#He put up Melissa posters during it

[elisabeth515]

Titanic Officer Barbie Movie Posters (and 1 fun fact about each of the officers!)

(Because why not)

Feel free to save as phone wallpapers 🙈

I’ve decided to include our babeypurser McElroy because the role of Purser is sometimes regarded as an officer role. Among all the officers, Lightoller (B), Pitman (5), Boxhall (2) and Lowe (14) survived the sinking. McElroy was the only officer whose body was recovered and identified; he was buried at sea.

Now to the fun facts!

Henry Wilde: he was already captain and was set to command the SS Cymric for the Liverpool to Boston Route. Unfortunately, the coal strike happened and his first voyage with Cymric was delayed to presumably 1st May. White Star Line decided to put him in onto the crew of Titanic as Chief Officer.

As you guys may know already, Henry Wilde is my favourite officer so it’s not surprising that I have been posting about him for this April. I also am currently doing a series of TikToks for his actions throughout Titanic’s maiden voyage as well🙈

Here’s my post about Wilde being made aware of joining Titanic

This is my post on the Crew Shuffle if anyone would like to read more about it

William Murdoch: Charles Lightoller thought his bestie’s moustache make him look ugly so he grew his moustache so that Will could shave. Nevertheless, we all think otherwise.

Charles Lightoller: of course, his role as one of the captains of the little ships during the Dunkirk Evacuation. He saved around 130 lives in it with his family yacht, the Sundowner.

Side note: currently, the Sundowner is a museum ship in Ramsgate but sadly, the yacht is in a bad condition and we need money to repair. I know I don’t have much high opinions on the British (yeah except Henry Wilde), despite having been living in England for almost 5 years, but Lightoller has been one of the most intriguing figures to me; being through 4 shipwrecks and fire, also living through Titanic, WWI, and Dunkirk, his story of hope and survival is worth a movie. If you would like to help preserving a piece of history, please consider donate to help save this famous getaway yacht little ship🙈

Donate here

And here’s the campaign video by our TikTok Lightoller Fan Club President Melissa on saving the getaway yacht

Herbert Pitman: despite suffering from seasickness, this son of a farmer had a more than half-century long seafaring career, retiring in 1946. He started his career as an apprentice, then a deck officer and when he could not pass the eye test due to colour blindness at one eye, White Star Line made him a purser and he stayed in this position for the rest of his career. Pitman served in both world wars on troop ships; when he retired, he was a Lieutenant-Commander of the Royal Naval Reserves and was created an MBE in 1948, in recognition of his long service in the merchant marine.

Joseph Boxhall: he had a very happy marriage with his wife Majory and they were very fond of their dogs. This may be a substitute to children given that they do not have children together but anyways if anyone asked why you haven’t had kids yet, tell them about the Boxhalls and their doggos 🐶

Harold Lowe: he was a hobby artist who works with watercolours, as well as wood carvings. This may come across as surprising but you should not be surprised given that his father was an artist. There are a few of Harold’s drawings exists today, including a sketch of Titanic (in which he messed up with the funnels). Oh yes, he was also in the church choir as well when he was young.

James Moody: During his South American runs, he would sometimes flirt with female passengers with his very patchy Spanish and well, sometimes he just dropped in some swear words by accident. Yeah, in case you wondered, he’s not that shy as you thought after watching Ed’s portrayal of our daring Jim in the 1997 movie (the real Jim was quite cheeky actually).

Hugh McElroy: as the ship’s purser, he was there to take care of passengers’ needs (like he’s basically the “manager”). From parrot-tending (yes, and he trained the parrot to do morse code) to organising marriage ceremonies for runaway couples, he’s there to try to help. And as a result, he was a very popular man on the ship and passengers were honoured to share a table with him.

-

Sources:

TitanicOfficers.com

@/Melissafairlady on tiktok (the revenge ‘stache fact)

Encyclopaedia Titanica forum (the discussion thread on Moody)

#titanic #titanic officers #henry wilde #william murdoch #william mcmaster murdoch #charles lightoller #herbert pitman #joseph boxhall #harold lowe #james moody #james paul moody #Hugh McElroy #chief officer dilf #goofy ahh sailor boi #the good boi #Anglo drama queen #emotional support scrunko blorbo #soft moustache boi #steve carell on sea #dog dad #discounted horatio hornblower #gossip boy #babeypurser #titanic shitposting

[whoviancumberbunny]

Tentative Love

Used this Prompt  by @creativepromptsforwriting​ 

Rephrased this Prompt  by @promptsforthestrugglingauthor​

Title from This​ Prompt List  by @youneedsomeprompts​

​Tentative Lov

eScanlan Shorthalt and other Vox Characters created by Critical Role

 Story By Melissa C. Scraper @whoviancumberbunny​

 Lucy was still recovering from twisting her ankle it was hard to believe it had been six months since she met Vox machina actually her favorite member of the group was one no one took seriously “Scanlan, why are you checking my ankle? Where is Pike?”

 “she and vax are getting supplies.” he  climbs out from under her sheets “see promised I wouldn’t do anything weird.”  

“Explain not having your shirt on.” She laughed “You asked me why I hid that reward poster with my face on it.” She looks down and thinks back to the day she had to quickly escape from the place she had never felt right in to begin with. “My ankle knows I witnessed him killed six people.” She wasn’t ready to admit the six people were in fact most of their family. 

“My shirt clings to the sheets.” For the first time he gave her genuine gentle touch in her cheek and not just one that was prompted by being around the other members of the team. “You talk in your sleep sometimes.   You knew the people he killed.” 

 “He used my mother as a blood sacrifice.  Cut out her heart.” She absent-mindedly plays with the silver bell pendant she always wears “Even in information about her death the family lies about how old she was when I was born. She was always listed as four years older than she was. Daphne Rose Harridge Collins, my mother was only 16 when I was born. ”  she had wanted so hard to convince Quentin to cut off his contact with the family because the mansion had darkness. Even Lucy had been able to sense from an early age.  

“I noticed when your mind wanders you roll the silver bell pendant between your fingers. Where did it come from.”  

“It belonged to my mother. She gave it to me for birthday a few months before her death.”  She sighed “I can’t let him find me. Because I know his intention is to kill me too.”  

“If he finds you I will protect you, I promise.” She noticed he had been omitting the phrase as friend for the last few weeks. Was it possible the sweet male gnome only allowed himself to be real when his friends weren’t around “Scanlan? First thing put your shirt back on and 2nd thing will you play your mandolin for me?” she said with a smile, a few moments later he was standing next to her bed playing a melody as the images of butterflies floated near the ceiling  “I..” she wasn’t sure how to tell she felt because she felt like loving him was putting him danger because Gabriel was the only person in her life she had ever been afraid of.  

 “no need to speak.” He took her hand “you are still wearing the woven bracelet I made for you.” During a battle the original strap to his mandolin had snapped and Lucy had spent three days making him a new one. At the same time he had taken the scraps of the old one and managed to fashion them into a bracelet and given it to her 

“You made it for me. Why would I not wear it.” He gently brushed her dark brown hair out of her eyes.  “You asked why I flinch when Vax and Pike call me Lulu. My cousins called me we were supposed to go horseback riding the day before…” Suddenly it dawned on Scanlan. She wanted to tell him but she was afraid to you “Lucy… are the six people he killed the other people in your family?”  as soon as he asked she started crying and he climbed onto her bed and let her rest her head against his shoulder. She had been holding it in so long.  After she finished crying she reached into her beag nd pulled out small book

 “are you sure?” 

“It is easier to just let you read everything I remember than it is to have to say everything.”  By the time other members of vox machina returned.   

“You just rest and I will bring you something to eat later.” He hand the journal back to her. The full descriptions of the deaths of her family had taken up ten pages in her journal.  After she placed her head on the pillow he gently kissed her forehead. “Your name means light and you feel like a light in my life.” He whispered  

“why the sad look Scanlan. Did Lucy reject you again?”  Vax said as  Scanlan went outside for air. “I wish I could make her past pains go away.” He said to himself as he looked at the sky. Somewhere out there was man who had killed his own family because he wanted everything. He knew Lucy didn’t think she was strong enough to fight him. But live everyone else in the house she carried emotional damage. Kamjiori had been right he had given up looking for love and it found him.    

A few weeks later…Scanlan uses Scanlan’s hand to carry Lucy outside. “This feels so weird Scanlan.”   “you need fresh air and this was the only way I could think of to make you smile.”  He had a  picnic set up under the big tree nears the keep “it is not much. All I am good at is making sandwiches. Tiny hands.”  The giant purple hand carefully placed her on the ground and he sat next to her “I can’t get the images from your journal out of my head. But it must be worse for you because you were there.” 

  Lucy “Scanlan, I would rather not talk about that right now lets just enjoy the fresh air.”  She takes napkin and wipes mustard off his cheek. “I am always showed when see you eating a sandwich bigger than your head.”   

“Did you ever have anyone trying to court you?” 

 “The money they were courting my name not me. I was never person to them. I was means to an end. The only person I ever came close to caring about was sent away to battle ogres because he wasn’t right kind of person to be marrying an heiress. Before that night I had been wanting to leave anyway. Because I wanted to make my own choices and not have them made for me.” 

Vax “we were checking the notice board in town and found this.” He said holding up the notice for reward for information on Lucero Angelique Collins 

 “there is difference between missing and not wanting to be found. ”   she sighed as vax just stared at her “Fine. About two years he made another failed attempt at murdering me.” She knew they wondered why she always wore high collars. She unbuttoned her collar a scar from knife being dragged along her neck “he paid bounty hunters to take me back and at the family dinner to celebrate my 18th birthday, I knew he was trying to poison me.” Scanlan looked over at Lucy and she was starting to shake “Vax’ildan. With all due respect my friend.  If you don’t go inside now I may have to punch you.” He stands between Lucy and Vax. “Leave us alone.” He may not have known her for very long but he could tell she about to break. “it is okay, Lucy. How many times?”  “Four that I  can remember. His goal was to keep me from turning 18. Because he knew his grandfather’s will stated I would inherit third of everything if I lived past 18.” The tears started rolling down her cheek he wiped his hands on his pants and gently caressed her cheek “I love you. I don’t know if you can accept my love. But I promise to my best to protect you.” 

Inside Vex slaps her brother “You made her feel like criminal, brother. You know very well that wanted posters don’t always mean the person is a criminal.” 

Outside he tells her the story of how he distracted the people at dinner party while the others fought the Briarwoods “Really your codpiece created rainbows?” she laughed  “True.” He sits down on her lap “tell me something are you always sitting so you are not taller than I am when we are talking?”  she feeds him a grape  “most people treat gnomes like lesser beings because we are shorter.” 

Lucy blushes “It is easier to talk to you when I can look into your eyes. They’re so beautiful  and soulful. Can see love in them like I did with Galen.”  

“Is that the name of the guy you mentioned, that your father sent away?”    “Yes. He was the son of the horse master. whenever father was having business meetings I would go out to the stables.   Being there was the only time I didn’t feel like I was just being treated like the daughter of master of the house.” She looks into his eyes    “

I hope I can be to you what he was. Someone you can just be yourself around.”  Scanlan said as he pulled her hands from her collar “Stop hiding your scars.  They are trophy that you lived when someone has been trying to destroy you.” He gently traced his fingers along her scars.  Then he placed his hand on her cheek and gently kissed her on the lips  “I have been wanting to do that for a while.” 

 “No need to sound so apologetic.  Scanlan Shorthalt. It was the hidden part of you I was drawn to. The way you act when no one can see you.” She said “why do you think you are the only one I never ask to leave when I wake up with anyone staring at me.” He stood up and helped her to her feet and as they walked,  he mindlessly strummed his mandolin.  “That is a nice melody. does it have name?”

 “Not yet.” In fact he was trying to write song for her, but he couldn’t think of the right words to go with the melody.   They hear a carriage go through the woods,  they duck behind the bushes. “He’s kind of gross looking.” 

“Gabriel found Whitestone. See the tall one with the greying hair and slight limp. That is Gabriel.”  

“he kind of reminds me of dark wizard I ran into once. Before I met Vox Machina.” He looks at her “that was about ten years ago in secluded forest.” He pauses and thinks back “I remember he had two children tied in cage.”  

“You are the one who tried to help me and Eli?”  She hadn’t been able to make his face out because it had been way after dark and only light was coming from the fire.  “You’re the little girl in the cage?” he looked at her “I couldn’t help you then but I am here for you now. We should get back to the keep.” When they return they explain what happened  

“Lucy, I am sorry for earlier.” Vax offers his hand “Forgive me?” she hugs him “I guess that means you are not mad.” 

“Gabriel Alexander Collins is the only person I have ever been afraid of.”  She describes each time she recalls him attempting to kill her “If Eli hadn’t pushed me behind the secret panel of the mansion. That night I would be dead now.” She had spent almost year running from him “I am not a fighter. I can see spirits.”  She could see the tether connecting Vax to The matron of ravens.

 Vax’Ildan after they came up with battle plan “Lucy can we speak in private.” They go into another room “you’ve seen the matron of ravens. The goddess of death.”  He paused “there is not good way to phrase this.” 

 “I can see the ribbon of spirit energy that connects you to the matron of ravens.  It shimmers golden.”  She looked at him “It is your soul.  You may be the one who serves her but  your soul is still yours.”  She places her hand on his chest. “What does your middle name mean? I have heard scanlan trying to write songs I know your first name means Light.” 

 “Little Angel. It was the name of my grandmother’s sister. She killed herself after her lover married another woman.”

  “You are an unusual person.” He smiled “in vasselheim we met man named Galen. When he heard about the deaths in your family stepped away from his post and mumbled. I hope that means she lived.” 

“I thought Galen was killed. Thank you , Vax.” After Lucy left the room

 “How long have you been standing there, Sister?” 

Vex “long enough.“ she looked at him “We did speak to him unfortunately a few hours later Galen along with most of the village were killed.” He looked at through the open door “Lucy has spent her whole life pretending she is not special.   Pike and Kiki can see it.  She has spent so much of her life around death that all she could do was fight to not lose herself in the darkness.  Think back to history lessons   before we left home there was a man named collins who was robber baron who killed his wife when he found her in the arms of his attorney.”

 A week later just outside of town to minimize collateral damage, Gabriel stands glaring at his niece "I haven't seen you in quite some time now." he said in a tone similar to snake “are these people as weak as you are.”

 Lucy stands in front of most of Vox with Scanlan standing next to her “Well, I was busy avoiding you. But my luck obviously ran out." There was, in theory, an art to these things...but they didn't quite have the eye or the patience for such a thing.  The young woman knew the members of Vox Machina well enough battle plans were only suggestions

 “Even with bunch of people around you are still not worthy of existence Lucero.” Gabriel muttered. “I still don’t know why my sons insisted on sacrificing themselves to protect you.”  

She flinched away from his words. ”You killed Eli last because you knew.  Three years before I was born my father slept with your wife and Eli was my brother.” She ducks as kiki and vex attack Gabriel.  It was vaguely apparent that he was no longer human.  Scanlan catches her  “Be careful you don’t want to twist your ankle again. What do you see?”  “His aura is black. I don’t think my uncle has been fully human for a long time.” She replied “Thanks Scanlan.”  Whispers in his ear “You better take me on that date you promised after this and not to a skeevy tavern.” 

When she moves out of the way Trinket shields her from direct attack by one of Gabriel’s  minions. “Thanks trinket next time I make something for dinner I am giving you nice piece of fish.”

 After two hours of fighting  those working for Gabriel have either ran away crying or fainted. Scanlan summons mythcarver “I know Lucy doesn’t want you dead but she also wants you some place where you can’t hurt her or any of our friends.”  Grog bonks Gabriel on the head knocks him out “He is stubborn asshole. “ he goes over to where lucy is sitting and kisses her “as long as you are with us you are safe.” 

 She looks at the others “Do you really think of me as your friend?”  

Percy helps her  to her feet “Of Course we do Lucy we wouldn’t have agreed to help you if we didn’t. Did I hear you correctly? You have a brother amongst the dead at Collins mansion.”  

“He’s buried in shallow grave In the basement, along with my parents and my cousins.  By my estimation there are least 8 people buried in shallow graves in the basement.” She looks down “I want them to be at peace. Their souls are trapped in the house. It was my grandmother’s spirit that told me to run and save myself.” “You can see auras?”   “Spirits. In the living your spirit creates your energy field  it manifests as spirits being trapped in the place they died.” She looked at vax ”He was the first one I told. I wasn’t sure anyone would believe me.  I have had this ability since I was seven.” 

After they return to whitestone “If it is not too much to ask. Will you all come with me to make sure my family gets formal burials.   I donlt want to go back to my hometown alone.  I have spent almost two years running from it.” 

Pike “Of course we will. You were the youngest in family of mostly men.” 

 Scanlan sits next to her “Is what you yelled at Gabriel true?”  

“Eli was my brother.  You remind me, of my father, Scanlan.  He was never sure how to show love.  but I remember whenever I didn’t feel well or couldn’t sleep he would play the piano for me.” She takes out her journal and shows them a sketch of her family.   That Eli drew a few months before their deaths “Eli drew this. That’s the reason he’s not in it.”

“You’re obviously the one In the middle of the front row. So the one with the forlorn expression on her face.”  Percy said “Daphne Rose Harridge Collins.”   “She is my mother.”  

“is this why you flinch when any of us call you Lulu. I noticed Eli drew a rose and for Lulu-bell . under it “ pike said handing it back to her “everyone except Gabriel called me lulu bell. It was the last thing he said to me before he pushed me into the secret passage. No matter what, Lulu bell run as far from here as possible and never look back. I had been on my own for about five months the day I collapsed outside the tavern you were thrown out of.”

Scanlan places his hand on her cheek “We can make a future together.”  Later that evening after everyone dispersed “Do I have your permission to stay on your bed tonight.”  

“No touching below the waist. Unless you’re massaging my feet. “ when he sits on her lap she whispers in his ear  just barely audible.  “I love you, Scanlan Shorthalt.”  She runs her fingers through his ponytail  

To Be Continued….

