#i need to spend the next few days plotting my trajectory

[oflgtfol]

*venom voice* 2099, spiderverse, venomverse…. So many comics, so little time

#i literally want to read more but i dont know where to go theres so many things i wanna read but like. which 😭😭 #i need to spend the next few days plotting my trajectory #(will take days bc i wont have much time to read anyway so mt normal reading time will be wiki browsing + doc organizing) #brot posts #comics posting #like what is venomverse i keep seeing it in the venom tag im overwhelmed just at the idea 😭 #please i have so much to catch up on still 😭 GAH

[bubblegumbeech]

The Librarian’s Trick

Day one Ectoberhaunt: Trick or Treat

https://archiveofourown.org/works/34213519

 1:

 Wes was certain this Cassius guy was a ghost. He had to be. Humans didn’t live on the outskirts of town in large decrepit clock towers that Wes was      pretty sure didn’t exist last week    .

 Humans didn’t have red eyes and white hair (unless they had a condition called Albinoism, Wes had looked it up. But Albinoism      also     meant they had no melanin      anywhere    and Cassius Dark was decidedly tan in an admittedly attractive but decidedly not Albino kind of way)

 Humans didn’t have fangs when they smiled but normal teeth whenever Wes tried to point out that      He had FANGS. They were right there!!!  

 Humans didn’t spend all their time either with Danny Fenton (who was Also very much a ghost!! Which should be in the list of proof but no one believes it so it’s seperate but still!) or mysteriously absent.

 And humans didn’t seem to know everything all the time but talk like a bad astrology website.

 So Wes was going to find a way to prove it.

 His first try had him sneaking a “ghost translator” he didn’t remember the stupid name Fenton’s dad called it when he bought it with his allowance, into the library where Cassius Dark supposedly worked.

 Supposedly, because while he could be found there, Wes had never actually seen him doing anything other than reading. And it was never a book Wes recognized, like, he wasn’t reading the Twilight series or anything. The last book Wes saw had been a large ancient looking tome written in a language Wes didn’t recognize. But Everytime he tried (subtly! He was super nonchalant about it!) to take a picture it ended up blurry!! And No Kyle, it wasn’t because he was      bad at taking photos    .

 But that didn’t matter because Wes had a different plan now. He was going to use the Fentons’ new version of their “ghost translator” thing, and see what happened. It was supposed to be both a translator and a truth decoder at the same time. So no matter what a ghost said, the device should say what they actually mean. Or something.

 With Danny, a bunch of innocuous stuff went off around him, but people always hand waved it as faulty tech. Wes wasn’t sure that was the case, in fact he was positive it wasn’t. But if he could get something useful to build up from, that would be a good start. And every good reporter needed a start.

 He stepped up to the Library’s front desk, where Cassius was sitting reading what was      clearly     a spell tome if the different summoning pentagrams in the open page Wes could see were anything to go by.

 “Welcome Young Weston,” Cassius said, the hint of a smile hidden behind his red eyes as he closed his book. Wes could swear they were glowing slightly. Geez did this guy get his ‘how to pretend to be human’ classes from      Fenton    ?

 … that would certainly explain why no one ever believed Wes, since that was a long beaten dead horse in his closet.

 He, very discreetly, had the device hooked up to one of his earphones, which he kept in one of his ears like any normal less than perfectly mannered teenager as he asked Cassius Dark his questions.

 “Excuse me sir? Do you work here?” he started with, it was a more or less innocuous question and one he actually wanted the answer to.

 Cassius Dark smiled. “I do.”

 My Job is all that was, is, and shall be. That which I set as my goal is beyond mortal comprehension and those I call master shall fall to my machinations. But yes, I get paid for sitting at this desk and answering questions sometimes. I am a ghost, fear me.

 Wes tried not to sweat too obviously. What the fuck?

 “Can you tell me where the journalism section is?” Wes decided to make a tactical retreat, at least his voice didn’t crack.

 “Straight back for eight shelves and then turn right. It’s next to the Non-fiction books.”

 I know what you’re looking for, I know why you are here. I know the exact time of your death and what will happen next. Your efforts amuse me though. I am a ghost, fear me.

 What Wes did next was not      exactly     fleeing. But it wasn’t      not     fleeing either.

 He’d have to try something else.

 2:

 The next thing he wanted to try was a bit riskier. If you thought about it a certain way. But it also wasn’t if you thought about it the way Wes did.

 He was going to use a phase-proof net.

 Genius, because unlike the translator machine thing, it would actually stop the ghost from attacking Wes if it got angered. Which it would, probably, since Wes was throwing a net at it.

 The plan was really simple though, he’d gotten a very large net, paid extra for the little aim thing, practiced half a billion times of his brothers before they went to the parents and got him grounded for a week, and then memorized the path Cassius Dark took in the mornings to go to his “job” at the library.

 Right now he was hiding in one of the leafier trees, right above the path that Cassius always used, waiting.

 And waiting.

 And…      waiting.  

 Honestly he was about to go home and was fairly certain this guy was going to be like, super late to work, when he finally appeared.

 Wes wasted no time aiming, making sure the trajectory was absolutely perfect, and firing the net off. He was just about to jump in celebration, watching the net as it curled slightly around its target, but before it could hit and wrap around him, Cassius was suddenly not there.

 Or he was, but just a little bit to the left, so that the net sailed harmlessly past.

 Wes cursed.

 3:

 The third one was fool proof. It had to be.

 Which was why Wes was staring at a large conspiracy board, covered in paparazzi-esque shots of the librarian and random notes he’d taken, all connected with a dizzying amount of red string.

 “Kyle, seriously. I need to figure out what kind of ghost he is or he’s always going to have the upper hand!!”

 Kyle just rolled his eyes and continued playing his video game, as if he didn’t care that Wes had set up his very important planning and plotting in the middle of the living room so long as it didn’t interfere with his own plans.

 “It has to be pretty powerful, he was able to dodge my net before it even touched him. And the translator thing clearly said ‘my goal is beyond comprehension’ or something,” Wes mused, “and he also said his job was like, everything?”

 Wes checked his notes, “yeah, ‘all that is was and shall be’. What could he mean by that?”

 His very annoying and clearly not taking this as seriously as he should brother just chuckled. “I don’t know Wes, maybe he can see the future?”

 That… no. That’s way too OP. Just the thought of it sent a shiver down Wes’ spine. There was no way a ghost could see the future right?

 Right?

 He had to test this theory.

 But how do you even test something like that?

 “Kyle, how would you test if someone could see the future?”

 “Throw something at the back of their head and see if they dodge?” He answered way too quickly.

 Wes thought about it for a moment. “No, what if they just have really good reflexes?”

 “Oh huh, I guess that could be true. No idea then.” He shrugged and Wes had to fight the urge to throw something at the back of      his    head.

 Whatever. He had to make plans.

 He’d tried just throwing things. It was risky, and kind of terrifying, but Kyle was right it      was     the first that came to mind.

 But Cassius never dodged. He was always just, not where Wes thought he was. Or Wes had      really bad aim,    which he didn’t!!! He was a basketball ace!! He had great aim! And great situational awareness!!

 So why couldn’t he hit Cassius Dark?

 Obviously it was because he could see the future. And the smug smile he always had when he knew Wes was looking reminded him an awful lot of a certain other Phantom.

 4:

 Ask him about his family.

 Easy enough. Especially without the Fenton’s weird translator because that might have been a bit terrifying. And also this time he had back up.

 He dragged Kyle by his sleeve into the library.

 “Mr. Cassius!”

 Cassius looked up from his book, removing the delicate reading glasses balanced on his nose. “Can I help you Mr. Weston?”

 “Yes!” He smiled broadly, taking out a small notebook that he had used to take notes on the suspicious and ghoulish things going on around town until it was mostly shreds of paper. “I’m writing an OP ED on the town library, and would like to know more about the librarian. Can you answer a few personal questions?”

 Kyle snorted and Wes had to elbow him in the side to get him to shut up. He was here as back up, not to ruin his plan.

 “So,” he began, “is Cassius a family name?”

 “No.”

 Wes nodded. And then frowned. Did ghosts have families? Supposedly they were alive once right? At least that was the general idea, Wes thought.

 “So what can you tell us about your parents? Like, what’s your father’s name?”

 Cassius raised an eyebrow, and had a soft smile filled with good humor. Wes felt it hit him like a threat. What was this ghost hiding?

 Well, other than the fact that he’s a ghost.

 “I can’t tell you much I’m afraid. My mother is long gone and I never had a father.”

 Kyle grimaced and elbowed Wes himself before saying, “I’m sorry for your loss.”

 “It’s no matter,” Cassius replied, still smiling, “I may yet see her again.”

 Ah, so either she wasn’t dead or he’s convinced she became a ghost too. That made sense. It could be his unfinished business as they say among the paranormal hunters. At least, the not fight-y and crazy ones.

 “So Dark was your mother’s name?” Wes asked, wondering if he could maybe find any records on her where he had failed to find them on Cassius himself.

 The smile slid right off his face. Wes and Kyle both felt the subtle chill in the air as Cassius leaned back and looked off to the side, as if to glare at something that wasn’t there. “No, I’m afraid Dark is my ex-husband’s name.”

 “Why keep it?” Kyle asked, completely ignoring the danger of the situation.

 The smile came back, except this time instead of soft and barely there as if he were indulging a child, it was sharp and twisted. He chuckled at an inside joke no one else in the room would ever understand and then he said, “Well, it’s not like      he     has any use for it now.”

 Wes paled. Had he killed his husband?!

 5:

 After a hasty retreat from the library Wes treated Kyle to a milkshake and fries at the nasty burger just as he had promised. Payment for going along with his ‘weird ghost theories’.

 But Wes couldn’t eat, he was too busy thinking. This one actually helped! He found information about the ghost’s previous life! He had a mother, but not a father, and had a husband.

 With the current politics it was one of two options. Either he was from a previous culture that allowed men to marry each other, or he was a more recent ghost than Wes had been expecting. He had already taken out his laptop and was scrolling through obituaries with the surname Dark, trying to think if he knew any off the top of his head that might have been in town when they died.

 Nothing particular came to mind.

 Wes’ thinking was interrupted by a loud, obnoxious slurping noise from his brother. He shot him a glare, but Kyle didn’t react. Wasn’t even looking at him. Instead he was looking out the window and watching one of the daily ghost attacks with Phantom playing hero as always.

 “You know, it’s kinda cool that they’re hiring actors to build the town’s lore like that,” he said, clearly ignoring the obvious evidence of ghosts right outside his window.

 “What the      hell     are you talking about?” Wes groaned, rubbing at his eyes. He needed coffee or something, it was a shame the Nasty Burger only served sludge no sane person would drink.

