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moved-to-void-kissed · 3 years

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Split of Twin Flowers

After being rescued from the realm of darkness, Aria seeks a way to give Ves a chance at living her own life, while also continuing to survive in her own right. Aqua brings her to the scientists at Radiant Garden to see if they have a solution, and for Aria to explain her situation, but the only option available may carry some worrying implications.. (3937 words)

Takes place after the ending of KH3. Content warning for mentions of battle scars, talk of a character being possessed, an event comparable to an exorcism (it’s kind of hard to explain in non-series-specific terms, sorry), and rather a lot of self-insert-focused exposition.

(Comments on and reblogs of my work are always okay, and appreciated, but are by no means required. I recommend reading this piece on the original document, but if that doesn't work, a transcript has been copied and pasted under the readmore.)

This is a piece I have been working on for a long time, and am very proud of, so I really appreciate anyone who takes the time to read it. I hope it isn’t quite as heavy as the content warnings may possibly indicate. I’m also using it as my post for the twenty-ninth day of sapphic September; there’s just one more to go!

Document transcript:

The door to the laboratory opened halfway, and a young woman tentatively poked her head around it. Upon seeing that she was not interrupting anything, she smiled and emerged more properly, brushing a lock of blue hair from her face.

“Oh, Master Aqua!” The lone scientist in the room smiled warmly as he noticed her. “Thank you for coming. I’m glad to see you’re alright.”

“Thank you, Ienzo.” Aqua replied, even if she did still in fact look rather tired. The long battle to defeat Master Xehanort and the true Organisation still felt fresh in her mind, and although it was a fight that the light had eventually won, it had still taken quite a toll on her. Not only that, but she hadn’t had the same chance to rest as the others - though thoughts of locating Sora still weighed on everyone’s minds, Aqua had been more concerned with finding a way back into the realm of darkness in order to rescue Aria, her partner who she had so unwillingly abandoned..

Now that Aria was finally free as well, Aqua could let herself relax a bit more, and with that lowering of her guard came much contemplation of everything she had gone through.

“Um.. Master Aqua?”

“Ah!”

She’d been staring off into space again, judging by Ienzo’s worried expression half-visible under his hair.

“Is everything alright?”

“Yes, don’t worry!” she replied, slightly embarrassed at her lapse in concentration. The young scientist did not look entirely convinced, but he seemed content enough to continue.

“I’m the only one here at the moment, but I should still be able to help with what we talked about over the Gummiphone. Did you happen to bring Aria with you?”

At this, the half-open door Aqua had come through continued to swing open as if of its own accord, only to reveal another young woman entering the laboratory with a somewhat nervous expression. She had clearly been through a lot, and the realm of darkness she had reportedly been trapped in for aeons had definitely left its mark on her; several large patches of darkness could be seen spanning her face and body, with one reaching down her left eye like a melting wound.

“Yes, I’m here..”

Her catlike eyes flickered nervously around the room, and it soon became apparent that what Ienzo had thought was a cape were in fact a pair of black feathered wings, both subconsciously curling around her shoulders. It was only upon recognising that Ienzo was the only one present, and that his initial reaction to seeing her was not as negative as she was expecting, that she was able to relax slightly and explain herself from behind a now-steeled facade.

“My name is Aria.” she said, looking up at the scientist from under her messy blonde hair. “Aqua said you might be able to help me achieve something. Has she already.. told you about, well-”

“We’ve already spoken a little bit using the Gummiphone I was given before, but he said it was best for us to come and talk in person to try and get everything clear.” Aqua stepped in after sensing Aria’s hesitation and took her hand to support her partner. “It’s alright - you can trust him,” she whispered close to her ear.

Trusting only in her love’s reassurance, Aria started to explain her intentions to Ienzo, who seemed content to listen even considering the clear presence of darkness she had; this silent gesture of tolerance was greatly appreciated. She appeared hesitant to reveal much of her true nature as a Heartless, but she did what she could to inquire whether the young scientist knew any way for a heart to be released from its current body and inhabit a different one, allowing the dormant self within the original body to reawaken. Unfortunately, Ienzo remained pensive, even after she had said her part.

“So, you’re looking for a way for a heart to enter a new body? I’m sorry, but.. I’m not sure we’ll be able to help you. Any of the resources we could have used - which is to say, the replicas, they would have been perfect for this - were taken by Roxas, Xion, and Naminé’s hearts.”

“Oh. So, there is nothing you can do?” Aria persisted, but Ienzo shook his head.

Then came a flash of hesitant inspiration.

“Unless..” He trailed off and turned to look down one of the corridors leading away from the main lab space. “Could you two come with me, please?”

“Of course!” said Aqua brightly, as Aria nodded in assent.

==========

The three left the main hub of the laboratory to walk down the corridor, which felt as though it was turning downwards into a basement level of sorts. Once there, they came to a tall door which Ienzo unlocked with some sort of biometric scanner, and this opened out into yet another laboratory space with a similar layout to the first - however, this one seemed in a less presentable condition than the other, and its lack of windows seemed to be what was giving it a more foreboding presence. There was a distinct sense that something bad had happened here, once upon a time.

“After you and the other Guardians of Light helped to defeat Master Xehanort,” Ienzo was saying to Aqua, “we went back to the Keyblade Graveyard to see if there was anything to salvage from the battlefield, and we were able to bring this back with us.”

He gestured to a container at the far wall, in which the two Keyblade wielders could now see a strange white figure suspended inside, resembling a featureless mannequin. It appeared to be dressed in some kind of dark robes, of a dull purple colour inlaid with sharp red motifs, worn over pieces of tarnished metal armour. A number of scuffs and dents littered the otherwise-smooth surface, and Aria could sense traces of a dark presence seeping from the container, despite the blank nature of the figure itself.

“What is this..?”

“This is one of the replicas that Even created, back when he was still Vexen, and a member of the first Organisation.” Ienzo explained. “The first twelve were prototypes, initially abandoned as failures, since they were made before his assistant provided the data needed to perfect them, but.. From what I understand, the real Organisation - which Vexen was also a part of at the beginning - repurposed those twelve into vessels for Xehanort’s heart, as backups in case the people they brought through time fell in battle again.”

“That’s right, I remember fighting these now.” muttered Aqua. “But, didn’t they fuse into one form, eventually?”

“That’s what I thought, too, from your accounts of the situation.” replied the scientist. “I’m not sure if Sora defeating the replicas in battle made them all separate out again, since they weren’t really designed to be fused, or if this one was already too damaged to combine with the others in the first place. Regardless, it was the only one we recovered.”

He now turned to face the blank figure with a concerned expression. “We’ve been running some experiments to see whether it can be repurposed for anything, but.. There’s a lot of darkness still lingering within it, so it wouldn’t be safe for a heart of light to inhabit without risking it also being afflicted by that darkness. And we haven’t found a good way of destroying that darkness without compromising the replica, either.”

“I could sense the dark power when I saw it, so corruption would seem a likely outcome.” Aria mused. “This would also be darkness from Xehanort, so.. it isn’t that surprising that some part of it stuck around. Persistence did seem to be his only worthwhile trait.”

She had crossed her arms in contempt at this last part, but seemed satisfied enough to relax after studying the replica further. “It shouldn’t matter any more than he did in the long run, though.”

“Hmm..” Aqua seemed concerned about the prospect, but was trying to keep an open mind. “What do you make of it, Aria?”

“Well..” She took a moment to examine the figure with an unchanging expression. “The replica body itself has sustained some damage from the fight, but I don’t see why that would affect my ability to inhabit it - it’s just possible that those injuries would reflect in my new appearance, which is.. nothing I’m not accustomed to. And, if the heart within a replica determines its appearance, then maybe what’s left of my heart - or, I suppose, the heart that I once was - would be able to smooth over those gaps. Though, if it’s the latter, that could mean my appearance ends up changing, which.. is not what I want.”

Aqua tentatively nodded, but Ienzo seemed more visibly confused.

“I’m sorry to interject, but- what do you mean by “the heart that you once were”? You’re saying that that’s different to your heart, somehow?”

“..In a sense, yes. How do I explain this..?” There was a slight pause as Aria tried to gather her thoughts, and it was clear she was still trying to think by the hesitant nature of her words that followed. She had seen right through to the heart of the man standing before her, which glowed with a newly-restored lustre. It was a heart that sought to help people, and sought knowledge in order to do that, though there were visible flickers of a long-seated regret present as well. Still, it was a heart that she judged would not judge her, so she decided to provide it with the truth she hoped would sate it.

“Though I look mostly human to you, this- isn’t technically my body, however much I treated it as such. If I were to let go of this vessel, or be driven out from her, you would see me as I really am - a Heartless, a flowering thing. However, Heartless are created when a heart is consumed by darkness, so.. surely the appearance I would take if I were to possess a blank replica would be that of the person this heart - my heart - used to belong to. Only, I don’t- I don’t really see myself as him, or as Ves. I am different, I am my own- well, person, if I can even call myself that. Yet, when I imagine my appearance outside of this vessel, I can only see myself as a Heartless. Does that make any sense?”

“I think I follow..” the scientist mumbled, though his still-furrowed brow seemed to indicate otherwise. “So, you kept your memories of who you were, even after turning into a Heartless? Kairi had implied that the same thing happened to Sora, but.. I’d just attributed that to him turning the Keyblade of heart on himself to free her, so it wouldn’t have happened to anyone else.”

This claim caused Aria to shake her head. “To my knowledge, the method is irrelevant; what matters is the intention. The more willingly a person opens their heart to the darkness, the more of their mind they keep when their heart is consumed, and they become a Heartless. I believe this is what happened with Ansem, though he actively sought after darkness so strongly that he retained a human appearance as well as mind. The emblem on his chest was the only way an onlooker could tell his true nature. When it comes to my original self, he was a Keyblade wielder, very similar to what I know of Sora, but… though he certainly did not willingly or deliberately let his heart be consumed, he was able to accept his fate in his final moments, and that is what allowed the Heartless formed at his demise - so, in other words, me - to retain some semblance of mind and self. Just.. not as much of it.”

“Oh. Yes, I think that makes more sense now. Thank you for the clarification.” said Ienzo. He was writing something furiously in a book that seemed to appear out of nowhere, then became startled when he realised his blunder. In an instant, he opened his mouth to ask something, but closed it with relief when Aria’s expression reassured him she did not mind him making notes about her.

It was Aqua’s turn to speak up now. “It’s so interesting to hear about this from you, Aria - but, I can’t say I’ve seen that kind of behaviour in any of the Heartless I’ve fought before. Had you noticed it at any point while we were in the realm of darkness?”

“Not that I can recall.” she replied. “It isn't exactly that common of an occurrence, considering most people’s disdain for the darkness. And, not only that, but..” She turned away from the other two here, and her next words came much more reluctantly again.

“Before I took over Ves, I remember feeling that I was losing myself - all I was driven by was this desire to be complete again, to be human again, but that was fading away over time. Then, when I found her, I didn’t necessarily feel more human, but what sense of humanity I did have was no longer fading away. So, if I hadn’t found her or someone like her in time, I probably would have lost my sense of self completely, and become just as mindless as most other Heartless are. It’s only thanks to the type of Heartless I became that I was even able to possess her in the first place, and.. I didn’t start to truly feel more like a person until I met other Keyblade wielders, and they interacted with me.”

“I see, I see.. So you’re saying that, in those Heartless that retain a sense of who they were before becoming Heartless, the remnants of normal heart behaviour - of humanity, if you will - have to be nurtured by others in order to be sustained, and will just be lost to the darkness if not actively encouraged?”

“Yes.”

Ienzo paused to finish hastily scribbling this knowledge down in his notebook, then lifted his head in realisation once he had had some time to think. “I think I might remember something of that from the old Organisation, actually.. Though, the memory is very hazy..”

To stop his mind from wandering as it wanted to, he returned to address the matter at hand.

“From what you’ve said, Aria, it does sound like you’d be able to make use of this replica - and you may well be the only one who could. I don’t think there’s any other solution here for you, and.. I say there’s no better way to find out than by experimenting. Give me a moment to get everything ready, and then we’ll be set to see if it works!”

Aria nodded, content with the proposal, but Aqua reached out to take her hand with a worried expression.

“Aria, are you sure you want to do this..?”

“Of course I am, Aqua. This is why I came here.” she replied. Then she hesitated again. “..Why, is there something wrong?”

“Well, no, it’s just-” Aqua took a moment to settle her whirling thoughts, holding both of Aria’s hands in her own now. “I don’t know what’s going to happen when I use my Keyblade on you. I don’t want to hurt you, or even destroy you. And, if something happened with the darkness infecting the replica, then..”

Aria couldn’t bring herself to meet Aqua’s gaze, but it was clear she appreciated the consideration, and did her best to reassure her love. “If I could leave of my own accord, I would have done so by now, but.. we’ve become too intertwined for me to do that myself. And Ves is not quite strong enough to drive me out from within - it’s enough of an effort for her to stay existing in the first place. So.. an outside force seems to be the only way to separate us. And there isn’t anyone I’d trust to wield that force, other than you.”

Despite herself, Aqua couldn’t help but smile at the last admission, and she felt her normal confidence returning. “..Alright then. If you’re sure about this, then.. I’m happy to be able to help.”

The two embraced for a moment, then there was a pause of silence as Aria took a few steps back to stand in the middle of the room. Once Ienzo had brought the replica out of its container, he carried it around to the other end of the laboratory, closer to the other two. Aqua summoned her Brightcrest Keyblade, then slowly raised its tip to be level with the X on Aria’s outfit. She took a deep breath, then pointed the Keyblade directly at her partner, echoing the movement used to open the paths to new worlds.

Aria instinctively flinched when a thin beam of bright light shot forward from the tip of Aqua’s Keyblade, striking her directly in the chest. She was then forced down into a kneel as an aura of pink-tinted darkness began to escape from her body. Her expression was grim, as if she was in pain, but Aqua caught sight of a hint of a smile before the darkness now emanating much more rapidly from her form started rising up to create something above her. It almost completely engulfed her body as if to pull it upwards too, seeming particularly concentrated around her head and wings, before disconnecting entirely to drop a drained figure to the floor. This left a dense collection of dark pink wisps, amalgamating in the air.

Ienzo was now well off to the side, looking rather alarmed, but his expression was replaced with complete surprise when the amorphous cluster of darkness coalesced, giving way to what looked like a floating mass of pink petals. Eventually, it turned around to reveal a large jagged mouth and piercing yellow eyes, staring with an expression he found difficult to interpret. The Heartless stayed floating in place for a moment, as if disoriented, then suddenly appeared to notice Aqua, staring at her curiously.

“Aria..?”

Her tentative call was clearly recognised by the flowering monster, which began to float cautiously towards her. She still had her Keyblade summoned, and her hand was trembling ever-so-slightly - whether with nervousness, uncertainty, or something else entirely, it was impossible to tell. Then, Ienzo stepped between the two and lifted up the replica body, hoping that Aria still remembered the plan.

“Here!”

It seemed the Heartless remained aware, as she moved forwards more purposefully after this, and collided directly with the empty vessel’s centre. A few petals scattered from the force, but it took only a few moments for the Heartless’ form to disappear entirely, appearing to be absorbed into the replica body. This caused another aura of darkness to manifest, enveloping the blank surface of the replica and making Ienzo recoil from the body - but it caught itself as it fell from his grasp to end up kneeling on all fours. A few more moments passed, as the darkness engulfed the entire body in a shell, before gradually dissipating after a few gold sparks were seen being forced out of the system.

The figure that stood up was slightly smaller than the replica had looked in the container, with catlike ears now poking upwards from a fluffy head of golden blonde hair. As she lifted her head, a cluster of cute freckles were seen scattered across her face, though in what Aqua thought was a slightly different arrangement than before. There were other little differences here and there, as well - the shape of her face, the way her hair fell at the back, how she stood dressed in the unfamiliar clothes from the replica in the middle of the silent laboratory.

But all of Aqua’s worries disappeared when the girl standing before her opened her eyes. Neither the bright, empty yellow of the lesser, mindless Heartless, nor a piercing orange like the seeker of darkness, nor even the harsh cold shade between the two that Aria’s eyes had been before, but a warm and resolute amber was the colour that met Aqua’s gaze, and regarded her with a renewed sense of gratitude and love.

“Aria!”

The Keyblade Master ran across the room towards her partner and nearly knocked her over with the energy of her emotions. Aria was nervous, but comfortably allowed herself to melt into Aqua’s embrace, now able to feel the connection between the pair even more strongly than before. Something felt so much more tangible about her presence now, and the relief coursing through her new body was enough to bring tears to her eyes.

“Aqua, it really worked..!” she smiled, speaking in a quiet voice filled with gratitude.

“I’m so glad you’re alright!” exclaimed Aqua, who also had a few tears in her eyes. “How do you feel? Is everything okay?”

“Yes, it’s all fine, I promise.” she asserted. “The replica’s darkness was not organised; it was just remnants that my presence has removed. I feel.. different, but in the best possible way. I could never have done this without you here with me - thank you, so much, for being here..”

She trailed off, still smiling at her partner, and another wonderful moment came and went. Then, a movement from behind Aqua caused Aria’s expression to take on a slightly fearful quality, and she turned her head to see what was happening. The cause of this movement was the figure left behind when Aqua set Aria free, who was slowly trying to get to her feet, her heart’s light flickering nervously. A bright green eye could be seen darting anxiously around the room from under her hair, but she was too weak to properly move, and quickly fell back to the ground again. Ienzo stepped in to support her, and his assistance was clearly welcomed as she was just about able to stand.

“Please take her somewhere she can recover.” Aria requested hurriedly. “After everything I put her through, she needs every opportunity she can to rest and adjust to being herself again..”

“Don’t worry. We have good facilities here.” Ienzo assured her. “Everything will be fine.”

This did little to ease Aria’s guilt, but the gesture was nevertheless appreciated. “Thank you, Ienzo.”

The scientist nodded, and then slowly helped the girl walk to the corridor. She appeared to be very shaken, and was glancing at everything with apprehension and unfamiliarity, but as she turned the corner of the corridor, she looked back at the couple still standing side-by-side, and met the eyes of both her saviour and her prison.

(For all that you have done to me, I know why you do not deserve forgiveness.

But, this is not the first time we have seen each other face-to-face since that day, thanks to that mirror you found in the darkness.

And ever since that moment, you have sought a way to free yourself from me. To let me live the life you once denied me. To break the hold that any other being you’d call your kind would do everything to strengthen.

You calculated the risks, but you still took them - the risk you would lose everything and the one person you cared for, for the sake of me getting to “get rid of you”.

So, who am I to judge a person - the person you have become - by the actions of the creature you once were..?)

A ghost of a smile flickered over her face, and the long-held vessel finally free again spoke of her own accord for the first time since the age of ancient fairytales.

“Thank you, Aria..”

#a call from the void #creations from the void #kingdom hearts selfshipping #this post is okay to reblog!#sapphicseptember2021 #selfship #selfshipping #love: wayfinding waters (aqua)#selfship: survivors of the dark (aqua/aria)#self‑insert: darkness' champion (aria)#and also featuring #self‑insert: ruby in the light (ves)#read the post carefully before opening the readmore please #or opening the document (which is how I recommend reading this one)#I have spent a long time trying to write this piece #i am proud of it

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winterscaptain · 4 years

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alternative assignment.

Aaron Hotchner x Reader

The brass calls in a specialist from the legal department, and she just so happens to be Aaron's new wife.

AO3 | Masterlist | Requests Open!

+++

“We’re at a dead-end, here. It’s been two days and we haven’t learned a damn thing.” Morgan threw the file down on the table and leaned back in his chair, squinting at the photos pinned on the board.

“Let’s not go that far yet,” JJ said, crossing to Hotch’s side. “There has to be something here.”

They stood in front of the board, looking for anything they must have missed. Spencer was pouring over the separate cases and autopsy reports for the third time, his notebook slowly filling with information.

There was some kind of commotion at the front of the precinct, and Hotch pressed a hand to his forehead, his mouth tense.

“I’ll see what’s going on out there,” he said with a sigh.

“Probably nothing good.” David’s chirp from the corner of the room almost made him smile, but the stress of it all was eating at him.

When he walked out, he found the fresh and rested face of his new wife, her badge out and go bag in-hand.

“What are you doing here?” He tried to keep his query neutral, but he was so relieved to have his other half on this case with them. She was a gifted profiler, and only left the BAU to pursue a relationship with him. Worth it.

“Don’t look so surprised, Agent Hotchner. ” Her eyes flashed with humor, but her face was neutral and professional. She was mocking him, and he knew it. “The brass sent me.” She looked around. “Where’s the unit set up? I’d like to brief you all.”

Aaron suppressed the urge to smile and roll his eyes, pressing forward past the curious local officers and taking the bag from her hands. It was rare that the legal department interfaced with the bureau’s operations, but not unheard of. He led her back into the conference room, where he held the door for her and closed it behind both of them.

“Y/N!” The chorus of joy from the team made her smile, and they each took turns embracing her and pressing loving hands to her hands and shoulders.

Aaron hung back, enjoying the reunion. Her position in legal usually allowed her to pick Jack up from school and stay with him when Aaron was out on a case, but it kept her away from their BAU family much of the time.

When they all recovered from the excitement, Y/N asked everyone to take a seat. Aaron sat beside her, squeezing her thigh under the table before focusing on the task at hand. She continued setting up her space even with the heat creeping into her cheeks.

“This city is trigger-happy with lawsuits.” Y/N tossed a copy of a file to every member of the team, detailing every instance of the city filing against, well, anything and nearly everything. She did her best to avoid Aaron's subtle appraisals of her form as she moved about the table, however much she loved them.

“What’s their deal?” Emily’s furrowed brow covered her scanning eyes as she flicked through the pages.

“We’re not sure,” Y/N answered. “The director called me in to make sure all our bases were covered, and to ensure someone on the legal team was prepared to answer questions regarding the scope and structure of FBI involvement in the case.”

“And they sent you because of your experience with the BAU and profiling, right?” Spencer closed the file and looked up, already finished reading it in its entirety.

“Exactly.” Y/N grinned and bumped Aaron’s shoulder with her own. “And I guess they thought I hadn’t seen enough of your unit chief after our three-week vacation.”

Aaron rolled his eyes with a small smile and said “Alright, that’s enough. Everyone get back to work on this and I’ll brief Y/N on the case. Split into pairs and revisit the crime scenes. Anything you find may help us build a coherent profile”

Everyone rose and scattered, grabbing keys and bags. Before long, the newlyweds were alone in the conference room, staring at the board. “Hi,” she said, hiding a smile.

She saw the corners of his mouth tip up before he began to walk her through their findings so far, “accidentally” brushing hands every once and a while. He took her on a tour of the precinct, but it was mostly an excuse to slip somewhere quiet and make out like teenagers.

As his lips forged a path from her collar to behind her ear, she thought back to the early days of their friendship. If someone told her she would one day straddle her unit chief's thigh in a rural police department's utility closet, one hand wound in his tie and the other in his hair while he did obscene things with his hands, she would have sent you to a psych eval.

+++

It was day seven and they were still struggling to find a suspect that fit the profile.

That aside, the team found a good amount of humor hiding the Hotchners’ relationship when necessary, as Y/N was still going by her maiden name on her official documents. Unofficially, the BAU and legal departments referred to the pair as the "Agents Hotchner," and calling for "Hotch" had both heads on a swivel.

The local police force had already taken notice of Y/N’s friendly and open nature, and she took to liaising freely, with her easy smile and a ready laugh. They’d even gone so far as to ask after her personal life after overhearing a couple of early-evening phone calls from Jack. (Yes she was newly married, yes she has a step-son, yes her husband’s incredible, etc. etc. etc.) She was warm where Aaron was removed, gentle where he was terse.

Dave was at the records desk with one of the administrators Y/N had grown to know rather well, discussing the general function of the BAU as they searched through pertinent city records.

“We’re like a family. It helps us work together well,” he said, and it was the truth.

The young woman laughed. “Have there ever been any office romances?”

“You’d be surprised,” Dave said through a laugh. “Most people transfer out, but we actually have a married couple on this case.”

Her eyes widened. “Really?”

Dave nodded, "It doesn't usually happen, but she has a specific skillset pertinent to the case."

His eyes strayed to the conference room, where Y/N and Aaron were bent over the same set of photos and reports. They were almost cheek-to-cheek as they leaned in to read. Any outsider would see an intensely focused, cohesive, and trusting pair, though they might miss the matching wedding bands on their left hands and the different photos of the same three-person family on their personal phone wallpapers.

The administrator looked around at each of the profilers scattered around the room, taking stock.

“Any ideas?” Dave sat back and watched her evaluate each member of the team.

“Not even a little,” she laughed.

Dave gestured to Y/N and Aaron with his pen, who had moved from the table to the board, pinning new photos and noting new discoveries. They were like magnets or planets in orbit, anticipating the needs of the other and working seamlessly as one unit. As Dave watched, she began to reach for a pen, and Aaron had one ready for her, pressing it into her palm. Aaron stepped back and watched as she moved things about on the board. They never said a word, but their ease of communication was clear to anyone watching.

“No way.”

Dave nodded, a smile on his face.

“But he’s so....” Her brow furrowed, unable to find the right word for Aaron’s serious and no-nonsense affect. “And she’s...”

“Someone had to melt that heart, right?”

+++

The team retired to their respective hotel rooms following the arrest of the unsub (the roommate – Spencer’s first hunch).

Y/N collapsed on the bed, face down. She felt the bed sink beside her, and she blindly reached for Aaron, who laughed and wrapped her in his arms, kissing her until she dissolved into breathless laughter. He was without his tie and blazer, the top buttons of his shirt undone.

“It was good to have you back with us, however temporary,” he said.

Y/N smiled. “Did you hear what happened today?”

Aaron raised his eyebrows, inviting her to continue.

“One of the women in the precinct today simply couldn’t believe we were the married ones.”

Aaron laughed out loud, and she thought it must be the best sound in the world. “Really?”

“Are you surprised? I mean, have you seen us?”

Aaron’s eyes softened, and he pulled Y/N closer to him, tucking her head under his chin. She felt, as well as heard, his words rumble through him.

“I love you. You’re the best mom and the best partner.”

She tipped her head up. “Show me.”

He grinned wolfishly and rolled, trapping her under his body with both of her hands caught in one of his over her head, his mouth following his other hand unbuttoning her blouse.

It was safe to say, the entire hotel knew which pair of agents were the married ones by the early hours of the morning.

tagging: @arganfics @quillvine - thought y’all would like this one :)

#aaron hotchner x reader #aaron hotchner #criminal minds fanfiction #hotch #criminal minds x reader #tali writes fanfiction

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sephhaa · 3 years

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How To Customize Your Tumblr Blog!

Alright! Here is the long-awaited blog post I’ve been meaning to make for a long time now. When I was trying to customize my tumblr blog, I found it extremely difficult(especially because the first time I got on tumblr I didn’t customize my own page at all) So hopefully, this will help you try to create a masterlist, how to navigate features and implement a theme for your blog! Also I hope this can answer some questions people have if they’ve come to an error when creating your blog.

I’ll also be making a AO3 guide(mainly how to customize your writing on the HTML page on ao3) so if you’re looking for that go here.

I’ll also be making a potential youtube video for these two guides. Since I don’t have a lot of time today, I’ll be making a video on these two guides the next time I decide to revamp my blog and I’ll be sure to link those.

Alright! Let’s start!

Alright! So starting in your homepage we’d be focusing on choosing, implementing and setting up a theme for your blog.

But before we do that, I highly—HIGHLY suggest you go through your blog and delete the clutter on your page. By clutter I mean—reblogs. Or at least delete MOST of them. Reason being—if you are a fic writer(like myself) and you publish your stories on your tumblr blog, your masterlist etc; and you want to link your chapters on your masterlist or you want to locate your masterlist(the original post NOT the reblog) it’s hard to do that with all the reblogs cluttering your page. This is crucial for later when we create our masterlist. If you are a fic writer and you’ve been uploading your chapters and you already have a masterlist—locate them, copy their link addresses(which I will teach you how to get copy link addresses in this guide) and paste them on a google doc or a notes of some sort. It’d save you so much time later when creating/revamping your masterlist.