Tuesday, January 31st, 2023     

#scanlan shorthalt #Vox machina au #fluff

[cyncerity]

Merry Christmas to all who celebrate!

I finally got my Secret Santa done! And my secret Santa was…

✨@melissa-s23✨

I absolutely adore her writing and art and I really hope she enjoys this 😊💖

@mcyt-gt-events

tw: none, just fluff

Coming home for the holidays was supposed to be a relaxing time, especially getting a break from the utter hell that college could be. But something felt…of this year. Like there was something being kept from him.

Quackity sighed as he looked out the window of his old bedroom, which Sam had been kind enough to leave relatively unbothered once he left for college. The little kid things had been moved into a storage bin, but all his old furniture, posters, and pictures remained, usually bringing him a sense of comfort after so long away from home. But now they just reminded him of what he used to have.

Sam and Quackity had always been close. They had clicked the moment they had met, when he was 6 years old and Sam first fostered him. It had only been a month when Sam had decided to adopt Quackity, at only 19 years old. And Sam worked hard to make it work, and Quackity couldn’t have been happier. But that had all changed a few months into his freshman year of college. He tried to call Sam as often as he could, but there was just so much to do. Eventually calling became nearly impossible, and it broke his heart every time he had to decline a call from his best friend/dad.

Until one day, something weird happened. Quackity finally, finally, had the opportunity to call, and no one answered. He called again. Nothing. He must’ve called 50 times, and nothing until an hour later. A text that read “Sorry, I was busy. I’ll try to call again soon.”

That was the start of their relationship growing farther and farther apart. Quackity was now a sophomore in college, and he hadn’t even seen Sam in almost a year. He tried to come over for the holidays during break his freshman year, but there were apparently problems at the construction company he ran, and they’d “try to meet up over the summer.” It never happened. But finally, fucking finally, Sam said that Quackity should come over for the holidays to catch up. And they had. The conversation when Sam had first opened the door to let Quackity in that morning had started off a bit awkward (ok, maybe more than a bit), but had quickly resolved into their old way of talking to each other. And after hours on an airplane and then hours of conversation with the man he had missed more than anyone, he went to his room to try and fall asleep. Which he should probably try to do, instead of staring out a window and feeling sorry for himself. He pushed himself off the windowsill and went to go put on his pjs, but his mind kept drifting back to Sam. Why hadn’t they talked in so long? What had Sam been doing? He had assumed that the sudden radio silence had been because Sam wanted to distance himself, but the joy on his face at having seen Quackity walk through the front door for the first time in so long disproved that theory. So what had happened? And as Quackity desperately tried to figure out what was going on, his brain decided to be more focused on sleep than the possible problems with his father. So he fell asleep, hoping that those answers would work themselves out soon enough.

*********

Quackity shot awake at the sound of glass shattering. He frantically switched on a light switch as he tried to figure out where the noise came from, until his eyes landed on a certain shelf in his room where he noticed a picture frame missing. That was until his eyes trailed to the floor and saw it face down with glass pieces scattered around it. Quackity sighed, to tired to deal with any of this, and just used the frame to swipe most of the big glass pieces into a pile and set the photo back on the shelf, when he felt something warm brush against his fingers, which he would have just assumed was his tired mind playing tricks on him had it not yelped at the contact.

Quackity pulled back his hand and frantically moved the other frames over, expecting to see a mouse or possibly even a rat. What he had not been expecting were two very small boys, both frozen in terror. They stared at each other for a few seconds before one of the boys grabbed the other and tried to make a run for it. But Quackity was faster, grabbing both of them and pulling them closer to his face, ignoring the heavy breathing and whimpers coming from them. They looked almost human, except for the pointed ears and tails they had. Besides that, one of the boys wore a red sweatshirt and had blonde hair pulled back into a short ponytail. The second slightly smaller one was a brunette who was wearing a green t-shirt. Could he be dreaming right now? Maybe. He hadn’t heard of anything like them before. Maybe, if they looked so human, they could talk? It was worth a shot.

“What the fuck are you?” He mumbled, making both of the tiny kids flinch. Ok, maybe that could have been more tactful, but he was tired, alright? Just when it seemed like the blonde one was going to speak up, the brunette slapped a hand over his mouth. Ok, so that meant that they probably could talk. They just didn’t want to. So Quackity, not having any better ideas for the time being, just set the two in his now emptied smaller suitcase, not registering the scared and frantic pleas from both of them to be let go, and zipped it shut, setting it next to his bed before falling back asleep.

****

The next morning was a train wreck, to say the least. As soon as Quackity woke up and remembered what had happened the night before, he went to check his suitcase. And sure enough, there were still two miniature people (to small to immediately notice the tear tracks down their face) in it, asleep. He was ecstatic. After all, he hadn’t heard of anything like these before. What could they do? What were they capable of? Where they alone or were they part of a bigger community of little people? What was their society like? Did he just discover a new species? After calming down a bit after his revelations, he raced down the stairs, suitcase in hand, to find Sam, only to find him on his knees with his phone flashlight out and some of the floorboards pulled up. What the actual fuck.

“Uh, Sam?” Quackity stated, walking farther from the steps to alert the man of his presence. “Whatcha doin there, buddy?” Sam whirled around, surprised at seeing Quackity, and god did he look tired. His hair was unkept, his eyes looked red, and the eye bags spoke for themselves. The only thing that kept him from looking completely dead were the bright green creeper pajamas that he insisted on wearing every night since Quackity bought them for him as a joke. Seriously, it looked pretty ridiculous, but that wasn’t the main problem here. How long was he up last night? But Sam seemingly refused to acknowledge how exhausted he clearly was, because he responded as if nothing was wrong. “Oh, Quackity! Uh..hey! Just, uh..looking for someo- something.” He said, clearly trying to look innocent but hiding something. Quackity wasn’t buying a word of what he said. He was in law school, he could pick out a liar. Sam would have to do better than that. “Ok, what are you looking for? Do you need help? Did you get any sleep looking for it or were you up all night, because honestly? You look like shit.” Sam’s face fell a little, whether that be because his act of being not tired hadn’t held up or because Quackity rightfully said he looked like shit, he didn’t know. But at least he was now being forced to talk about what he’d been avoiding. Sam sighed.

“No, I didn’t get much sleep last night. I’m worried.” Sam looked away and Quackity couldn’t help but feel like whatever Sam was so worried about was his fault. What did he do? Could he fix it? He set down the suitcase and moved closer to his father figure, kneeling down to be at eye level with him. “Sam, whatever you’re worried about, you can tell me.” He laid a hand on his shoulder. “You trust me, right?” Sam sighed, a soft smile across his lips as he laid a hand over Quackity’s, holding it and bringing down. “Of course I do. It’s just…I don’t know how you’ll react to this.” Quackity responded by holding Sam’s hand tighter. “Try me.” Sam sighed and let go of Quackity’s hand, instead wringing his hands together. A nervous habit Q had taken note of years ago. “Ok, so what if I told you I had adopted two more little boys after you went to college?” Sam said, looking down and growing quieter as he finished the sentence.

Quackity’s heart stopped. Holy shit. He had brothers. Little brothers. Two of them. Holy fuck. “Wait- wait I think I misunderstood something here I…” Quackity laughed in disbelief. “You have brothers.” Sam smiled, seemingly relieved that Quackity didn’t look too upset. “Im sorry, I should’ve told you sooner but I was so busy with the boys and I didn’t know how they would react to you and how you would react to them so I just…didn’t tell you.” He rambled. “I didn’t even mean to tell them about you but they broke into your old room a few days ago and said they wanted to meet you. That’s why I invited you over this year, but I can’t find them and I’ll be honest, I’m worried. Knowing those two they could be in actual danger right now.” “Wait, why would you be looking for them under the floorbo-“ Quackity cut himself off. Oh. Oh no.

“Well, you see, they’re…” Sam sighed. “They’re not entirely…human.” Quackity froze, and it felt like his heart stopped beating. He didn’t even need to hear the rest of what Sam said, but his brain forced him to listen to what he unfortunately already knew. “They’re only about as tall as my middle finger. They’re called borrowers. So them getting lost in the walls or attacked by a wild animal are actual concerns.” Q stood silent, shocked, the suitcase his apparently very literally little brothers were trapped in barely visible out of the corner of his eyes.

“Uh, actually, Sam, I think they’re fine.” Quackity mumbled, backing up towards the bag. Sam raised an eyebrow. “How do you know.” ‘Shit, how am I supposed to say this?’ Quackity thought. And finding no answer, he relented to simply grab the suitcase and hand it to Sam, who looked somehow more confused until he unzipped it. Quackity couldn’t stand to hear the boys cry in relief as they were lifted out of the bag by his- their father. He looked away as Sam turned his attention to calming the sobbing boys down, and tuned out whatever Sam was saying. He didn’t want to see the look of disappointment and disdain on his face. He didn’t want to hear how Sam would tell the borrowers that they’d never have to see Quackity again, that he would never be welcome here again. However, neither happened. Quackity was brought back into reality by a gentle tap on the shoulder. He turned around to see Sam, a hand cupped to his chest containing the two little boys who had stopped crying and who looked at him with a slight fear, but a stronger curiosity. “Quackity,” Sam spoke gently, his voice not holding the anger Quackity thought it would, “Care to explain what happened?”

Quackity didn’t know when he started to cry while explaining what had happened the previous night. Whether it was from watching Sam’s clear face of understanding when it should have been rage, the fear that he would be abandoned by the only person who ever cared about him, or just plain guilt, he didn’t know. But what he didn’t expect was for one of the little boys to speak up, followed by the other, both speaking to their dad in his defense. Telling Sam how they had broken into Quackity’s room again when they knew they shouldn’t have, and Sam carefully explaining why that was a bad idea. Then the one in the red sweater spoke to him. “We’re sorry, Big Q.” The blonde said, “We shouldn’t have been in your room.” Quackity felt his heart swell at the nickname as he held out his hand to the boys, both looking up to Sam for approval. He nodded at them, and Quackity watched in utter amazement as the two climbed on his hand with little hesitation. “You don’t have to apologize for anything.” He said, holding them up higher to his face and trying to ignore the instinct to aw at them. That wouldn’t help anybody, and who knew if they would find that insulting. “I shouldn’t have grabbed you, I shouldn’t have trapped you, I- I’m sorry. I want to know you better, I want to be part of your family. If you want me to be of course, and it’s ok if you don’t, but I want to be the best big brother I can.” He smiled at them. And he could have cried again from pure joy when the brunette spoke up this time. “Of course! Dad’s told us all about you, it’s really nice to finally meet you, first impressions be damned. Oh, and I’m Tubbo, by the way.” He said, elbowing the other. “Right, I’m Tommy!” The other, Tommy, spoke up. “And same with what Tubbo said. And I hope you know what you’re getting into, you’re stuck as our big brother now, you can’t go back.” He smirked, just making Quackity smile wider. “Oh of course, don’t expect me to ever go back on it.”

***

The rest of the day was spent on the couch, some shitty Christmas movie on in the background as the two borrowers used Quackity as a jungle gym, sharing stories that Sam had told about him, embarrassing Quackity and making Sam laugh. And Quackity hadn’t been this happy in a long time. With his dad and his new little brothers, his family, he felt truly happy. And he couldn’t be happier that despite what he had done, they had forgiven him. And he swore to be the best big brother for them that he could be.

#cyncerity #mcyt g/t #mcyt gt #cynwrites #for the first time in like a month #woohoo #Mel I hope you like it!! 💖 #Also this is why I wasn’t talking about my story for the Secret Santa on call a few days ago lol

[amyscascadingtabs]

this is sappy but whatever. i wrote most of this before the season started (which is why i come off as reasonable and somewhat mentally stable about all of this) but felt appropriate to post it now as a thank you. ❤️

i have vivid memories from the night b99 was cancelled. the news came late evening my time, and i had been editing fic and checked twitter and there it was. loud and clear. i don’t remember which site it was but the picture was jake and amy with their wedding cake and that made everything feel even worse.

i remember freaking out even though i had been prepared, because those last days before the news hit on tumblr were... panicked. but i still freaked out to the extent that i ran outside in my pajama pants and hoodie and blue plastic slippers and called my mom, and then i walked up and down the streets where i lived in the darkness and cried in frustration as she tried to talk me down. i remember there were random guys with motorcycles out? but i was too hysterical to care. i’m pretty sure i screamed something to my mom about ”HOW CAN BIG BANG THEORY GET A BILLION SEASONS BUT THIS SHOW GETS CANCELLED????”

i know everyone who was in the fandom at the time has their cancellation story. what played the biggest part in mine was the fact that i felt like i hadn’t had enough time. really, i had only just become active in the fandom, only just started interacting with people on here and writing my first few fics, but i was absolutely loving it. it was giving me happiness again after a long period of emptiness and depressive feelings. when it was cancelled, what made me feel the worst was the fact that i’d had so little time – to make friends, write fic and react to episodes together. i felt deeply jealous of everyone who’d gotten more.

thinking about it coming to an end now has made me remember that night and those feelings of jealousy. because i did get more time. i got three more years. that night, i remember asking for just one, for a half, for anything, and i got three years.

and these three years have been a whirlwind of emotions and feelings and episodes and debates and discussions and gifsets and fanfic and asks and having this as my safe space while pretty much everything changed around me in the outside world, and i just want you all to know that i have never taken a single day of them for granted. this show could have been taken from me before i’d ever gotten the chance to grow with it and alongside it, and instead it was part of my life for three whole years.

i have a really, really good memory (four time quiz champion anyone? just me?okay <3), and i remember so much of it in such detail, and it's so weird to think about how long it's been when it also feels like yesterday.

i remember my first comment on peraltiago parenting experience, my first episode-related fic, the insane high after the renewal, staying up all night to watch the wedding live. i remember writing fanfiction on the beach while on vacation in greece, on a plane to berlin, at home on my parents balcony late late at night. i remember the honeymoon episode title being released, s6 starting filming again, the excitement over every little piece of news and finding about the cast directing. i remember labor fic and christmas fics and when i scroll back to pictures of my paris trip in january 2019 it's interspersed with a billion pictures of andy at the golden globes. i remember lighting my fairy lights in my little basement room and watching season 6 in bed at 2.30 am if it was a big episode, and watching it in the morning before fridays in high school most days. i remember writing post-ep fics during classes and on my phone on subways and trains. i remember the s7 news, and the casecation nerves and debates, and fucking kissgate. being named "the class amy santiago" by my friends when we graduated and getting a little silver paper plate to show for it. i remember the first fic exchange and inventing julian and simon santiago and i remember meeting @johnny-and-dora and eating wagamamas in manchester and talking about how simon santiago was DEFINITELY on the stairs and buying a little fake plant that i named andy plantberg (he's still in a box somewhere). i remember writing fic during slow hours in the ice cream shop i worked at. moving and putting up my framed b99 poster in my own apartment (very much still up). finding out about trying and everyone going fucking crazy. infertility fic. melissa's pregnancy news. s7 promo and standing outside my job the very first day and texting siân "AMY HAS TO PEE!!!!!???" because that was in the promo and we knew there were pregnancy tests involved in the first episode. the crazy happiness of s7 finally premiering. everyone going crazy about jake and amy deciding to start trying and how i could quote the scene verbatim the next few days. the week leading up to trying, what turned out to be the last normal week before the pandemic. the fucking MESS i was after that. the following week and ding dong and crying with happiness. being dizzy with hyperfixation joy the following day and barely feeling aware of the covid pandemic for the first few days because i was just thinking about jake and amy having a baby. getting through the first few weeks mostly because of b99. admiral peralta and finding out we were having a BOY and not even being disappointed even though the headcanon had been the opposite for years because it was perfect. the iconic b99 quizzes. lights out and mac being born. somehow managing 475 days before season 8, coping together when we got the news about the final season, watching the cast do their final day of filming. the first stream being interrupted by a storm warning and cutting out several minutes because of course. getting to see parents peraltiago and MAC and the insane speed with which those few seconds were giffed. more b99 quizzes. the vow renewal. the finale.

i remember all of it and so much more and as much as my heart is breaking, i’m trying to remind myself that i could have gotten none of this.

brooklyn nine-nine has been such an important part of my life. and it always, always will be, forever. i could have lost it all that night, and instead i got three more years. if i'd known that when i was walking the streets outside my house in the darkness in complete panic, i would have cried with happiness.

so thank you. all of you. for everything. ❤️❤️❤️ for the friendships, the joy, the asks, the debates, the fic response, EVERYTHING. whether we've shared three years or one or less, just know that i'm so grateful.

have some random pictures i found and screenshots from my private instagram (which is inactive so don't bother) from when i started this hyperfixation. jesus lmao 😭😭😭😭 i am less insane now. no i'm not. but i express it less on instagram.

#my writing #b99 #b99 finale #goodbye b99 #tagging people felt wrong you're all part of this #that's my old computer my new one also has a few but it's less hysterical

[sooibian]

Tempting Fate (I)

@is-that-baekhyuns-shirt​ thank you, thank you, thank you for this beautiful poster!

Chapters: One | Two

Pairing: Minseok x You x Kyungsoo

Description: You’re forced to make a choice between a present that you didn’t choose and the idea of what could have been.

Themes: Angst, Exes!AU, Arranged Marriage!AU

Warnings: Strong language, indicative of emotional infidelity

Word Count: 3.7k +

A/N: Writing in quarantine hasn’t been easy so this is me trying to get back into writing by channeling all the rainy day melancholia into an angst piece. A huge thank you to @fightoh​ who inspired this Kyungsoo. I love you, Melissa! ^_^

We’re looking at a two-shot here, so lemme know if you’d like to be tagged for the update :)

________________________________________________________________

‘Settle down’

You often mulled over your father’s words of advice. This was one of the very few he’d cared to vocalize a little over a year ago. Settle down - as if you were an inanimate object devoid of any thoughts or feelings. As if you were lifeless. There was an undeniable ounce of truth in that, though. 

He had left you lifeless, cold, and pathetic.

