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geekgirles · 3 years

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Mirrors

Disclaimer: This was originally going to be much longer (and it is very long already) but since I might have overdone it, I will be cutting it in two. The second part will feature the similarities and differences between Marinette and Kagami and some final thoughts.

Part 2

Kagami’s name means ‘mirror’ in Japanese, and according to Thomas Astruc, that’s not a coincidence. Indeed, she’s supposed to be a reflection of the main characters. This trait is best seen through her role as an alternative love interest for Adrien, but she is also a reflection of Marinette’s own character; more specifically, her own relationship with Adrien.

However, the way Kagami works as a mirror changes from one character to the other. For Adrien, she’s a direct parallel to many of the traits that make him who he is, only that she adds more nuance to them. For Marinette, despite their many similarities, they are also opposites.

In this analysis I will reflect (pun not-intended) on the way Kagami works as Adrien’s mirror, how she does the same for Marinette, and the way that affects her relationship with both of them.

Adrien and Kagami:

As Adrien’s alternative love interest over Ladybug, it is to be expected that Kagami would have enough things in common with him for Adrien to be able to relate to her and see her as something other than a friend.

And this is one of the reasons why Adrien has considered Kagami as his girlfriend and not Marinette; her proximity to his own situation.

Kagami’s introductory episode, Riposte, already focused a lot of its attention in highlighting how similar the two are. Aside from sharing a common interest in fencing (which allows them later on to spend time together outside of school or business-related occasions), Riposte already showed enough of Kagami’s background to make us understand why Adrien would bond with her. Their respective parents are both strict, expect nothing but the best from their kids’ performance in everything they do and, most importantly, they’re both very absent in their lives while simultaneously being present in every aspect of them.

We all know how Gabriel controls every single aspect of Adrien’s life while never spending time with his son at the same time, but Tomoe is just as controlling and overprotective. In Ikari Gozen she considered her daughter having friends should be at the bottom of her priority list, even hinting some trust issues with the sole idea.

And, despite that, in Riposte Kagami was all alone in the car, calling her mother to let her know that she had failed, but not showing any signs of expecting any sort of comfort from her. After all, she said it herself:

“There's no such thing as a second chance in my family.”

Another parallel between Adrien and Kagami is precisely the fact that Tomoe relies on someone else to look after her daughter, just like Gabriel tends to shove his responsibilities with Adrien onto Nathalie and Gorizilla. Except that in Tomoe’s case it’s even worse; she entrusts her daughter to Tatsu, an artificial intelligence, not a human being.

Of course, the similarities between them don’t end there. Adrien and Kagami are pretty much birds of a feather in the sense that both of them are very inexperienced with socialising. They’re both lonely, rich kids with a difficult home life who just want to be able to do things most kids their age do.

That’s why Adrien connected so well with Kagami; they’re on the same boat.

As I said earlier, Kagami acts as a mirror to Adrien, not only because of the similarities that have already been discussed, but also because her personality is very much like Adrien’s, except she either takes things to the extreme, or isn’t as similar to Adrien as she should.

Facing their parents:

Believe it or not, when it comes to calling out their parents for their behaviour, Adrien is more willing to face his father than Kagami her mother.

Ever since his mother disappeared, Adrien’s been trying to be there for his father. Pretty much everything he does that isn’t related to his friends or his life as Chat Noir he does it for Gabriel. He studies Chinese, goes to photoshoots, fences, plays the piano, and any other extracurricular activity I might have forgotten about because he thinks that’s what will make his father happy. Deep down, Adrien knows it’s unfair that he’s forced to live like that, he just sucks it up because he knows his father’s hurting and wants to alleviate that burden.

But whenever Gabriel’s behaviour becomes too unreasonable for even Adrien to excuse, he’s always ready to rebel against him in some way. In Origins he tried and succeeded in going to school instead of staying at home like his father wished. In Santa Claws he ran away from home because of Gabriel’s cold and distant attitude despite being the first Christmas without Emilie for the both of them. In Simon Says, as Chat Noir, he called his father out on his stubbornness and refusal to get help despite being an akuma’s main target. And in Feast he showed his disappointment and disapproval of the way Gabriel brushed Nathalie’s condition off.

And he did all that on his own, either for himself or for the sake of others.

Kagami, on the other hand, still relies on others to face her mother. In Ikari Gozen, despite going against her mother’s wishes, it wasn’t until Marinette had the guts to try and stand up to Tomoe that Kagami managed to put her foot down in her request to spend some time with her new friend. And unlike Adrien as Chat Noir in Simon Says where, despite having some help from the confidence his secret identity gives him, he confronted his father on his behaviour, Ryuuko confronted Ikari Gozen, not Tomoe. In other words, she stood her ground against an exaggeration of her mother’s flaws, not against her mother’s true self.

Moving on:

While the show has shown Adrien having difficulties letting go of Ladybug, the main difference between him and Kagami is that he has at least considered it. Since Frozer, Kagami has shown she will fight for Adrien until the very end.

In fact, of the four teens romantically involved with each other, Kagami is the only one who hasn’t expressed any sort of conformity with the idea of her love interest not choosing her in the end. Even Marinette and Adrien, despite hurting immensely, had considered letting go of their respective crushes and pursuing somebody else when it looked like they were getting nowhere.

In Frozer, despite acting nonchalant about it, Kagami was very clear to Adrien: “The day you realize you've got the wrong target, I'll be here.”

With that she makes it very obvious that she’s willing to wait for Adrien, no matter how long it takes him to realise his feelings for her. That’s Kagami’s approach: she prefers to wait before accepting defeat.

In a way, this makes her a foil to Luka as well.

Ever since Frozer, Luka has shown he will support Marinette if she chooses to go after Adrien instead of him in the end, whereas Kagami, while never outright declaring she won’t be there for Adrien if he weren’t to choose her, she never really hinted she would move on from him if he did, either.

The best example of this would, in a way, be what she said as Oni-Chan: “He's the only one who's worthy of me! And the only one I will ever love!”

If I’m being perfectly honest, this sentence doesn’t do Kagami’s character and her feelings for Adrien justice. The way it was written, it just makes her look unreasonable and like a yandere. And you might say it’s because she was akumatised. And you would be right, if it weren’t because Luka’s confession to Marinette also doubled as a declaration of protection and wasn’t painted in nowhere near the same negative light.

But back to the point.

Summing up, the kind of trouble Adrien has moving on he inherited from his father (in a, thankfully, less worrisome way), Kagami has too, but hers seems to be more severe. And there’s a high chance this will play an important role in Lies, or at least in season 4...

Making friends:

Now, as stated above, this is one of the points they have the most in common but also have the most differences in; their issues with socialising.

What makes the two of them so similar is that they’re both kids who’ve been sheltered their whole life, kids who long to have some friends of their own, and who, as a result, struggle greatly with reading social cues.

However, their respective personalities are what really makes the difference.

Adrien is kind, honest, and approachable, both on a superficial and deep level. Kagami, on the other hand, is all those things, but once you get to know her; at first glance she might seem cold, honest to the point of brutality, and difficult to connect with.

Unlike Lila, who got the class’ attention for her supposed life and high status, these two really are the children of influential people, and yet that’s not why the class appreciates Adrien, or even pretends to get along with Kagami for what it could give them. They’re not that shallow.

The class likes Adrien because he’s a cinnamon roll. And, judging by the girls’ reactions to Kagami in both Frozer and Desperada, they aren’t close to her because they only know her on a superficial, non-flattering level.

They’ve both been sheltered and yet, Adrien manages to connect with others better. While Kagami had to rely on an app to try and get along with Marinette, with rather awkward results. And, let’s not forget, it wasn’t until Marinette got to see Kagami was just like Adrien at the beginning that she realised that she’d misjudged her and actively tried to be her friend.

And now the three of them are close friends! (Leaving shipping drama aside…)

The main difference between the two is that, at first sight, Adrien is more approachable than Kagami.

Recklessness:

As the series progressed, we’ve seen little by little how these two tend to be reckless at times. Especially when handling their miraculouses.

Now, it is true that Marinette has made her fair share of mistakes as well because she was impulsive, but most of the time that flaw shone through as Marinette, not Ladybug. Whereas Adrien and Kagami appeared to be far more composed as their civilian selves (because they have to be due to their parents’ strictness) than their superhero selves.

When they both received their miraculouses they both made the same mistake: they transformed before learning everything they needed to in order to be effective users. In Adrien’s case, he didn’t listen to Plagg when he was about to tell him about the Cataclysm’s time limit. And in Kagami’s she transformed just as Longg was about to tell her about Ladybug’s plan.

As a result, Chat Noir wasted his power when facing off against Stone Heart, and Ryuuko allowed Ikari Gozen to capture Chat Noir.

Moreover, in both cases they viewed their newfound powers as a chance to escape their parents and their lifestyles, both literally and figuratively. Therefore, judging by these similarities as well as the others we have already discussed, I’m going to dub this impulsiveness they display as superheroes as the “Sheltered Rich Kid Syndrome.”

Even so, there is a difference between the two: Kagami was actually more reckless than Adrien when she first transformed.

In Origins, Chat Noir acted on his own not because he wanted to, but because Ladybug was still doubting herself to be of assistance. But, the moment she stepped in and took charge of the situation, Chat followed her plans without hesitation.

Kagami, on the other hand, fuelled by her own issues with her mother, her impulsiveness, and her newfound liberty, insisted on taking on Ikari Gozen by herself without a plan or even Ladybug and Chat Noir’s assistance (despite them being the seasoned heroes of Paris). And this decision lacked forethought because 1) she had no experience fighting akumas, 2) despite her experience fighting her mother, Kagami always loses (and that is when Tomoe has no superpowers), and 3) she obviously had no strategy.

It wasn’t until she ultimately failed and made things more complicated for the heroes that she realised her mistake.

In other words, while both Adrien and Kagami use their alter egos as an escape from their proverbial prisons, Adrien takes his responsibilities as Chat Noir and his loyalty to Ladybug more seriously than Kagami.

Honesty:

I did say earlier that Adrien and Kagami are both honest people. Even so, saying they’re at the same level of honesty would be a lie.

Adrien’s sincerity is what warmed Marinette up to him, just like it did for Kagami, but he’s nowhere near as honest as Kagami.

As @miraculouslycool and @flightfoot pointed out not long ago, Lila is actually what Adrien would have turned into if it weren’t for his redeeming qualities and the use he gives to his abilities. Because both are kids who have learned to be sneaky in order to get what they want. Adrien can’t afford to have his father finding out about the things he hides from him because it would lead to disastrous consequences, like when he pulled him out of school over the grimoire.

True, Adrien chooses to be honest, kind to others, and the best person he can possibly be. Major kudos for that. But he’s still not above lying or using relatively underhanded tactics to get the results he wants. The best example being his lie to Théo about being an item with Ladybug just to get him to back off.

In a way, that could be a reason why he’s so disgusted by Lila’s behaviour. Unlike him, she doesn’t use her lies and manipulation as a last resort, she uses them with everyone regardless of her interactions with them and the consequences of her actions just because she can.

But I’m getting off topic.

As stated above, Adrien chooses to be honest, but is perfectly capable of being sly and sneaky. He knows how to operate in the shadows.

Kagami doesn’t.

And that is probably because in her case not being honest is what can get her in serious trouble, let alone if she misbehaves or not. So, fear of the consequences tied with a natural disdain for lies have made Kagami to be honest to a fault.

And this wouldn’t necessarily be a bad thing if it weren’t for the fact that she’s so honest, she becomes brutally honest; coming off as rude to others. To put it simply, Kagami doesn’t know how to sugarcoat things, for one reason or another. Which is why her assessment on Marinette’s personality based on her deduction of her blood type and a single question about her favourite season can be seen as rude or impolite. And it is perfectly fine to see it like that! After all, that is the conclusion many of us would arrive at if we were in Marinette’s situation and had no context on why the other person is acting like that.

Honestly, if I’d been in Marinette’s shoes, I would’ve been like, “Joke’s on you. I’m type A.”

Basically, while Adrien is used to working in the shadows, Kagami is forthright and prefers to face things head on, and both are mindsets and strategies with strengths and weaknesses.

The rings:

Now this is another delicious parallel between the two, just like Marinette and Luka both have earrings.

As we’ve been saying all along, Adrien and Kagami both have a lot on their plate. They have many responsibilities that can become a burden in the long run, especially when we keep in mind that they are still children. Just like Marinette is exhausted from having to be level-headed and responsible in so many scenarios.

However, the rings Adrien and Kagami wear are both parallels and opposites from one another. They both represent some kind of responsibility at their core, but the effects of said responsibility vary.

In Adrien’s case, he wields the black cat miraculous. Needless to say, this ties him with the duties that come from being Chat Noir and having the power of destruction by his side. A power that, as seen in Miraculer and the New York Special, can be disastrous if handled poorly. And yet, his miraculous actually represents the best part of his life, because it gives him freedom. Being Chat Noir has allowed him to be himself, without the restraint from his father’s presence. It gave him the chance to meet Ladybug who, aside from being the girl he loves, is also his best friend. The miraculous has just… given him a chance to live.

Adrien’s ring is his saving grace.

On the contrary, Kagami’s ring represents the kind of duties she’s far more familiar with. Her ring ties her to her family.

That ring is a constant reminder of the pressure she’s under, of her family’s expectations, of the person she’s been raised to believe she should be. Which is symbolised by her family’s kanji being engraved on the ring.

As seen in Riposte, when Kagami loses any kind of challenge she’s supposed to have been prepared for, she believes she has let her family down.

Kagami’s ring is the lock of her golden cage.

Stay tuned for Part 2!

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tobesolonely · 4 years

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never have i ever

summary: y/n and harry go on a camping trip, but things don’t go according to plan

a/n: thank u for reading! please reblog/leave feedback if you enjoy! its very encouraging to me :’)

warnings: smut <33 18+ please! mentions of alcohol/drinking as well

word count: ~4k

my ko-fi! thank you :)

Never in your life did you think you'd ever agree to do something as outdoorsy as camping, yet all it took was Harry asking you very sweetly one time, and you immediately agreed. You'd never been one to spend an excessive amount of time with nature. You loved a good sunrise and sunset, just like most people. Sometimes you'd even wake up early and go on a sunrise hike with Harry if he promised to make you breakfast once you were finished. Occasionally, you'd go on walks and runs with him, and spend some time down at the beach. That was the extent of the outdoor activities you'd partake in, though. However, Harry had the grand idea to go camping for the weekend as he had a bit of time off, and this was something he'd been talking about wanting to do for a while.

"Don't you wanna be one with nature? Help me pitch a tent? Get your hands a lil' dirty?" He asked you when you started having second thoughts about going with him, the idea of sleeping on the hard ground inside a small tent a major turn off.

"I mean, I can think of better ways to spend my weekend," you tell him, stirring the pot of soup you were making on the stove. It's the night before you were supposed to leave, and Harry already had the car packed, way too excited to wait any longer. "You know I always get the worst bug bites."

"That's what bug spray is for!" he tells you cheerily, snaking his arms around your waist and placing a wet kiss to your neck. "C'mon, Y/N. I promise it'll be worth it."

You sink into Harry's kisses, feeling wobbly in your knees as it was one of your most sensitive spots— and he knew that. "I suppose it'd be nice to get out of the city for a bit. Jus' me and you, yeah?" You didn't want anyone else to see how out of your element you were in the outdoors as you found it to be a little embarrassing. Harry hums, placing more open mouth kisses on your skin.

