#but yeah your female employees are treated fairly love it

[alltooreid]

Invisible String

Although Spencer Reid and the Reader don’t find themselves in a romance with each other until well into their adulthood, their relationship has been decades in the making. Almost as if something as been pulling them together all these years. 

A/N: sorry for such a long wait but i’ve been struggling a lot mentally as of late. i hope you guys enjoy this one shot!! As always requests are open and heavily encouraged!! And of course this is inspired by the taylor swift song of the same name :)) Also keep in mind although the following scenes are heavily inspired by some scenes in Criminal Minds, elements of them have been slightly altered to fit in Y/N as a character.

Pairing: Spencer Reid x Reader

Type: a cute strangers to lovers fluff fic!

Word Count: 3.9K

Content Warnings: typical criminal minds case discussion, mentions of child trafficking when discussing this case, but no real detail. slight spoilers for season eight (beginning maeve stuff) and tiny spoilers for season fifteen (briefly mentions max but nothing really important to the plot at all)

“Time, curious time Gave me no compasses, gave me no signs Were there clues I didn't see?”

You had met Spencer Reid 3 times before you had really met him.  

It was almost silly to think about it now. Now that you and Spencer have been dating for 3 years, it was strange to believe there were so many chances for you two to meet years earlier.

When you were sixteen years old, you got your first part time job. You worked at a self-serve frozen yogurt shop called Iced Dreams. You hated it so much. Your manager was a total creep, your older coworkers were rude and condescending to you, since you were one of the youngest people working there, but most of all you hated the uniforms.

Consisting of a very stupid looking hat, bright pink with randomly embrodiered teal patterns, an outdated bright teal shirt, it had been given to you from a dirty bin in the back, and judging by the sewn in shoulder pads, it had to be at least a couple decades old.

So one day, you didn’t wear the hat.

It wasn’t entirely purposeful. You couldn’t find it, you searched your room, you searched your car, so eventually you had to leave without it to prevent being late. Still, as you clocked it and passed the box of extras in the office something made you decide to leave it alone.

You were about 8 minutes into your shift when your manager approached you. “Y/N? Where’s your hat sweetheart?” You hated this man so much. You had gone to your parents time and time again, recounting his creepy behavior towards you and the other teenage girls who you worked with, but they refused to let you quit.

When you had started working there, he used to enforce this ridiculous rule that all the female workers had to wear skirts as part of their uniform, but you had gathered all the sixteen and seventeen year olds who worked there and all threatened to quit if he didn’t change the policy. So you were no stranger to breaking and defying the rules.  

“Yeah I couldn’t find it, sorry.” you shrugged.

He chuckled and reached his hat out to touch your face. You jerked back, you almost wanted to refuse to wear one of the stupid extra hats just so that you could get fired.

“Well, Y/N its policy sweetie. No matter how special you are to me you still need to wear the hat. There’s extras in the office.”

“No way I’m wearing one of those. I bet they have like lice or something.”

He pursed his lips and sighed “Well I suppose that beautiful hair is just too pretty to wear a used hat huh. . . What do you suggest? If you’re working you have to wear it.”

You laughed, “Well you could let me go home.”

He paused, “Why don’t you go sit in the office, I’ll come talk to you in a minute.”

So you did, for about 10 minutes you sat in the office, surrounded by frozen yogurt flavor marking posters and boxes of old uniforms, and each passing minute you feared for the worst. Maybe you were actually getting fired? You really didn’t want to go that far, because, as much as you hated it, you really needed this job.

When your manager finally came to talk to you he held a small salted caramel frozen yogurt, your personal favorite flavor, and a twenty dollar bill. He handed them both to you.

“You seem so stressed Y/N, why don’t you take the day and go get lunch. My treat,” he said, smiling that weird twisted smile that always made your full body shiver.

However you were broke as hell, and no teenager in their right mind would ever pass up free food, so you took it, grabbed your keys and started to leave

Yet as soon as you walked out the back door you dropped your frozen yogurt, cup fully upside down, onto the pavement. You cursed, you hadn’t even taken a bite of it yet, and it looked like he had put coconut flakes on it, and you loved coconut. Still, you had your twenty bucks, and that was a pretty sweet pay out considering you were only clocked in for about 20 minutes.

So you got Chinese food, and spent what was supposed to be your shift in the shopping mall across town, completely and blissfully unaware of the fact the Behavioral Analysis Unit of the FBI was dragging your manager away in handcuffs.

➽───────────────❥

Young Spencer Reid had only joined the FBI about a month ago. Despite being a genius, and providing crucial information to the solving of cases, he was aware of the most obvious. He was only twenty two years old, and he was scrawny as hell.

He felt this intense need to prove himself, especially to make Gideon proud.

So when they got a case about a the kidnapping and sex trafficking of teenage girls, he saw it as something he could really involve himself in. Based on the profile, it wasn’t going to be a large, strong, confident unsub who Morgan needed to tackle. This man would be ugly sure, but he would be a manipulative mastermind. Reid could work with that, he could prove himself.

He surprised everyone with his sheer work ethic and determination to find this man, and through consistently revising and delivering the profile soon enough they got a hit. A young woman in her early twenties called the tipline and reported her own manager. Insisting he fit the profile perfectly, and described how strangely he treated the minors who worked there, and how he almost exclusively hired young girls, treated them great and then switched as soon as they became legal.

So Garcia did her magically digging, and soon enough the FBI was tearing up a frozen yogurt shop, looking for any evidence of pedophilia. Garcia was even brought along, as she was pivotal to discovering any secret files in his computer.

At first, all they could find were strange compilation videos and under employees skirts. Spencer, and the rest of the team, were struggling to connect how he could get so many videos from an angle like this without anyone noticing or reporting him, until Gideon uncovered an old dusty pair of shoes, in which the right one held a small camera at the toe.

Although this was absolutely disgusting, it wasn’t enough to prove he was running the ring or kidnapping the girls, so Garcia kept digging. Meanwhile, Spencer tried to make himself useful by checking out the back of the store.

That’s where he found your clock-out receipt.

“Hey guys, we might want to take a look at this,” he shouted out.

Morgan grabbed the paper from his hand, “Ok, I don’t get it kid, it’s trash.”

Spencer pointed to the details on the slip, “Yeah but it says here she clocked out 18 minutes ago after only working for 23 minutes and 46 seconds. If this guy is our unsub, this girl could be in a lot of trouble.”

“Maybe she’s still here, has anyone checked out the parking lot yet?”

Spencer shook his head, and followed Morgan out the back door. There they discovered some almost completely melted salted caramel frozen yogurt.

Morgan bent down to investigate, “Yeah, we gotta get this to the lab, but I can tell you right now that there’s clearly more than just coconut topping this yogurt. It also means we have another victim.”

Spencer crouched down as well, “Not necessarily.”

“What do you mean kid? We’re missing a teenage girl and we’ve already found illegal evidence on this guy's computer. She’s in trouble.”

“Well judging the shape and inscription of these pills it appears to be some pretty strong rohypnol, almost certainly prescription grade. And ingesting it like this means she probably would have begun to feel its effects fairly early, I would predict 15 minutes. She clocked out 18 minutes ago, so even if she left exactly at that time she would have certainly crashed her car on the way home. The nearest residence is 8 minutes away from here, we’re in a complete shopping district. There’s only two cars out here and neither have a passed out driver, so I would bet she didn’t eat any of it. Also, the only spoon out here is still wrapped in plastic, “ Spencer analyzed.

Morgan sighed, “Well what do we even do then?”

Before Spencer could answer Hotch opened the back door. “We got him.”

Spencer turned to Morgan, “I’m sure her phone number is somewhere inside, I say we call her and make sure she’s ok. She probably doesn’t even know this is happening right now.”

So he did find your phone number, and although he initially pushed the phone to Morgan, he just chuckled and pushed it back.

“No way pretty boy. You’re the know-it-all with all that profiling out there, you can call her,” and before he could protest Morgan left, so Spencer was left to call you.

And strangely, for it being the first time he would ever interact with the love of his life, he thought nothing of it.

And that was the first time you had met Spencer Reid.

➽───────────────❥

The second time was years and years later, when you were waitressing night shifts to make extra money. You had never forgotten meeting Spencer Reid the first time, but this was the first time you would ever see his face.

You were slightly concerned when you got a call from a man, whose name you had now long forgotten, claiming he worked for the FBI. Although you weren’t incredibly surprised to hear your manager committed such heinous crimes against children, you were taken aback by how close you had come to becoming one of his victims.

But that was 9 years ago. In your college days it became a fun story you told at frat parties, but you were 25 now. Sometimes you would think about the incident when you couldn’t sleep, and if you were feeling feisty you would use it as an icebreaker or a “two truths, one lie” statement, but otherwise you didn’t really think about it.

You had plenty of other things to worry about, in fact, that’s exactly why you worked so much. It was so much easier to forget when you were constantly preoccupied with complaining customers and terribly awkward blind dates.

You had just sat this man, incredibly handsome, however it was clear he was on some kind of date. His reservation was for two, and he spent way too much time adjusting his clothes and table setting for him to not be trying to impress someone special. He also brought a gift, which judging by the packaging and shape, seemed to be some kind of wrapped book.

Even though he was 15 minutes early for his own reservation, he still looked really nervous, almost like he already believed she might not show up. You couldn’t help yourself, you had to go talk to him.

“Anyone ever tell you you should model?” you started with.

He looked up “Excuse me?”

“Sorry for being so bold, you just look so familiar,” he weirdly sounded very familiar as well, but you didn’t tell him that. “Are you sure you haven’t modeled? You have excellent bone structure. I bet you could.”

He laughed to himself, “yeah I’m sure.”

“Well your date is very lucky either way. I wish I had a boyfriend as handsome as you. Actually I wish I had a boyfriend period, but that’s a whole other story.”

He chuckled, and although you knew in your heart that you shouldn’t be flirting with him considering he was 15 minutes away from being actively on a date talking to him made you feel something you hadn’t felt in a long time. “What happened with your boyfriend? Do I even dare ask?”

“Well I kind of always knew he wasn’t super interested in me, but I really liked him, so I did my best to ignore his wandering eyes,” you sighed. “That didn’t stop him from leaving me for his coworker though.”

“That’s terrible.”

You smirked, “That’s not even the worst part, he broke up with me over a 27 second phone call. He didn’t even let me respond, he just kind of hung up.”

“I’m sorry, no one deserves that. Especially not you. I’ve only been talking to you for a couple minutes and I can tell that.”

“Oh really? What makes you so sure?”

“I’m pretty good at reading people.”

You smiled, “Well I should probably stop flirting with you now, considering your date hasn’t even started yet. And don’t worry, she’ll show, you’re so handsome she’d be stupid not to.”

He looked confused. “You were flirting with me?”

You laughed, “I thought you were good at reading people?”

He smiled back at you, and it made your heart soar, this silly, pure goofy smile that made you want to replace his date and have dinner with him right then and there.

You walked back to your hostess stand. A couple minutes later you noticed the handsome stranger on the phone. You thought nothing of it until later when a woman came in, clearly nervous, holding a gift bag.

“Can you give this to Spencer Reid for me please?” You recognized the name, the man you were just speaking with had filed his reservation under it.

“Um, yeah sure, aren’t you going to go in? He’s at that table over the-” but before you could finish your sentence the woman was gone. Your heart sank, poor Spencer, how could someone drop their date off a gift but stand them up anyway? That’s just cold.

When you get up to bring the gift to him, he’s already heading out of the restaurant himself.

“Sir? Spencer? Dr. Reid?” he turned his head. “A lady came in and dropped this off for you.”

His face dropped, it almost looked like he was about to cry. “Thank you,” he said as he looked up at you before leaving.

He ran out the door, both gifts in hand and whipped his head around a few times before sighing and speeding off in one direction. Even before you learned what happened after that and leading up to it, you felt terrible for the handsome stranger.

How could you not for someone so clearly distressed? Someone so clearly in love?

➽───────────────❥

7 years and a divorce later you were spending your Saturday in a park, strangely contemplating love itself. Although you barely remember that night all those years ago when you spoke to Spencer, he did. Vividly. In fact, on this Saturday you both were in a public park, contemplating your many failed attempts at true love.

It was your first wedding anniversary without your husband. Although you had only been married for two years, you still were having a hard time navigating life without him. 

You started to wonder if you would ever find the true love you had been wishing for since your youth. Was 32 too late? Had you lived out all of your opportunities?

When you were little your mother had told you that all soulmates were attached at the left ring fingers, by small, incredibly thin strands of gold string, invisible to the naked eye. She insisted that these strings were constantly trying to pull you and your soulmate together, and that when life was ready for you two to meet, you would. 

Until then, you would have small, mindless interactions. Things you wouldn’t think about, maybe even things that weren’t interactions at all. You would get the same commercial jingle stuck in your head. You would both get an intense craving for the same food. You’d have the same dream. 

As a kid you were obsessed with this idea, you thought it was so romantic, and you fully believed everything your mom told you about it. You always asked her for more stories, and at bedtime you refused to sleep unless she would tell you more.

But now you were sure soulmates, true love even, didn’t exist. The invisible pretty gold strings your mother weaved fantastic stories with were completely fabricated. If they weren’t, you would have seen the clues by now.

Right?

➽───────────────❥

Spencer Reid was given an assignment from his therapist. He had to spend his Saturday off trying to interact with a stranger. Making friends with someone other than his colleagues may seem like a simple task for some, but it was something the young genius had almost no experience with.

He understood that it was probably for the best. He wasn’t exactly great with relationships of any kind, but especially not romantic ones. It didn’t take a genius to know that a couple of flirtations, a dead girlfriend he had only seen once, and a long time unrequited (or at least he thought unrequited) infatuation with his best friend and godsons’ mother was not a very great track record.

He, just like you, was also beginning to believe that he was hopeless when it came to love. That 38 was too old, that his time to meet someone and have the children he dreamed of had long passed.

But right as he was about to call JJ, to see if she would invite him in on the case Garcia had started to work on, he saw you.

Unlike you, he remembered your face and your interaction vividly. That almost date with Maeve was one of the biggest defining moments of his life, and what are the chances that the waitress from that very night was now less than 30 feet away from him, reading under the green leaves of a tree.

He wasn’t going to say anything, until he saw the book you were reading.

The Narrative of John Smith.

It must have been a sign, for what he wasn’t exactly sure yet, but it just had to mean something. The universe had to be reaching out to him, he had experienced crazier things.

And just as he was about to walk over to you, to close the gap between the gold strings tied around your ring fingers, a child interrupted his train of thought.

“That’s a strange haircut.”

