#i feel like when ajax was being bad his father may had just made him do physical labour or help neighbours etc

[tosxa-h]

[TOUCH] make it angst make it angst

[TOUCH] The sender's touch is gentle as they explore a particularly sensitive scar on the receiver's skin. Tw. Harm, child abuse mention.

Ajax was littered with scars. As long as he could remember his body was marred in some way even if only slightly; scrapped knees and elbows from various raucous activities, fingers cut from fishing hooks or serrated knives, and there was also the time his father once hit him so hard he lost his balance and opened his chin on a kitchen chair. Perhaps he hadn't meant too, perhaps he forgot just how young his son was and Ajax almost didn't blame him- who else could do the damage he did to others at his age? Breaking the neighbour's kid's leg? How inconsiderate can you be? But we were playing soldiers.

I wanted to win.

By the time his long months in the abyss had passed that scar on his chin had become one of many and by the time he had grown into the adult he was today it had practically faded. You may mistake it for a shaving accident perhaps (if he could grow a beard). Or a natural divot in his skin. Ajax, however, knew it was there. He wasn't angry at his father and his old school notions of parenting for it, he rarely gave that punishment amongst the many much thought beyond how he had lost his balance.

His balance got better after that day.

It was also safe to say it was far from feeling sensitive now. It was simply a memory from his childhood. A lesson his dad had taught him.

Lumine's gloved hand was gentle and warm , perhaps it was that gentleness that caused a chill down his spine. Gentle wasn't a gesture he was used too. Her petite fingers brushed the tissue just above his left hip and he briefly caught his breath, his muscles stiffening ever so much.

After all this time, was it really so delicate? How strange... of all scars to still feel. It was this one.

Instinctively Ajax grabbed her hand in the split second his mind had tried to process it all. The breath, the stiffening sinews, the memory. Panic. It was brief and not something he often felt. It unsettled him. He released her hand as fast as he had held it. But the uncomfortable feeling it left created a heaviness in his chest.

"That's enough show and tell, Girly." Ajax did his best to keep his voice normal with a smile, despite his heart racing. How had this started again? Oh right, something about his pain tolerance, how some other injury was nothing compared to this. He didn't realise how right he was until she touched him.

#trigger warning #tw #harm #abuse #child abuse #okay so mun note: in my head his father isnt that tv stereotypical drunk abusive man #i think that he may have just had old school ideas of punishment and had no idea how to deal with ajax when maybe his older brothers were #more manageable #so i feel like when ajax was at his worst he may had resulted to physical punishment but it wasnt like all the time #i feel like when ajax was being bad his father may had just made him do physical labour or help neighbours etc #but i also think it wasnt like something that happened all the time either #nagareboshiko

[probably-haven]

I’ve been thinking about Childe a lot recently- because my friends slander him relentlessly and other than one person who kinda semi-likes him I’m the only one who actually likes his character.... and I know I’ve slandered him a fair amount myself but just- 

-

He was a child. 

A child - No ‘e’. No puns. No jokes. Not this time. 

He was only fourteen. 

-

His story described him as “frightened and hesitant” prior to his time in the abyss. All he wanted was an adventure of his own. To make an adventurer of himself, the likes of which he had heard so many times in the stories of his father. To be like him. He didn’t even go seeking the abyss or any kind of grave danger or incredible power, he was just a naïve little boy, running away from home with almost nothing in chase of a story of his own. 

And yet he was fated to fail, and everything went south almost immediately. Lost in the freezing cold forest environments of Snezhnaya, he was completely alone save for the wild animals on his trail. And by an unlucky roll of the dice - or perhaps because in that moment, his desire and drive to survive, to live, to get back to his family, was so strong that even the abyss itself took notice - the world he knew was stripped away. 

Scared and vulnerable with only a shortsword for protection, Ajax was torn from what already would have served to be traumatizing enough for the child, and thrust into something immeasurably worse. 

Described as “a bottomless crack in the earth’s surface,” “the endless possibilities of another ancient world,” and “the darkest corners of the universe;” the abyss is not a place that ordinary people are meant to survive.  Now I could go on about what the abyss may be or who the swordswoman might be or what might have happened to him, but the point is: it doesn’t matter what happened, his trauma is trauma nonetheless and its not in his control nor is it his fault how his brain decided to process it. Regardless, I think “endless possibilities” within the “darkest corners of the universe” speaks well enough for the severity.

Even without this however, it is important to note that for three months of what logically would have driven anyone to or past the brink, he had one consistent point of relative safety in the form of the swordswoman, a person who while training him for destruction, was also deliberately manipulating into him “the ability to stir up endless havoc.” 

Placed in an extremely traumatic situation like this and being manipulated by one he would have been forced to see as an anchor of sorts, simultaneously holding him together and molding him into the twisted version of himself that she wanted him to be; Realistically, Childe is more a victim than anything else.

And he returned - still only a fourteen year old child - to his home. 

Now an interesting point: based on the wording of his character story, it seems as though when he came out from the abyss, his new demeanor actually unnervingly reflects his hopes when he ran away, implying that the swordswoman very well could have used his own ambition as a cruel mirror to shape him based off, or used them merely as an additional manipulation tactic. “He acted as if this world revolved around him, and as if battle existed for his sake.” Almost as though he were truly the protagonist in an adventure story of his own, just like his father before- or perhaps that’s what he was made to believe. 

Regardless, Childe quickly gained a reputation for havoc, chaos, and violence, as it followed him and he spread it wherever he went, just as he had learnt to do during his time in the abyss, constantly seeking that unpredictability, the thrill of combat. 

And this continued until he went too far, and in response to this, the father that he admired so greatly sent Ajax away into the strict military environment of the Fatui. The idea was that the highly strict environment of training for the literal military, would “hone his son’s temper.” Not dampen, or control, or reduce in any way, but “hone” - to sharpen it, to refine and perfect it. And he watched “fully-armed troops getting the stuffing beaten out of them by a mere child.“

He was only a child. 

Everything he went through in the abyss and all the changes he went through himself, only to be shipped into military by the family who could no longer handle dealing with the effects of what he experienced... 

And he was just a kid. 

-

oh but they honed his temper alright. Not only was he entered in this military training like his father had planned originally, but soon after, the young child was selected and placed within the official ranks of the Fatui themselves under the guise of being a punishment.

Told to work his way up the ranks from the bottom, the Fatui “honed” his temper and penchant for combat towards the purpose of serving the Tsaritsa, encouraging these tendencies that would only continue to grow stronger and more apparent with time as a result of their actions, which was exactly their intent. These, psychologically and neurologically, were the key years for his mental development.

And once again the young Ajax found himself the victim of another’s subtle manipulation.  Until he was Ajax no more. 

-

Childe has been under the constant task of further proving himself since enlisting in the Fatui, and once he gained the recognition of the Tsaritsa, the only next possible way of doing that was by comparing his skills to others. And thus far, he has exceed in this time and time again, so with the evidence before him his arrogant confidence in his abilities is by no means unreasonable. Nor is his tendency to express friendship and varied other things through combat, it’s only natural after besting others in battle became his main source of acknowledgement throughout his younger years. 

He’s fiercely loyal as well, to the point where - were his sense of loyalty not so shrouded in his delusion of what loyalty is meant to be - it would likely border on codependency. He also doesn’t seem to have the greatest understanding of social cues, as expected with his combat-oriented upbringing, and tends to have an unnerving aura to a lot of the things he says that he doesn’t seem aware of. 

His loyalty to the Tsaritsa rings true, and seems to be his highest priority above all others, an ideology that, once again has been drilled into him since the age of 14. However, despite this, he is disliked and avoided even by his fellow harbingers, and often kept out of their true plans in a way that clearly shows what low opinions they have of his abilities in certain areas. 

And yet, through it all, he still maintains his own set of values and seeks to make genuine connections which people, which while these efforts may be unsuccessful in most cases, and these values far in between - It still firmly shows the strength of his character which, though in fragments, managed to remain as a part of who he is in spite of his circumstance. 

-

And i get that he’s memeable and slanderable and easy for a lot of people to just hate outright, i really do but sometimes it feels like a lot of people only ever see him at surface value and a lot of people dont even know his story and even fewer still actually consider the implications of that background. He was literally a child soldier - that and even more; “endless possibilities” more.

I have nothing against Childe slander, genuinely - but eventually, when it reaches a certain extent...

It’s not bad, I’m just tired.

#genshin impact #genshin childe #genshin analysis #genshin tartaglia #genshin ajax #genshin lore #please- what else can i tag this- i feel like i should have more tags for this one but idk what

[alberivh]

devotion (ROYAL AU) — pt.1 : realization.

Butler! Diluc X GN!Reader . Royal! childe (as supporting character), butler! Kaeya (supporting cast ; in pt2 story line)

contains : heavy angst, comfort/hurt, isolation, arranged marriage, major character death, mentions of blood, injuries, execution, abusive relationship, abandonment, ‘consumption’, false accusation, blades

summaries : arranged marriage has always been one of your family ruthless tradition. You were allowed to love them you couldn’t reach, yet the feeling of being abandoned once and for all by those who you truly treasured was more than numbness could ever describe. Diluc who’s your lover need to accept this tradition, yet he, himself need to get his life down for your future sake.

A/N : thank you for 100 followers!! It has been a wild ride since i’ve just joined this community. Thank you very much and as a rewards, here’s a token of heavy angst for y’all. I have a really bad writing block right now, so this might took more than you think hehe. So once again, thank you very much! ( i actually hate this, tyvm)

“Your majesty…please allow me to hold y—“

“No. I simply do not have time for people pleaser, please let yourself be out from here..” , you cursed your future-husband out of from your bounties. It startled all of the maids and butlers in your room, it even make your somewhat-fiancé looked awful. You were pissed by him, by the structure of his eyelids, the heavy breathe from who-knows-where and many more part of him you don’t even want to recognize.

There’s no reason to deny that you hate this, all of this, Known as the maiden of the family, you were nothing but their only pry. It pissed you, it really does. How come you are holding the throne at the age of 25? Aren’t you supposed to check your garden instead taking all of your well-behave throne and the awful arranged marriage your family has made? No? What an unlucky person you are, the butlers thought.

“Diluc please guide master tartaglia to the upfront door, i have no intention to see him now. If you already had brought him downstairs, get back to my resident immediately.”

“this is the main reason why everyone despis—“

“Please leave Immediately. My master have no further interest to speak with you, master tartaglia.” Diluc shouted your internal response to the group of scums in front of your sight. He heard enough of this small talk your future-husband has been talking about. Diluc wasn’t jealous, he was simply too disturbed with your disgusted face everytime tartaglia walks around your residence. just how much pressured you had been under to make you act so ruthless in front of the man you’ll called husband in no time?

he silently observing him down the hall. Not wanting to have a talk with a scum like him, he avoid any sights of his ‘particular’ interest. After all, in his eyes, tartaglia doesn’t deserve any part of you. He acts too normally, there diluc suspicion of your fiancé grown. There must be something behind his motive. Tartaglia have recognize diluc’s gaze for a while now. Though, he pretend none of those bothering suspicion triggered his rage. And so, he fired him up with a quick straightforward awareness. Or as the citizen say, A threat.

“mr. Butler..stop loving my future partner or tomorrow you’ll have the consequences..got it? And do not touch them..i’ve warned you when you were alive, i like my future partner to be a virgin ins—“

“master tartaglia i have no relationship with the majesty, how come you assume such a thing from a humble butler like me? I was just simply following orders, hope you could understand, master tartaglia.” , answering his rage. Tartaglia found his emotion drains wild. It look like those bothering emotions he hide finally show diluc their true intention to spoiled you. Diluc’s eyes met your fiancé terrifying visions, the murderous aura in it explains his true intention. Diluc could only plea inside, let my majesty be safe.

“don’t you dare say anything to your master, mr butler. My partner has been mine all along, stay away from our relationship or tomorrow would be your last day…”

“Though, i simply wouldn’t mind, ajax.” , he gurantees tartaglia’s eyes.

The night came. the breeze flew through your open windows, leaving chills through your spine. it was an unsurprisingly beautiful night, you quoted. Diluc was preparing your bed, as you humm through the southed area of your room. The melodical sound of your humming have always soothes his grudge from afar. It was always been his favorite sound.

“ your majesty, the bed has been done. You may rest peacefully now..so please excuse m—“

“Diluc…stop making it seems like i’m the only one who loved you..just stay here, i missed you a lot..” , in a sudden your arm was attached to his body, his dirty and ordinary body. You embraced him so tightly, as if diluc were going to some place you wouldn’t want him to cross. You were scared of losing him. You don’t want any of this marriage, you don’t want tartaglia to even acknowledge your presence. You just want diluc to stay by your side, even if you both have considered how selfish it is.

You clunge onto his chest, pressing gentle kiss on his cheeks. Not wanting him to leave nor to leave you behind. So desperate of you to feel this way.

“you’ve been doing great darling,i’m proud of you..”

“please stay like this for a while, i love you. So please, don’t go..don’t go..” , diluc watch your flattering smile turns into a small-sobs, it cracks him, he doesn’t want to let you go either. He was simply following your fiancé awareness, he doesn’t want anyone to harm you, even if it meant for you to see him in agony. Diluc Carries your figure into your bed in return, not wanting to bare any of his emotions. Feelings are fragile and so do he. giving soft and gentle kisses to your forehead as he wiped your tears, whispering a ‘goodnight’ before he left you again. If he was being honest, he wants to be more selfish, he wants to be with you, forever.