So you settled. 

Gradually sank under the weight of the very same thoughts and feelings you were not supposed to have. Especially not after, as your step-mother had so eloquently put it, you’d spread your legs for the spawn of Satan. 

These questionable archaic edifices threw you back by decades, centuries even. You’d started to loathe them all - your parents, the society and to a large extent, your own self. Either way, you did what you were asked. 

Like dust, you settled.

The buzz of your phone alerted you of a meeting that was scheduled thirteen minutes from now. Twirling the cup of long gone cold coffee, you took some time to compose yourself. Ten minutes. Taking a huge gulp of the bitter liquid, you proceeded to head out of the cafe. 

“Hello”, said the man who accidentally bumped into you on your way out.

The sound of his voice could sweep you over with a wave of recognition even in your most unresponsive state. Dreading, you looked up to meet his eyes. The same big, brown eyes you’d once have endless conversations with. The very same eyes that saw you for who you were. The eyes that had already started to say the things you weren’t emotionally equipped to hear. 

“Hi”, he exhaled. You were enchanted by the way his lips moved. Flushed and soft, with a subtle pout. Plush and voracious they’d once felt on your skin.

He looked exactly like you’d remembered him. Soft brown hair fell in shaggy bangs across his forehead. A black shirt over ripped denims that outlined his lean frame and his right wrist wrapped in dark beaded bracelets. Your gaze dropped and stayed fixed on his combat boots, as you fought back tears.

Your phone chimed. Seven minutes.

Kyungsoo’s lingering gaze saw you out of the cafe.

.

.

.

“How was your day?” your husband asked, in the trademark gentle tone he’d use with you.

Dinner table conversations with Minseok were cumbersome. They felt heavily rehearsed and unnatural. You usually had polite responses and courteous questions to subdue the pressing silence that filled up any space Minseok and you inhabited. But tonight was you felt pushed to the wall. You felt hollow and rigid. 

A dazed stupor had steered you through the day after the man who’d splintered your heart had chosen to resurface after two years. The very same man because of whom you weren’t the wife Kim Minseok truly deserved.

This wasn’t exactly the dinner table conversation you'd ever pictured having with your ever so sweet and kind husband. 

“Nothing out of the ordinary”, you smiled, “did you manage to get Yang Ho Sung on board for the expansion?”

“Not to jump the gun but we might be able to lock in his signatures come Monday”, a pleased Minseok flashed his toothy grin. 

“Not to jump the gun but congratulations!”

He chuckled, “If all goes well, I might have to fly out to Hong Kong. You know, raise capital...move funds...”

‘Raise capital, move funds’ was a part of your job description as Financial Controller, not the Head of Strategy's. Hong Kong was where the Company’s Head Office was situated. It was also where both of your parents had taken permanent residency. It was a place both you and Minseok frequented and for most part it meant bothersome soirees (generously sprinkled with intrusive questions) with his side of the family as well as yours. And anyone with a pair of functional eyes could spot trouble in paradise. So you were glad as you were grateful that you didn’t have to do much to dodge this trip. 

It was almost as if Minseok read your thoughts, “You’re working on the Nakamuras’ merger project and it didn’t feel right pushing this expansion onto your already full plate.”

Pursing your lips into a slight smile, you nodded in agreement.

.

.

.

The day of Minseok’s flight to Hong Kong found you seated across from Kyungsoo at the very same godforsaken cafe.

“How have you been?”, he asked plainly. 

Devoid of expression, your eyes bore into his as you clutched the teacup closer to your person, the rock on your finger conveniently on display.

“You mean after you suddenly disappeared? All things considered, peachy.”

His jaw tightened, “Don’t be like that.” What should’ve been a plea, came across as an audacious command.

“Why are you back, anyway?” You hated sounding like a jilted past lover straight out of a soap opera but you felt exactly like one.

“Because you deserve the truth”, brows furrowed and voice down to a whisper, he leaned in closer.

“I deserve much more than just the truth!” You were seething with anger.

“Let’s start with the truth first.”

“Okay”, you squeezed your eyes shut and shook your head, “this attitude is quite brazen, don’t you think?”

His hands landed on the coffee table in a soft thump, and spoke as if he were spelling out every word for you, “You’re clearly not ready for this conversation so call me when you are, yeah?”

“Go fuck yourself, Doh Kyungsoo”, grabbing your purse you dashed out of the cafe as angry tears streamed down your cheeks.

.

.

.

Locking away every vicious little memory of Kyungsoo in the farthest corner of your mind, you went about your mundane, monochromatic life until unsubtle baby pink and powder blue onesies peeked out of Minseok’s luggage as you helped him unpack.

“Just Mother being over enthusiastic, that’s all…I’m sorry...”, his face flushed as he yanked the Harrods bag out of your hand and hastily dumped it in his closet.

If only she knew that your hostile home environment wasn’t conducive to...reproduction.

“I know my face looked a little puffy during our last video call but that doesn’t mean I’m...”, you said quietly.

“I know, I know...I’m sorry, she shouldn’t have.. I had half a mind to...to discard them or... give these away to Ho Sung considering, you know, his wife’s expecting but I couldn’t...aish...I think I’ll go take a shower.” 

Averting your gaze, he rummaged for fresh towels in his closet.

“Minseok”, you gingerly sat down on the edge of the bed feeling guilty for having put him in a spot.

“Hmm”, his voice sounded shaky.

“Minseok”, your grip on the sheets tightened as you chewed the insides of your cheeks, “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean it like that.”

Scratching the back of his neck, he turned around to look at you. The upward curl of his lips didn’t meet his eyes. He knelt before you and took your icy hand in the cozy warmth of his. 

His hands were always so, so soft and warm, yet so firm and steady.

Bringing the ring on your finger to his gentle lips he whispered, “I know.”

.

.

.

His incessant phone calls and messages coupled with your unbridled desire to understand the reasoning behind that one decision that steered your life onto a downward slope was why you agreed to see Kyungsoo again.

“Is ‘How have you been?’ still out of bounds or...”

Kyungsoo chose wisely with this quaint little overpriced Italian restaurant. There was no way either of you’d end up creating a scene here.

“It is not and I've been well. You?”, you ask civilly, twirling spaghetti on your fork. 

“I left because - ”, he started.

“Diving right into it, I see.”

Leaning back into his chair, he let out an exasperated sigh, “Would you please?"

“Okay. Go on...explain what good reason you had to turn my world upside down, Kyungsoo.”

“Thank you. Remember my art gallery?”, Kyungsoo asked.

How could you ever forget! It's what your step-mother used to attack with you every chance she got. Wayfaring, college dropout Kyungsoo's mildly successful upscale art gallery in Gangnam.

You nodded curtly in response.

“Dad handled everything...right from the actual sourcing process of art pieces to the finances. Although it was my business, I was simply a curator. You of all people should know how our parents like to meddle.”

“Kyungsoo, what's your point?”

“He apparently used the art pieces to launder money. And before NTS could get a whiff of it we had to go underground - I had to go underground. So he declared business bankruptcy, salvaged whatever little he could after NTS got their fair share of it, obviously and we went off the grid. Only recently we were made aware  that all of our other Companies have been cleared off defaults - Dad pulled some strings to make that happen - but all of this is behind us now.”, Kyungsoo’s eyes enlarged as he chewed on his lower lip anticipating your response.

“Well, you could’ve called.”, you sipped Riesling to steady yourself.

“We could’ve been tracked, love!” 

Feeling yourself disintegrate at the way that term of endearment rolled off his tongue, you pressed a napkin to your lips.

“What is it that you want now, Kyungsoo? I’m married - it’s all over!”, your voice quivered as you tried to reason with him as softly as you could.

“It’s not! It’s not over! Kim Minseok isn’t the man you chose -- this isn’t the life you chose! You didn’t escape my mind once in these last two years, baby...my hands were tied! Please understand, there was nothing I could've done. But I’m here now and I’m not leaving.”

.

.

.

The picture frame in your secret possession remembered Minseok as a portly little lad in a penguin onesie. 

Him in his mother’s arms and you, an infant, in yours. Your mothers had been childhood friends, thick as thieves but the only memory you had of Minseok was this picture frame from the scenic Guri, where you spent the first five years of your life - until your mother passed and your father spiralled into despair. Minseok’s mother took pity and urged her husband to offer your father a position in the Seoul branch of his company. 

The job paid well since Mr. Kim’s company was flourishing. Your father immersed himself into work leaving you with sitters for most part of your childhood. He successfully managed to add a chip-making division to the already thriving semiconductor line making SK Group the largest memory chip-maker in Asia thus elevating him to a Keyperson’s position. In his forties, he found himself a botoxed, gold digging beauty to marry and lived his life forever indebted to Mr. Kim.

So when the conglomerate’s matriarch proposed an alliance between you and Minseok, your father couldn’t refuse.

The alliance came a year after Kyungsoo disappeared.

Doh Kyungsoo. Your first love. The only one who’d stood by you when your own father couldn’t care less. You’d met him in your sophomore year at the University where he studied Archeology and Art History and you, Business Administration.

You had little to no memory of the night Kyungsoo played your knight in shining armour on Baekhyun’s bar hopping 21st birthday. You were drunk out of your wits. And when a sicko tried to take advantage of it, Kyungsoo stepped in. He drove you home, tucked you in bed and even brought you Haejangguk the next morning.

You’d managed to tame the beast according to Baekhyun but the truth was it was Kyungsoo who saved you from your dreary life. He brought out your exuberance and ferocity. 

You ditched the pastels in your wardrobe for radical florals, the straight black hair, now an untamed, red tempest and modest little diamonds in your ears replaced by the dazzle of the glittering galaxy.

Your grades declined meteorically as you painted the town red with him on his Motorrad and come senior year he recklessly dropped out of college. That’s when things started going south for the both of you.

After a failed acting stint, he dabbled aimlessly in Seoul’s art scene. You didn’t greatly approve of his life choices, especially these major shifts which were solely his decision since he hadn’t bothered to consult you once. You, on the other hand, picked up pace academically and after graduation, Mr. Kim’s conglomerate took you under its wing - just as planned.

You tried to be there for Kyungsoo during this "phase" of his which lasted well over two years but he kept pushing you away. Until finally, with the help of his father, he set up his own art gallery in Seoul. It didn’t create a lot of buzz at first but it brought a welcome change within Kyungsoo. He was focused, driven and tried to make the best of the opportunity. 

Both of your careers kept you busy and you slowly began to drift apart. Petty fights and misunderstandings only deepened the cracks in your relationship and Kyungsoo, being a man of few words that he was, didn’t help the situation.

You both did and said things you shouldn’t have and all that should have been said was left unspoken. Often you even decided to part ways but every other night found you in each other’s arms. Come morning, the very same issues would resurface. 

But you both tried. Tried to make it work through the tears and the pain for the thing called love. You’d both been inseparable for four years now and this was nothing but a minor roadblock.

And when things finally started to look up, he left without a goodbye.

.

.

.

Minseok looked nothing like the toddler you’d remembered him to be except for his striking angular eyes. He was lean, suave, well mannered, albeit slightly awkward (you didn’t blame him considering the blind date setting) and definitely deserved a better wife than you. He shyly complimented your neutral beige flare dress and you both shared the rosy bits about your life.

His father had decided against giving him a directorial position on a platter so he’d worked his way up from Assistant Manager, Sales to freshly anointed Head of Strategy and you were working towards a better position in Finance. 

Minseok was, plainly put, nice. Very much unlike the broody, flighty, reckless Kyungsoo you’d known and loved all these years. But Kyungsoo was a distant memory and Minseok looked like someone who was married to his work. 

All things considered, you believed you could make this arrangement - that was your marriage with Minseok - last.

.

.

.

The expansion kept Minseok busier than usual while you were busy plotting away with Kyungsoo - looking for ways to get back with your first love and break the news to Minseok in the gentlest way possible. 

“Ripping the bandaid off is the only way forward”, Kyungsoo suggested, helping you with a generous serving of kimchi stew.

His studio apartment was a stone throw away from your workplace. So you took an extended lunch break to see him in the privacy of his house. You felt a tinge of guilt at the frequency of your rendezvous but you let your heart have it’s way. As much as you hated the predicament his reappearance had put you in, his presence made you feel alive again. You no longer dreaded the morning alarm, the commute to work or even work itself. You had something to look forward to everyday - you had him to look forward to everyday.

“Hello?”, he interrupted your train of thought.

“Hmm?”, you looked up from your bowl.

He chuckled, “Nothing’s changed...” making you eye him questioningly.

“You still space out a lot”, he said, scrunching his nose affectionately.

Guilt weighed heavier.

You smiled, “No, it’s just that - there’s so much at stake Kyungsoo. I don’t think I can just rip off the bandaid.”

“Higher the risk...”, his eyes widened in an attempt to convince you.

“I know...but...he’s a nice guy and --”, you fought back tears.

“Run away with me?”

“Kyungsoo!”

“I’m sorry”, he muttered.

“Did you find a new place for the art gallery?”

“Mhmm”, he avoided your eyes, “just off Samcheong-ro.”

“Kyungsoo, this is huge! Samcheong-ro is the heart of the art scene!”

He smiled, “And this time around I’m working with people I can trust.”

Putting your hand on his arm, you squeezed it lightly. Nodding you said, “I’m really, really happy for you.”

He sighed, “Listen I’m sorry about earlier...I didn’t intend to rush you, I’ll be patient...I love you.”

You couldn’t say it back.

.

.

.

“Minseok, the Nakamuras accepted our offer”, you started with some happy news.

His feline eyes widened in astonishment and his shoulders went up as he pursed his lips to contain a big smile, “Really?”

You nodded.

“This means a hell lot of more work for you”, he chuckled, “but it’s a huge reason to celebrate! Let me take you out to dinner tomorrow?”

In your one year of marriage, Minseok had made this offer only a handful of times.

“Sure”, you smiled, “I was thinking of a weekend trip to Jeju. You know, clear my head?”

“Ah! Of course, anything you need. Will you be travelling alone?”

“Yeah”, you lied through your teeth.

Looking mildly dejected, he forced a grin, “You deserve the break.”

.

.

.

You woke up well before the break of dawn, not nearly as enthusiastic about the seaside getaway as you’d been when you’d planned it with Kyungsoo. Nevertheless, you went on to physically and mentally ready yourself for your flight at noon.

Minseok, an early riser by habit, was still in bed at half past eight.

“Minseok?” 

You leaned over his asleep form but nothing. So you put an arm on his shoulder and tried to lightly shake him awake only to receive a muffled groan in response. A hand on his sweaty forehead confirmed your suspicions.

Without giving it a second thought, you texted Kyungsoo, called off the trip and to avoid the inconvenient onslaught of questions, turned your phone off. Feeling an overwhelming sense of concern, laced with guilt and anxiety, you shook Minseok awake.

“You’re burning up!”, panic struck, you nearly yelled at your groggy husband.

“I don’t feel so well… Please call Soo-ah, she’ll take care of me. What’s the time? Have you called yourself a cab?”, Minseok spoke in laborious gasps.

“There’s no need to call Soo-ah”, you said, straightening the duvet, “I’m not going anywhere.”

To your utter surprise, Minseok did not, in any way, nudge you to carry on with your plans. Instead, he thanked you with a slight nod and a small smile. His gentle, cherubic smile made your heart skip a beat, it cooped you up in an inexplicable warmth.

To you, an uwell Minseok was uncharted territory and during the course of the day you realised he wasn't very different from a tantrum throwing infant. 

You started your day with committed the cardinal sin of denying him his morning cup of coffee.

“I’ll drink twice as much water to rehydrate!” He whined.

“Ugh! Don’t make this harder than it already is! I'm grasping at straws here!" You shouted from the kitchen while whipping up rice porridge for breakfast.

His protests against the mushy bowl for his first meal were comparatively milder, which was a welcome relief but your caffeine deprived husband sporadically kept shooting you snarky sideway glances. All hell broke loose when you had to nearly shove the acetaminophen pill in his mouth.

“Yah! Are you trying to kill me? This is fatal!”, he’d started talking in pouts now.

“Yah! Kim Minseok!”, annoyed, you glared at him.

A round-eyed Minseok stared at you in disbelief before quietly dry swallowing the pill.

The medicine was quick to act, stabilizing his temperature. So you asked your stickler for cleanliness husband to go take a quick shower but the man wouldn’t budge. 

“I want to stay in bed all day”, he smiled adorably.

“You’re not exactly smelling like fresh lilies right now, Minseok. Who’s to take care of you if I faint?”, you teased.

His face flushed as he begrudgingly stepped out of the comfort of his duvet. Grinning with glee, you proceeded to cook him chicken soup for lunch.

Lunch was awfully quiet.

“Did you not like the soup?”, you asked in mock concern. You were sure your comment from earlier was the reason for his mopey face since the fragrance of his cologne overpowered the aroma of your chicken soup.

“No, the soup’s just fine”, he deadpanned, making you chortle.

“You should fall ill more often, this is fun!”, you giggled.

A pink blush rose to his cheeks as he swirled the spoon in his bowl, “I agree.”

***

While Minseok napped, you prepped for dinner. The www suggested a light bean sprouts soup with a side of rice and kimchi.

“Shall we eat in front of the TV today?”, you asked Minseok.

“Sure! Anything you wanna watch?”, slumping into the sofa, he flipped over to the primetime news. 

You groaned.

“What? You love this anchor!”

“And how do you know that?”, you asked, slurping your soup.

“I follow you on Twitter, remember?”

“Hmm but I lack the cerebral capacity for this tonight”, you snatched the remote out of his hand and played The Running Man instead.

Yoo Jae-suk and Lee Kwang Soo’s antics left you in splits. Dinner ended with you sniffing water up your nose and an alarmed Minseok furiously thumping your back as you continued to giggle foolishly.

“I don’t remember the last time I laughed this hard”, you cried.

Minseok smiled awkwardly taking in your behaviour he wasn’t accustomed to, “Let me help you clean up...then I should probably head to bed.”

“Wait”, you floundered out of the couch, “just one more thing!”