➽───────────────❥

Derek Morgan and Spencer Reid were finally reuniting after many years. They barely got to see each other these days, but even though he was teaching and working at the BAU, Spencer still was willing to clear his schedule to second Derek suggested they meet up.

Morgan was excited as well, both to see his friend and to hopefully help him get a date. Sure, he had liked what he had heard about Max, but he wasn’t exactly surprised it had only lasted a couple months between her and Spencer. They just seemed too different.

Plus, now he got the chance to play wingman again, and he was ecstatic about that. Spencer not so much.

“I don’t know Morgan, it’s only been a couple months since we broke up. Wouldn’t it be too early to start talking to other people?”

“Pretty boy, you and I both know that the rate in which you’ve had relationships is not even close to the average. You need to balance that out somehow.”

Spencer sighed, he knew Derek was right, but he still felt strange.

“Morgan, have you ever heard of the red string of fate?”

“No, but I’m sure I’m about to hear all about it.”

“It’s an East Asian philosophy, based on the discovery that the ulnar artery connects the heart with the pinky finger, actually that’s where the belief in pinky promises come from. The reason it’s integrated in so many different cultures is that-”

“Kid, you’re losing me here,” Morgan interrupted. “Finish your thing about the string.”

“Oh yeah, sorry. It’s the idea that human relations are predestined by a red string that the gods tie to the pinky fingers of those who find each other in life. Legend has it that the two people connected by this thread will have an important story, regardless of the time, place or circumstances. The red string might get tangled, contracted or stretched, as surely often happens, but it can never break. Essentially, the idea is that although we might not realize it, our lives move in a pre-ordained direction, guided by invisible strings that are woven into the fabric of the Universe itself. And all the while, the red thread connecting us to our distant soulmates is getting shorter.”

“Well it’s an interesting theory kid, but it’s a lot to think about. I mean, we’re in a bar, let loose a little bit. Not every interaction has to be about getting closer to your soulmate. And sure, maybe you’ll meet them one day, maybe even soon. But you’re here now, and just because your one true love may not be, doesn’t mean it’s not worth it to be here.”

Spencer sighed, “You’re right. I don’t even know if I believe in that anyway, maybe I’m just looking for something to explain this all.

Derek patted his friend on the shoulder, “okay pretty ricky, this is how it’s about to go down. I’m going to buy you two drinks. You’re going to take both of them, and go find someone, anyone here to go talk to.”

“Ok, I think I can do that. Who?”

Derek looked around, trying to find who he believed would be the best match for his friend. “How about her?” he asked, pointing at you.

Spencer couldn’t believe it when he looked. There you were, the girl, the one he had met three times before, even if he could only remember two. The woman he knew was some sort of universe sent sign that Saturday he saw you underneath the greenery. The girl he was so close to talking to before he was interrupted by Max’s nephew. The woman who (and he obviously did not know this at the time) he would marry 3 years later. The one who would carefully knit the baby blankets for all of their friends and exes. The one who he would adopt 3 children with. The woman who, he was now sure, was at the other end of his invisible string. The girl he needed to talk to right now.

“Is it just me,” Morgan said, “Or does she look kind of familiar?”

“Yes,” Spencer responded, “yes she does.” He got up quickly and started making strides towards you.

“Wait!” Morgan called, “You forgot your drinks!”

“I don’t need them!” he shouted back. When he sat down next to you, you smiled. It made his heart soar, you had this silly, pure goofy smile that made him want to ask you out right then and there.

Instead he settled on the only conversation starter he could think of.

“Have you ever heard of the invisible string story?”

And you couldn’t help but laugh.

“A string that pulled me Out of all the wrong arms right into that dive bar Something wrapped all of my past mistakes in barbed wire Chains around my demons, wool to brave the seasons One single thread of gold tied me to you”

- Thank you for reading! Please reblog and let me know what you think :))

#spencer reid #spencer reid fanfiction #spencer reid fluff #spencer reid one shot #spencer reid x reader #spencer reid x you #spencer reid fanfic #reid #Criminal Minds Reid #Criminal Minds Spencer Reid #reid fanfic #reid fanfiction #Criminal Minds #criminal minds fanfiction #criminal minds fluff #reid x reader #spencerreidxreader #spencer reid taylor swift

[mxgilray]

Loki Season 1 Thoughts

Overall, I really liked this series. It has some issues without question, but I sincerely don't think it's the dumpster fire so many viewers on this site treat it as. Did it go how I expected? Not at all? Did I enjoy the heck out of it and look forward to it every Wednesday? Hell yeah!

Loki's Good Guy Personality

A big complaint many have had with it is how much Loki's demeanor has changed and how his emotional growth feels rushed or his personality is ooc. Truth is, he saw his entire future, saw what his angry, power hungry, I-work-alone persona would get him in the end, and it snapped him back to reality. He has always been shown to be quite emotional and craving attention and lacking in self assurance, it's just in the past movies he's masked it with violence and fake narcissism, and he's always been a secondary character so his perspective is rarely shown. But if you really pay attention it's obvious he isn't truly villainous; we all know that, it's largely why he has such a huge fan base.

Right after meeting Mobius, Loki got an infodump of his future, saw his parents both die, found out that free will means jack shit, and learned he's absolutely powerless in this realm. On top of that, this is 2012 Loki, fresh off of being under Thanos' control, suddenly being shown that the guy who controlled him is going to end up killing him. Frankly,, I think it all broke Loki. He was too shook up by it all and by the sheer helplessness he found himself in at the TVA that he let all his barriers down momentarily. Just long enough for him to open up to Mobius about his motivation and his lack of self confidence. And you know what I bet? Loki felt relieved after talking to Mobius. A weight was lifted, because he bore his heart to someone and wasn't rejected or laughed at or treated like a psycho. And after letting his walls down fully, Loki didn't feel the need to put all of them back up. He stayed guarded around other people, but he didn't need to pretend around Mobius. Mobius has seen under the mask, so Loki doesn't feel pressure to perform as an all knowing, all powerful God around Mobius. That freedom is life changing.

People who gravitate towards broken, pseudo-villain characters do so because we relate to their internal conflict, their mental illness, their need to fake it around everyone close to them. Their turmoil and depression and self destructive behavior are familiar and we see ourselves reflected in their actions. Now, when a person really truly let's their guard down, drops all their layers of facade, and embraces themself, they tend to change demeanor and even personality pretty drastically. It's jarring in real life, so of course when it happens to a fictional character who you usually relate to it is going to be jarring, maybe even more so because it feels like a change you yourself would never go through. I know this sounds bad and people might get at me for it, but...

I believe the issue here is that a large part of Loki's fan base doesn't want him to get better. They don't want him to move past his mental illness, to learn how to cope with anger and disappointment in healthier ways, to be happy. They like his damaged persona, they like the internal conflict. Maybe it's because they're still at that low place themself and feel like a relatable character is getting taken away from them, maybe it's because they don't understand how much being at peace with yourself can alter a person and to them it feels like he's been changed too much. To those of us mostly on the up and up from battling depression and mental illness, it's comforting to see Loki getting a chance to be genuinely happy and accepting of himself.

Sylki and Lokius

First things first, I'm not anti anything. Ship what you want, idc. Personally, I do not see the Sylki dynamic as romantic, but I get why people read it that way. I thought the series did a good job of showing unrequited love, namely Loki falling for Sylvie and Sylvie feeling zero romance towards him. This was aware of his attraction and in the end used it as a distraction so she could get the upper hand. The show played up the potential romance because we are viewing things from Loki's perspective and he's become smitten as a kitten. I do think in the long run they'll have a more sibling-like dynamic, one Loki realizes that you can feel extreme love and care for a person without it being romantic. I enjoyed how the show explored their relationship, though I do wish they hadn't had every character under the sun mention their moment on Lamentis-1 like it was some big deal to bond with someone you're about to die with.

I'm bitter towards the development of Lokius. It had a strong start in the beginning, and in ep 5 had some potential reignited, but then they had Mobius not know who Loki is at the end. I'm still hoping they're playing the long game with this ship and that it'll come to fruition partway through season 2. The chemistry is there, and Mobius knows Loki very intimately and isn't put off by his past. Loki also feels much more at ease around Mobius than he does around Sylvie. It's the comfort of a deep loving bond with Mobius verses the nervousness of a new crush that he feels for Sylvie.

I don't think Loki is quite aware of his feelings for Mobius, simply because it's based in friendship and mutual respect and isn't a hot and heavy lust. Plus, as soon as he was away from Mobius he was thrown into a near death experience with Sylvie and developed a surface crush during their heart to heart. Since Loki's still figuring out what genuine feelings are beyond anger and sadness, he sees the simplistic crush he has on Sylvie as love and the intimate bond he's been forming with Mobius as friendship. He doesn't understand his own feelings yet, but I think he'll figure it out next season. I mean, he was probably already rethinking his feelings for her after she kissed and betrayed him, mentally kicking himself for expecting her to not pull a Loki betrayal like he would've in the past.

The Time Variance Authority

I really like the concept of the TVA, the structure of it, the methods they use, the deeply fucked way they recruit employees, the cult like motto, shady Miss Minutes who is definitely playing her own long game, and the blind acceptance TVA agents have of the Time Keepers' will. It's all very well done... until your dig into the core, aka He Who Remains. They built up the idea that the Time Keepers created the TVA to prevent a multiverse war and that they created agents to enforce their will. Then the creating agents turned out to be fake, the Time Keepers were fake, I expected the reason for the TVA's existence to be fake to. It felt too simple to have it genuinely exist just to keep the multiverse in check. Why the anonymity, unless it's to keep from having agents target and prune versions of himself which.. songs like a decent solution. HWR made it sound as though the multiverse war was just a bunch of versions of himself screwing shit up, so why isn't the TVA's focus on eradicating every other variant of this guy? Sounds a lot easier and nicer than fucking with the free will of every other living being. So either Marvel made a bad call when choosing what HWR's motive was for creating the TVA, or he was lying about it all to cover up something sinister.

Overall Storyline

I'm fairly happy with the plot as a whole. There were some pacing issues and I think a few missed chances for deeper conversations between various characters. While I enjoyed the Loki variants, I honestly would've been happier seeing Tom playing most the variants (except Kid Loki and Classic Loki since they are clearly different age ranges). If there is supposed to be one sacred timeline, it seems off to me that Lokis would be allowed to vary so extremely without it causing a nexus event(an alligator, whose nexus wasn't that he's an animal who obviously can't do any magic much less command Thanos' army, but that he ate someone's cat) and not just in appearance but in life path (ie boastful Loki collected all the infinity stones but it wasn't till he had 6 that he caused a nexus event even though him gaining control of the Soul, Power, and Time stones should've each caused nexus events since on the sacred timeline he never interacts with those 3 and taking any one of them would've fucked up a lot of other timeline parts)

I love the display of Lokis raw power, and 2012 Loki coming to the realization that he's way more powerful than he ever thought. And it wasn't just Classic Loki who spent thousands of years alone honing his skills, 2012 Loki reversed time on a goddamn falling building! I also liked the small magic, the fireworks, the tablecloth blanket, Loki yanking Sylvie away from HWR with just magic.

As someone who is both bisexual and genderfluid, I would've really loved more concrete representation. The comment about there never being another female Loki hit me in the gut; it undermined the Easter egg "Sex: Fluid" on Loki's TVA file. With how big a deal Sylvie being female was made out to be throughout the season, I expected her gender to play a key role in taking down the head of the TVA, like it was foretold that only a female Loki could end it all or some shit.

I don't mind the idea of Loki finding love in a straight passing relationship. I don't even mind the selfcest all that much. It just feels so obvious to me that Sylvie is written as not having any romantic inclination towards Loki, while Mobius is clearly written as falling in love with someone he shouldn't and trying to maintain an heir of professionalism to keep from wrecking his bond with Loki. I really really hope they come through on season 2 and give Lokius the canon relationship and proper representation they deserve.

Mmkay I thinks that's all the thoughts I've got right now. If you've been feeling cheated or clowned by how things went this season, maybe my perspective of things can help ease your pain.

#loki spoilers #loki series #loki #mobius m mobius #sylvie laufeydottir #lokius #sylki #tva loki #time variance authority #marvel #mcu

[gladerwolfstarkimagines]

Tea Shop Part One - Zuko x female reader series

Imagine being an air acolyte searching for the avatar in Ba Sing Sei and instead finding yourself working beside the dragon of the west and the banished prince of the fire nation, but of course you know them as Mushi and Lee. From the start you and Zuko clash, you hate his angry rude attitude and he hates how often you call him out on his poor behaviour. Your dislike grows until it’s almost unbearable and then his life is suddenly placed in your hands. After that and things change...

Part two here

Part three here

Part four here

(Note, in the readers view Zuko = Lee and Iroh = Mushi but when it’s from Zuko’s or Iroh’s pov they will be Zuko and Iroh. Hope that’s not too confusing!

Prologue: You were descended from air benders and were one of the last air aceloytes in the world. Your family was not in the air nation when the fire nation attacked a century ago, by luck your grandfather was in Omashu. When he heard the news he was devastated but crippled with fear he stayed and hid in the Earth kingdom. He married your grandmother and tried to assimilate into the earth kingdom. Your grandparents were terrified of the fire nation and therefore keeping the air nation traditions alive was not something they were focused on. So by the time you were born only your Uncle Pathik made an effort to keep the air nation traditions alive, even becoming a monk to devote himself to the cause. Your family was under the belief if they kept quiet the fire nation wouldn’t find them but of course they did. The fire nation arrested your family for the suspicion of practicing air bending, despite the fact none of you could actual airbend. The association enough was worth a life long imprisonment and so your family we’re shipped away to the deepest prison known. Your father managed to smuggle you out of the city but he wasn’t so lucky. You were devestated but after your escape headed to the only family you had left, your eccentric uncle’s home at the eastern air temple. You managed to avoid warrants for your arrest with shows of earth bending, a skill inhertited by your grandmother. Fire nation guards couldn’t comprehend someone being an air aceloyte and an earth bender and so the gift saved your life. You finally tracked down your uncle and decided that day to dedicate yourself to the air nation in spite of the fire nation. They’d taken your family but they wouldn’t take your culture. You asked your uncle to teach you all he knew and worked hard to become an air acolyte like your grandfather. It all seemed pointless, you and your uncle against the whole fire nation and then you heard the avatar was back. You made it your mission to find him and help him rebuild the air nation. You told your uncle your plan and he told you to go to Ba Sing Sei, always allusuive, he told you nothing more than you’d find what you needed there and so you set off. You expected to find the avatar quickly but had been there a whole year with no sign of him. You we’re giving up hope you’d ever find him and you’d be stuck working as a waitress in the lower ring forever when two new staff members changed that.  