 Kyle finally looked away from the window, his eyes wide as if      he     was the one confused. “You know, how they got the librarian to say he was married to Pariah Dark? And then imply he’s the reason he’s a ghost?”

 Wes felt like the seat underneath him had suddenly disappeared. “Where did you get      That    from?!”

 “He said his ex-husband was named Dark! Pariah Dark’s Ghost Zone show is the first thing that comes to mind!” Kyle argued back. “Isn’t it?”

 Holy shit this guy was married to the ghost king.

 He thought back to the ominous answers he’d gotten that first day from the Fentons’ translator. Maybe he should leave this one alone.

 +1

 Wes was at the library, studying quietly and absolutely avoiding the librarian. Not that he’d seen him today, but it didn’t hurt to keep his head down. With any luck the guy had a short memory and would forget Wes had been trying to find a way to out him to the town.

 A portal ripped from the air in front of him, sending a static energy throughout the library and causing Wes’ hair to stand on end. It was a swirling purple, deeper and more… well      more     than most of the natural portals that Wes had seen appear around town.

 He wanted to scream, but years of living in Amity Park had fully trained that out of him. Screaming was the number one way to get a ghost locked on you as their first target. Especially if you were there when the portal opened.

 Before Wes could even think to duck under the table he was using a figure stepped out of the portal, poised and composed. He had a deep purple hood that seemed to swirl with the fabric of galaxies and a large ornate clock embedded into his chest. His skin was a rich blue and he had glowing red eyes.

 Wes recognized him immediately.

 “Oh, hello Mr. Weston, is there something I can help you with?” Cassius Dark asked.

#Danny Phantom #ectoberhaunt 2021 #clockwork dp #wes weston dp #background dark ages #Bee's writing #fanfiction

[veroticker]

Good guy - Kate Meader

Summary (from Kate Meader’s website)

He's a Special Forces veteran making his pro hockey debut. She's a dogged sports reporter determined to get a scoop. She's also his best friend's widow...

Fans can’t get enough of Levi Hunt, the military veteran who put his NHL career on hold to serve his country and fight the bad guys. So when his new Chicago Rebels bosses tell him to cooperate with the press on a profile, he’s ready to do his duty. Until he finds out who he has to work with: flame-haired, freckle-splashed, impossibly perky Jordan Cooke.

The woman he should not have kissed the night she buried her husband, Levi’s best friend in the service.

Hockey-stick-up-his-butt-serious Levi Hunt might despise Jordan for reasons she can’t fathom—okay, it’s to do with kissing—but her future in the cutthroat world of sports reporting hangs on delivering the goods on the league’s hottest, grumpiest rookie. So what if he’s not interested in having his life plated up for public consumption. Too bad. Jordan will have to play dirty to get her scoop and even dirtier to get her man. Only in winning the story, she might just lose her heart...

Blurb

“His head was still spinning at the speed of his career trajectory. Four months ago, he’d received his discharge papers from Special Forces, acquired an agent, and put himself on the market. Ten weeks ago, he’d signed on for a fall start with the Chicago Rebels AHL affiliate, the Rockford Royals. Spending a year or two in the feeder league to get game-tough seemed as good a plan as any. He’d spent nine years off competitive ice after all.

But then disaster struck—for someone else. Garrick Jones, one of the Rebels’ centers fractured his arm during a preseason game six days ago. The next morning, Levi was on the practice rink in Riverbrook, home base of the Rebels. Just like that.

“Get your pants made custom,” Rebels captain Vadim Petrov said to Kershaw as he walked out of the shower in a cloud of steam. The guy made millions in modeling endorsements so this entrance was definitely on brand. “Then your beautiful, thick ass will be covered.”

Theo pointed at Vadim. “We’re not all Russian billionaires. I’m doing okay, but I’d rather not slap down a few thousand buckaroos every time I need a suit. Not when the pants end up splitting because my glutes are so damn powerful.”

The entire locker room lost it.

“You’ve got super glutes, Kershaw,” Levi said. “Hey, that has a nice ring to it.”

“Don’t even think of it, New Guy. I already have a nickname.”

Facing an ass-free mirror, Cade scrubbed a clump of gel through his hair. “You mean Lightning? Which you invented yourself.”

Surely not. “You self-assigned your nickname?”

“And it’s starting to catch on! Like Lightning.”

Vadim curled his lips in aristocratic disgust. “In your wet dreams, Theo. You cannot come up with your own nickname. That is the rule.””

(review under the cut)

Review

What a pleasure it was to go back to Chicago and meet again with the Rebels hockey team! Callaghan (from In skates trouble) was there, and the Dempseys (Flirting with fire) made a come back too. It was like a family reunion! I really enjoyed that.

Also, there was a real bit of hockey in there, both on and off the ice. You get the feeling that Kate Meader knows what she’s talking about. I particularly liked Levi’s struggles at going back on the ice after so long and finding himself lacking; the way he trains harder than anyone else to earn his spot in the team.

Finally, there’s a huge chunck of the book revolving around Jordan and the way she has to act as a woman in a male’s world. Coming after the whole #metoo movement, the book uses the idea that women need to report the men who act like assholes, especially in a work environment. Jordan faces backlash when she tries to write an article about the problem, but she resists, and she sets a good example.

Not the best Kate Meader I’ve read so far, but it was quite enjoyable, and her take on #metoo gave a little plus to a conventional plot. Always well written, with compelling characters, it was Kate Meader to a T.

Quickie

Series: Rookie Rebels #1

Hashtags: #hockey romance #husband’s best friend #soldier #metoo

Main couple: Jordan Cooke & Levi Hunt

Hotness: 4/5

Romance: 4/5

+ the whole plot around the harassment of women in sport

- I didn’t really get the need for secrecy around Levi’s good deeds

Stalker mode

You can suscribe to Kate Meader’s newsletter on her website.

You can also follow her on Facebook.

#Good guy #Kate Meader #contemporary romance #hockey romance

[voicesfromthelight]

On Free Will, Divination, and Shifting Timelines

I’ve been thinking a lot, lately, about the relationship between free will, soul contracts, manifestation, and divination. Not so long ago, when I started doing readings professionally for other people, my spirit guides were fairly reluctant to predict the future, opting instead to focus on patterns going on in people’s present lives. The reason for this was that they were, and still are, adamant about the sanctity of free will, the power of intention, and our ability to mold our futures through them. In light of this, it is perhaps somewhat surprising that a few months ago, for reasons I can only guess at, my channelings began to include mentions of a new guide being assigned to me, whose function was specifically to help me read the future more accurately. Since then, I have noticed a gradual shift in my readings towards including more elements of divination.

The predictions that come through in readings can take a while to manifest in the lives of my clients, who generally only consult with me once or twice, and will therefore usually be given whatever information will serve them best in the long term. Sometimes, the possibility of less auspicious developments is brought up in the interest of helping a client change courses and avoid the suggested outcome. Predictions can also come with a clarification that the events are still taking shape, energetically, and therefore are more likely to change. If a prediction seems too outlandish in light of the client's current reality to be easily assimilated, but is important to be acknowledged, the guides will also sometimes provide evidence of their accuracy by alluding to future events that the client already has planned and is aware of, but I myself have not been informed of before the reading. All in all, everything that is brought through serves the purpose of helping my clients make the best possible decisions, bringing them hope in times of adversity, and healing interpersonal patterns so they can flourish.

The dynamic of readings I do for myself is somewhat different than those done for my clients, and has helped me shed some more light on the way in which free will interacts with the timelines, or trajectories for the future, we set ourselves on with each action we take. Since I talk to my guides daily, I’ve had ample chances to have their predictions confirmed, and get feedback on the shifts in my trajectories almost in real-time. In fact, lately, Salvador, Natalie, and the third, as-of-yet anonymous consciousness have taken upon themselves to regularly guide me through certain situations by describing details of events that then usually unfold over the next couple of days. They often do this in the form of quoting or summarizing conversations in advance, and addressing the ensuing emotional reality along with instructions on how to approach it from the most constructive perspective. While being on the receiving end of this phenomenon, delightful as it is, has been downright bizarre at times - as if I had somehow hacked reality - the wonderful thing about it is that it has helped me anticipate challenging situations, as well as taught me greater patience and compassion. (Perhaps some of you have seen the TV series “Good Omens," based on the work of Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman, with the book of "nice and accurate prophecies" informing the characters of what is about to happen, down to bafflingly minute detail? Yes, it's a work of brilliant fiction, but that’s actually a bit what my life feels like right now.)

What then, of destiny? Are any of the events in our lives set in stone when we incarnate to this earth?

When we choose to engage in an endeavor, a relationship, an interaction, etc., it can sometimes seem as if certain things that happen have been pre-ordained. I personally believe that we are born with certain encounters that have been planned (soul contracts, if you like), patterns to work through, and purposes to fulfill - or at least something to that effect. However, our ability to create and mold our realities is generally quite broad within this framework. It is how we use this co-creative power in our lives that matters. This is where free will, the choices we make about where to direct our attention, and making decisions based on love rather than fear, come in. For better or worse, we can choose, almost at any time, to take a different path, and delay, repeat or undo elements plotted out for our life experience.

I've come to notice that the shifting of timelines apparent in my personal predictions somewhat paradoxically reinforces what the guides have always said about free will and the malleability of the future. See, when I speak to my guides about upcoming events, the information they bring through will often have both long-term and short-term dimensions to it. However, it's not always easy to tell the difference, as the channelings are filtered through the emotional energy of the moment. Certain shifts that occur in the predictions day-to-day can then seem more final or portentous than they ultimately are. But with each short-term adjustment, the outlook of the long-term trajectory, or timeline, can change. The energy of free will interacting with the world, shaping reality, is constantly in motion.

As a result of this ever-changing energetic transformation, even though the guides will inform me of the long-term trajectories of certain pursuits, the way in which the events play out sometimes seems to contradict what has been said before, only to shift back into alignment with it later on. It seems we have the ability to shift the trajectories we are on amazingly quickly, with each decision we make. The arc that we then perceive as our lives unfold is all a matter of perspective: We can measure our experiences in moments, days, weeks, etc. as we choose, kind of like following a graph showing fluctuations in the stock market over a shorter or longer period of time (if you'll pardon the humdrum comparison).

As a practical example (which must nonetheless be kept somewhat abstract to protect privacy), I recently found myself in a situation in which I was navigating a somewhat volatile relationship with both personal and professional aspects to it. The resulting dynamics were throwing me for a loop. Thus, I found myself often checking in with my guides to make sure I was approaching each development appropriately. Their advice wasn’t always what I expected it to be, nor did we always agree on what exactly was going on, but they never failed to guide me to the best possible results. They seemed to have their own explanations for the higher purpose of our collaboration, and where it was leading, which trumped any superficial changes in the relationship. They assured me all would ultimately be well.

