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denimbex1986 · 9 months

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'One can consider Oppenheimer a groundbreaking film for various reasons. The blockbuster period-piece biopic not only shares an unsung story about one of history's most contentious physicists, but in the signature style of Christopher Nolan, it also presses boundaries of what cinema can do both visually and dramatically. The star-studded film offers stellar performances from the likes of Cillian Murphy, Matt Damon, Emily Blunt, David Krumholtz, Florence Pugh, and more. However, the most memorable performance may come from the world's favorite superhero actor, Robert Downey Jr., who plays against his conventional type to give us an unexpected and down-to-earth villain.

Robert Downey Jr. Is Hollywood's Haughty Hero

Although they might be snarky and sarcastic, Robert Downey Jr.'s characters almost always come off as heroes at the ends of their respective movies. Even when he's not donning a super suit to play Iron Man in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, RDJ has excelled at playing protagonists from Sherlock Holmes to Dr. Dolittle. Outside of blockbusters, he may take on more morally complicated roles, but whether he stars in a comedy like Tropic Thunder or Due Date, a drama like Chaplin or The Soloist, a neo-noir like Zodiac, or a mix of the three in Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang, Downey Jr. often finds himself winning over the audience's hearts before the credits roll.

In Oppenheimer, Downey Jr. portrays Louis Strauss: a trustee at the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton, where the eponymous Dr. Robert Oppenheimer (Murphy) worked, and chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission after World War II. Through nonlinear editing reminiscent of Nolan's Memento and The Prestige, Oppenheimer almost becomes just as much Strauss' story as it does the titular scientist's. In between color scenes of Dr. Oppenheimer creating the atomic bomb during the War, black-and-white scenes show Strauss attending a hearing to join President Eisenhower's cabinet in the 1950s.

With a receding white hairline and thick glasses, Robert Downey Jr. is not immediately recognizable as Strauss. He appears far older than the actor's 58 years would suggest. Nevertheless, Strauss enters the film with reasonable levels of RDJ charm. In one of the first scenes, Strauss offers Oppenheimer a prestigious position at Princeton, and even as their differences unfold across the film's first and second acts, Strauss still upholds an image as one of the scientist's allies. It's not until the third act that a classic Nolan twist turns the character on his head and reveals his true, conniving nature.

What Makes Robert Downey Jr. 'Oppenheimer' Performance Strong?

Unbeknownst to the audience for nearly two hours of the film's colossal 171-minute runtime, Strauss is secretly the villain in Oppenheimer. Near the start of the third act, as his hearing breaks for a recess, Strauss reveals to his senate aid (Alden Ehrenreich) that he has covertly been pulling strings to undermine Oppenheimer for political gain. Throughout the film, several scenes depict Oppenheimer being aggressively interrogated about his left-leaning, former-Communist affiliations in conjunction with his stances against the United States developing a Hydrogen Bomb. In this pivotal scene, Strauss reveals that he not only orchestrated the interrogation but rigged it against Oppenheimer to ensure that the scientist would lose his security clearance to the Atomic Energy Commission.

Robert Downey Jr. plays this switch masterfully. Just as Strauss has all of his colleagues fooled, RDJ effectively tricks the audience into thinking he was one of the story's good guys. However, once Strauss reveals his true nature and ambitions, all of the subtleties in RDJ's performance rise to the surface. Throughout the scene, he remains cool, calculated, and precise, and yet, we now notice the hints of furious self-absorption that Downey Jr. has been building within the character all along.

Why Does Robert Downey Jr. Work So Well as Strauss?

Robert Downey Jr. in OppenheimerImage via Universal Pictures The atypical casting of Robert Downey Jr. as Strauss makes the twist even more rousing. Unlike Tony Stark or Sherlock Holmes, Strauss never comes off as the smooth-talking maverick that RDJ often portrays. Even before the curtain falls on his agreeable facade, Strauss is somewhat distant in Oppenheimer. He appears as an uninspiring bureaucrat, rarely filling the room and hardly a centerpiece in the film. For a good chunk of the movie, it seems like the character is just there to frame Oppenheimer's story without consequence. It's a far cry from RDJ's usual roles as suave, eccentric bigwigs, and it adds to the twist's chilling effect.

As aforementioned, RDJ is best known for playing protagonists, and yet Strauss' character arc is almost the reverse of Tony Stark's in the first Iron Man movie. In the 2008 superhero film, Stark enters the narrative as an openly conceited hothead, but by the end, he rises to become a selfless hero. By contrast, Strauss begins Oppenheimer as a likable figure but ends with his pride and arrogance flatly displayed. It is not layers of hubris peeled back to reveal virtue, but quite the inverse, and while Iron Man eventually saves the world in The Avengers, Oppenheimer's haunting denouement suggests that Strauss contributed to its destruction.

Robert Downey Jr.'s 'Oppenheimer' Role Showcases His Impressive Range

All of this — from RDJ's anti-typecasting to Strauss' layered identity — not only proves that Robert Downey Jr is more than a character actor, but it demonstrates that he has a talent for nuanced and complex roles... enough so to pull off a Christopher Nolan plot twist without the narrative assistance of time travel, wormholes, or nineteenth-century magicians.

Above all, though, it confirms that Downey Jr. can play the villain just as well as he can play the hero. After nine times portraying Iron Man, and only once getting to dip his toe into antagonistic waters when becoming the adversary in Captain America: Civil War, RDJ finally showcases his chops for playing a cold, conspiring, and (eventually) unambiguous bad guy in a movie. While we'd all love to see Robert Downey Jr. further demonstrate his range and take on additional roles in serious movies like Oppenheimer, we can't help but feel inspired by his villainous portrayal of Strauss, and question if there might be a supervillain role in the actor's future.'