If you absolutely refuse to de-clutter your blog and/or you’ve never published on tumblr but you plan to so you don’t necessarily need to scroll so much to find your original masterlist post/story post/chapters etc; then ignore this step.

But if you are a fic writer or writer in general and you have a masterlist and/or story posts/chapters published on your tumblr blog—go ahead and scroll to find those original posts(NOT the reblog) and get their copy link addresses and paste those links in a separate google doc, notes etc. You can refer to this doc/notes when creating/revamping your masterlist/story post without having to delete any of your reblogs. I must warn you tho, it WILL take you a lot of time. Especially if you reblog A LOT. Happy scrolling!

TUMBLR THEME:

Okay—moving on—THEME! Alright so you need to find a theme for your blog. What is a theme?

A theme is a decorative set up for your blog.

But before you go looking for/implementing a theme, here is some things you need to know:

1- Many of these themes are made by fellow tumblr creators who have spent SO MUCH time creating the codes for these themes. In saying that, when you do select a theme by a creator, READ THEIR RULES! It’s very important that we’re following the rules that these creators put for some of these themes.

2 - The general rules for themes if you plan on using one:

*Do not change/steal the themes and/or use them as a base to implement a different theme.

3 - If you want to change something, look at the rules and see what you are allowed to change and what you’re not allowed to change. If its not listed, reach out to the creator to see if making these changes are okay. Generally, these creators are good at listing their rules and/or do’s/don’ts for their themes.

4 - Reblog the theme you chose! Not only does this let the creator know you’re using their theme, it also lets other people check out their page in search of themes.

Now that’s out the way—I’m going to list a couple of theme pages I frequent:

· https://maziekeen.tumblr.com/

· https://glenthemes.tumblr.com/

· https://raiidens.tumblr.com/

· https://amboise.tumblr.com/

· https://kosmique.tumblr.com/tagged/t:recs

· https://magnusthemes.tumblr.com/

· https://seyche.tumblr.com/tagged/%26themes

· https://egg.design/tagged/egg%20theme

· https://lemonfawn.tumblr.com/

· https://yeolithm.com/portfolio

· https://xuethms.tumblr.com/tagged/codes-by-xue

· https://warugaki-themes.tumblr.com/tagged/warutemas

· https://www.floralcodes.com/page/2

If you find that you don’t like any of the themes I’ve listed here, you could always search on tumblr, “tumblr themes” and a whole list of pages come up.

Once you’ve found your theme, let’s head on over to “Edit Theme.”

Once you’ve located “Edit Theme” in your settings, click on it and it’d open up to a new tab where you’d be implementing your new theme.

Today I’ll be using a theme from @maziekeen !

Once you have opened your “Edit Theme” page, you’d see that theres a bunch of functions to your right. This is where we will be implementing our new theme, specifically this bar:

Now, you’re going to click, “Edit HTML,” this will open a window that will look like this:

It will open up a window with a bunch of coding, here we will be deleting that code to replace it with a new code that is our new theme. To quickly delete this old code you’d press down on keys:

SHIFT+CMD+A(MAC)

SHIFT+ALT+A(Windows)

This will select all the code:

Now as you can see, all of that code is highlighted. You’re going to go ahead and delete it by clicking:

delete(MAC)

backspace(Windows)

Once all of it is empty we’re going to head on over to our new code theme.

On your creators theme page(or the theme post, whichever is fine) Many creators have different verbiage for getting codes. Sometimes it’d say, “CODE”, “GET CODE”, “Download,” etc. Either way,(and in my case) you’d click “Get Code,” which will redirect you to a website to download the code.

Many creators use Pastebin as a way to paste these VERY long codes. If there’s an option, you’re going to find and click “download.” If you can’t find a download option, it’s likely that you have to click “RAW” to download the code. In my case, the download option is available for me so it’d just click download and it’d open in a separate document. I find that if you download on raw, it will open to a new tab with a long list of code. Either one is fine.

I also want to mention that—some themes you might come across are priced. VERY affordable and if you have some money to spare, def buy a theme and support the creator!

Once you’ve downloaded your theme’s code it will open in a separate doc(or open in a separate tab) with a long list of code. Here you will select all the code:

SHIFT+CMD+A(MAC)

SHIFT+ALT+A(Windows)

This will select all the code, copy the code:

CMD+C(MAC)

ALT+C(Windows)

Go back to your Edit Theme page. You’re going to go ahead and paste your new code onto the empty HTML space:

Now with your new code, you will click on “Update Preview” Once it loads, your entire page will change to that new theme’s layout:

Now click save!

Alright! Now, let’s say you don’t really like the colors, or you want your profile icon to appear on said theme layout(sometimes your avatar icon won’t appear at all or you won’t have that option. If you want that option it’s likely you’re going to have to search for another theme where it’s obvious you can put your profile picture in one of the icons.) You’re going to go to the sidebar, scroll until you see all of these functions:

Here on the sidebar you can change the colors to your theme! You can also change the theme’s background, and in this case(photo icon) in the sidebar feature. You can also scroll down a bit where it says “links” and add names and links to things people can click on.

That’s all for adding your theme!!

COPY ADDRESS LINK:

Now, here is where de-cluttering your blog comes in handy. Here, we’re going to locate our chapters, story post, masterlist etc(if you publish all your written posts on your tumblr) or if you’ve already published all of your story posts/chapters onto your masterlist here on Tumblr then we need to locate the original master post.

The reason we need to locate the original master post is so that when people/readers click your masterlist—it won’t be a reblogged version of it with a bunch of writing you have previously posted on that reblog. The original, 9 times out of 10 looks a lot more organized etc.

Once you have located your masterlist—go on ahead and follow these steps:

*Hover your mouse on the very top, right hand corner of your masterlist.

*A flap animation is going to appear(like the above photo)

*Once it appears, right click it

*A little window will appear, it’d look like this:

Here you’re going to click, “Copy Link Address.”

Once you have copied the link address you can place this link on your Edit Theme bio so people can click your link to your Masterlist. You can also use this to copy link addresses for all your chapters/story posts when you’re trying to link your chapters within your masterlist. I’ll explain how to do that later in this guide.

MASTERLIST:

Okay! Moving on to creating/revamping your masterlist!

If you already have a masterlist then completely ignore this step and go on over to how to put your masterlist on your bio/any errors you might have come across when trying to put your masterlist on your bio.

You’re going to go to your homepage and create a new post:

Here you’re going to title your masterlist, add images etc. Here are some features I find that a lot of people don’t know about/where to locate these features:

The, “Keep Reading” feature is a feature I find more than often a lot of people don’t know how to locate/add to their posts. The read more option is especially great if you have a really long chapter or a long post(such as this one) It’s especially helpful if you have a very long masterlist. I’m going to use my masterlist as a example to add the read more feature:

On your masterlist post, you can add the “Keep reading” feature by simply clicking the little three dots icon:

By clicking it—it immediately creates a page break saying, “Keep reading”

Another feature I find people not knowing how to do is linking their stories(story posts) on their masterlist. Here’s how to do it:

Here’s my fic, “Here’s to Forgetting 1974″ and I’m trying to add it to my masterlist. We’re going to copy the address link on this post(make sure if you’re going to add a story to your masterlist that it is the original post) once we have the link let’s go back to our Masterlist:

First we need to set up a title or some sort of text for this feature to work. I simply just titled, “Here’s to Forgetting 1974″ as my text. You’re going to highlight your title—immediately, a set of features will appear:

Here we’re going to click on this icon:

This will open to a smaller window to paste a link in:

Here we will paste our copy link address from our story post onto this small window link. Once you’ve done that, click “Done.”

Immediately your title is underlined and if you hover your mouse over it and/or click it, it’d redirect you to your story from your masterlist post.

This process is similar if you want to link your chapters onto your story posts.

Here’s my story, “The Case of 1979″ and lets say I published a new chapter for this fic and I want to put the chapter link onto my story post.

*Go copy the copy address link of your new chapter

*Locate your story post:

Let’s say I’m adding a surprise chapter 12(lol)

Type your text, “Chapter 1.” “1, 2, 3″ any type of text. Here I’m just going to title my text, “Chapter 12,”:

And follow the same steps as before:

*Highlight the text

*Click on the link icon

*Paste the copy link address of your published chapter onto the https:// window

*Click done

Once you do that, hover your mouse above the chapter text/click it and it’d redirect you to the chapter from your story post.

Now that your masterlist is set up, here is the very long, and complicated process of adding your masterlist(or any link in general) to your bio.

Head on over to the “Edit Theme,” page.

Here, we will be paying extra attention to the “Description” bar.

Now, there is a bit of coding you’d have to do here and how you write the code MATTERS:

The coding is:

<a href=“

that is:

<a SPACE href= QUOTATION MARK ( “ )

Now. You cannot—CANNOT copy and paste this code in/copy and paste your links on your bio(in case you want to go ahead and copy everything in your bio and save it on a separate doc to save for later) I love copy and paste—less time consuming etc—but unfortunately, the description bar DOES NOT like it so we gotta deal with it lol.

Now you’re going to go ahead and locate your original masterlist post, copy the address link and start setting up the format:

After you have pasted your link and ended it with a quotation mark( “ ) at the end. We need to set up some kind of text so that the entire link doesn’t show up on your bio. I’ll title my text: “ | M.List. | ” You can write any title, as long as its within this coding:

</a> (Beginning)

</a> (End)

</a> TEXT </a>

(of course, all together, no spaces. For the sake of this example I just want to separate the text from the code so you can clearly see what you’d have to do.)

You’re going to put your text in between this coding:

Your link should look like this and it’d appear like this on your theme layout:

You should be able to click these links even in the theme layout.

And that’s how you set up your links in your bio!

Here is a common problem that happens when you add links to your bio. Let’s say you go ahead, go to settings and decide to change your “Edit Appearance,” to your blog:

Alright, you change your page’s coloring, the background, your profile picture—cool! Not so cool for your links!

Almost immediately, you’d find that your links will cease to work if you change your profile’s appearance. Why? because when you change it, your links are in that bio where the coloring is—those links are also being changed since they’re there.

You’d need to go back to, “Edit Theme” go to the description bar and TYPE out your entire code/text again. You can just copy and paste your copy address link of your masterlist but you’d have to type out the coding and text all over again.

And you’d have to do this every time you decide to change your Tumblr blog’s appearance.

Alright! That is all for this guide! I hope you’ve found this useful! I’ll be uploading an ao3 guide under my “guides” link on my bio where I’ll share how to navigate ao3 and all it’s weird functions. I’ll also teach you guys how to customize your writing(indenting, images, fonts(bold, underlined etc) on the HTML format in the case you don’t like the the other writing format that ao3 has to offer(it’s real ugly lowkey lol) also I’ll be providing some tips and tricks to make posting your ao3 chapters on HTML more simpler.

If you’re interested in me or my stories, I write both BTS content and Anime content( Currently it’s Voltron but I do plan on writing a fic for Death Note and Inyuasha(cuz there isn’t enough Sango and Miroku content and that’s a CRIME) follow me and give my stories a read!

Until my next guide!

#tutorial #tumblrguide #guide

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fatoujallovv · 4 years

Photo

so here’s my disclaimer: I hardly know what I'm doing. This is my glued together homemade giffing method that I’ve created over months of just random experimentation and bits and pieces from all kinds of tutorials. there are probably better or more correct ways to do a lot of these things! this also isn’t a completely universal tutorial, some of the specifics are geared towards giffing skam, specifically skam france.

I gif in photoshop cc 2020 on a macbook. Some things like keyboard shortcuts and little things about the photoshop interface will probably vary if you are on a pc/ other version of photoshop!

this is very long and very unprofessional, but I hope there is something in here that someone will find helpful!

we’ll be going from this:

to this:

up to date as of October 25, 2020

downloading clips

selecting what part you’re going to gif

cropping

my action for resizing, converting to a smart object, and sharpening

coloring

exporting and setting the delay

tldr tips

1. downloading clips

4k video downloader (which you can get for mac or pc here) is great for things posted to youtube, especially from skam france because all the clips are on their youtube with no weird geoblocks or anything! it’s really easy, you just have to open the clip in youtube, copy the link, and go into the program and hit paste link. I like to put on smart mode first and set the destination folder so all my clips go into the place I want.

There is a 30 video per day download limit, so if you’re thinking you really want to gif lots of stuff from the show, and want a big chunk or a full season it’s definitely worth hunting for a mega or google drive with full episodes to download because it’s just less hassle! I might come back to this post later and compile a list of all of those, but for now if you type “[remake] no subs google drive” or “[remake] no subs mega” into a google search, you’ll probably find something! the all of skam website has no subs for several remakes, but not all!

If you don’t have enough space on your computer to be keeping full seasons, I know there are methods to get screencaps without having to download (generally for giffing movies and regular tv I think this is a common method), but I’ve never done it so I’ll redirect you to this tutorial that explains it! you should probably just go there for the whole thing tbh it’s much more coherent than this, but I digress.

2. selecting the piece of the video you want to gif

now that you’ve got your episode or clip you’ll want to just open it in photoshop! if you go the screen capping route the way to do that is a bit wonky, so you can keep following the tutorial I linked above and join back in here at coloring if you like!

if the timeline at the bottom doesn’t pop up automatically you can go to window > timeline and turn it on! now you can use the scrubber bar thing to find the moment you want to gif!

The advantage of this over screen capping is you can scrub with more precision. the arrows circled in blue below let you jump only one frame, where in screen capping I'm pretty sure you can only go by ten second or one minute intervals.

I usually drag the scrubber as close as I can to the start of the shot/moment I want to use, fiddle with the arrows circled in blue below to jump forward or back one frame at a time until I'm at the first frame I want. I move the left grey handle to the scrubber and then I hit the play button and let the whole shot/moment play. Pause and repeat the shuffling with the arrows until you’ve landed on the last frame you want to use and move the other grey handle.

the moment you want to use should be between your handles (it’ll look like what I have circled in red), and if you hit play, you should see the thing you want to gif playing on loop above the timeline. the speed will probably be weird, but we’ll deal with that at the end.

now I recommend doing command or control + s to save your gif as a psd (photoshop document). this is a working, editable file which means if photoshop crashes you can open your file right back up and keep working as long as you’re hitting command or control + s at regular intervals as you work. later we’ll go through exporting in gif format that can actually be uploaded to tumblr.

3. cropping

next I crop out any logos or black space at the top and bottom. Just click on the crop tool on the lefthand side of the screen, drag the edges and hit enter when you’re done. you can of course crop out more than just that, but regardless of what you crop out, now is the time to do it.

you can set an aspect ratio for your crop at the top of the screen if you’d like to be positive that all the gifs in your set will be the same:

4. my trusty action: resizing, converting to a smart object, and sharpening with one click

Now is when I use an action I made that does all the resizing, converts to a smart object, and sharpens. I’ll take you through the steps so you can conceptually get what’s going on, but I highly recommend using the actions window to record your process as you follow along so you have this action as well. It easily shaves at least 5-10 minutes off of the whole process, and these steps will be the same every time.

here’s how you make an action: go to window > action and open the action panel. click the plus symbol to start recording a new action:

in the window that pops up, give it a name and hit record:

now just continue with the steps below, and it will save them!

first you flatten frames to clips (I think it says flatten to layers on older versions of photoshop). this is in the menu at the top right corner of your timeline:

next you convert to frame animation by clicking on the symbol in the bottom left, circled in red:

if there is more than one thing in the frame animation, delete the extra one. you don’t need to keep the last one but it won’t let you remove it until there are other frames in there. also go into your layers and delete video group 1 and its contents. don’t ask me why these steps are necessary, I don’t really know, but I’ve noticed it sometimes gets wonky if you don’t do this:

now you want to make frames from layers and delete that first frame that was there before:

then we return to the timeline:

use command + option + a (control + alt + a for pc I'm pretty sure) to select all layers and then right click within your layers window and select convert to smart object. It’s important to convert to smart object after you go back to the timeline, or the gif won’t move:

next I resize. gifs for tumblr should be 540 pixels wide. for recording your action you should just go into image > image size and only change the width to 540 in case you ever have gifs cropped to different aspect ratios. don’t touch the height, let constrain proportions figure it out!

now, here’s what our base gif looks like, no sharpening, no coloring:

now to sharpen. go to filter > sharpen > smart sharpen. this is up to personal preference, but my go to settings are:

this is what we have after sharpening:

now is when you can stop recording your action.

just press the stop button in the action window:

this action is pretty much universal and after I select the moment the gif will be and crop however I want, I use it on every gif I make! so although this initial setup is tedious, now you’ll never have to do these steps again, and the process is magically much quicker.

5. it’s time to jump into coloring!

I typically start with exposure and sometimes some brightness/contrast. with really dark gifs like this, you kind of have to make it worse before you make it better. I did this:

now the gif looks like this:

we have some static and some ugly bits, and this is where selective color comes in to fix it! boost blacks like this:

and now your gif looks like this:

the skin tone is looking a little sickly and weird, so I go into the yellows and reds in my selective color layer to fix it! I also messed with the greens here because I didn't want color in the background (that part is totally optional and just up to your preference):

now we have this:

to really take the color 100% out of the background, I did one more separate selective color layer for cyan (again, I just felt like it but this is optional!):

and now the finished gif:

there’s lots of fun extra things you can add like text and tints and overlays and all that I won’t get into, but feel free to reach out for help on those types of things!

this gif was certainly not the most complicated to color. some ridonkulously dark clips (*cough cough* vendredi 20h27 *cough cough*) take tons and tons more effort than this and a lot of the time you’ll want to use color balance layers and vibrance layers and all of that to mess with your coloring.

with all of this coloring business, I really just learned by doing. I don’t know all the technical purposes of each type of adjustment layer, and I tend to stay away from curves just because I find them confusing and annoying. The bottom line is that you should always experiment and find out whatever coloring works for you and run with it! I’m sure every gif maker you talk to does things at least a little differently!

I highly recommend taking the time to go through all the types of adjustment layers and just move the sliders around to see what they do! That’s honestly one of the best ways to learn and decide what you like!

6. now to export and adjust the delay!

the keyboard shortcut for exporting on mac is command + option + shift + s, control + alt + shift + s for pc, otherwise you can go to file > export > save for web

my settings are here:

the settings only need to be configured once! otherwise just hit save and follow the pop ups to choose where to save and what name you want to give your gif. Since you saved as a psd way back, that will be the name it’s automatically given, but call it whatever you want!

then I adjust my delay by opening the gif I just exported (not the psd, the .gif file) and using one of my delay actions. I’ve made an action for each delay between 0.05 (real time) and 0.08 (really slow mo for certain super short shots, typically for more ~artsy~ sets).

all my action does is select all frames:

adjust the delay (which will differ based on whether you want them slowed down and by how much):

for reference, this is a 0.05 delay:

and this is a 0.08 delay

now you just export the same way you did before!

remember if you’re recording this as an action, you don’t want to touch the file name, just say yes when it asks if you want to replace the file. if you always save your gifs to the same place, your action will now enable you to override any gif with the incorrect delay with the correct one with one click!

7. tldr: the main tips

for downloading 4k video downloader works well for non geoblocked youtube videos, the all of skam website is another place you can look to download with no subs, here’s the screen capping method if you don’t want to download

The main way I combat dark lighting is to bump exposure to the right, gamma correction to the left, and then enhance black in a selective color layer. The amount of these three adjustments will vary gif to gif. I know lots of people use curves, but I find them really confusing for some reason, so this is my method! As my graphics teacher likes to say: there are always at least 3 different ways to reach the same result!

there’s a little bit of additional coloring on this one, but here’s another before and after example so you can get an idea of how those steps get you a better lit result without making the lighter parts super over exposed:

besides those three steps, you have free rein to use the other selective color channels, as well as color balance, vibrance, hue/saturation, etc. to restore color that was lost or to change the colors altogether! mess around with it and have fun experimenting!

7a. bonus coloring tip:

sometimes you can make use of selective color to completely alter an isolated color in your gif. You can get very adventurous with this, but here's a simple example of changing blue tones to teal (I got away with these gifs being longer because they were in rows of two in the set I posted them in. I'm too lazy to trim frames so I can put them here at 540 px without going over the 10mb limit so just ignore the quality ok):

7b. actions, actions, actions!

if you find yourself doing a certain thing over and over, always record it as an action. the amount of time they will save you is honestly really impressive.

You can duplicate actions, so, for example, if you have different sharpening preferences for different shows or scenes, you can duplicate your gif process action and go into the steps, double click smart sharpen, and alter it however you want!

This could also be good to do for the different widths for tumblr if you ever do sets with rows of two or three! Duplicate actions is also how I made my actions that set delay at 0.05, 0.06, 0.07, and 0.08!

when in doubt, always make an action! it’s worth minimizing the tedious bits of the process as much as possible so you can focus on the fun part of seeing your awesome gifs come to life! any little task you find yourself doing often, make an action!

and for now that’s all I have. if any of this made no sense, if you want to suggest a correction or addition I could make, if you’re ever curious how I did something on any gifs I post, or if you have any other sort of questions, feel free to send me an ask or a dm! if I can’t answer your questions I’ll be happy to try to direct you to someone who can or a tutorial to help! again, I'm no expert, not even close, but I hope at least one person will find one thing in this mess that helps.

#this got . so long omg #mystuff #mytutorial #gif tutorial #tutorial #resources #fellow gif making peeps feel free to correct me or give input on how to improve or add to this tutorial!

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sinsatmidnight · 4 years

Text

Donation

Pairing - Yves (Ha Sooyoung) x Male Reader

Words - 3133

Sins - Smut, mutual masturbation, sumata

So Loona got their first music show win over a week ago and I was hoping to put out a Loona fic before a week was up, but better late than never, I guess! I’ve been running through so many ideas and have so many half-written fics these days. Congrats to Loona! Also, this one is going to have a follow-up sequel although that might not come out immediately. Lastly, stay safe from COVID-19 everyone!

Sperm donation. You had heard that there was some money in it for you, you made an appointment and so here you are, listening to a very attractive medical intern talk to you about all the steps to go through to become a donor. Long dark hair, thick pouty lips, cat-like eyes, sharp nose and narrow jawline. The doctor’s coat over her collared long-sleeved white blouse doesn’t show off her figure very well, but her skirt is quite short and highlights her legs effectively. You look over the lanyard tag she is wearing to find her name. Yves Ha Sooyoung.

“So, we need to do some tests before we can accept your donation. We will be taking blood samples from you to check for genetic conditions and infectious diseases. We will also need a sample of your semen for testing. We will get both of those from you today. There will also be a recorded interview and psychological evaluation, which we will arrange for another day.”

Standing across the reception counter from her, you nod your way through her words, your eyes focused on her pretty face. The intern picks up the form you filled out when you first arrived with all your personal details. “So, your ethnicity and nationality are both Korean, your place of residence is in Seoul, you are single and have never used any drugs and no known drug allergies. Okay, did you bring your personal and family medical history?”

You hand over a few sheets of paper in a large manila envelope, they had told you to bring all these documents when you were arranging the appointment on the phone. “Thank you, now I need to make sure that you have not had sex or masturbated in the past 72 hours. Have you?”

They had also mentioned this requirement on the phone. “No, I have not.”

Yves smiles politely at your answer. “Good, you’ll need to repeat that again before the actual day of the donation. We will arrange for that if you pass all the necessary tests. We will be getting the sperm sample first, and then we will draw your blood after, just in case you feel weak after drawing blood and need to rest. Please follow me.” The pretty intern stands up from her seat behind the counter and walks down a hallway with you following behind.

She leads you to a small room with dark purple paint and blinds drawn over the glass panels serving as windows. There is a couch the same colour as the walls and a small glass table in front of the couch. on the table, you see hand sanitiser and anti-bacterial wet wipes. There is also a single “Do not disturb” sign that repeats its message in English, Korean, Chinese and Japanese, the type that a hotel might provide for guests. There is a small cabinet at the side of the walls that holds more supplies of hand sanitiser and wet wipes and there seems to be nothing else in the room.

Yves hands you a large glass vial with a cap for the opening. “Here you are. Feel free to take as long as you need, you can lock the door and there is the ‘Do not disturb’ sign that you can hang on the door as well. The room is soundproofed quite well, so any noise you make will not be heard from the outside. Let me know if you need anything else, if not, I’ll be at the counter outside.”

An immediate concern crosses your mind. “I’m really sorry if this question sounds weird, but is there any…uh, inspiration that I can use when getting this sample for you?” The question was awkward, but you’d heard about American sperm banks having porn in the rooms for this purpose. And it would be a much easier task with some form of stimulation beyond your imagination.

“It’s okay, we get this question a lot here. I’m very sorry, but as you know, all porn is illegal in Korea, so we can’t provide any. We used to have a few copies of magazines like Maxim Korea in the rooms, but they’ve all been either stolen, damaged or had pages torn out. And so we stopped providing them.” The look on the intern’s face is sorry as she bites on her lower lip while thinking of a way to help you.

You are about to tell her that it is fine and thank her for her help, but then she comes up with an unorthodox solution. It’s one that you like.

‘Well, this is not how we normally operate at all. But if you might have trouble with getting the sample…maybe I can stay and help you with that? Only if you don’t mind, of course. If you prefer to go at it alone, I can go wait outside.”

You didn’t expect that, but you are secretly thrilled at the prospect of Yves helping you. You nod. “I don’t mind at all. I’d love your help. Please don’t take this the wrong way, but I’m glad for the company. Could do worse than have a stunning babe with me.”

She nods in response as a slight blush colours her cheeks. Yves picks up the ‘Do not disturb’ sign, hangs it on the doorknob, closes the door and locks it. As she turns back around to face you, she pulls out a white surgical glove and fits it over her right hand.

Yves walks up to you, biting her lip, hips swaying. When she reaches you, she gently takes the vial from you, places it on the table and then her demeanour changes entirely. There is a dark glint in her eye as she runs her hands over your chest, your abdomen and stopping at your groin. “Let’s begin extracting your semen. Doctor’s orders.” Yves gives you a soft squeeze as she lowers herself down to her knees, never breaking eye contact with you. You’re sure you are quite fine with her taking charge here.

Yves nuzzles her face against the growing bulge in your pants. The friction is pleasurable, and her teeth catch hold of the zipper and pull it down. She presses soft kisses upon the fabric separating your cock from her lips and sighs softly in satisfaction. “You know, I really like the musky scent of a cock. I mean, it would be terrible as a scented candle, but it’s wonderful for making me wet and horny.”

Every time her lips part, you can feel her hot breath on your member even through the fabric of your underwear. “It’s too bad I can’t give you a blowjob. We can’t risk contaminating the sample with my saliva.” Yves grabs your hands and guides them onto her head. Then she makes you press her head down against your bulge, her open mouth taking in the tip of your cock, but with an unusual condom of fabric around it. You can feel that her mouth is warm and wet, but the feeling is somewhat muted, dampened by your underwear. The sight of her lips open and taking you in is hot though.

Your hips can’t help but thrust forward slightly a couple of times for more pleasure. Yves lets go of your hands and stands back up, her hands undoing the buttons on her shirt. “We need to arrange for a facefucking appointment soon. I need to examine your cock independently of this donation process.” She looks pointedly at the couch. “Sit down.”

You walk over and take a seat, joined by Yves sitting at your side, her black bra and incredibly toned abdomen exposed after she had unbuttoned her top. She notices you staring. She leans in and breathes into your ear. “Go ahead. Touch me.” You don’t need a second invitation. Your hands are immediately drawn to her body. Her abs are toned and hard, and she’s not even clenching them. “Damn, you must work out a lot.” You whisper as you slip your hands under her bra. Her breasts are soft but firm, her nipples harden at your touch and her skin is heated against your hand. You start to unclasp her bra straps. You want her naked now.

“I work out a bit, but I really just have a lot of sex, mostly with my roommate.” Yves smiles slyly as she helps you by removing her coat and shirt and tossing them to the floor. You have her bra off shortly after. “Female roommate?” You ask as you toss the bra to the floor.

