#but if anyone is curious all of the 3 combined filled up 2 pages and a half

[stillness-in-green]

I saw speculation on this going around & I’m curious to get your thoughts on it: where do you think Geten’s story might be going in the future, & do u think it’s possible Dabi will kill him? I saw ppl talking about Dabi’s noted distaste for him & how the PLF seems more of a temporary alliance in the LoV’s mind (Compress’ noted rejection of the name in his thoughts, Dabi’s use of Skeptic against his will, etc), & w/ AFO back in the picture they theorized Dabi may get his quirk & kill Geten.

Okay, so, it took me a while to grapple with this one, and in the end, I'm going to have to break my reply up into two parts. Because you asked a very simple question, anon, and my answer to the question you actually asked is pretty simple (if characteristically rambly)! But you also provided a bunch of contextualizing information about what prompted your ask, and I have a lot to say about that contextualizing information, stuff that is only tangentially related to your actual question.

Note that some of this is going to get pretty salty, but I assume you wouldn't have brought a Known MLA Stan a question like this if you didn't want at least a bit of that. Most of the salt will be in the second part, though! This first part is pretty safe!

So, to answer the actual question: I don't have a lot of solid thoughts on where Geten's story is going, because from the looks of the way the series as a whole is going, it may well be that the MLA’s story is already done. I have previously expressed concerns about the current status of the MLA mainly because of all the speculation that Horikoshi is trying to rush to get to the ending, and if Hori’s rushing the ending, I don’t know that I’d bet on Geten coming back at all. In fact, given what I can guess about the scenario, I’d kind of rather he not.

The thing is, the MLA have always been far more relevant to the League than they have been to anyone else in the cast. They’re Tomura's victory spoils; their plot beats were established to connect to the League, not the heroes, the students, or even All For One. There’s just no personal connection there, and lacking a personal connection, all they’d do is be fodder for background fights to fill page space and give the side characters something to do.

And there’s just no drama in that! Not even any tension! We've already seen the MLA characters beaten--first by the villains, and then by the heroes. Hell, we've seen Re-Destro beaten three times!(1) Based on how the raid went, there are maybe three people in the entire MLA that present a credible threat--Hose Face, whose name we don’t even know, Re-Destro, who has a repeatedly-illustrated weak point in the form of his new legs, and Geten.

While I definitely think Geten could give any of the students save Deku a run for their money,(2) what would be the point? Who would he be slotted in to have a dramatic fight with? Geten hurt Cementoss, but he didn't kill him, and none of the students are uniquely close to Cementoss anyway. Geten has never personally offended or harmed any of the kids directly. There was a time people theorized that Shouto's end game boss would be a combination of Geten and Dabi, but with the PLF scattered, that looks less likely.

From the other side of things, Geten himself has no particular beef with the kids. If he'd been on the front lines to witness the opening moments of the battle, maybe he'd have a bone to pick with Kaminari, Kinoko, Juzo, and particularly Tokoyami, but it took Geten a bit to get to the front; he has no particular way of knowing about those four, and at the moment, he certainly has more pressing matters on his mind.

Geten's primary interest, when it comes right down to it, is Re-Destro. He talks a big game about the MLA's goals, but when the pivotal moment comes in Deika, he bails on the battle that was assigned to him to try and help RD instead. He claims that pure strength is to be valued above all else, but his loyalties don’t change when Gigantomachia bats him aside like a fly or when Shigaraki proves himself to be An Strongest. Even up to Jakku, Geten is still concerned solely with Re-Destro. With no real reason to pit RD against the kids, there’s no reason to throw Geten against them, either.

The only person Geten has an established rivalry with is, of course, Dabi, but getting the two of them even in the same vicinity again is going to require breaking the MLA leaders out of jail, which clearly isn't a priority of AFO's, and he's the one running the show right now. Would Shigaraki bother? He might, particularly if RD, Trumpet and Geten all get shipped to whatever Tartarus Lite Mr. Compress and Machia are likewise bound for. But if the story is headed to its conclusion, is Shigaraki ever going to get that option?

Is AFO the final boss? If so, it doesn't seem to leave much of an opening for the MLA to become relevant again, because, again, the MLA are all about Tomura's victory, Tomura’s ascendant arc as a villain, his status as a hero to other villains (namely RD). If Deku "saving" Shigaraki from All For One is going to magically resolve all of Tomura's issues with society as a whole, because hey, at least this kid is a good person, so his society can't be so bad after all! (GAG), that doesn't seem to leave much room to get into the myriad issues with society that all of Tomura's followers have. Frankly, the only thing the MLA has to offer Deku right now that's remotely relevant to his current goals is Re-Destro's starry-eyed explanation about why he's fallen so hard for Shigaraki, and Spinner is better suited for that role on basically every level.

So that’s all been one big if. The other alternative is the ending I'm hoping we get, in which Deku and Shigaraki join forces to put an end to AFO, only for Shigaraki to thank Deku cordially and then get right back to destroying things because, surprise surprise, Midoriya Izuku being a good person doesn't absolve Hero Society of all of its many, many sins. Then I can see there being room for the MLA to return. At that point, not only is there RD’s devotion to Shigaraki on offer, but also the MLA’s ideology of Liberation, what it is, what it offers, along with, for example, more on whatever Harima Oji’s complaints were about heroes, more on what has to change systemically to satisfy Shigaraki’s grudge. That’s a story the MLA can meaningfully contribute to, and therefore a story in which Geten and his quirk supremacist beliefs are more likely to be addressed.

However, I’m not optimistic that we’re going to get that ending, and until we find out whether Shigaraki will be satisfied with being rescued from AFO (if, indeed, he survives the process at all), or whether he and his compatriots’ societal issues will be left by the wayside, I’m not yet prepared to spend a lot of time theorizing on how the MLA’s role in it would look.

As to the specific question of Dabi killing Geten--honestly? I think that moment is past. While I said earlier that Dabi is Geten’s only established rivalry, that is frankly being more generous than their relationship actually warrants. After all, we haven’t seen them interact since Deika, and literally the only time one of them has so much as thought of the other in that period was Dabi grumbling, “That icy punk sure knows how to let loose,” after Geten’s big wall of ice attack allows Tokoyami to get away with Hawks. If their continued animosity were going to be a plot point, and especially if Dabi were going to murder him in cold blood eventually, Horikoshi should have shown us the two of them antagonizing each other as co-lieutenants of the Violet Regiment.

At this point, Dabi has made his big play, revealed his identity to the world. I think he's pretty locked into the Todoroki Drama now; he has bigger concerns than going back and winning a grudge match against Geten. Also too, given the point he's trying to prove about the strength of his/Endeavor's flames, would he even want Geten's quirk? If he were to get it, would he get the "evolved" version or just the basic one?(3) Because given the precedent set by both the mechanics of Monoma's Copy and AFO's comments about Jeanist's Fiber Master, I'd be inclined to think the latter, and Geten's ice powers are way less badass without the temperature control, especially for a dude trying to wield them in concert with flames of the temperature Dabi uses.

From a narrative standpoint, Geten has already been punished for his hubris with a personal defeat, the humbling of his leader, a loss of pride in his organization, and then a second, much more damning defeat and subsequent capture at the hands of heroes. Dabi taking his quirk and killing him at this point would just be kicking--indeed, killing--him when he’s already down. It doesn’t feel like karma; it just feels malicious.

That said, in the rather dubiously scaffolded scenario that the MLA gets free and finds their way back to the League and AFO/Shigaraki takes Geten's quirk(4) and Dabi accepts it, would Dabi then kill Geten with it?

…I mean, maybe? Do people think that Dabi is that much of a sadist? Because it would be the act of a sadist, to murder a kid who's almost certainly younger than he is and might even still be a teenager, one who has just been violently stripped of any ability to defend himself, all out of a desire for petty revenge over a months-old slight--a slight consisting of Geten parroting rhetoric he learned from the weird cult he grew up in, and which Dabi has very possibly been working with Skeptic long enough to know is maybe not all that accurate a characterization of the cult's ideals anyway!

And that brings me to Part 2. ---------------------------------------

(1) Four, if you count the clone’s destruction.

(2) Even 1-A's two remaining powerhouses don't present any more of a threat to Geten's ice than Dabi did, and Shouto will only give him more of it to work with. Their advantage over Dabi is that they can both sort of fly, which might well tip the balance--one of Geten's major advantages is his ability to manipulate ice from a considerable distance away, farther away than Dabi's flames can reach, but flying opponents deprive him of that advantage. Now, Shouto's flying is fairly unstable, so I suspect Geten is more maneuverable in the air, but his maneuverability wouldn't save him from Bakugou, the human equivalent of the anger-powered jetpack.

(3) Set aside the Doylist explanations about anyone who stole Geten's quirk getting the version the audience already knows purely out of laziness, forgetfulness, or authorial fiat.

(4) And look me dead in the eye and tell me Geten would just let Shigaraki Tomura or anything currently inhabiting his body just casually stroll up and lay hands on him without protest. Not to say I think AFOmura couldn't do it, but doing it in a "cool," dramatic way would probably involve some lightning movements we have not seen him make thus far.

#bnha #stillness answers #geten #meta liberation army #dabi

[joshslater]

Five Step Program

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I stared at the contents of the envelope, a blue jockstrap, and a folded piece of paper. I hadn’t put much hope into this “miracle solution” to becoming a jock without any of the work. Of course there was a catch. “First 20 customers get their first shipment free of charge” was enough for me to fill out the form with my information. It wasn’t anything too revealing. Name, address, height, weight, age. A box where you could write what you hoped to achieve with this revolutionary five step program. That’s what they really were after, I guessed. Having people enter their dreams so that they can tailor their next scam better. I was even surprised I got anything in the mail at all, and now having opened it, it made even more sense.

I could see how sending a jockstrap to someone perhaps fulfills some legal requirement that the recipient could now look like a jock. It could be a way to avoid getting a federal fraud charge. But I hadn’t spent a dime on this, so it didn’t make any sense. The jockstrap looked like any other jockstrap, I guessed. I’d never owned one, nor worn one. The pouch was dark blue and made with two layers of some synthetic mesh material. The big waistband was light blue with the letters JOCK repeated in dark blue around it. There was a faint smell of synthetic material and detergent. I did a mental sigh and opened the folded letter.

Congratulation on becoming one of our first customers on the revolutionizing five step Jock Express program. As a thank you for signing up, this first part is totally free of charge. Should you wish to continue the program, as we are confident you will after having successfully completed the first session, simply use the URL at the bottom of this page to enter your credit card information and we’ll send you the next item as soon as the payment is confirmed. I’m happy to inform you that we can offer a reduced price for the entire program, should you chose to start it within five days. The price is only $100 for the next installment, and progressively higher as you advance in the program. There is no commitment to purchase so you can stop the program at any point. We’re confident you will want to complete all the five steps in the Jock Express program.

Fuck that! What morons sign up to this kind of shit?

Instructions: The Jock Express is the easiest and most user friendly fitness program ever developed. Simply drink a lot of water, put on the items included in each program step, as you normally would, and go to sleep.

I was even more confused. Why would that sway anyone to put out $100 for at best another piece of gym clothing? I put it all in my in-tray on my desk and let it slip from my mind. I had dinner, watched TV, answered some late emails and the usual Tuesday stuff. By bedtime I walked past my home office and had the sudden recollection that I had something waiting in the in-tray. Then I remembered what it was, and almost reluctantly decided to go ahead with wearing the damn thing. I was still convinced it was a scam, but was immensely curious to exactly how it would work. If nothing else I would get to feel what wearing a jockstrap feels like. I drank a glass of water, put on the jockstrap, and went to bed. The jockstrap was as comfortable as anything and I quickly went to sleep.

Apparently I slept through the first alarm, and jolted awake on hearing the more incessant buzz from the phone. I jumped out of bed and it wasn’t until halfway to the bathroom I realized I was naked. I wouldn’t say massive, as in cartoonish in any way, but my dick and balls were noticeably bigger than before. It took a few seconds for my still startled brain to put the pieces together. The jockstrap had disappeared and somehow affected the body. It hadn’t replaced any body parts, I could still recognize my dick, but it was for sure altered. Suddenly $100 felt like way too little money. I didn’t even put any pants on as I typed in the URL from the letter. Jock Express step #2  for $100 and express delivery for another $25. Annoyingly no option to order all four remaining steps as a package. I just wanted to have them all in my house as soon as possible.

By the time I had entered all my details, checked all the boxes, and clicked the final webshop button I was rocking a massive hard-on. The biggest one in my life so far, by far. I didn’t care right then if I would come late or call in sick, I just knew that I had to take my pre-cum leaking enhancement for a test drive, and slowly started to move my hand up and down the shaft. It felt better than ever, and lasted longer than I have ever before. I’m not really sure how long, because I zoned out a bit while wanking, and then exploded with an epic load of cum. I managed to tilt the chair back and catch it all on my body, but then I felt really spent and dozed off, only to be brought back with a text message from my boss. Sick day it is, I decided.

A more apt description would be a lewd day. I just cycled between laptop porn, wanking and showers, and combinations thereof. I loved the difference it made when wearing underwear. Even when flaccid you could tell here was action waiting, not just only wearing underwear, but while wearing jeans too. I took photos so I had progress photos to compare with.

The next day was a strange one. I worked all day in the glow of someone with confidence, as if somehow I had done some achievement. I kind of surprised myself with how much of a difference it made when dealing with the pileup of emails from yesterday. Big dick energy. I could make decisions so much faster than I was used to. I don’t know if I really had more confidence, or just didn’t care as much. I was for sure giddy with anticipation of what was yet to come by overnight delivery. I forced myself to stay until official end of office hours and then bolted and drove straight home.

Thank God there was a DHL box in my mailbox, or I don’t know what I would have done. I opened it on my way in, and it’s contents were similar to the first one. A folded letter and some folded cloth. Without opening the letter I unfolded the cloth, which turned out to be a plain, sleeveless, white cotton T-shirt. Had there been someone to high five, I would have done so. I’m not fat, but there is a bit of flabbiness I would love to get rid of, so I couldn’t wait for this part. I felt anticipation in my stomach and something else in my pants. I hadn’t had a wank since this morning.

Evening couldn’t come soon enough. The letter said basically the same as the last one. A new URL for the $400 Jock Express #3, which I immediately ordered, again with overnight shipping. Not really sure what to kill time with, I figured a jock would watch sport, so I just randomly put some football on. I hadn’t really paid any attention to sports before, so I wasn’t sure about who was who, what the series looked like, or really what happened on the field besides the obvious. I ended up masturbating to the football, which in my opinion made it better. By 9:30 I decided to drink a few glasses of water, strip, put on the sleeveless T-shirt, and go to bed. I tossed and turned in anticipation for quite a while. The T-shirt had a very loose fit, and the big holes for the arms made it even more mobile, though it was anchored by the crew neck. Finally at some point I managed to fall asleep.

I woke up before the alarm. It was dark enough that I knew I hadn’t slept through them all. Instead of getting up or turning on the light, I just slowly moved my hand to my chest under the sheet. My chest was about the same size, but felt firmer, I imagined. But more importantly I was naked and the shirt was gone. I moved my hand down and couldn’t contain my joy when I started to feel the faint square of abs. I jumped out of bed and ran into the bathroom to have a look in the mirror. The effect was better than I thought from just touch. My torso not only looked fit as a model, with abs and V and all, but younger and with better skin. Perhaps an illusion, but it almost looked like my dick was bigger as well.

Having woken up early, after a wank and a shower, I was one of the first in at the office and quickly got ahead on my tasks for the day. I still had the anticipation I felt yesterday, but today it was more like I knew what to expect. It wasn’t just a one-off or a fluke, this was legit and it was happening. As I started early I decided to flex out early and rush back home. I spent the drive home fantasizing about different types of clothing. I was kind of wishing for those sleeves they use in basket, to amp up my arms, but there might be some scientific reason why they changed the body parts in a specific order. Who was I kidding? This wasn’t science. This was magic.

I ripped open the familiar package as soon as I was inside the front door. This time it was white under armour legging of some sort, ending just below the knees. I was considering strip down fully naked and put on the leggings right then and there, and wear them until it was time to go to bed, but decided against it. Even though the descriptions were vague and didn’t really say you couldn’t do that, I didn’t want to risk fucking up the process. Instead I found some underwear in the same color as the jockstrap and took a pair of scissors to an old white T-shirt to make it look like the one I put on yesterday. Then I put on those, and nothing but, and sat myself in front of the TV, determined to actually try to follow the game this time, whichever game I happened to see.

It might be I imagined it, perhaps because I’ve never really seen myself in a sleeveless T-shirt before, but it looked to me like my arms were a bit more defined than yesterday. I realized that I had just assumed only the parts under the clothes are affected, but that’s just something I made up. It could be that it just primarily acts under the clothes, or perhaps it was just a coincidence and the clothes really could change anything. In the end I let it go. It didn’t matter, I couldn’t prove it either way, and I couldn’t watch a game, have deep thoughts and masturbate all at the same time anyway. I was so into it I almost forgot to order the next package. A steep $1000 for whatever the next item was, but so far it was fucking worth it.

I really liked how I looked in the 3/4 leggings or whatever the fuck they are called. Just imagining how much better I would look the morning after made me go to bed with a big boner, despite being thoroughly wanked. I tried to calm myself by thinking of the last game I watched, and not give Jock Express a thought, and it kind of worked. I know I fell asleep pretty quickly and dreamt of football until the alarm woke me up.

“Fuck yeah!” was the first I could think when I saw myself. The thighs were about as large as before, but the line going down them made it obvious they were muscles and not jiggle matter. It even felt different just standing. I’m almost positive my dick had grown even more. Who the hell wouldn’t dish out $400 or whatever for this shit?

While the day started great it quickly became frustrating with all the corporate bullshit. I knew how to do my job. There were just so many fucking rules in the way of doing it in the best way. Perhaps the anticipation of the second to last package made me be in a bad mood. Whatever. I bolted as soon as I could, cranked up the volume in the car, trying to not think of anything until I got home. I almost punched something when I opened the mailbox and didn’t find an envelope. Instead it was just a note about DHL attempted to deliver while I wasn’t home. I could either call them to deliver tomorrow or drive to a pickup point. Like fuck I would wait another full fucking day.

I was furious when I got back into the car, blasting music as loud as I could, but I quickly calmed down. Perhaps this was a good thing? It might be a box with shoulder pads from football or hockey or lacrosse or whatever the fuck else looks hot. You know what else is hot? Michael at the DHL pickup point. I mean, I’m not homo or anything, I’m just saying he was a good looking dude.

The packet he gave me was a bit disappointing though. No way it could contain anything as large as shoulder pads. I didn’t want to fuck with my mojo, so I kept the same routine as before and didn’t open it until back home. Fucking cleats and socks. Another fucking leg day. And they smelled bad too, like distilled vinegar or some shit. As I entered the URL from the letter on my phone I got two more shocks. The price of the last package was ten thousand fucking dollars! And even worse, the delivery wouldn’t arrive until Monday. Two fucking days away. “This is bullshit” I shouted at nobody and threw the empty cardboard box into the wall to no damage to either.

I was still furious and went straight to the fridge, pulled out a cold can of beer, opened it, and downed half of it. It felt better, but I was still upset on the world in general. I looked at the phone screen again. $10k is a fuckton of money. There wasn’t a rush to buy it right now either, if they didn’t do overnight delivery during weekends. I emptied the can and crushed it against the countertop. It hurt my hand, which just added to my anger for being such a weakling. I pulled the rest of the six-pack out of the fridge and threw it in the living room couch on my way to the bedroom. I needed to get out of these stuffy office clothes and cool down with a cold one, or four.