#Oppenheimer #Robert Downey Jr.#Lewis Strauss #Cillian Murphy #Christopher Nolan #Matt Damon #Emily Blunt #David Krumholtz #Florence Pugh #Tropic Thunder #Sherlock Holmes #Dolittle #Chaplin #The Soloist #Memento #The Prestige #Alden Ehrenreich #Captain America: Civil War

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townounce61 · 1 year

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Some Known Details About 'Missing' Trailer

In the English-speaking world, the normal youngster’s greatest familiarity with the Eastern heritage of SFX-driven live-action recognized as tokusatsu would probably be Power Rangers, the long-running Television program concerning a team of mech-piloting superheroes. But, also though I was not specifically certain how it could possibly be therefore widely recognized, it was necessary to me to understand how and why that type worked with Japan at its greatest. That series was derived from a Oriental program contacted Super Sentai, which was itself a launch coming from the ’60s traditional Ultraman – an essential descent in lighting of the recent updates that Ultraman are going to soon obtain a silver-screen reboot. However, the character of Ultra-Orl would likewise participate in a crucial function in the tale, a story that I had long taken into consideration absurd only a month or two back, but which the film's main character is ready to discuss. A trailer appeared over the weekend for Toho Studios’ upcoming Shin Ultraman, which will certainly provide the big-budget procedure to the unusual character. The trailer includes a brand-new alien invader who appears to be the same kind of android Kuiper as her supervisor, who the manufacturer has prompted might be Kuiper's father. View Kiiper and the aliens fight to become the true danger to the unusual family members that exists on Ultra Street Fighter. (He’s theoretically a symbiote who takes over a multitude’s body, turns 50 storeys high, and battle gigantic monsters phoned kaiju . He has super stamina, movement, and strength-to-weight proportion, producing HIM the heaviest and fastest monster in the game.He is a creature created of a singular, lengthy, slim, humanoid body which is extremely solid and tough enough for him to quickly overthrow any various other monster. Someplace, This Piece Covers It Well is seething with jealousy.). The following morning, it was revealed that Spider-Man were carrying out the same trait to Venom's daddy (in the chance that it would aid him survive… and then Venom would aid him). Venom's dad (along along with Spider-Man and Spider-Woman), really wanted to view Spider-Man, and at that point the Venom symbiote decided to attempt it.

In the short 30-second clip under, he tangles along with a large mutant turtle and carries out his hallmark rocket-jump right into the heavens, all of it buffed to a shiny CGI polish. It's like throwing a bomb into a major property. (The suggestion responsible for the scene is that the CGI model of Doom may be as well CGI for real life.). Even more than anything, the result experiences like an old-fashioned variation of Space Invaders over-powered tools. Chance for the venture are high, in component because lovers of this particular category always remember how well Shin Godzilla transformed out back in 2016, with the same creative crew (Neon Genesis Evangelion maker Hideaki Anno being the secret-weapon film writer) and the same aesthetic of technological refinement within throwback enjoyable. But the results in this situation have been quite frustrating. Godzilla may not be our very most popular, but it's still exceptional sufficient to justify its personal group. Unlike the current American-made Godzilla films, there was no po-faced feeling of momentousness, as Toho caught to the unserious hue of the initial while offering brand-new wrinkles to the time-tested formula. It was not the end of an age along with new innovations, yet it did offer the most fascinating elements to the franchise: beasts and vehicles that look like they were designed by palm from an not known resource and come in the most contemporary of kinds. Toho right now has concept for a whole ‘Shin Japan Heroes Universe’ connecting the just recently refreshed Godzilla, Ultraman, and an upcoming reboot of Kamen Rider (the smash ’70s TV collection regarding an insect-themed motorbike battler of monsters). You might find this label brand-new activity hero's action on display at some of the Tokyo cinemas in the upcoming weeks, but for right now, you'll most likely be left with one of few high-level franchise statements. They’re plainly taking signs coming from their equivalents in the West, consolidating familiar labels under a singular advertisement that the public may recognize and rely on to supply comparable satisfaction in potential releases. At the very least in North American, which has been slammed for its reduced amount of advancement, companies are getting a solid improvement of new ones, along with numerous promising to happen of their own in the coming months. Perhaps it’s only because Toho’s splendid undertaking is still in its early stage, but they appear to be off to a much better beginning than their Hollywood competitors, properly knowledgeable of the beauty their residential properties had in the first location and not getting bogged down in folklore for its very own sake. Ahem. There's no easy comparison, really. One might state they're not Hollywood, and it's not out of a negative cynical feeling of "oh what's this film regarding?

#japan song #japan new film #japan movie trailer

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pinerbureau · 2 years

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Cubemen on xbox one

#Cubemen on xbox one Ps4

Add to this the fact that eating an unbroken chain of 256 pac-dots gives your score a mega boost and Pac-Man 256 has you juggling a sizable to-do list as you rush through its corridors. There is a beautiful balance here between learning to avoid the various ghost types, completing missions and grabbing fruit multipliers to boost your score all while trying to outrun the 256 glitch. All of these power-ups are upgradeable through eight levels using credits which you obtain by completing special missions such as “kill ten ghosts with bombs” or “eat 15 cherries” and three can be allocated to your inventory at any one time, appearing as random drops scattered around the maze as you go. To aid in your march up the leaderboards Hipster Whale and 3 Sprocket has added a whole host of ghostbusting powerups to proceedings and amazingly none of them interfere with or break the classic gameplay.īy doing what a Pac-Man does and eating every pac-dot in sight you’ll gain access to hurricanes, stealth, trails of destructive fire, mini pac-men who devour every ghost in sight, a proximity bomb and ghost-blasting laser, to name a few of the tons on offer here. Blue ghosts traverse corridors in a repeated pattern, orange drop in a straight line, red acts like a homing missile while pink (or Pinky) waits for visual contact before striking at speed to put an end to your pellet munching.Īll of the classic gameplay is here and it isn’t long before you find yourself back in that Pac-Man trance, slowly transitioning from the panicked charge forward of a newbie to a much more considered, side to side means of traversal, scanning the horizon, planning your advance and making those signature last second escapes to, very temporary, victory. You’ll instantly recognise your enemies if you’ve played a Pac-Man game in the past and slowly but surely begin to relearn their various behaviours as those dormant Pac-Man skills begin to come back online. Taking its clever cue from the infamous level 256 glitch in the original Pac-Man game, which would see the right hand side of the player’s screen turn into a jumbled soup of letter and numbers, here that soup become a tsunami, slowly engulfing everything in its path, devouring all before it and pushing the player headlong through an endless maze filled with randomly generated ghosts, pickups and power-ups. However, what Crossy Road creators Hipster Whale and 3 Sprockets, of Cubemen fame, have created here is an entertaining and addictive mash-up of classic Pac-Man gameplay and endless runner which works really well and has kept me glued to my screen for far more hours than its miniscule price-tag suggested it could.