Yves stands up, unclasps her skirt and steps out of it before bending down and pulling your pants and underwear off, revealing your erection standing at attention. “Yeah, I love pussy as much as you do. I know guys find that hot, but right now…right now I really need to control the urge to suck you off.”

Yves gets back on her knees and her tongue starts to lick all over your cock, starting from the base and going up but missing your swollen, throbbing cockhead. You notice that she also has one hand down her panties as she’s doing this, groaning softly in pleasure as she slathers your shaft with saliva. “I’m just going to get some lube here…” It still feels good, but the tip of your cock would really like some attention.

Once she has gotten your cock well-licked, Yves gets up and sits next to you on the couch again, and her gloved hand reaches over and starts to lightly stroke it. Her thumb runs over your sensitive tip, and you can’t help but shudder at the contact.

Her other hand takes a couple of your fingers and brings them to her mouth. Slowly she sucks on them, getting them wet with her saliva. And she never breaks eye contact, even as her other hand continues to slowly jerk you off. “Damn, your bedroom eyes are so sexy.” You groan as she takes your fingers all the way to the knuckle, her tongue wrapping itself around them.

A couple of minutes later, she removes them and pull your hand over to her silky black panties. “Don’t leave me out, why don’t you help me cum, get your hands working.” As you slide you hand into her panties, the first thing you notice is how wet she is. You gently press against her slick entrance and your fingers slide in with ease. “Fuck, it’s always better when it’s another person’s hand.” Yves mutters and then rewards you with a passionate kiss, moaning into it.

Her tongue slips into your mouth just long enough to brush teasingly against yours. It beckons your tongue to explore her mouth and withdraws back in. You oblige and your tongue slides straight in; to wrestle with hers on her own turf. Your fingers continue to fuck Yves and she increases the pace of her stroking as she gets more heated herself.

You break the kiss and your lips seek out her neck, taking in the scent of her shampoo as you do so, and you pepper her with soft nibbles and licks of her skin down from her neck until you reach a hardened nipple, which you happily take into your mouth. The sharp intake of breath she makes is music to your ears. You suck on her nipple as your fingers slide into her all the way to the knuckle and curl inside her.

The intern’s breathing is ragged and the only sounds coming from her mouth now are soft moans of “Oppa…’ as you alternate between attacking her two nipples and her sensitive neck with your lips. She’s given up on her handjob at this point, her hands instead finding purchase on the back of your head and neck. You sense that Yves is close to orgasm. And this is when you start running your thumb roughly over her engorged clit.

Yves runs her two hands into your hair and grabs it roughly as her entire body tenses, and then there is a strangled half-cry as she goes taut and cums all over your hand and her panties. You continue to fuck her with your fingers through her orgasm until her body relaxes and she flops down to the couch, spent.

As you remove your fingers from inside of her, Yves lies back, a contented smile on her face. “If that was what your fingers felt like, now I really can’t wait to be fucked by your cock.” She says breathlessly, as she winks at you. She leans in and gives you a peck on the lips as her hands help your remove the shirt you’re still wearing, tossing it onto the floor, which is, by now, littered with clothing from the both of you. “I need to do my job and get that sperm sample now.”

Yves sees that you’ve softened a little in her neglect and so wraps her gloved hand around your cock again, stroking quickly while her mouth attacks your nipples. In no time, you are fully hard again. She gets up to her feet, and one hand gently tugs on yours, urging you to stand with her. She picks the container for the sample off the table with the other.

You follow her to the wall, where she uses her free hand to push you up against it, and then she locks her thighs together and guides your cock into the smooth, damp space between her thighs and just below the panty-covered lips of her pussy. Aided by how slick her thighs are with a combination of sweat and pussy juices, your cock slides right into place. One gloved hand still holding onto the glass vial, she rests the other upon the wall for balance.

Yves has her near-naked body pressed up against your own body; her breasts rest against your chest and her hips are almost connected to yours. In this position, you can feel the heat and wetness of her pussy even through the thin, lacy fabric of her panties separating your shaft from direct contact with it. Your hands wander behind Yves and you rest one hand on the small of her back, the other grabs a generous amount of ass and pulls her that little bit closer to you. “Nice ass.”

“That’s what everyone says.”

Yves starts to rock her hips back and forth, fucking your cock with her thighs, and your hips also buck forward, unable to resist the friction of sliding across her smooth thighs. “The Japanese call this sumata. You know some men prefer fucking like this? Since it’s safer than normal sex and the pleasure is just as good.”

You are in no position to argue or answer as Yves increases her speed and her mouth roughly devours one of your nipples as well. You feel your orgasm slowly building and she correctly senses that her sperm sample will be arriving soon. “Are you going to cum soon, oppa?”

You nod as you squeeze her butt tighter. Yves pulls off you, which draws a frustrated low groan from you, but she quickly pulls you forward and swaps places with you. The sexy medical intern then bends over in front of you, still in her heels. “Not inside. Same as before, but this time, you do the fucking.”

“I have to do the hard work now?” You jokingly pretend to be annoyed, but in truth, the only thing you want to do right now is fuck Yves senseless until you’re both sweaty, exhausted messes.

As Yves locks her thighs together again, she places the container right at her crotch and holds onto the wall with the other hand. When you unload your sperm, it will all go into the vial. You slide into that small space once again, but this time her butt is bent and facing you, so you take the opportunity to lightly spank her ass cheeks and give them both a good squeeze. Yves shivers and turns her head back to look at you.

“You know, we should get together another time and then you can give me a good fucking in the ass. And mouth. And pussy. But probably not in that order. You want to be my fuckbuddy?”

You pull Yves’ panties to the side and run two fingers across her outer lips, causing her to moan softly. “So…fuckbuddies, then. Just like your roommate? I can do that.”

The sound of wet flesh slapping together fills the room as you start thrusting into Yves’ thighs, and she also moans and urges you to cum for her. “Oppa…please cum for me, I wanna taste your cum, fuck me hard, please….”

You are unable to hold back at her needy voice and a few minutes later, you unload all your built-up sperm into the glass vial with a loud groan. Yves quickly gets off your cock and then gets on her knees and tugs on your cock with her gloved hand to make sure that she gets as much as she can out of you.

Yves seals the vial with its cap and turns her attention to cleaning your cock with her mouth. You shiver and moan as her lips first touch and then engulf your sensitive shaft and she thoroughly licks and sucks you clean, even going so far as to deepthroat your spent cock. It feels amazing and you almost wish that she had sucked you off instead. Another time, perhaps.

As she gets to her feet, Yves runs a finger over a bit of your cum that ended up on her thighs and sucks that finger clean as she goes for her clothing to get dressed.

“You can rest for a bit; I’ll get the sample stored safely. When you’re ready, you can come find me at the counter and we will get your blood samples.” The both of you slowly cover up your sweaty bodies with your clothing once more. When Yves is done, she gives you a smooch on the cheek and then turns to leave.

Yves goes to the door, looks back and winks at you. “I’ll have your phone number from your patient records, so…I’ll KaTalk you tonight.” She unlocks the door and leaves.

You eventually recover enough and go to get your blood drawn by Yves who has cleaned up her makeup very quickly. After that, you are sent back home to rest for the rest of the day.

That night, you receive a message from Yves on KakaoTalk. It’s an audio recording of her masturbating and having an orgasm while calling out your name. That tease.

Damn it, you’re looking forward to getting a date sorted out to meet up and properly fuck.

#loona smut #Yves smut #Ha Sooyoung smut #reader insert #male reader

245 notes · View notes

lsmithart · 3 years

Text

‘The Present Body, the Absent Body and the Formless’ by Uros Cvoro

This text, taken from a 2002 copy of ‘Art Journal’ has proved pertinent to my theoretical and contextual understanding of Whiteread’s practice in a critical context. Cvoro discusses the ways in which familiarity informs responses from viewers, both positive and negative, whilst also exploring the domestic as having a relationship to the body and human identity. Through this somewhat complex text, Cvoro guides us to the ways in which Whiteread has opened many doors of possibility through her decision to materialise negative, or absent, spaces.

Notes:

Page 55 – ‘Materialised as a palpable imprint of absence, House also seemingly materialised burning issues in British politics, imprinting itself onto the public consciousness.’

‘The questions that House raised about the articulation of memory as a displacement of past into present, the tracing of absence, and the dialogue between the viewer’s body and the materialist of the object remain as pertinent as ever for any serious study of sculpture and memory. It is in this context that I propose to revisit House, with the hope of productively reopening some of these questions.’

‘House as a disruption of material space through solidification.’

‘House either acted as a symbolic substitute for the body of the viewer – an inverted, disrupted body – or represented the absence of the domestic body.’

‘There is a conceptual potential of House to dislocate the oppositions of work/beholder, text/reader, and object/subject.’

‘Bois and Krauss detach the trace of the formless from the visual form, thus undermining the proximity of the trace to the form and the possibility of the trace being absorbed by the form. Their point is that if the trace of the formless is independent of the visual form, it will eschew the binary logic of form and content.’ (Bois and Krauss, 1997).

Page 56 – ‘The lack of stable ground – the site of the trace that forces the structures of absence and presence to be always deferred – suggests an essential disequilibrium.’

‘Krauss suggests that Whiteread’s process of casting carries out the entropic congealing of the possibilities of meaning. The way Whiteread creates objects tests the spatiality of casts and produces anti-gestures that challenge our perception of space, solidity and objects.’

Page 57 – ‘Casts are what is left over after matter cools down and solidifies. As traces of trapped space and destroyed spatiality, casts embody the compression and congealing of “life”, meaning and the spatial intervals necessary to sustain them.’

Richard Shone, (1995). A Cast in Time: ‘A cast of an object traps it in time… displaying its own pasts of the object it replicates.’ ‘Shone does on to compare a cast to a death mask, in this regard with the cast standing as a palpable reminder of a particular space or object and a finite period of history. A cast is a connection to the past, a surviving reminder of memorial form governed by the structural possibility of its iteration and repetition.’

‘Between the “truth” of the object and its insufficient aestheticism, a cast is a parody and euphemism if its original. The unrelenting realism of its arrested image marks a space between impression and imprint, between presence and absence. If, as Derrida indicates, the supplement is the incomplete, intermediary component (the in-between), the process of casting is a repetition of this place between absence and presence. A cast is a supplement to the “original”, the coming of the mark of absence after the original has been removed (erased). In Whiteread’s case, the cast is literally the mark left by empty space (absence).’

‘House was supplementary to an original that came to be a space, nothingness, or void.’

‘The space becomes an undifferentiated, uniform material mass separated form life by its surface texture. Yet this very surface, at least in part, remains attached to the original mold though the markings and imprints left by the mold stuck to the cast.’

‘Whiteread��s casts nourish an indexical relation to the matrix by silently pointing to something that existed in a specific place. In other words, “these are plaster casts that are stuck in a posture of referring to the spot where the real thing existed in all its particularity.”’ – Bois and Krauss, Formless, page 180

‘When the formless is released in the slippery relationships between the cast and its mold, the material integrity of the object itself is called into question. In Whiteread’s work, the site functions as a text that is perpetually in the process of being written and read.’

Page 60 – ‘The materiality of House will be identified with slippages between the categories of object and body, public and private space, absence and presence.’

‘Shone suggests that Whiteread’s method of production is constituted by a set of revisions of the material object that offers a way to gain insight into the overlooked, mundane aspects of that object. The way in which Whiteread manipulated the materials and the materiality of her objects invokes the shaking and disturbing of material reality constituted through baseline concepts such as house and home, structure and foundation, and materials such as plaster and concrete.’ – Links to my progressing work based on site specificity and the structure/foundation/shell.

Nick Kaye, (2000). Site-Specific Art: Performance, Place and Documentation: ‘The displacement of the static environment it entails likens it to an event “in which the environment is problematised”. “The event comes between sign and object.” Whiteread’s art practice identifies the logic of materials as catalysts for processes of transformation and change, aligning the nature of materials with notions of event and performance.’ – Links to memory, materialising a memory through object.

‘Whiteread’s objects precipitate slippage between the processes and exchanges that constitute our experience of the world. These include the material affinities between the body, the object, and the environment it defines and by which it is defined. Her placement of materials operates against the attempt to read the interior of the work or the work through interiority.’ – Links to our inability to occupy the space which has been cast, directly linking the cast space to the body (the familiar).

‘House enacted a slippage between the experience of the inside and outside, site and object, public and private, home, materiality (solid space and actual home), and the body. Because it included the solidification of everyday space, it implicated and provoked the viewers’ presence and participation, only to disrupt then. It worked to disturb the viewers’ sense of their body’s physical integrity and spatial differentiation from the material object with which they were confronted.’ – Again, links to our inability to occupy the space which has been cast, directly linking the cast space to the body (the familiar).

Richard Shone (1995) – ‘In House, every spatial interval, every material mark can be final, and yet each of these “moments” retains a memory of the trace of the process of which it is part in the material. Thus, its materiality simultaneously suggests the processes of solidity of materials, historicity and memory, a phenomenological experience of the world, and at the same time a negation of all of these’.

‘Intersection between historical and memorial processes, a swinging motion that levitates between materials and events.’

Page 61 – Susan Best, (1999) The Trace and the Body: ‘The viewer’s body as the index of its absence and of the spatial structure in which that body operates, Best suggests that House configures space in such a way as to imply a relation to the body. House raises a sense of disturbance in the body, primarily as the result of its carnal effect and affect.’ The eliciting of “strong feelings of bodily discomfort” raised by House, the sense of immediate disturbance and unease caused by having a domestic space presented as solid object turned inside out, reflects the bodily endeavour to conform to space. This demonstrates that our response to the work “is indeed first a foremost a corporeal one”’. (Corporeal = relating to a person’s body). ‘We expect accommodation from House and we are disturbed when it is denied.’

‘House entailed a loss of the humanist subject and a “leaking away into the nondifferentiated.” (Boi and Krauss, 1997: p.171) Through a material reordering, it took the place of the body and became a witness to a palpable corporeal absence, leaving the audience as the intruder into private space. House became a nonhuman of the corporeal. It was also an attack on the body without an affirmation, where the humanist body was denied, excluded and turned into the formless.’ - Audience excluded from the object confuses our perception. We are forced to view the space/object as its own entity, the casting process charging it with traces, memories, remnants, an empathic exchange begins in order for the audience to understand and process what is before them.

Page 62 – ‘It had to be the other to the space it replaced in order to replace it. The very negation of the original produced a supplement, just as the very act of repetition articulated the freestanding condition of the signifier. House thus constituted a black hole in the viewer’s perception.’

‘In part, this assault was only possible because House was a reminder/remainder of a domestic and familiar space.’

‘It was, in Anthony Vidler’s (1995) words, a “silencing of the past life of the house,” where the traces of that former life were “rendered dead but preserved.”’ (p.12)

‘Home is the “mythical point of origin” that represents a crucial component in the constitution of identity.’ (Bird, 1995: p.122) – Familiarity and empathy through shared identity.

‘House materialised the fragile symbolic barrier between absence and presence and private and public, between things that should be hidden and things that should be shown.’

‘Leaving only the bare familiarity of things that ought to have been hidden but have come to light: the uncanny.’

“The psychopathology that lies beneath the everyday; the repressed fears, desires, prohibitions that lurk within social routines as the uncanny stalks the familiar, and the inanimate threatens to come alive.” (Vidler, 1995: p.71)

‘Viewers felt distressed because they experience the invasion of the exposed nakedness of House and realised that this could have been their house and their private space.’ – Forced empathy through direct familiarity – looking into their own lives.

‘Whiteread thus denied all chances of the nostalgic return to the womb by refusing access to domestic familiarity, even banishing the uncanny itself. If nostalgia marks a primal desire to return to the womb, then House was decidedly and extremely anti-nostalgic; it was a past to which one could not return.’

‘House was an impossible “lost” object of memory, a trace of a trace.’

‘Souvenirs are the traces that replace the event with narrative, and the desire for them arises from the impression of unrepeatability of the event, or longing for the vanished original.’ – Relevant to my 301 installation plans.

Page 63 – ‘It does not rely on memory to reproduce the past, it does not depend upon notions of revelation that refer to an originary site or mark a return to such a site: the economy of presence.’

‘This is an erasure (definition: the removal of writing, recorded material or data) because Whiteread’s object is a cast, an impression made by a void whose appearance is constituted by the erasure of such marks. The very structure of the sign is determined by the trace of what is forever absent.’

‘The presence of materiality of House took on meaning from its being an addition that replaced absence. It represented an irreversible past event, one that is always obliterated, a memory of what has never been present.’

REFERENCES:

Best, S., (1999). The Trace and the Body. The International Exhibition: Trace. pp. 172-176.

Bird, J., (1995). Dulce Domum. In: Artangel Trust, Bird, J., Lingwood J., (1995). Rachel Whiteread’s House. Phaidon Press. p.122.

Bois, Y-A. and Krauss, R. E., (1997). Formless – A User’s Guide. New York: Zone Books. p.171.

Cvoro, U., (2002). ‘The Present Body, the Absent Body, and the Formless’. Art Journal. pp. 54-63. Available at http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/778151.

Kaye, N., (2000). Site-Specific Art: Performance, Place and Documentation. London and New York: Routledge. p.3.

Shone, R., (1995). A Cast in Time. In: Artangel Trust, Bird, J., Lingwood J., (1995). Rachel Whiteread’s House. Phaidon Press.

Vidler, A., (1995). A Dark Space. In: Lingwood Artangel Trust, Bird, J., Lingwood J., (1995). House/Rachel Whiteread. London: Phaidon Press. pp. 12, 68, 71

#304

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gettingrichfromhome · 3 years

Text

How To Make Your Own Website and Monetize it?

By following up with me in less than twenty-four hours, you will be ready to launch a Website that will undoubtedly earn you thousands of dollars every month! How to generate the money? Well, the website that we make will be offering SAAS service.

What is a SAAS service?

A SAAS (Software As A Service) service is essentially an online software or service that you pay to use.

For example, Mailchimp.com, which is a SAAS service, provides email marketing services that you pay for.

A SAAS service is anything you pay for to get an online service.

Now you can be the owner of a SAAS service, you will have your own Website, and people will subscribe to your service and pay you monthly recurring payments.

Let’s say you have 100 customers who use your SAAS service, and your service costs about $10 a month; you’d make $1000 per month!

All you have to do is sit at home and watch your passive income develop on your computer screen. It’s a fantastic and easy way to earn money.

How to get a SAAS service?

“How can I get my own SAAS service or software?” you might be wondering. The good news is that you don’t have to create one, learn to program, or even employ a programmer to do so.

You can simply buy it Online for $40–$60. You can buy software from a website called codecanyon

You can simply visit the website, click on the php scripts and search for SAAS and choose what kind of SAAS service that you preferred.

There are several types of SAAS applications available for purchase. Discount networks, accounting and billing software, email marketing systems, and employee management software are only a few examples. Take your time browsing the services and choose the one you like best, the one that fits you and you feel that you can be successful with.

Hosting Your Service

After you’ve created your SAAS service, the next move is to host it and make it public. To host it online, you’ll need a domain name and a server.

Now it is sounds hard since you don’t have any technical background in this term. Don’t worry, it is actually a simple and easy steps.

First you need a VPS server, you can visit and buy a cheap one from Bluehost. its only $3,95 permonth with and they give you free domain for 1 year! Check the price below. Buy the “LAMP” administration.

So What is VPS server? We do what we call “online hosting” when we want to publish a PHP page, script, or some other web application. This basically means uploading the files and database to a public server so that it can be accessed over the internet. On simple word, the place where you put the file is from VPS server.

In this tutorial we will used the shared server from Bluehost. Shared server only means that your server will be host with others website.

Now everything is ready, the only things that matter is how to install it. Let get to it.

Getting Started

After having your own server and domain on Bluehost, you need to connect them. Your VPS Server can be accessed now your Bluehost profile, but of course, we don’t want to access our website though an IP! we want to use our domain name. So simply, we are going to map the domain name to our VPS IP, so then we access the VPS and the WordPress website through both the domain and the IP.

Configure your DNS Records

Simply open DNS management zone in your Domain Provider and edit the main A record.

Than we need to create MySQL database for the application. So Let’s Create one. Connect to your VPS server using any SSH client like putty. and Let’s start!

Just open Putty and enter the Server IP or Name, and Press Open. It will ask you to login, just enter “root” as the user, then enter your password which is sent to you by email.

Note: while typing the password, putty will now show it for security reasons, but It’s there, just type it!

What’s nice, is that we have MySQL installed already as part of the LAMP Stack, but we need to create a database and a user for out application.

Note: Every MySQL statement must end in a semi-colon (;)

To get started, log into the MySQL root (administrative) account by issuing this command:

mysql -u root -p

You will be prompted for the root password, just write or paste it and press Enter.

First, create a separate database that your PHP application will use. You can call this whatever you want, but we will be using TestDb in this guide to keep it simple. Create the database by running this command:

CREATE DATABASE TestDb DEFAULT CHARACTER SET utf8 COLLATE utf8_unicode_ci;

Next, we are going to create a separate MySQL user account that we will use exclusively to operate on our new database. Creating one-function databases and accounts is a good idea from a management and security standpoint. We will use the name DbUser in this guide. Feel free to change this if you’d like.

We are going to create this account, set a password, and grant access to the database we created. We can do this by typing the following command. Remember to choose a strong password here for your database user:

CREATE USER 'DbUser'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY 'enter_a_custom_password_here';GRANT ALL ON TestDb.* TO 'DbUser'@'localhost';

You now have a database and user account, each made specifically for Your PHP application. We need to flush the privileges so that the current instance of MySQL knows about the recent changes we’ve made:

FLUSH PRIVILEGES;

Exit from it by typing :

EXIT;

Upload The Script Files To The Server.

To upload the files, you need an application called WinSCP.

It is a free tool and you can download it from here.

Connect to Your VPS Server using WinSCP, and Update the PHP Files to the server to this path: “/var/www/html”

In most cases, the files would be zipped, so we need to extract them.

Again to Putty SSH CLient and Let’s install the unzip utility using the following command:

sudo apt-get install unzip

Clear putty screen to make in clean using the following command:

clear

Change directory to /var/www/html using the following command:

cd /var/www/html

Unzip the “.zip” file using the following command:

unzip YOURFILENAME*.zip

*Note: the file name may be different in your case, so replace YOURFILENAME with your file name.

Now, Move the latest folder content to the upper directory so it can be accessed directly -> use WinSCP Just copy all the files inside “YOURFILENAME” folder and paste them directly in html folder.

Configure Apache to Publish PHP Website

Well Done, Now your files are uploaded and placed in the html folder, we just need to configure apache so we can our Publish PHP Website and access our script using our domain name. To do so, open WinSCP again and navigate to this directory: /etc/apache2/sites-available/

Now, create a new empty file and name it “yourdomain.conf” . You can replace “Scriptname” with any name you want

Open yourdomain.conf Then copy and paste the content below into the file and save.

<VirtualHost *:80> ServerAdmin admin@YOUDOMAINNAME DocumentRoot /var/www/html ServerName YOUDOMAINNAME ServerAlias YOUDOMAINNAME <Directory /var/www/html/> Options +FollowSymlinks AllowOverride All Require all granted </Directory> ErrorLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/error.log CustomLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/access.log combined </VirtualHost>

Replace with your own domain, in my case its “YOURDOMAINNAME”

Enable your script configuration in apache and restart the service.

Now simply, run the following commands to finish the setup:

sudo a2ensite yourdomain.conf sudo a2enmod rewrite sudo systemctl restart apache2.service

ALMOST DONE!

Connect to MySQL Database.

Open your web browser now and navigate to your server name.

Continue the setup by entering the database info and your admin login information. In our example, the database name is TestDb and the user is DBUser with the password set.

That simple!

Setup cronjobs.What are cronjobs?

cron is a Linux utility which schedules a command or script on your server to run automatically at a specified time and date. A cron job is the scheduled task itself. Cron jobs can be very useful to automate repetitive tasks.

For example, you can set a cron job to delete temporary files every week to conserve your disk space. Some PHP web applicaitons, may require you to set up a cron job to perform certain functions.

Setup cronjobs.

To setup cronjobs, you need to add all required jobs to the server. This depends on your script, so if you bought a script from code canyon, the script owner should provide the cronjobs.

To do this, open WinSCP and got to /etc Open crontab file using the editor And paste all the jobs from your script to this folder. (cronjobs are listed in the app documentation)

Make sure each job is on a line and an empty line in the end.

Secure with a Free SSL.

SSL certificates are used within web servers to encrypt the traffic between the server and client, providing extra security for users accessing your application. Let’s Encrypt provides an easy way to obtain and install trusted certificates for free.

Connect to your Server using Putty SSH client. and Let’s Start!

Install the Let’s Encrypt Client

Let’s Encrypt certificates are fetched via client software running on your server. The official client is called Certbot.

First, add the repository to install Certbot:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:certbot/certbot

You’ll need to press ENTER to accept.

Then, Update the package list to pick up the new repository’s package information:

sudo apt-get update

Install Certbot’s Apache package:

sudo apt install python-certbot-apache

Certbot is now ready to be used.

Set Up the SSL Certificate

Generating the SSL certificate for Apache using Certbot is quite straightforward. The client will automatically obtain and install a new SSL certificate that is valid for the domains provided as parameters.

Simply run the following command: (change the domain)

sudo certbot --apache -d YOUR_DOMAIN_NAME

You will be asked to provide an email address for lost key recovery and notices, and you will be able to choose between enabling both http and https access or forcing all requests to redirect to https. It is usually safest to require https, unless you have a specific need for unencrypted http traffic.

That’s it!

Test your website now and it should be SSL encrypted.

This tutorial I used are originated and made by Hasan By H-educate, you can check his link Here : https://h-educate.com/ or check his youtube on H-educate.

Other tips to make money online, check here : https://ricky-kartiyanta.medium.com/

Cheers!!

#website #saas solutions #saas #monetize #passive income #business #workfromanywhere #easy money #gettingrichfromhome

2 notes · View notes

ayamari-no-goshi · 3 years

Text

Eidolon 14 | (T)

ff.net | AO3

Fandom: Danny Phantom (DP)

Summary: AU: What started off as the result of a simple act of rebellion ends up causing his life to spin out of control. How will young Danny cope with the results as well as a past that has a strange habit of coming back to haunt him.

Warnings: rated T for violence, mentions of death, kidnapping, and various other things

Chapter warnings: implied character death. Entrapment

Parings: hints of Danny/Sam much later on

Notes: originally uploaded to Ff.net. Cross-posted to AO3 and tumblr

Chapter 14: History

"Sweetie, could you hand me the socket wrench? I think it's somewhere to your left…" a woman asked as she looked up from the device she was creating to glance at her daughter calmly reading on a worn couch about twenty yards behind her.

The girl being addressed sighed but complied with the request. She moved to a nearby tablet and quickly began searching through various stacks of blueprints of various inventions yet to be invented to find the tool which was possibly lurking underneath. "Mom!" she called out rather sheepishly a few moments later, "which one is it again?"

"It's the silver one that looks like it has a nozzle on the end."

"Well… that's not very specific."

A few moments later, the girl came over to the woman's workbench and produced a few different tools. Chuckling, the woman grabbed the needed tool, placed to others on a nearby table, and thanked her daughter. Quickly, she began tightening a nut needed to keep her project together. It needed to be stable if it was going to do its job.

"Um… what exactly are you making again?" her daughter asked after a few awkward moments of examining the device.

"It's a containment unit to trap ghosts," she explained without missing a beat of her work. "I thought I had mentioned this one to you before."

"Probably, but you know it's hard for me to keep all of your various inventions straight." The girl fell silent and started to head back towards the couch. "Mom…" she called out before she had reached her destination, "If he's just going to destroy your work, why do you continue to make all of these inventions? It's not like they'll help us escape."

Now it was the woman's turn to sigh. She gently put her tools down, pushed her red safety goggles up, and turned towards the younger girl while adopting an understanding expression. "Jazz… I know what I do seems pointless at times… But, if we can manage to either trap or incapacitate Vlad, then maybe we can finally get out of here."

