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frostandflamesfanfic · 1 year

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Light Up My Life (Steve Harrington x Reader)

Light Up My Life (Rated T)

Pairing: Steve Harrington x Reader

Word Count: 3.7k+

Warnings: Brief language and some suggestive situations, but mainly fluff!

Summary: For Stevemas Day 12; Your and your boyfriend, Steve, have been dating for some time. Although time has never been on your side, the two of you are determined to spend the holiday together this year. When you decide to have an early Christmas date night, Steve comes up with a way to make it even more magical...

You sighed to yourself as you stared over the counter to the parking lot outside, hands toying with a random piece of scrap paper. The sun had just started to set for the night, casting shadows against the asphalt and sending vibrant hues of orange sunlight through the windows. For the Christmas season, you would think the bookstore would be even busier. People would pass in and out to pick up whatever cheap new release there was for the friendly bookworm. Come January, loyal customers would come in to exchange the attempt to connect for the new book title they were really interested in.

Except this year, it seemed paperbacks were replaced by whatever the latest technology was. Even Dustin Henderson had charted a new course on his voyage of curiosity that all but left the world of Dungeons and Dragons guides and physics textbooks behind. Mrs. Peterson was the lonely lingering customer in the corners of bookshelves. Her eyes flickered between a paperback copy of The Dead Poets Society or a leather-bound collection of Emily Dickinson’s works.

She was one of your regulars, the bookworms with heart, as you called them. Every Christmas, Mrs. Peterson would show up to the store with a mission to find the perfect book for every person on her shopping list.

You couldn’t help the smile that spread across your face as you crossed the store to help her. “Mrs. Peterson,” you called over. “Doing some last-minute shopping? Anything I can help you with today?”

“Oh, hello dear!” the older woman glanced up from the covers with an endearing smile. She held out the two books in your direction. “I’m trying to find something for my great-niece, Dariah. She wasn’t supposed to be coming to Christmas dinner, since she needed to fly in all the way from California. She started college there, did I tell you? Southern California University…no, wait. That isn’t quite it.”

She paused to raise an index finger to her lower lip in thought. A moment later, Mrs. Peterson’s face lit up as she gave a small exclamation. “University of Southern California! Yes, yes,” she jabbered on with an eager series of nods, “that’s it! She’s been studying literature there. Told me herself that she wants to get published, maybe even work in the publishing world.”

“Oh wow, that’s fantastic, Mrs. Peterson!” you tried to sound excited for the older woman. Truly, you did. “You must be so proud! California isn’t a bad place to study.”

You glanced over to the large clock affixed to the wall by the checkout counter. 6:55, it read. Your boyfriend was supposed to pick you up after close – sometime after seven o’clock. He worked across the street at the local video rental store, Family Video, so it wouldn’t be too far of a trek. The last thing you wanted, though, was for him to have to sit and wait for you to finish with a customer.

“Yes, well,” Mrs. Peterson agreed, “but I wish she didn’t live so far away and then decide to come home on a spur of the moment. Now I’m having a hard time figuring out what to get her.”

“Hmm.” You let your eyes wander around the store, the seemingly endless rows of books new and old. You tilted your head and started to walk through the shelves, dodging and weaving until you found the nonfiction section. Personally, you never really visited this section for leisure, but you had a vague idea of what hidden gems lurked amongst the shelves. “You mentioned she was looking to be published?”

“Oh yes,” Mrs. Peterson replied. “She’s always been writing ever since she was a child. I mean, the stories she’s come up with–”

“I’m sure they’re lovely, Mrs. P,” you tried to politely reroute the conversation back to the original topic. Reaching up, you plucked a dark-blue covered book and held it out to the woman. “On Writing Well by Micheal Zinsser. It was published just this year and we’ve already had numerous orders of it from the local universities. She might get something out of it in terms of writing.”

As she took the book from you, she gave a small tut of appreciation. “Oh thank you, dear. Somehow you always know exactly what I’m looking for.”

You chuckled and shrugged your shoulders, taking the other two books from her hand and walked over to place them back in their rightful places. “Sometimes it’s less about finding the perfect book for a person, and more about the perfect person for the book.” You gestured vaguely over your shoulder toward the register. “What do you say we get you all checked out and you can head home to finish up those last-minute preparations for Dariah, yeah?”

“I mean it, dear,” the woman said as she walked over to the counter. “I don’t know how you manage to do it every time. You’re quite the young person. More people should be like you.”

“Well,” a familiar voice cut into the conversation, “as much as I appreciate your compliments here, Mrs. Peterson, if there were more people like your favorite employee over here, I would be a very jealous man.”

You glanced up to catch the hazel-eyed stare of your boyfriend leaning against the front door of the shop. He jerked a thumb toward the handle. “You forgot to lock up. Gotta be careful, sweetheart. You never know who will come barging in after hours.”

“Oh, Steve,” Mrs. Peterson smiled as you rang up her purchase, “you’ve found yourself quite the keeper.”

“That I have, Mrs. Peterson.” Steve said as he strode into the store. He ducked down under the counter flap to wrap his arms around your waist and placed a resounding lip smack against your cheek. “Hey there, sweetheart.”

You shivered at his show of affection, which caused Mrs. Peterson to chuckle. “Don’t let this one slip away.”

“Oh, I don’t plan on letting this one go for a long, long, long time,” your boyfriend promised.

You turned your head to catch his gaze. “A long, long, long time?” you teased.

“As long as you’ll have me.”

A hot flush crept up your neck and tickled your cheeks. It wasn’t that you were embarrassed by his comments. Steve had a way of making you feel like the most important person in the world. He never did it to make you uncomfortable. Over the last five years you dated, you had come to find that every word he said he meant. The fact that someone would say these things about you, much less mean what they said, was difficult to comprehend at times. It had only taken a few months for the first “I love you” – something that you had never done before. But with Steve, it was easy.

He made things easy and you could spend every day finding new ways to fall in love with him.

“Get ready for the long haul, then, Harrington,” you mumbled as you reached over the counter to hand a receipt to Mrs. Peterson and waved goodbye.

Your boyfriend hummed and sent his own goodbye to your customer, opting to stick his face into your neck once the door shut behind her. Another thing you learned about Steve over the years was how clingy he was. No matter what you were doing together, Steve always had to touch you in some capacity. A hand clasped in your as you shopped for groceries in town, lips pressed to your temple as you sat in his lap while Dustin explained his latest theories. His fingertips would slide their way up under the hem of your shirt when he was just standing next to you, tracing random shapes into the skin.

“Ready for our date, sweetheart?” Steve mumbled into the junction of your shoulder. He pressed a kiss to the area and hummed when he felt you shiver under his touch.

“Just about,” you responded absentmindedly. “Just have to clean and lock up before we can go.”

“I can help.”

You shot him a frown, eyebrows knit together in confusion. “You sure?”

Your boyfriend nodded and released you from his grip to pick up a stack of books off the counter. “Babe,” he said with a tsking sound, “I sort tapes for a living across the street. I think I can manage a few books.”

“Yeah, but there’s a certain order-”

“I got this,” Steve tried to calm you. “Go get ready to lock up. The lights of Loch Nora are waiting for us. Don’t want them to burn out before we get there, yeah?”

A little hesitant at first, you finally agreed to give Steve a stack of books meant for the fiction section. Your hope was that even if he didn’t recognize or understand the sorting system of the store, he would at least be able to rely on his skills from the video store to help him out. To no one’s surprise, Steve handled the stack with ease. You would be lying if you said you hadn’t waited a moment just to take in the view of his chin holding the stack in place, his free hand putting book after book back on the shelf.

“Hey babe?” he called out after a few moments of sorting. “Where’s your horror section?”

“Over by the romance.” You used the stepstool to replace the leather copies of The Hobbit and Fellowship on the collectors’ shelf. Why your boss thought it would be a good idea to sell ninety dollar editions of the classic stories was beyond you. None of your typical Hawkins customers could afford it, unless they won the lottery. “Don’t ask me to explain the system. They’re just in the same area.”