I ripped off the tie and started to unbutton the shirt on my way into the bedroom, and once there opened the door to my wardrobe. I felt like a girl, not knowing what to wear. I hated everything my eyes fell on, and I hated feeling like that. I bunched the shirt into a ball and threw it into a corner, together with the tie. I climbed out of the pants as quickly as I could and threw them there as well. Then I stopped myself.

Everything I saw I really liked, I realized. The pecs, the abs, the thighs, and the generous bulge in the boxer briefs.I yanked off my socks and more deliberately lowered my boxers to let the dick and balls loose. I knew what I wanted from this junk selection of clothes, and opened a drawer with my athletic clothes and pulled out a pair of grey sweatpants. It was Friday and my dick and balls deserved some freedom, I thought, as I put on the sweats without any underwear. I picked up the sleeveless T-shirt from the floor by the bed and put that on as well. I felt so much better. A few beers, whatever game was on, and some more wanking, and perhaps this could turn into a good evening after all.

After two more beers, cum stains on sweatpants, T-shirt and the couch, and fuck knows how many games I zapped through I couldn’t wait any longer. Whatever bullshit the cleats and sock did, the sooner it was over with, the sooner I could move on with the final package. $10k was still a lot, but if I sold all shares I could buy it, keeping both house and car.

The socks went almost up to the knees, but weren’t any real soccer socks or anything like that. The looked more like something someone might have to the gym, or something a skater would wear. Skater was perhaps right, because they smelled like that vinegary acidic smell of really sweaty skater shoes. The socks were white with a wide black band around it near the top, and were a bit off-white on contact surfaces around the foot, as if they had been used in black shoes by someone. As if I would fucking care. I pulled up both legs of the sweats over the knees and put on both socks, pulling them as high as possible. The cleats were black and a bit banged up, but fit perfectly on my feet. I didn’t even remember having given out my shoe size. I was unsure how tight to tie them, so I went with comfortable without being loose.

It felt weird walking with them, like the shoes were pushing your forward. Not at all like my much flatter leather shoes. Somehow my test walking ended up by the fridge, so I grabbed another six-pack and returned to the couch for some more ESPN or whatever.

I had no idea what sport it was on the screen, but glancing out the window I could see that it wasn’t evening anymore. I must have fallen asleep, I realized, but I felt way better than I ought to, given the pile of crushed beer cans around me. I walked to the toilet to have a piss, and it wasn’t until I lowered the front of my sweatpants to grab my morning semi-stiff snake I realized I was barefoot. I was pissing for probably a good minute, aiming down with one hand. Holy fuck so much I’ve kept in while sleeping. I was pretty sure I had cleats and socks on when I fell asleep. I did a few bounces on the balls of the feet. It felt fucking great, and shook loose the last drops of piss from my dick. I dropped it back into the sweatpants, and broke into a smile from how fucking huge of a tent it made, despite being just a semi. I did a few more jumps, looking at how the flagpole in my front swung up and down. I really didn’t deserve to feel this great after yesterday, but I’d fucking take it. I felt so full of energy I felt I could do anything. I wanted to run just to see how it would feel.

I dashed into my bedroom and emptied the rest of the athletic clothes drawer on the floor. Some T-shirts, a pair of basket shorts, white socks and wiped down indoor and outdoor shoes. All of it was underwhelming, outright disappointing. And why the fuck did I keep the shoes here and not by the door? I grabbed the outdoor shoes and without bothering with socks started to mash my foot into it. It was clearly at least one size too small, perhaps several. Who the fucks know how shoe sizes work. I threw both shoes into the wall above my pile of office clothes. Fucking hell. Why do all days start out great and then go downhill so fast, I wondered.

I grabbed a pair of flip flops, the car keys, and pulled the credit card out of the wallet and walked out to the car. The car stereo startled me when I turned the ignition key, as it blared out some hip hop at max volume. I reached to turn it down, but changed my mind. It felt like my mood, as I was driving to my closest mall almost below speed limit. There wasn’t much traffic out anyway on a Saturday morning. As I turned into the almost empty parking lot in front of the mall I realized the fucking God damn shit mall would open for another 40-something fucking minutes. I wished I could turn up the music louder.

As I looked down on the cum stains on my shirt and tenting sweats I decided why the fuck not, and started to beat off in sync with the music.

40-something fucking minutes later I entered the sporting goods store in the mall. Johnson’s or Dick’s or Willy’s or whatever, I don’t care. I picked up some proper compression clothes, like the leggings I had earlier with a matching top. I got myself some outdoor Nike’s, a few proper tanks, some jocks, boxer shorts and socks, new flip flops, and a snapback cap. On the way to the cashier I decided to pick up a wooden baseball bat and a regulation size football as well. Back in the car I ripped off all the stickers and shit and put on something I could run in. The sneakers, jockstrap and shorts, a tank top, and the snapback. I left the car and just ran.

It was a revelation. The first time I tasted ice cream or coca cola, or the first time I discovered I could do something else with my dick besides peeing and hitting it too hard. I felt like a good damn terminator. Like as long as I kept the pace below sprinting I could run for hours. Trickles of sweat running down my face, my arms, my back, wetting the fabric of my clothes where it could, cooling the skin with the breeze my motion generated where it couldn’t. I have no fucking idea how long I actually run. When I finally ended up back in the car I was steaming and real fucking hungry.

I felt like a shower was in order, but I was too hungry to do that first. I went by Five Guys and had a bacon cheeseburger with fries and a peanut butter milkshake. As I started eating I realized I wasn’t anywhere near tired. It was probably enough running for today, but I wanted to do more. Halfway through the meal I decided I would visit the gym we had a company membership at. I had only been there a few times since the introduction walkthrough. I wasn’t even sure I had the card in my wallet anymore, or if it was in the bowl of stuff in the kitchen.

I made a quick stop at home, unloaded my car, found the card, and set off to the Pacific Wellness Center. The dude in the lobby had a pissy attitude and asked me if I was wearing indoor shoes. I asked him what they looked like, and he let me in. Such a shame, because he was kind of good looking.

Inside the gym the results were mixed. Squats, lunges, planking, and abductor machine all went excellent. It was fun, even. But everything involving arms went miserably. I could only lift a pathetic load, and after a few reps I would be tired. I even embarrassed myself in front of two massive gym buddies. One of them had amazing arms. You could see how strong they were even when he wasn’t lifting, but fuck me what beautiful ‘ceps when loaded. And tanned too. It was lucky I had the jockstrap on, because that body was smoking hot.

I could only stand a few more failures after that and then sped back home, still with hip hop at max, in a mix of emotions. I got naked on the way to the bathroom, and there I spent perhaps an hour in the shower, getting the grime and sweat off me, and wanking twice, thinking of the arms of the hot dude. As I dried myself on a towel I knew I had to buy the last package. Ten fucking thousand fucking dollars. I had to use the laptop to access my bank, and once I had put in the sell order for my stock portfolio I saw the pornhub tabs I hadn’t looked at since Wednesday.

The big-busted bimbos I had wanked my way through the Wednesday suddenly didn’t seem as interesting. I clicked around a bit until I found a muscle stud fucking a Latino girl. How quickly the taste can change, but except for pathetic arms, I’m was now the muscle stud. I quickly entered the URL from the Jock Express #4 box and ordered the last package. The delivery date was still Monday, so come Tuesday the muscle stud would be me. Only one fucking week.

Since I was out of beer I threw on my old shorts and a T-shirt, and had a walk to my nearest convenience store and bought one six-pack for each hand. I was feeling a bit stiff from the training, but it was much better than it ought to be.

As I opened the door back at home the warm smell of gym clothes, sweat, and feet hit me. I did the responsible thing and threw everything in the washing machine, opened a beer, and started to watch whatever was on.

Sunday was just a boring-ass filler day. I woke up at a decent time, had a long run. I passed through the park, but didn’t engage with any of the groups playing football or beach volley there. I could wait two more days to get my arms sorted. I did some cleaning up and domestic shit back home. Then I went to the gym again, but this time I pretended it was leg day, so I didn’t have to embarrass myself. After dinner I had an evening jog as well, and only had a few beers before bedtime.

Same thing on Monday. Woke up pretty early and went for a long run. When I was almost back home I got a text message from my boss, saying we needed to talk about my performance over the last few days. My answer “Suck my balls” probably summed up the conversation much better than any in-person meeting. I found that the best way to find porn with muscle studs in them was to search in the gay section. Just because you like to watch big arms and strong backs doesn’t make you homo. I jacked off to the videos until it was time to eat lunch. By 2 pm I was climbing on the fucking walls in anticipation, and every minute felt like too long. Perhaps it wouldn’t arrive today at all? I heard the mailman at 2:18 and rushed out wearing only shorts and snapback.

The mailbox was stuffed full with a big, soft envelope. I tore it open on my way back inside, kicked the door shut, and emptied the contents on my kitchen table. A big black something fell out, as well as something small that rattled across the table. Ignoring the letters, as usual, I unfolded the cloth. It was a big, black hoodie in sweatshirt material, with the print “STRONG” on the front. Finally arms! I picked up the small plastic box that almost fell off the table and opened it. It contained some sort of advanced mouthguard mad in blue, white, and transparent plastic of different hardness and flex. The kind that football players use.

Not knowing what to do next, I went to the gym and spent a few hours just randomly doing low weight, high rep stuff. I was trying to catch a glimpse of everyone else who worked out to see what their arms and legs looked like. Once I felt it was too obvious I wasn’t doing anything serious I drove home, but instead of going inside I started to walk and walked for hours just looking. It felt good just to be in motion. I didn’t return back until the sun started to set, and it was almost fully dark when I walked through the door.

I decided to just go ahead with the last piece of transformation. I stepped out of my sneakers and pulled off my damp socks. It didn’t smell of strawberries. I pulled off the T-shirt and stepped out of the basket shorts, but kept the compression shorts on. I grabbed the hoodie from the table and put it over my head. Perhaps it was me, but it smelled of musky sweat inside while I put it on. I poured myself a big glass of water and downed it.

I walked with the small plastic box to the bathroom and had a look in the mirror. I didn’t really look that different. The big hoodie hid my newly athletic front. The legs and feet looked strong, but who ever notices that? My big bulge in the compression pants was however a change from the past week that couldn’t easily be hidden. I opened the box and put the mouthguard into my mouth. It fit snugly and didn’t change my appearance much either. Not knowing what to do with the hoodie I put it up over my head and pulled it tighter with the drawstrings so all but my face was gone. Then I turned off all the lights and went to bed.

It was still dark when I woke up. Instantly I knew it had worked, because I couldn’t feel the mouthguard in my mouth, though it felt different. As if the ghost of the mouthguard was still there, prying my mouth open. I felt some sort of pressure on my head, as if I was wearing a hat or a beanie or something. I was about to feel my head when I realized moving my arm felt different. Not wanting to fuck around any longer I went straight to the bathroom again to have a look in the mirror. I stared at my reflection with open mouth. The difference was breathtaking.

First of all I wasn’t wearing any top, so my abs and pecs were on full display, but they were also bigger than before. Everything was bigger. My shoulders were much bigger, my entire upper body looked wider than before, and everything about the arms were huge. My face was still my face, but there were lots of small changes. “Fucking dope” I said with a much deeper voice than what I had before. I smiled a smirk and flexed the arms in different poses. I couldn't wait to show up at the gym doing an arm day. I just needed to have another shower. My dick needed service, and I felt sluggish, as if I hadn't really wakened up yet.

[capricores]

astrology & tarot readings 💥

i’m super excited to announce i am finally going to be offering astrological readings again! i’m also going to be offering a few different tarot readings & mixed astro-tarot readings as well! below the cut is full information on readings offered, prices (all in $CAD), important notes, and so forth. thank you so much for your continued support on my blog and content, and i appreciate so much anyone who may consider and order a reading from me! i can’t wait to provide you guys with more insight to your astrological makeup, and hopefully give you a better overall understanding of how astrological placements function in general. i also hope to give you great insight via tarot and oracle as well.

NOTE: readings will close once i fill up a certain amount of slots (undecided rn, but likely stopping around fifteen-twenty), please check my bio or status in this post (see directly below) on whether or not readings are currently open before requesting! i will make sure to frequently update the status of readings, and will try to re-open them soon after they close. it is likely that when i start my new FT job in november that i may have to close readings for a bit or accept less reading slots :)

CURRENT STATUS: open for all readings

💥 RULES AND IMPORTANT NOTES TO READ FIRST:

must be 18 or over to receive a reading (apologies but i do not feel comfortable reading for minors/receiving their birth information)

i default my readings in the PLACIDUS or equal house system (i do this dependent on your place of birth; for more info feel free to DM). if you prefer/relate more to another system, let me know! i am happy to read your chart in another house system (if you’re new to astrology, i recommend looking at the different planetary house placements in your chart in whole sign system, placidus system and equal house system - see which you relate to most - the easiest to tell by is usually the venus & moon house placement, just search up some basic descriptions of the varying placement of moon/venus. i prefer equal and placidus; lately i lean more towards equal)

i use tropical/western astrology, with both modern and traditional rulers

my readings come in either written or audio format, it’s entirely up to you. both audio and written readings contain the same depth and amount of information. audio readings are supplemented by summarized/bullet points of topics covered but note they do not have written in-depth interpretations like the written natal chart reading would (but i do break down my audio readings with time stamps for easy navigation)

tarot readings and mixed tarot/astro readings can also be done via video if you’d like to see the cards as they come out/etc; please note tarot-only readings are not supplemented with writing/notes if you order them audio or video style

full natal chart + personal planet + progressions readings can be customized to an extent: for example, if you’re not interested in romance, let me know before i do your reading! i’ll focus more on friendships and business when touching on connections/partnerships/venus/etc. or, if for example, you’re more interested in romance, i can highlight those things when interpreting your planets and aspects! this goes for any topics/themes: career, finance, love, friendship, etc. just let me know your specific interests, or things you don’t like talking about (ie: you have zero interest in romance), so i can make your reading more tailored to your preferences. if you have any triggers (ie: do not want family talked about, do not want s*xual topics [sorry i have to add the * or i’ll get shadowbanned again lol😭] talked about, etcetc please let me know! it is never any problem to accommodate this)

obviously, no returns/refunds as this is not a physical item and it takes hours, sometimes days, for most readings to be completed! by ordering from me you are agreeing to this no refund or return policy.

💥 READING TYPES

✨ ASTROLOGY-ONLY READINGS

1. full natal chart reading (must have birth time) $50-70

tier one, $50:

interpretations of all planets (sign + house)

interpretations of ascendant, midheaven, descendant, ic (fourth house)

interpretations of any stelliums, “high energy” houses (maybe not a stellium- but a house with multiple planets/asteroids in it) and lack of an element/modality (or abundance/excess of)

tier two, $70, includes everything in tier 1, plus:

interpretations of every house, even if the house is empty

interpretations of strong / major aspects (main focus on squares & quincunx for lessons, blockages, secret strengths / areas of growth, etc - but any other strong/prevalent aspects will be covered)

interpretations of the following asteroids (sign/house/aspects): north/south nodes, chiron & juno

interpretations of interceptions and duplications if applicable

interpretation of yods and t-squares if applicable 

2. full natal chart reading (no birth time) $35

interpretation of all planets (sign)

interpretation of all major aspects (minus moon aspects)

information on any stelliums, lack of an element/modality (or abundance/excess of)

3. personal planets reading (birth time: $30, no birth time $20)

interpretations of sun through mars in the signs (and in the houses if you have birth time)

any standout aspects to the personals are interpreted (moon aspects not available if you don’t have birth time)

4. current astrological progress, focus, etc (”consultation”) $60

this reading is the one i’m most excited for! 🤍 this reading looks at your current transits as well as your progressed chart and solar return chart to determine where you currently are in your stage of astrological development and focus. we will discuss your progressed placements, kind of like a natal reading, and explain how they may be guiding, impacting and influencing you. we will also go over your current transits, their potential lessons, predictions based on your progressions & transits (long-term), and kind of get a full guide on what to expect, what to focus on, blockages, etc. 

this consultation is interactive! so i welcome you to ask any questions before or after the reading that you’re curious on (i ask for a maximum of five or so *intense* questions though - clarification questions and small questions are totally fine more frequently). you can ask things like “what will happen over the next year in my love life” or “what are the biggest lessons for me this year”, etc. this reading is meant specifically for gaining insight into upcoming events and themes in your life. i use your natal chart, transit chart, solar return & progressed chart. you NEED accurate birth time for this reading. you also need to be comfortable giving me both your birth place and where you will be (city-wise) on your next birthday (or last birthday, depending on which was closer; for the solar return chart).

please note however, this does not include any in-depth interpretation of your natal chart, if you’re interested in that you are going to want the first reading! it is also consultation style; i of course will interpret placements but it is more a “what to expect & focus on” type of reading, than a “this means (x)” type of reading. if you have more information of questions about this or any other reading, shoot me a DM anytime!

5. love reading $15

focuses on self-love, friendship & romantic love. this reading focuses on the planets, aspects, asteroids, houses that center around themes of love and connection in all forms (namely juno, venus, moon, 5th/7th/8th houses, etc). it will go over your wants in love versus needs, blockages in love and things to look out for, weaknesses versus strengths, the type of person that would likely best suit you as a friend or partner, etc. please note it’s recommended that you have your birth time for this reading, since it relies on house placements (however i am able to provide this reading w/o birth time).

i plan for this reading to likely be around three or so pages but knowing my rambling it may be longer lol.

6. blockages, development and growth reading $15

this astrological reading focuses heavily on the learning points and blockages present within your natal chart. specifically, this will have heavy focus on squares, oppositions, quincunxes, yods, interceptions, saturn placement, jupiter placement, sun placement 12th house + draconic chart. i will go over areas of struggle, blocks, and areas that likely need development and heavy focus based on your natal chart. i recommend the above progressed reading if you want a more extensive view on this with consideration to current transits and progressions. please note it’s recommended that you have your birth time for this reading, since it relies on house placements (however i am able to provide this reading w/o birth time).

i plan for this reading to likely be around three or so pages but knowing my rambling it may be longer lol.

7. work, education, career & purpose reading $15

this astrological reading focuses on your “purpose”. mainly highlighting placements like the north/south node, 3rd/9th houses, ascendant-midheaven, and sun/mars/mercury/uranus, we cover ideal careers, paths, and purposes for you. this will cover potential issues and blockages when it comes to work, career and study; as well as when achieving your purpose. it also points towards specific fields, industries, areas of study, etc that you are best suited for and guided towards astrologically. please note it’s recommended that you have your birth time for this reading, since it relies on house placements (however i am able to provide this reading w/o birth time).

i plan for this reading to likely be around three or so pages but knowing my rambling it may be longer lol.

✨ MIXED READINGS (astrology & tarot combined):

1. love life + your person/soulmate reading $25 w/ transits $20 w/o

tarot pulls to reveals the traits, potential signs, energy, etc of your person. using the natal chart (fifth house, seventh house, juno, venus/moon/jupiter, saturn aspects, and more) to determine the traits, likely signs/placements of your “soulmate” or ideal person.

tarot pulls surrounding current themes/blockages/etc in your love life, what you may need to hear, what your person may be going through, their feelings, etc. i also look to your astrological transits to see potential blockages or blessings in your love life right now.

2. monthly predictions / reading $15

using a mix of tarot & oracle pulls along with your current astrological transits, i’ll highlight the focuses, blockages, blessing, themes and similar for the next  month for you. things to look out for, look forward to, to specifically work on, etc. if you have a specific theme of more interest (ie: work life or love life), let me know and i can accommodate my reading to focus more on those than other things (just note i may end up pulling cards not related to said thing, because the universe has a stronger message for you).