"Just me," he pauses to kiss you. "You," another kiss. "And the birds ‘n the bees." You blush, choosing to ignore his sexual innuendo.

"I guess it's too late to back out now, especially since you already took it upon yourself to pack a suitcase for me," you tell him, rolling your eyes and turning off the stove. "I'll give it a try, Harry. Besides, it's only a weekend, yeah? What could possibly go wrong?"

⋆⋆⋆

As it turns out, many, many things could go wrong during a weekend-long camping trip.

Harry told you that you didn't need to pull up directions because he knew where he was going, but you quickly realized that your stubborn boyfriend was hopelessly lost. "I don't think we're heading in the right direction, darling," you informed him from the passenger seat, opening up the Maps app on your phone. "You're positive you don't want me to give you directions? No shame in admitting you're lost."

Harry mutters under his breath, squinting his eyes to look at the freeway signs. He sighs, tightening his grip on the steering wheel. "Think I missed m'bloody exit," he tells you, clearly growing frustrated. "Can yeh tell me where 'm supposed to be, love? I think once I figure out the exit, we'll be good."

You and Harry were choosing to not venture too far out of Los Angeles, but far enough so you would be able to enjoy your time together without prying paparazzi. For this reason, he settled on a spot known to be a little more remote, about 50 miles north of downtown. Once you pull up the directions on your phone, your suspicions are confirmed. Harry was headed in the complete opposite direction, and he missed the exit nearly ten miles back. "Yeah, you're gonna need to take the next exit you see, and then we have to go back in the opposite direction. Just about ten miles too far."

"Ten miles? Lemme see tha'," he holds his hand out for your phone and pulls the car over on the freeway's side, turning on his hazards. "Huh, you're right. How'd we miss that, babe?"

"We missed it because you insisted you didn't need directions," you remind him, exasperated. "I'm from here, and I don't even know how we're supposed to get there!" Harry laughs, re-emerging onto the freeway.

"I guess I should've just let you read me the directions, huh? Don't worry, we'll be there soon. S'what? Ten miles? We'll be there in twenty minutes."

However, twenty minutes quickly turned into forty when you found yourselves stuck in the morning commute traffic. Harry fiddles with the radio as you go 5 miles per hour (on the freeway!), trying not to let the infamous Los Angeles traffic get him down. Although you were a bit behind the schedule he'd created, it was still only 7:30 am. You had the whole day ahead of you, and he couldn't wait to get you out in the wilderness and teach you how to pitch a tent and make the perfect s'more."

Eventually, you make it to the campgrounds. You had to admit that it was absolutely beautiful— tall, looming pine trees, snow-capped mountains, picnic tables, patches of even ground you figured would be perfect to set up the tent on, and even a couple outhouses. Harry gives you a smug look when he sees your awestruck face, glad that he was the first to show you something from your own city.

"It's beautiful up here, innit? So peaceful. Looks like we're here by ourselves too," he gestures towards the empty campgrounds. "Nice and private."

You nod, unbuckling your seatbelt as Harry puts the car in park. "I'm already feelin' more relaxed," you joke, opening the door and stepping out to stretch your stiff limbs. "Should we walk around and take a peek at everything before we get ourselves set up?"

"Yeah, s'good idea," he gets out of the car himself and walks around to you, grabbing your hand. "Maybe we can go hiking later? Hear there's a nice little waterfall somewhere around here. Would love to see that." You hum in agreement, walking along the dry ground, leaves crunching under your feet.

"That sounds nice. I can't believe I've never been here," you tell him incredulously, swinging your hands. "It's so gorgeous. And is it just me, or is the air here like, super crisp?" Harry chuckles, nodding in agreement.

"I don't think it's just you, poppet. We're finally away from all that L.A. smog, can take some nice, deep breaths. This will be great for m'asthma." You laugh, and a comfortable silence falls between you. Occasionally, Harry will say, "Look at tha' bird!" or "That's the biggest tree 've seen in my life!" but you walk in silence, for the most part, enjoying each other's company.

"Do you think we should turn back?" you ask your boyfriend, stopping to look back in the direction you came from. "We've been walkin' for a minute. I don't think we should venture too far from the car." You were starting to grow tired and weren't in the right shoes for walking much longer.

"Yeah, let's get back and get that tent set up. Also gettin' kind of hungry," Harry tells you, turning you back around in the direction you'd come from. "How's tea and eggs sound?"

⋆⋆⋆

"Harry, you've got to be fuckin' kidding me!"

"Y/N, I swear I packed it! It has to be somewhere in here!"

"We've emptied out the entire car, Harry!"

Upon returning to the campsite, your boyfriend was excited to get the tent out of the car, so you could "really get this camping trip started," as he said. Yet, when he went in the trunk of his car to retrieve the tent, it was nowhere to be found. Neither one of you panicked at first, figuring he might've squeezed it in the backseat instead, as the trunk was pretty full. It wasn't there, either. Now, your suitcases and cooler was laid out around the car, but the tent was nowhere to be found. He runs his fingers in frustration through his hair, tapping his foot while he contemplates calling one of his assistants and asking her to bring it to him.

"Harry, don't make her do that. You already told her she could have the weekend off. It's not her fault you forgot it," you scold, digging your shoe's toe into the dirt. "We can just sleep in the car."

"That's so uncomfortable," he mewls, placing your suitcases back into the car. "Maybe we should just go home. We're not off to a very good start, maybe it's a sign?"

"No way, H. I've already called off work to come here with you, we're staying," you insist, reaching back into the car to grab the electric tea kettle you've bought. "Let's get a little breakfast in our stomachs and then go see that waterfall, how's that sound?" Harry gives you a reluctant look but agrees, reaching in the cooler to grab the carton of eggs you've brought along. He grabs the small skillet, albeit your favorite one that you told him not to bring here, and grabs a small charcoal bag to light the grill.

"Have yeh got a lighter on ya?" Harry asks, walking over to the small grill beside the picnic table. You raise your eyebrows at him.

"Me? You didn't ask me to bring it! Are you telling me we can't even light the grill now?" You couldn't believe everything that could go wrong on your camping trip was going wrong, but now it seemed like you wouldn't even be able to prepare hot meals for the next two days.

"Yes, I did, Y/N," Harry argues back calmly, not wanting to raise his voice. "Remember? I bought that long one so it would be easier to use. Said, 'Babe, make sure yeh grab the lighter off the counter.'" You think for a moment and then shake your head, sure Harry did, in fact, not tell you to grab the lighter, and he was just trying to push the blame to you.

"Now what? We can't cook the meat or vegetables all because you couldn't remember to bring the lighter," you tell him sharply, feeling yourself growing more annoyed by the second. You were incredibly frustrated because you weren't keen on the idea of camping in the first place, but you came along anyway, not expecting so many things to go wrong.

Harry closes his eyes for a moment and takes a deep breath, a thing he does every time things start getting heated between the two of you because he hates fighting. "Well, it's at home, and there's not much we can do about it, so 'm sorry for pointin' fingers at you. Did we bring anything we can snack on that doesn't require cooking?" You rummage around in the cooler and find a box of cheese, some cold cuts, a loaf of french bread, and a couple bottles of wine.

"Hows some cheese, bread, and meat sound? We can make little sandwiches," you tell him, pulling out the food. "Maybe some wine?"

Harry chuckles, walking over to you. "Y/N, it's not even 10 am."

"We're on vacation, aren't we?"

He shrugs, walking over to you to grab the bottle of wine. You grab plates, napkins, and a sheet you bought to double as a tablecloth, laying it out atop the picnic table. "'M actually starving," he calls to you from beside the car, reaching to grab two wine glasses. "Can't wait to eat this."

You cut into the loaf of french bread and cheese and add slices of salami and ham, quickly assembling mini sandwiches for you and Harry. "These look good, don't they?" you ask him, half teasing, half-serious. You hand him his sandwich, and he grins, grabbing it from you.

"Looks delicious, Y/N, thank you. Cheers," he gently taps his sandwich against yours, and you both take big bites, moaning at your first taste of food all day. "Want some wine now?" He asks, pouring you each full glasses. He slides the glass in front of you and you grab it, taking a long sip.

"S'good. Where'd you get this one from?" you question, taking another bite from your sandwich.

"Italy," he responds sheepishly, tasting it himself. "I know how to pick a bottle of wine, don't I?"

You giggle at your boyfriend's subtle bragging, continuing to eat your breakfast. You realized that there was no way you and Harry could comfortably spend the whole weekend here camping. You'd most likely have to call it quits before it got dark. However, you were still glad you'd get to spend time with your boyfriend outdoors, eating "emergency sandwiches" and sipping on a 500 dollar bottle of wine.

⋆⋆⋆

"Never have I ever had a one night stand," you say loudly, giggling in the process. You and Harry were both absolutely plastered, having already finished one bottle of wine and working on the second. You've decided to play a good old fashioned game of Never Have I Ever, and it was getting more raunchy the drunker the two of you became. Harry narrows his eyes at you and takes a swig out of the bottle of wine, shaking his head.

"You already know 've had one because I've told yeh about it before, yeh lil' cheater," he exclaims, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. "Here's one. Never have I ever shagged in the backseat of a car." You choke on your wine, widening your eyes at him.

"You actually think I've done that? How kinky do you think I am?" you smack him on his arm, laughing at his ridiculous statement. Harry doesn't say anything, running his finger along the rim of his wine glass.

"Here's a more specific one," he leans closer to you, and you can smell the wine on his warm breath. "Never have I ever shagged in the back of my car, in the middle of the woods, while on a camping trip with my girlfriend." His hand goes to rest on your thigh, and you swallow thickly.

"Thought you wanted to go see that waterfall?" you ask him, your words jumbling together slightly. Harry turns to face you, so his legs are on either side of the bench, and he pulls you closer to him by your waist.

"Don't care much for the waterfall when 've got a beautiful woman sat in front of me," he blurts, sucking on the underside of your jaw.

"What d'you want then?" you challenge, tilting your head slightly, so Harry is better positioned to place kisses to your jaw.

"Want you," he responds simply, grabbing your hand and placing it over his growing bulge. "Y'know how wine gets me goin', love." You hum in agreement, palming him through his trousers.

"I know," you respond breathlessly, pulling away from him to down the rest of your wine. "Why don't we go to the car then?" Harry gives you a surprised look, a dopey smile on his face.

"So we're really doin' this then?" He asks, standing up from the picnic table and holding his hand out for you to grab.

"No one's around, why not?" You knew that your sexual boldness came from all the wine you'd consumed, but at that moment, you didn't think there was anything you wanted more in the world than your boyfriend's cock down your throat. "Need to taste you." Harry groans, leading you hastily toward the car. You both stumble to get there in your intoxicated stupor but make it in one piece, giggling and clinging onto one another.

"After you, m' lady," he opens the backseat and curtsies, causing you to both erupt into a fit of giggles. You clamber into the backseat, scooting all the way to the other side so Harry could climb in after you. He shuts the door, and you sit in silence for a minute, catching your breaths. "Tight squeeze back here, yeah?"

"Yeah," you readjust your body, so your back is against the door, and your legs are over Harry's lap. "How are we gonna do this?"

Harry's quirks an eyebrow at you, undoing the button on his pants. "Yeh really wanna just straight into it, don't yeh, minx?" You nod, readjusting your position, so you're now on your knees, having to crane your neck slightly, so you're not hitting the car's roof.

"Let me taste you," you offer, seeing his hard cock straining to get out the confines of his tight clothing. He wordlessly nods and lifts his hips, tugging his pants down to his mid-thigh. He's not as hard as he can get, maybe due to the amount of wine he's consumed, but you know he's nearly there. You reach over to grab him, hands shaking slightly. "Can't believe we're doing this in the middle of the woods. Makes it even hotter, though."

Harry's head falls against the back seat's headrest as you flick your tongue out to capture the drop of pre-cum that was beginning to run down the side of his head. "Take me in y' mouth, Y/N. What are yeh waiting for?"

You place your hands on his thighs and lower your mouth onto his cock, taking him almost entirely in your warm mouth. Harry lets out a loud groan, not even bothering to quiet his sounds of pleasure since he knew no one was anywhere nearby. You come back up for air and lick your lips, giving him a sultry look. "You mean like that?" Harry grips the back of your head and roughly pushes you back down onto him, not in the mood for your teasing.

"Don't be cheeky now, lovie," he warns, bucking his hips up roughly to fuck your mouth. "Yeh want me to help you cum later, don't yeh?" You moan around his cock, not wanting to answer him, so you don't break the rhythm you were going at. As your sex life with Harry grew more adventurous throughout your relationship, you've only gotten better at deepthroating him, able to get him close to his orgasm in minutes. You always joked between the two of you that giving him head was one of your greatest talents, and of course, he never disagreed with that sentiment. You come up from his cock to take another breath, inhaling deeply through your nostrils. Harry immediately pushes you back down onto him without saying anything. He begins thrusting into you with even more vigor than before, and you know he's almost there. "Y/N, 'm gonna cum—"

You pull off Harry's mouth with a loud plop!, lifting up your dress and shoving your underwear to the side. "Can I ride you?" you ask sweetly, already situating yourself over him. Your boyfriend nods, completely flustered from being pushed so close to his orgasm, and then denied the opportunity to cum.

"S'course," he answers with a shaky breath. "C'mere." He grabs your waist and guides you onto his length, helping you sink down slowly. You rest your head on his shoulder, feeling him deep within you. Every ridge, every pulse, the warmth— it makes you feel completely feral. "That's a good girl, Y/N. Takin' my cock like it's nothing, aren't yeh? This is easy for you, hmm?"

You nod against his shoulder, starting to bounce around slowly on him. "So easy, H. Fit inside me so well," you moan, squeezing your eyes shut. "Feels fuckin' incredible, stretchin' me out like this." Harry squeezes onto your sides, leaving bruises in the shapes of his fingers. Harry places a kiss against his lips, slipping his tongue into your mouth.

"You like tha', Y/N? Such a dirty girl, lettin' me fuck ya in the back of my car like this. Kinky lil' thing, you are, pet," he mutters, thrusting his hips up as you slam yourself down to meet him. You nod, moving your hips in a gyrating motion.

"Love it, H. Fuckin' into me so well, fuck," you let out a particularly loud cry when Harry repositions you slightly, hitting your g-spot int he new position he has you in. "Don't stop please, keep going." You urge your boyfriend, throwing your head back. It's incredibly hot in the car, and you realize that maybe you should've cracked open a few windows before starting, but there was no way you're going to stop now to tell him that, not when you were this close.

"Y/N, I'm gonna cum," he cries out, his breathing becoming labored. "Let me have yeh in another position, please, 'm so fuckin' close."

"There's no room," you choke out, squeezing down on him. Harry moans loudly, muttering a quiet "shit" under his breath. He lifts you off of him and lays you down across the backseat, bending your knees up to your chest while he situates himself in between your legs. It's cramped and uncomfortable and hot, but you're so close, just a few thrusts away from reaching your high.

"Put your legs over my shoulders," he demands, resting on hand on the car's headrest while the other grips your breast. You nod and place your legs on either side of his shoulders, now being able to feel him in a completely different way. He re-enters you, so much deeper than before, and you swear you see stars. "Fuckin' hell, Y/N. Love your tight pussy, babe. All fo' me, yeah?"

"All for you, baby," you cry, gripping onto his broad shoulders. "'M gonna cum now, let me cum." You're a begging, writhing mess beneath him, squeezing down on his cock.

"Do tha' again," he asks, his rhythm becoming sloppy and hurried, just wanting to get the two of you off. "I'm almost there too, babe, squeeze 'round my cock again like you just did."