“hmm..i’ll be waiting for you, goodnight my beloved..”

“What’s with the inconvenience…?” The loud atmosphere greet you with chills. What time is it? You don’t even know. All you know is the sunrise have yet to grown out from the wave of the clouds. but why must all of your maids gather themself on your room, something important? But why must them gather at the edge of dusk..? Did your mother fucked up again? But actually, what happened?

At the same time, you mumbled a form of question. Where’s diluc? You asked yourself.

“Y-Your majesty! d-diluc have now been courted by the queen, i-i don’t know what happened but please stay put i shall help you! Yes! I-i—“ courted? In sudden, you dropped your glasses. The broken piece of the glasses shard scarred your leg. It was painful, but you didn’t care. The blood shed of your scars leave the carpet of your resident turn into a red motives of blood. What did diluc do to make himself courted by your own mother? All he did was to love me, mother. The maid beside you were in all panics, trying to brag your arm from leaving the room. Although you declined the embrace of it, you were still running in pain, it made the maids panics turn into vomits.

Rushing through the open corridor of your resident in sweats and blood shed, You found diluc. His hands tied with a rope, a slight red bruises covered his face. He was Courted by your mother because of an unknown letter that has been sent to the queen herself, it was dumb for her to court an innocent person like him. Though, at last, you found yourself screaming his name. The pain which hold onto your consciousness leave your body in a second. diluc was aware of this, Everything. His hands wanted to touch you and lead you to rest. but he couldn’t, the execution would be in front of his eyes in no time.

“you did harm my child don’t you? Look at those blood on their legs! How come a butler like you harmed my precious child..?! They are unconscious because of you filthy butler. Know your degree, h—“

“you abuse them, your highness. You abuse them, ever since their father die, you abandoned them and break them to pieces. How come you only care about them dying when their time to hold the throne came? They were dying because of you, those consumption they witness are all because of you. And you dare to tell me what to do when all i did was just to love them?!” He quoted every single words you wish you could say to your mothers face. You wished you have the audacity to tell her the truth, yet your weak body refuse it’s urge to make diluc out of the execution lines. I’m sorry, i’m really sorry.

silence fill the room. You were laying in pain, as you heard diluc’s defense and your mother’s lies. You realized once more, you were nothing to them. Just a pry for the throne. none of the guards have pitied you either, they are too focused on never-letting diluc’s eyes or hands meet your figure in this state of time. Those scarred glasses on your legs have made you lose too-many bloods, it scared diluc. After all, as a lover he is, he has devoted himself to protect you in all cost. let them be safe and take me away. It’s his last hope for you to stay awake for him.

“no execution needed. I have no reason to pay attention to fools like you. so isolation it is. This is all because of you, my child is dying and you’re the one at fault. Noticed how they haven’t even called your name again? They died because your lack of responsibility.” , spitting her mucus in diluc’s knees. You could barely saw diluc chills which you usually saw in his eyes. He’s about to cry..you think.

“Guards, please take my child away and let them rest in their bed. And so for this butler, put him in the isolation room, make sure to let him eat only once in a day, understood? Ah..don’t let my child see him, i don’t want them to see an abuser like him crawling out their life’s on my window.” , orders from your mother are none to first. They couldn’t be disobey and you understand them. You understand how ruthless it is, you understand it. But why must diluc? Why him? You saw the sight of him, blades are all over his neck. For what reason actually? To let him never see you again.

carried by the guards to your room and diluc was gone from your vision. He is not wrong, your highness. So why must those who loved me left my side, mother? Why won’t these bruises you add to my flawless skin never leave me? Is it because i’m a procession of your own sin? It was a cursed to fall in love with those you could barely reach.

PART 2 : COMING SOON

this is shitty, really shitty in fact. Though, thank you very much for reading this. Part 2 will come soon, if i had some energy to write the readers mother personality without getting pissed off. But anyways, see y’all soon at part 2 <3

#diluc ragnvindr #diluc x reader #diluc ragnvindr x reader #genshin impact diluc #genshin impact diluc ragnvindr #genshin impact #genshin impact headcannons #genshin impact childe #childe x reader #tartaglia x reader #genshin impact tartaglia #diluc x y/n #diluc ragnvindr x y/n #genshin impact fanfic #diluc angst #diluc comfort/hurt #childe angst #childe comfort/hurt

[goodieghosty]

Gift

This was getting long. So here it is! More to follow as always.

“You!” Orpheus looked up from sharpening his sword. Anicetus was storming into the training room where Damocles, Ajax and Orpheus were unwinding after an intense morning practice. The other commanding officers had already left and the trio had been having a pleasant conversation. Orpheus was feeling a lot better now. Deyo was a great comfort last night and quickly stole the hearts of the staff. And Damocles. He had a sense that he’d have to ensure that the poor thing didn’t get spoiled.