“I swear I took the last dose when you weren’t looking!”

“I know that because I was looking!”, your voice carried from the kitchen.

“Here…. I’ve been too harsh with you today”, you offered him a slab of tiramisu making him almost jump out of his seat in delight.

“What’s this?”

“Your question is low-key offensive, Minseok!”

“No, I know, I mean...thank you. For everything.”, his lips curled in a sincere smile making your heart flutter.

***

For someone who holds his liquor well, flu medication made Minseok really drowsy, real quick. 

As you tucked him in bed, you switched your phone on with your numb fingers. It beeped furiously with a flurry of angry messages from Kyungsoo, making Minseok stir in his sleep.

“I’m sorry”, you whispered.

“I love you”, he mumbled in his sleep-befuddled state.

#exosnet #exowritersnet #kyungsoo angst #minseok angst #exo angst #kyungsoo fanfic #minseok fanfic #exo fanfic #xiumin angst #xiumin fanfic #exo scenarios #kyungsoo scenarios #xiumin scenarios #minseok scenarios #exo imagines #kyungsoo imagines #xiumin imagines #minseok imagines #exo x you #xiumin x you #kyungsoo x you #minseok x you #kyungsoo #xiumin #minseok

[journeydb]

March 5 2020 Marrakech

Today was a very fun, educational, and exciting day!  Right after breakfast we were transported to Jardin Majorelle to experience the gardens and tour the museums within the walls.  Since I had been there before with Bruce, Linda, and Binx, I was familiar with it, but I found some things I had missed before.

While waiting to be able to enter the museum we decided to do a fashion shoot with Caitlin, who is an interior designer, model, and actress.

Then others got involved, and, of course, we needed to capture that incredible hat of Natasha’s!  She and Ruth made “mother and daughter” poses which were quite fetching.

The first time I was here I didn’t get to see the short film about Yves St. Laurent’s life so I was delighted to watch it this time.  I hadn’t realized that YSL’s design house changed hands when he died, after part of it was transferred to a foundation, which maintains the gardens and museums in perpetuity.

Yves and his partner and soul mate, Pierre Berge, were very fond of Morocco, and especially Marrakech, and they both found tremendous inspiration here,

Some of Yves’ other muses included the actress Catherine DeNeuve, and she modeled many of his creations.

We weren’t able to photograph the display of mannequins wearing many of Yves’ most popular designs but I found a few photos of them online.  One side of the museum contains the exhibit of Moroccan-inspired designs, including evening wear, and the other contains the Berber museum.  The Berbers are the indigenous people of Morocco, most of the tribes live in the Atlas mountains, and they have influenced cuisine, design, and language here over the centuries.

After touring the museum I wandered around the gardens again, taking in all the natural beauty and breathing in the scents of the desert and this botanical wonderland.

Yellow and blue are the theme colors here and the displays that were created by the gardeners were phenomenal.  Being a gardener myself, I took inspiration from them that I hope to recreate at home.

Another small museum contains many of the hundreds of posters YSL designed, including his series of annual “Love” posters, which became very popular “pop” art.  There were probably quite a few college dorm rooms over the decades with these whimsical images on their walls.  If I had known about YSL when I was in college, I would have surely put one up.

My crutch was hidden on the side for these photos and I’m getting along pretty well without it so I think tomorrow I’m going to try to leave it behind when we go to the spa outside of town.  I’ve put some creams with arnica I bought in one of the souks on it and the swelling has gone down a lot, as well as the pain, so I think it’s healing.

I love bamboo!  It grows prodigiously anywhere; I even planted some in Martha’s Garden at our church in Colorado. Because of its combined strength and quality of being light-weight, bamboo is one of the most used building materials, particularly in areas of the world where it is found in abundance. Historically and today, is an important resource to build bridges, houses, scaffolding, floors, roofs and other structures. Bamboo’s incredible growth rate is more than show stopping.  It also translates to some serious carbon sequestration benefits. When properly managed and intensively harvested, bamboo can sequester up to nearly two tons of CO2 per clump per year. This translates into a CO2 drawdown curve that’s ten times faster than that of woody trees. That's HUGE!  It also filters water, is used for food, because it’s full of vitamins and minerals, and for medicine because of its anti-microbial, anti-aging, anti-oxidant, and other properties.  It’s WONDROUS!

Jardin Majorelle is in the European Quarter of Marrakech.  When we went to lunch at Plus 61 I wasn’t surprised that the ambiance was more European than Moroccan.  We separated into two groups and I was at the table with the vegetarians, except for Ruth, which made it easier for us to share dishes, which we did with relish!  The food was fusion Moroccan with a Mediterranean influence.

After lunch we went to the design house, LRNCE, which I found to be a bit overpriced and which underwhelmed me.  I found some beautifully decorated pots which I liked a lot but otherwise I wasn’t too impressed.  The others tried on some clothing and seemed to like what they saw, but I was soon ready to move on to our next experience.

Coucou Chamelle, a take-off on Coco Chanel, was my favorite boutique so far during this trip.  I loved the  quote from the real Coco Chanel in the entryway, which was “Prenez mes idees, j’ai d’autres”.  Translated this means “Take my ideas, I have others”.

The shop, which was quite large and housed in a former factory, was chock full of furnishings, ceramic pots, dinnerware, jewelry, clothing, knick-knacks, baskets, and more.  I found the offerings creative, whimsical, and, some quite thought-provoking.  If I was able to carry more home, would have bought quite a few items but I settled on a flowing blouse with a Moroccan flair, in cyan, my new favorite color, and some jewelry to give as gifts.

Marraki Life, a factory in the Menara part of the city, was a revelation because we were able to watch the workers spin yarn, then, weave cloth on looms, and then sew it into beautiful, colorful, very expensive clothing.

Melissa is a friend of Jan’s from Boulder who wasn’t able to join the tour until today.  We’re very glad she’s here and excited about getting to know her better.

I think we were all beginning to experience a bit of sensory overload and ready to go back to the riad for some tea and rest before beginning our next exercise in creativity.

[losbella]

[wonderfulworldofmichaelford]

Michael After Midnight: TGWTG Anniversary Crossovers

I think enough time has passed where I can talk about these films without looking like I’m jumping on a trend.

Back when it was, you know, an actual thing, Channel Awesome would every so often gather together and make a big-as anniversary film to celebrate the site. The movies would always be these massive doorstoppers where everyone would be running around in Halloween costumes of whatever character they liked the most that fit the theme and fighting some random villain. None of this ever really tied in to their work, and none of this even remotely had anything to do with reviews. It was all just hanging around with friends and having dumb fun, and when I was younger I kind of just accepted that.

But certain revelations have made that dubious. No one was having fun making these. Everyone was miserable, except perhaps Doug Walker, who was just utterly oblivious to the plight of his coworkers. There was seedy stuff going on, people were pretty much being tortured and abused, and it’s a wonder anyone was ever able to feign enjoyment in any of their scenes. And looking back on these movies I used to remember fondly, I have to say… they kind of really, legitimately suck ass. These three films – Kickassia, Suburban Knights, and To Boldly Flee – are just legitimately painful and depressing to sit through, for reasons both meta and writing-wise.

The biggest problem with all of them is their humor, which is a pretty big problem when you’re starring a bunch of comedians, some of whom can be legitimately funny. The worst bits tend to revolve around the mind-boggling number of references they cram into each script; To Boldly Flee and Suburban Knights are much worse in this regard, as they have all of the actors literally dressed up as their favorite characters, but there are two examples of this sort of thing that shine as the worst examples of all. The first is Lindsay Ellis doing a Sarah Palin impersonation in Kickassia; Palin was such a flash-in-the-pan politician that it instantly dates the whole movie, and I don’t know if it was just bad writing, lack of direction, or what, but Ellis just fails to make this joke work at all. Like I know I can’t expect this to be as funny as Iron Sky’s Palin riffing, but still, it’s just sad.

The absolute worst, however, is JO in To Boldly Flee as Ed from Cowboy Bepob… at least that’s who I think he’s supposed to be playing. I know nothing about Cowboy Bebop and have outright refused to ever watch it because if Ed is anything like how JO played her, I’m going to fucking hate the whole show, Steve Blum and Melissa Fahn be damned. JO’s portrayal is whiny, hyper, annoying, manic, obnoxious… there’s not a single positive thing that can be said. His performance of the character is pretty much the poster child for just how absolutely awful these movies could get.

There’s also a lot of jokes where the punchline is basically just “this guy’s body/genitalia is funny, teehee.” Suburban Knights and To Boldly Flee have some truly awful examples of this, such as the numerous upskirts Doug Walker gets as Link and the infamous Spoony Dune scene. But even that isn’t the worst of it. The worst of it comes from the frequent states of near-nudity that Justin “JewWario” Carmichael would find himself in throughout these films. To Boldly Flee has him channeling George Takei and fencing without his shirt on, which is bad enough, but Suburban Knights has perhaps the worst scene of all, in any of these films, though only with hindsight.

For those of you not familiar, JewWario was outed as a creepy sexual predator during the whole #ChangeTheChannel fiasco. The guy groomed young women and did god knows what else during his time on the site, with none of his coworkers any the wiser and the management doing their best to cover it up; in fact, everyone only found out because the suits who owned CA made a huge blunder during their rebuttal of the claims of its former employees. With all of that context, please try and rewatch Suburban Knights’ climax in which JewWario helps save the day by revealing his penis to everyone. This right here is Keyser Soze levels of “uncomfortable in hindsight.”

The stories aren’t much better, and often fall into the same sort of issues that The Angry Video Game Nerd movie fell into, in that nothing in these films really showcases why we love the reviewers; Kickassia infamously has the Dr. Insano twist, as one example of how they botched this. All of these movies just feel too epic in scope and don’t really try to incorporate anything that we love about these reviewers into the films. Only To Boldly Flee really does anything right in that regard, as it throws back to everything from oneshot Nostalgia Critic villains to the Todd-Lindsay-Lupa love triangle to Phelous dying… the real problem is you have to actually sit through To Boldly Flee to see that. The movies go for these epic plots where the reviewers do cool shit like take over micronations (Kickassia), quest for powerful artifacts (Suburban Knights), or deal with extremely heavy-handed and hamfisted allegories for internet privacy bills (To Boldly Flee). You’d think maybe throwing a bunch of comedians into an epic plot like any of these could lead to some funny jokes, or maybe some sort of Monty Python-esque parody, but no, instead these comedians decide to revel in melodrama and try to genuinely act, with EXTREMELY mixed results. It doesn’t help that some of these people just aren’t even remotely funny when they’re trying to be.

Here’s the thing with The Angry Video Game Nerd’s movie, in comparison to these, though: it may have had this epic, ridiculous, goofy plot involving Area 51, kaiju, aliens, and crappy Atari games buried in a landfill, but the entire plot was building up to, and ultimately delivered on, the promise of the long-awaited review of the E.T. game. For all the film’s flaws, Rolfe knew what we loved about the Nerd, he knew what the fans wanted, and by god did he give it to them in the silliest, most epic way possible. Even if I didn’t love the film, the fact Rolfe knew why we’d want to see a feature-length Nerd film in the first place speaks volumes about how he understands that he can do what will make him happy artistically and still show the fans what they want to see.

These movies from the Channel Awesome crew don’t seem to get that at all. They don’t build up to a review. They don’t build up to them discovering the worst movie or song or whatever they review. They’re all very straightforward genre comedies where they can make a bunch of shallow, Seltzer & Friedberg-esque “Look at this thing that exists! That’s a joke right?” references. Aside from seeing your favorite reviewers in a goofy plot like this, where is there any bit of the reason you watch these people in the first place? Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad if they were playing characters instead of them playing themselves, in their internet reviewer personas; at least then you wouldn’t be watching Brad Jones stumbling around in a Darth Vader helmet and think to yourself miserably “God I wish that poor guy was watching another E.T. porno.”

So there are some positives in these films, shockingly enough. Brad Jones is consistently good across the entire ‘trilogy,’ especially in Kickassia where he has the good sense to walk out on all the bullshit for a while. Maybe it’s just because these films got me interested in him, but I definitely think he does a good job. The same can be said for a lot of the actors, such as the bad guy in Suburban Knights and Ma-Ti’s actor; they manage to deliver at least solid performances in spite of the films. And then there are the James Rolfe cameos, and it’s just always good to see Rolfe in general.

To Boldly Flee, despite its reputation, actually has a lot of genuinely good bits. For instance, the distraction song is actually a really solid musical number. Linkara, Doug, and Spoony actually play really well off of each other, so when they have their three idiot villains team up they at least get some decently good moments. And other reviewers I generally like such as Phelous or Todd do a solid job, and frankly in To Boldly Flee Doug Walker does show some impressive dramatic acting… but it’s in service of a character who has previously been portrayed as a petulant, whiny, self-serving, egotistical manchild, so it almost feels like he’s playing a totally different character. Still, credit where credit is due.

None of these films succeed at what they want to. Ostensibly, they are supposed to be celebrating the site and the friendship of the reviewers, but as I mentioned, there’s no reviewing, there’s nothing that indicates what the site is about, and they all just come off as ego-stroking self-congratulatory wanking. None of these films were worth the pain and suffering that the cast and crew had to go through to produce these, and watching them at all these days is especially hard knowing that a lot of these people are smiling and joking through pain, stress, and abuse. It’s sick.

Kickassia may be the most competent, but that isn’t saying much at all. Aside from the whole Palin bit, this one has a simple, straightforward plot and is relatively down-to-earth, and it almost feels like it really was just a bunch of friends making a shitty low budget action movie in the desert… something sadly undermined by reality. Suburban Knights is probably one of the most uncomfortable to sit through due to jokes like Film Brain saying he’d eat Kinley Mochrie’s “pea-ness” (this was before she came out mind you) and the numerous jokes surrounding JewWario’s junk, but it almost works, like it nearly comes close to being a dumb epic fantasy comedy, but it just frequently shoots itself in the foot with the bad writing and acting and its overreliance on references.

To Boldly Flee is, to put it absolutely simple, a hot mess. This film is an utter trainwreck from start to finish. It is the Battlefield Earth of internet review movies, a bloated, messy, overly long dumpster fire with some of the most nightmarish behind-the-scenes stories and horrendous financial mismanagement you could ever imagine. But where Battlefield Earth is at least unintentionally funny, this film… is not. This film just makes you feel bad for everyone involved, it makes your heart ache for all the poor reviewers who had to suffer under the miserable conditions, it makes you question Doug Walker’s sanity in thinking he could turn his screeching manchild of a reviewer into some tragic martyr in a total 180 from how he had always been portrayed prior. None of these three films are worth sitting through, but I think To Boldly Flee is, with hindsight, the one least worth sitting through, which is a truly incredible accomplishment.

It’s kind of tragic. I still like a lot of the reviewers who took part in these – Todd, Linkara, Phelous, Brad Jones, and even Doug to some extent (though that’s an unpopular opinion these days) – but I just can’t muster up any forgiveness for these films anymore. And I don’t blame any of the people in it (except maybe Doug); most of them were there out of obligation or friendship or what have you. These films are just a monument to hubris, ignorance, broken friendships, horrible management, and wanton cruelty to those who called you friends.

See that picture up there at the top? With all of them gathered together like friends? God, how I wish that were the reality. How I wish that picture accurately reflected life, that they were all pals having a good time and that these films were something they were proud of. But behind that picture are stories all of them could tell of hurt, betrayal, resentment, anger, contempt, and some very unspeakable things in Carmichael’s case. I wish the sort of world a surface level glance at that picture shows you existed, where the crew of TGWTG all had a blast making these shitty movies together, because at least in that case I could find a sort of ironic enjoyment in them. But reality has gone out of its way to undermine any of that. 

#Michael After Midnight #Review #Movie review #Channel Awesome #TGWTG #That Guy with the Glasses #Kickassia #Suburban Knights #To Boldly Flee #Internet reviewers

[themurphyzone]

Absolutely Disastrous Ch 15

Ch 15: Show Your Fighting Spirit! Enter the Champion of Hoenn!

Due to BuzzNav’s latest report on the projected cost of repairs for the Rustboro Gym, Veronica and Milo agreed to battle on the beach instead so the Dewford Gym would be safe from the crossfire.

“I usually do single battles with two Pokémon per side,” Veronica called. “Is that okay with you?” 

“Fine with me!” Milo said. 

Veronica tossed her Poké Ball. “Then let the battle begin! Show us your fighting spirit, Meditite!” 

A blue and white Pokémon popped out, briefly stretching in a yoga pose before bowing politely to Milo. Milo bowed back, and Meditite was pleased at her gesture being returned. 

“Diogee, let’s start with Bite attack!” Milo ordered. 

“Detect, then follow up with Meditate!” Veronica yelled. 

Meditite’s eyes flashed red, and she disappeared as Diogee’s jaws clamped down on empty air. Diogee scuffed the sand with his claws while Meditite reappeared several feet away. Meditite closed her eyes, curling and raising her hands in a basic meditation position.

“Over there!” Milo pointed in Meditite’s direction. “Cut attack!” 

“Duck behind a sand dune and keep meditating!” Veronica yelled. 

Meditite broke her concentration briefly and ducked behind a large sand dune. Cut slammed into the thick soil, stirring up sandy clouds and bits of driftwood but leaving Meditite unharmed. 

“Try Cut again!” 

“Ready, Meditite?” Veronica called. 

Meditite nodded, vanishing before Cut connected. Then she appeared next to Diogee, her legs spread in a firm stance as he coolly sized him up. 

Milo pumped his fist in the air. “Meditite’s in range! Use Bite!” 

Diogee charged at Meditite, his mouth wide open and ready to clamp down on her head. Meditite raised her arms, her palms facing outward. 

“Force Palm now!” 

A shock wave exploded from Meditite’s palms just as Diogee reached her, blasting the Dark-type into the ocean. The tides washed over Diogee as he struggled to his feet, but Meditite never gave him the chance to recover. Since Confusion didn’t affect Dark-types, Veronica instructed Meditite to control the water around Diogee’s paws to decrease his mobility instead. Once Diogee was sufficiently trapped and more focused on freeing himself, Meditite blasted him with another Force Palm.

