#it's been four weeks since i had more than MAYBE one shot (i.e. not enough to even feel) so i was like fuck it lol idk

[mrsmarlasinger]

I am so drunk I'm hiccuping and I'm slurring and I can't walk and I can't type!!! I'm working on my ~sixth (INCREDIBLY DILUTED) shot right now, but that's it for tonight. Because I don't wanna throw up!!

#I COULD throw up if i wanted to but i won't!! #started out drinking alone but then i called my qpp because drinking alone feels kinda cringe :-( #it's been four weeks since i had more than MAYBE one shot (i.e. not enough to even feel) so i was like fuck it lol idk #also it's genuinely incredible how i continue to write my novel-in-progress while this drunk #idk how i do this but istg my drunk NOVEL writing is much better than my drunk CASUAL writing. like i wake up the next day and i'm like #'this is pretty good tbh!' lol. I write high as well and i will not lie. i *am* tempted to get cross-faded tonight. will let you know (-: #oh my god i cannot sit up straight #anyway byeeeeeee #alcohol #alcohol tw #alcohol cw #tw alcohol #cw alcohol #(my parting words: alcohol is cringe lol) #personal

[im-justso-bored]

Week 6 of Clown Theories and Analysis

S03E06: End of Game

So this one is a bit late, I guess I was a bit underwhelmed by this episode but I’m finally getting around to typing this out. I’ve noticed that for each episode this season, I’ve appreciated it much more the second time I watched it. I think it’s because I have certain expectations of the episode and the episodes end up being completely different from what I thought but idk if it’s in a good way or not so I have readjust my expectations and I usually enjoy it more the second time around. 

Also I wanna say that while I am just as disappointed as everyone else that Eve isn’t getting the screen time she deserves, it does make sense that they would be splitting up the time for each character differently this season. With everyone being separated (Eve no longer working for Carolyn, and V no longer working for Konstantin), there are a lot more storylines to keep up with. And in the promos leading up to this season we see a lot of all four of them, not just Eve and Villanelle. Carolyn is to Eve what Konstantin is to Villanelle, they’re just as much affected by everything as Eve and V. That being said, I do want to see Eve on screen more and I think that season 4 will more Eve and Villanelle centric, hopefully with more emphasis on Eve (kind of like season 1). Especially because depending on how these last two episodes play out, it’s looking likely we won’t be seeing Konstantin at all next season and possibly even Carolyn. KE does have a history of really focuses and building up characters before killing them off (i.e. Bill and Kenny). 

Piss off forever - So I still don’t understand how Niko survived a pitchfork to the neck. I take back my RIP from my episode 4 review. 

I’m really glad that he’s still done with Eve though. Dude doesn’t even care to find out who tried to kill him, he just wants Eve as far away from him as possible and I’m here for it. Whatever it takes for no more Niko. He was still wearing his wedding ring in this scene which confused me but I think this is the last we’ll be seeing of Niko (I hope). Otherwise the whole pitchfork scene would have been for nothing because it clearly didn’t make Eve think it was V. And I guess the goal for the writers wasn’t to kill Niko either so they must be just giving Niko and Eve the only other way out of their doomed marriage which is for Eve to really see the position she’s putting Niko in by still being connected to him. 

To Villanelle, the Keeper - You never really see V care much about who she works for or why is tasked to do what she does.

For a long time, she did what she was told until Eve brought it to her attention and she stole the recording of Frank and learned about the Twelve. And then you see in episode 7 of season 1, V is asking Konstantin for the names of the Twelve. I think Eve asking about who she works for and listening to the recording of Frank opened up a can of worms for V. After this, she’s in this constant struggle within herself to either be powerful or to be free. For a long time, she’s always been stuck in the middle and given the illusion of power and freedom but she never really has either. I think V’s interest in being a Keeper this season has a lot to do with that. You see her talk about freedom a couple of times.

“Run. You’re free.”

“You’re free now. You can be whoever you want.”

Each time, she received the response of “I don’t want to be free.” You can tell she’s really confused at how someone would willingly give up their freedom. She doesn’t have that luxury, she has the illusion of freedom but she’s never truly free. So seeing others give up their freedom is something that perplexes her. I think V sees gaining power the only way she can truly have freedom which is why being a Keeper is so important to her. And despite the shit she went through in episode 5, she seemed genuinely happy to receive the news that her request was successful. Until she realizes that nothing has really changed and she’s still being given orders and not the other way around. The title of “Keeper” is nothing more than an illusion of power and freedom.

She knows she can’t touch him - I’m all here for Eve not believing for one second that V tried to kill Niko.

I’m a little confused on how Eve figured out it was Dasha who tried to kill Niko based off a couple of photos, an online profile, and one conversation with Carolyn. But I guess they do have to move the plot along so I’m just going to say it’s because Eve is a badass investigator even though we all know her and Villanelle share one brain cell. 

Does it really matter who? - I love how Carolyn constantly calls Eve out on her obsession for Villanelle. Because Carolyn is kind of right, if it was the Twelve, why does it really matter? It was important for Eve to know because it means that it wasn’t V. Not to say that Carolyn is completely right though, with a death so personal, of course she would want to know exactly who killed him just like Carolyn would want to know exactly who killed Kenny. But as we all know, it’s more than that for Eve and Carolyn sees right through her as always. 

Also how is that Carolyn always has ties to sketchy Russian people? Konstantin and now Dasha. 

I send for you - I think I speak for us all when I say that I’m tired of seeing V cry or with tears in her eyes, let her be happy pleaaseee. Villanelle is desperately trying to hold on to the few people she has left. After the letdown of finally being promoted to Keeper, the only thing she has left now are Konstantin and Eve, both of whom she shot. These are her last ties to holding on to her humanity and sanity, which parallels nicely with Eve and the red string of fate. You see Konstantin choose Irina over Villanelle in this episode just as you see Niko choose his freedom over Eve. Which leaves Villanelle with Dasha who she doesn’t fully trust and Eve with Carolyn who she also doesn’t fully trust. 

Are you working for them, Paul? - Just a quick note about this scene. This brought up a question a lot of us have been asking since season 1. Is Carolyn working for the Twelve? Was she ever working for the Twelve? It seemed less likely after Kenny’s death but sometimes I still wonder and this scene definitely brought my attention back to that. 

He asked if I was his father - So I’m not even going to touch the whole “Geraldine kissed Konstantin” thing because as of right now, everything about Geraldine confuses me and she has not added anything to the plot so far. Although I do want to know why she lied about Konstantin visiting. It’s definitely not over something as small as a kiss.

Carolyn was such a badass in this scene. She���s definitely become more careless and a bit more unhinged like Eve and Villanelle. As I said before, both Konstantin and Carolyn are just as affected by all of the events that have built up since season 1 and we’re seeing huge contrasts from them then and now. This is definitely building to something big for the last two episodes. I wonder if the idea of Konstantin being Kenny’s father will have any significance later on. Also I want to know how Kenny came to that conclusion and if that’s part of what got him killed. Carolyn’s shock at finding out what Kenny asked Konstantin about makes me wonder if there is something else she’s hiding and wondering if Kenny found out. Not about being Konstantin’s son but something bigger like Carolyn possibly working for the Twelve or formerly working for the Twelve?  

Trying to get my step count up - So yeah, Konstantin is fucked.

She is perfect killing machine - Eve had such top energy here and I love it. Eve definitely surprised Dasha here, maybe even scared her a little. Eve managed to figure her out in a matter of days and then track her down. Dasha definitely underestimated the connection that both Eve and Villanelle share and it’s apparent in this conversation. It’s also very clear that Eve knows V better than Dasha does despite Dasha spending more time with her lately. Dasha sees Villanelle as a “killing machine” but Eve knows that she’s much more than that even after all the shit that V put Eve through. Dasha continues to dig her own grave by underestimating Eve and putting Villanelle on a pedestal, which I think she realizes more in the last scene of this episode. 

This is bullshit - So this scene reminded me of a scene from Dexter where after killing his brother, it really put him off his game and Dexter struggled with his next couple of kills after that. Same with Villanelle and killing her family, this is the only time that we actually see V really falter during one of her kills. 

I don’t want to do this anymore - I’m making it illegal to make Villanelle cry, I can’t take it anymore 😭 What a heartbreaking scene but also what an amazing scene and the parallel to 1x05 is just fantastic. I’m a sucker for good parallels and the ones in this show are just *chef’s kiss*.

Killing her mother definitely broke something inside of Villanelle. I guess you could say that it broke Villanelle and what’s taking place is Oksana. After her promotion not being what she wanted and Konstantin choosing Irina over her, she lost the only way to either of the two things she really wanted, power and freedom. Now she’s stuck doing the same thing she always has (reminds me of what she said during the AA meeting “I’m just so bored.”) but now she’s a different person and that’s not enough anymore. Maybe it was a little more bearable when she didn’t feel anything but now that she feels more, I can imagine that it’s much more suffocating. From the beginning (season 1), she constantly mentions wanting to be normal and do normal things and the only way she can do that is if she’s on top with no one controlling her (power) or if she’s free. But she has neither and both are slipping further out of her reach. 

Also this ^ isn’t allowed. The crying nor her still being so attractive while falling apart. Like how is that possible????

Irina - So like Irina killing her mom’s bf came out of no where but also at the same time, it didn’t? I think it’s definitely in character for Irina to do something like that. But like...eventually. Definitely not so soon. But I guess it can make sense seeing as V and Irina are constantly battling for Konstantin’s attention and maybe Irina thought that this would get his attention if she were a killer like V. 

Thanks to Irina’s little joy ride, Konstantin is now forced to stay in London longer which makes him a target and if Konstantin does die within the next two episodes, I think it’s going to have a huge impact on Irina and she might even blame herself since he had to stay in London because of her. Or this will cause Irina to become more unhinged and for her behavior to escalate. 

OVERALL - This episode was decent, it was one of the weaker episodes for me this season. It gave me a lot to think about but it definitely lacked the excitement and tension that I’ve grown to expect from Killing Eve. Also I’m not a big fan of what they’re doing to the location title cards. I guess they’re trying to be funny or maybe match the same chaotic energy that the characters are giving off. Idk but I don’t really like it. 

I think the last two episodes are definitely going to be a lot more fast paced (or at least I hope) as the season is wrapped up. I’m really nervous for the next week and a half, also I’m sad that this season is coming to an end already! I’m glad we have at least one more season after this to look forward to.

#Killing Eve #Killing Eve season 3 #Killing Eve spoilers #Killing Eve season 3 spoilers #Eve Polastri #Villanelle #Oksana Astankova #Oksana #Villaneve #Killing Eve S03E06 #Carolyn Martens #Konstantin Vasiliev

[davebuckleslefthand]

Martial LAW ??? LOGISTICALLY IMPOSSIBLE.. 

there are not enough troops in these USA to go                                                and attempt to implement Martial law over OUR United States.

June 30, 2013 at 4:06am and still the rumble under                                                                                    the table makes one think:  “What if?”

EVEN IF THE RUSSIANS AND THE CHINESE AND THE ENTIRE                      UN MILITARY FORCE SHOWED UP...

So many of you have been fed disinformation that the Obama Cabal                are waiting for us to act so they can declare Martial Law. This becomes          the reason you use to permit yourself to be in bondage now. Its like a slave  who thinks 

“I cannot rise against the master because                                                            he is just waiting for a chance to whup my ass."

Anyone who feels that Revolting and exercising our rights to resist Tyranny,    will give the Government the reason to impose "Martial Law" read this; carefully.

I am telling you unequivocally...

"That line of thinking is exactly what they want you to think!"

It's a RED HERRING"

NATIONAL MARTIAL LAW? 

LOGISTICALLY IMPOSSIBLE IN A COUNTRY OUR SIZE....

"NATIONAL MARTIAL LAW"?  IMPOSSIBLE TO IMPLEMENT! 

Do not use that as the excuse to exercise your rights!

IF WE TAKE UP ARMS AND FIGHT AGAINST TYRANNY... 

OBAMA WILL IMPOSE "MARTIAL LAW". 

The "cowardly nay sayers" say. "Do not do that"; "Let them fire the first shot".

Good grief how many times have I heard these pathetic lines. Too many times.

Patriots. 

Lets rationally analyze this OK ?

What is Martial Law ? It is the exercise of Government and Control by Military authorities over the civilian population of a designated territory.

"Designated Territory" get it. There is no army in the world that can impose Martial Law over all of AMERICA. The country is too big. It is logistically impossible. Some cities? 

Yes... 

a large area? Maybe.

They will delay Martial Law if it ever comes until they have confiscated your guns. Do you know why they want gun registration and then gun confiscation?

So that they can control large areas. Right now it is IMPOSSIBLE.

Why ?

1. 100% of the Military will not go along with Obama's illegal declaration. There will be a mutiny in the military. So about 70% will take their arms and munition and join the American Citizens... creating huge holes in the logistical supply chains for the remaining enforcers. 2. The PEOPLE will be against them so there will be limited safe havens for the enforcers and they will have to move in large convoys reducing their tactical ability to control large sections or land. 3. The most important point is that there will be return fire. 

Patriots have guns. LOTS OF THEM.

Here are some consoling and awesome statistics. There were 13.7 million hunters in the United States                                        over age 16 -- 12.7 million of whom used rifles, shotguns                                  or handguns for hunting, according to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

That means hunters constituted only 15.9 to 18.1 percent of the estimated     70-80 million gun owners in the U.S. in 2011 --- the latest year for which statistics are available.

In a Dec. 28 national report, USF&W said 13.7 million individuals over age        16 self-identified as hunters, and that 12.7 million used guns (shotguns, rifles    and or handguns) while hunting.

Another 2.9 million hunters used antique muzzleloaders to hunt, but according to USF&W, there is overlap between this figure and other figures due to them reporting.

Around 4.5 million hunted with bows and arrows.

The National Rifle Association (NRA), meanwhile,                                    estimates there are between 70 - 80 million American s                                    gun owners as of the January 2011 stats; these are over a decade old.

Those 70-80 million gun owners had in their possession almost 300 million firearms, about 100 million of which were handguns.

America's Hunters:  The Entire World's Largest Army.

The state of Wisconsin has over 600,000 hunters that got permits this (2o11)

Allow me to restate that number: 600,000

Over the last two months, the eighth largest army in the world - more men under arms than Iran; more than France and Germany combined - deployed to the woods of a single American state to keep the deer population under control.

But that pales in comparison to the 750,000 who are in the woods of Pennsylvania this week. Michigan's 700,000 hunters have now returned      home. Toss in a quarter million hunters in West Virginia, and it is literally          the case that the hunters of those four states alone would comprise the    largest army in the world.

And that is just FOUR states.

The total population of registered hunters in America today ranges from 23 million to 43.7 million individuals. (Based on annual data provided by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.) As long as the American Hunter retains his right to Bear Arms, America will forever be safe from imposition of Martial Law and a Military tale over if we all stick together.

AN OBAMA FORCE STANDS LITTLE CHANCE TO BE ABLE TO IMPOSE MARTIAL LAW GIVEN THESE STATISTICS.

So cut the crap that Obama wants us to do something so he can impose Martial Law. We must not be afraid to act when the time comes.

Some additional stuff to consider:

Strategically... be prepared for the Government to shut down the internet and possible all cell service. In retaliation Patriots will knock out all Cell towers and TV Towers so the State Run Media will not be able to transmit their propaganda.The News paper printing presses will be destroyed and so in the end ham and shortwave radios that will be used by Patriots. I hope most of you guys have ham radios. The Government will have their emergency broadcast system so they will be able to communicate very effectively. Patriots will require undercover "runners"!

The Government does not have the man power to put more than 5 -6 Major Metro areas under Martial Law... and since 55% of the Law Enforcement Officers are Oath Keepers, Count on them coming over to our side.

Strategic highways into the cities are needed to truck food into most concrete jungles in the inner cities since food can only be trucked in. The Government will spend a lot of resources trying to make sure the population who is still supporting them are provisioned. When their provisions run low... they will riot against the government too demanding more resources and this will spread their resources even thinner.

UN and foreign troops may move in but they have less skills in the US countryside and while they may be effective in the cities they will not be sent out into the suburbs.

The African American troops will only venture out into the countryside on suicide missions since even if they are not loyal to Obama they will be perceived to be due to to the extensive race baiting by the cabal and as such are pretty much useless except in the urban areas. They will be kept out of the standard confrontation theater.

So who will be fighting then ?? A limited Military force with a lot of very high tech weaponry... but we are not in uniform so Patriots will be very difficult to distinguish from the population. They will be in uniform because they have to stay together and ID each other.

Coins and "barterable" items need to be stocked because paper money will become a semi useless in most areas. Understand that there will be retaliation so families need to be kept in safe haven areas. They will consider cutting of power and water supplies to Patriot Enclaves but they will have difficulty controlling the RED STATES.

The Blue State Metros areas will riot on their own because they will be in short supply of all basic requirements since all their stuff needs to be trucked in.

Its going to get hot but we will win once we get started. Martial Law or not!

The Command and Controls for Patriot zones are already in place and all that will need to happen is the "Link up"

Additional Info from @John A Brown:

The country has 4 million square miles of land, 4 million miles of paved roads, 150,000 miles of railroads, thousands of miles of navigable rivers.

What is their significance? Every bite of food, every drop of fuel . . . not to mention every single electronic communication of every kind . . . has to pass along these routes and EVERYTHING in that inventory of needs and services either originates in, or must pass through our States... the so called "Flyover Country", i.e. red states and red counties.

WE WILL STOP THEM IN THEIR TRACKS!!

Stay alert Patriots. SHARE AND KNOW THAT WE ARE ALL NOT ALONE... 

THERE ARE OVER 100 MILLION LIKE US...

BEHIND EVERY BLADE OF GRASS!

[dprwolfgang]

Bottle You Up // Park Jinyoung

Therapist! Jinyoung x Patient! Reader

Fluff, Mild angst, poorly written smut

Request from @luckykpopanimespy​. Thank you for the request and being so patient with me. I promised myself I’d have this done before my bday tomorrow and before the weekend ended so her it is. This is my first ever published piece for Jinyoung so I hope you enjoy and I hope I was able to create what you wanted.

Maybe falling for Jinyoung wasn't the best idea, him being your therapist and all. After years of constantly feeling like there was something wrong with her, it was nice to have someone other than Jackson understand her personality. Most (especially her family) would say that you’re socially inept, emotionally detached but really she was just bad with people which might be the same thing but in order to shut her mother up she’d gone to see a therapist like she recommended. He had been her therapist for the past year thanks to their mutual friendship with one Jackson Wang.  

"You know I was starting to think you didn't need my services anymore." Jinyoung teases as he flips another piece of meat on the grill. Therapy sessions with Jinyoung were a bit different i.e. instead of sitting in a room and listening to her talk about her issues, every session consisted of different activities that included the most mundane of things like going to the movies or grocery shopping which were all supposed to help with her lack of social skills as he had put it. All it's done however, is shown her just how much boyfriend material Jinyoung is and she has not one clue as to why he was single. Tonight the session consisted of Korean BBQ and soju.