#Cubemen on xbox one Ps4

In April, the developers were given a nod from Sony to develop new titles for PlayStation 4 and PS Vita platforms, and is currently working on a new title for the platforms.I’m not a big endless runner fan, so, when asked to review a budget PS4 Pac-Man endless runner game I fully expected something that would pass ten fidgety minutes before being thrown on the scrapheap with the rest of its ilk, “go back to mobile gaming where you belong!” Pricing will be announced at a later date. We can't wait to see how creative they are, whether in tactical multiplayer online or in the new levels they build."Ĭurrently available on Steam and iOS, Cubemen 2 is slated for release from late 2013 to early 2014 in the U.S., Europe, Australia and New Zealand as a downloadable Wii U title. Cubemen 2 is an amazing game and a great fit for Nintendo players. "We've spent the last few months working with both Nintendo and 3 Sprockets, the game's developer, to make this a reality. "I'm really proud to be able to announce this," said Nic Watt, creative director at Nnooo. Be sure to watch the video below to see Cubemen 2 in action. Currently, there are 4,000 user-generated levels created on other platforms, which Wii U users will have access to, along with customisable Cubemen skins and global leaderboards. The title features a single-player mode and the multiplayer mode supports up to six players. Nnooo, the Australian developers behind the abstract puzzle game EscapeVektor, is releasing Cubemen 2 on Nintendo's Wii U, making it the first indie game to offer cross-platform multiplayer and user-generated content on the system.

#Cubemen on xbox one

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theworldbrewery · 3 years

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over our last two sessions, I ran something a little different. Our cleric, Oggie, has a (complicated) relationship with this NPC, Elliot. Elliot is a gay half-elf man whose father is a politician and diplomat; Elliot’s father has decided that since Elliot has a criminal record (he was framed for treason) the best way to ensure he is provided for is to marry him off to another political family, neatly tucking him away where he can’t cause a scandal.

Now, his father isn’t too interested in Elliot’s desire for romance or attraction, so he’s arranged a marriage with a young woman from a prominent elven family. The party quickly decided that this cannot stand. They agreed to attend the wedding in order to prevent it from happening.

Upon arrival at the venue, however, a few key things were going to pop off. First, it turns out Oggie’s estranged family lives in the town. Second, the whole region is deeply haunted and extremely sinister. Third, messing up the bride’s life was a non-option, because when I introduced the character of the bride, a friend of ours came out of the bedroom where I’d stashed them and introduced themself as Gloria, the bride herself (an air genasi monk in a family of elves, another outsider).

this was already clearly a rousing success, but we still had to get through the wedding, and I had to run it in a way that felt dynamic and tense. People go from room to room and building to building, indoors and outdoors and making visits to the village. It’s the day of a wedding!

So I developed a method for running the Day of the Wedding, and I’m sharing it with you for any extended roleplay and intrigue encounters you want to tangle up in plot threads.

First things first: run it like a combat.

What I mean by that is when the party woke up on the day of the wedding, I asked them all to roll for initiative. Instead of a round taking six seconds, each round lasted one hour, enough time for a movement (go to 2 areas near one another or 1 place that’s a bit further away), an action (a primary roleplay scene or investigation), and a bonus action (a conversation with a fellow player character, a quick search of an area, etc.). As the DM, use your discretion to decide what constitutes a suitable bonus action vs action.

Now, unlike combat, this type of encounter should permit player characters to team up and act together. When a PC that is high in initiative order decides to do something, other PCs that rolled lower can opt to join them if they want to act in the same location or engage with the same NPCs. (This is a great option to keep the action moving and lets players work together more.)

In order to keep this situation rolling, I prepared a few key notes. I focused on regional effects; that is, the overall culture and vibe of the area. I decided early on that the region is haunted, and that the locals are suspicious, superstitious, and obsessed with cleanliness. These features are tied into the overall plot conflicts that would develop over time. I also chose to include the effects of the Haunted table from Tasha’s Cauldron to add some spiciness to my haunting. In essence, think of the tensions the NPCs in the region are already experiencing prior to the party getting involved. A recent assassination might make a court intrigue more complicated as they now distrust strangers, for instance, while a new trade war over tariffs can complicate a diplomatic mission.

Next, I considered my locations. In this instance, my locations included the inn where the party slept, various rooms in the manor house hosting the wedding, a handful of outdoor areas, and the chapel. I focused on creating detailed descriptions of the ambiance for each location.

Then, I wrote out a quick description of each major NPC - in this case, the wedding party, the family of the intended, and a few locals and guests. In a roleplay/intrigue scenario like this, it’s vital to include motivations, secrets, and goals for each of these NPCs, even if those goals are very simple. You’ll need them for the last step:

Create a round-by-round timeline. Write out your list of locations and pair them with the NPCs that will be there during each round (hour). In my notes, I added what the NPC was doing there or what they were thinking about--linking their motivation to their location. For example, a character in the garden was leaving an early-morning meeting with her lover, the new gardener, while the fathers of the bride and groom met in the library to discuss the cover-up they had just pulled off (a politician and wedding guest had died mysteriously at midnight, and to keep the wedding from being derailed, they had hidden the body and were intimidating the only witness).