✨ TAROT-ONLY READINGS (all pay by tip unless specified, but i do ask a min of a $2 tip!) - payment done via ko-fi or paypal. here are some reading examples (everything is customizable, these are just reading suggestions and possible questions, we can discuss further in DMs)

new moon, full moon, weekly or monthly readings: what you need to release, blockages this moon cycle/week/month, blessings this moon cycle/week/month, what to focus on this moon cycle/week/month

self-love & healing readings: what makes you wonderful / what should you be proud of you / what do you bring to others / where are you too hard on yourself / how can you show yourself love / areas of growth

general love reading: you / lover / dynamic, their wants / your differences / similarities / compatibility, your role in rs / their role / past of rs / current state of rs / future, etc.

general career and finance reading: where does your passion lie / what are you good at / how can you combine these / advice, current financial state / where to avoid spending and save / where to let money flow / advice, what are you doing wrong (career/finance) / what are you doing write / what should you do next / advice, etc.

friendship reading: you can actually use the love reading spreads/questions for friendships as well! some other examples; what you think you get from friendship / what you actually get / what the other person feels you bring / is this person a good friend, current state of the friendship / blockages in the friendship / blessings of this friendship / advice or oracle, etc.

stay or go reading (insp): current state of the connection or situation / why you should stay / why you should go / general advice [please note as with any other reading; you must make your own decisions; please do not ask me about toxic/abusive relationships; the answer is always to get help & leave if you can and are safe! this reading can be used for jobs, education, connections]

general three card pull style readings: you / the other person / the relationship, what you want / what they want / potential outcome, strength / weakness / advice, past / present / future, emotional compatibility / spiritual compatibility / physical compatibility, etc! but you’re welcome to google “three card tarot readings” and request a specific one

yes / no + reasoning readings: straightforward, ask a yes or no question and i’ll pull a tarot card + angel oracle card for the question + ask for clarification on the yes or no (please note “maybe” “not now” etc answers are possible, the cards won’t always give a solid clear yes or no)

extensive tarot love reading, singles $10: traits & signs/energy of your next person, how/when you’ll meet [or if you already have], future relationship strengths/weaknesses, romance + angel + moonology oracle messages, blockages for the relationship, advice, etc + one question answered of your choice

extensive tarot love reading, taken/talking stage/etc $10: your person’s current state, their current feelings, if they’re ready for a relationship (+ why/why not), if you’re ready for a relationship (+ why/why not), blockages holding the relationship back/that may arise, romance + angel + moonology oracle messages, strengths and weaknesses of the relationship, advice + one question answered of your choice

romance & angel oracle pulls for love: very straightforward oracle cards to give messages about your love life, partner, current situation, etc in lieu of using traditional tarot-only reading methods

please note i will not answer any medical, legal, or similar questions/advice. all decisions you make after any reading are always your own. astrology & tarot are meant to be for entertainment purposes solely. i am not held accountable for decisions you make after viewing your reading(s). please note i am not a replacement for therapy, counselling, financial advices, career counsellors, life coaches, or other professionals.

HOW TO RECEIVE A READING - for astrology, astrology-tarot mixed readings, and extensive tarot love readings)

please check bio/this post to see if readings are still open

fill out THIS form

i will then DM you once i receive the request to let you know if i am able to accept the reading or not (aka if slots haven’t filled up yet! i’ll try to give an estimated time frame of completion as well or at least let you know how many readings are before yours) - as of november, i will dm you only once i start your reading! but feel free to DM me first for confirmation

once i’m ready to start your reading, i’ll ask for your birth information and get things going

payment is done via paypal and again i use canadian dollars! once i confirm your reading, i take the payment AFTER i’ve already started the reading. i will send you an invoice via paypal, so all i require is your email. once completed, you’ll receive a google doc link to your full completed reading. i also attach a google form for review, feedback, etc. if you’re comfortable with me publicly posting your feedback onto my reviews page, you’ll be able to specify that in said form! the feedback is anonymous with the option to not be anonymous, entirely up to you.

HOW TO RECEIVE A READING - for tarot-only tip based readings

please check bio/this post to see if readings are still open

send me a DM mentioning you want to do a tip-based tarot reading

after that, i’ll ask you to let me know the theme, spread, topic, question, etc

i’ll pull your cards and do your reading, and then you can send the tip via ko-fi or paypal afterwards :)

#also! if you have a reading already booked from me everything is staying the same for you! #(like price/reading type/everything will stay so dw) #unless you want to change/upgrade to one of these readings #and if i havent reached out to you in a while pls feel free to msg me again i apologize for being so spacey and out of it!!! #mercury rx has been pushing me around loool #im so excited for these i am vibrating w joy #i hope this has no typos or mistakes i am exhausted help #it took so many hours to write this post bc i kept changing things fml

[luminescent-writer]

20 First Lines Tag Game

Rules: List the first lines of your last 20 stories (if you have less than 20, just list them all!). See if there are any patterns. Choose your favourite opening line. Then tag others!

Thanks for tagging me @leadhelmetcosmonaut!

Aha time to spend several hours digging through my Google Drive! These stories are organized in chronological order (more or less), with the first story being the most recent one and the 20th story being the oldest one.

1. Five And All (current WIP, outlining/drafting, still deciding if I want to keep that name)

“We can’t stay here any longer, no one is coming to help! We have to actually make a plan and do something,” Casie shouted into the microphone.

The crowd of students in the auditorium erupted into protests and murmurs. Casie sighed and tapped her foot on the stage.

2. The Endless Dimension (drafting)

The marketplace was a mess, full of eager shoppers and stalls squashed together in a jumble of miscellaneous wares and overenthusiastic merchants. The noise of the vendors yelling, the brightness of the piles of colorful products, and the combined smell of hundreds of foods and sweets flooded Mus’s senses. They felt the most content they had been for weeks.

3. Vivendel Culminating (completed)

The weather was always perfect, but Vivendel preferred it when sunnier days were scheduled. The sunniness level that the weather fairies had chosen that day was wonderful, and Vivendel smiled at the bright blue sky and warm rays of sunshine. He considered inviting one of his Parents to enjoy the weather outside with him, since it might be one of the last opportunities they got to see each other. Vivendel decided to ask his Mother during their phone call.

4. The Jade Sculptor (completed)

There was a sculptor that lived in a small village. One day, he went into the market and bought a long strand of rope. The rope seller had two long braids of hair that went all the way down to his feet, and he talked about the fine quality of the rope for a long time.

5. For The Forest (completed)

As Hedley levitated a box of sausages off of the highest shelf, a tree smashed into the ground outside, and he flinched from its booming crash.

6. Agate's Life (completed)

Since the moment of Agate’s birth, Granite, her mother, was teaching her to control herself.

7. Speak Away Into The Sky (completed)

The angels rushed down from their metal house and ran to the well. They carried several containers, each one as large as a full-grown person. Long, snake-like tubes extended from the containers, and they plunged one of the tubes into the village well. Primrose stood among the curious villagers who had gathered to watch the angels in awe.

8. The Bubble That Would Not Pop (completed)

The bubble popped out of the plastic ring and drifted through the air, carried by a soft breeze from pouted lips. Children watched as it dangled in midair for a moment, its edges quivering. Then it fell, down and down and down, towards the ground.

9. Stellarforce (completed)

Stellarforce peered through the fog and smoke as she looked down at the city. The people were speeding through the city on trains and cars as they went to work, and she couldn’t spot anyone who was clearly in distress from her position in the sky.

10. Fishing Lesson (completed)

“You never get enough fish!” Lola’s mother yelled, “Don’t come back tonight until you’ve finished all of your work and filled this bowl with fish.”

11. Garlic Tastes Weird (completed, Victoria is a vampire)

“Victoria is coming over for dinner tonight,” Donna told Beatrice as they were watching TV shows together in the afternoon.

12. Rewind Again (completed, this is 3 pages of vent writing)

This has been the worst birthday I’ve ever had. I’m scrolling through my social media feed. I’ve been on this website for half an hour, and it hasn’t evoked a single emotion for all that time. Glancing at the time displayed in white numbers in the corner of my screen, I see that it’s 9:20 PM.

13. The Carcass House (completed, might go back to revise this one soon)

The house had been lying in the field for a while now. It looked the same every time I saw it, save for a few more fallen shingles and the slowly fading paint.

14. Thoughts of a Kraken (completed)

Hydration is important after a long week of launching yourself into space at very high speeds and flying aimlessly around the universe. There’s nothing like taking a sip from a spent fuel pool when you’re in need of a drink.

15. Burning Bridges (completed)

The walls of her bedroom were the same boring shade of beige as they were in Julie’s childhood. The popcorn ceiling was uncomfortably uneven, and the bumps made strange patterns.

16. The USB (completed)

The laptop flipped itself open, unlocked its own password, and opened a new document. A message appeared on the bright screen as the laptop’s keys clicked up and down.

17. Phone Call (completed)

The smartphone was on the floor in front of my apartment when I saw it. I couldn’t see anyone nearby who might’ve dropped it, so I picked it up and brought it inside.

18. Strawberry Friends (completed)

I offer a strawberry to Joey, and they quickly stuff it into their mouth, their hands stained with sticky red juice. Eating a strawberry myself, I reach over to wipe the mess from Joey’s face.

19. Pictures of a Monster (completed)

At this point, he was nothing more than pictures. Pictures, scattered throughout the internet, on every platform you could find. There was an endless chain of pictures, and he would never truly die as long as they existed.

20. Flight of the Prince (completed)

The rain had been relaxing but the thunder was not. It rumbled loudly outside the window, and the lightning flashed across Prince Fidus's eyes.

Hmm, okay. I seem to like starting stories by saying "the", since nine of the stories here start with that word. Some other patterns I see are describing the setting or starting with a character's action. My favorite first line is from "Speak Away Into The Sky" (number 7), and I think it's the one that grabs the most attention. I wrote that story from a prompt that said to combine the plot and setting of two different genres, so I picked a fantasy setting with magic and aliens (the angels) from sci-fi. I think it mostly just counts as fantasy, though. Also, I really had to look through all my files for this tag game!

I'm tagging @tenwlms, @bmariewinter, @keen2meecha, @mel-writes-with-her-dragons, and anyone who wants to participate. No pressure though, and I hope you have fun!

#luminescent WIPs #tag game #20 first lines tag game #writeblr #writers on tumblr #fantasy writing #writing #writing blog #Five and All

[sleepless-rain]

Karasuno studies! – View from the second years (Part 5) –

Translator: Leo | Sleepless-rain | Leoppii Editor: San | Naffnuffnice Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5

NOTE: PLEASE READ ALL THE OTHER PARTS BEFORE THIS ONE (or at least part 4) as understanding the punchline of this section relies on the previous parts.

Kageyama left the bookstore with his monthly volleyball magazine, head filled only with thoughts of tako-pho. Combined with the post club activity hunger, Kageyama stumbled down the street. With a bump he walked into someone...

“WHAT?”

TRANSLATORS NOTE:

Please do NOT repost this translation ANYWHERE. If I see the whole thing elsewhere I will stop translating novel chapters and delete all chapter translations I have done. Sharing small snippets are okay but not the whole thing. Please link back to this tumblr post if you want to share it.

Jerking his head up in response to the angry outburst, Kageyama found himself looking up at the volleyball club’s second year member, Tanaka Ryuunosuke. The others, Nishinoya Yuu and Ennoshita Chikara, were here as well.

“…wait it’s just Kageyama. Why are you walking around all spaced out? You alright?” Tanaka asked.

Kageyama, still dazed, answered, “Huh. Uh, I’m fine. Just went to buy the monthly volleyball magazine.”

“Oh, lemmie have a look tomorrow.”

“Sure.”

“Thanks… wait, that’s not what I meant! You’re looking spaced out! Are you seriously okay?” Tanaka gave Kageyama a worried look.

“No…” Kageyama pouted.

“What’s wrong? Is it something you’re worried about? You can tell Tanaka-senpai anything!”

Behind the proud Tanaka, Ennoshita had given up. “There it is, the senpai thing...”

But Kageyama played into it and told him, “Well, uh… I was just wondering what tako-pho was… ”

“Tako-pho?”

Upon hearing the unfamiliar word the second years exchanged glances. 

“What is it?”

“Do you know?” 

“Never heard of it.”

Ennoshita smiled teasingly, a second’s worth of eye contact saying, “Hey, you’re the senpai he can talk about anything to.” And flustered, Tanaka opened his mouth.

“Ah, well you know, it’s that thing! Ah… that thing! Yes! Like… the octopus version of pho!”

And to that Kageyama muttered quietly, “Ah, that’s what I thought…”

“What about it?”

“It’s just that I heard that Hinata and Yachi-san were going to make tako-pho…”

Why he was so concerned about them making tako-pho was unknown to even Kageyama himself. But it stuck to him like a thorn in his side and that bothered him. What was tako-pho?

Kageyama had clammed up and Nishinoya piped, “In other words, is it like imoni*? An imoni party? Is it time for this imoni leader’s debut? ” (* Imoni: this is a traditional dish in the Tohoku area, literal translation being “potato boiling” usually done in autumn on the riverside (this segment takes place in winter). A massive pot is set on rocks, and seasonal vegetables are put in to make a soup. The main ingredient is something called sato imo. There are different versions of imoni depending on where in Tohoku you have it (for example using beef instead of pork, miso instead of soysauce for the soup base). The original reference was to gyuujiru (a supposed beef version of tonjiru) . But I didn’t want to replace this whole Imoni section so it may seem a bit random for Nishinoya to suddenly bring it up. I apologise. )

“I don’t really get what you’re saying…” responded Kageyama, and Ennoshita cut in.

“No, isn’t it too cold for imoni?”

“What are you saying? If you put your spirit into it you can do it!”

“Really? Isn’t it too cold out?”

“Put some spirit into it Chikara!!”

“Imoni and spirit have nothing to do with each other!?”

“What are you saying Chikara? This is imoni we’re talking about!”

A sense of discord began to descend between Ennoshita and Nishinoya before Tanaka interrupted, “Wait, you guys. Stop it. We shouldn’t be arguing about miso based soup or soy-sauce based soup, or sato-imo or potatoes, right now is some precious time before the spring tournament, we don’t have time for this.”

Just as T anaka finished, Kageyama came to a realisation.

That’s it.

He wasn’t sure of the details of what Hinata and Yachi were talking about. But he was curious as it involved a topic similar to imoni. It wasn’t about the soup base or the type of noodles, not about the beef or chicken but….octopus. Thinking about it weighed on Kageyama’s thoughts and his hunger increased.

Imoni – this was a problem involving the identity of someone from Tohoku and Kageyama was a fine Tohoku born person.

“I knew I could count on you senpai…” he muttered and looked up at Tanaka, his face completely different from before, free of worry. “Thanks!” He bowed energetically, and took off at full sprint.

Tanaka, watching Kageyama’s silhouette, commented after him, “What was all that about just now…”

“I have no idea but it seems like he’s cheered up so it’s fine right?”

Tanaka replied to Ennoshita’s words with a “RIGHT!” He picked himself back up. 

“It’s your senpai power!” Nishinoya responded with a triumphant pose.

“You’re right! Senpai-power!”

Ennoshita started walking, leaving the laughing Nishinoya and Tanaka behind. “Hurry up, let’s go, it’s cold.” 

                                                            ***

“Hey sis, can I ask you something?” Tanaka, who had just arrived home, turned stiffly towards his sister, Saeko, who was wearing a face mask. 

“What is it?”

“So… what do you think tako-pho is?” Tanaka asked his face mask covered sister awkwardly.

“Huh? Tako-pho? No idea. Like an octopus version of pho or something? Is this a new menu item at the restaurant?” Saeko replied through her teeth as to avoid wrinkling the mask, and hearing her response, Tanaka laughed in relief. Thank god. 

He didn’t tell his precious junior any lies. Thank god...

Seeing her relieved little brother, Saeko let out an unrestrained laugh. “I’ll be the one to tako-pho** this Tanaka household though.”

“A pun, really? You drinking already?”　Tanaka frowned and Saeko’s expression changed quickly.

“Shut up. Get to your room and start studying already. Didn’t you do badly on the term tests?”

“What? Did you look at them without telling me? It wasn’t a failing grade so it’s fine!” 

Seeing Tanaka’s face go red, she gave his head a poke. “Haha, you can’t fool me. You just missed the failing grade. With a brain like that, are you really my little bro?”

“W-what!? You mean you lied about seeing my papers!?” 

“High school students should be studying! Study!”

And so the pitiful Tanaka was pushed upstairs to his room by his older sister who had taken over the house and its residents. 

                                                              ***

“Studying… huh…” Tanaka laid out over his bed and reached over to take a textbook from his desk. And as he opened it to look at the pages, as if he had been knocked unconscious, he fell asleep.  That was quick. A strangely clean and new English textbook closed neatly on the bed covers. 

It seems that it’s a little too early for some of the first and second years to be focusing on studying.

And so the third years will graduate soon and new students will start high school. Tanaka and the others will become third years and a new Karasuno volleyball club will be born. And when that day comes, this responsible senpai will surely be the support for an amazing team. Probably. 

TRANSLATION NOTES:

**Tako-pho: In this case a better translation would be “rule the roost” but Saeko has used the same word play from part 4. Her intention for it to mean  “Take over“ as Hinata had used when speaking to Yachi.

As a small disclaimer:  I have taken some liberties in translation to make the novel read smoothly. So please don’t quote specific words as canon. That being said I tried my best to stay faithful to the original.  For this reason I will not allow translations into another language using this as the base text. I apologise to anyone who is keen on sharing it in another language but please do so using the original Japanese text.

Anyway, if you enjoyed this chapter please consider supporting Haikyuu and buying a copy of this novel (volume 11) ! I may consider doing more novel translations in the future!

I do have a Ko-fi so if you do feel like it, please donate!

#leo translation #kageyama tobio #haikyuu #hq!! #haikyuu light novel #nishinoya yu #tanaka ryuunosuke #ennoshita chikara #tanaka saeko #karasuno

[uxcollector]

UX Writing: How to do it like Google with this powerful checklist

Notes from Google I/O 2017 on choosing the right words

Writing is easy. All you have to do is cross out the wrong words. (Mark Twain)

hese are my notes from a Google I/O 2017 talk by three UX Writers. It’s a great resource to start creating a UX Writing process within your organisation. Useful for anyone involved in putting words on interfaces.

Topics covered:

1. Introduction to Content Strategy

Maggie Stanphill, UX Director, Content Strategy, Google

2. Three UX Writing Best Practices

Allison Rung, UX Writer, Google

3. Building Brand voice for your new Product

Juliana Appenrodt, UX Write, Google

4. Your UX Writing Checklist

Maggie Stanphill, UX Director, Content Strategy, Google

1. Introduction to Content Strategy

Google follows the principle - focus on the user and all else will follow. Focusing on the user starts with the content.

Content strategy is the crafting and development of all product messaging. UX writing is a speciality within this discipline. It focuses on helping users achieve their goals with language.

Language helps the user get where they want to go. By focusing on what the user wants to achieve, content strategy builds loyalty and trust.

Writers work with designers to think about information hierarchy on the page. This then guides user actions. Writers work with researchers to test hypothesis about language and inform our insights.

When you have the foundation of UX writing and you add brand voice, something amazing can happen. UX writing can survive with the fundamentals, but it can thrive with brand voice.

Oh don’t use big words. They mean so little.

