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roselen-mylady · 4 years

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Kickin it old school

Bucky Barnes x Deadpool!Reader

What happenes when Bucky falls in love with Y/n, otherwise known as Deadpool, the famous Merc with a Mouth? Can he break down her walls and enter the chaos that is her heart?

WARNING: Mature language and suggestive themes

It started with a giggle. A little inappropriate giggle, underlined with drunken crudeness. It was a giggle that was accompanied by a dark, lustful smile and an even darker gaze. It was the kinda giggle that came from a girl who had never quite done it but had done enough hand and mouth stuff to no longer be completely innocent. A timid but craving giggle. A nasty giggle.

Valkyrie had come to the compound for a meeting, nothing more. But with Y/n’s insistence she stayed around for their daily training. They held it outside today, allowing Sam to practice some group maneuvers with his wings and his passed down shield. Valkyrie went easy at first, not yet knowing the extent of Y/n’s power or how much she could take.

But soon Y/n’s dirty and foul comments became more irritating than amusing and without much thought she forced Y/n back, making her fly across the yard. It wouldn’t have been such a damaging fall, no Y/n had survived much worse. Yet the decorative fence surrounding the building was an unforgiving cushion and Y/n’s head was soon impaled upon one metal spike. If her mind wasn’t so foggy she might’ve made a joke about being like an overthrown king, whose head was then displayed throughout the kingdom on a pike.

Thankfully Sam wasted no time in making the joke, much to Valkyrie’s horror. She had killed many beings in her time, a lot without any cause or honor but this was different. The object of training wasn’t to kill your opponent but rather to better them. However there Y/n was, unmoving and what appeared to be dead upon the lawn.

“Gods.” Valkyrie’s muffled voice came to Y/n like a blur. Y/n twitched, doing her best to lift herself off the spike. It was metal and quite firmly attached to the rest of the fence so she knew she had to find a way to work herself up to the top.

Then the giggle came. The sultry giggle Wade used to love.

“Deadpool, are you alright?” Valkyrie questioned, but was met with no response as Y/n gazed around her, some cheesy 90s song that had been long lost in her subconscious now filling the air around her. Valkyrie stepped into view like an angel coming to rescue her and Y/n couldn’t help but reach out to her as the woman broke the spike and brought Y/n up into her arms.

Valkyrie was relieved to hear Y/n couldn’t die though the rather annoyed way Sam said it was alarming. Y/n’s white lenses widened as she reached out for Valkyrie’s face, letting her gloved hand caress her skin.

Sam emerged somewhere from behind but Y/n paid no mind, finding Valkyrie’s confused expression almost…sexy? She couldn’t think straight but for what she was going to do, she didn’t need to.

Y/n accepted the music in her head and the image before her, bringing both hands up with two fingers pointing into Vs. Y/n wasted no time in making very indecent gestures, only furthering Valkyrie’s confusion. Y/n couldn’t even hear Sam’s mock disgust as her hand drifted to her mouth motioning a lick between her two fingers though her mask covered her mouth.

Valkyrie looked back to Y/n with an amused but uninterested smile before another set of arms took hold of Y/n. The cool metal under her back was different from the metal in her head and she found herself leaning into it for comfort. A scent so familiar filtered through her mask and she inhaled deeply, enjoying it more than the smoke from her guns.

Looking up she was met with Bucky, his kind blue eyes and even warmer expression sending chills through her high state. Very much like Valkyrie, he fell victim to Y/n’s sexual gestures, her palm forming a circle in front of her mouth as she bobbed it closer and closer to her face. He didn’t respond, at least not that she could tell in the disoriented state she was in, instead setting her down upon her feet.

Taking that as a go ahead, she began to sink to her knees but before her fingers could begin to dig into his waistband, his metal fingers wrapped around the spike, yanking it harshly out of her skull.

The music stopped instantly and everything went cold around her as she collapsed into the grass. She groaned, gripping her head as an agonizing headache tore through her brain. “Oh fuck!"

"She’s back to normal. If you can even call her that.” Sam teased as Valkyrie stepped forward to check on Y/n. Bucky stood in front of them, closest to Y/n and she now took notice of the pink dusting his face and the uneasy shift of his hips.

“How did you survive that?” Valkyrie questioned, curiously as Sam tugged the shield out of a poor nearby tree.

Y/n shrugged lazily, rolling over onto her side to climb back to her feet, blood still pooling in the lawn beside her. “Can’t die. Headshots only make me loopy.” Y/n explained, circling her finger next to her head dramatically as she struggled to piece together any coherent thoughts.

“Yes, so I gathered.” Valkyrie laughed, referring to Y/n’s lewd suggestions. Y/n only shrugged shamelessly.

“Well, if you’re ever up for it, you know where I’m at. I’ll even let you stab me again if that’s what you’re into.” Y/n winked, missing Bucky’s slight frown as he started back toward the compound.

She didn’t know he’d only come out upon hearing a sickening squish of her skull sinking down the spike. She didn’t know he’d rushed to the lawn and nearly had a heart attack when he saw her. Didn’t know that even though she was practically immortal he still feared for her life. Didn’t know he’d give his for hers in an instant.

Valkyrie smiled at the offer but didn’t give a response instead leaving Y/n guessing. She liked it when they played hard to get anyways.

“Dead, c'mere.” Sam called over causing Y/n to turn away from Valkyrie’s retreating figure. She made her way over to him, still dizzy from her brain repairing itself but managed to make it over to the tree where he’d instructed.

“Try catching the shield, I don’t think I’m throwing it hard enough."

Bucky froze at the request, already sensing what a terrible idea it was. Yet before he could even begin to object Y/n complied, bracing herself in preparation.

"Wait."

His words hung limply on his tongue, exactly what he feared would happen, happening the second he spoke. Sam yelled out an apology as Y/n yanked her hand out from under the shield where it had been pinned to the tree.

She didn’t cry or scream in pain, instead giving a frustrated shout as she jerked herself back, ripping her finger off in the process.

"Aw, pussyshit."

•••

"Ha! Sam, look! Baby finger!” Y/n wiggled her tiny middle finger, thrusting it into Sam’s face. He recoiled in disgust, forcing away her hand.

“Ew, no! I don’t wanna see that thing.” He cried, pushing her off his desk. Y/n shrieked as she tumbled to the ground, landing flat on her ass.

“Shit.” She groaned a little, choosing to sprawl out instead, too lazy to get back up. “Come on! You’re the dumbass that chopped it off. Masturbating is going to suck ass! What the fuck am I supposed to do with this?” She pushed her hand forward once more, smirking as he spared it a cautious glance. Immediately Sam looked away again, shaking his head in distaste.

Her hand fell against her stomach, her other hand coming to massage the little finger as it grew in. But before she could continue to terrorize Sam the automatic door slid open, heavy boots clambering into the room.

“Y/n, what are you doing on the floor?” His deep voice sent familiar chills through her spine and she quickly sat up, trying with all her might to ignore the feeling. Bucky looked down at her, his brows furrowed in confusion as he nudged her leg softly.

“Cause this jackass, pushed me off the desk.” Y/n replied as she kicked Sam’s chair, crushing his leg against the side of his desk. He grunted painfully, shooting her a deadly glare before Bucky intervened.

“How about we call this even before things get out of hand?” He sighed, rubbing his forehead like an agitated parent.

“I don’t even want to hear the word ‘hand’.” Sam groaned. Y/n gasped, angrily rising to her feet and throwing her hands up wildly.

“You cut it off, you stupid shit suckle!” She screeched, fuming at this point.

“I told you, I’m still getting used to the shield!"

"Eat a cock!” Y/n shot back.

Bucky sighed, grabbing hold of Y/n’s hand to inspect it carefully. All the vulgar words she had planned to use on Sam were quickly lost to her flustered thoughts and her scarred face fell into an awestruck expression.

Thankfully he didn’t see the pink that dusted her cheeks, only frowning slightly at her new appendage. It was small in his larger hands, but so was the rest of her hand and she quickly retracted it before she could start to enjoy the feeling. Bucky’s fingers followed hers for a split second, chasing the warmth that she provided but he caught himself, letting his hands drop to his side with a deeper frown.

“How long will it take for it to grow back?” He asked. She shrugged, looking down at the dried patches of blood still lingering around the new finger.

“Eh, like 10 minutes. I’ll be fine. One time this huge motherfucker, Juggernaut, ripped me clean in half like a damn phone book. Well, it wasn’t clean. It was messy-it was so fucking terrible.” Y/n laughed, unaware of the alarmed look Bucky and Sam shared.

“What happened to your legs?” Sam questioned reluctantly, knowing the answer wasn’t something he really wanted to know. He was just so damn curious.

“No idea.” Y/n hummed quietly, looking off into the distance as if searching for her literal other half. The men watched her with vivid concern, trying in vain to force away their own theories about the whereabouts of Y/n’s legs.

“We have another mission. Suit up and meet at the jet in an hour.” Bucky told them, his voice stony in a way that only happened when he was upset. He then turned, storming out of the room leaving Sam and Y/n with equally confused faces.

“The fucks wrong with Terminator?” Y/n questioned, jerking a thumb back at the door. Sam shrugged, lifting himself up from his desk, trying not to give Y/n the satisfaction of watching him limp. She noticed though. She always did.

•••

“Getting real tired of these HYDRA motherfuckers!” Y/n yelled, firing at one of the agents as she ran down the infinite looking hall. Bucky ran alongside her, his metal arm braced out in front of them to deflect bullets.

Well most of them.

“Fuck!” Y/n screamed, slamming her hand down over her left breast with an appalled expression. Bucky froze as did the HYDRA agent that shot her, equally shocked.

“You shot me in the fucking boob!” She screamed, disbelief and vengeance lacing her words. “Oh shit, that fucking does it. I’m shooting you right in the dick, cum bucket.” She promised, her smile venomous as she directed the gun at the man’s groin and fired without hesitation.

The man cried out in agony as he fell to his knees, making Bucky visibly flinch beside her as she shot again. “Y/n.” He warned, looking around at the hall which was slowly flooding with more agents. “We have to move on."

"Not yet. Not until this guy’s kids come out of his bitch like pudding!” Y/n stepped forward, firing again even though the man had already become unconscious. Only the click from her empty clip seemed to calm her rage and she growled in frustration.

“Stupid!” Y/n shouted at herself, slamming the now unless gun into her thigh holster. The man on the ground with an ever growing puddle of red growing around his lower half was a gruesome sight but it made her smile. “Worth it.” She whispered with a smirk.

“Sam’s waiting for us outside!” Bucky reminded, turning around them and kicking one of the agents into the group behind him. The harshness in which he had been forced into them made them fall, buying Bucky and Y/n sometime while they recovered but not much. “The elevator is our best bet outta here."

No sooner had he said it, Bucky immediately stopped, glaring at the sight before them. A dozen men came around the corner, blocking their path with an older man in a suit at the front.

"Whoa there, buddy, you’re within 100 feet of a school. Don’t make me call your parole officer.” Y/n mocked, putting her hands on her hips as she stared down the man at the center.

His brows furrowed in confusion and he looked around at the other men, hoping one of them might fill him in. The agents behind the pair had gotten back to their feet, coming to block the other direction of the hall, cutting off all means of escape.

“You have nowhere to run, give us the drive and I promise your death will be quick.” The man demanded. Y/n glanced over at Bucky, her taunting expression obvious to him even under her mask. He couldn’t help but let a small smile slip as she turned back to the man.

“I’m gonna have to stop you right there, pal. Sorry to steal your whole Dr. Evil moment but there’s been a change of plans.” Y/n started, menacingly stepping toward the man. There was still a fair distance between them but it was close enough to make the man cower.

“If you leave right now, I might-

let you keep your hands. If not, well, let’s just say you’re gonna have a tough time tickling your pickle tonight.” She smirked at the older man. Some of the men were baffled by the woman before them, unsure if they should be fighting her or not. Seriousness was never one of Y/n’s strong suits. Unlike people such as Captain America and Colossus, Y/n ran on violence and smartass remarks. This was in every aspect of her life even in her grieving process and while this wasn’t the healthiest of methods she didn’t really care.

“Kill them.” The man ordered, sinking back into the group, as they stepped threateningly closer. Y/n nearly smiled under her mask. She loved it when they played it hard to get.

“Time to kick it old school.” Y/n announced, reaching behind her and tugging free her dual swords. She spun them expertly in her hands, bringing one above her head while the other stretched out in front of her. “Bring it on, cock thistle."

Bucky stood in awe as he watched her. The thumping in his chest was a forgotten feeling. It was something that died when he fell off the train and only just recently had it been revived. Ironically it was the one woman who couldn’t die who had brought his ability to love back to life.

And for that she owned his heart.

A single bullet rang out but Y/n was much faster than the bullet, swinging down the katana and slicing it clean in half. A moment of confused silence rang out through the hall, tension rising faster than the bullet that just tore through the air.

Like the shot at the beginning of a race, the simple sound made everyone erupt into conflict. Multiple men swormed Bucky, crashing him into the wall but struggling to pin him there. Bucky was stronger than all of them but they just kept coming, a mess of men grabbing hold of his limbs and immobilizing him.

Y/n charged forward, dropping to her knees and leaning back as she moved to slide under the man closest to her. He cried out as she cut off his hand, a soft thud on the ground telling her that her sword had gone clean through. She rose again, turning and bringing one of her feet up to plant herself before, digging her katana into the man’s back. The man fell limp on the ground, his dismembered hand still gripping the gun he had pointed at her.

"Need a hand?!” Y/n shouted, glancing over at Bucky’s predicament. He looked back at her, his face twisted into a provoked expression. That was the only answer she needed and she quickly rolled under the rain of gunfire directed at her, landing a few feet from Bucky. She stretched out her sword, sliding the edge through the small space next to the tigger, lifting the gun and hurling it in Bucky’s direction.

He caught it effortlessly, overlapping his metal fingers atop the dead man’s butchered hand and pressing the barrel to one agent’s skull. He made quick work at taking out three of the men, evening the playing field enough to overpower the men. He shouted as he forced himself forward, his pure brute force powerful enough to throw back a few of the men.

Taking advantage of their stupor, he hammered his fist into the face of the agent next to him, causing blood to spill from his nose as he stumbled back. Bringing his elbow back into the next man, he knocked him unconscious before breaking free. Bucky pivoted on his heel to attack the agent hurling themselves at him once more. His hands came to fist the straps of the man’s uniform, thrusting him up into the ceiling and shattering the fluorescent light above them. The agent fell into a pile on the floor, the glass from the light scattering over his unconscious form.

Y/n launched to her feet, slamming her knee into the chest of another man forcing him into the wall before driving her sword into his chest. Once retracting the blade, he sunk to the ground smearing blood down the wall as he collapsed. Quickly returning to her feet, she sprinted a few feet, pounding her foot into the wall as she vaulted over the next man, slicing his throat as she went.

“You stupid bitch!” A voice shouted over the chaos, catching Y/n’s attention. She tilted her head as she looked at him, the white lenses in her mask widening.

“Excuse me, shit brains? Since I’m an Avenger now that’s terrorism right?” She questioned, turning to Bucky. Noticing he was occupied she rounded back to the man, narrowing her eyes at him. “As Scoutmaster Kevin once told me many years ago.” Y/n took large strides as she made her way to him, murderous intent rolling off of her in waves as she wiped the blood from her sword onto her leather clad forearm.

“I’m about to fuck your shit up."

The man howled in pain as she pelted her sword into his knee, the sharpened blade piercing through his kneecap and burying itself into the floor behind him. Y/n ran forward, kicking the blade further in causing the joint to snap with a sickening crunch.

Grabbing hold of the man’s head, she flew forward, flipping over him as she balanced her weight on his already unsteady form. She landed behind him, pulling his head back with a harsh tug. Knocking out his other knee, she forced him down, bringing her other katana to his throat while her foot rose to settle between his shoulder blades. In one swift movement, she pushed him down, digging her blade into his neck with a satisfying slice.

Bucky met her eye as the man dropped, the gurgling from his throat echoing through the hall. Bucky’s gaze was surprised but not disgusted. Instead he marveled at the sight of her, astonished by Y/n’s display of atrocious violence yet fierce beauty. Never had he seen anything like it before Y/n entered his life and while he should’ve been horrified by half of the things she did he couldn’t. Because ever since she joined their team she had only done those things to destroy the same organization that had destroyed him. And he couldn’t get enough.

Y/n looked away, flustered under his gaze. She couldn’t handle the way he sent chills down her spine and butterflies to her stomach. It was cliche but it was happening and she refused to face it. "I see the elevator.” She told him, catching sight of the leader trying to run out of the corner of her eye. Her head whipped around, her hand reaching forward to grab the blade still plunged in the dead man’s knee before chucking it at the escapee.

The sword sunk into his skull pinning him to the wall as Bucky took out the remaining men beside him. “We have to hurry, our cover’s been blown and Sam can’t wait around for too long.” Y/n nodded in acknowledgement, sheathing her sword as he came to stand next to her.

Y/n glanced around at the bodies scattered around the hall. It was quite a scene, blood splattered along the walls and floor, bullet holes littering the plaster and the light fixture above them flickering wildly as it struggled to keep the hall lit.

“Oh, I am so touching myself tonight.” Y/n groaned at the sight making a soft pink flush across Bucky’s cheeks. The mere thought of it sent blood rushing to his face and he shifted awkwardly as it rushed to other places as well. But before he could mumble an embarrassed response, shouts from more agents echoed down the hall cutting short any sort of awkward conversation he could have mustered. He quickly shuffled through the corpses, dragging Y/n along with him as she quickly plucked her other sword from the man’s skull.

They ran around the corner coming up on the elevator fast. The agents giving chase were catching up and Bucky urged Y/n in front of him, instinctively trying to protect her. Once reaching the elevator, he ripped open the doors, too distracted by the growing danger the agents presented to notice the fact that the elevator wasn’t even there as he stepped forward.

But Y/n noticed and she quickly grabbed him, spinning them to where he was out of the way. However in the process she forced herself over the edge, falling back clumsily.

For a split second Bucky reached forward, trying desperately to catch her but she was already falling. She slipped through his fingers dropping the eleven floors to the bottom of the elevator shaft, landing with a sickening thud.

Bucky choked on his breath, staring down at her still and twisted form as his heart clenched in his chest. Flashbacks of his own fall began to overwhelm his already cluttered mind and he almost wanted to scream.

It was 2 agonizing seconds before she moved, a loud shout echoing through the shaft.

“Motherfucker! I think I just shat my spleen!” Y/n moaned, rolling onto her side. Bucky let out a relieved chuckle and looked behind him, mumbling his own curse before jumping down after her. His metal arm grasped onto the cables, slowing his fall but the screeching of metal on metal seemed to amplify in the confined space.

Once reaching the bottom he jumped off, crouching down beside her as her blood began to pool around her head. “Shit! I don’t know what hurt more, falling eleven stories or listening to your arm! It’s like two tractors trying to- Fuck!” She cried as his arms slid under her body, pulling her up against his chest.

“I found the elevator.” Y/n laughed dryly as she pointed above them, the said elevator hanging a few floors above the floor they had been on. “How convenient.” She mumbled, glaring up at the air as if focusing her annoyance toward a certain writer who enjoyed torturing her readers.

Bucky was oblivious to her turmoil, instead shaking his head at his stupidity and cursing himself for letting his feelings for her distract him. It was his fault she fell. Is this how guilty Steve had felt?

“We’ll have to have Sam meet us on the ground instead.” Bucky grunted, kicking open the doors to the ground level. He ran out into the room, his grip on Y/n remaining firm as he headed to the exit.

“Nothing like falling 100 or so feet to get you going, am I right?” Y/n snickered at her own joke, trying to ignore the erratic beating of her heart as his cologne invaded her senses.

They made it out, the sky blooming in a beautiful shade of orange as the sun began to set. Y/n admired it for a moment, smiling when the quinjet came into view. Allowing her to slip out of his arms, Bucky planted his hands on her waist to insure she was steady before bashfully shying away as Sam landed.

“Come on!” He shouted, opening the back ramp for them. Bucky followed Y/n as she ran up to the jet and climbed up the ramp, keeping an eye behind them as the HYDRA agents ran outside. The ramp closed just in time and Y/n let out a relieved laugh as she fell onto the bench inside, whopping amusingly.

“Well, that was a shit show. Got this little fucker though.” She grunted, pulling the drive out of one of her pockets before handing it over to Sam. He accepted it, eyeing her with a rare look of concern.

“What the hell happened to you?"

"Decided to take a swan dive off the eleventh floor. Not my highest record but still fucked me in the ass.” She laughed, tugging off her mask. Her hair was matted and bloody, sticking up in one spot from her mask but any effort at soothing it was pointless. The scarred tissue around her lips and nose contorted in discomfort and sweat had coated her brow from their fight.

She was healing already but it didn’t ease her any as her bones reset and her organs reformed. It was an excruciating process but she didn’t complain, instead pulling out her gun and observing it as Bucky sat down next to her.

“Who’s balls I gotta fondle to get some tacos? I’m starving.” She nagged, dropping her mask and gun on the floor before stretching out across the bench on her stomach. Her head rested on Bucky’s leg making his blood run cold as her chin brushed the inside of his thigh.

“You offering?” Sam replied, raising a suggestive brow as Y/n’s new position.

“You wish.” Y/n winked at him, making Sam shake his head disapprovingly.

“Eh, you’re not my type.” He insisted, sharing a playful glare with her. They had a confusing relationship but most of her relationships were. Sam didn’t hesitate to tease her or join in on her pranks, much to Bucky’s chagrin. Y/n rather enjoyed Sam’s company and she knew he felt the same though they seemed to hate each other.

“I’m nobody’s type, Warren Worthington. I’m kinda the, 'if I squint really hard I can pretend you’re the non-blue version of Mystique- Lawrence not Romijn- so I’ll fuck you’ kinda gal.” She rambled, not caring to explain who the hell she was talking about. But she didn’t have to. Bucky was already frowning.

Y/n wasn’t lacking confidence, no that was the one thing she had an abundance of. She knew exactly what people thought of her horribly scarred body and she chose not to give a shit. But what upset Bucky the most was the fact that she believed herself to be unwanted. Did she truly believe that she was undesirable or was she just joking?

“Want some?” Y/n questioned beside him, holding up a small white package labelled 'Y/n’s cocaine’. He shook his head, his brows furrowing as he wondered why on Earth she thought that moment was a good time to offer him cocaine. Or how any time was the right time.

She shrugged, ripping open the bag and pouring some of the white powder into her gloved hand and inhaling it harshly. He winced at the sight but her drug problem wasn’t the cause of his downcast expression. Rather the fact that the beautiful woman who had introduced herself as Deadpool seemed to be oblivious to his feelings.

Bucky couldn’t get the sick feeling to subside the whole way back to the newly rebuilt compound.

•••

“Here I go, here I go, here I go again. Girls, what’s my weakness? Men!” Y/n sang along, ignoring the strange looks from the man in the elevator as she danced along with the song blaring on her portable radio. “Ok then, chillin’, chillin’, mindin’ my business."

The elevator opened on the floor where most living quarters and showers were kept, hers included and she stepped out with a bit of a jig as she kept pace with the beat. "Yo, Salt, I looked around, and I couldn’t believe this. I swear, I stared, my niece, my witness.” The soft patter of her feet down the hall was soothing as she lifted her arms above her head, swaying slightly with the music as she twirled, barely missing the agent who was coming out of his own room.

“The brother had it goin’ on with somethin’ kinda, uh. Wicked, wicked had to kick it

I’m not shy so I asked for the digits.” Y/n rolled her shoulder rhythmically as she side-stepped past him, keeping her moves swift and joyful as she danced along to the song. The showers weren’t too far now but her loud music was slowly catching the attention of people who had already called it a night, summoning them out into the hall.

“A ho? No, that don’t make me. See what I want slip slide to it swifty. Felt it in my hips so I dipped back to my bag of tricks.” Y/n’s heart skipped a beat as Bucky stepped out into the hall. He was dressed in a much more comfortable looking attire of sweatpants and a t-shirt and while it was plain it still sent a familiar tingle to her core.

Opting to push aside her unwelcomed feelings toward the man, she continued on deciding to have a little fun with it as she went.

“Then I flipped for a tip, make me wanna do tricks for him.” She spoke along to the song, making eye contact with Bucky as she did. His eyes seemed to glue to her hips, watching them with a guilty expression, the gentleman in him fighting his obvious stares. He tried with all his might to drag his gaze elsewhere, only managing to lift them to her half-masked face with a flustered expression.

“Lick him like a lollipop should be licked.” Y/n winked, flicking her tongue sensually. The line sent a deep flush to his cheeks as she came to stand before him, her fingers racking his t-shirt.

“Came to my senses and I chilled for a bit. Don’t know how you do the voodoo that you do. So well it’s a spell, hell, makes me wanna shoop shoop shoop.” Y/n smirked, spinning on the ball of her foot and walking off toward the showers, a bit of a pep in her step as she left Bucky absolutely flabbergasted.

The music faded along with the scent of her perfume and Bucky lingered on the senses, his heart racing wildly. He was so distracted in fact that when Sam crept up beside him, a mischievous glint in his eyes as he followed after Y/n, he didn’t even try to object. For now he would bask in what was left of her presence and the frantic pace of his heart.