"But Mom, in case you forgot, we need a ghost to get out of here! That maniac put us in a room with no door, no windows, and a ventilation system way too small for a human to even consider using for an escape! Unless you've found a way to safely blast through eight feet of steel enforced concrete, even if you can incapacitate him, what good will it do?

The woman bit her lip at her daughter's words. "It does seem hopeless, but I refuse to give up. We are going to get out of here, somehow. I promise." She gave Jazz a glance conveying the conversation was finished for the moment before turning back to her work.

Dealing with a teenager was difficult on the best of days, but when she was the only completely living person the woman had contact with for the previous thirteen years or so, trying to convey hope was exceedingly she was, Madeline (Maddie) Fenton, ghost hunter and paranormal research extraordinaire trying to convince her daughter they would be able to escape, when she had been utterly trapped and neutralized by a ghost who could disguise itself as a human. If only she had realized such a thing was possible years prior, there was a chance she could have prevented their current predicament and the separation of their family.

The man had seemed nice enough when he had introduced himself to her and her husband, Jack, all those years ago. He had even helped fund their various anti-ghost projects, but it was all a sham. The man had only gotten close to them to keep an eye on their research and any children they might have. She should have seen the warning signs when he brought up that one particular legend, but she, like Jack, just brushed if off as simple curiosity.

But, soon after Maddie became pregnant with her second child, Vlad's interest in their family started to verge on obsessive. It worsened after they found out the gender of the growing child. This, his possession of one particularly old book, and the growing notion he was somehow involved in the raids on the lab by the ghost known as Plasmius had forced her to reconsider Vlad as the person who would look after her children if anything would happen to her and Jack.

About a year after her son was born, the attacks from Plasmius on their research compound and home had gotten much worse, and Vlad's behavior had gotten more eccentric. Worried, she contacted an old friend of hers who had worked with her and Jack in the past and explained the situation to him. He seemed to understand the situation and agreed to her request. Not wasting any time, Maddie sent him a copy of the new will she and Jack created so he could look over it before it was finalized. Unfortunately, she never got the chance.

Plasmius had managed to find a way to get by their security system and enter the main part of the house. Maddie barely had a chance to hide her son before Plasmius knocked her out. When she awoke, she found herself alongside her husband and daughter in what appeared to be a large concrete room with no apparent doors or windows. Little did she know it would become her prison for the next fourteen years.

When Plasmius (who revealed himself to also be Masters) demanded to know where their son was, both she and Jack refused to tell him. He appeared to take it well and left them to their own devices for a couple weeks. During those weeks, the only outside interactions they had were with the ghostly servants who tended to their needs and furnished the room. Maddie still could fondly recall the way Jack tended to attempt to attack the servants on sight.

When Vlad reemerged, he was absolutely livid. Her son had been found where she had hidden him, but the courts had refused to let Vlad anywhere near the child due to the presence of the document her friend held. While surprised the courts ruled it as official, Maddie couldn't help but be pleased. However, Vlad found it as unforgivable and took his rage out on Jack. Maddie still was not entirely sure what happened to her husband after Vlad took him, but Vlad had given her enough hints for her to understand Jack was dead.

After her husband's death, she believed the same fate would befall her and Jazz, but it never came. Vlad had developed somewhat of a liking for both of them and had gone to great lengths to keep them happy and healthy. Her concerns turned to her missing son, who was still outside of Vlad's reach. The boy's new guardian had disappeared from Vlad's sights making the hybrid furious. What Maddie never understood was why the man never used his abilities to overturn the different court orders to gain control of the child or even just kidnap him. The only thing she could fathom was either he could not properly forge signatures or it dealt with his pride as a man, if one could refer to him as such.

After about a year of imprisonment, Maddie devoted herself to three main goals: educating her daughter, escaping, and taking care of Vlad for good. When she wasn't helping Jazz increase her knowledge with the books and materials Vlad had given them, she was working on weaponry which had the potential of fighting off Vlad and his servants (though most of them were relatively harmless). Unfortunately, it seemed as if Vlad had a means of spying on her as he seemed to always know what she was making and would frequently take and/or destroy her work, forcing her to start from scratch. Though it was disheartening, she was not going to give up. From her perspective, getting a handle on Vlad was the only route of a feasible escape.

Though most of her thoughts retained to the protection of her daughter, she would occasionally wonder about her son. She had no knowledge of his life which she supposed was a good thing. The less she heard, the better as it meant Vlad was not making progress. However, there were whispers among the staff involving Vlad's interest in a recent case involving missing documents in a single parent household. Though it was probably no big deal, Maddie had an uneasy feeling every time she thought of it.

…..

An odd noise caught her attention around dinnertime. It almost sounded like a yell. Glancing over at Jazz, Maddie noted her daughter also had heard it. She looked in the direction of the noise just in time to catch someone falling from the ceiling. Unsure who had intruded into their space, she grabbed her newest completed weapon, an ecto-staff (complete with retractable edges), and slowly approached the newcomer. The person lying on the ground appeared young and completely knocked out. But, her assumption was quickly proven wrong as the figure groaned slightly before shakily standing up.

It was a teenage boy, or at least its appearance suggested it was, with startling white hair and a mostly black wardrobe. The white aura around him indicated he was a ghost, but Maddie had never seen a ghost fall such a manner which made her suspicious. Deciding to gain the upper hand in the situation before he could react, she snuck up on him while he was glancing around and stabbed him in the back with her staff, effectively shocking him. Secretly glad her invention worked, she removed the weapon from him back and then used it to slam him into the closest wall.

"Don't move!" Maddie hissed at the boy after shocking him again with the staff. "I don't know why Vlad sent you, but I am not going to let a ghost harm either me or my daughter!"

"Hold on a second!" The ghost's voice was full of fear and confusion as he held up his hands in protection. The echo in his voice made him a little difficult to understand, but it was the same with most ghosts. "I'm not going to hurt you! I didn't even realize you were here!"

Her response was to shock him again. "Nice try, ghost!" she snarled after his screams died down. Most ghosts, no matter how friendly they seemed, lied. It was in their nature to try and trick the living.

"Wh-what are you talking about….? What ghost? I'm… I'm not a ghost!"

Maddie raised an eyebrow as she studied the boy. He seemed genuinely confused; she could see it in his eyes. Was it possible this ghost didn't actually know it was a ghost? No, that was impossible."Oh, and I suppose normal people have unnaturally white hair and glow?" she asked sarcastically trying to force him to admit he was lying.

"Hey, that was something Vlad did to me…!" he retorted indignantly before realization seemed to hit him. "Wait a minute…. I'm glowing?" A frown crossed his features as he examined his hands and noticed the pale light emanating from his body. "Why the hell am I glowing? What was in that drink he gave me?"

She stared at him in amazement. "You didn't even realize…" she muttered to herself as the scientist in her started to emerge. "You're either a good actor or newly formed…" Examining him more, she quickly threw out the notion he was acting. Everything about him, from his body language to the honest surprise in his shockingly green eyes, indicated his expressions were genuine. But, ghosts weren't supposed to be able to be so expressive, unless they were newly formed as they still had some recollection of their human life. If he was newly formed, it represented such a great possibility! "Hmm… I've never gotten to study a newly formed ghost before…"

The boy seemed to understand her intensions and immediately tried to scoot away from her. Fascinating! Didn't he realize he could just phase through the wall? "Look, I really didn't mean to bother you!" he told her quickly as he glanced around for an escape route. "I really want to leave as much as you seem to want me to. So… if you could please just show me where the door is, I'll be out of your hair."

Maddie didn't answer him immediately which caused him to cringe. She was far too interested in his physiology. After powering down her staff, she placed the end of her staff to lift the boy's chin. "Fascinating! Your body structure is incredibly similar to that of a human's, and you clearly still think like one." It was true. He was the most human-looking ghost she had ever seen. If it wasn't for the white hair and glow, he would look exactly like a normal teenager. Even his skin color could pass as a human's. Normally, the closest a ghost got was a sickly pale white, but this kid was actually tan. Maybe his appearance would become more ghost-like as he got older.

"'Think'? What's with this think business? I am human!"

She was about to retort when her daughter suddenly pushed her aside. "You're scaring him!" she scolded before turning towards the boy and extended her hand. "Here, I'll help you up. By the way, my name is Jazz."

The ghost looked at Jazz warily before accepting the hand. "I'm Danny," he told her with a smile as she pulled him to his feet. Maddie was surprised how easily the ghost was able to interact with her daughter. Though most ghosts could interact with the physical world, it tended to take some effort. They boy seemed to have no problems whatsoever. Maybe it was another particularity of such a young ghost. "And… I … uh, didn't mean to come in here, I promise. I was just trying to get away from Vlad…" He coughed awkwardly for a moment before he looked around. "Um, where exactly am I anyways?"

Jazz was obviously amused by his response. After patting his shoulder, she led him towards her favorite couch, an old and patched gray thing she refused to let Vlad replace. "Let's exchange information. You're obviously confused by this just as much as we are."

Maddie watched the interaction with a wary eye. While she wasn't too keen on letting the ghost get close to her daughter, it didn't seem like it was hostile. Maybe hostility was another trait which was age dependent. No matter the reason, it was still a great opportunity to study the boy. It also gave another possibility; he could have some information on Vlad she could use. So, observing was her best course of action, for now.

…

"And I thought my situation was bad!" Danny remarked after he listened to Jazz explain their situation. He leaned back, allowing himself to rest his head on the back of the couch. "I can't imagine being trapped in a place like this for so long. And there isn't any way to escape?"

Jazz shook her head. "Trust me; we've looked over this place hundreds of times with no luck."

A frowned crossed Danny's face as he considered it. "It's just like the room he had me in… except it at least had a door. Man, that guy really is a fruitloop. Why has he kept you here for so long?"

"He hasn't exactly privileged us with that information," Maddie sniffed as she stared at the ghost. While he didn't seem like a threat, she still wasn't sure he wasn't under Vlad's control. "I'm surprised he hasn't told you."

"I keep telling you I have nothing do with that guy! Not only did he kidnap me and give me this weird stuff, but Winston told me he's the one who attacked my family!"

"Hey…" Jazz quickly interrupted noticing Maddie was starting to get irritated. She inwardly smiled at her daughter; Jazz was really good at reading her mood. "You've mentioned this drink Vlad gave you a couple times now… What exactly was it?"

"Not sure…" he replied with a frown. "I was trying to break down the door to that room I was in when he came in and somehow managed to be in two places at the same time. One of the Vlads held me still while the other forced this nasty tasting green glowing stuff down my throat. Next thing I know, I'm sick to my stomach and in a lot of pain." He grimaced and grabbed his arms as he recalled the event. "After I woke up… Vlad came in and started talking about this curse before dragging me in front of a really big mirror. After catching a glimpse of my appearance, I freaked out, ran for my life, and tripped over my own feet. Next thing I know, I'm in a strange room being stabbed by that staff." He glared at Maddie. "What exactly did you do to it to make to shock people like that?"

"Hold on a moment… you 'caught a glimpse of your appearance'?" Jazz paraphrased slowly. "So, you're implying you didn't look like you currently do before getting here?"

"Yes! What's so hard to understand about that?" Danny's voice was full of frustration. "I don't know why Vlad changed my clothes and hair color. Where does that guy get off dying someone's black hair white? It's going to take forever to get all of this bleach out…"

Maddie shared a look with her daughter as Danny examined one of the snowy locks near his face. He really didn't seem to understand exactly what had happened to him, and he certainly didn't seem to realize he was no longer human. He was even sitting perfectly on the worn out couch like a regular person. Normally, even when sitting, ghosts tended to float above the piece of furniture instead of touching it.

But, there was a bigger implication to the ghost's words. He was suggesting he was still alive when Vlad had gotten a hold of him. If Vlad had indeed killed the boy than how many of the other spirits they had encountered through the years had met their fate in the same way?

"So… Danny," Jazz stated suddenly in an attempt to change the subject, "how old are you?"

He frowned for a moment before he rubbed the back of his neck in embarrassment. "Hmm… that is a good question. Since I'm not exactly sure how long I've been here, I'm not sure if my birthday's passed. If it has, I'm fifteen now."

Maddie had to turn away for a moment after listening to the boy. Usually she was unaffected by the words of a ghost, but this one was different. He was approximately the same age as her missing son. Had he been taken away from his family like hers had been? At least she was still alive and would eventually be able to try and reconnect with the boy when she eventually escaped. This child would never get the same chance.

…...

About an hour had gone by since Danny had fallen through the ceiling. While the boy was proving to be surprisingly good company, Maddie was surprised no one else had visited them as dinner time had passed. Suspicious, but not overly alarmed, she turned her attention back towards the boy.

Though Danny had initially come across as shy, he was actually rather talkative and had a good sense of humor. Even she was warming up to him, though she wasn't going to admit it. She did allow herself to politely offer him a drink from the small fridge Vlad had given them in an attempt to play hostess. Amazingly, he drank it with no apparent problem. Ghosts weren't supposed to be able to handle human foods, but perhaps since he was so young he still had something of a human constitution. She was going to have to ask the boy to allow her to study him more in depth.

While the boy was telling a joke, he suddenly gasped and shivered. "Danny… are you okay…?" Jazz asked him hesitantly as she touched his shoulder. A small gasp escaped her as she watched a faint mist form from his breath before disappearing. How peculiar. Ghosts shouldn't be able to breathe, and it certainly wasn't cold enough in the room for it to be visible.

"Someone's coming…" Danny stated as he stood up and looked at the ceiling. His breath misted again as he spoke.

Maddie looked at him curiously. "What do you mean? Are you telling me you can sense other ghosts?"

"I… I don't know… But I think it's Vlad… Great… just what I need right now…"

"Are you sure?" If this boy was telling the truth, he presented an interesting possibility. This was the first time she had ever heard of such a power.

Danny wasn't able to give an answer before Vlad phased through the ceiling in about the area where he had been staring. The man looked agitated as he glanced around the room before allowing his gaze to focus on her and the two teenagers. A smile graced his lips as he floated down to their level.

"Ah, Maddie, Jasmine, you look wonderful today," he told them as a form of a greeting. "I do hope you forgive me for dinner being late today. A certain someone disappeared, and it's been a mess trying to find him." His attentions turned towards Danny, who hesitantly backed away. "My dear boy, how did you ever manage to end up down here?"

When Danny didn't answer, Vlad rubbed his eyes and continued to talk. "Though I had planned on introducing you to the girls eventually, I was hoping you would have a much better grasp of your powers before then. No matter… In fact, this may actually work to my advantage." He glanced at back at Maddie and gave a strange smile. "So, my dear, do you recognize him? I've heard a mother will always have some sort of recognition when she encounters a child she hasn't seen in years."

Maddie narrowed her eyes at the strange comment. "What are you talking about?" She glanced to her side to check where her staff was. Drat! Why didn't she grab it when it Vlad entered the room?

"Oh, how silly of me," he said as he placed his hand over his face in feigned embarrassment. "It would be much harder to recognize him in this form. Come here, Daniel."

The boy shook his head and continued to move away. "No way! I'm not letting a sicko like you come anywhere near me again."

"When will you learn you are in no position to argue?" Vlad's tone was rather resigned as he tiredly made three duplicates of himself.

As Danny kept switching his glance between the different Vlads in a terrified manner, Maddie snuck over and grabbed her staff. She kept her movements as quiet as possible until she noticed the clones were about make a move to grab the boy. "Danny, run!" she shouted as she attacked what she believed to be the original with her staff.

"You'll regret that, woman!" the hybrid snarled as he and two of the clones turned their attention to her.

One of them shot a beam of pink ecto-energy while another disappeared. She easily blocked it with her staff, as most ecto-infused weapons could deflect such attacks, before using it to stab the air behind her. A grunt of pain told her she had hit her mark; Vlad could be so predictable some times. Bringing the bottom of the staff up from the ground, she nailed the ghost in the chin to giving him an injury somewhat comparable to that of an upper cut. She then flipped the staff to use the momentum to bring it horizontally and nail him again in the face. A satisfying crash told her he was down for the moment. One down, three more to go.

She quickly jumped back as another blast was sent her way. As soon as she landed, she had to lean back as the other Vlad involved in her fight swung a right hook at her. Recovering before he could, she swung the bottom of her staff up towards her so she could circle it and hit him. The ghost tried to turn intangible before it hit, but the ecto-energy within the staff still sent a painful shockwave through him. Bringing the bottom of the staff up, she switched the position of her hands to allow her to bring the tip down on the top of his head. Sensing the approach of another clone from behind her, she thrust the staff backwards,hitting the him, before sliding it back forwards to once again hit her previous opponent.

Quickly adjusting her hands again, she swung the staff around, much like an overly large baseball bat, catching both of her opponents as the move caused her to crouch. Bringing the rear end of the staff to the floor, she slid the tip out until it was resting under the opponent behind her as she turned around. Standing, she shifted positions and brought the end of the staff right between Vlad's knees. She could hear him slump to the floor as she turned her attention back towards the other one. Somewhere on her right, she could see the Vlad she hit earlier getting up from the floor.

The frustrating thing about ghosts was their incredible resilience. While they could be damaged with the proper weapon, they were easily able to recover if given the time. Though Vlad was somehow only half ghost, he still possessed the annoying trait making him a difficult opponent, even if she was the better fighter. And, he was an expert at distractions.

A yell somewhere to her side caught her attention. The one Vlad which had gone after Danny had finally gotten a hold of him. Vlad was trying to say something when an irritated, "Get away from him!" was shouted followed by a heavy book being thrown. Though the book easily passed through Vlad, he did give Jazz a rather irritated look.

"I would stay out of this if I were you, girl," he retorted as he raised his hand towards her. Pink energy circle the outstretched hand as he kept the other firmly attached to Danny's shirt.

"You leave my daughter alone!" Maddie shouted as she started to charge towards the fourth Vlad. Her movements were cut short as she was grabbed from behind by several hands. She struggled only to find she was effectively stuck and at least a few inches from the ground.

"Just sit back and watch the show," one of the Vlads hissed in her ear. "Struggling won't get you out of this mess."

"Now that all of the distractions are gone…" the Vlad holding Danny looked over the terrified boy rather carefully. "You've caused quite a lot of trouble today… I would be more careful in the future. You wouldn't want the people who care about you to get hurt, would you?"

Danny was barely able to mumble an answer when Vlad started sending shocks through his body. Maddie watched in horror as the boy screamed as he started to convulse. After an agonizing moment, Vlad stopped the shocks and held the limp boy by the arm seemingly waiting for something. After a moment, a dazzling blue-white ring appeared from Danny's waist. It quickly spilt in two; each half traveling along both halves of his body. When the lights died down, a completely different boy was dangling from Vlad's grasp. This one had pitch black hair and lighter skin. Even the outfit was different.

Apparently satisfied, the solitary Vlad glanced at Maddie and held up the seemingly unconscious boy. "Maddie, meet your long lost son, Daniel Fenton." He then flung the boy onto the gray couch. As he did so, the other Vlads let go of Maddie and were absorbed back into the other one. "As you can see, he has come into his birthright… though he doesn't look anything like what either of us were expecting. But, I'm not overly bothered. There are things I must prepare for him, so until I return, look after him. I dare say you should welcome this as a great time to bond with him. Ta!" With a mocking grin, he floated up towards the ceiling and disappeared.

Maddie, though no longer trapped by the ghost, was unable to move as she stared at the boy on the couch. This child… this ghost, was really her son? But how…?

She collapsed to the floor and tried to hold back her tears. She had tried to prevent this! Vlad wasn't supposed to get a hold of him! And Danny… poor Danny, she and Jack had done research to try and prevent him from becoming like Vlad, but it had all been for naught. She should have known better than to try and fight fate. But, how was she going to live with herself when the sweet boy from before became the monster from her nightmares?

=== End of chapter notes:

It was actually pretty fun to write Maddie's fight scene. I've actually taken Kung Fu in the past and was fortunate enough to learn some staff forms. With my staff currently sitting in the living room (where I usually tend to do my writing), I was able to grab it and fool around with different movements and forms to try and get a semi-realistic fight going in my mind. But, staff movements aren't easy to describe. There aren't a lot of technical terms and you can't swing them sideways without picking them up in certain ways. The circling I describe is in reference to switching staff positions/forms. Note, when you learn how to work with a staff, it's usually taller than you are.

Vlad is a master manipulator, strategist, and can fight, but knowing he tends to let others do his work, I'm fairly certain Maddie would be able to take him in a real fight if he didn't get a chance to plan it out. Sure, Maddie could have gained the upper hand on him a while ago, but that's exactly why he takes away her weapons. The staff escaped due to the ends being retractable allowing it to be stored in odd places. Yes, I thought about this.

#Eidolon #danny phantom #dp #danny phantom au #dp au #danny fenton #sam manson #tucker foley #vlad plasmius #maddie fenton #jazz fenton #my writing #fanfic #fanfiction #fantasy #alternate universe #paranormal #supernatural

3 notes · View notes

bubmyg · 5 years

Text

wonder - jjk

pairing: jeongguk x reader

genre/warnings: pool boy/waiter/kind-of-baker/first-aid-extraordinaire/aspiring singer!jeongguk(ft. cherry!guk), writer/journalist!reader, the CHEESIEST fluff, tiny amounts of angst, a bad attempt at original poetry, there is a tiny blood mention

word count: 14,906

summary: romance novels lie about finding some deep epiphany in the ocean because you find your inspiration in some chlorine tainted red locks or where jeongguk isn’t smooth with a pool net.

a/n: this is. the longest fic i’ve ever written. also the longest i’ve ever worked on a fic (...a month ajfdks) and im really proud of it :-( i hope u like it :-(

There’s a certain breaking point for an advice columnist, one that isn’t supposed to come three years into the job and over a handwritten letter from a nine year old who has just had her dream of becoming a vet shattered by this sudden discovery that she, in fact, passes out when she sees any type of blood. Or if that breaking point comes, the draft of the response isn’t supposed to make it past an unsaved document, (Dreams are a scam, anyway. Learn that.) scrapped and used as emotional support to formulate the real answer.

There’s a nine year old little girl who rushes to the paper for a week after sending her letter, hoping to find some sort of solace in the advice column she finds fascinating, generally filled with advice on things she doesn’t have the capacity to understand: cheating husbands, the capitalist nature of the makeup industry, why “business casual” isn’t a reward for women, and taxes. She’s memorized her opening line enough to have her heart racing into her throat when she catches sight of it on its usual page, her letter transcribed and italicized just above the tiny portrait of the columnist and the bold font that would be her response.

Her mother finds her sobbing on her bed fifteen minutes after she called for her to come to dinner and consoles her enough to acknowledge that being a Disney princess is just as good of an aspiration as a vet, not before writing a strongly worded letter addressed to the editor of the paper and canceling the family’s subscription.

There’s a different document you should have scrapped completely, the sixty-seventh page of your never ending novel, never ending in the sense that it would never end because you were going to give up on everything with the exception of the column for the next day: an obscure sex toy shop escapade that isn’t fit for the nine year old and her canceled subscription in the first place.

You’d been glaring at the grainy lines across your monitor, ones that cut through the middle of the words on the sixty-sixth page, when Hoseok’s figure glided past the glass wall of your office to enter without knocking.

He cleared his throat and you turned slowly from the monitor, as if your gradual spiral cascading to a head had brought an end to your cordiality as well. There was a paper in his hand, the day prior’s edition, ink thick on the outside where a picture of a local elementary school’s service project was displayed. He opened it silently, turning to a page, your page, outlined heavily in red ink pen.

The gold links of Hoseok’s watch reflected off your monitor as the paper smacked and slid its way across your desk, forcing you to wince for two separate reasons.

“I’m sorry—”

Hoseok withdrew his latter hand from the pocket of his black slack and your fingers itched to close out of your novel but his gaze was steady on the blinking cursor next to a piece of grammar you’d fiddled with six separate times.

“Any progress?” You blinked at him and he jerked his head in the direction of your desktop, black fringe parting against his eyelashes so his dark eyes dropped a deeper shade of black.

There was a raw spot ready for you on the inside of your cheek and the taste of stale metallic flooded your tongue. Your legs unfurled from where they’d been folded up underneath you in your desk chair, gaze sweeping to the wilting ficus underneath your desk, “Not exactly…”

Papers fluttered together and you caught sight of the dogeared letter from the little girl as Hoseok brushed a bare spot on the corner of your desk to take a seat. There was a smiling cartoon character patterned to the surface of his short-sleeved button up and it’s smiling muzzle appeared to mirror that flit of an upturn on the edge of Hoseok’s dimpled lips. The subtle cock of his chin was anything but of praise, sympathy more so bleeding out the strict in his dark irises as he sighed.

“I understand this job and this column are not your first love,” He mirrored the snarky response that swallowed on the back of your tongue, “Hell, this probably isn’t even your third or fourth love.”

“But I do expect you to uphold a certain level of professionalism in your column. I’ve never had an issue with you in the past. In fact, I nearly stopped looking over your submissions before sending things to print,” Hoseok leaned forward, elbow on his thigh, chin on curled, ring clad knuckles, “However, as of recent…”

“It won’t happen again, Hoseok. I swear, I was just—”

You quieted when his fingers curled outward from underneath his chin. “...this was not the first column as of recent that hasn’t exactly been up to par.”

Quieter, barely a breath, you nodded, “I’m sorry.”

Hoseok’s index finger straightened, leaning from his lips to press into the side of your monitor, tapping his nail against the screen, “I know how much this means to you. I know how little progress comes when inspiration comes. I know that inspiration doesn’t just strike when we ask it to. I get it, I really do.”

“...and I think some time away from here, from this place, from your column, would do you wonders.”

There was something defensive in your next inquiry, “What are you saying?”

“I’m giving you the summer off—” His finger wagged in your direction when you choked, “—no I’m making you take the summer off.”

“The whole—”

“Two months. Away from here, as in, I’m sending you to the coast for two months. Beach house, all to yourself, all-expense paid. Except for your food, I know you like—”

You squinted at him, “What?”

“Namjoon,” Hoseok provided and you tensed at the name of his friend, a high-powered executive at a publishing company you’d failed three times over to score an internship at, “He really understands the plight you’re going through. It’s his house.”

“There has to be a catch.”

“Yes, I’m giving Jimin your column while you’re gone.”

You grit your teeth at the mention of Hoseok’s blonde headed assistant and Hoseok chuckled at the reaction he desired, “I’m kidding. I mean, I am giving him your paper space. But, Namjoon said, providing that you make some sort of sizable progress on your manuscript, he’ll review it.”

“What?”

“You’re my friend. He’s my friend,” He plucked your turtle shaped paper weight into his palm, tracing it with the same index finger, “I want the best for you and I want my employee’s to be working at their utmost capacity. Namjoon can never have too many clients—” He made eye contact with you when he set the turtle down, “—and he probably owes me some sort of favor.”

Your gaze wandered out the window, eyeing a taxi as it sped away from the curb and forced its way into the flow of traffic. “All because I told a nine year old that Disney princesses’ aren’t real, huh?”

“No,” Hoseok’s hand covered one of yours, patting gently, “Because you’re better than this version of you. And I miss her, frankly. Old you used to bring me coffee in the mornings, so—”

“That’s when I was in Park Jimin’s position.”

“Jealous?”

“No,” Your jaw clenched but the smile on your lips was tiny and genuine regardless, “Thank you, Hobi.”

He hummed, pushing himself up off your desk to trail around toward the door, “Put your novel away, you have two months at the beach to work on that. Submit tomorrow’s column and then get your ass out of here. You have a flight to pack for.”

You weren’t sure if it were the wet tropical air that clung to your hair follicles or the grains of sand already wedged underneath the platform of your sandal but stepping off the plane gave you at least the vague sense that your inspiration was back. You itched for the keys on your laptop, letters worn and granules of salt from potato chips lodged in between, the space bar with two glossed circles from the unconscious tap of the side of your thumbs.

But the device was lodged in your backpack which was lodged between your shoulder blades as you tried to balance the lopsided baggage while maneuvering the cheap wheels of your suitcase over cobblestone sidewalks.

The keypad granted you entry when you’d barely pressed down on the last number of the combination you were given and your suitcase thanked you when sand rippled stepping stones became smooth, white tile. You nudged the luggage aside, dropping your backpack from your shoulders in the process of the long exhale you released from tense muscles, sand splaying messily over sleek flooring as you peeled your sandals from your ankles.

