stand my ground and -”

“Mare, I like your husband -” Arthur said with a heavy sigh, interrupting her again “- I’m sorry, I do, but Rowan is the last person I’d take job advice from, especially in this case. I know he has that issue with his wrist and can't play cello in the symphony any more like he’d wanted to, which I feel bad about, but he decided the next best thing was to rot upright at a desk somewhere in the bowels of Lloyd’s of London as an insurance broker. I couldn’t imagine a more boring way to spend your life. If I thought less of him, I would assume that he wants you to be as miserable as he is, but you don’t have to be. Life is too short, and if your boss doesn’t appreciate your talents, you can take them elsewhere. If your husband has a problem with that, he doesn’t have your best interests at heart, and he’s not the one.”

Maree knew that her father was right.

In an incident that seemed like destiny, a few weeks after her trip, a corporate recruiter

sent Maree an email, asking her if she was possibly interested in making a switch to Formula One Management. She agreed to at least meet with the recruiter in person over lunch, and Maree couldn’t help but be impressed as the woman answered her questions. There was one overarching, remaining question on her mind after the recruiter finished her pitch.

“I thought it was kind of a bit of an old boys’ club there. I haven’t ever really followed motorsport, but that’s the impression I’d gotten from the news for the past few years.”

“Ah, yes. It was, under Bernie Ecclestone. His way of doing things was… a bit antiquated, but the environment has changed a lot since he sold the organization to a new parent company. Under Mr. Carey, it’s a much more, ah, equitable environment. Still majority male, I will admit, but things are starting to improve.”

She wanted to accept the recruiter’s offer of an introduction to the programme management team, but she figured that she should discuss things with her husband, as a career change would affect him, too. It would be a different work environment, which Maree needed. It would still be working in the world of professional sport, which Maree wanted. However, it would come with a small-but-significant pay cut.

Rowan’s reaction to the news of her entertaining the possibility of her leaving her job was just as she’d predicted.

“I don’t mean this to sound rude, but I don’t think you should throw away the years you have in the league just because your boss is a prat. By the sound of it, he’s not very good at his job anyway, so you’ll probably outlast him. Hell, maybe they’ll even promote you to replace him. Just grin and bear it until then. Plus, it sounds like they want you as some sort of diversity hire.”

The last bit of it annoyed Maree, and was even beyond what her father had warned her about. The recruiter hadn’t even brought up gender until Maree had asked, and in the position she was in at the Premier League probably made her seem like a quote-unquote diversity hire, so the difference would be minimal.

As she sat down with her laptop to send an email to the recruiter to say “thanks, but no thanks”, she remembered the interview with Susie Wolff that she’d watched at her parents house.

The things Susie said to the reporter about knowing when to move on, and how you could never experience growth if you weren’t willing to accept change and take risks resonated with her. “But at the same time,” she remembered Susie saying, “You can’t lie down and accept being walked all over in that kind of environment. It’s tough, but you really need to demand the treatment you deserve.”

She sent a reply to say “yes” instead.

A few months and more than one shouting match with Rowan later, she packed up her office in the Premier League headquarters in Brunel building in central London, never to return again. She called her father on the way home to tell him the good news.

Her getting a new job wasn’t ultimately what caused her and Rowan’s marriage to crumble, but it was likely the wound that led to its slow exsanguination.

All of this was on Maree’s mind as she was at work on the Monday of the first meeting. She was at her desk, reviewing things for the meeting last-minute, and glanced up from her computer monitor just in time to see Susie breeze past her office door en route to the conference room on the same floor, flanked by Stefano Domenicali and some other members of senior management. Her elegant wool coat was unbuttoned, flowing behind her a little like a cape as she walked. Her blonde hair seemed to glow under the fluorescent ceiling lights. Maree wasn’t sure why, but she felt her heart catch in her throat. She couldn’t help but stare as Stefano led the group into the conference room, until a notification pinging her watch snapped her out of it.

“Shit,” Maree whispered. She was due to attend the very meeting Susie had arrived for, which had managed to somehow slip her mind in the past thirty seconds. Truthfully, she had given herself a few minutes in her calendar notification, but it suddenly didn’t seem long enough for her to gather up her notes, calm herself down, or figure out why the idea of a meeting with some motorsport executive had her feeling so off-kilter. It wasn’t as if these types of meetings were new to her, not at this point in her career. She’d had plenty of meetings with team principals, executives from supplier companies, drivers, team executives and footballers during her Premier League days, this was nothing new.

Maree sat back down at her desk, and pulled a small makeup compact out of her purse. She was suddenly very aware of how the blonde of her own hair looked almost dull in comparison to Susie’s, how her long, wavy hair had so many flyaways than the silky bob Susie’s hair was always styled into. She tried to coax the rebellious strands down and flounced the ends a bit while she did a last check of her makeup, wondering if she shouldn’t have gone with something more than the minimal application she usually wore. Someone once told her that the way her cheeks were rounder and fuller made her look young, and as she approached her mid-thirties, she preferred to keep it that way.