At one point, things came to a bit of a head, and I found myself in a rather heated conflict with this person. Up until then, the guides’ advice had always been to focus on patience with a positive outlook, and to simply ignore any negativity, keeping the long-term picture in mind. But at that moment, I felt I had no choice but to stand up for myself and walk away. Over the course of the previous few days, the tone of the guides’ predictions had suddenly shifted, as if our “plans” - possibly those written into a soul contract - were being canceled, and now, they seemed to be saying, “Put an end to it. Move on.” I felt disappointed. As an empath, my personal boundaries tend to be a little mushier than they should be, and putting my foot down felt uncomfortable. However, I pushed myself, and did what needed to be done, thinking: “Well, that’s it. So much for that project. What a let-down!”

After the ensuing quarrel, I sat down to meditate, feeling sad and frustrated. I decided to spend a while praying for healing and going through the Ho’oponopono process, hoping to dissolve the conflict. As I then shifted my consciousness into channeling mode, I felt an intense physical warmth and gradually strengthening sense of well-being, as if I had more guides around me than usual. When they then came through, they informed me that everything was back on track, and I now had good things to look forward to in the collaboration again. Salvador cheered me on, saying I had learned an important lesson about how to use my anger constructively. Natalie, who has taken to opening channeling sessions with an introductory sentence that always begins with the word, “enjoy,” started this one by saying: “Enjoy studying trouble!” - the implication being that the most important lesson of the day was to understand new spiritual truths around dissolving conflict.

As it turned out, the guides were right. The honest expression of my anger triggered an energetic shift that led to a reconciliation and set us back on course.

Now, whether the guides knew this dramatic course-correction would happen all along, or I had, in fact, shifted long-term timelines with different outcomes several times, is not quite clear to me. Perhaps the frequency of my personal readings had merely created a situation in which I couldn’t see the forest for the trees. What I do know is that a very quick, unexpected shift for the better happened in the trajectory the guides were describing, after I changed my response to certain patterns in the interaction. The prayers and meditations played no small part in this energetic transformation, I think, and working with my guides helped me to understand first-hand just how powerful the process could be.

So, in conclusion, I offer you this. While it is possible to predict the probable future, especially in the short term, if we are not happy with what is being created, we should never feel powerless to shift courses, even if we feel we have to do so on a dime. What future would you like to create for yourself today? Think it, see it, feel it, create it!

#divination #timelines #free will #spirit guides #spirit guide #guidance #wisdom #psychic #psychic medium #channeled messages #Natalie's Lessons #5d #ascension #law of attraction #energy #manifestation #tell the future #shaman #intuition #intuitive

[jancys-blue-bayou]

WIP game

Post the names of all the files in your WIP folder, regardless of how non-descriptive or ridiculous.

This was making its way ‘round so wth, doing it though I’ve reduced my WIP list (in the productive way!) recently.

TRS finale - the final chapter of The Real Shit, which is what I’m currently trying to finish. Will hopefully be done soon-ish.

It’s been a whirlwind - further parts of It’s been a whirlwind which will have a few more chapters, got the next part halfway done sort of but the plotting is getting tricky and I sort of lost myself lol, trying to figure it out again.

Baby ideas - This is just a doc where I quickly jot down random ideas for We’ll figure it out that comes to me (or that comes to @iamthethumperanon) and are waiting to be used. (Also, to you who recently sent in a prompt for this fic: I love the idea and that’ll be the next chapter, going to start on it soon as I finish TRS).

This isn’t you - AU/Rewrite that I sort of abandoned but may pick up again but change around my original concept a bit. It started out as “Steve AU” because the idea came from picturing s1 if they hadn’t changed Steve’s original characterization once Joe Keery charmed the Duffers (so he would remain an antagonist and not have the poorly written heel face turn in s1). Now their original characterization of Steve is him being super horrendous and raping Nancy, I won’t go there (because we don’t need more of the rape as tragic backstory for powerful woman trope I think, and I’m not comfortable writing it) but he’ll be the jerk he is for the most part of s1 (probably a bit more than he is in s1) and he won’t have the sudden change meaning Jancy will get to be badass monster hunters on their own without the deus ex machina device Steve is in the s1 finale. Their almost kiss moment will then be uninterrupted so that’ll happen... but they won’t get together right away, Nancy will be single at the end of s1 (will give him the camera and cheek kiss but then sit down alone on the couch). I haven’t fully worked out how to time it with s2 but I’m now thinking of picking this up again because of some ideas for a rewrite of s2 I have (basically giving Jonathan a voice and motivations which he didn’t get and also get Jancy more involved with the main plot earlier) but I have to figure out what will have happened in the time between s1 and s2, and ofc Nancy will be single in early s2.

S3 fic notes - what it says on the tin, just a doc I’ve come back to continuously to jot down small notes for a possible s3 prediction fic, building off of where s2 left us and what we know about s3 filming (confirmed, I don’t give a time of day to what certain twitter accounts who claim to be in the know say, this is just off of what we’ve gotten hints about in interviews/character descriptions and what we know from bts photos etc). Will be Jancy-centric ofc but take on the whole of what I think s3 might be. Might sit down and think harder on it when they’ve soon wrapped, I have several different plot ideas/subplot ideas that needs ironing out.

[redacted] AU - (it’s not called that but the real file name gives it away and it’s a secretttt). A big AU I’m working on that me and @iamthethumperanon have been plotting for months (when I say plotting I mean shouting at each other in DM’s and me sometimes remembering to write down the ideas). It will be uh... loooong, I don’t know how many chapters but MANY (and I’ve just written one and a half so far lol but have like 15 pages of basic notes for the rest now). All I’ll say right now is it’s set in a different time than canon and it doesn’t feature supernatural stuff, and it’s Jancy-centric but will feature pretty much all the characters and it’s drama/angst/fluff mixed with a bit of... I guess action and mystery/thriller in a way.

Open the curtain - semi-abandoned, this is just notes for an old fic idea which I haven’t gotten further with. It’s Jancy in college and sort of an investigative thriller with supernatural stuff. Basically continuing the trajectory that was set up in s2, title comes from Murray’s speech before they come up with the idea of watering down the story to get out to the public, “They’re not wired like you and me, they don’t spend their lives peeking behind the curtain.” so it’s Jancy continuing to investigate, discover, peek behind the curtain, asking questions like how high did the conspiracy go? Was Hawkins Lab the only lab? How big was the project? Is it the only project of its kind? If Jane is number eleven, does that mean numbers one through ten exist? etc etc), and setting out to find the answers to these questions themselves. It would focus in on the last question and would get to Jancy teaming up with El and through El meeting Kali and them setting about finding the other numbers. Would eventually work to them with the help of El, Kali and the others take on a large governmental enemy to get justice for El and the others and to fully expose the government conspiracy (what they did in s2 didn’t expose the whole full thing) but I haven’t worked out that part, or the other characters (who the other numbers are, what happened to them etc).

#this got long but i do love to ramble so i should just make my peace with that

[nomunun]

can you rec kirubaku fics?? ily btw

of course!! i’ll just make a lil list with my all time favs (•̀ᴗ•́)و

One Step Closer by @tusslee​ (Rated M)

“Hope flickers pitifully beside the fire of determination inside of him. Whatever it takes, he decides, he’ll prove them all wrong.

Injured in a car accident, Bakugou Katsuki has to learn a new way of life as he slowly, but surely recovers with the (unwanted) help from his physical therapist, Kirishima Eijirou.”

-(i think it’s save to say that this one is definitely in my top 3. i cried so much while reading it so you better buckle up for a wild, emotional ride)

the rest is under the cut (｡•̀ᴗ-)✧

2 A.M by cityboys (Rated T)

“Caught between cities, phone calls and shifts he didn’t sign up for, Katsuki finds that he doesn’t travel light as well as he thought.“

heart stains on the carpet by cityboys (Rated T)

“"She’s saying we’re dating,“ Katsuki says, trying to put as much disgust into the word as possible. “Me. Willingly being around your freeloading ass—”“Ah.” Katsuki is definitely developing a special kind of intuition for when Kirishima’s about to dish out bullshit—because he feels it now, watching the guy do that thing where he shrugs and smiles in an attempt to appear innocent. “Katsuki’s a little shy about this sort of thing, you know, and we weren’t going to say anything.“For effect, he ends with an apologetic smile.

Summer that year brings Kirishima Eijirou to Katsuki’s front door.“

-(fake/pretend relationship babyyyyy!)

ghosts beneath ink wash stars by cityboys (Rated T)

“Eijirou’s evolution from Bakugou’s delivery boy to kind of, possibly, someone to come home to.“

-(everything from cityboys is so beautifully written so they all share a spot in my top 3)

the fool’s rush by @chonideno​ (Rated T)

“Settling down with each other is naturally what comes after being dorm neighbors for years. It’s time to navigate through adulthood together, to live the daily grind of being pro-heroes, to learn more than they thought they’d like to know about each other, about themselves.

Or how Bakugou and Kirishima find a way to call each other “home” and struggle with the realization that once all their bills are on auto-pay, the only thing they still have to deal with is this pit full of feelings they have ignored for too long.”

-(this one hits really close to home and i love it a lot!)

cotton candy hands by @chonideno​ (Rated T)

“Studying to become a hero requires knowing how to take care of yourself. Sometimes you might need help on the way so if your crush offers to do your hair for you or to give you a well-deserved back rub, it’d be stupid to say no.

A series of soft vignettes in which a love-struck Kirishima and a touch-starved Bakugou care for each other and it’s definitely not making their hearts jump through hoops, they’re never this close to kissing, no, they’re totally best friends bro“

-(after a while you’ll just start yelling at the screen for them to just kiss already lmao)

but i’ve got an angry heart by @newamsterdame​ (Rated T)

“He’s about to open his door to go to the shared bathroom on this floor when he notices the scrap of paper that’s been pushed under his door. It’s a salmon-colored flashcard, the type that’s sold in 500-packs with multiple colors. Bakugou stoops to retrieve it, frowning at the message he finds written on it.

Hey neighbor, welcome to the house! I heard you knocking things around, yesterday, and I think you maybe punched a wall? Anyway, the landlady gets pissy if you put holes in the wall, but I have a punching bag! You can come over and use it, or I can move it into the hall, if you want!

There’s only one other bedroom on the fourth floor. Now, Bakugou crosses the hall to the bedroom on the right side, slamming the post-it note against the door.

Fuck off and die, it reads.

Bakugou Katsuki is not going to jeopardize his future a second time, and that means staying away from anyone who gets too close. Kirishima Eijirou has never learned how not to be close to someone. Of course, they end up as next-door neighbors.”

-(one of a view fics i re-read a couple times bcuz it’s just that good!)

quote love unquote by @newamsterdame​ (Rated T)

“Sero nods. “It’s the chance of a lifetime, really,” he says. “We want you to date Bakugou, for the sake of his reputation with the press. Some public appearances, a few ‘candid’ photos. For at least a couple of months.”