But he couldn’t enjoy the feeling for long.

•••

“Sam!"

Bucky knew he would regret not stopping his birdbrained friend. Said perpetrator now ran full speed down the hall toward the kitchen, arms cradling Y/n’s suit urgently. Sam sprinted behind Bucky, hoping his super soldier best friend might be able to spare him his life as the raging Merc with a Mouth made her way to him.

Poor Bucky didn’t even have time to process what Sam’s arms held before, Y/n came storming in clad in only her mask, water dripping from her untucked hair and other areas. "Sam, you dick kicking fucktard! Give me my fucking suit, now!” Bucky tried in vain to shield his eyes but it was too late. He had seen enough to fuel his fantasies for the rest of his life and any hope at burying his painfully unreciprocated feelings were now dead.

“No! You practically live in this thing, it’s disgusting!” Sam yelled back, climbing onto the counter to stuff the suit behind the fridge. “You’re banned from it until you wash it!"

"How the fuck am I supposed to do that?! You crammed it in further than a priest goes into a 6 year old boy!” Y/n screamed back, marching threateningly over to the counter where Sam stood.

Bucky didn’t know what he admired more, her lack of shame as she paraded around in the nude or her lack of remorse as she grabbed Sam’s ankle, brutally yanking him and causing him to crash onto the hard surface.

“Motherfucker! I did not come down here and ruin that poor teenage boy’s virgin eyes for you to be a punk ass bitch!” She screamed, pointing in the direction she had just come from. Sam groaned, sparing a glance in the direction.

“What’s Spiderbrat doing here?” He huffed, gripping his ribs tightly as he tried to rise from the ground.

“I don’t know.” Bucky mumbled, putting his hand against his temple as he attempted to remove the soaked Y/n from his sights.

“Spiderman?! That was Spiderman?! I have an obligation to the fans!” Y/n cheered excitedly before spinning around and running off down the hall. “Wait Spidey!” She cried, her feet slapping the tile in wet smacks.

“I swear to God if she takes his virginity. Y/n!” Sam yelled after her, flying up from the ground and speeding after her. Y/n screamed as she slipped, a loud crash echoing down the hall as Sam cried out in pain.

Bucky practically shook as he struggled to erase her from his mind. He couldn’t do this to himself. It was in her nature to be inappropriate and flirtatious. He couldn’t allow himself to read into it. He couldn’t handle the rejection.

•••

Bucky needed some air. He had sat in his room for an hour trying to recover his composure. His heart still raced and his face hurt from how much he had been blushing but nothing seemed to stop it.

Venturing up to the roof wasn’t like him. Usually he would go on a run or try his luck at the training room but today he wanted to just sit alone and think. However once reaching the roof he found that wouldn’t be the case.

Y/n hummed quietly along to her radio, swinging her feet cheerfully over the edge of the building as she sewed back together the bullet holes in her recovered suit. It was a routine of hers, one she only started to develop when Blind Al refused to do it anymore.

Bucky stepped forward quietly, not recognizing the tune but loving the way it sounded from her. She wore a simple pair of shorts and tank top, exposing much of her scarred skin but not as much as he had seen earlier. He was grateful she unknowingly took pity on him but covering up, coming to stand a few feet behind her.

Tying off the sting, she reached over to the box of band-aids, pulling out a Hello Kitty themed one before slapping it on over the stitch. Y/n cheered out triumphantly, holding up her suit to inspect it before draping it over the ledge beside her. A half eaten burrito was set on her other side and she absently reached for it, taking a bite out of it as she bobbed her head to the music.

“You wanna bite?” She questioned, mouth still full with the food. Bucky mentally cursed himself for being caught but gave into her offer, coming to stand beside her. She handed him her burrito and he hesitantly took it, biting into it carefully.

“You owe me 5 bucks. That show you got downstairs wasn’t free.” Y/n smirked, lighting the tense atmosphere a little. Looking up at her, he had no choice when a smile crept onto his face. Everything about her seemed to fill him with a giddy excitement, like riding a roller coaster. Y/n was a roller coaster of a person.

“Only 5 bucks. Little cheap if you ask me.” He replied smoothly, earning a giggle from her. She shrugged shamelessly, swinging her legs over to his side of the ledge.

“Gave you the ol’ bestie discount. Pay 10 dollars more and I’ll even throw in a night of your wildest dreams.” Y/n winked, hating how much she adored the pink that dusted his cheeks.

He shook his head with a light chuckle. “No, I wouldn’t want it to happen like that.” He replied, flinching at his own words. Her brow furrowed but judging by his mortified expression she decided to leave it alone.

Grabbing his hand she gestured for him to sit next to her and he did, climbing up cautiously as she turned back around. It was strangely soothing on the edge, the risk of falling sending a small thrill through them. Y/n had a way of giving him tiny bursts of joy, something he’d never experienced before. Not for a very long time.

He couldn’t begin to describe the way she could make his heart race with a simple glance. In training when she takes him down he finds the fact that she could end him with ease peculiarly enticing. He’d experienced a variety of experimental drugs but never the recreational type. Though he imagined the high he’d receive would be very similar to how Y/n made him feel.

She gave him a buzz that he slowly began to crave. Life before her just seemed so dull and he never wanted to go back to that. He’d become a bit of an addict for her presence and he felt safe in doing so. Losing her to the ravages of battle as he had so many before was impossible and Bucky felt that his feelings toward her could help him move on.

The breeze flushed against their bodies, turning Y/n’s attention to the stars flickering above. The way she gazed up beside him, reminded Bucky of dates he had in the 40s. They were simple and sweet, always ending with a soft peck to his cheek or lips.

Imagining Y/n on one of these dates was like seeing a pig fly but he didn’t care. His old life was gone and no one helped him move on from it better than Y/n even if she was unaware. In the past women were polite and lovable and Y/n was anything but.

She was foul mouthed and wildly inappropriate, constantly saying things he would’ve never dreamed of hearing from the women he used to date. Her dark humor was wrong and he still struggled to understand it at times. She killed without hesitation or remorse and in the most gruesome ways one could imagine, not giving the action a second thought. All of this was new to him and while at first he disliked everything she stood for, he couldn’t help but fall in love with her as time passed.

She was everything that was so new to him, yet still carrying the underlying characteristics he loved so much. She was brave and reckless, willing to give her life for others. Her morals were still there yet buried deep within her, never to be exposed unless she encountered something truly corrupt.

Her decisions were rash and not thought through, her lack of mortality seeming to make most situations trivial to her. But he suspected she was like that even before her mutation. Despite her carelessness in battle, she cared so much more than she’d let anyone know. People she considered friends, need never fear any danger for she would eliminate any threat that dared show its face.

But what he loved the most was her strength. While her physical abilities were amazing and dared outmatch his own, he loved her emotional strength more. She had experienced so much pain, like he had but she still managed to smile. Still managed to make him smile. And he loved her for it.

“Thank you for saving my life today.” He spoke earnestly. Y/n shrugged her shoulders nonchalantly, gazing out over the city.

“No worries. Couldn’t have ya becoming a pancake, now could we?” She laughed, trying to mask the true worry that started to set in. What if he had fallen instead of her? What would she have done?

'Probably would have gone after him.’ Y/n sighed silently, knowing it was true.

“No, I guess not.” Bucky offered a smile, hoping she didn’t notice the guilt in his eyes. Another uncomfortable silence settled over them but Y/n didn’t seem to mind.

“You’re beautiful.” Bucky mumbled quietly, almost timid under her stunned stare. He didn’t regret saying it, only wishing he had said it more often.

The way the night sky accented her face was glorious even though she was scarred. Her scars had never really been an issue to him. The first time he had seen them she was reluctant but understood their need to see the person behind the mask to gain their full trust. He hadn’t been anticipating such intense scars but he wasn’t repulsed by them. In fact he thought she was breathtaking and he wondered just how different she had looked without them.

When she explained how the scarring had come to be, telling them that her disfigurement was actually because of her cancerous cells mutating, he felt sorry for her. He knew what it was like to be tortured until he became something else and he hated the idea of her experiencing it as well. Yet even through all that she insisted she was 'a sexy motherfucker’ and he couldn’t help but agree.

Her hair swayed with the breeze, falling gracefully around her face and outlining her shocked expression as she tried to figure out if he had really complimented her or if she had just misheard him over the music. The glimmer of sincerity in his eyes caused her heart to leap, making it harder to reply.

Her eyes were her most beautiful feature. The one thing that hadn’t changed since her mutation and he found that he was able to read her better through her eyes. Whether or not her eyes displayed the same enjoyment her smile showed, told him everything he needed to know since she covered almost everything about her with some smartass remark. Her eyes gave her away. Her eyes were everything.

“Thank you.” Y/n whispered, unable to piece together any sort of snarky reply. She couldn’t even break her stare as she gazed into his compassionate eyes. A tug at her heart pulled her toward him and as much as she tried to fight it she couldn’t shake it.

Bucky felt it too as he cautiously leaned forward, his metal hand coming to caress her cheek as his eyes absently dropped to her lips. Her breath flushed over his own sending chills along his skin. Their lips ghosted over one another, barely brushing in the tenderest of touches.

Yet a sudden change of song sent Y/n tearing herself from his grasp, a crestfallen expression taking place of her once longing gaze. The upbeat tune rattled her to the core, dredging up the memories she so desperately tried to subdue.

We're talking away.

I don't know what, I'm to say.

I'll say it anyway.

Today's another day to find you

“What? What’s wrong?” Bucky gasped, pulling away with a concerned frown as he reached out to hold her arms. She shied away from his touch, making him instantly retract his hands, fear of hurting her flashing across his face.

“No, uh, I’m okay. I’m sorry I’m just-I…” she trailed off trying to find the words to blame it on herself. She knew Bucky still feared the Soldier that lurked in the darkest parts of his mind, waiting for the right moment to break free and destroy everything and everyone he cared for. She knew she was one of those people. And she knew she had just terrified him by moving away but she couldn’t help it.

“I’m not ready for this."

Shying away.

I'll be coming for your love, okay?

Take on me. Take me on.

I'll be gone. In a day or two

"I’m not ready for something meaningful. I’m not ready for you."

Bucky’s face fell at her confession, shifting away from her. She wanted to reach out or say something, anything to make him stay but the ever growing guilt in her heart rendered her speechless.

She couldn’t do this. Not to Bucky. Not to herself. And not to Wade.

But she couldn’t stay silent.

"I had a boyfriend.” She spoke, her voice shaky and fragile. Bucky froze, unable to lift his gaze to her. “His name was Wade. I was with him before I got cancer and he was there when I got diagnosed. He was there when I refused treatments and he was still there when I became this.” She gestured to herself, deciding to spare Bucky the story of her avoiding Wade for all that time because she feared how he’d react when he saw what she had become.

Much like Bucky, Wade didn’t care and after she saved him from Francis, they somehow made a life together. Tears welled in her eyes as she thought of him, his loving gaze and dirty mouth bringing a bittersweet smile to her face.

“His crazy matched my crazy, big time. A real ride or die type. Oh, that man’s mouth could make me sound like a nun. And we were going to start a life together.” She hastily wiped the beginning of her tears as Bucky listened quietly beside her. “But I was reckless and arrogant and I got him killed before we could."

The hurt Bucky felt from her rejection was slowly starting to fade as she explained, his intense emotions starting to morph into sympathy.

"I loved him more than anything in this life and no matter what I did, I couldn’t get back to him. Immortality is a bitch like that but I thought, maybe just maybe if I somehow managed to destroy myself completely, I would be with him again. But nothing worked.” Her voice broke as her emotions overcame her.

It took everything Bucky had to not pull her into his arms right there and hold her until she couldn’t stand it anymore. But he couldn’t. Her heart still belonged to the man who made her into who she was and he had to respect that, however painful it was.

So needless to say.

I'm odds and ends.

But I'll be stumbling away.

Slowly learning that life is okay.

“I’m sorry.” Bucky mumbled, unsure of what else to say. He’d experienced loss before but never something that made him want to end his life. For 70 years he lacked the freedom to do so and now that he did, he wanted to live for himself. Wanted to experience everything that had been taken from him.

But now it was Y/n that lacked freedom. She was brave enough to venture into the unknown for Wade only to be dragged back by her immortality. The two were very different, as they always had been. And while Bucky thought it made them better together, Y/n could only see it as a reason to stay apart.

Wade was her other half, her soulmate. Bucky could never replace him. And she could never ask him to.

“It’s not your fault.” Her reply was sincere but dulled, as if the automatic response wasn’t what she wanted to say yet happened to be the only thing she could manage. She wanted to say so much more. She wanted to tell Bucky that while Wade was her first and most beloved partner, it didn’t mean he was her only.

Ignoring the way Bucky made her feel was growing more difficult and try as she might she couldn’t deny it any longer. She loved Bucky.

From the very beginning she had been hooked by the super soldier and every tragic thing that had happened to him. She loved his rare but breathtaking smile, the one that made her dizzy and weak at the knees. She loved the moments when he’d let his frustration out through hushed swears and absolutely adored the times he’d remind her that his vocab was that of an army man from the 1940s. He could spout off a string of profanities that would make a sailor cower and even though he always apologized after, the action only made her feel more at home among the team.

She loved what a gentleman he was, even to her, who was as unladylike as they came. He’d never hesitate to go out of his way to do little chivalrous acts that made her heart race and it only made her crave the 40s man more and more.

But what she loved most of all was how much he understood her. He knew what it was like to be forced to the breaking point until he became something he wasn’t. He knew what it was like to not trust your own mind and for that Y/n loved him.

But she still loved Wade more.

Say after me.

It's no better to be safe than sorry

Take on me. Take me on.

I'll be gone. In a day or two.

“Bucky, I-"

A familiar feeling stopped Y/n dead in her tracks. A sense that told her something was wrong and one she had only felt the night she lost Wade. It was like the world around her slowed down and all she could hear was the frantic beating of her heart as she looked out into the open night air.

A jet engine roared through the sky, coming faster than Bucky could react in his moment of weakness. Fortunately Y/n was much faster, grabbing hold of the super soldier and dragging him off the ledge. They ran across the rooftop, ducking back behind the small concrete entrance that housed the elevator back down to the building.

A harsh explosion followed not too soon after they had seeked cover and Bucky moved forward, bracing her against the wall as he did his best to keep her steady as the building rattled on impact. Heat enveloped them and Y/n tried her best to ignore the heat rising to her own face, being pressed so close to Bucky’s chest.

The jet flew past the building and into view, rounding back for another attack. Y/n watched it with wide eyes as it flew straight at them, readying another missile.

"Look out!” She screamed, tugging furiously at Bucky’s t-shirt as she dragged them to the other side of the concrete housing. They moved fast, making sure to stay ducked down to avoid becoming more of a target than they already were.

Thankfully for them, the jet didn’t strike the roof, allowing them to slip into the elevator and begin the descent to the rest of the compound. The aftermath of both explosions shook throughout the building and the lights inside the car had turned red, telling all those in the building that they were on high alert.

“It is those HYDRA fucks? What do they want?” Y/n questioned. Bucky didn’t reply at first, silently calculating their next move. It was a cold reaction but something he couldn’t quite shake from his Winter Soldier days.

“They’re here for the drive.” He answered finally as the doors opened up to reveal the lab floor. Sam ran to them frantically, leaving the two scientists to back up files and technology in case the attack went too far.

“Good! You’re here. I’m going out to try and stall the jet, you guys get a quinjet and meet me outside.” Sam instructed, heading into the elevator only to have Bucky grab his arm.

“Sam, they want the drive. They won’t stop until they have it.” Bucky explained carefully, his eyes returning to the seriousness they always had during missions.

Sam shook his head, “What do you expect us to do? Hand it over?” He questioned. Bucky shook his head, all the plans he was able to put together ending in failure. There had to be something.

“What if they think the drive is destroyed?"

Bucky and Sam turned to Y/n, mutual looks of confusion taking hold of their features as she glanced back at the lab. The scientists had finished up and we’re now rushing past them to the elevator but Y/n’s eye caught something else. The drive was placed in a small container, Stark tech of some kind to make sure no external sources could get to it.

"How would we do that? They’re not gonna take our word for it.” Sam protested. Y/n was already making her way to the drive, her own plan forming as she went. Bucky moved to follow her but she quickly turned around, as if sensing what he was doing.

“Sam take Bucky with you. Distract the HYDRA assholes for as long as you can while I transfer the drive’s info to the safe house. Follow my lead.” Y/n demanded, rushing over to the desk which held the drive.

“No way, I’m staying with-” Bucky was about to object but another explosion quaked the building, sending him back into the elevator. Sam grabbed hold of his arm before Bucky could react and the elevator closed, leaving Y/n alone.

Bucky yelled out, forcing himself toward the buttons but Sam’s grip was tight and Bucky found he didn’t have the energy to fight him. Y/n’s plan would work, they always did. But he feared what she might do to herself in the process.

“Why would you do that!?” Bucky shouted, trying to make up for his lack of fight through his words. Sam didn’t answer knowing Bucky was being irrational. Y/n insisted again and again she could do 'shit they’ve never seen’ as she fondly put it, but it hurt Bucky everytime he couldn’t save her.

He’d watched her 'die’ countless times and each time he couldn’t do anything. It trudged up memories he’d rather forget. Memories of protecting Steve and still losing him to the one thing he couldn’t fight-…time. Memories of the helplessness he felt during his time at HYDRA. Memories of losing his old self, a part of him he’d never be able to save or recover.

Bucky stormed through the hangar, heading toward the first quinjet he saw. It took every ounce of self control he could muster to not rip the door off the machinery but he managed to climb in, leaving the jet unscathed.

Sam flew ahead with a couple of agents in their own quinjet while Bucky followed behind, ultimately taking his own route straight toward the attacking jet. He knew their technology well and knew the weakest points to hit but even if he took out this jet, another one would take its place eventually. There had to be a way to insure they wouldn’t come back. Maybe if he went back and took out the new boss? No, someone would rise up and take his place.

His eyes narrowed as he began his attack on the jet, using the large guns installed within the aircraft. The HYDRA jet instantly maneuvered away from the shots but Bucky anticipated it and moved with them, raining as much fire as he could on them.

But before he could advance on them any further, another quinjet launched out of the hangar, flying past at breakneck speeds. Bucky’s heart dropped when he heard Y/n over the radio.

“Listen here you HYDRA nutsacks. If you want the drive, you’re gonna have to come get it. And I don’t play fair.” She taunted over the frequency, urging the enemy jet to follow her as she raced away from the building and Bucky.

As she had expected the jet followed, sparing no expense as they hastily rushed through Bucky and Sam’s attacks. Nothing mattered but the drive and Bucky wished he had thought their mission through a bit more. He didn’t even know what was on the drive let alone how far HYDRA would go to get it back.

But he soon found out how far they’d go to ensure their enemies didn’t have it.

“Y/n, look out!” Bucky cried, unable to stop himself. He knew what Y/n was planning. She was meant to go down in the plane. But he wanted to stop it, hell at this point he would rather give the drive up. Y/n’s powers were amazing, yes but he couldn’t help but feel that one day her luck would run out, that one day she just wouldn’t come back the same. She’d be horribly changed like he had been. A monster.

He couldn’t bare to see her become that.

Y/n skillfully flipped the jet, steering a harsh right as the HYDRA jet stayed close on her tail. “Get the others out of here. I can handle this!” She called, keeping her words careful as to not alert the enemy of her plan.

Sam listened, turning away to lead the other quinjet back to the headquarters but Bucky couldn’t. It wasn’t fair. He knew what it was like to die and come back and he couldn’t understand why Y/n was so willing. At first it was noble, giving her life for his but then she did it again and again.

Bucky was terrified for her. Terrified she wouldn’t be Y/n anymore. And terrified of the reason she kept destroying herself.

“Bucky go back! This isn’t your fight!” Y/n yelled at him, switching to a frequency only they could hear.

“The hell it isn’t! The only reason you’ve been fighting HYDRA is because of me. I’m the fucking asshole that keeps leading you straight into harm’s way when I’m supposed to protect you!” He fought, following behind the chase.

Y/n groaned, frustrated by his insistence on keeping her safe. She didn’t need to be safe, if anything he should be protecting everyone else from her. “I never asked you to protect me! Why can’t you just leave me the fuck alone?!” Angry tears began to well in her eyes but she rapidly blinked them away, keeping her focus on the jet behind her as she began her trek up into the sky.

Maybe if she flew high enough the HYDRA jet would stall long enough for her to get an advantage?

“You know why!” Bucky spoke, his tone matching her own agitation. He really hoped he didn’t have to say it. Saying it at all was nerve-wracking but saying it in the middle of a fight? How could he spring that on her?

Y/n’s heart dropped as her grip tightened on the yoke. His words shot through her like a thousand bullets but she found herself unable to recover from it. It was all too familiar. Too depressing.

“You don’t know what you’re saying.” Y/n replied, praying to whoever had control of her miserable life that Bucky was mistaken. Maybe decades of being touch starved and deprived of love had made him think he cared about her.

Unfortunately that wasn’t the case.

“I love you, Y/n! Fuck you always make things so difficult and you never take anything seriously but I love you more than I’ve ever loved someone. There’s nothing I wouldn’t do for you but you keep dying before I can show you that."

His confession was rough and forceful but still so heartfelt. Y/n wanted to cry at how much it reminded her of Wade’s but she didn’t allow her tears to consume her. Only pushed herself and the quinjet through the atmosphere, watching in the display as the HYDRA jet began to fall.

"Please, say something.” Bucky pleaded, his voice fragile and broken. He knew rejection was imminent. Their talk on the roof told him that she wouldn’t accept his feelings. But he needed to get it out, needed to tell her before she died.

“I’m sorry, Bucky.” She replied quietly before switching off her radio. Silence fell over the jet as she allowed the engine to shut off. Bucky flew past her, further into space, having not anticipated her sudden drop.

She was alone again, free falling toward the earth once more like she had mere hours before. Although this fall would be much more fatal. More destructive.

As she angled her jet straight toward the enemy jet, switching back on her engine and accelerating at deadly speeds, she found herself without a single comment.

Not one word slipped past her lips as flames consumed her before she could even feel the impact.

•••

The apartment was familiar. It was an apartment she had left to Weasel when she made a more permanent stay at the compound. She still visited from time to time but it didn’t look like this anymore. No, this place still had the messy bed with scribbled words on the chalkboard above it. It still had the colorful table and the warming sunlight shining through, a light Weasel usually blocked with curtains. Still had the memory wall full of pictures of her and Wade, a wall that was now bare.

This was her and Wade’s home.

“Red?” His voice rang out like heavenly bells and Y/n’s head whipped toward the sound. There he was, seated in the leather chair near the window. He looked just like he had the night she lost him. His hair was short and barely styled, having only grown a small amount in the time she had known him. There was a small amount of stubble along his lower face but his next words quickly dominated her observations.

“What are you doing here?” She didn’t answer, wanting to study his face as long as she could. She wanted to refresh her mind with the image of his loving eyes and adorning smile. Wanted to forever remember the slit in his eyebrow from a long forgotten fight and the way his hands gripped the arms of the chair as he stood.

“I died…again. I know you said it wasn’t my time but I just hoped, maybe this time it was?” Y/n spoke carefully, stepping forward, finding that the clothes she had worn seconds before had been replaced with one of Wade’s large t-shirts.

Instead of moving to hold her and tell her she was right, that her time had finally come, he let his gaze fall. Her heart clenched in her chest and angry tears filled her eyes but she refused to allow them to fall, refused to let her chance at seeing Wade be cut short by her uncontrollable tears.

“Who’s in charge of all this shit? Who fucked us over so bad that we can never be together?” Y/n snapped, turning her teary gaze toward the ground. She couldn’t bare to stare at the blurred wall separating her from Wade. Couldn’t stand to show up here time and time again only to be refused the one person she wanted most.

“I don’t know, baby. Trust me if I did, you wouldn’t be there and I wouldn’t be here.” His voice was almost like a forgotten memory and Y/n hated her mind for allowing it to slip so far from her thoughts. He always spoke to her with such a tenderness, a tenderness he never used with anyone else.

“I wanna stay with you.” Y/n pleaded, struggling to lift her eyes from the floor. Wade had begun to frown at her wish. She didn’t know why.

It was a sad frown like he wanted so desperately to agree but couldn’t. Wade knew his love still had a purpose in life and he couldn’t be selfish by asking her to stay. In the end nothing could make her stay, even if she begged for it on her knees. Because she still had a life waiting for her. A life without him.

“Things are complicated now.” Wade tried to explain, moving closer to her. This wasn’t what Y/n wanted to hear and she stood in place, not moving an inch as hurt overcame her.

“What do you mean?” Y/n questioned, trying not to sound as vulnerable as she knew she was. She wanted it to be over. To finally get the life with Wade she never had. But she could feel something tugging her back. It grew stronger with each passing second and she knew soon it’d reclaim her. But the feeling didn’t make her angry. She wasn’t upset.

The feeling was overwhelming but in a good way. Like when someone says 'I love you’ for the first time.

“Bucky.” Wade confessed suddenly, dragging Y/n’s attention away from the tug.

“What-…?"