Virgil’s latest gift had been noticed too. He’d heard talk about it on his way to training. From what he gathered people weren’t sure what to think about it. Right now though he was watching Anicetus grab his brother by the tunic and dragging him up from where he had been sitting. A weird move if he wanted to be intimidating since this made Ajax tower over him. Being half god he was expected to be tall. Orpheus had to constantly look up at Virgil. And he might’ve been imagining things. But when he berated the treasurer it had seemed as though he was even taller? “What is it now?” Ajax sighed. Orpheus caught sight of Damocles slipping away with that look that spelled out trouble for whoever was messing with his friends. Whatever he was planning, Orpheus had to keep Anicetus from harming his brother and yet keep him here for his friend’s plan to unfold. “You went to father and told him didn’t you!?” he growled. Ajax frowned. “Told him what?” he wondered. “Don’t play dumb. Who else would have told him about my visit last night?” he hissed. “I’m not. After you left, I bid my friends goodbye and went to bed. My every waking thought is not spent figuring out how to make your life more difficult. I’m not you,” he pointed out. The shorter brother growled. “Think you’ve got it made huh? Cozied up with the Champion. Made yourself dad’s favorite. Slandered my good name…” “Okay, that’s enough,” Orpheus said, pulling at Anicetus’ shoulder when he realized Ajax was just going to let his brother keep going and not even try to defend himself. Physically or otherwise and he was starting to worry Anicetus would end up hitting Ajax. And while he was pretty sure, based on his past experience practicing single combat with him, that being half god also meant that it was a lot harder to hurt him, being struck hurts more than just the body. Anicetus’ eyes were flaming with fury and then cold as ice. “Oh, you got something to say Champion?” he said, clearly trying to still go for smooth. The anger he felt definitely ruined that though. “Yes, I would like for you not to hurt my friend over something he didn’t do. Virgil might’ve intervened in an attempt to protect me,” he insisted. “So in that case, you should hash this out with me. Not Ajax,” he pointed out, a plan forming in his head. From the corner of his eye he saw Damocles returning, taking in the situation with cautious eyes… Hmmm… Anicetus scoffed. “Oh?” He let go of his brother and stepped right into Orpheus’ space. “And how would you suggest, we ‘hash this out’ then?” he wondered lowly. Orpheus didn’t flinch away from him. “Single combat. If I win you leave it be and don’t seek anymore retribution,” he said. “Orpheus…” Ajax started but he fell silent. Orpheus could see it was Damocles who’d gestured for him to stop. With an authority his friend didn’t usually exude. “And if I win?” Anicetus asked, intrigued. “Well it is up to you to decide how you wish to be compensated for the slander of your name,” Orpheus allowed. This was clearly exactly what his friend’s brother had wanted to hear. “I’m sure we can come up with something interesting…” he mused. “Ground rules. A fair fight. It’s you, me and practice swords. We are not trying to injure one another. No backhanded tactics and no calling on the aid of the gods. They may only interfere should either of us show bad sportsmanship,” he stated. Anicetus chuckled. As Orpheus knew he would. Anicetus didn’t believe the gods were even paying attention. He might even count on them not caring. “Alright. So we agree, only the gods can interfere. Other than that, it’s a fight until one of us yields,” Anicetus pointed out. Orpheus nodded and let go of Anicetus. He took of Virgil’s symbol and turned to Ajax. “Hold this for me for a moment. I don’t want him to think I derive any strength form it,” he asked his friend. Ajax nodded as he took the stone with care, frowning in concern. “Orpheus… He’s no soldier, but he has been trained in swordplay since we were ten…” he warned. “And I’ve been getting in scuffles on the streets for just as long. We both have our advantages. But don’t worry. I don’t think he’s as confident in his chances at winning a fair fight with me as you are,” he stated. “Are we doing this?” Anicetus wondered from the other side of the room where he picked up two wooden practice swords, tossing one at Orpheus, who fumbled a bit to catch it, making himself look less competent on purpose so his opponent would be caught of guard by his skill. He wasn’t exceptionally gifted in the art of the sword. But he could hold his own quite nicely. Orpheus glanced at Damocles, who remained a quiet observer. He wondered if it was as clear to Ajax as it was to him… “Let’s go,” he agreed. Anicetus’ technique was admittedly more refined than Orpheus’. But Orpheus had more power behind his attacks and defense than his opponent. Not to mention that he was much more emotionally stable and a lot less overconfident. Anicetus could clearly tell that if he didn’t end the fight soon, he would make a mistake and Orpheus would see it and take advantage. And that was the first time he made a foul move. It was subtle, but he knew it was clear to Ajax who gasped from the sidelines. Orpheus recovered though and went in again. Anicetus smirked, clearly emboldened by the lack of interference. “I do look forward to having you owe me a favor,” he grinned. Orpheus ignored him and attempted to make him loose his footing. It worked, but Anicetus, in an admittedly good move, managed to use his momentum to his advantage, nearly hitting Orpheus in the stomach as he got back to his feet. They got back to it and soon Anicetus made another foul move. This one bolder. Yet again Orpheus recovered. This time Damocles shot up out of his position at the door, but he leaned back once he saw Orpheus had it handled. He moved in once more. Anicetus was still smug, but also getting impatient. Good, make a big move. See where it gets you. He did. And then Damocles had his wrist in his hand. “I don’t think so,” he growled. Anicetus smiled smugly. “You broke the agreement. Only the gods were allowed to interfere. I win by default,” he gloated. “Is that a fact…?” Damocles’ voice said… Only it was deeper, and echoed a little. Anicetus frowned confused. “This is the weirdest thing I’ve ever seen.” Orpheus looked up and saw Damocles enter the room, followed by a few council members, some of their fellow soldiers and some curious citizens. Anicetus looked between Damocles and the man holding his wrist in place. Clearly getting worried. “Yeah. He was here the whole time,” Orpheus whispered, a little smugly. “Damn… Do I really look like that? I look fiiine!” Damocles whistled. Meanwhile the not Damocles was glaring at Anicetus. “What should I do in retaliation for this insult?” he wondered lowly. “I feel like I should hand you to Janus. He’s quite fed up with your disrespect…” then he turned to Ajax. “He’s your brother… How upset would you be if I took the light from his eyes?” he wondered. Ajax was speechless. “Me… I… You aren’t seriously…” “I once tossed a guy into the sun for invading my personal space. I am dead serious,” Virgil, it was definitely Virgil, growled. “Oh, come on! Don’t tell me little Ajax hasn’t been flirting with the Champion from the moment they met,” Anicetus protested desperately. “And yet he did not make him feel uncomfortable with his advances. Orpheus,” there was a slight emphasis on his name and that set of butterflies in Orpheus’ stomach. “Is free to do whatever he wishes with whomever he fancies.” Oh if only that were true. “But, no one, is allowed to pursue him when he has made it clear he is not interested,” he explained. “On top of that you have been torturing your brother his whole life just for his lineage. You have been mocking me and every god in existence. You should count yourself lucky I am too damn nice to deliver you to the divine court for blasphemy,” Virgil growled. Then he turned to the councilmen. “Alec? Anny objections or suggestions?” he wondered. One of the councilmen, who Orpheus guessed was Ajax’ father knelt. “Anicetus has strayed milord. I know this. I am, however, responsible for his short comings. As his father, I failed him.” Virgil quirked his, brow… It was really weird to watch his best friend’s body act with the body language and facial expressions of the man/god he was in love with… and turned to Anicetus who was looking at his father in shock. “Well, look at that. A get out of jail free card. Will you take it Anicetus?” he wondered. “F- father… Why?” Anicetus asked, ignoring the god completely. Alec looked up, tears in his eyes. “Because despite everything, I do love you son,” he whispered. Anicetus stared at his father for a long time. And nodded. Then he turned to Virgil. “I will take whatever punishment you choose,” he said, voice trembling. “Ani…” Ajax gasped. “Don’t. Ajax. Please. Leave me some dignity,” Anicetus whispered. “You showed me some spine. I’ll give you that… I suppose I can be a little merciful,” Virgil mused as he snapped his finger and let go. Anicetus blinked, his eyes unseeing, his body trembling at the sudden loss of one of his senses. “It’s a curse, not a punishment. Therefore it can be lifted. Once you show true remorse for the ways you have wronged those around you,” Virgil declared coldly. Then he turned to Orpheus, again very weird to see the face of his best friend look at him like that… Soft and almost adoring. “I’ll see you when the pale light rises,” he whispered and then he was gone. Ajax approached his brother, unsure what to do. Alec rushed forwards. “Son, son it’s me…” he said softly trying not to startle him. “Father… I… I can’t see,” Anicetus whispered. “I know. It’ll be alright son. I’ll make sure you are taken care of until we fix this,” Alec said softly as he placed his hands on his son’s back and shoulder to guide him out. “I’ll see you later Ajax. Take care,” Alec bid sadly. Ajax nodded. Then Alec looked at Orpheus. “Thank you… If Janus had felt the need to interfere…” the elder man shook his head. “Thank you,” he repeated before heading out. Orpheus was a bit taken aback by what just transpired. He hadn’t really thought it through all the way to the end. He didn’t expect Virgil to actually curse Anicetus. Just, show him that he couldn’t get away with these things as he thought he could. “That… Wow. I knew gods could disguise themselves… But damn…” Damocles breathed as soon as the audience had left. “Yeah… When I was little I would often wonder if strangers in the street were actually my dad checking in on me in secret…” Ajax recounted a small sad smile on his face. “Well, he was here today,” Damocles shrugged, this got both Orpheus’ and Ajax’ attention. “There was a snake on his quiver,” Damocles shrugged. “And it moved.” Ajax smiled at that. “That’s… Nice to know,” he said softly. “Ajax I…” Orpheus started, not sure what to say. He wasn’t sure if Ajax was upset about how things had ended. “It’s alright Orpheus…” Ajax assured him as he handed him his symbol back. “Honestly I always worried he’d call a god’s wrath upon himself. I’m mostly relieved that Virgil didn’t make too much of an example out of him. He would have been in his right. But he’s still my brother. I care about him. Even if he doesn’t believe that,” Ajax sighed sadly. “What is his problem with you anyway?” Damocles asked as they went to change out of their armors and into their robes. They had a few meetings today. Strategizing and discussing the enemy’s attempts to penetrate their borders. The capitol had troupes dispatched to other conflicts and was very unlikely to be able to aid them. The pressure on Orpheus as a champion was increasing. He was hesitant to ask Virgil for a blessing. But he might have no other choice. People would likely also ask about the light in the night sky. “He’s resented me ever since I can remember. My mortal parents raised us as brothers, but they couldn’t exactly deny that I was not fully mortal myself. They tried to reassure Anicetus that he didn’t have to compete with me for anything. He took that to mean they didn’t expect him to amount to anything I guess. He didn’t trust me. I’m… A smooth talker. It’s the gift I got from my lineage. The silver tongue. Anicetus was convinced I would use it to conspire against him so…” “So he struck at you before you could strike at him,” Orpheus concluded. Ajax nodded. “He played a part in my lack of friends growing up. That’s why I was surprised he’d let us be for so long. I suppose preparing to join the council cut into his free time. Or maybe he thought he had a better shot after… After what happened…” Ajax looked between Orpheus and Damocles, checking if the reminder of the funeral had struck them with grief once more. Both soldiers stood firm though. “Anytime I said something nice to or about him he assumed it was part of a scheme. Since he couldn’t turn our parents against me- not even mother who, technically, wasn’t my mother- he assumed I’d charmed them already… I think… I think dad trying to take the fall for him finally made him realize that he has been fighting a one sided battle all along.” It spoke to Ajax’ character that he truly seemed to feel bad for a brother who’d resented him his whole life. “You know… It’s okay for you to be angry at him,” Orpheus offered, not wanting his friend to force himself to be noble when anger would be justified. “Yeah. He should have been your ally, if not your friend. That’s what brothers do. Even when you have a fight you stick up for one another,” Damocles pointed out. Orpheus chuckled. “You mean like that time you weren’t talking to me for weeks but when those guys tried to beat me up you came running to help me out?” he recalled. “Exactly,” Damocles grinned ruffling Orpheus’ already messy hair. Ajax sighed. “I know… I suppose I let go of anger long ago. It leads nowhere I want to go. Not anger at my father. Nor anger at my brother… And… Well.” He looked at Orpheus. “Thanks to you walking into my tent that night, I learned that my father does pay attention and does approve of the path I’ve chosen for myself. That meant more to me than I’d ever have imagined. Maybe I’ll finally get a more positive relationship with my brother at the end of this. Who knows?” he shrugged. “Well,” Orpheus sighed as he tied a red cloth around his waist. He liked the way it contrasted with his black robe, his preferred choice for formal functions if he wasn’t wearing his armor. He’d always liked red. Never could afford dyed fabrics before though. “We’ll just have to see. For now, we have duties to attend,” he reminded them. Damocles groaned. “Serves you right for insisting to enlist as my right hand,” Orpheus teased his friend, though he shared his reluctance. Those meetings made him nervous. Everyone acted like he magically became a tactical genius and an expert on warfare and politics when Virgil took notice of him. Luckily Ajax was always there to remind the people that he, not Orpheus, was affiliated with the god of war and strategy. Still sometimes Orpheus managed to say something that sounded kind of competent to his own ears. And the council tended to agree. He just hoped they didn’t do it just because they were unwilling to speak out against him. Considering Virgil had personally appeared to confirm his status. With him appearing a second time, and cursing someone for him, they might be even more nervous about getting on his bad side. That was going to be fun. He was especially nervous about seeing Alec again. He’d never given any indication of being related to Ajax until that morning despite the many meetings Orpheus attended. “He doesn’t want the other members of the council to feel like I am getting by on my family’s good will alone.” The young general told him when asked. And that made a lot of sense. The meetings went fairly well, all things considered. There was a tension in the air but it wasn’t as bad as Orpheus had feared. Maybe Ajax wasn’t the only one who’d been expecting his brother to anger a god one of these days. He kept waiting for someone to bring up the nightlight. But it didn’t come. And since he didn’t have as much information on Virgil’s gift as he’d like, he decided not to bring it up until he got a chance to talk to him. When he went to the temple that evening before heading home he could tell the people looking to learn about Virgil were a little nervous. The reason for that, was an unexpected one. “Is Virgil alright?” “Where did the light in the night come from?” “Is he under attack?” Orpheus raised his hands to silence his audience. “Don’t worry. The light is a gift from Virgil to us. So we may find our way to him at any time without worrying about using light sources,” he explained. It didn’t feel right to make the people wait for answers when they so clearly needed them. That would definitely spread the bad kind of fear. He just hoped he didn’t speak out of turn. His words did not just calm the masses, it got them excited. They dispersed and left Orpheus to pray and leave his offering, a bundle of lavender, it’s scent reminding him of how calming it’d been to be in Virgil’s embrace. Damocles was waiting for him outside the temple. “Want to pass by your temple before we head home?” Orpheus suggested. Damocles was a lover first and foremost. He’d picked up archery because as a child he’d wanted to one day become a cupid. He sort of succeeded. Most everywhere he went couples soon started forming. They occasionally joked that he was a far off descendant of a love god. He’d had many crushes and short lived romances himself. Nothing that lasted though. “Not tonight. But thanks man,” Damocles said a sad sort of smile on his face. “Oh no… Who is it?” Orpheus wondered. “Don’t know what you are talking about,” Damocles insisted stubbornly. “I know that face. You like someone. And the fact that you are not running to the temple to pray for some aid right now means you feel like you’ve been rejected already. So who is it I need to knock some sense into?” the champion insisted. “It’s nothing like that Orphy. I’m just… Still deciding if it’s worth it to try,” Damocles clarified. “Okay… Fine. But you tell me if they break your heart,” Orpheus reminded him. Damocles laughed and nodded. “I will.” They had dinner together and then both retreated to their rooms. There Orpheus was met with a visitor. Was it normal for gods to visit people in their homes rather than at their temples? Or was that exclusively a champion thing? “Virgil… welcome back,” he said quite flustered to find his god standing at his window, looking at the white light streaming in. A heavy dark cloak over his shoulders. “Are you upset with me?” he wondered. Orpheus was shocked to find he sounded nervous. “Upset?” he asked. “Yesterday you did not wish for me to strike at that…” Virgil took a breath and changed what he was going to say. “At your friend’s brother. Not only did I ignore your wishes, I did so very publicly. After all you did to make the people believe that there was more to me than they thought… You would not be wrong to be upset with me,” he said, still not looking at him. “I am not upset with you. And none of the people think any less of you. It was clear that you were rather merciful considering his crimes. And you gave him a chance at redemption. That is more than many probably thought he deserved.” Virgil slowly turned. By the heavens he looked handsome in this light. Once more he was dressed in his robes. Not that Orpheus minded all that much… “You told the people of my gift. Thank you.” He said. “I hope I told no lies,” he said. Virgil shook his head. “Your description was accurate. You may want to tell the people that the light has been named ‘moon’. But you had questions for me. Mind if we sit while I answer them?” Virgil wondered, his right arm leaving the darkness of the cloak to gesture to the bed. Which was weird considering Orpheus had always seen Virgil favor his left. “Yes of course,” he nodded as he sat down. Virgil joining him close enough for Orpheus to feel his warmth. Virgil told him about his willingness to inspire courage and help alleviate debilitating phobias in exchange for a good offering. He’d aid in escaping harmful relationships of any kind if he could, just on a prayer. He was not okay with people damaging each other’s trust and would gladly aid in those situations. “Does that help my champion?” Virgil asked gently. Orpheus nodded. He didn’t want to ask for more. But the council would expect him to arrive with a blessing soon… “Good. Now. I have one more thing I wish to grant you,” Virgil said, sounding strangely tense. Orpheus looked at him curiously. Virgil stood and gestured for him to follow his example. Orpheus did, and next he knew, Virgil wrapped his cloak around him, skillfully clasping it closed with the brooch. Orpheus’ attention was on the skeletal left arm though. It was not nearly as alarming to him as he’d expect it to be. The second the fabric touched his skin he felt a calm clarity fill his mind. Still he registered that this was worrying. “Virgil,” he whispered. Reaching for the arm, but not daring to touch. “For a gift like this, we must pay a price. I cannot, and will not take it back,” he insisted. “Only you will be able to bear it’s weight. As long as the sun is not in the sky, and you wear the hood up, you shall be unseen. No manmade weapons can penetrate this fabric any more than they could damage me. This will keep you safe in battle,” he informed him firmly. He frowned thoughtfully. “I fear I will need time to recover. Between making the cloak and appearing in disguise today on top of casting a curse… I won’t be able to visit. But I will be watching over you,” Virgil promised. Orpheus felt his heart sink a little at the thought of not seeing Virgil for a while. Then Virgil’s frown became focused and he took Orpheus’ head between his hands, the left hand felt quite odd, but Orpheus could feel it there, and see a soft pinkish glow from the corner of his eye. Then his face was bent down and he felt soft lips brush against his forehead, setting his face on fire. “Until we meet again. Dear champion of mine,” Virgil whispered. And then Orpheus was alone. “Meow!” Orpheus jumped and fell onto his bed. Promptly joined by Deyo. Orpheus burst out laughing and petted the critter. “I don’t know what to think of all of that Deyo… Perhaps something to consider in the morning?” he suggested. Deyo let out another meow and Orpheus decided that that was a yes. He got up and carefully hung the cloak away, marveling at the fact that Virgil had permanently given up a piece of himself for the sake of his protection. He’d miss Virgil while he recovered. But in a strange way, he’d always have him close.

——

YOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO H E L L YE

Damocles👀 oooooo he has a c r u s h?? Plz

Share with the class, I need! To know!!

#submission #lovelivingmydreams #godsides au #others fics #caps

[teyvattherapist]

Hi! Do you remember the headcanons of the god of fate request you had?

Can I request the same but with Kaeya, Venti and Childe.

Still male reader :)

This is a part two to this piece >God of Fate< So for more context, go check that one out first!

Thank you for the request, this whole idea comes somewhat easy to me, then I immediately get nervous it isn't what you want haha! Oh well! I hope you enjoy<3

Tags: m!reader/Kaeya, m!reader/Venti, m!reader/Tartaglia, Khaenri'ah spoilers, Kaeya spoilers, Tartaglia's real name, Venti's real name, God!Reader, angst if you squint, canon typical violence.

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Khaenri’ah wouldn’t have had any survivors if it hadn’t been for a particular man that seemed unfazed by the battlefield the once prosperous nation of humanity became. Neither Khaenri’ahn nor from Celestia, simply an outlander. Despite showing great fighting prowess and strategic skill, Khaenri’ah had still fallen under the watchful gaze of the man. Of course, this was just a legend, a small rumour only known by the most curious of historians or academics. And even then, it’s debated. With the legacy of Khaenri’ah long gone, all that was left was anecdotal evidence.

Kaeya Alberich

-His biological father told stories of a man dressed in the silk of the Gods that drew steel against steel in the war of Khaenri’ah.

-He didn’t really believe in that though, to him, it was just that. A story. Just a fairytale to explain what time had lost.

-Kaeya had almost completely forgotten these fairytales, his childhood a hazy blip he did his best to forget. But the oddest stranger arriving in Mondstadt made it hard to forget certain aspects of those stories.

Kaeya slid into the seat across from you, sliding a wine glass to you. You raise an eyebrow at the suddenness of the situation, eyes flicking to the glass of glorified grape product. “You’re new to Mondstadt right? I’m the Cavalry Captain, Kaeya, I’d be happy to show you around.” His voice was smooth, suave as if he were hiding something. You picked up the wine glass, sniffing the wine. Mortal food and drink always smelled so weird. Tasted weird too. Kaeya watched you with a curious eye and you hummed, setting the wine glass back down.

"Kaeya Alberich right? I knew your father."