“Bakugou sent you to ask me to date him?” Kirishima asks, baffled.“

Of course not. We, his people, are asking you to date him. He’s going to have to get on board, if he wants his career to survive. And in the bargain, Riot will get all sorts of publicity, because their lyricist will be dating one of the industry’s hottest stars. A win for everyone.”

When Kirishima Eijirou’s band hits the big time, he’s not prepared for his newfound fame. He’s even less prepared to meet the actor he’s been crushing on for years, or to start dating him as a publicity stunt. The closer Kirishima gets to Bakugou Katsuki, the more he realizes he’s in over his head. But it’s hard to stop, once his heart is in it.“

-(still ongoing but trust me it’s worth it! that fake/pretend celebrity au we all need)

Perihelion by @tauontauoff​ (Rated T)

“Bakugou was a comet, blazing out of reach. Kirishima knew he was stupidly lucky that his furious trajectory went by close enough that his fingertips got to graze the cowl of fire. It was enough.

During Christmas Class 1A and 1B spend a laid-back week learning about extreme environment hero work in the Alps. Kirishima was used to keeping part of his feelings for Bakugou hidden, and had every intention of keeping it that way, but things don’t always go according to plan.”

Six Page Spread by @indigonow (Rated E - there’s no smut yet though)

“They’re 22 and Bakugou’s finally gotten control over his public image. Think more…"bad boy” and less “explosive asshole”.

Kirishima is weak (though he always has been).

Bakugou is never going to be a “nice guy”, but he’s managed to stop people from thinking he’s a villain. This is my take on the trials and tribulations of (Kirishima) being in love with said not-nice-guy in a world where heroes are always in the public eye and nothing’s ever simple.”

-(also ongoing but oh boy its worth the wait)

Indisputable by @indigonow​ (Rated M)

“He strains, he yearns for praise, for compliments, for recognition. All he wants is the positive attention, and he blooms under it like a flower turned to face the sun. With encouragement he is the best, and without it he’ll push himself without regard for anything around him until he’s there again at the forefront of people’s minds. He’ll force them to acknowledge him if he has to, because he can’t live without it.

Bakugou has struggled all his life to be number one, and he’s cracking to pieces every moment that he isn’t.“

-(ongoing. also a personal fav bcuz so far it’s the only one where mitsuki isn’t portrayed as a Good Mom™ but rather it addresses her abusive behaviour towards bakugou and i appreciate it a lot)

No Decision by @clairesail​ (Rated E)

“Kirishima Eijirou’s a newly contracted fighter for Japan’s major Mixed Martial Arts promotion and Bakugou Katsuki’s its volatile middleweight champion. But when the two men meet in a chance encounter and discover Kirishima can’t be knocked out by the champ’s famous elite strikes, it sparks a rivalry and fascination between them that can’t be settled in the cage.“

-(that’s the fic that originally got me into MMA)

The Lost Continent by cattchi and paglykos (Rated E)

“Kirishima Eijirou is from a noble family of pirate exterminators.Bakugou Katsuki is rising as one of the most fearsome pirates on the seas.

When a trade goes awry, Kirishima finds himself cast among Bakugou’s crew, having to learn the ropes and the sea as they chase after All Might’s infamous hidden treasure.”

-(still ongoing pirate au!!! also fair warning: this fic has a lot of smut. it’s all skippable without missing anything of the main plot tho so even if you dont like smut i highly recommend it bcuz the story itself is amazing!!)

like the first day of summer vacation by @hellsuga​ (Rated T)

“Bakugou prepared for this. He prepared for flipped canoes and snotty children, skinned knees and spiders in cabins. He prepared for a summer of complete and utter bullshit.

Bakugou did not prepare for Kirishima Eijirou.”

-(summer camp au, still ongoing)

#im emotional now i wanna reread all of them (*꒦ິ ꎁ ꒦ີ) #have fun reading dear anon! #anonymous #msg #boku no hero academia #fic rec

[phantom-le6]

Episode Reviews - Star Trek: The Next Generation Season 5 (6 of 6)

As we continue our run of episode reviews for Star Trek: The Next Generation, we now come to the last two episodes of season 5, beginning with the wide-acclaimed episode “The Inner Light.”

Episode 25: The Inner Light

Plot (as adapted from Wikipedia):

The Enterprise finishes a magnetic wave survey of the Parvenium system and finds an unknown probe. The device rapidly scans the ship and directs an energy beam at Captain Picard, who collapses on the bridge and then wakes up to find himself on Kataan, a non-Federation planet. His wife, Eline, tells Picard that he is Kamin, an iron weaver recovering from a fever. Picard speaks of his life on the Enterprise but Eline and their close friend Batai try to convince Picard that his memories were only fever dreams and incorporate him into their society as Kamin. Picard begins living his life as Kamin in his village, Ressik, having children with Eline and learning to play the flute. Kamin spends much time outdoors and with his Dobsonian telescope studying nature. As years pass for him, he begins to notice that the drought is caused by increased radiation from the planet's sun. He sends reports to the planet's leaders, who seem to ignore his concerns.

 On Enterprise, the crew continues attempts to revive Picard. They try to block the influence of the probe but Picard nearly dies, so they are forced to let it continue. They trace the probe's trajectory to a system whose sun went nova 1,000 years before, rendering life extinct in the system. Years pass and Kamin outlives Eline and Batai. Kamin and his daughter Meribor continue their study of the drought. They find that it is not temporary; the extinction of life on the planet is inevitable. Kamin confronts a government official who privately admits to him that they already know this but keep it secret to avoid panic. The official gravely points out to Kamin that they have only recently launched artificial satellites using primitive rockets: their race simply does not possess the technology to evacuate people before their planet is rendered uninhabitable.

 One day, while playing with his grandson, Kamin is summoned by his adult children to watch the launch of a rocket, which everyone seems to know about except him. As he walks outside into the glaring nova light, Kamin sees Eline and Batai, as young as when he first saw them. They explain that he has already seen the rocket, just before he came there. Knowing that their planet was doomed, the planet's leaders placed memories of their society into a probe and launched it into space, in the hope that it would find someone who could tell others about their species. Picard realizes the context: "Oh, it's me, isn't it?", he says, "I'm the someone... I'm the one it finds", realizing that Kamin was the avatar they chose to represent their race.

 Picard wakes up on the bridge of the Enterprise to discover that while he perceived many decades to have transpired, only 25 minutes have passed. The probe terminates and is brought aboard the Enterprise. Inside, the crew finds a small box. A somber Riker gives the box to Picard, who opens it to find Kamin's flute. Picard, now adept at the instrument, plays a melody he learned during his life as Kamin.

Review:

Apparently, this episode was created by combining two ideas.  The first was Michael Piller wanting to do an episode where Picard lives a life he never really lived at all, and the second came from freelance writer Morgan Gendel wanting to do a story about Picard and Riker getting memories of a war beamed into their head in an anti-war story.  After multiple re-writes, the two ideas end up combined in this episode, and yet both also later appear in other episodes within Trek.  Picard ends up experiencing another life unlived in the episode ‘Tapestry’ in season 6 and within the Nexus during the film Star Trek: Generations, while the anti-war story would later be the centre of a Star Trek: Voyager episode.

 Until I saw the episode synopsis on Wikipedia, I for one thought the memory dump concept was somehow not quite realised properly; I thought it would make more sense for Kamin’s memories to be dumped verbatim into Picard and he’d just play along with them right from the start of the alternate life.  However, in actuality he’s not really getting a simple memory dump; rather, he’s living a kind of virtual reality simulation based on the collective memories of an alien world.  As such, the issue then becomes why isn’t that explained more explicitly, and how did they manage that technical feat when they were barely getting rockets up into space?  Basically, the containing premise for Piller’s idea sadly has a few technical flaws that slightly spoil the overall experience.

 That all being said, this is a great episode, especially in-so-far-as it never tries to get the audience to buy into Picard’s virtual life being any kind of substitute for reality.  There’s another TNG episode in one of the remaining seasons, and an episode of the Batman animated series from the same era that TNG was being made in, where the show seems to be trying to get us to buy into the idea that the reality of the show isn’t reality.  Frankly, I hate episodes like that; once a show establishes what its reality is, that has to remain constant or I get very angry and lose interest.  Reality is reality in all things, and while we might all perceive it differently, its most basic laws are immutable.  Our sun, for example, always exists until such time as it may burn out; the coming and going of night time or clouds cannot alter this. A kettle will always boil water after a set period of time according to its design and will only truly take longer when its components start to fail; whether it is watched or not will only make it seem like it takes longer; it will not actually take longer.

 Because the episode doesn’t ask us to buy into Picard’s alternate life ourselves, we can actually sit back and enjoy it, and it is an enjoyable episode in that Patrick Stewart delivers a great performance as Picard, and he is actually joined by his real-life son Daniel Stewart in this episode.  It’s very much a character piece, though, so don’t go expecting any kind of issue exploration.  The closest we get to that is inadvertent parallels between the on-going cover-up by the officials in Kaman’s life around the impending super-nova and how many people in real life react to the concept of climate change.  However, that matters even less when you also consider that the experience does change Picard somewhat, and it’s good to see Next Generation create something that can be called back to.  Even by the time of this episode, overarching continuity was something the show was reluctant to do, though the Deep Space Nine and Voyager spin-off shows would compensate for this.

 So overall, we have a great episode that for me almost manages to hit a top score, but falls just short through the technical flaws of the memory dump, though not by much.  My end score for this episode is 9 out of 10.

Episode 26: Time’s Arrow (Part 1)

Plot (as adapted from Wikipedia):

The Enterprise is recalled to Earth on a priority mission regarding evidence of aliens on the planet 500 years before. They are shown a cavern near Starfleet Headquarters in San Francisco containing 19th century relics, and the disembodied head of Data. Investigation reveals cellular fossils native to the planet of Devidia II, indicating a race of shapeshifters were visiting Earth's past. The Enterprise leaves for the planet, taking Data's second head. Upon arrival they discover a temporal disturbance on the planet. Though no life forms are visible, Deanna Troi senses the presence of suffering humans. The crew determine that the aliens are slightly out of temporal phase with them. Data notes that his android body has a phase discriminator that would allow him to see the aliens. Captain Picard reluctantly allows him to join the away team. Data establishes a means of communicating what he sees to the rest of the crew while in temporal sync with the aliens. Once in phase with the aliens, Data describes them as absorbing strands of light from a device in the centre of the cavern, appearing otherwise benign. He describes two aliens entering a time portal, that he is drawn into. Data finds himself on Earth in San Francisco on August 11, 1893.