"He loves you. You know that. Our times up baby.” His voice was miserable but stern. They never spoke so seriously before, even in the previous times she’d reached him in the afterlife. Every word was true even if it was his worst nightmare. And Y/n knew how much it pained him to say it.

“No it can’t. I-” She tried to argue but found that there were no words to dismiss it. The tug was getting more powerful and familiarity washed over her. The tug was Bucky. He was her tether to the world and as much as she wanted to, she couldn’t let him go.

But she couldn’t let Wade go either.

“He loves you and as much as I want to do horrible, horrible things to him, I can’t. He can love you, hold you- fuck, he could give you a baby. All the things I can’t anymore.” Wade’s voice cracked and Y/n’s own tears began to fall, shaking her head at the mere thought of letting anyone other than him love her like that.

“I need you to let me go before this gets too hard.” Wade begged.

It broke Y/n to see him so lost, so shattered. This hurt him just as much as it hurt her but he was strong enough to push on. To tell her what she knew she needed to do, even if it was the last thing she wanted.

He’d always been stronger than her.

“Will we ever be together again?"

In response, she received no words. Just a smile. A smile that told her everything would be okay. That no matter what happened it would be them against the world, even if she found love from another man. That smile told her more than any verbal answer could and put to rest the longing in her heart.

"Kiss me like you miss me, Red."

A bittersweet laughter echoed between them as she looked at him. All the love she’d felt for him was still lingering in her chest and she knew it’d never truly be gone. But another love was still there, one that was growing stronger like the tug she now felt.

"Well, come here."

Wade paced forward, moving through the barrier effortlessly and tugged her close to him like he had many times before. Her arms wrapped around the back of his neck as he pulled her up by her thighs, planting his lips on hers without missing a beat.

Kisses with Wade were always passionate and hot but this one was different. His hold on her was tight like he knew it would be the last and his lips lightly caressed hers, pouring every ounce of adoration he had for her into the kiss. Y/n clung to him like her life depended it, feeling the tug become so powerful she feared she’d be ripped from his arms. When they pulled away there were no words spoken, just a gaze.

Then she was pulled back.

•••

When she woke up, she couldn’t feel anything, not even the air that flushed into her exposed lungs. Her chest was slowly piecing itself together and judging by her pounding headache, she figured her skull was doing the same.

She no longer felt pain the same way others did and while she knew the process of her body morphing back to normal would be excruciating, that pain was dulled to her. All she could focus on was the voice calling out to her.

It was only then that she looked around at where she was. The ground was cold under her skin, or at least what skin she had feeling in so far. The smoke from the crash was bellowing into the night sky above her but she couldn’t smell it. She was only just beginning to feel the nips of heat from the fire biting at her arms and legs, though she wasn’t sure if they were even attached to her anymore.

The voice cut through the chaos like a beacon and Y/n couldn’t help but feel relaxed by it. It was soothing and a reassurance of safety came with it.

Soon the owner of the voice forced his way through the debris, finding her battered body torn apart among the aftermath of the destruction. His eyes flashed with horror but he wasted no time in moving forward, yanking a heavy piece of metal out of her chest to free her. Y/n watched, not even knowing she had been impaled.

Bucky had seen many horrible scenes before, most of them having been by his own hand but this was terrible. He was unsure if it was the fact that she’d done this to herself or if it was that she was forced to stay alive throughout the entire thing, but either way it unnerved him and he felt the need to get her out of there immediately.

He grabbed hold of her torso, pulling her up into his arms and taking notice of the fact that one of her legs and ¾ of her left arm was missing along with most of her chest. But despite this she just smiled at him, leaning further into him.

"Hey, Seb. Oh, wait, fourth wall! Fuck me!” A delusional giggle escaped her and Bucky brushed off her comment, trying to focus on getting her out. He wasn’t sure where her limbs had gone or if he should try to retrieve them but Y/n slowly losing consciousness in his arms urged him to get out of there and he did just that.

“Hey, you’re gonna be okay. We’ll get you back to the med bay and you’ll be good as new.” He smiled at her and she nodded, knowing he was right. Didn’t make the process of self healing any less uncomfortable.

But she couldn’t think of that right now. Wade’s words were still fresh in her mind.

'He loves you. You know that.’

“Bucky.” She croaked, her own anxiety for what she was about to say overpowering everything else. The disaster around her didn’t matter and neither did the cracks in her chest as her ribs reformed. All that mattered was getting her words out before she lost consciousness. Before she lost her nerve.

“It’s okay, Y/n. I’ll get you out of here.” Bucky assured, dismissing her call. Y/n frowned, reaching to grab hold of his face only to realize her arm had not yet grown back. She cursed silently, looking up at him. That crash was really a bitch.

“Would you get your head out of your ass and listen to me?” She insisted, hating how vulnerable she was making herself. She hated being so emotionally weak in front of anyone other than Wade but she tried to listen to his wish. Tried to let him go.

“Look, I care about you, alright?” She confessed, noting the way Bucky’s arms tightened on her and how he stilled instantly. “Ever since they fridged Wade, I never thought I’d care about anyone like I did him. But then you came along with your perfect smile and perfect eyes and ugh-God, why is this so hard?!” A groan escaped her as she let her gaze fall from him. It had always been easy with Wade, they fell into place like puzzle pieces but with Bucky it was harder. More real.

His fingers curled around her waist, feeling the skin reshaping under his metal fingertips. Y/n was just loopy from the crash, he couldn’t take her confession seriously right?

“Y/n, I-"

"I know, I’m sorry. What I did on the roof was wrong, I was just scared-I’m-I’m still scared.” She admitted, her hold on him tightening desperately. Bucky frowned, guilt flooding him for putting her in such a conflicting and uncomfortable situation.

He should’ve never said anything, should’ve never put her in the position where she had to force herself to move on from a lost love. It was wrong and terribly unfair.

“Forget it, let’s get you somewhere safe, okay?” He replied, watching as her eyes grew heavy, losing her fight to stay awake. The looked like she wanted to argue but before she could she fell unconscious, allowing him to finally focus on escaping the wreck though his mind was cluttered with guilt and self hatred.

It wasn’t fair. But then again life never was.

•••

When Y/n woke up again her body was almost completely healed. Other agents were cautiously refilling the building after ensuring that no other HYDRA attacks were imminent. They had no reason to return after all, the drive was destroyed and as far as they knew, the information had gone down with Y/n.

Bucky told himself he’d finally look at what the drive held since HYDRA had put up such a fight for it but he couldn’t bring himself to leave Y/n’s bedside.

She’d been hooked up to several machines that would help her heal, something she’d surely throw a fit about when she awoke. She’d told them plenty of times that she didn’t need the whole 'hospital bullshit’ but it was just procedure. Plus Bucky suspected the medical personnel liked to piss her off as much as she did them.

He would’ve found her curses amusing when she finally did regain consciousness but his nerves were too great. They’d left off in a serious and rather suspenseful moment and he almost wanted to disappear all together.

Talking with Y/n was what he’d wanted to do all this time and best case scenario, he’d finally win her over. But he knew the worst case was more likely. He’d always managed to fuck things up and this was no different.

He was wrong to force his feelings upon her and while he felt guilt and knew he’d be rejected, he wouldn’t have taken it back. It felt freeing to tell her. He was actually relieved she knew how much he cared for her.

“What in the fuck nuggets is this bullshit?” Y/n snapped suddenly, yanking the IV from her arm and tossing it away from her with an annoyed glare. “I already told you guys-.” She stopped mid sentence, upon seeing Bucky sitting there.

He looked tired and she wanted to make a joke to ease the nervous stare he directed at her but she couldn’t bring herself too. In the last 24 hours she’d been an emotional train wreck and while her heart screamed to tell Bucky whatever he wanted to hear, she knew things were more complicated than that.

And deep down he knew that too.

“Look, about what I said after the crash.” She began, running a hand through her hair. Bucky watched as she did so, hanging onto her every word. He’d remembered what she said or at least what it sounded like she was going to say. But had she meant it or was it out of pity?

“I want you, okay?” She confessed, expelling all doubt from his mind. She wasn’t one to beat around the bush and quite frankly she was tired of struggling for words. So she spoke from the heart, even if it wasn’t very romantic. “I’ve liked you for a while but-…Wade’s death still hurts.” She continued.

Bucky sat on the edge of his seat, his heart pounding in his chest as she spoke. It’d been so long since he’d had a chance at love and he already felt as though he’d messed it up. But then again they’d always been a little messy.

“But I wanna try this. I know I said I wasn’t ready for anything serious but I wanna try us no matter how fucked up we are together.” Y/n told him, reaching for his metal hand and clasping it in both of hers. “I wanna fuck the world with you. I wanna fuck it so hard.” She smiled, earning a laugh from him.

Her confession was overwhelming and clumsy but he took it like it was. Y/n was an overwhelming person and he was ready for that. He was so ready for whatever mayhem she had to offer.

“Fuck the world, huh?” He questioned, amused as her eyes lit up with joy.

“Yeah. You and me, Buck.” She promised, holding his hand tightly. His heart swelled at her words, shifting to sit on the bed with her as she leaned closer to him.

“Deadpool and Winter Soldier. I kinda like it.” He said, smiling at her as she smirked. Dirty words began to develop on her tongue and before Bucky could even realize what he’d walked himself into, she was leaning toward his ear, her breath brushing his skin and leaving chills in its wake.

“I bet you’ll like it even more when I say it in bed won’t you, Winter Soldier.” She spoke in his ear, her voice smooth and sultry. His face had flooded red but he refused to let himself get all flustered and speechless.

There was once a time where he was a lady’s man and while he knew he was probably a little out of date, he was a fast study. And having known Y/n all this time had taught him a few things.

“Only if you scream it."

Y/n paused, looking back at him with a mix of shock and pride. She was at a loss for words and Bucky quickly accepted his victory, launching forward and putting his lips on hers.

Despite her lustful comments her kiss was tender and passionate, a kind of kiss he’d longed from her for some time. A kiss that although hesitant was strong and heartfelt.

They had some work to do and while their relationship would be chaotic, it was their chaos and he couldn’t ask for anything more.

"I gotta know something.” Y/n admitted suddenly, pulling away from the kiss. Bucky was a little confused but nodded anyway, wondering what on Earth would be so important.

“Who taught the Russo brothers about time travel, Endgame was so fucked."

#bucky barnes x reader #bucky barnes fanfiction #bucky barnes #winter solider imagine #winter soldier #bucky barnes x y/n #sebastian stan #marvel #endgame #deadpool #wade wilson #x reader #sam wilson #falcon #james buchanan barnes #bucky barnes rants #bucky barnes x deadpool!reader

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cerastes · 3 years

Note

Oh yeah, been a while since we get an update on tabletop things, what's the CAST looking like nowadays?

Life’s WAY too busy for tabletop right this second so not much has changed, but:

“Lisbeth Elstad” (Alias; real name far more mundane)

Wimp that tries to project a strong image.

Would normally be a shopkeeper in any setting, but circumstance has forced her to undertake adventure instead.

REALLY ill suited to being anything except a shopkeeper, but she’s trying.

Extremely intelligent, not wise in the slightest. A genius when it comes to biology, chemistry, physics and medical sciences, but very naive and full of prejudice as a person. She thinks she’s wise and learned, but she’s really not (she is well-traveled, however).

Alchemist; in a world of magic, it’s one of only two things she can knows how to use, but makes up for it by using her extensive knowledge of chemistry and pharmacology to produce facsimiles of magic, since she can’t use it normally. No need to cast Fireball when you can whip up a vial of napalm and throw it at someone.

Ironically, despite being an Alchemist, she hates money, and will give medical treatment basically for free (her rate is usually “enough to buy something to eat at the nearest food stall”) if she sees someone that needs it, especially if they are not human.

Dislikes humans, feels much more at home with non-humans, despite being human herself.

Just like her “magic”, most everything about her is a facsimile of what she thinks a “cool, strong mercenary” should be like. Name, appearance, way of carrying herself, all fake. Her main “spells” are all reference to the Malebolge, Eighth Circle of Hell, where counterfeiters go. She’s pretty self-aware about it all, really.

Chaotic Good. Genuinely good intentions, but is very socially inept and emotionally immature, so her mood tends to fluctuate a lot.

Long dyed blond hair, silver contact lenses, very tall and lanky, like a noodle or a beanstalk. Wears black suits and a black two-headed wolf pelt because she thinks it makes her cool (though the pelt is actually an important item to her), a completely blank white mask because she has a terrible poker face and doesn’t want everyone around her to know when she’s scared shitless (again, wimp), and a large witch hat because that’s just the culture, baby.

19 years old; another older version of her exists (27 years old) used not in tabletop, but for stories, particularly alongside Glock Elf and her gang. Glock Elf begrudgingly considers her a mentor of sorts, but the reverse is true, as the cynical Ms. Elstad has legitimate respect for Glock Elf’s balls to the walls style of life that’s less about making big enormous machinations and more about throwing flying kicks first and asking questions later.

Rasmus Casper Istre

Swindler, but has the brains and brawn to back it up.

Used to be a phony fortune teller, but picked on a target too dangerous one time and had to leg it, this led him to meet the party and embark on adventure, initially just to put food on the table, later, to uncover a larger conspiracy that put the world at risk.

Good at improvising and coming up with creative solutions, though he’ll often let greed guide his hand and end up incurring more risk than he needs to, both to himself and to his allies, if it means scoring a bit more money.

Rogue; An expert with daggers and very intimate bedfellow to fisticuffs. He is not formally trained in any capacity and is entirely self-taught.

Also known as “Rabbit”; the Gods Of The Land awarded him this title for his cunning, speed, and his trademark ability to look harmless right before you fall into his trap.

Despite his crook-like nature, Rasmus has only the deepest respect for ladies and is not interested in courting anyone except the Elven Priestess that won his heart.

As much as it pained him to admit it, he eventually grew so fond of the party that he basically rejected an offer to betray them that would have set him up for life, saying “I never would’ve had to worry about money ever again in my life, which is neat, but I would’ve had to ally myself with the lowest, most unforgivable piece of garbage in this world had I done that, and I’d have to see his face every morning of my life in the mirror”.

Endgame set-up: A powerful hardened Blacklight Dagger with an enchantment that makes it return to the its owner after being thrown, alongside an evil thunderstorm crafted into a gauntlet, which endowed it with incredible lightning powers, and which gave my DM headaches when I looked at the cursed thunderstorm and asked the DM if I could feasibly capture it and forge it into an item with the several scrolls and artifacts we had that, technically allowed for us to at least attempt it. My DM rocks though so he said yes but I treated him to pizza that night.

One time, Rasmus stole the body of a seemingly invincible hero the party managed to kill and preserved it in salt, and then, with his Half-Orc Barbarian party member and friend, strapped him to the front of a Greatshield to make what we dubbed the Hero’s Corpse Shield, which was practically indestructible and impenetrable because of the hero tied to the front of it.

Chaotic Neutral; initially more interested in profit than anything, and later helping out the party simply because they are his sworn brother and sisters, but doesn’t really care too much about doing right or wrong. His involvement is wholly personal.

Very slightly above average height, short brown hair, stubble, green eyes, slim but toned build, mostly wears leather or chainmail, but one time went around in robes with a sun-looking mask for a while when he became the impromptu leader of a cult, in order to avoid getting executed for maximum heresy (the whole hero’s corpse on a shield thing).

In his 20s. The game in which he was my character is over, but we’re seeing if we Season 2 it because we all fucking loved it a lot.

Fargigoth

Newest addition, so not much out yet.

Half-Orc Artificer. Stole a small field cannon that an army was employing during a battle and uses that as his “cauldron” to shoot things out of it. He’s a BIG lad, so he carries the cannon with his hands.

Once stuffed a Fire Elemental’s corpse in the cannon and threw in a bunch of other garbage, resulting in an explosive shotgun blast of debris, shrapnel and hellfire that sent him flying backwards because, it turns out, cannon recoil hits pretty hard.

Good friends with a female Tiefling Paladin party member.

And combined, they can’t unscrew a lightbulb without putting into motion a Metal Gear Solid-esque conspiracy, unintentionally.

#tabletop ocs

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fanexus-dot-net · 4 years

Text

The Philosophy of Fanexus

As Fanexus comes together, we want to provide you with an outline of the philosophy that underlies the platform. The features and TOS that we are currently working on all aim to align with the following principles.

A Social Media Platform for Fandoms and Creators

Fanexus is a social media platform and wiki that aims to meet the needs of both fandoms and original creators. We were inspired to create Fanexus after following online fandom and creative communities to various platforms over the years, only to find that most of these sites failed to meet our needs as fans and as creators of both fanworks and original content. While using these platforms, we started to come up with ideas for features that would enhance our experiences. Eventually, we realised we had the skills and the means to take these ideas and use them to create a social media platform that could meet these needs.

Organised and Accessible Fan and Indie Content

One of our core principles is that fanworks and indie content have just as much value as official and mainstream material. The emotions evoked by these works can be just as profound, the ideas they explore can be just as engrossing, and the overall importance they have to a person can be just as significant. As this content often doesn’t aim or need to have the same broad appeal as official and mainstream works, it can venture into places that mainstream media won’t tread, thus having the potential to explore more daring ideas, and elicit more powerful emotions in some people.

Despite fan and indie works generating as much personal value as official and mainstream material, they lack the same degree of organisation, accessibility, and permanency. If someone is looking to track down a piece of mainstream media or find information about it, they will generally find a record of its existence, a way to access the media itself, and information that helps put it in context with any related pieces of media. By contrast, if someone is seeking out a piece of fan or indie work they once enjoyed, it’s common to find that it’s been deleted, or has simply been buried under so much subsequent content that it’s impossible to find again.

Another common experience is discovering a piece of fan or indie content that is part of a larger set of works, but lacking information explaining the context of the content with respect to the larger collection. Picture finding an image of an original character from a story crafted by multiple roleplayers and wanting to learn more about the character and story. Different parts of the story and information about its characters and lore may have been provided by each of the different roleplayers on their own blogs, across a mixture of platforms, and may have each used slightly different tagging conventions. Some posts explaining vital things may have been mistagged or deleted. The lack of centralised organisation that can give people an easy starting point and order in which to consume some fan and indie content presents a significant barrier of entry for people who might tremendously enjoy certain works.

A similar experience can occur when a newcomer enters an old fandom that has developed a vast collection of fanon characterisation, worldbuilding, and terminology. Many of these conventions were likely established years ago on platforms that may not exist anymore. The newcomer may feel completely lost when encountering this fanon material, and unless there’s an up to date and easy to locate fanon wiki providing explanations for all of these concepts and terms, or a seasoned fan is willing to provide a full explanation, it can take a significant investment of time for them to figure out what all of it means. As a result, entering such an established fandom can be more confusing and inaccessible than it needs to be.

Fanexus endeavours to give fan and indie content a level of organisation, accessibility, and permanency that elevates it to a level closer to that of mainstream content. One of the means by which we seek to do this is by including wiki functionality. Creators will be able to make wiki pages for things such as their OCs, AUs and roleplays, with summaries containing key points, and guides linking to the relevant content, while explaining the order in which it should be consumed. Fandoms can also work together to create wiki pages explaining fanon concepts and terminology, and the number of different ways they are interpreted by the fandoms. As Fanexus grows, we seek to find ways to make fanworks and indie content increasingly organised and accessible.

Promote Creative Diversity and Enable Tailored Experiences

Fanexus cherishes variety – the more differing fandoms, interests, creative activities, interpretations, preferences, and styles that we can cater to, the better. We stand in opposition of homogenisation in fandom, especially where only particular interpretations and preferences are favoured, while whatever doesn’t comply with these dominant readings and tastes gets pushed to the margins or is attacked for daring to stray. We don’t want any fan to feel they have to alter their headcanons or style to better conform to whatever is preferred by the majority or vocal segments of their fandom. If someone doesn’t enjoy the ideas and creative styles that are predominant in their fandom, we want them to be able to avoid this content, and instead find material that does appeal to them.

We promote the idea of fandom as an infinite multiverse of possibilities, where each interpretation is equally legitimate, and no reading invalidates any other, because in an endless multitude of fictional realities, all ideas and desires can co-exist. We hold that even canon doesn’t have more legitimacy than the vast array of fan reinterpretations and reimaginings it inspires. We think that it’s important to financially support canon content as it helps the generation of more of what we all love, but we believe that fanworks are just as real and just as enjoyable. By extension, we hold that fanworks that stray far from and wildly contradict the canon that inspired them are no less important than fanworks that fit in seamlessly with that canon. It’s helpful to have a fandom in agreement over what’s explicitly canon so that fanworks can be labelled as either canon-compliant or canon-deviant, to let content consumers know what they’re in for – canon is a point of reference for fandom. However, labelling something as canon-deviant isn’t an admission of inferiority, it’s simply another way of contributing to the rich variety of the fandom experience.

In order to help promote this variety we desire, we endeavour to facilitate the creation of subcultures within broader fandom cultures, so that people who don’t vibe with the predominant interpretations and preferences in a fandom can form communities with like-minded fans. We provide fine-tuned filter features to help people avoid content they dislike without missing out on what they do want to see. The tagging system enables the creation of tags for very specific concepts that are connected to tags for related concepts; for example, a character from a franchise with many continuities can have a main tag for that character, but also have subordinate character tags for each continuity they appear in. A tag can also be created for a specific fanon characterisation of that character which ignores certain canon developments. Through this, fans who only enjoy certain versions or interpretations of a character, even if those versions are fanon, can choose to follow tags for only those versions that appeal to them. The relationships between the tags also mean that people who enjoy certain things can investigate the related tags for those concepts, and find new things that interest them.

We hope to foster diversity in creativity by promoting an atmosphere that celebrates variety; by allowing people to pursue their niche interests without getting in each other’s way, and by creating a map of concepts that makes it easy to navigate a vast range of branching ideas. We want to be home to fanworks ranging from those that perfectly replicate the themes, characterisation, and tone of canon, to those that go completely wild by throwing in every indulgent and out-there idea, thus creating something entirely unique and far removed from the canon that inspired it. We want people to analyse canon through a vast range of different lenses, arriving at all sorts of wildly conflicting but fascinating theories and interpretations. We want for fanworks to inspire fanworks of their own and to be the basis of analysis themselves. We want to be home to a dizzying collection of original works. We want people to use Fanexus to build their own little universes that reflect their own set of interests and ideas, and then be able to find like-minded people to share them with.

Combat Toxicity and Promote Respectful Discussion

People deserve respect, compassion, and the freedom to pursue whatever makes them happy, as long as they’re not harming others in this pursuit. No one should ever be seriously threatened or dehumanised – especially when it comes to traits outside their control such as race, gender, sexuality, disability, etc., or over interests and lifestyle choices that aren’t causing harm to others, such as taste in fiction and ships. Over the last few years, toxicity in fandom has risen to truly alarming levels. Countless fans have been degraded, threatened with violence, and doxxed over things as benign as the characters, ships, and tropes they enjoy in fiction. This is completely unacceptable to us.

We stand firmly in opposition to this bullying, and we will strive to make Fanexus a place where fans and creatives are free to express themselves and enjoy their passions, without fear of becoming a target of harassers. By giving people the ability to form private communities where they can carve out their own spaces with like-minded fans, and by providing more fine-tuned privacy and filtration features to make it easier for users to avoid content they don’t want to see, we hope this will limit the germination of toxicity. However, we want Fanexus’s commitment to combating fandom bullying to extend beyond simply providing better privacy and filtration features; an anti-bullying stance will be written into the Terms of Use and will be actively promoted by the administrators and staff. Anyone seeking to bring the cruelty and toxicity that festers on other platforms to Fanexus will not be tolerated.

Our stance on bullying does not mean that we are opposed to criticism of behaviour, ideas and works, as long as the discourse is respectful. We ask people to understand that there is a line between critical discussion of a person’s behaviours, ideas, and works, and personally attacking someone because of beliefs they may hold or something they have created. A user expressing a view that constitutes hate speech or harassment should be reported, and can subsequently be dealt with by our moderators. If someone publicly expresses a view you feel to be disagreeable, you are certainly free to engage in debate with them if you can do so in a constructive way. If you don’t feel that you are able to criticise their behaviours without making personal attacks, we ask you to block them instead of generating unnecessary conflict.

We believe that a loss of nuance and the rise of absolutist thinking bears much responsibility for the surge of toxicity in fandom, and we want to combat it by promoting critical thinking. We understand that many people use fandom as a form of escapism where they can switch off their brains, and we welcome fans and creators who come for indulgence without any deep thought behind it. However, we also value users who contribute thoughtful and rational analysis and discussion, and we seek to encourage and promote such engagement for those who are interested.

Harm Reduction Without Censorship

Fanexus should be an environment that is both enjoyable and safe, but we also want it to be a liberating space where people are able to freely express themselves artistically, indulge in the things that make them happy, and be their authentic selves. Many people desire lives that are enriched by a variety of experiences, from serene to thrilling, from comforting to confronting, from pulp to profound. Art and fiction can be one of the best ways to live out the full breadth of the human (and inhuman) experience without harming oneself or others. We believe that so long as they’re not causing harm, people should have the right to live the lives they want to live, and we support their right to use art and fiction towards that end. This doesn’t mean that there is no risk in using fantasy as a way of exploring some experiences – some people can struggle with the separation between fantasy and reality, or be misled into thinking some behaviours presented in art and fiction are normal or acceptable in the real world. We don’t believe that censorship is the solution to this problem.