Your POV

You showed up for your shift at the tea shop to find your boss had finally hired some more staff. You were thrilled and eyed the two newcomers with interest as your boss discussed the basic tasks with them while you ran the tea shop, eventually the tour brought them to you and you were introduced. "This is my main waitress" your boss said to the two men "y/n these are your two new coworkers". You nodded looking them over, the older man smiled at you but the younger one stared at the ground, or more accurately glared. He definitely did not seem pleased to be here. "Nice to meet you" you offered and the old man smiled and told you his name. You looked to the younger one expectantly and the man nudged him. "’I’m Lee" he replied flatly barely glancing at you. “Well welcome” you smiled and Mushi smiled at you but the boy, Lee, didn’t even look at you. “Now on with the tour” your boss cried and you watched Mushi talk to him while Lee sulked. Great your new co-worker was a pouty angry teenager. He’d be fun to work with.  

1 week later

Your prediction was true, you were an easy going person who could usually get along with anyone...expect this new boy. The boy was miserable and moody. He was inconsiderate and obviously didn’t work well in teams. His customer service poor and his tea making skills only just adequate. The fact he was so rude prompted you to mess with him, rude people were fair game as far as you were concerned and so you made sure not to help him. If the waiter couldn’t show common courtesy than neither would you. This resulted in a lot of shared glares and bickering between the two of you. You knew it went against your air nomad roots to pick on people but when the person was a moody rude immature man who never got your name right, surely the monks saw that as an exception right?

You arrived at the tea shop for your afternoon shift and saw Lee was leaving. That was nice. Things between you had gotten worse over the past week and shifts with him were almost unbareable. Being mean didn’t come naturally to you but something about this man made your blood boil. Lee noticed you come into the shop and held out an apron to you. Suprised you went to take it when he dropped it on the floor with a laugh. You rolled your eyes at him and snatched it up off the floor. Lee smirked and you glared. You watched him place his belongings on the counter as he prepared to leave, something you’d told him not to do many times as it wasn’t sanitary and got an idea. A glass of water was also on the counter and you smirked, because your manager was such a cheapskate the counter was made of earth. You flicked your hand and knocked the glass over onto Lee’s stuff. Lee cried out and groaned as it soaked his bag and coat. Lee looked around and caught you smiling. “You....” he started when Mushi appeared “y/n I need three jasmine teas”. You nodded “on it” and grinned at Lee’s angry glare that was glued to you as you walked past him.

Iroh’s POV

Iroh noticed Zuko pouting about something and paused as you left to go make the tea like he’d asked. Zuko was angrily shaking his jacket and Iroh frowned “Lee are you...”. “She! She is the worst! Did you see what she just did to me” Zuko cried holding his bag out to Iroh who frowned. The bag had a tiny wet stain. “Ow yes this is very serious...the sun might not even dry it before you reach home!” Iroh cried. Zuko rolled his eyes “y/n did this! Did you know she’s an earth bender?”. “No but we are in the greatest earth city in the world...it’s not suprising”. “She can’t treat me like that” Zuko carried on ignoring Iroh’s comment “she can’t get away with this, who does she think she is?”. “Hasn’t she told you numerous times not to put your stuff on the counter?”. “She...I don’t know! I don’t listen to her! She’s always telling me how to do stuff like i’m a...”. “New employee?” Iroh asked with a smile and Zuko scoffed. “This is ridiculous i’m sick of this” and he stormed from the tea shop. Iroh laughed and glanced to where you stood serving customers, you’d certainly gotten under his nephew’s skin and it was entertaining if nothing else.

Your POV

When the afternoon rush finally died down you got a chance to chat to Mushi. Thank god he was nothing like his nephew, there was a down side though. Despite not be liked him he loved talking about his nephew and seemed to constantly mention him to you, like today. “Y/n do you think you’d be able to work the late shift with me tomorrow night?" he asked "it was supposed to be Lee’s shift but he has a date". "Really?" you asked more than fairly suprised, "is it that girl who’s always in here?". Mushi nodded "yes!" and you laughed "i knew it! She asked for Lee to serve her even though his waiter skills are awful!". Mushi laughed "love is blind, she’s hopefully seen past his moody exterior to the man he is beneath” Mushi smiled at you but his hint went right over your head. "I can cover his shift" you agreed and Mushi grinned "Thank you y/n!". You told him it was fine and smirked, just the idea of Lee on a date was enough to make you laugh.

2 days later

You probably shouldn’t have offered to work that late shift for Mushi when you were opening in the morning too but you needed the money so you dragged yourself out of bed way earlier than you would’ve liked. The idea of teasing Lee about his date motivating you and when you saw him waiting outside the tea shop you smirked. "Morning" you called loudly making him jump. He swore and you smirked unlocking the door. "It’s your shift?” he complained “why are you always here?". "Because i work here idiot" you said going to roll your eyes before you calmed yourself, Lee wouldn’t ruin your good mood...or stop you teasing him about his night out. "So how was the date?" you asked smirking. Lee didn’t look at you, he didn’t even show he’d so much as heard you. It made him so much harder to annoy when he didn’t respond so you tried again. "Hey i covered for you I expect some payment" you informed him but he just shrugged "i didn’t ask you to cover for me". "Yeah but i was still the person who did so you could run around on a date" you said annoyed. The man always managed to do this, you’d start messing with him and come off angrier than him somehow. Lee only shrugged "not my problem" and you glared. Your good mood was slipping.

All day Lee’s attitude annoyed you more and more. He was in a worse mood than ever and it showed. He was rude to customers, he mixed up orders and refused to correct them, he spoke back to you when you were only trying to help him. So by the end of your shift you were ready to strangle him. When Mushi and another worker showed up to relieve you, a sigh of relief escaped without you even realising. You let all your anger go, prepared to move...and then you turned around and tripped over the rubbish bag you’d asked Lee to take out 3 times. From your crumpled position of the floor you spotted him already ready to leave and your anger flared back up. You marched to him and pressed the bag into him “here”. “Why would I want this?” he asked and you glared “it’s the rubbish you forgot to take out”. “I didn’t forget I just didn’t want to” he shrugged and you twitched. “Wow that’s a great attitude, take it outside now”. “No, you’re not my boss, you can’t tell me what to do”. He opened the back door and sauntered out and you followed him seeing red. You threw the bag at him hitting him on the shoulder and let out an angry groan. “What’s your problem?” you cried. “What’s your problem” Lee replied squaring up to you but you wouldn’t back down. “My problem is you’re an awful waiter and an intolerable human”. “Wow that hurts me so much” Lee said sarcastically and you balled your fists. “What is wrong with you?” you called “nobodies making you work here, if it’s so awful find another job! It’s not my fault you’re miserable all the time so stop acting like it is!" you yelled "you’re mad at the world? Well get in line! Nothing gets better by you acting like a jerk but if you hate it here so much leave!" and you slammed the door in his face.

Later that day

Your day hadn’t gotten much better as it went on but the end was finally in sight. You'd just finished your shift at a nearby restaurant you also worked at when you noticed two men fighting. You frowned but turned the other way. Sure it wasn’t the noble thing to do but you'd learnt to only seek trouble in certain situations and in back alleys at night was not one of those moments. The trouble apparently didn’t want to leave you alone however and you heard sounds telling you the fighting was following you. Suddenly one of them crashed past you, the other following with a sword. You glared and then gaped to see Lee was one of the men fighting. It didn't suprise you he’d be in a street fight but to be fair he seemed to be the one getting attacked. Shocked you watched, impressed by how skilled the two men were. Lee was obviously not a tea maker and according to the other guy he was actually a fire bender.

The man managed to disarm Lee and he smirked. "you’re defence less, you’ll have to firebend to stop me doing this" and swept his sword towards Lee. Lee closed his eyes unable to get out of his grip and just accepted the swing. You couldn't. Call it the airbender roots in you but you wouldn’t watch senseless violence and just do nothing, even for someone as annoying as Lee. "No" you shouted and sent a rock hurtling towards the man. You knocked him off Lee and stepped forwards "leave him alone". "Who’s this your body guard?" the boy asked and you raised an eyebrow "actually i’m a waitress". Lee stood beside you and you both faced the attacker when you heard yelling. Suddenly two Dai Li agents arrived and looked between you and Lee to the boy. "What’s going on here?" they asked and you turned to them. You’d gotten pretty good at maniuplating the authorities in your hidden life so knew how to play the Dai Li. “Officers thank god you’re here! This man attacked me and my friend for no reason, he was going to hurt him so i had to earth bend! I didn’t mean to hurt anyone I swear". "She’s right" a man who’d been watching called and the Dai Li fixed their eyes on the other boy. He tried to resist but they forced him into a cart and it disappeared down the road. "I’m sorry this happened to you" the agent told you and Lee "please go on and enjoy your night". You and Lee nodded and turned to walk away, when you were out of ear shot Lee spoke. "You didn’t have to help me" he started and you rolled your eyes sick of this and started to walk away. "No!" he said catching you up "i didn’t mean it like that, i just meant...after today i figured you hated me". "I don’t hate anyone" you replied "but you come pretty close sometimes". You thought his mouth almost curved into a smile and he nodded. "What were you doing out here?" he asked "and are you in a uniform". "I work at a restaurant near here" you explained. "You have two jobs?". "Three" you said embarassed "rent’s hard". Lee nodded his head down and you were pleased he didn’t give you sympathy. "I’m not you know" he said suddenly and you frowned “what?”. “A firebender...i’m not one" he clarified. "I wouldn’t care if you are" you shrugged and Lee frowned "really i assumed because of your..." and he trailed off. "Because of my what?" you asked turning to face him and Lee paled. He looked to your arm without meaning to and you knew he’d seen the scar that lay there. "i didn’t mean to, your sleeve was pushed up the other day..." he rushed to explain reading your expression "’i’m sorry for mentioning it". You touched your arm self consciously, the place where your burn crisscrossed it and frowned. A fire nation solider had give it you on your trip to the eastern air temple, he was annoyed your earth bending proved you couldn’t be the run away air acolyte and so he burned you as punishment.  "It’s okay" you said after a while "but no it doesn’t change things, i don’t blame all firebenders just because one burnt me". Lee looked shocked at that and you got a feeling he didn’t have that same view about the person who burnt him. "It doesn’t matter to me if you're a fire bender or the earth king himself, we’re all just human". Lee paused suprised to hear you say something so philosophical and nodded. "’I’m sorry, for earlier not this" he said softly "i have been...difficult". "Just difficult?" you asked and he shot you a glare. "Sorry...you were saying?". He sighed and glanced back at you "i’m working on my anger" he told you "i’ll try and be less of a jerk". "I’ll believe it when i see it" you replied but smirked to let him know you were joking.

You walked the rest of the way in silence and reached the tea house quickly. Mushi was cleaning up damage that must’ve been caused by the fight but dropped his broom when he saw Lee. “Z..Lee you’re okay” he cried rushing over “what happened?”. “It was fine, y/n helped me and Jet was arrested”. “You helped him?” Mushi asked smiling between you both and you and Lee rolled your eyes simultaneously. “It was nothing” you said quickly “i’d have done it for anyone”. You thought Lee’s eyes narrowed at that comment and so quickly added “but i’m glad you’re okay”. Lee looked at you suprised but nodded “thanks”. You nodded awkwardly and turned “so i’ll be going home, see you guys tomorrow”. “Bye y/n and thanks again” Mushi called after you.

Zuko and Iroh’s POV

As soon as you were gone Iroh smirked at Zuko “so...the two of you seem to have bonded”. “Don’t” Zuko replied pushing past him. Iroh’s smirk grew as he noticed the slight blush on his nephews cheek, he knew he’d sensed chemistry there. Thank god the two of you finally were realising it too.

____

I made a new Zuko series! I always love how angsty and stroppy season 2 Zuko was so thought I’d write a series around that. Hope you like it!!!

#zuko #zuko imagine #zuko x reader #prince zuko #avatar #Avatar The Last Airbender #avatar the last airbender imagine #prince zuko imagine #prince zuko x reader #mushi #iroh #atla lee #atla mushi #atla iroh #avatar zuko #atla zuko #avatar mushi #avatar lee #avatar iroh #jet #atla jet #avatar jet #ba sing sei #air nomad #air nation #fire nation #air acolyte #alta zuko #atla imagine #atla zuko imagine

[noona-clock]

The Counselor - Part 6, Final Chapter

Genre: Teacher!AU

Pairing: Bobby x You (Female!Reader)

Warnings: None

Part 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 | Words: 1,913

About eight months later

You let out a soft but very distressed whine as you looked at all of the empty boxes and all of the contents of your classroom stacked in piles around you.

You’d known that packing up your room and moving wasn’t going to be fun, but you hadn’t realized just how daunting the process truly was.

Okay, that’s a lie.

You had moved classrooms before when you’d transferred from your previous school to this one, and packing up everything and moving and unpacking had definitely been just as stressful and unpleasant as it was shaping up to be now.

You’d just blocked it all from your memory.

But now you were faced with it again, and... ugh. You really didn’t want to.

There was no turning back now, though -- not that you truly wanted to change your mind. You absolutely were not staying here, and you’d already signed a contract with another school just about twenty minutes from here, so it was a done deal.

The situation with Mr. Howell hadn’t necessarily gotten worse throughout the school year, but it hadn’t gotten better either. He had never apologized to you, and from Bobby’s reconnaissance, his old-fashioned views hadn’t changed. He’d just gotten better at hiding them.

So, when he’d announced a few months ago that he would be staying on as principal for the next three years, you had gone back to your classroom and immediately submitted a transfer request.

Did you want to work at a different school? Absolutely not. You loved your students here, and you especially loved being able to see your boyfriend every day, even if just for a few minutes before and after school.

But there was absolutely no way you would work for that man for three more years. Not after the way he’d treated you.

So, here you were. Sitting on the floor of your classroom the day after the last day of school, not even sure how to start getting things packed up because there was just... so much.

How had you accumulated so much stuff? Why did you need all of this?

With a sputtering sigh, you dropped the folder you’d been holding and fell back onto the carpet behind you, flinging your arms out and reaching them gently above your head, almost as if you were preparing to make a snow angel on the floor.

You lay there for at least a few minutes, your mind blank yet racing with thoughts at the same time, until you heard familiar shuffling footsteps heading toward your room and, eventually, coming inside.

Since you knew who it was, you didn’t move your head to look. You didn’t sit up or even shift your gaze, and just as you expected, Bobby let out a soft groan as he lay down next to you.

“Already giving up?” he murmured.

You let out a breathless chuckle, carefully moving your arms back down to your side and then scooting over so you could press your temple to his shoulder.