“Aaaaaaand done!” Steve clapped his hands together and emerged from the back of the store a moment later, a small paperback clutched in his right hand. “Hey, do people really read this shit?”

At first, you couldn’t tell what the book was. Being in a literal bookstore made it difficult to narrow it down. However, when Steve held it up to the light, you caught sight of the title and your stomach dropped: After the Stars Fall. The cover image was simple enough, depicting a man and a woman as they embraced in front of a fireplace.

“I, uh,” you stuttered. “I think we’ve sold a few of those. Not recently, though. It’s a couple years old.”

“Huh.” Steve glanced down at the book in his hands. “Is it any good?”

Even though you hadn’t read the book yourself, you knew the reputation these novels had. Karen Wheeler in particular always seemed rather flustered whenever she picked up her latest installment. You thought that was a pretty clear sign to steer clear until the later stages of life.

“I mean,” you chuckled half-heartedly, “those two look pretty cozy. Probably just got some quiet time by the fire after they put the kids to bed. Domestic bliss; must be nice.”

“Yeah, maybe.” Steve’s voice sounded distant. When you glanced back up at him in concern, you noticed he was staring at you. Yet, as you looked closer, you noticed he was staring past you. He was lost in a dreamworld of sorts, allowing his mind to wander in ways you would most likely never understand.

“Steve?” you asked timidly, hand placed against his bicep. “Babe, are you okay?”

All of a sudden, Steve flinched and his eyes flickered to yours. A smile graced his features as he nodded and pressed a kiss to your cheek. “Yeah,” he soothed. “Yeah, I’m okay. Let me go start the car and we can go, alright? Don’t want you freezing that cute little butt of yours off waiting for the heat.”

You laughed and gave a little wink as you walked to grab your jacket from the back room. “Something tells me I’d have something else to help keep me warm.”

⧫ ⧫ ⧫ ⧫ ⧫ ⧫ ⧫ ⧫ ⧫ ⧫ ⧫ ⧫ ⧫ ⧫

Growing up in Hawkins, one could find themselves becoming desensitized to the small-town charm. Who wouldn’t? Being around the same stores, the same people, the same town…a change of scenery started to sound nice after a while. You tried to get out about four years ago. After graduating high school in the summer of ‘85, you followed the Byers out west to attend University of California, Berkeley. It was a tough transition, especially without your boyfriend. The two of you made the long distance work as best you could over the year, relying on phone calls, letters, even the occasional surprise visits when you could.

After spring break freshman year, you knew the next three would drag on if you stayed in California. You couldn’t let Hawkins go. Your family was here— both biological and otherwise— so was your home…and Steve. You couldn’t let it go, not again.

So you didn’t leave.

After the earthquake, you made the decision to move back to Indiana for good. You transferred to Indiana State University, finished your degree, and took up a job doing something you loved in the process. It had taken you some time, but in between loan payments, you and Steve were able to put rent down on a lease. The apartment itself wasn’t grand by any means, but it was home.

This year marked the first Christmas you and Steve would spend without the stress of finals or scheduling conflicts. The two of you made sure to request the day off in advance, going as far as taking additional shifts to cover the expenses. It was tough, but you knew it would all be worth it to wake up on Christmas morning with Steve by your side.

You rarely found yourself traveling through the Loch Nora neighborhood during the rest of the year. The big houses were daunting and the people who lived inside were even more so. People said Hawkins was cursed, plagued by a mystical evil that corrupted those who went looking in the wrong places. Once upon a time, you thought that to be true, too. Now, as you see the displays of red, green, and gold lights strung up over houses and fresh trees neatly dressed with popcorn in people’s yards, you only saw the magic.

As Steve drove through the streets of your small home town, you felt yourself begin to relax into the leather seats of your boyfriend’s car. The sound of Christmas carols wormed its way into your ears from the stereo speakers, pairing nicely with the low hum of Steve’s voice as it sang along to the lyrics.

“I can’t remember the worst December,” Steve sang quietly, both hands still situated upon the wheel. “Just watch the icicles form. What do I care if icicles form? I've got my love to keep me warm.”

You felt a flush heat your skin while it crept up your neck at the sound of his voice. Almost as if sensing your bashfulness, Steve tilted his head toward you when he pulled up to the next stoplight. Ever the flirt, he gave you a small smile and quick wink as he continued to hum along with the tune. “Off with my overcoat,” he sang a bit louder now, another cheeky grin at the corner of his lips, “off with my gloves. Who needs an overcoat? I’m burning with love.”

“Okay, now you’re just being mean,” you bemoaned. Without another word, you leaned over to lower the volume of the radio.

“Those are just the lyrics, babe,” your boyfriend defended. On any other occasion, you would have taken pity on him and let the situation go. Although, the grin which refused to remove itself from his face only made you smack him or cover your tinted face in your scarf. Maybe even both.

“Not the way you’re singing it. Just shut up and drive, Harrington.”

“Oh, well, isn’t someone bossy…” Steve snickered. “Maybe I like this new side of you. Where have you been hiding this one?”

He made another turn, this time onto a street that you were more familiar with. Through the early days of your friendship-turned-relationship, you would take this street to pull into Steve’s driveway when nightmares kept him up in the wee hours of the morning. His parents were hardly ever home, so it wasn’t like you needed to sneak in. Though now that the two of you had your own place,

“What are we doing here?” you questioned, frowning at your boyfriend.

Steve merely smiled in response as he pulled up into the driveway and cut the ignition. He undid his seatbelt and gestured for you to do the same as he got out of the car. You couldn’t help but smile as he bolted over to the passenger side to open your door with a mock bow. It was such an old fashioned gesture, but it still felt entirely like Steve: an old soul with a big heart. “I want to show you something,” he said.

Steve held out his hand, which you were quick to accept. He took that as an opportunity to swing your interlaced fingers back and forth. Shoving his free hand in his pocket, he brandished a pair of keys and led you to unlock the back garden gate. It was darker than usual, the only light streamed from inside the pool. The two of you still knew your way around the yard, even in the dark. You allowed Steve to guide you along for a moment, before he suddenly stopped and rested his hands against your shoulders.

“Alright,” he said. “Just– just wait here, okay?”

He pressed a kiss to your forehead before he stepped away, leaving you alone in the darkened backyard. You suddenly felt nervous for no apparent reason. Even though it had been a few years since the last interaction with the Upside Down, you remembered hearing about what happened to Barb in Steve’s backyard. You knew you could fend for yourself. It wouldn’t be your first tumble with the beasts from Hell. You also knew Steve wouldn’t let anything happen to you if there was a surprise intruder.

Then why were you so anxious?

Your thoughts were cut short by a flood of bright light which practically blinded you in the process. As you blinked away the initial shock, you were met with an even larger surprise. A gazebo was now tucked into the corner of the Harrington family’s backyard. It was illuminated by bright strands of warm yellow twinkling lights wrapped around the railing. Little paper snowflakes dangled from the ceiling, held up by invisible wire.

Steve stood in the middle of the structure. An embarrassed smile stretched across his face and a flush burned bright pink against his cheeks. “Surprise?” he said weakly.

“Steve,” you trailed off in utter surprise. “What– what is this?”

“Well,” your boyfriend came closer to pull you under the overhang over the gazebo, hands tightly gripped against yours. “My, uh, parents always wanted a gazebo and I wanted to make this special, so I, uh, I guess two birds, one stone, yeah?”

You frowned and furrowed your brow. “You…you did this?”

Steve nodded and swallowed. His eyes shifted from one side of your face to the other, as though he was searching for something. After a moment, he cleared his throat.

“I, uh, I had a whole speech prepared,” he admitted. “I wanted to tell you how much I love you, how much I want to be with you. I wanted to tell you about all the plans I had to make this Christmas as special as possible. But being here, now, today, that all flies out the window. Because, in the end, I know the flowery words won't matter. Because right now, all I see and all I feel is you.

“I know with everything that I have, that I want to be with you forever. I know that I will never stop loving you. I told you when you went off to college, I didn't care that we were only able to see each other during your breaks. That didn’t matter to me because it would be so worth it for you to come home. I guess the point here is I will never stop waiting for you, because you are my everything. You're everything I need, sweetheart.