Party members who arrived at each location were therefore entering existing scenes they didn’t have full context for. Each hour, the NPCs would move on to the next phase of their day, seek out other NPCs to interact with, etc. NPCs could still be influenced by the party’s actions, so each round you might adjust exactly what they’re doing or where they’ve gone--the beauty of improv!

Keep in mind that situations should still be developing when the party isn’t witnessing them. An NPC no one had spoken to yet turned out to have spent the morning searching for her missing father, which led the party to the gravesite that they’d spotted earlier in the game, while the gardener turned out to be a villain they’d met before who was acting in secret during the session! Use your best judgment, though. Just because you wrote content for an NPC doesn’t mean the party will engage with it, so follow their lead; sprinkle the clues, and then let the party’s focus drive which storylines get developed.

So long as every NPC has a goal or secret to influence their opinions and decisions, they will feel like nuanced actors within the roleplay scenario; the timeline you lay out in advance gives them a sort of “Artificial Intelligence” that can be influenced by the player’s actions.

Personally, I also recommend setting a natural deadline for the party. If my players didn’t stop the wedding by 1pm, for instance, the ceremony would go forward and they would either be forced to object in public or let the marriage take place. Thus, they only had 5 total “rounds” to disrupt things enough that the wedding would be called off.

You can create similar deadlines depending on the central goal of the party. A vote on whether to pass a controversial law could serve as one for a court intrigue arc, while a crime-solving arc might have a threatened time when a kidnapping victim will be murdered (”You have 24 hours to deliver the ransom”, for example). The sense of a ticking time-bomb gives the players a much-needed urgency. The round-by-round timeline also helps to ensure that you won’t have to continue prepping rounds ad infinitum; instead, you need only prepare up until shit pops off and the deadline is reached.

You may find you won’t reach the deadline, though. In this arc, the party discovered the corpse of a major politician who had died in the night and was secretly buried by the gardener. They used the cover-up as leverage to blackmail the parents of the bride and groom into calling off the marriage, which was helped along by the ranger revealing that Elliot’s father was concealing Elliot’s criminal record to keep the marriage arrangement intact. They managed to prevent the wedding with an hour to spare.

However, as Alice the sorcerer went downstairs to announce the cancellation, she spotted a person who looked just like her weaving through the crowd to leave the manor. She followed, and discovered that she was tracking the semi-villainous NPC who had crossed paths with the party a few times before, disguised as Alice. The NPC, Florian, had been playing the role of the gardener, and blackmailed the bride’s father into giving up a precious family heirloom in exchange for concealing the body; now that the cover-up has been revealed, they’re getting out of Dodge with their prize. This revelation serves as the plot hook for the next dungeon!

#dm tips #dm advice #rpgs #d&d #dnd #dungeons and dragons #roleplay #actual play

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junicai · 3 years

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Aria at Award Shows

Iconic Outfits

2020 AAAs NCT Daesang Award

Peoples’ jaws dropped when they saw Aria sidle up alongside the other 23 boys, strolling out like she owned the building. The heels gave her enough height to be nearly level with Renjun - something she wouldn’t let the boy forget - her hair dyed back to a natural black like it had been during NCT2020 promotions. It was rare that Aria didn’t look slightly apprehensive about stepping out onto a red carpet, but the confidence was rolling off her in waves. As she walked, the slit in the dress seemed to keep on going, trailing up her leg and changing the otherwise classy dress into something that left the innocent bystanders in the first row suffering from a high chance of a heart attack.

tldr; Aria’s hot and people are Noticing.

2019 Show Champion NCT 127 ‘Superhuman’

NCT’s second win with Superhuman left a huge divide in nctzens; a rift between those who were ot21 stans and ot22 stans (sans and plus Aria). Up until then, there had been rumors around whether Aria was to leave NCT now that there was a new girl group supposedly debuting under SM. Their management team had refrained from publishing a response - but that only lead fans to create their own speculations and theories. This outfit played perfectly into the growing rumor; with the large circular pendant on Aria’s bracelet having two chrysanthemums etched into the gold. The flower symbolized happy endings and goodbyes, with nctzens taking this as the proof that Aria was truly set to leave NCT in the coming months.

tldr; nctzens need to learn how to Chill.

2017 M! Countdown NCT 127 ‘Cherry Bomb’

Unfortunately, this era was the cause of a lot of strife for Arizens; the stylists either hit it out of the park and Aria was drop dead stunning - or she ended up looking a little like a bratz doll a toddler had gotten their hands on. Unfortunately for Aria, their first win with ‘Cherry Bomb’ left pictures of her in a plastic, obviously dyed blue skirt and cherry pink hair to match immortalized on the internet forever.

tldr; arizens hoped that her stylist got fired after this era. the plastic skirt wasn't the worst thing they'd done.

Other Iconic Outfits

Seating Arrangements

Depending on the venue, idols are normally sat on straight rows of chairs and benches, or at round tables. Given the choice, Aria would always prefer to sit at one of the tables, as not only does it give her a chance to not have to worry about her legs being seen while being covered by the tablecloth - if there is one - but it lets her keep everyone sitting near her in her direct line of vision.

However, should she have to sit in one of the main rows, she’ll normally end up squished beside one of three boys - Donghyuck, Yuta and/or Renjun. Should one of those three be unaviliable, Doyoung and Jeno are usually quick enough to fill in the empty space.

Donghyuck would always be her first choice, was it not for the boy’s incessant energy that sometimes left her nerves fried before their performance. Most days she adored the company - adored him and his efforts to get her mind off their impending songs with various games and ways to pass the time (they're not allowed play footsie anymore though, because Aria stomped on his foot with her heel once) - but other days she just needed someone to hold her hand and say nothing. That’s where Yuta and Renjun come in.

As Aria’s found out over the years, for all the man’s tactile affection and loud displays of love, Yuta’s highly perceptive to when she needs some silent comfort. Now, she’s not sure if he’s that perceptive to everyone or just her - but either way she’s not complaining.