“How did I get so much stuff?” you asked with a soft sigh.

You felt Bobby’s fingers graze against the back of your hand before they found yours, grasping them tightly and then linking them through his.

“I’ll help you,” he said. “Then it won’t take so long to get everything packed.”

Your eyebrows shot up your forehead, and you almost sat up to convey your surprise. “You’ll help me? Really?!”

“Yeah,” Bobby smirked. “Just this once.”

You turned slightly onto your side so you could press your face into his neck, your wide grin splitting your lips. “Thank you!” you squealed before you began peppering his neck and cheek with kisses.

For over two years now, Bobby had teased you by refusing to help you with things, saying you could do it on your own -- which you could, most of the time. So, whenever he did help you, you liked to make a big deal out of it to tease him right back.

Now that he was your boyfriend, he tended to help you out a lot more, but still. His reaction to your exuberant gratitude was always worth it.

You felt his cheek move as an adorable, toothy smile appeared on his face, and he turned to quickly capture your lips in a kiss before pushing himself off the ground and holding a hand out to help you up, too.

You gripped his hand tightly, and when he started to move away after you were standing, you squeezed and pulled him right back.

Sure, he was your boyfriend, and he was basically obligated to help you pack up things to get ready to move, but... you were moving to a different school, away from him. He hadn’t said it out loud, but you were fairly positive he didn’t actually want to help because he didn’t want you to leave -- even though he completely understood why you were.

You’d actually tried to get him to leave with you, but guidance counselor positions were a lot more difficult to come by than math teacher positions. So, he had to stay here for now, but he assured you he would keep looking if it seemed Mr. Howell really was going to stay for a few years.

“Thank you,” you repeated, though your voice was softer this time, and you didn’t kiss all around his face eagerly like you just had. “I really appreciate it.”

“You’re welcome, baby,” he replied with a secret blush and somewhat of a goofy grin.

You stood on your toes and pecked his lips before stepping away so you could start packing.

“Have you gone to see your new classroom yet?” Bobby asked after the two of you had packed quietly for about ten minutes.

Side note: one thing you learned that you truly loved about Bobby was the fact he was okay with silence. He was pretty talkative, but he didn’t feel the need to talk all the time.

“Not yet,” you answered as you taped up the box with the contents of your desk. “I’m going this afternoon.”

“Do... you want me to come with you?”

You looked up at him, eyebrows raised slightly in curiosity. “You want to come?”

Bobby continued rolling up the posters that had been on your wall, keeping his focus on them rather than on you. “Yeah, I’d like to. I won’t get to visit your room like I can here, so I want to see it at least once.”

You pressed your lips together to keep from smiling like a fool and replied with, “Of course, you can come. I would love some help unpacking.”

Bobby’s head snapped up, and he quirked a brow at you. “I didn’t say that.”

“Oh, come on!” you laughed. “Please? Please please please --”

Your playful begging was interrupted by a knock on your door and a man clearing his throat.

Your visitor was immediately recognizable -- you’d heard that throat clearing once before, and the sound of it put your teeth on edge.

“Hello, Sir,” Bobby greeted.

Bobby typically didn’t fight your battles for you -- you were capable of doing that on your own. But this was one he did without you even having to ask.

“Bobby,” Mr. Howell greeted with a nod.

And then he turned toward you.

“I just wanted to wish you luck at your new school, Y/N,” he said to you with a barely there smile.

You silently let out a deep breath and set the roll of packing tape down, feeling a surge of courage swelling up inside of you. Courage you hadn’t had back when he’d yelled at you in front of your students.

You walked over to him, plastering the most neutral expression that you could muster on your face.

“Thank you,” you answered in an even tone. “And I want to wish you luck, too. I wish you luck in overcoming your prejudices against women, and I wish you luck in overcoming the toxic masculinity that makes you feel like you know better or that you can control me and women like me. You’ll never be a good principal until you recognize what women have done for the teaching profession and realize that employees cannot and do not thrive under leadership like yours. Controlling leadership. A good boss is not one who has all the answers, but one who knows the right answer when he sees it, no matter who it comes from. I’m leaving because of you, I won’t deny that, and if you continue to treat the women in this school as you treated me, I won’t be the only one. I can promise you that. Thank you for your well wishes, and I hope I never see you again. Now, please leave.”

Before you could see if he actually turned around to leave after your unexpected but wholly deserved speech, you stepped away from him and headed back over to your desk.

Thankfully, by the time you got there, he was gone.

You let out the biggest, shakiest sigh of relief, and Bobby was at your side in an instant.

“Y/N!” he laughed in amazement. “That was --”

He gathered you up in his arms, squeezing you tightly.

“That was incredible,” he murmured, his tone filled with pride. He then pushed you away just enough so he could see your face, his lips curved into the biggest smile. “Do you know how much I love you?”

“Probably the same amount that I love you,” you answered, your heart still racing from what you’d just done.

You had no regrets, of course. He needed to hear that. But it had still been nerve-wracking.

Bobby pulled you back into his embrace then, kissing your temple for a long while.

“I love you,” he said quietly. “I love you so much.”

“I love you, too,” you chuckled as you clutched at the back of his t-shirt.

“I -- I was going to wait to bring this up, but I can’t stop myself.”

Your brow furrowed gently, and you leaned back to face him again. “Bring up what?”

“I want to move in together.”

“You --”

“My lease is up soon, and with you going to another school, I just -- I don’t want to not see you every day. So... move in with me? Please?”

You and Bobby had been officially dating for less than a year. It was incredibly soon to move in together.

But...

You’d been friends for, what, three years now? You felt like you’d known him your whole life.

You knew him backwards and forwards, and he knew you just the same.

And, like he said, the thought of not seeing him every day was pretty upsetting.

Okay, extremely upsetting.

So...

Why not? If you were going to take a chance like this, it wasn’t going to be on anyone else other than Bobby.

You pressed your lips together, though the corners of your mouth turned up into a tiny smile, and you nodded. “Okay.”

Bobby’s face lit up.

“Yeah? Really? You want to?”

“Of course, I want to,” you chuckled. “I’m already packing up my classroom, might as well just pack up everything else, too.”

It was going to be a lot of work -- even more work than packing up your teacher belongings... but wasn’t Bobby worth that much work?

Yes. Of course.

He was absolutely worth it.

#kwritersworldnet #bobby scenarios #bobby imagines #bobby au #bobby fluff #bobby fanfic #ikon scenarios #ikon imagines #ikon au #ikon fluff #ikon fanfic #kpop scenarios #kpop imagines #kpop au #kpop fluff #kpop fanfic #ikon #ikon bobby #bobby #kim jiwon

[what-stop-the-presses-rly-means]

Bye, Bye, Sugar Blue Eyes part 6

Race x female reader modern au

Part 1, 2, 3, 4, 5

Warnings: Swearing, smoking, mention of death

A/N: It liiiives! This story is back from the dead, zombified just in time for Halloween! (I know it’s been months and I super apologize for that)

______________

So it’s been a couple days into our post-Race returning routine and I gotta say… It’s weird how normal everything seems. I know that’s an unusual thing to complain about, but it’s just been very strange. I expected our whole dynamic to shift. I mean, Race - everyone’s favorite guy - has finally returned. You would think I would get put on the back burner and everyone, boys young and old alike, would gravitate his way and only listen to him. Not that I would blame them if they did. Race is everything they said he was, and more. He had this charming personality and whenever you were around him it was like he had some sort of gravitational pull. You wanted to be near him and you trusted everything he said.

Even so, everything around here has been functioning in a fairly similar way as before. The only difference is that I have a sweet, kind, and generous helping hand. The boys still respected me and followed the rules (for the most part) and my role in this home hasn’t changed much.

It’s crazy how close Race and I have gotten in just a few short days. We’ve shared so much with each other that I feel like we’re officially friends. I no longer feel like an outsider amongst this small group of longtime best friends. Instead, I’m kind of one of them now. Race was so considerate, wanting to know if I’ve adjusted well enough and if everyone had welcomed me warmly.

“It was pretty rough at first, trying to adjust to the new job. But now it doesn’t even feel like a job anymore. It’s second nature, it’s my life now. And I love it very much,” I had said. “I care about those boys as if they were my own. Not to mention my fellow employees.” I smiled. “It feels weird calling them that. Don’t tell them I said this, but it feels like I’m a part of a big family around here. Like they’re my brothers or something. There’s nothing I wouldn’t do for any of them.” I looked up and saw that he was staring at me with soft eyes and an even softer smile.

“That’s good to hear. I’m sure they’d be happy to hear that as well if you ever decide to tell ‘em.” He tilted his head. “Have you always been so good at the speaking thing?” I gave him a curious look, so he elaborated. “You seem to always know just what to say. It’s like everything that comes out of your mouth is just so warm and sweet and straight from the heart.” He wouldn’t stop looking at me with those stupid eyes so I cleared my throat, ducking my head away.

“I think you have me confused with Jack. That man should be a public speaker or something. It’s like he was born to motivate people.”

Race chuckled. “Yeah, he’s always been that way. Even when we were the wee ones living in this place. He was kind of our leader of sorts. He took care of everyone. And when any of us started feelin’ down about our situations, which was often, he would be right there with the right words to say and a warm hug to ease our worries. I swear he could tell a Christian that God, himself, had returned in the form of a pig and the next thing you know, the whole city would swear off bacon. He just has a way about him that makes you believe everything he says.” We both laughed, and then he looked up at me again. “But that doesn’t mean you’re any less than. Kindness attracts kindness. Jack said he knew you were perfect for this job. He knew you would fit in right away because you had already shown so much love and consideration in such a short time. You already had what it takes to do what we do, so don’t sell yourself short. You’re just as good, if not better than the rest of us.”

I blinked at him, fighting off the blush creeping onto my face.

“You’re one to talk. Every time I’ve talked to you I feel so comforted and safe. Safe from my own feelings and all the bad thoughts that threaten to sneak up on me. At the same time I don’t feel like you’re trying to ‘talk me down’ or treat me like a patient. You’re a friend who just wants everyone around him to be happy because he knows what it’s like to feel like you might not ever be happy again. Sometimes I forget you’re actually a counselor.”

He laughed lightly. “Yeah, when I first told the others that I was going for a Psychology degree Jack made fun of me a bit, acting shocked that I would pursue something so serious. But, all in all, they supported me one hundred percent.” He looked down at his shoes. “I know it’s a teen movie cliché: the rough and tumble street rat grows up, gets an education, and combines his street smarts with this book smarts to teach kids who are in the same position he started out in. But I felt like it was what I was meant to do or somethin’. Again, cliché, I know. Jack and I spent our time here as kids trying to make sure everyone was cared for. He was more abrupt and straightforward about it, while I took a more discreet, one-on-one approach. I would sit and talk with anyone who needed it. That’s how our dynamic continued to be when we came back here. Jack, being the straightforward kinda guy, took on this opportunity head on and assumed so much responsibility. And I came back to help any individuals who might be struggling with their place here. And of course Davey and Albert have helped out so much as well. It’s like nothing’s changed over the years.”

“Sure it has. You’re helping the next generation by not giving up on them and giving them a chance to grow up and spread a little kindness and compassion themselves. Instead of looking at the world through the eyes of the people that turned their backs on them. You’re slowly but surely shaping their lives.” He looked awestruck for a second before a couple of the boys came running down the hall, pushing each other out of the way on their way to the stairs.

“Out of the way, asshole!” one of them shouted.

“Mouth! Don’t make me pop you in yours!” The boy looked over his shoulder with an apologetic grimace before running downstairs. “God, that boy is aptly named.” Race laughed.

“From sugar to spice in no time flat. I like that in a woman.” Before I could make an equally sassy comment, Peter ran up to us.

“Miss (Y/N)! Miss (Y/N)! Guess what?”

I stooped down and picked him up. “What? What? Where’s the fire?” I laughed.

“I finally got my gang name!”

“I really wish you wouldn’t call it that.”

“Oh, um, okay. I finally got my nickname!”

“That’s wonderful, Sweet Pea. What is it?”

He looked so excited to tell me. “It’s Pea Pod! Ya know, ‘cause you call me Sweet Pea all the time? What do you think?”

“You chose your nickname based off of what I call you?”

He looked so proud. “Yep! But you can still call me Sweet Pea. I like it when you do.”

I was so touched. “If that’s what you want. You’ll always be my Sweet Pea.”

He smiled so wide and hugged me. I looked over his shoulder at Race with a shocked expression. His eyes were also wide as he gave me a thumbs up.

Peter pulled back. “Okay, I gotta go tell everyone else now!” I set him down and he took off running.

I let out an exasperated laugh. “Well, that was a lot at once.”

Race slung an arm over my shoulder. “All in a day’s work around here.”

POV Change

Race sat on the front steps for a moment. After the hustle and bustle of being back for a few days and reacquainting with everyone and everything, he finally had a few moments to stop and think. And that didn’t bode well for him. If he thought about his situation for too long, he’d start spiraling again. Normally when he was stressed or on edge for whatever reason he’d head out back to smoke. But he promised he would quit.

Taking a couple deep breaths, he pushed the feeling down and walked inside. It was about the time for the boys to be doing homework, so most of them were in the dining room. Taking advantage of a few quiet moments, he threw himself down on the couch, closing his eyes. A couple minutes later a voice startled him.

“You look relaxed.”

Opening his eyes, he saw (Y/N) standing in front of him with a laundry basket. He moved over and gestured to the seat next to him. She smiled and accepted.

“I must be a really good actor, then,” he chuckled.

“Really?” She started folding the laundry in front of her. “What’s on your mind?”

Race sighed. “It’s nothing, really. It’s just weird bein’ back. After all the stress of taking care of my dad, where it had been so quiet, almost like the calm before the storm. It was as if everyone was afraid to speak or even breathe. We didn’t talk about the elephant in the room. We didn’t even discuss it much after he… after he passed on. It was just a lot of silence and bottled feelings. I’m still not sure if my mom has really let herself grieve or not.” He glanced over at her. “Sorry, that’s pretty heavy.”

She smirked at him, sliding the basket between them. “Don’t worry about it.” He gave a small smile of his own, leaning down to help fold.

“Ya know, you have this way about you that just makes people wanna open up to you.”

I smirked. “So I’ve been told.”

“I’m serious. Like, I’d never just spill all of that out to any of the guys. Well, maybe Albert, but he’d make some stupid joke afterward. But I know you’ll be kind and gentle. ‘Cause that’s how you are with the boys, so you’re probably that way with everyone. You just have a nice way about you. …And I’m rambling now so I’m gonna stop.” He pulled his bottom lip between his teeth. It’s a habit he’s picked up since he quit smoking. To his left he could hear her laugh lightly.