 Data realizes he needs money to accomplish his goals. He wins a sizable amount beating card sharks at their own game in poker. Data takes up residence in a local hotel, befriending the bellhop (future author Jack London). Data claims to be a French inventor. He enlists London to acquire 19th century supplies under the pretense of building an automobile engine, when in fact Data is building a detector to find the aliens. Data sees a photo of Guinan, the bartender from the Enterprise, in a newspaper photo. He goes to a reception she will be attending, believing she also came back in time from the future. Data interrupts her speaking with Samuel Clemens (Mark Twain), speaking to her as if she is from the 24th century, which spark's Clemens' curiosity. Speaking privately, it becomes clear to Data that Guinan is native to 1893 and has yet to meet the Enterprise crew. Clemens is discovered eavesdropping on this conversation, and he becomes determined to discover the truth behind Data and Guinan.

 Meanwhile in the 24th century, the Enterprise crew has determined how to build a similar phase discriminator to Data's. This will allow them to see the aliens, and go back in time to rescue Data. Guinan convinces Picard to join the pending away mission, warning that otherwise Picard and Guinan will have never met at all. The away team activates the phase discriminator and see the aliens as Data described. The strands of light are human life forces, taken at the moment of death. The away team uses the time portal to travel back to investigate further and to hopefully find and save Data as well.

Review:

There’s not much to this episode; basically, TNG was trying to make sure that they ended on a cliff-hanger in order to quash rumours generated by the start-up of the DS9 spin-off series that Picard and his crew were on the way out.  Now in some respects, there’s a lot of elements that certainly drum up interest. You’ve got the idea of Data going back in time to late 19th century Earth and potentially dying, an encounter with a past Guinan that present-day Guinan suggests is pivotal to her mysterious acquaintance with Picard, random time-travelling aliens and the curious ramifications of having Mark Twain thrown into the mix.  The problem, however, is that beyond this there’s not much really going on.  There’s not much character development and no issue exploration, creating a cliff-hanger that is more about plot than these other things.  Granted, that’s a change of pace, but it’s not the stuff of great Trek. Hopefully part 2 compensates for this. Overall, I’d give this episode 7 out of 10.

[ladylynse]

Oooh if the writing request is still open, could you do some ether fluffy or angsty Danny Phantom? (Your writing is awesome btw I got so excited when I saw that post :D)

Thanks for the request, anon! I hope you enjoy this. I picked angst for now but might do something short and fluffy later.

Missing:[FF | AO3] You never know what you have until it’s gone. That’swhat they always say. But Danny had never imagined that phrase might apply tohis sister. 

Season 3, going AU before Phantom Planet; 2.7 K

“You’re back early,” Maddie mused when Danny walked into thekitchen in the hopes of finding some non-contaminated food to eat. She wasmaking cookies at the kitchen table, which at least meant there’d be someedible food in an hour. “I thought Jazz said you two would be out all day.”

Danny frowned. It was the first Saturday of Christmas break,and he’d planned to spend the afternoon at home. Ghost hunting had kept him uphalf the night again, but he’d headed out this morning to meet up with Sam andTucker. Tucker was going out of town this year to meet up with his dad’s sideof the family, and since it was out of state he’d be away most of the break.Danny and Sam had wanted to spend what time they could with Tuck before he left.

Sam figured they’d be able to sneak away to visit him atsome point—he couldn’t be busy all the time, and the Spectre Speeder was almostalways available—but even though her parents didn’t celebrate Christmas, theystill attended a number of high society functions and dragged Sam to as many aspossible. Consequently, Danny knew he’d be spending most of this Christmasstuck with his family, as he had for many Christmases in the past. As long ashe made sure he didn’t get stuck in the Ghostwriter’s story again, he should beable to marginally enjoy himself.

At the very least, the Christmas Truce meant he’d actuallyget a real break.

But it still meant he had planned to avoid his family forlarge chunks of time, which meant he hadn’t made any plans with Jazz.

“When did she say that?” Danny asked. He opened the fridge,trying not to let the worry clawing at his gut explode into anything serious.Jazz was the worrywart, not him. Usually.

Maddie laughed. “You were there, sweetie. It was only thismorning.”

Everything in the fridge looked suspect, either moulding or glowingor smoking, but Danny had already lost his appetite. He shut the door hardenough to rattle the test tubes on the top shelf. “Right.”

He hadn’t been there.

He hadn’t even seen Jazz today.

Which meant he needed to find her.

Now.

Maddie was too distracted with trying to fish a tiny pieceof eggshell out of the glass she’d cracked the egg into to really noticeanything Danny was doing, so he didn’t even pretend to look for more food. Hejust spun on his heel, left, and called Jazz’s cell phone.

She didn’t pick up.

Tucker wouldn’t be able to track her phone when he was stuckin a car, so Danny dialled Sam’s number instead.

“Danny? What’s up?”

“Jazz is MIA,” he said. “I don’t know who it was. Amorpho,maybe. Someone who can pass for me, at any rate. Mom said we left together thismorning, but we didn’t, obviously, because I was with you and Tuck.” He bit hislip. “I don’t know if Jazz knows she’s in danger. I mean, she should realize that whoever it is isn’treally me, but….”

“Think she’s still intown?”

Danny had already checked the garage. “Her car’s gone, butthat doesn’t mean anything. Can you check the library? That’s close to you, andI can cover her other usual haunts faster than you.” Not that she had manybesides the library, but since she wasn’t answering….

“No problem. Don’tworry, Danny. We’ll find her. I’m sure she’s fine anyway.”

That depended on who had her. Amorpho had promised never tocome back to this town. Even if he’d decided to go against that, what reasondid he have to take Jazz? What reason did anyof the ghosts have to take Jazz? If someone had pretended to be him, thiswasn’t like it had been that time with Kitty and Johnny 13.

Danny shoved his phone into his pocket, took one last glancearound to make sure he was alone, and transformed. He should be able to checkalmost everywhere by the time Sam finished combing every inch of the library.And if any ghost decided to show up to try to slow him down, they’d regret it.

Danny worked as efficiently as he could, zipping betweenplaces and taking his time once there, but he backtracked a few times to makesure Jazz hadn’t shown up in the meantime. His ghost sense never went off, andhe saw no sign of her, so he ended up doing a quick patrol of the entire town,hoping to spot something. When he finally gave up and met Sam at the library,he only needed to see the look on her face to know that she’d come up emptyhanded, too.

“She might have gone out of town,” Sam pointed out. “Did youtry calling her again?”

He hadn’t, so he did, but there was still no answer. He bitoff a message telling her to call him back and then looked at Sam. “We shouldcheck the Ghost Zone. I…I think it might be faster if we split up. Are youcomfortable going in by yourself?”

He didn’t doubt her ability to handle the Spectre Speeder, andshe knew it. He was more worried that she might be attacked. If Jazz had beentaken, Sam was definitely fair game. The Spectre Speeder had a wealth ofbuilt-in weaponry, but it could be overwhelmed.

And he didn’t want to lose her, too.

“I’ll be fine. If she’s in there, she’ll show up if I trytracking Real World items. And if you’re really worried about me, I can swingby Dora’s and ask her for help.”

Danny couldn’t hide his relief. “That’s a great idea. Thankyou.” On an impulse, he threw his arms around her and squeezed. “Be careful.”

“You, too,” Sam whispered, hugging him back. After a beat,she pushed away and added, “I know you’re going to hate this suggestion, butyou should talk to Vlad. You’ll know pretty quickly if he’s behind thissomehow, and if he’s not, he should jump at the chance to get in your mom’sgood books.”

Danny shuddered, but he knew she was right. “Yeah, okay.” Hethought he should say something else, but he didn’t know what, so he juststepped back, mumbled, “Thanks,” and jumped into the air, angling toward Vlad’s.

The first energy blast nearly shot him out of the sky, andinstinct was the only reason the next ones fired in quick succession didn’t hithim. When he recovered his wits and spotted Valerie, he growled and zipped in azigzag fashion toward her. “I don’t have time for this!”

“What, did I interrupt your plans? Sorry not sorry, ghostkid. You wreck too many plans of your own to get any sympathy from me.”

She levelled another barrage of charges against him, but hedodged, turned invisible, and ripped the blaster off her suit before sherealized his plan. Another sprang out of her shoulders, finding him almostinstantly, and he dropped his invisibility as he threw the broken weapon ontoher jet sled. “Jazz Fenton is missing,” he snapped. “If you want to helppeople, help me find her. She was kidnapped by a ghost, but I don’t know who itwas, so I don’t know where to look. Your trackers have a wider range than myghost sense. Are you gonna help or not?”

Valerie blinked at him. “Jazz Fenton?” she repeated. Andthen, “You have a ghost sense?”

“Just leave me alone until we find her, okay? I promise wecan fight later. Danny and Sam are already out searching. Call one of them ifyou find anything. Got it?”

“But why do you even care? She’s the daughter of ghosthunters.”

“Because she’s my si—“ He caught himself, stopped, andamended, “She’s my friend.”

Judging by Valerie’s narrowed eyes, she didn’t buy that, buthe had no plans on elaborating. Fortunately, she didn’t push him. “Fine. I’llhelp. But this doesn’t mean I’m going soft on you, got that?”

“Loud and clear,” Danny confirmed, and then he flipped overand sped towards Vlad’s. He heard Valerie yelling something after him—she couldprobably guess his destination by his trajectory—but right now, he didn’t care.Not if Jazz was in trouble.

Danny knew Vlad conducted about as much of his mayoralduties from his home as he did from city hall, probably by citing vague andsuspect security reasons and overshadowing anyone who asked too many questions.Danny didn’t care about the details now, but since being at home gave Vlad morefreedom to plot, he checked there first.

Because it was Vlad, he didn’t bother going intangible whenhe burst through the west picture window and into his home office.

“Temper, temper, Daniel,” Vlad said without looking up fromhis desk, as if he didn’t care about the shattered glass that was noweverywhere.

Danny knew his eyes were burning green as he advanced. “Didyou take Jazz?” he yelled. “Do you have her holed up somewhere? Is this anotherone of your stupid schemes? Because it’s notfunny.”

The pen dropped from Vlad’s fingers, rolling from his deskand onto the carpet. He looked up, finding Danny immediately. “Jasmine isgone?”

Danny’s heart sank. The surprise and concern on Vlad’s facewere genuine; there was no hint of a smug smirk hidden in his features. “Momsaid the two of us left the house this morning, but I haven’t even seen Jazztoday, which means it’s someone who can shapeshift. Do you know if Amorpho cameback?”

“My dear little badger, last I heard, Amorpho had moved onto bigger cities.” Vlad’s lips thinned. “I know for a fact that Spectra andBertrand are scouting out a town in another state, for all that I advised themagainst that particular place, but I wasn’t aware that another shifter had comehere.”

Danny had known Vlad kept tabs on the ghosts that invadedAmity Park, but he hadn’t realized how closely. “There have to be othershapeshifters, though. Not just ones I’ve fought.”