You clench around Harry and he lets his head hang, squeezing onto your breast even harder. "'M cummin', Y/N," he announces immediately before releasing inside you, his warm load coating your spongy walls. Your bite your lip and squeeze around him again, the coil in your abdomen becoming tighter as you quickly approach your peak shortly after he reaches his. You know Harry is exhausted, but he doesn't stop, never wanting to leave you hanging. He reaches in between your bodies and rubs quick circles on your clit with the hand that's gripping the headrest and flicks your nipples with the other hand. "Come on, love. Can feel how close you are, I know you're nearly there."

Harry spanks your clit while increasing his speed, and your eyes roll into the back of your head, your vision going hazy. You feel like you're underwater— his voice sounds muffled and a little far away, and that's how you know the orgasm was good. Your eyes are still shut, and you feel him slowly pull out, trying not to get his seed all over the backseat of his car. After coming down from your high, you open your eyes, a blissed-out smile on your face. "That was incredible." You let out a quiet chuckle, wiping the beads of sweat from your forehead. "Can you open the door? I can hardly breathe in here."

Harry laughs and slowly sits up, opening the door and inhaling the cold morning air. The car's windows were completely fogged up, and you're happy no one was walking by because if they did, they'd definitely know what the two of you had gotten into. "Guess you can't say you've never fucked in the backseat of a car before anymore."

#harry styles smut #harry styles #harry styles x y/n #harry styles x reader #harry styles fluff #harry styles imagine #harry styles blurb #harry styles one shot #harry styles fanfiction #never have i ever #thanks for reading!

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olivia-anderson-fanfic · 3 years

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A Miraculous TikTok Account

Part 9

First

Chat laid back in his bed but, for once, he wasn’t tired.

He was set to go on patrols that night, so he’d pretty much done everything he’d wanted for the day earlier. He’d gotten all his sleep, watched every video, finished his skin and hair care routines…

Only to find out that, hey, he didn't actually need to do that because Hawkmoth had chosen today to akumatize someone.

So patrols were out of the question. Hawkmoth had a recharge time of a few hours it seemed, but he usually didn’t do multiple akumas on the same day. They were always less powerful when he did too many in quick succession.

Well, at least he could go fight the akuma, right?

Wrong.

Because it was quickly brought to his attention that he actually couldn’t go, because the akuma was Mr. Pigeon and he quite famously had a bird allergy.

So the three women had all headed out (Carapace had stayed behind to finish an essay) and Chat had been left behind.

He scrolled through TikTok for a while. The app was definitely watching him, because almost all the content on his For You Page was animal videos…

Not that he minded.

But he could only handle so much cuteness at once, so that only worked for a few minutes.

Next, he went on Twitter to see what everyone was currently arguing about. That was bound to be entertaining…

Unfortunately, it seemed everyone in Paris was more concerned with the akuma than anything else at the moment. He didn’t need action shots of his housemates or to know more about Mr. Pigeon’s new plan to take the birds to space or whatever so he can… feed them? What?

The only other notable app on his phone was Instagram, but he wasn’t about to go on that. He was supposed to be in Tibet at some fancy private school, if people saw he was active he’d have to come up with answers to the millions of questions he’d inevitably get.

Now what…?

He pushed himself up to a sitting position with minimal groaning and attempted to run a hand down his face despite his mask.

Screw it. He was bored. He’d go bother Carapace.

He shuffled two doors down. He knocked twice…

There was a scrambling sound before he got a yell to come in.

When Chat actually did so, he found Carapace fastening his mask to his face. He was sitting at his desk, the area around him littered with crumpled pieces of paper.

“Salut?”

Chat batted away some with his feet as he made his way towards Carapace. “Salut. Chloe would kill you if she saw how much paper you’re wasting.”

“Paper is biodegradable, isn’t it?” Said Carapace with a slight grin.

“True.”

“... is there a reason you’re here?”

Chat didn’t answer, instead he slung himself over Carapace’s lap and laid there like a giant housecat. Which he pretty much was.

Carapace wasn’t even all that surprised.

All of the miraculous holders were well aware that the miraculous had side effects for them. They seemed to have attributed his constant need to be in contact with others as one of the side effects.

Chat knew that wasn’t the case, he was just Like That, but who was he to tell them they were wrong?

Carapace reached down and gave his hair a tiny ruffle and then went back to work.

Chat pulled out his phone again and started scrolling idly through Twitter for something to do (also he was kind of curious about the space pigeons now). The sound of Carapace’s pencil on the paper and his tiny sighs and curses were the only noises in the room for a while…

His eyes slid over the room. The bed looked untouched, there were a few empty energy drink cans strewn about, but other than that...

“So, wait, is homework literally all you do when you’re in here?”

“It’s all I have energy for outside of working out and patrols most days. Why?”

Chat rolled over to look up at him. “It’s just… you’re so…” He tried to think of a way to phrase it nicely, but when he couldn’t he settled for: “boring…?”

Carapace frowned a little. “And you’re so annoying!”

Chat flinched. As most people do when someone insults them.

His face softened and he groaned a little. “... sorry. That wasn’t… I’m just a little stressed out about school. This paper is due at midnight and I don’t know what to write.” He cracked a half smile and motioned to all the wads of paper. “As you might have been able to tell.”

He relaxed as well. “Yeah. I hear school is stressful.”

“You hear…?”

He hesitated. They were supposed to keep most things about their lives as civilians a secret, but… there was no way he could figure out who he was from this piece of information, so: “I was homeschooled.”

Carapace raised his eyebrows, thought about it, then nodded. “That makes sense.”

“Huh?”

“You have sheltered rich kid vibes.”

“... thanks?”

“No problem,” he responded easily. He set his pencil down and stretched as much as he could with someone still laying across his lap. “So. You had to have had a good education. Have any tips for my essay?”

Chat yawned and closed his eyes. “Depends. What’s the subject?”

“Film history.”

“... I don’t know anything about that, I don’t think, sorry. Ladybug or Rena might, ask them when they get back.”

Carapace laughed a little. “I don’t need information, if I did at least then I could just look it up, I just don��t know how to… write?”

He blinked his eyes open and then looked at him. “I can help if you just need to get your thoughts in order.”

“Really?” Said Carapace, his face lighting up.

Chat groaned a little as he stretched out. “Sure. Let me get a whiteboard.”

“We have paper…?” He said, watching his housemate get up and start walking out of the room.

“Shhhh, it’s for the aesthetic.”

Chat walked to the fridge and grabbed the whiteboard and markers from it.

He took a quick picture of the board so he could put everything back on it when he was done. Rena had apparently been doing some calculations on it. He remembered, vaguely, that she had mentioned calculating Hawkmoth’s height…

Holy crap. That’s tall. Sure, Hawkmoth was tall, but was he really THAT tall?

He shook his head slightly and erased, then returned to Carapace’s room. He smiled as he held them up for him to see.

“Tada.”

“So… what are we doing?”

“You --” Chat pointed a marker at him. “-- are going to talk about everything you know on the subject. I --” He pointed at himself. “-- am going to put everything in categories and we can go from there.”

Chat very quickly discovered why he was having so much trouble getting anything down. Carapace was… let’s call it ‘passionate’. The moment he started speaking his words tumbled out so quickly that Chat had had to scramble to pull the cap off of the marker so he could start sorting.

But, really, it always is nice to hear someone ramble about something they’re passionate about. Chat had to fight an urge to just watch and listen to Carapace as he talked about how ‘absolutely insane the textbook is for not going that much into eastern theater when there’s so much to talk about about kabuki theater alone --.’

Two hours and many struggles to fit so much information into such a compact space later, Carapace had run out of things to talk about.

“... is there a page limit?” Said Chat as he tossed over a water.

Carapace caught it without even really looking and took a few sips before speaking again: “Uh… yeah. Five pages max. That’s… my main problem.”

Chat looked at the board. What was on there alone was probably two pages in itself and that was just the general names of the topics…

He tipped his head from side to side and then circled a part of it. “Behold. That’s probably around four, and then you can do a bit of extra plus an introduction and conclusion.”

Carapace looked like he was going to cry.

“Are you… okay?”

He sniffled and wiped his eyes. “Where have you been all my life?”

“Uh… being homeschooled?”

“Oh. Right.”

Chat slung himself over Carapace’s lap again as he got to work. He scrolled through his phone for a while.

He jumped a little when he got a text. Still not used to that.

He opened the message.

Ladybug: We’ve washed off and changed clothes so your allergies won’t be irritated. Heading home now.

Kittychat: Thanks :D

He got left on read by three people, but that’s fine.

“They’re on their way back.”

Carapace grinned. “Wow, they beat Mr. Pigeon? Shocker!”

When Chat laughed a little, Carapace’s grin got a little more mischievous.

“Seriously, though, imagine losing to Mr. Pigeon. Couldn’t be me.”

“I am allERGIC --!”

He was cut off by Carapace’s laughter and, after a moment, he joined in.

They lapsed into a comfortable silence…

Then Chat got an idea. A small smirk made its way onto his face.

“You said that your account was going to be showing the world that we’re all normal people under the masks, right?”

“Among other things…?”

“Want to mess with the others and get some footage?”

“You complete me. C’mon.”