“And right now, I really only have one thing left to ask you,” he continued, a teary and hopeful smile against his lips. As you looked over at him, you gasped as he knelt one knee onto the floor of the gazebo and produced a small box from his jacket pocket. “Will you marry me?”

“Oh, Steve,” you gasped and covered your mouth with two gloved hands. You felt the tears as they welled up in the corners of your eyes.

“Yeah, sweetheart?” Steve asked gently. He scooted a bit closer to reach up and wipe the tears from your eyes. “Are you okay?”

You eagerly nodded. “Yeah, yeah,” you answered. “Yeah, I’m okay, Steve.”

A sigh escaped your boyfriend as his body released its tension to relax. “Okay, good,” he said with a nod. “That’s good. But, uh, I kinda need an answer here, babe.”

Not wanting to wait any longer, you slowly fell onto your knees to give him a kiss. Steve almost immediately melted into it. His hands wrapped around your waist as yours found the small tufts of hair at the base of his neck. Despite the cold chill of the December air, you felt as though you were sitting in front of an open fire. When you finally broke apart, a smile nearly threatened to split your face in two.

“So…” Steve drawled out between huffs of breath. “Was that a yes?”

You kissed him again with a grin, much more quickly this time. “Yes,” you affirmed. “Yes, I will marry you. In every way and language. Oui, si, da, yes. Yes.”

You couldn’t believe this moment was really happening. After years of knowing each other, defeating monsters, and finally coming together, Steve was asking you to spend the rest of your life with him. You knew it wasn’t going to be perfect, but you knew it would be worth it.

When you looked into your future, you saw the two of you finally living the lives you dreamed of. Whether it was in Hawkins or anywhere else, you didn’t care. The only thing that mattered is that you would be with Steve. He was your home, your family, and your future.

And you couldn’t wait to see what would happen next.

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Author's Note: And that officially concludes our Stevemas celebration. I can't believe this is the end. The last two weeks have sped by in a blur, but I couldn't be happier to have seen all the nice comments about this little event. I'll be honest when I say this started out as a completely self-indulgent challenge, but to see you all on every fic (and seeing some new faces, too), it really made my holiday season. I really wanted to make this last story special and I'm really happy with the end result.

That being said, thanks for sticking with me over the last 12 days. If you liked this fic and event series, and want to see more like it on my blog, please consider commenting, tagging a friend, and reblogging this post. Not only does it help motivate me to keep putting out new content, it also helps spread the word about my works. Likes are appreciated, but it's really these three interactions that help the most. If you want to get updates on any of my future stories, maybe consider giving my blog a cheeky follow. I promise I don't bite and won't spam you too much with mine and other creators' amazing work!

Until next time, my little sparks <3

Wishing you all a very merry christmas and an equally wonderful holiday season regardless of how you celebrate!

Taglist: @bakerstreethound, @theelmgrove, @maddipoof

#steve harrington fanfic #steve stranger things #steve harrington imagine #steve x reader #steve harrington #steve harrington drabble #steve harrington x reader #steve harrington fanfiction #stranger things x reader #stranger things imagine #stranger things fanfiction #stranger things #joe keery imagines #joe keery #twelve days of stevemas #ficmas 2022 #frostandflamesfanfic #steve harrington fluff

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cverthinks · 2 years

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was that EMILY ALYN LIND spotted down at the shoreline of east hamptons main beach? must just be, MARSEMMY MARS VERNON the TWENTY-FIVE year old BAKER. whenever i hear MIRACLE ALIGNER by THE LAST SHADOW PUPPETS it reminds me of them. they are known for being SARCASTIC but they make up for that by being LAID BACK. they have been living in the hamptons for ONE YEAR.

howdy, my name is rian (they/them) and this is mars. if ya like what you see, please feel free to like this and i’ll swing into your pms to plot !!

s t a t i s t i c s

full name , nicknames : marsemmy claudia vernon , mars

age , dob , zodiac : twenty-five , february 29 , aquarius

hometown : geneva , ny

gender , pronouns : cisfemale , she / they

orientation : bisexual , biromantic ( closeted )

height : 5′4″

relationship status : single

occupation : baker

language(s) spoken : english - fluent , french - fluent

similar characters : shane madej ( watcher network ) , max mayfield ( stranger things ) , sloane peterson ( ferris bueller’s day off ) , veronica fisher ( shameless ) , donna pinciotti ( that 70′s show ) , audrey horne ( twin peaks )

aesthetics : being the big sister to many friends against your will, sharp black lines, tattoos poking out from professional crisp white sleeves, burgundy red lips upturned into a knowing smirk, living alone but always having to cook dinner for ten people, being wrapped in the comforting scent of vanilla, purple under eyes giving away yet another sleepless night, high waisted jeans, paint stained sneakers, saying ‘meh, good enough’, having a worrying amount of red wine in your pantry, the bitterest and hottest cup of black coffee you can find, hating your mom but also missing your mom, perpetual eye rolling, ordering a strawberry milkshake at any diner no matter what, watching a group of friends dance while you’re alone.

TLDR: if shane madej had possessed a small woman’s body and liked baking instead of hunting ‘ghosts’. sarcastic bordering on just plain callous sometimes. owns her own baking company where she makes cakes and pastries for rich assholes in the hamptons. mom friend but in the sense of her grabbing ears and calling her ‘kids’ idiots

a b o u t (tw: parent death, grieving)

there’s nothing to really say about marsemmy vernon’s short time spent in brooklyn. the first four years, the only years she has when her family was a trio. her mother, an alcoholic and her father, a workaholic pastry chef. her memories are vague, but mars knows well-enough that they weren’t a happy little family in their one bedroom apartment.

her parents try fixing their marriage by moving from their shitty situation. geneva was nice, the house they bought a fraction of the price and triple the size of what they had in the city (though, this is hardly a brag). the couple lasts for another two years before her mother leaves for good this time, not before scarring mars by forgetting to pick her up from her first day of kindergarten at the same time.

markus and marsemmy vernon worked much better as a duo, anyways. it was like they had a mutual understanding. they could only depend on one another, there was no one else in this town to call home except for one another. markus had been a baker since he was a teenager, bouncing around from shop to shop. when his wife left him and his daughter, he knew it was only up to him to finally plant roots to help his family grow. valhalla baking company opened in late 2004, priding himself on creative work and a place for any and all souls to find the same comfort he did in baked goods. mars would hang out at the shop daily after school whenever she could. picture, if you will: a small eight year old stepping onto a step stool to ring someone up. it’s no wonder that mars took to baking just like her father did.

she takes care of herself in her adolescence, and more importantly, their father. the man who raised them, and taught them everything they knew. it was another thing mars was good at; nurturing, being the responsible one of the dynamic duo, even as a teenager. her childhood may have been nonexistent, but she tells herself she wouldn’t have traded it for anything. high school graduation comes and goes, and mars doesn’t go off to college like most of her classmates. instead, she dives headfirst into working full time at the bakery. valhalla is busier than ever after all, becoming a staple business in geneva.her father passed away very suddenly and tragically over a year ago.

according to many news reports, markus verhoff fell asleep at the wheel after a long day of work, and crashed his car. mars doesn’t talk about him much these days, diving headfirst into her work the same way her father did, and going a step beyond: moving the business to the hamptons. after all, he left the business to her in his will. twenty-five years old and a business owner, it weighs heavy on her. but she tries her best.

h a b i t s

#hhq:intro #wrote this so mf FAST

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noratilney · 2 years

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Fancast Friday #3: Might Tell You Tonight

THE STANDISHES (Delilah, Charlotte, Alicia, Abby, Andrew)

Juno Temple as Delilah Standish

Brianne Howey as Charlotte Standish

Aisha Dee as Alicia Jordan

Sofia Carson as Abigail Abby Cardenas

Diesel La Torraca as Andrew Elliott

THE COHENS (Gabriel, Isaac, Emmie)