The only thing she thought she’d done right that morning was selecting her favorite blue cardigan to wear over her gray blouse. She always liked the way it brought out the light blue of her eyes.

“Why am I so nervous about this? Maybe it’s just because she’s my new boss,” Maree thought as she stood up, grabbing her laptop and her notes for the meeting before trekking across the office to the conference room.

She took a deep breath before knocking on the conference room door and letting herself in.

“Ah, Maree, nice to see you again,” Stefano said, as Maree nodded to the group assembled loosely around the conference room. He rose from his seat to give Maree a handshake, gesturing for Susie to step over. “Maree, I’d like you to meet Susie Wolff, your managing director for this project. Susie, this is Maree McInnes, your new lead programme manager.”

Maree did her best to remain calm and collected as she shook hands with Susie. In the back of her mind, she made note of how soft and warm her hand was, even in their brief, businesslike clasp.

“It’s nice to meet you,” Susie said, giving Maree a pleasant smile. “Though, I believe we’ve met before, correct? I get the feeling we have.”

“Yes,” Maree said. She could feel herself blushing, pleasantly surprised that she’d made enough of an impression. “At the BRDC awards gala a few years back.”

Susie laughed, flashing a brilliant smile. “Oh, right, when Dan Ticktum’s father made a joke about us being cousins because we’re both from Scotland, or something.” She rolled her eyes. “You’re from Inverness, if I remember?”

They chatted for a moment as Maree eyed Susie up and down. She was dressed very smartly, in a well-tailored business suit, with a cream-colored boat neck sweater under her jacket, a chunky statement necklace that looked like a chain, with large links that looked like they were made of polished, pale wood, and a pair of diamond stud earrings. Maree couldn’t help but feel strangely slovenly in comparison, despite wearing the sort of thing she normally wore to work.

Eventually, Stefano called the meeting to order, and Maree and the other attendees each found an open seat. After a perfunctory round of introductions that reminded Maree of being in primary school again, they got down to the business of starting to form a new motorsport series. While Maree’s mother and father would likely think it was terribly interesting and exciting, despite not being fans of sport at all, they were both the sort of people that enjoyed the minutiae and details of things. Maree supposed she was the same way, otherwise she wouldn’t have gone into programme and project management.

As Maree was called on to present the proposed timeline and key dates of the project, thankfully, she felt as though the nerves and adrenaline she’d been feeling lessened their grip on her as she came into her element. This was her giving another presentation on another project she was leading, just as she’d done hundreds of times over the last decade and then some. She barely noticed the impressed expression on the face of her new boss as she talked through the separation of duties of each person assigned to the project. Who would be handling marketing, suppliers, sponsorships, driver recruitment, team relations, all of the little pieces and parts that needed to come together “...before we make it to pre-season testing in Barcelona in April.”

There was mild, scattered applause through the room as Maree clicked to the final slide on the presentation projecting from her laptop. “Any questions?” she asked, steeling herself for the usual barrage of critique. And questions.

It surprised Maree when Susie was the first to speak up.

“The first thing I have to say is that I am very thrilled to have you on this project, and I am impressed. I think Stefano and James chose the perfect person as far as our programme manager goes, and I’m quite excited to start working with you.”

Maree was only half-listening over the joyful ringing in her ears as Susie asked about some supplier dependencies, giving some answer that was maybe a bit more automatic than intended. All she could think about was Susie’s words, and how her Scottish accent had mostly reformed itself around Germanic phonemes after years of living abroad and being married to someone from Austria, much like her own accent had been pounded out of shape by her time in London, but much like Maree’s, Susie’s roots - their common roots - shone through when she said certain words, like the way she said the vowels person and perfect.

By the time she got back to her office, she could still feel her heart pounding. Almost 150 beats per minute, according to the sensor on her watch. But still, she had no idea why a first meeting with a new boss would make her feel this way when it never had before. She had also not felt such a desperation to impress her boss like this, probably since she started on with the Premier League. Susie praising her during the meeting felt like she was sinking into a warm bath, and she never wanted to get out.

And so, when an hour later, she received a calendar invite from Susie about a “planning lunch” for the next day. There was nobody else CC’d to the invitation. Not for the first time that day, Maree was grateful that she had her own private office, because that way, nobody could see the mixture of terror and joy spreading across her face.

#susie wolff x oc #f1 fic #my fanfic #my fanfic writing #formula 1 fanfic #f1 x oc #formula 1 x oc #formula 1 academy #series: thistle and weeds #yes the title comes from a m*mford and sons song... sorry... i like it though #and pardon my lack of scotland and london knowledge... i'm doing my best

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