"Soooo, are you gonna tell me what happened or…?"

"He said I was emotionally detached and that I needed to realize that he was more than just a piece of ass, that he has feelings too." Head propped up on my hand I look at him " the dick wasn't even that good and he could never find the damn clit. You'd think with all the porn he watches he would know how to locate it but nada." the young woman shrugs as if she was simply reading off the menu while Jinyoung visibly chokes on the shot of soju he'd taken at that moment.

"I don't know, maybe there really is something wrong with me." Taking the rest of  soju to head, she takes a piece of meat and pops it into her mouth."

"____, there's nothing wrong with you, we've been at this for so long and if he couldn't tell that you're an amazing woman then he didn't deserve you. You aren't bad with people ____, you're just very selective of who and what you give your time and energy too and I don't see anything wrong with that. You aren't meant to be happy all the time, you.."

"Whoa, slow down before I fall more in love with you than I already am…hey you wanna be my boyfriend?" If Jinyoung is shocked by the words that come out your mouth then he hides it very well.

She’s not drunk if that's what you're thinking. Tipsy, most definitely but not drunk…or maybe she is?

"Jackson wasn't lying when he said alcohol makes you loose-lipped huh?"

"I'm not drunk!"

"Sure you aren't sweet cheeks, now listen to me even though I'm sure we'll be having this conversation again in the near future. You sit up straight and look directly at him.

"You aren't meant to be the same person you were a week, a month or a year ago. We as humans, we're creatures of habit but we're also creatures of change and you've changed so much since our first session where you just sat a looked at me and…"

"at least somebody thinks so,"

"Yah! Stop cutting me off you little brat," he says pinching her cheeks and now is definitely not the time to be turned on but god dammit he had you whipped and he didn’t even know it.

"Then stop saying shit to increase the massive hard-on I already have for you." You smile at him.

"And that's my cue to get you home." he shakes his head jokingly before calling over the waiter and taking the rest of the food to go.

"Why do you keep ignoring my confessions Jinyoung? At least tell me if you don't feel the same way. I mean it'll suck but I've already accepted my fate with Hanahaki."

"Aish, calm down drama queen,we'll finish talking once we get out of here so stop putting words in my mouth."

“Fucking hell, why’d I leave the damn blinds open?” You mumble to yourself rolling out of bed and heading straight for the bathroom.

It’s not until you’re settled on the toilet fully immersed in relieving your bladder that the smell of coffee and bacon hits your nose.

Who the fuck did I bring home last night?  

You grab the baseball bat beside your desk once back in the bedroom and tiptoe out of it following the scent of French vanilla.  

Firm grip on the handle you poke the shirtless culprit causing the male to jump and drop whatever he was holding in the sink. Once he turns around you’re lowering the bat and glaring at him.

“What the fuck are doing in my apartment so early and shirtless?” Bat rested on the counter and arms folded across your chest.

“It’s noon and San said you’d need the grease and coffee at whatever time you decided to wake up. As for why I’m shirtless…well, a certain someone who claimed she wasn’t that drunk threw up  on me when she tried to convince me to kiss her.” Jinyoung smiles at the pout on your face taking a step forward for every one you took backward.

“I really don’t need to know about your sex life Jin. It’s already bad enough that I gotta deal with the feelings I have for you that I don’t need added salt to my wounds.” He chuckles as he traps you between his shirtless body and the counter.

“How much of last night do you remember pretty girl?” You shrug and reiterate what you remember from the moment you took those migraine pills from San to the moment you woke up. Jinyoung scolds you for mixing alcohol with medication but finally understood why you got so drunk that quickly. Jackson had mentioned in passing that you could hold your liquor more than anyone he knew and even if you did get drunk you never seemed to wake up with a hangover just a craving for coffee and grease. Needless to say he was quite surprised when you were hammered after just four shot of soju and three beers.

He helps fill in the gaps of your hazy memories and by the end your face is buried in your hands.

“Jesus Christ what the everloving fuck is wrong with me?”

“Hey, hey it’s okay. I mean it’s not everyday the woman that I like throws up on me but it makes for a great story later on.” He laughs and so do you because his laugh is just that infectious but you stop when his words sink in.

“Y-you like me?”

“Yeah…I was going to tell you last night but you got wasted and kept cutting me off and then when I got you home, well you already know how that ended up.” His hands find purchase on your waist pulling you closer to him. One hand leaves your waist and travels up the expanse of your body to cup your face. “If the offer still stands, I would love to be your boyfriend.”

Jinyoung’s eyes had been one of his many tells and looking directly at him you could see that he was absolutely serious about what he’d just said and before you could talk yourself out of it you’re kissing him.

It takes a moment for him to reciprocate but once he does, it’s more than anything you’ve ever conjured up in your imagination. His lips are like marshmallows, soft, sweet and pliant against your own. You can taste the coffee and think that you’d never be able to have French vanilla like a normal person anymore. You can’t help the moan that tears from your throat when the hand that once lay on your waist rubs over then grabs an ass cheek, pulling you flush against his body.

“Is that a yes?” He whispers against the side of your neck as he continues peppering the skin with kisses.

“In every language but what about your job?” You question. As much as you wanted him, you knew this could affect his job.

“Yesterday was officially our last session, I meant it when I started I don’t think you need me anymore but if you want to keep your sessions going Jaebum’s already agreed to take over.” He smiles and you’re kissing him again.  

He grabs  both of your thighs and lifts you, wrapping your legs around his waist. He makes the small trek to your bedroom, closing the door with his feet then drops you onto your bed.

“God this better not be a damn dream.” You mumble with no intention of him hearing but he does and he hovers over you kissing you lips lightly.

“It’s not.”  

Jinyoung’s hands picks up where he left off and continues its adventure in exploring your body. Pushing the material of your tshirt up and over your head, his mouth latches on to your nipple as his fingers twist and pull at the other.

“Jin please.” His name leaves your mouth in a breathless sigh. He doesn’t tease or question, he kisses his way down your body until he’s settled between your thighs.  

Your underwear slowly comes off as he whispers about how wet you are, a tentative lick to your dripping core as he wraps his lips around your swollen bud and sucks hard. Fingers teased your wet folds before one slides in. You moan lightly, head thrown back onto your pillow, back arched when Jinyoung slips another finger past your entrance.

You never knew you could enjoy cunnilingus as much as you were in that moment and it was all thanks to him. You push up on your elbows and look down at the sight of Jinyoung’s face buried in your cunt and can’t help the way you clench against his fingers.He ate you out like his life depended on it, knowing exactly when to curl his fingers or suck just a little harder. You were absolutely sure that if San was at home he’d be knocking on your door telling you to keep it down and for once you’ve never been more thankful for his early shifts on a Saturday.  

The tightening of your walls against his fingers alerts him to your impending orgasm and he doubles his efforts to get you there faster. One particularly harsh suck has you coming undone on his tongue and dripping down his fingers.He presses soft kisses up your body as you catch your breath. He wasn’t one to brag but seeing the blissed out expression on your face had him mentally tooting his own horn.

“You good pretty girl?” A kiss to your cheek before dipping into your neck and continuing his assault on your skin.

“You just gave me the best orgasm of my life and you’re asking me if I’m okay?” You laugh lightly when you feel him smile against your skin.

“That was only the beginning baby.” He rises and captures your lips with his. One hand in his hair as the other travels the expanse of his chest down to the waistband of the sweatpants he was wearing slipping under. He groans into your mouth when your hands wraps around his length and squeezes.

Slow, languid strokes up and down his has him growing harder than he already was. He lets you have your fun as he rids himself of his pants and boxers, laying you back against your pillows he takes your hands in his, fingers interwoven and holds them down besides your head.

He runs his length through your glistening folds coating himself in your arousal, his tip catches on your entrance and he’s pushing in until he’s buried to the hilt inside you. Neither of you break eye contact and as much as he wants to fuck into you when your legs tighten around his waist effectively pushing him deeper inside you, he knows he’ll have many more opportunities to do so.

“Please,”

You don’t have to tell him what you need. Jinyoung is acutely aware of when you want him to go faster and harder or slower and deeper. Knows just when to rub figure eights on your neglected clit to have your back arching into his chest and your nails raking down his back as you reach your high.

He slows his pace letting your come down, leaving kisses all over your face. He waits until your breathing has become steady before picking up his pace and chasing his end. Your hand finds his cheek as you both stare at each other.

“Let go baby, cum for me.” You whisper against his lips. Three deep thrusts and he’s pulling out and coming on your navel with a groan. He places a kiss to your lips before he disappears into your bathroom. You can’t help the blissed out smile on your face as your mind replays the last hour. You jump lightly when you feel the warm cloth against your skin and turn to see Jinyoung dressed in his boxers. He helps you pull your tshirt back over your head and tosses the dirty cloth in the hamper then climbs back into your bed pulling you against him.

Head against his chest and his hand in your hair, you sigh in contentment.

“Ever since I realized how I felt about you, I always found myself wanting you around me even when I didn’t have you booked for a session. I found myself wanting to hold you and never let you leave…”

“Every time you smiled at me I felt like I could just keep that image and save it for a rainy day and now I have you here,” you continue when he pauses.

“What do you plan to do with me?” You can hear the teasing tone in his voice and you smile. You look up at him and smile pressing a quick kiss to his lips.

“Bottle you up.”  

#park jinyoung #mobile masterlist #got7 scenarios #got7 jinyoung #jinyoung scenarios #kpop

[dansnaturepictures]

In continuation form my last post half an hour ago: Photos of mine on my 2021 wildlife calendar: October-December and five reserves 

Like the last post, mentioned below in order of appearance in this photoset 

October: Collared Dove in the garden taken March 2020 

As one of my prominent lockdown/working from home era photos this one sums up those days in when I loved taking pictures of birds in the garden, but had to battle more than most to make this calendar. Against Puffins, Seals and Bewick’s Swans this simply point and shoot taken Collared Dove cut a more modest figure in my shortlists. But in the real close looking at the pictures this darkhorse made me realise it was simple yet effective and a picture I really liked the quality of with its nice little bit of sun bringing out the bird well on a memorable sunny day so it made it. What I didn’t realise until recently is I believe its the first of my garden bird photos ever to make one of my calendars a huge personal thing to take from the days working from home/in lockdown. 

November: Grey Seal, Farne Islands from June 2019 

Another of the Farnes photos I liked so much, in my strongest year for them seeing so many Grey Seals and up close too helped make the Northumberland adventure so special too. This one just had so many elements I liked about and I rather hoped I might be able to put it in my calendar line up only the second seal picture to make it for me. Whilst its a summer photo I know November is a key part of the Grey Seal breeding season on the Farne Islands bringing back memories of a BBC Autumnawatch stint with them on the Farnes with Gordon Buchanan when I was younger when I first learned of this and longed to go so with many of the Farne photos competing for that June slot I took a bit of pleasure in giving this one the vacant (in terms of photos on the calendar taken in it) eleventh month of the year. 

December: One of my favourite birds the Puffin, Inner Farne, Farne Islands, Northumberland taken in June 2019 

When I finalise a calendar lineup I create a new folder (my shortlist is basically a folder of my photos on my laptop which after processing my photos on each trip/every time I take some I put copies of them/standout ones into to compete to be on my calendars) for the next calendars i.e. this year my 2022 calendars. I then pick ten wildcard photos so photos taken within six weeks prior to my lineup being finalised to put into the next year’s folder as they were taken in a time I was well into my choosing and maybe didn’t get a fair chance to stay around long enough for me to judge them truly so they effectively get a shot at being able to be ones I come to like enough over time and could make the next year’s calendar. I also do if I need to reverse wildcards where if I take a picture between finalising the lineup (creating the new shortlist folder) and my first social media reveal of the calendar that I think is good enough to go on the calendar I’ve just chosen instead of another I can do that. 

If it wasn’t for the fact my calendar lineups had already been revealed on social media for 2020 by the time we got to the Farne Islands this Puffin picture may have been on my 2020 one. Albeit, I took so many I was proud of on the Farnes this in a batch of three or four I picked out as my strongest when there among others it may have been unfair to accelerate only one to the calendar. I say that with a pinch of salt and just a way to explain finer details of my calendar selection process and mean no disrespect to the 13 of my wildlife photos from 2018 and earlier 2019 that made this calendar I’m so proud of on my wall now. 

As it happened this photo got the time to well and truly prove its worth among my others and make the calendar, but I feel as soon as I took it I knew it would probably make my 2021 calendar. There is just such an aura about it, I feel its again simple yet effective in the way I took the photo but its just such a memorable photo. As I said all those years ago for the good one I took on Skomer Island, Pembrokeshire in 2013 of a Puffin with sandeels in its beak that’s the money shot that’s the picture everyone wants to take of a Puffin. I did that here and its my best Puffin picture, potentially my ultimate wildlife subject in the UK especially, I’ve taken since that 2013 one that hangs on a big printed canvass I got for a birthday once with another of my past photos beside me. With this picture I just can’t really put into words what it means to me I just love it so much, it sums up why I love Puffins and why the Farne Islands experience was one of my greatest in my life. It sort of fell into December’s slot with the packed amount of June photos making the calendar. But actually the cloudy sky and white wall may make it quite Decemberesque thinking of snow haha. Fitting that the photo I’ve known would likely make this calendar for the best part of the year will close it. 

This is the first year I’ve ever shown you them I believe but I normally like to have five photos that during the selection didn’t quite make the calendar as reserves. This is just in case a photo on the calendar doesn’t look too good in any format on the website I make the calendars or something happens with the file or anything like that. Its an easy contingency and these photos so close but yet so far are unlikely to actually be on the calendars. These photos in this photoset the fourth-eighth pictures in this photoset are a mixture of one that were provisionally qualified at one point and had to make way for other photos or the remainder of my final league I do where I pit eight photos against each other to see what looks best at the time and do a little scoreboard to determine the last few places on my calendars. 

The reserve photos are, another Puffin on Staple Island, Farne Islands from June 2019, Common Tern on Inner Farne Island then, Kestrel at Richmond Park in October 2019, Water Rail at WWT Slimbridge in January 2020 and Small White butterfly near to home taken in March 2020 the same day as the Collared Dove and this one was provisionally qualified so I nearly had two locally from one day.

So there we have it, my wildlife 2021 calendar. My landscape and other outdoors 2021 calendar lineups had their final decision done later so I will do posts like these for them in due course corresponding so they’re a month after the Twitter reveal of them on Dans_Pictures. 

#puffin #collared dove #common tern #grey seal #small white #kestrel #water rail #gloucestershire #pembrokeshire #northumberland #hampshire #october #november #december #uk #calendar #wildlife #photography #england #europe #selections

[shadowsong26fic]

yo tell me about Shamie, any universe

So, the difficulty here was in coming up with ten facts you don’t already know…XD

Anyway!

Ten Things About Shamie, applicable primarily to their usual canon-aligned timeline (as opposed to Valdemar AU or one of the ones where Mirah acquires them as an adult), though some of these apply to any and all versions.

For those of you who don’t know, Shamie is one of Zeb and Kallus’s four kids. They’re a former pickpocket/street urchin, the third by adoption order, probably the second-oldest, and Human. In modern-day Earth terms, they're agender. They grow up to be a priest in a faith devoted to a sun/fire deity that I still need to name.

Putting the actual list behind a cut because. Uh. I got wordy?

Ask me about my characters!

They’re not technically a feral child, in that they weren’t, like, Raised By Wolves or anything. But both of their birth parents were out of the picture by the time they were two (I think their biological father was possibly gone before they were born, but not 100% sure on that), and then they were on their own for about six months when they were around five or six, and then for about a year until Zeb found them when they were around nine.

I’m not 100% sure who looked after them between two and five, but it’s probably a similar sort of situation to the old woman who looked after Stef before that one Bard found him? I.e., looked after their physical needs/wasn’t especially cruel or kind, but mostly used them as a prop for begging, etc. Anyway, whoever this person was, Shamie’s memories of them are pretty vague and sort of neutral

So, basically, while their social skills are wildly inconsistent, their basic physical milestones were more or less met/language and communication development is more or less on track, and they have enough of a foundation to catch up where they’re lacking.

(Yes, yes, I know this is a thing that tends to get handwaved for the sake of Story all the time, and I’m still doing a certain amount of that, but there’s a limit, at least for me.)

Their original home planet was pretty far away from its star, and therefore lighting tends to be pretty dim or super artificial or both (though there was geothermal heating that gave it a naturally fairly moderate temperature range). Which is probably another reason they gravitated towards a sun/fire deity.

They’re pretty good at reading people/intent; so when they spot Zeb trying to figure out a way to break into whatever he needs to break into, they immediately peg him as Dangerous But Not An Active Threat/Not Scary and keep an eye on him from a distance.

…which probably means they figured out what he was up to and offered to help, rather than him spotting them picking someone else’s pocket and approaching them.

The fact that they then attempted to negotiate price (not…very well, they don’t really have much concept of long-range planning or how to save up or whatever at this point, so fifty credits seems like A Lot to them and that’s where they start, but they made a Spirited Attempt) is probably about 30% of why Zeb decided to keep them.

(Though, initially, Zeb actually kind of encouraged them to disappear/run off after they handed over the passkey he needed, because Let’s Not Get A Small Civilian Child Shot Today Okay That’s Bad.)

(Shamie considered doing that for a minute, but stuck around for reasons that are still fuzzy in my brain, and that just kind of cemented things.)

(Still the best text message conversation when he gets in touch with Alex about maybe bringing home Kid #3

(Also his mission report on the subject: “Did not in fact get the Small Child shot. Go me.”)

So, the way training for priests work in their faith, is that they go to seminary for about three years, and then are sent out as a junior priest for a sort of apprenticeship/internship, which usually lasts anywhere from one to five years. Pretty much every priest takes on a junior at least once over the course of their career. Depending on the kind of career track the junior priest is set upon, their mentor could be in a variety of positions/career stages, though usually the super high-ranked priests don’t take on juniors anymore, and the full priest is generally at least ten years past their own internship. Anyway, all this background to say that Shamie ends up mentoring probably at least three or four junior priests over the course of their career, including one of their ex’s kids.

(Generally, there’s a transition period when an older priest is retiring, especially for priests on the community rather than administrative/political track. This is sometimes, but not always done with an internship, which is how things worked out for Shamie. Their mentor, I think I’ve possibly mentioned, is a Togruta who in my head is played by Maggie Smith.)

They never quite grow to like the heavy snows/storms/how Cold things get in certain seasons (ask them about that time their generator shorted out during a storm and they had to go out and reboot it), but a) it’s still not as bad as Hoth, and b) the view–both of the higher peaks and of the valley below–and the sense of open space/freedom/nature/what have you make the weather patterns absolutely worth putting up with.

Once they got used to the altitude, they made a habit of trying to take one day a week to go hiking. Not so much for the scenery, but because there’s a particular contemplative state they get to when it’s just them and the mountain and the flora and fauna, etc.

(They technically serve a group of about four or five mountain towns, along with the surrounding rural area; their base town/where they actually live is roughly central, altitude-wise, and about as high as Machu Picchu.)