We seek to reduce harm while limiting as few freedoms as possible. We don’t permit malicious behaviors that actively intend to cause harm, such as bullying, while we aim to remedy the harms of other behaviours by addressing their cause. If harm stems from naivety or misunderstanding, we seek to remedy these factors. When harm is caused as an unintended side-effect of an activity with a neutral or positive aim, then instead of banning the activity, we first endeavour to find if the harmful side-effect can be separated from the activity and its benefits. If there is a way to satisfactorily reduce harm without limiting freedoms, that is the path we will take.

We hold that censorship is a poor method for addressing the potential harms caused by art and fiction, not only because it limits freedom, but also because it doesn’t address the underlying problem. If a person isn’t exposed to any art or fiction that could potentially give them harmful ideas, they are still vulnerable as they can acquire those ideas from many other sources. Rather than attempting the impossible task of shielding people from ever encountering difficult or confronting concepts, we maintain that it’s more effective to assist in their education to help prevent them from taking the wrong messages away from these concepts when they do encounter them.

Fanexus endeavours to allow as much artistic freedom as possible (excepting content made with malicious intent as a form of harassment), because we understand that art and fiction are not reality, and things that would be unacceptably dangerous or harmful in real life don’t carry the same risk in fantasy. We know that many people who enjoy harmful and taboo things in art and fiction do not endorse these things in reality, and that vicariously experiencing these things through fantasy is extremely different from experiencing them in real life. We seek to promote this understanding of the distinction between fantasy and reality, so that it’s clear that something presented as enjoyable in fiction is not necessarily something that would be enjoyable or safe to partake in personally. People should know to think critically about things they encounter in art and fiction before they decide to emulate them in reality.

There are far more dangerous things on the internet than just morally complex and darkly indulgent fantasy, and Fanexus seeks to provide education to help protect against these threats as well. We intend to create a repository of resources to educate people about the risks they can encounter online, such as predators, scammers, hate movements, and dangerous misinformation. Our aim is to protect people by empowering them with knowledge that will help them in many spheres of life.

Evolve in Response to User Feedback

Fandom and technology both evolve, and we acknowledge that a platform like Fanexus must evolve with them. We intend to seek direct feedback from our userbase in order to discover what features will assist them in creating and maintaining the content Fanexus is dedicated to. However, while our platform will evolve over time, we pledge to remain committed to the philosophy that motivated its creation.

#Fanexus #philosophy

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hellfirenacht · 4 years

Text

The Convention Fic Chapter 4

Beetlejuice x Reader (Gender Neutral)

First Chapter

Friday (Evening)

It didn’t take long for you to get ready to head to the aquarium. You dug through your suitcase and pulled out the outfit that you had brought specifically for partying in. Though you knew that this was a date and wanted to look nice, the aquarium would allow everyone to wonder around for a few hours before letting those who paid for the After Party into one of the Ballrooms, which Beej was quick to inform you was a 21+ event.

You were practically bouncing with excitement as you changed and freshened up. The hyena that Beej had given you was sitting on the bed, protecting your phone as it charged. Beej was kicked back on the second bed, watching you with an amused grin.

“You know, you look great no matter what you’re wearing.” he commented, scanning you up and down. “But I gotta admit, if I wasn’t already dead you’d be killing me right now.”

You gave him a smirk. “Is that rigor mortis, or are you just happy to see me?”

He laughed, “And here I was worried that you’d be too tired for this.”

“Normal tired is gone, I’m only left with that kind of 4 AM tired where everything is funny and I’m invincible. But don’t worry- I completely intend to pass out as soon as we’re done.” you affirmed.

“That’s why you’re my best mod- you’re always ready to party and work.” he replied with a grin. “You ready to go yet, Babes?”

“Yup! Just gotta put my shoes on and I’m good to go!”

You grabbed your beat up tennis shoes, not wanting to risk blisters for the rest of the weekend. As much as you wanted to look good, you also had a job to do for the rest of the con. You swapped out your backpack for a small pouch that rested on your hip and around your waist and shoved your phone, camera battery, key, badge, and money in.

“Ready!”

Beetlejuice just snickered at you as he pulled himself off the bed and looked you over. “I gotta say Babes, you look stunning for our first date. The fanny pack is really doing it for me.”

You pouted slightly. “Watch it, Bug Boy.” you warned in a playful tone. “Besides have you ever washed that hoodie?”

“Nope!” he said with such pride for a second you were inclined to believe him.

The playful teasing continued as you made your way out of the building and towards the Aquarium a few blocks over. The sun was just now showing signs of going down, though late in the evening. Beej’s green-tipped hair was an interesting contrast to the warm yellows, reds, and hints of lavender of the setting sun. The air around you was comfortably warm as you crossed the busy street with other nerds who were also on their way to the nights event. The two of you cut through the large park where you had held the meet up the other evening, and Beetlejuice slipped his hand into yours again.

It was comfortable. Though the two of you had only met in person just the other night, not even 24 hours before, it didn’t feel awkward or strange. Maybe you were closer to him than you had originally thought. All those late nights in the chat, playing games, talking on cam, they suddenly meant so much more now that he was there with you. He was real, and the two of you were close, and now here you were, on a date. A real actual date. A warmth spread over you at the thought.

The air around the Aquarium was cooler than the air at the park. Perhaps it was the shadow the building cast in the late evening sun, or the slight smell of sea water that tinted the air. The two of you easily slid through security and presented your tickets before entering the building.

The aquarium was large and tall, split up into five different sections ranging from river fish to freshwater fish, to ocean fish. Together you decided to start at the river fish, and you pulled out the video camera. Though this was a date, both of you agreed that even if you didn’t post the footage, it was still something the two of you wanted to remember together. You couldn’t help but be okay with that, plus seeing him through the lense of the camera as well as in person felt right to you.

Together the two of you toured through the different sections, looking at fish, getting B-Roll footage of cosplayers and at one point Beej even interviewed a fan that came up and introduced themselves. With each new section brought new fish and creatures for the two of you to point and look at. Beetlejuice was fascinated by all the creatures, which surprised you.

“I’ve never been able to see fish before.” he stated, which seemed like a strange answer. “I’ve never been to a fish zoo or even the beach before so this is all new to me. You know, I never understood the whole thing with humans being obsessed with other animals but I think I get- oh my god they glow!!”

Beej grabbed you by the arm and pointed excitedly at the Jellyfish that were glowing against the blacklight of the tank that they were chilling in. Beej’s smile was so wide and his pupils were so large that you his eyes almost looked black. It was clear that this man was going to lose his shit at any fish that had bioluminescence. He was practically shaking with excitement as he pressed his face up against the glass like a little kid.

You did manage to scoot him out of the way to allow yourself room to get some footage of the tangled mass of jellyfish. You agreed- it was really cool seeing the different fish glowing under blacklight. As you pointed the camera a Beej again, you swore that he was glowing under the light as well- the same green that you saw back in the arcade just the night before. You made a mental note to ask him what kind of hair dye he used but for now, your breath was caught in your throat with how... weirdly beautiful he looked.

He was still the same Beej that you had seen a million times before on a screen, but there were some things about him that a camera just couldn’t do justice towards. His laugh was louder in person, and right now it felt more honest. Not that you were surprised, you always understood that internet personalities were just that- personalities. You saw what they wanted you to see but with Beej it felt different. Yes, in this time and place it was a more intimate experience being next to him and seeing him in person, but you were starting to realize how genuine and honest he was with his audience. You could feel your heart swell at the thought, not only could he be himself on camera, he could also be himself with you.

“Oh man I’d stay here all night if I could!” he said, leading you out with a big smile on his face. “Next year we’re staying an extra day and we’re gonna sneak in here at night and scooba dive with the jellyfish.”

“That’s a terrible idea.” you laughed. “I’m in.”

He smiled at you, his eyes still shining with excitement. “And that’s why I asked you to be here with me!”

“Someone’s gotta bail you out of jail when your roommates aren’t around.” you countered.

The tour ended with the last area- the Ocean fish. It took you a little bit longer to make your way in there, as the two of you stood in front of the exhibit, pointing your camera at the mascot of the aquarium; a large orange fish named Deepo.

The two of you stood there, laughing hard. Beej has his phone out and was going live as the two of you laughed at the ridiculous looking fish.

“Disney... Disney please sue something!” Beej begged, zooming in on the wide lifeless eyes of the statue that smiled across time and space. “DEEPO. His name.. Oh God-Satan his name is DEEPO!”

There were tears streaming down your face as you both pointed and laughed. Around you, some other con goers were also taking pictures, while some were looking at the two of you like you were high or drunk. It didn’t matter, the point is Deepo would either save your soul or destroy it. After cities collapsed, oceans dried up, and humans were eradicated- Deepo would live on as the uncaring God of the New World.

You really needed to get some real sleep tonight.

After finally pulling yourselves together, the two of you straightened up and finally the two of you stepped into the large tunnel, finding yourselves surrounded by fish and soft blue lighting. You couldn’t help but let out a small gasp as you looked up, seeing a fish swim over your head. All around you was ocean life- the tunnel was right under a large tank, allowing you to see fish from every angle.

“Oh wow...” you whispered, looking up. Beej took the camera from your hands and started filming as you took in the view. Fish of all colors, shapes, and sizes were swimming around the two of you, feeling so close even though the glass protecting the tunnel was at least two feet thick.

“I gotta admit, this is pretty impressive.” you heard Beej from across the tunnel, filming a small school of yellow fish. “I’m glad we- oh holy shit!” his head shot upwards and you followed his line of site and gasps.

Above the two of you, a whale passed over head, followed by a shark.

“That’s a shark!” Beej gawked, following the creature with the camera. “Holy crap, that’s a shark! Babes, I want that. I want that shark. I love that shark. I need that shark to live.”

“Well it’s a good thing you’re dead because it’s staying here.” you replied, eyes still glued to the top of the tunnel, watching the larger fish swim around you. It was absolutely breath-taking. You moved to the side of the tunnel until your legs hit a ledge for you to sit on, keeping an eye on everything around you. You were suddenly okay with the suggestion of just staying here forever with these fish. You had no clue that fish could make you feel this safe or content.

After a few minutes, you glanced over at Beetlejuice who had the camera pointed at you. How long had he been filming you staring at the fish? You felt a little embarrassed now.

“Hey, I thought this was your show.” you said, trying not to be embarrassed.

“It is, and I like to show off things that make me happy.” he said with a wink. “Plus you’re stunning in this light. I can’t be the only one that looks good here.”

The compliment felt warm in your chest compared to the cool air of the aquarium. You wanted to brush it off, or tell him no, or even fire something back at him but instead you said something that surprised yourself.

“Thank you.”

You accepted the compliment with grace and a smile. It felt true- between the amazing lighting, the outfit you had chosen, and the feeling of being with Beetlejuice... you felt stunning. Moe than that, with Beej around you felt seen. You felt like all your hard work went both noticed and appreciated. Everything you did for him he thanked you, praised you, told you how much it meant to him. He saw something in you that you hadn’t seen for yourself in a long time. For this moment, you could see yourself the way he saw you- an amazingly capable person, a fun person, a giant fucking nerd, a friend, a crush.

That was the confidence boost you needed, and you felt secure. You felt safe. You felt like you could do anything you wanted because knowing that someone you looked up to and respected so much could see it in you. You stood up and walked over to him, keeping eye contact the entire time. You reached out and lowered the arm that held his camera knowing that this next moment was for just the two of you.

Beej got the hint and allowed you to stay in control of the situation, knowing exactly what was going to happen next. You reached out and touched his cheek, feeling the scratchy beard against the palm of your hand. Briefly you wondered how much maintenance it took for him to keep it tinted green like his hair before leaning in and pressing your lips against his.

His mouth shifted into a smile against yours as his free hand rested on your lower back. The cool skin of his lips combined with the cool air around you caused goosebumps to appear on your arms and the back of your neck. The kiss was short, only a few seconds long, but it was enough. When you pulled back, Beej was grinning hard and you could almost swear that he had hearts in his eyes. The two of you stared at each other like the dopey love-struck idiots that you were for a moment before you took his hand.

“Come on, Love Bug.” you said. “Let’s keep going.”

The two of you finally made your way out of the tunnel after getting a few more shots of different fish before making your way into the next room. Again, you were almost rendered speechless as the two of you found yourselves in front of a large tank that stretched from the floor to a very high ceiling. The large tank gave you a perfect view of how large the whales and sharks were compared to the smaller fish. There were whales and stingrays and large bloated looking fish you had never seen before.

Maybe you would take up Beej on the offer of breaking in to spend the night.

The two of you found a spot to sit in front of the large glass wall as you stared out into the water. In this moment, no words needed to be said. For once Beetlejuice was enjoying a comfortable silence as the two of you put away the camera and just let yourselves be. His hand found yours, and your head found his shoulder. Together for the next half hour, you rested and just took in the view of the amazing sea creatures swimming around.

Around you, cosplayers took amazing pictures next to the tank, nerds took selfies with the fish, and the two of you couldn’t help but laugh a bit at one pink-haired cosplayer crying happy drunk tears over one of the large bloated looking fish. (“It’s so ugly!” she cried and laughed. “I love grouper fish! I love him so much he’s so ugly he’s beautiful!”).

You almost dozed off once or twice as you rested against Beetlejuice. It felt so relaxing being next to him, that you wished that you could just spend the rest of the weekend here. But after a while, he nudged you.

“You still good to go to the after party?” he asked. “It’s gonna start soon, but if you’re tired I understa-”

“I’m gonna party!” you yawned and stood up. “Give me a sec to wake up and I’ll be good to go.”

You took a moment to stretch and get your body to wake up. Turns out at the fish for however long you two were there had left you feeling pretty well rested and happy. Your brain was still a little fried from spending the past few days on little sleep but you could make the the next few hours.

By the time the two of you made it into the ballroom where the party was being held, the DJ was already blasting music and people were lining up at the two bars set up on each end of the large room. There were two glass walls on different sides of the rooms, much smaller than what you had just been looking at but still large enough to peer in and see it was large enough to fit in a few whales. The tanks were dark at the moment, you assumed to give the animals some rest after a long day of being gawked at, but a few congoers were still camped out by the viewing areas, relaxing with their drink and peering into the darkened tanks.

The two of you bought some drinks and found an empty standing table to stay at for the moment. There was a large dance floor in the upper right corner of the room, the DJ booth next to it. On the wall they were projecting clips from various animes and also Steven Universe for some reason. That was the only non-anime being shown on the screen, and you wondered who had put the looping montage together.

Beej chugged down his two drink quickly, itching to get to the dancefloor. “I gotta show these breathers how to really party!” he said.

You had to admit, you wanted to get on the dance floor as well. The DJ was playing an amazing mix of anime, cartoon openings, group dances, old emo music and songs that would make any nerd get up and dance.

The music woke you up better than the drink in your hand. Beej politely waited for you to finish it before dragging you to the dance floor. Beej was a beast once he was in the crowd, jumping from group to group and dancing with anyone who would let him close. You couldn’t even be jealous when he found himself in the middle of a group of girls as he began flossing like there was no tomorrow.

You could have sworn he said he hated flossing before. You wondered if that changed one he actually learned how to do it.

The crowd started to form into a circle around Beej. People jumped in and out, showing off their moves and having small dance-offs. Everywhere people were cheering and having fun. The DJ changed songs, and a spark ignited inside you- this was a song that you knew very well. A specific song from A Goofy Movie that made every inch of your body suddenly go feral. Beej had his moment in the spotlight but now it was your turn.

You were about to teach these nerds what it really meant to do the Perfect Cast.

You waited for the right moment to jump in, your confidence fueled by the slight buzz of alcohol in your system combined with your amazing date with Beej. This was the moment you had been waiting for your entire life, and nothing could fucking stop you.

The chorus kicked in and you found yourself rushing to the center, looking around at the crowd and starting on the dance that you had learned so long ago. Everyone lost their shit.

“THEY’RE ACTUALLY DOING IT!”

“WOOO!”

“IT’S THE PERFECT CAST!!!”

“TEACH ME PLEASE!”

“Oh snap, looks like we got someone who knows their Disney!” a voice said over the speaker and you realized that the DJ was talking about you over the mic. You snapped back into reality with a huge smile and looked over at Beej who couldn’t have been more proud of you. As you jumped back to the side of the circle and let someone else take over you got a few highfives and compliments.

“Damn Babes, why didn’t you tell me you could dance?” Beej asked, still smiling wide.

“I forgot!” you laughed. “Oh wow, I haven’t done that in forever. I... I forgot I knew it until I did it!”

The two of you danced together on and off for the rest of the night, taking breaks to occasionally have another drink or rest. Beej had much more stamina than you, seemingly never needing to rest or take breaks. When you needed a second to catch your breath he’d hover between making sure you were okay and running back to the dance floor. You honestly didn’t mind, you loved seeing him out there, making friends and being the center of attention.

By the end of the evening, as the party was starting to draw to a close, you found yourself sitting against the viewing glass, tipsy and happily gazing out into dark tank where a few whales swam in circles. The pink-haired girl who you’d seen earlier crying over fish was next to you, seemingly in the same boat. There was an unspoken agreement that this spot was the Quiet Spot. Even though behind you a party raged on, filled with nerds, and lights, and alcohol, this spot was for being drunk and watching fish. This was a pastime you could get used to.

“There you are!” came a voice from behind you, causing the two of you to jump slightly. You looked up at beej and held your finger to your lips.

“Shhhh....” you whispered loudly. “You’ll throw off the whales.” okay, maybe you were closer to the side of drunk than tipsy.

The DJ started playing Don’t Stop Believing and there was a roar of excitement from the crowd behind you as drunk nerds scrambled to the dance floor. A chorus of voices of all kinds filled the air as everyone in the room seemed to sing along to the music that was pulsating through the air.

“I think I’m having a religious experience.” the pink haired girl said, as she stared continued staring at the whales.

“Me too.” you said, to Beej’s amusement. “Same time next year?”

The girl nodded in agreement. “May the whales don’t stop believing.” she said solemnly.

You stood up, wobbling a bit, but Beej held you steady. “You usually this much of a light weight?” he asked.

“Strong drinks.” you mumbled with a smile, leaning into him.

“Alright, I think you’re partied out.” Beej said. “Your fragile human body needs sleep. And probably other things too.”

“Water... food.” you replied and the two of you made your way out of the building, headed back towards your hotel. The night air felt good against your warmed skin, you didn’t realize how warm the room had gotten with so many people dancing. You were comfortably drunk with a dopey grin on your face as you clung to Beetlejuice.

“Hey... Beej.... are you my... booooooyfriend?” you asked, looking up at him.

“I’ll be whatever you want me to be, Babes.” he replied. “Think you can handle dating a demon?”

“Pffff... you aren’t scaaaary.” you slurred, and laughed at the offended look on Beej’s face.

“Excuse you, I am the ghost with the most!” he said. “I’m the scariest demon you’ll ever meet!”

“If you say so, neeeeeeeeerd!” you giggled.

Beetlejuice managed to drag your drunk ass back up to your room, and helped you use your key card. This time you did not immediately drop your pants (much to Beej’s dismay) but instead went straight to the bathroom to pee, wash your face, and get a glass of water.

“Beej... Beej I got a secret.” you said as you exited the bathroom.

“Yeah? What’s that?”

“I’m a little bit drunk.” you giggled and took a few long gulps of water.

“No shit?” he smiled at you.

“Not even a little turd.” he laughed at that.

“I’m gonna... I’m gonna drink this water so I’m functional tomorrow.” you set the glass down. “OH! Oh! I did... I did something smart!” you were bouncing on your feet.

“You’re the one that holds all the braincells here, but what did you do specifically?” Beej watched you with an amused grin as you stumbled slightly to the mini-fridge and pulled out a to-go box. “Got more food at Waffle House when we went. Because I’m SMART!”

The two of you turned on the tv to watch a movie with too many commercials as you ate your cold waffle and drank your glass of water. You soon found yourself resting against his shoulder again.

“Hey Beej?” you asked. “Where are you staying this weekend anyway?”

He stiffened slightly at the question. He wasn’t ready to tell you that he was just teleporting between the con and his home hundreds of miles away.

“I uh, don’t exactly have a room.” he replied, hoping that your drunk brain would let it go. It didn’t.

“What?” you looked up at him. “Wh-where are you sleeping?” your eyes looked like they were tearing up, oh shit, oh fuck, he did NOT want to make you cry. “Are you sleeping in your car??”

“Yes!” he blurted out. “I am... sleeping in my car!”

“No!” you pouted. “No! Bad Beetlejuice!” you stood up with a look that would be angry if it wasn’t coming from a half-drunk breather. “Stupid Beej, dumbass...” you mumbed to yourself and walekd over to the tv, grabbing a small envelope and pulling something out. “Can’t do anything without me, I swear.” you threw a piece of plastic at him and he looked it over. It was an extra key-card. “You’re staying HERE for the rest of the weekend you stupid, dumb... stupid face!”

When his mom had yelled at him when she was drunk, it was horrifying. He’d retreat into himself and tell himself he was as worthless as she said he was. With you, it was different. Your words sounded angry, but your eyes were full of hurt and concern. You didn’t really think he was stupid, or maybe you did, but either way it wasn’t a feeling of malice towards him. Someone was concerned for him, someone cared, someone wanted him around.

Who was he to say no to that?

“Alright, alright, if it would make you happy.” he replied with a grin. “But where am I gonna sleep, there’s only one bed!”

You looked at him in confusion, glancing between the two beds in the room. You were drunk but you weren’t stupid. At least, you didn’t think so.

“Beej there’s another bed right there...?” you questioned yourself. Was there one bed or two?

Beej stood up and grabbed a hold of your suitcase that was laying on the floor in the corner of the room. He walked over to the second bed and sloppily dumped out the contents onto the spare bed.

“I dunno what you’re talking about, all I see is this large pile of clothes!” he smirked. “I don’t know about you but in my experience humans don’t usually sleep on piles of laundry.”

You smiled and let out a small chuckle. “Oh, silly me. I suppose you’re right. There’s only one bed. One large bed that we could both fit in.”

“I insist that you take the bed and I will sleep on the floor.” he smiled.

“No no no, you’re the guest, you take the bed.” you said, grabbing his arm and pulling him onto the bed. He pulled back the covered and crawled in.

“Nah, I think you should take the bed.” he pulled you close against him, allowing you to take in his scent.

“...Your hoodie smells awful, take it off.” you grumbled, helping him remove the offending piece of clothing. You wondered if he had been correct about not washing it ever.

You didn’t hear anything after that as sleep overtook you quickly. Beej’s cool body under the warm blankets created the perfect temperature for falling asleep. Beej held you against his chest and turned on the tv low. He didn’t need to sleep, but he would stay until you woke up. Your warmth and weight on him allowing him a feeling that he’d only ever felt in one other place.

To Beetlejuice, you felt like home.

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#nacht fic #beetlejuice x reader #gamer beej #the convention fic

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the-blind-assassin-12 · 4 years

Text

A Big Step

A/N: Another in the Play the Hand You’re Dealt event, this one takes a look at the night before Benjamin moves in with you, and how it compares to a similar memory... This is related to the It’s Beginning to Look A Lot Like... / Too Good To Be True timeline.

Word Count: 2,176

Requested by: @something-tofightfor - Benjamin, Fluff, Memories or Photos, Reader’s POV

“Is this the last…” you gestured to the corrugated brown box using the black marker in your hand, the cap stuck to the bottom leaving the inky tip exposed. “That everything, Benjamin?” There’s still some room in here if we need to stick anything else in. Looking up from where you sat, legs sprawled and surrounded by newsprint and bubble wrap, you felt your cheeks grow warm as they lifted into a light smile.

Balancing two full boxes in his arms, he grinned at you from over the top of them. I bet those are both books. “Should be.” He crossed the small space to set the boxes down near the front door, where five others just like it were stacked next to a suitcase and an overnight bag. You leaned back and craned your neck so you could see around his legs at what he’d written on the side. Your smile grew when you saw the word, the B scrawled tall and thin just like in his signature, two squat O’s kept in place by a rigid K, the whole thing rounded off with the soft tail he gave his S. Knew it. He let out a breath as he straightened back up, brushing his hands on his pants. “We’ll do one last check in the morning but,” he scanned the small space, shelves and closets empty, not even a hanger left swinging on a bar. “I think that’s the last of it.”

“Good,” you stifled a yawn as you wrote the word miscellaneous on the box you’d been packing, full of paperweights and picture frames and souvenir statues, odds and ends he’d collected through the years, things he’d managed to cling to even in the ever turbulent and constantly changing current of his life. It wasn’t a lot, but it was what he had, and you’d enjoyed getting to help him pack it all safely away. You’d been to Benjamin’s shoe-box sized flat plenty of times, and you’d seen most of the things that you’d carefully wrapped and packed before. But seeing them up close, holding the Newcastle United mug that sat on his bookshelf and feeling the chip in the edge with the meaty tip of your thumb, or noticing the way that the screened logo of the football club’s crest had faded in one spot due to sunlight exposure from the slant in the blinds had somehow felt more intimate. You saw him in that cracked white porcelain and the coins, buttons, screws and paper clips that had managed to make their way into it, and you couldn’t help but imagine how it would look mixed among all the knick knacks and nonsense that accented your overflowing bookshelves at home.