“Why thank you, I try.” It was quiet for a moment before she reached over and turned his face to her. His eyes widened as she stared at his mouth. She brushed his lip lightly with her thumb, making him release it. “Don’t bite it, you’re gonna make it bleed,” she said softly, soothing the bite mark. Race blinked a couple times.

Laughing awkwardly, he said, “Always being motherly, aren’tcha?”

“I never really turn it off.”

“I’m not complaining,” he whispered. They smiled at each other, his face still in her hand. Her eyes noticeably drifted back to his mouth when-

“Hey, Racer, did you get those errands done- woah!” The couple jumped apart at Jack’s voice. Race’s face burned red as (Y/N) busied herself with a shirt she had been folding.

“Sorry! Didn’t mean to interrupt. Just wanted to make sure those letters got mailed and… yeah. I’ll leave you alone now, sorry.” He retreated to his office after one more glance back at them, a smirk very apparent on his face.

Race fiddled with his hands before clearing his throat loudly. “Uh, yeah, I’ve been trying to think of ways to kick the smoking habit. I guess chewing on my lip is the current cure.”

“You just need to find something else to do with your mouth.” A second later, her eyes widened, as if she hadn’t meant to say that out loud. “Uh, ahem, s-so why are you trying to quit all of a sudden? The guys say you’ve been smoking since you were, like, sixteen. Not that there’s ever a bad reason to quit! Not that I’m shaming you if you don’t quit! Please stop me from talking now…”

Race chuckled at that. “You’re fine. I’ve actually wanted to quit for a while. I’ve only done it this long because it calms my nerves. But my… my dad convinced me. One of the last things the man ever said to me was that he wanted me to promise I’d stop. How could I say no to that? But let me tell you, it has been the hardest promise to keep. On the day of the funeral I can’t tell you how many times I wanted to wander off and smoke all of that stress away. But that was one of only two promises he made me keep, and I couldn’t let him down.”

“What was the other one? If you don’t mind me asking.”

He fidgets with his hands, a little surprised. He hadn’t realized what he was saying.

“Oh, it’s nothing. He just wanted to bestow some wisdom in me before his passing. That’s the kind of man he was. He wanted to make sure everyone he loved was looked after when he was gone. So he made sure I stopped smoking, saying he didn’t want my life cut short like his was. And…and he wanted to see me happy. I promised him that I would let someone look after me and bring a little happiness into my life. Seeing as I tend to take care of everyone else, he got this notion that I would never be taken care of.” He let out a small laugh. “I don’t know if he just wants me married with a bunch of kids of my own before I get ‘too old’ to do so, or what. But I promised I’d try.”

(Y/N) pondered this. She fluffed out the last article of clothing so she could fold it.

“I don’t think he had a particular picture in his mind. He probably just wants you to let your guard down every once in awhile and let others see you during the good and the bad, the noteworthy and the mundane moments in life. And let them help you through them. There’s nothing wrong with helping others and being their rock. It’s admirable, actually. But he’s right in thinking that there should be moments when the roles are reversed. Everyone deserves to feel loved and protected. You don’t wanna burn yourself out.” She grabbed the basket and stood up. “You, especially deserve it. You’ve been through hell and back, and you still put everyone else’s wellbeing before your own. Maybe it’s time for you to be cared for. It’ll certainly be easy enough. No one around here is gonna let you slip through the cracks. So now all you have to worry about is the smoking thing. And I’ve got the feeling that you can accomplish anything you set your mind to.” She smiled warmly at him and left the room.

Race stared after her for longer than necessary, mouth agape. If his dad were here now, he would be smiling knowingly at him.

A couple weeks later Race found himself in much higher spirits. The holiday season was coming up and everyone seemed a little cheerier. Though he’s not so sure that was the only reason. Since he’s been back he’s noticed that the boys are a little more in order, for lack of a better word. They seemed to all get along and follow their schedules without much fuss. He’s especially seen a greater change in Rider. He wasn’t nearly as moody as he used to be, actually helping out around the house and playing with the younger boys. He had been ecstatic when Race had come back, talking a mile a minute any chance he got.

He had felt bad that he had to leave him behind when he did. He knew, obviously, that it wasn’t his fault, but he couldn’t help it. He saw so much of his younger self in Rider and felt as if it was his duty to protect him and help him in any way he could.

But now it was as if Rider was an entirely different person. Race didn’t know what happened when he was gone, but he was thankful for it all the same.

He walked into the main entrance to see Rider helping (Y/N) hang some garland along the railing on the stairs. They were both humming some Christmas song while Davey set up a Menorah on the table below. Jack was currently outside in the midst of a snowball war with some of the boys, and he didn’t know what Albert was currently cooking, but it smelled amazing. Race sighed contently. He loved the holidays. Everyone comes together and the home just feels so nice and warm and welcoming. It’s like nothing could ruin the happiness.

Except sometimes things don’t go as planned.  

Tag list:

@getchapapes

@technically-whizzy

@werkwerkelizaaa

@pulitzerpublishers

#newsies #race higgins #race higgins x reader #mine #bye bye sugar blue eyes #look! I wrote something!

[milk-luvr-dot-com]

“A New Assistant” - The Thick of It - Chapter 2

Summary: While DoSAC fucks around trying to keep the data wipe a secret, Malcolm and Ivy begin to become more comfortable with one another.

Word Count (this chapter): 5222

Rating: Mature (for adult situations, language)

Warnings: No Ao3 Warnings, Explicit Language, homophobic language, fatphobic language, sexist language, ablest language

Categories: F/M, Gen

Tags: Falling in love, crushes, comedy, slow burn, explicit language, original female characters, AU - canon divergence, mutual pining, additional tags to be added

Chapter 1, Chapter 3

Ao3 link and full work under the cut.

https://archiveofourown.org/works/24510592/chapters/59267578

Malcolm walked into the office, expecting to turn on the light. It caught him off guard when the light was already on, and Ivy was sitting across the room at her desk, quietly talking to people on the phone about menial garbage that Malcolm had put her on last night.

"Oh, shit." He said, dropping his briefcase beside his desk and settled into his office chair.

She looked up after finishing her call, "Morning, sir."

"Were you here all night?" Malcolm made a concerned face.

Ivy capped her pen. "No, got here early to sort out Anthony's mental breakdown about his stupid bloody department of education thing." She rubbed her eyes, which didn't smear what little makeup she had on. She looked tired. She could have been lying.

"Well, good morning anyway. Can I fetch you some tea?"

She thought it was a sweet gesture. He always tried to be kind to her, no matter how frustrated or pissed he was at anybody else. He was always patient. Even if he made a smarmy comment, it was all in jest. She had only been there a week, but she knew that Malcolm didn't treat anyone else like this.

"Aren't I supposed to be the one doing the tea fetching?" Ivy smiled meekly.

Malcolm didn't look at her, instead preoccupied with signing into his computer. "Right you are. Can you fetch us some tea?"

She sighed, getting up, "what kind?"

"Earl grey would be fine, thank you, Ivy."

"Mhm." She fetched it, then came back fairly quickly.

As she leaned down to set his cup on his desk, he began, "You ever see that movie with Rory Calhoun, where there's these siblings who sell meat but it's actually made out of human flesh? What's it called again?"

"Motel Hell?"

He snapped his fingers, pointing at her. "Motel Hell. Wow, you must really know your '80s horror films."

She chuckled, "I remember seeing that one at the cinema with my mates."

Malcolm raised an eyebrow, "in cinema?"

"Yeah."

He didn't continue, trying to calculate her age in her head.

"Sir, you're only about 4 years my senior." Ivy slumped into her chair.

Malcolm looked at her in disbelief. "No..." he turned his head to give her a side eye. "No, you can't be."

She pressed her lips together, and nodded. "Yeah. 46, as of July."

"I thought you were  approaching  your 40s. Christ, you look lovely."

"Oh, stop." She swiped her hand at him, grinning and blushing. "You're not that bad, either, Malcolm."

He sighed, "Anyway, uh, my point was that you and I are like the people from Motel Hell. Tag team of..."

"Shit?"

"Yeah, shit. So, I want to see you in action. How about you go up there and see what's.. shaking." Malcolm smiled, using his hands as he talked.

"Alright then. I'll take notes for you." She stood up, making her way up to the DoSAC workspace.

The sound of Ivy's heels echoed through the office space and send the same vibe as the Other Mother from Coraline. Once she rounded the corner, she didn't make a fairer presence.

"Morning, morning, morning everyone." The DoSAC employees looked relieved to see her instead of Malcolm. They really shouldn't have been. "Where's Nicola?" Ivy turned to Olly, who was punching in a phone number.

"Er, she's on a call." He said, which was a total lie, as she had just stood up and looked directly at her before ducking back down again, with a relieved look on her face. Again, she really shouldn't have been.

A blonde haired woman, who's name Ivy recalled to be Robyn, asked weakly, "Does he know...?"

She wheeled around, staring at her. They were the same height. "Hm? Sorry? Does he know what?"

"Er..." Robyn scrambled for something to say, clearly, "the best way to clear a paper jam?"

"I'm not sure, but in my expert opinion, you put a hamster in a tube sock and beat the printer over and over again with it until it works." She bluntly responded, then turned at Nicola's voice.

"Morning, Ivy. Uh, if you could sort out the sack race situation for me, that'd be terrific." She said to Terri, who agreed and asked what she could do. "Ideally, build a time machine so that we could go back and not invite photographers to the sports day."

Ivy rolled her eyes. Terri and Nicola continued for a few more moments, then Nicola turned her attention to Ivy, finally. "So, Ivy-"

"Oh, sorry, uh, Malcolm's calling, hang on just one moment." She made her way to the elevator nook.

"Malcolm, what can I do you for? ....Oh, yeah, it's going okay. Yeah they're being fucking weird, like those boys on that one show, Ghost Adventures. Walking around and shouting every five minutes, 'what was that?' .... no, not literally, sir. But maybe you should come up here, they look like they're about to admit something. They've got it in their little beady eyes. ....Yeah, okay. See you." Ivy slinked back to the main area.

She gave a warm smile on her way back. "Right, my apologies. What's going on, hm?"

"Uh-" Nicola began, but then was cut off when Ivy answered a voice call. "Hello, Rory, what can I do-... WHAT?" She shouted, and continuing, "ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME? JESUS!"

Ivy ran off, towards the bridge point of the office. She continued to talk to Rory about something regarding what's on the press, something menial, but Rory always decided he was most important. That's why Malcolm gave Ivy the number, for her to handle it. Robyn and Glenn had a very clandestine conversation full of false laughter on the other end of the hall. She took mental note of it. Once Malcolm exited the lift, she ended the call.

They held conversation on their way back to Nicola's office.

"They're being fucking weird."

"They're always fucking weird, why do you need me up here?" Malcolm asked.

She exhaled through her nose. "I'm just worried it might be something big, and I don't know if I can handle it, okay?"

"You can handle it, trust me, you were fine, but since I'm up here anyway, I might as well stay up here." They stopped directly outside of the Secretary of State's office. "We'll talk about this later, okay?" He pointed at her, and they both entered the room.

"Little pigs, little pigs," he teased in a gruff voice, "Let me come in. Don’t worry about the hair on your chinny-chin-chin."

"Malcolm, Ivy, what was your call?" Nicola asked, smugly.

They both furrowed their brows. Ivy spoke first, "is it any of your business?"

"What was our call?"

Glenn tried to get a word in, but Malcolm continued. "You want to know what our call was? Sorry, I didn’t realize I had to run all the calls made through your bed-wetters switchboard, here."

"Usually he’ll just dial 1-1-hate." Ivy jumped in.

Nicola asked, "Malcolm, do you know?"

"Of course he knows."

"No, he doesn’t know."

Ivy gently elbowed him, whispering, "Fucking clandestine."

"There has been a massive irretrievable data loss. The last seven months’ worth of new immigrant details have gone, apparently lost in the computer." She finally laid out.

Ivy’s eyes widened out of shock, and then her brows lowered, angry. Malcolm paused for a minute, beginning to crack a smile and then a maniacal laugh.

"You’re fucking kidding. Nicola, tell me you’re fucking kidding." Ivy began, slowly raising her voice halfway through the sentence.

"Do you know what? Do you know what’s really fucking sad here, is that I don’t even have the energy to pretend I already knew. Which is for the best, because I’m gonna need all of my fucking energy to fucking rip all of your bodies to bits with my bare hand and sell off your flayed fucking skin as a sleeping bag to a normal person!" He turned to Ivy, "Ivy, go and get my bowie knife from my office, because I’d like to start now."

"Can I just say that getting angry actually isn’t going to help anything. I’ve done anger, I’m currently at grief, I’m working my way towards bargaining… whatever, you know, it’s behind me."

"Oh, that’s great. That’s fan-fucking-tastic, minister! You know what, why don’t you just explain your little plan to us here so we can pick out all the problems with it like crows looking for bits of flesh on a fresh piece of roadkill." The short woman spat, crossing her arms.

She sighed, asking Terri to explain the plan. "Well, blaming the department minister might be a high-risk strategy."

"Ooh, high risk. Power serve." He added immaturely.

Ivy smiled, then bit her lip, adding "Saucy."

"My pitch would be that this department is fatally flawed. It’s out of condition, it’s obese, it’s asthmatic."

"That a-girl, back over the net."

“You're really sure about that, Nicola, because-” Glenn began.

"Yes, wise words from the distinguished, elderly, gay fucking tennis coach here."

Olly interjected, "Seriously, I think we should talk about my strategy further because I really think that there's a way-"

"Oh, good, the tiny-dicked ball boy's having a go now, with his tiny little clean white shorts and a pink polo, here we go." Ivy pinched the bridge of her nose, leaning against the black filing cabinets.

"What about Sue Barker's little sister? What's she got to say?"

Robyn made some comment about lemon zinger, before Ivy checked her notes. "Does The Guardian know about this? The Mail?"

"Oh God- you two, can't even handle you, you fucking statue, on your own," Nicola started, motioning to Malcolm, "but now it's fucking Bonnie and Clyde. The Guardian, God I don't fucking know..."

"Shall I find out? Get some feelers?" The woman in the pink power suit asked.

"Yeah, go on, get your feelers out for the lads."

"What do you think, Malcolm, will shitting on the department work?" Nicola suggested, crossing her arms and rubbing one of her temples.

"Oh, sure. Let's cause a bit of friction, here, huh? Let's fire someone, let's fire Glenn!"

"You can't just fire Glenn, no."

"We could fire Glenn."

"Shall I get his file?"