They tend to wear their hair in pretty feminine-coded styles, because they like them better. Probably part of why they let Orryn braid their hair so often. Most of the rest of their presentation is pretty mixed, at least until they’re ordained–their faith doesn’t really have gender differences in standard clerical wear.

While there’s pretty much nothing that they flat-out won’t eat (except that one thing they’re allergic to, or otherwise known to be toxic for humans/obviously spoiled/etc.), they don’t really like sweets/overly sweet things, as a rule.

While they’re pretty phlegmatic/chill about most things, there are a Few Things that genuinely get to them:

They have a Thing about arson.

And a related Thing about not being able to find/get to an exit.

Slugs or anything else that leaves a wet/sticky trail.

Or, like, sticky things in general tend to squick them out a bit. They don’t mind most other types of mess but if it’s sticky it’s Gross.

They really, really don’t like anything that obstructs their hands/fingers–took them a while to even get used to wearing gloves, and that’s mostly because the choice between Gloves and Frostbite.

(They tend to type one-handed, too; pretty much any task that can be done one-handed, they prefer to keep their other hand free Just In Case.)

Apparently, their biological father may have been a clone???

This will probably not be at all relevant since their birth parents aren’t super relevant in general but yeah it’s a Thing.

(…I mean. Assuming the clones weren’t engineered to be sterile, which is possible but I don’t think ever explicitly stated and also this is interesting.)

Also, I’m not sure anyone actually figures it out, unless Shamie has genetic testing done to check for potential issues moving forward–they possibly take more after their mother, appearance-wise (and they’re definitely Taller and Ganglier than any of the clones as an adult), plus there were a lot of weird environmental factors in their early childhood so ::shrug emoji::.

#asked #answered #tigerkat24 #shadowsong writes star wars #shadowsong writes self-indulgent bs #meme

[porchwood]

Okay, here goes. The incredible @everlarkedalways created a GoFundMe to help me out through present circumstances, but before I share that link, I wanted to explain a bit of what’s been going on. I feel awful accepting financial help, in part because I’ve been such a dry well for the past 18 months (I have nothing creative to give back/say “thank you” with) and also because so many of you have previously contributed monies to help me through other crisis points over the past five years (yes, it’s been that long and no, it doesn’t seem to be getting any better). But things are maybe the most desperate they’ve ever been and I really can’t say no to badly needed help.

Because I’m long-winded, I’m going to try to condense this into a simple chronological order. Things have been relentlessly bad since my car accident on December 26, 2013, but this is where the current run really started: 

December 2017: The day after Christmas, I went to the ER at 3am with excruciating chest and upper back pain, a bad experience all around (terrible staff, indifferent care). Their best guess was that I’d had an acid reflux attack, something I’d never had before (but have had since, alas :/).

January 2018: The ER bill saga began, and after loads of paperwork/headaches applying for any kind of aid/bill forgiveness, they put me on a payment plan for the $1,343 balance (and yes, that was "after” insurance - Marketplace policies are crap and all they did was “adjust” the total; nothing was covered). Meanwhile, I started taking Lucky to an acupuncturist over an hour’s drive away, desperate to find something to ease her severe separation anxiety (nonstop barking and howling when I was gone, which we have been struggling to treat, with varying degrees of success, for over two years). The sessions were very expensive (around $400 for one month - I had to put them on a credit card that I’m still chipping away at) and actually made her WORSE.

February 2018: The downstairs neighbors left a mildly threatening note about Lucky’s howling - the day before my birthday. In a ridiculous twist of luck, I managed to find a great sitter who only takes little dogs and was (and still is) able to watch Lucky for me as needed, but it cost me $25/day. (At most I would use her two days a week, but you can see how quickly that would add up.) At the same time, I also started administering CBD drops (suggested by our new vet) to Lucks when I had to leave her at home.

July 2018: After increasing the dosage multiple times, I finally started seeing improvement in Lucky’s behavior from a combination of the CBD drops and SAMe, which was huge (note the timespan), but these therapies cost about $100 month. I resolved to make it work somehow.

September 2018: I found out that my workplace had been bought out by an area salon and would be changing hands soon. Shortly thereafter the new owner sent us the employee handbook, which stated that we could not have another job in the same field (many massage therapists in this part of the country work at multiple places as there simply isn’t enough work to go around, especially in the off-season). The new owner was originally okay with me keeping my second job (on-call work at a yoga studio), and then I learned that that position was switching from a subcontractor to an outright rental (I would have to pay up front for the use of the room and possibly make none of it back while having to promote myself as a business), so for several reasons I decided I would leave that second job at the end of October and try to pick up more hours at my “main” job. One bright spot in all this: the downstairs neighbors moved out at the end of the month, but...

October 2018: ...the day after the neighbors moved out, the landlord informed my roommate (a THG fandom friend and content creator) that the owner of our building had sold the property and that we had 30 days to vacate. I can’t even begin to articulate how stressful, expensive, frightening, and exhausting that time was. By the end of October our only real option was a little house approximately 10 miles from town, and miraculously we got ourselves moved out there - to the tune of lots of $$$ and insane energy expenditure.

November 2018: Because I now lived about 20 mins from work and I have to come home at lunchtime to take Lucky out (and give her a booster of anxiety drops), I had to switch to split shifts. If you’ve ever worked split shifts, you will understand why this sucks (you’re never home, you’re always tired, and you never see or spend time with the people you live with). My new boss put me on the schedule for two additional days a week (I initially had just two days a week, period, hence the second job), which initially seemed very promising, but neither myself nor the rest of the staff realized that the new management had an either/or policy when it comes to pay. (This is messy and frustrating to explain, but in a nutshell: instead of getting paid commission for massages and hourly for the rest of your clocked-in time - laundry, desk help, etc - you get paid ONLY commission, i.e., nothing for all the extra things you do, unless the commission divided by hours amounts to less than minimum wage, in which case they pay you minimum wage for the week instead, including for your massage hours. Which is not cool but is, apparently, legal.) So I was driving about an hour a day (20 mins each way, twice, to the tune of about 300 miles/week) just to make minimum wage (we were entering the dead season for massage and I’m the perpetual “second string” therapist anyway, so some weeks I had just four clients in four days :/), which was exhausting and disheartening.

December 2018: Daylight glimmered: my sister (with whom I am extremely close and who I hadn’t seen in a year and a half) flew out to see me after Christmas. A coworker agreed to cover the whole week and a half of her visit for me, and I was a little nervous about taking the time off (unpaid, of course) at such a rotten financial time, but I hadn’t had a vacation of any kind since moving to Maine nor a weekend off since August of 2017. I resolved to be extra frugal during her visit and my work schedule was going to be almost full after she left, so I was pretty sure I could squeak through somehow.

I saw her off on her return trip, and that night I was carrying some dishes down from our living room when I took a very bad fall down the stairs. These are awful, steep “Maine stairs,” and in my fall my left leg shot out through the open side of the staircase and wedged the knee against the bookcase in the dining room below. When I tried to get up I realized that something was very wrong with my knee, and my roommate helped me to bed with ice, a brace, ibuprofen, etc. The following morning I went to the hospital and was directed to the same stupid ER (the last place I ever wanted to go again, but they don’t have urgent care out here and wouldn’t let me just see a GP, so I broke down and cried in admissions). The care I received was middling, if not as bad as on my previous visit, and the nurse-practitioner ordered no weight-bearing for three days, which meant losing the rest of that (desperately needed) work week, and advised following up with orthopedics the next week if the knee wasn’t better.

My wonderful roommate made all kinds of accommodations for my comfort for those three days, and I implemented all the extra therapies I could think of (turmeric, arnica, l-glutamine, Epsom salt soaks, etc). I asked my employers about the possibility of picking up non-massage hours (covering the desk, laundry, etc) but was given the impression that there was nothing for me to do till I could return to massage again. I went to the orthopedic doctor last Thursday and his diagnosis was an MCL (least concerning of the knee ligaments) sprain or tear. I was already strides ahead on his self-care recommendations (getting myself off the crutches, constantly wearing a good brace) and he was supposed to refer me for some PT, but I haven’t heard a peep on that front, and I’m not particularly concerned because, Lord knows, my insurance probably wouldn’t pay for that anyway. He estimated 4 weeks to full recovery but I’m determined to get back to work before that.

So, here’s where we’re at: I’m out of work at the worst time of year, and at the very least, I’ll lose 2.5 weeks of pay (on top of the planned week I took off, plus Christmas and New Year’s were unpaid holidays). Because we live in Maine where everyone has beastly heating fuel, even in a decently insulated house (as I believe this one to be), it costs us around $350 a month to keep the place at 58 degrees through the winter months. (Yes, 58 degrees. 60 if we’re splurging.)

My credit cards are maxed out from car repairs and copious Lucky expenses (including an emergency vet visit - she ended up being fine but it was one of those things that happens after hours/over a weekend and you really shouldn’t wait several days to have checked out).

Oh, and just for fun, our January rent payment got lost in the mail. The landlord was very nice about it and we promptly sent out a replacement, but this meant paying $35 for a stop-payment on the missing check (did I mention that I had to buy checks, to the tune of almost $30, just for paying rent?).

Those of you who have already donated: you are quite literally keeping me going right now. You covered Lucky’s rabies booster yesterday and refills of her food and supplements (all of which, naturally, were running out at the same time), and Lucky is absolutely the reason I’m still alive, so her care honestly means more to me than my own.

I have no idea what my medical bills will look like at this point. I’m assuming the ER visit will be around $1000, and I’m sure the orthopedic visit will be up there somewhere too. As soon as bills start coming in I’ll apply for aid (or, likelier than not, a payment plan), but in order to do that they’re going to want my new tax returns, which means I’m going to have to get my taxes done (probably in Feb) just to find out what my ultimate medical expenses will be. (I used to do my own taxes cheaply through TaxAct, but I was a subcontractor for part of the year, which complicates things and means having to pay someone $$$ to do them this round. I may actually owe on my taxes this year, which is terrifying.)

The healing has been going well overall and I’m hoping to be able to go back to work next week, but I don’t want to assume my knee will oblige. To add insult to injury, I just got hammered with a terrible cold (the kind that levels you in bed), so my body is triaging itself and I’m not sure which is going to get the care first. Surprisingly enough, Lucky’s being a great little nurse, but recovery is a difficult and very lonely process, especially when you get saddled with illness on top of injury.

Anyway, sorry for the ramble. I’ve been reluctant to talk about the miserable past year, but in light of the fact that I’m receiving (and, I guess, asking for :/ ) help, I thought you should know what’s been going on. Thanks for listening and blessings on your day. <3

#bad stuff #gofundme

[justaramblingromantic]

when she was little - part i

Characters/Pairing: Sarugaki Hiyori and Hirako Shinji/ShiYori

Type: Canon, Post!Series, Say Please!verse, Lily and Thistle!verse, ShiYori Week 2018, 

Word Count: 2897

A/N #01: First of seven parts. I will post an update daily just for this arc, in honor of ShiYori Week 2018. I’m already days behind and I don’t think I will be able to meet all the prompts, but I will still do what I can. :)

Wow. I’m still so amazed by the existence of a ShiYori week! Back in the golden days of this fandom grandma, we just yelled ship gibberish into the void and maybe every turn of the century, some casual ShiYori shipper would take pity and touch base for a while. This…This must be what they call progress!! You go, you, ShiYori Week Organizer!

FYI, this chapter corresponds to the Prompt for Day 1: Reversed.

A/N #02: Back to this arc – I’ve always wanted to explore a de-aged Hiyori so I finally got around to writing it. Baby!Hiyori is so cute I can’t even. I hope you guys have your fluff caps on.

Random note: I’m always endlessly amused that the ‘hiyo’ (ひよ) in Hiyori’s (ひよ里) name is also used in ‘hiyoko’ (ひよこ) – meaning ‘little chick,’ haha.

                                              Though she be but little, she is fierce!

                                                          - William Shakespeare

When Hiyori was late for lunch, which almost always never happened, Shinji should have already guessed that something was not right. 

His petite lover never missed a free meal as a general rule of thumb, which was how he was able to (often) lure her back to Seireitei to seek him just like he had this time. She still did not like Soul Society all that much, but with enough incentive (as well as the promise of his charming escort and company) she could usually be convinced to set aside her prejudice temporarily and learn to enjoy her time with him in this realm that they both originally belonged. He hoped that he would eventually be able to wear down her resistance and reluctance to come back permanently to Soul Society – he did not expect her to return into service as a Shinigami of the Gotei 13 (that would be too much to ask from her and would earn him nothing but her fury), but it would at least be nice to have her nearby all the same.

He had promised to treat her today – yakiniku, her favorite – and in light of that, it hadn’t taken much persuasion on his part to get her to clear her ‘busy’ schedule to lunch with him. She had grudgingly agreed to turn up at noon when he spoke to her through the phone last evening, but it had already been a couple of hours past that appointed time, and she still had not showed at his office in the Gobantai. Shinji had been quite busy with his paperwork and therefore he had only been mildly exasperated by her unpunctuality; two hours had to be some kind of record even for her.

His Lieutenant had approached him a while ago, and Momo had rather concernedly enquired if her Taichou would like her to bring back some takeout for his sake instead. The dark-haired female was very conscientious of her duties and would often fret when she felt that her Captain was neglecting his personal wellbeing, though she stopped when he explained that he was waiting for a certain snaggletooth monkey brat. His Fukutaichou had smiled then with understanding, content with the knowledge that her Taichou wasn’t starving himself under her watch, and work in the office resumed for the next hour or so.

By then, Shinji had already finished all the bureaucratic tasks that he had set out to do for the day, and Hiyori still had not showed up at his office. The fine-haired Vizard Captain was no longer just disgruntled with his significant other, he was also starting to become a mite concerned. It really wasn’t like Hiyori to be late at all, in fact, she was usually excessively on time for appointments, often even going so far as to arrive early (and then she would go around beating up those who came after her for being tardy). Shinji was starting to wonder if something had really happened – though if it turned out that the brat was indeed simply, just unbelievably, incorrigibly late, then he would be really unamused.

It was then, that there was a quiet knock on the door of the Gobantai office, and both Taichou and Fukutaichou looked up from their desks to see the composed figure of Kurotsuchi Nemu standing at the entrance. The artificial soul sketched a solemn, polite bow to her fellow Lieutenant and the latter’s Captain before asking for permission to speak.

“Go ahead,” Shinji responded, intrigued by this unusual visit. The Fifth Division and the Twelfth Division typically did not have many dealings with one another, so he was curious to see what the latter Squad wanted from his.

“Good afternoon, Hirako Taichou,” the young woman greeted in a calm, modulated tone. “The Twelfth Division seeks your assistance in light of a particularly unexpected situation that we are currently doing our best to correct. We require your cooperation in the meanwhile as we’re not equipped to deal with the subject, and our Third Seat has mentioned that you may be able to offer invaluable assistance in resolving this accident.”

Shinji was visibly baffled. “Subject? Accident?” he echoed, his brow furrowing ever so slightly in bewilderment. “…This isn’t another one of yer Taichou’s ploys ‘ta get a Vizard Shinigami on his table again, is it? What, or, as I suspect, who are ya talkin’ ‘bout, Kurotsuchi Fukutaichou?”

In response, the Juunibantai Shinigami moved aside slightly and made a small gesture with her hand, revealing the presence of the Third Seat of her Squad who had just shifted into sight.

“No, Hirako Taichou. This is not a ploy.” the other Lieutenant replied quite truthfully and courteously. “I shall allow Akon-san to explain the situation in detail.”

Shinji had not seen the horned scientist of the Twelfth ever since that last time they had that conversation about Hiyori, and as Shinji’s dark golden gaze shifted over to younger male, mouth already open to ask what was going on, he immediately caught sight of the tiny bundle that the clearly discomforted man was gingerly holding in his arms.

The little thing that Akon was carrying with painstaking care shifted and moved slightly, and Shinji’s eyes widened imperceptibly in surprise.

It was a child.

A very young, tiny one at that – not exactly a baby and probably just slightly more grown up than a toddler, but what had stunned the Captain so much was not the presence of the child, but rather, her all too familiar appearance.

Soft, fluffy, shoulder length blonde hair. Cute, cherubic features. Small rosebud mouth. Huge ochre eyes. The unmistakable smatter of freckles dusted over babyish cheeks. The young one did not look a day older than four or five, and in reaction to that sight, he had damn near shot up from his seat instantaneously, the earlier bemused, laidback look in his eyes disappearing abruptly, agitation visibly thrumming through his previously calm spiritual pressure as he grimly eyed Akon.

“What exactly is this?” he demanded immediately, his tone becoming sharp and clipped, an apparent undercurrent of growing ire in his abruptly shifted demeanor and speech. “What have ya done?”

There weren’t a lot of things that would immediately rile the lean, rangy blonde, but what he was looking at right now came pretty damn close. ‘What the hell are ya tryin’ ‘ta pull?”

Poor Akon visibly blanched at the deadly serious, borderline angry expression on the Captain’s face, suddenly reminded of the fact that this usually laidback male was also quite powerful in his own right. The black haired man nearly took a step back before he caught himself and shook his head quickly. “Hirako Taichou, believe me when I say that this is anything but intentional. …There has been an…unfortunate mishap.”

And it had been an awfully unfortunate mishap, indeed.

It turned out that Hiyori had somehow decided to make a small detour to her old Division when she had arrived in Seireitei ahead of lunchtime, and thanks to an unfortunate series of events (aided and abetted by her bottomless pit of a stomach), the waifish blonde had ended up eating something that she shouldn’t have – i.e. an entire plate of delicious looking (but highly experimental) cupcakes that had just been freshly created by the R&D department of the Juunibantai, mistaken by the pigtailed female as part of the refreshments that her ex-colleague Akon was serving her – and the result was now one age-diminished female Vizard, both her physical and mental forms returned to that of a young, impressionable child, with no memories of her adult life whatsoever, and currently more fascinated by her surroundings than in understanding whatever had happened to her.

Shinji was flabbergasted as he listened to the explanations of the two Juunibantai Shinigami, and then he had quickly gotten pissed off on the behalf of his hapless lover.

“How come yer squad’s always leavin’ this sorta highly ambiguous and dubious things lyin’ ‘round?!!” the Gobantai Taichou had demanded with significant displeasure even though he had already been repeatedly assured that this…affliction that had come over her could be corrected and that they were working on the cure to counter the reverse aging effects, though that would technically rectify itself eventually, given time – a few centuries of it. Shinji had not been amused. At the same time, since Hiyori had ended up ingesting several servings of the spiked cupcakes all by her petite lonesome, it had actually been a surprise in itself that she hadn’t accidentally overdosed on them and eaten herself right out of existence – Shinji was hardly impressed when that possibility had been mentioned to him by the clinically composed Kurotsuchi Fukutaichou, and he had been very close to storming over to the Twelfth Division himself to strangle her ‘father’ with his bare hands whilst demanding that he fix this, right now.

For the first time ever, Momo got to experience her usually calm and laidback superior blow his top, and the blonde would honestly be growling and snapping much, much, more, if not for the tiny little girl child who was still ensconced in Akon’s arms.