(Oscar Wilde)

2. Three UX Writing Best Practices

1. Clear

Often, the words used are software problems and not people problems. Pay attention to verbs. A verb is an action word, it tends to be the most powerful part of your sentence. In a perfect world it will relate to some action to the user.

For clarity we remove the technical terms and put the action in the context of the user.

This is important when you’re writing a product announcement or an app update. Currently, the focus is on the technical specs of the new feature you’re releasing. Instead focus on the new action that people can perform. Jargon free messaging offers context.

2. Concise

Concise doesn’t only mean short, it means something closer to efficient. When we are writing concisely, we look at our message and make sure every word on the screen has a distinct job.

The above is a common problem in product writing. We don’t need a header here. This is common in interfaces. Because the design field shows some pre-existing text field, we feel we need to fill it in. You should avoid this, when you can instead practice content first design.

Content first design makes sure your visuals are inline with what you’re trying to say. Not the other way around. Try not to jam your message in boxes that weren’t meant for them.

Have your designers work in parallel with writers.

Here we’ve removed the header. As research suggests, most people don’t read every word that’s present on their screens. They tend to scan.

We know that people’s eyes follow an F shaped pattern as they read over the screen. They read the first line, the second line, then start skipping down the page catching only the first or second word of each sentence. For this reason we keep our text not only concise but also frontloaded.

Frontloading is the practice of putting your important concepts first. This is done so people’s eyes catch those important words as they scan through the page

Above, most of the words are at the end of the sentence. We can fix this by flipping it around with the below.

You won’t always be able to do the above. The principle will always hold true and you can use it anywhere you’re writing for screens. Keep the most important text up front and then ruthlessly edit what comes after it.

3. Useful

The call to action (CTA) guides people to their next step. You want your text to help people get where they want to go. For this reason the call to action needs to resonate with what people want to do. Here ‘OK’ is not a good call to action.

‘Try again' is a good option instead. This isn’t all we need. We need to give them an option if they’ve forgotten their password. If they forget their password and their only option is to ‘try again’, it’s very likely they’ll get frustrated.

Paying attention to writing and the people you’re writing for is very important. It can uncover some of the basic functions that your app or website needs to offer. If you don’t think of those edges cases and write for them, you might see a drop off in usage.

Best practice wrap up

If you pay attention to these three principles, you’ll connect better with your users.

Good UX writing is not a science.

These three principles are not always in harmony. There’s a kind of tension between them. They’re competing with each other.

When we made the text clear it’s still pretty long, and not so scannable. When we made the text concise, it made it shorter but at the expense of some clarity. Finally when we made the text useful it became longer and less scannable.

Consider your users context and you’ll find the right balance between these principles. Think about what they want to do in the moment.

You can also look towards your products brand voice. Your brand voice should create the right balance of clear, concise and useful. This should be true to your products character.

Think about your products core function and you’ll begin to find the elements of that character. Then think about what makes it special, how it’s differentiated.

Below is what Google would do inline with their own positive brand voice. They don’t like to lead with negative words like ‘wrong’. They are also okay to have the text a little longer and a little less concise, to be friendly and chatty. The message below sounds like Google. It doesn’t mean it’s right for your brand. It’s up to you to build your own brand voice for your product.

Make the most of your words.

(Claire Savage)

3. Building a brand voice for your new product

Brand principles

Start with a set of brand principles. These can be 3 or 4 adjectives that embody your brand, and how you want people to perceive it. To come up with these adjectives you can do a brainstorming exercise.

Imagine you’re signing up your product to a dating site.

What words or info would you put in your products profile? What is it about your product that make it stand out. What makes it seem most interesting to people?

What would make them want to swipe right and want to learn more?

You can then distill these qualities into descriptive words. These will then become your brand principles.

With Google Pay the principles were: fresh, empathetic and approachable.

Now you have your brand principles. The next step is what these principles will sound like when you apply them to your writing. These will then become your writing guidelines.

Tone

You can then take it one step further and think about what your voice will sound like in different contexts. This is tone.

An easy way to remember the difference between voice and tone, is to think about it like a person. A person’s voice stays the same. The tone they talk to you in may change, depending on the situation or what they’re saying.

In an app this might be like talking to users in a different way for different circumstances.

Tone spectrum

For Android Pay they mapped these different moments on a user journey. They did it in a tone spectrum ranging from serious to whimsical. This makes sure that they’re using our voice in a consistent way across the entire user experience.

For your product the two ends of the spectrum might be called something different. Your tone might range from informative to inspiring or direct to humorous. Once you’ve created your two ends, you then need to determine what moments in the user journey you’re going to map.

A good way to do this is to think about the distinct milestones or interactions in your user experience. These can be things like on-boarding, education or troubleshooting.

To help you decide where these will fall on the spectrum, you can then think about:

What is the user’s goal?

What might they be feeling in that moment?

What would you like them to feel?

Now let’s do some UX writing 🤓

So you’ve established your voice and you’ve mapped your tone. Now, apply both of these and do some UX writing.

It’s time to decide what words will go in to your user interface. This ends up being a combination of everything we’ve talked about.

To be successful your interface text needs to:

Be clear

Be concise

Be useful

Reflect your brand’s natural voice

To show you how Google get there let’s walk through what their UX writing process looks like.

As an example lets try to see what they say to the user the first time they use Android Pay. They can guess that the user is curious. So they want to tell them what they can do with the app, as well as give them a reason to move beyond this screen and set it up.

Step 1

At the beginning of the process they start with something descriptive like the below.

Step 2

They then think about the three principles of good UX Writing. The text is clear and useful, but it’s not concise. They look at what pieces of information are essential. What parts could use visuals instead? They edit it to something like the below.

Step 3

They’ve ticked off clear, concise and useful and now they need to think about tone. They then ask themselves, ‘does this text convey our brand? Not too much, it feels pretty generic’.

So going back to their brand principles they think about how they can make it fresher and more exciting. Even whimsical, as this might be their first impression on the user.

In the final iteration they end up with something like this.

A/B Testing

It’s a little longer than before, but adding a little personality can do this. It’s up to you whether infusing this personality is worth the words. This is not always a clear decision. If you’re not sure whether some words will be more effective than others, then A/B test them.

When trying to find the right words for your product never underestimate the power of A/B testing.

They ran an A/B test on the start screen on Android Pay. They changed the button from ‘add card’ to ‘get started’ and it resulted in a 12% increase in click throughs.

A/B testing is a great way to decide between two versions of text. You can find out which one connects more with your users.

Bad writing slows things down. Good writing speed them up.

(Ken Roman)

4. Your UX Writing Checklist

With this checklist, you’re on your way to make your product stand out with language.

Standout UX Writing Checklist

ALWAYS

User First: Focus on your users

Clear: Write in a language free of jargon, and with context

Concise: Write in a style that’s efficient and scannable

Useful: Write in a way that directs the next action

On Brand: Define your brand’s voice and apply an appropriate tone

WHENEVER POSSIBLE

User First: Choose language that performs, proven by research and A/B testing

Bringing writers in at the end of the creative process, is like trying to put toothpaste in to a tube.

(John Steinbeck)

#UX writer

[theorynexus]

50.

Before returning to liveblogging, I’d just like to say that the organization I used for the Aspects (3 sets of 4, with Freedom, Fate, and Mixed categories) in my last post is one of many different possible ways of categorizing the Aspects.  Their nature is complex, and they individually preside over such broad aspects of reality that any one system of dividing among them is not necessarily going to capture all the nuances and connections to be found between them. The one way that is known canon to organize among these would be the Aspect Pair system, which, as one can see due to the way I described the four categories, is not mutually exclusive with the schema which I utilized in the post. To clarify: I mostly chose this particular way of organizing the Aspects for my counter to Dirk’s train of inquiry for the sake of showing that while many of the Aspects lend themselves to a Fate reading, Free Will is just as well supported. ...

***snickers***    Well, that’s certainly one way to describe the blurring resulting from the intermingling of numerous shards of her soul which is now occurring. On a side note:  It is very interesting that his control is ongoing in pseudo-real time, for his frame of reference, and that his ego is so narrowed/focused at the moment (possibly as a result of the difficulty in maintaining narrative control?) that he can possibly have such slips as a result of distraction on his part. I wonder if Rose not speaking is more a result of the general narrative pause that he is implying might happen if he is not focusing (unlikely, considering all indications are time flow continues) or his manipulation/entanglement of Rose.

How benevolent of him. That said:  Yes, indeed, what he is saying does make quite a bit of sense, especially with the tense “could have been,” suggesting that this is a matter of present and past intermingling, such that the future selves that split off from at least her current main node of being (from her perspective) are not integrated preemptively, for that would probably skew their creation, mess with possibility, et cetera.        Moreover, what he is saying with regards to the psyche needing to be at a certain level of strength very much makes sense, as well. His own is only capable of this because of his Unbreakable Soul personal trait, most likely. He cracks, splinters, bends, but doesn’t fully break~ (And no, I don’t think that Dave being able to cut his Unbreakable Sword suggests that this is no longer the case; rather, it is most likely a sign that he achieved greater mastery of his soul and was able to divest its connection with the sword temporarily, showing an increased degree of flexibility on his part.)

I don’t entirely trust this, insofar as I am not entirely sure Rose is ready to open them, but if Dirk is being truthful as far as his intentions go, at the very least this suggests that his agenda of “becoming a single god” might be more benevolent insofar as it might be more local (meaning specific to him).   If that is so, it could explain the discrepancy that seemed to crop up with Rose being able to actually talk/think in presumably her own (that is to say, deviant from Dirk’s) manner / persona, and might suggest he at least intends for this measure to be temporary.

Hmmm. Well, this all makes it seem somewhat sinister again, insofar as “what I want her to see” could be interpreted as being “only” what he wants for her to see, and the antagonistic “martyr” comment a moment before makes that vibe a bit stronger; however, I DO think that she at least eventually needs/needed to have opened her eyes for the sake of her cohesion and development, so I am quite conflicted on this matter, and in my opinions of it. (Note: I think she needs this because she’s presently quite restricted and narrowed in her field of vision, for her expanded Vision as a Seer of Light is being constantly resisted by her, and thus she is essentially putting blinders on to the burning rays of the sun.)

This could be interpreted both as dangerous, psychically subsuming, insinuating behavior on his part, or as the natural result of her Seer status making things happening seem like noise in her wider-opened consciousness.

Well, that’s a very interesting act of metaphorical/-physical manipulation. So very subtle and questionable and interesting~

LET’S TAKE A FIELD TRIP TO CANDYLAND!!!

That is a weird and silly way of viewing things.  Of course there can be regret. Humans agonize over things they can’t help/change all the time, dummy. :P

Yes, indeed, I do appreciate that spoiler protection, Narrator. Though perhaps a hint might have been more interesting. Perhaps a hint might still be yet to come. Indeed, though: it is likely that no change would happen while I was gone, if I randomly flipped to the equivalent page, Candy 25, and looked back.   I will not do so, regardless of the temptation.

***chorus of Cherubic laughter***     Negatives and positives. Very interesting, indeed.  For some reason, I am suddenly struck with a desire to know whether and/or how these epilogues might intermingle in Homestuck^2, should it be a direct sequel to them.

Now... that is a particularly interesting manner of describing things. I wonder: does this describe the uncertainty/opacity that was naturally supposed to emerge from the narrative End of Homestuck gap in the works that allowed for the escape out of canon in the first place? The “blend ingredients responsibly” comment probably refers to the fact that Lord English presented the primary force that insisted on there being a single Alpha Timeline that, regardless of the retcons, Scratches, and narrative loop-de-loops required to reach its conclusion, ensured his ascension and the natural progression of his being, within Canon.    Presumably, outside of Canon, reentry might be both possible and required in order to maintain the balance of that narrative shell that protects the rest of meta-textual reality from LE’s ire-filled gaze, and thus there are multiple “pathways of promise” that have equivalent legitimacy, and which can simultaneously take place, so long as one of them actually leads to LE’s most important battles’ proper conclusions.     A similar situation to this actually happened in Homestuck’s canon, with the splitting of Vriska, though I’m sure you knew that already.   Of course, only one timeline in this scenario actually successfully left to the exit of canon, along with the kids’ victory state, and presumably the situation is now majorly different. Anyway: I do again wonder how these two main branches shall combine and/or split off in the future-- what sort of interactions they might have~

I am very curious what actual mechanics might have led to this particular sweet and rancorous set of circumstances being forced into being. Is it just random chance that leads to this “irresponsible” outcome?   Is it a necessary sacrifice for the narrative “oomph” to oppose Lord English, in order for the measure of wills to be balanced?   Very curious, generally.

Wow, indeed that sounds incredible. Also ominous. Particularly the use of “bleed,” and the contrast of majesty+disheveled, light and shadow.

Somewhat creepy, but okay.  (I guess the fact that Doc Scratch was a creepy uncle figure always meant that Dirk was intended to be creepy like this, to some extent.)   That said:  Indeed, I agree that this is probably very reflective of her true/Ultimate self.

Again, somewhat creepy.  Additionally: Interesting that he seems uncertain-- unable to truly penetrate her mind, just then --and that this comes across almost as him reassuring himself.

I do truly appreciate this semi-blind, selfish desire of his.   Truly, that is one of the greatest needs of the thinking being: acknowledgement. 

That is a very complex thought. It certainly will be her, but it will be more. Regardless, as will have been elaborated upon by the later passages: she absolutely needs to let go if she is to survive. Her physical form is dying, and the only choice is to either perish, or to allow herself to naturally develop as her godly self is naturally designed to.  While there is technically a choice, as is the case with The Choice that the Denizens present, there is really not much of one to begin with. She will know what is right in her heart, when the choice is made, and her own character will not have permitted her to turn another way.  The only question is if there’s a third option. I would just like to say that Dirk’s statement of “better” is somewhat untrue, likely. There are likely positives and negatives of the choice-- things Rose will have to sacrifice in order to make it work.  Thus, while her Greater Self will be better in some ways, she may well be deficient in others.

Her earlier statement, as I laid out earlier, was in fact incorrect. That said, it is indeed necessary to have abandoned humanity at the point.  Whether or not it was additionally necessary to break down quite all those barriers is another matter. I would suspect that this is in fact not the case.   I do wonder: shall individuality between the two of them actually buckle with the entanglement of their being on a psychic level?     For some reason, I suspect that their cores shall in fact remain somewhat unfused. However, this is mostly intuition, based on the fact that he is/intends to struggle to maintain her physical body for at least a while, yet.   We shall see how things truly turn out, either way.

***lip curls into a snarl***     What disgusting, wretched nonsense.   That kind of verbiage directly contradicts your desire for an understanding equal, Narrator.   Why does your intelligence have to outstrip your wisdom to such a degree?    ***sighs***

Yes. Yes, it does.  Whilst it is not such a linear or meta-stable structure as might otherwise be thought, anyone knowing the nature of Narrative should be aware of the key time-based interactions which allow it to function. I am beginning to absolutely loathe Dirk’s arrogance. ~~~ Post Script Note:  It is very interesting to see the “You” at the end, there, for it could represent Rose, rather than the Reader, at this moment, and the aforementioned blurring of their consciousnesses which I suggested some time ago. 

#Homestuck Spoilers #Homestuck^2 #Homestuck Epilogue #Homestuck Liveblog #Meat or Candy #Homestuck Analysis #Unreliable Narrator #Dirk Strider #Rose Lalonde #Abandoning Humanity #Humanity #Philosophy

[damienthepious]

*flipkicks into Lizard Kissin’ Tuesday nearly late with Cool Sunglasses and a new offering of Fic*

The Rite Of Movement (Chapter 3)

[Ch 1] [Ch 2] [ao3] [Ch 4] [Ch 5]

[Fandom: The Penumbra Podcast

Relationship: Lord Arum/Sir Damien/Rilla

Characters:  Lord Arum, Sir Damien, Rilla, The Keep, Original Monster Character(s)

Additional Tags: Established Relationship, Engagement, Post-Canon, Domestic Fluff, Romantic Fluff, Poetry, Presents, Monster Customs, Dancing

Fic Summary: Arum has a surprising revelation about his own feelings, and then decides to take matters into his own claws since his humans don't seem to realize what they are denying themselves.

Chapter Summary: A conversation before and after a long day, and a correspondence returned.

Chapter Notes: Heck I still don't know how to write summaries properly. Anyway. It's Tuesday again! Time for me to compulsively post fic. Love y'all <3 ]

-

After Rilla and Damien come through the portal back into her hut, after the vines recede into the trough-shaped flowerpot full of swamp dirt in the corner, there’s a moment when they meet each other’s eyes.

And then they both burst into laughter. Damien presses a hand to his heart as if to keep it still, and Rilla guffaws in a completely undignified way until Damien lifts her in a fierce hug.

“I can’t believe him-”

“He wants to marry us, my love!”

“He was so nervous about it too did you see-”

“His hands upon our own were steady but I saw his other hands clasped together to keep from shaking- oh Rilla our brave beast came to us with his very heart in those beautiful trembling hands! A display of such courage, such vulnerability-”

“Don’t let him hear you call him vulnerable or he’ll sulk for a week,” Rilla says, and as Damien sets her back down she drops her head to rest on his shoulder and she grins and grins and grins. “Oh, Saints…”

“I fear I will be utterly useless today,” Damien admits, smiling shyly. “Our engagement will be dancing in my mind at every moment, and I will be unable to share the source of my joy.”

“You can tell Angelo, at least,” Rilla says, drifting away from him to go get changed. “And honestly, Damien, I really don’t think anyone is gonna be surprised if you’re caught up feeling romantic today. It’s not like it’s never happened before, you know? Just- be a little more vague than normal when you speak your heart.”

Damien considers that, then nods. “I suppose you are right,” he says, and then he glances at his fiancée with just a hint of worry. He works his jaw for a long moment before the words blurt out of him, the irrational worry he needs to hear Rilla dismiss. “You don’t think that he- that Lord Arum is only asking to wed because he thinks it’s what we want, do you?”

“Damien,” Rilla shimmies into a new skirt, steps back over to him and places a hand firmly on his shoulder. “Don’t be ridiculous. He wouldn’t have asked if he didn’t mean it.” She aims a stern look at him, squeezing his shoulder. “C’mon, Damien, you know him better than that by now.”

“No, no, of course… of course you’re right.” He pauses. “He… of course he wants…”

“Damien. He made us chocolates,” she says, and the way her lip is curved, the soft, surprised pleasure in her smile, it eases the tension trying to build in Damien’s chest. “If it was just obligation- he wouldn’t have made us a gift, right? He wouldn't have bothered to explain how monsters do marriage, and he definitely wouldn’t have looked that nervous about it. He thought-” she bites her lip, and her expression is so deeply fond that it makes Damien’s heart sing. “Dummy thought we might actually say no.”

Damien considers that idea for a moment, the idea of not wanting to marry Lord Arum and Rilla, and it is nigh incomprehensible. He shakes his head. “We- we should treat him to a gesture in kind,” Damien says, the thought striking him suddenly and filling him with glee. “An engagement gift in return! He deserves- he deserves to have his sweetness returned to him, as he has treated us to such sweetness himself.”

“Saints you’re adorable,” Rilla breathes, and she kisses him quickly before she continues. “I think that’s a great idea. What did you have in mind?”

Damien furrows his brow. “Er- well, I could compose a-”

Rilla bursts into laughter again before he can finish the thought, and Damien stops and smiles, chagrined. “You’re always composing a something. It’s a very sweet thought, your poetry is always lovely, but maybe something more- out of the box?”

“Out of the box,” he echoes, musing. “Hmmm. I am not sure what sort of token of affection he would enjoy, my Rilla, and gifts were not a part of my original proposal,” he says. “Besides the rings, of course.”