The house was open concept, white tile outlined in golden, sand like consistency, flooring that disappeared from the entryway to the wide room in the middle and down a short hallway that pointed into a wide, sliding glass door. Stainless steel appliances encased by black cabinets and white marble countertops, blue accent pieces and a fruit bowl filled with plastic treats completed the kitchen while compact leather furniture in the same hues boxed in a towering entertainment center on the opposite end of the room.

Your bare feet welcomed the shag grey rug that resided under the living room furniture, carrying you toward the various DVDs peeking out of the glass case underneath the TV. Nature documents sandwiched a singular copy of The Notebook, the cover worn and tattered underneath plastic from being parted so many times.

He’ll like her then and your fingertips twitched at your thighs in search of your laptop keys.

You turned a collection of faux grapes in your palms, pressing into the waxy material, eyes squinted for the typed letter lodged underneath the wire basket.

Welcome! I trust that you’ll find your accommodations satisfactory for a few months, yes? I’m eagerly awaiting your progress, Hoseok speaks very highly of you and your skills. Happy writing!

Underneath was a bulleted list of contact numbers and a FAQOTH (Frequently Asked Questions of the House), trash days, the number of the nearest pizza delivery, the code to the shed outside that contained noodles and an inflatable flamingo for the pool. It was skimming that provided you with that information and your brain short circuited on the mention of a pool, abandoning memorization in favor of your bare feet scuffing across the warmed concrete of the pool deck.

If the pesky sand rubbing raw at the arches of your feet or the palm trees you’d spotted out the windows of the plane weren’t enough to immerse you in the mindset, the clear blue of chlorine tainted water twitched at your knuckles just a fraction more, especially as engulfed by a privacy fence and vining vegetation cut neatly through the rungs of thick white.

Your stomach argued for lunch from one of the pizza places Namjoon had suggested and your heaping luggage argued for organizing the white wicker drawers in your bedroom but your gut said your laptop and your swimsuit. You were pressed onto a candy-striped towel in a lounge chair with the sun trickling at the sweat on your hairline before any other option could out weight, your clothes half strewn in the entryway of the house where you’d dug for the spandex material but forgotten as you furiously hacked away at editing your outline.

You bolded the newest addition to your outline inside your outline, the one that held all the tropes you wished to tackle in the sensical nonsensical manner that was a novel centered around the beauty of clichés. If other authors avoided clichés at all cost, the adverse relationship of shoving any and all that you could correlate between the confines of two plastic ends and a spine could produce a similar effect, pique the interest if marketed as the cliché of all clichés, work against and for itself between worlds of bubblegum high school romance and stale mint flavored coworkers, strangers, and enemies to lovers.

Besides, eliminating stereotypes within clichés counted for something in itself. A commentary on something much larger, at least, you liked to think it was.

SEND THEM TO A BEACH HOUSE appeared directly beneath THE SPAGHETTI SCENE FROM LADY AND THE TRAMP BUT WITH EXCESS CHEESE FROM A PIECE OF PIZZA and the giddiness from typing it out had you overloading the software with how quickly you switched documents to your outline outline, swiping your index finger until the setting appeared and you deleted it in one long, blue highlight.

You thought back to the young adult romance you’d read in high school that had taken place in a beachside town, then to the very same romantic thriller you adored as an adult, to the whimsical short story you’d written in an undergraduate, elective creative writing class, to the first time you’d dug your toes into slightly damp sand and let the soothe of the waves lap at your ankles and the fall of your eyelids to be as dark as the never ending water disappearing over the horizon.

Nothing is more cliché than a beachside town, you thought and spoke the words all the same, shoulders hunching over your keyboard as you clacked the same sentence across the screen and quickly deleted it to amend more specifically. It was the most you’d typed, switched tabs for research, and had the curled feeling of anticipation for what would flow from your fingers in the last year and you briefly wondered if Namjoon had pumped something into the seashell shaped air fresheners stuck in every outlet in the house.

Your trusty search engine provided little response for “beachside towns with little to no tourism” and you instead found yourself typing in the name of the city you’d directed your cab to from the airport, a homage to the sudden rush of inspiration. More details flowed than necessary but you allowed them in the haze of humidity and sun, the name and country and zip code following out next to the bolded location bullet point until your cursor dropped down to the third line and you cut yourself on the words Sunny Drive, where the speed limit signs end in threes?

You cracked your knuckles first, then your toes, then rolled your ankle to pop it, too, crooked fingers still sat on the middle row of the keyboard, asdf-jkl;, tapping in tune with the hum that slipped through your sealed lips.

The high top of a golf cart cruised over the links of the white fence encasing you in your writing utopia, the whir dying as the vehicle rounded the corner. Your fingers were back in action, deleting the modest, white four door sedan assigned to your main character in favor of a high-powered golf cart that you’d research later if realistically existed.

Somewhere in the distance was the call of a bird, traveling over the thrash of the waves onto the shore just in reach beyond the tops of houses suspended on frames around the boardwalk. It was the call of a sea gull or something of the same variety, but you considered giving your main character a parrot and added an entire new section of your outline for the very plot piece.

Something bubbled in the depth of the pool stretched at the end of your pointed ankles, something that had curled into the filter and elicited a burst of air. In your head, you extended the pool by significance on either side and gave your protagonist the trait of an accomplished swimmer in high school.

Nothing more cliché that dropping some characters into a seaside town, one with a parrot, a tricked-out golf cart, and an affinity for swimming rather than surfing like her love interest, antagonistic counterpart and his four door sedan with a dent in the side and caked sand on the rims.

Three documents over was your actual manuscript, one you marked with various highlights to change major plot points later. A major rehaul of location but worth it for the electricity snagging and pushing your joints to click across the keys. Your brain left a footnote to revamp the scene you’d left your characters at, previously at a crossroads of figuring out the vibe in their acquaintance, stuck in a grocery store with the love interest clutching a bouquet of flowers and squinting at your protagonist.

It was quickly changed to a late night scene at a beach, the bouquet of flowers instead a ghost crab and the line of dialog a do you want to hold him? rather than the, awkward albeit, I could buy these for you? To give to your mom, of course—

And then the artificial blue of the water behind you seemed to engulf your laptop screen, draining it into a lower quality of pixels and blurred lines that categorized your work computer, the giant stone turtle hidden behind a bush of thick vegetation shrinking into your paper weight, the line of documents open across your screen erasing into your next column that, for some reason, included every curse word you could imagine in angry red font.

A tiny emoticon reminiscent of the talking paperclip from early Microsoft word processing appeared in the corner, but in the shape of Park Jimin.

In short, you were stuck, the fire of inspiration eager to boil in the pit of your stomach evaporating like the footprint on the pool peck after you’d dipped a singular foot in. You’d transported back to your office in the uncomfortable desk chair stolen from the insurance office a story down with Park Jimin breathing down your neck for your position by bringing Hoseok coffee every morning but in a slightly better quality than you had, because it was handmade with love in the longue, with a novel that was no closer to being finished than it had been when you’d fell in love with the concept and got paid to outline the entire thing not a week into your position at the newspaper (and in between running Hoseok coffee and trying to hide your work in the limited privacy of your cubicle).

A massive control + Z was in order and the fingers on one hand stretched to do just that on the first of three documents, latter cuticles shoved in between your teeth to nibble miserably on. You’d erased any mention of a beachside town and ripped away the sticky note on the inside of your conscious that suggested touching a ghost crab for romance when something rough and cold dripped against the outside of your thigh.

Confusion caused you to place your laptop to the concrete below your chair and terror caused the startled gasp to bubble out of your throat at the sheepish looking figure stood knee deep on the pool stairs.

“Uh, hello,” The figure had obnoxious red hair to match the obnoxious yellow shirt hanging off his shoulders, a similar hue that colored the apples of his cheeks, shading embarrassment over sunburn and traveling to the peek of his teeth and the twinkle in gentle brown eyes that much resembled that of a deer pinned by some oncoming headlights. “I’m...here to clean the pool.”

It was a pool net that had hit you, misjudged from the sopping pile in the mulch of leaves and bugs and neon colored specks of unidentified objects. Your eyes trailed upward from the damp pleats of rope at your side to the holder of the pole, one who hadn’t tried to jerk the net away from you but instead kept in place, as if he didn’t move a muscle maybe you’d disappear.

“I clean the pool twice a week?” He tried again but you were too focused on the rosy shade of his lips matching the moussed fringe that curled into his eyelashes. “It should have been on the note Namjoon left—”

“It probably is,” You dismissed and he finally pulled the net away from your side, the wide sweeping circle he took to plop it back into the pool not succeeding without dripping some onto the top of your head. Unconsciously eager to amend the endearing pout that graced the stranger’s lips as he stirred the net into the center of the water, you added, “I just got in this morning. I haven’t had time to read everything yet.”

“Oh. Oh,” The man straightened from where he’d been crouched trying to snag a red thread at the far end of the pool, the ends of blue pool shorts darker than the rest and trickling against toned thighs, “Well, I’m Jeongguk. The neighborhood pool guy. And groundskeeper. And...whatever else you need me to be, I guess.”

You quirked an eyebrow and Jeongguk faltered, “I mean, like, I can fix shit. If you need me to. Like, if the cable goes out. But don’t ask me about the Wifi. No clue how to improve that.”

“Do any of us?”

He laughed and there was a peek of a dimple at the corner of his lips, turning away from you, “Fair point.”

You watched as he navigated the net with a finesse that suggested he didn’t just smack your thigh with it, depositing the red string in a sad heap near the filter. The calculated wander of your gaze drew your mouth to dry, following the jump of his calf muscles as he stepped from the pool, dragging the net with him over his shoulder.

“Seriously though,” Jeongguk’s voice snapped you out of your trance and you wet your lips and longed for your chapstick lodged somewhere in the depths of your backpack. He stood by a plastic looking brown shed, the net out of his hands, arms instead folded to his chest. “If you need anything, just call the front desk. The number is pasted on the fridge.”

“Noted, thanks.”

“My pleasure—” He paused halfway through the sliding glass door, fingers poised in an awkward pointing motion, “—what was your name again?”

You uttered it and Jeongguk winked, fingers shaking as his latter foot joined him inside. “Well, then I’ll see you later.”

“Perfect,” You breathed to yourself and you realized after the roar of his blue maintenance truck pulling from your drive that your collection of tattered bras and panties were scattered in the only entrance to the house.

Romance novels lied and movies an even bigger scam about wearing sandals for long periods of time without developing stupidly coarse blisters on the surface of the faux leather straps. You were heaving and limping and confused by the time you found the main office at the far end of the neighborhood.

In retrospect, it was hard to miss, an obnoxious aqua shade of paneling, outlined in a thick white trim led to by an equally bright staircase. Bikes accented in the same white but a clearer shade of blue lined the racks outside, complete with wicker baskets on the front and shiny metal bells that glinted just right to make you shield your eyes and trip up a single stair in your ascend. Inside the barn like doors came a refreshing burst of air conditioning, eliminating the humidity from outside and immediately calming some of the sweat curling into the hair at the nape of your neck.

A man sat behind a glass top counter in the middle of the room, legs delicately crossed on the stool he perched to, sunglasses nudged in the darkest part of dyed blonde roots, thumbing through a tourist style magazine that advertised May, the current month, as it’s date of publication. When the doors rattled shut behind you, he looked up, sunglasses bouncing to the bridge of his nose as he let out a tiny, startled noise.

“Hello!” He greeted after a moment, broad shoulders setting as you approached the counter. The magazine was flipped shut and slid closer to you, eyebrows wiggling at you beyond the frames of his fallen glasses, “Can I interested you in an entire article on the shrimp business in town?”

You giggled then, gently nudging the magazine back to him. The gold on his nametag fastened to the pocket of a blue surf shop t-shirt read Seokjin.

“No, not today.”

Seokjin balled the gloss into a roll and with a shrug, pitched it over his shoulder. “You know what, me either,” He winked, folding his hands on the counter and leaning toward you, plump lips curled back to let out an endearing wheeze of a laugh, “What can I do for you today?”

“Do you rent the bikes outside?”

“I’ll rent you two of them,” He laughed again at the expression on your face, turning to fish a clipboard off the tiny table behind him. “Kidding. I’ll rent you three.”

“I love it, but I think I only need one for right now.”

“If I weren’t on shift, I’d accompany you,” Seokjin scribbled something on the clipboard, “What house number are you in?”

You recited the number to him and he nodded with his tongue between his back molars. The clipboard was returned to the table in exchange for a set of tiny keys, ones he held out to you by the dangle of their miniature, metal hook. “These work on the first bike on the rack,” He smiled again, all full lips and an endearing red tinge to the tips of his ears, “Bring them back to me to check the bike back in or I may have to hunt you down.”

Your eyes widened and he cackled again, slapping a palm down on the glass countertop, “Kidding. But there is a fine if it’s not returned in twenty-four hours so—”

“Noted. I’ll have it back,” You pressed the keys into your palm and offered a halfhearted wave, “Thank you!”

“Always! Happy riding!”

The keys were deposited safely into the pocket of your shorts after you’d managed to wiggle the bicycle away from the rack, clacking against your phone screen as you clambered aboard the leather seat and pushed off in the direction you’d came.

You pedaled first in search of the house, finding it easier on the retrace and mapping it to memory as you dared a new trail, the one that looped and met a dead end when asphalt curled into white sand. The house whirred by again and then the main office, the air cooler in a breeze and with an easier travel than walking with a dozen blisters. You cycled slowly, taking in the unruly wind of cobblestone sidewalks and curiously planted palm trees near the planned planted flowers and each house in their own entirety in comparison to your own and the license plates of each car in each driveway as they advertised various regions and places and worlds aside from the one you were living in.

The blue maintenance truck elicited bile in the back of your throat from the incident earlier in the week as it sat parked on the street corner where sprinklers poked out of the turf and sprayed onto the green and yellow logo pasted to the side. The cab was empty but the yard it was parked in front of wasn’t, the knee height gate surrounding the shrubbery open with Jeongguk’s feet planted just on the other side of it.

You whipped your gaze from the slice of hedge trimmers through an exotic looking tree, instead looping your bike onto the opposite sidewalk and in the opposite direction. To no avail, the cul de sac throwing you back around like an out of control speed skater and suddenly the distance in front of you was filled only with the image of Jeongguk’s bare shoulders.

The bike coasted underneath you, leather relaxing its strain on your blisters as you concentration instead fell to the defined ridges between his shoulder blades, ones that rippled under a thin sheen of sweat each time he drew the trimmers open and shut, fluttering confetti like green to the grass below. The gardening tool fell as you watched, one arm staying above his head as he wiped a glove covered hand across his forehead, pasting more of the faded red fringe to the sweat already glistening there than clearing it. In the same moment did he pivot, trimmers dangling at his thigh, but this time you weren’t focused on the short black clinging desperately to his lean hips or the bunched white shirt sticking out from the waistband, rather the defined lines of his trimmed stomach starting underneath his ribs and disappearing underneath the elastic.

Jeongguk calling your name wasn’t part of the mirage and your rounded mouth jerked up just in time to notice the rapidly approaching edge of the curb.

Your dry mouth didn’t need water when it instead got the sprinkled of gravel, your bike tire colliding with the blocked concrete below and throwing you off to the side. A pain registered as a skid down your elbow but nothing quite matched the shamed embarrassment that flushed at your cheeks as a distant shit, hey! echoed in your ears and gravel crunched under approaching footsteps.

“Hey, woah, are you okay?—” You felt like you were underwater, like the ocean had suddenly decided it could eat the human race and was choosing you as its first victim, “—shit, you’re bleeding.”

A sting to your arm drew you above water and fingers that weren’t your own wiggled in front of your blurry vision, coating in a glob of dark red. The dots in your vision worsened when there was a pressure around your arm, Jeongguk’s t-shirt yanked from his shorts to act as a makeshift bandage and you couldn’t even appreciate the feeling of his hands touching you when you felt like you could vomit all over them any second.

“Hey, hey, babe can you hear me? Don’t pass out on me, it’s just a little scrape. C’mon, hey, I have some water in my truck, give me a second—”

The grass was a welcome pillow to the throb in your head, clearing the specks of black and white in your vision just enough for you to welcome the overhead blue curling around the landscape. You focused your attention on a cloud, one shaped like a disfigured dolphin, until it slipped in front of the sun, the rays spilling out in thick shards from between the transparent water vapor chilling the new layer of sweat that had slipped over your skin in your near faint.

You shuddered as more of the dots in your vision transferred to a seeming chill in your veins, goosebumps crawling across your arms and leaving a dry, cotton taste in your cheeks. Scrambling footsteps in the gravel returned as quickly as they had retreated and a gentle hand slipped behind your shoulders, aiding you in sitting up enough to bring your lips to a cool splash of water.

“I’ve been telling Seokjin to replace the brakes on these for months,” Jeongguk passed the water bottle into your still twitching fingertips, instead taking a seat next to you in the grass.

You were shaky in taking another gulp of the lukewarm water, letting it slide thickly down your throat. Various retorts snagged in the back of your throat and you suppressed them like the urge to glance over at him. Instead, a soft hum came out, one emitted through another cheek full of water.

“Well, when you’re ready, I’ll drive you back to the house and take the bike back—”

“I’m fine,” You croaked but you punctuated the sentiment by gathering your feet underneath you. A dull pain throbbed in your forearm and you swayed slightly in your crouched position, but you managed to stand with no more than a few stars decorating the back of your eyelids.

Jeongguk stuttered behind you, scrambling to his feet as you hunched over the fallen bike, dragging it to an upright position by one of the protruding handles. He slipped a warm hand to the small of your back, stalling you. “You’re not going to try to ride back, are you?”

“Yes?”

“You nearly fainted just now. Do you really think that’s...the best idea?”

Your knee caught on the seat in your first attempt to straddle the bike but you were successful the second time, standing with shaky palms clenched on the handles. “Not really. But it’s not very far…”

You thought you’d shaken him, the bike wobbling as you pushed off, getting two tire rolls away before his figure was jogging up beside you, placing an insistent hand on the bars. “At least let me walk back with you,” Jeongguk insisted, red fringe not obscuring his wide-eyed concern.

You begrudgingly ignored the veins in his forearm, slowing the speed of your pedaling to let him guide you through the desolate roads of the quiet neighborhood. It was a quick but silent trip, Jeongguk turning to balance the bike with two hands as you clambered off on shaky legs. He’d barely pivoted from depositing it back into its empty space on the rack when you’d pushed the tiny set of keys against the center of chest, too engrossed in a range of mortification.

“Here,” You bit out, “Thanks again.”

You took off in a rumpled mess of gravel, sunburn, and a bloody t-shirt as Jeongguk called after you some variation of be careful! that almost sounded like he was laughing.

The blood caked off his t-shirt on the third wash (when you managed to understand the complex mess of dials lining the top of the machine) and you hung it on a wire hanger on the tiny awning that extended outward from the house onto the concrete. He’d have to duck underneath it to do his job as you hid faithfully in your bedroom and pretended to nap for the duration of his visit.

There was a distinct clattering outside as the morning hours drew into the afternoon and you buried your head underneath the puffy duvet, taking comfort in the flash of colors across your phone screen even if you were mute to the video you’d played. But then the clutter outside transferred to the slide of the patio door and the video disappeared as your phone fell face down against your waist and you froze.

Jeongguk was calling your name, fluctuating in volume as he moved about the main part of the house. You winced each time the scuff of his bare feet moved closer, relaxed when it was farther away, and sighed when he tried, “I know you’re in here. Seokjin didn’t see you leave today. Or yesterday. Or the day before.”

You swallowed your pride and the unattractive scab growing on the flat of your forearm as you stalked out of your room. You found him mostly clothed this time, hands braced on the lip of the bar in the center of the kitchen with his phone pressed toward his nose in one hand.

“What, have you been watching me?”

There was a fond smile that crept to Jeongguk’s lips as he turned to look at you, “Making sure you didn’t bleed out, actually, but if you want to look at it that way.”

You paused in the hallway, feet as wide as your shoulders and arms folded tight to your chest. Only then did you realize you still had flannel pajama shorts and a flimsy white shirt on. “Well. Here I am. With only minor injuries. So uh…”

There was a glass plate in the flat of his palm before you could blink, a pyramid of chocolate chip cookies wrapped with plastic presented before you. “I, uh, made you some cookies,” He blinked, tossing his head toward the refrigerator. The red in his hair had faded to a harsh pink, “and there’s fresh lemonade in the fridge.”

“Your t-shirt is hanging outside,” You blurted in response, “free of blood.”

Jeongguk’s nose wrinkled, turning to deposit the cookies to the countertop again, “Didn’t want it back. I have fifty of the same thing. But thank you…”

You stared at the back of his head, where dark brown roots had begun to weave through the sharp red. After a moment, you blinked, “...so you can bake?”

He shrugged without looking at you, peeling the plastic away from the plate to pluck a cookie into his palm. He glanced over his shoulder, endearing smile dimpled into his cheeks and you melted like the bits of chocolate that brushed against his digits when he stretched the treat out to you, “Eh. Try one?”

Jeongguk’s gaze followed you as you shuffled around the kitchen, sliding out one of the bar stools with the crook of your foot to slip onto the round leather. You reached over the countertop, snatching a napkin from a pile near the sink to spread out in front of you, lips pressing into a geometric shape in your cheeks.

“C’mon, hand it over.”

He bypassed your wriggling fingers to place the cookie down on your napkin, watching you with a bated breath and round eyes. Soft irises followed the path of the piece you broke off the cookie to where you nudged it into your mouth by the curve of your thumb. The cookie crumbled across your tongue, melting in a mess of sugar and chocolate that gurgled a pleasured moan from your throat as you dived in for two, four more nibbles on the soft corners.

An amused expression wrinkled at his cocked eyebrows and the small sliver of his teeth when your eyelids fluttered open from devouring half the treat, “Good?”

“You can bake,” You affirmed, breaking off another bite sized corner. “Maybe I should wreck bikes more often.”

“No,” Jeongguk assured, replacing the cookie with a fresh one before turning to your fridge to yank out the pitcher of lemonade, “You definitely should not.”

His stature went fishing about the kitchen area, yanking open cabinet after cabinet until he found something suitable, glass pieces smudged from years of use. He pulled down two, placing them in front of the pitcher.

“You know, your food selection here is pretty sad,” He handed over a full glass, watching as you took a languid gulp.

“I don’t exactly know where the grocery store is,” You argued of the boxes of leftover pizza stacked inside your fridge and the singular bag of pretzels you’d smuggled onto the airplane. “Nor do I have a car, and biking is certainly out of the question—”

Jeongguk ignored you, opening and closing drawers until he found the packet of paper Namjoon had left for you, the FAQOTH. His thumb lodged between the pages, squinting at the ink as his voice muffled around the rim of his own glass.

His tongue swiped at the lemonade clinging to his upper lip, sighing, “You really didn’t read this, did you? There’s, like, seven cab services to choose from. And at least six of them know where the Walmart is.”

You dismissed him with a wave of your hand, snatching the packet of paper from his grasp to flatten it over the napkin you’d been snacking from. “All Namjoon has listed are pizza places…” You trailed off, “I need restaurant recommendations. Throw some at me.”

“That’s a pretty broad question. I have a lot.”

“You’ll have to show me a few before I leave.”

You stared at each other in a passing silence that heightened your mortification like bile on the crux of your throat, especially when Jeongguk cocked an eyebrow, the slightest of smirks slanting his lips as his chin unhinged, falling to his chest as he fished aside for another napkin.

“Maybe…” He trailed off, snatching a pen from the same drawer the FAQOTH had came from. “But for now—” He scribbled some more on the surface pebbled in design, scratching out a name and an address before presenting the drooping napkin to you, “—try this place. I think the cab drivers can find it...”

The Dusty Dolphin bordered the line between the natural white sands of the beach and the main strip of highway that cascaded down the coastline. It was as if sitting on the border in territories, the inside seating of the restaurant on soft grasses sticking through sand like soil with an asphalt parking lot lined in chipped neon parking spaces just a walking distance away, while the outside seating was perched on the beach, a patio raised on wooden platforms with brightly colored umbrellas stuck through the center of wooden tables.

Your fingers paled your knuckles with how tightly you clenched your fists, flip flops slapping against the wooden surface as you climbed up a rickety staircase to tell an uninterested looking hostess that it would be just you.

“Outside?” It wasn’t really a question of yes or no, more of a confirmation of what she was expecting you to say as she hopped down from her stool and began to collect silverware and a glossy menu.

Your sure was lost under your breath as she took your curt nod as the answer, weaving through the close knit tables in the indoor seating to lead you through a single set of double doors and to an empty table on the far corner. Again, her, “Is this okay?” was a confirmation, not an affirmation, and your nod had her saying your server will be right with you when she’d already slipped back inside.

The sun peaked out from behind the lapping waves on the horizon, the blackness engulfing the farthest waves a taste of the sun’s sleep for a few hours, leaving the world with a brilliant mesh of pastel hues, colored together like oil crayons as brushes of wispy clouds rushed by to the melody of the water rushing to the shore. A breeze rolled with the motion of the water and you tugged your thin cardigan closer to your torso, not helped with the fans bolted to the overhead framing that continued to rotate softly, a cooldown from their midafternoon duties where they whirred fatefully.

“Hey, told you the cab driver could find this place.”

Jeongguk stood in front of you with the dopiest of grins on his lips, a tiny and audible giggle stumbling out from the shocked expression that met your features. He was adorned in all black, tight black jeans, a black belt cinching a black t-shirt into his waist, a black apron snug just a beat above the belt buckle. His bright locks were styled, parted away from his forehead in a calculated fashion that made one swoop a tad bigger than the latter side. Pens and straws and a tiny notepad were tucked into the pouches of the apron and he held a notepad of a similar fashion up, pen clicking rapidly as he continued to giggle at you.

“You work here?” You blinked, and then added with flat palms slapping against the front of your menu, “Is there anything you don’t do?”

“Can’t quite train the dolphins at the wildlife reserve yet, but we’re getting there,” His nose wrinkled in another laugh, pen clicking out finally as he rested it against the paper, “What can I get you to drink?”

“Uh. Water, I guess.”

“Boring,” Jeongguk scribbled shorthand to the pad, “Are you going to get something a bit more exciting than chicken strips for your meal?”

“I don’t think you’re supposed to be heckling the paying customer.”

“Seriously,” He eyed you again, “Do you know what you want?”

You opened the menu for the first time, the array of seafood and pastas and salads and various other dishes overwhelming you with him hunching over you, shuffling to read over your shoulders.

“What do you recommend?”

“Well, we’re pretty known for seafood—” You shot him a look, “—obviously. But like, all the shrimp is pretty good—”

“Because of the shrimp business in town?”

Jeongguk laughed, “Seokjin?”

“A little bit.”

He hummed, chin hovering dangerously close to your shoulder before he straightened, shuffling between the railing around the porch area. “I’ll bring you a couple things,” He decided, mostly to himself and absently over his shoulder,

A couple things meant a platter of shrimp, cooked, seasoned, piled, and ripped in different variations, piled high like the pyramid of cookies you’d nearly devoured after he’d left your house. His manager complained twice upon finding him sitting with you, judging your expression as you sucked some butter contraption off the ridges of a steamed shrimp and teasing you of the flakes of garlic clinging to the corner of your mouth. He returned to refill your water when you’d only taken a few sips from the candy striped straw and ignored you three times when you asked for the bill as the sun completely disappeared beyond the water, leaving the sea to one giant stretch you could not see but could hear the threat of.

“Here, I guess,” Jeongguk settled the black fold down on your table, leaving with a wink that illuminated in the artificial porch lights hanging from the center of the still turning fans. It was enough lighting to read that he’d paid for your bill, scrawling a giant smiley face underneath the amount.

You sighed, prepared to reprimand him as you carefully folded the receipt to slide into your pocket but two colored notes underneath caught your attention. The pink one read wait on me, I’ll drive you home. You placed it aside with a check to your phone, finding it five minutes from closing time of the restaurant as a majority of the other patrons who had long fled the premises.