"No! I've got a list!" The sickly fucking Mister Rogers (God rest his soul) shouted.

Ivy folded her hands together, bending down as if she was talking to a child. "Oh, you've got a list? Of what, your favorite fucking toys, you fucking immaculate toddler?"

Malcolm left the room, and so did Nicola and Glenn. "Ivy, come on. You're the new broom, you're sweeping up trouble with one end, broom-handling incompetent staff up the tunnel with the other."

"So how do we play it with the Guardian, then?" She chased after him.

"Smile. By gay. Smile, smile, smile!" Malcolm psychotically smiled. Ivy mirrored him.

"Malcolm, sir?"

"Huh?" He was at his desk again, stuffing his notes for the meeting at The Guardian in a pile.

"Am I coming with... you... to the thing?"

He stopped, looking at her, lost in thought. "Er... yes, but I'm going to need you stay out of the lunch room. Stay in the lobby. Have a lovely beans on toast or whatever it is you cockney bastards do."

She rolled her eyes, shrugging, "Ah, thanks mate."

"I'll call you or come get you if some shitty shit thing happens, like Nicola chokes on a piece of banana or some other disaster."

"I'd expect Nicola to choke on Jeffery's banana, trying to sputter out..." She continued for a moment, mumbling on about calling Nicola a wanker.

"You really don't like her, do you?"

Ivy looked up at him, raising her eyebrows. "No. I really don't. She's a fucking disaster with the press. She's a smug little stinging lit piece of coal thrown in your shoe directly from hell."

"Well, what can you expect from someone so low down on the list?"

She snickered, "Not much apparently."

"Fine. Yeah." Ivy looked up at Malcolm's voice. She was seated on an uncomfortable red seat directly across from the meeting room. She stood and met up with him again.

"Ah, there's your other half, Malcolm." Olly commented.

"Piss off." She answered.

Most of them piled into the lift, and Olly continued. "I didn't think you'd have come today, but I suppose she follows you everywhere, like a little puppy."

"Yeah, what is it with you two, Malcolm?" Terri chimed in. "Are you two dating?"

"Are we dating?" Ivy mocked. "No, we're not. I'm his assistant. He's my boss."

"Hot, isn't it?" The curly haired lanky bitch continued.

She sighed. "Olly, if you don't shut the fuck up, I'm going to tear off your arm and beat your thick skull to death with it." She pointed at him threateningly.

"Ooh, I'm so scared of the oompa loompa in the navy blue skirt."

"Don't fuck with me!" She shouted.

Malcolm shot Olly a stern look, to let him know he meant business. That classic Malcolm look that put fear into DoSAC's veins. He shut up immediately. They exited the lift and out of the lobby, then back inside into the van.

"Hey French Lieutenant's woman, we're over here, come on! What're you doing, marking out your territory?"

Nicola had a look on her face like she'd just seen a ghost. She'd fucked up somewhere along the line, Ivy thought.

"I need some air, Olly, come with me, now." She hurried out the car.

"She's not a post-match puker, right?"

"Fuck's sake."

"I know."

Terri began talking about wine. She stopped, in favor of asking more prodding questions. "How was your first week, Ivy?"

"Fine." She was pretending to write things down, instead drawing a caricature of Nicola in a straight jacket with a text bubble coming off of it saying 'wooden toys!'. She had it turned to Malcolm, who looked at it and smirked.

"He wasn't too hard on you, was he?"

"Nope."

"Are you listening to me?"

Ivy finally looked up. "Nope!" She smiled. Malcolm covered his mouth, checking his Blackberry, and pretending he wasn't grinning. "And I don't work for you, so it doesn't matter."

Nicola returned to the car, apologizing profusely and explaining herself to Malcolm. She ended it with a, "Sorry, Malcolm, I'm really sorry."

"Fucks sake!" He smacked his lap with his clipboard, "JESUS! CHRIST! Well now we've got another adjective to add to smug and glum, FUCKING RETARDED! Jesus! Do you not think it would be germane to check who you're talking to? It's a fucking newspaper office! It's not a fucking, sanatorium for the fucking deaf, is it?! Are you so dense?! Am I going to have to run around slapping badges on people wit a big tick on some, a big cross on others, so you know when to shut your gob and when to open it? Jesus Christ! Oh, but that'd probably confuse you as well, won't it?! That'll be TOO confusing! You'll see a cross and go, 'oh, fuck, X marks the spot! Better tell this little person all about the Prime Minister's fucking catastrophic erectile dysfunction!' Oh, but, not to worry! Not to worry, you've sent Olly over there to deal with it! Fucking Olly! He's a fucking knitted scarf, that twat! He's a fucking balaclava!"

Once Malcolm had finished his tear, he held his face, turning to look out the window. Nicola quietly left the car, leaning against the side of it and rubbing her face. She looked like she was about to cry.

"Sorry, Ivy." He quietly said, apologetically. "Sorry you had to be caught in the middle of that."

She had been silent the whole time, stuck in between those two. "Oh. It's okay."

"Don't I get an apology, too?" Terri piped up.

"No, actually, you don't, you fucking wad of bubblegum. Come on." Malcolm and Ivy exited the van, Nicola saw and followed from the other side. They approached the red head, and Olly was desperately explaining himself to her.

"The department's not really fit for purpose, I mean, Terri's quite bad."

"Not just Terri, I mean I'm not going to name names but Robyn, Robyn's shit. Total shit."

Olly nodded, "Robyn, she's total shit."

"O-kay. Olly, please fuck off." Ivy said, crossing her arms.

"What?"

"Go on. Go and have your fucking lukewarm tea. Mummy and daddy are talking." Malcolm added, shooing him with his hand. "I'm sure that we can settle this matter of you eavesdropping on a private conversation."

The journalist paused for a moment. "It was a public conversation."

"No. You are- you think you're so clever and you are so totally wanking with the wrong crowd here because this woman-" Nicola grabbed Ivy by the sleeve, dragging her in front of Malcolm and into center stage. "This woman, here, is the press."

"Nicola!" She hurriedly whispered. Nicola ran off, whining "Fuck, what have I done?" All the way back to the van.

"Do you think this is going to advance your career? Is this you moving forward?"

"I mean, at least my career has got a trajectory, whereas yours is about to crash head-on into a change of government."

"Don't you worry, girl, because I can still fucking steer some fucking flaming wreckage in your fucking direction."

"Yeah, I'll tell you what, once it's printed I promise I'll come back to you for a reaction quote. How's that?"

"Darling, I wouldn't fucking piss on you, if you were fucking allergic to piss, right?"

"Malcolm-" Ivy attempted to begin to deescalate the situation.

"No, I will fucking-"

The reporter began to walk away, "I'll come back to your wife, here, for a reaction quote, too. That's quite enough for one day. Jesus."

"We're not married!" He shouted after her. "Fuck right off, then!"

As they turned, Malcolm began muttering swear words to himself. "Are you alright, sir?" Ivy asked.

"No! I'm not fucking alright! Shit!" He spat, throwing his hands up. He huffed, "Sorry, it's just-"

"I know." She tentatively put a hand on his forearm that was attached to the hand stuffed inside his pocket. "Sorry, dumb question."

"No, you're fine."

Meanwhile, inside the van, the gang were gossiping like a bunch of schoolchildren about Malcolm and Ivy. Terri pointed, "Look, they're holding hands! They have to be dating!"

"What?" Olly looked out. "No they're not!"

"Okay, shh, shh, they're coming back."

Malcolm and Ivy walked back to their office in silence on their way back. Once they got back and settled back in, Malcolm broke the silence.

"Well that was a fucking whale-sized shit stain on this department."

Ivy clacked in her password into her laptop. Without looking up, she answered "This department is a whale-sized shit stain. To be completely honest, sir, it's exactly what I'd expect to happen."

He chuckled for a bit, then the room went back to silence. Once again, Malcolm broke it. "Ivy?"

"Hm?"

"What did you mean, this morning, when you said you thought you couldn't handle it?"

"Huh? Oh. Er... well, I meant exactly that. I didn't feel that I could handle a big reveal like that. And I had a feeling that was what they were going to do."

"Do you know what? I think you could've handled it."

"Sir-"

"I've seen you in meetings. I know how you've done at your last job. You're quick enough, you're... certainly smart enough, and you've got enough power in your voice to yell if need be. That's a big part of the job, too."

She smiled, warmly, and genuinely. She was blushing, just a bit, too.

"Don't doubt yourself. Okay?"

She sniffled, on the verge of tears. "Okay." As she nodded, a tear dropped down onto the paper she was reading. "Thank you, Malcolm. Thank you."

"Hey, hey, woah." He stood up, "Don't cry, I was just-"

"I know." She wiped a tear away. "It just means a lot to me, that's all." She grabbed a tissue, wiping away drips.

"Okay..." Just then, his cell phone chimed, a notification from the Daily Mail. They'd gotten their grubby little hands on the story already. "Oh, shit."

"What?"

"Mail's found out. Right, gotta get Nicola's spidery arse down here. Pick yourself up, and look alive, love." He punched in the number, and sternly talked into the phone, "Get over here. Now. Might be advisable to wear brown trousers, and a shirt the colour of blood."

Ivy didn't listen to that last bit. She was too focused on him calling her ‘love’. Yeah, it was colloquial around England to refer to women as ‘love’, but it was mostly in a demeaning or sarcastic method of use. It meant more that Malcolm had used it as a term of endearment.

Malcolm began once Nicola - and for whatever reason, Terri - had settled down. Ivy was stationed next to him, arms crossed, like a bodyguard of a mob boss, leaning against the back wall. “I just want to say to you, by way of introductory remarks that I’m extremely miffed about today’s events. And in my quest to try and make you understand the level of my unhappiness, I’m likely to use an awful lot of what we would call violent sexual imagery. And I just wanted to check that neither of you would be terribly offended by that.”

"Did you write that for him, Ivy?" Terri asked, as if they were friends.

"To be honest, I’d rather him not apologize for it, it’s funnier that way." She said starkly and with a bit of sass. "I’d rather him go in unlubed, if you will."

"I think I could do without the theatrics, Malcolm."

"Enough! E-fucking-nough. You need to learn to shut your fucking cave, right? Today you have laid your first big fat egg of solid fuck. You took the data loss media strategy and you ate it with a lump of E. coli. And then you sprayed it out of your arse at 300 miles per hour."

"I simply made a mistake."

"Pretty big fucking mistake." Ivy added.

Nicola furrowed her brow. "God, can you just shut up!"

"Hey, I don’t work for you. I don’t give a flying shit what you tell me to do."

"You got on the record and off the record fucking mixed up! What would have happened if like, George Martin had done that? We’d have no fucking Beatles, that’s what. Now, I don’t give a fuck about that. I’ve had to sit next to Paul McCartney at fucking Chequers."

"The data loss wasn’t my fault."

"Fine, yeah, but I tell you what. It came out pretty fucking fast once you were in there, didn’t it? Which makes me wonder, should I just go and talk to the boss? Should I go and tell him, 'I don’t think she’s up to the job.'"

"You said yourself that if he sacks me after a week, it looks like he’s fucked up."

"Yeah, but that was before, when your only problem was a fucking shit pun in a newspaper and a face like Dot Collen licking piss off a nettle."

"Okay, I messed up, right? I messed up. But I will, from now on listen to every bit of advice you give me. I’ll go on Question Time wearing a push-up bra and a fez. I’ll do the hustings on stilts if that is what you tell me the strategy is because you know about that stuff, Malcolm. I know that. It’s just that I’ve got things that I want to do, all right?"

"Of course you do, like Montessouri fucking rocking horses, I suppose."

“No, no.”

Ivy checked her notes, "Uh, the Mail has the motherload on this, yeah? But you know, you’re going to have to just swallow your pride."

"Uh-huh. Thank you, Ivy."

"Right, what’s the strategy?" Terri clicked her pen.

"Ooh, the Kraken awakes." He sarcastically said.

"No, no no. This is just the first part of the meeting that hasn't been about expletives or fezzes or stilts or teabagging. This is the bit that relates to media management."

"Teabagging?" The assistant inquired.

"I didn’t say anything about teabagging. Do you know what teabagging is?"

"Er… not really, no. I’m told it’s uh… unpleasant."

Ivy and Malcolm made eye contact, both thinking the same thing.

"Who do you want me to call? The Mail?"

"Yes. Go on, get the mail in. The Cheeky Girls back on tour." He escorted them out of his office, closing the door behind them.

"What a day, eh, sir?" Ivy said, returning to her desk.

"Er… Ivy, I���d rather you not call me ‘sir’ anymore. At least not when we’re alone."

"Oh. Okay. Uh, any particular reason?" She began fiddling with some papers, stacking them and clacking the edges against the desk to straighten them.

"No, no. It just feels a bit formal, you know? Like, oh, what’d I do to deserve respect?"

"Mhm."

The room returned to silence. Even though they were a week in, Ivy still wasn’t christened in Malcolm’s eyes. This was her first experience with a scandal that was actually proper. There were no long nights, where they were flip-flopping back and forth with options and the media while the cleaning lady worked around them, not yet. There were no miserable holidays where they spent the time sucking up to another MP. If Malcolm had any friends or social skills, he would have expected to have had a night or two sitting together at the bar after a long night, slowly getting hammered on cheap beer and the occasional hard malt. There was none of that yet. But he still felt like she was here the whole time. Like she’d been through thick and thin with him. He didn’t know if that was just her vibe, or if it was on account of the fact that he was slowly falling in love with her.

Wow, Malcolm thought. He’s admitting it to himself now. That was unheard of. He hadn’t been like this since high school. He hadn’t felt anything towards anyone, especially not since he took this job all those years ago. Shit.

"Hey, Malcolm?" Ivy finally broke the silence. Hearing her voice was such unrequited bliss.

"Yeah?"

"Do you… want to go for a drink sometime? Or something besides work?"

"Why?"

"Can I be honest?"

"No."

"I’m going to anyway. You seem like you need a friend."

He stared at the wood grain on his desk to preoccupy his senses while he thought for a moment. He finally answered, "Okay."

"Huh? Sorry?"

"Let's go, then."

"It's only 3:30, Malcolm."

"Yeah, but it's 5:30 in Finland. Come on, grab your stuff, there's a pub 'round the corner."

"We have work!"

"No, no no, it's okay, we'll just sneak out."

Ivy was taken aback by Malcolm suddenly rebellious manner. I mean, he sort of was rebellious regardless, in a different way. Swearing and hurling abuse at coworkers was his drink of choice when it came to rebellion, but he always stuck around and did his work. It's not like he was straight-lace, either though. He was just never the type to ditch out early.

"Christ, what if the press sees us?"