The same tiny little girl child who also happened to be his lover, and was now staring warily at him like he was a raving madman – which he had been pretty much behaving like for the past half an hour or so.

The young girl had one arm slung around her temporary caregiver’s neck even as she was being securely held on the side, and her large eyes took in everything with unbound curiosity. She instinctively pulled herself closer to her current guardian when their gazes crossed, and Shinji frowned inwardly at her unexpectedly timid reaction. In response, Akon awkwardly petted the child on her back and held her snugly, and even though Hiyori was only a five/six year old in physical form, Shinji was still immediately irked by the fact that she was being cossetted and comforted by somebody else. She was very young and vulnerable right now, and that only made his already existing protective instincts towards her increase even more – a lot more.

“I assumed since she’s your…partner,” Akon spoke up rather carefully then. “-that you’d at least be informed about this situation. I feel partly responsible, so I’d like to help out too since uh, little Hiyori may be too much of a handful for you to handle by yourself, Hirako Taichou.”

Perhaps the kid truly meant well with his offer, but Shinji felt his eyes narrow slightly at the less than well-meaning way in which he had structured his words. Why, that punk- He still obviously hadn’t given up on his little crush on Hiyori yet.

“I ‘preciate yer offer, but that ain’t necessary,” Shinji replied in turn, his earlier irritated and upset demeanor fading quickly as he regained his cool composure. “She’s never gonna be ‘too much’ for me ‘ta handle, so ya can just pass her over right now – I’ll take care of her just fine on my own.” The blonde walked over to the Twelfth Division Third Seat and reached out towards the little golden haired girl still ensconced in the latter’s arms, and child that she was, young Hiyori put up no resistance as the now significantly older blonde placed his hand on her small shoulder.

No, the one who failed to budge was Akon, and this time, Shinji’s eyelid twitched as he looked at the latter’s equally dogged features. The blonde gritted his teeth slightly and ‘smiled’ at the Third Seat. “Ya should really let go now, Akon-san,” the Vizard Captain commented rather pointedly, but much to his chagrin, the black haired man maintained his grip on the precious cargo.

“I think I’d still like to offer my assistance,” Akon insisted with determined firmness even as he subtly attempted to maneuver Hiyori back closer to him. “Like I said, I feel partly responsible, so I want to do my part to help as well.”

Shinji placed his other hand on Hiyori’s other shoulder and lightly tugged her to him once more. “And like I said, yer assistance’s not needed here,” the Gobantai Taichou retorted in return. “If ya really wanna help, then go straight back ‘ta yer Division and do yer best ‘ta figure out how ‘ta undo this mess. Now, give her ‘ta me.”

Akon rocked backwards slightly in an attempt to loosen the other man’s hold on his charge. “I’m pretty sure that I can be of service here as well,” he insisted with an equal modicum of stubborn politeness, though Shinji wasn’t about to be shaken loose so easily. “Besides, it’s obvious that Hiyori likes being near me – she has been clinging to me the whole time.”

Shinji’s eyelid twitched again, and his pull became stronger. “Don’t make it sound so unnecessarily suggestive. Yer startin’ ‘ta get on my nerves, Third Seat!”

In reply, Akon pulled back. “I apologize, Hirako Taichou, for that’s not my intention,” he replied in a passive fashion, though that turned out to be more passive aggressive than anything else, for he continued. “But you can safely entrust Hiyori to me; I’ll take good care of her and make sure that she is well tended to-”

It sounded suspiciously as though the younger man was asking him for her hand in marriage. Unsurprisingly, Shinji started to look more than a bit brassed off then.

“Oi. Ya do not get ‘ta say this sort of things ‘ta me!!”

Meanwhile, the two Fukutaichou of the Fifth and the Twelfth stood to the side and watched the ensuing altercation with varying degrees of chagrin and clinical fascination. After all, it was a rather unusual sight - two grown men, both powerful in their own right and usually insouciant and pretty difficult to stir up, were resorting to downright childish levels of rivalry as they argued rather fiercely for the possession of a little girl.  

Momo glanced timidly at her fellow Lieutenant, who was still intently watching the rather comical scene of the two men currently involved in a tug of war over a child. “Ah…I had no idea that Akon-san felt so…passionately over Hiyori-san.”

Nemu inclined her head slightly in agreement. “Neither did I. It’s interesting.”

Momo did not quite know what to make out of this whole escalating situation (this was not going to end well, she was sure), and she was about insert herself between her Captain and the Twelfth Division Third Seat when the issue suddenly resolved itself.

Tired and wary of the two men fighting over her, Hiyori flinched away from the blonde man and quickly cuddled towards her default guardian, wrapping her arms firmly around the latter’s neck and hiding her face in his shoulder.

Shinji paused, surprised by her action, but she had clearly chosen, and it was Akon’s win.

“Hiyori’s more familiar with me now,” the black-haired scientist remarked then, though to his credit, if he was quietly gloating over his victory, then he was hiding it very well. “Let me take care of her for now-”

“Hiyori.” Shinji spoke then, and there was a quiet, compelling tone in the way he said her name, completely different from which he had bickered with Akon earlier, and it was enough to prompt the young girl to lift her head and peek at him with curiosity in her large ochre eyes, automatically drawn to him even though she did not understand a thing. The child silently watched the beautiful looking, golden-haired man talking to her.

“S’this what ya really want, brat?” Shinji asked, before simply stretching his arms out towards her once again, this time not touching her yet, but close enough that she should be able to make contact with him should she wish it. “If not, then come back ‘ta me.”

She continued to stare at him for what seemed like the longest time, as if mesmerized by the quiet intensity in his eyes, trying to figure something out in her mind. Then, at last, still without a word, the little blonde started to loosen her arms from around her black-haired guardian’s neck and simply reached towards Shinji to be carried, going so far as to lean her torso slightly towards him as well so that he could take her easier. Her act of blind trust made her lover really happy, though he was careful not to show it. Slipping his hands under Hiyori’s skinny arms, he lifted her easily from Akon’s grasp (the latter finally, reluctantly letting her loose then) and rather awkward fitted her to his own lanky form. It was a good thing that she was already old enough to somehow cling to him on her own, for Shinji was very quickly learning just how challenging it was to carry a child by propping her against the side of his distinctly non-womanly and non-curvaceous hip.

The man was still rather awkwardly trying to figure out where to appropriately place his hands on her small body (she was so much tinier now than she had ever been, and he still had problems getting over that fact), when the child boldly reached up, caught his face by placing her little hands on the two sides of his cheeks, and made him look at her.

Then, she asked the question that had been plaguing her since she had been brought into this office.

“Are ya my family?”

                                                                   ::tsuzuku::

#bleach #Sarugaki Hiyori #Hirako Shinji #shiyoriweek2018 #Shiyori #ShiYori: Say Please AU #my fics

[awildhanmonster]

Character Ramblings for Wyrd!

At Wyrd’s behest, I’m trying to write down a little master post of some recent characters she bullied— I mean enabled— me to create.  This is for our casual Loserverse world— i.e. the fast-and-loose All The Myths Are True low fantasy trope where a bunch of well intentioned idiots try to get by in an apartment complex for largely mythical creatures.  I’ve accidentally made up a lot of new side characters in the past month and it’s getting hard to keep track of them, so here we go!

THE HOMESTEADING SHAPESHIFTER TRIO: AKA NELL, LEONORA AND BARNES

I’m listing these three together on their own because they are an active “couple” (… trio? I’m not sure what the right polyamory term is) who all live together in a more rural part of the county on some acreage generationally owned and tended by Nora’s family line.  Their personal plot is pretty manageable (just a few acres) and a small portion of the entire property.  They have a little flock of maybe 2 dozen combined sheep and goats, some chickens, and possibly an alpaca.  The land is woodsy and picturesque with an old country house they share.  

Nell J. Harriet, aka Nell: approximately 32 years old, born intersex, happily nonbinary (pronouns are ‘they’).  The tallest of the bunch at around 6’ even, with a pale wiry frame and knobby, angular corners all over.  Jet black hair with a striking chunk of white smack dab at the front of the widow’s peak like the trail of a dog’s blaze, one solid brown eye, one split tweaky blue/brown mess.  Shifted form is a black and white border collie with (surprise!) heterochromia and a chunky white blaze cutting through the forehead right at the widow’s peak.  

Despite being born to a mother with a long family history of (gene-recessive) shifters cropping up every generation, Nell was still a surprise to everyone involved, given that their father had presumably been human.  Their mother— who I’ll call Meryl for now— comes from a fairly mundane lineage of canine shifter (while being a non-shifter Rr carrier herself) which typically manifests in early childhood and has a certain period of semi-conscious malleability during the formative years in which things like coat color, length, ear set, and other minor (external) features can be changed through great effort and trial/error before eventually “settling” into a constant, unique physical identity with time.  They heal several times faster than average humans, scar less, and tend to show greater physical resilience, taking a few seconds to painlessly and more-or-less fluidly change shape, but lack any kind of “burst healing” mechanic or unusual magical attributes.

Everyone else in the family before Nell had turned out some kind of pleasantly functional “mutt” shape in the end, but Nell erupted onto the scene as a full blown black-and-white border collie looking thing from day 1 of the change as a bouncy toddler.  Meryl could only guess that the father (long since vanished from their lives with no hard feelings, the affair was brief) was a similar, incidentally compatible shapeshifter himself, but that’s about as well as anyone can guess since he’s not around to ask.  

Nell, for their part, is exactly the kind of plucky, sunshiny, high-energy velcro person you would expect from a border collie on two legs.  They struggled in early childhood with some rough ADHD and OCD type tendencies, but managed to get through public schooling with the help of family support/tutoring, and wound up not pursuing college in favor of trying out a more rural living, instead.  They met Leonora while bouncing around odd jobs a couple years after high school and the rest is history.  They’re much happier now with a largely outdoor existence and animals to tend to, burning off the excess energy that plagued them for years without a direction prior to homesteading.  They’re one of those types who thrives with an outlet for physical and mental stimulation but loses their mind for lack of it.  As one would expect from any good BC.  The farming life is an ideal fit.  

Leonora Basso: aka Nora, but only if you’re close to her.  Approximately 34-ish, a shameless bohemian woman from a long line of shifters almost functionally identical to Raiker/Nicky’s species, with the exception of taking on the form of giant (thanks, conservation of mass) white maremma type guardian dogs instead of akbash.  Built square, stocky, and a little short (probably around 5’4’’), with olive/bronze-y skin, brown eyes, and a giant fluffy mess of fluffy, platinum white-blond hair the exact color and texture of maremma fur.  

She’s chill, with admirable patience for things that warrant it and a long fuse for small annoyances, though she’s also the only member of the three to ever knock someone’s teeth out, so take that with a grain of salt.  Like any good guardian dog, she’s placid until you start messing with her flock— literally or metaphorically.  Then she’ll be the one to quietly walk across the bar and slam your head into the table.  She met Nell during a trip to the inner city by complete happenstance when the two hit it off over conversation, during which she invited them to come visit her farm over a public touring weekend, and within weeks wound up dating.  Their relationship was exclusive up until Barnes came along  and none of them are quite sure how it happened, but they’ve never been in a better place.  

Chancellor Barneston Augustine-Kingslay, aka Barnes: and ONLY Barnes, okay.  Repeat his full name N E V E R or he’ll just, seriously, die.  Of embarrassment.  The youngest of the bunch at around 27-28 or so, Barnes was adopted by his (human) parents as a (human, presumably) infant, and had a perfectly normal (human, presumably) childhood until one day when his mother came in and found that her napping four year old was suddenly a napping 40 pound maine coon cat— or at least, what LOOKED a whole lot like one.  Needless to say, the following week was a scramble of buying every “Help!  My Child is a Shapeshifter, What Do I Do!” parenting book off Amazon and learning how to cope with a toddler who could suddenly vault over double stacked safety gates unaided, but they learned how to adapt, and life continued on happily for the little family anyway.  He’s an average sort, and arguably handsome to some: about 5’8’’, not especially pale or tan, hazel eyed, and sporting what looks like perpetually dark-ticked mouse brown hair, cut short.  He performed well enough in public school with a mostly human peer group who went largely unaware of his “talents” and even went on to earn a bachelor’s in business/finances/something akin, which seemed like the thing to do.  He wouldn’t describe himself as unhappy in his accomplishments; by every metric he was doing fine in life, and could easily figure out a career in some white collar job that paid his bills well enough.

He just couldn’t shake a certain feeling of restlessness and dissatisfaction about the idea, and wound up making a habit of weekend demos and classes to see what else was out there in the world: one of which happened to be a sheep shearing weekend out at the Basso Homestead.  On a whim, Barnes attended a demo headed by none other than Leonora while she was using a feisty ram (named Ramses) to walk visitors through the shearing process, Ramses was being fighty, Nell wasn’t around to help wrangle him, and Barnes, thinking he was capable, volunteered (despite Nora warning him repeatedly that rams were pretty feisty) to help hold him down.

… Needless to say he earned a spectacular nut shot via ram horns in the groin and wound up sitting out the rest of the day with an ice pack and a lot of sympathy, but it got him talking to Nora, and then Nell, and the three of them just gelled in a way that kept bringing them back together.  He’s realized in hindsight that he’s much happier in the suburbs than the big city, and enjoys putting his schooling to use by handling the home taxes and business numbers.  

(Fun fact: years later, when it Ramses got too big for his britches and was sent to the abattoir, they were given part of him by the Basso family and cooked a roast to celebrate the asshole sheep that brought them all together.  Ramses was delicious.)

Barnes, incidentally, still has no idea just WHAT kind of shifter he actually is thanks to being a doorstep baby/anonymous adoption acquisition by the foster folks— aside from a giant 100+ pound country cat, that is.  He’s observed that his shift is nearly as swift as Leonora’s, though there are queer persistences that he seems to have (pierced ears not healing instantly or trying to close after a change) that she lacks.  Coupled with the fact that he seems to be a magnet for comically mundane/irritating paranormal activity, he’s put in his research (mostly as a boredom hobby, not a necessary pursuit) but keeps drawing blanks on potential labels for his identity.  The TRUTH of the matter (which he’ll probably never know in canon) is that he’s actually a cait sith— born in the form of a cat, rather than a human, and bewitched by his mother to retain a human form as long as possible in the hopes that it would get him a better chance at finding loving parents.  His shifting has a much heavier magical component to it than his SOs, though he has no real sense for it, and it’ll probably just be a mystery the rest of his life.

Wow, yeah, this got super long!  I’ll make a separate post for the other losers I’ve made up lately, though these three are the most fleshed out so far.  

[squirenonny]

How you even get people interested your fics, asking for a friend thanks

Aw, man, isn’t that a question for the ages?

So I’m gonna preface this by saying that there’s no magic quick-fix to attract more readers (however much we all wish there were.) Writing for the big ships or posting a fic featuring a popular trope/AU when it’s popular is going to get you more readers than writing niche fics, but chasing trends isn’t going to make you happy and it might even hurt the quality of your work. When you post and whether there was some big fandom or IRL event that drew attention away from the newly published pages (or flooded them, burying your fic under ten pages of Klance week ficlets or whatever) can also play a big role.

Secondly, and I know you’re probably not going to like hearing this, try not to worry too much about numbers like hits/kudos/bookmarks/reviews. They don’t mean as much as you think, and they aren’t a reflection on your skill as a writer or the value of your story. The best thing to do is to find some other way to measure success–maybe it’s how many words you’ve written, maybe it’s whether you stick to a consistent update schedule. Maybe it’s reaching that scene you’ve been dying to write for forever. But make sure it’s something that’s in your control, because depending on the faceless masses for validation sucks, and you deserve better.

Okay, on to some advice for attracting readers.

1. Rework your summary. Confession time: I hate writing summaries. Hate it. I’m already not good with short form and trying to sum up a story in a hundred words or less is even worse. But it’s one of the most important skills for a writer to learn, since it’s your one shot to get people interested enough to click that link. If you’re stuck, here are some suggestions, with examples of how I’ve used them for my own stories.

Pick a (short!) excerpt from your piece. Maybe a brief exchange of dialogue, maybe the opening line, maybe something else. It should be something that doesn’t require context to understand and that makes people want to find out what happens next (or what led up to this moment.) Example:

This psychic—Lance the Lucid, according to the posters, and Keith wasn’t even going to comment on that—was a charlatan, plain and simple, and Keith kind of wanted to punch him. Sure, Lance knew how to put on a show, but Keith doubted there was anything more to the act than charm and dramatic flair.

Pidge sighed, catching Keith’s eyes. “At this point, they’re pretty much our only hope.”

If you’re writing an AU, especially a canon divergence AU, put the focus on what you’re changing. Example:

Shiro used to dream of Earth. That was before the Arena, before Haggar, before he joined the Galra army. At least he has an ally, a Galra officer named Keith. Together they plan to bring down Zarkon’s empire from the inside.

Matt never thought he’d see his family again. Then he crash-lands on Earth and Pidge rescues him from Garrison custody. But his homecoming is short-lived. Now the Holt siblings, along with Lance and Hunk, must find the Voltron lions and free the universe from Galra control.

Or: Galra!Keith, double agent!Shiro, red paladin!Matt, black paladin!Allura, full series AU.

If you’re writing something tropey, or a twist on a cliche, maybe highlight that. Example:

[following a short description of plot] Canonverse Soulmate AU with romantic and platonic soulmates (and some gray areas in between)

Sometimes the simplest thing to do, especially for shorter stories, is to do a one-two punch in your summary. The set-up and the punchline. The scenario and the twist. The status quo and the catastrophe. Think “Long ago, the four nations lived in harmony. Then, everything changed when the Fire Nation attacked.” Or better yet, the next part of that intro–defining the Avatar and then hitting us with “and then he vanished for a hundred years whoops.” Whatever you do, keep it short. Example:

When Keith was seven years old, he spent a year in La Quinta with a boy named Lance, the best friend he ever had. Ten years later, Lance and Keith reunite at the Garrison–only Keith doesn’t remember who Lance is.

The most important thing to keep in mind is that shorter is (usually) better, but you want to include enough to hook readers’ attention. It’s hard, I know, but keep working at it and it’ll get easier. Seriously–write five completely different summaries for your fic, all under 100 words. Give yourself a 5 or 10 minute limit for each so you don’t agonize too much. Set them aside for a while, then come back and see what works. Or write a list of all the things you’re most excited about in a given piece, cut out any major spoilers, and try to work one or two of the others into your summary.

2. Be strategic about your tags. If you’re posting on AO3, use tags people are going to search. Angst, hurt/comfort, fluff, any tropes that feature prominently, any relationships (especially gen ones) that are a major focus. Be wary of overtagging–Shatt shippers, for example, know all too well how common it is to search for Shatt and turn up only Klance fics with a passing mention of Shiro and Matt going on a date. But plenty of people search for specific tags in trying to find new stories. Use that.