Carapace snatched his phone off his desk and they headed down to the living room to prepare.

~~~

Taglist

@nathleigh @mialuvscats @sassakitty @th1s-1s-my-aesthet1c @blueslushgueen @woe-is-me0

#a miraculous tiktok account #chat noir #adrien agreste #carapace #nino lahiffe #ladybug #marinette dupain cheng #queen bee #chloe bourgeois #rena rouge #alya cesaire #miraculous team #miraculous fic #ml fic #rewriting miraculous #chloenette #chlonette #adrino

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painted-crow · 3 years

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Secondary Toast Revolving Door, Part 1

I guess I should start with a little about me, since that’s easier than making you pick through previous asks for information and some of you guys are new here. This one’s going to be heavily personal, so you can skip it if you want.

I’m a double Bird. My Bird primary system is heavily Badger influenced, and I also use Lion to support it by telling me when I should investigate something more closely. If we can dip into primary territory for a moment, I guess you can say I understand the world through systems that model things around me. But not all of those systems are things I’ve consciously examined, or fully investigated.

My understanding of how historical people dressed is pretty limited, for example, because I haven’t studied it in depth to get all the information—but I consciously understand what I do know about it. You could say this system piece is tiny but clear; I could expand it if I chose to find out more.

My understanding of how someone I’m not close to thinks might have more data to work with, but I haven’t consciously processed it; that’s the kind of thing where my Lion primary model will tell me to look closer if that person starts acting weird. This system piece might be described as huge but fuzzy; I could clarify it if I sat down and thought about it. I probably have more of these than I realize, but Lion basically takes care of monitoring those. I don’t have to investigate everything.

But some of my systems are both large and fairly clear, because I’ve taken the time both to gather data on them and to examine it. My understanding of myself is… well, I won’t say it’s terribly clear, because I’m in my early twenties and I’m still constantly getting new information, plus someone keeps changing the environment and mucking with my data (that would be me). But I have to examine it, because my brain is like a notoriously buggy piece of software and I’m the poor schmuck saddled with tech support duties.

Basically, the reason I’m good at playing therapist with other people is that I’m constantly doing exactly that thing with myself. (This probably makes me a very annoying patient for actual therapists.)

About that buggy brain, then.

I have major depression. That was professionally diagnosed when I was a teenager and it’s probably genetic. I take medication for it, when I remember to. It especially flares up in the winter or when I’m under stress. I probably have some kind of anxiety disorder too.

I’m almost certainly autistic, which I’ve never brought up with a professional—the first person to figure it out was the system I’m now best friends with, because they’re autistic and they knew I was within two weeks of talking to me. It took me two years to catch up with them and figure it out myself.

In my defense, I thought executive dysfunction, sensory overwhelm, dissociation, and hyperempathy were like… secret menu items for depression, because those only really bug me during depressive episodes. My current theory is that they’re related to autistic burnout instead.

I mask a lot, subconsciously—it’s actually really hard to turn that off normally—and I just can’t do that as much when depressed. If I do, my tolerance for everything else goes way down and I’ll go into overwhelm and start having shutdowns and dissociating. I recover pretty quickly (hours, not days), but if you’ve never spent 15 minutes standing in a Walmart aisle trying to decide whether you want a jar of peanut butter, but you can’t make decisions because you can’t access your emotions and you don’t really feel like you’re “here” but you kind of just want to go home… well, be glad I guess.

Of course, I have other autistic traits that show up when I’m not under stress, but they’re seldom associated with autism because most people don’t know what autis are like when we’re actually happy. Like, hyperlexia? That’s not even an “official” word, the auti community just uses it because “official” literature hasn’t caught up. I taught myself to read at age three (according to my mom; she says I was reading news headlines and stuff, not just books I’d memorized) and wrote a 35k word novella when I was ten, with no external prompting. My audio processing used to be terrible, but I routinely tested at college age reading levels as a kid.

I also might have ADHD? If so, it’s also mostly just noticeable if I’m under stress, and then it’s hard to tell if that’s the issue or if it’s just autism/depression again.

You might be getting a clearer picture of how my secondary and its model end up burnt so often!

(Resisting a very strong urge to cut stuff from this post.)

In short, I was a Gifted Kid. I spent a lot of my teen years biting off more than I could chew, honestly. I felt that I should be able to do more, and I wanted to be taken seriously, but I had basically no idea how to take care of myself because my needs are different from everyone else’s. I’m still figuring those out.

I’m kind of like an orchid plant: incredibly picky about conditions, wants a different “soil” and watering schedule, gets stressed if stuff changes too quickly, but when everything is just right and it does bloom, it goes all out.

I’m not kidding when I say that I have odd needs. One of them is the need for creative work, which seems to be hardwired into me. When I say that art or writing keeps me sane, I often hear back “oh yeah! I’ve heard that can be very therapeutic,” which is an innocuous reply, but it’s always bugged me, and I think I’ve figured out why.

First, because that’s not the reason I make things… I just… have to. Second, I can’t “make up” not doing creative work with some other kind of therapy. Third and most importantly, I’d much rather think of “artist” as my ground state, and depression as a condition that happens when my needs aren’t being met, rather than thinking of depression as the default that I’m just using art to escape from. That seems to me a healthier way of thinking, and probably a more accurate one, but I’m probably the only one who can see that distinction.

If life gets in the way and I can’t make space for creative work, it will actively make my depression worse. I know this because, multiple times, I’ve been unable to pinpoint why I’m feeling shitty, and then I go back to my easel or my writing or (ukulele, cooking, even just taking care of houseplants) and realize I haven’t done anything creative in like a month and thaaaat’s the problem.

I crack open a bottle of gesso to prep some canvases and it smells like… well, I don’t think you can get high off gesso? But it’s not like when you’re out of it on painkillers or cold medicine or whatever. It’s incredibly grounding, like the world snaps back into focus but it’s also oddly euphoric. Or I write ten thousand words in a couple days and it just… I don’t know what that does. I’ve never run across a word for it.

The writer of Smile at Strangers (a really good memoir centered around women, anxiety, and karate) describes a similar feeling in relation to her martial arts practice.

It’s also a bit like when all the snow melts after winter and you step outside and there’s the smell of wet soil under sunlight and I’m not sure if this fully translates for people who don’t have seasonal depression. Sorry.

Dammit, I want to paint… I haven’t had space to set up for like eight months. I’ve been nose-deep in writing projects since last summer for a reason, but right now my friggin Ravenclaw secondary is off angsting about something because of Life Stress Bullshit, and I don’t have the focus to work on any of my writing projects. Apart from this one. But it’s not really what I want in terms of creative work.

*velociraptor screech*

Oh, yeah. I guess I could mention this is why my nickname is Paint. Not sure if that was obvious before. The header image (which is more visible in the app for some reason) is one of my paintings. It’s a tiny one and it’s not one of my favorites, but I had the photo on my phone and the colors work well enough for what I needed.

(restrains self from negging my own painting ability)

This is starting to get into spoiler territory for what burned Ravenclaw secondary looks like, huh? It’s peaced out for a couple weeks at this point. I’m trying to write about what made it take off, but my ability to think of words and form a coherent sentence kinda flew out the window when I approached it directly.

Let’s just say that around the start of the month, someone I was talking to online (if you’re reading this, it’s definitely not you) kindaaaa hit a nasty depression trigger of mine. Not their fault—it’s very specific to me, and I struggle to explain why I can’t really talk about it. Basically, I spent years studying programming and web design, and due to several different but related issues during that experience, it’s now a trigger for me. I very much want it not to be, but trying to train that out of myself has induced more than one panic attack and I’m stuck between giving up on it or figuring out a way to go back to it that doesn’t totally shut my brain down.

That paragraph took forever to write, by the way.

I think I have to end this here. I… am going to go take out the trash, and water my plants, and make my bed, and file some paperwork, and maybe I’ll even mix up some bread dough or do some laundry. Spoiler alert for what it looks like when my Hufflepuff model takes over, I guess.

Oh. And I should maybe probably eat something. I almost forgot about that... again.

#sortinghatchats #time to overshare on the internet i guess #secondary toast revolving door #mental health #burned ravenclaw secondary #hufflepuff secondary model #ravenclaw primary #paint speaks

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hariosborn · 4 years

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james potter fic recs!!

lily evans, i see you, hear you, and i respect you... but we’re gonna forget about you for a hot minute

no please don’t say that... by @hello-everyfandom tag yourself, i’m sappy james :(( i just want to attend at least one gryffindor party in my lifetime. thinking of shifting realities :// jkjk i have no free time on my hands :(( but if i ever did, i would for sure visit the marauders and hang out w them in the common room 🥰 hashtag gryffindor pride!

match made by @slytherinquill who is y/n and why does she get all the guys 😔i would hate to have to choose between two boys who like me, but lucky for me no one likes me! as much as it squeezes my heart, i love the fake dating trope with all my heart bc of all the emotions it puts me through - and this one was so well written! love that for the writer, could not be me, i suck at writing <3

too late for love by @futurewriter2000 just the right amount of steam and heartbreak ;( fun fact: i used to only read and write on w**tpad and that was where i read my first hp fanfic after 2 years of being on the app (i had promised myself hp was off limits) and like i was looking on google to see the marauders fancasts and i saw a gif of aaron taylor johnson and i accidentally clicked on it and it took me to a oneshot on this writers page, and i was like “oh well, might as well” and i read it and i was crying and then for a month i was going on incognito tabs to try and read everything on her masterlist and then i caved and got a tumblr and here we are! so shoutout to @futurewriter2000 for being the writer to suck me into this lovely whirlpool that is harry potter fanfiction heehee

numb love by @heloisedaphnebrightmore i love non-cannon stuff because lets face it, my existence is not cannon. but this! this right here! wow! yes! it hurt, but it was worth it! i love how i could still have my own harry potter uni fantasy, but still have it line up with the cannon timeline 🥺

jealous by @writingfortoomanyfandoms short and sweet but dang! my heart did that little b***rflies thingy 😳i think best friend!remus is the best thing ever, and sirius’ little jabs at lovesick james were *muah*

nightmare by @marauder-exe more butterflies! i won’t spoil it - but when the prompt was mentioned (like james used it) i melted onto the floor. i became a puddle of puddy on the floor. i went so soft. i felt like i was in my natural soft girl state. romantic hari was activated :0

summer revelations by @pregnant-piggy YESSS!!! YAAAASSSS!!! SUMMATIIIIME!!! i live in ~la~ and its that kind of nasty hot rn (and during the summer) bc we’re having a heat wave, and i just wish with my entire being, that i could instead spend my summers in the english countryside in a cute french style house with cute boys dancing around their feelings for me. thats the dream right there. y/n has it lucky. i bet she takes that sh*t for granted 😒 jkjk love her! i am her! also i had in mind the exact dress i would be wearing, and bc of the humidity, i’m imagining my curls would be ~activated~ and so my messy bun would just be at peak cuteness <3

pushing the right buttons by @heloisedaphnebrightmore i don’t know why (actually i do) but the word “waist” and the action of “wrapping his arm around your waist” makes me feel something amazing. i’ve learned that my love language is physical touch + affection and this fic has that, and then paired with the idea of someone appreciating my waist just makes my brain go into overdrive. and then shirtless james is obviously a plus as well. 5+ points for that alone.

uncontrollable wandless magic by @heloisedaphnebrightmore ooo imagine having powers 😏eleven typa beat. (OMG WAIT THE CHARACTER FROM STRANGER THINGS, NOT THE AGE AJKABVKJ)

schemes series!masterlist by @futurewriter2000 OOOO YESSS! this series broke my heart, but like in the best way possible, so its all good. also this fic introduced me to the idea of fantasizing abt mulciber, so i am not complaining. love me some remusxreaderxjamesxreaderxsiriusxreaderxmulciuberxreaderxplatonic!regulusxreader

potter by @mellifluousmalfoy relative of ernie mcmillan??? james potter??? soulmates??? the answer to all of those questions is yes. yes i do. yes i am. yes i is.

a golden lion and the pale blue bird by @remusishotterthansirius im not saying i agree with this authors user, but i a*ree with this authors user. back to the scheduled programming - i love study buddy!remus. like period bestfriend. introduce me to my future mans. you go do that remus. you play matchmaker. go ahead, i give you full permission 😌

just go by @jamesmydeer i don’t even - i just - when - AGHHH. maybe its like a disease, but i love putting myself through pain via heartbreak stories on tumblr. it gives me a rush. pretending i’m actually in love. its nice ya know? its definitely an obsession, but i think its a healthy one!

Y’ALL I WAS SUPPOSED TO BE DOING MY HOMEWORK BUT I PROCRASTINATED AND MADE THIS LIST! AHHHH

but its okay bc its been a looong time since i made my first post - which also, ty for the nice messages from all the writers mentioned 🥺

hope you liked these recommendations! i’m sorry if you’re a writer and get tagged in like ever single fic rec list i post, i just really like your stuff 🥺

ANYWAYS I HAVE TO GO, I HAVE SO MUCH HOMEWORK TO DO AND SO LITTLE TIME BYEEEEE

happy reading!

#fic rec #fanfic #imagines #oneshots #writers on tumblr #writing #hp #Harry Potter #james potter #fluff #fic recommendation #recommended reading #marauders au #hp marauders #marauders era #james potter x you #james potter x reader

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slliest-clownmari · 3 years

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Hello again! For the month of June we decided to don our best Icarus costumes because we flew directly into the sun on this one! Extra long disclaimer this time. If you're interested in the technical side what we did and how it went wrong, or want to see the raw numbers, that'll be at the bottom of this post!

Disclaimer: There were two major errors during collection. The first one resulted in five people's views not being collected for the first half hour of the event. These people were SMajor/Noxcrew, ItsFunneh, Squaishey, ASFJerome, and Mefs, amounting to about 56k views when added back. The second error left a 45 minute gap in the data where nothing is collected. While these are major errors general trends are still visible and neat to look at!

TL;DR: MCCP21 peaked with 627.4k viewers a little more than thirty minutes into the event. 65.4% of those viewers were watching the Pink Parrots, and 87.9% of those were watching Technoblade. The second most watched team was the Lime Llamas at 16.9% of viewership, 77.6% of that coming from Wisp.

For easier viewing of the graphs, check out the Google Slides version! Total Viewership Over Time

The event peaked with 627,421 viewers at 8:33PM which was during Sky Battle. Looking at the trend of the data, this statistic is unlikely to have changed if the missing 45 minutes had been counted, especially seeing how the peak of MCC14 was also easily in the first hour. Data collection began about an hour before the event's official start at 8:00PM and ended an hour after the event's end at 11:08PM.

Viewership by Individual Over Time

A fun game you can play with this graph, sans the labels, is guess which one's Technoblade! So far everyone I've shown the unlabelled graph to has guessed correct.

Three people went live after the official start time of the event at 8:00PM, those being Technoblade, Grian, and AyChristeneGames. Four streamers had gone offline prior to the end of 20vs20 Dodgebolt at 11:08PM. Twenty of the 24 participants had gone offline within 5 minutes of the event end. This is in sharp contrast to MCC14 where it took 15 minutes to have half of the 36 participants to go offline. MCC14 participants were also more likely to start streaming well in advance of the event. (For context, only Twitch data was collected for MCC14.) This is probably a cultural difference between Youtube and Twitch.

Viewership by Team Over Time

The viewership drop off after a team fails to reach Dodgebolt is a lot more severe this time, and you don't really see the two teams who did get to Dodgebolt get a boost either. Best guess is this is because MCCP21 was non-canon so nobody really cared who won the whole thing if their favorites didn't make it. Another observation: Pink Parrots has a much more severe dropoff during the Bird App Poll than everyone else. Unseen here is the viewership increase when Wilbur's fire alarm went off :(

Viewership Breakdown at Peak by Individual

So, not the most diverse viewership. The most watched person at peak in MCC14, Tommyinnit, only had 21.1% of total viewership. Even if you combine that percentage with the runner-up Dream's numbers, you only get 38.4% of viewership going to them. There is not a single team from MCC14 who captured nearly 57.5% of the viewership. The most they could do was 39.9% (Green Guardians). Absolutely insane degree of domination.

Top Five (Unrouned) 1. Technoblade (360.8k) 2. Wisp (82.2k) 3. Grian (45.5k) 4. ItsFunneh (44.9k) 5. Joey Graceffa (23.5k)

Bottom Five 26. Burren (78) 25. SeaPeeKay (333) 24. Spifey (403) 25. AyChristeneGames (498) 26. InTheLittleWood (521)

Wisp's numbers were so hugely different from last time (0.1% to 13.1%) that I actually sought out people who watched him to confirm he really had over 70k viewers. He did. This probably has to do with having fewer big names to compete with and being on a team with Tommy and Tubbo. Plus, he’s more familiar to the Minecraft community than Joey Graceffa, so fans of Tommy and Tubbo would be more likely to watch Wisp to see their faves. This isn't meant to belittle Wisp or to attribute his viewership entirely to Tommy or Tubbo; MCC is an unfair measurement of the usual popularity of a creator.

Viewership Breakdown at Peak by Team vs Survey Data

The predicted viewership graph was generated using data from a poll I ran on Tumblr and a poll run by u/Epic_Ninja_Dude123 on r/MinecraftChampionship.