“Of course there are. But even if they did come here,Daniel, what makes you think they would be able to impersonate you so easily ifyou had never met them? And what makes you think they would choose Jazz as thetarget if they have not been here long enough for either of us to discovertheir presence?”

Danny swallowed. “Are all your clones accounted for?”

Vlad rolled his eyes. “Butter biscuits, Daniel, do you takeme for a fool?”

“That’s not an answer.”

Vlad’s expression softened. “I don’t have any stable clonesright now. You know that. Danielle is the only one unaccounted for.”

“This isn’t Dani. Even if she could pass for me, shewouldn’t. Not like this.” Danny raked a hand through his hair. “You reallydon’t have any idea who it could be?”

“I dislike your father, Daniel, not your sister. While Iwish to tear your family apart, I wouldn’t do it like this.”

“Gee, thanks.” Danny crossed his arms and studied theintricate pattern on the carpet. In a quieter voice, he said, “Sam and I havechecked all over town. There’s no sign of Jazz or her car. I filled in Valerieon my way over here, and Sam’s going to take the Spectre Speeder into the GhostZone and search with Dora. I guess…. I guess since you don’t know anything,I’ll have to tell Mom and Dad.”

Vlad sighed. “Tread carefully, little badger. In themeantime, if you get me some of your sister’s DNA, I’ll look into reprogrammingsome of my trackers.”

Danny’s head jerked up, his face twisting with disgust.“You’re not tracking me with those, are you? Or, oh, god, not Mom, right? OrValerie?”

Vlad glowered at him. “Do you want my help or not?”

Danny shuddered and made a mental note to have Tucker lookinto something that could jam that sort of thing, assuming that was evenpossible. “Yes. Okay. I’ll get you something. Hair’s good enough, right?”

“It’s much less effective than blood or saliva. The betterthe quality of the DNA, the more accurate the trace will be.”

Okay, gross. Danny did not want to know how Vlad went aboutcollecting DNA samples so that he actually knew that. “I know I can find hair,but I’m not making promises about anything else.” He glanced at the hole he’dmade, added, “Sorry about your window,” and took off before Vlad could sayanything else.

This was all taking time. Too much time, considering he hadno idea how much time they had. Were they going to have to wait until Vlad gothis creepy DNA tracker thing working or hope that the ghost sent some sort ofransom note? Since Jazz had been taken by a ghost, the police wouldn’t be ableto do much to help. It’s not like ghosts left behind a lot of traces; ecto-signatureswere arguably the best way to track a ghost, and they never lasted long. He’dlet his parents make that phone call; he had no idea what to tell the police.The ones in Amity Park would believe them, but anyone outside of the area….

Danny hit the pavement outside his house hard enough tocrack it, but that wasn’t enough to slow him down. He threw open the door, raninto the kitchen, and panted, “Mom, I think Jazz’s been kidnapped. I can’t findher anywhere.”

Maddie, who was covered in flour, looked up and pulled outan ecto-gun from her suit, levelling it at his head.

Oh.

Right.

“What was that about my daughter, ghost?”

Danny still didn’t feel ready to tell his secret to hisparents. While he was fairly confident they wouldn’t vivisect or evenexperiment on him, he wasn’t sure any of them were really prepared to deal withthe emotional turmoil that would come along with the truth. That was one of thereasons he’d wiped their memories with the Reality Gauntlet. They’d acceptedhim for the moment, but once shock passed and the truth really sunk in—the truthand everything that meant—there would have been major issues. Hiding had seemedsimpler. He’d been too much of a coward to face all that emotional upheaval. Ithad been far easier to put all that off to some indeterminate point in thefuture.

But Jazz was the one best equipped to deal with that sort ofthing, and she wasn’t here.

And he wasn’t going to sacrifice her for the sake of hissecret.

“Jazz is gone,” Danny repeated. “I don’t know who has her,but I can’t find her anywhere.”

Maddie’s lip curled, and he saw her flick off the safety andrest her finger on the trigger. “My children are perfectly capable of defendingthemselves,” she snarled, “and are out together, safe and sound. You shouldhave picked a different lie, ghost scum. Why do you think I’d ever believe that?”

“Because I’m your son, Mom,” Danny said, shifting back toFenton, “and I always have been.”

The ecto-gun fell to the table. Danny dodged as it went off,rolled, and came back up to his feet. Maddie was still staring at him,pale-faced and wide-eyed. Her hands dropped slowly back to her side. “Danny?”He could see the fear on her face and hear it in her voice, the fear that whatshe was seeing was actually true and not just a trick.

“Fenton, Phantom.” He shrugged and tried to smile. “Notreally that hard to figure out once you actually consider it.”

“How—?”

“We can go over all that later, Mom. I promise. Right now,we need to focus on finding Jazz.”

Maddie shook her head as if she were trying to clear up allthe possibilities and improbabilities invading her mind. “Why now?” shemanaged. “All this time—”

“I know, but Jazz is in trouble,” Danny answered, “andfinding her is more important than keeping my secret.”

It always would be.

(see more fics)

#phanfiction #phanfic #dp fanfiction #dp fanfic #danny phantom #fanfiction #jazz fenton #danny fenton #my writing #ladylynse #replies #asks #writing requests #snippets #dp snippet #thanks for the request! #Anonymous

[theticklishpear]

Hello! Long Time listener, my question is: do you have nanowrimo prep tips for short stories and essays? Tank you.

Hello there! Thanks for sending in! As a matter of fact, I do have some advice on the subject, since this is exactly what I’m dealing with this year as part of my own NaNo experience. I wind up writing assorted short stories and personal essays for NaNo just about every other year, so let’s talk!

How many words is “short”: Short stories tend to be around 2,500-7,500 words. NaNo aims for 50k, which equates approximately to 7-20 stories, depending on length. Take a long, hard look at your writing history of short stories and see what “short” means to you. I know for me, my “short” varies from 3,000-12,000, so I’d be looking at more like 4-17 stories for an entire month. What kind of word-counts are you aiming for? Do your short stories tend to be more like 10,000 words? Or more like 7,000 words? A bare guesstimate of that in relation to your usual writing counts will help you when it comes to creating a list of stories you want to try out during the month. Just like you need to know your goal (50,000 words in 30 days), you also need to be able to quantify that–what does that really look like in terms of story? You must know how many you’re tackling.

Know what you need: In the writing community, but more heavily within the NaNo community, we talk about being a planner, pantser, or plantser. These three labels apply to how much planning you tend to do prior to your stories, and they can be useful for assessing what you–as a writer–need to do before starting in order to succeed. What kind of writer are you?

If you are a planner: Make sure you take the time to sit down with your ideas and write out as much plot as you generally do for your other stories. The difference between writing during NaNo and writing any other time is only in your mastery of time management, as a planner. Make sure you carve yourself the time you need, or you’ll be in a bit of trouble when November starts. If nothing else, get yourself a workable outline of the pieces you want to write on during the month. With enough practice, you can start being able to vaguely predict how long a story will take you to tell (in terms of word count), which can be particularly useful for NaNo for determining just how many pieces you need to prep.

If you are a plantser: If you do nothing else before November starts, at least write out your inciting incident, your climax moment, and the final resolution scene of your plot. These three points will give you a vague trajectory to aim toward to keep your story cohesive and headed in the direction you actually intended. In between, take all the diversions you want to, but head toward those three points. Planning just enough to keep your story together and give you goalposts when you start to get lost and don’t know where else to go will be infinitely more helpful than you might expect. It’s a bit more planning than the general “I’ve got an idea, several characters, and the end-point” than plantsers may be used to, but I promise it’ll stand you in good stead.

If you are a pantser: Write out quick blurbs about the stories you want to tell this month. I know, I know, pantser means you head in mostly blind, but if you don’t give yourself something tangible to refer to when you don’t know what to write for the day, you might wind up pretty stuck for a couple of days. Writing even a bullet list of ideas, settings, and characters you’re interested in writing will be of great help.

Plan at least 2-10 stories and don’t hesitate to skip around: Good news! You don’t have to write one project at a time! Evaluate your head-space each day as you sit down to write to see which story calls to you most in that moment. There’s no reason to force yourself to write one story straight through when you can allow yourself time with another idea if you’re stuck in the mire and your inspiration is giving you images, lines, and scenes from another piece. The rock tying you to one piece is imaginary and losing it for NaNo will be key.

For me in particular, each story I write invokes a certain mood or feeling within me. It’s a very different feeling to write on Gran and Gwyn than to write on City Docks, and sitting down to write on either of those requires me to be in the right state of mind and mood. Over the years, I’ve been able to foster the ability to drop down into those different mindsets through music, rereading a few paragraphs, and generally remembering what kind of story I was originally trying to tell. That ability takes time and a conscious effort to establish, so if you don’t have that capability yet, don’t stress, but also take the lighter approach:

If you can’t drop into those perspectives on your own, a quick assessment of where you are in your mental head-space as you start writing will tell you which of your projects you should be writing on. Since NaNo is all about quantity over quality, stalling out is a very real danger. Knowing how to read yourself and gauge where you are on a given day will be important. Of course, additionally, keeping the tone and mood of a piece stable throughout the writing of it will help keep it cohesive for the future, but that’s just a bonus. If you find that you’re simply not able to manipulate yourself to fit your story, then work on the one that fits you in that moment.

Becoming comfortable skipping to another piece and working on two stories at once can be an important skill for surviving a NaNo of short stories, so make sure you know which ones you want to focus on, try to gauge how long they’ll be, and be prepared for 50k of them.

Preparing essays works similarly: If you’re working on academic essays that require citations and research, have all of that already done. Highlight your sources with what you want to use, write out your outline of your thesis and supporting arguments. Be so ready that all you need to do is actually write it. If you leave the research to do as you’re writing, you’ll wind up taking away valuable time from the writing itself, and with NaNo, the writing is paramount over the quality of it. I don’t particularly suggest using NaNo to complete academic essays, to be honest.

Personal essays and creative nonfiction essays, on the other hand, work out just as well as fiction for NaNo. But again, knowing how much preparation you need as a writer is crucial. Know what topics you want to tackle; know what point about those topics you intend to make; write out the 1-3 line TL;DR of it so you have something to hold on to during the month. Creative non-fiction and personal essays tend to be shorter word-counts than short stories, so make sure you head into November with a slew of topics closer to 15-20.

Write more, allow time for thinking: If you’re not able to get a good list of pieces to work on and some semblance of a plan for them together by the time NaNo starts, consider expanding your daily word-count goal. The official daily goal is 1,667 words, but that’s a forecast intended for those working on one project. If you really are planning on keeping these stories to the “short” category rather than the novella category, you’re looking at trying to write a whole bunch of individual stories.