Home. The word sent a jolt of excitement through you. It's going to be his home, too...our home. The realization had been hitting you in small bursts since the two of you had discussed living together a few weeks back, but it felt different as you folded the flaps to close that last container, running your hand over the marker ink that you could still smell. It’s real now. You shoved the box to slide it over with the rest and he dropped his hands down to help you up.

“Tired?” His fingers wrapped tightly around your palms and he gave a strong pull. You drew your legs up and pushed off the ground into a standing position, nodding as another yawn crept up on you. Benjamin laughed as he pulled you into his chest, letting go of your hands so he could press you closer. Eyes slipping closed, you hummed as your cheek made contact with the soft material of his tee. He’s so warm. A lazy smile curved your lips as you felt his touch along your spine and his breath in your hair. “Me too.”

I can tell. It wasn’t just the way that you could feel the heaviness in his limbs as they wrapped around your body. You could see it in his eyes, a glassy haze lightening them as his lids drooped low enough for his top lashes to sweep the bottom ones. You’d caught him rubbing them, reaching two fingers beneath his lenses to try to shove the sleep back inside. It was also evident in the disheveled nature of his hair. While he never spent much time styling it, it always looked like more of a mess at the end of a long day, parts of it sticking up at unruly angles from the way he’d comb and scrub his fingers and hands through it. And it’s been such a long day.

Both you and Benjamin had put in a full day of work before you’d arrived to help him. You’d gotten there as the furniture donation service was finishing up collecting some of the larger pieces that he wouldn’t be taking with him- the slightly warped wicker bed frame, the two-seater folding table and chairs, the lumpy orange sofa and the clunky coffee table. They’d all been given to him by friends and colleagues who were more than happy to relieve their overstuffed attics and basements of their bachelor pad furniture when he’d found himself in need of it. Your house was already completely furnished, and even though you’d told him that there was enough room in the basement to keep everything if he wanted to, he’d assured you that it wasn’t necessary.

“I don’t think I’ll be needing any of it again,” he’d told you, an honest gleam in his eyes and a warm tone in his voice making your stomach flip. Everyone and their cousin had been sure to share their unsolicited opinion regarding your new living arrangement. You’d heard everything from “Two months? That’s too quick.” to “How do you know it’s going to work out?” and you knew that he’d been raked over even hotter coals, his friends reminding him of his former marriage and how he’d rushed things then. While you didn’t need anyone’s approval of your actions, you’d be lying if you said it hadn’t made you just a little nervous. But hearing the certainty in his words bolstered the faith that you had in this decision. I don’t think you’ll need any of it again either, B.

Sighing, you opened your eyes, knowing that if you didn’t you were likely to fall asleep on your feet. “We should lay down, get some sleep.” You turned, resting your chin on his breastbone to look up at him as his hands slid down to your waist. “Early start tomorrow and-” the rest of your sentence fell into the gaping maw of yet another yawn. And its a big day...and I’m exhausted.

The skin on the bridge of his nose wrinkled as his lips twitched into an even fuller smile, lifting his cheeks. “We should. Or, well,” he brought one hand up, tilting his head as he traced your right eyebrow with the tip of his pointer finger, the others trailing softly over your forehead and into the wisps of hair that framed your face. Oh that’s...when he does that it’s… “We should try.” His hand cupped the side of your face and you leaned into it, feeling his long fingers threading through the loosely gathered hair at the base of your ponytail. He chuckled and you did too, knowing that you’d be sleeping on an old air mattress that likely had a hole in it, was too small for two people to fit comfortably, and would almost inevitably result in one or both of you taking an elbow to the ribs and waking up on the deflated remains of the vinyl cushion. But if I’m waking up with him it doesn’t matter. You shivered as you realized you’d be waking up with him every morning from now on, in the same bed, under the same roof.

“I’m sure we will. I know I will.” This time you stifled your yawn by tucking your face down against his body and squeezing your lips together, but you weren’t fooling anyone. Not even a flat mattress is keeping me awake tonight.

He let out another small laugh as he reached down to untuck your chin. “I know you will, too.” Taking the hand from your face, he reached up to remove his glasses, folding the arms and setting them next to his keys on top of the tallest box. “I just,” he returned both hands to your body, eyebrows gathered together and a breath leaving his lungs but his eyes never leaving yours. What’s wrong? “I wanted to…”

“Benjamin?” You gave him a squeeze before raising one hand up to smooth out the furrows in his brow with your thumb, your fingernails scratching lightly along his hairline. Curving your hand around his cheekbone, you trailed your touch down over his scratchy beard and leaned in to brush your nose against his. “What’s the matter?”

He shook his head, squinting to focus his gaze even more intently. “Nothing.” Turning his head, he quickly left a kiss to the center of your palm. “Nothing at all.” He pulled you back into him then, lips finding the same spot in your hair as before, leaving another kiss there as you felt his hand come up to cradle the back of your head, rocking you gently before continuing. “I just wanted to thank you… for all of this. For… for helping me and, and for…” Helping you? Of course I...why wouldn’t I? He sighed. “For making me feel like you want me to move in with you, and not like I’m...like I’m some kind of…” Of course that’s what I want. You felt him swallow and guessed where the conversation was headed. “When I moved in with...with Julia,” you flinched at the sound of her name. Get used to it, she’s his ex-wife you’re going to hear about her. “Do you know what I think about when I remember that day?” How often do you think about that day? You immediately chastised yourself. Not the point, let him talk. “I remember that she didn’t even offer to help me pack or even pick me up, she just… joked about how little I had and-” he scoffed and you felt him shift to look down at you. You tried to conceal the contempt you felt for the other woman, for the way she’d belittled and underestimated him at every turn, but you weren’t sure if you were successful. “You know, I don’t blame her kids for the way that they acted towards me, not in the beginning.” He shook his head. “She didn’t even tell Leo that I was moving in. Didn’t… She knew it was going to be an uncomfortable conversation, so she pushed it onto me instead. Guess she didn’t think it was a big enough step to warrant any wave-making, but…”

“But it is a big step.” You hadn’t meant to interrupt him, but you didn’t want him to think that he had to downplay what this milestone meant just because Julia had. I don’t know much about her, but I know I’m nothing like her. You wanted to make sure he knew it, too- knew that he could be himself and express himself and feel what he felt. Otherwise, what’s the point? “It’s an important step, because it means-”

It was his turn to interrupt, and he did so by covering your mouth with his own and grasping your face between his hands. Stunned only for a second, you quickly responded to his kiss, left hand gripping the top of his shoulder, the right sliding up his jaw. You could feel it working beneath your palm as his lips and tongue moved with yours. God he’s a good kisser. Your fingers curled, biting into the skin at the back of his neck as you rose on your toes to get a better angle. You felt everything you were going to say echoed in that kiss- it means trust, it means taking the first step towards a future, it means taking a risk...together. It was a risk you’d never taken before, but for the first time in your life, you were more afraid of missing the reward than suffering the loss.

When he finally broke the kiss, you opened your eyes slowly to see him already looking at you. “I know what it means,” he nodded, eyes brightening despite the sand man’s handiwork causing them to start falling shut. “And you do too.” Yeah, Benjamin, I do. Before you could confirm his statement, you were struck by another yawn and he laughed, a warm rumble leaving his chest. “Come on, let's go get some sleep.” He kissed your cheek and took your hand, leading you into the other room where the mattress, pillows and blankets were already waiting.

Eyes already closed before you were fully horizontal, you felt yourself give into the void of sleep but not before you could answer him. “Good idea...big day tomorrow.”

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#play the hand you’re dealt #card game prompts #benjamin greene #fluff #memories or photos #reader's pov #tgtbt #too good to be true #benjamin greene x you #benjamin greene x reader #gold digger fanfiction #gold digger benjamin #julia day #is the worst #in the world #she's worse than mona lisa saperstein #and that's saying a lot #a big day indeed #i love these nerds

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niqhtlord01 · 5 years

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Humans are weird: Space Pirates

A Pirate’s Perspective.....Part 2 (part 1 here https://niqhtlord01.tumblr.com/post/186975300276/humans-are-weird-space-pirates ) Amelia gazed up at the mechanized helper bots. Each was as large as a shipping container on tread tracks and with grappling arms designed to lift the weight of three containers at once; and she was looking at a dozen of them... Their red lenses turned towards her and she could feel the operators behind them grinning as they made them roll forward. She rolled aside just as a massive grapple arm smashed down towards her caving in the deck like a tin can where she had been standing. As she got up she saw the rest of her crew idling in the entry port, watching the whole struggle like it was a Saturday morning cartoon. “Well don’t just stand there you fraking idiots!” she shouted as she rolled away again as more of the helpers converged on her. “Start shooting something!” “FOR GOLD AND GLORY!” The pirates raised their guns and fired as they darted into the cargo ship after their captain. The small arms fire bounced off the plating of the helpers but it was enough to draw several of them away from Amelia to face this new threat. The hold quickly devolved into chaos as the pirates circled round the helpers and continued firing at them from all sides, climbing several of the storage racks to shoot down at them. Despite being greatly outnumbered by the pirates, the dozen mechanized helpers began quickly evening out the odds. Their grappling arms swinging left and right in a frenzy, catching the occasional unlucky pirate and flinging them into a nearby wall and turning them into a bloody art piece. One of the mechanized helpers reached into the storage racks and pulled out a cargo container. Grabbing it with both hands above their head the chucked it at the pirates higher up, taking several of them at once. Amelia had finally got tired of rolling around like some pansy video game character and drew her side arms. Unlike the rest of her crew, these guns were custom designed with enough stopping power to blow a hole through any locked door. With a weapon in each hand she began calmly side stepping around the nearest mechanized helper while unloading round after explosive round into its head casing. The shells began denting the casing as the unit turned and began rapidly advancing on the pirate captain realizing she was the most dangerous threat in the room. The bark of her pistols drowned out the surrounding battle until Amelia’s world was nothing but her weapons and her target. The units advance began to falter as it brought its arms up to protect its head as the shells streamed out one after another. *Click* *Click* *Click* *Click* The unit lowered its arms to see that the pirate captain’s weapons had run dry and quickly resumed its advance before she had time to reload. To the unit’s surprise Amelia threw away her weapons and pulled a second pair of pistols from her combat mesh. She smiled as the shells found their mark this time, breaching the head casing and detonating inside the brain cortex. The mechanized helper lost control of itself and powered past Amelia and smashed full speed into the wall. Without bothering to admire her kill Amelia turned to see Mr. Fig sprinting into the hold and leap on to the nearest mechanized helper in a single bound. With a gurgling roar he opened his jaw larger than should have been physically possible and latched on to the head before biting down. As Mr. Fig began ripping the head off Amelia was greeted to a sight of tearing metal, snapping cables, and a shower of sparks before the entire head was detached and spat away. “As impressive as that was Mr. Fig, I doubt that’s good for your teeth.” Amelia called out as she sought a new target. Mr. Fig turned towards her and to her surprise smiled, showing that every tooth in his jaw was now either missing or broken. A strange crunching sound started coming from his jaw and to her surprise an entirely new set of sharpened teeth began forcing their way through his gums dripping with blood. “That’s alright captain, I’ve got plenty more.” “And here I thought my dreams had enough nightmares.” Mr. Tipples waddled into the room tinkering with a small metallic disk.”Just about set captain.” She turned around to see her crew were getting the ever living shit kicked out of them. At least the ones still alive were she noted, finding a few more nauseating living murals now plastering the walls and floor. “go now!” she shouted waving Mr. Tipples forward, “While we still have a crew at all!” Mr. Tipples finished his tinkering and placed the disk into a pouch on the front of his clothes. Dropping down to all fours, Mr. Tipples suddenly began charging into the room, dashing between the clumsy smashings of the mechanized helpers. Their massive bodies now turning against them as they could not hit such a small target without first hitting each other. As Mr. Tipples neared the first helper he threw the small disk at the head unit and with a magnetic click it latched on. Shortly after the head unit turned into a shower of sparks as the power dampeners inside the disk activated ans sapped all of the units power at once leaving it a dead husk. Amelia watched as Mr. Tipples continued darting between the over-sized grappling arms and treads while throwing disks left and right. Mr. Fig, not wanting to be outdone, ran after him and with sheer force ripped off an entire arm of a helper and using it as a club proceeded to beat it out of commission. Seeing the situation now under control she turned to the surviving crew. “We’ve still got a ship to take, get moving!” ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- After the battle at the boarding tube the rest of the assault went rather smoothly. The crew of the cargo ship appeared to be a skeleton size and largely unarmed. Mr. Tipples and Mr. Fig’s teams ran into some resistance but the crew were using metal pipes and tools to defend themselves. After one was foolish enough to take a swing at Mr. Fig with a metal bat he caught it in his jaw and snapped it in two the crew began surrendering. The last group on the bridge held out only slightly longer. They had sealed the doors and refused to open them, stating that they were strong enough to withstand any explosive device. Not wanting to be slowed down any longer, Amelia ordered the charges to be placed on the wall section beside the door instead and blew a hole straight through the wall and then proceeded to storm the bridge. All captives were brought to the main hold and gathered outside the sealed loading doors. Unlike the rest of the ship, the central hold was designed to withstand the destruction of the entire ship while keeping the cargo safe inside. The designers had placed more worth on the cargo than the rest of the ship so blasting it open was not an option. Amelia was beginning to wonder if she would need to start torturing the captives to get the cargo ships captain to unlock the hold when Mr. Tipples finally cracked the code and unlocked the central hold. As was her law, she had first pick of the loot before the rest was divided up among the rest of the pirate crew. Amelia was unlike most pirate captains as they would claim the largest share of loot for themselves and the scraps were then divided among the crew. Not many things ever interested her enough to value wanting and so she only picked one item for herself. Additionally, by offering her crew the larger share she ensured that they would remain loyal to her any potential mutineer would have a tough sell against such generous terms. Amelia had Mr. Tipples and Mr. Fig stand guard outside over the captives while she entered the central hold alone. The inside was dark and cold, the only source of light coming through the opening in the door Amelia stepped through. She reached into one of the mesh pockets and withdrew a small sphere. She pressed the sphere’s activation, but when nothing happened she pressed it several more times before resigning to shaking it violently in the palm of her hand. Finally the sphere started emitting a strong light and hovered just above her head, following her as she continued walking between the cargo containers. The hold was eerily silent with only the echoing of her prosthetic leg resounding in the chamber. The central hold was truly massive, running nearly the entire length of the ship from just under the bridge to the engines. There were other cargo holds inside the ship that surrounded the central hold that were by far easier to access, but the goods held within them would be of little value compared to what was in the central hold. Smiling as she saw that the entire hold was stacked from bow to stern with containers packed three high Amelia picked one at random to inspect. The container was standard issue just like the ones she had been fighting between mere hours before but she had to start somewhere. She figured she would be searching through several or several dozen to see if there was anything she wanted before letting the crew in. The first sign something was wrong was when she inspected the doors to the container. Usually, valuable cargo inside central holds would have state of the art locking mechanisms per container. Instead, Amelia was met with a thick metal chain with a large padlock holding it together. She approached the door and pressed her ear to the container listening carefully. She waited for what felt like an eternity before she heard a soft rustling sound. She stepped back from the door and smiled. Most likely there was something alive in there and might be some form of exotic animal. Rich traders paid millions to decorate their trade offices with such creatures to flaunt their wealth and she had found her pet Hydra in one such shipment. She drew a pair of pistols and with a swift motion blew the lock clean off, the chains falling to the ground soon after echoing out loudly. Grabbing hold of one of the doors, Amelia hauled it open carefully just in case something rushed her.The inside of the container was pitch black but she could clearly make out rustling sounds now, the familiar jingle clinking of chains. Despite not being able to see inside the container she clearly could smell something was alive as she was hit by a wave of rancor that would have made lesser men throw up constantly. Amelia was a pirate captain and was used to such odors aboard her ship, so she only coughed violently. She took hold of the glow sphere and gently pushed it inside of the container, her pistol aimed inside. The chain rattling was getting louder now as the sphere went deeper inside the container and Amelia was sure she was about to lay eyes on her prize. As the light neared the back of the container she did indeed see what twas chained. Several strands of metal chains were welded to the ceiling of the container holding up the ragged husk of people. As the sphere cast more light Amelia saw that it wasn’t just adults. Longer strands of chains held what she could only assume were children, every chain locked around a bulky metal collar. They were humanoid in shape but as Amelia took a closer look she saw that none of the figures chained to the walls had mouths and their eyes were a light shade of pure blue with no iris. Their clothes were torn and dirty, covered in fesses as there was no place to use the bathroom. The smaller aliens clumped together behind the larger ones who were standing between Amelia and them, protecting them from a potential threat. As if this scene of barbarity was not horrific enough Amelia recoiled in horror as she saw that some of the larger aliens chained were not moving at all. They had died were being held up by their metal collars. Amelia’s mind was racing now, unable to fully comprehend what she was seeing. She unsteadily took a step back but her prosthetic leg slid in something and she tumbled over. She blinked her eyes as she fell and as she opened them she saw the larger aliens rush her. The comforting feeling of her pistol was still in her hand she fired off a warning shot into the ceiling of the container. The rush of aliens stopped and they quickly retreated back to the far end of the container and watched as Amelia slowly rose to her feet, wiping off portions of shit that still clung to her. She had risen to her feet again when one of the smaller ones broke from the group and approached her. The others attempted to stop her but she pushed past them until she was as far as she could go, the chain of her collar pulling taunt against the wall holding. The alien was not barely up to the height of Amelia’s knees and gazed up at her. Without saying anything they held out their hand. “I...” Amelia’s brain was rapidly throttling by this point. “I.....I don’t...” She slowly backed out of the container back into the central hold and vomited, her composure all but forgotten at what she had just witnessed. She vommited for a minute before wiping her face and calming down. The glow sphere now was hovering above her saving her from the sight of such horror, but she could still here the aliens chains rattling from inside. A sudden horrific realization struck her and she immediately stormed over to the next container. She blew off the lock and threw open the door without hesitation. The sphere’s light casting inside showed a similar sight as before. Alien figures chained to the sides of the container. She went to the next container, blew off the lock, then took a look inside. Then she repeated it again for the next one, and the one after that, and then again for the one after that. She searched some twenty containers, all of them filled with chained aliens either dead or on the verge of dying. it could not be denied that she lived outside the rules of the law and was a criminal by all means. But there were some crimes that even she could never forgive, nor leave unpunished. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Amelia emerged from the central hold and gazed over the captives. Mr. Fig and Mr. Tipples looking startled and relieved at her return as it had been nearly a half hour since she entered the hold. “Jesus captain. A little warning next time before yo-” Amelia glared at Mr. Fig and the sudden look of raw hatred and anger on her face silenced him. Jenka noticed the other pirates take a cautious step backwards as if they knew something that look meant and were just as terrified as the Predatoria. Amelia moved towards the captain of the Morbis Ulta, not bothering to wait for the other captives to move out of the way she merely shoved them violently out of her path. At reaching the captain she grabbed him by the collar and lifted him to his feet, her eyes glaring like knives into his soul. “Did you know what you were transporting?” The captain stuttered as he struggled in the surprisingly strong grip of Amelia. She slapped him across the face sending him flying back to the floor. “Did.You.Know?” Her voice was as sharp as a knifes edge as she looked around at the rest of the crew. The captain didn’t have to say anything, his body language betrayed him. He knew........... Without saying another word Amelia stamped her leg three times and once again the Hydra appeared at her side. She gestured to the cowering captain on the ground and spoke only one word. “Feast.” All five mouths of the Hydra shot open and the creature surged past Amelia. The captain began screaming as the five heads latched on to him and began biting off chunks of flesh one at a time. He cried and shouted for help as he tried to crawl away only for the Hydra to tear into his legs and pull him back. Several other captive crew members rushed to their captains side to protect him but the Hydra turned on them just as rapidly. Teeth latching on to throats before ripping them wide open and leaving the gasping crew members bleeding out on the floor. Amelia watched the dying captain for a moment. There was no grin on her face, no witty remark about the captain’s demise, only grim satisfaction. She then turned and walked over to Mr. Fig. He didn’t look surprised at the his captain’s pet viciously devouring another living creature, but he knew his captain and he did show concern as she was not one prone to overly violent and cruel actions. “Captain, what did you find in there?” he asked. She looked up at him, her mouth opening and closing as if trying to find the right words to describe what she had saw; but her silver tongue failed her. “Evil.” she simply stated. She glanced back at the remaining captives who were all now recoiling from the Hydra as it finished eating their captain. Mr. Fig followed her line of sight then looked back at her. She motioned for him to come closer and he leaned down for her. “None of them make it off this ship alive. Finish it, then have the crew enter the holds.” With that Amelia left back into the holds without another word. Mr. Tipples looked up at Mr. Fig in confusion but with one glance something was communicated between the two of them. Mr. Tipples nodded and then followed after Amelia into the hold as Mr. Fig turned to the pirate crew. “Aim for their legs. No kill shots. Captain want’s her pet to have its meals alive.” Without further orders the pirate crew hefted their weapons to their sides and began firing into the captives. True to their orders none of the shots killed anyone but sent them sprawling to the floor with cries of pain on their lips from the weapons fire. As the Hydra began moving from one injured captive to another Mr. Fig motioned for the more pirates to follow him into the hold. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- In the end the pirates discovered that every container aboard the two of the three transport ships they raided were full of chained aliens. Not all of them were the same species, some were even human to Amelia’s surprise. Amelia was in the process of deciding on what to do with them when the boarding crew for the third and final transport came in. It seems that some of the slaves broke out of their cells and had rioted, killing the crew and taking controller of the ship. What really caught Amelia’s eye was that from the report the breakout was started by a small human child and a Predatorian. “What are your orders captain?” Amelia looked up from the report and saw Mr. Fig and Mr. Tipples looking at her on the command deck of the Liberty Jewel. She reclined in her chair and looked upwards, her mind still not fully grasping how civilized peoples of the stars could rely on such barbaric practices of slavery. She had worked herself into a depressing mood when she felt her Hydra nuzzling up against her. She scratched their heads and she perked up some. “Transfer all of the slaves to the third ship. They can take it and go where ever they want.” “And what about the our crew?” She looked down at Mr. Tipples. “They were expecting a cut from the cargo, but now we are letting the cargo go?” Amelia stood up and descended the steps from her command throne to stand over Mr. Tipples. She gazed him in the eyes, any notion other than disgust present on her face. “They are people Mr. Tipples. People are not cargo. I would suggest you remember that.” He felt the anger swelling up from her and cautiously took a step back. “Yes captain, sorry captain.” he said as he bowed. She gazed at him for a few moments longer before looking to the viewport. “Tell the crew that we’re taking the two remaining cargo ships and we can sell them back at the cove. There’s always someone looking for a large transport to move questionable goods.” She watched the third cargo ship power up and begin floating away through the asteroid field. There was nothing more than to suppress this entire day’s adventure from her mind so she went about the process. “Mr. Fig, have our sister ships latch on to the cargo ships. Mr. Tipples, ensure that the locking is secure. Once that is done we will begin the journey back to the cove.” With that Mr. fig and Mr. Tipples moved to begin issuing orders while Amelia returned to her throne, already planning her next raid and hopping her prize will be more of a profitable variety. Good deeds were all well and good, but a pirate craved profit and glory, and Amelia was pirate first above all else.

#HUMANS ARE WEIRD #humans are insane #humans are space orcs #humans are space oddities #scifi #space pirates #pirate #story

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infraredforhealth1 · 3 years

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Can Deer See Infrared Light?

Can Deer Sense Colors and See Ultraviolet Light?

Have you ever wondered if deer sense colors and can see ultraviolet light? This is one question that scientists are trying to answer.

Do they see ultraviolet light because it is all around them all the time, or do they only get a glimpse of it through their eyes when it moves in front of them.

Scientists have been studying this question for quite some time but have not come up with any concrete answers.

When you look at an animal standing in the middle of a field, or standing in front of a beautiful landscape, you will notice something about that animal that most of us cannot see.

It is that subtle aura of color that they give off that most of us can not even identify.

But if we were to study the way that they move and their physiology, we might be able to identify some of the different colors they give off.

These studies are still ongoing, but there are some clues that have been uncovered as to what they are thinking.

Researchers have noticed that animals do not only see ultraviolet light, but they also react to green light.

Do Deer Have Rely On Color For Deer Sense?

Did you ever wonder what does the deer sense colors toward the violet end of the spectrum?

This is one question many people ask and often get very few, if any answers.

Some folks say that deer are able to see infrared or far infrared and their eyes are naturally green.

Now this is a natural color for them and they do need to be in an area where they can see these colors.

Some other folks suggest that deer have very sensitive vision and this is why they only see certain colors such as greens, or blacks.

Well, I beg to differ with you on that one.

Deer can see blues, browns, or blacks better than some of the most seasoned hunters.

Sometimes they may even see white.

If a hunter is sitting in a tree stand in a very remote location and there is no tree cover, but they can see a faint glow of yellow or white light behind some boulders, then they are probably close enough to see a deer in the distance.

Why Do Deer Only Have Binocular Vision?