Similarly, if you post on Tumblr, use your tags efficiently. The first five tags on a post are the ones that the post will show up in (i.e. if you have a tag tracker or go to tumblr.com/tagged/____) Tumblr’s search looks at the first twenty tags, I believe. So use your first five tags for either the most popular or the most niche aspects of your fic. (i.e. tagging it “klance” will have a larger potential audience, though it’ll get buried pretty quickly; tagging “matt holt” or “shatt” gives you a much smaller potential audience, but one that’s more starved for content so will probably click your link at a higher rate.) Prioritize, and leave your organization tags/tag commentary for after.

3. Your first chapter should pack a punch. This one may be a little harder to put into practice if you have an existing fic you’re trying to drum up interest in, but it’s worth keeping in mind. If your summary and tags get people through the door, your first chapter (in a multichapter fic)/your first few paragraphs (for any fic) is where people decide whether or not this is worth reading. Goals to strive for:

Your first line, or at most your first paragraph, should hook reader’s interest. It should ask an implicit question–what’s happening? How did we get here?

(the equivalent of) Your first page (a couple hundred words, tops) should establish the situation and forward momentum. Diving straight into action with no context can be confusing, but lingering too long on exposition can make people tune out before they get to the good part. I’ve heard it said that the first 250 words should establish three things: character, context, and motive. Who are we focused on, what’s happening right now, and why does it matter? There are exceptions to every rule, of course, but make sure you know why you’re deviating if you decide to do so.

Your first chapter (assuming you have more than one) should leave people wanting more. Don’t leave them in the middle of the set-up, or they may not be motivated to continue. But don’t give them everything they need to see where this is going, or they won’t bother waiting to find out.

**Update: There’s now a follow-up post talking a little bit more about how to start a story, with examples!**

4. Persistence is key. Out of all the advice I can give you, this one’s going to be the hardest to follow, I’m sure. It can feel like you’re throwing words at a void and getting nothing back. Sometimes you have a real slow start. Sometimes you’re writing self-induldgent rarepare stuff, and it seems like you and two other people are the only ones who ship it–and those other two never comment.

The thing is, writing fic (especially as a newcomer or writing niche fic) is like playing Marco Polo at a death metal concert. Not only are you shouting into a sea of noise, but you’re also trying to find the relative handful of people who are going to answer. But here’s the thing: if you yell “Marco” once and get no response, then go home, you’ll never find those other people. If you keep yelling–maybe stay in one spot and yell over and over, maybe wander around calling out every so often–you’ll find someone, and then you’ll find someone else, and then maybe someone else will start shouting with you and find three more people. It starts slow, but it builds momentum.

In terms of fic, though, what does that mean? It means keep writing. Maybe keep hammering away at this one fic–excellent if it’s something you’re excited about, something you need to write no matter what. You keep putting it out there and you’ll start to beat back the wave of random chance that conspires to bury your fic because of weird posting times or an onslaught from a fandom event.

Maybe write a bunch of shorter fics, participate in bangs and exchanges and other events. You might hook readers with your Klance soulmate AU that you did for a secret santa, then tempt them into trying your other stuff (true story.) You might make friends by chatting in a big bang’s discord, and they can help you write more attention-grabbing summaries, or can signal boost on Tumblr. (Or just be that one person who stans your writing and keeps you motivated through low hit counts on AO3.) Or you might just hit a whole bunch of people’s rarepair/nich buttons and start building a following that way.

Or maybe it means going a little more off the rails. Try a different fandom. Write original fiction. Write an 80k Marauders-at-Hogwarts fic for yourself, edit it, and only then start posting a chapter a week so you can grow your reader base without the low number of comments chipping away at your motivation because joke’s on you, hit counter. I already have the next chapter done. And the one after that, and all of them, so they’re still coming even if no one’s reading. ha-ha! (Also a true story.)

Look, the point is, building a reader base is hard, and it’s frustrating, and a lot if it is based on luck and fandom trends, and you’re always going to want to get caught up in the numbers. Even once you have readers, you might get frustrated because the tropey shipfic with a shoddy plot that you BS’d your way through has ten times as much love as the lovingly crafted, well-plotted AU that you’ve poured literally thousands of hours into. Because writers are all starved for feedback, and with the exception of people lucky enough (or unlucky enough) to hit a fandom sweet spot and get shot straight into the realms of That One Fic Everyone Knows About–with the exception of those freak accidents of fate, the people who have sizable followings are almost always people who just plain love to write and do it regardless of what anyone else says or does.

So don’t write for the readers. Write for yourself first, and love what you write. Write stories that need to be told. Stories you can’t bear not to tell–because when you care that much about a story, it shows, and when the right people find your story, they’re going to love that you love it. Trust me. The right people are out there. You just have to keep shouting until you find them.

#anon #answers #writing #advice #writing advice #long post

[ajvlogsandstuff]

RWBY V5E13: Downfall (SPOILERS) and what I didn’t like about it

Now, I should place some prefaces before the pitchforks and torches come out. THIS IS NOT A RWDE POST. I love RWBY. I see it as a truly creative show and after nearly 5 years of watching, I am extremely invested in the world, characters and issues of the universe. Now, despite that, I am aware that the show has issues - some minute, some glaring, and some vastly blown out of proportion. I am not one of those people who send death threats to the CRWBY because of a stupid shipping war (you know which one I am talking about) or a character’s death, but I also don’t just accept everything the writers do blindly, as being demonstrated in this post below. That being said, I have one or two issues, one particularly major to me, that I want to discuss in the post below. Obviously, there are MAJOR spoilers under the cut below, so make sure you have watched the episode before reading this - as despite what I am saying, it is still one of the better episodes of the past volume - and then come back to read this. Now, let’s get into this…

So to start with, I would like to discuss my thoughts on the volume as a whole so far. I honestly have liked this volume a lot more than Volume 4 for one main reason: I haven’t had every episode be ruined for me by that half of the FNDM. Not saying that the FNDM is bad - some of the content being produced and discussed is amazing and I love it - but like most over fandoms on this site, the negatives vastly outweigh the positives. Be it death threats (of which I have received several from the fandom - more later), ships being forced down my throat and general overreactions to everything, I have tried to regulate the time I spend reacting to the show more with friends online and in person than scrolling the RWBY tag. 

But as I was saying, Volume 5 has actually been a vast improvement despite what everyone says: the graphics have had such a drastic increase from just a few months. The action is much better than Volume 4 - everything feels less floaty again and the environments for the fights (i.e. cargo ship, falling rocks, burning house) are much more varied and dynamic. Whilst the story has had moments of slowing down, it never felt to me as if it was unnecessary. Maybe some of the middle episodes could have been cut down to 1 longer episodes, but it doesn’t really matter to me in the long run. I will be posting a few posts in the coming weeks discussing my thoughts on how particular characters have played out this season (the first one being quite an interesting read given what has happened in this episode), but if relevant, I will discuss them later in this post.

Now, this isn’t to say I hated this episode. The Cinder and Raven fight is quite possibly the most visual and high-octane fight in the show so far, and had a song that I need to own right now. The bits of action we got with Emerald, Mercury and Hazel were… good, just give us more please. And the two semblance confirmations - Jaune’s and particularly Hazel’s - were interesting ideas and leave lots of room for future development. However, for all the good things we have in this episode, there were issues. So after all that, here we go.

1. The lack of screen time with villains:

Now, this isn’t just an issue in regards to this episode, more the show as a whole, but the villains do not get enough screen time in contrast to the other characters. Yes I know we spent pretty much half the episode with Cinder and Raven, but I would like to focus on the other villains present, being Emerald, Mercury, Hazel, Lionheart and Adam (this won’t be the last you will hear of Adam in this post, trust me).

First, I’ll start with the easiest on this list - Hazel, as he got a vast amount more than the other four present. Hazel in the past few episodes has been amazing, a breath of fresh air in contrast to the rest of the villains - a semi-unique backstory, an intriguing personality and motive, and one of my favourite weapons in the show. My issue is that due to so much focus being on Hazel crammed into the last three episodes that focus has shifted from where it could have been developing less developed characters. I still look forward to seeing more of this Mr. Hyde style villain, but let there be focus on the others.

Next up is the dynamic duo, Emerald and Mercury. My issue in this sense is that there is nowhere near enough screen time or development for these two. All we know about Mercury from his four Volumes on the show is that his dad was an alcoholic hitman who abused him, and that he has prosthesis, whilst all we know about Emerald is that she is a street rat that Cinder took in. That is it from FOUR VOLUMES. And I know you may argue that “other characters like Tyrian and Watts weren’t developed well”, but the point isn’t that they haven’t had development, it’s the fact that they have had so little development, despite having ample opportunity to. Mercury was one of the main characters in Volume 3 and everything we know about him was from a less than one minute scene in one episode. My point is that they have been in this area for 2 and a half episodes and have just been there in the background as goons for the protagonists to fight. The Yang and Mercury rematch should have been one of the highlights on the season, and we see it in the distance for about 3 seconds. Just give them more time, or just give us a scene of the two of them talking in Salem’s castle. ANYTHING! They are the only villains that the audience can in some way align with, so let us see them talk.

Lionheart is an odd situation. Episode 11 provided us with a lot of development for him, especially the revelation that he has been working with Salem for years. And then we get to see his thought processes of if he captures Oscar/Ozpin and brings him to Salem, that she will let him be free. “Yes, this is the development I have wanted for this intriguing character - what is he going to do in the next two episodes, I wonder?” Oh, sorry Andrew from two weeks ago, he does nothing except fire a few shots at Oscar. Really? You have the opportunity for a really interesting dynamic between Ozpin and Lionheart and you just have him sit on the sidelines. But don’t worry, it could be worse - you could do nothing, just like…

2. The writing of Adam Taurus:

Adam. Oh, Adam. Don’t get me wrong, I love you, Rooster Teeth. I really do. But this is the most insulting piece of writing I have ever seen for a character. Now, I will preface this by saying that Adam is my favourite character in the show, as he is the only character to have maintained a constant level of villainy throughout. Cinder did things under Salem’s orders. Tyrian did things under Salem’s orders. Hazel did things under Salem’s orders. Adam did all of those things FOR HIMSELF. He didn’t have to cut off Yang’s arm - he did it out of bloodlust. He didn’t have to kill Sienna - he did it out of a want for power. He didn’t have to send his forces to attack the Belladonna household - he did it because he wanted to. This man has been constantly portrayed in every scene he is in as a ruthless, vindictive and remorseless terrorist. And what does he do for three episodes? NOTHING! He plants the bombs on the tower and just stays there! This is the man that aided in the fall of Beacon, took out the leader of the White Fang in one hit, and even at one point intimidated Cinder Fall.

But okay, they may have just finished planting the bombs and were preparing to fall back to a perimeter. Let’s say that is what is happening - give RT the benefit of the doubt. Then as they fall back, Blake shows up. Okay, coincidental timing, but that’s RWBY for you. But who cares - this is the confrontation we have been waiting for, not just since the fall of Beacon, but since the Black Trailer. Adam was one of the first characters introduced in the show, introduced even before Yang. This is what Blake has been training for the past few seasons. The embodiment of her past trauma.The literal figurehead of her nightmares. And guess what?

She beats him in one hit. ONE HIT. No fight, no fitting ending, no last laugh. She defeats him with a FIST TO THE BACK. Yes, I know it is poetic - Adam has defeated everyone with one hit, so he gets defeated with one hit. But think about it. We have seen Adam fight in the Black trailer - he is clearly superior to Blake in terms of combat. He should have wiped the floor with her.

“Oh, but he was reckless and tricked by Blake’s semblance” - this man was her mentor and partner. He was probably the person who helped her unlock her semblance in the first place, never mind the months/years they spent together fighting in the White Fang. He wouldn’t forget about her semblance, it is just lazy writing. Blake has said in the show that she always runs away from everything, and that her semblance is an extension of that. The whole point of her arc is that she can’t keep running away from him. And she defeats him by using her SEMBLANCE. All ideas of it being poetic and monumental are thrown away by that point alone. 

And that would have been bad enough, but they also had to make Adam’s character a thundering dumbass at the flick of a switch. Not only does he threaten to blow himself up knowing that it would kill himself, despite being the most egocentric character in the show, he also only brought 8 MEN WITH HIM! This man is a leader of a terrorist military force and brought 8 men with him to one of the most important missions in years. 

Now this wouldn’t be so bad if they had made it seem like Adam would go down this route, but in the brief amount we had seen him earlier in the Volume,  he was made out to have become more ruthless and unhinged than we saw him in Volume 3, a dictator style leader who would transform the White Fang into more of a threat. But all of that development gets thrown out of the window when you completely shift a character’s personality on a dime.

And my main issue with this is that most of the community is loving it, happy that he is gone and wilfully accepting the writing. I am not going to petition RT to change the show like some have for other issues (such as #BringBackPyrrha) or send death threats. I know that there is still an episode left and anything could happen. Hell, Adam may even bounce back better from this, where instead of leading the White Fang, he ruthlessly hunts down Blake and keeps to his promise of “destroying everything she loves”. I just hope that this isn’t the last we have seen of my favourite silver-ey—- i mean, favourite character.

3. BMBLB:

Oh boy, I am going to get hate for this. Now look, I don’t hate BMBLB, never have. My issue with the ship is the obsessive nature of the FNDM rather than with the show. I used to be a Black Sun shipper (I’m not anymore, but I still think they should get together from a screenwriter’s standpoint) and every single time I would post about ships, I would get barraged by BMBLB shippers. My main issue is people taking a moment of any two characters interacting and saying it is proof that the ship is canon. And I know other ships do this, but never to the extent I have seen BMBLB. 

So, straight up, THIS IS NOT AN ISSUE WITH THE EPISODE, but just something I would like to say to the FNDM. Just because two characters interact doesn’t mean they are canon. So, I would just like to provide some context to a particular moment in this episode. 

When Blake first enters the hall - yes, she does acknowledge Yang specifically - but this is for one reason. The last time Blake saw Yang, she was being carried away unconscious with a missing arm. Blake knows how ruthless Adam is and assumed that she was dead. Blake ran while Yang was still in a critical condition. She says Yang because she is amazed that she survived, likely incited by having just seen Adam and recalling what happened. 

I’m just going to leave it at that, don’t tear me apart. Please.

4. The waste of potential

This point is less important, but I feel it still needs to be touched upon. Now, there is still an episode left and, as I said prior, anything could still happen. My point being that - to me - Cinder’s death would be a waste of potential. Yes, it wouldn’t effect the show as much as Raven dying instead or someone like Weiss dying, but killing off not only a Maiden, but currently the heroes’ main antagonist and rival would be too rushed. 

Cinder is a character who has ties to so many characters: she is Ruby’s foil and is the only character so far effected by her silver-eyes. She is Jaune’s main antagonist in the series, essentially being his final goal in terms of avenging Pyrrha. She is the mentor to both Mercury and Emerald, a rival to both Watts and Tyrian, and an apprentice to Salem, never mind the ramifications of being the first (known) human-Grimm hybrid. Killing her here with someone who she only met a few episodes ago would feel too contrived in my opinion. 

“But Raven froze her as he was falling”. Raven broke out of ice literally last episode and, oh yeah, Maidens can fly. Also, if she is dead, someone would have gotten her Maiden powers already. But anyway, I’m just spit-balling theories now. I think it’s time we concluded this monster of a post now.

Conclusion

Now look, despite (almost) all of the points above, I did still like the episode and I am hyped as all hell for the finale next week. I just hope that some of the issues are resolved, some sooner than others. AKA, “Please RT, don’t fuck up all the work you did with Adam. If this is the end of his story, then you have wasted vast potential”.

Anyway, I hope that you all enjoyed this discussion/rant and I am most excited to review the Volume next week. I will be posting lots of character analysis and theories in the coming weeks too, so look out for those.

Yours sincerely,

Andrew Sangster

p.s. just keep writing adam pls

#rwby #rwby5 #rwby volume 5 #rwby spoilers #ruby rose #weiss schnee #blake belladonna #yang xiao long #jaune arc #nora valkyrie #lie ren #cinder fall #raven branwen #qrow branwen #hazel rainart #downfall #adam taurus #white fang #haven academy #emerald sustrai #mercury black #oscar pine #ozpin #sun wukong #kali belladonna #ghira belladonna #vernal #ilia amitola

[nipponnomad]

Translation: ONE-Sensei Young Sunday Interview :D

I did my best to summarize this hour-long interview with ONE-sensei, uploaded to YouTube by Young Sunday in March and uploaded to Tumblr by the lovely and talented @one-blog last week. Please note, while my Japanese is decently high-level, I typically translate written Japanese rather than spoken Japanese (which, by its very nature, is harder to translate), so there might be mistakes here or there. That said, I believe I captured the general gist of things. If you're fluent in Japanese and want to do a more comprehensive translation in the future, please feel free!

EDIT: Here are some more detailed translations of selected parts of the interview, based on Japanese transcripts that @isasm found. :)

ONE-SENSEI: YOUNG SUNDAY INTERVIEW

Things to note:

-I mostly focused on what ONE said, as the hosts talked a lot and tended to get off on tangents.

-ONE comes across quite shy in this interview, especially in comparison to the super-chatty hosts. There are times when the hosts start to ask him a question and he doesn't seem to know what to say. There are also a few times where it looks like ONE is honest-to-god dissociating. That said, it's a good interview that includes some pretty insightful commentary.

-ONE is forced to sit in the creakiest wooden chair known to man.

-Maybe this is common knowledge, but is ONE married? You can see what looks like a wedding ring in a lot of shots.

-Instead of “ONE-sensei,” the hosts refer to ONE as “ONE-kun” throughout. I'm not sure why. It's kind of cute though.

The Interview: ONE's Life Story

The hosts begin with small talk, chatting about a new album they've listened to, and introducing ONE-sensei and his work in general terms. ONE doesn't actually show up until about nine and a half minutes in. The hosts ask if he's seen their show before and he says he has, that he watched it after he was invited to appear on it. The hosts seem quite pleased and amused about that.

ONE is asked what sorts of activities he did in middle school and high school. He responds that he did tennis in middle school, but he wasn't at a super high level. Because ONE comes across pretty shy and self-effacing, the hosts joke that they can now understand where Mob Psycho came from. They then announce that they're going to do an abbreviated life history for ONE, who says he's nervous.

ONE says he was born on October 29th, 1986, and is a Scorpio. His birthday is next week or the week after next (from when this interview was filmed). The hosts remark on how he's relatively young.

ONE says he was born in Niigata but raised in Saitama Prefecture, where he's lived for 22 or 23 years. His hometown is near Kounosu (wherever that is). He specifies that his town shares a DMV with Kounosu, which is such a charmingly mundane detail. :P

The hosts ask what kind of kid he was. He says he was a normal kid, but “low tension” (i.e. low energy, quiet, laid back). The hosts say that that explains why his characters tend to be low tension as well. ONE agrees that might be the case. He says there are times when he gets more energetic, and the hosts tease him, implying that now is certainly not one of those times. ONE says he did get really energetic when the One Punch Man anime was announced.