They sat up at the bar stools. Malcolm ordered them each a beer. "The press won't come near the pubs. They haven't yet, anyway."

"Haven't yet? Do you...?"

"No, not all the time. I usually have a stash in my office." He smiled, joking. She laughed, taking a swig.

"I wanted to be a bar maid when I was younger." She mentioned, offhandedly. "Went to school for it for a few months. Became preoccupied with other things." She continued to explain.

"Really?"

"Yeah. But, enough about me." She shook her head, gesturing to him. "Did you ever think you'd get into politics?"

He sighed, "Not really, no. I uh, went to school for journalism. Started at my local newspaper, which got absorbed by The Independent. Continued there. Slithered my way up the chain." Ivy raised an eyebrow. "I dipped my hands into politics while working there. I left the Indy and worked for what is now called the department of work and pensions, then, again, worked my way up from there."

"Mm."

"What about you?"

"Oh, uh... Well I-I didn't really have a career until my mid 30's. I've bounced at lower level secretary or receptionist positions for a while. In both politics and journalism."

"Yeah, 'cause didn't you work for good old Harry Pickle, the dickle for a while?"

She snorted, almost spitting out her beer. "Is that what they're calling him?"

"What, you didn't know?"

"No! The bloke always kept that sort of thing under wraps, I guess. For his own sake."

"Jesus Christ the man's a fucking control freak."

"I know, oh trust me, I know. I had to wake up early every morning to print out things he could check off to make him feel like he had more control, while I poured sawdust over his idiocy vomit pile and swept it up. Fucking disaster. And when I said I wanted to leave, I think they put me on you because you were the worst to deal with."

He paused, furrowing his brow.

"In their opinion. I genuinely enjoy working for you Malcolm, don't worry." She placed her hand on his forearm that was resting on the countertop. He looked at it, biting his lip and trying not to draw too much attention to it.

Oh God, is she interested in me, is she being nice, or is she just tipsy? He thought. No, we're only one beer in, she can't be. Stop staring, you look like a creepy old man. She's just... so beautiful.

He clenched his fist under the counter, scrambling to find other things to talk about. "Uh, what about before your 30's?" She hadn't moved her gentle hand.

"Oh. Uh..." She looked apprehensive, almost embarrassed. "Well, you know I went to bartender school. But before that I mostly just... stayed at home. I don't have any younger siblings. Actually, no siblings period."

Malcolm smiled. "You're lucky."

She chuckled falsely, "I'm really not. I er... had to take care of my mother after secondary school. She was ill."

"Oh, bless."

"Yeah," she looked down, smiling sorrowfully. "But, she didn't have long to suffer. She died when I was 19." He nodded along, sympathetically. "After that, bartender school. I worked as a barmaid. Got bored with it after a year or two. Then I went to undertaker school, while still bar tending in the nights."

Malcolm raised his eyebrows, shocked. "Really?"

"Yeah. I'm not kidding. If you ever need to mix a black velvet or embalm a body, you know who to call." She giggled. Malcolm laughed a long, admiring her as well. "So, then I worked as an undertaker until aged 33. I was offered to become funeral director, you know, the seedy arsehole who'll tell you shit like 'it's what dad would have wanted' when showing you a 10,000 quid casket. Had no interest there. So I started my assistant job in government, after going to a job fair. And the rest is history."

"Jesus, your life is so much more interesting than mine."

She chuckled. "I don't think it's all that cool. I mean, I've never been outside of Europe."

#the thick of it #malcolm tucker #peter capaldi #malcolm tucker x original female character(s) #pcap #jamie's fanfics #fanfic #fic #fanfiction

[camariba]

Not to bring everybody down, but I’m seriously worried/pessimistic about the future of Tumblr.

I see people reacting like “Oh they’re banning porn, that’s great, finally they’re gonna get rid of the porn bots and also my blog is super wholesome and sfw, so nothing will change for me.”

And look, I also find the bots annoying and also holy shit apparently this site has a serious problem with child porn (which I was thankfully pretty ignorant about until fairly recently), so great that they’re cracking down on that.

BUT

It’s not like they’re finally listening to users who report this stuff, and then use actual employees do delete content of that sort. I’m sure it would be possible to make the site safer and less of a haven for the worst kind of people, but that would probably take more time, money and effort than Tumblr is willing to invest. So nah, better get rid of any and all, uh, “explicit content” right along with the horrible harmful and illegal stuff, and use algorithms to do it.

Do you guys realize what the consequences are gonna be?

So, first thing that comes to mind, all the actual porn blogs are gonna disappear. That’s a pretty sizeable number of users gone all at once, so I’m worried that they’re gonna increase the number of ads to compensate for that, since, as far as I know, that’s where the money comes from.

Then, “explicit content”? “Female-presenting nipples”? Where do I even start with that? First of all, there’s that double standard again - male nipples are fine, female nipples are inherently sexual apparently. So that means not just porn, but any and all instances of artistic nudity, journalistic content, activist stuff, etc. that happens to show nipple will be gone. That’s gonna be a huge loss. Also, let’s not forget that LGBTQ+/Queer* content is already treated as somehow more “mature” and “explicit” than het content, I’ve read many a thinkpiece mentioning how this content is already hidden when you use safe mode. And in the last few days, a loooot of it has also been flagged in addition to that. And I’m not talking hardcore gay porn here, but people kissing, holding hands, that kind of thing. So tumblr as a (at least semi-) safe space for LGBTQ+/Queer people will cease to exist. As if that wasn’t horrible enough, I can totally see something like this opening the door to even stricter rules that crack down on any subject that can be considered even remotely controversial, to keep the site “safe” for advertisers, similar to what is happening on youtube (for those who don’t know, videos with “controversial” subjects get demonitized really fucking fast nowadays), which would probably spell the end for Tumblr as a tool for activism. Even if Tumblr won’t go quite that far, the way they treat LGBTQ+/Queer content even now is awful and I hate it.

And last but not least, don’t forget that all of this is being done with algorithms that are set to be super sensitive. I’m a real IT n00b, so I freely admit I don’t understand how it works, but it looks to me like they are programmed to respond to (read: flag) content that contains certain colours, shapes, or with gifs, certain movements, that you commonly find in porn (so for example, probably anything with fleshy colours is at risk now). The last few days have already shown that completely wholesome stuff is flagged en masse - pictures of bread, of flowers, 18th-century paintings of fully clothed people, etc, nothing is safe. That also means that Tumblr’s statements about art being exempt from the new rules are basically meaningless, because anything can get automatically flagged anyway.

The only thing that I bet is going to remain untouched is all the Nazi shit that I keep seeing, because Tumblr has never, not once, shown any interest in getting rid of any of that, because ~ free speech ~ I guess.

So this is the future I predict: no, Tumblr is not going to implode overnight and disappear on December 17th. But it is going to get a lot less fun/interesting to use, leading to people using it less. Less active users means less content, making it even less fun for the remaining users and so on and so forth, so more and more people will abandon the site until there is nothing going on here anymore and then Tumblr will just wither and die.

And it makes me really sad. I’ve been on this site since 2011, which seems like the saddest and most pathetic thing to even mention, but yeah, that means I’ve been here my entire adult life, actually. And oh, it has been a journey. Tumblr can be such a dumpster fire of bullying, terrible opinions, hate, actual illegal stuff, fandom wars and bad hot takes. But more than that, for me it has been at least a jumping off point to learn more about social justice and the ways in which people are marginalized, it has been a treasure trove of interesting and weird trivia, of hilarious and surreal humour (of both the intentional and unintentional kind), of book/film/series recommendations, of actual peaceful fandom discourse and always, always, of beautiful pictures. Seriously, people from out there in meatspace mostly don’t understand how much I just love looking at collections of beautiful pictures as an escape from everyday life and a way to calm myself when I’m stressed and anxious, and as inspiration. And I love how, despite it being theoretically a “social media site”, you don’t have to interact with anyone if you don’t want to. You can just keep to yourself and look at nice things. There is no other site quite like this one. Pinterest would probably come closest to replacing what I like about Tumblr, but it’s missing the “Gesamtkunstwerk”-feel that you get from your own Tumblr blog.

Yeah, to sum up, despite its many, many, many flaws, I always really liked Tumblr and I don’t want to say goodbye.

(* if you’re wondering why I write LGBTQ+/Queer instead of choosing one term or using them interchangeably, it’s because some people from the community consider Queer a slur, but some other people from the community are very very opposed to considering it a slur and don’t want to avoid it because they say it’s a perfect umbrella term for people who don’t want to fit themselves into any narrower box than “not hetero” and/or “not cis”. I’m just trying to cover my bases here)

#probably longest post I ever wrote on here #cause Tumblr can be so hostile that I never felt safe expressing my opinions here #but if everything is ending I might as well #tumblr #tumblr apocalypse #tumblrocalypse #dumblr #personal #new community guidelines

[betsynagler]

Tired of Being Treated Differently

In 1996, my best friend from high school invited me to go on a two-week cross-country trip with her and three of her friends — which turned out to be four for the first six days, when one of them decided to bring an extra person, until we dropped him off in California. I’d never driven across the country, and was excited to give it a try, so I said yes. It was an incredibly fun and also eye-opening experience, not only because it was my first visit to sites like the Grand Canyon, Las Vegas, and the Corn Palace, but because four of the people in the van — and once we dropped off our California-bound late-addition, everyone except for me — were people of color. How did this matter? Well, for starters, when we’d land in places like a fishing town on the Oregon Coast, and everyone would stare. As a fairly generic-looking white woman of 27, I was used to passing without a second glance in most of the places I’d been to that point (basically the States, Europe and Canada), certainly anywhere I’d been in the U.S. It very quickly became obvious to me that this wasn’t the case if you were were Black or Asian American, like the friends I was traveling with. Turned out there were parts of the country — and a lot more parts than I’d suspected — where you were going to get noticed, and not in a friendly way. But there was also stuff I learned on that trip that wasn’t as obvious. Like what it meant when we went out to lunch in a nice restaurant in Santa Fe and got terrible service. My impulse was to just chalk that up to the fact that we were all in our 20s and didn’t look like we had money — particularly after spending more than a week’s worth of nights either camping, sleeping on friends’ floors, or in Motel 6s (the night we splurged on the $40/night Excalibur in Vegas, it felt like we were staying at the Plaza). Because that was what I’d dealt with before. My friends, however, felt pretty strongly that the way we were being ignored and slighted had something to do with race, because they’d dealt with that before. And so, while it’s not like this had never occurred to me until then, that trip helped drive home in a tangible way that 1) my experience of going through the world was not the same as everyone else’s, and 2) that that body of experience, that history that each of us had, was going to lead us to view the same situations very differently.

These concepts weren’t hard for me to get, not just because I had friends of color, but because of what I’d been experiencing in my own life and career, starting with graduate school. Since moving to New York to become a filmmaker six years earlier, I’d often had this feeling that I was being treated differently, but in ways so hard to prove, even to myself, that I'd mostly just accepted it was all in my head. When guys I’d shot films for as a first year at NYU, who’d been really happy with my work, instead chose the same other guy to shoot for them in second year, I chalked it up to my not being “technical enough,” or not having the confident decisiveness to take charge of the set the way the DP was supposed to — until I realized that no women were shooting films for men at all, unless they were their girlfriends. When I arrived on professional sets, it started sinking in more and more that men really were always telling me to smile, or offering to “help” me with my job when their jobs were unrelated to mine and I hadn’t asked for their help, or treating me as an object of flirtation, even if they were my superiors. I eventually learned to handle all of that by being more tolerant, competent, and professional than they were, but what I had the hardest time with was what I cared about the most: sending out scripts, or soliciting constructive feedback from peers in writing workshops, and receiving constant rejection or rude/patronizing remarks. Okay sure, cruelty is considered par for the course in a business where success is so elusive and so coveted that people are just expected to accept all kinds of abuse — verbal, sexual, physical — in order to get somewhere. But that only makes it more infuriating when there are additional comments or obstacles that other people don’t seem to be dealing with. Like when I wrote a film about a friendship between two teenaged girls, and one of the men in my writing group couldn’t understand the point of the script unless they had a lesbian relationship. Or when I submitted a script to a production company and the coverage I received said that the reader had no interest in the story, which featured two female main characters and one love interest who was a man of color, until the second love interest, a white guy, showed up. Yeah, that's when things got good, he said. I was starting to see that I was stuck in a system where the white male arbiters of good and bad had all the power not just to decide whether my work was one or the other, but to define what the terms “good” and “bad” even meant. So it was easy for them to claim — and fully believe — that the failure of women to scale their ranks wasn’t due to our gender, it was due to their inability to master “the craft.” All they had to say was, “I couldn't get into the story,” or, “I didn't care about the characters,” and those were considered legitimate critiques based on merit, when of course there was way, way, way…basically everything more to it than that.

This is what makes unequal treatment such a hard thing to pinpoint: it has everything to do with who’s distinguishing and quantifying “good” and “bad” in an entrenched system. So it's only when you look at the big picture over time, quantified in data, and see the work of women and people of color highly underrepresented in nearly every area of the arts — music, painting, sculpture, literature, theater, cinema, etc — that you can see discrimination is happening because the system itself is fucked.

What I was going through wasn’t the same as what my friends from that trip were going through, not at all. Each of us is a different person. But we all knew that we were being treated differently, based on countless experiences we’d had that added up. And we knew, because we’d experienced that too, that the kind of discrimination we were dealing with was so insidious and damaging precisely because people who hadn’t faced it were going to scoff and chalk it up to something entirely innocuous, and say it didn’t even exist.

I was reminded of all this last weekend, when I watched the women’s final of the 2018 U.S. Open. I don’t think most people would say that Serena Williams behaved perfectly when she argued with umpire Carlos Ramos and then later broke her racket when she threw it down in anger. But the question is not whether she did something wrong, it’s whether she was treated differently. Of course you can say that Ramos was just following the rules, that she shouldn’t be getting special treatment because she’s the great Serena Williams, and that plenty of men have been penalized like she was — with articles like this jumping on opportunities to bring all of that up and say “What about…?” But if you dig a little deeper, you find way more examples of white men behaving worse in less important matches, even toward that same umpire, and not having him penalize them so severely as to ruin a tournament final for everyone involved. In other words, yes, there are rules, but if they aren’t applied in the same way across the board, we are back at “He said, she said,” and it's always the “He said” that comes first. Always.

The Whatabouters always say, “Why does everything have to be about race/sex?” Well, yeah, it’d be great not to have to talk about discrimination, but you can’t when it won’t leave you alone – even when you’re arguably the best athlete in the world. If you’re a woman and/or a person of color, your experience has told you that it nearly always is about that. It just is. Then the Whatabouters say, “Then you’re asking for special treatment when you break the rules.” Well, that’s because the rules, by which I mean all of the laws of this country dating back to the Constitution, were, from the very beginning, designed to treat women and people of color differently – creating a world in which the norm is special treatment for white men. Again, it just is.