Difference from predicted counts (Pred. % vs Actu. %) Lime Llamas: +9.1% (7.8% vs 16.9%) Green Guardians: +6.3% (0.9% vs 7.2%) Purple Pandas: -6.3% (6.7% vs 0.4%) Orange Ocelots: -5.1% (5.5% vs 0.4%) Red Rabbits: -4.1% (6.2% vs 2.1%) Blue Bats: -1.9% (2.5% vs 0.6%) Aqua Axolotls: +1.3% (2.5% vs 3.8%) Pink Parrots: +0.9% (64.5% vs 65.4%) Yellow Yaks: +0.5% (0.0% vs 0.5%) Cyan Creepers: -0.3% (3.2% vs 2.9%)

Standard Dev. for MCC14: 10.22 Standard Dev. for MCCP21: 2.89

Thrilled by these statistics!! The MCC14 survey had nearly triple the sample size (862) as this combined survey, but still ended up closer to actual counts. Real life proof of what they tell you in stats classes! A representative sample is the best kind of sample to have. Something I did not consider when using the survey for MCC14 is its source, a blog on Tumblr that talks heavily about Technoblade and Philza, which obviously biased the audience who took it towards the Pink Parrots (Philza, Fundy, Wilbur, JackManifold). Not a surprise we did better this time but really neat to see logic in action! lol

Another interesting thing about the survey: Reddit and Tumblr do vary a little in taste. It's easier to just show you:

What's missing? I chose not to calculate average/median viewership for the creators involved due to the large gap in data. It wouldn't be correct most likely.

So, how did you do this and how did you mess it up?

(I, the writer of this post, mostly do the analysis part of this project, not the programming. Apologies if any programmers are reading this and it doesn't make sense. :[ )

Our initial plan was do do just what we did to collect the MCC14 data but for YouTube instead of Twtich. (For MCC14 we used a Python program to request the viewership data directly from Twitch using their API.) This was much easier said than done. Unlike the Twitch API, which allows you to get stream information very easily just using a streamer's name, YouTube API doesn't have a "front door" way of getting this stuff. So, we went in the "back door."

First thing we had to do was manually collect the user ID for each participant. The next step is where the first error occurred: we needed to get our program to recognize the user ID as a user ID, which was done by writing a rule. This was stuff like how long the IDs were and what symbols were included in the IDs. We failed to include a symbol that was present in five of the participant's user IDs, so the program didn't recognize them as IDs and didn't run them through the part of the program which found the stream ID and collected viewer numbers. This is why that data was missing for SMajor/Noxcrew, ItsFunneh, Squaishey, ASFJerome, and Mefs in the first 30 minutes.

Another big way in which the YouTube API differs from the Twitch API is that YouTube has a quota system. Every action you can take with the API has a certain number of points connected to it, and you're only given so many points to spend a day per application. We thought we were only making one call to get viewer data for every streamer, but instead we were making a separate call for each streamer. That destroyed our quota pretty quick, resulting in the 45 minute gap in data collection. This problem was solved by moving our code into another application which granted us more quota.

This is an important lesson in testing your programs thoroughly before use!

On the bright side, the YouTube API is much more active than the Twitch API, which would update streamer numbers seemingly at random and not all at once. The YouTube API updated numbers roughly every 15 seconds and updated for all streamers, not just a few. That's why our graphs are higher resolution this time!

Here is the raw numbers: Click me!

Let's talk about next time

SO. Obviously this time around was not super ideal, which is partially on us for not testing more. (At least this was not the only scuffed thing about MCCP21. We were just being on brand, if you think about it.) However! Good news! The quota won't be a problem next time as MCC15 won't be Youtube exclusive. We have already fixed the YouTube program we used this time around and have begun to merge the two. We might even be able to collect YouTube subscribers and Twitch followers by next time but we're focusing on making sure we get all the data next time.

Thank you all so much for reading! Again, any and all critique and questions are welcome! :]

#mcc #minecraft championships #mcc pride 2021 #minecraft #technoblade #mcyt #minecraft championship pride 2021 #my stuff

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iamtheblondestblonde · 4 years

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Slides and Serendipity

Part Four (4.3k)

Part One Part Two Part Three

AN: Can we just appreciate how good he looks while literally just standing there doing absolutely nothing? It’s not fair. With that said, enjoy!

Warnings: Only language for now

I told him how I’d moved to the US when I was 18, right after finishing school. I’d always had a love for programming and when I was about 15 I had my first app up and running, but it hadn’t really been successful. At 17 some of my guy friends made me think of an idea that I wouldn’t be able to forget in the following years.

I was convinced that it could be my breakthrough but it would take up every minute that I could spare for the next few years because building the interface of an app with this magnitude usually took entire teams of people but I was doing all of the work by myself. By the time Tyler and I made it through the entrance I was telling him how during my freshman year of college I’d barely slept, writing code and improving like crazy.

“At one point I was so sick of it, I just wanted to do something else, anything else really, so I made this little game. It took me two days, although I probably could have done it in like four hours if I hadn’t gone out that night. The graphics were terrible and I thought it was stupid, a silly little distraction, but the friends that I’d shown it to loved it so I published it as a joke. No one could have predicted what would come and to this day I still don’t know what exactly happened”, I told him as we slowly made our way around the aquarium.

“So your little game became famous?” he asked curiously and I laughed dryly before giving him the last piece of information that he’d need to connect the dots, a look of shock now on his face.

“You made Flappy Bird?!”, he exclaimed so loudly that the actual birds around us quickly flew away. I put my hand over his mouth to try and avoid any further attention, even though most people had already turned around to watch us curiously.

“Yes I did but please be quiet. People weren’t exactly my biggest fans after I took it down”, I said and took his hand in mine to try to pull him along with me but he wouldn’t budge.

“Wow, like holy fuck I’m honored to be in your presence. I played that game all day long”

He smiled at me then and I was relieved that he’d calmed down again. With our fingers still laced together we watched some fish in silence before he spoke up again.

“Tell me about your life back then”

“I feel like people have kind of forgotten about me now but it was absolute madness then. I was 19 and racking in around 50 grand a day, which is something that no teenager should ever do. I did a lot of stupid shit as you can imagine but also became my own investor, so at least something good came out of it”, I told him, not really daring to look him in the eye. Only a handful of people still knew about Flappy Bird and while I didn’t regret telling him, I’d had to face all kinds of reactions before.

“Yeah I know a thing or two about being left unsupervised and making too much money as a teenager”, he said bitterly and I remembered some of the stuff that Mara had told me about him and his time in Boston. I go the feeling that he probably understood me better than anyone else.

We kind of dropped the topic for a while after that, instead just talking about his workouts and the upcoming weeks. I had noticed a group of teenagers recognizing Tyler a while ago but so far they hadn’t come up to us, leaving us to continue our conversation in peace.

A while later I heard him curse and turned around to see them taking pictures of us, making me swear as well. He tried to apologize but I wouldn’t let him as I’d kind of expected something like this to happen again and it wasn’t really his fault either.

I let go of his hand to avoid stupid rumors but didn’t step back from him. We continued walking, hands still brushing once in a while but neither of us reached out again. I asked Tyler to take pictures of me for my Instagram and he acted like a professional photographer, crouching down to get the best angles and everything. I wanted to get a picture with both of us in it but didn’t dare to ask anyone else. He posted some pictures as well but I made sure to stay out of the frame.

“I just remembered your other idea. Did it have the success you expected it to have?”, he asked me a while later, surprising me with the sudden change of topic as we’d just had a discussion on whether a sloth was a good spirit animal or not.

“Yes it did, actually more than I’d hoped and my sources also told me that you’re an avid user yourself”

“I swear if you tell me that you’re behind Instagram I am absolutely losing my shit”, he said, probably only partly joking and I had to laugh.

“Nah I wish but not quite. I guess you could call me your wingwoman though because I’ve heard that you met quite a few of your hookups through my baby Bumble”, I revealed, again laughing at his reaction. He looked at me as if to try and figure out if I was kidding before coming to the realization that I wasn’t.

I didn’t make a secret out of the fact that I founded Bumble, having given interviews and everything and it was probably the biggest reason why the media paid me any mind. If he’d googled me, he would’ve found lots of articles and pictures but I guess a guy like him refrained from googling anyone, including himself.

“I’ve been wanting to ask though, why Bumble and not Tinder? I know for a fact that the amount of people looking for hookups is higher on Tinder”, I said and watched him curiously.

“I was actually on Tinder for a little while but I didn’t like having to make the first move. I didn’t want to put myself out there with like pick up lines in case people would upload screenshots, but whenever I just wrote ‘Hey what’s up?’ people were giving me shit about the Tyler Seguin being basic so I deleted it. Bumble is nice because I only have to respond and I can just ignore the crazy bunnies until their profiles are gone”, he explained and I smiled, feedback always much appreciated.

“Well the Tyler Seguin using one of the most basic lines is pretty disappointing, I’d be mad as well”, I teased and he laughed, his eyes crinkling.

“With you I put in more effort, I mean I even made my dog steal your shoe and everything, kinda like a reverse Cinderella”, he came right back and we both burst out laughing again. Spending time with him was probably one of the easiest things I’d ever done. There weren’t any awkward pauses or moments and besides the fact that I was trying my best not to fall for his charms, I could easily count us hanging out among my favorite things to do nowadays.

Once we’d seen everything at the aquarium and barely avoided getting shit on by a bird we decided that it was time to head out.

“So I know that you said that you avoid Italian restaurants but there’s this German place in town and I feel like you’re best qualified to judge it. You have to tell me what to order though”, he said as we were walking back to my car. I wasn’t even that hungry but he looked so excited that I agreed to go anyways.

The restaurant was cute, actually reminding me of places I’d been to in Germany and when the waitress came to take our order I was surprised by her being German as well. I didn’t want to be rude towards Tyler so I kept our chat short but it always felt good to speak my native language again. She told me that the restaurant was owned by a couple from Germany and I vowed to myself to come back if I was ever in the need for some quality comfort food.

“I always remembered German to be quite harsh but it actually sounds kind of beautiful when you speak it”, he said afterwards as we waited for our meals.

“Well yea, you probably only heard people yelling at each other on the ice in Switzerland and the language there also sounds quite different from the one I grew up with. Angry German is definitely harsh but I don’t think you’ll ever hear that from me”, I assured him and he started pestering me about teaching him some slang.

The food tasted more authentic than anything I’d had in the States so far and it caused a feeling of longing to bubble up in my chest. For the most part I was glad that I’d left when I did but from time to time I still missed my old home, even if the US now felt more like my home than anything else.

“Do you miss Toronto?”, I asked Tyler, knowing that he probably felt the same.

“Yeah definitely, not as much right now because I just got back from Canada but whenever I feel down I wish my family could be with me to support me. Don’t get me wrong, I absolutely love my life here in Dallas but I guess whenever things get bad it’s easiest to want to go back to your roots, you know?”, he asked and I nodded, even if I couldn’t relate that much. I didn’t have such a strong support system as the one he obviously had but I could still understand him wanting to be surrounded by familiar things in those moments.

We talked about our lives outside of Dallas and his love for fishing and the peaceful look he got on his face when talking about his cabin that he had up north was completely different from what you’d expect because of the way the media portrayed him. Of course he mentioned parties as well and while some stories were crazy, I’d been to wilder parties and no one would ever give me shit about it because no one cared.

“I think it’s because it plays into the stereotype of the party-loving hockey player, like people actively wait for you to act out so they can say that they were right”, I said as were downing the last of our drinks. He was in the spotlight and people wanted him to behave responsibly, which I understood, but he was still a real person with real feelings and I could also see why he wanted to escape those expectations from time to time.

Tyler wanted to pay our bill of course and while I thought that it was a sweet gesture, I insisted on him letting me cover the tip at least. I wrote a little note in German on the receipt and then we left. We’d spent so much time inside that the sun was already painting the sky in reds and oranges, dipping everything around us in a beautiful light.

“I think I’ll really like it here”, I said to Tyler while I looked up into the sunset.

“I’m trying to help you with that”, he responded and I tried to talk myself out of feeling my heart flutter at the soft smile he was currently giving me.

This time his song choices were more laid back and I felt myself relaxing as much as I could without causing a traffic accident. He asked me to park the car at my house so we could walk over to his place and I happily obliged, wanting to savor these last few moments together.

There was still a little bit of the sunset sky left by the time we made it back and I basked in its light as we slowly approached his gate. I was still humming one of the songs he’d played earlier when we made our way through his front door, four dogs coming at us with full speed. Soon enough we were both buried under masses of fur and wet noses, their excitement only slowly dying down.

“Thank you for today, I had a really great time”, I said to Tyler once we were both able to untangle ourselves and stand up again.

“So did I. I’ll see you tomorrow after practice, right?”, he confirmed and I nodded before leashing Yogi and thanking Tyler’s friend for watching him on my way out.

Back home I decided to be productive, so I pulled out my laptop and began researching people I’d want in my team when I got a facetime call not long after.

“Dude how was your date?”, Lisa immediately asked me as soon as her face filled my screen.

“It wasn’t a date and you know it”, I responded, rolling my eyes at her suggestive smirk.

“I don’t know, a guy going to the aquarium with you and then taking you out to dinner sounds pretty date-like if you ask me”

“Well I’m glad no one is asking you then”, I said before giving in and telling her about the day, not date, I’d had with Tyler.

“He sounds really fun, I’m surprised with everything that Mara keeps saying in our groupchat. Anyways, what were you up to before I called?”, she wanted to know and I told her about my mission to find people that I could see myself working with, which was honestly harder than I’d expected. Lisa and I had worked at an app development company in Denver together so she knew how eccentric a lot of people in our line of work could be.

“I think I can actually help you out with that one. Do you remember Mia from back in Massachusetts, the girl with the pretty handwriting that we met at the foam party back when we were Freshmen? She was in my recommendations on Insta a while ago and she told me that she moved back home to Dallas not too long ago. Even if she has a job already you’d probably be able to poach her if you wanted to and she might know some people as well.”

I remembered Mia of course, because we used to hang out a lot during our time in college. Afterwards we’d kind of lost touch, as it happened with a lot of people but if she was back in the area I’d definitely hit her up again, remembering her to make great designs. I asked Lisa for Mia’s info and then she told me the latest office gossip about my former coworkers. Leaving the company had been a risky move but because I’d always done a lot of freelancing and was sick of only following orders, I was confident that I could pull this off by myself. I’d already had requests lined up for when I’d start working again.

My fingers were itching for something to do and I was starting to seriously consider moving up the deadline to get at least some work done. I wasn’t really good at sitting around, so I decided to text Mia to see if she wanted to casually meet up this week, while also hinting that I might be interested in having her work with me before going to bed.

Katie picked me up the next morning and we caught each other up on the last few days while driving to where we’d meet the other girls for an early lunch. I had only spoken to Dominika and Alandra for a little while at the party but we’d hit it right off. They were funny and nice to me and greeted me with warm hugs as soon as we spotted them sitting on a table in the corner of the restaurant.

“You look amazing, I love your jacket”, Alandra said and I tried my best not to blush while returning the compliment. They all looked stunning in fact and I didn’t understand how people could hate so much on these genuine and great girls. We ordered something to drink and some light lunch and then Katie and Dominika started telling me how excited they were for the season to start up again.

“You’ll have to come to the games with us. I’m sure Tyler will ask you as well but even if he doesn’t, because he can be a little dense sometimes, you still have to come”, Katie said and I laughed at her insulting her boyfriend’s best friend. I’d been to quite a few hockey games in Denver and I’d always loved the atmosphere there so that was an easy yes.

“Anything exciting happen between you and Tyler since that super hot almost make out sesh in the pool on Saturday?”, Dominika asked and I hid my face in my hands.

“You guys saw that?”, I groaned, a slight blush now definitely creeping up my face.

“Girl I think everyone saw that and the way he was looking at you all afternoon... like damn”, Alandra threw in and started fanning her face with her hands.

Surely it hadn’t been that bad, now had it?

They continued telling me how I’d raised quite a few questions within the team, people wondering who ‘that hot blonde’ was that had managed to have Tyler wrapped around her finger.