Rilla blinks, and then a sly smile blooms across her face. Damien’s heart swells at the sight, as it always does, and then with sparkling eyes Rilla takes Damien’s hand.

“Okay, so, that gives me an idea.”

-

Arum’s messenger finds him out on the balcony, where he is sunning himself and certainly not pouting that Damien and Amaryllis are not there to warm him personally this afternoon. They still have some appearances to make near the Citadel, of course; Amaryllis with her numerous undeserving patients and Sir Damien- doing whatever Knights do when they aren’t out in the world, slaying monsterkind. It simply seems unfair, that they must be away from him so soon after agreeing to marry him.

He hears a thrumming noise and feels a soft brush at his elbow. The bee (from his hive on the uppermost part of the Keep, modified and ensorceled to be resilient and obedient and the approximate size of a generous loaf of bread) flies into his upper left arm a second time, a fuzzy buzzing whump that pulls him from his near-nap with a snarling yawn. When he looks down, she is nudging insistently against his elbow, and the little scroll case clutched in her claws has a new missive inside. He lifts the creature gently, unbuckles the scroll case, and informs her that she has done an excellent job before he sends her back towards the hive.

When he is alone on the balcony again, the Keep warbles a question and he scowls, staring at the scroll in his claws with a combination of nerves and excitement tossing around in his guts.

“I suppose we shall see,” he says with a sigh, and the Keep responds gently. He scowls. “Of course not. Nothing to fear regardless- if they disapprove of my position then I shall be glad not to have them attend. We don’t need them anyway. I desire to be married and I shall be, regardless of whether I can find a monster to declare it so. I will declare us married myself if need be.”

The Keep trills amusement.

“Call me cute again and just see what happens to you,” he mutters darkly, the scroll nearing danger in his flexing claws. “That herbalist has been a horrible influence on you, you ridiculous plant.”

It sings a distinctly unapologetic apology and Arum scowls again, but the expression slides from his face as soon as he unrolls the parchment. The Keep sings again, impatient and curious, and Arum waves a hand in the air with a hiss as his eyes dart through the correspondence.

“They- Eld Mosshorn wishes to attend,” he says in a stunned whisper. “They wish to come with their interpreter and- and they have agreed to preside over the ceremony.”

A ripple of small pale flowers bloom across the balcony as the Keep sings its joy, and Arum tries to hide his smile in a scoff.

“As I told you, nothing to fear at all. They say they will be near enough to pay a call on us close to the full moon after next, and that the full moon itself will be an auspicious day for the ceremony.”

It’s a little more than a month away, as if Eld Mosshorn knows precisely when Arum desires them to come. As if the universe itself is on Arum’s side.

The Keep sings a strangely stilted question, and Arum pauses his reading to glance up with a furrowed brow.

“What?” He scowls, dismissive. “Why would they ask about you?” His eyes dart back to the scroll to read further along, and then he wrinkles his snout in confusion. “They- they say, that they anticipate a lovely reunion with… with the “soul of the swamp itself” upon their arrival.” He pauses, his mouth hanging slightly open. “What.”

The Keep hums in smug pleasure, then warbles a quick, dismissive triplet.

“What-” he starts again, and then he shakes his head. “Irrelevant. What do I care if the two of you ancients have some new gossip to exchange? All that matters is that Mosshorn isn’t going to go inform on me to the Senate or worse. They want to- to help.” He pauses, staring down at the parchment again for a long, long moment, his thumb brushing the edge of the page. “They actually want to help me marry Amaryllis and Sir Damien.”

He doesn’t realize the Keep has lifted out a vine to curl gently around his shoulder until he feels its touch, and he snarls automatically though he doesn’t pull away. Another trick the Keep has learned from his humans, this almost-hug. He lifts a clawed hand to grip the vine, reading the words again as it sings to him in softness, in support.

“Thank you,” he says quietly. After a pause, he rolls the parchment back up, sniffing primly and gently untangling himself from the embrace of the Keep. “Well, that’s quite enough of that, I think. Open a way to my room, if you would. I believe I have an invitation or two I should begin to compose.”

-

When Rilla returns home in the evening, exhausted after dealing with her backlog of housecalls, Damien is waiting for her. He sits on the stump in front of her hut, busily scratching away at a long piece of parchment, weaving together drafts of verse with a distant look on his face. He doesn’t even notice her approaching until she wraps her arms around him from behind, pressing a kiss to the nape of his neck and making him jolt, a sharp line of ink skittering across the page in response.

“Oh, sorry,” she says, patting his shoulder sympathetically, but he’s grinning wide when he drops his paper and turns in her arms to pull her into a hug.

“At last, my love returns!”

“It’s only been a few hours, Damien,” she says through a laugh. “Did you manage to hold yourself together today?”

“As best as I was able,” Damien replies. “Sir Angelo knew that I was acting oddly, but he said it was a pleasant oddness rather than the alternative and he did not ask many questions.”

“You didn’t tell him yet?” Rilla asks, pulling Damien to his feet and helping him collect the parchment before they head inside.

“I did not have a moment alone with him,” Damien says wryly, and then he sighs as the door shuts behind them. “Besides, I think it will be best to wait until we have a date chosen before I start bandying invitations around.”

Rilla notices the note sitting innocently in front of the flowerpot, and she picks it up to read as Damien busies himself putting away his new poetry drafts. “Well,” she says as she reads, “looks like you don’t have to worry too much about that part of it.” She lifts the note and gestures with it. “Arum must’ve had the Keep send this through sometime today. Apparently his monster priest agreed to go along with this whole monster-human marriage thing.”

Damien presses a hand to his chest, eyes shining. “So quickly!”

“Well, we don’t know how long ago Arum asked, I guess,” she shrugs and looks at the note again. “He says his priest suggested the full moon after next.” She tilts her head as she does the math. “Full moon is… four or five days from now? So just barely over a month. Huh. It’s like this guy read Arum’s mind…”

“A month,” Damien breathes. “So soon and yet so far, I would be content to wed you both tonight if I could-”

“I know, Damien,” Rilla says fondly, folding the note and tucking it between a few pages of her research. “I know you would.”

His smile fades off just a bit, a worry from the back of his mind rising to the surface. He hesitates, but he can’t help himself, can’t keep himself from asking. “And you, my love?”

She blinks, then looks at him in confusion. “And me, what?”

“Are you… truly content with the speed at which this is progressing, my flower? A month feels like an age for my impatient heart, but I know that you had reservations about rushing through our engagement before…”

Rilla’s brow furrows, just a bit, and then she sighs. “I’m not in as much of a hurry as the two of you apparently are, no,” she admits wryly, “but it’s hard not to get caught up in the excitement. We’ve been through a lot together, you and me, all three of us together- and I want to get married to you, Damien.” She reaches out and cups his cheek, smiling. “I wouldn’t have said yes if I didn’t want to. And I wanna get married to Arum, too, even if I didn’t think that was even an option like two days ago.”

“I was only…” he pauses. “I was never sure why you postponed for so long, during our original engagement. I convinced myself over and over again that you did not want to marry at all, that you were only humoring me.”

“I’m sorry,” Rilla says gently. “I didn’t mean to make you feel like that.”

“Can I…” he winces, then reaches a hand up to press her own against his cheek again. “May I ask why you were hesitant, before?”

“I didn’t-” Rilla bites her lip, sighs at herself, and drops her hand. When she’s safely stepped back a pace, she lifts her eyes to meet Damien’s again with a self-deprecating smile. “Look, I don’t want to make a big deal out of this or anything, okay?” She pauses, and Damien nods. She worries her lip between her teeth for a moment, and then she says, “If I’m being honest, the biggest reason I kept putting off setting a date was that I didn’t want to get married if my parents weren’t gonna be there to see it.”

“Oh.” Damien’s eyes widen in surprise, his heart giving a painful lurch. “Oh, my Rilla I am-”

“Don’t- don’t get all- sappy about it,” she snaps, waving a hand in the air and scowling to the side. “I just thought- if there was a chance they could come back, maybe if I just waited a little longer maybe they’d be able to be there. Which was stupid, obviously. But now…”

“Now?” Damien asks, hesitant when she pauses for a breath or two longer than is comfortable.

“Well,” she says, voice dull, “it’s not like I could have brought them to a wedding with a monster anyway, right?” She sighs. “I’m sorry. I don’t actually- I don’t really want to talk about this. We’re engaged twice over and I’d really rather go back to being excited about that right now.”

Damien makes himself smile, gentle, and pulls Rilla into a hug. “Of course, my love. I am sorry if I pushed you.”

She thwacks him on the shoulder gently, rolling her eyes. “I’m fine, Damien.”

“I know you are. You are substantially more accomplished at being fine than I am, my flower, but you wished to go back to excitement over our engagement and that means that I would like to hold you in my arms.” He does just that for a moment, swaying slightly as if in an understated dance, before he continues. “And, if you will allow, I would very much like to kiss you, now.”

“Damien.” She’s smiling again, the expression Damien most cherishes, most delights in causing. She leans in and the smile melts into a kiss that sings through Damien, that flows through him like a river of liquid light, every time. When she pulls away again she laughs softly against his lips, resting her forehead against his, and the feeling almost overwhelms him.

“I love you so much, Rilla,” he murmurs. “I will be so, so grateful to be your husband.”

“I love you too,” she says, voice soft and eyes closed, and she kisses him again before she leans back, taking his hands in her own. “Now c’mon, we gotta get back to the Keep so you can distract our fiancé long enough for me to figure out his ring size.”

#elle's fanfic #the penumbra podcast #second citadel #rad bouquet #lizard kissin' tuesday #sir damien #amaryllis of exile #lord arum #pls pls enjoy and tell me what you think!!!! #happy lizzer kiss day huzzah #the rite of movement

[minnie-marvel]

Crown Fell (Peter Parker x Reader) Part 4

Asgard has been destroyed and the time has come for you to live on Midgard with your brothers Thor and Loki. They’ve decided in order to live among humans you must learn to adapt to them, and what better place to do that then highschool? Don’t worry too much though, a very cute Peter Parker is ready to teach you and might be the Prince Charming you never thought you’d find on earth.

Peter Parker x Reader

Words: 1,848

Part 1 Part 2 Part 3

A/N: Okay but we all know that we busted an entire tear when we saw Rue’s death scene in Hunger Games let’s be real for a second. I really wanted to get this out before my wisdom teeth removal so here ya go!

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You kicked your feet to and fro tapping furiously at the new phone in your hand. It was a gift from Tony Stark, a way to communicate with him and the rest of the Avengers should the time arise. You still sat on the barstool Peter leaning beside you as he helped you punch in his number as a contact.

“There! Now if you need me but I’m not here, you can click these and we can talk whenever you want,” He smiled innocently looking up at you his chocolate brown eyes making your cheeks flush as you looked at him.

“But…does that mean you’ll be leaving on a mission after this weekend?” You asked disappointment creeping into your tone. He waved his hands feverishly in response to whisk away your sudden sadness. 

“N-no I’ll still be here!! And at school too!! It’s for like when I’m not two feet away from you, you know?” he asked to help you put both of your minds at ease. Peter wasn’t sure if his heart could take another somber gaze from you.

You felt your lips smile and you nodded shoving the phone into his hands. “Now then! You’ll have to show this Instagram Flash was talking about, I’m quite curious!!”

Peter laughed and happily obliged starting to make your account for you. “Okay, what do you want people to call you on here?” He asked as you rested a hand on his shoulder while you watched, making a chill run down his spine.

“Hmm… it should be something inconspicuous… what would you suggest?” You asked blinking up at him.

“what about just your name? Or Y/N. O with some numbers or x’s?”

“PERFECT! Go forth Peter, I’m anxious for this Instagram to finally take shape,” You said eagerly as he tapped your name away with two simple x’s before and after your name and initials. He took a step back with the phone still in his hands your face perfectly fitting in the frame.

“Peter? What are you doing?” You asked curiously tilting your head to the side. 

“It’s not complete without a picture! Smile!” He cheered. It wasn’t like he had to ask you twice. The happiness in his voice was enough to make you break out in a huge grin.

Snap!

He set the picture as your profile icon and added it to your page without a caption before handing the phone back to you. “Now you can add and follow people as much as you’d like! I followed you,” he explained pointing to an icon of him and Ned in mid-handshake. You smiled at his profile scanning what few pictures you could before a notification popped on your feed. You squinted at your phone.

“Flash_99 has followed you…? How quick…” You whispered to yourself. Peter nearly fell over looking at your phone too. “I JUST made this account like… literally a minute ago!! God, he’s so annoying…” he muttered to himself throwing a hand through his hair. You shrugged and clicked the phone off before approaching Peter again.

“Well, if it makes you feel better, I like you far better than I do Flash,”  You smiled before walking off, leaving Peter a blushing mess, that tried to struggle from melting into the cracks between the floorboards.

“Okay everyone, since it's our little princess’ first day home from school I thought it might be appropriate for a little catch-up party!!” Tony Stark had hopped over the large seat planting himself comfortably while swinging his legs over the sides. 

“Aww sweet a catch-up party??” Peter asked sitting on the floor right by Thor’s feet. “This’ll be great,” You sat between your two brothers as you usually did, blinking as the huge flat screen slowly descended from the living rooms ceiling. You leaned your head down to Peter. “what’s a catch-up party?”

Steve sat properly on a sofa close by while the rest of the Avengers who wanted to join you filtered in the room slowly. Some had bowls of popcorn, others bottles of sodas and cups to pass around. You turned to listen to Steve’s explanation.

“I’m older than the rest of these guys,” He explained pointing to the collective group with the back of his thumbs. “I come from a time that didn’t have all these different forms of technology, and movies and things, so every once in a while we throw one of these parties to catch me up to speed with how things are in the twenty-first century,” he took a cup and filled it with sprite before taking a sip of the bubbling liquid.

“This will be good for you too Y/N, it might help you with making some references,” Tony said grabbing the remote and turning the television on. “I think we’ll have to pick a teen movie for your sake, we’ve got Mean Girls, High-school musical, Twilight, The Princess diaries- I think you might actually enjoy that-”

You pointed your finger to one picture that had a serious looking girl pointing an arrow seemingly at you. “What’s that one?” You asked almost expecting for her picture to move.

“That? That’s The Hunger Games,” Peter answered tossing a glance at you. “It’s kind of violent though… are you sure you want to watch it?” He arched an eyebrow and you returned him with a sly smirk.

“You’re asking this to the person who pulled a knife on you earlier today?” You asked.

“What?!” The whole room erupted minus your brothers (Loki looked especially pleased) and Peter causing you to shrug sheepishly. “We were only playing!!” You defended flicking your wrist a dagger appearing in your hand in an instant.

“She can do the instant dagger thing too?!?!?” Bruce asked already letting his fingernails dig into the arms of the chair he sat in.

“Sister, your Loki is showing,” Thor said patting your shoulder. You pouted as you flicked your wrist again the dagger seemingly disappearing into thin air.

“I’ll try not to take that as an insult brother,” Loki chimed as he pulled you close to him. “It’s high time you showed your mischievous side!”

“Is that so Loki??” You erupted in a laugh pulling Thor with you as the three of you collided in a sort of dogpile on Loki, the combined weight of both you and Thor nearly choking him. He slapped your bodies away vigorously like a cat who had water dumped on them who sought out revenge.

Peter and the rest of the Avengers couldn’t help but stare. It was so odd to see Thor and Loki act so friendly. They weren’t complaining though, anyone would have preferred a happy Loki as to a sad one, or even worse- an angry one.  

��Alright, quit horsing around you three, I’m gonna start this baby up,” Tony said pressing play shuffling into his chair more. You suddenly found your attention drawn to the television as the movie started. 

You can’t say the violence shocked you or really anyone but Peter being that he was the one that was least used to the violent lifestyle that the rest of you were all accustomed too. You hardly reacted throughout the whole thing but listening to Peter’s commentary proved to be a bit funnier than expected. Halfway you found yourself sliding to the floor next to him because Tony threatened to blast him with his iron suit if he said one more lame pun. You of course still wanted to hear everything he had to say about the movie so you stayed close- much to your brothers’ dismay.

You hugged your knees as the pale light from the screen reflected onto your faces while the rest of you sat in the dark.  You suddenly felt your body go still as you saw a child have a spear thrown straight to her chest. As the protagonist sang softly to her body you felt your eyes sting, tears welling up inside them. Your lips pursed as you tried not to give yourself away, but Peter’s eyes were looking into yours from the side.

You didn’t see it but both of your brother’s body had tensed up uncomfortably as they forced themselves to watch the screen. Loki felt his nails dig into his own skin as he crossed his arms tightly and Thor’s teeth clenched so hard on top of one another that he thought they might break. They barely moved barely breathed until the scene was over. When it finished and the riot ended their eyes tore themselves from the screen and landed on you as you rubbed your shoulders.

They didn’t let their gaze shift from you for the rest of their movie because some part of them, even if it was a small part, feared that if they did, you might have ended up the same way as the poor girl in the movie.

After the credits rolled and the lights came on everyone broke out into individual discussions about the movie. You couldn’t help but attack Peter with questions.

“So they both were allowed to live with their lives?? How is the Capital not furious??”

“Oh, they are,”

“Then why are they still alive and fine?? Why couldn’t the little girl live too?”

“Well, there's another movie,”

Your jaw just about dropped as you leaned in close to Peter’s face. “Another?!” You asked. Peter couldn’t help but blush despite knowing that he had two Norse gods watching his every move. Your eyes were just so close to him, he could see the different specks of color in them seemingly glistening with excitement. 

“Y-yeah like… two more,” He answered averting his eyes shyly. 

“TWO?!?!?!?” You shouted. You grabbed his hands quickly in yours. “Peter, we must watch these immediately!! I have so many questions, so many thoughts so many-”

“Y/N, it’s getting late,” Thor said standing to his feet. “Perhaps you can watch in the morning, for now, we all need rest,” he said taking you by the back of your collar without breaking a sweat. He threw you over his shoulder. 

“Goodnight fellow Avengers, Peter,” he said not even bothering to glance back as you were carried away to your room.

“Tread carefully spider-boy,” Loki said in a soft hiss leaning down into Peter’s ear from behind causing him to jolt in place his heart jumping out of his chest in fear. He left him grasping at the cotton shirt he wore breathing heavily a soft “oh my god,” escaping his lips.

Peter wasn’t sure if he had just made two very powerful adversaries or not, but he wasn’t going to try and push their buttons to try and find out.

Meanwhile, you sat in your bed still trying to figure out how the foreign application on your phone when you saw a number one pop onto a small bubble at the corner of your screen. Curious to what it did you clicked onto it blinking at the message it held.