The second note was yellow, the handwriting a bit more loopy, calculated in a sense.

A mirage is the peace the night time sea suggests; a reality is the beauty your soul creates.

Jeongguk was free of the apron when he returned, shirt untucked, and a large blue jacket shrugged across his shoulders. The same giddy smile from before remained plastered to his features as he dug in his pocket, pulling out a set of keys that he tossed and caught in the same palm.

“Ready to go?”

You folded the sticky note carefully, slipping it with the collection of bills in your back pocket.

“Yeah, let’s go.”

He left notes while you were asleep and he had another schedule to get to, choosing your pool as the first to clean and assess and correct the chemical balance of, leaving the bright blue paper with tacky glue stripped on the top to the patio door.

You caught it when you shrugged outside with a piece of toast in hand and your laptop folded under your arm, crumbs decorating your knuckles as you slipped the paper off the sizable smudge on the glass to bring it to your nose.

Think of dream, sleep of you.

He left notes on the hedge just outside your door on his way to the neighbors to fix a faulty outlet in the upstairs bedroom for a family who’d just arrived and had decided to cram three children with twelve electronic devices between them into that very room.

It was bright pink and sealed to the petal of a flower you debated picking, a petal that dislodged anyway when you plucked the note instead, decorating the stone walkway with a single question of soft red hues.

Bloom in my heart like the question of my soul.

He left notes on the inside of your refrigerator, right on top of a family sized bottle of orange juice he’d watched you haul through the front gates of the neighborhood while Seokjin assumed he was paying attention to his instructions for the disposal of some lawn chairs at the community pool near the beach.

You found it after he left in a flurry of more cookies, the smell of chlorine, and an off handed comment about you needing more variety in your life than water and orange juice, a yellow note that rivaled the unnatural coloring of the juice when you’d purchased a brand name rather than the more expensive, family brand.

Orange juice sucks, that much I do know.

You scattered them across the screen of your open laptop like an investigator piecing together the details of a crime while your neglected novel watched on, the cursor mocking you from beyond a note that said procrastinating my destiny with a useless metal fence. Color coding failed when Jeongguk switched from pinks, blues, and yellows to purples, oranges, and greens. His handwriting didn’t falter, suggest a trend with a certain harder press of his pen. The medium in which he wrote varied, lead or red pen or what appeared to be a blue colored pencil. Some told a story, only to be ruined with orange juice or elbow scabs or half eaten shrimp.

Your laptop screen was coated in a thin layer of film from placing and plucking the notes into various orders, one that hazed over your novel as you began to stack the notes into a neat pile in your cupped palm. It mirrored the midday haze that had curled across the neighborhood, the sun eliciting the mirage of steam curling off the pool water that seemed to hinder your conscious unable to understand the growing tree of poetry in your grasp.

The contents of the last paragraph, even without a layer of tacky glue and humidity stained air, made little sense, only one of five you’d written in three weeks. It was thick and expositional, a writing exercise within the draft, a rambling discussion of your surroundings when you’d decided to have your characters visit a beach rather than force their stories into some sand and sun.

Your outline answered your rhetorical question.

Why are they going to the beach? TBD.

You deleted the fifth paragraph and shut your laptop. Four paragraphs in three weeks.

Soft fluttering of the notes between your fingertips kept the distracted state of your conscious occupied long enough to seek out an unnatural sound of nature. It was a scurrying from around the side of the house, scattering through dry pine needles and gravel poured between the concrete stepping stones. The cloud of your thoughts cleared enough to panic in confusion, leaving the notes underneath a corner of your laptop as you crept into your flip flops.

The wire gate was left open, swinging gently against the side of the house. Clear footsteps rut deep into the coarse brown needles, smudging into the mud below still damp from the morning rain shower.

Your first rational thought of it being a squirrel erased as you reached for the gate, pulling and latching it. Someone was walking a dog across the street, a tiny white poodle with a ridiculous haircut and a cat bell on its collar. A childlike scream traveled upward from the beach. The breeze clattered against the leaves of a towering tree planted entirely too close to the house.

The same gentle breeze fluttered a strip of pink against the side of the house.

“Dammit, Jeongguk,” You cursed, needles lodging between the rubber of your flip flops and your bare feet as you moved off the stepping stone path. It was pasted high, too, barely in reaching of your pinching fingertips as you leaned into the house and stretched as high on the balls of your feet as you could go.

Your back slumped against the house as you glared at your prize for thin scratches and a strain in your shoulders. A number. A phone number.

With a shitty smiley face, a curve and two dots, beneath it.

You cursed through another layer of pine needles, deserting your flip flops on the far end of the pool deck as you hopped across seething hot concrete to retrieve your phone from underneath your towel. Pointed thumbs jabbed in the number to a new text thread, equally as prominent in clicking out a message.

What the hell are you trying to tell me with these notes, Jeongguk?

For thirty-seven agonizing seconds, you thought your only answer was the smiling emoticon with tiny red hearts dotted around the surface. And then three little dots appeared in the bottom left corner.

Everything. Meet me at the beach tonight?

You followed the sound of music, passing only a family with two tiny girls, headlamps strapped to their foreheads and plastic sand castle buckets clutched in their fingers as they chatted eagerly about what they’d seen underneath their feet, and a colony of the very crabs they’d been trying to capture. Your flip flops followed the beat of the guitar melody, pattering against the flex of your thigh where you clutched them in loose fingers at your hip, bare feet sliding through the cool sand, occasionally catching on snags of sea shells and scurrying sea creatures.

The sounds grew louder, dimming the thrash of night time waves, and you found him, seated not far down the coast line on a ratty looking, red lawn chair.

Jeongguk glanced up from furrowed eyebrows when you cleared his throat, hunched over a guitar balanced neatly on short clad thighs. Confusion erased into elation as he grinned, tossing his head toward the empty lawn chair next to him, blue and with less frayed edges.

“Hey! Have a seat. I brought beer in the cooler behind you. And water. I can go get you anything—”

You ducked for the red plastic container, drawing out a dripping water bottle and cracking the lid, “It’s okay. Thank you.”

He visibly relaxed, the lingering stare on your lips wrapping around the bottle diverting back to his work on the instrument in his lap, fiddling with some of the tuners at the top. You watched as he worked, thumb coming out to strum at the bottom few strings before he sat back with a satisfied hum.

And then Jeongguk began to sing. Softly at first, a testing glance in your direction as soft pink lips seemed hesitant in parting. When intrigue lit your features, body visibly tensing, his mouth curled into a smile, voice a higher volume but a soft octave nonetheless, gentle and soothing like a retreating wave that lipped gently across the shells it was leaving behind. His gaze faltered from yours to hit a note, a scrunch to his nose, a vein down the length of his neck, a passion that you longed for as his voice fishtailed into an easy run. It was an unfamiliar tune to you, one that ended in a handful of endearing head bops and cheesy hums from Jeongguk as he strummed once, hard, down the strings of his guitar.

The smile on his lips wobbled, trying to contain his teeth but still dimpling in his cheeks as he blinked at you. He lost the battle with his smile when he spoke, testing “Good?”, with a slight giggle.

“The notes,” You said dumbly, “They’re your lyrics?”

“Some of them…” He sat the guitar in the sand with a shy hand wrapped around the back of his neck, “Some are just, I don’t know, poetry.”

“So you sing.”

“I sing,” Jeongguk nodded, “I like to think I’m a better singer than pool cleaner. Or cookie baker.”

You followed his gaze from your eyes to his clasped hands on his knees. “Have you tried to pursue anything in it?”

“No point,” His gaze moved onward from his hands to the ocean, squinting and closing, “Just a hobby.”

“For now—”

“For always,” He was staring at you again, curt in his sharp correction. After a moment, a tiny smile slanted his lips, “It’s okay, really. I enjoy doing it in my free time.”

You tilted your head, “Why are you sharing this with me?”

Jeongguk was standing above you, hand outstretched, shy smile flushing his cheeks even in the darkness. “Walk with me.”

He took the initiative the thread your fingers together, leading you down to the edge of where the water reached. The water still warm from the heat of the season lapped around your ankles as you trudged down the coast, hand in hand, silence welcome to the soundtrack of the ocean. After a sizable distance, Jeongguk sighed, footsteps stalling to yank your unsuspecting figure to a stop.

“I’m showing you because lately, they’re all about you.”

You blinked at him, hands still clasped but pulled at an unnatural distance between your statures. “Jeongguk, what—”

“Look, I’m extremely lame and not as good with actual words as I am with the notes I left you but…” He stepped closer, dropping your intertwined hands to swing between your bodies, “I like you. Basically.”

“Basically?”

A disgruntled whine left his lips and his gaze trailed over your shoulder, upward toward the sky, “I know you’re only here for another month and I know I barely know you but. I don’t know. I like you. And I felt weird envisioning a future where I didn’t at least try.”

Your skin warmed through the thin flannel draped across your sun irritated skin. Another step closer, this one initiated by you, followed by a soft squeeze and tug on his palm. “Like you said, I’m only here for another month,” Soft eyes darkened into the stars dancing around you wandered back down to your gaze, hopeful even as you sighed, “I’m supposed to be writing, anyway. That’s the entire point of my trip and I’ve barely got anything done…”

“I won’t be a distraction.”

“You already are.”

Another shy smile graced Jeongguk’s features, mumbling, “Sorry.”

“But a good distraction…” One more step and there was but a fingertips length distance between your torsos, your thumb running along his knuckles, “You’re a good distraction.”

“So what you’re saying is…”

You held up your free hand, pinky presented. “I’m willing to try, Jeongguk but—” You punctuated the word before he could hook the digit in yours, “—no obligations. Not really, anyway.”

“Do the obligations include or exclude kissing?” He braved leaning closer to you, even as the rosy hue on his cheeks spread, “Pleasesayinclude, pleasesayinclude, pleasesay—”

You tugged down on his hand, loose fist with your pinky presented falling against his shoulder as you connected your lips. He hummed happily into the seam of your lips, arm snaking around your waist to eliminate the distance between your torsos. “One month,” You punctuated between a breath of air, one he ignored with another languid kiss into your mouth.

“So I can’t tell Taehyung you’re my girlfriend?”

“Who’s Taehyung?”

“My roommate,” Jeongguk linked your pinkies while you were distracted, kissing your jaw, “I’ll introduce you to him.”

“Jeongguk,” You squeezed his hand and pinky in tandem, “One month.”

“Stop, you’re making your not-really-your-boyfriend sad.”

Kim Taehyung was all surfer, the stereotypical bleached blonde hair with dark peeking out of the roots, baggy black shorts with the white strings untied, a thin white undershirt hugging his lean figure underneath a blue shirt with some intricate design of flames and waves and a surfboard ironed on the front. His bare feet slapped through the corridor, grumbling something to Jeongguk’s greeting call, hair tossed back with a thick white headband around the middle of his forehead that pronounced his harsh eyebrows, ones that furrowed to inspect you.

“Hi!” He was loud, like an over excited golden retriever, especially when he beamed to tease his roommate, “So you’re the beautiful lady Gukkie here courted by flashing his stellar abs and less than comparable thighs.”

You gawked, cheeks heating because well, kind of, but the hand on the small of your back fist into the material of your shirt, pushing you forward and past his broad figure.

“Don’t you have a wave to almost drown in?”

“C’mon, I was just kidding, love!” Taehyung’s footsteps were heavy behind you, following your figures through a narrow hallway, “No part of Jeon is impressive enough to get you. Did he bribe you? I’ll pay the ransom.”

You giggled as Jeongguk paused around you, sucking in a breath through his teeth that materialized into a whispered, “If you ignore him, he goes away. Eventually.”

Your nose wrinkled, turning to look at the red-faced man pressed against your back, “But he’s funny.”

You’d paused in front of a doorway, one Jeongguk pushed open and glared pointedly at you. “Don’t encourage him. Go.”

Jeongguk’s room was wide, a contrast to the narrow hallway lined in creaking hardwood and paneled walls. It was open concept, not much furniture aside from a few dressers and the bed. Blacks, whites, and greys told the story with color sprinkled in from accented belongings, like a collection of keychains hanging off a billboard in the corner, the cork material of the wall hanging filed with various photographs pinned up by neon colored tacks. A string of lights hung above his headboard, polaroids dangling from the wires, similar ones pasted in a haphazard pattern on the same wall.

“You like photography?”

He watched you step to his corkboard, delicately sliding your fingers underneath a photograph so as not to touch the ink on the front. It was a picture he’d taken of Taehyung at a surfing competition, purposefully edited to look straight from a vintage yearbook.

“A little. Filming too....”

You nodded, letting the photograph flutter back against its board. Pivoting, slow steps carried you toward his slumped figure standing rigid in the center of his room, sliding your palms over his shoulders when you got close enough.

“All of these talents and you can’t dye your hair by yourself?”

Jeongguk’s fingers fell into the fringe hanging over his eyes, now blonde with hints of pink clinging to the ends of certain strands. A pout materialized but he didn’t whine, just leaning closer to you with tendrils of hair still secured between a hand behind his head.

“Just because it’s your first visit doesn’t mean I won’t subject you to Taehyung’s three hour lecture of proper surfboard waxing techniques.”

“Stop threatening me with a good time and lead me to the hair dye.”

His bathroom was as small as the hallway and you found yourself seated on the edge of the vanity with Jeongguk crushed between your legs. He didn’t seem to mind, fingers twitching from their place beside you to creep up to your thighs as you squinted at his head, plastic covered fingers globing harsh red through his hair.

“What’s your natural hair color?”

“Brown.”

You tapped at his roots, taking a glob with the crook of your fingers. “Why don’t you leave it at that?”

“Because red is cool.”

“Who told you that?—” You pulled your hands into your lap, careful to hold the stain away, “—Your girlfriend?”

“Don’t know,” Jeongguk leaned close enough to smear red on your forehead with his bangs if they weren’t pasted to his forehead, “Is my hair color cool?”

A playful look of disgust wrinkled at your nose, “Only half of your hair is dyed right now.”

He glanced behind you in the mirror, eyeing the glob of dye on one half of his head to the straight blonde on the latter. “So?” He blinked back to you, “Is it cool?”

“I don’t know,” You began to peel the gloves off, “Wash it out and we’ll see.”

You sat cross legged in the center of Jeongguk’s bed when he returned, half of his hair back to the vibrant red it had been when he nearly impaled you with a pool net, half the blonde it had been trending toward when he asked you to entertain his affections for a month more. He didn’t give you an option of a yes or no, flopping at the foot of the bed to press his cheek against your ankles, arms stretched out across your thighs.

“Hey,” He said after a moment, muffled against your jeans.

You tested the waters of placing a hand against his scalp and when he cuddled into your affection, you softly ran your nails through his hair. “Hey, what?”

“I let you read my things—” Jeongguk shifted to place his chin on your naval, blinking owlishly up at you, “—my things about you. When do I get to read part of your novel?”

“Hmm, when it’s finished and published and available in bookstores.”

“Is that soon?”

You shot him a look but he didn’t seem to be kidding. “No. Probably not. Especially since I’ve made virtually no progress.”

“Well,” He pecked your belly button over your shirt, snuggling back against you again, “I’d love to read an advanced screening version.”

You’d deleted the four paragraphs you’d completed in three weeks. Zero paragraphs in five weeks.

“We’ll see…”

You printed your outline in three separate copies, each one with their own unique set of markups of various color pens and pencils and highlighters, colors born out of your tiny sparks on inspiration that you tried to hold onto like a the end of a rope, one that would pull you to the surface for clarity, creativity, anything. But each time the trill of your red pen reached the end of the page, transferring over to your fingers on the keyboard, the half an ounce of rope had slipped through your fingertips, leaving you to tread underwater.

Those stapled pages were spread across a table on the patio area of The Dusty Dolphin, half sandwiched between your laptop that was attached to an extension cord. Jeongguk had hijacked both the Wifi password and an extra long cable, seating you in the far corner of the deck area and keeping you stocked with fresh water and samples of mozzarella sticks.

It was the third time you’d marked through and rewrote a certain bullet point, the result a smear of dying highlighter in neon yellow that you could barely read. You capped the highlighter and the open pen rolled to the center of your keyboard, turning your attention instead to the goosebumps that had appeared across your bare forearms and Jeongguk’s figure as he jogged out onto the patio deck.

“That my hoodie?” He questioned as he approached, your head halfway through the black fabric you’d had tied around your waist for the duration of the day.

“Could be Taehyung’s. I stole it from your laundry room.”

Jeongguk placed the new glass of ice water down, avoiding your papers and electronics to wrap a hand in the collar of the hoodie to tug your mouth to his.

“Nope,” He teased with a nip to your bottom lip in a whirling departure, “Mine.”

“Wait!”

He turned, nearly colliding with a high chair protruding out into the walkway.

“Come back, waiter.”

The pad of paper was drawn from his apron, just to appease the look the child’s mother shot him as he moved to stand next to you again. “Yes, paying customer?”

“Can you bring me real food, please?”

He began scribbling something before you could talk, mirroring your sentiment the same time you uttered it.

“The shrimp pasta?”

A bashful smile sunk your chin into your shoulders and you nodded. “Yes, please.”

“Course,” Another chaste peck on your lips that turned into two, then lingered on the third, only for heavy footsteps and a rough voice to have him jumping away.

“Jeongguk…” A figure was leaning out of the doorway dressed in an ironed white button up and black slacks, the tiny gold nameplate advertising manager first reading Yoongi. “Stop kissing customers, please.”

This time a horrified gasp from the mother in question, one that caused Yoongi’s eyes to widen as he moved for the table, shooting you a comforting wink as he began to explain the concept of a joke while Jeongguk disappeared back into the depths of the restaurant.

You managed to hack out two paragraphs while Jeongguk put your order in with a handful of dialog sprinkled within. His kiss was to the top of your head when he slipped the plate in front of you, careful to avoid your twitching fingers over the keys as he hummed.

“Any progress?”

Your response wasn’t a total lie. “A little bit…”

Two paragraphs and useless dialog tagged with edit later in six weeks.

You’d managed to catch a handful of the rope promising to pull you ashore, one you clung desperately to while your fingers, coiled equally as tight, wore the letters on your keyboard to nothing, backspace barely a factor as you left in typos and grammar issues and a myriad of useless punctuation. The lines from where your laptop sat in relation to the cover your swimsuit bottoms provided was of little concern, just as your hair tied messily on the nape of your neck and the lack of towel underneath the bare parts of your stature not covered by the swimsuit you’d stumbled into in route to reach the rope.

The paper outlines sat somewhere inside but you didn’t need them anyway, the digital copy enough to mark off pieces from as your word count skyrocketed, pages clicking over and over the hump you’d previously been stuck on, the rope dragging your belly first over but getting you there nonetheless. You typed until your mouth begged for the ice water you’d left inside and one of the two cookies of Jeongguk’s left, but you powered through into another page, giddy with the possibility but more focused on the emotion somewhere between determination and greed.

You heard the gate open but ignored it, you heard a call of your name but ignored it, and you felt the splash of water hit your ankles and glared at it.

“Hey!” Jeongguk resurfaced on the side of the pool. He’d fixed his hair, vibrant and red against where he brushed it out of his eyes. “Come in for a swim?”

You pursed your lips, determined to ignore him as your fingers started slow on the keys again. When you arrived at your previous speed, you huffed, “You aren’t supposed to clean today.”

He dunked his head under, resurfacing in a flurry of bubbles, “Does it look like I’m cleaning?”

“Jeongguk. I’m busy today.”

“You’re only here for another week.”

“Exactly!”

He sighed, forearms folding onto the concrete as he leaned forward, watching you, “Whatever you have is great. Better than great.”

“You wouldn’t know.”

“I have a vague idea because you won’t let me read anything.”

You were glaring at him again, the playful expression previously on his features hardened into something you couldn’t quite understand, one that softened only marginally as the seconds passed.

Jeongguk uttered your name, a gentle request, “Take a break.”

Your laptop sat open on the bare lawn chair, battery zapped the longer the heat bore down on it but the pointed stalk of your footsteps across the pool area had shoved it aside. The water was cold upon first touch but the reactions of your body didn’t show it, carrying you down the staircase until you were submerged, body crouching so that your chin skimmed the surface of the water until you were treading directly in front of Jeongguk.

“I’m in the water,” You hissed, “Is this what you wanted?”

He didn’t have it in him to giggle, a sad smile instead not quite reaching the dimples in his cheeks.

“No. I want you to believe in yourself.”

The push of your mouth against Jeongguk’s was wet, tasting of the chlorine that splattered around you when you stood to grapple for purchase on his shoulders. Strong arms encased your waist, accepting you anyway as one liquid staining your lips was replaced with something warm and tinged in salt, dripping in unwarranted streams from the corners of your eyes.

You whimpered when your back was pressed to the side of the pool, legs coming to wrap around his waist while your fingernails scraped at his back. “I’m sorry,” You gasped, his lips mouthing at your neck while he held you.

“Don’t be,” He reprimanded you with teeth on your collarbone, arms sliding higher on your waist to press you flush to his chest, “I’ve got you.”

Another miserable apology fell from your lips and your chin was jerked upward by a soft palm cupping your cheek, latter hand pressing into the concrete behind you. “I said, I’ve got you, baby girl,” Jeongguk reiterated, forehead pressed to yours. Something sad rippled in his starry irises, something that dug the dagger deeper into the hammering organ in your chest, “What do you need me to do?”

“Just, I—”

Words failed but the bury of your face into his neck, securing your ankles around his back and holding to him like he’d disappear any second, didn’t.

Jeongguk’s arms threaded around your stature again, nosing into your damp hair with a shaky sigh. “Okay. Okay, I’ve got you. Shh, it’s okay, it’ll be okay…”

Fourteen pages in seven weeks.

The weight of his palm in yours had never quite reached home, a foreign weight laced through your fingers from the hesitancy echoing a mantra in the forefront of your conscious, eerie and daunting and to the tune of your rapidly beating heart.

No obligations. A distraction. A good distraction. No obligations. Broken laptop charger. Not enough complete. No obligations. Too much dialog. Too little progress. No obligations.

Fourteen pages. Seven weeks. No obligations.

You squeezed your fingers together just to watch the joints retract under your skin, the moonlight a ghost over your knuckles. Again and it was inevitable to catch Jeongguk’s attention, his hand flexing underneath yours, smooth and gentle and waiting, accepting of the home your lost heart would need.

If you’d just let yourself knock on the door. No obligations.

“Hey.” He’d stopped walking next to you, the sand cold on your toes, the plastic straps of your sandals rubbing a blister on the soft crease between your fingers on your free hand. “Hey, can we…”

“Look,” You overlapped him, sandals falling from your grasp when you pointed instead. A small group of crabs ruffled through the sand in front of you, bumping through languidly, over and under each other. Jeongguk’s eyebrows nearly met at the wrinkled bridge of his nose, the corner of his mouth slightly downturned when you glanced at him. Softly, you nodded, “Crabs.”

He let go of your hand, crouching. A cupped palm scooped through the sand, effectively excavating one of the crabs. It shook the sand from around itself, scurrying eagerly about the surface of Jeongguk’s hand as he straightened, stretching the creature out to you.

“Do you want to hold him?”

Thoughts of your novel and the overwhelming overhauls it’d endured in your eight weeks, the first a modest to a beachfront neighborhood, from a grocery store to a beach, from a bouquet of flowers the boy had been clutching onto for months while you worked on the details around him to a tiny crab who lasted long enough for you to hate the idea.

The tiniest of smiles made it to your lips, “Is there anything you can’t do, Jeon Jeongguk?”

He crouched again, releasing the crab in a flurry of sand dusted from his fingertips before returning to you. Curled fists made it into the pockets of his shorts, foot nudging into the ground below him as he shrugged. Wide eyes lifted from their spot at the tips of his toes to yours, the same sad smile lacing his features, “I can’t figure you out, apparently.”

“Can we...can we talk?”

He nodded, slowly at first and then all at once. A hand stretched in your direction again, fingers wiggling, the smile on his features a step closer to genuine. “C’mon, let’s go sit down.”

You followed Jeongguk up the beach, finding a space just in front of where the long grasses began, fluttering gently in the night time wind so much so that their soft ambiance almost outweighed the ripple of the ocean from farther up on the shore. Your hand retracted from his, sandwiched between your thighs but your shoulders still touched, sitting side by side as the moonlight crawled up the waves to be deposited onto the coast.

“I don’t know what I’m doing,” You said after a moment. Features scrunched to the breeze, eyes shutting as you sighed, “I really don’t know what I’m doing.”

He hummed, “Do any of us?”

“You seem to,” Your cheek pressed to your shoulder, offering a smile when he glanced at you, “Mister gorgeous pool boy who can sing, play guitar, write poetry, bake, and catch ghost crabs without blinking.”

Jeongguk hummed once more, a lower sound this time, nose pointed toward the breeze. “If you think my ambitions in life stopped at tourist neighborhood groundskeeper and a waiter at a place named The Dusty Dolphin, I must have done a really shitty job at letting you get to know me over these couple of months.”

“I know that,” You nudged him, “but how are you content with your passions just staying passions? How can you not want more?”

“Let me ask you a question,” He nudged you back, chin meeting his upper arm to peer at you under vibrant bangs, “Why do you write?”

“Because I want to have a published novel.”

Jeongguk quirked an eyebrow, “Why do you want to have something published?”

“Because I’ve put years of work into the idea. I’ve drained my soul to invest it in this project.”

“Do you love it?”

You blinked, “My novel?”

“Your novel, your column, the newspaper, writing,” Jeongguk shrugged, “Any of it.”

“I did…”

“Did?”

“I’ve always been in love with the craft of writing—” Softly, you amended, “—my writing. My creations. And I’ve had slumps, I’ve endured writer’s block. I’ve gone past deadlines and I’ve scrapped entire plots, ideas, paragraphs, sentences. But never this bad. Not to the point where I don’t know what I’m doing anymore. Why I even started writing the piece in the first place, what the end goal. What it was even supposed to be about, let alone anything about it.”

Jeongguk nodded, nose pointing toward the breeze again, cheek lulling to his arm, “Why did you come here, of all places?”

“I was sent here. Work leave.”

“What’d you do?”

“Told a nine year old that, not only are Disney princesses not real, but not a viable career option.”

He chuckled next to you, legs stretching out in front of him. “Harsh.”

“What about you?” You nudged him again, “Why do you write?”

“Because I love music and words are the language of music,” Jeongguk’s finger dug into the sand, absently drawing geometric shapes before brushing them away with the heel of his palm, “Even instrumental pieces can be described in words. Whimsical, haunting, pretty. That kind of thing.”

“I didn’t have to ask you if you loved it…” It was a rhetorical sentiment, trailed off as you stared at the nudge of his fingernail into a crooked rectangle.

“Can you do me a favor, when you go back home?”

“Please don’t tell me not to forget you. We live in the twenty-first century. I expect a picture of Seokjin with his shrimp magazine once a week.”

He was smiling when his hand slipped to your cheek, turning your gaze to his. “I’m serious,” His eyes flicked between yours, dizzying you in a mess of stars that never seemed to blur with the speed of his insistent gaze. “Scrap your entire novel. Start over.”

“What? Do you understand—”

Jeongguk’s lips felt like home. You hadn’t placed your guard around those. “I don’t understand. You won’t let me read it,” His forehead pressed to yours, “but just try it.”

“But Namjoon—”

Another kiss, gentle, a brush of your mouths together, just enough to swallow your insecurities. “The new one will be just as great. Better. More than enough to send to Namjoon.”

“How do you know?”

His thumb brushed against the apple of your cheek, eyes following the movement, “Would you allow him to read your current draft in its entirety? Not just what you’ve gotten finished while here.”

You hesitated long enough for Jeongguk to kiss you again, lingering enough to properly swallow what you were going to say. No, absolutely not.

“Might as well try—” His cheeks dimpled and it was the first genuine smile you’d allowed yourself in days, “—right?”

“Can you do me a favor?” You asked after several seconds of indulging in each other’s affections, lips swollen and brushing against his mouth.

“I won’t send you shirtless pictures every morning, no—” He shifted enough to shed himself of the pink checkered flannel on his shoulders, wrapping it to your shoulders to pull you against his side, “Taehyung already thinks I’m vain.”