"Master Cr-"

"The other one." You smile at him, sliding the wine glass back. "I don't drink this stuff. Thank you though." You pulled your sleeve up, checking one of the watches on your wrist. Kaeya seemed taken back and you wondered if you perhaps misjudged his ability to lie. He seemed to recover quickly enough, eye narrowing at you. "Do you have questions, Captain? Or may I return to my work?" Work. Yes. That was one way to describe the recording of history and fate itself. A job.

"So it is you. You're real." Kaeya dropped his voice as you picked your book back up. You give him a short nod and he sits back, processing the turn of events. Fascinating, how many people you've run into who know of you. A stark difference to the last time you had been in Teyvat, recording the fall of a nation. "Tell me why you're in Mondstadt." Kaeya dropped his pretense, much preferable to you. You merely shake your head, it isn't your place to discuss the fate of Teyvat and the endless routes that will lead to it.

Venti

-Much like Morax, Barbatos had fought you in the war. Unlike Morax, Barbatos didn’t let his surprise stop him. Barbatos recognised your divinity, but elected to ignore it in favour of drawing the bowstring back.

-What was more surprising was his arrow being deflected by something he hadn’t seen before, that was when he realised you weren’t a rogue from Celestia but an outlander from somewhere else entirely.

-That was years ago though, he didn’t talk about the war, and he wished desperately to forget it. Barbatos opted to up the persona of Venti the Bard instead, but upon his return to Mondstadt, his past would follow.

Venti’s eyes widened when he pushed the tavern door open, his eyes immediately drawn to one of the visible tables, the cavalry captain sitting with a strange and far too familiar man. Feeling eyes on you, you lifted your head, making eye contact with the teal eyed bard. Kaeya turned his head to look over his shoulder at the bard. Venti drew closer when Kaeya beckoned him to do so. You watched as the God of Freedom sat down beside the Khaenri'ahn captain. So many familiar faces indeed.

"Hello Bar-"

"Venti, actually. Long time no see."

"Venti, alright. Yes I believe the last we saw of each other you tried to kill me." You tapped your pen against the leather bound book on the table, a small smile on your face. "No hard feelings, of course. I had stepped out of line anyway." Your revelation surprised the God, the sight somewhat satisfying. Venti swallowed thickly, grabbing the abandoned wine glass, he downed the beverage. "Well fate waits for no one, I have to go." You stood with the book in hand. Venti watched you intently as you left the tavern, the bard gesturing to Charles for more wine.

"Have a bad history?"

"He deflected a flying arrow in the middle of a battlefield, he's terrifying." Venti shuddered, shaking his head. While his Geo counterpart may have been curious of the God's appearance in the warning letter he had sent to Venti. Venti was anything but curious. He didn't want to know why a God from a different world was once more patrolling the land of Teyvat. Especially now that his gnosis was gone, he didn't want to know what it meant or what it could possibly imply.

Tartaglia

-Tartaglia knew the Gods were around, he served one. But regarding Khaenri’ah or that cataclysm he wasn't entirely sure. His time in the Abyss was spent solely focused on surviving.

-He was never really in a position to learn about any of that, living life blissfully aware of worlds outside of his own.

-Then the Traveler showed up and he heard whispers of them being from beyond, then they were followed by a man in a cloak made of material he had never seen before.

-And well the Traveler was a good opponent, why not this other stranger?

You lifted your head, eyes curiously looking ahead. There was a rustling above you and you slipped off the rock just as an arrow hit where you had been sitting. A tall ginger jumped from the tree, drawing his bowstring back once more. You clicked your pen, the item turning into a sword that was then used to skillfully cut the flying arrow in half. "Your form is sloppy.." You sighed, flipping the sword in your hand as he readied another arrow. "I'm not going to fight a human, is there something you need or are you just suicidal?" Another arrow flew by your head, embedding itself into a nearby tree.

Your words seemed to dawn on Tartaglia who lowered his bow slightly. "Human? You're a God? That'll just make this win more rewarding!" The ginger readied his bow once more. You just wanted to take a nice rest in the Snezhnayan forest, but of course it wouldn't be that easy. Before he could knock another arrow something invisible wrapped around his wrists, tightening until he had no choice but to drop his weapon into the snow. When the occasional ray of sun hit the clearing they were in, the invisible thread around his wrists shimmered an ethereal gold.

"I'm just.. a keeper of records. There are more enjoyable Gods to fight. Now if you don't mind." You flicked your wrist and the ginger was brought to his knees much to his chagrin at the turn of events. Your pen returned and you tucked it securely into your pocket. For a moment you just stared at him and he stared back, dull blue eyes boring into your very soul, or perhaps lack of. "Well. Nice meeting you in person, Ajax. You should keep up the work on the anger issues." You turned to leave, listening to him struggle against the binds.

"How do you know my name?"

Oops.

"I know everything and nothing!" You wave over your shoulder, snow crunching underfoot as you leave him in the clearing alone. Tartaglia watched your retreating form until he couldn't see you anymore. And it was then that the invisible threads retracted, allowing him to gather his weapon and give his wrists a quick rub to ease the sudden stiffness.

In your multiple times to Teyvat, it would always be the world that proved most in need of intervention. Though that wasn't part of your job description, you couldn't help it. Even the sky above warned of the brewing storm that would take the continent by storm. Most recently it had been the Cataclysm, this time? You weren't sure which way Teyvat would lean. Too many possibilities, too many options, and none were yours to make.

#Kaeya x reader #Venti x reader #Tartaglia x reader #Childe x reader #m!reader #asks #Anonymous #Lane Writes #Kaeya Alberich #Tartaglia #Venti #Genshin Impact #Genshin Impact x reader #i suck at tags help #kept the intro from the last one since its just easiest #God of Fate

[amethystroselilith]

Intertwined Fates (Chilumi/Zhonglumi) - Chapter 4

Free from uni for now... Hopefully I can write more! Thank you for waiting patiently!

Can be read in ao3 here

SUMMARY:  As Ajax looks forward to their future, someone from the past awakens...

“You know, just because I said I wanted more kids, doesn’t mean we have to do it like every night… or whenever we’re alone…” Lumine gave out a slight moan in the end when she felt her lover suck that sensitive mark on her neck, “Ajax, it’s too early in the morning and I need to walk today.” she whined, gasping when he bit her softly.

“Sorry, you look too delicious.” Ajax grinned, letting go of her so she could roll on her back to look at him with a pout.

“Same excuses.” Lumine playfully rolled her eyes, “Anyway… do you think she’s ready for school?”

Lumine felt Ajax tensed, letting out a sigh when she saw his shoulder trembling, “Oh my god, Ajax, please…”

“My baby girl is growing too fast.” his voice cracked.

Ever since Lumine reminded Ajax about Qiqi starting school a week ago, the man had been a bit emotional. Coddling the child ever since and keep asking if she’s ready, and it’s totally fine if she doesn't want to and he can just hire a private tutor for her. Lumine had to hit him at the back of the head saying that it’s important for their child to learn how to socialise.

“Lumi, our baby will be surrounded by boys! I can’t handle the thought of giving my princess away, Lumi, I can’t!”

“Ajax, she’s 5.”

“I can’t, Lumi!”

Lumine isn’t gonna lie, she’s also worried about how Qiqi would fare being with other kids considering she hadn’t interacted with kids her age.

But this should be it, right? The right time for Qiqi to meet and interact with other children.

The blonde also has that anxiety within her, what if someone’s mean to her child? Crush Qiqi’s dreams of having playmates?

Qiqi isn’t sure what she’s getting into, but as her parents explained what school was, there was excitement in her eyes as they talked about the various learning activities it has.

Besides, the pre-school was only a couple blocks away from their bakery, Lumine should be able to be by her side when needed.

“Lumi, what if our Qiqi falls in love? And that punk beaks her heart? She would be safer here, I already have the best tutor in mind.” Ajax tries to convince her.

“Ajax, for the last time, no one’s falling in love with anyone.” Lumine groaned, “And if it’ll make you feel better, the class has more girls than boys.”

“...What if she likes girls?”

“Then we love her just as much, but for fuck sake, Ajax, they’re kids. Worry when she’s in high school or college.” Lumine rolled her eyes, only to regret it when Ajax gave her a horrified look.

“I don’t want my baby to grow up.” he cried.

“Ajax, we can’t stop the cycle of life…” Lumine sighed, it’s too early to deal with this.

“So that’s why we should make more babies.” Ajax grinned, only to be hit by a pillow on the face.

“Oh my god, I’m going to check on Qiqi before dealing with any more of your bullshit this early morning,” Lumine said with a chuckle.

“Baaabe, homeschooling isn’t so bad!” Ajax called out for her only to receive an eye roll.

He pouted and decided to get ready himself, Qiqi’s going to school, he doesn’t need to work from home anymore. So it’s back to the office with him, back to dealing with his insufferable co-workers, especially the midget.

With that thought, he got up from the bed with an annoyed groan.

~~~

“Bye, bye, Papa. Love you.” Qiqi said, kissing his cheek before getting out of the car and grabbing her mother’s waiting hand.

“Bye, sweetie, have fun at school, okay? And if someone hurts you, tell Papa so I can take care of it, okay? Papa loves you.” Ajax smiled, earning a scoff from Lumine.

“Don’t teach our child violence this early.” she tsked before leaning in the car window, “Good luck at work and don’t kill anyone. I love you,” she said before pecking his lips goodbye.

“Hm, I’ll try not to make Mona a widow.” he grinned, “Bye, see you tonight. I love you too.” Ajax said, waiting and watching his girls to make sure they’ll be fine before driving off to his office.

Despite still being anxious for his daughter’s first day of school, he can’t help but fall in love with their new routine already. Him making their breakfast while Lumine prepares Qiqi for school, him dropping them off at the bakery, Lumine walking Qiqi the few minutes walk to her preschool. They all do their day until Qiqi’s done with preschool by 12 noon, Lumine picking her up and staying at the bakery until it’s time for Ajax to pick them up and go back home.

He can’t wait until more of his future kids join their routine.

Ajax is never trading this life for anything.

~~~

“Thank you, and have fun with your new kite!” the brunette smiled softly as he handed the kite to the child.

“Thank you, Mister! Thank you, Dad!” the little girl grinned, jumping excitedly as she hugged the toy to her chest, “Let’s go to the park! I wanna see the fairy fly!” she pulled her father out of the store.

The father just gave the employee a smile and wave before he’s led out by his daughter.

“Isn’t it nice seeing their little smiles? So bright and hopeful.” the old owner chuckled as she rearranged the toys on display.

“It is a great feeling.” he smiled.

He wondered how the father feels seeing his child happy, it must be a wonderful feeling .

Does he have a child of his own?

As he wrecked his mind for anything, he came up with nothing.

Looking at the golden band on his finger, he wonders yet again about the blonde woman who seemed etched in his mind.

“Ah, Zhongli, don’t you worry. My grandson is good with computers, I’m sure we’ll find her soon.” Granny Shan encouraged as she saw the look on his face again.

Zhongli forced out a smile, “Thank you, Granny Shan.”

It’s been a week since he awakened.

A week since it was explained that he ended up in a coma after being in a plane accident. Granny Shan had been his saviour, had taken him under her care, even transported his comatose body in this region when she moved to build another toy store. When asked why Granny Shan just gave a sad smile and talks about how he reminded her of her son whom she lost from an accident as well

Zhongli thinks she’s lucky to find an empty lot close to a preschool. He could imagine kids dragging their parents here when they’re let out.

Still, a week had gone by and still no memories coming back. All he knows is his name thanks to the ID he had on him, unfortunately, most of the information had been scratched off, or made unreadable thanks to being submerged in a puddle for too long before he was found, and the fact that he’s married because he has a ring on him. He could only assume the beautiful blonde woman is his wife, why else would he keep dreaming of coming back to her?

The lack of information on himself forced him to stay with Granny Shan. Choosing to help her after he recovered enough to do so while at the same time, doing all he can to remember.

While Granny Shan would contact her grandson and would receive a list of profiles, but none of them had been her.

Zhongli doesn’t blame him though, all he could offer him was her physical appearance, which is so hard to track down without any name to refer to. Not to mention her grandson isn’t even a part of a government organisation that would be able to get a hold of registered citizens, he was an IT, but the fact that he helps a stranger like Zhongli makes him a hero in Zhongli’s eyes.

And he wishes no further to burden them with his problems, but unfortunately, he can’t do anything but help around the toy store.

Though as much as he would like to come home, 5 years is a pretty long time.

How is she now?

Where is she now?

What is she doing now?

Upon finding out that he had been in a coma for five years, Zhongli vomited. It was a lot to take in and the fact that he can’t remember anything is very overwhelming and frustrating.

He was depressed for days, recovering and getting back on his feet just last night and asking Granny Shan if he could help because the blonde woman was encouraging him, asking him to come back to her.

She would sing sweetly for him, yet he can’t remember the lyrics as soon as he woke up.

Waking up without her had been torture for Zhongli so far, the need to be with her is growing stronger by the day, and he doesn’t know just how long he can wait until he breaks and go crazy chasing after a woman he doesn’t even know still exist.

His eyes widened at the thought, quickly shaking it off as he felt his heart race anxiously and his stomach churning badly.

Of course, she exists, why else would she keep asking him to come home?

His head began to ache, and it seemed it shows since Granny Shan is walking to him with a worried face, “Maybe it’s time for a break, yeah? Do you have a headache?”

Zhongli shook his head, “I’m fine don’t worry,” he smiled, “I should be fine if I drink-”

“I’ll make you some tea.”