Anthony Natale as Gabriel Cohen

Sean Berdy as Isaac Cohen

Elodie Blomfield as Emmie Cohen

MYSTIC FALLS HIGH

FRESHMEN (

SOPHOMORES

Isabel Durant as Kelsey Baker

Vanessa Marano as Alexis Barnes

Cameron Boyce as Anthony Cartullo

Owen Patrick Joyner as Peter Chase

Felix Mallard as Nathan Cooper

Connor Paolo as Brandon Edgecombe

Gage Golightly as Lauren Grant

Becca Tobin as Emily Gregory

China McClain as Morgan Hayden

Claudia Lee as Jessica Hollis

Taylor Momsen as Claire Honeycutt

Dove Cameron as Delia Honeycutt

Iman Meskini as Laila Kamoun

Maya Hawke as Rachel Kuschner

Dominic Sherwood as Jeffrey Lambert

Nicole Maines as Mary Lawrence

Curran Walters as Jason Matthews

Katie Stevens as Rory McGovern

Peyton Meyer as Connor Miller

Dylan Llewellyn as Evan Parry

Emilija Baranac as Jennifer Nielsen

Mitchell Hope as Benjamin Peterson

Victoria Justice as Michelle Porter

Brenna D'Amico as Stephanie Rand

Elise Bauman as Melissa Roberts

Sofia Black D’Elia as Hannah Sheridan

Eli Brown as Corey Wilson

Arden Cho as ? Wong

Casey Cott as Adam ?

Ashleigh Murray as Courtney ?

Kit Young as ?

Jordan Fisher as ?

Barrett Carnahan as ?

Nathaniel James Potvin as ?

Isabel May as ?

as Tristan ?

as Michael ?

as Daniel ?

as Josh ?

as Eli ?

JUNIORS (

Madison McLaughlin as Miranda Carter

Vanessa Hudgens as Veronica Delgado

Ross Lynch as Bryce Honeycutt

Danielle Galligan as Kristin Lieberman

Mae Whitman as Natalie Piper

Matthew Daddario as Scott Tucker

Willa Holland as Amy ?

SENIORS (

Sophie Cookson as Melanie Anderson

Chord Overstreet as Frederick Dean Honeycutt

Brenton Thwaites as Jesse ?

DELILAH’S BOOK CLUB

JoAnna García Swisher as ?, mom of ?, aged eight and ?, age six

Michaela Conlin as ?, mom of ?, aged nine

Anna Torv as ?, mom of ?, aged eleven, ?, age nine, and ?, age six

OTHERS (Mary McCullough, Joanna Fell)

Rachel McAdams as Mary McCullough

Sharon Belle as Joanna Fell

#fancast fridays #fancasting #might tell you tonight

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osvaldrps-archived · 3 years

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emily peterson in chicago pd / by clicking the [ gif pack directory ] link or source below you will find #51 gifs from episodes 1.02-03, 1.05, 1.07, 1.13, all made by me from scratch. you can use/edit them to your liking, just credit me where credit’s due. and please reblog the post if you find these helpful.

features: patrick flueger, elias koteas. trigger/content warning: alcohol.

#emily peterson gif pack #emily peterson gif hunt #emily peterson gifs #gifpacknetwork #gifsociety #gifhunthub #gifpackshq #gif pack #gif hunt #mine #emily peterson #chicago pd #chicago p.d.

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milfsource · 2 years

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MILF MONDAY | Dec 27th 2021 ↳ WLW MILFS Bette Porter - THE L WORD GENERATION Q (2019- ) Emily Mather & Sarah Bishop - A DISCOVERY OF WITCHES (2018-2022) Hen Wilson - 911 (2018- ) Laura Peterson & Bradley Jackson - THE MORNING SHOW (2019- ) Camile Wray - STARGATE UNIVERSE (2009-2011) Stef Adams Foster & Lena Adams Foster - THE FOSTERS (2013-2018) Annalise Keating - HOW TO GET AWAY WITH MURDER (2014-2020) Roz Marchetti & Sofia Marchetti - SEX EDUCATION (2019- ) Teddy Altman - GREY'S ANATOMY (2005- ) Siuan Sanche & Moiraine Damodred - THE WHEEL OF TIME (2021-)

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jamie-knight · 3 years

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I saw [JAMIE KNIGHT] at a coffee shop in [BROOKLYN] today. I forgot how much [HE] looks like [ROBERT PATTINSON]. They are a [THIRTY-TWO] year old [LIBRARIAN] who’s been in NYC for [14 YEARS] now. Every time we run into each other, they are always [CALM AND INTELLIGENT] but I’ve heard people say they can also be [STUBBORN AND CLOSED OFF]. [CHASING CARS BY SNOW PATROL] reminds me of them every time it comes on the radio. — [c, she/her, 26, cst] @villagestart

Name: Jamie Knight Age: 32 Birthday: February 19th Zodiac Sign: Pisces Talents: Can play the piano College: Majoring in Music Occupation: Librarian Family: Matthew Knight (father), Emily Knight (mother, deceased), William Knight (paternal grandfather), Amanda Knight (paternal grandmother), Evelyn Peterson (maternal grandmother), Alyson Knight (step-mother), Caroline Turner (step-sister, 30 years old) Sexual Orientation: Heterosexual

ABOUT

TW: death tw, fire tw, alcohol tw

Jamie has always been at odds with his father, his father often ignoring Jamie as a kid in favor of work. His mother was wonderful, and they had a close relationship.

When Jamie was five, there was a fire at the neighbor’s house that quickly spread to his own house. It was all over the news and he’s had one person approach him that remembers it. His father had been away on a business trip when the fire happened over night. His mother died saving Jamie.

After that followed an even more strained relationship between Jamie and his father. Every time he looked at Jamie, he saw memories of his wife, and he tried as hard as he could to distract himself with work or alcohol.

After the fire, there was a court hearing in which Jamie received settlement money from the neighbors who started the fire. He wouldn’t talk for weeks after the fire and needed to go to therapy due to grief.

Jamie hasn’t touched the money.

When he was eighteen, he and his father moved from London, UK to New York City for a job. Jamie didn’t have much going for him and he has family in New York, so he went with his father, still living with him. He moved out pretty much immediately when going to New York and got a job.

As an adult, Jamie is pretty lost. He often compensates with humor. He can be very closed off, but he will occasionally open up to those that he loves or that are intimately close to him.

Although he can be promiscuous and generally reckless, he has a soft heart and loves intensely. His outward appearance is of someone who is relatively calm, most of the time, but it’s just because he’s in his head a lot.

He is a job hopper, and is never satisfied with staying at one place. He is currently a librarian and likes the quiet.

WANTED CONNECTIONS

Best Friends Friends Hookups/FWBs Ride or Die Love Interest Step-sister (Caroline Turner, 30) Musical friends/college friends Anything!

#villageintro #death tw #fire tw #alcohol tw

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traumahqs · 3 years

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besties who are your mw!!

hey babe! for characters i would love to see; callie torres, alex karev, charlotte king, james peterson, cristina yang, owen hunt, andrew deluca, carina deluca, tom koracick, richard webber, miranda bailey, violet turner, cooper freedman, ryan kerrigan and sheldon wallace. for face claims I would love to see; matt czuchry, emily vancamp, milo ventimiglia, america ferrera, yunjin kim, arden cho, chase crawford, adam brody, jessica lowndes, grant gustin, bethany joy lenz, henry cavill, john stamos, kerry washington and morgan freeman. as you can see, i tried to give you some fcs to match the characters, but honestly, feel free to bring oc's as well !! members, if you have suggestions, leave them below !!

#traumaanswered #greys anatomy rp #private practice rp #appless rp

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neitherlandslibrary · 5 years

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Happy International Women’s Day

to all the female-identifying people!