With Dream, Renjun is the one she’ll sit with and doodle on the white napkins that are laid out on the table for lord knows what reason. After being bored out of their minds for their first few award shows, Renjun had snuck two black ballpoint pens into the venue in the inside of his red suit jacket. The drawings had become somewhat a tradition, and the best doodle normally is uploaded to bubble shortly after the show has ended.

All in all, Aria’s normally quite content to sit in the centre of the large group of boys - split over several rows or tables, boisterous and bubbly with energy. The only real downside to it all is the lack of blankets available to protect her modesty once she is seated.

Most venues split the idols fairly evenly between the boy and girl groups - with blankets being allocated especially for the seating of girl groups. This meant, unfortunately, that when NCT files into their seats and sits down, there is rarely something in the close vicinity that Aria can borrow quickly without causing a fuss.

Sometimes she gets lucky - other female idols might spot her and are normally kind enough to hand over one of their cushions or blankets, content to share with their neighboring member. Occasionally though, Aria has no such luck and is left to either pull down her dress multiple times per minute to cover the prickly feeling over the tops of her legs when she felt like eyes were boring into her, or wait for some kind of break so she could go find a spare covering.

Aria supposed after the third time something like that had happened, her members were getting fed up with it all.

At first it was their plan B: should some type of cover-up not be available in their immediate vicinity, Johnny or Lucas or Jaehyun - once, even Dejun - or another member who ran hot near-constantly would shrug off their jacket and fold it over Aria’s legs, pulling it up and then lifting her hands to place them in her lap to hold their jacket there.

Eventually it became their plan A however, now commonplace for Aria to go looking for the member who was wearing multiple layers and who wouldn’t suffer from the loss of their outermost one.

Iconic Moments

Twitter: [180821] and people rly say nct doesn’t care abt aria :/

Red carpets were always something to dread, in Aria’s eyes.

The cameras flashing bright enough to blind you, and the knowledge that if she stumbled or - god forbid - fell it would be immortalized forever on Koreaboo’s newest blog post.

However the worst bit, was always the footwear. High, stiletto heels that left her teetering around on nothing more than her tippy-toes, precariously balanced as she made her way up and down stairs, over carpet and tiled flooring alike.

Aria was used to wearing heels, but the one’s she performed in were usually fitted with various types of ankle support and a thick heel to give her balance. Wobbling around on a heel the same width of a piece of uncooked spaghetti was not something she’d willingly choose.

Not to mention the blisters.

Designer shoes were gifted to the company on a regular basis - shipped over just in time for Aria to slip into the pair before stepping out of the van into the sea of bright flashes and reporters. It always seemed like designers were too pre-occupied with making a shoe look good rather than making them actually wearable.

The first time Aria had been gifted a set of heels - early 2018 - she made the mistake of assuming that they would be in similar comfort as her performance heels.

Two hours later and with a wad of bloody tissue stuffed into the back of them, Aria had learnt her lesson.

From then on, it was commonplace for Aria to bandage her heels before she went out to shows - not quite as heavily as she normally would for a performance, but just enough to stop the skin splitting under the constant abrasion.

She’d only been caught out badly once - but it was all caught on camera by a fan sitting close by, and spread over twitter like wildfire.

Aria had limped her way back over to where NCT 127 was sitting, lips pressed together in a tight line and hands clenched in the tight material of the leather trousers she had been given to wear. The trousers stopped a few inches above her ankles, so the red mess of her heels was clearly visible as she hobbled over and sat down with a thud onto the seat.

Donghyuck placed a hand on Aria’s shoulder, leaning in so that he could see her face behind the curtain of hair that she had let fall to hide her tear-filled eyes from him.

“Riri?” Donghyuck whispered to her, thumb beginning to rub soothing circles into her arm. “Hey, Riri? What’s going on?”

Aria only shook her head, gesturing to the pair of torturous heels on her feet.

Donghyuck inhaled sharply when he saw the blood trailing up her leg and soaking into the back of the heel. He turned to his side to elbow Doyoung, grabbing his attention.

“Hyung. Hyung.” He hissed, Doyoung turning around with an over-exaggerated sigh.

“No, Hyuck, I told you I’m not going to-” Doyoung cut himself off upon seeing Aria’s pain-filled face. “Aria? What’s wrong? What’s happened?”

Donghyuck slid off his seat onto the ground despite Aria’s protests that the floor wasn’t clean, get up, and explained what had happened to his hyung. Sliding her heel off as slowly as he could to not pull at the skin more, he muttered apologizes to Aria as she inhaled a shaky breath before exhaling it on a small, wet cry.

“Hyung, did you bring anything for Taeyong-hyung’s shoulder that we could use?”

“Yeah, yeah I did give me two seconds.” Doyoung bent into the small bag that he had tucked underneath the seat, pulling out a length of bandage that was stowed away in the outermost pocket.

Donghyuck took it from Doyoung’s hands with a small ‘thank you’, moving to kneel back down in front of Aria and taking her ankle back into his lap.

“Hyuck, no I got it, c’mon the ground isn’t clean-”

He silenced her with a look. Aria settled back into her chair - defeated - and Donghyuck wrapped the bandage around her heel as quickly but as painlessly as he could manage.

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

Twitter: [190323] HSHS ARIA IS A CARAT WE’VE WON LADIES N GENTS

Maybe Aria should have been paying more attention to the camera that was slowly panning around the idols, projecting their faces up onto a large screen beside the stage, but she was too engrossed in the current group’s performance.

“그렇다고 네 맘이 작다는 게 아냐,” Swaying gently side to side and mouthing along to the lyrics, Aria was happy enough to smile along to the song and move her hands in a small mimickery of the choreography she’d taught herself off the group’s dance practice video she’d watched only a few dozen times.

It wasn’t until Mark poked her in the side that Aria broke out from her own little bubble, twisting her head to look back at him and then up at the screen when he pointed.