‘Hey Y/N, I’m gonna be throwing a dope ass party at my house tomorrow night, you should totally come ’

Part 5

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“Crown Fell” Tag

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#minnie marvel makes a fic #peter parker x reader #peter parker #peter parker imagine #crownfell #marvel x reader #marvel fanfiction #marvel #avengers x reader #avengers #avengers fandom #avengers imagine #avengers fanfiction

[fluidsf]

Fluid Label Focus on QUANTUM NATIVES 3

Wa?ste: Living Demons (2019)

Reviewed format: PROMO MP3 download as kindly provided by QUANTUM NATIVES

Welcome to the third review I’m doing of a new release on the QUANTUM NATIVES label. This short but sweet EP length release by Australian artist Wa?ste titled Living Demons was sent to me as a PROMO MP3 download shortly before its release on March 27 of this year (2019) by Chris from QUANTUM NATIVES. And today I’m finally getting to reviewing this release. So, where does the label takes us this time on this, at time of writing most recent release? Well, it takes us to a surprisingly recognisable but also surreal manipulated sonic environment. The visual artwork, description in the email and texts included all hint to a human being as a kind of computer of which the “mind” is comparable to memory. Comparing impressions, situations and occurrences we all have in daily life to the building up of multiple tasks / processes into the RAM of a computer. The idea is of course quite abstract and open to multiple interpretations which are especially invited by the (in my opinion) quite “out there texts” and descriptions that accompany the music the so far 2 released videos that accompany two of the 4 tracks on Living Demons as well as the various artwork files included in the download folder you get when you download this release. With all these materials combined the release feels a lot like a really calming kind of sonic environment featuring catchy melodies but which is also filled with field recording details, sudden sound manipulations and some quirky distortion effects, like being lost in thoughts at a café, music is playing and the sounds from the people and traffic outside the café window are all suddenly mixing with the music into a pleasant lucid dream. Before I’ll move to the review of the music and how the artwork is connected to it, I’ll mention the contents of the download (these are most likely identical to the release you can download yourself). Besides an icon file of the release (for the map where the releases are located on the QUANTUM NATIVES website) you will find the 4 tracks of Living Demons in 320kbps/44.1kHz MP3 files, a text file containing the text (in multiple languages) describing the music, an art folder featuring 8 different artwork files in various formats, outside the folder there’s the release cover in good 2448x2448p resolution, a small version of the cover and a scanned PDF file containing a photo book.

As I mentioned, moving into the sonic environment of Living Demons is a really smooth 14 minute journey of the impressions of daily life contained within gorgeous layered pieces of music. The music Wa?ste created on this release mixes manipulated Pop samples, Deconstructed Club, Glitch and Noise elements into fluid soundgrooves and Noisescapes that feel like a depiction of the spring season filtered through our impression filled lives. First track ｆ.４ℹ︎.t.h showcases this really well. The piece revolves a poppy melodic fragment that’s glitched up, stuttered and granularized forming a hypnotic looping base of the music in which the hopeful female textless vocal samples hover around the sonic environment both as motif and scattered bits of sound that are also combined with the ever changing grooves of the piece. These grooves consist of a mixture of R&B styled electronic drums which are distorted and effected in various points within the track and chopped Amen breaks creating abstract blocks of rhythm that are often stuttering and disintegrating into often metallic sharp bursts of sound. These glitchy metallic resonant percussive elements form a great juxtaposition of the fragmented but still consistently deep ambiences created by the vocal Pop melody samples as well as additional reverberated female vocal samples that create dense side-chained atmospheric pads. Field recordings of a crowded street are blended in to create references to the impressions of daily life that float through our mind through this music, but sonic details within the percussion like the various gun sound effects also add a curious Industrial harshness to the soundscape of the piece and the heartbeat sound at the end of the piece is a great compositional choice that keeps the music grounded in the organic ambience of human life. All in all a great first track that blends musical and concrete sound to conjure up the images of life filtered through a lucid dreaming mind as well abstract outbursts of the mind’s imagination. The following piece stealing is darker, but not in a doomed horror kind of manner, this darkness is more like the tension of a Thriller. The piece is very Industrial focused, filled with various percussive metallic sounds, most likely taken from field recordings of construction works, fences clanging and related resonant sounds caused by the actions of people in the city. The melodies are formed from various sampled sounds that are rich in overtones and do have a bit of an 80s Gothic feeling to them in a way, which is helped by the at times “triggered” sounding element in the way the samples cut off when the notes of the melodies are played. stealing feels a lot like a cross between an 80s Gothic influenced Industrial piece and contemporary sample manipulation and granular techniques. It’s like an eerie story told in a dark shadowy church whilst strange images of a city in construction flash before your eyes, the bassy kicks feeling like sudden punches of energy from a nearby underground club. The burst of granular Noise in the second half of the piece feels like a strange wave of corrupted imagery passing you. Anything is possible in this mysterious environment you’re in, but you are always reminded of the daily city life you’re living in as well, grounded to the flow of a calm day as it unfolds, minute by minute. The track that follows afterwards, ecstatic passage is a piece I could describe as sounding a bit like a beatless Witch House track. Indeed, that style might sound like being unrelated to this music, but in fact the heavy distortion, metallic Industrial percussion mixed with deep synth ambiences and angel like female vocals are also elements featured in that genre. Connected to the concept of a blend of impression from city life hitting our minds while sitting in a cafe at leisure, I could describe it as a joyful outburst of emotional energy blended with the loud traffic noise and harsh sounds that can occur in midst of a traffic jam. Like the dark muck of asphalt trying to cover a painting of a sunshine filled landscape but never succeeding as the sunshine keeps evaporating the dark texture of the asphalt. Final track xan 1 continues this element of (harsh) Noise trying to reduce that tranquil peaceful feeling of a picnic in the park as could be depicted by the bright warm guitar / choir samples melody. Screechy masses of needle scratching like Noise burst out at many points in the track, and at other points Pioneer turntable rewinding sounds come in, as if an epic beat is about to be dropped. It’s quite an absurd, maybe even funny juxtaposition between the folky melody and out of the blue dadaist Noise burst and DJ mess-ups. I also love the very high pitched beeps within the Noise bursts and how the juxtaposition of Noise and melody creates a very nice two-layer depth in the piece, allowing you to be able to hear the Folk melody “in between the Noise”, even if you’d expect it to mask the melody. A great closing track from this excellent EP by Wa?ste.

All in all, Living Demons is a very vibrant, richly detailed and adventurous mind trip blending thoughts of the intense city life with imaginative abstractions, varied sonic imagery and inviting melodies that also freely crosses into Industrial and Noise territory along the way. The accompanying artwork by Wa?ste expresses this multi-layered aspect of the EP rather well, showcasing pictures of people in the city, details of shop signs, hand drawn and painted abstract imagery and hand-writing, blending the musical aspects with the visual domain and showing us captures of city life as well as the abstraction contained within the music through graphic glitches and creative layering of text and imagery. The two videos released for Living Demons so far, for ecstatic passage and xan 1, show this imagery in motion, going with the music, showing moving images from people on the streets of the city which in the video of ecstatic passage are combined with some sweet illustrations by @momcore666 layered over the imagery. An excellent release definitely and highly recommended for fans of Plunderphonics, Glitch, but also Noise and Industrial styled music and anyone looking for a great sonic adventure to enjoy and celebrate the spring season with. Go check this out now.

The MP3 download on QUANTUM NATIVES is available here: http://www.mediafire.com/file/vtcbi599l24u9rh/WaSte+-+Living+Demons+%28QNR025%29.zip?fbclid=IwAR2ARieqZVP0fMHJjTfeZP1uq7NPz75VMK_CjE8QhA1rpb4-wFo-sdsDdXQ

The two mentioned videos are available to watch on the QUANTUM NATIVES Youtube page here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p5WQTSJIkoE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S3dmG5So0T8

#digital download #underground music #independent music #wa?ste #2019 #deconstructed club #glitch #industrial #noise #sound collage #plunderphonics #quantum natives #living demons #fluid label focus #experimental music #@momcore666

[pamphletstoinspire]

Have we forgotten the name of Jesus?

It's time to retrieve devotion to the Holy Name.

Are you very good at remembering names? Not me. When I taught at universities, my students thought that I was very strict because I took attendance every day. Actually, taking daily attendance was my only shot at learning the students’ names by the end of the semester. When my inability to recall names was found out (as it inevitably was), I would (half-) joke with my students: “I have nominal aphasia.” They would look at me with kind concern. Then I would explain: “That means that names fly into my right ear and then fly out of the hole at the base of my skull.” I used a bit of humor to cover my embarrassment at this weakness in my social skills.

Immediately after my mother had a stroke, she was traumatized by the discovery that, for a brief while, she could not recall her name. When she recovered and came home from treatment, she began a curious yet revealing practice. Every morning, before anyone else woke up, she would come down to the kitchen, and take out a notebook that she kept in a drawer. The she would sit down, and write the day’s date, followed by her name and address. Line after line, she would repeat her name and address, in perfect handwriting. Once she filled the page, she would close the notebook, and place it back in the drawer. She kept up this practice for years, until she died.

There is one name that we dare not forget. No—let me rephrase that. There is a name we must retrieve. That is, there is a name that is all-too-familiar, spoken of all-too-casually, with neither faith nor reverence, and that is the Holy Name of Jesus.

January 2, in the venerable calendar of the Church, is the Feast of the Holy Name of Jesus. (This feast is celebrated on January 3 in the General Roman Calendar of 1969.) Recalling when the Holy Family came to the Temple in Jerusalem to dedicate the Christ Child to God (Luke 2:21), the Mass of the venerable rite reflects the abiding faith of the Church that the very name of ‘Jesus’ (roughly translated here as “God-is-salvation”), is worthy of love, devotion, and care. There was a time when this insight was common knowledge and common practice.

The acknowledgement of the true awesomeness of the Holy Name was summarized by the Catholic Encyclopedia:

The Name of Jesus invoked with confidence

brings help in bodily needs, according to the promise of Christ: “In my name They shall take up serpents; and if they shall drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them: they shall lay their hands upon the sick, and they shall recover.” (Mark 16:17-18) In the Name of Jesus the Apostles gave strength to the lame (Acts 3:6; 9:34) and life to the dead (Acts 9:40). It gives consolation in spiritual trials. The Name of Jesus reminds the sinner of the prodigal son’s father and of the Good Samaritan; it recalls to the just the suffering and death of the innocent Lamb of God.

It protects us against Satan and his wiles, for the Devil fears the Name of Jesus, who has conquered him on the Cross.

In the Name of Jesus we obtain every blessing and grace for time and eternity, for Christ has said: “If you ask the Father anything in my name he will give it you.” (John 16:23) Therefore the Church concludes all her prayers by the words: “Through Our Lord Jesus Christ,” etc.

That the Holy Name, that is, the invocation of our savior, was both worthy of love and also blasphemed, was expressed by “The Golden Arrow Prayer,” which is said to have been revealed by Jesus to a Carmelite nun of Tours in 1843 as a reparation for blasphemy:

May the most holy, most sacred, most adorable, most mysterious and unutterable Name of God be always praised, blessed, loved, adored and glorified in heaven on earth and under the earth, by all the creatures of God, and by the Sacred Heart of our Lord Jesus Christ in the most Holy Sacrament of the altar.

How different is Catholic tradition from our own time, marked by vulgarity, irreverence and worse! There was a time when Catholics knew to bow their heads upon hearing the Holy Name spoken of in public prayer, in the recitation of Sacred Scripture, and in the venerable rites of the Church. Our culture has gained nothing by losing its humility before God. Worse, the culture has become indifferent to the honor owed to our Divine Savior, whose human birth we claim to have so recently celebrated. What shall we do, starting today, to restore reverence for the Holy Name and love for Jesus in our conversations, our prayer and our worship?

Litany of the Holy Names of Jesus, All Mercy

Christ, in all your names and forms, have mercy on us, the sinners. The headlines are terrible. Everywhere you look there are natural disasters, political and social unrest, a sense of disorientation and of things spiraling out of control. Often when we pray we feel less and less certain of how to pray — the words come jumbled, or fail outright.

Interiorly, we cry out, “Lord, help! Have mercy!” The less mannerly among us might add, “We’re crying ‘Uncle’ over here!”

Which is another way of saying “Have mercy on me.” Or, “Have mercy on us, and on the whole world!”

It’s a good prayer.

Recently at Adoration, those sentiments, brought before Christ Jesus, Truly Present, poured out in a ragtag sort of litany that seemed to combine the Jesus Prayer and the words of the Divine Mercy prayer, words from both of which I used interchangeably throughout, inhaling with the Name, exhaling with the plea for mercy.

It was a calling out for mercy to the Holy Name, in all of its forms and varieties, and it was simple, but it led into a deep sense of contemplation and consolation. Perhaps it will for you, as well.

Litany of the Holy Names of Jesus, All Mercy Lord Jesus Christ, Son of the Living God, have mercy on me, the sinner. Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on us, and on the whole world. Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on us, poor sinners.

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God…

Christ Jesus, Logos, have mercy on me, the sinner. Christ Jesus, Word of the Father, have mercy on us, and on the whole world. Christ Jesus, Assent Come Forth from the Creator, have mercy on us, poor sinners. Christ Christ Jesus, Without Whom There Is Nothing… (have mercy…) Christ Jesus, Light in the Darkness, Never Overcome… (John 1:1-4) (have mercy…) Christ Jesus, Incarnate of Mary… (have mercy…) Christ Jesus, Dwelling with Us… Christ Jesus, Emmanu-el; God-with-Us… Christ Jesus, Son of God, Son of Mary… Christ Jesus, New Adam… Christ Jesus, Savior of the World… Christ Jesus, Bread of Life… Christ Jesus, Laid in a Manger… Christ Jesus, Promised Redeemer… Christ Jesus, Sign and Contradiction… Christ Jesus, Teacher of Teachers… Christ Jesus, Wonderful Counselor… Christ Jesus, Image of the Invisible God… Christ Jesus, Firstborn of All Creation… Christ Jesus, Alpha and Omega… Christ Jesus, Who IS… Christ Jesus, Who WAS… Christ Jesus, Who Is to Come.. Christ Jesus, Lord of All… Christ Jesus, the Way… Christ Jesus, Before All Things… Christ Jesus, In Whom All Things Hold Together… Christ Jesus, Orienter of the World… Christ Jesus, All Creation… Christ Jesus, All Restoration… Christ Jesus, All Good… Christ Jesus, All Truth… Christ Jesus, All Life… Christ Jesus, All Justice… Christ Jesus, All Grace… Christ Jesus, Defeater of Demons… Christ Jesus, Faithful Friend… Christ Jesus, Welcomer of Children… Christ Jesus, Consolation of Women… Christ Jesus, Model for Mankind… Christ Jesus, Head of the Body, the Church… Christ Jesus, Healer of the Meek… Christ Jesus, Calmer of Fevers… Christ Jesus, Good Shepherd… Christ Jesus, Living Wine… Christ Jesus, Receiver of All… Christ Jesus, Infinity of Compassion… Christ Jesus, Reconciler of all Things… Christ Jesus, Holy Door… Christ Jesus, Great Rabbi and High Priest… Christ Jesus, Desire of the Everlasting Hills… Christ Jesus, Font of Mercy… Christ Jesus, Lord of Light… Christ Jesus, Prompter of Prodigals… Christ Jesus, Namer of Names… Christ Jesus, Portal of Mercy… Christ Jesus, Great Challenger… Christ Jesus, Beloved Teacher… Christ Jesus, Living Water… Christ Jesus, Food of Multitudes… Christ Jesus, Deliverer of Self… Christ Jesus, Lord of the Sabbath… Christ Jesus, Son of David… Christ Jesus, Holy One of God… Christ Jesus, Strong Arm of Jacob Christ Jesus, Wealth of the Poor… Christ Jesus, Defender of the Oppressed… Christ Jesus, Purity of Purpose… Christ Jesus, Presenter of the Keys… Christ Jesus, All Beauty… Christ Jesus, All Holiness… Christ Jesus, Giver of the Holy Ghost… Christ Jesus, Crossbearer… Christ Jesus, Suffering Servant… Christ Jesus, Friend Betrayed… Christ Jesus, All Forgiveness… Christ Jesus, Bread of Angels… Christ Jesus, Divine Bridegroom… Christ Jesus, Consummation of the New Covenant… Christ Jesus, Defeater of Death… Christ Jesus, Great Revelation of All… Christ Jesus, Power of God… Christ Jesus, All Wisdom… Christ Jesus, Prince of Peace… Christ Jesus, King of Kings… Christ Jesus, Majesty of Heaven… Christ Jesus, King of Glory… Christ Jesus, Messiah, Present…

Christ Jesus, Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world, have mercy on me, the sinner.

Christ Jesus, Holy One… Christ Jesus, Mighty One… Christ Jesus, Immortal One…

Have mercy on us, and on the whole world. For yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory, for ever. Amen.

#holy name of jesus

[mandilion76]

In case anyone was curious

Under the cut is a 7 page prep list I needed to submit for my baking fundamentals lab for our practical exam.  I am feeling optimistic that I have created a good plan to be able to complete everything in four hours.   I am pretty proud of how it turned out, hopefully my instructor agrees!

Sanitation Plan

Prior to start of lab, make sure nails are cut and clean underneath

Prior to start of lab, make sure uniform is clean

Fill sanitizer and detergent buckets

Place chemical buckets in back of mixer next to sink

Set bus tub in sink for dirty dishes

Test thermometer

Get timer

Clean station as you go

Clean dishes as needed, especially in between each task

Store raw ingredients such as eggs and milk in cooler

Store all finished product in cooler or wrapped up                                               (eclairs/creampuffs) on work surface

Wear gloves when in contact with any finished product

(whether when wrapping up or plating)

Be sure to cook all product to temp if one is indicated in recipe

Sweep and mop floors

Wash, rinse, &  sanitize all equipment

Put all equipment away

Wash, rinse, & sanitize all surfaces in addition to the detergent/sanitize buckets

  Prep List

Arrive early for lab

Get mis en place from cooler

Store any ingredients that need to stay cold in lab cooler (milk, eggs, cream, etc)

Fill sanitization and soap buckets, place towards back of work station behind mixer next to sink, one towel in each bucket, have additional towel for hands and for removing items from oven.

Place bus tub in sink for dirty dishes

Clean & sanitize work station

Wrap plates in plastic wrap and set aside until needed

Turn on oven to 425 F for eclairs & cream puffs

 Pate a Choux

Ingredients                        Weight              Equipment

Water                                  227 g                 Sieve

Unsalted butter                   115g                  *1/2 sheet pan

Salt                                     1g                      *spatula

Bread flour                         170g                  *Mixer/Paddle/Bowl

Eggs                                    5 eggs                *Piping Bag/Tip

 Bring water,salt and butter to a boil in saucepan. Stir in bread flour, all at once and cook until mixture forms ball and coats bottom of pan.                      

 Transfer mixture to mixer with paddle attachment and mix on medium speed to cool mixture to 140 degrees. Add eggs, one at a time, until incorporated.

 Fill piping bags. Pipe mixture onto parchment lined sheetpan (pipe 6 eclairs 1” by 4” and 6 cream puffs 2” in diameter). Bake at 425 degrees for 15 minutes. Lower oven to 375 and bake for 10-20 minutes longer until golden in crevices (check at 15 minute mark, do not slam oven door-may deflate) Remove from oven and lower heat to 350for the geniose.

 (WEAR GLOVES!!!) Once cool, wrap in plastic wrap until ready to fill and present.

 ***WASH DISHES & CLEAN/SANITIZE WORK STATION***

 Pull out eggs for Genoise and place in warm water.

 Pastry Cream

 Ingredients                 Weight              Equipment

 Sugar                 2oz                    *Saucepan

Milk                  16oz                  *Whisk

Egg Yolks          3                        *Sieve

Whole Eggs       2                        *Steel Bowl

Cornstarch          1.25oz               *2 Hotel Pans, 1 filled with ice

Sugar                 2oz                    *Spatula

Butter                1oz

Vanilla               .5 Tbsp

 In saucepan, dissolve 2oz sugar in milk and just bring to boil. Beat eggs and yolks in stainless steel bowl.  Sift cornstarch and 2oz sugar into the eggs and beat until smooth.  Temper egg mixture by slowly streaming milk, stirring constantly. Return mixture to heat and bring to a boil, stirring constantly. Remove from heat once comes to a boil & thickens.  Stir in butter & vanilla, mix until butter is melted & completely blended.  Wearing gloves, push through a sieve into a hotel pan and cover with plastic wrap.  Place on top of hotel pan containing ice, label with name & date,  & place into cooler until needed.