As we could not put everyone on the gifset, we also want to shout out to all the woman inside and outside the show

Character in the show: Callie, Camille, Carol, Cindy Gaines, Copy Girl, Crying Woman, Dr. Jennifer London, Dragon, Emily Greenstreet, Etta, Eve, Female Professor, Fray, Genji, Gretchen, Harriet, Healer Faye, Hedge #1, Homicide Detective #1, Irene McAllistair, Iris, Kimber D'Antoni, Kira, Lia, Librarian Rona, Mackenzie, Old Woman, Orgy Girl #1, Orgy Girl #2, Phyllis, Prof. Pearl Sunderland, Poppy, Professor Bigby, Psychic Girl #2, Rainbow Girl, Receptionist, Sam Cunningham, Shelia, Stone Queen, Sylvia, The Prophet, The White Lady, Whitley, Young Hedge, AD, Arielle, Arleen, Ashley the Bookie, Baba Yaga (and the girl she posess), Beatrice McAllister,Beatrix, Becky, Dana, Doctor Meers, Dr. Higgins, Evelyn,Fairy Queen, Fillorian Mother, Goldie, Hanna, Harriet, Healer Tara, Heloise,Homeless Lady, Jane Chatwin,Marina Andrieski,Mellony, Napster, Natural Student #1,Nurse#1, Nurse#2, Persephone, Physical Kid #1, Poppy, Professor Lipson, Prudence Plover, Quentin's Mother, Rhona, Scared Woman 36,Shara,Shoshana, Silver, Skye, Sonia 36, Spectre, Stephanie Quinn, Stephanie's Friend, Suzie, TV Crew, Victoria, Water Dragon,Zal, Zelda and all uncredited characters!

off cameras woman : Adela Baborova, Aeryn Gray, Alexandra Rojek, Allison Gordin, Alma Kuttruff, Alyssa Jacobson, Amber Crombach, Amber Waters, Ana Lossada, Ana Lossada, Angie Kennedy, Anna Register, Annalese Tilling, Anne Grennan, Ashley Biggs, Ashley Mason, Athena Wong,Audrey Himmer-Jude, Aylwin Fernando, Barbara Jansen, Beth Williams, Blair Richmond, Blythe Bickham, Breanna Watkins, Bree Brincat, Briana Skye, Brittney Diez, Caitlin Groves, Candice Harvey, Cara Doell, Carmen Lavender, Carole Appleby, Caroline Milliard, Carolyn McCauley, Carolyn Williams,Carrie Audino ,Cassandra Parigian, Cathy Darby, Chere Theriot, Cherie Bessette, Cherie Smid, Cheryl Callihoo, Christina Nakhvat, Clara George, Clarinda Wong, Coreen Mayrs, Crystal Mudry, Danielle White, Debbie Douglas, Deborah Burns, Deborah Burns, Deneen McArthur, Denya McLean-Adhya, Desiree J. Cadena, Donna Stocker, Elie Smolkin, Elizabeth Rainey, Elle Lipson, Emily Nomland, Emily Upham, Emily Weston, Emmanuelle Charlier, Errin Clutton, Eunice Yeung, Eva Abramycheva, Gilda Longoria, Ginge Cox, Grace Delahanty, Heike Brandstatter, Helen Geier, Irina Berdyanskaya, Irwin Figuera, Janene Carleton, Janet D. Munro, Janice MacIsaac,Janice Williams, Jayne Dancose, Jenni Macdonald, Jennifer Gilevich, Jennifer Kaminski, Jennifer Machnee, Jennifer Nelson, Jesse Toves, Jessica Goodwin, Jessica Williams, Juli Van Brown, Julia Holt, June E. Watson, Justin Coulter, Kai Lesack, Kara Bowman, Karen Lorena Parker, Karina Partington, Karley Stroscher, Karly Paranich, Kate Marshall, katerina Motylova, Kathie Singh, Katie Letien, Katrissa 'Kat' Peterson, Kelli Dunsmore, Kendelle Elliott, Kristy Jelinek, Kyla Rose Tremblay, Kyle Landry, Laura Dickinson, Laura Schiff, Lauren Aspden, Lauren Beason, Laurie Lieser, Leslie Cairns, Lisa Blaxley, Lisa Chandler, Lisa Godwin, Lisa Pouliot, Lisa Pouliot, Lisle Fehlauer, Liz Goldwyn, Lucie Elwes, Luisa Abuchaibe, Lyne Talbot, Lynn Werner, Madeline Jensen, Madison Mah, Madison Penland, Magali Guidasci, Maisie Lucas, Margot Ready, Maria Gleeson, Marie Marolle, Marijke Richman, Martha Dietsche, Mary Hubert, Meghan Kelly, Michelle Kabatoff, Michelle Kee, Michelle Yu, Miluette Nalin, Mimi Dejene, Nadia Alaskari, Natasha Wehn, Nicole Bivens, Nina Göldner, Patricia Jagger, Patti Henderson, Paula Antil, Polina Nikolai, Pricilla Rodgers,Priya Ayengar, Rachel O'Toole,Rita K. Sanders, Rudy Jones, Sam Ochotta, Sarah McLauchlan, Sera Gamble, Shae Salmon, Shae Salmon, Shailey Horton, Shannon Courte, Shannon Kohli, Shannon McArthur, Sharon Dever, Shelly Goldsack, Shelly Shaw, Sina Nazarian, Sondra Durkse, Sonia V. Torres, Sophia Delgiglio, Stephane Bourgeault, Stephanie Plett, Sue Blainey, Sumner Boissiere III, Sunil Pant, Taja Perkins, Tamara Daroshin, Teresa Brauer, Tracey McLean,Tracie Hansen, Tracie Leaphart, Tracy Craigen, Vanja Cernjul, Wendy Foster, Wendy Snowdon, Wendy Talley

(Source IMDB)

#the magicians #themagiciansedit #margo hanson #alice quinn #julia wicker #kady orloff-diaz #fen #season 4

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tasksweekly · 5 years

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[TASK 148: ARUBA]

In celebration of Caribbean American Heritage Month, here’s a masterlist below compiled of over 150+ Aruban faceclaims categorised by gender with their occupation and ethnicity denoted if there was a reliable source. If you want an extra challenge use random.org to pick a random number! Of course everything listed below are just suggestions and you can pick whichever faceclaim or whichever project you desire.

Any questions can be sent here and all tutorials have been linked below the cut for ease of access! REMEMBER to tag your resources with #TASKSWEEKLY and we will reblog them onto the main! This task can be tagged with whatever you want but if you want us to see it please be sure that our tag is the first five tags, @ mention us or send us a messaging linking us to your post!

THE TASK - scroll down for FC’s!

STEP 1: Decide on a FC you wish to create resources for! You can always do more than one but who are you starting with? There are links to masterlists you can use in order to find them and if you want help, just send us a message and we can pick one for you at random!

STEP 2: Pick what you want to create! You can obviously do more than one thing, but what do you want to start off with? Screencaps, RP icons, GIF packs, masterlists, PNG’s, fancasts, alternative FC’s - LITERALLY anything you desire!

STEP 3: Look back on tasks that we have created previously for tutorials on the thing you are creating unless you have whatever it is you are doing mastered - then of course feel free to just get on and do it. :)

STEP 4: Upload and tag with #TASKSWEEKLY! If you didn’t use your own screencaps/images make sure to credit where you got them from as we will not reblog packs which do not credit caps or original gifs from the original maker.

THINGS YOU CAN MAKE FOR THIS TASK - examples are linked!

Stumped for ideas? Maybe make a masterlist or graphic of your favourite faceclaims. A masterlist of names. Plot ideas or screencaps from a music video preformed by an artist. Masterlist of quotes and lyrics that can be used for starters, thread titles or tags. Guides on culture and customs.

Screencaps

RP icons [of all sizes]

Gif Pack [maybe gif icons if you wish]

PNG packs

Manips

Dash Icons

Character Aesthetics

PSD’s

XCF’s

Graphic Templates - can be chara header, promo, border or background PSD’s!

FC Masterlists - underused, with resources, without resources!

FC Help - could be related, family templates, alternatives.

Written Guides.

and whatever else you can think of / make!

MASTERLIST!

Maureen Bunyan (1945) Afro Aruban - tv personality.

Chris Comvalius / Chrisje Comvalius (1948) Aruban - actress.

Emily Bolton (1951) Aruban - actress.