Do deer only have binoculars, with two eyes, like all other animals?

The answer to this question is yes.

A deer’s eyes are in a very narrow shaped arc like which near front of their noses for optimum purposes; it is not just eyesight that they have, but also the ability to see far off into the distance.

If you stay very still the deer would just think you are just another tree or plant.

The deer only have binoculars, with two eyes, like all other creatures.

Binoculars are designed with a field of vision, similar to a human; two lenses are in each lens, rather than one like a binocular.

To deer, this is all about movement. Because their eyes are so close together, the deer is not able to move quickly from point A to point B they must look through both lenses at the same time.

For them to do this, they need two lenses, each with a field of vision slightly larger than the other.

This will allow them to see all the way around to the other side of the deer.

How Do Deer Can Pick Up Movement That Humans And Other Evolved Predators?

There is another way that deer can pick up movement that humans and other predators with very close set eyes have.

They have incredible eyesight and are able to see things that we cannot.

It is common knowledge that deer can see far in the distance and they have been known to cite long range prey as well.

The most famous example of this is of course the elk.

However, deer have also been known to sight long range prey such as caribou and even mountain goats.

They were also used by Native Americans as their allies when fighting other tribes for food and because of their great sense of smell, these deer can actually be heard over a long distance away.

Their great sense of smell lets them know where there are people or other animals around that they might want to eat.

Most Hunters Unaware of the Harm Caused by Wearing UV Brightened Clothing

Most hunters unintentionally wore UV brightened clothing to avoid deer seeing humans.

They think they are being clever by wearing a bright orange top or dark colored pants, but they were not.

It is very important for hunters to wear deer camouflage every time they go into a deer stand to avoid being seen by the deer.

While the deer in their natural environment may not see humans as a threat, seeing people in the woods increases the chances of an aggressive approach from the deer.

UV brightened clothing helps minimize this stress.

Deer are highly sensitive to human scent and if a hunter approaches too closely, the deer will run away because they can sense human scent.

While some will say that brightened clothing makes no difference at all, I beg to differ.

Studies have shown that the body color of deer has a profound effect on the amount of stress the deer will feel.

For example, a very bright red shirt worn by a hunter who is wearing a bright orange pants is almost guaranteed to cause him or her considerable amounts of stress.

Can You See Beyond Violet And Infrared Light?

To explain, let us first take a look at what happens in human eyes. Human eyes are extremely complex, for they are able to take in all sorts of light and be able to filter out colors.

The human eyes are able to filter all these colors, so they can only see what is below the ultraviolet light spectrum.

The human eyes work in much the same way as the camera in that they are able to see the light that has come up through the bottom of the lens.

This is where the human eyes lose their color perception, but they are able to filter this out by using the pupil.

When using an infrared camera, the human eyes are able to filter out the infrared light by using the pupil to focus on an area that is illuminated by the light.

The human eye works in much the same way as the camera in that they are able to focus on an area that is illuminated by the light.

In order to see anything with the human eye, the iris will move across the surface of the cornea to focus on the light.

Why Can’t I See Some Light?

The human eyes can’t see all the light that falls on it, this is because of the scattering effect of light.

Light is made up of packets of different energy which are called electromagnetic vibrations.

When these vibration lines up they form a beam of light and this light is what we see.

Visible light comprises all of the visible light that we can see and this includes all colors of light as well as ultraviolet light.

However, our eyes cannot distinguish between red, yellow and blue which are actually ultraviolet rays and we only see these colors when the sun is out.

The human eyes can’t see all the light that falls on it because of its reflecting properties and its reflecting surfaces.

The retinas consist of a ring of cells surrounded by an organelles layer which contains the image that we see.

This layer helps to reflect certain colors of light back into the eye and so, only a small part of the electromagnetic spectrum is transmitted to the retina and we notice it by the color that we see.

For instance, the blue wavelength is the only light that reaches the retina in the visible portion of the spectrum.

The human eyes can only distinguish between blue, red, green, yellow and orange colors but these four colors are the only ones that can actually be seen by our human eyes.

We cannot see certain colours at the same time, such as light vs dark, green vs red, yellow vs blue.

We cannot see colors such as yellow with blue, red greenish and red greenish.

Some people refer to light as “red light” because our eye operates in this way and also our cones are more sensitive to red colors.

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Light Spectrum

On one end of the spectrum is red, which is the most visible color and on the other end of the spectrum is yellow which is also the most invisible.

If we were to travel faster in time, the visible light would eventually become red, and as it did so the earliest paintings would begin to appear in yellow.

Thus in those early days the yellow ray would become the more popular one for artists to work with.

However there are some ways to change how that red and yellow appear on the canvas as time goes by and newer methods have been developed for digital photography to make it possible to capture the light waves in a completely new manner.

At one extreme, all colors can be represented by a pure white light, at the other extreme all colors can be represented by their component colors.

The light that hits our eyes is composed of red, green, and blue and as we look around we can detect subtle differences between all of these components.

For instance the red of a rose appears to be a little bluer or reddish than the actual red but when this light source is shifted slightly out of focus (an effect known as white balancing) this difference becomes much less noticeable.

Now we have light coming in from all directions and with different amounts of intensity, and the photographer must ensure that each color is brought out to its maximum level.

There are also some colors which cannot be seen unless they are seen at their most extreme.

To a photographer, it may be more important to have red happen in full brilliance than to see how much blue is in a scene.

Making Up the Visible Spectrum

Have you ever wondered what is making up the visible spectrum? Have you ever pondered what it might be? There is a big mystery here, because although we can see the rainbow, we don’t actually see the rainbow’s color unless the visible part of the spectrum has been filtered. So, what are those things making up the visible spectrum?

We can see the visible spectrum by looking through opaque objects, but this only allows us to see the edges of those objects, and not the middle.

By looking through a medium that does not allow us to see the center of the spectrum, we can’t see the visible portion.

So we know that the visible spectrum consists of all colors of light, but what we don’t understand is what distinguishes each color.

While it is true that our eyes are capable of detecting color, it is an oversimplification to say that the eye determines color.

The eye works together with the nervous system and visual processing organs to determine color.

Since all visible waves have wavelengths that are of a particular length, it is possible for an observer to view the visible spectrum through objects that have different wavelengths.

The way that this is made possible is the existence of what are known as “waveless” waves.

Waveless waves exist at two different frequencies, or electromagnetic waves, which means they can only be observed at a single frequency.

That means that making up the visible spectrum is impossible if our eyes do not perceive Waveless radiation.

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How Few Rods Can See in the Dark

In the animal kingdom, most animals that walk upright have relatively few rods at all and the ones that do have very few are so tiny that they really are only suited for swimming and insects. Rods in fish are even smaller and can be seen with the naked eye; these rods are also used as sensory organs to detect other types of movement in the water.

Humans, on the other hand, have rather large rods that enable them to see at night.

Human eyes are extremely sensitive to light and this sensitivity is one of the reasons that humans have a relatively difficult time seeing in dimly lit conditions.

This is why most people spend their lives trying to improve their night vision; they want to see in the dark so that they can go about their daily business and enjoy life.

As humans evolved from primates, there was not much need for eyes that evolved to see in the dark because there were not any other visible light sources around.

However, as the human population began to grow and our needs for food and other necessities started to grow, we began to need to use tools to help us eat.

Suddenly, there was a need for things like fire, knives and arrowheads and so these human-designed tools were created.

Today, humans have rather few rods at all and we can see everything that is going on at night with the aid of a powerful magnifying glass.

Most humans have rather poor night vision and as a result, they can spend hours in total darkness searching for car lights, street lights, or anything else that might be there.

As cars become faster and less safe to drive in, this means that humans will likely have a greater need for better night vision technology in the future.

In fact, as cars become more automated, our dependence on them will also grow along with the number of human-designed drivers and artificial intelligence control systems that will be required.

Do Large Mammalian Eyes Contain Two Different Types Of Cells?

Mammalian eyes are of two different types, which are referred to as the ocular cells.

These two types of cells are situated in the bones of the eye. One of the two, the retinal pigment epithelium, or RPE, is responsible for absorbing color and vision.

The other, the choroid, contains blood cells and the fluids that support the lens and the retina.

The choroid also has a role in the regulation of tears and lubrication of the joints.

The epithelial cells are found at the back of the eyeball, while the choroid and the macular contain the blood vessels, muscles, and the nerves responsible for receiving vision.

While the eyes contain two different types of cells that receive light, the actual focusing system for the eye is a single set of photoreceptors.

This type of photoreceptor can focus light to a specific area by the use of a thin layer of tissue called the retina.

The retinas located in the back part of the eyelid and on either side of the pupil are the two that are used in human vision.

In mammals, the human eyes only have about forty million retinal ganglion cells which are responsible for processing all the visual information sent to the brain.

Other than the retina and the macula, the remaining portion of the eye is made up of the lens and the iris, which controls the amount of light entering the eye.

In order for the eyes to function properly, all the cells in the eye must work in unison.

Mammalian eyes do not function like other animals’ eyes.

Instead, the cells of the eyes are constantly fighting for control of the amount of light entering the eyes.

When one tries to gain control over the amount of light entering the eyes, they will go into a state of excitation in which they fire their neurons at each other, causing the eyeballs to move around and focus light to a certain spot.

The result of this process is that the eyes of a person with a mammoth sized head are much bigger than normal, which explains why people think their eyes look that big.

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What Do Deer Generally Perceive Us As?

Many hunters who hunt from stands have often wondered what the deer’s perception of us is when we are sitting very still.

In other words do they see us as a target?

Although deer have very acute hearing and sight they will normally only pick up sound or movement very briefly. Once they realize you are not moving they will move on. However, this does not mean you should be sitting still at your stand.

The post Can Deer See Infrared Light? appeared first on Infrared for Health.

source https://infraredforhealth.com/can-deer-see-infrared-light/

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hellzyeahthewebwieldingavenger · 6 years

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Mayday’s Costumes Through the Years

Spider-Ben Costume (What If Volume 2 #105)

Mayday’s first costume was literally her uncle Ben Reilly’s old Spider-Man costume (apparently repaired since his death). She adopted this to battle the Normie Osborn Green Goblin and save her parents back in What If Volume 2 #105 where she debuted.

Makeshift Costume (Spider-Girl #1)

Since Ben’s costume (along with most of Peter’s ones) were burned at the end of the previously mentioned issue, Mayday’s second costume was a makeshift affair composed of a black Lycra gym suit, a black ski mask and silk gloves. It is rather appropriate that Mayday have her own makeshift costume when dabbling in life as a superhero. Both her father (as ‘the Masked Marvel’ in his wrestling days) and Ben Reilly have similarly thrown together costumes before adopting more traditional superhero attire.

Spider-Ben Costume 2.0 (Spider-Girl #1)

At the end of Spider-Girl #1 Mayday managed to perfectly recreate Ben’s old costume with one exception. The tips of the white lenses in her mask were more pointy and pronounced than had been the case in her original costume. You might think that that’s a nitpick and merely down to artistic licence on the part of the Pat Oliffe (who hadn’t co-created Mayday nor Ben’s outfit). But in fact the different design of the eyepieces was not only maintained when Ron Frenz returned to drawing the series, but was commented upon in Spider-Girl #76 by Kaine. Like her makeshift suit, Mayday’s ability to single handily create a full body suit (with a rather complex pattern) is appropriate given her father and uncle doing the same, to say nothing of the sewing abilities of her mother and great aunts May and Anna.

Makeshift Costume 2.0 (Spider-Girl #7)

Mayday temporarily wore this even more plainclothes makeshift costume in Spider-Girl #7 after her parents took away her regular costume.

Black Costume (Spider-Girl #75)

Mayday’s next noteworthy costume change occurred in Spider-Girl #75. The issue was originally going to be a major turning point for Mayday as she would ‘grow up’ and begin calling herself Spider Woman. Part of this growing up (and by extension I suppose, growing ‘darker’) would involve a new more serious costume. And so she purchased a sleek black and white number from the Spider Shoppe (a store which specialized in Spider-Girl related merchandise). The costume visually recalls her father’s black costume which debuted in Amazing Spider-Man #252 drawn by Spider-Girl co-creator (and artist of SG #75) Ron Frenz. MJ was actually scared of May in this outfit (due to past experiences with Venom) which is ironic since she owned the Spider Shoppe and presumably designed or approved of the manufacturing of the suit.

Black Costume 2.0 (Spider-Girl #76)

This ‘costume’ was worn by May after she literally ripped her black mask apart. She did this to reassure her hysterical mother who believed that she was encountering Venom again. May’s tactic worked but she was left without a mask and so made so by borrowing an old mask of her father’s.

Symbiote Costume/Spider-Ben 3.0 (Spider-Girl #100)

In Spider-Girl #100 a critically injured Mayday was healed when the Venom symbiote bonded to her body. After she was saved the symbiote temporarily stuck around and used its shape shifting abilities to create a costume which looked nearly identical to Mayday’s regular outfit. The only major differences were that her forearms and hands had patches of the red-and-black patterns from the rest of her costume and her fingers were all blue, giving the impression she was wearing finger less gloves.

Makeshift Costume 3.0 (Amazing Spider-Girl #1/Avengers Next #1)

This costume was yet another makeshift attempt by Mayday although even more thrown together than the black gym affair in Spider-Girl #1. Whilst the outfit first appeared in print in ASG #1, chronologically she was wearing it in Avengers Next #1 which was set before ASG #1 despite being published later.

Spider-Ben 4.0 (Amazing Spider-Girl #1/#2)

Although no in-universe explanation was ever presented, in Amazing Spider-Girl #2 Mayday is given her red and blue Spider-Girl costume by Mary Jane but it looks noticeably different than the cloth costume she wore from Spider-Girl #1 onwards. The eyepieces are much smaller. There is a larger patch of blue around her armpits. And her webshooters have been redesigned, being both smaller and more closely resembling her father’s as opposed to Ben Reilly’s. These changes are never commented upon in the series so could be attributed to artistic licence although between the time skip from SG #100 and ASG #1 and the fact that Ron Frenz drew both it would be easy to say Mayday modified her outfit. Indeed later issues depict the suit as having a kind of zipper around the neck area, which is something never depicted in the previous Spider-Girl or Spider-Man suits.

This costume technically first showed up on the cover of ASG #1 (albeit with Mayday’s regular large eyepieces) but didn’t appear within the series itself until the second issue.

Spider-Ben Costume 5.0? (Amazing Spider-Man Volume 3 #8/Spider-Verse Team-Up #3)

Whilst it could be a matter of mere artistic licence Mayday seemed to wear a slightly different costume during Spider-Verse. I’ve placed ASM v3 #8 as when it technically first shows up but since Frenz drew SVTU #3 and her suit looked different in that I thought it better to mention that too. This costume mostly seems like a throw back to the costume Mayday sported in Spider-Girl #1, with larger eyepieces and web shooters resembling Ben Reilly’s once more. However she retains the larger blue areas around the armpits and the eye pieces are not quite the same as we’ve ever seen before on her. In other issues (though not drawn by Frenz) her mask is shown to act somewhat like a hoodie rather than just a mask or the neck zipper we’ve seen in the past. Whether Mayday merely modified her outfit since her previous appearance or if this was artistic licence is unknown although it should be noted that it should be noted that the intentions of Frenz and DeFalco in SVTU #3 was to imply the Mayday we see might not be the actual MC2 Mayday. So the differences in her outfit can be attributed to a concerted effort by Frenz and Sal Buscema to make her look different implying the costume’s changes go beyond artistic licence.

Spider-Man Costume (Amazing Spider-Man Volume 3 #15/Spider Island #1)

At the end of Spider-Verse Mary Jane reveals she managed to save one of Peter’s Spider-Man costumes and gave it to May, who adopted it as her own along with the title of Spider Woman. Witht he potential exception of her white eyepieces retaining their familiar points the costume is identical to the one traditionally worn by Spider-Man sans webpits. Although given the costume in ASM v3 #15 and depicted as wearing it in a kind of ‘vision of the future’ int he same issue, Mayday was not shown wearing it herself until Spider Island #1 as part of the 2015 Secret Wars event.

Spider Woman Costume/Spider Island Costume (Spider Island #5)

In Spider Island #5, having begun to move on from her grief regarding her father’s death, Mayday adorns a new costume. It combines elements from both Peter’s traditional suit with Ben Reilly’s with some new features. The suit keeps the dark blue of the Spider-Ben suit along with the ‘half boots’ on her legs, the webshooters outside the gloves and making the arms and gloves almost completely blue exempting the thumb, index finger and pinkie. The back of the costume also has the red and black web pattern running down it. The front of the torso is effectively identical to Peter’s including the belt area. New additions include the back of the ‘belt’ curving downwards, the two middle fingers also having red and black web patterns, a new spider symbol on the front and back (larger than Peter’s front symbol but smaller than Ben’s), the shoulder areas having the red and black patterns (but not drawing it down the length of the arm), the red and black on the back finishing in a triangular pattern and web wings (not dissimilar to Peter’s web pits or Jessica Drew’s own web wings) connecting from the back to the arms.

Whether Mayday retains this outfit after Secret Wars remains to be seen.

Venom Earth X

As a little bonus the Earth X version of Mayday Parker had bonded with a symbiote and become her world’s version of Venom.

#Mayday Parker #may parker #spider-girl #spider woman #mc2 #mc2 universe #peter parker #spider-man #venom #venom earth x #earthquake

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johnboothus · 3 years

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VinePair Podcast: How TikTok Is Changing the Game for Drinks Influencing

VinePair Podcast: How TikTok is Changing the Game for Drinks Influencing

For more stories on TikTok, check out our whole series here.

TikTok’s influence on popular culture continues to grow and change, and these days, the platform is taking the drinks world by storm. While in 2020, some of the biggest trends involved flair bartending and performative pours, 2021 is showing a few different sides of the social media platform. Whether it’s a whimsical snow cocktail made by a world-famous chef, or voices that didn’t break through previously, the drinks space on TikTok is rapidly evolving.

That’s what Adam Teeter and Zach Geballe discuss on this week’s episode of the “VinePair Podcast”: why different styles and voices seem to be flourishing on TikTok, why the cocktail space in particular is so dynamic, and why there’s still incredible untapped potential for beer and wine influencers to find a foothold.

Listen online

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OR CHECK OUT THE CONVERSATION HERE

Adam: From Brooklyn, New York, I’m Adam Teeter.

Zach: And in Seattle, Washington, I’m Zach Geballe.

Adam: And this is the VinePair Podcast. Zach, man, what’s going on? What have you been up to?

Z: Well, you know, it’s been a chaotic-ish week, as always. My wife and I are house hunting, which you know the fun of that.

A: How adult of you.

Z: I know. Well, we have a kid, so we figured we probably should buy a house eventually. Yeah, it sucks. I hate doing this. I mean, I look forward to eventually having a house, but everything else about the process is zero fun. Not zero fun — it’s like 8 percent fun. I think it would be a little more fun if it wasn’t Covid. But it’s like everything about going to look at houses is just so much more complicated, and you’re on like an incredibly tight window. It’s like you have exactly this time, you cannot do this, you have to do that, which is all well and good as it should be. There should be stringent protocols, but it does make it a lot more stressful to just even find time to fit in house visits. Just everything about it is more stressful than I think it would be during other times. But this is when we’re deciding to buy a house, so that’s what we’re stuck with. But it does mean that I’ve been having to drink to deal with the stress.

A: Oh, so what have you drunk?

Z: I’ve actually been weirdly on a beer kick lately, which sometimes happens for me. Caitlin was actually just commenting. She’s like, “You’ve been drinking beer more than wine lately.” I think it’s been a couple of things. We do have wine open a lot because of classes and stuff I teach, but I’ve been more just wanting a beer at like 5 o’clock more than I have necessarily been wanting wine with dinner. We’ve also been having a lot of weird pulled-together meals because Caitlin’s super busy with work. So it’s been like, what can we get quickly? The beer has just been kind of a good fit. There’s a lot of breweries near me, and a couple that I’ve been really enjoying. There’s a brewery called Reuben‘s that I actually just tried last night. Their Secret Crush, which was put out for Valentine’s Day, is the latest they have. They have this whole series of “crush beers,”* which are all kind of the same base beer with slightly different hopping regimens. So, yeah, it’s interesting to try that. The other brewery by me, Lucky Envelope, had a pineapple sour that they put out as part of their Lunar New Year celebration, and that was super tasty. I really enjoyed that beer. What have you been drinking?

A: So it’s interesting you say this. I feel like I do go through phases. So I’ve been doing a few things. One, I have been drinking more beer. I had a pretty good IPA earlier in the week. It was from Tröegs, and I think Tröegs is great. They sent me one of their new releases, and it was really tasty. The other thing I’ve been doing is, I’ll just have a glass of whiskey. He’s gonna love that I’m giving him credit, but Aaron Goldfarb turned me on to this.

Z: Lots of love for Aaron on the podcast lately, from both of us.

A: I’m just hoping his mom sees this because I think she reads everything about him. Anyway, he has these Glencairn glasses, and he drinks a little dram of different things in the evenings. He actually drinks beer out of them too, sometimes, just because he likes the glass. But I’ve been doing a little dram — I’ll pour to the curve, and it’s nice. I’ll either have it before or after dinner because yeah, you’re right, it’s not every night that I want to open a bottle of wine for dinner. I have other shit going on, and like, also the stress of cooking and stuff; it’s not as easy to do. So I have been doing that, and it’s really lovely. I’ve kind of revisited some bourbons that I like, some Scotches that I like, and obviously, I’m always willing to try others (for those of you out there in the podcast land.) The other thing I want to ask you really quickly about drinking is, have you thought about moving out of Seattle? Because, you know, Zach, we have had more positive reaction and more emails to the small town or small city podcast than we ever have before — from somms, chefs, etc., writing in and talking about how they had left New York, Houston, or Denver to go to other places and start restaurants and shops. So I was just curious, has it got you thinking maybe you should leave Seattle?

Z: No, because we’re looking to buy a house in Seattle, so probably not. My wife also works in Seattle. My wife makes more money than I do, so her job takes priority. Even within a city or a broader metro area like Seattle, I do think that what we have seen, along with this possible trend of people moving out of these places in the first place, is that a lot of what’s exciting, potentially, in food and drink is not in the kind of classic downtown cores. You and I will have to do an episode down the road, maybe as things get closer to more fully reopening, when the pandemic has subsided more, about the transformation that’s going to happen in a lot of these downtown cores, because it really is, I think, going to be pretty revolutionary. It’s going to be hard for restaurants that have traditionally relied on a combination of business, travel, and tourism to make a go of it fully. I think some of those things will come back sooner than others. But I do think that it does mean that there is a lot of interest. I have some interest, and I think lots of people do, in saying, “Hey, can I set up a wine shop, a restaurant, a wine bar, a craft beer bar, or something that’s serving a community that is not completely detached from a larger city, but is far enough away from the existing centers, where it’s going to be enticing to that population base to not drive so far to have the same experience?” For me, it might not be moving to places that are significantly outside of Seattle, like Bellingham or Olympia or something like that, but it might just be going 15, 20 miles north of Seattle doing something that’s a little more for those people in those areas who don’t have a lot of other options. So I don’t know, I’ve been thinking about it. But it’s true that the response has been really positive — thank you all for writing in. It’s always [email protected] if you have feedback. We always really do appreciate it and give it a lot of thought.

A: A few people we might have on the podcast, which is cool. What you bring up makes me think about (which we didn’t talk about because it’s not really a small town) how the Charleston scene is booming. When you and I were together and did the live podcast for the Charleston Wine and Food Festival last year, we went to North Charleston, which actually is 15 miles north of Charleston. That really cute little downtown area that has Stems and Skins, which was one of the best wine bars I’ve been to in the country. We were asking, who’s the clientele? Are people driving out of Charleston to come? Just as I know this is for the people who decide to move out here because it’s more affordable and they’re commuting to Charleston for work. I thought that was super interesting that, as you’re saying, it was this little opportunity. There’s a little amazing neck of business; there’s one really good Neapolitan pizza restaurant, another nice restaurant, a coffee shop, that’s just for that community. And I love that. I think what you’re talking about is really interesting and definitely worth thinking about for those entrepreneurial restaurateurs out there and wine shop and spirit shop people.

So we did something crazy here at VinePair. We decided, under the editorial leadership of Joanna Sciarrino, who’s our new executive editor, as well as the rest editorial team: our senior editor, Cat Wolinski, and Katie Brown, our associate editor and assistant editor, and then also Tim McKirdy, senior staff writer. We decided to take on this idea of a massive package of content around TikTok. We have all been talking in editorial meetings about how impactful TikTok has been, and that it really seemed to turn this massive corner in the pandemic. Now you have so many people joining the platform. So we asked not only our in-house team of writers, but also a lot of well-known contributors like Aaron Goldfarb and Dave Infante to examine and write articles about what TikTok looks like right now. The entire package is called Tapping into TikTok, published today on the site at VinePair.com/tapping-into-tiktok. There are like 13 articles, plus this podcast, that all look at the world of TikTok through different lenses. There are some profiles of really interesting people on the platform. There are some business stories, there’s some trend pieces. It’s a really good read that I encourage everyone to take a look at, because I think we’re at a sort of an inflection point here with what’s going to happen with this platform as more and more people join. So if you have ever been wondering what’s going on, or who you should be following, or who some of these people are, you definitely have to read these stories. They’re really, really fun as well. You’ve got amateurs, you’ve got professionals, etc. So Zach, we want to take the fact that this is the week that this entire package publishes, (and we happen to have our podcast debut on the day the package publishes) to talk about a larger theme: What is going viral on TikTok, what is so unique about what is going viral, and what are we seeing that’s so crazy about TikTok? And one of the biggest, most recent trends, obviously, is snow cocktails. Snow cocktails are all the rage, but there’s a lot of stuff on TikTok now that has taken off and had its moment, and we’ll discuss why we think that is. First I’d love to get your reaction — what do you think of the snow cocktail trend? I kind of think it’s awesome.