If you plan to write a little bit more each day–just a couple hundred words more–you can build in planning days. If you write 2,000 words a day, that leaves you with approximately 5 days in the month that you can spend thinking about and planning the next set of stories you want to tackle. Asking you to plan 15 stories and then still be excited for them during the month may be a bit much. Building a couple of down days where you don’t have to write but can spend that writing time planning for what comes next could prove to be life-saving.

I hope that helps, and good luck with your NaNo endeavors! -Pear

#pear responds #writing #writing tips #nanowrimo #nanoplanmo #hideous-ideas-of-a-young-girl #posts by pear

[itsnelkabelka]

Speech: Foreign Secretary Speech: Uniting for a Great Brexit

The other day a woman pitched up in my surgery in a state of indignation. The ostensible cause was broadband trouble but it was soon clear – as so often in a constituency surgery – that the real problem was something else.

No one was trying to understand her feelings about Brexit.

No one was trying to bring her along. She felt so downcast, she said, that she was thinking of leaving the country – to Canada.

It wasn’t so much that she wanted to be in the EU; she just didn’t want to be in a Britain that was not in the EU.

And I recognised that feeling of grief, and alienation, because in the last 18 months I have heard the same sentiments so often – from friends, from family, from people hailing me abusively in the street – as is their right.

In many cases I believe the feelings are abating with time, as some of the fears about Brexit do not materialise. In some cases, alas, I detect a hardening of the mood, a deepening of the anger.

I fear that some people are becoming ever more determined to stop Brexit, to reverse the referendum vote of June 23 2016, and to frustrate the will of the people. I believe that would be a disastrous mistake that would lead to permanent and ineradicable feelings of betrayal. We cannot and will not let it happen.

But if we are to carry this project through to national success – as we must – then we must also reach out to those who still have anxieties.

I want to today to anatomise at least some of the fears and to show to the best of my ability that these fears can be allayed, and that the very opposite is true: that Brexit can be grounds for much more hope than fear.

There are essentially three types of concern about the momentous choice the nation has made.

STRATEGIC

The first is that this is simply a strategic or geo-strategic mistake. On this view Britain is an offshore island comprising fewer than one per cent of humanity, and we need to be bound up in the European Union for protection – partly for our protection, and partly so that Britain can fulfil its historic role of providing protection for the other countries of the European continent. I come across quite a few people who think that Brexit has cast us adrift – made our geostrategic position somehow more vulnerable, while weakening the security of the whole of Europe.

SPIRITUAL

The second anxiety is essentially spiritual and aesthetic – that by voting to leave the EU we have sundered ourselves from the glories of European civilisation. People believe that we have thrown up a figurative drawbridge, made it less easy to live, study, work abroad; and decided to sacrifice the Europeanness in our identities. They fear that the Brexit vote was a vote for nationalism and small-mindedness and xenophobia. They think it was illiberal, reactionary and the British have shown the worst of their character to the world; indeed that it was in some sense unBritish.

ECONOMIC

And the third objection is the one that occupies most of the debate – the economic fear that we have voted to make ourselves less prosperous; that membership of the EU is vital for UK business and investment, and that the panoply of EU legislation has helped to make life easier for companies and for citizens. People fear the disruption they associate with change, and that our friends and partners in the EU may make life difficult for us. Sometimes these economic anxieties are intensified by the other fears – about identity or security – so that hitherto recondite concepts like the single market or the customs union acquire unexpected emotive power.

Well I believe that whatever the superficial attractions of these points, they can be turned on their head.

I want to show you today that Brexit need not be nationalist but can be internationalist;

not an economic threat but a considerable opportunity;

not unBritish but a manifestation of this country’s historic national genius.

And I can see obviously that I’m running the risk in making this case of simply causing further irritation.

But I must take that risk because it is this government’s duty to advocate and explain the mission on which we are now engaged;

and it has become absolutely clear to me that we cannot take the argument for granted.

We cannot expect the case to make itself.

That was the mistake of the pro-EU elite in this country when they won the last referendum in 1975.

As the Guardian journalist the late Hugo Young points out in his book, This Blessed Plot:

The most corrupted trait I kept encountering was the sense – so prevalent among the Euro-elite, that having won the decision they had won the argument. Many exhibited the unmistakable opinion not only that the battle was over but that the other side, however loud it shouted, had simply lost and should now shut up.

And he went on to say:

The noisier the contest became during the early 1990s, the heavier the silent gloating that accompanied it, from the class that knew it commanded every operational forum from the ante-chambers of Whitehall to the boardrooms of big business, from Brussels committee rooms where a thousand lobbyists thronged, to the outposts of the Commission.

Well the boot is now on the other foot, at least in theory. For all their power and influence – every major political party, the CBI, Barack Obama and so on – those voices did not prevail.

But is this the time now for the referendum winners to gloat?

Should we sit back in silent self-satisfaction? I don’t think we should.

It is not good enough to say to remainers – you lost, get over it; because we must accept that the vast majority are actuated by entirely noble sentiments, a real sense of solidarity with our European neighbours and a desire for the UK to succeed.

All I am saying is that by going for Brexit we can gratify those sentiments – and more.

So let me take the three anxieties in turn.

SECURITY: A STRONG BRITAIN AND A STRONG EU

To all who worry about our strategic position and the supposed loss of Britain to European security I can offer this same vital reassurance that the Prime Minister has made so many times and that I believe is welcomed by our partners.

Our commitment to the defence of Europe is unconditional and immoveable. It is made real by the 800 British troops from 5th Battalion The Rifles I saw recently at Tapa in Estonia, who have since been relieved by 1st Battalion The Royal Welsh.

Already this country is the single biggest spender in the EU both on aid and defence. Although we represent only 13 per cent of the EU’s population, we contribute 20 per cent of defence spending - and the RAF’s giant C17 transport aircraft represent 100 per cent of the heavy lift capacity of the whole of Europe - as well as 25 per cent of the overseas aid budget.

It makes sense for us to continue to be intimately involved in European foreign and security policy. It would be illogical not to discuss such matters as sanctions together, bearing in mind that the UK expertise provides more than half of all EU sanctions listings.

We will continue to be Europeans both practically and psychologically, because our status as one of the great contributors to European culture and civilisation – and our status as one of the great guarantors of the security of Europe - is simply not dependent on the Treaty of Rome as amended at Maastricht or Amsterdam or Lisbon.

SPIRITUALLY BRITISH, EUROPEAN AND GLOBAL

So let us next tackle the suggestion that we are somehow going to become more insular. It just flies in the face of the evidence. It was my Labour predecessor Ernie Bevin who said, “my foreign policy is to go down to Victoria station and go anywhere I damn well please.”

That is pretty much what the British people already do. We have a bigger diaspora than any other rich nation – 6m points of light scattered across an intermittently darkening globe.

There are more British people living in Australia than in the whole of the EU, more in the US and Canada.

As I have just discovered we have more than a million people who go to Thailand every year, where our superb consular services deal with some of the things that they get up to there.

The statistical trajectory suggests that this wanderlust is most unlikely to abate. In 2016 the British people paid 71m visits to other countries – and that is a 70 per cent increase since the mid-1990s, and now more than one foreign trip per person per year.

If we get the right deal on aviation and on visa-free travel – both of which are in our mutual interest – this expansion of UK tourism will continue, not just beyond the EU, but within the EU itself; and we will continue to go on cheapo flights to stag parties in ancient cities where we will, I’m sure, receive a warm welcome and meet interesting people, fall in love, struggle amiably to learn the European languages - knowledge of which, by the way, has suffered a paradoxical decline during our membership of the EU.

There is no sensible reason why we should not be able to retire to Spain or indeed anywhere else (as indeed we did long before Spain joined what was then called the common market). We can continue the whirl of academic exchanges that have been a feature of European cultural life since the middle ages, and whose speed of cross-pollination has been accelerated by the internet as well as by schemes like Horizon or Erasmus – all of which we can continue to support, and whose participating scholars are certainly not confined to the EU.

For those who really want to make Britain less insular, and we all want to make Britain less insular don’t we - the answer is not to submit forever to the EU legal order, but to think about how we can undo the physical separation that took place at the end of the Ice Age.

Fly over the Channel at Dover and you see how narrow it is, the ferries plying back and forth like buses in Oxford street, and as you measure the blue straits with your fingers you can see that this moat is really an overgrown prehistoric river that once flowed down from the mountains of Norway and was fed by its tributaries, the Thames and the Seine and the Rhine. Indeed Britain and Holland used to be joined in the old days by a territory known as Doggerland, but the customs of Doggerland are now lost to history.

In 1986 Margaret Thatcher and Francois Mitterrand had the vision to heal the rupture with a first dry crossing; and it is notable that Eurotunnel is now calling for both sides of the Channel to prepare for a second fixed link. It does indeed seem incredible to me that the fifth and sixth most powerful economies in the world, separated by barely 21 miles of water, should be connected by only one railway line.

I accept that the solution is still a few years off – though the need will be upon us fast – but I say all this to signal something about the attitudes that should inform Brexit.

It’s not about shutting ourselves off; it’s about going global.

It’s not about returning to some autarkic 1950s menu of spam and cabbage and liver. It’s about continuing the astonishing revolution in tastes and styles – in the arts, music, restaurants, sports – that has taken place in this country, in my lifetime, not so much because of our EU membership (that is to commit the fallacy known in the FCO as post hoc ergo propter hoc) but as a result of our history and global links, our openness to people and ideas that has brought 300 languages on to the streets of London, probably the most diverse capital on earth.

In that sense Brexit is about re-engaging this country with its global identity, and all the energy that can flow from that.

And I absolutely refuse to accept the suggestion that it is some unBritish spasm of bad manners.

It’s not some great V-sign from the cliffs of Dover.

It is the expression of a legitimate and natural desire for self-government of the people, by the people, for the people. And that is surely not some reactionary Faragiste concept.

It is to fulfil the liberal idealism of John Stuart Mill himself, who recognised that it is only the nation – as he put it, “united among themselves by common sympathies which do not exist between themselves and others”. Only the nation could legitimate the activities of the state.

It was only if people had this common sympathy that they would consent to be governed as a unit, because this feeling of national solidarity would “make them cooperate more willingly than with other people, desire to be under the same government, and desire it should be government by themselves or a portion of themselves exclusively.”

And there is good reason for insisting on this national solidarity, or common sympathy, because government involves tremendous impositions, by which we collectively agree to taxation that pre-empts half our income, and obedience to laws not all of which we think are necessarily sensible.

If we are going to accept laws, then we need to know who is making them, and with what motives, and we need to be able to interrogate them in our own language, and we must know how they came to be in authority over us and how we can remove them.

And the trouble with the EU is that for all its idealism, which I acknowledge, and for all the good intentions of those who run the EU institutions, there is no demos – or at least we have never felt part of such a demos – however others in the EU may feel.