Edsilia Rombley (1981) Afro Aruban / Afro Curaçaoan - singer.

Caro Emerald / Caroline Esmeralda van der Leeuw (1981) Aruban / Dutch - singer.

Gillain Berry (1988) Afro Aruban, Afro Jamaican - model and Miss Aruba 2010.

Liza Helder (1989) Aruban - model and Miss Aruba 2012.

Stefanie Evangelista (1989) Afro Aruban - model and Miss Aruba 2013.

Alina Mansur (1991) Aruban - model and Miss Aruba 2015.

Charlene Leslie (1991) Aruban - model and Miss Aruba 2016.

Kassandra Suarez (1992) Aruban - youtuber (Kassandra Suarez and Kassandra Vlogs).

Alysha Boekhoudt (1994) Aruban - model and Miss Aruba 2017.

Angeilys Porto (1996) Aruban [Colombian, Dominican] - actress.

Kimberly Julsing (1998) Aruban [German] - model and Miss Aruba 2018.

Naomi Chanel Laing (?) Aruban [Surinamese] - YouTuber.

Nathalie Biermanns (?) Aruban, Dutch, Austrian - actress.

Valeryn Vasquez (?) Aruban - model (Instagram: valerynvasquez).

Karen-Ann Odor (?) Aruban - model (Instagram: odorkaren).

Desirre Hernandez (?) Aruban - model (Instagram: qwn_desi).

Mariana Saer (?) Aruban, Venezuelan - model (Instagram: marianasaer).

Kiandra Pop (?) Aruban - model (Instagram: popkiandra).

Maria Alejandra (?) Aruban - model (Instagram: mari.pole).

F - Athletes:

Cornelia Melis (1960) Aruban - long-distance runner.

Evelyn Farrell (1960) Aruban - sprinter.

Nicole Hoevertsz (1964) Aruban - swimmer.

Roswitha Lopez (1969) Aruban - swimmer.

Yvette Thuis (1971) Aruban - swimmer.

Luz Marina Geerman (1984) Aruban - sprinter.

Roshendra Vrolijk (1984) Aruban - swimmer.

Naomi Halman (1986) Aruban - basketball player.

Monica Pimentel (1989) Aruban - taekwondo practitioner.

Jamina Roberts (1990) Aruban - handball player.

Sarah-Quita Offringa (1991) Afro Aruban - sailor.

Philipine van Aanholt (1992) Aruban - sailor.

Nicole van der Velden (1994) Aruban - sailor.

Allyson Ponson (1995) Aruban - swimmer.

Daniella van den Berg (1996) Aruban - swimmer.

Padú del Caribe / Juan Chabaya Lampe (1920) Aruban - musician-songwriter.

Euson / Julio Bernardo Euson (1941) Afro Aruban - actor and singer-songwriter.

Dave Benton / Efrén Eugene Benita (1951) Afro Aruban - singer.

Michiel de Jong (1973) Aruban - actor.

Jim Jones / Jimmy Jones / CAPO / Joseph Guillermo Jones II (1976) Afro Aruban / Puerto Rican - actor, rapper-songwriter, and director.

Curt Fortin (1978) Aruban - actor, singer, tv presenter, director, and writer.

Alain Clark (1979) Aruban - singer and producer.

Pete Philly / Pedro Philip Monzón (1980) Aruban - rapper, singer, and MC.

Smiley / Tavis Scoot (1980) Aruban - singer.

Roger Peterson (1980) Aruban / Curaçaoan - singer-songwriter, guitarist, bassit, pianist, and drummer.

Bryan van Putten (1985) Afro Aruban - singer-songwriter and guitarist.

Vince Irie (1987) Aruban - singer-songwriter.

Jeon Arvani / Jonathan Thiel (1991) Aruban - musician.

Mario Michael Gonsalves (1992) Aruban / Unknown - director.

Gilmher Croes (1993) Aruban - instagrammer (gilmhercroes) and tiktoker (gilmhercroes).

Jayden Croes (1998) Aruban - instagrammer (jayden) and tiktoker (jaydencroes).

Gio Leocadia (1999) Afro Aruban - DJ, dancer, comedian, instagrammer (gioleocadia), and tiktoker (gioleocadia).

Wally Warning / Ewald Warning (?) Aruban [Afro Surinamese] - singer.

Moses (?) Aruban, Jordanian - model (Instagram: mosesfitsanity).

M - Athletes:

Jeffrey Nedd (1957) Aruban - boxer.

Kim Reynierse (1961) Aruban - long-distance runner.

Hubert Wester (1961) Aruban - boxer.

Gerard van Vliet (1964) Aruban - cyclist.

Victor Maduro (1964) Aruban - judoka.

Adonis Kemp (1967) Afro Aruban - baseball player.

Lucien Dirksz (1968) Aruban - cyclist.

Richard Rodriguez (1969) Aruban - long-distance runner.

Miguel Janssen (1970) Aruban [Dutch] - athlete.

Juan Geerman (1970) Aruban - footballer.

George da Silva (1971) Aruban - footballer.

Michel Lopez (1972) Aruban - footballer.

Ryan Tromp (1973) Aruban - footballer.

Gerald Zimmermann (1973) Aruban - footballer.

Radhames Dykhoff (1974) Aruban - baseball player.

Calvin Maduro (1974) Aruban - baseball player.

Claudio Poppen (1974) Aruban - footballer.

Eric de Mey (1974) Aruban - baseball player.

Enrique Zschuschen (1975) Aruban - footballer.

Gene Kingsale (1976) Aruban - baseball player.

Sidney Ponson (1976) Aruban - baseball player.

Germain Dirksz (1976) Aruban - footballer.

Geoland Pantophlet (1976) Aruban - footballer.

Eldrick Celaire (1978) Aruban - footballer.

Jackson Gross (1978) Aruban - footballer.

Mark Mackay (1978) Aruban - footballer.

Robin Nelisse (1978) Afro Aruban - footballer.

Wander Gross (1978) Aruban - footballer.

Junior Faro (1978) Aruban - weightlifter.

Rodney Lake (1979) Aruban - footballer.

Carl Henriquez (1979) Aruban - weightlifter.

Ikel Lopez (1979) Aruban - footballer.

Danny Rombley (1979) Aruban - baseball player.

Roman Aparicio (1980) Aruban - footballer.

Kenrick Bradshaw (1980) Aruban - footballer.

Maurice Escalona (1980) Aruban - footballer.

Eugène Martineau (1980) Afro Aruban - decathlete.

Juan Rasmijn (1981) Aruban - footballer.

Geronimo Goeloe (1981) Aruban - sprinter.

Fiderd Vis (1981) Aruban - judoka.

Javier Wanga (1981) Aruban - judoka.

Antonio Giel (1981) Aruban - footballer.

Jayme Mata (1982) Aruban - judoka.

Ronny Nouwen (1982) Aruban - footballer.

Daniel Escalona (1982) Afro Aruban - swimmer.

Raymondt Pimienta (1982) Aruban - footballer.

Davy Bisslik (1982) Aruban - swimmer.

Andy Figaroa (1983) Aruban - footballer.

Pierre de Windt (1983) Aruban - runner.

Jeffrey Werleman (1983) Aruban - footballer.

Juan Valdez (1983) Aruban - footballer.

Jan Roodzant (1984) Aruban - swimmer.

Demy de Zeeuw (1983) Aruban - swimmer.

Lionel Tromp (1984) Aruban - swimmer.

Rubio Connor (1984) Aruban - footballer.

Ronald Gómez (1984) Aruban - footballer.

Reinhard Breinburg (1984) Aruban - footballer.

Theric Ruiz (1984) Aruban - footballer.

Roderick Lampe (1985) Aruban - footballer.

Hedwiges Maduro (1985) Aruban - footballer.

Eric Abdul (1986) Aruban - footballer.

Germain Cabrera (1986) Aruban - footballer.

Derek Brison (1986) Aruban - footballer.

Jesus Paesch (1986) Aruban - footballer.

Gino Mulder (1987) Aruban - footballer.

Marlon Pereira Freire (1987) Aruban - footballer.