Diogee tried to gather enough energy for Razor Wind, but slumped to the ground, too exhausted to build it up. 

“Diogee is unable to battle!” Melissa crowed. “Meditite is the winner!”

“You did great, boy,” Milo said, giving Diogee a Sitrus Berry to eat while he recuperated on the sidelines. Diogee nudged his hand, and Milo laughed. “I’ll try, but you know she’s always been a strong trainer.” 

“Diogee’s amazing as ever, Milo!” Veronica called. “Can’t wait to see who else you have!” 

“Thanks!” Milo exclaimed. “Marshtomp, come out!” 

The Poké Ball flew backward and hit the rock next to Zack, who yelped from the realization that the device had been inches from his face. Marshtomp dug his front limbs into the sand to signify that he was ready. 

“Mud Bomb!” Milo shouted. 

A mud glob appeared in Marshtomp’s arms, and he hurled it at Meditite, who deflected it with Confusion. The mud sailed into the ocean instead. 

Then Meditite turned Confusion onto Marshtomp. A mysterious blue power lit up her eyes, the aura surrounding Marshtomp as he clutched his head and tried to fight her off.  

“Go ahead and release Marshtomp!” Veronica yelled. 

Marshtomp flew into a sand dune. When he came out, he stumbled dizzily and fired a Water Gun at the ocean. 

“Aim a Mud Bomb at Meditite!” Milo called. 

Marshtomp created a Mud Bomb, but it sailed away from the sandy field instead. 

Veronica grinned. “Perfect, he’s confused! Get in close with a double Force Palm!” 

Meditite aimed one Force Palm in Marshtomp’s shoulder and another on his stomach. The shock wave snapped him out of confusion, but his limbs were locked in place. 

“Try to shake off the paralysis!” Milo yelled. 

But it only took one more Force Palm-Confusion combo to bring Marshtomp down. Milo recalled Marshtomp as Melissa announced the end of the battle and declared Veronica the winner. 

“That was a great battle, Veronica,” Milo said. “Your Meditite is really strong!” 

“Thanks, Milo!” Veronica said. “You’re not half-bad yourself. I’m sure you’ll figure out a way to beat me soon. You’ve just gotta work on it more. And maybe not use a Dark-type against a Fighting-type.” 

Milo laughed. “I’ll keep that in mind.” 

Veronica’s phone buzzed, and she rolled her eyes. “That’s my other occupation calling. Gotta deliver a vegetarian pizza to some people at Sea Mauville. Weird place to have a pizza party, but hey, money’s money. In the meantime, why don’t you go train in Granite Cave? Just keep heading north and you’ll see it! Who knows? You might meet some cool Pokémon in there.” 

She whistled, summoning a Dodrio whose three heads continued to squabble as she mounted it. 

“By the way, I’m a huge fan of your work,” Veronica said to Zack, who blushed and looked away. “Chop, chop, chop, chop away at my heart, I can feel it falling-”

Her singing faded into the distance as Dodrio sped away, leaving large sand clouds in its wake. 

“What was that about?” Milo asked.

Zack’s laugh was strained. “Oh, she was just singing ‘We’re Going to the Safari Zone’! You know, the prequel to ‘I’m Going to the Safari Zone’!” 

Melissa glanced at him. “I have no idea what you heard, but what she sang was more general pop song dedicated to reining in tweenagers and middle-aged women’s hearts than a random tune someone makes up for a laugh.” 

“Ah...you know, we should really run by the Center. Milo’s Pokémon took quite the beating today!” Zack exclaimed hastily. 

Diogee wasn’t happy about his 24-hour ban from battles. During Nurse Joy’s examination, she’d discovered that his mouth was more sensitive than normal due to Meditite’s Force Palm. She reassured Milo that point-blank Force Palms were one of Veronica’s favorite tactics and that the resulting shock wave caused mild soreness in some Pokémon. 

She proposed a soft food diet and a 24-hour ban from excessive activity, and Milo accepted it. He didn’t mind putting off the rematch. 

Then they headed north, ignoring all the taunts from the potion festivals and big laundry groups in town. True to Veronica’s word, Granite Cave sat on the northern edge of the island. Signposts surrounded the entrance, containing descriptions for what kinds of Pokémon could be found inside, several warnings to trainers, and a promotional poster for a new Stumbleberry Swoobat movie.

They decided to deliver the letter to Orton before focusing on training. Melissa wanted to train Poochyena more, while Zack wanted to work on an appeal with Whismur.

Milo provided headlamps for everyone, including a special one for Diogee that accommodated his horn. He also moved several flashlights and battery packs to the front of his backpack for easy access in case the headlamps broke. 

They entered the cave, and Milo was almost bowled over by a hiker screaming about darkness and stalactites. 

“TURN BACK!” he screamed. “NEVER AGAIN! THE DARKNESS WILL CONSUME US ALL!” The hiker continued his hysterics on the beach, prompting an annoyed Corphish to knock him unconscious with Crabhammer.

While the cave wasn’t narrow enough to trigger Zack’s claustro-avoidant tendencies, the headlamps only provided enough light for a ten-foot radius. Everything else was shrouded in pitch black, making it impossible to discern where a passageway began. 

“ECHO!” Milo shouted.

Echo! Echo! Macadamia! Echo! 

Milo shrugged. “Well, I tried. Though I should really get my echo fixed.” 

“Try what exactly?” Zack asked. 

“Spontaneously develop echolocation,” Milo said. “Maybe you have to get bitten by radioactive Zubat first though.” 

Melissa shuddered. “Let’s not. And besides, remember how we tried to fix your echo when we were eight? Lavaridge Elliot still hasn’t forgiven us for accidentally slathering him in sour cream.”

Before Zack could ask for more details, Diogee shoved Milo to the ground, narrowly avoiding several fast-moving rock projectiles. Unfortunately, the fall broke Milo’s headlamp and left their field of visibility slightly dimmer. 

“Someone’s trying to use Rock Tomb on us,” Melissa said as she released Poochyena. “Keep your ears peeled, okay?” 

Poochyena growled, crouching in front of Melissa protectively. 

Diogee tensed, but Milo shook a finger at him. “No battling, Diogee. We’ll let Poochyena handle this.” 

Diogee huffed in frustration. 

“Yeah, I know. But you still have another 23 hours, so just hold tight,” Milo said as he grabbed a flashlight from his backpack. He kept the beam away from the ceiling to avoid disturbing a flock of Zubat.

The rock projectiles came flying at them again, and everybody dropped to the ground. Poochyena bared his teeth, sparks jumping out as he charged a Thunder Fang. 

Then the ground under Poochyena trembled, and a large, armored head emerged and rammed into his stomach. Poochyena howled, biting down on his attacker, but his fangs were too small to penetrate the iron plates. 

“That’s an Aron!” Melissa exclaimed. “Steel and Rock-type with sky-high defense! I’ve always wanted one of those!” 

Mr. Chase had always refused her requests for an Aron though. He was already horrified by Melissa’s tendencies to hang around Graveler, Machop, and Milo. 

“This’ll be our training time, Poochyena! Use Swagger!” 

A red aura surrounded Poochyena, and he glared ferociously at Aron. Aron refused to be intimidated though, and tunneled through the ground to avoid Poochyena’s gaze. Then Aron slammed into Poochyena’s stomach again. 

“Melissa, maybe you should switch to Combusken,” Zack suggested. 

Melissa gritted her teeth. “No, Poochyena can do this!” 

Poochyena whimpered, baring his fangs stubbornly at Aron. Sparks flew from his mouth as he jumped onto Aron’s back, then it was replaced by bright burning flames. 

“Fire Fang, great job!” Melissa called. “Hang on for a little longer!” 

Poochyena pressed his Fire Fang against the iron plates, and Aron wailed as she tried to buck Poochyena off. When Poochyena finally let go, Aron was breathing heavily. A fire sprung up around her armored body, even though Poochyena didn’t land another Fire Fang. 

“Okay, I think Aron’s weakened enough!” Melissa raised a Poké Ball in triumph. “Welcome to the-” 

A weak jolt of electricity struck her hand. Startled, Melissa dropped her Poké Ball. 

“Are you okay?” Milo asked. He checked her hand in case she needed burn ointment, but the skin was smooth and unmarked. 

“Don’t worry,” Melissa said. “You know how they have those slides at playgrounds with the metal bolt inside and it zaps you when you touch it? It just felt like that. I’m alright, I was just—for lack of a better word—shocked. Poochyena, use Fire Fang on whoever did that!” 

A barrage of shimmering leaves struck Poochyena, and the Dark-type collapsed.

“Take a rest, okay?” Melissa said as she recalled Poochyena. 

“The sign didn’t mention anything about Electric-types,” Zack said. 

“Maybe it’s a Nosepass,” Milo suggested. “They have electromagnetic capabilities. Dr. Magnezone used one as a guide to help him traverse the Ionic Mountains in the Magneto Rising arc.” 

Zack picked up a glossy leaf from the attack that knocked Poochyena out. “Then how do you explain the Grass-type move?” 

Milo had no answer for that. He carefully approached Aron with a bottle of Burn Heal, but a telekinetic power forced his hand to drop it. Then a ballerina-like Pokémon blocked his path. 

Kirlia, the Emotion Pokémon. The cheerful spirit of its Trainer gives it energy for its psychokinetic power. It spins and dances when happy, Melissa’s Pokédex said. This Kirlia is male and can evolve if exposed to a Dawn Stone. Moves include Teleport, Shock Wave, Magical Leaf, and Confusion. 

“That explains the shock and leaves,” Zack said. 

“I just wanted to be sure,” Melissa admitted. “Kirlia don’t naturally live in caves.”

Kirlia spread his arms, refusing to budge. His legs trembled rapidly despite his bravery. 

“I just wanna treat Aron’s burn,” Milo said, holding up the Burn Heal. “If you’ll let me do this, we promise to leave you alone afterward.” 

Kirlia regarded him with suspicion, but finally stepped aside and allowed Milo to spray the medicine on Aron. The burn subsided, and Aron blinked in surprise as Melissa approached and fed her an Oran Berry. Kirlia didn’t look too happy about Melissa’s proximity to Aron though. 

“Sorry about that, Aron,” Melissa said as she patted the iron plates on Aron’s back. “I didn’t expect that Fire Fang either.” 

All of Aron’s previous animosity vanished, and she curiously poked around in Melissa’s bag for more berries. Kirlia said something in Pokémon language that Aron clearly didn’t like, and soon the two were snapping at each other. 

“Do you know what they’re saying?” Milo asked Diogee. 

Diogee rolled a Poké Ball to Melissa and dropped another one in front of Milo. When Milo tried to pick it up, Diogee snatched it away. 

“Diogee says Aron wants to go with Melissa but Kirlia doesn’t want his friend to leave,” Milo translated. 

“I thought he just wanted to play fetch,” Zack remarked. 

“I wouldn’t mind having you on the team, Aron,” Melissa said. Aron looked up hopefully. “But you should probably talk it over with Kirlia first.” 

Aron rolled her eyes, trodding over to the Poké Ball that Melissa dropped earlier. She tapped it with a stubby leg and allowed herself to be sucked inside, and the Poké Ball clicked for a successful capture. Aron didn’t resist at all. 

Kirlia could only stare in disbelief. Then he stomped his foot and gave every angry non-verbal gesture imaginable before shoving a Poké Ball into Milo’s hands and ordering him to throw it. Instead, Milo gently tapped the Poké Ball against Kirlia’s head. 

Kirlia looked rather surprised at the gesture as he vanished in a burst of red light. The Poké Ball wobbled violently, and it took a full minute before they heard the click. 

Under normal circumstances, Milo would’ve celebrated adding new Pokémon to his team, but something just felt off. 

But he was still hopeful that he and Kirlia could be friends. 

Turned out Aron and Kirlia had seen Orton Mahlson, though they both hid behind a large rock as he passed them. 

“Do you mind leading us to him? If you know where he went, I mean,” Melissa asked. 

Aron had extensive knowledge of the tunnels underneath Granite Cave. With Marshtomp’s help, they cleared a passage wide enough for everyone to squeeze through. Kirlia stayed near the back, glaring at Aron as she acted as a guide for the humans. 

Aron’s tunneling led them to a large, expansive room with sunlight filtering in through cracks in the ceiling, and for once everyone could see without the use of a headlamp. 

They crawled out of the hole that Aron made, surprising a man in an odd silver suit. His light brown hair was half-hidden by a gray steampunk styled hat, and one shoe was futuristic and sleek while the other resembled a sandal from ancient times. Although he was missing the giant magnet prop he wore on his right hand for the show, he still wore the iconic robot-like backpack. 

Milo was instantly starstruck. “Hi, Orton Mahlson, sir! My name’s Milo Murphy and I’m a really huge fan of your show and your work as Champion! These are my friends Melissa Chase and Zack Underwood! And my Absol, Diogee! Oh, and we just caught the Aron and Kirlia!” 

“Whoa, you look a lot older than you do on TV,” Zack said. 

Orton raised an eyebrow. “And you kids tunneled all the way here to tell me that? I’m not here to give autographs or shelfies or however you kids commemorate meeting celebrities these days. You’ll have to wait for the next sci-fi convention when my agent’s present.” 

“Well, not exactly,” Milo said. “But if you’re offering-”

Melissa elbowed Milo. “We met your dad, Orville Mahlson, after we stopped Team Magma from stealing important data from his company. He wanted us to deliver this letter to you. Oh, and he mentioned you’d be in Granite Cave, and we befriended this Aron and Kirlia who saw you walk by and agreed to help us find you. Please don’t file restraining orders for stalking against us.” 

She handed Orville’s letter over. Orton’s mouth twitched in amusement as he ripped open the envelope, took one look at the paper inside, and laughed so hard that he overbalanced from the weight of his backpack and fell to the ground. 

The letter fluttered out of his grip and landed on Milo’s shoes. 

Dear Orton, 

Hi!

Love, Dad

“We stumbled through a cave without natural light for this?” Melissa complained. 

Milo couldn’t help but laugh too. “You have to admit, it’s pretty funny after you get over the shock.” 

“You guys got an Aron and Kirlia now. It wasn’t entirely pointless,” Zack said. 

Orton finally stopped laughing, wiping a tear from his eye as he stood up. “I’m so sorry about that, kids,” he said, though he still sounded like he was going to have another bout of laughter. “My old man’s a jokester. It’s not the first time he’s pulled something like this.” 

“He could’ve texted you,” Melissa replied, making it clear she didn’t find the situation all that funny. 

“I suppose, but he likes to have fun,” Orton admitted. “Tell you what, since you went through all that trouble for a delivery, why don’t I make it worth your while? Do kids still like ancient paintings?” 

“We sure do!” Milo exclaimed. 

“Excellent!” Orton said. “Painting’s on the far wall! If you’ll follow me!” 

A massive, ancient painting had been etched onto the smooth stone wall. The left side depicted an enormous behemoth whose presence triggered volcanic eruptions and earthquakes, leaving desolate, parched earth in its wake. Its gaping maw shot columns of fire into the sky.

The right side displayed an oceanic leviathan capable of stirring up devastating thunderstorms and tsunamis. Swirling vortexes of water swallowed entire islands, leaving nothing but churning, murky waves behind.

Orton allowed everyone time to look over the painting before he spoke. “This is where I come for inspiration. As I’m sure you’re aware, I draw inspiration from old myths and legends. For example, the character Roserade Verde was inspired by local stories from the woodcutters around Ilex Forest, who say there’s a presence called the Voice of the Forest. There’s a shrine supposedly hidden somewhere deep in those woods.” 

“So are you planning to use this painting somehow in the future?” Milo asked. 

Orton chuckled. “I’m not going to answer that. Some of you become rather huffy about spoilers. But there’s another a reason I’m here. I’ve been helping my old man find proof that the Legendary Pokémon said to have created Hoenn have another form. A form that wields such incomprehensible power and devastating strength. Energy that is supposedly similar to Mega Evolution, yet not quite the same. To think that such a terrible and awe-inspiring battle could’ve happened in recorded history...it’s all quite fascinating.” 

Orton took a breath, ready to gush more about ancient legends, but heavy footprints echoed from the corridor. Kirlia and Aron tensed, and Diogee whined about having to stay put if there was a battle. 

“Just my luck running into you three again,” someone said from the corridor. “As if my current co-workers aren’t enough of a headache already.” 

“It’s John!” Zack gasped when they recognized the Aqua member who obscured his hair and eyes with a large blue bandana, then frowned. “Okay, that sounded a lot more frightening in my head.” 

“Yeah, he just doesn’t have a terrifying name,” Melissa agreed. 

“He should change it to like, the Blue Scourge or something,” Milo said. 

John ignored them as he shoved past Orton and examined the painting.

“Um, I’m kinda out of the loop here,” Orton said. 

“He threatened an old lady to reveal something about paintings, and we kicked his coworkers’ butts in a Pokémon battle,” Melissa supplied. 

“How does he even see with that bandana?” Milo asked. 

Zack shrugged. “I just assume it’s see-through.” 

“Everybody shut up,” John growled. “It’s obvious you all can’t recognize what’s happening even when the entire story is right in front of you.” 

“Entire story?” Orton echoed. 

John glared at him, and Orton withered slightly. “For a Champion, you’re the densest moron I’ve ever met. And I work for a dense moron too, so that’s saying something. It’s your duty to protect every inhabitant of your region through knowledge. And instead, you’re just eating up the attention, focusing on silly, trivial things that may be here today but will fade away in time.” 

“Hey, don’t call him those things!” Milo protested. 

John’s head swiveled around, his lips pursing into a thin white line. Diogee growled and pushed Milo behind him. “Call off your mutt,” John said. “I’m not wasting my time with a pointless battle.” 

“Down, Diogee,” Milo whispered, gently pushing on his shoulders until he finally backed off. 

“By the way, there’s a third aspect you’re forgetting,” John called over his shoulder as he departed from the room. 