Z: Yeah, I really enjoyed it. We actually had some decent amount of snow in Seattle this past weekend. I was like, “I’m going to do this.” It seemed like a fun idea. I had a good time. I made myself what I call a “Snow Fashioned,” which is literally just a snow Old Fashioned. I think that the whole snow cocktail trend is like a perfect example of when TikTok really works. The concept is really simple in a lot of ways, and it’s an incredibly broad palate — you could basically do anything with it. It’s not intimidating for most people. It can be as simple as just putting snow in a glass and pouring your favorite liquor over it, if you want to be that simple, or you can make a fancy drink. It was connected with the fact that when most of the country got a lot of snow or at least some snow, it was very easy for people to glom onto it. I think that’s fantastic. What was interesting is that it was almost such a broad palate — and I’d be curious if you felt this, too — it was hard to kind of get a sense of it besides just “it’s cocktails plus snow,” as opposed to, “here’s a specific drink or type of drink that’s going viral.” And that, I think, is what’s interesting about TikTok. For me, with these drink trends, it feels almost like it’s not always really about what’s even in the glass, it’s kind of everything that’s going on around it.

A: Totally. It’s about the vibe. It’s about who the person is. I think that’s what’s so interesting about these trends that we’re seeing. Some of them are obviously more about the drink. I think the snow cocktail was a really good example. At the end of the day, they all kind of look the same, right? It’s snow, and you’re dumping stuff with snow, right? So it’s like, are you dumping a Negroni on top of snow? We’ve written about this to the Togroni trend. Those guys who created the Togroni trend were dumping Togroni in snow and being like “ah, check out the Togroni!” I also think it still looked the same as when José Andrés made his cocktail, if you saw this one, which was amazing. He took mezcal (which he kept calling tequila, and going back and forth) and mixed it with vermouth. José Andrés is a national treasure.

Z: I would say he’s a global treasure.

A: Yeah. He’s the best. So he goes to add vermouth to his cocktail, and his vermouth is empty because he’d been drinking it inside. And he was like, “Oops, finished the bottle.” That was so good. But I think what was awesome about the snow cocktails is because they all look the same (I mean, yes, there is a different color poured over the snow, but they’re very similar, maybe different glassware) it’s about the personality who is fun to watch — who can be self-deprecating, like José Andrés, who is funny, those types of things. Whereas there’s other things that take off on TikTok that are really more about the drink itself or how crazy it is. That is how it really started. I think that we’re evolving to the people. But at the beginning of the pandemic, it was like, how crazy can this shit be? How many insane candy cocktails can you make? Like, can you take gummy worms and infuse them with vodka and get wasted? That’s where it started, and now it’s kind of moving. I love how it’s happened; I think what makes TikTok so compelling is that it’s people copying each other and updating. You even saw that with the snow cocktails. It was like, “Oh, you can do that? I can do a riff on it. Here’s my version of your cocktail.” That’s really fun. I’m really excited to hopefully start seeing that happen more in wine, and beer, too. It’s starting to break out a little bit, but it doesn’t make sense. I feel like the spirits people have discovered this platform and they’re really owning it. And I’m just waiting for wine to get there, and for beer to get there, because bourbon TikTok is nothing besides people sitting around talking about bourbon, and sharing bourbons. Why can’t that be wine TikTok too?

Z: I think what’s really interesting here are two components to it that have struck me lately. One of them is this idea of riffing that you mentioned. To me, it’s like this perfect example of how TikTok is not just recycling trends. It’s doing the past 30, 40 years of cocktail culture, all in a span of a couple of months. You’ve gone from the flair bartending period of the 1980s and early ‘90s. Now we’re in this period where people are doing what was so exciting in craft cocktails in the early to mid-2000s. They are sharing drinks, they are sharing ideas, and the innovation is super fast-paced. Now in 2021, someone can upload a video of a cocktail that they’ve made that you’ve never heard of. You can understand how it’s made and you can go, “Well maybe if I don’t have all those ingredients, I can make a version of that with these ingredients instead, or I can riff on it in this way.” It’s the same kind of process that took months because a cocktail had to travel through a sort of informal whisper network in bars around the country. Now it’s like it can happen in a matter of days, which is super cool.

A: It is really funny. I hadn’t thought about that. That’s a good point. I wonder, too, do you think that is kind of what’s happening with wine right now? What I saw happening on the platform with wine — initially is there were some people who were reviewing wines. The biggest trend in wine right now is people going to their grocery store and saying, “buy this bottle, don’t buy this bottle, buy this bottle, don’t buy this bottle.” A bunch of people have taken this trend and are copying it — I’ve seen a lot recently. So I’m going to walk in the aisle, and I’ll be like, “I love this bottle. It was delicious. I had it with roast chicken. Hated this bottle. It was too big for me, or too high alcohol, or bitter.” A lot of it is amateur wine drinkers, which I love. I don’t mean amateur in that they’re amateurs, but they’re not professionals, which is cool. They’re talking about what they love. That is the way I think you could connect it to what we saw nine months ago with DrinkTok, or BarTok, where basically the first thing you saw was the way that most of us start drinking when we’re close to 21 — it’s basically like dumping everything into a bucket and seeing what happens. The first time I ever bought wine was just by going into my grocery store and being like, “OK, I’m in Georgia, I’m in college. They sell it in Publix. Is this one good, or is that one good?” In Atlanta, I started getting more into wine and would be like, “Now I’m of age. I’m going to go to the wine store. Maybe I’ll talk to somebody because I’m not still intimidated.” I wonder if we’ll see that evolution, and if we’ll also see similar in beer, where we’ll start going through the phases of what you go through as a wine drinker, in the same way we’re seeing the phases of what you go through as a cocktail drinker.

Z: One of the things that I’ve been racking my brain about a little bit is: With Instagram, it was clear what made for compelling-ish wine content initially. But even then, I feel like wine Instagram was very focused around bottle shots. Basically, the innovation is what else is in the picture with the bottle of wine? There was this big trend, I’m sure it’s still going on, where wineries posed the bottle with all these different things, fruits and things like that, that supposedly you would smell or taste in it. It was like a whole visual representation of the experience of drinking the wine, which is very compelling. It’s also an incredible labor to put together. But with TikTok, I would be curious to see if reviews take hold. I think what will be maybe more powerful than that, potentially, is not necessarily “here’s 10 seconds on this wine” or “here’s 10 seconds on why you should drink this wine and not that one” but instead “here’s 20 seconds about a wine that I really like.” Here’s the story of this wine in a really concise format, and maybe it’s cleverly shot or edited. With TikTok you want that pop of information, but you also need to be entertained. I think that one of the challenges that comes with this grocery store format is like, if you’re not in that store or in a similar store, you might not have the same wines on your shelf. I mean, yes, there are wines that are on pretty much every grocery store shelf. But if you’re trying to do something, especially as a professional, that’s a little more insightful than which mass-produced red blend you should be drinking. It is hard to find a purchase with TikTok. I’ve thought about this a lot for myself, personally. It’s hard to know what you would say that is not incredibly glib, but also doesn’t bore people.

A: A few things that you mentioned are really interesting to dig deeper into. The first is obviously Instagram versus TikTok, which we covered in one of the VinePair packages. One of the profiles everyone should read is a profile on the woman behind the account SpiritedLA. What she says is really fascinating. She makes beautiful cocktails. I think she’s probably one of the people making the best cocktails on TikTok. What she said, though, is that when she got on Instagram, she was very methodical about the formula. Like, “this is what you do. This is the lighting, this is how it has to look for it to do well in cocktail Instagram.” Wine people were doing the same thing, like, “This is how you have to talk about it here. These are the hashtags you have to use.” She has around 42,000 followers on Instagram. She said when she joined TikTok early in the pandemic, she was like: “I’m going to make really fun cocktail videos. I love fashion and I love dressing for the party. So I’m just going to wear really cool outfits that match the drink and I’m going to make the same drinks I’m making on Instagram.” She showed herself on Instagram, but not a lot — it was really the drink. She has this great personality that kind of comes off like she’s in the ’50s, almost like she has this really cool, classy air to her. She talks about a bygone era of cocktails, and she gives you the history and all that stuff. She has 243,000 followers on TikTok. She said she didn’t follow a formula or anything, she was just herself. I think that’s what’s been really fun about TikTok — a lot of people are able to be themselves and are just able to say, “This is what we do, and you either like it or you don’t.” One of these other accounts that we profile in the package is the account JonesnMann. And JonesnMann are a duo that are usually on YouTube together reviewing bourbons and other spirits. But on TikTok, only Mann wanted to do it. (And also, they refuse to give their first names. This is part of the characters they play. So it’s not that I don’t know their first names, they actually don’t even give them in the article.) So Mann was like, “We should be on TikTok.” He is super entertaining. His whole tagline is “drinkin’ the comments” and you tell him like a cocktail you’ve made and he’ll make it. He’ll also talk about spirits. If you say, “What do you think about Crown Apple?” He’ll talk about why he likes Crown Apple, or he’ll talk about Blanton’s. He’s this fun person that people like to watch. On the other side, when it comes to wine, I think, one, there hasn’t been a personality that’s burst out yet. I think that that’s going to be what it takes. Two, I think if someone’s going to be really successful as an influencer on tape talking about wine, I think they need to really watch what’s happening in one specific subset of #DrinkTok, which is the bourbon TikTok channel. The communities are similar in the fact that a lot of time they talk about wines, obviously, that you and I will never be able to find or try. They talk about Pappy. I’ve had Pappy once in my life, you and I’ve had 10 year. I’ll probably never have the 23. That is what they all talk about, in the way the wine people talk about DRC or Petrus, or other wines. But then they all love to talk about these finds that they get that are regionally specific. You would be amazed at how many bourbons people have that are regionally specific. They prop each other up, and they have certain people in the community who have become these personalities that are really engaging and fun, and help educate. One of the people — who I’ve just been waiting and waiting and waiting for someone in wine to be like – is this guy, Steve Higdon, who is 60 Second Bourbon Review, and he refers to himself as “the boomer of bourbon TikTok.” I think he’s just so down to earth and funny. People in the bourbon community love him because he feels like their dad. It’s mostly people who obviously are younger, but they have embraced him and he has tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of followers. He’s one of the most popular, if not the most popular, person in the bourbon TikTok community, and everyone kind of defers to him. They’ll be like, “I know Steve said he liked this bourbon, but here’s my notes,” and it’s great. I think there is that opportunity for wine, it’s just figuring out who those personalities are that can feel approachable, and not “somm-y.” You can’t be somm-y, because it won’t work on Tiktok. In Instagram if you had a somm following, you could have other somms and people who want to be like somms following you and that would be fine. But because the algorithm on TikTok is so democratic in the way that it throws out your content and sees what people love, you have to be approachable, and you have to be providing content that people feel they can relate to. Or, you can create content people hate, which I’ve also seen go viral, but you don’t want people in your comments being like, “You’re the worst person. You’re such a jerk. No one wants to follow what you like to drink because you’re a snob about it.” I think that’s also interesting. So who knows, man? It’s a fun platform, for sure.

Z: You make a really good point. I wanted to ask your opinion. With Instagram, it’s always felt to me like one of the things that is rewarded on that platform is a very specific visual aesthetic, right? Yes, we all know it. In the early days, it was the filters. Now, I would say it’s that, but it’s also just you want your pictures to look a certain way, whether you’re in them or not. And I wonder, my sense of TikTok — and you’re deeper in it than I am — is there is less of that, because it’s video, and not static to some extent. It is a thing where — maybe just because it’s newer and there isn’t as clear of a “here is how you get the most interaction on the platform” — I just wonder, does that also create space for drinks that are inherently less visually grabby? We all know that one of the things that’s true about what’s happened in drinks culture because of Instagram is (and in food culture too) is increased emphasis on visual appeal from the get-go. It’s why craft beer labels have moved the directions they’ve moved. All that kind of stuff. On TikTok, yes, the thing has to look good if you’re going to see it, but you’re never going to get the same quality. Most people don’t have the same quality lighting. It’s a video, so things are moving. In most cases, it’s always going to be a little bit less polished. I wonder if it does create space for people who are not going to be able to produce professional-quality photography at their house, and might not be able to produce professional-quality videography, either, but can be a professional-quality personality, I guess.

A: Yeah, I think that it does. Let’s talk spirits, specifically. You have two different kinds of people. You either have the person who has a full set up, almost like they’re standing on a set. They’re making their drinks in a way that feels very polished. They probably went out and bought some equipment to hold the phone steady and things like that. Spirited LA is like that, right? Her setup looks beautiful — she has a beautiful kitchen. You could take her videos and with a little bit more work be like, “I could see this on Food Network or something.” Then there’s Johnny Drinks, which actually is this father and son from Jersey who I think are the most followed account in drinks TikTok. They’re up to almost 800,000 followers. It’s a father and son. They knew not a lot about drinks before they started TikTok. They’re learning about drinks together. They’re just like in the basement of their house in Jersey. I think the son is home from college because of Covid. He started filming with his dad. His dad’s real job is something in insurance, I think. (I haven’t got to read the profile yet. I’m really excited to. We’re recording this prior to all publishing.) They’re in the basement, where the dad has this bar that used to be just for hanging out. There’s a pool table down there, whatever. It’s not set, you know — the camera’s shaky, but they’re just two people trying to learn how to make drinks, and talking about it to people, and showing people how to make drinks. They’re just a good personality. I think people love that it’s a dad and a son. There’s like this connection between the two of them. The son also asks the dad about life advice. These things are resonating with people watching who want to be entertained. People are looking for good entertainment, in the same way they were looking for that on YouTube years ago. Whereas Instagram has more and more and more felt plastic to a lot of people. We’re all sick of the fact that like, that’s not what your family looks like all the time. Come on. You’re not having fun 24/7. These articles are being published about how Instagram specifically is causing people to have massive amounts of anxiety, and to be depressed, because they feel like this friend has a perfect life and they don’t. Meanwhile, you don’t know that the friend also is having issues with their job, or with their health, or any of these things. But when they’re posting on Instagram, it looks like everything’s perfect. I think people like TikTok because there can be those little mistakes. It just feels more real.

Z: You can have already drunk all the vermouth, as it turns out?

A: Exactly! Right. You know, it’s all there. And that’s why people like it. I can’t stress this enough — I think it’s a platform that if you’re in the drinks business, you need to be paying attention to. It’s funny because I feel like there’s been a lot of noise over the last week or so about another platform, Clubhouse. I’ve played around on it. It’s the same people that were on a lot of these different platforms initially. There’s like a group of — I don’t wanna say illuminati, but like, you know — it’s the same wine people that are on Twitter having conversations about wine. They’re not bringing anyone new into the conversation on Clubhouse. I didn’t see anyone new when I jumped into these rooms. This is probably worth a podcast of its own down the road, but I don’t see any new voices on Clubhouse. It’s the same voices I hear on Twitter, whereas TikTok is really new people, or there are people who yes, had some success on Instagram, but not like this. Again, SpiritedLA, she’s the perfect example. Yeah, she had some success on Instagram — 40,000 followers on Instagram for a cocktail account is nothing to sneeze at. There are people who have massive cocktail followings. But she has 200,000-something followers on TikTok. That’s just insane.

Z: Alright, so when are we taking the podcast on TikTok, Adam?

A: The second you can figure out how we can cut these episodes into small bits.

Z: Isn’t that what we have interns for, damn it?

A: I definitely would encourage everyone to read as many articles as you can on the site, if you want to scroll through all of them. Also, a shout out to Josh and Danielle, who built the site for this package. It looks like you’re actually scrolling on a phone on TikTok when you’re scrolling through the stories. It’s super cool. It’s just vinepair.com/tapping-into-tiktok. Hit us back and let us know what you thought of this podcast, what you think of TikTok, and what you think of the package at [email protected]. Again, we’re excited about the platform. We think it’s interesting, and it’s something that everyone should be paying attention to. We’d love to know if you have paid attention to it, or if you just checked it out in passing. Let us know what you think, because I think it’s going to only get bigger. That’s my prediction.

Z: I can’t argue with that.

A: Zach, see you back here next week.

Z: Sounds great.

Thanks so much for listening to the “VinePair Podcast.” If you love this show as much as we love making it, then please give us a rating overview on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher or whatever it is you get. It really helps everyone else discover the show. Now for the credits. VinePair is produced and recorded in New York City, and in Seattle, Washington, by myself and Zach Geballe, who does all the editing and loves to get the credit.

Also, I would love to give a special shout out to my VinePair co-founder, Josh Malin, for helping make all this possible and also to Keith Beavers, VinePair’s tastings director, who is additionally a producer on the show. I also want to, of course, thank every other member of the VinePair team who are instrumental in all of the ideas that go into making the show every week. Thanks so much for listening, and we’ll see you again.

Ed. note: This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

The article VinePair Podcast: How TikTok Is Changing the Game for Drinks Influencing appeared first on VinePair.

Via https://vinepair.com/articles/tiktok-drinks-podcast/

source https://vinology1.weebly.com/blog/vinepair-podcast-how-tiktok-is-changing-the-game-for-drinks-influencing

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wineanddinosaur · 3 years

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VinePair Podcast: How TikTok Is Changing the Game for Drinks Influencing

VinePair Podcast: How TikTok is Changing the Game for Drinks Influencing

For more stories on TikTok, check out our whole series here.

Listen online

Listen on Apple Podcasts

Listen on Spotify

OR CHECK OUT THE CONVERSATION HERE

Adam: From Brooklyn, New York, I’m Adam Teeter.

Zach: And in Seattle, Washington, I’m Zach Geballe.

Adam: And this is the VinePair Podcast. Zach, man, what’s going on? What have you been up to?

Z: Well, you know, it’s been a chaotic-ish week, as always. My wife and I are house hunting, which you know the fun of that.

A: How adult of you.

A: Oh, so what have you drunk?

Z: Lots of love for Aaron on the podcast lately, from both of us.

Z: I would say he’s a global treasure.

Z: You can have already drunk all the vermouth, as it turns out?

Z: Alright, so when are we taking the podcast on TikTok, Adam?

A: The second you can figure out how we can cut these episodes into small bits.

Z: Isn’t that what we have interns for, damn it?

Z: I can’t argue with that.

A: Zach, see you back here next week.

Z: Sounds great.

Ed. note: This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

The article VinePair Podcast: How TikTok Is Changing the Game for Drinks Influencing appeared first on VinePair.

source https://vinepair.com/articles/tiktok-drinks-podcast/

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chfaiq5k-blog · 4 years

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The Best Digital Content Marketing Strategy That Drives Real Results

There’s simply no way around it. Advertisements are everywhere seemingly everywhere we look these days. Whether stalling us for 30 seconds before we watch a YouTube video, or disguising itself as a blog article with a title like “The 10 Secrets to Becoming a ‘insert dream occupation here’ (You won’t BELIEVE #7)”, advertisements are becoming more and more difficult to escape from. However, in the midst of all of this mostly-annoying advertising to consumers, businesses still are left with enormous opportunity.

This is the world of content marketing

Simply put, content marketing focuses on driving sales for your business by giving your customers what they’re looking for, while they’re actively searching for it. But here’s a harsh reality most well-intentioned digital marketers are unaware of: Social media content creation alone will not improve your marketing results. Plain and simple.

Publishing and distributing content with little to no direction, strategy, purpose, goals, or targeted audience will likely end in failure, and result in a waste of both time and money – even if your content is amazing! And that’s because content needs a tailored digital content strategy supporting it to ever truly have an impact on your audience, your web presence, and most importantly, your bottom line. When your strategy lacks a solid foundation, all of your brand’s blog posts, articles, ebooks, web pages, guest blogs, and more will essentially be a waste. This may sound a bit harsh, but frankly, it’s the truth at its core.

In 2019, it is absolutely essential to have an online content strategy for your business. But this isn’t a statement made in self-righteousness. This is just what some the numbers say about using a digital content strategy for your content marketing:

Another 60% said they didn’t know how to measure content ROI.

That means a whopping 97% of the most successful marketers have some kind of strategy backing up their content!

So the question on everybody’s mind – and the reason you chose to read this article – is what should your 2019 digital content marketing strategy look like? The answer to that question varies slightly from industry to industry. But in today’s digital landscape, there are specific strategies and areas of focus that transcend all verticals and universally apply as best practices. So here’s the best digital content marketing strategy designed to drive real results for your business.

First and foremost, Create and execute an actual content strategy with measurable goals

Maybe your marketing department already has an editorial calendar and content schedule. While that holds it’s merit, the most important question still remains; do you have an actual strategy behind your content marketing efforts?

If your (honest) answer to that question is a no, don’t panic because you are not alone. As many as 63% of businesses don’t have an actual content strategy. This can be bad news for that 63%, it can be great news for your brand if you begin developing a content marketing strategy that aligns with your business goals.

With that said, it’s important to understand that a content strategy is not as simple as constructing an editorial calendar and planning a few weeks in advance. On the contrary, it’s an investment and a documented strategy that relies upon (but is not limited to):

Setting specific goals for your content marketing strategy, particularly goals that will align with your overall business goals so that any content you produce helps you achieve your business goals (generating more traffic, more leads, making more conversions via your website, blog or email and so on)

Establishing KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) for measuring your ROI

Audience segmentation for increasingly personalized content

Content curation strategy

Content repurposing strategy

Unique strategies for alternative customer acquisition channels

Stay ahead of the curve and prepare your content for voice search

If you’ve not yet taken to using voice search in your day to day life, it may come as a surprise to learn just how popular it actually is, and how many people use it on a regular basis. Chances are that with the increasing popularity of devices like Google Home and Amazon Alexa, in conjunction with services like Apple’s Siri, voice search will only continue to grow at a rapid rate – potentially even becoming the new normal for the general masses. Many even believe that almost half of all online searches will be voice searches by 2020. We are on arguably on the cusp of a new era in voice technologies.

So what does this mean for digital content marketing? It means that marketers need to start optimizing their content for the future. At least, some of their content that is. However, before that trend becomes a reality there is an obstacle to overcome because each device seems to be pulling data from different sources, and offering vastly different results. Regardless, there are still tactics you can deploy to get ahead of the competition and ensure your content is the one that voice assistants will recommend.

You need to get your content to be the featured snippet – the short blurb or meta description that sometimes appears at the top of your Google search result – and know which searches result in featured snippets. Analyze your industry’s keyword relevancy, and tailor your descriptions to populate with those keyword combinations. Getting your content to be prominently featured on Google search results gives you instant ability to become top of mind for a potential consumer who will be served your content directly from their voice command.

Control the conversation around your brand on social media

Speaking of voice, there is another crucial element of your strategy that cannot be overlooked. And that is controlling the conversation around your brand on social media. It goes without saying that selling a product – especially online – becomes substantially easier when your customer is looking for what you sell. In today’s age, consumers have put an increased focus and importance on researching their potential purchases. So selling someone on a product in 2019 isn’t like selling a couch in a furniture store. The haggle and the ‘sell’ is slowly being taken out of the consumer buying process.

But think about it like this; What if you could talk to that person while they were researching couches? What if you could talk to them about the value of paying a premium for quality before they made up their mind about how much they were going to spend? Essentially, what if you could reincarnate some of the traditional elements of sales in a modern environment? This idea is at the core of your brand voice and controlling that conversation in order to steer it in your desired direction.

Controlling the conversation while your potential customers are educating themselves is an invaluable practice for your brand marketing efforts. It’s a universal truth with everything from car insurance to CRM software. When your consumers are discussing your brand on social, why not write about these conversation points? Why not take control of the conversation when your customers are deciding what they need, and direct them to your products or services first-hand?

Invest in new ways to utilize influencers and influencer marketing

In many situations, we view influencer collaboration as simply having the influencer promote a brand or its products/services on their own channels. And while there’s no debating this is still an ample strategy, there is a new approach that is beginning to trend right now: having the influencer create content for your very own brand channels (your company blog, your brand’s social networks, etc.)

This approach has many advantages for brands, from boosting credibility with your target demographic, to increasing traffic and followers on your networks as you attract that influencers’ audience. But how exactly do these types of campaigns work, you ask? To put it simply, they work by having known and respected influencers from your niche create content for your channels. They can then promote this content on their channels and help drive traffic to your desired platform.

For example, if you sell gaming products, you could have popular gamers share exclusive product drops and reviews on your blog – that will likely attract a large audience of gamers to your blog. Additionally, you can take things a step further and even have run a ‘takeover’ campaign, in which you have an influencer take over your social channel for an entire 24 hour period – similar to those that take place on platforms like Snapchat.