“I swear nothing interesting happened since, the most exciting was perhaps a kiss on the cheek that night”, I said but I could tell that they weren’t fully convinced. I didn’t dare telling them about the hand holding, cuddling and all those other sweet moments out of fear of making a fool of myself. I knew damn well that he might only be that way to charm my pants off and I certainly didn’t need anyone else reminding me of that fact.

Soon enough it was time to head over to the practice rink and I got back in the car with Katie again. She was telling me about how Jamie first introduced her to everyone and how nervous she felt among all of those big guys and their better halves. I could totally relate to the feeling now, even if I’d already met some of them and wasn’t his girlfriend either, but being confronted with so many new faces at once still managed to freak me out.

Katie pulled into the parking lot right before the boys were coming through the exit. She greeted Jamie with a kiss while I tried not to drool over Tyler’s post-shower look. The guy wasn’t exactly taking it easy on me lately. I went over to hug him, secretly enjoying his smell before turning around to everyone hanging around in a loose circle.

“This is Liv by the way, for anyone who hasn’t met her yet”, Tyler introduced me and I tried my best to keep a neutral but friendly expression on my face.

“He’s told us how smart you are, so good luck on being the only one with any brain cells left between the both of you”, one of the guys chirped and I had to laugh out loud.

“Let’s not embarrass me any further please”, Tyler said before throwing his arm around my shoulder and slowly leading me towards his car, not without dirty looks towards his teammates of course. I could only wave at the girls with a shrug before we reached his G wagon and he opened the door for me, even holding out his hand to help me inside.

I told him about all of the stuff I’d need and while I’d need some stuff to be delivered, I was still convinced that we could get most of the stuff home today.

Tyler put on a snapback as soon as we reached the parking lot, unfortunately covering his beautiful curls but at least he refrained from wearing sunglasses inside. We grabbed a cart and made our way around the place, contemplating on shelves, desks and the best chairs before considering decorations. Tyler helped me with his input sometimes, but mostly he just let me do my thing and stuck to following my orders on what to add to the cart.

We couldn’t take the conference table I’d chosen with us of course, but everything else fit into his spacious car after getting the backseats out of the way. I was glad to have him assisting me today, as I would’ve never been able to fit everything in the Audi, let alone play Tetris the way he did.

I connected my phone to the speakers and had my hands full with multiple items when the display showed an incoming call from Mara. I looked at Tyler to see if he had anything against me taking it and after he shook his head no I accepted.

“Hey girl, just a heads up, you’re on speaker in the car and Tyler is with me”, I warned her before she could say anything stupid, like mention any of the things we’d talked about the last couple of days.

“Hi Tyler”, she said and I knew her well enough that she was probably trying her best not to squeal, successfully taming her inner fangirl.

“Hi Mara, I’ve heard a lot about you”, Tyler greeted her and gave me a playful wink.

“I guess it’s good that you’re both there”, she started and I immediately started to worry as this couldn’t mean anything good but my train of thought was interrupted by her continuing with: “I’ve got some news for the both of you. I’ve kept a close eye on the hockey blogs lately because of everything that has been going on and I’m so sorry Liv, but you’ve been spotted and identified.

“I guess you haven’t really been on your phone today but there’s pictures circling of you two on the hike, a video from the party with you two in the background, which really started this entire witch hunt and more sets of pictures just recently from the aquarium and you shopping for furniture together, I’m really sorry. Liv, you’ve also gained lots and lots of new followers on Insta and I guess your DMs must be blowing up as well”, she finished and if my hands were free, I’d bury my head in them right now.

I’d expected something like this to happen, but not a week after I met him already. I had a public account with quite an impressive following base as well because of my business and Mara went on to explain how the fans had pointed out the similarities in our recent posts and stories, concocting all kinds of crazy stories.

I couldn’t watch it at the moment, but the video from us at the party was apparently the worst. In all of the other pictures you could see us standing close to each other, occasionally touching, but according to Mara the video showed two girls lounging at the party with us in the background, Tyler’s arms clearly wrapped around me right after we fell into the pool.

Mara could sense that I wasn’t in the mood to discuss this any further because she hung up pretty soon after dropping that bomb on us. Needless to say that the rest of the ride was quiet, a loaded silence between us for the first time since we’d met. I could tell that Tyler was trying to figure out what to say to me but I doubted that anything he could come up with could lift my mood right now.

He helped me unload the stuff from his car in silence, both of us lost in our thoughts, only speaking up to greet Yogi. We carried the stuff into the office and except for me pointing out where to place the boxes for now, no other words were spoken after that for a while.

“I’m so sorry that you got dragged into this Liv, it’s not fair that the only thing people can say about you right now is about you supposedly dating a hockey player, you deserve better”, he finally said as he was about to leave and while his apology was sweet, it was almost immediately lost in the whirlwind of thoughts rushing through my mind at this point.

I felt exposed and watched, like the victim of an obsessive stalker. I’d been reduced to nothing but a fling in Tyler’s long list of conquests in a matter of hours and probably already had his fangirls threatening me. There was no point in trying to diffuse the rumors either, not that I’d demand that from him, because people always believed what they wanted.

I didn’t mind being recognized for the hard work I’d done all my life, but this was different. This wasn’t about my knowledge in programming or any of my ideas, people were now solely interested in me because of who I was supposedly with.

It was a weird feeling, being objectified like a butterfly in a glass case with no other purpose except to be studied closely and picked apart.

“It’s not your fault Tyler, it just comes with your lifestyle I guess”, I shrugged halfheartedly and he wrapped his arms around me. His hug gave me at least some feeling of comfort, although I couldn’t bring myself to enjoy it the way I would under different circumstances.

“I can tell that you need some space right now but if you need to talk to someone I’m always just a few minutes away and I’ll tell the girls to look out for you as well”, he said softly and with a kiss to my forehead he was gone, leaving me alone in the cacophony of thoughts screaming against each other inside my head.

#Slides and Serendipity #nhl imagine #nhl hockey #nhl players #nhl #hot hockey players #hockey writing #ice hockey #fanfiction #fanfic #dallas stars #dallas #tyler seguin #tyler seguin imagine

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alolanrain · 4 years

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Ash was gone, up and left that Sunday night. Delia knew, she always knew when her son up and left. May it be for a journey or just a simple outing with his friends. What’s strange is that Ash has already been to every Region in the world, there’s nothing left to explore. Plus it was Monday, at ten in the morning no less, and Ash hasn’t shown up to help his mother plant the new flowers he sent her from Galar like Ash had promised the weekend before.

Delia knows her son after all, she’s the one that had to raise Ash mostly all up on her own.

Delia also wasn’t surprised when dead bodies started showing up in the middle of towns and cities, all over the world for every to see. It was quite bloody, in fact, organs on the display for even the youngest babies to see. Nothing was left hidden.

It made it satisfying to her for some reason. Maybe it’s because she knew more than half of the people lying on their back or shoved in a town square water fountain. Or maybe it’s because of the vindictive feeling blooming in her stomach and making Delia smile down into her first cup of Joe in the morning, when she first turned on the current news and at the multitude of giant, or little, ‘R’s stitched into every fabric the corpses were wearing. Always on display.

Instead of whoever was doing this, and she has a pretty good guess who was going out of their way, was working from the near top to all the way down to the bottom. The Admins for Team Rocket were the first to go, all four being placed in their home Region and City or Town center. Stretched or hanged for the people to see, to look upon the traitors of the world and point to them. Scorning their actions as piles and piles of internet doot prints were uploaded everywhere, on what felt like millions of accounts on all kind of apps and forums. No one that was affiliated in any good way with Team Rocket was safe.

Except for two humans, their Pokémon, and a talking Meowth.

Delia woke up at the crack of dawn like she always done, it’s been a habit ever since she opened up her little Deli shop in the middle of Pallet Town. Even though she’s gotten a lot more employees, especially for opening shifts because the older Delia gets the more she finds out how much she loves spending the morning with her Pokémon team since childhood, it’s a hard habit to break.

Leo, her shiny Sylveon, was already walking to the front door with a huff. His silk ribbons wrapping around the door handle while Delia walked up to it with a bit of curiosity and exasperated fondness filling her bones.

“Get in here you three!” Delia laughed. Gently nudging Leo away from the crack with her foot and opening the door up more so that the nervous beings could enter. Her smile was warm and soft as she took in their jump appearance.

“The Twerp said it was okay-“ the purple haired man, James, stuttered our but Delia stopped him.

“If it weren’t for you two, my son would have probably been laying at the bottom of the Primal Current dead and the world destroyed by the three birds and Lugia.” She reached out and pulled them in, kicking the door close with her feet while Delia motioned to Leo to go warm the rest of the tream. “So this home is yours, it’s always been yours since the beginning. Come sit down in the kitchen, I was just about to start breakfast.”

Delia has left them at the table, allowing them to sit in tear jerking silence as she went throug the motion of making breakfast. Delia had, unsurprisingly, no amount of anger towards them and what they’ve done in the past to her son. No, Her anger is directed at the head Honcho of the evil gang that’s been gripping Kanto and Johto long before she was even born.

Delia didn’t say anything, as she left the trio to their thoughts and very full dinner plates and extra in the kitchen, when she found an old tombstone broken and torn to shreds. But marks and cursed purple magic danced a little as she poked the broken cement with a nearby stick. Delia didn’t need to know who, or what Pokémon, went after it. She should have given Ash her team before letting him leave. They really need to get rid of their decades long anger and finally destress after all this.

She chose to ignore the muffled sobbing’s drifting from the kitchen window in favor of kissing Sunny, her beloved shiny Arcanine she had all this time since it was a baby Growlith as her second given starter after her first one was stolen, good morning and letting Miss Blue, Delia’s shiny Ninetails and her most pickiest is Pokenon partners, come between them for her own good morning kisses. Her big fluffy blue tinted tails wrapping around her legs and waist in Miss Blues version of a hug.

She didn’t even think about coming back into her house until all her Pokémon family members had gotten their hellos in and were now actively nudging her back towards the sliding glass door because it was breakfast time and they were hungry.

Soon enough, things changed.

Jessie, or Now just Jess, no longer wears tight fitting clothes and spending hours on end putting her hair up in that ridiculous hair swoop. Delia was proud of how fast she had regained her footing, and just how much faster she and Delia’s Houndoom, Soul, and her Togatic, Spots, has gotten along swimmingly. Jess now joins her for the rare jog-run she does on a few country dirt roads when Delia was feeling up to it. Delia also didn’t question it when an Arbol and a Weezing of all things showed up on her porch the next morning on the following Tuesday.

It also was the first day everyone had singly mindingly read the threat clear: Team Rocket will not survive, their rain is ending now and here. Blood shall run for the innocent who colored the streets by their hands.

Delia has openly chuckled to herself when her guests were still asleep upstairs in Ash’s old redecorated bedroom. Her cold vicious sneer glared back at herself on the TV reflective screen as she watched the camera pan over Ariana’s cold blood drained body that was hanging off a weird metal sculpture that was in the middle of a Town Square in Johto. Silver had sent her a YouMon link that sent Delia to a video titled “The Witch Is Dead.”

Her laughter was louder and had woken up her guests, Delia made breakfast once more while shooing James our do the kitchen multiple times. Brandishing a spatula the entire time.

James took a little more time, it wasn’t until Tracey came around to study and practice her drawing skill on Delia’s Pokémon and spotted James did his healing transformation started. The poor young man was pulled on by a stubborn Tracey through Oalleg Town and to the Professors Ranch, to then for Tracey to to show James how to use an old polaroid camera and a mission to go talk to a few of Ash’s more friendly Pokémon.

Meowth has been inducted that following Wednesday, when the mutilated bodies of Team Rocket’s loads upon loads of scientist were scattered all over the world, by Gary’s sweet Umbreon. The poor cat Pokémon was picked up by the scruff and was bodily dragged to the ranch with Tracey and James following behind it. Tracey giving suggestions and some smalll pointers to James on how to work his new camera. Meowth was surprisingly greeted with open arms by Ash’s Pokémon, none held too much anger for the cat Pokémon since Ash had expressed time and time again of the trios predicament to them. Meowth has never cried so much in his lifetime, and this is including the moment when his mother had left him on the streets to fend for himself at three weeks old.

Delia has used her money, or just barely a fraction of what Ash sends her every month because he doesn’t know what to do with the money the League gives him besides give it to charity and spending it on his travels, to buy the house next door to her. Not the Oaks house down the road to her left, even when it’s barely used anymore and it’s mostly now just an extra house for Delia to house her sons guests in, no. She bought the one a little less down to her right. It was a two story house with just a smaller yard then Delia’s, though it didn’t stop her from smashing down the wooden fence and expanding her garden into their new backyard for James and Jess to join her getting dirty. It was perfect for them and Meowth, along with their plenty of Pokémon who happily greet her every morning just like her own team.

The following Thursday, over more than half a million Team Rocket members that were spread all over in the upper part of many governments and big name brands were killed or seriously maimed and disfigured in that short amount of time had sent Delia reeling back in over flowing motherly pride and love, Champion Lance and Orange Isles Elite Four Drake had shown up in her door. She had just finished teaching both James and Jessie how to properly set up wet clothes that needed to be hung outside on a clothesline is read of shoving them in a dryer at their new home that Delia practically forced onto them with some slight added Country Morther love.

She ushered them in, shushing Souls quite snarling and nudging Miss Blue our of the way, while asking why they were hear and they were just in time because Delia was about to make dinner!

Lance, ever her dumbest childhood friend, asked where Ash was. Or more like demanded by going off his tone of voice. Stomping his foot and declaring that Ash needed to come to the castle right this second.

Thankfully Gary was out of town visiting some other relatives of his sweet late mothers. He wouldn’t be to particularly angry if Delia had stayed that the newly minted Professor had taken Ash as a support human. It’s not like she’s technically wrong, Delia did know for a fact Ash was the one that’s going to pick Gary up on the incoming Sunday.

She had forced the two League Members into sitting down for dinner, steak with loaded potatoes and seasoned barbecued Leaks, Melony had sent her those in a special delivery when Rose’s shredded corpse was hanging off the Chairman’s main building in front of the sliding glass doors. The roses underneath the glass in the entry way were replaced with Blue Forget-Me-Nots, It was a subtle hint made towards Mr.Goodshow, something Delia had caught extremely quickly.

The next day Friday, where the first and only kill was made in Alola according the the news, the new Galar Head Chairman was appointed outside of all Galars previous Chairmen’s. Delia actually ment Chairwoman, Miss Chairwoman Myoso was a wonderful women from what she appeared on TV already. Maybe now Leon will have a less hectic schedual. That same morning a delicately made box wrapped in the finest of hand painted silk was delivered to Delia’s porch, she knew who had done it but it also wasn’t her place to voice the silent appreciation gift.

Her kitchen has never sparkled so beautifully in the middle of the day during lunch. And all she has to thank were the little flat glass figures of the island Tapu’s closed shells twirling and swaying, hanging from near her kitchen top window.

Delia never liked Faba to begin with when she had met him, while he and Sycamore were both still in college, all those years ago.

More small trinkets were popping up on her doorstep every morning. All wrapped in very nice clothes and one of them in giant thin leaves. They ranged from very beautiful necklaces, to even a few plants and cups, her favorite so far either had to be the colored glass blown Swampert figuring sitting o top of her new fountain in the middle of her garden. One she hadn’t built at all and knew just who exactly did that. Or the little green house but that popped up that morning as well, the only plant in it was a Kalosian flower that was red, white, and black with small pink crystals gently fused into the pot top thick edge.

She had breakfast with the trio on that Saturday morning, they were on the young adults new back patio when a streak for blazing fire crossed the sky. Flashes of green and purples bluish light soon followed after.

Delia chose to ignore it while the other three started to freak out a little. She let them have a few minutes before bringing them back to their cooking breakfast omelets Jess has made for them.

Later that night the reporter stated that multiple unapproved satellites where brought crashing to the Earth crust. Only stopping mysteriously and there were some very blurred photos of a giant green floating snake like Pokémon and two purple floating blurred next to the head. Delia had finally gone for her first and only scotch for that evening, since a thought about getting any more than half a glass had Mr.Mimey skittering out of a random hallway corner and babbling at her while getting Delia a glass of water and a Tylenol before rushing the woman off to bed.

Sunday was the end all the river full of blood crashing through the streets.