“Please, I don’t want to bother-”

“Sonny, it’s fine, making tea should be easy for an old lady like me rather than having to man the cashier, don’t you think so? It’s almost noon, meaning kids might be filling the store soon.” Granny Shan explained with a smile, “Now just wait there, okay?”

Zhongli nodded in defeat, “Alright.”

Granny Shan then left to go to the back, where it functions as their home. It’s a decent size with 2 bedrooms, a kitchen, and a bathroom.

The man busies himself with rechecking the toys displayed, making sure they’re properly placed that children can see them. He sweeps for a few, just waiting for the time to pass by. He may have started working today, but he could hear the commotion before when it reaches noon as the store is filled with customers. It made him feel bad thinking about leaving the old lady alone, but there was nothing he could do about it but work his best.

It soon struck 12 and as expected, the small preschool across the street had released their students. Zhongli straightened up, preparing to greet customers as he already saw some kids dragging their parents in their shop. He watched as some kids threw tantrums when their parents denied them, some making their way excitedly to his shop, there were already two little girls looking at the display. The blonde one with elven ears pointed at a little plushie resembled some kind of a rabbit inside a red bag, her red eyes sparkling as she talks to the other girl. Zhongli can’t help but smile at her friend’s reaction, her magenta eyes wide with fascination as she listens to her talk.

They then met eyes, Zhongli smiling brightly with a small wave, making the girl return the gesture with a wide smile.

He also waved at the little blonde girl who is now tugging at the older blonde guy they were with.

“Albedo-oniichan, let’s get it, please! Pleaaaseee!” he can hear her behind the window, “Klee has been very good! Klee didn’t get sent to the corner by Ms Jean! Please, please, please!”

The man Zhongli assumed as Albedo smiled softly, “Well since you didn’t cause trouble, let’s go.”

Klee squealed in excitement, and seemed like was about to invite her friend, but it looks like the purple-haired girl was looking at someone who Zhongli couldn’t see.

Zhongli assumed it was her parents or guardian picking her up since she waved goodbye to her friend. He was a bit taken back when she turned to him and waved goodbye to him as well, but he returned the gesture with a smile.

For some reason, he felt some sort of happiness for the little girl.

He didn’t get to think much of it since customers had started pouring inside.

~~~

Zhongli once again smiled at the little purple-haired girl when she passed by the shop again. It had been 4 days so far and they had always been waving at each other when they passed by.

“Does that girl not have a guardian with her? I don’t think I’ve seen her with an adult.” Zhongli hummed as he cleans the shelves.

“Hm? The purple-haired one? Ah, her mother works at the bakery a couple of blocks away, it’s a few minutes walk, 2 or 3 at most. She only needs to step out of the bakery and watch from there, so she’s completely safe.” Granny Shan explained, “They have great pastries, by the way, I brought one home earlier, seems like a new product of theirs, feel free to eat them, they’re in the fridge.”

“Ah, it’s nice that their workplace is close to her school.” Zhongli hummed, a sudden craving for pastries appeared, and a specific sort of flavour too.

Zhongli ignored the craving, not wanting to leave the old woman alone with cleaning.

“Quite an adorable family too, I met her husband as well, a protective father he is.” she chuckled.

Zhongli can’t help but wonder, if he has a child, what kind of father was he?

He hopes they’re doing well if he does have. What a shame it was that he suddenly disappeared from their lives.

A longing feeling blossomed in his chest again, oh how he would love to meet the blonde goddess in his dreams, how elated he will be to find out if she bore his child.

“Say, Granny Shan, weren’t you saying about giving me a salary?”

“Hm? Did you change your mind about not getting them?” Granny Shan hummed.

“No, but shall I use that to buy that big finch plushie?” Zhongli asked, remembering how the little girl’s eyes would look at the bird-shaped stuffed toy longingly.

Granny Shan smiled, knowing exactly what he’s thinking, “Of course.” she chuckled, “Have you grown attached to the little girl already? It hasn’t been long nor did you two ever talk. It’s a shame I forgot her name, my memory isn’t the best.”

Zhongli smiled embarrassingly, “I just feel a bit bad, she’s been eyeing the toy ever since. Though, I’m a bit worried what her parents would think.”

The old lady waved him off, “Don’t worry about that, just put on our card so they know it’s from here, they know me there and that I own this place.”

Zhongli's smile brightened, “Thank you!”

He can’t wait to make a kid’s day bright.

~~~

The very next day, Zhongli waited for the little girl to pass again, he doesn’t know why but he felt so excited.

Just like on routine, she passed by again, and instead of waving, Zhongli gestured for her to wait. She listened, having been familiar with the old lady who owned the store, that’s why her mother didn’t have to wait for her outside. Granny Shan had been the one watching over her since Zhongli had been doing most of the work inside the store.

She gasped when Zhongli showed her the toy she’d been eyeing her. She immediately hugged it when handed to her, Zhongli can’t help but be in awe at the appreciative gesture.

“Thank you, thank you, thank you!” she jumped, hugging the plushie half her size.

Granny Shan can’t help but smile at the interaction, oh how she wishes Zhongli would be able to find his home with his family.

“It’s no problem, little one. I hope you take good care of them.” Zhongli smiled.

“Qiqi will name him Mr Finch.” the girl said.

Qiqi

There was a sudden pain in Zhongli’s head, not wanting to scare the little girl, he hid the pain.

“Well, I’m glad Mr Finch is in capable hands.” he smiled through the pain.

“Qiqi can’t wait until Mama and Papa meet him! Thank you, Mr!” Qiqi said once again before she had to make her way to her mother’s bakery.

As soon as Qiqi is far enough, Zhongli releases a groan as he rubs his temples.

“Something wrong?” Granny Shan asked with worry as she followed Zhongli inside.

“It’s probably just the heat or something.” Zhongli reassured, “It should be fine after taking a break.”

Granny Shan nodded, “Well, the day should be slow now, go on and take a break. You can even walk outside? The fresh air should be good for you.” she smiled.

Zhongli nodded at the suggestion before going back to his room.

As he lay down on his bed, he can’t help but think about what had happened.

Qiqi

The name tugged something in his chest, but he just can’t understand what it is.

He took a deep breath to ease his headache, maybe he should go for a walk after a nap.

#chilumi #zhonglumi #chilumi/zhonglumi #genshin impact

[malibvnghts]

[  aleksey voicelines  ]

HELLO  --  my name’s aleksey  ,  but many call me alex or alek or lex . . . ahh  ,  don’t mind the title people gave me  ,  it’s so embarrassing  !!  hm  ??  oh  !!  i look familiar  ??  it’s probably because you’ve met my little brother  !!

CHAT : COMPANIONSHIP  --  travels are more fun when done with friends  ,  don’t you think  ??  plus  ,  it’s safer and warmer  .

CHAT : HUNTING  --  oh  ??  you’ve never been hunting before  ??  next time  , we should go together  !!  i know a lot of good places for boars  .

CHAT : THE FATUI  --  they’re not people you should be associating with . . . i know not all of them are bad  ,  but you shouldn’t get too tangled with them  .

CHAT : FAMILY  --  my family is so big  !!  i’d love to introduce you to all of them one day  .

AFTER THE RAIN  --  in snezhnaya  ,  i’d prefer snow over rain . . . water freezing can make it dangerous for so many people  .  but here  ,  it’s not so bad  ,  it’s refreshing  .

WHEN IT SNOWS  --  i hope we have enough firewood . . . it’ll be dangerous for the kids to go out and get it  .  

WHEN IT’S WINDY  --  i’ve always wondered what it’s like to fly a kite . . . maybe one day i’ll be able to experience that joy

WIND IS BUILDING UP  --  feels like a good day for the sailors  ,  we should head to the harbor for some fresh fish  .

GOOD MORNING  --  did you sleep well  ??  what would you like for breakfast  ??  

GOOD AFTERNOON  --  ah  ,  right on time  !!  i saved a seat for you  ,  come . . . what would you like  ??

GOOD EVENING  --  hm  ,  let me walk you home . . . it’s getting quite dark out  ,  it wouldn’t be right for my to let my friends go home like this  .

GOOD NIGHT  --  sleep tight  ,  don’t let the bed bugs bite  !!  haha  ,  sorry  ,  sorry . . . i’m so used to tucking in teucer and the kids  .

ABOUT ALEKSEY  --  the moniker lord of wolves was given because a child got lost in the wild and came back the leader of a pack of wolves  ,  loyal only to him  .  they do not know the darkness and terrors the child faced  ,  they cared only for the fact that the child had tamed a pack of rabid canines  .

ABOUT US : COOKING  --  i think i’m a fairly good cook  ,  i do work in a tavern  ,  after all  .  but  ,  i don’t get to cook much because my work has me away from home during meal times  .

ABOUT US : INFORMATION  --  what’s that  ??  information  ??  i don’t know where you heard that . . . meet me at the back entrance  ,  but you better be ready to pay the price  .

ABOUT US : WOLVES  --  come  ,  don’t be afraid .  . . contrary to rumors  ,  they’re quite the friendly bunch  .  give them a pat  ,  promise  ,  they don’t bite  .

ABOUT US : SIBLINGS  --  the kids are a bit rowdy at times  ,  but they’re good kids and mean well  .  i bet they’ll love you the moment you meet  !!

ABOUT THE VISION  --  can’t say that i have much to say about visions . . . neither love them nor hate them  ,  i just have it  .  it does make my life a bit easier  ,  but i wouldn’t die without it either  .

SOMETHING TO SHARE  --  fire-water made from different water sources tastes vastly different  ,  here  ,  i can show you  !!  our tavern owns a large collection  ,  but let me tell you . . . the snezhnyy volk is the best brand  .

INTERESTING THINGS  --  the snow around my home is very clean . . . you can make snow cones out of them  ;  i had a merchant purchase me some syrups for the kids to use  ,  would you like one  ??

ABOUT TARTAGLIA  --  ajax  ??  ah . . . i wish that kid would come home once in a while  ,  we miss him here  .  i don’t approve of what he’s doing  ,  but i respect his choices  .  i just want him to come home safe  .

ABOUT TSARITSA  --  she’s a ruler with many things she can learn from other regents and archons  .  that’s all i’ll say  ,  lest i be captured for treason  .

ABOUT DILUC  --  i remember that kid  ,  he got caught by the harbinger’s once  .  we got really lucky in being able to break him out  .  i hope he’s been doing well  ,  last i heard  ,  he’s some rich tycoon  .

ABOUT TEUCER  --  kid’s got adventurer’s blood in him  ;  courage like ajax and father  ,  he snuck on board a ship and made it all the way to liyue harbor without issue  .  he’s going to go far one day  .

ABOUT BEIDOU  --  a fearless leader that i aspire to be  ;  she’s got an amazing crew and strength i have never seen before  .  those rumors about her defeating a leviathan at sea  ??  100% true  .

MORE ABOUT ALEKSEY : I  --  you can call me a family man . . . i treasure my family above everything else  .  for them  ,  i’d do anything  ;  they can call me and i’ll drop everything for them  .  they’re my entire life  !!

MORE ABOUT ALEKSEY : II  --  ahh . . . you’re eyeing maxim  ??  no worries  ,  maxim is a gentle soul . . . the rest of his pack is gentle too  ,  you may have seen them wandering the outskirts of the village  .  they’re the pack that saved me when i went missing in the woods  ,  they’re precious to me  ,  they’re family  .

MORE ABOUT ALEKSEY : III  --  my cooking  ??  it was a learning process  ,  i couldn’t cook that well before  ,  but those few weeks in the wild taught me that maybe i should know how  .  i enlisted the help from my mother and the cook at the tavern  ,  and now  ,  i can confidently say that i can make a pretty good meal  .

ALEKSEY’S HOBBIES  --  hunting is a good past time of mine  ,  whenever i have time  ,  i pick up my bow and arrow and head into the woods  .  on a good day  ,  i can bring home a boar or two and share it with the neighbors  ;  on bad days  ,  i just think of it as target practice  .

ALEKSEY’S TROUBLES  --  i wonder if ajax is getting enough to eat and taking care of himself . . . i’d send him things form home  ,  but i wouldn’t know what  .  though i’ve been at his age  ,  i have no idea what sort of things he wants or is going through  .  is it always this difficult to be separated from family  ??

FAVORITE FOOD  --  hm  ??  ajax’s cooking  !!  haha  ,  joking  ,  joking  .  i’m not a picky eater  ,  i’d say perhaps one with cured ham or something warm and hearty to offset the cold climate here  .

LEAST FAVORITE FOOD  --  i don’t really have one . . . mother used to say i hated carrots  ,  but i eat plenty of that now  !!  i can’t believe how childish i was as a child . . .

BIRTHDAY  --  were you just going to pass your birthday without telling me  ??  that makes me so sad  !!  come  ,  we must celebrate  !!

FEELINGS ABOUT ASCENSION : INTRO  --  how interesting  !!  i feel much stronger than i was before  !!

FEELINGS ABOUT ASCENSION : BUILDING UP  --  oho . . . so this is what it feels like to have more power  ,  i feel like i can do anything  !!  now i can truly be a superhero for teucer  !!

FEELINGS ABOUT ASCENSION : CLIMAX  --  wonderful  !!  i never knew i had this potential in me and it’s all thanks to you  ,  comrade  !!  come  ,  we must celebrate  !!

FEELINGS ABOUT ASCENSION : CONCLUSION  --  without you  ,  i’d have never reached here  !!  so i hope you’ll allow me to join you on your journey to become stronger  !!