How ONE Started Drawing Manga

The hosts ask how he felt when the One Punch Man anime was announced, and ONE says it was really awesome. The hosts remark that One Punch Man reminds them of American comics and is like a “Japanese Marvel.” ONE agrees that he has a similar image of One Punch Man and has always found its advent a little mysterious—like he doesn't quite know where it came from. ONE states that it's now been about three or four years since One Punch Man debuted in Ura Sunday and Shonen Jump.

ONE says that he started drawing manga in elementary school and can't remember exactly how he got started. He says he remembers reading Crayon Shin-chan on the shinkansen and stuff and trying to draw it (he specifies that he was very slow at drawing at the time). He says that Crayon Shin-Chan was an early influence on him, which the hosts find unusual.

The hosts ask about his upbringing and whether or not his parents were strict. It seems his family was a bit strict and he didn't show them his manga growing up—because he was embarrassed, but also because he expected he would be scolded for drawing manga instead of studying. So basically, he hid his manga hobby until he got to college. The hosts compare him to Kamuro from Mob Psycho, presumably because of the strict family.

The hosts ask if ONE ever submitted one of his comics for publication. ONE says he did submit to Shonen Jump when he was a first-year college student, but that it didn't go well because “it wasn't an interesting story.” He says the guy who reviewed his manga at Shonen Jump went through it really fast with a totally blank face and that ONE was sent packing pretty quickly.

Because the submission didn't go well, ONE started putting his comics on his personal blog. At the time, it was really hard to read the comic on your phone because you could basically only see one panel at a time and you had to go through all fifteen pages that way. Eventually, he started drawing manga on his computer and uploading it from there. He got really into the “pasokon manga” culture and bought himself a drawing tablet and downloaded Comic Studio.

He began uploading his work to a pasokon manga site where all the users were beginners or semi-professional. As far as I can tell, the site was called NEETsha, short for “NEET Shakai” or “NEET Society.” (Please feel free to correct me if I'm wrong on that one.) This was when he started drawing One Punch Man.

About One Punch Man

The hosts ask where the name One Punch Man (“Wanpanman”) came from. One host points out that it obviously sounds like Anpanman. Obviously it also sounds like One Piece (“Wanpiisu”), which is a sales juggernaut in Japan. ONE points out that actually “Wanpanman” outsells “Wanpiisu” overseas.

They ask what kind of character ONE was aiming for when he created Saitama. ONE says he always loved shonen manga and read a lot of it, and he thought about the final episode/battle, when the character was at their greatest strength. Basically, he thought it would be funny to start with a character who was already at the peak of their power and go from there, watching each successive villain get taken out in one hit.

Within the world of One Punch Man, the hosts note, Saitama is basically a regular person, he's laid back and flexible and his main concern is everyday stuff like going to special sales. They also note that Mob is similar, being a quiet type of guy who keeps a low profile until his percentage starts going up.

The hosts ask if One Punch Man immediately became popular after ONE posted it to NEETsha. ONE says it was pretty soon afterward, and that he enjoyed reading everyone's thoughts and comments and encouragement.

At this point, the hosts realize the interview is half over and they've totally forgotten about the personal history thing.

About Mob Psycho 100

As the hosts see it, there are three major themes in ONE's work: 1) What is power? 2) What should be done with power? 3) What is our true power, and how are we supposed to live with that power? We don't typically see the characters longing for more power; instead, we're dropped into the middle of the story and watch what they do after they've already become powerful. This is evident in Mob Psycho 100.

The hosts ask if the Mob Psycho manga has changed from when ONE put it online to when it was released in print. ONE says it hasn't really changed but it was worse reading it online because it was so small and hard to read on a cell phone screen. The hosts also ask if ONE has had assistants helping him to edit and fix things up, but ONE says they weren't there in the beginning.

The hosts look at some of the pages from Mob Psycho and comment on the art. When they compliment ONE's use of lines for emphasis in one picture, ONE says, in a self-deprecating sort of way, that he just did it using a tool in Comic Studio. The hosts also remark on the way Reigen holds a phone in one panel (you probably know which one) and laugh a lot. However, following this seeming criticism, one of the hosts keeps calling the art in Mob Psycho “punk” or “hip hop.” I had a hard time figuring out what he meant by that, but I think he's calling it a sort of indie, outsider art. He goes on to say that it's not like how everyone else draws and isn't imitating the prevailing manga style.

The same host states that there are two kinds of mangaka: 1) the “cover band” type that imitates others without really thinking for themselves, and 2) the type that doesn't imitate others and thinks for themselves. For example, many “cover band” mangaka imitate the battle scenes in Dragonball, whereas the ones in Mob Psycho look—if anything—more like battles in Akira. The hosts ask ONE if he was inspired by Akira. ONE says he likes Akira but doesn't really answer one way or another.

The hosts have been talking a lot, so they interrupt themselves to ask if ONE wants to correct them on anything. ONE has just one thing he wants to say: when he was drawing the picture of Reigen holding the cell phone, surprisingly enough, he drew it while looking at his own hand. This comment gets big laughs.

Themes in ONE's Work

The hosts discuss the issue of “leveling up,” comparing it to “geemu nou” (“game brain,” a type of dementia allegedly caused by playing too many video games). In English academic discourse, we would probably call this “gameification.” Basically, people who play a lot of games—as well as the protagonists in a lot of shonen manga—become obsessed with “reaching the next level” and don't focus on anything else. The hosts ask ONE if there's some sort of lesson in his work about the dangers of this type of single-mindedness.

ONE says that he's noticed this tendency in shonen manga. By contrast, he discusses the series he was influenced by as a child, Crayon Shin-chan—specifically, the movie version of Crayon Shin-chan. As a series about a normal family, Crayon Shin-chan was generally fairly peaceful and funny. However, in the movie, things got kind of serious. ONE believes that, when things get serious in a gag series, they hit extra hard.

He compares this to One Punch Man. Even though it's a gag manga, the world itself is pretty serious, with people being killed by monsters all the time and so on. Existence itself is like a gag in the world of One Punch Man, which ONE finds interesting.

Finally, the hosts show pages from the fight between the esper kids and Claw's 7th Division. They discuss the part where Mob very calmly and directly tells Gas Mask Ojiichan: “Having psychic powers won't make you popular.” Gas Mask Ojiichan then gets upset and yells: “EVEN SO, I SHOULD BE TREATED SPECIAL!” So basically, Claw is full of children who never managed to mature into adults and don't want to become “commoners.”

ONE then talks about “commoners,” average people who get up in the morning, get on the train to go to work, and do their best day after day. ONE thinks that this in itself—being a member of society—is difficult in its own way, and that's what Saitama and Mob are trying to do.

I feel like that's a really lovely way to end the interview. Sadly, they never finish the personal history and we never find out what ONE's favorite food, color, movie, manga, and type of woman are. :(

#ONE #one-sensei #one-blog #one punch man #mob psycho 100 #opm #mp100 #translation #interview

[weekendwarriorblog]

30 Minute Experiment: Reset/Reboot #30ME

Okay, let’s do this. A bit earlier than usual since I’m up early but also because I missed Saturday’s #30ME and when I decided to try to do it yesterday instead, I couldn’t get Tumblr working, and it took all day for me to try actually just logging out and signing back in again. I’ll know now if that ever happens again.

Anyway, the topic I wanted to write about on Saturday that ended up seeming better for Easter Sunday... without me really knowing much about the actual holiday other than it representing rejuvenation, although that seemed rather apropos for the topic I had chosen which is the concept of either resetting or rebooting.

There’s a bit of a difference between the two, although in some ways they’re related. I consider resetting like literally going back to the beginning and starting from scratch, while rebooting feels more like reinventing yourself. Both ideas seem very timely and appropriate to write about because it seems like there is a lot of that going on in this month where many of us have been quarantined due to the pandemic. 

I see friends who always seem to be busy with their work baking bread and cooking and doing all these things that I seriously would have never imagined them having any interest in it. In some cases, I’m wondering if they’re bored or they’re enjoying these new hobbies so much that they might consider changing career paths and trying something new. This isn’t something that new as I’ve seen one friend who went from being a writer/editor at a serious New York newspaper pursuing his dream of writing comics. One long-time film critic colleague turned his back on that to bake brownies. Then there’s the case of my brother who was an amazing security and IT guy working for the likes of AOL and Langley before he decided to get a masters in library sciences, get into archiving and library, and now, he seems very happy and stress-free as a beekeeper. And a quite successful one, mind you, going by the honey his hives produce that I’ve putting in my tea the past week and enjoying via some honeycomb I nibble on at night.

The thing is that I’ve seen so many friends and family reboot and reinvent myself, and I just can’t seem to get into that head myself, even when it comes to using this downtime from movies to do something more constructively than doing this 30 minutes of free-writing each day. (I have been working on a few of my screenplays, too, and trying to do 30 minutes of that and 30 minutes of housecleaning every day to varying success.)

I understand why there is a necessity to reset and reboot and try to change thing when something like this pandemic happens, and it’s not like my life is so grand and wonderful as it is that I’m clutching onto it longingly not wanting to lose what I have. Far from it.

No, I can definitely see my life being better or different than it is, and I know full well that it’s up to me to take that plunge and reset/reboot. I have no one in my family or any friends that will push or prompt me to do so, since most of them know full well how tenacious I am. I have literally become that old dog that doesn’t want to learn any new tricks. I mean, it’s not like I’m sleeping that late or taking long naps or suffering from depression (which has been the case last year even though I was working and writing about movies again... for money, if not a living).

You see, I’ve already rebooted myself several times in my life already. I didn’t actually start writing regularly until about 25 years ago. I didn’t start writing about movies until about 18 years ago. Heck, I didn’t even start watching movies regularly until about 20 years ago. I just started doing it, discovered it was something I could do, and then discovered I could get paid to do it (and presumably read) so I just kept doing it... over and over... often with weekly columns that sometimes brought me more joy when they were done then when I was actually writing then. Don’t get me wrong. I do enjoy doing the Weekend Warrior now more than ever, especially since I have more freedom to write about what I want when I write. It’s just harder to get excited about it when I can’t talk about the box office or theatrical releases which have become a real passion for me during those 18 years or os.

So no, this won’t be me deciding to quit writing about movies. When they come back, I’ll be back to trying to do interviews with filmmakers of interesting movies I like, but it’s hard not to spend so much time not thinking about box office/movies and not having other things circulating around my brain. (if reading these 30 Minute Experiments hasn’t made it all too obvious.)

One thing I’ve been doing for the last few weeks that’s gotten me more and more excited every day are these nightly events called #TimsTwitterListeningParties. Maybe it seems obvious but Tim Burgess, the singer from The Charlatans (you may remember their break-out single “The Only One I Know” that played a lot on alternative and college radio in the ‘90s). Well, he started this thing where he picks an album for his followers to all listen to at the same time, but what’s even cooler about is that he’s been able to get cool musicians and people involved with those records to listen to them, too, and they tweet stories about the album and the songs and the making of the record and stories from that time, as well as showing pictures.  This has led to these amazing experiences with thousands of people listening to records like the Flaming Lips’ “The Soft Bulletin” while two members of the band discuss each track and how they came about, or The Beta Bands’ “3 EPS” where members of the band that have long broken up talk about it. Or yesterday with the double feature of Pulp’s “Different Class” and New Order’s “Power, Corruption and Lies” -- an album I never got into combined with an album I absolutely LOVE. 

These are going on for the next few weeks as Burgess has managed to get some amazing artists to talk about classic albums including some of my favorite bands like Supergrass, Ash, The Cult...and more and more... but also bands I never really got into like Mogwai and the Pogues and others who have made classic albums.

So what does this have to reboot/reset, Ed, you’re asking yourself while reading the last three paragraphs? Well, some of you may or may not know that I spent 20 years trying to be a recording engineer and producer of music, because I absolutely love music. I’m quickly learning that I can live without movies or visual stimulation but I can not live without music, and the more I listen to these great albums, the more it reminds me why I moved to NYC and wanted to be a recording engineer and make great records. 

That didn’t exactly work out for me for various reasons that include my (still present) immaturity, but I definitely feel that I’ve gotten better at dealing with people i.e not musicians and the more I hear this record, the more I wonder if I should just do something to get back to my love of music. 

The thing is that I didn’t always love the process of making records -- and maybe I’ll discuss in this in a future installment -- but as soon as I think back to all my time spent behind a console or computer screen recording and mixing, I also think about how much of a compromise is involved with making music, whether you’re a producer/engineer working with a band or an engineer working with a producer or whatever. I just never felt like I was good enough to earn the respect of some of my peers, and I found that writing was something I could do by myself and either my editors liked what I did and gave it the thumbs up or (in the worst cases) would rewrite something themselves, completely changing any passion I put into the original piece. The latter hasn’t happened in a very long time... okay, maybe a few times... but it also leaves me in a place where I wonder if the best way for me personally to reboot/reset would be find a way to do what I love, get paid to do it and not have to constantly compromise everything I was doing.  I kind of had that at ComingSoon.net but had other issues that probably came out of not having the power or control I wanted to call any of the shots. I’m not sure if that changed too much when I started doing freelance work but the money just never was as good.

So the question now is... do I reset? Do I start again doing something brand new at my advanced age and see what happens? Or do I simply reset, where I find a way to reinvent myself, so I don’t get as bored or frustrated with my situation which is something I’m constantly facing.

Listen, I know I’m not gonna start baking bread for a living, but I wonder if there’s a way that I can get back into the music business in some way.. as a manager or record label person or marketing. Obviously, I don’t have as much recent experience as others, and maybe I’m not in tune with NEW music, but I do know what makes a good song that makes me happy so why couldn’t I find a way to help promote music that makes others happy? Surely my advance years gives me a little bit of credibility of having knowledge and experience that maybe someone in their 20s out of college would’t have, even if they obviously would have more energy and enthusiasm than me.

I was thinking of all these great record producers who are now in their 60s and 70s who are still making great records, so maybe my reset/reboot has to be about going back to what I love and doing something that can keep me happy but also give me a little more control of what or how I’m doing it. It’s definitely something I’ll keep thinking about over the next few weeks or however longer I’m trapped in isolation. (Believe me, it’s not been fun sitting in this tiny cramped and cluttered apartment by myself for four weeks but I’ve found things to keep me entertained and relatively happy... now I just need to find a way to earn an income or living doing so.)

I’m almost out of time so ... yup, that’s it for me. Back to writing this week’s Weekend Warrior! Tomorrow!

#30Me #ResetReboot #30minuteexperiment

[bigyack-com]

The Week in Business: Even Billionaires Can’t Buy Debate Skills

Happy leap year, everyone. To close out this extra-long February, consider getting a jump on your taxes today. Or, more realistically, fantasize about taking a year off to travel — which may not need to be quite such a fantasy after all. Back to the real world: Here’s what you need to know for the week ahead in business and tech. Image

Credit...Giacomo Bagnara

What’s Up? (Feb. 16-22)

Still a Bad JokeMichael Bloomberg may have poured $400 million into his presidential campaign so far (more than the four other leading candidates combined), but it wasn’t enough to save him in his first debate. He took a beating onstage — and then in national polls — for bungling simple questions about his taxes, his policies when he was the mayor of New York City and accusations of fostering a sexist culture at his multibillion-dollar company (to which he responded, weakly, that maybe the women who worked for him “didn’t like a joke I told”). It was a sharp upset, especially since his ad push had made such a big splash. He’ll get another shot at the next debate, in South Carolina, on Tuesday.A Reprieve From the TopMichael Milken, the “junk bond king” whose business played a role in the savings-and-loan crisis in the 1980s, was among the bevy of white-collar criminals who received official pardons from President Trump this past week. An archetype of his generation’s “greed is good” mentality, Mr. Milken received a 10-year jail sentence for securities fraud in 1990, but was released early after a diagnosis of prostate cancer. He was also barred for life from deal-making, but that didn’t stop him from negotiating CNN’s $7.5 billion sale to Time Warner in 1996, for which he was forced to pay a $47 million fine to the Securities and Exchange Commission. (For what it’s worth: He may have clemency, but he’s still not allowed near financial markets — technically.)Wall Street Buys Main StreetMorgan Stanley is buying E-Trade, the discount brokerage firm that allows regular people — i.e., those without tons of money — to buy and sell financial assets online. The deal would give Morgan Stanley access to a new customer base known as the “mass affluent”: people who have some savings to invest, but are not rich enough to buy into hedge funds or pay for a Wall Street money manager (Morgan Stanley’s traditional bread and butter). The $13 billion takeover is the biggest by a major American bank since the 2008 financial crisis.Image

Credit...Giacomo Bagnara

What’s Next? (Feb. 23-29)

Tighter Borders After BrexitNow that Brexit has finally happened, Parliament can focus on other things — like keeping certain types of immigrants out of Britain. Starting next year, the government will restrict visas for workers who can’t speak English or meet specific salary minimums. The new rule is part of Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s promise to “take back” control of the country’s borders and reduce its economy’s dependence on cheap migrant labor. But it isn’t unfriendly to all foreigners — high-skilled workers (engineers, scientists, those with advanced degrees) are welcome. Still, many business owners are worried that the law will hurt them because they rely on employees who don’t meet its requirements. Another concern: The regulation disproportionately affects female immigrants, particularly those in low-paying jobs like nursing and senior care.Banding TogetherEmployees at the crowdfunding platform Kickstarter have voted to unionize — a groundbreaking step in Silicon Valley, which has been notably unfriendly to organized labor. Google, for instance, tried to prevent workers from discussing their labor rights, hired a consulting firm that specializes in blocking unions and fired several employees who pushed back. (The company says the employees were let go for other reasons.) Kickstarter is one of the first tech companies of its size and visibility where employees overcame those obstacles, and their next steps will be watched closely by other workers who hope to follow suit — as well as higher-ups seeking to stop them.Coronavirus Rages OnOver a month into the coronavirus outbreak, businesses are starting to see more widespread fallout as governments impose stricter measures to contain it. Apple cut its sales expectations for the quarter, citing the virus’s impact on factories and stores. (In China, many people are afraid — or forbidden — to go out and shop, and deliveries are stuck in limbo.) Meanwhile, Amazon is stockpiling more Chinese products in the United States, a departure from its usual strategy of keeping inventory lean, in case the virus gets worse and disrupts trade further. The stock market, however, didn’t seem too bothered by news of more quarantines this past week.

What Else?

New Mexico has accused Google of using its educational products to spy on the state’s children and families, and is suing the tech giant for violating the federal Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act. The lingerie company Victoria’s Secret is being sold and is expected to go private, capping off a year of harsh scrutiny of Leslie Wexner, its owner, who had ties to the convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. And across the Atlantic, the “Bernie Madoff of France,” Gérard Lhéritier, is preparing his defense against charges that he orchestrated a literary Ponzi scheme involving a billion-dollar collection of rare books and manuscripts.Was this newsletter forwarded to you? Sign up here. Read the full article

#1augustnews #247news #5g570newspaper #660closings #702news #8paradesouth #911fox #abc90seconds #adamuzialkodaily #atoactivitystatement #atobenchmarks #atocodes #atocontact #atoportal #atoportaltaxreturn #attnews #bbnews #bbcnews #bbcpresenters #bigcrossword #bigmoney #bigwxiaomi #billionaires #bloomberg8001zürich #bmbargainsnews #business #business0balancetransfer #business0062 #business0062conestoga #business02

[octoberwren]

If it’s words you seek (I’ll Remember You) Chapter 2.