And how often have our laws and rules that were not designed to be unfair been applied evenly and fairly? Let’s face it, the U.S. Open’s got nothing on the American justice system. Why do we refuse to recognize that when fallible people who do “bad” have to be punished, and when other fallible humans are doing the judging about how “bad” they are, there's going to be all sorts of bias and unequal treatment? If the recent news isn’t convincing to you, we’ve now got data to prove that Black people are much more likely to be on the receiving end of police violence; have been far more likely to receive the death penalty in capital cases; that crack users in the 80s, who were more often Black, received far stiffer sentences than white users of powdered cocaine; that Black people were far more likely be searched and arrested for possession of marijuana than white people (two of the reasons, in case you were wondering, why so many more people of color have been incarcerated en mass during the War on Drugs); and that Black schoolchildren are likely to be more severely punished, suspended, or even have the cops called on them than white children for the same transgressive behavior. 

And systems by which people are considered “good,” like at their jobs, and promoted? Again, completely dependent on the fallible judgments of those in power, so that only in the aggregate can we see how Black employees receive extra scrutiny from their bosses, Asian Americans are the least likely racial group to be promoted to management positions, women are punished and considered “bad” at their jobs for traits that are considered “good” in men, like ambition, speaking up, or doing too well in school; and how, of course, women of color are the least likely to be supported or promoted for equally good work.

I know what the Whatabouters are saying now: “Yes, people in the past were wrong, but now, moving forward, we’re the ones trying to treat everyone the same.” Um, really? We’re supposed to believe that? We’ve had this whole lifetime of experience that tells us otherwise, and you’re dismissing that, again? You’re claiming that, at long last, in this tennis match, or court of law, or screenwriting competition, or job review, or state senate, when it comes down to questions of “rules” and “fairness” and “objectivity,” we should continue to just trust the white guys? Yeah, right.

If you’ve been wondering why so many women and people of color are running for office this election season, well, here you go: we’re just sick of being treated differently. For a long time, we’ve trusted the white guys who say they’re going to fix things and finally respect our rights the same way they respect their own. Now we’re finally deciding that the only way things are going to change is for us to get in there and make the rules, and apply them ourselves.

Can you blame us?

[personalcoachingcenter]

Have You Heard? A STRATEGY FOR BUSINESS GROWTH Is Your Best Bet To Grow

New Post has been published on https://personalcoachingcenter.com/have-you-heard-a-strategy-for-business-growth-is-your-best-bet-to-grow/

Have You Heard? A STRATEGY FOR BUSINESS GROWTH Is Your Best Bet To Grow

Good afternoon, so I wanted to start today with one of my famous quotes. We’re toast in the water, and you might look at that and say well that doesn’t really make sense. You got that wrong and you’re right.

I did get that wrong, but it’ll. Allow you to understand how my brain works, so I did want to warn you that I may use more of these expressions today that don’t really make sense, and I would advise you to never use them in public and just pretend leave them At home you would look like an idiot, so let’s start with some stats.

Let’s, get the boring stuff out of the way. So at least 85% represents the amount of business owners leaders, managers that work in their business, that are firefighting, and you know trying to do the same thing over and over again.

Looking for a different result, which is funny enough, that’s, the definition of insanity, the fifteen percent and I’ve, been in both areas. The 15 percent are those of us who get to take a moment to breathe and be strategic, and I’d.

Argue that even those who are doing that are really just refining things. We’re, trying to put out the fire a little faster. We’re trying to change things so that the fire won’t be as big, so I would argue it’s fairly close to the 85 % it’s.

It’s like being insane. It’s like not being fully diagnosed with insanity, but being very close. It’s similar to my mother, sorry, mom, sorry, mom. Okay, so look, I wanted to tell you some stories about how we went back to the drawing board in a very challenging industry and the incredible results we’ve had from that – and I’d – hope to inspire you to be able To do the same, so where does this all begin? It starts 14 years ago, right here in Halifax, Nova Scotia.

I entered in the private security industry, so security guarding and you know it’s, a tough industry, it’s been commoditized. Even though it’s, it’s. Human beings, its major priced drives from the which, which was really putting the entire space in a commodity racket.

There hasn’t been any changes in years and even being this space, I thought you know what we’re, pretty good problem solvers. You know, I remember five years ago a Bon Jovi concert up in Moncton. There was probably twenty five.

Thirty thousand people there we had 150 security and so halfway through the show, the RCMP that come to me and I said Ron, we have a problem. I said what is it they said. We have people peeing all along the fence line there’s.

Hundreds and hundreds of people peeing everywhere, so I said, ok, ok and they said, and if you don’t fix it, we’ll shut the concert down. So you know this is a problem I’ve got to solve it. Of course I say: ok, we will.

Ve got this wasn’t our fault, you know they didn’t have enough porta-potties, but as security brought it we did have to to solve the problem. So I gathered 20 security around I said. Look. I need six volunteers to come with me on a mission and what we’re going to do.

We’re gonna go up. The fence line will stand about five or six feet back on the outside of the fence line. It’s, an 8 foot tall fence, so we will, be nice and safe and we will go up and down and we will make fun of everyone of those wiener sizes and I guarantee if we do a good job it up.

They will stop being, and lo and behold, six female volunteers said we would love to come on that mission with you. So what we go we go up and down the six of us, okay and sure enough. We made fun of all the wiener sizes.

You know big small, the different sizes and shapes, and within minutes there wasn’t a peer in sight. We were good, we could always solve problems, but you know it wasn’t enough. I would argue that our competition could solve that same problem.

They might have done it differently, but they could solve the same issue. And so you know in this space it’s. It’s, it’s very challenging, and so I I had some hard moments of do. I even want to stay in it.

Wasn’t enough to win, and so I went through this process of going back to the drawing board, but the first time I didn’t make it all the way back. The first time I actually started with a border, and I got to a question – and the question was: if I had a million dollars of my hard earned money, my retirement funds and I was going to buy my business, knowing what I know about my company.

What would I do differently? Who would continue to work that who, by who would I be excited to work with what clients would I keep? What systems would we use, and it was okay, but I’d, argue with her back into that 15%.

We were being a little strategic, it wasn’t enough, and then we went back again and this time I took the border out and we went back to the drawing board clean slate different question this time. The question was what, if I had to restart the industry today, you know knowing the challenges internally and the external client challenges.

If I had a blank slate using technology and resources that I have today at our fingertips, how would I recreate a model to service this industry? And you know I feel like that’s. What Uber did you know? Uber, the creators are uber, they didn’t own, a taxi company.

They, you know they weren’t the taxi business. They were. I’m sure they were a customer on multiple occasions, and here you are taxi companies that were probably asleep at the wheel: okay, thinking about how to refine their business.

How do we, you know pick up customers faster? Maybe we should get a radio system that works a little better, but uber went back to the drawing board that’s, what they essentially did they, they kind of said well, knowing what I know today, if we had to recreate this industry, how would We do that with technology and everything at our fingertips, so we started to do that.

We actually landed on a purpose of changing the security industry and that was powerful because it started to drive everything that we did. So we started with simple, simple things. Like the Golden Rule, you know my mother always told me growing up always go by the Golden Rule, treat those is.

You would like to be treated. I don’t know where I think my mom’s from here, but – and you know we thought about that – we said let’s, go back to the drawing board, cuz! Think about the golden rule that we all know you know.

I know when I meet someone for the very first time. I would love you to take off my shoes and give me a foot rub for a half hour, but I don’t know if you would like me to do that to you. So we said: let’s, go back to the drawing board.

Let’s. Let’s! Think about this and we re-engineered it and said what about treating those as they would like to be treated, and so we started to push that out with our customer service model and we we had some great results.

Then we looked at policy in our industry. It’s, very policy driven there’s tons of policy and it becomes who can implement the best policy and have the you know the most efficient policies and policies are like rules from, and we said, look some of the challenges in This industry are people, don’t, get to think for themselves.

They follow policy. So what? If we created a decision-making process? What do we gave people their brains back, and we said you know what, before you do something just make it go through this process number one.

If it’s, the right thing to do for the customer, yes or no, then is it the right thing for our business based on our purpose and our values and number three: are you willing to be accountable if it’s? Yes, yes and yes, don’t ever ask anyone just do it and we started to see some results.

We gave people their brains back and then you know on this journey of changing the industry. We got to a very difficult place that we said. Look, we need everybody on side and the toughest challenge we faced was: could we get employees in this business to become stakeholders, not shareholders, not own a piece of the business but a stakeholder? Someone who had a stake in the decisions of this business? Someone who wanted to be a part of it and ever said you can’t, do that it’s impossible.

You know this is a high turnover industry. People are treated like garbage, it causes horrible morale, and so we were up for the challenge we had to do it to win. We had to get everyone on side.

So off we went brings me to a story in Toronto. We took over a customer in the trucking space and the manager there, the security manager, a fella by the name of ash Hwanhee, so ash wanti is the security manager.

He’s, worked there for 10 to 15 years for multiple companies, because in our space, what happens is when you gain a security contract. The individuals might work there for years, and then they put the new company’s uniform on and off.

They go so I get a phone call from him. He says mr. Lovett. First I’d, like to congratulate you on the contract. Said thanks, Ronnie. Yes, I have a question. He said we need a vehicle here I said yeah.

He said what kind of vehicle are we gonna buy? I said: well ash Ronnie, you’ve, worked there for 10 plus years. Why don’t you tell me what kind of vehicle do we need? He said, oh well, sir. We need one with four-wheel drive and it’s got to have space, we need space, it’s, got to, be safe.

I said okay! Well, I’ll. Tell you what ash whining? Why don’t? You go out and find the vehicle you go, buy the vehicle, you know what we’re looking for and if you can get us a great deal, we will pay a commission.

I can tell you that you could hear a pin drop on that phone call. He’d, never been challenged. He’d, never been able to be a part of something and use his brain and anyways. He was very excited.

He said, sir, I will find the best vehicle for you. I will you, I accept the challenge I will go and I will do this and so fast forward. Six months later I had coffee with his old boss, who used to manage the contract and he was a schwa knees.

Boss, and I said you guys had a vehicle there. He said yeah yeah, we did, I said so. Let me ask you a question: was that vehicle clean? He said: no, it was a total mess. He said we had to go down there and clean it up multiple times, because that vehicle was so messy.

I said okay, so now I run into someone else from our business who was at the site and he came to me and said you know I was just at that client location. He said we have a very nice vehicle. I said yeah, you know why she wanted bought it.

I said, let me ask you a question: is it clean inside he said man, you could eat your breakfast off the floor and right then right there. I knew we were on to something we had changed. An employee that had worked for five or six different companies biggest company on the planet as an employee into a stakeholder, someone who had a stake in our company in our decisions, so I was very excited, so we start moving along.

We we had multiple instances of these types of situations which was great and then finally, one day in rural Nova, Scotia, we had an individual named Paul and we had a client issue come up and we needed a shift covered and it was on his birthday.

Now. I can tell you these security guards space when someone gets a day off and it’s. Their birthday. They don’t, go to work. They are not interested but Paul. Who’s a stakeholder? He decides he’s, gonna go in on his birthday.

So look I was very proud. I sent him a tax. I said, thank you Paul for going in on your birthday and he writes me a text back and it says no problem. This is my company, my family. I get that text and I am so excited.

I was gonna go to Mount Kilimanjaro and stand on the roof of that there, not the roof. This top sorry about that Jim say see. I was gonna stay on the top of the mountain and say I’ve got proof. I now have proof in writing.

We did it, we are. We are doing what we said we were going to do and this is very exciting, but instead I was on a flight from Halifax to Toronto and I thought well, what I can do is I’ll, cut and paste this text and I’ll, send it around to a thousand plus staff that we have across the country to show them how proud I am of this moment.

So I do that. I cut and paste I put it in okay. I send it off now, unfortunately, as a fast-moving entrepreneur who is dyslexic and has ADHD and is overly passionate. If you wrap that in with autocorrect you don’t get a good result, so I’m moving quickly.

I’m trying to be you know they. I want to keep it in service and sure enough. If you can’t see it. Hey guys want to share a powerful text. I just receive from Paul who stepped up on his birthday to cover off a shift after thanking Paul, he replied with no problem.

This is my company, my family, so my reply or my texts, my email says very proud that we have suc dedicated and patio. Our people spoken like a true stakeholder. Now there’s, two parts here you know the first part I don’t, think anybody knew what I meant.

The second part I think they did, but what I wrote was this so sure enough. The plane takes off. I’m high-fiving myself. I am so so excited that I you know I was able to move quickly and get this email off sure enough.

My assistant runs in to see my wife and she says this is bad. You know this is really bad. He really made a mistake this time this went to all staff everybody. So I get home that night I get in the house and my wife says you sit down.

We are gonna talk. So at this point, didn’t know what was going on sit down. She said you’re, the CEO of this company. You cannot write emails like that without proofreading them. I said honey. I proof read that twice so now you know.

I have bigger problems than messing up expressions. Okay, so look the question. Now is: what are the results? What are the results from all this stuff, and I can tell you there’s. Lots we’ve had 60 percent growth in our business this year we are doubling the industry average in profit.

We’re very proud of that, and you know I really look at this. If you can go back to the drawing board, not just on your end product, okay, you’re in service, but everything that you do and have all your people going back to the drawing board on.

You know how you hire your culture, how you train everything that you do, then. I really believe that you & # 39. Ll have an explosion of growth, and this this chart really shows how technology moves, but when a computer can build a computer.

This is the theory of singularity and how it how it applies to technology technology will go, go crazy, okay, it’ll advance so quickly and I believe the same thing for your business. I absolutely feel you have.

You will have the same growth like we are. So look in closing if you are a CEO, a manager, a leader and you’re, not pushing your people to go back to the drawing board to creatively seek solutions with a blank slate.

Okay, shame on you because you should be and if karma gets you, you’ll, probably get disrupted by a board 13 year old, with a heavy imagination in their basement, and if you’re on the other side of that coin, you Report to a leader or CEO, and they aren’t, pushing you to go back to the drawing board to be created tap into your 4 year old mind of when there were no herbal, not –.

We’re, no borders, then I think it’s, time to get a new leader. They had to said they’re saying. If it’s, not broken don’t fix it, and I’ve heard this for years. So many people tell me this well.

We believe that you should go back to the back to the drawing board in that too, and if it’s not broken break it and put it back together better than you found it.

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