You smacked Jeongguk’s shoulder and he giggled, leaning forward just enough to brush the tips of your noses together. Once. Twice. Four times.

“No,” You tilted to squish your noses together, locking his gaze to yours, “Try to pursue something with music. I don’t care if it’s DJing at that shitty club Taehyung was trying to get us to go to last week. Or maybe busking on the weekends. You can set up in front of the pond as you enter the neighborhood.”

“I don’t…”

“Try it,” You punctuated it with a hard kiss to his lips, “What can it hurt?”

You’d shifted to lay between his legs, cheek on his chest, kisses shifted to his chest over his shirt, his sprinkled to your forehead, cheeks, nose. He hummed into the ministrations, nosing over your hairline.

“Theoretically, if I were to become a famous musician, would you come to my first gig? It’ll never happen, but you’re a writer. Speaking in hypotheticals...”

You settled your chin between the hard planes of his chest, “Depends. Will you buy my novel?”

“Three copies. I’ll come to three separate book signings to get personalized notes from you.”

You giggled and Jeongguk couldn’t help but kiss your nose. Twice. “Then yes. I’ll come to your first gig. Maybe two of them, if you pay for my plane ticket.”

He seemed satisfied with the answer even as an insecurity seemed to linger on the tip of his tongue, one that festered when he glanced over your head to the ocean, still as dark and thrashing as before. “You really won’t forget about me, will you? Because truthfully, I don’t think I’ll ever forget about you.”

“You’re stuck with me, unfortunately. Give me your email and we can be penpals. You can remind me not to crush the dreams of elementary students while I’m at work…”

“...but no, Jeongguk,” You squeezed his waist, pressing your lips to the center of his chest, “I won’t forget you.”

“I’ll still send you my lyrics. They’ll probably be about you for a while, anyway.”

“I’ll let you read snippets of my novel, once I restart. Actually let you read something I’m proud of.”

“I’ll send you a picture of the first dollar I get from busking. It’ll probably be from Seokjin, but it’ll count.”

“I’ll miss you. And your cookies.”

“Miss implies forgetting,” His index finger lifted to prod at your pouted bottom lip, “We aren’t forgetting.”

Another sad smile, a different type of sad, one of the up most cliche smile because it happened, adorned your features as you raised a pinky finger. Slightly crooked, open, without your guard, “Pinky promise?”

Jeongguk’s lips distracted you from the feeling of home that came with the link of your pinky’s, squeezing onto your digit. “Pinky promise.”

Zero progress in eight weeks.

Park Jimin was standing in front of your desk with a copy of your novel in hand, a nervous smile pasted on his plump lips, feet shifting awkwardly beneath him as he waited on you to finish typing. He’d told you to keep working and who were you to deny him of that request.

“What can I do for you?” It wasn’t anything work related. You’d already passed the advice column and your office down to him in exchange for a feature column and a better office with a better computer monitor. He wasn’t getting that too.

The book hit your desk and he scurried to amend the flurry of papers that kicked up around it, speaking as he shuffled through the documents. “My girlfriend, she, uh, loves your novel and I was wondering if you could, uh, sign it for me? Maybe? It’d make her day, year probably, and—”

“Yeah, Jimin,” You reached for the book, dismissing his efforts to clean your desk with a flick of your wrist and a smile, a genuine one, “Of course I can sign it. What’s her name?”

The waxy cover contained the result of your efforts, the painstaking nights you’d stayed up sobbing over your manuscript, the early symptoms of carpal tunnel from hacking at your backspace too much, your familiarity with deleting and recovering entire documents. But most importantly, the return of your passion, your love, your fears the ultimate roadblock to the end of your novel and the beginning of a new, the one currently hidden behind a couple emails and your column for the following week.

The beauty of dual screens.

“Thank you so much,” The blonde gushed, clutching the novel against his chest when you were done scrawling on the cover with a ballpoint pen, “She’ll be so excited. Thank you!”

Your phone was prepared to text Hoseok, did you pay Jimin to do that?, when you noticed another notification, red and glaring at you from your messages application. It was a familiar contact name, a message written in a font generated by something, a three step process he must have taken to type, copy, and paste it. Even through the silly font did your heart swell.

They say lest we forget, but why forget when I can be there with you, if you’ll let me.

You kicked away from your desk, propping your foot onto the seat of your chair, phone onto your knee.

Alright, Guk, what’s the significance of this one?

There was several seconds of typing, deleting, typing again, silence, more typing. Finally, a message. A single emoticon, the side eyes, the ones that knew something with a slightly upturned mouth. You were halfway through another inquiry, an okay, what the hell does that emoji mean, Jeon? when you received a picture.

His hair was brown now. Dark and fluffy and disheveled across his forehead where a single pink note was pasted to his skin. The ink was dark, prominent, like he’d sat and scraped at it for hours.

I’LL SEE YOU SOON.

You called him.

“Jeongguk, what the fuck are you talking about—”

“I got an audition.”

You paused and he continued with a shaky breath, “I got an audition. In your town. For music. Singing.”

“...so what you’re saying is you’re going to become a big superstar and I’m going to have to pay my own way to your first concert—”

“Baby,” Jeongguk whined, “I haven’t got the spot yet.”

“Yeah, but you will.”

There was another pause, some rustling in the background and then he hummed, “I’m going to sing a song about you. For the audition.”

Your cheeks heated and you rolled toward the window, blankly staring at the towering building next to the office. “Yeah? What’s it called?”

“Wonder.”

“Yeah I wonder what you’ve titled the song about me, if it’s not my name—”

“The song is called Wonder…”

There was a pause and he was singing again, just as soft as you remembered, the same lyrics he’d serenaded you with on the beach holding a different weight now, both literally without the organic strum of a guitar and figuratively to what the polished poetry did to your healed heart, open and ready.

You murmured into his soft, teasing hums, hugging a knee to your chest, “That song, huh?”

“I told you already. I can’t seem to write anything that’s not about you,” You could hear Jeongguk’s smile, “That didn’t change in the months since you went home.”

Your cheeks heated all the way to the back of your neck, filtering to the shy roll of your shoulders as you hunched over your knee, squeezing it tighter, and you reveled in that he couldn’t see you to quip, “You know what has changed though? Your jokes. I think they’ve gotten dumber.”

There was still a smile in his voice, even as he threatened, “Alright, listen here you little—"

“Watch it or I’ll sue for you using ‘me’ without my consent.”

“You based an entire character in a bestselling novel after me. It’s only fair.”

You spluttered, “I did not—”

“And for the record? Washboard abs is a lame description of my godly physique. Even I know that and I’m but a mere lyricist.”

“I’m going to kick your ass when you get here.”

“...so you’ll want to see me?”

“Of course,” Your voice softened and you watched a bird climb altitude before fluttering to the windowsill, “I have to sign your three copies of my novel.”

Jeongguk laughed, sweet in your ears.

“I can’t wait…”

#bts #jeon jungkook #bts reactions #bts scenarios #bts imagines #jungkook scenario #jungkook scenarios #jungkook imagine #jungkook x reader #jeon jungkook scenarios #jeon jungkook imagine #jeon jungkook x reader #jungkook fluff #bts fluff #bts x reader #i changed the summary from what i had on my wip ajfdklasjf #ANYWAY :'-)

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ask-de-writer · 4 years

Text

DARING DO and THE GRYPHON’S QUEST! : MLP Fan Fiction : Part 17 of 19

Return to the Master Story Index

Return to MLP Fan Fiction

DARING DO

and

THE GRYPHON’S QUEST!

De Writer (Glen Ten-Eyck)

and

Carmen Pondiego

Cover art by Aranel the Cyborg, now Wind the Mama Cat

29584 words

Writing begun 03/29/16

This is a Fan Fiction based on My Little Pony. Canterlot, Princess Luna and the name Daring Do are owned by Hasboro Inc.

//////////////

Users of Tumblr.com are specifically granted the following rights. They may reblog the story. They may use the characters or original characters in my settings for fan fiction, fan art works, cosplay, or fan musical compositions, provided that such things are done without charge. I will allow those who do commission art works to charge for their images.

All sorts of fan art, cosplay, music or fictions is actively encouraged.

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Chapter 17. The Coward’s Weapon!

Daring Do was pleasantly surprised at just how good her half brother Blendin was at specimen preparation. There was another surprise for her too.

Friend spent much of her time crooning to her Eagle eggs. She did frequently leave her nest and lend her green magic to the task, usually greatly simplifying the work. It was the greatest assistance at particularly difficult or delicate times in the preparation of the failed nymphs that she had loved so dearly and watched over for so many centuries.

Almost any time that they took a break from the arduous task before them, Friend would leave the eggs and nest protected by a nearly invisible glow of green magic. She would take a place beside Daring Do and purr/croon softly. Daring Do found real rest and comfort in the love that Friend shared with her. She often rested her head against the changeling’s horn and shared thought and memory.

It was from that sharing that she learned something surprising about Friend. When her hive was attacked by war equipped and battle ready unicorns, Friend defended the hive’s precious eggs.

She slaughtered ten of the enemy, literally tearing them to pieces in the defense of those eggs. When her shared hive mind felt the Queen die, she went briefly berserk. Four of the ten attacking unicorns that she killed fell in those few moments.

It was duty and love for the eggs that she tended that brought her back to something resembling sanity. Taking all of the eggs that she could carry, she fled into the night.

The world outside of the hive was a strange and confusing place at first. By luck alone, she found a long disused road that led to the mountains. She did the best that she could but it was not enough. One by one, she felt the spark of returned love die out of each of the eggs. Her heart was torn asunder by the loss.

Daring Do knew the rest of the story. What she did not know was the sheer depth of feeling that Friend had developed for her. She meant it when she said that Daring Do was Matunen, Hive Queen, in the ancient tongue of Early Middle Equestrian.

Friend was totally contented for the first time in ages. That in no way interfered with any whit of her egg tending.

Blendin saw his half sister’s serene relaxation around Friend and was glad. The Apprentice Librarian of the Great Library in him was glad too. He was learning things about conservation of irreplaceable delicate artifacts and relics that would apply to his work in the Great Library.

Once everything was ready, he stared at the results of their work in wonder. He had not only helped to prepare the whole foundation for the creation of an entire intelligent species, he had it and all of his half sister’s notes cataloged for the Great Library!

Together, they sent a note of their progress to the Empress.

The door, upon opening, showed the Empress, Grata, and Hisst, the Right Wing of the Imperial Throne. The hallway was blocked by heavily armed Imperial Guards in full battle armor.

Daring Do was about to ask if such precautions were necessary when a loud, harsh voice from up the hallway demanded, “This is all Blasphemous! Even if it were the truth and showed our ancient roots, it would still be blasphemy! The Holy Legends declare that Faith alone is sufficient and seeking truth beyond its holy pages undermines Faith!

“Whatever is here must be destroyed!”

The Empress responded, “What is about to be destroyed is YOU, Krapper! You have fifteen seconds to be around the curve and out of OUR sight before I order my troops to open fire!”

“You would not dare!”

“Nine seconds left, Krapper.”

There was a clatter of claws on stone as the speaker retreated!

The Empress drew a deep breath, her crest showing disgust. “The entire lot of First Creation Idiots want to destroy the only real history that our kind has.”

Friend spoke up, “Your Majesty, they are wrong. This I/we know. Before I/we loved the eggs that became the nymphs of your kind, I/we saw changelings. I/we saw unicorns. I/we saw Eagles. I/we saw pegassi.

“I/we helped matunen Daring Do and brother Blendin to be sure that these failed nymphs truly show how I/we loved the eggs that became the nymphs that are your kind.”

The Empress, crest showing deep thought, began tracing the development of her kind. She was reading the placards set by each step of the way. Looking over to the true mother of her whole species, she asked, “Why did you go from pony to big cat for our hindquarters?”

Friend crowded over to point as she spoke. “Not all big cat. See how these bones go? That is from the pegassus. The head was carnivore, Eagle. The hindquarters had to eat meat too or fail. I/we did see a lion in mountains once, close enough to feel its insides by loving it. I/we used what I/we knew.”

Grata, crest rippling in laughter, exclaimed, “We are so lucky that she didn’t see a bear!”

After the fit of laughter passed around the room, the Empress asked, “How will this all be presented, Doctor Do?”

Daring Do sketched rapidly. “The case, to be portable must be of stout woodwork. The front viewing window should be made of glass that has been spell strengthened like a Magic Net mirror.”

The Empress nodded, crest showing some concern. “You mentioned not risking the real relics and that is a good idea.

“We have General Iron Hooves here with some of his munitions experts. The team that they are consulting with is known to you, though we know that you do not like them much.

“V.I.L.E. Is here. They have sent Carmen Pondiego, Baron Von Nighthoof, Marehem Skadefryd, and Kiros Asbhy. I understand that they have also got a number of Agents here too.”

Crest smiling, the Empress went on, “I was warned to be sure that I still have both mandibles of my beak after dealing with them. However, they will be absolutely honest with family.

“They have several missions. One is being worked on now with General Ironhooves and his aides. Another is to be the agency for creating your cases and making the copies for display. I will be ordering twenty sets.”

Daring Do, looking doubtful, did agree, “I have to admit that when it comes to museum quality duplication, Mom’s company is unexcelled.”

An all too familiar voice caroled from the doorway, “So sweet to hear you actually say something nice about my company! Of course we are honest! V.I.L.E. has never been caught or proved to be guilty of ANY crime at all!

“Suspicions? Poof! Suspicion and a cup of tea will get you anything from a nice Bergamont to bag of Lupton’s Worst!

Carmen Pondiego strutted into the room in her trademark porkpie hat and fire engine red dress. She called over her shoulder, “General, Dear, would you please come in and see for yourself what my daughter found that is causing all this mess?”

General Ironhooves entered the door. He was in his simple field uniform.

He tipped his Campaign Hat to the Empress and her Wings. He approached the study tables, examining the relics with care. He picked up Daring Do’s voluminous field notes and sketches, seeming to leaf through them, except that once in a while he stopped long enough to separate pages that stuck together.

He put down the books and turned to the Empress. “Ma'am, you have chosen your battlefield perfectly. Better, you have the enemy in the sights of your artillery.

“I hope that it does not come to armed conflict, but if it does, after consulting with Carmen here, I think that you will have a LOT of surprises for them!”

Daring Do managed to look skeptical. “Only them?”

Before Carmen could snark back, Marehem wandered in, right past the security detail. He grinned. “Helps to be a misfortune changel …”

His eyes bugged out. It was the first time that Daring Do could remember that her uncle Marehem was caught totally off guard!

“An Egg-tender, HERE? How did that happen? How can she live without a hive?”

Friend looked up from serenely turning the eggs in the nest. She smiled as she said, “Matunen Daring Do.”

Uncle M stopped like he’d hit a brick wall headfirst. “Adora, Matunen? A queen?”

The Empress nodded, crest rippling amusement. “It hit us like that too, when we realized that Friend is OVER two thousand years old. She was the sole survivor of a destroyed hive.

“Tending eggs kept her sane. She is the Mother who loved an unstable and fatal hybridization into becoming our strong race. I gather that for her, loving means something other than a simple feeling.”

Marehem got it together to say, “It sure does. The eggs a queen lays are sort of neutral. They will develop as random kinds of changelings. Give them to an Egg-tender and tell her how many of which sort, worker, other egg-tenders, drones, even a queen, and that is what you will get. Their love is a very complex magic that no other kind can do.”

Daring Do, eyes twinkling, suggested, “Make the order for V.I.L.E. twenty one copies. We will donate one to the Nightmare Wars Collection of the Royal Museum!”

General Ironhooves grinned hugely. “You really want to shaft those First Creationists, don’t you?”

Daring Do simply said, “Yes. They defile and deny the history that I have devoted my life to.”

Carmen pointed to the work tables and said, “Will you take a real compliment from your mother, Adora? This, notes, restorations, preparation and all is a fantastic piece of work.

V.I.L.E. will duplicate it with the greatest of care. With your permission, we will keep a copy for our own private museum.”

Mutely, Daring Do nodded.

She saw Uncle M talking to a Magic Net mirror and turning it to show everything.

Carmen pointed to an especially fragile relic and said, “Be especially careful of this one, Baron.”

One by one, the laboriously prepared relics, notes and all quietly vanished. General Ironhooves simply noted, “Handy trick, that!”

Daring Do, Friend, with her nest, and Blendin were brought to a large suite with an open airy feeling. One Gryphon port was open enough for the Eagles to get in and out but not Gryphons. The rooms were swarmed with Eagles.

Friend immediately shared that soft green magic of hers to include all of the waiting Eagles. The way that they crowded close about the nest, it was clear that they had been waiting for Friend’s loving magic. Several shuffled aside and one reached out a beak and snagged Daring Do’s tunic, making her join or get a torn tunic. She joined the Eagles in luxuriating in the literal glow of Friend’s shared love.

After a few days of resting up, Rahak came by. Crest at attention, he requested, “Doctor Do, master Blendin, would you come please? The display copies are ready for examination.”

They followed the Wing Commander back down to the workroom. There were twenty one large cases of fine solid woodwork, each faced by stout glass armored by a spell to the toughness of steel. The contents were beautifully displayed to make the whole progression from hippogriff to Gryphon utterly clear. Each item of the display had its explanatory placard.

Neatly done on each placard was an exact copy of a reference to the actual original Legend Document, with translation. After that part was a clear, simple note explaining the item.

Central to the whole display was Daring Do’s detailed sketch of the remains of the failed nymphs in place, as they were found.

The whole thing had such an impact that Daring Do’s breath drew in, in a way that she had heard so many times as a child riding her mother’s back in a knapsack, when her mother saw some beautiful thing that she was about to steal.

Turning to an equally awestruck Blendin, Daring Do said, “Tell Carmen that this is the best display preparation that I have ever seen.”

“Thank you, dear,” said a familiar voice. A khaki colored unicorn mare in a form fitting fire engine red dress stepped out of the shadows. Daring Do was shocked to see bags under her eyes.

Carmen Pondiego told her, “The General is sleeping now. I have been working along with every agent that I have available. I cannot tell you what we have been doing. Imperial Security is involved. I only hope that it has been enough to prevent the war.”

Rahak suggested, “Let us all prepare for this evening’s banquet. That is when you will make your presentation, Doctor Do.”

Daring Do was looking around the Imperial Banquet Hall, at the many war banners that fluttered in the light breeze. There were also the banners of the provinces of the Empire. The wood and stonework was outstanding for its solidity and rich carving.

Perched on every place that they could find claw room were hundreds of Eagles, looking expectantly at Friend. Her nest had been placed conveniently close to Daring Do’s place.

The dining tables were all set so that every diner could see the big glass fronted case with its display. There were two small books by each place.

One was a copy of the original document of the Legends, written some time shortly before 54 Post Nightmare Wars. It had an exact copy of the document itself, a line by line literal translation and a third line in modern Gryphon with notes to explain the meaning of idioms used when the original was written. No commentaries. No editing. Only a foreword explaining that this was a true copy of the Legends that they all revered and tried to follow. Commentaries were dispensed with in the hope that the reader could understand what the words said and form their own opinions based on solid fact.

It was signed and sealed by the Empress herself.

The other small book contained copies of Daring Do’s expedition notes and sketches that were relevant to the display showing the origin of their species.

The First Created believers started to scream, “Blasphemy!”

The Empress herself cut them off. “Silence, Krapper! These are the Legends that you CLAIM to revere!”

“You have left out the rich and ancient commentaries!”

Her crest rippling with laughter, the Empress exclaimed, “Ancient? Krapper, the FIRST commentary was inserted into a small book like this only thirty five years ago! It had a note that it WAS NOT HOLY WRIT, only opinion. That note was removed and further commentaries added. More than half of the mass of your book has been added in just the last five years!

“It must be wonderful to be able to write up whatever you please, insert it into the next edition of your book and have it called HOLY WRIT!”

“Our Book is the true Law! Holy Word is higher than mere secular law!”

“NO, Krapper! That is direct sedition! Guards! Stand behind Krapper! If he utters one more word of sedition, cut his wing tendons at once. He will be given the LONG DROP at sunrise for the crime.”

The Empress paused for effect and added, “Now, we have a banquet laid before us. Let not Krapper’s ill manners spoil your appetite. After we have eaten, we will hear from Doctor Daring Do, whose actual facts, well documented and proven may provide you with much food for thought.”

The server placed a plate in front of Daring Do, commenting, “I hope that we got it to your taste. It is a sauced alfalfa steak. We don’t eat such fare, so we are not much used to cooking it.”

Daring Do replied with a smile, “I am sure that it will be fine. You have been doing well the last few days.”

She cut a bite and began to chew. Numbness spread from her mouth. She gasped and could draw no air. Her vision was fading slowly.

She heard, “The Blasphemer has been struck down! Any means to strike at blasphemy is honorable, the Holy Writ is clear!”

The voice of the Empress cried, “Poison is the Coward’s Weapon! Seize them! Do not wait for the Long Drop! Kill them now!”

The voice of Friend cut across the fading din, “No! Matunen still has love. I/we need them! They will wish for your long drop! I/we promise …”

Then no sight. No sound. No touch. No taste. Nothing …

<==PREVIOUS NEXT==>

Return to the Master Story Index

Return to MLP Fan Fiction

#DARING DO AND THE GRYPHON'S QUEST!#Part 17 of 19 #MLP Fan Fiction #Written by De Writer and Carmen Pondiego

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rokutvchannelbuilder-blog · 4 years

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Top 3 Ways to Create a Roku Channel

https://tvchannelpros.com

Are You a Material Creator or a Coder?

Most prospective Channel Publishers wouldn't have the moment nor the persistence-- nor in many cases, the sources-- to learn to develop a network this way. As a matter of fact, I've discovered that most ambitious Channel Publishers are NOT coders by any means, shape or type-- the majority of are material designers, and also material developers don't have the moment to find out just how to develop Roku Channels from square one. They would certainly much rather be doing what they do best-- producing web content.

Since that very first channel, I have actually developed and launched numerous channels for many years. The code itself hasn't changed (much), only the different procedures by which we code and also develop channels has transformed. Various software application as well as SaaS (Software Application as a Solution) items have actually because come into play (supposedly) making channel growth much easier for the Do-It-Yourselfer, however also for coders like me, they can commonly be time consuming and costly to discover. Some programs have reoccured, others have actually stood the test of time-- as well as are truly fantastic products for creating networks-- but once again, there's that finding out curve, and that time variable, which power element that go into producing them. For me, it's what I do. For TELEVISION Network Pros, it's what they do. For you, it's most likely not how you intend to spend your Saturday afternoon.

The 5 C's of Roku Programs

If you CAN diy, I would certainly recommend doing it. You might even intend to take into consideration taking my new Do-It-Yourself Roku network workshop. It will certainly be an enjoyable and gratifying experience to finally get it best and see your ended up Channel on the TELEVISION screen. Doing-It-Yourself CAN be costly, nonetheless. Along with the moment as well as energy, you'll need the vital parts that enter into every Roku Channel. I call these the 5 C's of Roku Stations:

1. Idea-- this is your CONCEPT for your Network, it includes the logo design, graphics, layout and also layout aspects of your channel that make it eye-catching to customers. This is the FUN part of establishing your Channel.

2. Code-- this is the actual shows (as in computer shows, not television programming) for your Network. It consists of the channel code as well as the network "feed" that requires to be developed for your Channel. (The feed is code that provides your web content to your channel from your Web content Delivery Network (CDN), both of which I go over following.) The network code must be written in Roku's exclusive BrightScript and the channel feed should after that be composed in either MRSS XML or JSON. This is the TECHNICAL component of establishing your channel.

3. Content-- this possibly do without stating, but your web content is the video clip material you intend to disperse using your Network. You must currently have that. (I'm going to tell you where to get more for FREE in a couple of minutes.) Content needs to gathered, uploaded, inscribed, after that links need to be produced for both video and also screenshots, after that those web links should be contributed to the code (above), and after that titles, summaries, periods as well as various other metadata in most cases must be included as well. This process is called, "Material Intake" as well as it is the most TAXING part of establishing as well as launching your Channel. Beyond the coding, the majority of the WORK will certainly remain in Web content Consumption, linking, etc., going forward.

4. Content Delivery Network (CDN)-- this is an unique server on which your content is stored AND from which it is streamed to your Channel. For a lot of, this can be the largest cost. A CDN resembles host, yet NOT. You can not make use of conventional web hosting to shop and also serve your video material to a Roku Channel. You CAN NOT connect your YouTube videos and offer them from YouTube to your Channel, either. If you could, then this would certainly all be a whole lot less expensive to do. But you can't. And it's not. Though Roku and Connected TV usage "Internet Method (IP)" to stream web content, they just can not stream directly from the Web. (There's a long as well as technological answer to this that is possibly beyond the extent of this book.) Rather, you require to make use of a CDN that is created especially for streaming to Connected Television platforms. The CDN alone can set you back anywhere from several hundred to several hundreds of bucks simply to establish, and afterwards in most cases there's month-to-month charges and TRANSMISSION CAPACITY fees. If you're Doing-It-Yourself, this is one of the most COSTLY component of establishing as well as launching your Network.

5. Commitment-- Once you have every one of the above in place, the MOST INTEGRAL PART of creating and introducing your Network is making the COMMITMENT to manage it, keep it and update it often. You can toss a Channel up on the system and also never touch it again, and you will still get customers-- a minimum of one or two times anyway. They'll visit your channel the first time, search your web content as well as possibly find something to see. After that they'll return a couple of days or a week or a month later on to see what's brand-new. If there's nothing new, they most likely will not come back again. The KEY to an effective Roku Channel is to maintain your web content FLOWING; to keep it upgraded as well as fresh, often. That takes commitment.

If every one of that appears easy sufficient to you, after that I entirely suggest you attempt Doing-It-Yourself. I'll also advise THREE programs right here that will certainly help:

Roku Direct Author

Roku uses its own, totally-free channel-building system readily available at http://developer.roku.com. You merely sign-up and also comply with the directions to develop and release your own network. It's all window-driven, much like adding a product to eBay. You give your Channel a title, you include summaries, you select shades, upload logo designs (in the required dimensions as well as styles) and more. Nevertheless, it does have some noticeable challenges for the amateur Channel Publisher

Getting Started with Roku Direct Publisher.

First, you will still need your very own Web content Delivery Network (CDN)-- once more, this can set you back anywhere from numerous hundred to a number of hundreds of dollars, plus month-to-month costs and also transmission capacity in many/most situations-- OR you can use TV Channel Pros's Material Distribution Service (CDS) which is a much less-expensive choice to costly CDNs. TELEVISION Channel Pros CDS gives the same high quality of service and reliable streaming as the more pricey CDNs but at a portion of the price, beginning at simply $12.95 a month, depending on just how much content you have to serve, without any additional bandwidth costs.

Next Off, Roku Direct Publisher requires every network to have its own channel "feed." This is a separate item of coding that provides instructions to the CDN (or CDS) above as to what video web content to reveal and also where. You'll need to create your feed in either MRSS XML or JSON. After that you'll require a place to ORGANIZE your feed. (The feed can in fact be held on typical host, whatever that costs you.).

The Feed File Obstacle.

Creating a feed documents is where most aspiring Do-It-Yourselfers struck a wall surface. Unexpectedly, the "very easy method" to constructing a channel ends up being much more complicated and lots of surrender. Never ever fear though, due to the fact that TV Network Pros currently uses customized MRSS XML and JSON Feed Themes that you can use (starting at just $49.95), in addition to simple-to-follow guidelines and also technology assistance to aid you obtain your feed right. You just copy-and-paste your web content links right into the feed file design template, add titles, descriptions, etc., for each video, as well as BOOM, you have a Roku-Ready feed for your Channel. TELEVISION Network Pros will certainly even HOLD your feed file for a small month-to-month fee.

Cost of Making Use Of Roku Direct Publisher.