There, her face, staring back at her from the big screen was enough to make her mouth drop open a little bit and her eyes widen. She clapped a hand to her mouth before turning to hide her face in Jaehyun’s shoulder, shaking with embarassed laughter.

Aria could hear Taeyong’s teasing laugh in return, before a hand came and ruffled the hair on top of her head, that she swatted away.

--=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

Twitter: [170911] lmao same aria

Aria knew she was there.

She knew that she was sitting right there and that she was in one of those really skimpy dresses stylists loved to put girls in because apparently female idols don’t deserve modesty and Aria knew that she had a blanket for once and she should share it but oh my god.

It was Chungha.

Aria was going to pass out.

Taking side glances every few seconds only confirmed the fact that Chungha was pulling down her dress to cover as much of her legs as possible, tucking her ankles together and underneath the seat.

Ok.

Ok, she could do this.

Aria took a steeling breath, before shifting on her seat to face Chungha on more of a diagonal. She lifted her hand before lowering it slighly, looking away.

Should she- no ok she’s doing this.

Without giving herself time to talk herself out of it, Aria moved to rest her hand on Chungha’s arm. The older woman jerked slightly - startled - and Aria was quick to apologize.

There was no audio in the video uploaded - the original poster having been too far away to capture much - but the two women talked for a moment before Chungha pointed to the blanket and then herself.

Aria nodded emphatically, and Chungha’s face crumpled into something fond, bowing her head in thanks before they unfolded the blanket another time and Chungha scooted an inch closer to Aria so they’d both fit.

Chungha sent Aria another grateful smile before refocusing on the performances - apparently not noticing, or perhaps choosing not to comment on the rather obvious red tinge that the younger idol’s cheeks had taken on.

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natromanxoff · 3 years

Text

Record Mirror (July 14, 1979): 119/?

THE QUEEN BACKLASH ENDS HERE

WITHOUT DOUBT Queen are among that elite number of bands universally hated by the rock press.

The rancour is, make no mistake, mutual which is understandable. If you find yourself on the receiving end of an inveterate dislike at the outset of your career and watch it being nurtured and carefully cultivated over the next six years you’re bound to retaliate.

Queen’s hatred manifests itself by their continued habit of ignoring the music press i.e. refusing to give interviews. There is the occasional token “chat”, pointless as it is innocuous, but in the main it amounts to a blanket “No.”

One of the last interviews Freddie Mercury gave was the last nail in the perspex coffin. Under a headline which boldly asked ‘Is This Man A Prat?’ the king of the leotards was demolished by one of the old school Queen haters and Freddie obviously came to the conclusion, in its wake, that interviews in future would be both superfluous (he was popular enough) and detrimental.

The curtain, velvet naturally, closed.

Roger Taylor, a little wary, a little weary, sits stiffly in an armchair. The juggernauts rattling the Chelsea Street outside create a sonorous buzz bomb hum in the room.

You expect a member of Queen to look elegant. In fact Roger is only wearing a wine colour mohair jacket, black shirt and blue jeans.

He apologises for being a little late and explains how he went to the wrong address. Roger seems to be the only member of Queen left who is prepared, albeit rarely, to open his mouth in the presence of a hack. A question springs to mind . . . why?

“We all sat around a table before I flew over from Munich to discuss the press situation and we agreed I should be the one to represent the band. Freddie is very uncompromising and refuses to have much to do with journalists.

“Obviously, he’s had a few raw deals with them in the past,” observes Taylor.

Roger himself has a rather low view of the music press.

“Most of it is rubbish. There was something I liked recently, a piece on Malcolm McLaren, but in the main I think I’m the only one of Queen to actually read the music papers.”

Why does he think the band are systemically slagged?

“I think it’s because Queen have always come across as being a rather confident band. We seemed, to other people at least, to be very sure of ourselves. I think the press may have misconstrued the confidence, mistaking it for a form of arrogance. Hence they became wary of our motives which bred a dislike for our music.”

Now that’s what I call a neat conclusion.

At the risk of being sent to Coventry by my colleagues I’d like, if I may, to come clean. I love Queen (you’re fired, Ed).

I think it all began with a simple pre-packed but indisposable line – “Dynamite with a laser beam” and has continued uninterrupted (despite the occasional flaw) right through to ‘Queen Live Killers’.

A combination of reasons, Freddie Mercury’s lascivious lisp – the most attractive intonation known to man . . . Brian May’s reel ‘em off rococo riffs that would, in his capable hands, transform the theme music for ‘Waggoners’ Walk’ into a meisterwork . . . John Deacon’s almost stoic stance, incongruous yet integral . . . Roger Taylor’s intense power, so unexpected from one so slight . . . the ability to go over the top without failing into the trap of caricature . . . a desire to give the punters what they want without pandering . . . that cast iron confidence . . . those nine glorious winter weeks of ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ which kept the cold away from my soul . . .

Yes, I love Queen.

Roger explains the story behind ‘Killers’ which features just about every Queen classic which ever found its way into a silk lined memory bank.

“We always knew that one day we would make a live album. I think it was well planned. About 90 per cent of our last European tour was recorded on a mobile unit and we then spent weeks sitting through the songs in the studio.

“The result is a 100 per cent LIVE album. Nothing has been touched up in the process of selection, I think that’s pretty rare these days. Many ‘live’ albums are tampered with.”

The choice of single is unusual – ‘Love Of My Life’. “It’s not so unusual when you hear the way it came out. The song seems to have such a wide appeal. Everywhere we go the reaction to it is the same. The audience are just bursting to sing along.”

The result is Queen’s best single since ‘Don’t Stop Me Now’ (that was their LAST one crawler, ED)

As I mentioned earlier the band are currently residing in Munich where they are “experimenting” in the studio.

“We are recording in a totally different way for us,” says Roger who speaks with a delicate London accent only typical of cockneys with dramatic training and David Essex.