Thank you all so much for loving this odd ball fic, seriously I can not tell you enough how much I adore you all for it! The only thing I have to say about this chapter is that it almost killed me. I wanted it to be perfect, so of course I ended up re-writing it like a thousand times. Yep. (I’m neurotic about posting no matter how many time I’ve done it, I’d hate to disappoint you guys who have liked it so much.) But now that it’s done I’m happy with it, you might not be with the amount of angst. I can’t write fluff guys. I wish I could, my mind would love me more for it.

Anyway...happy reading! Hope you enjoy. Seeing as this is going to be a multi-fic you’re more than welcome to ask me to tag you in it! I love doing that ; )

Chapter 1 here

Also on Ao3 for your convenience

(I own nothing, Marvel owns me)

Summary: Darcy Lewis is many things, avoidance expert, current holder of the Hydra Survivor Cup and not to boast, but she's at an expert level with self defense in sarcasm and shiny wit.

What she's absolutely not is Steve Rogers Soulmate, she doesn't give a flying monkey what The Universe is trying to tell her with the 'gifts' she's recently acquired, i.e Reading His Mind and other tricks that have to do with The Good Captain.Her and Steve? 

Pffft, that's never gonna happen.

Chapter 2: Hindsight is a bitch and so is HYDRA.

3 years ago

Darcy loved her job, most days. The benefits were good, and honestly, she needed those, it was all fine and dandy being an intern with Jane when there weren't Aliens and Gods trying to have a smackdown on planet earth. And for some Loony Toons reason, Darcy was always smack dab in the middle of all of that world ending hoopla.

So when Nick Fury himself offered her a job, well what was she supposed to say?

No. She could have said no, Jane had demanded she say "Fuck no, you damn pirate." But Darcy really needed the health coverage, it was just a hop skip and away before she was shot at, and she was trying to be an adult and handle her business.

Janey hated the idea, but she slowly came around when Darcy had pointed out quite reasonably, if she said so herself, that what better way to keep an eye on S.H.I.E.L.D shenanigans than to have an all-access pass to their home base.

Technically her job title was ‘File Manager', so a lackey in Nick Fury terms, Darcy fully believed he'd only given her the job so he could keep an eye on her. But whatever, she had a coffee shop in her workplace and a hell of a view.

A view she had been creepy staring at for over three months now, it was borderline stalker behavior. But the man had an ass that wouldn't quit, and that navy uniform did so many things for Darcy's late night imagination, that she physically couldn't help but stare.

It was only when she started noticing other things that Darcy thought she may be in some trouble here.

Like the way he opened doors for the science dudes, who stuttered and looked on in awe, or how he sometimes looked so lost, like a boy who let go of his mother's hand. He came in some days bloody and broken, with eyes that seemed too haunted to be real. It took everything Darcy had and then some not to rush over and hug the stuffing out of his chest, just so he didn't look like the weight of the world rested on his shoulders alone.

Four months in and when she could actually detect his steady steps from a room away, Darcy decided that enough was enough, she needed to do something before she bear-hugged the man out of sheer frustration.

It was then that Darcy came up with a foolproof plan; because everyone loved coffee right? Right.

She'd put on her big girl pants and give him something to smile about because his sad face was breaking her soul, so she ordered a coffee just the way he like it, ignoring the side-eye she received from the barista when she wrote down the order.

She then marched her butt down to his office that looked as bummed out as he was, with the plain gray walls and bare furnishing practically screaming his loneliness out loud with hand gestures. Darcy lifted her hand to knock on the Captain's door, only to reel back in shock when it opened up.

Steve Rogers towered over her and for a split second Darcy felt like she was going to lose her breath, he was just so damn handsome it was unfair to the people of earth.

His open face blanked carefully when he saw her standing there holding two coffees. He took in his name on one of the cups and Darcy's stomach dropped when she saw the flicker of something flash through his eyes. Before he even opened his mouth, Darcy had the strangest sort of sixth sense, she felt something disastrous coming her way, she knew exactly what he was going to say and she wanted to stop this, she wanted to wake up this morning in total ignorance. The coffee cups started to tremble in her hands as she began to wish feverently that this wasn't what she thought is was.

But Steve didn't notice her distress, he spoke the words that damned them both, "Sorry Miss, but whatever the hell this is, you're not my priority."

And just as she knew it would, Darcy's world shifted on its axis and fell apart at her feet.

She opened her mouth ignoring everything in her screaming to shut the hell up-keep quiet-he doesn't need to know- it was instinctive, she wanted to say something, anything to him, not to leave her alone like this, but she could only let out a stutter, It was too late anyway, he was already turning away from her, even when the coffees fell from her hand and landed on the floor in a wet mess, he never even glanced back in her direction.

Darcy stood like a statue, watching Captain America-no-Steve Rogers (because of fucking course her mother was right. She wasn't special, she'd never be great enough for him, for the world he belonged to.) walk away with his shoulders straight like the soldier he was. He blocked out the evening sun as he left her and engulfed her surroundings in darkness.

Darcy really thinks her brain is coming up with bullshit metaphors at inappropriate times, but she can't breathe. Let alone think.

She's left standing in the middle of his door, the air around her seemed so much colder than it was before, her teeth started chattering against the freezing air and she wanted to break down and laugh or cry, maybe both, she wanted to sink to her knees and yell that she knew it, she knew this was always going to be her downfall.

All those years of looking at her mark, she had stupidly convinced herself that she was bigger than this moment.

It was the worst lie she had ever told herself.

She couldn't breathe.

And for a vomit inducing second she thought she was going to black out, but then no, she knew this feeling, she just hadn't felt it for a few years now, she was having a panic attack. Joyness abound today.

She slid to the ground slowly, tracking her breaths, trying to touch the floor, smell the air, until her heart didn't feel like it was going to explode from her chest in a gory mess.

She hadn't felt this fragile-and her mind spits the word like venom-since she left her shitty hometown, filled with shitty people.

Because this wasn't some average Joe…it wasn't someone who thought she was just a body with big boobs and no brains or even someone that thought her life experience consisted of a nice suburban life and no real tragedy. It wasn't even her mother's condescending taunting, Darcy dear, are you sure you want to go out in that? Are you sure Political Science is the field for you? Don't you think he'll love you more if you cleaned the house?

This was someone that-Thor help her- she wanted respect from. She had actually wanted him to like her, she all but scoffs at that, all she got was a mere glance and words that she never thought would spill from his perfect lips.

Steve Rogers was her soulmate, a shudder wracks her body with just that thought, he was a good person, all the things she told herself about her mythical ‘one' was ignorant.

She had read about his heroic deeds in history class and had admired him long before he turned out to be alive and walking in the same semi-circle as her own.

What the hell was the universe thinking pairing her up with him? Her insecurities seemed to drown out the noise of the building as she got up and headed home.

In the days, weeks after, Darcy was a mess, and she couldn't shake herself out of it no matter how stubbornly she wanted to. It felt like her soul was missing, and maybe it was, maybe he took it from her the moment he spoke.

She went from rage to helplessness. One day she was convinced she was going to storm into his office and yell every curse words she knew and ones that she made up on the spot. She wanted to see him regret ever speaking those words, but before she'd even get to his door she ran away in a fit of panic.

There were plenty times she just paced the hallway and Darcy knew she looked crazy, hell, she felt like a nutjob. She stayed away from work a lot as well, she was surprised Nick Fury didn't burst into her room and drag her out by her feet. (In the oncoming days she realized why he didn't and Darcy barely kept the tears away when she thought about how her life would have been, if she just put on the news)

Darcy had finally made up her mind, she would just say something, he had the right to at least know, Darcy couldn't keep it from him, that was unfair, although she really, really wanted to. It was taking most of her strength not to get on a plane and book it to the nearest deserted island. She wanted to crawl into a ball and scream until her throat was sore. But Darcy Lewis wasn't a coward, and she wouldn't let her shitty hometown be right about her. She wasn't second best, she deserved more out of her life than to be a throwaway thought.

Steve may not want her around but he'd at least know what they meant to each other, then and only then could he decide on where he wanted her in his world. (and if he didn't want her anywhere near him, then she would accept it like the grown-up she was, even if the very thought left her with an ache in her heart,)

So with that, Darcy bought a new cup of coffee, and so help her if he even thought of turning the drink of Gods away again, she entered his empty office and waited and then waited some more.

She stood for so long, straining to hear even the slightest noise, that her back protested her very existence. Bored, she put the coffee down at his table and sat at his desk, his chair swiveled and she amused herself by twirling in it, and almost threw it to the ground when she heard a noise outside. When it grew quiet again and her thundering heart settled down, she figured it wasn't Steve about to catch her in her lunacy.

When she heard the thud again she got annoyed at the dumbass that was ruining her fun times, she was an anxiety-ridden mess and whoever the hell that was, was going to get a mouth full from her when she let loose all her nervous ramblings and probably, no definitely, some insults.

She stormed out the room and peeked around a corner but she instantly deflated when she saw Adam looking at her sheepishly, while he tried to get into another office a few doors down. Adam was a good guy but he looked more like he should be down with the sciences dudes, than working as a field agent. He was also spacy enough that forgetting his keys was common enough occurrence.

Darcy was about to offer her help like she normally did, but stopped when she heard a familiar deep voice coming from the speakers, Steve's voiced echoed along the walls and what came next made her blood run cold with fear.

"Attention all S.H.I.E.L.D agents, this is Steve Rogers. You've heard a lot about me over the last few days. Some of you were even ordered to hunt me down. But I think it's time, to tell the truth. S.H.I.E.L.D is not what we thought it was. It's been taken over by HYDRA. Alexander Pierce is their leader. The S.T.R.I.K.E and insight crew are HYDRA as well. I don't know how many more, but I know their in the building. They could be standing right next to you. They almost have what they want. Absolute control. They shot Nick Fury and it won't end there. If you launch those helicairriers today, HYDRA will kill anyone that stands in their way. Unless we stop them. I know I'm asking a lot. But the price of freedom is high. It always has been. And it's a price I'm willing to pay. And if I'm the only one, then so be it. But I'm willing to bet I'm not."

Darcy's emotions ping-ponged from self-disgust and shame that she didn't know, after all these days, Steve had been going through so much worse things than her. He said he had been hunted, like he was just a step away from a bullet and she really fucking hoped he was okay because she wasn't sure she'd forgive herself if he wasn't.

Next was a burning anger that made her skin hot thinking of those HYDRA dicks, she fucking hated Nazi's and she hated that she worked in a place that was crawling with them. It was like a light switch clicked on, as Darcy realized that she wasn't alone listening to that announcement. When her eyes met Adam's, Darcy wanted to spit, his mask of clumsiness had fallen away and in its place was an ugly rage that she had never seen on another human face before. He looked alien to her.

"Oh Darcy," He leered at her, and she wanted to throw up, preferably on him, the dickwad. "I really wish he had waited at least a few seconds. This might have been less painful for you."

She had a second to think ‘what the actual fuck?' before he took steps towards her, but nope, she backed the hell up and slammed the door in his face, sliding the lock home.

"Please, Darcy, you think that will stop HYDRA?" His voice was too smooth behind the door, to clean and Darcy never hated someone so much in her life. "Do you think he can stop this? We're HYDRA, If a head is cut off, one shall grow in its place."

She snorted at that, even when the door kicked in she was still chuckling with amusement at these massive douche-nozzles, "Is that in your brochure? Because and I'm just being honest here, that is the stupidest thing I've ever heard. You do know that the Greek legend ended with Hercules killing the monster right? You have cracked open a book before, right?. So I'd say the odds are against you here Adam, there's a real-life legend kicking your buddies asses right now, no way you're getting out of this alive."

Wow, who knew a vein could thorb that angrily? Guess she hit a nerve, she wasn't smug, much. Oh who the hell was she kidding, the smirk curved her face like war paint.

"This is what's going to happen little girl," she didn't actually think he could piss her off more, but that kind of flew out the window and died a horrible death with that remark, "You're going to stay still and not move, I'm going to take all the information I can out of your hero's computer. I'll take you away and get a promotion for all my trouble. You, on the other hand, will be locked away in a room so small, that by week one you'll have lost your mind, your bravado will vanish and I'll be there every step of the way to watch it happen."  

She could lie to herself and say she was just buying time until help arrived, or that she was a second away from getting out of this. But the dread was lodged like a stone in her stomach, and she could tell that no one was coming for her. Especially not the man she really wanted to see, he was probably a bit busy saving the world.

There was no way out, but even as her fingers shook with terror, she'd still be damned if she let him see her fear, he wouldn't get that from her, "Okay dude, just two things, this is the twenty-first century, do you really want to be walking around as a chauvinistic prick? Because I think that's the wrong lifestyle choice."

"Also, who said it was just bravado? Kudos on the big words, by the way, some people, but not you obviously, would clearly see all my talk for what it was... Stalling." Darcy then flipped over the coffee cup that was for Steve and it sloshed over the computer's hard drive, there was a sizzle and- a quite frankly- underwhelming whine as the thing was destroyed.

She glanced up at his gaping mouth and shrugged carelessly, "Guess that promotion is off the table now, huh? Sucks for you."

The last thing Darcy could recall without a head-splitting throb was a fist barrelling towards her face.

Three years later and Adam was lying in his own pool of blood while Darcy stood over him, knife in her hand, and sick threatening to give way, and if she could go back, she'd tell that girl pacing outside of Steve's office to say something. To stop being such a chicken shit and use her damn voice. She had enough light in her soul to be worthy of his affection, she could be what the universe believed she was; the perfect match for him.

Now though, she had crimson blood dripping from her hands and guilt suffocating her lungs, his love was the last thing Darcy would ever deserve.

Present

Steve stumbled back from her, shaking his head as if to clear it, "What the hell?"

Darcy turned her head, she really didn't want to see what realization he came to, what kind of emotions she had unwilling let him feel, she just hoped whatever he was going to do, he'd make it quick and spare her the drama. This day had been long enough already, she was exhausted, she really didn't care how it ended at this point. Even if they had a prison at this…she was on a farm… How the hell did she only notice that now, where exactly did they expect to keep her locked up, in the barn with Betty the cow?

"Steve what-" Whatever Bucky was going to say was drowned out by her startled shriek, as Steve bloody Rodgers, reached down and hauled her off the ground and into his arms.

Darcy wasn't going to lie, this was on her her bucket list, but she was too shocked to actually enjoy the moment, she's also pretty sure she looked like an absolute idiot with her mouth hanging open as she stared up at his face.

His strong jawline of freedom tightened, when he noticed her appalled look, and was it her imagination or was he blushing slightly? She had to reel in the urge to pinch his cheeks, she succeeded, but by barely an inch of self-control.

"You're in agonizing pain, Miss Lewis. I could feel it." Darcy felt the rumble of his voice against her side, and she needed to have a stern talking to with her body because she shivered in response to the feeling and now was definitely not the time for her it to start perking up like a bloodhound.

He did smell sinfully good though, and her lady parts loved it. She wasn't even sorry.

If anything it looked like Steve blushed harder and her curiosity was building, she really wanted to ask what kind of aftershave he used (she thought it may have been specially made just for her, like in an actual lab somewhere) but that would involve speaking, and that was something she was going to avoid at all costs. Like the end of the world type stakes before she even uttered an I'm-your-soulmate-let's-go-for-coffee-and- by- coffee-I mean-sex.

"So," Steve cleared his throat and shifted her in his grip, and damn she wanted to melt into a puddle as she watched his muscles flex and ripple, "You can communicate your thoughts through touch?"

It was then that Darcy realized a few things in rapid succession, Steve had no idea that it was only him that she could communicate with through touch, hell she didn't even know she had that little trick up her sleeve or she would have built a literal wall around herself and not just her emotions.

Another thing was when Steve felt her pain, he picked her up gently, he was still holding her as if she was made of glass, it wasn't a big revelation but it was just so damn sweet of him that it made the cliff notes, especially if he felt her guilt, then he really was the best man she had ever come across. (He really needed to cut that shit out if he ever expected her not to love him.)

The last thing was probably the more important one, her hands were wrapped around his neck, so he had to be feeling all the inappropriate thoughts about those muscles, and how she had fantasized about the many things he could do with them.

So now she was flailing around in his arms as she tried to break free because nope, him actually knowing she lusted after him ruined The Plan. The not talking to him until death or the world imploded plan. It had its flaws but it was working so far.

She wasn't exactly succeeding in trying to run away with some sort of dignity intact, Steve just held her tighter in his unmovable arms, "Miss Lewis, please stop, you'll hurt yourself and despite what you may think, even if you did betray us, I wouldn't want anyone to be hurt under my watch. And you're in too much pain to disrupt your injuries any further."

She wished she could tell him that his words hurt a hell of a lot worse than any bullet wounds she suffered from. Darcy was used to physical pain, it was always her emotions that ran a little too deep and cut too sharply with her.

She assumed that he had felt her guilt and hey, at least she knew now where she stood. That didn't stop her from folding her arms across her chest as he walked into the house. If she could minimise skin contact and her subsequent humiliation then she would take every precaution she could.

They walked past the kids, now watching tv and Darcy didn't stick out her tongue when the little girl giggled at her position in Steve's arms. She was an adult, she had loads of restraint.

No, she did not. She leant over Steve's huge shoulder and stuck her tongue out at the little tattle tail.

"That wasn't very nice," Steve said as they entered the hallway she had bolted from, she could hear the amusement softening his tone, and Darcy couldn't help the grin that teased her lips if she tried.

His answering grin lit the embers of a flame she thought had been killed years ago, she had to reached down deep to actually feel that it was hope surging in her bloodstream. Darcy tried desperately to douse it but it kept flickering up again, and she wished that whatever happened next that, that small amount of hope didn't end up sealing her fate for the worse.

Fun fact, fear was one of the biggest triggers to her bond with Steve, Hydra used that information brutally. And an awesome effect was that being experimented on left Darcy with a healthy dose of fearing needles. So when Steve had left her in the room with Helen, the doctor who she really regretted pushing and yeah she felt like a dick for hurting the woman, but now that she had a huge needle in her hands, she would call them very much even, alright.

Darcy tried closing her eyes and counting to ten, she tried wrapping her hands in the sheets to feels something concrete, but her heart wouldn't stop slamming against her rib cage, she didn't want this, she hated this, invading his privacy. It wasn't hers to have, it was never hers to keep. She couldn't just-

"Sam touched her," Steve said to half of The Avengers, all sitting on the porch looking up at their leader

"What?" Clint asked standing behind a brunette that Darcy knew from past episodes of Walking In Steve's Shoes, was the archer's wife and Soulmate. She cradled a baby in her hands and Darcy had never seen something so small and fragile before or that damn adorable.

Natasha got to what Steve was trying to say first, "When Darcy touched Sam, I assume he felt nothing?" When the man nodded his answer, she carried on, "She made skin contact with Helen as well."