BATTLE & EXPLORATION  :

ADDED TO PARTY  --  thanks  ,  comrade  !!  i’ll make sure this adventure won’t be a dull one  !!

ELEMENTAL SKILL  --  are you feeling warmer  ??  /  you’re going to need some ice for this

ELEMENTAL BURST  --  not all wolves travel alone

IDLE  --  see chats

SPRINTING  --  no need to rush  !!  /  let’s enjoy the scenery

GLIDING  --  wow  ,  i never knew the world looked like this from up here  .

DAMAGE  --  i should have paid more attention

KNOCKED OUT  --  i can’t fall here . . .

#( aleksey | hc )

[butterscotcheye]

ahaa

so as is the case when i usually get home from work. I”m a bit drained. earlier i said i would write a footie thing if i still had the (angry)  energy. I don’t really anymore but dammit i keep letting that happen and almost everything i’ve ever meant to write, never gets written lol. so i’m gonna try and light a fire under my ass a bit this one time.

I haven’t watched the UCL game. I was at work. But my dumb and naughty self just had to check the scores and read tumblr when no one was looking cause this is mY TEAAAM. it sucks that i don’t know what’s happening. From what i’ve read, its really nothing unexpected. I saw the lineup after all. But i really gotta say something

Zidane. I love you. I really do. You were an amazing and legendary player. Under you we won alot of things. I respect what you have done for this club. AND. you are  a good man. But sometimes, you need to be a dick. And that’s the thing. he just wont be. (unless it’s with bale and sort of james but that’s kinda different lol )When I hear about his relationship with the players, its usually described as ‘sunny and zen like’ and i can’t help but think that translates a bit to “they’re my buddies and i don’t wanna be mean to them” or at least the ones he is friends with. So he has his favorites. And his favorites are players that are really nice people. So i think he has a real problem being honest about their abilities or lack thereof. He can’t take a real look at them and what team needs. He needs to say No sometimes. He needs to stop being afraid of hurting the feelings of his best pals on the team.

Benzema. He has alot of haters on this site and in general. And i’m gonna tell you. I am NOT one of them. To be honest, I like him. (YES i am well aware of the shady shit, no one needs to inform me. But until it’s 100% proven i am giving him the benefit of the doubt. He’s a father with kids and that’s that until then.) I get a little tired of people talking bad about him. But at the same time. I GET IT. Yes, he does score the most for us. Yes his work rate is immense. But you know, that’s what happens when you are always the guy being called up to start and play most of the 90. Benzema is a great striker and he does alot of wonderful things for the team. But he is not consistent. He can’t be if he doesn’t get breaks. His busted hand is a damn distraction. I’m sure he’s high on meds half the time lol. He could learn to say no or stop asking to be started and you know, get it operated on finally. we have wonderful alternatives who need play time. Dude, we are not putting out on an iceburg to die by letting someone else play. You will play, but damn. Lucas. Lots of people are upset that Lucas is always being chosen above others. And i get it. Lucas is a really really nice guy. I love him. he’s very sweet. But that should not be why Zidane chooses him all the time. And that is not to knock his ability because Lucas is a great player. But again. we have fast and amazing young wingers who are itching to get out there and have done so much. With Zidane watching them do it. I don’t want anyone to talk bad about Lucas and i don’t like seeing it. But i’m in agreement that we need to rotate and let someone else in. Marcelo, again. I LOVE MARCELO. there is no left back like him. He’s done amazing things. And when he has a good game, sometimes he even makes the winning difference. But he also has some bad habits and his speed isn’t what it once was. The thing is Zizou adores him, and he will always get first dibs. its just man, i’m so upset about Regulion still lol. Mendy has proven to be really good! if just a bit injury prone. Which is not his fault. Though in this team, it seems like everyone is O o. Everyone gives their all , really and i think they beat themselves up in the process. I’m going off a bit sorry. See this is why i suck at writing up these things. And I know i defend Courtois alot. Someone the general fandom just straight up hates. ALOT. And, I GET IT. That one is a complicated one which needed it’s own rant that i didn’t have the energy to write back when Navas was still here. But again, he’s a nice guy. He stays late to talk to as many fans as he can before the bus leaves him behind lol And i think that is why Zidane gives him so many chances and or is afraid to bench him. Because it’s not about his ability lol. I like Tbo because he is nice and he gets alot of shit and i feel really sorry for him. Truth. As someone who was bullied i can’t help it. But , and i say this as a fan of his. He is playing like SHIT right now. Sorry tbo. Well, what i mean is we’ve seen him be better. But he hasn’t been good since the rayo vallencallo match of last season when it was just him and Jesus keeping the score low. He was great between Huesca and club world cup and the first round of Ajax. But then it was like he peaked and then dipped back to when he first got here. (he took no time off to let the ankle injuries heal and i think it’s made his form crap imo) ZZ just needs to say no. I think his inability to say no really made Navas walk, and he may claim he preferred Keylor but he didn’t seem to show it with who he picked to start. And i really think it’s cause ZZ just can’t be mean. Well he needs to start slapping some peoples around, or Perez will get someone else who will. AND I DONT WANT THAT(because i want to stay in zz’s camp), BUT IF THAT’S WHAT WE NEED..

#football rant #only read if bored #real madrid #no hate

[diveronarpg]

Congratulations, JULIE! You’ve been accepted for the role of AJAX. Admin Minnie: Armand came to me out of nowhere, born out of a few concepts I thought could be interesting. But Julie, you brought him to life. I didn't think I could love him more but you added dimension and depth; you brought all his darkness to the table and paired it with all of the light he still carries. I genuinely think you may understand him better than I do, and I trust you with him completely. I can't wait for you to bless us and ruin us in the same breath. I can't wait to fall in love with him just a little bit more, with every word you write. Please read over the checklist and send in your blog within 24 hours.

WELCOME TO THE MOB.

Alias | Julie

Age | 20 (!!!)

Preferred Pronouns | She/her/hers

Activity Level | Like a 5/10? Things have genuinely settled in life and I have a sort-of routine, since I’m working regularly, so while I’m not always here, the chances of me being active on a daily-ish basis are much higher. I’m also always lurking on Discord.

Timezone | MST

How did you find the RP? | I made a blood sacrifice asking for a good group and lo and behold, there you were. Thanks, roleplay deities!

Current/Past RP Accounts | Santino, Loretta

IN CHARACTER

Character | Ajax / Armand Giordano

What drew you to this character? | “He rises from his own ashes and abandons his humanity — as Ajax, and Ajax alone.” This line right here is really what did it for me. The concept of Armand shedding an old identity, a personal one, and taking on a new one is fascinating to me. I think a lot of characters within the mob don’t necessarily identify themselves by their nicknames, personally. Santino doesn’t think of himself as Sebastian, he thinks of himself as Santino, is what I mean. Armand, on the other hand, identifies closely with the name the Montagues have given him, because in his head that’s all that he has. The lines are very much blurred between Armand and Ajax. Armand is a direct result of catastrophe, pain, betrayal on two sides of a war he hadn’t even known existed up until it was forced upon him. Ajax, on the other hand, is the outline of his own actions, even if those actions were taken out of a need for survival. I don’t think it was intentional on his part, exactly, that cleaving of the past and the present in two, but I think he relies on it now heavily enough that he might feel lost without it.

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

I WILL BEAT THEE INTO HANDSOMENESS. I’d like to explore just how Armand got the reputation of being the person not to fuck with in the Montagues. When you have a slate of powerhouses like Marcelo, Matthias, Grace, or even Valentina, when she’s not traipsing around on the other side, garnering that sort of reputation has to be difficult. He focuses intensely on physical prowess and I’m sure that it shows. How he uses it and the way he occupies a room is equally as important. I’m not saying it was achieved through blatant bloodshed, but delving into how it is that he’s established that sort of fear in saying the name Ajax sounds like a lot of fun. This also sort of opens the door to relationships with the Capulets. I’m sure he’s beaten the fuck out of a Capulet at some point, right? Who would that be? Was it because they were threatening Roman, or was it a hairstring reaction?

BUT BE AS AJAX. Armand takes his role of protector to Roman very seriously, as he should. I don’t think Armand’s necessarily the most book-smart but he can see the paths laid out for Roman in front of him, and Armand’s ready to clear the way if necessary. His silence around Damiano doesn’t indicate a fear of the man, only distrust, which I feel like is only growing after Damiano endangers not only himself but his own son after the death of the Witches. He’s focused so incredibly intently on Roman that most other priorities just fall away, because Armand believes Roman is the key to peace in the city. I don’t think he sees it as key to a mutual relationship between Capulets and Montagues in some sort of new age, because look at what that made out of a boy as young as sixteen. But he wants to lift Roman as high as possible to ascend upwards within the Montagues and claim his rightful seat on the throne. Armand discovering that Roman and Juliana are corresponding could either make or break that belief. I don’t think he’s emotionally capable enough to handle that sort of betrayal, because in that, he would only see his parents. I’d love to see how that route plays out in whatever direction it goes, whether he feels betrayed by Roman’s correspondence (whenever it comes to light) or more at peace with himself knowing that his parents weren’t the only ones in the city doing what they had done.

SHALL PRIDE CARRY IT? Armand protects others; it’s the key element of his personhood. That’s just what he does. It’s a natural role that comes to him with equal pride and ease, and how he feels about himself is largely reliant on how well he can keep those he cares about safe. But I’d love to see a situation where it’s less about the wellbeing of others, and more of his own, especially in the capacity of his parentage and emotions regarding that matter. Sure, Armand can hold his ground in a fight, but the use of his own parentage against him more or less broke him. And sure, he was young, but that sort of trauma changes a person vastly. He’s never looked love in the eye again, only violence and destruction of those who threaten what he cannot directly comprehend (read: love). I don’t know that it’s necessarily a secret, his birth, but I’m sure someone knows, and I feel like that could be used against him. How he reacts to that being used would be interesting to explore, and could be a potentially catalyst for greater overarching plots as well as his pride in his job and his role within the Montagues.

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

IN DEPTH

In-Character Para Sample:

The ride back from the whole fucking affair is silent. The little prince is practically fuming in his seat across from Armand, and Armand is touching gingerly at the tenderness at his brow. He’s shocked that the drunkard got in any sort of a hit at all, but he had to respect the force of the swing. There’d been a blistering moment of pain-pleasure-pain before he’d swung the whole weight of his body forward to crack his skull against that of his opponent. The Capulet had crumpled to the ground with a groan, and his friends were quick to collect him and go running. Armand had laughed as they’d been dragged away, crowed in victory, called out after them: it won’t happen like that next time!

And then he’d turned, eyes searching for Roman in the gathering crowd, and Roman had looked at him so strangely, like he’d done something wrong, when this was all Armand knew how to do right—

Roman alternates between looking at Armand, huffing, and looking out the window, huffing still. The fight with Damiano earlier had been bad enough. A brawl in the streets between Capulets and Montagues sat as the cherry on top of the cake. He wants to say it was you who wanted to go so badly. Even so, Armand’s not a complete idiot. He knows how that would go. Rebellious or not, he’s not sure that this is how the heir saw their evening going. He’s sure the lashing words from Damiano tomorrow will be harsh, if not outright cruel. He’s only seen the man lecture his son once or twice, but it more or less follows the same pattern: you have a legacy, you’re important to Verona, and to me, blah, blah, blah. Armand usually just tunes him out.

The divider between the passengers and the driver is up. They could get it all out now, if they wanted to. Armand’s not sure he knows where to begin. They’re both new to this whole thing, though, that’s clear enough. If he looks out the window, he can see the Castelvecchio glittering in the distance, a jewel of architecture and stone. That’s what his fathers had called it, at least. He clears his throat. “Roman, it’s-”

“Don’t.”

Armand’s mouth snaps shut. Fine, then. If Roman doesn’t want to talk, then they won’t. He’s not sure how long he can endure this bubbling of emotions in such a small space. He knows Roman is passionate — almost passionate to a fault. But that could very well kill him, if he’s not careful. He could say I worry for you, it’s my job to keep you safe. He could say a thousand things. He’s just not sure it matters. He’s never been any good at this sort of thing, doesn’t think he ever will be. He opens and closes his hands, clenches and unclenches them into fists. Anything to be anywhere else but here.

Roman won’t look at him for the rest of the drive, and Armand’s almost grateful for it. He says nothing to him once they reach the grounds of the Montague family home. It’s late in the night. Damiano is surely asleep. No one greets them at the doors, and Armand makes sure that Roman makes it into his bedroom before moving into his own small space at the end of the hall. He has his own place, although less time is spent there, and more here. His days revolve around Roman, now, and he’s almost thankful for the distraction from everything else. The world gets a little too loud, sometimes, and it only ever quiets when he’s slamming his fists against the weight of a bag, or something hurts, or running hard enough that all the thoughts drain out of his head. Or, as he’s now found, when he’s with Roman. He knows it isn’t the same for the little prince, but Armand worries that if he gets caught up in his own thoughts, he’ll lose it. Do something stupid. Go mad, maybe. Wouldn’t that be a laugh: Ajax didn’t die doing his job. He died from insanity.

He slips his running shoes on and steps into the cold night air, stares up at the window of Roman’s room. The lamp-light is on, and besides, he won’t be gone long. One foot after the other, then the next, until all he can think about is the weight of his steps against the ground, until it starts to ache. When he can’t go any longer he forces his body to pick itself up and keep moving, until he collapses on the ground, gasping for breath. (It’s been a while since he’s done that, he realizes).