All in, given you have your network logo and graphics to start, establishing a channel with Roku Direct Author (cost-free), plus TV Network Pros CDS solution, their customized MRSS XML or JSON feed, and organizing for your feed, you're looking at just $73 a month to introduce Do-It-Yourself, not consisting of the time and also power and also sources that go into ingesting your web content to the CDN, or into handling, preserving as well as upgrading your Channel every single month.

Instantaneous TELEVISION Channel.

Another great tool for the Roku Channel Do-It-Yourselfer is Immediate TV Channel (ITVC)-- http://www.instanttvchannel.com. This is a "cloud-based" Roku development service that sets you back $49.95 a month. I've personally utilized it for a number of networks and I enjoy it. It supplies better adaptability in creating your channel. You can develop various formats, you quickly incorporate sophisticated capability, you can incorporate more advertising and marketing streams than you can with Roku Direct Publisher, and a lot more.

With ITVC, you may find the arrangement part is a little difficult and also involved than with Roku Direct Publisher, but ITVC makes the "feed" part much easier by doing that help you. Rather than needing to code your video clip material directly into an MRSS XML or JSON feed, ITVC creates and also keeps the feed automatically. You simply include your video clip titles and also summaries, along with your video links and screenshot links right into ITVC's Interface, rather than right into a code documents, as well as results are instant. (Thus the name, "Instantaneous TELEVISION Channel.").

You Do Not Required a Feed Documents.

With ITVC, you won't require a feed data, however you'll still need organizing for it as well as for the different code files ITVC immediately creates and updates for your channel. With ITVC you don't truly have a selection for that since it requires you to use Amazon AWS, which incidentally, is totally-free for the very first year and afterwards $1-- 10 a month after that, depending upon how much web traffic your channel gets. With ITVC, you'll still require a Material Shipment Network (CDN), as well as once again, your best and least-expensive alternative for that would certainly be TV Channel Pros Web Content Distribution Service (CDS) starting at just $12.95 a month.

Expense of Making Use Of ITVC.

Done in, the price to launch a Roku Network utilizing ITVC ($ 49.95/ month), Amazon AWS (totally free for one year) as well as TV Network Pros Content Delivery Solution (CDS) can be just $63 a month. Once more, just like Roku Direct Author, that doesn't consist of the moment and power as well as resources that enter into consuming your content, or into managing, keeping and also updating your Network each month moving forward.

Network Screening and also Approval.

With both of these solutions-- Roku Direct Author and also ITVC-- the network testing as well as authorization process can take anywhere from one to six weeks. (As well as no one ever actually understands precisely the length of time.) So make sure to take that right into factor to consider when finding out your network's launch and also promotional schedule.

A Faster, Easier Service is on the Following Web page.

Keep in mind MOST OF THE FUNCTION (that is, the "labor,") involved in establishing, introducing and preserving a Roku Network hinges on Content Ingestion and also Channel Management. Prior to you determine to Do It All Yourself, you need to quit and also believe just how much your time is in fact worth to you. If you have the time as well as the patience to do it, as well as to find out exactly how to make use of the above programs, of course, do it. Otherwise, below's a much FASTER as well as SIMPLER way to develop and introduce your very own Roku Network, despite your budget. Time- as well as energy-wise, this is most definitely your least-expensive choice:.

TV Network Pros Complete Roku Channel Program.

TELEVISION Network Pros provides three channel plans. When considering which strategy is ideal for you, consider the quantity of time that would in fact go into consuming and creating links for each of your video clips, then literally linking them into your network code, including titles, summaries, screenshot links, and so on. You'll swiftly see why each plan is a great deal in connection with the amount of video clip content as well as job involved with each-- and on top of that, THEY do all the work for you on a continuous, monthly basis, as-needed.

There's just NO much better means to create and introduce a Roku Channel. Where it can usually take 1 to 6 weeks for authorization with the other remedies, with TV Network Pros, you can see your brand-new network authorized in as low as 7 days. https://tvchannelpros.com

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angelinefunderbu · 5 years

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Merge Music

After downloading and utilizing MergeMP3 I received a call that additionally they needed to split a number of music tracks into smaller pieces. Transloadit permits you to merge an audio file and a picture to generate a video. In all probability essentially the most environment friendly strategy to register your tune (or work) with BMI is through your on-line account Songs registered online will be present in BMI's Repertoire Catalog practically instantly. Mp3 Audio Editor helps you to be a part of the separate audio recordsdata right into a single audio monitor with the identical or fully completely different codecs. You simply import and add the MP3 recordsdata in succession to the timeline. That's assuming you ripped all of these fragment MP3's on the identical time and so they have the identical audio settings. Select the tracks within the merge list you'd choose to insert silence with, then click on 'Silence' to launch a setting home home windows as proven on the correct facet. I needed to report my one-take stream of consciousness podcast using a program known as Easy Recorder , save the file, then merge it with a preexisting MP3 file that contained the canned podcast introduction. Choose MP3 recordsdata" from the Save as kind" drop-down menu. Select and examine info you'd prefer to merge. Audacity presents many extra selections, however actually if all you want is to make a chunk of audio shorter - maybe for a ring tone - then Free MP3 Cutter will get the job completed. How To Use MP3 Merge - Download this system in a zipper file from the developer here Extract the zip file and run the program - in our examples, we will use the instructions from the File menu however you can also use the equal icons on the toolbar. When the method completes, it can provide a hyperlink to obtain the combo. Besides combing audio information , the crossfade feature of makes the merged songs stream one into another seamlessly. If you need a quick machine to merge a few songs, Audio Joiner is the software you want. four. Reversing the MP3 files are supported as effectively. Free Audio Cutter helps chopping or merging audio formats MP3, OGG, WAV and WMA. Merely click the MP3 Joiner acquire button at the web page. My mission involved trying to merge 4 dozen or so tracks, in order, from every folder so each folder constituted one track, with each folder representing about an hours worth of material. All of the methods above will surely benefit you in accordance to your need. The first free audio joiner could be very really useful for it's easy and efficient, and has no limits. It is particular acceptable for many who do not prefer to put in extra packages. Freemake Audio Converter will appeal to the users with its intuitive interface and quite a lot of supported codecs. For Mac prospects, merge songs online Fission possibly a dependable alternative for it may presumably merge MP3s on any Mac operating packages with ease. On this article, we present a simple methodology to be part of numerous mp3 into one with out re-encoding or convert the source MP3 data into different audio codecs like WAV, AAC, M4A, and so on. In home windows XO I would first have the entire story mp3s in movie maker, after which from the index of present or imported recordsdata copy and paste different particulars. To begin with its mp3 merger operate it's important set up it first and launch it. Now on the Audacity's interface hit File > Open and load all the mp3 tracks that you simply need to affix collectively. ✓you possibly can reduce and merge the mp3 data using Mp3 Cutter & Merger. In case you current little interest in above excessive-listed 5 on-line MP3 joiners, we right here specifically give you yet yet one more alternative, Joyoshare MP3 Joiner It's extraordinarily wanted owing to its great efficiency. Added auto detection of whether or not VBR frame is required throughout the merged file. The Merger lets you take multiple audio recordsdata, rearrange them in whatever order you want, then export it as a single mixed audio file. The Cutter permits you to take a single audio file, choose a start and finish time, then export that choice as a separate audio file. As said above, this utility only supports MP3 and WAV file extensions, and it's doable to upload an audio observe by the use of each the file browser or the drag and drop" function. You probably have a number of tracks that might sound greater merged as one, observe this step-by-step and mix these tracks into one huge file. Observe: Whenever you see All Free MP3 Cutter listed inside the All applications" tab, one different strategy is to begin the uninstall from there and if Revo Uninstaller Professional detects an applicable log from its database it's going to likely be robotically used for the uninstall.

Merging audio recordsdata, or joining is beneficial for creating soundtracks for movies, mixes with out gaps or your personal audio stream to play as an MP3. Streaming could be the method of things proper now however in the event you own your music and wish to play it your approach, merging means that you can create one lengthy combine out of a lot of smaller tracks. Listed here are five audio instruments you can use to merge audio recordsdata. For MP3 Merger, it does not matter if the audio files you are merging are available in a single or totally different formats. Merge MP3 can join mp3 recordsdata in quite a lot of audio formats, encoded with different codecs utilizing totally different settings. It is straightforward to affix information you downloaded collectively even if all of them come in numerous codecs. A simple technique to document out of your show screen in HD. Make video footage of any software program, http://www.mergemp3.com record on-line streaming video, webinars, even Skype calls, and save clips in all trendy codecs. Weeny Free Audio Cutter helps cutting or merging audio codecs MP3, OGG, WAV and WMA. That can save the merged MP3 file in your default Music folder. This web page gives a simple program that may shortly and simply merge a number of MP3 recordsdata. Load the audio information you want to merge into AVS Audio Converter. It's advisable to rearrange the MP3 recordsdata that you just simply need to merge in a folder so to add the folder as a substitute of importing audio file one after the other. You may receive info from ASCAP concerning your on-line application instantly upon submission. Merge MP3 is a conveyable gadget that is awfully straightforward to utilize and compact in measurement.

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earleshealy53-blog · 5 years

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Merge Data Label

Helium Audio Joiner, as its name suggests, means that you can merge various audio tracks into one single file utilizing an intuitive interface and superior instruments. MP3 Joiner Mac or MP3 Merger Mac Lion is a straightforward-to-use softwares to merge, combine, merge MP3s be part of MP3 tracks. Only must confirm Merge into one file" with mouse, you can merge multiple MP3 clips collectively right into a singe MP3 audio file with excessive audio high quality. You possibly can configure a website-enormous setting to inform Configuration Manager 2007 whether or not or not to mechanically create new information when it detects duplicate hardware IDs, or to permit you to resolve when to merge mp3s, block, or create new shopper data. I have a query about merging tracks in PT12. I normally document electrical guitars with two microphones, usually a dynamic microphone and a ribbon microphone. I document them on two seperate mono tracks. Now, during mixing, I find that I put the faders of these tracks on the same level as on this explicit case it is the greatest "blend" to my ears. Would it be doable to merge these two mono tracks into one mono track? Then I don't have to send the tracks to a seperate mono bus and would maintain the track rely down. I used to do this on a regular basis in Logic with the "glue tool", however I have never found a technique to do it in PT12 yet. Any assistance is welcome. Mp3splt gives a set of an open-source digital audio splitter to separate mp3, ogg vorbis and FLAC files without decoding or recompressing. It runs on Linux, Mac OS X, and Microsoft Windows operating programs. With mp3splt you possibly can cut up single MP3 and OGG information into smaller elements in an easy means. Merely open up the file and then choose the splitting technique you would like to use: set the split points manually, tell this system to divide the file in keeping with silence breaks between tracks, use a cue file or search a web based CD database for information about the album. Utilizing Mp3 Cutter and Merger is de facto easy: you simply have to pick the audio file that you must work with, after which reduce and paste the fragment that you just're keen on. Once you're executed merging your audio file, you'll be able to play it instantly from the app. ➜ Supports massive number of codecs in all of the features - MP3 Cutter, Merge, Metadata Track Editor etc. Added capability to make use of ID3 tag of any file within the checklist because the ID3 tag of the merged file. I have several audio CDs, each one having one lecture on it. Nevertheless, the one lecture is split up into approximately 70 tracks on each CD. Therefore, when I try to RIP the CD into an MP3 file, I get roughly 70 MP3s for every lecture. Merge mp3 files online mp3 merge files mp3 merge online download merge mp3 merge mp3 file join mp3 online merge mp3 on-line free mergemp3 mp3 merger merge music together online merge mp3 online be part of songs collectively on-line merge two mp3 information on-line merge mp3 free mp3 merger software program free download merge songs on-line free merge two songs together on-line free merge mp3 audacity. Take into account the following picture. There are three exact matches and there are two information in which the just telephone number field differs. In this case, CRM will auto-merge the first three information and prompt the user to resolve battle within the final two records. As soon as the conflict has been resolved, the information will probably be merged.

With Home windows Film Maker, you'll cut up video, merge videos, decelerate or speed up video, add effects, set video transitions, add titles, and many others. What could disappoint you is that it doesn't offer video cutting possibility. What's extra, some guys say that Windows Movie Maker sucks in Home windows 10. 2) From here on, you're in total management concerning the audio tracks and which of them you need to import or merge. The blue cog marked within the image below is the key to your endeavors: mark the audio strains you need merged (first!), then click the cog and find the Be part of CD Tracks possibility (second). Click to substantiate your selection. Do you have a number of MP3 tracks which are inflicting you a priority otherwise you need to create individual clippings? Merge them into one album or cut up them into separate files utilizing MakeitOne MP3 Album Maker. This instrument doesn't have a limit on the songs that it could possibly take hence; you may take a number of recordsdata at a time and be a part of them into one MP3 monitor. Added help for Recording Audios. Now you may File Audios throughout the app and then use it for Trim, Merge, Combine & extra. A brand new copy of the music is created, with the merged tracks changed by a single Audio Recorder track. The original music stays out there within the My Songs browser. The All Recordsdata display acts like a a number of clip selection: it's displayed when the property values do not match across the choice. As with a a number of choice, when the show mode is ready to All Files, any data you have entered right into a property will be entered into the XMP of each element file that makes up the merged clip. How can I manage and merge duplicate records in my Act! database. The maximum upload measurement is 64Mb, if the overall measurement of your information is larger than this, Merge Activities will not work. Weeny Free Audio Cutter must be another audio merging and splitting software for you. The software program helps MP3, OGG, WMA and WAV files as the enter audio formats, the DRM protected WMA information excluded. Because of the built-in audio editor of Weeny Free Audio Cutter could be very helpful for creating customized ringtones or managing lengthy audio recording information. One more reason to decide on the software program ought to be the different parameters you'll be able to select to regulate the audio files, such because the sampling frequency, channel mode and audio bitrate. Just add multiple audio information into the list, and merge these recordsdata into one audio file with the software program now. MAC: We sign bands for a similar causes we signed them after we first started reaching out beyond our group of friends: We are moved by the music. There are many great bands and great artists on the market—loads to go round, and we have now to remind ourselves we can't put out each report we like. Hopefully, being artists ourselves facilitates the communication and the connection between Merge and people we work with; we've got been in lots of the similar conditions they find themselves in whether it is making a report or being on tour, or attempting to steadiness your life as an artist. Even something so simple as what a sticker or an album sleeve ought to seem like…we now have thought about all of those issues many times from both sides.

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icon-devcodapage · 5 years

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Top 15 Online Plagiarism Checker Tools for Bloggers in 2019

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Writing is like respiration for bloggers. If you wish to develop your weblog, one method to do it is to improve your publishing frequency.

But what might break you is that you simply write great content after which find out that Google penalizes you, why that?

As a result of there was plagiarism in your articles. And all of your arduous work is gone as a result of one article was slightly bit just like one other’s. Annoying, right?

What’s even more annoying is that you simply start hiring individuals because you need to grow your weblog much more and begin focusing on extra necessary strategies.

In the long run, you find that your weblog is penalized and as an alternative of rising your visitors, your visitors will drop dramatically in a day without any notice… and you lost the money you paid for the author.

What in the event you might know if there are any similarities between your submit and others on the web with a fast examine earlier than publishing your publish, so you don’t get penalized and all your exhausting work is gone with out you notice.

That is what you’ll uncover in this publish.

But first, let’s talk about plagiarism, later we’ll talk about online plagiarism checker.

What’s plagiarism

To put it in easy phrases, plagiarism is stealing somebody’s concept or work without referencing him.

So in case you are writing an essay for your instructor and you will write about an concept that’s already coated by someone’s else, you might want to reference him at the finish of the article.

In case you don’t, then you’ve got already achieved plagiarism.

When fascinated with it, then a lot of the content you write isn’t your ideas. However copying the identical content, even for those who change the wording a bit of bit is considered stealing and plagiarism.

And what’s worse is that you simply copy elements of various articles and assume that by that method you’ve a singular article, and truly you don’t.

And this gained’t do you any good, so don’t attempt to do it in case you are critical about running a blog.

Varieties of Plagiarism

There are totally different varieties of plagiarism, however listed here are the few which might be widespread.

Direct Plagiarism: This is plagiarism in its greatest shape. You’re just copying a submit or an article word by phrase and call it yours. If that is your technique. Cease running a blog right now because you are wasting your time and money

Mosaic Plagiarism: This occurs if you copy phrases from a supply, but don’t put it in citation marks

Self Plagiarism: It happens once you publish your work multiple occasions. This might be an issue in case you don’t optimize your different posts right so Google doesn’t penalize you.

Unintentional Plagiarism: It happens if you by accident write a phrase or a sentence and somebody has already written it the same means. This occurs for one of the best of us, and this is what we are going to attempt to clear up in this publish.

How Google takes motion towards plagiarism

Google hates plagiarism. The least factor they need is to point out their searchers content material that is comparable to one another, which offers a horrible consumer expertise, and this can decrease the earnings of Google.

This can be a simple purpose why Google hates plagiarism. In the long run, it will affect their enterprise.

So what they do? As soon as they notice that any of your articles has elements of it copied from different sources, they penalize your blog and make it unworthy of their belief, so your hard-earned rankings for the other posts are affected as nicely.

And it happens in a moment.

After that, you want to start diagnosing the issue to seek out why that occurred, clear up it, and then begin making an attempt to get them to rank you back. That might take months in the event that they do get you again.

Typically, they gained’t even take you out of it, so you’re penalized for life.

Onerous, proper?

The answer might be easier. Just do a quick examine for plagiarism before you publish the submit and you’re good to go.

So which software to use that will help you examine for plagiarism before publishing your publish with out taking much work from you?

The very last thing you need is a software that is going to waste your time and never allow you to find in case your publish is plagiarized or not.

Greatest Tools to Examine For Plagiarism

That will help you clear up this drawback and not worry about plagiarism once and for all, this publish was created to share with you the highest tools that verify for plagiarism with out much work from you.

So you don’t need to worry if any of your articles by accident include comparable phrases to others, or if any of your writers are copying content from different blogs with out you understanding.

In fact, you gained’t know all of the content material on other blogs writing about the same articles, and also you don’t have to verify all of them each time your author ship you a brand new article. That’s more durable than writing the content material your self, proper?

So without additional ado, listed here are the top on-line plagiarism checkers…

1. Grammarly

Grammarly is among the first highly-sophisticated free online plagiarism checkers for college students and modifying tools that use its AI to know what you’re writing and offer you advice on the best way to improve your writing. It isn’t just a grammar and spelling editor.

They usually can’t call their instruments top-of-the-line if they will’t verify for plagiarism. And that’s the reason they have their plagiarism checker.

Their checker catch plagiarism from the ProQuest databases and over 16 billion net pages… sure, you read that proper.

So it isn’t only created for educational functions, but in addition for writers who don’t care a few diploma from their instructor and just want distinctive content that pleases Google.

And of course, you gained’t want to worry about your writing going public before you publish it, so don’t fear about that.

And here is the factor, you might use their plagiarism software for free, by going to this link.

And when you have the pro version, which I like to recommend you to do, then they may examine it for you mechanically, while you’re modifying your submit, so that you don’t have to do a separate verify.

In case you are wondering how I write good content material with out a lot errors in English and English is my second language, then I am positive you already know my secret 🙂

2. Copyscape

Copyscape is one in every of the first well-liked plagiarism checkers created. It is created to unravel 2 issues as a blog owner.

Find in case your content material is unique or not. You don’t need to get laughed on by a author who pays your hard-earned money to only copy content material from different sources. Their instruments aid you clear up this drawback

Know if someone steals your content material: it’s straightforward for somebody to steal your content and there’s nothing to do about it in case you don’t know that they exist. Their Copysentry program scans the online day by day for copies of your content and emails you when someone copies your content material, how cool is that?

There is a free model that allows you to verify your publish after its revealed. Simply enter the URL of the submit, and depart them to do the remaining.

If you wish to copy and paste your content and benefit from their different software that checks your content material, copy sentry, then it’s worthwhile to get the premium model.

One cool function is that you may also verify your complete website for plagiarism, how cool is that?

The worth of the premium version is Three cent per search (for as much as 200 phrases.) Each additional 100 phrases will value you 1 cent.

Not a nasty investment for your website.

But in case you are planning on benefiting from the modifying capabilities in Grammarly, then spend your cash there and don’t hassle with additional tools, until you’re hit by Google and need to examine your entire website for plagiarism.

You are able to do so here, without taking a lot time copying and pasting every of your articles, particularly, when you’ve an extended listing of phrases.

Three. Plag Scan

Plag Scan is another software that helps you find the “authenticity” of the word written as they say. They examine your content for any similarities with other content on the internet.

There are various totally different plans that have been created for schooling and large business purposes that we gained’t hassle with.

Their personal plan is what may be of curiosity to you.

This device isn’t for free, however you can get a free trial to verify the device. Their cost is a pre-paid system, the place you pay relying on the number of phrases you need to edit. They don’t care what number of documents you scan, they solely care concerning the number of words.

The smallest plan the place you possibly can examine 6500 phrases for 5.99$. 25okay words for 12.99. 62.5k phrases for 24.99$. 150okay words for 49.99$.

As you’ll be able to see, the more you pay for, the cheaper it comes. At first, you have been paying 1$/1000 words. Within the largest package deal, you’re paying 0.33$/1000 words. So maintain this in mind, in case you plan to use this software.

4. ProWritingAid

Pro Writing assist is another software that’s created to help writers make their content material appear to be knowledgeable author has written them with out being knowledgeable your self.

It helps you with modifying type and grammar errors and helps you find the fitting phrases to use.

Once more, like Grammarly, they want a plagiarism device to make their software more complete they usually did simply that. But there isn’t a free version like Grammarly.

That you must both have the premium version or buy plagiarism examine packages.

You get 50 plagiarism checks a yr in any of their premium variations, where you pay for a yr or more in advance. There’s also a lifetime choice.

You possibly can purchase plagiarism examine packages relying on the number of checks you need to do. For 10 checks, you pay 10$. For 100, you pay 40$. For 500, you pay 120$. For 1000, you pay 200$.

Once more, as you see, the extra you pay for, the much less money you’re paying per verify. So go greater, when you possibly can.

5. Quetext

Quetext is a software created particularly that will help you examine if your content is plagiarized or not. There is a free and pro model.

With the professional model, you get entry to their deep search know-how which compares your content to billions of sources as they say. 20 million books, 35 billion pages, and 1 million journals.

It’s also possible to add as much as 5 information to examine on the similar time. In the free model, you possibly can’t upload a file.

And the phrase restrict is increased to 25okay phrases as an alternative of the 500 words in the free version.

And there’s no search or reviews restrict as with other instruments in the pro model. Within the free, you solely have 3 search limits.

The price for the professional version is 9.99$ a month.

6. DupliChecker

Dupli Checker is a utterly free device that you would use to verify your content material immediately without signing up.

Once you go to the website, you’ll see a field to enter the textual content you need to verify, or the power to add a file, and then you would examine for plagiarism. You possibly can additionally do a grammar examine.

The only drawback is that you’ve a 1000 words limit per search. Simply minimize your posts in elements and you’re good to go.

There are lots of instruments you may benefit from when you do web optimization. It’s a great free software to have in your arsenal if your price range is restricted.

7. Plagium

Plagium is one other software that helps you examine the originality of your examine. You might do a fast search for 1000 phrases. In the event you do examine frequently, you will have to pay to use the device.

There’s additionally their deep search which you possibly can use for an extra layer of digging deep to seek out if there’s any drawback together with your content.

The fast search prices zero.04$/web page. The deep search costs 0.08$/page. In case you do a file search, it costs 0.005$/web page.

You may also buy credit in advance and have legitimate for a interval of a yr. And the extra you pay, the extra bonus you get, so think about it.

There are additionally month-to-month plans if you wish to use it repeatedly. The bonus is larger right here 🙂

eight. Plagiarism Verify

Plagiarism examine has been obtainable for 7 years now, and they are utilized by over 77okay users to examine their content material.

You are able to do a 1-page verify for free.

If you wish to do extra, then it is advisable buy one in every of their paid packages. There are packages for organizations, which isn’t created for bloggers, after which there’s the for people package deal.

The light package deal allow you to examine 20 pages for $5.99.

The standard package deal prices $9.99 to examine 50 pages.

The premium package deal costs $25.49 to examine 150 pages.

Select the one that fits you.

9. WhiteSmoke

Whitesmoke is one other one of many fashionable modifying tools, that’s used by many professional bloggers. Their new format has attracted a lot of people to it, and I am contemplating testing it for some time to match it with Grammarly again.

And as any modifying software, it will probably’t be full and not using a plagiarism checker, so there’s one which you get to make use of with other tools. There are not any free trials.

And you must both pay yearly or for 3-years if you wish to save a lot.

And also you get entry to the plagiarism checker in their totally different packages, so see the one which fits your need from right here, after which use it to edit your publish, and verify for plagiarism as nicely.

10. SmallSEOTools

Small search engine optimization instruments is a set of free tools that you can use that will help you together with your web optimization. There are totally different tools to use beside the plagiarism checker just like the Phrase counter, grammar verify, reverse image search and what is my IP.

You possibly can verify plagiarism by pasting an internet page, in case you have your publish revealed, or by uploading a doc file, or by pasting it immediately in the box that appears to you.

You’ve got a limit of 1000 words per search. Just reduce your posts in half, if it’s essential to search for more than that.

Great tools to use, in case you are restricted together with your finances.

11. Plagiarisma

Plagiarisma is one other device that helps you verify for plagiarism. You may even do a grammar verify from their website.

You can do a fast search from their website, or signup for free.

It has been obtainable since 2010, and it might be somewhat bit outdated.

However you can attempt it in case you are wanting for an excellent free choice.

12. DustBall

Dustball is a challenge created by Brian Klug. it is created to do a plagiarism examine. There are totally different plages with totally different languages for people who need to visit the website in a language aside from English like Spanish or Arabic.

In 2017, the power to create a plagiarism report was out there to do it for free, so it’s a plus should you care about this stuff or you need it to provide it to your instructor and so on.

There is a premium model that they declare is 3x extra correct. It just prices 8$ for 50 checks, and 25cents for every examine after that. It is one other good device to check out.

13. Copyleaks

Copy leaks is one other software that helps you detect plagiarism and paraphrased content using their AI know-how. It may be utilized by business and academic institutes like universities and faculties.

Additionally they created the device for publishers to help them publish unique content material. They will conduct a deep comparability with over 60 trillion pages on the internet including personal archives and password protected sites.

If you would like that degree of deepness in the search, then take a look at this software.

14. Plagramme

Plagramme is another freemium software that gives a beneficiant free plan for individuals to examine their work towards plagiarism.

The free model can examine documents with limitless phrases. It provides you a detailed word stories that you can download and consider anyplace you need. It’s also possible to download it on windows, mac, Linux, and Ubuntu. And you can do your search in 18 languages, so don’t fear, in the event you don’t write in English.

Their free device is good for most bloggers. The professional is even better, and their pricing is a pay as you go mannequin.

A fantastic software to take a look at.

15. Scribbr

Scribbr is one other great plagiarism checker with a great UI.

They’ve a database of 60 billion net pages and 30 million publications to ensure there isn’t plagiarism in any of your content.

Their software is corresponding to most of the prime instruments in the market including Grammarly and Quetext.

The only factor is that there isn’t a free model that you may check out. However their prices aren’t that dangerous.

For a small document up to 7.5k words, you pay 18.95$.

For a standard doc as much as 50okay phrases, you pay 28.95$

For a big doc greater than 50okay words, you pay 39.95$.

Virtually all languages are supported right here. And the device takes around 10 minutes to verify your content material.

For those who actually need to go deep in your search, this is among the greatest instruments to check out, since they are already partnering with the well-known Turnitin software.

Conclusion

Plagiarism might make all that you simply do utterly ineffective and destroy every little thing that you’ve constructed through the years.

To struggle it, and make certain your content is freed from plagiarism, this submit accommodates 15 instruments that are free and paid that will help you remedy this drawback once and for all.

I often use Grammarly because I already use it to edit my content and make sure there are no issues in grammar or types.

Which device did you select to make use of and why? Tell us in the feedback under. I might love to hear your ideas.

The post Top 15 Online Plagiarism Checker Tools for Bloggers in 2019 appeared first on Tactics Socks.

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