“Every time we entered a studio in the past we had a good idea of what we were going to do. This time we started from scratch and the result is amazing. The music is nothing like anything we’ve done before, I guess you could say it’s much simpler.”

And this novel approach to their music also extends to their shows. On their next British tour – in the late Autumn – the band will be playing much smaller venues than they are accustomed to.

“In London for example we went to play to audiences of about two or three thousand in different areas. I think it’s much fairer to the fans.”

But won’t this affect their stage show which is after all a crucial factor for any powerpomp outfit?

“Not really. We will just scale down the show accordingly. Besides,” he says taking another bite out of the biscuit, “we haven’t used dry ice in years.”

The monkey on Queen’s back, as corpulent and cantankerous as ever, has been put there by those who firmly believe the band can never emulate past achievements. Roger is cognizant of its presence but refuses to unpeel its bananas.

“That all began after ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’. When it stayed at number one all those weeks we were kindly informed that we would never be able to make another single to rival it both artistically and from the point of view of sales.

“Yet ‘We Are The Champions’ sold a great deal more and has since become the biggest selling single in the entire history of Elektra Asylum – our label in the States.

“We don’t do the amazingly complex things any more because we’ve moved on from that. We concentrate on the music we are doing now and we intend to do it the best we can, it’s ridiculous looking behind and and what you’ve done.

“There’s nothing like going back on the road to re-unite the bond between the four personalities and strengthening our belief in the band. We are a real working unit and, in my experience of the music business, one of the most democratic bands around today.”

A statement like that cries out to be expounded.

“People think every member of all the bands, not naming any names, are treated equally that is get the same money as their colleagues. That’s rubbish. In many bands there are a couple of guys that get all the money. The rest are on wages. Queen share the profits equally.”

And they don’t have a manager taking his cut either, John Reid departed a couple of years back and now the band themselves make all the major policy decisions. Why did they decide to dispense with the services of a manager?

“Basically because we were fed up with giving other people money. Y’know it never ceases to amaze me how naive those guys are in bands who have just had their first hit. After all this time I’ve forgotten just how naive we must have been at the beginning.

“I mean, everything seems so great when you get into the charts for the first time. You’re living on cloud nine and nothing else matters. But in truth that hit means absolutely nothing. So few people achieve any amount of financial success in this business.

“Oh, you think, you’re really living . . . for a while. Somebody gets you a flat in Chelsea and it’s all free. But one day the rent stops being paid for you and you realise you’re skint.

“Since John Reid has gone the four of us have always made a point of discussing everything together. We have various people working for us but all the important decisions are made by us alone. That way we get freedom of choice – and financial independence.”

My attention is suddenly diverted.

“FORTY-LOVE!” Wimbledon, the Persil White opiate for the hoi polloi squashed in a strawberry crush wrings out its perspiring petticoats on the TV in the next room. Roger’s girlfriend, an extremely attractive French girl called Dominique, is engrossed. The couple have lived together for two years. Crippled old marriage questions permeate the air.

“I don’t believe in marriage,” says Roger. “It’s simply a contract and the fewer contracts I enter into the better. If you get on well with someone then there isn’t any harm in living with that person – but marriage is something else again.”

They live in a six bedroomed Victorian house just outside London, which is set in 20 acres. Roger has a “tiny” town house in Barnes as well. What’s it like having a bank full of money at the age of 29?

“I don’t hide away from life. Queen have never been one of those ‘being grabbed in the street’ type bands. It may happen when the four of us are together – but when we are out alone we are seldom bothered. That gives me the opportunity to enjoy myself. I go to clubs a lot. I like having a good time. I don’t think you could describe any of the band as leading sheltered lives.

“But I have completely lost touch with how much things cost. When you find yourself living in hotels for so long you never really deal in money as such. Everything is available whenever you want it – but you never see the cash actually being handed over.

“I’ve forgotten what it was like to be penniless which Queen were for years. I guess that must happen to many successful rock bands.”

Another thing that happens to many successful rock bands – they quit the country. But not Queen it appears.

“We have always based ourselves in England and I see no reason why we shouldn’t continue to do so. We could leave at any time but we choose to stay. People believe we are tax exiles because we spend a lot of the time out of the country recording in studios all over Europe and touring.”

And what will happen when the band finally trudge wearily down the road leading to that ivory strewn elephants’ graveyard . . . ?

“I know it’s bound to happen one day. I suppose I’d take a long, long holiday . . . and then make a solo album.”

#queen #queen band #roger taylor #dominique beyrand #freddie mercury #brian may #john deacon #record mirror #record mirror july 1979 #queen scans

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fyodorsslut · 3 years

Text

Wrists- Bakugou Katsuki

Requested by: @toomanyotpslove

A/N: both of us can’t remember what the request was sadly, but I still have the story and find it very much worth publishing!! So, here we are! It’s not the type of thing I’d usually write, honestly, but I tried

AU: Fantsy!Au

Pairings: Dragon Lord! Bakugou x shape shifter! fem! reader

Genre: Fluff, some angst (?), comfort

play: Particular Taste by Shawn Mendes

Warnings: Not proof read, mention of physical abuse, child abuse, blood, mention of killing, reader triggered, enslaving, dehumanizing, bruises

He learnt to never touch her wrists.

So, when he accidentally pulls her back by her still-bruised wrist, her reaction doesn’t surprise him too much.

When Y/n jumps back, startled, clutching onto her wrist like she’s doing it for dear life, with her mesmerizing y/e/c eyes shot awide, Katsuki isn’t even surprised. A good 12 years of living with her have taught him this much, at least.

“I-I’m sorry,” he coughs vaguely, gulping and watching out for any sign of an abnormal reaction. Even though it’s been long, Y/n’s mentality isn’t that stable and any small trigger could be like a bomb, and the explosion is her turning into some animal and losing control over herself. “It’s alright,” Y/n sighs, rubbing a thumb against her wrist.