“That guy’s real cheery,” Melissa muttered.

This chapter is dedicated to everyone who’s ever had trouble with Brawly and his Makuhita. He’s not really that formidable in ORAS, but in Gen 3 you don’t want his Makuhita getting in all those Bulk Ups and demolishing your team with Vital Throw. Plus, if you inflict a status condition on it, it has the Guts ability which will make it even stronger.

Meditate raises Attack, which in turn would raise the power of Force Palm. Force Palm also has a 30% chance of paralysis, which unfortunately happened to Marshtomp. Meditite also has the Pure Power ability, which doubles its Attack.

Kirlia’s Pokedex entry is the Firered/Leafgreen and X description. I really love the Ralts line.

Aron family is another Gen 3 favorite as well!

The gang meeting Orton in person is pretty much a modified version of Sara, Melissa, and Zack meeting Orton in Missing Milo.

Orton’s outfit in this story is basically a silver colored version of the Dr. Zone outfit, and with a magnet instead of a gift box.

In ORAS, the paintings in Granite Cave depend on the version you play. Omega Ruby has Groudon, Alpha Sapphire has Kyogre. Here they’re side by side.

#milo murphy's law #oras au #absolutely disastrous #melissa chase #zack underwood #diogee #pokemon

[xswestallen]

I want to be excited for the Arrowverse crossover, but I just find myself really put off by the blatant disrespect to so many female actresses. Candice is the leading lady on The Flash, and yet she's probably going to be just in The Flash portion and probably for maybe three scenes. Melissa was left off the promotional poster, and she's back in LA today, while Grant and Stephen are still filming non-stop. Even Emily has barely filmed and seemingly only filmed for Arrow. It's disheartening.

I feel the same way. Seeing Grant as Green Arrow and Stephen as The Flash looks like a lot of fun. But, once again, it looks like the women and black actors of all three shows won’t get equal treatment. I already wrote about the unfair treatment of Iris in the crossover previous to Crisis on Earth-X and Wally in Invasion and Crisis on Earth-X as a racism issue. Now I am realizing it goes beyond the two of them. 

All black characters are treated poorly. James has been a main character on Supergirl since the Pilot, but he only appeared in Crisis on Earth-X for 1 scene, a scene where he was murdered by a Nazi. Meanwhile, Winn got to be the one leading the fight against the Nazis on Earth-X. John Diggle, main character of Arrow since it’s Pilot and once the only person Oliver trusted to work with, is always written as the comic relief in crossovers and left out of every fight. In Crisis on Earth-X he was only used as a tool for the double wedding at the end. 

Women are also treated poorly. Kara was heavily involved in the Invasion crossover, having a lot of screen time and being a central part of the marketing. But, Supergirl was completely left out of the crossover. There was no Supergirl Invasion episode. The only scene in Supergirl that connected to the crossover was replayed during The Flash episode of Invasion. Now, Kara isn’t on the poster for Elseworlds. This crossover is going to be all about Supers, with Superman and Lois Lane appearing in every episode, and yet Kara isn’t even being used to advertise it.

Laurel is consistently left out of the crossovers too. Earth-1 Laurel made 1 appearance in The Flash, but not in the official annual crossover. Earth-2 Laurel was the villain of the week in The Flash 2x22, but hasn’t been part of either crossover since and doesn’t seem to be in the upcoming one either. 

And most obviously, Iris has been left out of every crossover besides Crisis on Earth-X. She’s been treated so bad that even in The Flash episode of the 2015 crossover, she only had 1 line! Iris has faced the worst treatment of all and I don’t think it’s a coincidence that she’s a black woman.

Really, Felicity and Caitlin are the only female characters who’ve been treated well in crossovers. I don’t keep up with Emily Bett Rickards on social media, but if she isn’t filming much for Elsewords, that is very strange. She’s been a big part in every other crossover.

#dctv #crossover #arrowverse #legends of super flarrow #iris west #iris west allen #kara danvers #supergirl #kara zor-el #laurel lance #black siren #black canary #john diggle #arrow #james olsen #guardian #Anonymous

[booksbeyondimagining]

Hey everyone!

Sorry I’ve not been very active on here lately (glances at personal goals for the year guiltily), but I spent the last couple of months working on shows and prepping for BookCon.  This year was a success, I think, in terms of achieving my goal to meet as many of my favorite authors – and potential favorites – as possible.

Saturday I started the day trying to get a ticket for a Leigh Bardugo signing at the TopatoCo booth, however their organization skills were downright awful and the line quickly became a messy blob and so of course this shorty in the back didn’t get one.  I told myself to get over it (and for the most part I did.  I was bitter still, but I was over it.  Gotta focus on the authors I did get to meet right?  The only annoyance was having to carry around my hardcover of SoC all day cause it costs $ to get back into coat check (wtf)).

So after that disaster I went to the signing for Brigid Kemmerer, who was lovely to talk to, followed by Susan Dennard (who got so excited about the poster I brought of the cover for The Executioner’s Three, her story on Wattpad).  I then went to the Jordandene booth to get an As Travars shirt – sadly they were out, but I got a Geekerella one instead – and while I was there I turned around and effing V. E. Schwab was right behind me.  This was the second time in 2 years that I’ve seen her on the floor, and this time I finally got a picture with her, lol.  I swear she is my lucky charm there – I wasn’t even actively seeking her out this year since I’ve already met her twice and yet there she was anyway.

I then went a stood for two hours(!) in a line for the Coco Ma/Jill Criswell signing for their ARCs of Shadow Frost/Beasts of the Frozen Sun (respectively).  I went to the booth to ask when the line was going to start forming and the guy was like “this is the line” indicating the one I thought was for the event prior to theirs.  So yeah, got to wait for a while there.  The line moved slowly because they were both talking with people, which was nice, but I was also mildly panicking because Amanda Foody had a signing I wanted to get to as well.  But I had a nice conversation with both (Coco was wearing Gryffindor robes so we had a fun HP conversation) and I got to the HarperCollins booth just in time to see Amanda and have her sign my copy of Ace of Shades.  

I think after that I wandered the floor for a bit, before making my way over to the Eoin Colfer signing.  I loved the Artemis Fowl series growing up, so I was ecstatic when I got the ticket to his signing.  The best part was we ended up talking theatre while he signed my books because he asked me what I did and I told him I do lighting design for theatre and he started talking about preferring the backstage atmosphere whenever someone puts on a play he’s written (I had no idea he wrote plays omg I’m such a fake fan lol).  And like the idiot I was I forgot to give him my business card.

After that I kinda stalked Katy Rose Pool.  She’s the author of There Will Come a Darkness which comes out in the fall and which I am currently reading (thank you Edelweiss).  It’s.  So.  Good.  And my friend had already met her during the day and told her about me and she remembered and was so nice and sweet and signed a blank bookmark I brought.  I also saw Amanda Foody there (I love how they have this group of writer friends it’s the cutest thing ever) and got the picture with her that I forgot to get earlier lol.  I then did some more shopping (got a Stardust candle that smells like stormy woods and blackberry and had little stars on top) and walked the floor until it closed.

And omg I went to the FierceReads booth to ask about the TWCAD ARC giveaway they were doing on Sunday (because yeah okay I am reading the egalley but I want it physically too of course) and while they were explaining it KATY ROSE POOL showed up again and I got so worried she thought I was an asshole for wanting the physical ARC as well instead of letting someone else get a chance to read it.  I’M SORRY I JUST WANTED ALL THE VERSIONS.  (Actually I’m over it now.  I got the ticket for the ARC game on Sunday and it was a chance-to-win game.  Basically you had your Tarot Cards read (the tarot cards are based on the characters in TWCAD) in a past-present-future spread and the present card determined which ARC you got.  I ended up getting The Last Word by Samantha Hastings oh well, but man the girl who did my reading was really good and it was scarily accurate.  But hey that gives me hope for my future cause it sounded just like what I needed.  Anyway, while I was there I watched two people who I knew had been first in both the ticket drop and the actual event line get the TWCAD ARC and I got really happy for them cause damn they deserved that.  PLUS I ended up getting an ARC of The Tenth Girl by Sara Faring for being tenth in line how cool was that!!)

Anyway, that was Saturday.

On Sunday, after getting the tickets at FierceReads (you got two for their giveaways, and beside the Tarot Card game I got a Grisha passport one which I gave to my friend cause I wasn’t interested in it), I wandered the floor for a bit before heading over to QuirkBooks to get ready for the Ashley Poston signing.  We were told we could buy the books before the signing even started so we did, and then they had a game where you turn one of those candy/prize machines you see outside of supermarkets and you got a piece of paper that indicated a prize.  My friend got a Charmed pin which she gave to me since I love the show, and I got a coupon for a free book so I got to return the copy of The Princess and the Fangirl I had just bought there and get it for free instead.  How cool is that?  And while we were in line for the game my friend saw Ashley Poston and she came over and talked with us and again while we were waiting for the signing to start.  She was so sweet and nice to talk with.

I then made the stupid attempt to try to get a ticket for the Melissa de la Cruz signing but since Penguin refuses to start lines before a certain time and just lets people stand in a blob, I again didn’t get one.  I wasn’t too angry though because I haven’t actually read any of her books, but the one she was signing for – The Queen’s Assassin – sounded interesting.  I was just more annoyed that all my other just-in-case-I-don’t-get-that-one events were already capped as well so I wandered the floor.  I finally found an event at the FaeCrate line for a die toss game but only got a chapstick lol.  Then I went to Simon & Schuster for their lollipop wall and ended up with a contemporary YA called She’s the Worst by Lauren Spieller.

I then went to the Meg Cabot signing where she signed my copy of Shadowland, because I love love love The Mediator series by her.  After that was the Tarot Card game as described above, and then the signing for Holly Black.  She seemed really nice from the line, but sadly by the time I got to her it was 4:30 and the publishers were making her speed things up to move the line along so I only got a candid picture and didn’t get much time to talk to her.  Oh well.

After that I went and got a shirt at Out of Print because they were putting them on sale by then – I got an Elephant & Piggie shirt and I LOVE it.  And then Hoopla was doing a wheel spin still but the woman said it was closed.  I waited around though because they had sunglasses and from what I could see, plenty of them (I don’t know what it is about my sunglasses but they will last like a year and then will just randomly break when I like take them off or something.  I don’t get it.)  They reopened it and when I spun and got a popsocket I asked and they just switched it for the sunglasses.  Lol score.

And that was the end of BookCon 2019!!

Here are all the books I received/bought/brought to get signed:

And here is all the swag I got (well the Susan Dennard poster I brought with me for her to sign, and the V. E. Schwab poster my friend actually got for me lol)

Also my friend and I stayed in this hotel that looked so old fashioned we kept calling it the Tower of Terror and saying we were gonna get visited by a ghost or something.  It was awesome.

Overall I was happy because I got to most of what I wanted, saw most of the authors I wanted to see, and bought some really fun merch too.  Can’t wait for next year and to see who I might get to meet then!

BookCon 2019 |A Review Hey everyone! Sorry I've not been very active on here lately (glances at personal goals for the year guiltily), but I spent the last couple of months working on shows and prepping for BookCon. 

#Amanda Foody #Ashley Poston #Bookcon #BookCon2019 #Brigid Kemmerer #Coco Ma #Eoin Colfer #Holly Black #Jill Criswell #Katy Rose Pool #Meg Cabot #Susan Dennard #V. E. Schwab

[charismaandcashmere]

In a Twitter account called So Sad Today, the American writer Melissa Broder has been sending out snippets of her daily inner life since 2012. Broder writes about mundane sadness – ‘waking up today was a disappointment’ or ‘what you call a nervous breakdown i call oops, accidentally saw things as they are’– and she is brutally honest about her own shortcomings (‘whoops, hurt myself conforming to socially accepted standards of beauty that i know are false but still feel compelled to fit into’ or ‘just felt a flicker of self-esteem and was like what the fuck is this’). The account has become a sensation, winning her more than 675,000 followers, and Broder’s book of personal essays about her mental-health battles, also named So Sad Today, appeared in 2016.

It’s startling that Broder’s unabashed expression of sadness – and all the shitty emotions – has struck such a nerve in a world where people’s social media profiles are immaculately curated to show their happiest selves. But clearly the growing rates of depression worldwide mean that we are struggling to be happy. Are we doing something wrong? Broder’s popularity should compel us to cast a new look at sadness and its cousins. Perhaps we should consider realigning ourselves with the Romantics, who as a group found solace in freely expressing emotions in poetry. In his ‘Ode on Melancholy’ (1820), for example, John Keats wrote: ‘Ay, in the very temple of Delight, / Veil’d Melancholy has her sovran shrine’. Pain and joy are two sides of the same coin – both are necessary for a fully lived life.

Keats might have had Robert Burton in mind here, the 17th-century priest and scholar whose hefty volume The Anatomy of Melancholy (1621) described how sadness might go into overdrive (something we’ve come to understand as clinical depression) and how to cope with it. Or various self-help books from the 16th century, which, according to Tiffany Watt Smith, a research fellow at the Centre for the History of the Emotions at Queen Mary University of London, ‘try to encourage sadness in readers by giving them lists of reasons to be disappointed’. Could it be that the path leading to true happiness goes via sadness?

Recent research suggests that experiencing not-so-happy feelings actually promotes psychological wellbeing. A study published in the journal Emotion in 2016 took 365 German participants aged 14 to 88. For three weeks, they were handed a smartphone that put them through six daily quizzes on their emotional health. The researchers checked in on their feelings – be they negative or positive moods – as well as how they perceived their physical health in a given moment.

Prior to these three weeks, the participants had been interviewed about their emotional health (the extent to which they felt irritable or anxious; how they perceived negative moods), their physical health and their habits of social integration (did they have strong relationships with people in their lives?) After the smartphone task was over, they were quizzed about their life satisfaction.

The team found that the link between negative mental states and poor emotional and physical health was weaker in individuals who considered negative moods as useful. Indeed, negative moods correlated with low life satisfaction only in people who did not perceive adverse feelings as helpful or pleasant.

These results resonate with the experience of clinicians. ‘It is often not one’s initial response to a situation (the primary emotion) that is problematic, but their reaction to that response (the secondary emotion) that tends to be the most difficult,’ says Sophie Lazarus, a psychologist at the Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center. ‘This is because we are often sent messages that we shouldn’t feel negative emotions, so people are highly conditioned to want to change or get rid of their emotions, which leads to suppression, rumination, and/or avoidance.’

According to Brock Bastian, author of The Other Side of Happiness: Embracing a More Fearless Approach to Living (2018) and a psychologist at the University of Melbourne in Australia, the problem is partly cultural: a person living in a Western country is four to 10 times more likely to experience clinical depression or anxiety in a lifetime than an individual living in an Eastern culture. In China and Japan, both negative and positive emotions are considered an essential part of life. Sadness is not a hindrance to experiencing positive emotions and – unlike in Western society – there isn’t a constant pressure to be joyful.

This thinking could be rooted in religious upbringing. For example, Indo-Tibetan Buddhist philosophy, which has been extensively studied by Western psychologists such as Paul Ekman, calls for recognising emotions and embracing pain as part of the human condition. It places emphasis on understanding the nature of pain and the reasons that lead to it. Many modern psychological practices such as dialectical behaviour therapy now employ this approach of recognising and naming emotions in treating depression and anxiety.

In a study published in 2017, Bastian and his colleagues conducted two experiments examining how this societal expectation to seek happiness affects people, especially when they face failure. In the first study, 116 college students were divided into three groups to perform an anagram task. Many of the anagrams were impossible to solve. The test was designed for everyone to fail, but only one of the three groups was told to expect failure. Another group was in a ‘happy room’ whose walls were affixed with motivational posters and cheerful Post-it notes and they were provided with wellness literature, while the final group was given a neutral room.

After completing the task, all the participants took a worry test that measured their responses to failing the anagram task, and filled out a questionnaire designed to evaluate whether societal expectations to be happy affected how they processed negative emotions. They also took a test about their emotional state at that time. Bastian and his team found that people in the ‘happy room’ worried a lot more about their failure than the people in the other two rooms. ‘The idea is that when people find themselves in a context (in this case a room, but generally in cultural context) where happiness is highly valued, it sets up a sense of pressure that they should feel that way,’ Bastian told me. Then, when they experience failure, they ‘ruminate about why they are not feeling the way they think they should be feeling’. The rumination, the researchers found, worsened their state of mind.

In the second experiment, 202 people filled out two questionnaires online. The first one asked how often and how intensely they experienced sadness, anxiety, depression and stress. The second – in which people were asked to rate sentences such as: ‘I think society accepts people who feel depressed or anxious’ – measured to what extent societal expectations to seek positive feelings and inhibit negative ones affected their emotional state. As it turns out, people who thought that society expects them to always be cheerful and never sad experienced negative emotional states of stress, anxiety, depression and sadness more often.

Painful times confer other benefits that make us happier over the long term. It is during adversity that we connect most closely with people, Bastian points out. Experiencing adversity also builds resilience. ‘Psychologically, you can’t become tough if you don’t have to deal with tough things in life,’ he told me. At the same time, he warns that the recent findings shouldn’t be misunderstood. ‘The point is not that we should try and be sadder in life,’ he says. ‘The point is that when we try and avoid sadness, see it as a problem, and strive for endless happiness, we are in fact not very happy and, therefore, cannot enjoy the benefits of true happiness.’

#sadness #blues #emotions

[megalium]

Covid-19: C.D.C. Order Requires Masks for Travel in U.S.

Covid-19: C.D.C. Order Requires Masks for Travel in U.S.

Countries are tightening borders to evade virus variants. A hospital refrigerator malfunction in Seattle led to a frenzied overnight inoculation drive.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has issued an order requiring travelers in the United States to wear masks as part of a new initiative aimed at stemming outbreaks of the coronavirus.

According to the 11-page order issued on Friday, travelers entering and transiting throughout the country will be required to wear face coverings in all transportation hubs, which the C.D.C. defines as including any “airport, bus terminal, marina, seaport or other port, subway station, terminal, train station, U.S. port of entry or any other location that provides transportation.”