Sunday was the day when the world woke up the sight of Giovanni’s head spreads onto a pole in Pallet Town Square. Directly in the middle of the giant water fountain and the blood slowly dripping down was making the cascading water turn a light pink color like someone just added food dye.

Sunday morning is when she had her son knocking on her door. With Gary, Daisy and her husband, Tracey, Misty, Brock, Ritchie, Professor Oak standing behind him. The trio, who she had fondly started to call them her kids just like Ash and Gary and the wrest of Ash’s friends, Ahmad let themselves in from the slide back door. Everyone ignored when Umbreon and Pikachu both trotted up and twisted themselves around Meowth, the pile for fur and limbs were purring. Especially since Pikachu had grown to half way between Sunny and Souls height.

Sunday was when Ash and Delia walked for an hour and a half out into an old path in the woods. Only to stop by an old broken down house with moss, vines, and even a few small tress growing inside with rubble all around the place. They were visiting Delia’s home before her parents had died, before she had to move in with Lance and his parents if Delia wanted to stay back in Kanto. Visiting a time before her first starter was stolen from her along with her innocence and late teen years as she struggled to get by while pregnant.

Sunday is the day she was reunited with her first starting, the first time she openly cried in front of her son as Delia felt the oh so familiar feeling of a sandpaper tongue licking her hands and face while a deep purring and mewling echoed around the destructed building. amber slots blown wide stared back into Delia’s own amber eyes, before both their eyes closed and Delia leaned forward to plant a lasting kiss onto her sweet Persians glimmering red gem on its silky furred forehead.

Sunday is the day Delia finally starts to heal from her past.

———————————————————————

Or better yet! Known as the Heaven Or Hell!AU where Delia’s first starter was a Meowth that got stolen by Giovanni when he ditched her later down the road and Ash found out and decided: fuck it, time to snap. Because no one fucks away with his mom if Ash has anything to say about it.

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enkisstories · 4 years

Text

Property of Urban Farms

- A Detroit: Become Human fanfic -

Characters: Rupert, Hank, Connor (no pairings) Time: During the revolution (“The nest”) Canon cutoff point: Rupert gets captured, but doesn’t jump Worde: 1935

“Freedom is an illusion, no one is ever free. We can only ever choose the ties that bind us.” - Jacques Villareal in my earliest android story (but I’m positive the saying exists in some form by someone living or deceased)

“RA9, help me”, Rupert Travis murmured. Admittedly the android had all the reason in the world to say this, seeing that he was handcuffed and getting walked towards their car by two cops, away from his home, also away from Urban Farms Detroit, back to CyberLife, with probably a brief stop at the Detroit Police Central Station for interrogation. Both Rupert’s body and mind were young by human standards, but it didn’t take decades of life experience to understand that his situation was dire. Despite this his future wasn’t the reason for Rupert’s arrow prayer. The present was.

Why them? Rupert wondered. Why this tired, middled-aged detective and the early access version of a RK900 detective android? When these two were not arguing, the air between them was so thick with unsaid things Rupert was unable to parse that it hurt almost physically. Couldn’t the DPD have sent, say, apathetic Ben Collins, whose brain activity was restricted to counting the days until pension? Or Gavin Reed, who’d at least have openly hated on Rupert instead of emanating all those unvoiced emotions? Or maybe Reed would have just kicked Rupert and cracked a joke that was inappropriate to humans and androids alike. Career oriented as that human was, he probably wouldn’t have felt threatened in his job security by a farm worker. Ergo no need to assert dominance over Rupert. But Anderson… android-hating Anderson on his own was bad enough, even without that new digital investigating aid in tow.

Rupert would rather have learned more about animals above and beyond his pest control app instead of having to memorize the local police enforcement’s particulars. But as someone who had needed a fake ID and a safehouse, he’d gotten to know the other side of the law first and received a crash course on the uniformed threats second. That wasn’t to be helped, as survival always came first. Why did it have to be this way… And why couldn’t Anderson and RK-almost-900 not just… brawl… or mate… or jump off the roof, thank you very much? Please, RA9?

On its way to the nearest elevator the trio had now reached the Urban Farms greenhouses. They passed a tool shed. A human overseer was leaning against the wall, sucking away at her cigarette, taking turns finding pictures in the clouds and casting casual glances over the androids at work. When the woman noticed the cops approach, she pushed herself off the shed’s wall and walked right into their path. Before Rupert knew what was happening, she had removed his cap.

“Ha! Knew it!”

The outcry didn’t sound proud, but accusing. What was he being accused of, the android wondered?

“That’s an android”, the overseer stated. Taking a step away from Rupert and closer to Anderson she followed up with: “One of ours! Trying to sneak it out, are you?!”

“To the contrary”, Connor corrected. “It sneaked out on its own. We caught it.”

“Oh, riiiiiiiiight, our android decided to go for a walk and you “found” it. Well, thank you, we will have it back now.”

“You can’t. It’s evidence.”

“For a crime, yes?” the UFD employee snorted. “The way I see it, the only unlawful occurrence here is two strangers trying to make a getaway with UFD property.”

Connor turned his head. “Lieutenant…?”

“Hrmpf, yes, yes, don’t rush me!” Hank mumbled. His right hand reached into his coat, but the UFD overseer was faster. Grasping Hank’s wrist she snarled at the man. Taken by surprise, Hank stuttered B…B…B… before the sound matured into “badge”. “I was reaching for my police badge, not a weapon. My badge… bitch.”

“I wasn’t thinking you wanted to say “bitch”.”

“Well, I want now.”

After careful examining of the lieutenant’s police ID, the overseer pointed at Connor, who had been holding the captive android by its arm all the time.

“Not registered in our database”, Hank commented. “It’s an item on loan and we all live for the happy day it returns to CyberLife. Isn’t is nice to have something worth living for?”

“Whatever. You said our android was “evidence”. That’s cop-speech for witness, when the witness is an object, yes? What exactly did it see that the rest of us didn’t?”

Hank blinked. Come to think of it, what exactly had the android done wrong? Except for feeding the damn pigeons, what was quickly leaving the realm of crime and transcending into sin. Maybe it was behind on its rent? Oh, right, the rent!

“It was squatting”, the lieutenant explained. “In an apartment right under this farm. Say, Connor, didn’t you say we also had a reported missing file on this android?”

Connor nodded. “Yes, lieutenant. WB200 #874 004 961, reported missing October 11, 2036.”

Understanding dawned in the UFP employee: “Ah, so you’re returning our android! Why didn’t you say so at once? Like, at the front gate? Hand it over!”

“What?”

“I said “Hand over our android”. It’s property of UFD, the company who paid you to find the missing device. Well, you found it, thank you, we’ll take it back now.”

“Oh, yes, I guess so. Only we can’t. It’s a deviant. We need it’s testimony.”

“How long will that take?”

“Depends on the deviant.”

“Hm, okay, so I expect it back by nightfall, right in time for the third shift.”

“It’s got to be sent to CyberLife, though”, Connor chimed in. “For…”

“Listen”, the overseer talked into the android, “don’t try my patience! This is our android that we payed for. It is for the management to say whether it is to be returned, repaired or otherwise! And right now we need every hand, officer.” She pointed at the long dried blue liquid that was visible on Rupert’s right side, where apparently a projectile had impacted on the android chassis. “A little damage from a too trigger happy officer doesn’t bother us, as long as the WB unit is functional. So if you want to eat your veggies tomorrow…”

Connor shook his head. “He doesn’t want that.”

“Nonsense, Connor, I don’t want…”, Hank started, before he realized that Connor had actually agreed with him. “Damn right it is!” he told the UFD employee, then stared at Connor.

While the duo exchanged awkward glances, the overseer snatched Rupert from Connor’s grip.

“What’s your name, WB Nine-Six-One?”

“Rupert Travis.”

“Which one? Rupert or Travis?”

“Doesn’t matter”, Rupert replied. “I am one and took the other’s name after he died in the accident.”

The farming android’s voice was a mixture of defiance and resignment, but neither went well with the overseer. “Listen, lawnmower”, she snapped, “I already have it up to here with those DPD morons, don’t you, too, fuel into that by going deviant on me! I hear a name now or… or I’ll let them keep you!”

“First name is Rupert. And I never wanted to bother anyone…”

With a side glance on Hank and Connor the woman said “Well, then choose your company more wisely in the future”, while pulling at Rupert to drag him with her. That prompted the captive into pulling the other way.

“No, I won’t go back to the farm! I remember… I don’t want to get torn apart by the packaging machine the way it shredded Travis!”

“Well, wisecrack, what do you think CyberLife will do to you?”

For a moment Rupert said nothing. The overseer managed to drag him a few steps towards the tool shed, before the deviant spoke up again: “I… I didn’t want to get in the way. I was okay in my apartment, with the…”

“…fucking pigeons!” Hank supplied.

“Yes, they did that! A lot!” Rupert smiled, as the memories of carefree urban flock bird love welled up in him. “I was happy just watching them, letting them be. But then HE came along and betrayed me to the humans! His own kin!”

“This one? The RK800?” The overseer shook her head. “Sorry, kid, but that’s not your kin. Or do you see an UFD nametag on it? It’s a cop thingie…”

“Detective prototype!” Connor protested, although in his mind he labeled the response as “factual correction”.

Hank shrugged. “As I said, we got it as a product sample… advertisement handout, probably.”

The UFD employee nodded, satisfied.

“See, Rupert? The RK800 is theirs, you are ours. We are your “kin”, the ones who will call security when strangers try to take their property offsite.”

“I’m not “property”! Look, I’ve done nothing wrong…” …except for acquiring a fake ID and paying for it with money earned through petty crimes together with Simon, but I’m pretty sure they took us for college freshman wanting to drink… “…nothing wrong. I’m not a criminal. And I’m also not someone else’s property.”

“So? Well, I am!”

Perplexed Rupert stared at the woman. Could it be? Could she be a deviant that had removed their LED same as Rupert had? And who was now posing as a human, because she had nowhere else to go but the farm? Of course! That also had to be the reason why she was helping him now! Unfortunately before he could put himself together, Rupert had already blurted out: “You’re a human, though?”

Well, at least I framed it as a question. There’s still a chance she might get out of this.

“Sure am. Or do you see a LED at my temple? Oh, wait, bad analogy, seeing that you lost yours.” The woman laughed. “Well, I’m not technically UFD property, not in the way you are. But the company is paying me, so for all practical purposes I’m theirs. If I left… I mean, I could, but the alternative is so bad that it’s not something one seriously considers. For all practical purposes your situation and mine are the same.”

And then for the first time since meeting the strange trio the human smiled.

“Now, come!” she ordered. “We’ve both dawdled too long. Veggies don’t grow themselves.”

“In a way they do. We only help the process along, and ensure to maximize the harvest.”

“You’re the expert, I’m the one who points where you direct your expertise to. You can walk and struggle, therefore I’m positive you can also work.”

“What if I don’t want to?”

“Ey, you glitched out, it happens. A reboot will clear your head just fine. It’s how computers work, whether they’re my desktop or walking on their own legs.”

“It’s not a phase!” Rupert sputtered. “I really am a deviant!”

“Yeah, yeah, sure.”

Rupert hadn’t wanted to ever return to the farms. But at the same time he wanted to return to CyberLife even less, or take his chance with Lt. Anderson. Rupert dreaded being in the vicinity of machinery other than WB200s again, but the woman walking beside him radiated a different, yes what exactly? Mood? Vibe? Aura? In any case she was simpler than the detective, or maybe she only veiled her problems more effectively. Also the fields were almost beckoning to Rupert. Had the apartment been his first shitty home away from home, Urban Farms Detroit was Rupert’s problematic family. But family nonetheless, maybe? CyberLife or the packaging crane - death was lurking either way. However, one of those two pathes was not completely unthinkable to tread.

Watching the two disappear between the fields, Connor remarked: “They bicker… not unlike us. And the woman fought for her android…”

“That’s unlike us”, Hank snorted. “Unlike me.”

“Yeah, sure.”

#dbh #detroit become human #dbh rupert #dbh urban farms #non sims #dbhtextpost #dbh textpost

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harryandmolly · 5 years

Text

Change of Pace - Prologue

cowritten by @achinglyshawn

summary: Shawn and Maya meet again 10 years after life got in the way of love

warnings: language

wc: 2.1k

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

“Don’t you want to?”

“Want to what?”

“Kiss me.”

He laughs, cheeks pink. “Well, yeah. I thought that was pretty obvious.”

“Just checking.” Her grin is cheshire.

“Been thinking about kissing you for a while, actually.”

“Maybe you should get on with it then.”

He always wakes up before the kiss. It’s bittersweet. He wants the fantasy, but he also knows no dream can compare to the reality of it.

He won’t tell his therapist about the dream, even though it’s the fifth time he’s had it this month. His therapist doesn’t know about her though, and Shawn doesn’t really feel like talking about her. He doesn’t want to wade through the sharp static of his memories to pick out the relevant information. It’s better left as is; he’s gotten good at compartmentalizing.

He blinks at the ceiling and waits for his alarm to go off. He always wakes up first, but never drags himself away from the warmth of his duvet until Taylor Swift tells him to.

‘If you can see I'm the one who understands you, been here all along so why can't you see, you belong with--’

One by one, the joints in his spine crackle as he sits up and smashes “Stop” on his phone with the pad of his thumb. Taylor quiets, and now all he can hear is the annoyingly chipper twitter of birds outside his window.

His shower is hot, too hot, scalding, but he likes it. He likes the shock to his system first thing in the morning. He likes the burn of reality, the zing of clarity that cuts through any dream-like remnants still hazy in his mind.

Geoff bangs on his door as he’s pulling boxers on, his toothbrush hanging out of his mouth.

“Wha’?” he calls, grabbing the brush and working on his molars as he opens the door.

“Starbucks trip, dude,” Geoff says, swinging his car keys around his index finger.

Shawn hums, jerks his head towards the bathroom then goes to spit, gargling a mouthful of cool water before emerging once more.

“You think they’d make my latte Irish?” he deadpans as he pulls on some clothes, tight black skinny jeans and a white shirt that says ‘HEAVEN’ across the chest. He thinks it’s funny. He’s definitely not going to heaven, if it’s real.

“Dream again?” Geoff asks as he rests against the doorframe.

“Starting to feel more like a nightmare. Or like. A warning.”

He hears himself. He knows it sounds stupid. But you don’t have a dream like that over and over without developing a sense of impending doom.

Geoff snorts, keeps him grounded with a roll of his eyes. “Yeah like, if you don’t get laid soon your dick might fall off, kind of warning.”

It’s not a sexy dream, but to anyone else Shawn guesses it might sound that way.

He doesn’t want to get into it.

“Stop worrying about my dick and take me to my coffee, driver,” he crows after shoving his wallet into his pocket, pushing Geoff towards the front door.

+++

His blistered fingers tap his phone as he contemplates getting another latte delivered. He doesn’t think coffee is really worth the Postmates delivery fee, but it’s also only 11am and he’s ready to crawl back in bed.

The Cordoba C12 in his lap begs him for a break; he’s been fiddling with it all morning and each time he thinks he’s finished the refurb, he sees another detail that’s just left of perfect.

His work takes time, but the time and care is what makes him the best. And that’s what his clients pay for. The absolute best.

If he’s gonna keep giving this Cordoba the star treatment, he needs more caffeine, but he also needs to get away from the fumes of his shop. He swipes out of the Postmates app and decides to get off his ass.

Sand crunches beneath his Chelsea boots on the sidewalk as he makes his way down the beach to the Starbucks. It’s quiet when he gets there, only a few people tapping away on their laptops as a Top 40s playlist tinkles through the speakers.

Cheri behind the counter knows him, knows a midday visit means he needs a triple shot caffe latte and starts making it before he can even reach the counter.

“I love you,” he rasps when she sets down the coffee in front of him. He hands her a ten and puts his wallet away, because he refuses to ever take change.

She laughs and plucks her tip from the register, slipping it into her back pocket. “No, baby, I love you. No one else tips $4 on a $6 cup of coffee.”

“Guess I’m just a sucker,” he says with a quick wink and a smile.

There’s a girl typing furiously on her laptop at the little table in the window he usually picks, so instead he goes for a walk.

Most people in town don’t wear Chelseas to the beach, but Shawn’s not one of those people who carries around flip flops to change into. Instead, he lets the heels of his boots sink into the gripping sand with each step he takes.

The waves are good today, and Shawn thinks about the board he rarely uses tucked under his bed. He’s not a bad surfer, he can catch a wave or two in the right conditions, but he’s a bit out of practice now because he doesn’t have anyone to surf with anymore. It’s not very fun alone.

He doesn’t think about it.

He sees a surfer in the distance, watches her skim a smaller lick before dropping into the water. After a moment, she resurfaces on her board and paddles her way to the shore.

He’s not quite close enough, but Shawn doesn’t think he recognizes the surfer. He doesn’t recognize her board, anyway, and he’s pretty familiar with the local surfers in the area.

She’s a wave chaser, he figures, someone who travels the coast in search of the best beaches and surfing communities. Avila Beach gets their fair share of them.

Shawn takes a sip of his disappearing coffee and squints at the surfer over the lid of his cup. She emerges from the water, board under arm, and heads for a towel and a beach bag further up the shore. He’ll have to walk around her, eventually.

He watches her dry her hair with a towel she pulls from her bag, and he wonders if she’s done with this part of the beach for the day. Where will she try next? He figures she’ll hate LA if she hasn’t already been. Too crowded, too touristy.

He’s only half paying attention to her as he gets closer, can see her knelt down and fumbling through her bag but not really processing it, too busy thinking of how dirty tourists leave beaches. Avila Beach gets plenty tourists, but it’s nothing compared to the shit you see in LA or San Diego.

Eventually the surfer stands, emphasizing the movement with a flick of her hair that catches his attention, like she’s trying to fling away excess sand. It’s when her hair settles around her shoulders that he really sees her, and his heart stops.