"So what you're sayin' is that Steve's finally got a girl he can understand?" Bucky chuckled at his friend's heated glare, but Darcy didn't feel real happy. If they could figure this out it was only a step closer to that something bigger and more terrifying.

Steve wasn't stupid, he'd add it all up and get a big fat Soulmate red flag.

The only shot she had was that he was still feeling confused, "All I felt was guilt and pain." He stated and Darcy felt a sudden rush of worry, for her. It was so out of left field it left her mind silent. A miracle that had never been achieved before.

"They flipped her then?" Sam asked but Steve was already shaking his head.

"No." He was using his Captain's voice, the  one that demanded attention and Darcy could feel her eyes tear up outside of his mind, she didn't think she needed his support until she got it. She had been afraid he would look at her with eyes that were cold, that she would become his enemy. And deep down, to the squishy part of her that was forever vulnerable where this man was concerned, that part of her knew, if Steve had ever come to despise her, it was probably one of the only things left in this world that could tear her to shreds.

"I thought maybe at first she might have been, but that's not the guilt I recognized. It was self-loathing. I think Miss Lewis fought her way out of HYDRA, she probably killed the bastards that took her, and that's what's eating her up inside." Darcy felt that swirling black rage again, it almost swallowed her up with its ferocity. Steve was livid, and she got the suspicious feeling that if she left anyone of them alive, he'd finish what she had started.

"Why'd she run then?" Clint's wife, Laura, asked while rocking her child in her arms, Darcy felt a pang of envy as she looked on with Steve's gaze at the family, and she almost choked on her tongue when she sorted through the huge mass of emotions to fully realize that, that one had came from her. Well shit, that wasn't ever going to be thought of or repeated again.

"She was scared," Steve shrugged looking away from his teammates to the evening sky beyond them, "she just got out of an extreme situation, trust probably isn't her first priority right now."

Darcy felt searing pain hearing that word repeated again, and this time she knew that came purely from her own body. Her chest burnt with it and she needed out, she wanted to keel over and just breathe properly for the first time in three years, without fear of this curse she had robbing her of her own mind.

She just wanted this to end.

But no one was listening to her, they never  did.

“I think-" and Steve said this so softly that even in her head, she still struggled to hear him, and maybe she didn't want to, "I think I'm hurting her."

Darcy's link slammed closed and she took in deep gulps of fresh tasting oxygen, Helen was standing over her hands stretched as if to press down onto her chest.

"I'm fine." Darcy wheezed out, bending her head over her knees.

"Yeah and I'm not still mad about you shoving me." The small woman said with an arch of her eyebrow, but she still looked ready to give Darcy CPR.

"I'm sorry about that, I was a bit-" She searched for the right words to come to her, but her mind felt like sludge.

Helen helpfully filled in the blanks, "Crazy?" or not as helpful as she thought. But Darcy still snorted out a laugh. In another life, they might have have been great friends.

"I was going to say freaked out but yeah, that works."She laid back down on the bed when her words turned slurred, "Did you give me smumthing?"

"Yes. You were severely exhausted, frankly I don't even know how you were still standing." Darcy tried to say something back, about her award-winning stubbornness maybe? She also feels like she should be a little more freaked the fuck out by losing awarenesses, but she couldn't get all that worked up about it.

She felt way too groovy.

Darcy's going in and out of consciousness when she opens her eyes again to a clash of blue, so bright that she smiles at it like it's the sun itself. She remembers that blue, and it never failed to bring an ache of longing to her world.

She lets herself feel the safety in that gaze that looks so welcoming, she loves the warmth that spreads through her like a campfire and she wants to stay in this moment forever, she wants to keep that feeling close to her, so she never feels alone again. She even lets her fingers reach out to touch and when she collides with something warm, she instantly gets hit with a strong sense of what she always assumed home would feel like.

And for once Darcy sleeps without nightmares or a fear of what the next day will bring.

Apparently what it brings is one pissed of God of Thunder and a tiny astrophysicist that wants to defend her honor and say fuck a lot while she does it, so y'know, the days looking brighter than the last.

Silver linings and all that shit.

Soooo? I hope you enjoyed it! If not, thanks for sticking with me this far! Much Love guys! 

#shieldshock #shieldshock fanfic #darcy x steve fanfic #my fics #angst like whoa #soulmate au #slow burn #steve is stubborn #and darcy even more so #hence the slow burn #soulmate with a twist #darcy has some tricks up her sleeve is what i'm saying #steve rogers x darcy lewis

[theliberaltony]

via Politics – FiveThirtyEight

Welcome to FiveThirtyEight’s weekly politics chat. The transcript below has been lightly edited.

sarahf (Sarah Frostenson, politics editor): It certainly has been quite the news cycle, what with five impeachment hearings last week and a Democratic debate, so in light of the Thanksgiving holiday, this week we’re taking a step back to play a good old-fashioned game of buy/sell/hold with PredictIt prop bets (plus some I made up).

We’ll talk where impeachment is headed and our best guesses for what’s happening in the Democratic primary. PredictIt’s prices (given in cents) as of noon Eastern on Tuesday were translated into probabilities. (We know that’s not exactly right, but it’s close enough.)

And in case you forgot how to play buy/sell/hold

Buy means “I think the chances of this happening are higher than indicated.”

Sell means “I think they’re lower.”

Hold means “I’m a coward and am unwilling to take a stand.”

OK, to kick us off. Buy, sell or hold: President Trump will be impeached in his first term. (73 percent).

nrakich (Nathaniel Rakich, elections analyst): The chances of that happening are much higher than 73 percent. Probably like 95 percent. So I guess I’m buying? (This game always confuses me.)

perry (Perry Bacon Jr., senior writer): I would hold. I still think there is some chance Democrats back down — since the polling suggests support for impeachment remains divided along party lines. (So if you’re a Democrat in a district Trump won, being pro-impeachment is probably a controversial view among your constituents.) The House Judiciary Committee is having a hearing exploring the constitutional grounds for impeachment on Dec. 4, though, so it does suggest that Democrats haven’t gone too wobbly on the impeachment plan.

nrakich: Interesting, Perry!

Wouldn’t it look terrible for Democrats to back down at this stage? The polls haven’t changed much since the Ukraine scandal broke — but they’re much better for impeachment than they were before it broke. And impeachment is still more popular than it is unpopular.

geoffrey.skelley (Geoffrey Skelley, elections analyst): I think I’ll buy at that price, given that Democrats need 216 of their 233 members to vote yes (considering vacancies), but as Perry says, there are some Democrats who’ve sounded somewhat less certain recently.

For instance, Michigan Democratic Rep. Brenda Lawrence came out in favor of censure instead of impeachment, although she walked that back on Tuesday, saying she still supports impeachment.

nrakich: Hmm. I grant you that there are some Democratic members who might want to vote “no” on impeachment out of self-interest. But the self-interest for the Democratic Party as a whole is obviously not to say, “Our bad, the president we’ve been railing against as a criminal for three years actually isn’t a criminal after all.”

sarahf: We still need some more polls before we understand the effect of the hearings, but as FiveThirtyEight’s editor-in-chief Nate Silver pointed out, support overall is slowly ticking back upward. Now, that might not last, or it might just be noise, but as he says, it pushes back against this idea that what Democrats have done is wildly unpopular.

Finally getting a few more impeachment polls and the notion that the numbers are moving against Democrats isn't looking so hot. +4 spread on supporting impeachment/removal, which is similar to the peak in October.https://t.co/Tj71WyGT4x pic.twitter.com/S7iUHaRdlX

— Nate Silver (@NateSilver538) November 26, 2019

So I’d buy, too.

But OK. Buy, sell or hold: The Senate will convict Trump on impeachment in his first term. (13 percent)

perry: Sell. There is just no chance of a removal vote. None. Maybe Trump resigns if somehow impeachment support gets really high, but I don’t see Republicans voting for his removal. I don’t think there is any real chance Trump resigns either.

nrakich: I think the chances that the Senate removes Trump are not literally zero percent, but they aren’t as high as 13 percent. (I’d maybe say 5 percent?) So yeah, sell.

geoffrey.skelley: I would sell at 13 percent. It’s just such a high bar to get 20 Republicans to vote to remove Trump, which would be needed for removal, assuming all Democrats vote in favor. But as FiveThirtyEight contributor Lee Drutman wrote, if the GOP starts opposing Trump, it might be hard to predict in advance. It could happen fast and all at once.

sarahf: Right, and there’s not really any signs of congressional Republicans breaking with Trump at this point, right?

Or in other words, is there anything that would make you not sell at this point?

geoffrey.skelley: I mean, GOP Rep. Will Hurd was one of just 13 Republicans in the House to vote to oppose Trump’s national emergency declaration over the U.S.-Mexico border, but he’s on the Intelligence Committee and looks like a “no” on impeachment. If he’s not breaking, I’m not sure who will.

But if someone like Hurd was more open to impeachment, especially because he’s not running for reelection, I’d take that as a sign that a break with Trump might be possible.

nrakich: But even so, Hurd isn’t your average congressional Republican, and I don’t think there’s any sign of those average Republicans breaking with Trump, which is what would need to happen for removal.

geoffrey.skelley: I don’t have a probability, but buy, sell, hold: Two GOP senators vote to remove Trump from office.

perry: Sell. There could be one senator (Trump skeptic Mitt Romney of Utah) who votes for removal. But I think the more likely number is zero Republicans back removal.

nrakich: I agree. It’s more likely that a Democrat (i.e., Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia) votes not to remove than that a Republican votes to remove.

sarahf:

geoffrey.skelley: Oh, I like that take.

nrakich: Removing a president is just such a drastic step. Even if Romney or moderate Sen. Susan Collins disagree with the president, that doesn’t mean they would vote to oust him from office.

perry: I could definitely see Manchin and Sen. Doug Jones of Alabama voting against removal.

nrakich: Jones would be in a tricky place — he is actually not that moderate. But you’d have to think a vote to remove would be political suicide in Alabama.

perry: Exactly.

geoffrey.skelley: Given he’s trying to win reelection in a state Trump will probably carry by 20+ points, voting to remove might make his defeat a done deal.

perry: On the other hand, Jones may know he’s very likely to lose his reelection bid in 2020 anyway, so maybe he votes for removal because that’s his real view. He might assume he has a better chance of being selected as attorney general for a Democratic president in 2021 than winning another term in the Senate from Alabama. (Jones was the U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Alabama from 1997-2001.)

geoffrey.skelley: Maybe a yes vote by Jones is a sign he knows he’s a goner. A no vote signals he’s still in it to win it.

sarahf: But 56 percent of Americans said in our poll with Ipsos that Trump had committed an impeachable offense, and there were some Republicans, too, open to the idea of impeachment. You don’t think if public opinion continues to tick upward, that wouldn’t convince any Republican senator to break?

perry: But in our impeachment tracker, support for impeachment is at 12 percent among Republicans. Why would any Republican in Congress vote for impeachment?

geoffrey.skelley: To Sarah’s point, based on our poll with Ipsos, it looks like about 28 percent of Republicans might be open to impeachment if they come to believe Trump withheld aid or tried to cover it up, compared to the 11 to 12 percent of Republicans supporting impeachment in our tracker. But that still would mean 70 to 75 percent oppose impeachment, and a bunch of GOP senators don’t want to risk Republican voters’ wrath in primaries in 2020 (or in the future).

sarahf: OK, let’s leave impeachment alone for now — looks like there will be plenty more to speculate on soon enough with the first House Judiciary Committee hearing scheduled for Dec. 4 — and move on to Democratic primary wagers.

South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg has been on a bit of an upswing lately. Strong performance in the last debate, some good polls in Iowa and New Hampshire, and the betting markets currently have him winning the Iowa caucuses (37 percent). Buy, sell or hold?

nrakich: Ooh, that’s a tough one. I guess I’d hold — I just don’t know what will happen, so I don’t have strong evidence to argue one way or another.

perry: Sell. I think Buttigieg is doing very well in Iowa. Perhaps he is the favorite there. But I would say he has a 30 percent chance to win the state, Warren a 25 percent chance, Biden and Sanders both a 20 percent shot and maybe a 5 percent chance for someone who is not one of those four.

geoffrey.skelley: I’m going to sell only because it seems like there are four candidates truly in the mix in Iowa, and I’m not sure anyone’s chances are above 30 percent out of the maybe 95 percent of outcomes that involve one of them winning.

Perry and I are very much on the same page!

sarahf: That’s interesting, Perry, regarding the order you’ve put the candidates in — PredictIt has it has Buttigieg, Sanders, Warren and then Biden in terms of their odds winning Iowa. So a bit more bullish for Sanders than I think the conventional wisdom holds, but right about where you’d expect Biden given his lackluster poll numbers in the state.

So tell me, since you and Geoff seem to be of the same mind, why do you think Sanders stands a chance of winning Iowa?

geoffrey.skelley: I think it mainly comes down to the fact that the vote could be sufficiently fragmented, and that means Sanders could win with 22 to 23 percent or something.

perry: I’m not really bullish on Sanders. I just think Buttigieg’s chances of winning Iowa are less than 37 percent.

geoffrey.skelley: The Democratic caucuses are also difficult to project because if a voter’s candidate isn’t clearing a certain threshold at their caucus site — usually 15 percent — that means a voter has to support another candidate who has cleared it. This is called the viability threshold, and it means that voters’ second-choice picks will be really important in Iowa, which is one reason Sanders could do so well. He is the backup pick for 13 percent of likely caucus goers, according to a CNN/Des Moines Register/Mediacom Iowa poll earlier this month.

sarahf: On that note, I’m going to go off book and give you all a wager from my ~mind~ (dangerous, I know). Let’s talk about how many candidates win 15 percent or more of the statewide vote in Iowa, which is the mechanism by which candidates win delegates (this is different than the viability threshold Geoff mentioned above, which looks at each caucus site individually — confusing, I know). Since 1992 when the 15 percent threshold was first introduced, there’s never been a primary or caucus (in Iowa or elsewhere) where four or more candidates have earned more than 15 percent of the statewide vote, but there have been many instances where three candidates have cleared it. So, first up — buy, sell, hold: Three candidates win 15 percent of the vote in Iowa this year (45 percent).

nrakich: Yes! I would buy that, Sarah. I think three candidates will win 15 percent or more. In fact, I think there’s a pretty decent chance that four will, which, as you note, would be unprecedented.

perry: I would buy three candidates getting to 15 percent in Iowa, and I think I would buy four candidates getting to 15 percent as well.

sarahf: What would you put those odds at, Nathaniel, for four candidates clearing it?

nrakich: Oh man, totally out of thin air … I’d say there’s like a 75 percent chance that at least three candidates exceed 15 percent, and a 30 percent chance that four candidates do.

sarahf: I don’t know. It’s hard for me to know whether to buy. Every four years as political journalists we go through this whole rigamarole where we salivate over the idea of a brokered convention.

So what makes you all think four candidates is a real possibility this year compared to say, 2016 on the GOP side, when things were also crowded?

nrakich: I mean, who knows if it would lead to a brokered convention. For one thing, a step like this is probably necessary but not sufficient for convention chaos.

But I think 2020 is different from 2016 because the polling shows that four candidates are already at or above 15 percent in Iowa right now — and that’s before the reallocation of all the lower-tier candidates’ supporters.

geoffrey.skelley: I’d argue, though, that we might see more movement before the caucuses that could lead one of the four leading candidates to slump and fall short of 15 percent, leaving us with only three candidates. Right now, that looks like Biden, but maybe it’s actually Warren or one of the others.

sarahf: OK, in the vein of candidates clearing thresholds statewide to win delegates … currently, Michael Bloomberg sits at 12 percent for winning the Democratic nomination, but I’m more interested in wagers on whether he wins a state (any state) on Super Tuesday. Again from my brain — bidders beware. Buy, sell, hold (5 percent).

perry: Buy. I think Bloomberg has the chance to do well. So. Much. Money.

nrakich: But, Perry, trying to buy political office doesn’t always work if voters simply aren’t interested in what you’re selling. That said, I think 5 percent is pretty low, so I’ll buy too.

I just think things are so unpredictable after the first four states.

Maybe Biden wins all four and the primary is effectively over by Super Tuesday, in which case I’d expect Bloomberg to get no traction. But maybe Buttigieg, Warren, Biden and Sanders each wins one early state and it’s a free-for-all!

geoffrey.skelley: I remain very skeptical of Bloomberg’s chances, though I see the case people are making. It’s possible that things are such a mess after the first four states that Bloomberg could swoop in and present himself as the solution to the chaos. But I think it’s far more likely that Bloomberg’s inability to appeal to Democrats keeps him from taking advantage even if that does happen. So I’m going to sell at 5 percent that he wins any Super Tuesday state.

sarahf: It’s just such an odd strategy to me that he’s decided to skip out on the first two early states to make up ground in the other states. You’ve looked at the historical numbers, Geoff — has this ever worked?

geoffrey.skelley: To be fair, there haven’t been that many times when candidates have openly minimized campaigning in the early states — or even skipped Iowa or New Hampshire outright. But it didn’t work for Henry “Scoop” Jackson in 1976, Al Gore in 1988 or Rudy Giuliani in 2008.

sarahf: I rest my case.

nrakich: I also would be more convinced of this if Bloomberg had said he’s going to go all out to win, say, Virginia.

But spreading his efforts across multiple Super Tuesday states might make it more likely that he comes in first place in none of them.

Now, you need to win more than just one Super Tuesday state to win the nomination, so I get why he’s not doing that. But come on, Bloomberg, why won’t you change your campaign strategy to go along with our prop bet???

sarahf: Haha OK, let’s end on where things stand overall in the 2020 primary. Elizabeth Warren has long been a favorite of the betting markets, but Joe Biden is actually in the lead at the moment with a 24 percent shot. So buy, sell or hold: Biden wins the 2020 Democratic nomination?

nrakich: At 24 percent? Buy.

Biden, to me, remains the single most likely Democratic nominee — especially so now that some of the wind has been taken out of Warren’s sails.

It’s still competitive, but to me that’s good enough for Biden to have a 30-40 percent chance.

perry Hold. I’m just confused. He leads nationally but is fairly weak in Iowa and New Hampshire. And I wonder if losing in those states will affect his numbers in subsequent primaries. I just don’t know.

nrakich: My pushback to that, Perry, is that he’s only weak in the first two early states, and there “weak” just means “not in first place.” It would be entirely unsurprising to me if he gains a few points and wins both Iowa and New Hampshire in the end.

geoffrey.skelley: Based on my analysis of early primary polls earlier this year, a candidate polling at about 25 percent nationally in the second half of the year before the primary has around a 25 percent chance of winning the nomination.

I haven’t calculated things yet for the second half of this year — the year isn’t over, after all — but Biden is probably polling somewhere around 25 percent. So I think I would hold at 24 percent based on that historical record.

sarahf: Whoever defined the ground rule of holding as “I’m a coward and am unwilling to take a stand” was shortsighted. Hold confidently, Geoff!

#IFTTT #Politics – FiveThirtyEight #politics #538 #Sarah Frostenson #Perry Bacon Jr. #Nathaniel Rakic