As mentioned above, tactics like influencer takeovers build huge credibility with your target audience by promoting your brand through the voice a relatable personality that inspires their audience to value their opinions and, in turn, take action.

In order to reach a wider audience, cast a larger net by incorporating more types of content into your strategy

Content marketing isn’t just blogging or deploying the occasional influencer campaign. It’s also creating consistent social media content like marketing videos, podcasting, email marketing, and so much more. Creating content for every platform or digital medium is essential in widening the net you cast with your marketing efforts.

It’s evident that we all consume many different types of content every day, in large volumes, all while using various devices. So in order to reach all these segmented audiences, it’s imperative to not only have a presence on multiple social channels but also to create different types of content for each segment and faction of your audience:

Creating interactive content like AR lenses can also help you reach a massive audience; for example, Taco Bell’s Cinco de Mayo Snapchat Lens generated an impressive 224 million views back in 2016. And with the growth seen in the interactive content market in the past 3 years, this tactic is likely to see an increase in usage for many companies moving forward.

Speaking of creating content…GOOGLE ABSOLUTELY LOVES CONTENT

Yep, the Google gods are all about quality content. Don’t believe me? Just head over to YouTube and look up any interview with Experts like Matt Cutts (the former head of webspam at Google) are huge advocates for feeding the content machine. His likely response to any question about how to rank higher in Google search rankings will likely always generate the response “write great content.”

Basically, Google is obsessed with providing users with the search experiences that deliver what they’re looking for. Some may argue at any cost. Informative content is often the best way to both provide that experience and attain online authority in Google search ranking.

Speaking of audience, scale your retargeting audience as well

One of the most effective marketing strategies – particularly for e-commerce companies – is to set up display ads of their products or services to those who visit their product pages, yet leave the site before purchasing anything. Content marketers can mirror this approach.

Let’s circle back to our couch analogy from earlier in the article. Let’s say you write an article about the top 10 questions to ask before purchasing your next couch. Those who take the time to read that article are very likely to buy a new couch in the upcoming months. Perhaps this is an ideal opportunity to set up display ads of some of your top couches for those readers? This concept is highly effective for scaling your retargeted audience.

Final Thoughts

As many as 91% of B2B marketers claim to use content marketing to reach customers, as this study from the Content Marketing Institute and Marketing Profs found. So it’s a strategy that has already been widely adopted by some of the biggest and most powerful brands in the business. That’s a substantial amount of content for any company to compete with and, unfortunately, it’s easy to feel the burden of this competition when your content isn’t populating in search results or in your audiences’ newsfeeds. It can be downright demoralizing if you aren’t proactively growing your brand online.

In order to perform well this year and beyond, and generate amazing results from digital content marketing, incorporate these strategies and stay on top of these trends. Use them to inform yourselves and shape your strategy.

The post The Best Digital Content Marketing Strategy That Drives Real Results appeared first on Viral Nation.

This content was originally published here.

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funkymeihem-fiction · 7 years

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He Don’t Mean It- Chapter 3 (A Meihem/Zaryahog fanfiction)

(AUTHOR’S NOTE: I’M SORRY OH GOD WHAT HAVE I DONE.)

http://archiveofourown.org/works/11563764/chapters/26447322

“Well. It seems now we are both in dog house.”

Zarya was, to both of their surprises, the first one to speak. Junkrat was too busy staring dumbfounded after Mei’s retreating figure, until even his keen night vision could no longer make her out and she was truly gone. A distressed little gurgling noise was the only sound he could seem to wrest from his throat, while the larger woman next to him wiped at some of the crusted blood below her nose before she sighed and folded her massive arms.

“I hate it when she is mad at me,” she said, sounding surprisingly resigned. “She can hold massive grudge for weeks.”

The verbal dam holding back the junker’s words finally seemed to break, and they came out as a torrent. “Ya think I don’t know it, russki?! Oh, this is bad. This is real bad. It’s over, ain’t it? I’ve come a gutser.” He dragged both hands down his swollen and battered face, black nails digging into his bruised cheeks. “It’s like you said, she can hold a grudge. But this is more’na grudge. She ain’t gonna forgive me, is she? This isn’t like those other times, like when I leave the toilet seat up or forget when the mission dates are or when I put that confetti bomb in her undies drawer. She’s mad as a cut snake! This is gonna be Goodnight Irene!”

“Er,” Zarya frowned at him unsurely, unable to really keep track of his rapid train of thought or his Australian slang. “…Yes?”

“I knew it! And not just her, they’re gonna come take away me best mate too! Gonna take him away, reprogram him in the head. Not gonna let ‘em! I knew we’d have to scarper even from this place, one of these days! Don’t worry, Roadie, I’m gonna get you outta here even if I gotta roll your big arse the whole way through.” He limped over towards one of the messy shelves, heavily favoring his right side with the ribs he still wasn’t sure were broken or not. They felt broken. It hurt to breathe, but there were more important things to worry about. Like pulling out a battered brown suitcase from under it and starting to shove seemingly random bits and pieces of metal and tools into it. “I knew goin’ legit was never going to work. What about Mei, though? Ya know what, w-we can grab her too. Swing by, grab her up. She’ll be mad at first, but she’ll understand! She’s real good at understandin’, eventually. It’ll be like old times. We’ll grab her and go, head out on our own again.”

Zarya rubbed the bridge of her nose with two fingers in clear exasperation. “Are you suggesting in front of me, that you are going to kidnap my friend after almost killing her already?”

Junkrat guffawed, pausing from shoving things into his get-away kit. “Well, when you say it like THAT it sounds a little harsh!” He thought for a moment, tapping at his pointed chin. “Okay…I’m startin’ to think that things might have gotten a bit away from me, here.”

“You could try saying sorry, if you even know the concept. That is what good people do. But then, you would not know, you are not good people. I do not know why she tolerates junkers like you,” she sneered down at him. “Talking of kidnapping her when you should be groveling for forgiveness?”

There was a low moan from Roadhog, who shuffled beneath the layers of chains around him. Junkrat tilted his head to the side, brightening slightly. He snapped his mechanical fingers, a spark popping between the metal digits. “Groveling! That’s an ace idea. Who can stay mad at a grovelin’ rat, right? That’ll melt her frozen heart for sure! Here, sounds like Roadie’s starting to wake up. Uh. Well, you already proved you won’t rat on us, even if that’s mostly because you’re a bit of a fuckhead. Anyhow, the chains should hold and you’re a brick shithouse, you stay here just in case he tries to get out again. You can take him, right? I’ll go after Mei!”

“No you don’t!”

She lunged, but the junker slipped right out of her grasp like a wriggling fish, somehow managing to vault up and out of her arms in a wiggle of limbs and a customary storm of cackling. She may have been able to best his frenzied bodyguard and there was no doubting her strength, but strength mattered little when trying to hold onto Junkrat and was like trying to wrestle with a greased-up weasel. Before she could try again, he was already out the door, laughing and flailing his way out into the night. With a low curse under her breath, she righted herself against the door frame and almost moved to follow him. But the rattle of chains behind her made her pause. Roadhog was trying to move again, thrumming a low baritone noise as his massive arms strained at his bindings. She tensed, sending one last glare after Junkrat before resolutely slamming her hand onto the door controls. They bolted shut with a mechanical whir and the clank of its locks, and she stared the enormous junker down from across the room.

The irritating rat man was right about one thing, at least. This Roadhog could not be allowed to get loose, and she was the only one able to stop him. At least until Mei would no doubt be bringing the cavalry to both handle the transgressions of the junkers, and for her to be chastised and punished for being foolish enough to ever get involved.

The beast in the pig mask was looking at her. The dark, blank lenses may have hidden his eyes and whatever else lay beneath, but she knew he was looking at her. She saw the faint movement of his fingers down by his sides, sinew and bone tightening and clenching into a fist that was no doubt locked around her neck in whatever dark thoughts such a man must have harbored inside all that silence. She lifted her chin, merely stepping forward and staring down at him without fear, gaze narrowed.

“So, svin’ya. Now it is just you and me…”

***

Junkrat scampered across the dark base, the metal clatter of his peg leg obnoxiously loud as he made his way through the common areas and towards the dorms. He was more than relieved to see that Mercy’s clinic area remained dark. Maybe he still had time to change her mind before she woke everyone up and set the whole damn base against his best friend. He was less heartened to see that she really had been bleeding more severely than he’d thought, and a pang of uncharacteristic guilt rippled through him when he saw there were drips and splotches of red that marked her trail all the way down the halls towards her little room. Perhaps it was a good thing he’d come to check on her after all.

The sharp rap of metal against metal rattled her doors. There was no answer at first, and his next knock was a bit more frantic, leaning up against it to whisper a loud, rasping “Mei! Mei, you arroight in there?”

There was the very muffled sound of a beep within, and a moment later the door whooshed open in front of him. She had made an attempt to scrub away the blood from her head wound, though her pajama shirt was still sopped with dark liquid on one side, and she was holding a baggie of ice to her temple. She didn’t seem surprised to see him, but didn’t seem particularly happy about it either. When she spoke, her voice was still cold and dangerously formal. “…Mr. Fawkes.”

So he’d been relegated back to the icily polite use of his last name. Owch. At least with his newly mangled features, it wasn’t hard to disguise his wince. He managed a lopsided grin, waving both dirty hands. “Don’t worry! I ain’t here to kidnap you or anything nefarious!”

She squinted at him. “Where’s Zarya?”

“Left her back with Hog. Figured she could beat him up again if he tried to get out. Clever, eh? Are you, uh, you feeling all right?” He took a quick puff of breath, tentatively reaching out towards her ice bag. “Lemme see it? Maybe I could help w-”

She moved back from his grasp. “No. No, I’m not feeling all right. I’m still mad at you. And someone I thought was my friend tried to kill me.”

“Could ya…not be mad at me? Actually, okay. You can be mad at me, but not at Roadie, that ain’t his fault!”

“And someone else decided that he this was a situation where nobody needed to interfere, and he almost died too,” she said, staring him down.

“I arready said I was sorry!”

“No you did not, Jamison Fawkes! You never say you’re sorry. And I’ve gotten used to that. But even a sorry isn’t going to fix this. This…I can’t just ignore this.” Her voice went to a sudden high pitched almost-snarl, before quickly shushing herself and looking down the hall to make sure they weren’t overheard. She lifted a hand to her face wearily, looking torn. “I’m going to change into some fresh clothes, and then I’m going to see Dr. Ziegler. She’ll know what to do.”

Junkrat’s eyes widened. He reached out again, and again she pulled away. “Ya can’t! Ya can’t do this to us, darl. This was all…This was all just an accident. Bad things happened to Hog. I dunno what, but they were bad and sometimes they get to him and for a while he ain’t himself. But that ain’t his fault. It ain’t never his fault. I don’t get mad at him for it, just like I don’t get mad at you for what happened to you. Just because Hog gets mad and punches at things, and you stare off into the nothing and cry, that ain’t your faults. I’ll help you both!”

She looked a little more pained, but he couldn’t tell if it was the head wound or frustration of their little spat. “Jamison, this isn’t helping. I know you think you’re helping, but you can’t do this. Mr. Roadhog doesn’t need to be chained and locked up, he needs help. Dr. Ziegler can-”

“Doc Angelface don’t understand. She’s not a junker. But Hog’s my best mate. The only one I got. And I’m not gonna let this place reprogram my only best mate’s brainmeats. Or mine. I know you don’t think much of that, but s’truth. Yeah, see, I know that little side-eye you give me sometimes. You think I don’t know the radiation’s cooked my nut, and my nuts?” He tapped the side of his scraggly head, then made a lewd gesture downward. “I know ya think we’re crazy! Fockin’ ‘ell, I know we are crazy!”

Mei was quiet for a long minute, gaze slipping down to the floor and the little smears of blood puddled beneath them. “I’ve…I’ve never said that…”

“But we ain’t something to be fixed. You can’t fix everything, love. I know you try, but you can’t.”

Anger and frustrating was starting to win out again, and he could see tears gathering in the corner of her eyes, even as they narrowed at him and her voice quavered. “I’m not saying you’re just some crazy person to be fixed. And neither is Mr. Roadhog. I don’t want you to think that that’s how I see you. Please, I just…I don’t want this to be happening. We can tell the doctor. It’s not reprogramming or fixing, and it might save both your lives, and maybe my life, and your teammates’ lives. It’s just helping! We just want to help you!”

He was about to snap back some retort when she pulled the ice pack away from her head. Blood matted her hair, and he could see the deep bruises and gashes in her head where Hog’s spiked and armored fist had thrown her across the room like she was nothing. His reply died away and he reached out to her again, this time to touch his fingertips to the wound. She grimaced at even the lightest pressure, quickly replacing the numbing ice.

“We both need to see the doctor anyway,” she said softly. “I’m fairly sure I have a concussion and you…Jamison, look at yourself in the mirror. You’re hurt. You’re really hurt and he almost killed you in front of me. And I couldn’t stop him. Neither of us could stop him. If Zarya hadn’t arrived when she did, who knows what he was capable of? He could have woken up after accidentally killing us both.”

“Nah, wouldn’t have let him hurt ya! I mean, this time…he…” He glanced to the bloody ice bag, trailing off before trying again. “Hey, we both been through worse, yeah? And you. Maybe you can help me. And I guess that purple-haired bint since she knows too. She can be our muscle, fightin’ the other muscle. We had a little accident here, but-”

“Jamison, your face is broken in several places and you’re missing at least one tooth!”

He waved both arms in the air. “-An accident here or there! But what’s a tooth or two between mates? We can prepare better next time. More chains, more traps, mebbe pilfer some more of Ana’s darts…That’s a good idea, ain’t it Mei? Me and you, we’re helping him together. That way I don’t have to do anything ridiculous, like choose between ya!”

Her brows furrowed. “W-we can’t do that, Jamie. I’m trying to tell you, we can’t do that. I know what you’re trying to say, but we have to do the right thing and get help. And why would…” She seemed a little choked up suddenly, but Junkrat attributed it to her head wound. Head wounds were strange, maybe it was giving her a snotty nose. “Why would you think I’m asking you to choose between us? Are you…already choosing between us?”

Alarms were starting to go off between his ears, and he thought back to Zarya’s words. Grovel like a good person. Maybe groveling would work. So he dropped down to one knee as gallantly as possibly, though he wobbled slightly on the squeaky-jointed upright peg and held one arm aloft to her, babbling aloud, “No! No, see, I don’t wanna have to choose between my best girl and my best mate! That’s a hell of a place to be, isn’t it? So we’re not gonna do that, are we? Did I say I’m sorry yet? You said I never say I’m sorry? I’m sorry, Mei. I’m real sorry about what happened, and I won’t let it happen again. He don’t mean it. I’ll take the blame. That’s good, right? Come on, darl, I’m sorrying my arse off here, what can I do to make it better?”

His attempts at an apology seemed to be having the opposite effect. She lifted her other hand to her head almost to clutch it in seeming chagrin as she looked down at him. “Wǒ bùnéng zhèyàng zuò…I can’t…I have to do this. I have to do things the right way, even if Mr. Roadhog hates me for it, even if you….”

“No…Darl, no, it’s gonna be okay. You said you wanted to help? You can still help!” He pressed his metallic hand to his chest, still wobbling a bit on his bent peg. “I’m sorry and that’s good, right? You and me, we can figure out anything. We’ll think of something together, yeah?”

“I’m sorry, I’m trying to make you understand and…I can’t…”

“No! No, you can! We can!” He was staring to sound a little more desperate than he would have liked. This was not working as well as he’d hoped. Maybe he wasn’t groveling in the right way. Maybe he needed to get on both knees, and beg her like he’d begged for his life so many times before. “Roadie’s gonna be back to his old self by the time we get back. I’ll make some tea, we can talk it over like real civilized legit folks do, yeah? We don’t need to bring the damn monkey or his bureaucrats into things. Look, I know your head hurts real bad right now but it’ll all look brighter in the morning. I’ll take care of you. Swear it, I’ll do anything for you.”

She wouldn’t look at him. Why wouldn’t she look at him? And why did that hurt even more than his bruised jaw and broken ribs? She kept staring at the floor, at that one little puddle of brownish-red. “Jamie, please…”

“I was just talking. Earlier, when I said that rot about choosing between you and Hog. It was nothing! You know me, I just say things, I got a gob on me a mile wide. Verbal diarrhea! Sorry, sorry, I know you don’t like the word diarrhea. I’ll be more careful with things, love, promise you. No. No, please don’t cry. Is it your head hurtin’? I got painkillers and Roadie’s hogdrogen huffers back at the garage. No? You worried about Russki? She’s fine. Hell, I’m more worried about Hog in that case. Er. Is it because I’m all beaten about? It don’t hurt much, I’ll be healthy as a brumby in no time at all.” He scratched at his tufted hair, mind racing. “Whatever it is, we’ll figure it out. Between you and me, we always figure it out. We go together, you and me…b-because we…”

She meant too much to him. He was certain it must have been love, or at least what he could understand of it from the songs on the radio and how reverently it was spoken of in the theater. It was something that didn’t exist back in the wasteland he’d clawed his way out of, but he knew that if it was what he thought it was, it would be her. Everything about her made his heart scream at the thought of losing her. He needed to tell her that this couldn’t end things between them, what he would do to keep her. How badly he wanted and needed her by his side for whatever time they both had left, how much he loved her smile and her little laughs and even her angry pouty faces, all the times he’d spent going over every moment of them getting to know one another, trying not to forget a single thing, how he could lay in bed next to her and revel in the soft touches of her body until he died. How he couldn’t even envision life never being able to make love to her again, or go back to a life without her.

The words he wanted to say turned backwards and ran into one another and jumbled up on his tongue, bubbling and spewing out of his mouth like crude oil out of a broken pipeline before he could do anything to stop them. “B-because I can’t imagine not being able to fuck you!”

Time seemed to screech to an abrupt halt. Mei’s jaw dropped open as she finally looked at him. She seemed stunned, expression blanking as the two of them stared at one another. In his head, Junkrat could hear the pieces dropping all around him, little metallic noises as everything fell apart. It all broke at once, pieces of words and feelings laying shattered all around him, rolling about his feet and falling into the holes in his brain. He stared back at her, his eyes drifting apart slightly, before he could rally enough to try and make sense of the hopeless mess inside his head. “Wait! That’s not what I m-”

With shock still written all over her features, she slammed the door in his face.

#meihem #zaryahog #meirat #junkmei #junkrat #jamison fawkes #mei #mei-ling zhou #roadhog #mako rutledge #Zarya #aleksandra zaryanova #angst #funkymeihem #fanfiction

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pogueman · 7 years

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iPhone 8 reviewed: Nice, but nothing to buzz about

yahoo

The gadget world is buzzing about Apple’s upcoming iPhone X, which it unveiled last week.

Good thing, too—because if Apple (AAPL) hadn’t unveiled the iPhone X, there’d be no buzzing at all. The other phone Apple unveiled that day, the iPhone 8, is a very minor upgrade indeed.

(Heaven knows what they’re going to call next year’s models. The iPhone 9 and the iPhone XI?)

Reviewers won’t get the iPhone X to review until next month. But the iPhone 8 gets into the public’s hands this Friday, so the time is ripe for a review of that phone!

The iPhone 8 is Apple’s latest and just barely greatest.

One big-ticket item

The iPhone 8 and its plus-size sibling, the iPhone 8 Plus, look almost exactly the same as the iPhone 7 family. The one difference is the back, which is now glass (gray, silver, or gold) instead of metal. It looks glossy and beautiful—not that most people will ever see it once they shove it into a case.

Apple says that its partner Corning Glass has hardened up this formulation by another 50%, but glass will always be more likely to shatter than metal.

Apple didn’t switch to glass for cosmetic reasons, though. It switched so that it could catch up with Samsung—by offering magnetic inductive charging.

Apple and Samsung call it wireless charging, but what they actually mean is “laying your phone on special charging pad.” It’s true that you’re no longer plugging a cord into the phone, but the pad itself still has to be plugged into a power outlet.

Seems like a little thing, but charging-on-a-pad is actually quite handy.

If you’re among the “Oh, come on—how hard is it to plug in cable?” crowd, I hear you. As author John Green might say, having to fuss with a power cord is the first-worldliest of first-world problems.

Still, once you’ve tried pad charging, you won’t go back. You come home from work, you just set the phone down on your way in. Or you set it down on your bedside table. Done.

Life will be even sweeter if Apple succeeds in its efforts to persuade hotels, airports, and car makers to put these charging pads everywhere you want to be. Then a smartphone’s short battery life (unimproved in the iPhone 8) will matter less.

The really great news is that Apple has adopted the same charging standard that Samsung and other companies use, called Qi (pronounced “chee”). You don’t have to buy Apple’s charging pad; you can use any company’s. These pads cost about $12 on Amazon (AMZN)—in fact, Apple doesn’t even sell a charging pad of its own.

Some time next year, Apple says, it will offer a jumbo mat called AirPower, which will offer a sweet perk: You can lay your iPhone, Apple Watch, and AirPod charging case (a special new one) on this pad simultaneously, and charge them all at once.

And now, some Frequently Asked Questions about charging:

How fast does the pad charge the phone? Same speed as the Lightning cable, according to Apple.

If I put the phone on the pad and plug in the Lightning cable, will it charge twice as fast? No. The cable takes over.

Does the iPhone 8 offer “fast charging?” Not on the pad. You can get fast charging through the cable—that is, a 50% charge in 30 minutes—but it’s going to cost you. You have to buy one of these USB-C power bricks ($50 and up) and a USB-C to Lightning cable (Apple’s is $25).

Fast charging is great, but it’ll cost ya.

Better guts

What else is new? A faster processor, of course. In side-by-side tests with an iPhone 7, you can see the speedup everywhere. Opening apps is faster. Pulling up webpages is faster. Opening attachments is faster.

The screen now adapts to the color of the ambient light, adjusting its own white balance as necessary to make colors look right. Apple says it reduces eyestrain, but I don’t know—seems like a pretty minor change to me.

The stereo speakers go 25 percent louder. They sound great.

All of this, Apple says, makes the iPhone 8 a great platform for the new wave of augmented reality apps that will start appearing in the app store this week. These apps, based on Apple’s AR Kit development tools, superimpose graphics or information on the live video image of the world around you. One app identifies the stars overhead, for example; another identifies the players on the ball field in front of you. I’ll be reviewing a lot of these apps in the weeks to come.

Better cameras

Apple says the 12-megapixel camera now has “larger, faster sensor; a new color filter; deeper pixels.” (Deeper pixels?)

Anyway, I took a bunch of shots with the iPhone 7 and 8 side-by-side to see if there’s any difference. And sure enough. The top-right peach is more blown out in the iPhone 7 shot, and there’s more detail in the bottom peach on the iPhone 8:

The iPhone 8 camera has been improved, slightly.

Same thing on the alligator: Better color range and detail on the 8:

Here again, the lower photo shows better color and detail.

Very nice.

On the larger iPhone 8 Plus, there’s some fancy stuff going on with its dual-lens setup. As on last year’s 7 Plus, this phone has two camera lenses: one wider angle, one a 2X zoom. Clever software lets you blend the zoom to any degree between them (or, using digital zooming, go all the way up to 10X).

This photo shows the Plus model (its dual lenses) and the fingerprinty back that’s on both models.

But because the two-lens setup can tell the foreground subject apart from its background, it’s capable of creating a soft blurry-background look, like this:

The softly blurred background is all software-created—and improved, Apple, says, in the iPhone 8 Plus.

(Some photographers refer to this blurriness as bokeh, although technically, that word describes the quality of the blurriness, not the blurriness itself. “I love the bokeh this lens gives you,” you might hear.)

Ordinarily, you see that look only in professional photos, or at least photos taken with big black SLR cameras using high-aperture lenses (f/1.8, for example).

In the 8 Plus, Apple says that the bokeh (yes, the quality of the blurriness) is improved—and there’s something new. After taking a Portrait shot, you can tap Edit and then fiddle with the lighting, experimenting with different studio light setups. It’s in beta, so not quite finished, but already, the results can be pretty amazing. So far, almost every portrait I’ve taken looks better with the Studio Lighting effect, and the Stage Lighting, which cuts out the background entirely, is stunning:

On the iPhone 8 Plus, the new studio lighting modes are pretty awesome.

Better 8 than never

So that’s really it. Magnetic charging, faster chip, slightly better camera.

And, of course, all of this runs on iOS 11, which brings a lot of goodies on its own.

The iPhone 8 and the jumbo-size 8 Plus.

The two iPhone storage capacities are 64 and 256 gigabytes (for $700 and $850; installment and rental plans are available). For the larger 8 Plus model, the prices are $800 and $950.

Some of those prices are higher than last year’s iPhone 7 prices, and some are lower. Weird. You do get twice the storage (64 gigs) on the base models.

For sure, the iPhone 8 is a great phone—it’s better than the iPhone 7 in several ways. Still, if you’re currently carrying, say, an iPhone 6s or 7, there’s not much here to justify the upgrade.

If you have something older, of course, the 8 will feel like a glorious improvement. But then again, so will the iPhone 7 and 7 Plus, which are still on sale, and for a lot less money ($550 and $670).

In other words, there’s really not much buzzing about the iPhone 8. For plenty of upgraders, though, there may well be some contented humming.