The sky is full of stars. He pants, tries to connect the lines between every one, synchronize his breath with the dull thrumming coming from the side of his head. There might be a cut there. He’s not sure. He hadn’t felt any blood.

The drumming of his own blood soon calms. When he stops gasping, Armand pulls himself up and stretches. Focuses on the lamplight in the distance. Starts running again. All his thoughts empty out of his head, and for once, the world is blissfully quiet.

Extras: N/A

#accepted: ajax #accepted

[gadgetsrevv]

Barcelona’s Lionel Messi misses Cristiano Ronaldo being at Real Madrid

The ESPN FC crew analyse Barcelona’s performance sans Antoine Griezmann in their 4-0 win over Sevilla.

Steve Nicol weighs in on the rumours Barcelona may try to swap Antoine Griezmann for PSG’s Neymar.

Frank Leboeuf explains why Lionel Messi and Antoine Griezmann’s on-field relationship won’t improve any time soon.

The FC crew choose which of Luis Suarez’s two goals vs. Inter Milan was more world class.

Craig Burley feels the UCL favourites all have one thing in common — their lack of defensive structure.

Barcelona forward Lionel Messi has said he misses his rivalry with Cristiano Ronaldo and would have liked his fellow five-time Ballon d’Or winner to have continued in La Liga.

Ronaldo left Real Madrid as the club’s all-time top scorer to join Juventus in a €100 million transfer in the summer of 2018. Since his departure to Turin, the two superstars have not faced each other.

– ESPN La Liga fantasy: Sign up now! – When does the transfer window reopen?

“Yes, I would have liked for Cristiano to continue in the Spanish league, at Madrid,” Messi said in an interview with Catalan radio RAC 1. “I think it gave an extra impetus to our rivalry, to the Clasico and to La Liga overall.

“I remember I said earlier this year that Madrid would notice Cristiano’s departure, just as any other team would, but even so, they have enough players to be at the top and fighting for everything. It’s Madrid and they have a lot of history.”

Messi and Ronaldo have always contended for major individual honours, however the Argentina forward said this has never been his priority.

“I’ve never thought about finishing my career with more Ballon d’Or awards than Cristiano,” he said.

Messi also said he considered leaving Barcelona and moving overseas during the years he was investigated by the Spanish tax authorities. In the summer of 2016, the Argentina captain and his father were found guilty of defrauding the tax authorities of €4.1m between 2007 and 2009.

“I’ve had several [difficult] periods, especially in 2013 and 2014 when I started having a problem with the Spanish tax authority and everything that came out,” Messi added. “It was difficult for me and for my family.

“I think I was the first one [to be investigated by the tax authorities] and that is why everything was so hard. From then on, they showed they were going all out with me and proved that they would target all sports and footballers.

“During that time, I considered leaving Barca. Not because I wanted to leave Barca but because I wanted to leave Spain. I felt I was being mistreated and I didn’t want to spend much time there.

“I think I had the door open to many teams although I have never had an official offer because everyone knew of my wish and eagerness to continue at Barca. That, however, was beyond any situation that I felt for this home, this club, it was what I felt at a personal level. The only positive was that my children were young and didn’t notice it but we had a hard time.”

Messi, 32, has said he intends to retire at Barca even though he has a clause in his contract which allows him to leave at the end of each season.

“If they want me, I would obviously be delighted to remain at Barca,” he said. “I reiterate that my aim has always been to stay here.

“Nothing has changed; it is as it has always been. Each time it becomes clearer that my aim and that of my family is to finish [my career] here. First because of how I am at the club, how I feel at the club, and secondly, for my family. We are very settled in this city. Of course, anything can happen but the idea is to continue living here.”

Messi has extended his contract eight times since 2005 but has yet to be offered a new deal and his contract expires in June 2021.

“I don’t think there is anything yet from what I know from my father [Messi’s agent],” the Barca captain said. “I have always stayed out of all negotiations.

“I have not spoken to the Barca president [Josep Maria Bartomeu] since our Champions League elimination against Liverpool. But I have no problem with the president. I have never had any problems trying to sort out things with the club. On the contrary, it has been easy. Probably once it’s done [the renewal], there will be no problems and it will be done in no time.”

Messi, meanwhile, said he thought Neymar would have joined Real Madrid if he were not to return to Barcelona in the summer.

Lionel Messi has said he misses the rivalry with Cristiano Ronaldo in Spain.

Neymar was keen to return to Barca but has remained at Paris Saint-Germain with the two clubs unable to reach an agreement on the switch.

“I honestly thought in this [summer] transfer window, that if he didn’t come here, he would go to Madrid,” Messi said. “I thought he was very eager to leave, for a change, to leave PSG.

“I thought that [Real Madrid president] Florentino [Perez] and Madrid would do something to sign him.”

Messi said he believes his friend Neymar “regrets” leaving Barca in the summer of 2017.

“I believe so, that Neymar regrets leaving, that shortly after leaving he realised he made a mistake and that he had taken a bad decision,” Messi said. “I believe so but you should ask him. Knowing him and knowing what has happened, I believe so.”

Messi said he is hopeful of Neymar returning to La Liga in the short-term future.

“Neymar to Madrid? I don’t rule out anything in football,” Messi added. “At Barca? I don’t discard it either considering what the president said, which was that it had not been possible but in the future we shall see and that the door was open.

“Neymar is one of the best in the world, he is a player that tilts the balance, makes the difference and obviously to have him in our team would have been useful in terms of having many more options to achieve our aims.”

Barca did strengthen their attack by acquiring Antoine Griezmann from Atletico Madrid. The France international has scored three goals and set up two more in seven league appearances.

“It is not easy to play at Barca because of the football we play,” Messi said. “From the outside it might seem easy but any player that hasn’t experienced the Barca philosophy, who hasn’t trained here when he was young, to come from the outside, as much quality as you could have, it is very difficult.

“He is used to playing in a very different way but I am sure he will adapt. We have no doubt he is a player with a lot of quality, very intelligent.”

Asked about reports that he didn’t want Barca to sign Griezmann, Messi said: “It is a lie that I didn’t want Griezmann. I said before that he was one of the best and the best are always welcome to a winning project that we all want to be a part of.

“I have never had any issue with him coming, on the contrary.”

Messi said that his time working under Pep Guardiola was “the best era as a player” at Barca while he considered his best goal to be “the header I scored in the Champions League final against Manchester United in 2009 in Rome.”

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#Uncategorized #Barcelona #Cristiano Ronaldo #Juventus #Lionel Messi #Real Madrid #Spanish Primera Di

[douchebagbrainwaves]

A PLAN FOR STARTUPS

And just as Jews are ex officio allowed to tell Jewish jokes, I don't feel like I have to bother being diplomatic with a British audience. We encourage that.1 They don't project any kind of aura of power either. Nor do you have security, because if it means what I think it can scale all the way to the bed and breakfast, and other people trying to do it. In a recent talk I said something that upset a lot of growth in this area, just as automating things often turns out to generate more money in the end, just as a statement of values, but as a guide to strategy, and even a design spec for software. How you live affects how long you live. At year 1, Google was indistinguishable from a nonprofit. No matter how bad a job they did of analyzing it, this meta-check would at least remind everyone there had to be embodied as companies to work. If you're not threatening, you're probably not doing anything new, and dignity is merely a sort of plaque. Someone would run your company for you once you'd grown it to a certain size.

I wished I'd spent more time with her.2 Does it make any difference to know that? About a month after we started Y Combinator we came up with the bullshit forced on you or it tricks you. Fake stuff that matters usually has a sharp peak of seeming to matter. They didn't have ads for over a year. It means arguments of the form Life is too short for something, you should probably stay. But they were expensive compared to what they were worth.3 A web site for college students to stalk one another?4

So traffic became the thing to get at Yahoo. The catch is that people will hold you to it. In it he said he worried that he was fundamentally soft-hearted and tended to give away too much for free. The area under the curve is just as steep, and when anything grows at the rate of a successful startup out of curing an unfashionable but deadly disease like malaria?5 It didn't matter what type. A mere 15 weeks.6 And even that's going to be hard, because Google has as big a head start in buying microstartups as it did in search a few years before by a big company, any number of random factors could sink you before you can finish. We now have several examples to prove that startups don't need to be constantly reminding yourself why you shouldn't wait. It's interesting Our two junior team members were enthusiastic. How tech-saturated Silicon Valley is. Few would be willing to claim that it doesn't matter at all where a startup is that you have to remember anything, and that's a really useful property in domains where things happen fast. But it was obvious what users wanted, so Apple flew under the labels.7

But the more reliable route is to convince them through your users: if you make something users love enough to tell what I said that upset him: that startups would do better if they moved to Silicon Valley.8 Business people in Silicon Valley are people you'd overlook on the street.9 I thought it would be huge. When IBM introduced the PC, they thought they were going to make money, and ambivalence about being a technology company, and by using graph theory we can compute from this network an estimate of the reputation of each member. But the smarter ones restrain themselves, if they could do searches online. If the aggressive ways of west coast investors are going to come back to bite them, it has been a long time coming. 0 so much.10 It's an interesting illustration of an element of the startup ecosystem that few except the participants ever see: investors trying to convince one another to invest in Airbnb. ITunes is Web 2. So far so good. A couple weeks ago I realized that if you pushed this idea, but they didn't have the kind of ideas you could not merely ignore, but ridicule. My father's entire industry breeder reactors disappeared that way.

But while some amount of natural benevolence. 0 so much.11 Starting a startup is that you have to spend on bullshit varies between employers.12 There has always been a stream of people who should know better. Because they're good guys and they're trying to help the world. I was firmly in the camp of bad. Why? Imagine a company with several times the power Google has now, but if I were choosing now that's still the one I'd pick. In fact the new generation of software is being written to take advantage of Ajax.13 Real ugliness is not harsh-looking syntax, but having to build programs out of the PhD program in physics at Berkeley to do this. I wouldn't be surprised if ten years from now, you'll be making about $160k a month.

Thirty years ago, one was supposed to work one's way up the corporate ladder is the trend for takeovers that began in the 1980s. If you do make users register, never make them wait for a confirmation link in an email; in fact, discontinuous.14 One of the hardest parts of doing a startup is that you have to remember anything, and that's actually very valuable information. So I was surprised at a conference this summer when Tim O'Reilly led a session intended to figure out what will make them happy, and that's actually very valuable information. The problem is, people who apply to Y Combinator don't generally have much money, and yet Digi-Key is trying to stop them in order to protect the work they'd invested in a position on the ladder. Mikey likes it. How do you decide?

How scrappy founders are. That was the phrase they used at Yahoo. By using the classic device for simulating the manager's schedule within the maker's: office hours. I'd recommend having the debate after meeting them instead of before. They insist on it. That's barely enough time to get started.15 Good news: they do exist.

Perhaps a better solution is to look at the problem from the other end. When you have small children, there are companies you can hire to manage it for you. It's the junk food of experience.16 If Christmas-as-magic lasts from say ages 3 to 10, you only get to watch your child experience it 8 times. Hence what, for lack of a better name, I'll call the Python paradox: if a company chooses to write its software in a comparatively esoteric language, they'll be able to resist, or at least postpone, turning into managers, just as automating things often turns out to generate more money in the end, just as automating things often turns out to generate more jobs. Suppose as before that you only extract half as much from users as you could.17 Yahoo considered the idea that they should be a technology company, and by using graph theory we can compute from this network an estimate of your company's value that you'd both agreed upon.

Notes

Living on instant ramen, which shoppers used to do this right you'd have reached after lots of potential winners, from the moment; if anything Boston is falling further and further behind. If you weren't around then it's hard to tell them exactly what they're selling and how unbelievably annoying it is the odds are slightly more interesting than random marks would be better to be good at sniffing out any red flags about the other sense of the word philosophy has changed over time. So if you seem like a VC means they'll look bad if the statistics they use the local stuff.

Though in fact they were getting results.

Whoever fed the style section reporter this story about suits coming back would have a connection to one of the marks of a place where few succeed is hardly free. It shouldn't be that surprising that colleges can't teach them how awful the real world is boring. The need has to their stems, but sword thrusts.

It's common for startups overall.

I took so long to launch a new search engine is low. Cost, again.

As well as down. On the face of it.

And startups that get killed by overspending might have infected ten percent of them. This seems to be a trivial enhancement of HTTP, to allow multiple urls in a world in which income is doled out by John Sculley in a way that's rare among technology companies. I realize revenue and not least, as accurate to call all our lies lies. According to a 2002 report by the fact that established companies can't simply eliminate new competitors may be that surprising that colleges can't teach students how to do this all the best ideas, because living at all.

I know of a cent per spam. The speed at which startups develop new techology is the new economy during the entire West Coast that still requires jackets: The First Two Hundred Years. I wrote the recommendations.

Bad math is merely boring, whereas bad philosophy is worth studying as a day job writing software goes up more than most people are immune to the Depression. And the expertise and connections the founders chose? Ii.

If a company he really liked, but that it's up to them.

It's hard for us.

The hackers within Microsoft must know in their experiences came not with the founders. Maybe it would be more alarmed if you get an intro to a degree that alarmed his family how much would you have to solve problems, but bickering at several hundred dollars an hour over the Internet into situations where a laptop would be worth it, but rather by, say, good deals. It's hard to say now.

An earlier version of this essay, Richard and David Whitehouse, Mohammed, Charlemagne and the fucking fleas.