Joshua John (1988) Afro Aruban - footballer.

Sylvester Schwengle (1988) Aruban - footballer.

Dwight Oehlers (1988) Aruban - footballer.

Dwayne Kemp (1988) Aruban - baseball player.

Randolph Oduber (1989) Aruban - baseball player.

Raymond Baten (1989) Aruban - footballer.

Clayon Maduro (1989) Aruban - footballer.

Shawn Zarraga (1989) Aruban - baseball player.

Erixon Danso (1989) Afro Aruban - baseball player.

David Abdul (1989) Aruban - footballer.

Rensy Barradas (1990) Aruban - footballer.

Erik Santos de Gouveia (1990) Aruban - footballer.

Emile Linkers (1990) Aruban - footballer.

Francois Croes (1990) Aruban - footballer.

Gregor Breinburg (1991) Afro Aruban - footballer.

Quincy Breell (1992) Aruban - long jumper.

Leroy Oehlers (1992) Aruban - footballer.

Xander Bogaerts (1992) Afro Aruban - baseball player.

Matthew Lentink (1993) Aruban - footballer.

Josh Gross (1993) Aruban - footballer.

Feddison Flanders (1994) Aruban - cyclist.

Jemal Le Grand (1994) Aruban - swimmer.

Jonathan Ruiz (1995) Aruban - footballer.

Jean-Marc Antersijn (1996) Aruban - baseball player.

Denzel Dumfries (1996) Afro Aruban - footballer.

Ryan Oduber (1997) Aruban - baseball player.

Walter Bennett (1997) Aruban - footballer.

Mikel Schreuders (1998) Aruban - swimmer.

Edre Elskamp (?) Aruban - footballer.

#aruban fc #poc fc #fc list #rph #caribbean fc #task: 148 #task: aruba

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toyboxboy · 6 years

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Reid: All I'm saying is that it's a lot like when JJ and Hotch faked your death so that you could escape from Ian Doyle. You didn't have any choice in the matter, but it's what they had to do. They fought just as hard to save your life as you did to save mine. It's what we do. Emily: It's... not like this. Reid: It is. You want proof? Here are some examples. Michael Lee Peterson, Chad Higgins, Kathy and Jessica Evanson, Gloria Barker, and Declan Doyle. These are men, women, and children you've saved at the BAU, personally.

#Criminal Minds #criminalmindsedit #Spencer Reid #Matthew Gray Gubler #Emily Prentiss #Paget Brewster #13x15 #Annihilator #my gif #S13 #spoiler

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culturedarm · 2 years

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Mitch Stahlmann summons sacred incantations on the flute for the Polish label Mondoj, Tekla Peterson strives for ecstatic release through eighties pop forms on Geographic North, and Sontag Shogun and Lau Nau send missives from the halcyon summer of 2019 and the Finnish island of Kimitoön. Tracks by Arca, Susanna, East Portal, Yama Warashi, Ohyung, Ethel Cain, and Emilie Levienaise-Farrouch complete the roundup of best new music.

https://culturedarm.com/tracks-of-the-week-09-04-22/

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naturecpw · 4 years

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Can a Cat Have an Existential Crisis?

Treating my cat for depression caused me to question the state of anxiety in animals and us. Nautilus - Britt Peterson

When I first adopted Lucas nine years ago from a cat rescue organization in Washington, D.C., his name was Puck. “Because he’s mischievous,” his foster mother said. Although we changed the name, her analysis proved correct. Unlike his brother Tip, whom I also adopted, a gray cat with white paws and an Eeyore-ish dour doofy sweetness, Lucas was from the start a fierce black fireball, a menace to stray toes or blanket fringes or loose items on tabletops. He was my alarm clock in the morning with his habit of knocking my hairbrush, deodorant, and earrings box off my bureau until I got up to feed him.

Then, almost four years ago, my husband and I had a child. Lucas, no longer the most important small creature in the apartment, retreated to the top shelf of his cat tree, where he would lie all day, staring morosely over the edge. When he did want attention, his solicitations became aggressive. Instead of waiting until 7 a.m. to start knocking things off of the bureau, he started hopping up there at 4 a.m. We closed the bedroom door and were still woken up at 4 every day by Lucas rattling the doorknob or hurling the weight of his 13-pound body against it. At mealtimes he would gobble down his food and then shove Tip out of the way to eat Tip’s food. He started marking the carpets in our living room and my son’s room, and his play with Tip turned more violent too.

Cat’s Meow: Lucas did well on antidepressants. But he started avoiding his food that contained them. His aggression, though, declined with play and human attention. Photo courtesy of the author.

I made an appointment, first, with a pet behavior specialist and, five months later, when her initially helpful suggestions didn’t change Lucas’s behavior, with a vet. The vet described Lucas’s condition as “anxiety” and prescribed fluoxetine, a generic for Prozac that’s often prescribed for animals. While I had felt a mixture of frustration and pity toward Lucas, in that moment I experienced a surprising stir of recognition. Over a decade ago, during six months in college, I had panic attacks every other day. I was given a similar diagnosis—panic disorder being a major anxiety disorder—and was prescribed a similar medication.

More than 50 years ago, behaviorist B.F. Skinner wrote, “The ‘emotions’ are excellent examples of the fictional causes to which we commonly attribute behavior.” For animals, who can’t describe their own emotions in words, this sentiment has proved more enduring than it has for humans. My panic attacks were an anxiety ouroboros: Am I having an attack now, on the subway? How about now, in front of my English class? Oh shit! It’s hard to imagine a rat or a mouse—or even my brilliant cat—ruminating on that obsessive meta-level. As Kierkegaard wrote in The Concept of Anxiety, “anxiety is not found in the beast, precisely because by nature the beast is not qualified as spirit.”

In fact, the concept of animal anxiety is something science has been wrestling with for a long time. And while our definition of anxiety, when it comes to animals, may still be fuzzy, it is growing ever sharper with time. That process has taught us much about our own emotions, and continues to teach us more about animal cognition. In the end, it also taught me a lot about my relationship with Lucas.

***

With all or almost all animals, even with birds, Terror causes the body to tremble,” Darwin wrote in his 1872 book, The Expression of the Emotions in Animals and Man. Today, with a greater understanding of the subcortical basis of fear, we know how closely brain systems resemble each other across mammals.

When a threat occurs, the flight-or-flight response is triggered by the amygdala, then moves to the hypothalamus, which in turn sends a signal to the glands, releasing adrenaline. The same happens in most mammal brains: Mice have tiny hypothalami and amygdalae that react to stress just as ours do. And as any dog- or cat-owner knows, the manifestations of fight or flight in animals are plentiful, complex, sometimes patterned (a dog that always sucks its paws and yowls during thunderstorms), sometimes based on temperament or genetics, sometimes coming out of the blue—very much like human anxiety.

Giving human drugs to animals isn’t just species narcissism. We know these drugs work for animals because they were originally tested on animals.

Veterinary behaviorists don’t worry much about whether anxiety is a valid term for what animals experience, or how to diagnosis it. “It’s not terribly difficult,” says Katherine A. Houpt, an emeritus professor of behavioral medicine at Cornell University. Vets look at external display: Does an animal startle quickly, snap, suffer from sleeplessness? Is a cat in a fearful posture like something New Jersey behaviorist Emily Levine called “the meatloaf position” (all four legs under and hunched)? By these observable measures, anxiety exists in great quantities in the animal kingdom, both among pets and far beyond.

In her book, Animal Madness, science historian Laurel Braitman cites a study by the pharmaceutical giant, Eli Lilly and Company, that states that 17 percent of American dogs suffer from separation anxiety. Braitman also describes anxious zoo gorillas and a bonobo who wouldn’t eat a meal until he went through a series of obsessive compulsive disorder-like rituals, anxious chickens given Prozac to calm down so their flesh will be more delicious, and the “stereotypic” (repeated self-harming) and aggressive behavior of walruses and sea lions at amusement parks like SeaWorld.