The language of the order largely puts the onus on transit operators to enforce the rule.

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“Conveyance operators must use best efforts to ensure that any person on the conveyance wears a mask when boarding, disembarking and for the duration of travel,” the document said.

The new mandate, which comes as the country surpassed 26 million cases, is part of a string of executive orders and directives that President Biden signed on Thursday that aimed to ramp up the new administration’s ambitious goals of containing the latest surge and accelerating vaccine distribution.

A similar order was proposed during the Trump administration, but the White House Coronavirus Task Force, led by Vice President Mike Pence, blocked the effort.

“Requiring masks on our transportation systems will protect Americans and provide confidence that we can once again travel safely even during this pandemic,” read the order, signed by Dr. Martin Cetron, director of the C.D.C.’s Division of Global Migration and Quarantine. “Therefore, requiring masks will help us control this pandemic and aid in re-opening America’s economy.”

A footnote in the order states that the C.D.C. reserves the right to enforce the order “through criminal penalties.” But a spokesman for the agency said that the order relied heavily on voluntary action to enforce the mandate.

“C.D.C. strongly encourages and anticipates widespread voluntary compliance as well as support from other federal agencies in enforcing this order, to the extent permitted by law,” he said. “C.D.C. will be assisted with implementation by other federal partners, including D.H.S. and D.O.T.,” referring to the Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Transportation.

The establishment of a national mask mandate for travelers was hailed by public health officials as a necessary step to fix the patchwork of local regulations that at times have let travelers move freely without facial coverings, in spite of ample data showing that mask wearing is key to preventing the spread of the virus.

“You needed this kind of coordinated response for quite some time,” said Dr. Melissa J. Perry, a professor of environmental and occupational health at George Washington University. “So, uniform, across the board, everyone, everywhere, being required to wear masks will get us more soon to the end of the pandemic.”

The Pentagon on Saturday halted plans to offer coronavirus vaccines next week to the 40 wartime prisoners at Guantánamo Bay after an outcry over whether the Defense Department was putting terrorism suspects before the American people.

John Kirby, a department spokesman, announced the reversal on Twitter, noting that none of the detainees had been vaccinated. A delay, he said, would let officials “assess the impact on force protection to our troops, and that’s always going to be the first priority.”

The 40 prisoners include Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, who is accused of being the mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, as well as six men who have been cleared for release by an interagency government panel.

The disclosure by The New York Times on Thursday of the plan to administer vaccines to prisoners at Guantánamo Bay incited a sharp backlash, particularly given the slow start of the vaccine rollout in the United States.

Most states have started vaccinating older adults, but people across the country have expressed frustration over vaccine shortages, long lines and canceled appointments.

Representative Kevin McCarthy of California, the top House Republican, chimed in on Twitter on Saturday to criticize the Pentagon’s initial proposal. “President Biden told us he would have a plan to defeat the virus on day 1,” he wrote. “He just never told us that it would be to give the vaccine to terrorists before most Americans.”

The Defense Department announced the suspension several hours later.

About 1,500 troops serve at the detention center in Cuba, most of whom are National Guard members who arrived during the pandemic and spent their first two weeks there in individual quarantine. But the Southern Command, which has oversight of the prison, has so far not disclosed how many of them were offered the vaccine and how many agreed to receive it.

Dr. Terry Adirim, the Pentagon’s principal deputy assistant secretary of defense for health affairs, signed a memo on Wednesday that authorized the vaccination of the detainees. She is a Biden administration appointee who has been serving as a senior health official at the Defense Department since July 2016.

Motorists in line at one of the country’s largest vaccination sites were briefly halted on Saturday afternoon as demonstrators descended on Dodger Stadium, the authorities said.

At about 1:50 p.m. Pacific time, officials from the Los Angeles Fire Department closed the stadium’s entrance, said David Ortiz, a spokesman for the department. The closure lasted for about an hour before the entrance reopened, while vaccinations continued inside the stadium, Mr. Ortiz said. Cars were temporarily not let inside the entrance as protesters were trying to walk through the gates. About 50 protesters were present at the entrance.

All scheduled vaccines would be delivered, the police said on Twitter on Saturday evening. A spokeswoman with the Los Angeles Police Department said no arrests were made.

“The protest did not shut down the vaccination site,” Chief Michel Moore said in a statement on Twitter. “All appointments are being met.”

The Police Department and Fire Department did not comment on whether the protesters were affiliated with any groups or what exactly they were demonstrating against.

Photos posted to social media, however, show people holding posters with the words, “99.96% survival rate” and “End the Lockdown” as well as other paraphernalia that appeared to denounce the pandemic’s existence and coronavirus vaccinations. One protester held a sign at the gates reading, “Vaccine Makers have no liability for injuries or deaths.”

The vaccination site at Dodger Stadium opened on Jan. 15. Since then, those eager to get vaccinated have been met with a wide range of wait times, with the site highlighting some of the logistical hurdles of vaccinating people in one of America’s largest cities. In the past week, an average of almost 7,000 daily cases were reported in Los Angeles County, according to a New York Times database. The city of Los Angeles has one of the highest vaccination rates in the country, as almost 83 percent of the doses the city has received have been administered.

[gilliansanderson]

If Ever There Is Tomorrow; Chapter 1

An AU in which Mulder and Scully meet three times over the course of their lives; told in a series of vignettes.

Tagging @today-in-fic and fulfilling my @fictober promise. I also wanted to dedicate this one to all the lovely, talented people who helped me out during the @fic-files write-in, because without their support and feedback I probably would not have had the courage to put this out there.

1. As Time Goes By

Spring, 1993

The end of the 20th century is only the beginning. Change hits the nineties at a breakneck speed; Hair is getting bigger, technology is getting smaller, colors are getting brighter while the climate begins to suffer, but in the midst of a new era, some old skeletons are about to be unearthed. The third time they meet is the least bloody, yet opens more wounds. It comes, like the times before, suddenly and without warning.

Well, that’s not entirely true. Mulder had been given plenty of warning when Skinner had informed him he was being assigned a partner; A scientist who was to, no doubt, disprove his work and report back to the kind of men he was fighting. To keep him in line and keep him from going overboard. This hadn’t come as a surprise, he always knew the closer he got to the truth, the more curveballs they would throw his way. What made him almost fall out of his chair was the name, Dana Scully.

A name he couldn’t claim had never crossed his mind.

Dana Scully haunted him like an intrusive thought or the vague memory of a strange fever dream. She reminded him of a time he would much rather forget, yet the feeling lingered; the possibility that maybe one day, their paths might cross again. When he’d heard that she’d enlisted he found himself needlessly frequenting Quantico in the hope and the dread of catching a flash of ginger hair. Her thesis was printed and dog-eared the moment it was published; because challenging one of the greatest minds the world has ever known was something so quintessentially Dana Scully, and he was ever the masochist.

His hopes were not high; he didn’t expect her to accept this assignment, and he certainly didn’t suppose she would darken his basement door that very same day, but suddenly, here she is, smiling down on him from the high road.

“Agent Mulder,” she says quietly, with an air of disbelief, “I’ve been assigned to work with you,”

They shake hands like strangers, his fingers burn at her touch; the sensation lingers even after her hand falls away. She had always run as warm as her complexion, His summer girl had become fall. Her hair is darker, neatly tamed. She teeters precariously on heels that give her precious extra inches, that demand he looks her in the eye. Her ill-fitting tweed suit hangs awkwardly on her slender frame; the whole ensemble reminds him of a child playing make-believe. Hidden is her rebellious heart under sensible attire and a polite smile; the heart he knows he broke, and one he refuses to break again.

So he puts down his slides and puts up his guard.

“Isn’t it nice to be so highly regarded? So who’d you tick off to get stuck with this detail, Scully?”

For a moment she’s stunned, then the next she recovers, “Actually, I’m looking forward to working with you,” she tells him.

He responds with a bitter smile, “Oh really? I was under the impression that you were sent to spy on me.”

A fire sparks behind her eyes, she looks as if she was about to retort before he cuts her off. “I’m surprised you didn’t object to your placement, Scully, what with our tempestuous history,”

She hesitates, he hates that she hesitates, hates that he makes her hesitate. “I can’t say I wasn’t caught off guard,” she admits, “Though I knew it was a possibility we would run into each other when I started working at the Bureau…”

“Yes, this is interesting happenstance isn’t it, Doctor?” She tenses, Mulder stands and brushes past her in order to miss her patented Scully glare.

“If you’re suggesting that you played any part in any decision concerning my career…”

“I’m not suggesting anything, I just always supposed you’d be headed towards a Nobel prize by now, yet here you are wasting your talents in the basement with me,”

Scully blinks and tilts her pointed chin, “You think I’m wasting my talents here, Mulder?”

“It’s just that in most of my work, the laws of physics rarely seem to apply,” he shrugs and hits the lights. In the unearthly glow of his projector, Scully looks like a ghost.

He shows her the dead kids, barely older than they had been, once upon a time. He tells her his theories, she rebukes them with a smirk, slowly the ice begins to thaw and a familiar feeling begins to take root.

Then she leaves, and the basement feels darker and emptier than it ever had before. So Scully was back in his life and maybe, plausibly, this time she would stay. Mulder locks the office door behind him that evening and whistles the whole way home.

Fall, 1978

September in Connecticut, 1978 is record-breaking. The air as thick and hot as soup, her stiff collared shirt clings to her skin and dampens at the base of her neck. She wipes away the sweat beading on her forehead with the end of her ugly striped green tie and ignores the disapproving look her mother gives her.

Dana had always marvelled at how the air was always different in every new place they landed, she secretly ranked them from the icy unforgiving winds of the Scottish moors to the serene and exotic air of Japan. Greenwich so far was not doing too well on this list, however, it looked like she was going to have to get used to it. She had long since gotten used to the routine of neatly packing up her life in matching suitcases and burying a lunchbox in the backyard.

Melissa left a trail of broken hearts behind them like push pins in a map. Her sister had always been better at making friends, she claimed it had something to do with her aura, Dana wasn’t entirely sure what that meant, only that hers was probably broken. Usually, by the time she had started warming to people, her father would sit the four of them on the couch and tell them it was time to start saying goodbyes, so Dana eventually stopped trying to find people to say goodbye to.

She had her friends, they were called Mom, Ahab, Missy and Charlie. Sometimes Bill, when he wasn’t being a pain in the A Double-S. They were all she really needed. When she was very young, she even had an imaginary friend called Lucy, who took the form of a red squirrel. Lucy would curl up behind her hair and whispered secrets in her ear. Dana liked the fact that nobody else could see her, that she was hers and hers alone.

Sometimes she would pen a letter to the boy who had forgotten her, only to burn it in the bathtub with her mother’s lighter.

But still, her Mom always tried. She heard her arguing sometimes with her father that it wasn’t good for them, that kids needed stability. It looked like this year she had finally won the war and a house was bought, not rented.

She shifts uncomfortably as her bare thighs stick to the Principals rigid leather seats. The Principal in question was a tall British woman with large teeth, a sensible mousey bob and a collection of motivational animal posters. Dana catches the eye of a mournful kitten hanging from a curtain, encouraging her to Hang In There! and somehow feels even less optimistic.

“Now Diana, a little birdy told me that you’re especially talented at Science is that right, dear?” She smiles in a condescending way that makes Scully bristle. Bill snickers to her right, Missy kicks him in the shin on her behalf.

“It’s Dana, Ms Paterson,” Her mother corrects her patiently.

“Oh, my apologies, Dana.”

Dana represses the urge to roll her eyes, instead, begins to fiddle with the brand new chain around her neck. Naturally she was the last of the three to be enrolled, but unfortunately for her, also the one the school was most interested in.

“As I was saying, it seems you are just the model student, and if you don’t mind the extra work, we might be able to sign you up to the tutoring scheme, we have a nice young man who is in need of a little extra help in physics,”

Maggie nods encouragingly at her, clearly ecstatic at the prospect of her troubled young daughter making a friend. Dana tries feebly to muster her mothers’ enthusiasm,

“Sure, Miss, sounds… neat,”

“Wonderful,” she croons, “I hope you don’t mind, but I already took the pleasure of asking Fox to come by the office, so you could get to know each other,”

Dana’s hand stilled at the base of her throat, she felt her mother stiffen beside her, and her siblings’ squabbles fall silent. No. It couldn’t be that uncommon a name. “Fox?” she falters.

“Yes, quite an odd name isn’t it? He’s truly lovely boy, very very bright, unfortunately, he had to be held back a year…” Ms Paterson yammers on, but Dana had long since stopped hearing her words, as a minute later he appeared.

He was taller and lanky, the skin on his cheeks textured and he was in dire need of a haircut, but he was undoubtedly the same wide-eyed boy who had been her first real friend. And with wide eyes, he stares at her from the doorway, as if he couldn’t believe them himself.

“Scully?”

Framed by a halo of light from the hall, the image of him becomes blurred by the tears which spring to her eyes. Her chair falls backwards with a heavy thud as shoots to her feet. She mutters an apology to the baffled headmistress before she hurries from the room.

“Scully,” Mulder pleads, catching her hand as she darts past and clutches it tight. Electricity floods her veins. She looks into those familiar hazel eyes and pauses only a moment before she pulls her hand away and runs.

Summer, 1969

The summer of ‘69 is worthy of its song. Rock and Roll is at its peak, a man walks on the moon, and somewhere in New England, a lonely little boy meets a lonely little girl.

With a startled wail and a resounding thump, she falls out of a tree into his yard and into his life.

The day until that moment had been dull and unremarkable. Having escaped captivity and found refuge in his favourite spot, under a tall oak tree overlooking the tranquil sea; Fox William Mulder, seven and three quarters, jumps with a start and stares at the heap of limbs and hand me downs, as it groans then starts to giggle.

“Are you okay?” he asks, as his initial shock subsides.

“Yeah, yeah,” it says, “I’m fine,”

Dana Katherine Scully, six and a half, sits up to brush off the worst of the debris but lets out a sharp gasp as a lightning bolt of pain shoots through her wrist. However, being the tough cookie she was having grown up playing rough with William Scully Jr, the sprain was not enough to make her cry.

“You don’t look okay, you’re bleeding,” Mulder observes. She touches a hand to her mouth which sure enough, comes away red. Between them on the crisply trimmed grass lies a pearly white tooth. The ruffled girl picks it up and studies it curiously, tonguing the fresh gap in her gums, then tucks it into the pocket of her overalls.

“I guess you’re gonna see the tooth fairy,” he lisps, gesturing to his own missing front teeth. Her freckles dance as she wrinkles her nose.

“The tooth fairy isn’t real,” she replies, spitting scarlet on the ground and wiping her mouth on her arm, staining her skin like war paint.

“Is too, and so is Santa Claus,”

He offers a hand to help her to her feet, which she takes with a bloody, gap-toothed grin. This girl was brand new, he knew every fresh face in this small seaside town, and not one of them had ever smiled at him like that before. She’s all skinned elbows and scabby knees. She looks like she was spat out by the sun, with a fiery rat’s nest of auburn hair and a mischievous gleam in her bright blue eyes. He feels like Isaac Newton, hit on the head with the discovery of the century.

“You’re not from around here are you?” he asks.

She shakes her head, “No, we just moved here this week. My Dad’s gone to sea, I was trying to see his boat from up there when I slipped,” She replies, gesturing to the web of twisted branches above their heads.

“He’s a pirate?” he jokes; she quirks a little brow.

“No. He’s a Captain,”

“Captain Hook?”

Fox Mulder is still at the age where girls are kind of gross, but the sincerity with which this pretty tomboy laughs makes his ears turn red regardless. She was like a breath of fresh air after spending the whole day trapped inside a stuffy room, which incidentally he had.

“Fox,” he blurts at her, suddenly losing his cool.

“What did you call me?” she replies hotly, her un-injured hand flying self-consciously to her mussed red hair.

“No! my name is – “

“Fox!” They jump at the booming disembodied voice calling from the house a few meters away, “What in the hell are you doing?”

“Crap,” he mutters. Scully can’t help but flinch at the use of the word which would have cost her her dessert. “I’m supposed to be grounded, I think I’d better go,”

She tries not to be disappointed, but finds herself reluctant to say goodbye to this curious boy with a strange sense of humor, who believes in myths and fairy tales; but he makes no move to leave, equally unwilling to say goodbye to the girl who dresses like a boy and smells like the sea, who climbs trees and doesn’t cry when she falls. They eye each other hesitantly until finally, she breaks the silence.

“Your name is Fox?” she asks.

He makes a face, “Yeah, but I hate it. I like my last name better. It’s Mulder,”

“Mulder,” she tries it on her tongue and decides she likes the taste. She straightens her back and offers her hand like she’s seen adults do a thousand times before. “Ok. Nice to meet you, Mulder, my name’s Dana, but I guess you can call me Scully,”

“Scully,” he beams and takes her tiny, dirty hand in his. They shake in childish ignorance to how their stars had just aligned.

#If Ever There Is Tomorrow #txf fic #the x files fanfiction #msr fic #fictober #oh god im still so nervous to post this #i might throw up #this is my baby #no but thank god for the workshop or i probably would have just aborted #my stuff

[jennielim]

[akshay123me-blog]

Here we start 30 days song challenge I special that’s to my friend who challenge me to for this .  I wanted to write this blog because it turns out that as I progressed with the challenge, I realized that at the same time it became an experiment and it is about something that many of us are passionate about: Music:

I learned a lot from them through music and I’m glad they shared a lot with me. I learned how human we can be by sharing songs that make us think and feel depending on the song, the melody and its lyrics.

Here I would like to share 30 days song challenge list  that encourage you to do the challenge and  you can know among all of you new songs:

Day 01 song challenge

Your favourite song  Ed sheeran shape of you Is my favourite song    released as on 6 January 2017 “Shape of You” peaked at number-one on the singles charts of 34 countries . it has more than 4.5 billion view on youtube the song was written by Ed Sheeran and having a great success in 2017 and also won grammy award for best solo performance .  It was the best-selling song of 2017 and the decade in the UK.