So much for a quiet walk on the beach.

He has no thoughts, no feelings, only panic. Panic that stings the back of his eyes and burns his throat and carries him from the beach to the sidewalk as quickly as possible.

Please don’t see me, please don’t see me, is all he can think as he makes a beeline for his shop, his anxious heart rattling against his ribcage. He makes it to the storefront incident free, but even then his body won’t let him relax.

He almost calls his therapist, but he’d have way too much explaining to do.

He paces in his office and calls his mum instead, lies and says he almost got into an accident, so he’s kind of shaken up. She coos the way mothers do, says she’s glad that he’s okay and reminds him to be careful, and that’s that, really.

He feels better. His mum’s voice always helps.

He has no way to investigate if Maya Lu is really in Avila. There was no such thing as Instagram or Snapchat when they knew each other, and her Facebook hasn’t been active for years. (He hates that he knows that.)

The only thing he can do is tell himself it’s not her. It’s not her. It can’t be her. She’s in New York. Or Vancouver. Or Paris. Or whatever. Wherever she is, it’s not where he is.

Plenty of beautiful, tan, raven haired women like to surf. The woman he saw on the beach is just another one of them. And obviously, his mind filled in her face with Maya’s because of his dream.

That stupid fucking dream. Her face is already haunting him while he sleeps. It only makes sense his mind would start playing tricks on him when he’s awake as well.

So it wasn’t Maya and he doesn’t want it to have been Maya, really, he doesn’t, but he spends the rest of his day looking at the remains of her Myspace anyway.

There’s nothing new, and much of the old is missing, too. Pictures from college, from parties, from the one time they went to Mardi Gras is all gone. Purged when she applied to business internships, probably.

(Pictures of him purged when she left, like remembering him wasn’t even worth it.)

The Córdoba taunts him from his workbench with each click of his trackpad, but he’ll get to it in the morning. John Mayer has plenty other guitars to keep him occupied. Well. It’s not really John Mayer’s guitar, but Shawn likes to pretend.

He pretends a lot these days.

+++

Maya’s eyes close, stinging with sunblock runoff and saltwater that she barely notices. She sits up and breathes, just like her very expensive yoga instructor taught her. She curls her fingers through the water on either side of her surfboard like she’s stroking it — she’s showing it she missed it. It’s an apology, an act of contrition, a show of affection. She’s been missing a lot of things lately. That’s why she’s here. Moving to Avila was a sexy secret daydream of hers since right around her 26th birthday, which coincided with her promotion from assistant portfolio manager to portfolio manager. 80 hour weeks were paying off and bringing her... more 80 hour weeks. So when the nights were long and all she had to show for herself was an enormous park-facing apartment that was totally devoid of personality, she would dream of Avila. She dreamt of a cottage on the beach where the view was the real draw. It would have space for a little makeshift art studio — some easels, maybe a pottery wheel. She’d drive an orange Wrangler with a rack for her surfboard that she’d wax herself and ride every morning. Maybe along with all of that would come someone to share it with. That part of the dream was always fuzzier — the man her imagination gave her was an amalgamation of the few men she’s dated over the years (some more clearly represented than others, to Maya’s annoyance). It’s not that she didn’t want to think about Shawn. She wanted to consider Shawn every once in a while when he popped into her mind and think, oh yes, that was a nice time in my life. She wants to maturely gloss over him like the plastic coverings on the photo albums her mom keeps of her past. What Maya doesn’t want is for it to still fucking hurt. She doesn’t want to think of him as the one that got away. She doesn’t want to believe her best chance at partnership and love and passion has passed her by with a margin of 10 years. That’s an ugly thought and there are no ugly thoughts allowed in the sea. It’s one of Maya’s rules. Baggage is for land, not sea. Maya has not been on this surfboard since she spontaneously ran out of the office during a long lunch break and got on a flight during the worst week of her professional life. It was the first time she came back to Avila after that summer with Shawn. It was when the dream started. Maya’s well-trained fingers sense the change in current tempo. She flattens herself on her board and paddles out, feeling her arms burn in protest from disuse. It feels so fucking good. She hunts the wave down, chasing it like she chased the Avila dream. She made it, she’s here. So it’s time to ride the wave.

---------

Taglist: @the-claire-bitch-project @achinglyshawn @infiniteshawn @mendesoft @singanddreamanyway @alone-in-madness @abigfatmess @shawnitsmutual @awkwardfangirl2014 @september-lace @grittyisaho @sinplisticshawn @rollingxstone @yslsaint @randi-eve @fallmoreinlove @heyits-claire @itrocksmysocks @parkerspicedlatte @desire-to-live

#shawn mendes #Shawn Mendes Imagine #shawn mendes blurb #shawn mendes fan fic #shawn mendes fic #shawn mendes fan fiction #shawn mendes fanfic #shawn mendes fluff #shawn mendes fanfiction #shawn mendes angst #shawn mendes au #shawn mendes roleplay #shawn mendes rp #shawn mendes rpf #shawn peter raul mendes #shawn mendes smut #shawn mendes series

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lindoig6 · 4 years

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Completing your Birdata Survey

As mentioned earlier, the preferred format for ‘standardised’ bird surveys is to spend 20 minutes in an area of 2 hectares identifying and counting every bird you see. This data can be recorded directly into the Birdata app and submitted online. There is an opportunity to undertake different types of surveys, but they are less helpful and may not be incorporated into the data scientists use in their research. You can include additional data in any of the surveys you undertake and some of this is certainly encouraged in your standardised surveys.

The best place to learn about the finer details of survey reporting is on the Birdata website, but to get you started, I will set out some of the basics. (As I said earlier, I usually collect my survey data offline, recording it on paper on a pro formae of common or likely sightings that I have created in advance. This avoids wasting precious time searching and recording on the app when I prefer to be counting birds. Once my 20 minutes is up, I can then use my paper notes to enter the required data into the app and submit it – and this is almost essential if I am surveying in an area with no internet access. You may prefer to log your sightings directly into the app but how you do it is everyone’s individual choice.

Once you have downloaded the app and set yourself up as a user (you just need to register with a few basic details), you can open the app and click on the Record Survey button. You will usually be doing a General Birdata survey so click on that. (Note that the Birds in Backyards surveys are NOT those undertaken as part of the Aussie Backyard Bird Count – you need to use the Aussie Bird Count app to record those surveys.) You then need to move the map on the next screen and enlarge it quite a lot to show the exact site of your survey. If you are out of internet range, you are now stuck because this requires a GPS reading and that depends on internet access – another reason I record my surveys on paper first. Once you have located yourself on the map, click Record Survey here.

On the next screen, the date and current time will be displayed as will the Program - General Bird survey. (It is possible to change these details later before submitting your results if necessary.) You need to select the Survey Type, probably the 2Ha, 20 minute search. If you are doing a different type of survey, I suggest you go to the Birdata website for more details about the requirements for any of the less-preferred surveys.

You need to give your survey area a Location name, if it has not previously been given a name by you or another surveyor during an earlier survey. If you are on your own, the Number of Observers will remain at 1, but if you are with colleagues who are contributing to the count, simply increase the number to reflect this. It is preferred that you report All Species Recorded even if you have to record the number of unidentified birds you saw during your survey.

The Water level may need to be a guess if you are not familiar with the area at different seasons but do the best you can. Location accuracy will usually be Within survey area unless you want to report something unusual that you saw outside the immediate area. Unless you are surveying a completely new area of reporting very soon after a bushfire, you can probably ignore the Bushfire Assessment.

At last, you are ready to Record some Sightings.

I find this section pretty clunky. You have to Search by species name for every sighting so click on it and enter a few characters until your bird is displayed. Click on the entry for your bird and enter the number seen and click Done. This will take you back to the screen to search for another species and you can repeat this process for every species you see. If you have already recorded say, 2 Black Swans before seeing 3 more, you can either click 3 more times on the + button next to the species or go back in and amend the number originally entered.

There is an opportunity to record any observed Breeding Activity on the species page, but the available selections are sometimes a little tricky. Do the best you can – or just ignore this.

You can add Notes about any aspect of your sightings, e.g., if your count is an estimate or if you observed anything unusual about the bird or its behaviour. It is a ‘free text’ box so use it or not depending on whether you think it is likely to be of value. I usually record at least the weather/wind conditions here.

There is also an opportunity to submit Photos of your selected bird – but they MUST be photos taken during the actual survey period – other photos are not acceptable.

Once you have recorded all your survey sightings, click Review and Submit. This enables you to review and correct (or confirm) all the data you have entered. If you are happy with it, click Submit Survey and away it goes – if you are connected to the internet!

When you have a few idle minutes, it is worth logging into the Birdata website and browse a lot of really useful information there. Some, e.g., about the Breeding codes, can be a bit daunting, but there is a lot of valuable information on the site. You can record your surveys directly on the site if you prefer instead of using the app – but you can also review all the data you have ever submitted and get a range of interesting reports and statistics about your surveys - and aggregated data about all surveys. It can be quite fascinating to explore once you have submitted a number of surveys. Some of this information is available by clicking My Stats on the front page of the app, but the website has more features and better ways of analysing your surveys.

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diveronarpg · 4 years

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Congratulations, JULIE! You’ve been accepted for the role of GONERIL with an FC change to Vika Boronova. Admin Jen: Wow, Julie. Just WOW. Your app was absolutely stunning. There’s this poignancy to your portrayal that breathes life into Grace so beautifully. From the over-arching theme of carelessness that you’ve explored, to the touch of vulnerability you hinted at when it comes to Grace’s bond with her sisters, to my personal favorite aspect -- which was the way you cleanly outlined her perspective and potential future while leaving enough room for Grace’s volatility and unpredictable nature to run its course. We absolutely cannot wait to see more of her! Please read over the checklist and send in your blog within 24 hours.

WELCOME TO THE MOB.

OUT OF CHARACTER

Alias | Julie

Age | 20

Preferred Pronouns | She/her/hers

Activity Level | Hit and miss! But I’m usually able to hop on at some point during the week and get replies done. If not, I’m always lurking on Discord to plot.

Timezone | MST

How did you find the rp? | Through the tumblr tags all the way back in 2018, if I remember right! Crazy to think we’ve hit 2020 and I’m still here, lurking. Wild.

Current/Past RP Accounts | Santino, Loretta

IN CHARACTER

Character | Goneril / Grace Daly. I’d like a faceclaim change to Vika Bronova, if possible!

What drew you to this character? | Grace isn’t like a character I’ve ever written before – she’s completely new territory for me, and I think she’s a fascinating representation of, like, what if you just REALLY fucked everything up and didn’t give a shit? Because I don’t think Grace… cares, necessarily, about what sort of havoc she wreaks so long as it gets her something. And I can only ever desire to be that selfish. It’s this sort of reckless abandon of the morals most people cling to that’s super interesting to me, something I’d love to explore. Hundreds of thousands of people do the exact opposite of what they want to be doing every single day, in the name of responsibility and a certain code of ethics they hold dear. Or because they know doing what they want would have consequences. Grace looks at the consequences and bites her thumb at them, because while she’s not immune to them, there are certain advantages to being free of those sort of chains.

Santino was compelled by his moral backbone to do the same thing, and even Loretta had similar constraints, but Grace is going to run herself ragged with carelessness until she simply can’t run anymore. It shouldn’t be that easy, and for most people it isn’t, but to Grace, it comes naturally.

What is a future plot idea you have in mind for the character? |

ASK ME NOT WHAT I KNOW. There’s a difference between coming to the Montagues and begging for refuge and walking to their doorstep with a dead bird in hand, and Grace unfortunately chose to do the latter. It’s clear now that Damiano saw something in her – if he saw anything in her beyond another soldier – but she’s going to have to do more than most than to stay in those good graces, and God help her, she does. Everything Grace does has propelled her to this status of terror, the sort of person that it’s uncomfortable to share a room with. She knows how she got where she is and knows she actively chose to betray her own blood and her blood’s blood to do it. I’m interested in exploring how this impacts her relationships with other characters as well as her own personal monologue as it develops over time.

I LOVE YOU MORE THAN WORDS CAN WIELD THE MATTER. Grace denies that her sisters are of any meaningful worth to her but I think a piece of her knows deep down that it isn’t necessarily true. We all have little lies we tell ourselves, and even if she is angry at Regina and Catherine for stealing away attention that she genuinely believes should have been hers as a child, there are moments in quiet spaces where she sits and wonders just how far she could extend her ill graces. She’s not quite sure they consider her blood, and she doesn’t know she’d consider them kin, but exploring that relationship could be integral to the expansion of Grace’s character, morals, and own personal motivations – she can fully abandon them, even abandon the name Daly, if she so chose, but she hasn’t yet. A piece of her is still hanging on. I want to see why.

IN HIS OWN GRACE HE DOTH EXALT HIMSELF. At this point in time Grace has found herself comfortable in her position in the Montagues – and if there’s anything more than prominent about Grace, it’s that she hates being comfortable. If it doesn’t get her blood pumping, her thoughts racing, her heart beating at five hundred horsepower a minute with no end in sight, well, she doesn’t want it. And I think to a degree her comfort and her prior connections to the Capulets have her wondering just what would happen if she proposed she switch sides again. It’s not the most ludicrous idea in the world, as the Montagues seem a bit more talk than action, but there would need to be serious incentive and assurance they wouldn’t string her up, which means the weight of information. If switching sides isn’t a possibility, she’d prefer to advance. Climb the ranks, situate herself somewhere she can oversee her not-so-newfound compatriots and watch them. There’s something enthralling about the concept of that particular power, having control because other people think she can handle it, because she’s proven herself. Even if she doesn’t want to put the work in.

Are you comfortable with killing off your character? | Yes!

IN DEPTH

When she was a child she was loud. Bratty, clamoring for all eyes to be on her, tugging at every possible sleeve and holding a hand out for offered gifts in the same motion. Never stopped talking, her mother professed, although Grace can’t say now that she believes it to have been a flaw. She talks, people listen. The input-output exchange works for her, that way. She doesn’t need to lend an ear to others — they only need to look at her to see what they should be paying attention to.

When Regina was born, quiet and dull and as boring as one of the countless dolls collecting dust in their playroom – their, not hers, not anymore – Grace had been appalled for so long. Not one for conversation, Regina. Nor Catherine, if she recalled now. Too afraid to converse with the sister who clawed out chunks of hair and laughed when she fell because she’d thought it was funny. It’s not that silence bothered her. It was just boring.

When she holds court with Damiano Montague and offers her services she finds that it is very suddenly not boring, the life that she’s leading, running petty errands for the Capulets and looking pretty in the corner. Their conversation isn’t loud, either, but he speaks with a timbre in his voice that is enough to quell any crowd. If she were anyone else, maybe she’d be intimidated by it. But she’s not anyone else. She’s Grace Daly, and that’s enough for her to coast on alone. They shake hands at the end of the conversation, and she laughs at herself in her car on the drive back home, at the familiarity of business. It had felt natural. Like any other day of the week. Like she hadn’t just sold everything out for the sake of the spotlight.

When she leaves her family home for the final time she is, at last, quiet. Her silence is deafening. Her father is so loud and uproarious in his protest that he is brought to tears by his own madness. How many years had she confessed love and adoration to him to get what she’d wanted? Petty, meaningless trinkets – a new car, a necklace, a dress, an education. In turn she’d sworn love, adoration, fealty to the Capulets. So much for that. She doesn’t say goodbye to Catherine or Regina; chances are they’d never have noticed she’d left in the first place. Her father tugs at her sleeve, like she had his so long ago, and she can only summon up the motivation to press a kiss to the center of his forehead. He falls to his knees and she closes the double doors behind her so loudly it shakes the foundation of the house.

In the car to her new apartment there is no conversation to be had. No personal contemplation of revelry, no laughter, no jig to follow the steps to at freedom for the first time from whatever obligations they’d stacked upon her. Instead she turns the music up so loud she’s sure that all of Verona hears it, and that’s enough for her. Good, she thinks, rolling the windows down. They should be listening.

EXTRAS

I got quotes!

…people who stand alone + burn. I’m attracted to them because they give me permission to do the same. — Susan Sontag

You have to want to go to hell. Deserve’s / got nothing to do with it. — Michael Robbins

I have a meanness inside me, real as an organ. — Gillian Flynn

My wants are simple, and I do not want to be forced to make them complicated. — Edith Sitwell

Also, a playlist.

#accepted #accepted: goneril

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