 ***WASH DISHES & CLEAN/SANITIZE WORK STATION***

 Genoise

 Ingredients                 Weight              Equipment

 Eggs                  3                        *Mixer/Whisk/Bowl

Egg Yolks          2                        *9” Round Pan  

AP Flour           2.5oz                 Cooling Rack

Vanilla               .5 tsp                 Sieve

  Add eggs & yolks to mixer.  On medium speed, whip until foamy, about 30 seconds.  Add sugar & continue whipping on medium speed until pale yelp & fluffy, about 8-10 minutes(mix on high speed for last 2-3 minutes).

 While eggs are whipping, sift flour 3x on parchment paper and set aside.

Turn mixer to low speed & quickly add flour all at once, then flavoring.  Try to not get the flour in the whisk if possible. Mix just to incorporate, 1 second, then mix on medium speed for another 1-2 second. Remove and finish mixing by hand (move whisk around just enough to see that all flour has been absorbed.  Pour into pan and put in oven as quickly as possible to prevent deflation.  Bake for 20-25 minutes, check at 20 minutes.  Cake is done if toothpick in center or cake comes out clean.  

*Turn heat to 400 for the blueberry bread.

Let cool in pan for 15 minutes, then invert on cooling rack and cool completely.

(WEAR GLOVES) Wrap with plastic wrap and set aside until ready to present.

***WASH DISHES & CLEAN/SANITIZE WORK STATION***

 Blueberry Bread

 Ingredients                                  Weight              Equipment

 Pastry Flour                        10oz                  *2 stainless steel bowls

Sugar                                  5oz                    *4 loaf pans

Baking Powder                   18g                    *½ sheet pan

Salt                                     4g                      *large sieve

Beaten Eggs                       2                        *2 spatulas

Milk                                   7oz          

Vanilla                               8g

Melted Butter                     4oz

Blueberries, well drained    4oz

 Sift together all dry ingredients into one bowl and combine all liquid ingredients (including melted butter) in the other. Add liquids to to dry and mix just until all flour is moistened. ***BATTER WILL LOOK LUMPY; DO NOT OVERMIX***

 Scale 7-8.5oz of batter into each loaf pan and place all 4 pans on a parchment lined baking sheet. Bake for 20 minutes or done when toothpick in center of bread comes out clean

***WASH DISHES & CLEAN/SANITIZE WORK STATION***

 Whipped Cream

Ingredients                 Weight              Equipment

Cream               8oz                    *Mixer/Whisk/Bowl

Sugar                 1oz                    *Spatula

                                                  *Pastry Bag w/Tip

                                                  *large deli container

 Place cold cream in mixer bowl.  On medium speed, whip cream until thick.  Fill piping bag and place in cooler until needed.

Ganache

Ingredients                 Weight              Equipment

Dark Chocolate 8oz                    *Bowl                *spatula

Heavy Cream     8oz                    *Saucepan

Chop chocolate into small pieces and place.  Bring cream just to boil, stirring to prevent scorching. Remove from heat and pour over chocolate.  Stir & let stand for a few minutes. Stir again until chocolate is completely melted and smooth in texture.

***WASH DISHES & CLEAN/SANITIZE WORK STATION***

For Presentation

           *BE SURE TO WEAR GLOVES AT ALL TIMES

1)   Cream Puffs-chose the best three and cut top of each puff.  Using pastry bag, fill with whipped cream.  Replace tops and dust with powdered sugar.  Place on a plate.

2)   Eclairs-chose the best three and cut top of each éclair. Using pastry bag, fill with pastry cream.  Dip tops in ganache and replace tops.

3)   Blueberry Bread-chose the best 2 loaves. Cut one loaf in half, then cut one slice to present on plate.  Present other loaf whole on a separate plate.

4)   Genoise-plate one slice for tasting and the remaining cake for evaluation.

5)   Whipped Cream, Pastry Cream, & Ganache-place small amounts of each on separate plates along with spoons for tasting. 

Once Chef Susie has finished evaluating/testing = WASH & PUT AWAY ALL DISHES * CLEAN/SANITIZE WORK STATION* SWEEP & MOP FLOOR IF NEEDED

[kayteonline]

CYOSTODA - Part 5: Y/N Picks Truth

Characters: Dean, Leah, Sam and Reader Location: Motel room, Crappsville, USA. Word Count: 2200ish (wordy4lyfe! It goes quick)

Summary:  Sam hits you with an easy truth, but Leah wants to know more, and Y/N ends up daring Dean 

Warnings: None really, sexual innuendos, and being in Dean’s lap ;)

See @littlegreenplasticsoldier‘s Master Mess

The road so far..

@littlegreenplasticsoldier​ Part 1

@gemini75eeyore​ Part 2

@deandoesthingstome​ Part 3

@rizlowwritessortof​  Part 4

You’re blushing, and you’re all getting giggly, and this suddenly seems like the best idea anyone’s ever had. “So, whose turn is it? Is it my turn?”

Sam gets that evil, seductive smirk on his face again as he nods. “Oh, yeah, Y/N. It’s your turn. So, what’s it gonna be? Truth or dare?”

With the whiskey making a nice, warm run through your body, combined with the revelation you’ve been a possible source of a few Winchester wet dreams, you hold tightly to the extra courage it’s given you and mirror his evil, seductive smirk back at him as you mull it over. “Well, as tempted as I am to want your dare, after those barefaced admissions, I’m gonna bet you…” pausing briefly, you glance at Dean making sure you’ve got his full attention before looking back to Sam, “…are curious to know, do I give the two finger salute to you? Or do I think of Dean over there when I need to check my oil?” Looking over to Dean again, his eyebrows lift in interest, lips pulling into a smirk when you throw him a playful little wink for your play on words. “Or maybe, I’m finger dippin’ to the two of you at the same time? So hit me with it, truth. What do ya wanna to know?” You internally high five yourself for the choice of words and slide the smirk back into place.

Without missing a beat, or even so much as a blink he asks, “Y/N, have you ever gotten off on thoughts of me, or Dean?” He’s not letting up on that god awful sexy little smirk of his, and his eyes are practically piercing your soul now; or is it your nether region? He really is loosening up now with that bold question.

Your liquid courage has a perfect answer for him too. “A girl has needs. Of course I get my rocks off as often as I please, but a lady has to have a few secrets, Sam.” Holding his stare you smile sweetly and slowly raise your glass to your lips. Dean grunts out a laugh, his tongue swiping out to wet his lips as he leans back against the cupboards, bringing one knee up to rest an arm on it as the other leg lays relaxed against the grimy carpet.

Sam’s mouth turns down in approval, nodding as he takes that in. The gears are still moving inside of that head of his though, and he’s about to say something more when Leah chimes in, “Well Y/N, I have a truth for you, sticking to this topic of self satisfaction and half naked bodies.” Her smile is wide as she shifts her legs around to cross them. “I want to know, what do you find to be the sexiest aspect of each brother?”

“This outta be good,” Dean smiles.

Your cheeks grow warm at having been put on the spot again. Sure, the brothers had to of assumed you’ve excavated your cave on more than one occasion with your recent lack of action, but damn, now you have to get specific about which parts you literally thought about? You were breathing a little sigh of relief with Sam’s easy truth, but it seems she’s asking what Sam may have been looking for originally.

“Are we talking physical aspects? Or characteristics?” you clarify, hoping you didn’t have to divulge the physical parts you’ve noticed the most day in and day out.

Sam gives her a conspiratorial wink and looks at you with an expectant smile, as Dean’s got his eyebrow pulled up to attention, his face giving zero clue to his thoughts, and Leah’s slyly smirking as she answers, “I know they’ve both been complete gentlemen so far tonight, and since you see them regularly, how about both.”

You let out a slow breath through your nose and decide to go for it. Brave Y/N, be brave. Someone’s gotta bend this tension filled room a little further, right?

“Well…” you begin, looking between each brother, lingering on Dean across the way, taking in the perfect spread of his long legs, eyes gleaming as he sits there patiently.

You set your glass on the carpet and rise to your knees, catching Sam’s eyes. “Sam here, he’s very much a gentleman, and one who’s always willing to put your needs ahead of his own.” You slowly make your way closer to him as you speak, looking over your shoulder at Leah until you’re behind him, and set your hands on his shoulders. “The sexiest thing about Sam, if you ask me… is his mind. He’s smart. Too smart sometimes for his own good. I mean the things he can do with a computer…” You raise one hand, fanning yourself dramatically, Sam’s head dropping forward as his shoulders shake with laughter. “You want logic and fact, he’s your go-to guy. He’s definitely the more logical one of the two.” You give her a playful wink feeling his hand rest over yours and give it a tiny squeeze, catching Dean eye-rolling so hard you can almost feel it.

Threading your fingers with his you pull his hand up. “Then you have these.” You unwind your fingers and he leaves his hand up in the same position as he follows your lead. “Just look at the size of that hand, huge right? Those long, dexterous fingers. I mean they just give a girl all kinds of wandering thoughts watching them at work… or even at rest; paging along a book, through papers, his hair, anything.”

You ruffle his hair some with a smile, before turning your attention to the other brother. “And then you have Dean over here.” He’s a little further away from Sam so you drop your hands to the floor, pulling your bottom lip between your teeth and slowly crawl towards him. And by slow, it’s slow. He’s just far enough away you can drag it out a little bit.

He shifts to sit up straighter at the attention, eyes locking with yours as you move. “Fearless, selfless Dean,” you sigh. Sam’s leaning back some, unable to keep his eyes from dragging over your form in this position; your back arched just so, and you can feel Leah doing the same, her own lip between her teeth as she hangs on each word. “Don’t be fooled by his macho man act, because while he’s 200% man in there, underneath it all lies a huge, bleeding heart of gold. The love he has for his family, blood or not; the amount that he cares about those he’s allowed in, he’d do anything and everything for them… and that, is the sexiest thing about Dean.” You’re between his spread legs when you stop, both of them now raised at the knee to make room for you. Rising up you sit back on your heels. He looks away shaking his head with a disbelieving half smile, but you know you’ve struck something inside; you can feel it pulsing off of him.

Shifting closer to him, you move until your knees rest against the bottom of his thighs. “Then you have that mouth of his.”

His eyes slide back to yours, head tilting along with his mood. He swipes his tongue out to wet his lips, pulling your attention to them, and that damn eyebrow is arching again indicating you’ve got his full attention.

You have to clear your throat to reign in your wayward thoughts the small action provoked so you could speak again. “Those plush lips, full of sass and bad jokes. And as funny as he thinks he is, you will never prepare yourself for his charm. Boy, can he lay it on thick too. He’s smoother than fresh butter when he’s in the zone.”

He scoffs rolling his eyes, and you bust into a fit of giggles. “Aw, you thought I was going to talk about how soft and supple they are, didn’t you?”

“Actually, yeah. I kinda did. Gotta say I’m a little disappointed there, Y/N.”

It’s your turn to roll your eyes. What is with these three calling you out right now? “Ok, fine,” you sigh with fake exasperation.

When you had started this truth, you had a plan of mentioning it, for dramatics, but decided to keep that bit of information to yourself, locked away for those nights you were alone in your own bed. The alcohol, however, had loosened you up a lot further than you originally thought now that you’d made it this far. That, combined with the light headed feeling you got from Dean’s blatant staring at your mouth at the moment, you decide to jump in feet first.

“To say I’ve never looked for extended periods of time, being with them as long as I have, would be a lie,” you start.

“Stared would be more accurate,” Leah interjects, nodding at you suggestively when you look at her over your shoulder.

“True, but I can’t be obvious here. I do se-”

“Sure you can,” Dean cuts in, practically giving you whiplash with how fast your head turns. “I wouldn’t mind.”

You quirk your eyebrow up, pursing your lips as you scan his over his face. “I know you don’t. Just one look at them, pouting naturally, subtly inviting the viewer closer. How could one not want to see just how soft they really are? To run their tongue along the soft, supple flesh, nibble and suck at that full bottom lip, feel them work across their skin.”

His eyes have gone a shade darker as you talked about him, the two of you now staring at the others mouth he responds, “The feelings mutual sweetheart.”

You both bring your eyes up to meet the others at the same time.

“Well Dean, then I dare you to find out if its true. Kiss me.”

He takes an audible deep breath in, slowly leaning the upper half of his body forward, and places his hands on your thighs.

“Whoa, guys, that’s not the rules of the game,” Sam speaks up.

Not breaking eye contact your hand flies up, arm outstretched behind as you to hold a finger up, one of Dean’s hands doing the same, signalling him to give you a minute. He’s moving just a little slower than you thought he would given the vibe he was putting off, and with the nerves bubbling in your stomach to confirm if he actually felt the same, you reach up and place your hands on his shoulders, pulling his mouth to yours.

You both simultaneously sigh when your lips lock, his hands coming up to take your face between his wide palms and press his lips harder against his. You push into it with him, feeling the confirmation he wanted this too as you tilt your head to the other side, sliding your lips along his for a different angle. He follows your lead, and with the warmth of arousal spreading across your body at the contact, you lick along his bottom lip, asking for entrance.

Sliding your tongue tentatively in, he happily meets you in the middle, and the smooth slide of the muscles against one another has you both moaning in appreciation, like you’re devouring the most delicious meal you’ve ever tasted.

It’s getting steamier the deeper the kiss gets. Your hands have run their way into his hair, as his have trailed down your back, settling into the curve of your lower back, pulling you closer as he moves straighter to press you against him. You climb over his raised thighs, accepting the invitation for connection and he lowers his legs in response once you’re over, wrapping his arms tighter around you.

The contact is heady. The kiss is heady. God he’s amazing at this. He was not lying either about how good that mouth of his is. Your breathless and wanting more as you settle down in his lap, melting into his warmth, a grin forming against his lips when you feel how much he’s enjoying this beneath his zipper as he presses his hips tentatively against yours.

You’re beginning to wish the other two weren’t present so you could rip his clothes off, and feel all of his smooth skin against yours. The ache between your legs is quickly going from a dull roar to a full fledged fire, and if this keeps going, your cares might completely fly out the window and they’ll really get a show. But you don’t want it to stop.

Sam clears his throat, and you barely register the sound, too lost in the feeling of Dean’s mouth against yours. He hasn’t noticed either, even when Sam clears his throat again, Leah giving him a shrug as she smirks, amused watching the two of you go at it like horny teenagers.

“You guys want us to leave? Or do you want to continue playing the game?”

It isn’t until Sam speaks that you finally pull away from each other, the two of you breathing like you’d just run a mile. Smiling you shrug at Dean who rolls his eyes at his brothers comment. Someone sounds a teeny bit jealous…

Dean leans closer, dropping his voice so only you could hear. “You have no idea how long I’ve wanted to do that.”

“Yeah, I do. Because I have also…”

You slowly slide off his lap to the ground, and place your hands on the floor behind you as you carefully move away, crawling backwards towards your original spot. “I believe it’s your turn, right Dean?” You put on your best sexy little smile, one you’ve used a time or two to get information you needed. “Truth… or dare?”

Dean picks truth (he tries ;) ) by @kreborn17 HERE

Dean picks dare (well, tries to ;) ) by @deansdirtylittlesecretsblog HERE

CYOSTODA Crew tag: @winchesterswoonathon, @saenalife, @inkiestdawn, @curliesallovertheplace, @kreborn17, @winchester-writes, @kayteonline, @aprofoundbondwithdean, @moonlitskinwalker, @rizlow1, @deansdirtylittlesecretsblog, @sunriserose1023, @eyes-of-a-disney-princess, @sammit-janet, @revwinchester, @notnaturalanahi, @babypieandwhiskey, @klaineaholic , @winchesterprincessbride, @ilostmyshoe-79, @mamalinda09, @butiaintgonnaloveem, @kittenofdoomage, @deandoesthingstome, @skybinx-blog, @gemini75eeyore, @ive-been-told-that-im-fangirling, @leatherwhiskeycoffeeplaid

#cyostoda #cyosamar17 #cyosa #cyostodatruth #spn fan fic #spn fan fiction #supernatural fan fic #supernatural fan fiction #spn one shot #supernatural one shot #dean winchester #sam winchester #reader insert

[teimywimey]

Chapter 2 is up!

Summary:

Every person is born with their soulmate's name written somewhere on their body. Symmetra’s used to be on her left wrist.

Or

Sombra has no real connections. The person she used to be did, but it’s better this way. Soulmates complicate things.

Chapter under the cut

Sombra paces in her hotel room, trying to keep her breathing steady. Her heart hammers in her chest. Come on, idiot. You’re Sombra. Sombra always knows what to do. Sombra always has a plan.

She doesn’t have a plan.

Soulmates had never really worked out in her experience. Half the kids she had run with in Los Muertos had felt their soulmates die - she remembers Angelo, who had been like a big brother to her, curling into a ball and clutching his bicep where his soul mark burned, screaming the name of a woman he never got a chance to meet. She remembers how the mark on the back of her mother’s hand had faded to scars even as she had refused to let her children give up hope. She remembers waiting for the pain to flare on her own wrist and for the gold letters to turn white, hoping that the seemingly inevitable loss would hurt less if she was ready for it. She remembers, and she knows that she must choose logic, she must choose to fight anything and anyone that would even try to control her.

And yet.

She can’t help but feel a certain pull towards the architech. It almost feels like recognition, and she supposes that, in a way, it might be. People believe all kinds of things about how soulmates are paired, but everyone talks about how you just know. And Sombra just knows.

She sits on the edge of the bed to breathe through the waves of fear. Pull yourself together. Sombra isn’t afraid of anything. She takes a deep breath in. Not even your soulmate being the most talented, intelligent, gorgeous- she forces that train of thought to stop as she exhales. Focus.

In, and out.

In, and out.

As Sombra calms, she pushes the unhelpful feelings away.

In, and out.

Be logical.

Something has to be done. For now, she has to ignore the fact that Satya is her soulmate. She sighs. It’s not like ‘Sombra’ was the name on her wrist. That person can’t exist anymore. I am Sombra, not that little girl.

Sombra opens her holoscreens and pulls up the profiles of the other architechs. There has to be more information. She makes notes for a while, but finds it near impossible to stay on task. Eventually she returns to Satya’s file. She can’t help but wonder what Satya would think of her. She is elegant where Sombra is crass, quiet where Sombra is harsh. How are we supposed to work together?

As she stares at her screens, she considers the facts of the situation. Vishkar is doing anything and everything to sate their greed; no one else has had both the means and the will to do anything about it; her soulmate is among the people in need of help. Sombra hates feeling obligated to do anything. Even Talon knows better than to try to force her into completing a task she does not want to do.

And yet.

Taking down Vishkar has to be done - for Lúcio’s sake, if nothing else. They have to be punished for what they’ve done. Sombra doesn’t want to admit it, but her curiosity about Satya is growing with every moment.

Sombra sighs. Of course this is the one time that my heart and my head point me in the same direction. Taking a deep breath, she hacks into Vishkar’s network and searches it for Satya’s computer.

---

Halfway across the world in Vishkar’s Utopaea headquarters, Satya settles into her apartment after work. The day had been long and tedious, filled with endless meetings and trainings and appointments. Ever since she had returned from Rio, things had felt ever so slightly off - almost like her fellow employees were watching her a bit more carefully. She had brought it up during one of the monthly psychological evaluations, but decided to drop it when Sanjay scolded her for it afterwards.

She sits on the couch and opens her laptop to check her email. It takes a second or two longer than usual for her to log in, and when she does, something seems wrong. She pauses.