Day 02 song challenge: A song that you can dance to

“Cheap Thrills” is a song by Australian singer-songwriter Sia from her seventh studio album.  It was written by Sia Furler and Grey kurstin, while solely produced by Kurstin. In Australia, it was eventually certified Quadruple Platinum for shipments of over 280,000 copies, and reached no. 6. In New Zealand, and was certified Double Platinum for sales of over 30,000 copies. The song was awarded Quadruple Platinum in Sweden, Five time Platinum in Spain, and Double Diamond in Poland. In the UK, it peaked at No. 2 for four weeks, and was certified double platinum for shipments of over 1.2 million copies. It has over 106,309,900 views on youtube and the song became the best selling and highest certified single of all time in Italy

Day 03 song challenge: A song that makes you happy

“What Is Love” is a song recorded by Trinidadian-German Eurodance artist Haddaway for his debut album. The song was released on 8 May 1993 as the album’s lead single. It was a massive hit in Europe, becoming a number-one hit in at least 13 countries and reaching number two in Germany, Sweden, and the United Kingdom. Outside Europe, the song was moderately successful, reaching number 11 in the United States, number 12 in Australia, number 17 in Canada, and number 48 in New Zealand. The song which makes you happy while watching video of this song.

Day 4 song challenge:A song from your favorite album

“Baby” is a song by canadian recording artist Justin Bieber alongside rapper ludacrist. It was released as the lead single from the latter half of Bieber’s debut album. It was available for digital download on January 18, 2010. The song received airplay directly after release, officially impacting mainstream and rhythmic radio on January 26, 2010. The song is uptempo R&B, blending together dance  and hip-hop elements, while using influences of doo-moo music. The song has received positive reviews from critics who complimented the song’s effective lyrics and chorus, and commended Ludacris’ part and the song’s ability to have an urban twist.

Day 5 song challenge: A song that reminds you of someone you´d rather forget

ALPINE — Damn Baby:

Alpine was released in Australia in 2012 and in the US in 2013. The album was featured on Triple J  prior to its release, and debuted at No. 1 on the Australian iTunes. After an extended hiatus, Alpine returned in 2019 with a new single, “Dumb,” on May 1. A week prior, the band had announced that founding member and co-lead vocalist Lou James would be departing from the band.

Day6 song challenge : A song that you want to play at your wedding

“Ring” is a song recorded by American rapper Cardi B for her debut studio album invasion of privacy in 2018  featuring vocals from American singer  Kehlani. It was released on August 28 in 2018 as the album’s fifth and final single. On youtube it has around 8,641,355 views and 51.5 k subscribers on the challenge .

Day 7 song challenge: A song that makes you fall asleep

How Soon is Now­- In 2007, Marr said “How Soon Is Now?” is “possibly [the Smiths’] most enduring

record. It’s most people’s favourite, I think.Despite its prominent place in the Smiths’ repertoire, it is not generally considered to be representative of the band’s style. Although a club favourite, it did not chart as well as expected. Most commentators put this down to the fact that the song had been out on vinyl in a number of forms before being released as a single in its own right. The original track runs for nearly seven minutes; the 7” single edit cut the length down to under four minutes. The complete version is generally used on compilations. This isn’t to say that this masterpiece is boring. In fact it is one of my favourite Smiths songs. However, if ever I can’t sleep, I stick this on repeat and I’m soon asleep in no time.

Day 08 song challenge: A song that makes you sad

DJ Snake, AlunaGeorge — You Know You Like It

“You Know You Like It” is a song by English electronic music duo AlunaGeorge from their debut studio album, Body Music (2013). The track was released in the United Kingdom on 20 April 2012 as the album’s lead single. The song peaked at number 39 on the UK Singles Chart in April 2013 after being used in a Tesco advert.

Timed with the release of the album, “You Know You Like It” was re-released on 28 July 2013, as a double A-side with “Bad Idea”. It subsequently reached a new peak position of number 39 in the UK Singles Chart on 4 August 2013. A music video to accompany the release of “You Know You Like It” was first released onto YouTube on August 31, 2011 at a total length of three minutes and thirty seconds. The video is shot in black and white and features clips of Francis dancing.

Day 09 song challenge: A song that you wish you could play

. “If You Could See Me Now” is a song by Irish pop rock band The Script, taken from their third studio album,  (2012). The song video was released as the album’s third single on 18 February 2013. The song was released on 4 March 2013. The track was written by Danny O’Donoghue,  Sheehan, Steve Kipner and Andrew Frampton. The song is an emotional tribute d A music video to accompany the release of “If You Could See Me Now” was first released onto YouTube on 18 February 2013 at a tota l length of three minutes an forty-nine seconds

Sheehan added to O’Donoghue’s late father – and to guitarist Mark Sheehan parents. For the very first time, vocals to a song.

Day 10 song challenge: A song that you want to play at your funeral

Master of Reality is released on 21 July 1971. It is widely regarded as the foundation of doom metal, stoner rock, and sludge metal It was certified double platinum after having sold over 2 million copies. Master of Reality was Black Sabbath’s first and only top 10 album in the US until 13, forty-two years later. The first editions of Master of Reality came in an ‘envelope sleeve’ containing a poster of the band, and with the album’s title embossed in black lettering, visible in relief. Later editions lacking the embossed printing would render the album title in grey. This was the first Black Sabbath sleeve on which the lyrics were reproduced on the back of the sleeve. It has over 2,356,897 views on youtube and around 24k subscribers.

Day 11 song challenge: A song you like with a person´s name on the title

Plain White T’s — Hey There Delilah:

It features the band’s lead singer, Tom Higgenson, singing the song while the band members are in another room behind him. The other band members are not playing in the song. The only other instruments are the strings provided by Eric Remschneider, who does not appear in the video. It was released in May 2006 as the third single from their third studio album All That We Needed. The video was directed by Jay Martin.

In a split screen it shows Delilah, not the backup singer’s girlfriend, played by model Melissa McNelis, who attends college 1000 miles away in New York City. She walks around the city, presumably, from a class to her job.

Day 12 song challenge: A song that moves you forward

Incubus — Drive:  It was released in November 2000 as a single from their third album Make Yourself. It is considered the band’s biggest hit and breakthrough single, eventually reaching the top of the US Billboard Modern Rock Tracks chart on March 3, 2001, and number nine on the Billboard Hot 100 on July 28. The song has over 145,370,900 views on youtube and around 619k subscriber.

Day 13 song challenge: A song from your childhood

Busted- In November 2013, Willis and Bourne announced plans to tour together with McFly as the “supergroup”

McBusted  in 2014, and this continued into 2015. On 10 November 2015, it was revealed that Simpson had rejoined Busted after successful secret writing sessions. The band then embarked on the pigs can fly arena tour in May 2016 and released their third studio album, Night Drive on 25 November 2016.

On 26 October 2018, Busted announced their fourth album Half way there, released on 1 February 2019, as well as a UK arena tour.

During 2003, Charlie met fellow songwriter-guitarist Alex Westaway and drummer Omar Abidi at a party. He was by this stage becoming increasingly frustrated by the music he was performing in Busted and stated he had “all of this creativity pent up inside and I just needed to vent it somewhere, and I was writing a lot of songs but I couldn’t play them, because I didn’t have anyone to play them with”. During the aforementioned party, an impromptu jam session took place.More than !14,345,233 views on youtube .

Day 14 song challenge: A song that no one would expect you to love

Drake — God’s Plan: This song received mostly positive reviews from music critics, who called it a typical Drake song. An accompanying music video for the song was directed by Karena Evans and uploaded onto Drake’s official YouTube channel on February 16, 2018. In the video Drake is giving away nearly one million US dollars to people and institutions in Florida. It received five nominations at the 2018 MTV Video Music Awards, including for Video of the Year and three nominations at the 61st Grammy Awards for Record of the Year, Song of the Year, and Best Rap Song, winning the last one. Commercially the song became the 29th song in history to debut at number one on the US Billboard Hot 100, making it Drake’s fourth chart-topper in that country, and second as a lead artist. The single topped the charts in fourteen countries, including the UK and Canada and reached the top ten in nine others. The song broke first-day streaming records on both Apple Music and Spotify, and was the most streamed song of the year on both services. “God’s Plan” received mostly positive reviews from music critics, who called it a typical Drake song. An accompanying music video for the song was directed by Karena Evans and uploaded onto Drake’s official YouTube channel on February 16, 2018.

Day 15 song challenge: A song that describes you

The League: This song was released on 1982 by Hardcore punk , punk rock.  For me, people have to prove they aren’t arseholes before I truly trust them, rather than prove that they arseholes after I have already made the effort to let them into my life.

Day 16 song challenge : A song that no one would expect you to love

“My Heart Will Go On”  is a song recorded by Canadian singer Celine Dion. It serves as the main theme song to James Cameron’s blockbuster film Titanic, that is based on an account of the British transatlantic ocean liner of the same name which sank in 1912 after colliding with an iceberg in the middle of the North Atlantic Ocean. The song’s music was composed by Jame Horner, its lyrics were written by Will Jennings, while the production was handled by Walter Afanasieff, Horner and Simon Franglen.

In Germany, “My Heart Will Go On” was certified 4× platinum for selling over two million copies, and was ranked as one of the most popular singles ever released there.It sold over 1.2 million copies in France, being certified Diamond. Additionally, the song was certified 3× Platinum in Belgium, 2× Platinum in Australia, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, and Switzerland, Platinum in Greece, and Gold in Austria. “My Heart Will Go On” was released twice in Japan. The regular edition from January 1998 sold 205,300 and was certified 2× Platinum, for 200,000 copies sold. The remixed edition released in June 1998 sold 111,920 copies and was certified Gold for 100,000 copies sold, due the fact that maxi-singles are treated as an album.

Day 17: A song that makes you think about life

Fiona Apple — Across the Universe:

One night in 1967, the phrase “words are flowing out like endless rain into a paper cup” came to Lennon after hearing his then-wife Cynthia, according to Lennon, “going on and on about something”. Later, after “she’d gone to sleep – and I kept hearing these words over and over, flowing like an endless stream”, Lennon went downstairs and turned it into a song. He began to write the rest of the lyrics and when he was done, he went to bed and forgot about them.I was lying next to my first wife in bed, you know, and I was irritated, and I was thinking. She must have been going on and on about something and she’d gone to sleep and I kept hearing these words over and over, flowing like an endless stream. I went downstairs and it turned into a sort of cosmic song rather than an irritated song, rather than a “Why are you always mouthing off at me?”.The words] were purely inspirational and were given to me as boom! I don’t own it you know; it came through like that.

Day 18 song challenge : A song that reminds you of a certain event

Fire work : This song was released on july 1983 E.G Records. It reached No. 29 in Uk charts.

The album was remastered and reissued in 2008, with eight bonus tracks: the non-album single “Me Or You”, an alternate version of “Dominator” (B-side to ” Let’s All Go (to The Fire dances)an unreleased early version of “The Gathering” and four tracks from a John Peel session from 1983.

Day 19 song challenge : The voice that you like

“Love the Way You Lie” is a song recorded by the American rapper Eminem, featuring Barbadian singer Rihanna, from Eminem’s seventh studio album Recovery (2010). The singer and songwriter Skylar Grey wrote and recorded a demo of the song alongside the producer Alex da Kid when she felt she was in an abusive romantic relationship with the music industry. Eminem wrote the verses and chose Rihanna to sing the chorus, resulting in a collaboration influenced by their past experiences in difficult relationships. Recording sessions were held in Ferndale, Michigan, and Dublin, Ireland. Backed by guitar, piano and violin, the track is a midtempo hip-hop ballad with a pop refrain, sung by Rihanna, and describes two lovers who refuse to separate despite being in a dangerous love–hate relationship.This song has over 1,908,101,273 views on youtube .

Day 20 song challenge: A song that remind something

Teenager Dreame: Musically, “Teenage Dream” is a mid-tempo pop song with a retro sound. It is styled in the genres of power pop and electropop, while taking influence from other genres such as disco and pop rock. Perry starts the song in a high-pitched voice while her vocals grow stronger as the song progresses. Lyrically, “Teenage Dream” discusses being with a lover who makes one feel young again. The song has topped the Billboard Hot 100, becoming Perry’s third number-one single on that chart, and her second consecutive number-one single after “California Gurls”. “Teenage Dream” has been certified seven times platinum in the United States, as well as receiving platinum and multi-platinum certifications in other countries.

Day 21 song challenge: Your favourite song at this time last year

“On My Way”

On 9 March 2019, Alan Walker began teasing the song via his social media.On 14 March 2019, Alan Walker formally announced the song along with its release date.After the announcement of the song, rumours circulated that Sabrina Carpenter and Farruko would feature on the song. Alan Walker confirmed their involvement on the song on 19 March 2019. On 20 March 2019, Walker announced that he partnered with PUBG Mobile for the one-year anniversary of the game, and that the song would be the event’s theme song.

On 10 May 2019, the alternative video was posted on Alan Walker’s YouTube channel, encouraging viewers to “choose their path” of either two video versions of Carpenter and Farruko in the official alternative music video, both were posted on their respective channels that same day. The two versions of the alternative music video indicated different searches, pieces of evidence, and artifacts that the female protagonist was searching (depending on the viewer’s choice) which led to each versions ending with the same outcome, which is the scene where tombstones with stone formations which were laid on the site, that took place a month before the events of the official music video when the artifacts were being unearthed and discovered .The song has 248,161,421 views on youtube channel and 5.5 M likes.

Day 22 song channel: A song from your favorite album

“Faded” is a hit song by Norwegian record producer and DJ Alan Walker. Incorporating vocals provided by Norwegian singer Iselin Solheim, the single was originally set to be released on 25 November 2015, but was delayed to 3 December 2015. The song was highly successful, peaking in the top 10 in most of the countries it charted in, and reached the top spot in more than 10 countries. Most popular song on youtube is has around 2,603.435,671 views and around 18 millions likes.It is currently the 17th most viewed video on YouTube, with over 2.6 billion views, 18 million likes and 489 thousand dislikes as of December 2019 as well as being the 27th most streamed song on Spotify, with over 1 billion streams as of December 2019.

Day 23 song challenge : A song that you know all the words to

Boyzone-Words

The song reached No. 1 in Germany, Canada, Switzerland, and the Netherlands.

“Words” was the Bee Gees third UK top 10 hit, reaching number 8, and in a UK television special on ITV in December 2011 it was voted fourth in “The Nation’s Favourite Bee Gees Song”.The song has been recorded by many other artists, including hit versions by RITA  in 1978 and Boyzone in 1996. This was Boyzone’s fifth single and their first number one hit in the UK. Words is a song by the Bee Gees, written by Barry, Robin & Maurice Gibb. It cross around 12,876,555 views on youtube.

Day 24 song challenge: Your least favourite song

“Smack That”

was released as the first single from Konvicted on September 26, 2006. Commercially, the song reached number one on ten record charts and peaked inside the top ten in nine, including the Billboard Hot 100, where it peaked at number two. It received several gold and platinum certifications and sold over 3 million downloads in the United States. The song earned a Grammy nomination for Best Rap/Sung Collaboration.

Day 25 song challenge : if you love someone

“I Wanna Love You” is a song written and recorded by Akon featuring Snoop Dogg. It was released in September 2006 as the second single from his second studio album, Konvicted. It is also featured on Snoop Dogg’s eighth album, Tha Blue Carpet Treatmet. This song was Akon’s first #1 single on the Billboard Hot 100 and was also Snoop’s second #1 on the same chart. It also reached a peak of #3 on the UK Singles Chart. The track originally had Akon as a featured artist and was performed by Plies, then an up-and-coming rapper from Fort Myers, Florida, but his verse was replaced by Snoop’s and his name has been left out from the writers’ credits. This song was #88 on MTV Asia’s list of Top 100 Hits of 2007.The song was nominated for the Grammy Award for Best Rap/Sung  Collaboration at the 50th Grammy Awards in 2008.

Day  26 song challenge : A song you never get tired of

Gustavo Cerati — Puente: Very poetic this song and Cerati as a good representative of Rock en Español (Latin Rock), he left us a very beautiful legacy in the world of music. (August 11, 1959 – September 4, 2014) was a guitarist, singer, musician, composer and Argentine record producer of Latin rock. He began his career as the leader of the band Soda Stereo for after developing a solo career.

Day 27 song challenge: A song that you can play on an instrument

Substance

Substance is double CD, double cassette and Digital Audio tape. It sold over one million copies and became New Order’s most popular and critically acclaimed album.

It is the companion to a similar singles compilation by New Order’s predecessor band Joy division also entitled Substance.

Day 28: A song that makes Fun of

Curtain call : – Eminem The song was released on December 6 of 2005 by American Rapper Eminem . The album was certified septuple platinum in the United States and quintuple platinum in New Zealand. It reached number one on several charts, including the US Billboard 200 and UK Albums Chart.

Day 29 song challenge: A song you like with a number on the title

The Smashing Pumpkins — 1979:

The song was released on early years  1988 -1991 .It has around 109,917,324 view on youtube channel and over 499 K likes with 485 k subscribers on youtube channel . On April 26, 2011, Corgan announced that the Smashing Pumpkins would be releasing a new album titled Oceania, which he labeled as “an album within an album” in regards to the Teargarden by Kaleidyscope project, in the fall. As with the previous recording sessions, all four band members contributed to the project. Also, the entire album catalog was to be remastered and reissued with bonus tracks, starting with Gish and Siamese Dream in November 2011.

Day 30: A song that you used to love but now hate

Hybrid Theory I used to like this song along with some other Linkin Park stuff. Now I see the error of my ways. Linkin Park are possibly the most over-rated band in the world. The music that would ultimately become the Hybrid Theory album was first produced by Linkin Park in 1999 as a nine-track demo tape. The band sent this tape to various recording companies and played forty-two different showcases for recording industry representatives, including performances for Los Angeles promoter and impresario, Mike Galaxy’s showcase at The Gig on Melrose.

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