The British people have plenty of common sympathies with the people of France, of course we do - but it is hard to deny that they also share common sympathies with plenty of non-EU people – the Americans, the Swiss, the Canadians, the Pakistanis; Thais, and that is one of the reasons why we in the UK have had such difficulty in adapting to the whole concept of EU integration.

To understand why EU regulation is not always suited to the economic needs of the UK, it is vital to understand that EU law is a special type of law, unlike anything else on earth.

It is not just about business convenience. It is expressly teleological. It is there to achieve a political goal.

The aim is to create an overarching European state as the basis for a new sense of European political identity.

British politicians, Labour and Tory, have always found that ambition very difficult. It is hard to make it cohere with our particular traditions of independent parliamentary and legal systems that go back centuries.

And in spite of many sheep-like coughs of protest from the UK, the process of integration has deepened, and the corpus of EU law has grown ever vaster and more intricate, and ever more powers and competences were handed to EU institutions, culminating in the Treaty of Lisbon.

We now have arrangements of such complexity and obscurity that I ask even my most diehard of remainer friends if they can explain their Spitzenkandidaten process – which has genuinely delighted the MEPs in Strasbourg but has mystified us in the UK; or the exact relationship between the EU’s Charter of Fundamental Rights, justiciable in Luxembourg, and the European Convention on Human Rights whose court sits in Strasbourg. Starter for ten: how many people in this room actually know the answer to those questions – I think very few. I think the answer to the second one is unknowable. How many know the name of their Euro-MPs?

And that is the point I sometimes make when I get the chance to throw the ball back over the net, to those who hail me in the street with cheery four letter epithets.

That’s the point, isn’t it. At least they know roughly who I am and roughly what I do, generally speaking.

If we wanted to find the person responsible for drafting the next phase of EU integration – in which Tony Blair and others would presumably like us to take part – we wouldn’t know where to find them, who they are, let alone how to remove them from office.

That is why people voted Leave – not because they were hostile to European culture and civilisation, but because they wanted to take back control.

That is why it is so vital that we don’t treat Brexit as a plague of boils or a murrain on our cattle, but as an opportunity, and above all as an economic opportunity.

THE BREXIT ECONOMIC OPPORTUNITY

Which brings me to the last crucial reassurances that my side of the argument must give.

We would be mad to go through this process of extrication from the EU, and not to take advantage of the economic freedoms it will bring.

We will stop paying huge sums to the EU every year and as the PM herself has said, this will leave us with more to spend on our domestic priorities, including, yes, the NHS.

We will be able to take back control of our borders – not because I am hostile to immigrants or immigration. Far from it. We need talented people to come and make their lives in this country – doctors, scientists, the coders and programmers who are so crucial to Britain’s booming tech economy.

It was my proudest boast as Mayor of London that we had 400,000 French men and women in the British capital – high-earning and high-spending types – while only about 20,000 UK nationals went the other way and were living in Paris.

And we must stay that way, we must remain a magnet for ambition and drive.

But we also need to ask ourselves some hard questions about the impact of 20 years of uncontrolled immigration by low-skilled, low-wage workers – and what many see as the consequent suppression of wages and failure to invest properly in the skills of indigenous young people.

We do not want to haul up the drawbridge; and we certainly don’t want to minimise the wonderful contribution they have made and certainly don’t want to deter the international students who make such a vital contribution to our HE economy, with 155,000 Chinese students alone.

But we want to exercise control; and if we are going to move from a low-wage, low-productivity economy to a high-wage, high productivity economy – as we must – then Brexit gives us back at least one of the levers we need.

I’ll tell you what, it is very striking isn’t it, that since the Brexit vote the fortunes of UKIP – the one stridently anti-immigration party in this country – have gone into a long deserved eclipse; and that is I think, because people feel they are being heard in their desire at least for control.

And the contrast in this country is very striking with some of the other countries and the Schengen countries, where no such control is possible, and where the far right is alas on the rise.

And as the PM has repeatedly said, we must take back control of our laws. And it would obviously be absurd, as Theresa May said in her Lancaster House and Florence speeches – which now have the lapidary status of the codes of Hammurabi or Moses – it would be absurd if we were obliged to obey laws over which we have no say and no vote.

As the PM said at Lancaster House remaining within the single market “would to all intents and purposes mean not leaving the EU at all.”

The British people should not have new laws affecting their everyday lives imposed from abroad, when they have no power to elect or remove those who make those laws.

And there is no need for us to find ourselves in any such position.

To those who worry about coming out of the customs union or the single market – please bear in mind that the economic benefits of membership are nothing like as conspicuous or irrefutable as is sometimes claimed.

In the last few years there have been plenty of non-EU countries who have seen far more rapid growth in their exports to the EU than we have – even though we pay a handsome membership fee, as I have mentioned many times.

In spite of being outside the stockade, the US has been able to increase its exports twice as fast. I think there are 36 countries around the world that have done better than us in exporting into the EU, even though they are not members.

And for those of us within the stockade, the cost of EU regulation was estimated at 4 per cent of GDP by Peter Mandelson and 7 per cent by Gordon Brown. Authorities which for the purposes of this argument I do not propose to dispute.

It is only by taking back control of our laws that UK firms and entrepreneurs will have the freedom to innovate, without the risk of having to comply with some directive devised by Brussels, at the urgings of some lobby group, with the specific aim of holding back a UK competitor.

That would be intolerable, undemocratic, and would make it all but impossible for us to do serious free trade deals.

It is only by taking back control of our regulatory framework and our tariff schedules that we can do these deals, and exploit the changes in the world economy.

It is a striking fact that our exports to the EU have grown by only 10 per cent since 2010, while our sales to the US are up 41 per cent, to China 60 per cent, to Saudi Arabia 41, New Zealand 40, Japan 60, South Korea 100 per cent.

Those figures reflect the broader story that the lion’s share of the growth is taking place outside the EU, and especially in the Asia-Pacific region.

In a world that demands flexibility and agility, we should be thinking not of EU standards but of global standards, and a regulatory framework to suit the particular needs of the UK

a country that already exports a higher share of its GDP outside the EU than any other EU country.

We already boast an amazing economy, diverse and very different from rest of EU.

We are the nation that has moved highest and furthest up the value chain of the 21st century economy.

We are a nation of inventors, designers, scientists, architects, lawyers, insurers, water slide testers - I met one in my constituency, toblerone cabinet makers - all the toblerone cabinets in Saudi Arabian airports are made in Uxbridge I am glad to tell you. There are some sectors, such as AI or bulk data where we really excel, we are streets ahead and in the future we may want to do things differently.

Of course we will need to comply with EU regulation in so far as we are exporting to the EU. (though we should realise that the single market is not quite the Eden of uniformity that it is cracked up to be: you try becoming a ski instructor in France, not that I have tried myself; and I discovered the other day that we have totally different standards in this country for flame retardant sofas, to say nothing of plugs)

But in a global marketplace, where we are trading in products that hadn’t been conceived even five years ago, serving markets that were poverty stricken 20 years ago, it seems extraordinary that the UK should remain lashed to the minute prescriptions of a regional trade bloc comprising only 6 per cent of humanity wonderful as it may be – when it is not possible for us or any EU country to change those rules on our own.

In so far as we turn increasingly to the rest of the world – as we are - then we will be able to do our own thing.

We will be able, if we so choose, to fish our own fish, to ban the traffic in live animals, end payments to some of the richest landowners in Britain while supporting the rural economy; and we will be able to cut VAT on domestic fuel and other products.

We can simplify planning, and speed up public procurement, and perhaps we would then be faster in building the homes young people need; and we might decide that it was indeed absolutely necessary for every environmental impact assessment to monitor two life cycles of the snail or to build special swimming pools for newts – not all of which they use in my experience – but it would at least be our decision to do that.

Freed from EU regimes, we will not only be able to spend some of our Brexit bonus on the NHS; but as we develop new stem cell technology – in which this country has long been in the lead – it may be that we will need a new regulatory framework, scrupulous and moral, but not afraid to be different. The same point can be made of innovative financial services instruments, where the FCA already leads the way.

We will decide on laws not according to whether they help to build a united states of Europe, noble goal that that may be, but because we want to create the best platform for the economy to grow and to help people to live their lives

And the crucial thing is that when we are running ourselves – when all these freedoms open before us - we will no longer be able to blame Brussels for our woes,

Because our problems will be our responsibility and no-one else’s.

And indeed no one should think that Brexit is some economic panacea, any more than it is right to treat it as an economic pandemic.

On the contrary, the success of Brexit will depend on what we make of it

And a success is what we will make of it - together.

And that very success will be the best thing for the whole of continental Europe - a powerful adjacent economy buying more Italian cars and German wine than ever before. I never tire of telling you we are the single biggest consumers not just of champagne but of prosecco as well and we want to go on in that role.

And so I say to my remaining remainer friends – actually quite a numerous brunch – more people voted Brexit than have ever voted for anything in the history of this country.

And I say in all candour that if there were to be a second vote I think it would be another year of turmoil and wrangling and feuding in which the whole country would be the loser.

So let’s not go there.

So let’s instead unite about what we all believe in – an outward-looking liberal global future for a confident United Kingdom.

Because so much of this is about confidence and self-belief.

We love to run ourselves down - in fact we are Olympic gold medal winners in the sport of national self-deprecation

And in the current bout of Brexchosis we are missing the truth: that it is our collective job to ensure that when the history books come to be written Brexit will be seen as just the latest way in which the British bucked the trend, took the initiative – and did something that responds to the real needs and opportunities that we face in the world today

That we had the courage to break free from an idea – however noble its origins – that had become outdated, at least for us.

Konrad Adenauer said that every nation had its genius, and that the genius of the British people was for democratic politics. He was right, but perhaps he didn’t go far enough.

Yes, it was the British people who saw that it was not good enough for Kings and princes to have absolute power and who began the tradition of parliamentary democracy in a model that is followed on every continent.

It was also Britain that led the industrial revolution and destroyed slavery and the British people who had the wit to see through the bogus attractions of protectionism and who campaigned for free trade that has become the single biggest engine of prosperity and progress.

And so I say to my constituent – don’t go to Canada, or anywhere else, lovely though Canada is.

This, the UK, is the country that is once again taking the lead in shaping the modern world

and it is our stubborn attachment to running ourselves that will end up making our society fairer and more prosperous.

In its insistence upon democracy, in its openness, its belief in the rights of the individual, in its protection of our legal system

its scepticism about excessive regulation

its potential for devolving power downwards

and in its fundamental refusal to discriminate between all the other peoples of the earth

and in its central distinction between a political loyalty and obedience to the EU institutions, and our eternal love for European culture, and values, and civilisation

Brexit is not just the great liberal project of the age, but a project that over time can unite this whole country. So let’s do it with confidence together.

Thank you very much.

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