Separation Anxiety: Sea mammals penned into aquariums suffer stress in biologically similar ways as humans. As a result they are given the same kind of antidepressants as us. Photo by Keren Su/Getty Images.

To ease their symptoms, we’ve been giving animals our meds for decades. Starting in the 1970s, captive animals were increasingly medicated, ranging from Gus the bipolar polar bear to penguins bummed out by British weather to the sea mammals at SeaWorld, caught in a scandal in 2014 after court documents obtained by Buzzfeed showed that doctors were dosing aggressive orcas with benzodiazepines, the family of anti-anxiety medication that includes Xanax and Valium. Some of the mine-sniffing dogs in Afghanistan diagnosed with PTSD were given Xanax, as well as other treatments, like desensitization. So many dogs, cats, and other pets are on antidepressants and antianxiety medication today that the industry has swelled to a multibillion-dollar business.

Giving human drugs to animals isn’t just species narcissism. We know these drugs work for animals because they were originally tested on animals. The underlying similarity between mammalian brains and patterns of anxious and depressive behavior has allowed monkeys, dogs, cats, rats, and mice to stand in for humans in psychoactive drug testing starting with the early barbiturates in the 1900s and continuing through tranquilizers in the ’60s to today’s SSRIs (selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors), drugs that, it’s believed, improve the symptoms of depression and anxiety by increasing levels of a neurotransmitter called serotonin.

Methods of provoking or measuring stress in laboratory animals to study these drugs are endless, creative, and should come with a trigger warning, if you’re at all an anxious person yourself. In the “forced swim test” (my summer-camp nightmare) mice are forced to swim in cylindrical pools to test their resilience in the face of certain defeat. Some “animal models of anxiety” try to create situations that are especially stressful for animals, like open spaces (the “elevated plus maze”) or being out in the open on a balance-beam like structure (the “Suok ‘ropewalking’ test”).

Methods of provoking stress in laboratory animals should come with a trigger warning, if you’re at all an anxious person yourself.

In one chronic stress experiment, mice were restrained, shaken, isolated, held under a hot hairdryer, kept under bright lights overnight, or had their cages tilted at a 45 degree angle. In the end—and just like humans who live under chronic stress—the mice became severely anxious and lost any appetite for “exploratory behavior,” like depressed teenagers hiding out in bed.

There’s plenty of debate over whether the stress tests and other “animal models of anxiety” match up closely enough to human anxiety to make all the animal research on psychoactive medications credible. Even the more subtle tests seem closer to repeatedly punching a human in the face until that human collapses into a shivering puddle, rather than replicating the complex patchwork of genetic and environmental factors that end up producing a human anxiety disorder.

Researchers rarely use the word anxiety to describe what the animals experience. Studies usually describe “anxiety-like symptoms,” focusing on the behavioral rather than the emotional, the expression of the feeling rather than the feeling itself. The fact that anti-anxiety medication soothes these symptoms in animals suggests they have something in common with the symptoms we call anxiety in humans. But are they a conditioned fear or something else entirely? And can we humans ever really know?

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Joseph LeDoux, a professor of neural science and psychology at New York University, and author of The Emotional Brain, has performed some of the most important research on anxiety disorders. “Do animals have mental states? We don’t know, and we can never know for sure,” he said in an interview with BrainWorld magazine in 2012. For LeDoux, observations of behavior aren’t enough to give it a label like “anxiety” when we can’t enter into the animal’s subjective experience. It might be emotion, it might also just be an automatic response to danger, and without any way of entering into the animal’s brain—the way language allows us to, at least to a certain mediated degree, with other humans—we can’t assess that.

But Jaak Panksepp, a neuroscientist at the College of Veterinary Medicine at Washington State University, disagrees. Most famous for his studies demonstrating that tickled rats “laugh” in high-pitched chirps inaudible to the human ear, Panksepp researches underlying, unconditioned emotional systems. When it comes to fear, this means instinctual, native fears, not fears created in the laboratory by repeated foot-shocks. Using deep-brain stimulation on an animal’s amygdala, hypothalamus, and midbrain periaqueductal gray—the center of the fear system in humans—Panksepp is able to trigger these instinctive fears, and then watch how the animals react. He’s discovered that activating the fear response causes animals not only to go into typical fight or flight mode, but also to try to stop the experience—to turn off the terror in their brain. Humans exposed to deep-brain stimulation in these regions experience existential fear, describing their emotions (according to studies quoted in Panksepp’s 2012 book The Archeology of Mind) in terms like “I’m scared to death” and “an abrupt feeling of uncertainty just like entering into a long, dark tunnel.” Rats and mice, says Panksepp, likely experience something just as unpleasant.

Of course, fear is not the same thing as anxiety. While fear is a primary-process emotion, anxiety is more complex. “It’s something you’re reflecting upon, your confrontations in the world, who’s treating you poorly,” Panksepp says. “We cannot look at the thoughts of an animal—no one has a methodology for that.” However, Panksepp says, he suspects animals experience their own kind of “thoughtful worries.” “I personally believe they do because they’ve got plenty of upper-brain material in areas that we know control human thinking and worry about basic survival ideas.”

Some might argue that I am anthropomorphizing, but the result has been positive for everyone.

Other scientists agree, both with the difficulty of defining animal anxiety and with the possibility that it could exist. Lori Marino was a neuroscientist at Emory University and is now the executive director of the Kimmela Center for Animal Advocacy. Anxiety among animals “is more debatable because it has a component that fear doesn’t have and the component is time,” she says. A sense of one’s self existing in time is fundamental to anxiety. You worry about your future self—where will I be tomorrow, in three weeks, in a month? You mull over past regrets.

For a long time, most scientists have believed humans are unique in having a concept of ongoing time. But recent studies of Western scrub-jays and Eurasian jays (two corvid, or crow, species) have shown the birds anticipate later feeding needs even when those needs are different from what they want in the present. A 2013 study suggested that chimpanzees and orangutans in zoos may have human-like autobiographical memories—that a single cue can activate a series of remembered events, just the way it does for humans.

It’s still a leap to assume that a more complex relationship with time implies a set of emotions around those remembered or planned for events—although one recent study found that pigs engage in “avoidance behavior,” balking and oinking, when anticipating a negative task in the future. But it does raise some intriguing possibilities.

“I think you can say that many animals have some sense of time,” Marino says. “It may not be exactly as sophisticated as that in humans, but I think they are able to anticipate something, they know that something is going to happen in the future, even if it is just a few minutes or a few hours or a few days. It’s just not possible to survive with just being fearful, without also feeling some anxiety about what might happen or anticipate it, even in the simplest sense.”

For me, labeling Lucas as anxious changed everything in how I thought of his behavior. I had seen him as an adversary: robbing my sleep, peeing on my kid’s rug, bullying me and my family and my other cat. Now he was a fellow sufferer. Some might argue that I am anthropomorphizing, but the result has been positive for everyone. As I became more sensitive to Lucas’s neuroses, I began to notice my role in them.

Animal anxiety, to say the least, is frequently caused by humans—from our destruction of their habitats to our hunger for their flesh to our imprisonment of them in zoos. But we often cause anxiety in the animals that have evolved to live beside us, that we love most intensely and view as our companions, by imposing our needs on them and ignoring theirs. Dogs and cats alike need lots of stimulation and exercise; we like to live in cities and work all day. Cats like to be stroked on the cheeks and chin; we hug and cuddle them like stuffed animals, even when they are obviously upset by it.

When I thought about Lucas as anxious, I also began to think about his needs more than I had before. I played with him more often and gave him more, smaller meals. He responded as well to the meals and play as he had to the antidepressants, which he had not been taking as much because he rejected the food I put them in. He stopped waking us up in the middle of the night and marking in my son’s room. Science may be only partway to understanding whether Lucas is anxious, in the Kierkegaardian sense, or just acting like he is. In the end, it became more useful to be generous about the definition of anxiety—to recognize a connection, and also my own responsibility, in whatever anxious might mean for Lucas.

Britt Peterson is a contributing editor at Washingtonian magazine and a writer on ideas and culture for Smithsonian, the Boston Globe, Slate, and Elle.com.

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