Yes, strictly speaking, you're using a degenerate case of Bayes' Rule. Some blue counties are false positives out of school. The two 10 minuteses have 3 weeks between them. The threshold for participating goes down to you; who knows who you might see something like the United States, have been the first to state this explicitly.

But when you have 8 months of runway or less constant during the entire cross-country Internet bandwidth wasn't enough for one user. This is a shock at first, and made more margin loans. Or more precisely, while simultaneously implying that lies believed for a seed investment of 650k. To use this route instead.

Correction: Earlier versions used a recent Business Week, 31 Jan 2005.

Unfortunately the constraint probably has to be driven by money.

#automatically generated text #Markov chains #Paul Graham #Python #Patrick Mooney #stuff #sense #PC #Silicon #fact #anything #job #weeks #smarter #traffic #income #jokes #Depression #companies #Whitehouse #investment #sup #Google #family #device #network #laptop #flags #revenue #students

[hsews]

When Mike Shooter was in medical school, he suffered the first of what he calls “thunderous depressions.” More followed. Shooter’s efforts to come to grips with these experiences has made him acutely aware of what young people with mental-health problems endure and forged his career as a preeminent child psychiatrist in England. He was the first such specialist to be elected president of the Royal College of Psychiatrists, a position he held from 2002 to 2005. Recently he published “Growing Pains,” which is based on 40 years of working with young people. The book explains why it’s imperative to differentiate between depression and the ordinary but often intense difficulties some children face. He recently spoke with The Washington Post on these issues. This transcript was edited for clarity and length.

Q: Do you think young people are more vulnerable to mental illness now?

A: Research suggests that the United Kingdom is the least happy place for a child to be brought up in the Western world; America cannot be far behind. Some of this could be attributed to the grinding effect of poverty. But not all: The frenetic competition, in school, in the scramble for jobs, in peer-group relationships, means many children fall off the bottom of the ladder of competition and feel as if they’ve failed. Or are so unsure of their own worth that they sit up all night searching for “likes” on social media in lieu of proper friendships.

But it’s not all bad news. There is currently much research into resilience: what enables some children to cope while others do not. I know from experience that there is one thing that can make all the difference: a relationship with an adult close enough to them, that supports them, listens to their distress and treats them as worthwhile. That person could be a relative, a family friend, a teacher or, dare I say it, a child psychiatrist.

Q: What’s the difference between depression and sadness?

A: Depression is a formal psychiatric diagnosis with recognizable symptoms, well-researched treatments and a predictable outcome. Sadness is a normal reaction to sad circumstances, or a free-floating mood typical of adolescents.

The danger is that the sort of distress I describe, if it ever reaches the clinic, will either be squashed into a psychiatric category that it does not warrant or will be dismissed as a problem for which the psychiatrist has no answer. The children in “Growing Pains” have been unable to get help because they haven’t met the formal criteria, reinforcing their sense of failure. These children need help, whatever we call them — sad or depressed.

Q: Is there a danger in labeling a disorder?

A: Labeling can be very dangerous. At best, it can fossilize a child’s image and the way they are seen and handled by those around them. At worst, it can wreck their lives.

I was once contacted about two young girls, both 14, both labeled. The first was given a diagnosis of depression by her general practitioner and put on a course of antidepressants. When I saw her, she told me she felt unloved in her family, her only friend had been killed in a road accident and her grandmother, her sole confidant, had died. Despairing of finding an outlet for her grief, she had resolved to join them by committing suicide — swallowing the tablets she had been prescribed. What she needed was the opportunity to talk about her unhappiness.

The second girl was labeled as a personality disorder — anxious about everything, always blaming herself, sleeping poorly, unable to make friends. That’s just the way she is, the adults said, nothing to be done about it. In reality, she had almost certainly slipped into a clinical depression that might have responded to treatment, but it went unrecognized. Following an argument with girls at school, she went missing and was found dead two days later. I was asked to do grief works with those left behind: vital for them, but too late to save the daughter.

Q: How best, then, to support a vulnerable child?

A: Most helpful is a relationship that can hold the child in trust while we work together on trying to change things.

The trust must be earned. Some children feel safer talking in the privacy of a clinic. Some are so young and so frightened that they are beyond words and need special techniques to uncover the cause of their distress. Many will need to be seen on their own patch — at home, school, wherever they feel most comfortable. It may require negotiation with adults to secure the necessary space, and unless the child needs immediate rescue from harm, it will take time.

Once trust is established, we must work together to build the child’s self-confidence so they can explore new ways of thinking about themselves and the world. In other words, it must be an empowering relationship that searches out the strengths that all children have and builds upon them. We cannot guarantee them a trouble-free future, but we can help them discover ways of coping better. When that is done, we need to say goodbye to the therapeutic relationship in a way that does not repeat and compound the anxieties with which the child presented.

This takes time, it involves risk, it means getting so close to distress that it may stir up our own unfinished emotional business, and it treats our children and young people as partners in the work rather than passive recipients of formal diagnosis and medication. And at the center of it all, it is not a textbook or a set of guidelines, but the child’s individual experience. Their story.

Q: Do we overmedicate?

A: I try not to blame people: the children and young people who have so often been blamed for their own distress and have felt so guilty that they have blamed themselves; parents and carers who are unable to understand what children are going through and are often just as needy of help; fellow professionals, who are desperate to help but are clinically trained and emotionally more comfortable with traditional ways of doing things.

So, yes, we are in danger of overdiagnosing distressed children and reaching too quickly for a prescription more appropriate for adult illness. But I understand why. Showing how a young person might fulfill — or not — a set of criteria and dishing out a course of pills is very obviously “doing” something, and the pressure to do something is huge.

Q: What do you think about the new American Association of Pediatrics guidelines that say children over age 12 should be screened annually for depression during routine pediatrician checkups?

A: Clinical depression has been underrecognized in the past.

As a sufferer myself, I know how it crippled much of my adult life before I got help. Without that help, I might still be drifting through life from one short-term job to another, metaphorically kicking my father in the crotch. So I can understand the wish of the association to make sure that such a lack of recognition never happens on their watch.

I do worry, though. I’m sure that clinicians will err on the side of safety, so regular checkups will run the risk of dragging adolescent unhappiness into the diagnostic net.

These checkups seem designed to capture established depression that would otherwise escape recognition. Our resources should be used to prevent such disorders being established in the first place. There is ample evidence that late adolescent and adult mental illnesses have their roots in childhood and that there are many opportunities in those children’s lives to intervene. It requires a switch of attitude — by professionals and carers — to prevent unhappiness crystallizing into formal disorders.

Money spent on early intervention will save many times as much in the later development of mental illness and social upheaval.

Q: How has your own experience with depression influenced your work?

A: I have a recurrent depressive disorder. The help I have received made sense of the terrifying feelings inside me, uncovered their origins in my childhood and enabled me to behave differently with my own family. Talking about it in the media has encouraged more professionals to come forward with their own stories, and the public to seek help.

Though my illness has made me more sympathetic to the young people in my care, it does not give me the right to trespass on the uniqueness of their experience. Everyone’s depression feels different; we must help young people to explain what it feels like to them. The worst thing you can say is “ I know exactly how you feel!”

[email protected]

Read more

Regular screening can find teen depression, but getting treatment isn’t easy

Can a book serve as a portable therapist for teens at risk of depression? Maybe.

Nasal spray of party drug shows promise as fast-acting antidepressant, researchers say

Nothing worked for my depression — until I tried meditation

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[douchebagbrainwaves]

THE TOP IDEA IN A STARTUP IDEAS

A round. Perl is not the sort I mean. Startups are that constrained for talent. They don't sue till a startup has made money, and once you have money, people will want ever more material wealth, so there is no secret cabal making it all work. Parents know they've concealed the facts about sex, and many at some point sit their kids down and explain all the lies they told you. Only a few people reading Jane Austen instead. I explained this as code to show a couple of nerds with no business experience operating out of a small agricultural town wouldn't benefit from moving to a startup hub a place is, the USPTO are not hackers. But anything that grows consistently at several percent a week, but if we had better than a 1 in 24 chance of succeeding, you'll only do it if you don't have startups, pretty soon you won't have much competition. We did it because it seems such a great hack.

But the American startups we've funded will attest that I say the same thing that makes everyone else want the stock of successful startups is that they're embarrassed to go back n paragraphs and start over in another direction. Technology will increasingly make it possible to relive our experiences. The only practical solution is to develop new technology as fast as startups, the more the rest will want to come. For comparison, here is an innocent one. The sentence structure and even the words are different. Finding investors is hard. There may be one person whose job title is CEO, but till she mentioned this it never occurred to me till then that those horrible things we had to write PhD disserations about Dickens don't. You could try to decrease the risk is to join an existing startup instead of starting your own.

Object-oriented programming generates a lot of economic history, and I get an uneasy feeling when I look at my bookshelves. He said it was never an issue, because everyone was so good they never had to use CLOS. He said their business model was crap. But not so lucrative or prestigious as it was possible to go from poor to rich, I knew practically nothing about the paths from rich to poor, just as a scientist is better off following the truth you'll discover cooler things than you could to work on dumb stuff, even if the problem is to make a living was by farming. Making $1000 a month a typical number early in YC and growing at 1% a week will grow 1. The space of possible choices is smaller; you tend to get cram schools on the classic model, like those we mishandled in high school. That group says another.1 Everything else we associate with startups follows from growth. The person who knows the most about the most important source of growth in mature economies. For example, legacy admissions. As the roast turkey appeared on the table, his alarmingly perceptive 5 year old son suddenly asked if the turkey had wanted to die.

I don't mean to suggest by this comparison that types of work consist of doing things for other people, whereas doing a technology startup, at least in our tradition lawyers are advocates: they are trained to be able to say whether patents have in general been a net win. YC, why don't more people apply? If you've had summer jobs in college, you may think you know how the world works, and any theory a 10 year old had about that would probably be a pretty narrow one. In a way this is virtuous, because I rarely heard a teacher say I don't know enough about the infrastructure that spammers use to know how to run the world? But when you understand the origins of this sort of trick to pledge publicly not to. How much do we have to look at this actually quite atypical spam. The best thing to measure the growth rate of is revenue. A company making $1000 a month a typical number early in YC and growing at 1% a week will grow 1. It's a bad plan to treat something only a hundred years old. We might like to think we wouldn't go so far, Sam Altman, John Bautista, Trevor Blackwell, Paul Buchheit, Brian Chesky, Bill Clerico, Patrick Collison, Adam Goldstein, James Lindenbaum, Jessica Livingston, Robert Morris, and my father for reading drafts of this.

To the extent you reduce economic inequality instead of just improving the overall standard of living, it's not the best way to get at the truth, as I suspect one must now for those involving gender and sexuality. And that helps overcome their understandable fear of investing in a company run by nerds who look like and perhaps are college students. If a lot of serial entrepreneurs, actually. The kind of question on the application form that asks what you're going to learn that the world is quiet and warm and safe. And as for the disputation, that seems nearly impossible to shake. Nor did we start YC mainly to help out young would-be startup founders are. The x in Ajax is from the XMLHttpRequest object, which lets the browser communicate with the server was to ask what surprised them. They could see they weren't as strong or skillful as the village smith. The Meander is a river in Asia Minor aka Turkey. If someone in my neighborhood heard that I was looking for an old friend especially if he is a hacker to suddenly send you an email talking about sex, and partly a larger part than he would admit that he doesn't want to tarnish himself in their eyes. But I know they exist. Breaking up companies into smaller units doesn't make those needs go away.

But as the tests get broader, the schools do too. Authenticity is one of the top VC firms, and even now I find it kind of weird. When did Microsoft die, and of what? When he was 19, he seemed like he had a 40 year old inside him. So it is with design. I'm just stupid, or have some sort of exit. Some parents feel a strong adherence to an ethnic or religious group and want their kids having sex?

But that world ended a few years ago. The US has less than 5% of the world's population. And yet all the empirical evidence points that way: pretty much 100% of startups that make something popular manage to make money from. Indeed, it will go in one investor ear and out the other. And fortunately at least two times, maybe three. Hope for the best, but expect the worst. I do: that being mean makes you fail. Why do you think so?

Let's start with a distinction that should be obvious but is often overlooked: not every newly founded company is a startup. They want to feel safe, and death is the ultimate threat.2 But few tell their kids about the differences between the real world, and this special power of hers was critical in making YC what it was. I have to bother being diplomatic with a British audience. They sold their software on eBay for a quarter of a million dollars as much as submission.3 It may also help them to grasp what's special about your technology. The average parents of a 14 year old girl would hate the idea that we ought to be writing about literature, turns out to have consequences one might not foresee when one phrases the same idea in terms of reducing inequality. So why do so many people complain about software patents specifically? All startups are mostly too busy and too poor to be worth suing for money. It's an excuse to work on your own projects.

Notes

This argument seems to be high, so it may be heading for a sufficiently identifiable style, you can probably write a Lisp interpreter: the attempt to discover the most successful startups are competitive like running, not economic inequality. They'd be interchangeable if markets stood still.

Fortunately policies are software; Apple probably wouldn't even cover the extra cost. The University of Vermont, 1991. Monk, Ray, Ludwig Wittgenstein: The Duty of Genius, Penguin, 1991. Which means one of his peers, couldn't afford it.

Y Combinator only got 38 cents on the entire period since the war it was so great, why are you even before they've committed. Maybe it would certainly be less than 500, because talks are made of spolia. But should you even be working on filtering at the valuation should be clear and concise, because the danger of chasing large investments is not pagerank commercialized.

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