One, two, three, four, five - the correct number of columns in the grid of icons on the left side of the screen. Two, four, six, eight, ten - the correct number of rows. Satya frowns. Separate from the grid, off to the right, there is an outlier, a word document she does not remember creating.

The text underneath it reads “hello.”

Satya deletes it and runs a malware scan.

The scan comes up clean and she goes to check her email.

She answers a few from colleagues, and a few from clients. Sanjay had sent an email asking for a report that Satya is sure she had sent him at least twice already, but she sends it again anyway. As she searches the documents folder, she sees it.

“Hello take 2,” this one is called. When she minimizes the windows she has up, sure enough, another icon has appeared on her screen. She deletes it and continues on with her business. Maybe someone is just messing with me. Some of her coworkers liked to do that sometimes. Their joking didn’t bother her when they left her out of it, but this was too much.

She sends the last few emails, and exits all the windows to check for another icon.

“plz”

Satya pinches the bridge of her nose. They don’t pay me enough to deal with this. She sighs and opens the document.

It is blank.

Satya isn’t sure what she was expecting.

She closes it, deletes it, and runs another scan. Still nothing is flagged. She almost screams in frustration when she closes the scan window and yet another icon has appeared. She opens it and taps out a message.

Why are you doing this?

Satya glares at the screen as though that might make the person on the other end reply faster. After a moment, the cursor jumps a couple lines down the page and the text color changes to purple.

I have information for you. You have the right to know.

The words send a spike of combined dread and curiosity through Satya. She presses enter twice and types:

Who are you?

The cursor moves again, then sits there blinking on the page.

I’m

It pauses. A ‘y’ appears and is quickly deleted.

a friend.

Satya frowns.

If you are my friend, you can communicate with me through more appropriate channels. I do not appreciate what you’re doing

The cursor moves almost immediately when she finishes typing.

I know, I’m sorry. We haven’t met

Satya presses enter before the person can continue.

Then how are we friends?

There is a pause, then the typing continues.

Details, details. I’m a friend and I mean you no harm. Please listen to me.

The cursor jumps down and waits for Satya’s input. She sighs.

Fine.

The stranger types out the address of a website, a username, and a password.

Log in.

What is that?

An ‘appropriate channel.’

Satya rolls her eyes and opens the web browser.

The website appears to be a local news site for a small town that Satya has never heard of. She logs in with the information she had been given, and is surprised to find what almost looks like a forum. She freezes. A chat window pops up at the bottom of the page.

Sombra: hey!

Sombra: I’m the friend

Hermosa: What is all this?

Sombra: just an archive of stuff, and sort of a forum. Most of it is locked for you right now, and none of the other users besides me can interact with you yet

Hermosa: Why is it locked if you want to give me information?

Hermosa: And who are the other users?

Hermosa: How does this work?

Sombra: a curious mind, I like it ;)

Sombra: 1) just a precaution, 2) some friends of mine. Maybe three of us use this regularly. 3) it’s hard to explain, but do some research on virtualization if you want, it’s cool shit

Sombra: go to the corps tab, >Vishkar, >Rio/Calado

Satya goes to the tabs as ‘Sombra’ instructed. She looks through the compiled information and almost forgets to breathe.

There is CCTV footage of Symmetra in the Calado building on that night, footage that shows her knocking out guards and looking through files. There are recordings of conversations between Vishkar employees, Calado employees, and government officials. Medical reports, death certificates, lawsuits - there is so much information, so much incriminating information, that all she can do is sit and stare. The pinging sound of a notification startles her.

Sombra: I know this is probably a lot to take in

Sombra: this is what I wanted you to see first

One of the files becomes highlighted in purple. Satya clicks on the first one apprehensively.

It is a recording of a phone call between Sanjay and one of the Vishkar CEO’s underlings. Her heart sinks as she listens.

“-and good job with the placement, that fire saved us the headache of buying the land.” The man chuckled. “At this rate you’re in for a promotion, Korpal.”

“Thank you, sir,” Sanjay responded. “I should also let you know - Vaswani didn’t like what happened.”

“Well, that’s why we don’t leave the decision making to Vaswani, isn’t it? Remind her of her place, tell her whatever she wants to hear. Let her keep dreaming.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Keep a closer eye on her, too. We don’t want too many funny ideas to take root.”

“Yes, sir.”

Satya closes the recording. She sits and stares at the screen, at a loss for what to do. No, I- no. It can’t be real. It’s a joke. We’re making the world a better place.

Frustrated, she logs out of the website and goes to delete all traces of her conversation with Sombra. She is surprised to see that the document they had been talking through earlier had already been deleted and replaced with something new - “Satya.” She almost doesn’t want to, but she looks at what it says.

Satya-

I know this is hard to believe, but it is real. All the information I have to give you is real. You’re trying to make a better world - so am I. We can help each other. Just think about it. And don’t worry, I will make sure that there are no traces of me for Vishkar to find.

Vishkar will not stand forever. I’d love to work with you.

-Sombra

Satya closes the document, and moments later, it is deleted. She sits curled up on her couch, watching the sun set over the Utopaea skyline, and considers her options.

---

Sombra falls into an uneasy sleep after she finishes cleaning up the evidence of her intrusion into Vishkar’s network. She dreams of a child playing in a field with her brother and sister, waiting for their mother and father to call them in for dinner.

---

Sombra is woken at dawn by a notification. She checks the archive and selects the blinking chat window.

Hermosa: This is how it’s going to be. I will ask you questions - about anything and everything, and you will provide me with answers and sources proving those answers. If you ever lie to me, I’m out, and I will take everything I know to Vishkar. Deal?

Sombra laughs as she reads the message. I like her already.

She grins and responds.

Sombra: Deal

Author’s note: credit where credit is due - the talking via the word doc is inspired by the Millenium series by Steig Larsson, can’t remember which book

#overwatch #overwatch fanfic #overwatch femslash #sombra #symmetra #satya vaswani #symbra #sommetra #soulmate au

[thelmasirby32]

Six key content performance aspects that Google Analytics can’t measure

Google Analytics (GA) is one of the most popular traffic analytics tools for websites, but it can have serious drawbacks for anyone looking to measure content performance.

The problem is systemic: Analytics was built to track traffic for ecommerce and content sites, with the structure of its reports built around pageviews. It can provide some sophisticated data around those views – what kinds of audience members are behind them, how they might have arrived, what they did next, and other such questions – but today’s content marketers need the ability to measure and understand much more than that.

How do people interact with your content when they’re viewing an individual landing page? How do they feel about your brand after having been exposed to it on other media channels? Where are they running into conversion roadblocks? What are the content assets across touchpoints that people are consuming most on their paths to conversion? What assets are most compelling to your most qualified individual leads?

GA can hint at some of the answers to these types of questions, but to truly understand these aspects of your content marketing performance, you’ll need to turn elsewhere.

Here are a few of the biggest ways that Google Analytics can’t measure your content performance properly, along with some tips for overcoming these shortcomings.

1. On-page behavior

Google Analytics only tracks page views and movement within your site. Unless you manually add layers of event tracking, it can’t reveal what people do within specific pages. You’ll never know if visitors get two lines into your content and then get distracted by an interesting link.

This is the value of heatmaps, which are remarkably effective at showing user behavior. They map out which areas of the page get the most view time and the most clicks, and where the mouse rests.

A heatmap shows areas that get the most attention in red, shading to blue for those that get the least. It reveals whether the visitor engaged and interacted with the page, or left it open and unread for hours. With a heatmap, you can discover the most popular parts of your pages, the navigation links people click on most, and whether key elements below the fold are going unseen.

To get started experimenting with heatmaps, you can try using Hotjar, Lucky Orange or CrazyEgg.

2. Brand sentiment lift

Google Analytics is limited to tracking page views on your own website. It can’t tell you anything about the impact of your content on earned or shared media channels, where you don’t have the ability to install its tracking pixel. And even if you could use it track content views on all channels, you still wouldn’t know much about the impact that the content has on brand sentiment, or your share of voice in the general market.

Instead, use a social listening tool to track what people think about your brand. Social listening tools track social media shares, comments, reactions and mentions. This information has many key use cases, one of which is gaining a holistic view of brand sentiment.

The better platforms track far more than the number of brand mentions on social media, using semantic text analysis to reveal the emotions behind the posts and comparing these signals to those of your competitors. Merge these trends with your timeline of content marketing achievements, and correlations will start to emerge.

To get started experimenting with social listening for brand sentiment tracking, you can try using Awario, Mention or Talkwalker.

3. Friction points on forms

If a visitor tries to complete an online form and gives up in frustration, Google Analytics will never let you know. The best it can do is to show you how much time all visitors spent on the page. (Even this information can be extremely misleading since GA measures page view durations starting from the moment given page loads to the moment the next internal page loads. If your visitor stays for 10 minutes, reads your article from top to bottom, shares it, and then closes the tab without browsing any further within your site, GA will register ‘zero’ time on page.)

When it comes to lead capture forms, contact forms, and sales checkout forms, it can be hard to tell how many fields you’re best off including. The fewer fields your forms have, the lesser friction people will have opting in, which makes for more conversions.

On the other hand, the more fields you include, the more data you’ll have to work with when people do complete and submit forms, which is useful for identifying personas when executing segmented nurture sequences. You’ll also learn more about your audience, and you’ll be in the best possible position for determining the relevance of your leads. And there’s something to be said for asking a lot of your audience, as it helps to filter out people who are “just curious” about your lead magnet and will never actually do business with you.

To really understand the extent to which form fields are serving as roadblocks on the path to conversion, turn to your form builder tool’s analytics. The better platforms will reveal partial submissions, and how far a user gets through a form before abandoning it, so you can see if any single field is too long or question too confusing.

To get started experimenting with form conversion optimization, I recommend Formstack, Formismo or Jotform.

4. The identity of every visitor

One of GA’s biggest weaknesses is its inability to give context to visitor behavior. It can’t show you much about the identity of your visitors – at best, you can segment data about your entire pool of visitors according to their physical locations, devices, referrers, rough demographics and points of entry to your site.

What’s more, Google Analytics only uses a sample of your visitors, so that even if you tinker with your report settings to reveal the IP addresses of individual sessions, you can’t rely on this information as a comprehensive source of individual user insights.

Instead of GA, use audience intelligence tools that provide information about the interests, behavior, personal data (in a GDPR-compliant manner, of course.) and historic activity of every user, so that you can gain a deeper understanding of your visitors. This allows you to fine-tune your content to appeal to your audience, and it also reveals opportunities for account-based marketing.

To get started with audience intelligence, try Albacross, LinkedIn Website Demographics or Visitor Queue.

5. Funnel analytics

It is possible to use Google Analytics to track users through your funnel and measure its effectiveness. However, setting this all up can be highly complicated. You have to build a confusing series of filters and a dedicated URL structure that allows GA to correlate content pages with each stage of the funnel.

It’s much better to use a single tool that follows users through your funnel. Pick one that logs abandonment points and the cumulative impact of your various key funnel touchpoints. You’ll also need a good way to track the activity of returning visitors, which is another weak point for GA, thanks to uncertainty about cookies, lack of reliability when tracking visitors across devices, and the aforementioned notorious data sampling issue.

And if you integrate a funnel analytics tool with your CRM, logging each lead’s engagement activity on your website, you’ll be in great shape to set up a smart lead scoring system for identifying sales-readiness levels.

To get started with funnel analytics, check out Kissmetrics, Woopra or Yandex Metrica.

6. Off-site interactions

Google Analytics only measures interactions with the content on your own site. It’s not something you can use to measure the impact of content on shared, paid or earned media. So that guest post you recently published on someone else’s blog, or your LinkedIn Publisher articles, for example, will be blind spots for you.

GA can show you information about some of the visits you acquired via clickthroughs from these media presences, but that’s about it.

You’ll get better results from a multi-channel dashboard tool that pulls together user analytics from all channels, including email marketing, advertising tools, and social media. This type of solution can’t show you how people found your content on these properties, nor where they went next if they didn’t end up on your website, but it will help you consolidate all your metrics into one centralized dashboard for a more holistic analysis.

What’s more, if you combine data relating to engagement on all touchpoints into one timeline, you’ll start to see correlations between spikes on certain channels and website conversions, which can point you in the right direction for further drill-downs

To get started with multi-channel dashboards, try Klipfolio, Databox or Geckoboard.

Google Analytics isn’t a magic button

Google Analytics is hugely popular, but it can’t do everything, especially if you’re concerned about content performance. Fortunately, there are other tools that fill the gaps GA leaves behind, giving you a much clearer understanding of your content marketing success.

The post Six key content performance aspects that Google Analytics can’t measure appeared first on Search Engine Watch.

from Digital Marketing News https://www.searchenginewatch.com/2019/12/04/content-performance-google-analytics-cant-measure/

[allthingwomancare]

New Post has been published on Leo Passion

New Post has been published on https://leopassion.com/best-le-labo-cologne-for-men/

5 Unbelievable Le Labo Cologne for Men that You can Wear in 2019

If you do not know French, you will see that the name Le Labo sounds strange, funny and even somewhat … weird. However, Le Labo merely means “laboratory” only. This brand was born in France about 11 years ago but was developed in New York, USA.

Le Labo is currently only available in 10 countries, and each store of this “strange” perfume company is designed in the style of a laboratory. Customers will see firsthand how fragrances are prepared and labeled. Unlike other major perfume producers, each bottle of perfume at Le Labo will be scented by customers, then experts will prepare, then bottle and label.

Customers can print either the name or whatever word they want with up to 23 characters. When buying perfume at Le Labo, customers will receive a unique perfume bottle that only they own. Used up, you can bring a perfume bottle to the store for them to fill with a 25% discount.

Eddie Roschi and Fabrice Penot are the founders of Le Labo and turn aroma history into a new, sophisticated and natural page. “The purpose of Le Labo is to make life more beautiful”. Here Top 5 best smelling Le Labo cologne for men 2019:

How to choose the right fragrances

If you don’t know, please read here

How to make your perfume last longer

If you don’t know, you can refer to some guidelines here

How to apply perfume when your body has a lot of sweat

You worry about the body has too much sweat, some instructions will help a improve your situation. Please read here

Review Top 5 Le Labo Cologne for Men 

1. Le Labo Santal 33

Santal 33 perfume of Le Labo brand is fragrant perfume fragrance for both men and women and was introduced in 2011. The person who designed this fragrance is Frank Voelkl. Inspired by Santal 26, one of the lesser-known fragrant backgrounds, a scent suitable for both men and women. Santal 33 aims to convey the legend of cowboys, immense lands, hot desert winds, saddles sun and smoke emanating from the fire at night.

A scent of perfume can vibrate sensual aspects and enchant the senses of men and women. Fragrances using cardamom, iris, ambroxan incense are used to highlight smoked wood notes from Australian sandalwood, papyrus and cedar giving them a pungent flavor, mixed with skin belong. The combination of these flavors brings a unique unisex fragrance and charismatic relaxation.

This is an interesting and addictive scent. It will create an atmosphere similar to that of the wild west wherever you go. The perfume is very concentrated and will definitely last for a long time on your skin and outfit. Read more review here

Click to Check Amazon Price Try Sample here 

2. Le Labo Oud 27

Oud 27 is an oriental wood fragrance for both men and women of Le Labo. Oud 27 was produced in 2009 under the auspices of Vincent Schaller perfume specialist in the familiar shape bottle as the bottle is often used in hospitals.

As soon as you sprayed the perfume, you can see immediately that the rich aroma of oud radiating along with the original Civet charm is slightly original but gradually becomes more pleasant. The two fragrances above radiate throughout, blending with it is the rustic scent, spicy steam of pine wood, slightly sweet, fragrant with patchouli soil, a warm sweetness of ambergris and the cool aroma of inhalation incense The fragrance of Civet over time is gradually left to leave the aroma of light and warm musk, blended with amber and a little seductive from roses.

The elegant and charming aroma helps you become sexy in the eyes of the opposite person, especially the opposite sex. The original fragrance is quite strong, which can make you feel uncomfortable, but when the fragrance subsides a while later, you will feel a wonderful scent more than ever. The natural notes, pure, sweet and sexy are extremely attractive, making anyone who can smell them pay attention to you. The fragrance holds well on the body so you can use it in the morning but still smell it at night. The complexity of the scent will create a valuable experience for those who use it.

Try Sample here 

3. Le Labo Rose 31

The Rose 31 of Le Labo is a floral fragrance, musk wood for men and women was launched in 2006. The perfumer who created this fragrance is Daphne Bugey. Rose 31’s goal is very clear: changing the famous Grasse rose to a strong, determined aroma of men. With the Rose 31, the Le Labo brand has revealed a sensual blend of woody and pungent aroma. All focus on the wonderful rose flower of the perfume industry.

Rose 31 carries in it feminine notes but when soaked in rich spices, it has become a very manly fragrance. There is a strange thing in this fragrance. The scent varies between the fragrance of the flowers and the spicy aroma, along with the aroma that is the rich mixture of woody notes and the wild scent radiating with a moderate amount. Rose’s original aroma of 31 elegant rustic impressions leads to a sweet, spicy scent of roses. A gentle little aroma of vetiver in the middle notes is the opening to the final scent with the blend of oud wood and musk.

Fanciful, dangerous and extremely elegant, this is one of the favorite rose scents during the time since it was released. Fragrant masculine rose with curious, mysterious scent. Spray some perfume on you and you’ll be ready for an evening date.

Try Sample here 

4. Le Labo Bergamot 22

Bergamot 22 of Le Labo brand is a fragrance of wood incense – fragrant for both men and women. The perfume was released in 2006 and was refined under the talented hands of Daphne Bugey.

During the development process, Bergamot 22 was given a nickname “fire perfume” and as soon as it smelled the pungent aroma at the beginning, you will understand why it has such a name. Vetiver’s passionate aroma helps to revitalize the lively freshness of grapefruit and bergamot. A little bit of grassy essence obtained from orange leaf oil helps stir up this very simple combination of perfume. The musk with amber helps balance the liberation of notes of citrus flavor, creating a rare abundance in the citrus fragrance that we often see.

Overall, Bergamot 22 is a unisex perfume model with a rather unique personality. The fresh aroma of the notes of bergamot notes is supported and supported by other warm incense notes, creating a unique feeling for the user. This is a great fragrance for spring and summer

Try Sample here 

5. Le Labo Patchouli 24

Patchouli 24 perfume of Le Labo brand is a perfume line wood – chypre for both men and women. Patchouli was launched in 2006. The brand Le Labo has always been famous for playing with the scent of fragrances and Patchouli 24 is no exception. Perfume moderator Annick Menardo used patchouli and transformed it in a way no one expected.

Patchouli fragrance in perfume is quite interesting, instead of making perfume with the common aroma of patchouli that we know, Patchouli 24 has a smell of leather and smoke (due to notes of wood and plastic). In order to balance this aroma, she used the sweet vanilla scent like milk pudding.

If you expect a patch of patchouli from this perfume bottle, you may be disappointed. But if you’re willing to accept the idea of ​​a patch of patchouli with a unique and unique scent, Patchouli 24 is a perfect choice.

Try Sample here 

Conclusion

Emerging from around 2010 until now, Le Labo has not shown signs of cooling down. As one of the pioneering brands of fresh perfume trends, Le Labo is a fragrance developed based on a single main note, so the scent is simple and easy to guess. However, Le Labo’s favorite point is the essence of perfumes and the quality of the ingredients.

When your nose is familiar with many complex scents, Le Labo is a beautiful minimalist. It is the simplicity, sophistication and unique that Le Labo brings to customers that make this perfume company highly appreciated.

#le labo cologne review #le labo men's cologne #le labo perfume samples #niche perfume