“You sure?” with a little tilt of his head, Katsuki takes a closer step towards scared Y/n. “You good?” “Yeah,” she smiled, nodding. It took a lot of Katsuki not to push further. Instead, he nods in concern, wary of the apology he now owes her

A few years back, or so he recalls, was when he met her.

(12 years ago)

The shore was so thick with humid, too much humid he couldn’t breathe properly. His small, bare arms prickle with the sensation of moisture, minuscule droplets too small to see dancing over his skin. The 6 years old boy stretches a little, moving his fingers in tiny circles, stirring up the cloying warmth hanging over the seashore.

Sniffing, he grimaces, the light breeze smells of fires doused by the passing rain. His small features scrunch, the kid at the castle, went out fishing or such. Instead, he was here, with his parents and some lieutenants, checking on what’s coming in and out the country.

Dazing away from his parents, he runs a hand through the flowers blooming from boxes along the pathway. The dirt around them is still wet from the passing rains and a particularly exuberant gardener. Behind him, more flowering veins run up the brick walls and rocks, these people love there flowers. The explode in various shades, thriving in this climate-

That’s when he spots it. Her

A few men bulk up, trying to casually hide it, tensing at the presence of the king and queen, clearly not have been expecting it. But, from the heir’s vantage point, he saw the girl clearly, Bruised, chained up so movement is very uncomfortable. Some leather, cage muzzle sat disturbingly on her mouth and wrapped around her head. With clearly barely any movement, the girl’s body could go through so much harms, aside from the position she’s sat in.

It’s almost terrifying, goosebumps crawling up the young boy’s body.

“Katsuki?” A gentle voice calls for the ash blonde. He slightly flinches, ripping his gaze off the girl in chains. He looks at his mother in a frightened manner.

“Is something wrong?”

Shakily, he points a weak finger towards the cage.

Holding a hand out, he manages to pull the abashed girl out. She has an air of misuse and neglect. Skinny and barely able to balance her weak form on her own.

Katsuki softly takes the muzzle off. He smiles at the face in front of him, only to be met by wide eyes and trembling lips.

“Are you okay?”

Flinch.

A small hand grips into the back of his dress shirt. A certain body’s heat closing up to him.

“She won’t do anything, not even eat. She spoke no words, and is continuously clenching onto the prince.”

Young Katsuki didn’t understand what was going on as the nurse spoke to his mom. A clan murdered? People... haunted? He didn’t mind her huddling onto him the way she did. He heard she’s a shape shifter, what is that?

“Shipped, enslaved, and sold in the black market. She’s a special, these ones cost a fortune there.”

He didn’t understand, sure. But he still knew whatever this girl has been through, it’s trauma. He knew that from how the words sounded, and from the look on his mother’s face, he’s never seen her more disgusted his whole life, not even when he eats his mucus.

He glances at her, bruises clouding her freshly cleaned cheeks, one eye purple. Her arms and hands were the same, too. When her eyes catch his, she looks down immediately, pulling away as an embarrassed red paints her cheeks.

“Katsuki...” The king slowly kneels before his son. “What do you think?” “What do you mean?” He raises a light eyebrow, confusion written on his face with wide letters.

The king glances over to his prideful wife, who only softly shrugs, both unaware of what to do with the girl who could’ve possibly ended up reduced to some lifeless corpse in a few more days of starvation. They don’t get to ask Katsuki more than he’s already done; finding the girl. Yet, it seems as though the almighty king and queen, for the first time, are out of any other options.

“Would you mind staying with her until we figure out how to help her do things on her own?” His brunette father spoke gently, simplifying the words so that the young, stubborn prince could understand much of it.

“I’m not a kid,” He huffs, annoyance unjustified. “Of course I’ll help her around. That’s my job.”

A scream erupts from her lips before she could help it. Her eyes immediately shot shut as she holds out her arms in defense, ready for the punishment for being so loud.

“Hey, easy there,” The man at the infirmary smiles gently at her. “What’s wrong?”

“She doesn’t want anyone touching her wrists,” Katsuki confirms, watching over them closely like an examiner over a test. The doctor helping figure out her bruises as y/n flinches like a spooked animal. “Manacles trauma,” he nods. “These monsters really did their business.”

“Katsukiiiii,” she whines, helplessly running. “Slow down a little!” “Not a chance!” Her friend chuckles aloud, tugging at the blindfolded girl’s hand as his legs take off, fleeting against the floor of the castle.

He comes to a sudden stop, pulling Y/n to stop too.

“Why’d you stop?” she questions, tightening her grip over his small fingers. “Shh, we’re here,” he talks, smiling agape as attempts to control his uncontrollable excitement.

His hand leaves hers, clutching on to the blindfold at the back of her head. Swiftly, he rids her of the void she was staring into.

The sight she was outlet into was like an ambush to her feelings. Unable to form any words or create a reaction other than a stuttered “is this for me?”

“Do you... yes! It’s yours! Do you like it?” The young ash blonde asks excitedly, watching over the girl’s reaction. “It’s even right next to mine!”

She turns to him, tears filling her pretty y/e/c eyes. Before he realized it, she’s pulled him into a tight embrace, sobbing for some reason unbeknownst to him.

“Thank you.”

( Back to the present )

“Can we go back inside now?” He felt her breath before he heard her voice, straight up nauseous from the amount of people gathered up in such feast.

“Yeah, sure, whatever,” he grumbles under his breath. He sounds annoyed, but it’s no sweat for his lover to slip past his well-made façade.

“Thank you, Katsu,” She presses a soft kiss on his cheek. Even though he knows no one saw, due to their position at the far corner of the room, his cheeks rise a flame. He immediately grimaces, you could practically see steam fuming from his ears as he, without any ado, stomps inside puling the girl alongside.

“I sure hope you have a proper explanation for that, princess,” He folds two strong, muscular arms onto his bare chest. The multiple necklaces and animal teeth almost scrambling away from his arms. “Explanation for what?” Y/n raised a brow, playing dumb. She smiles softly, twirling a lock of y/h/c hair around her index finger, knowing damn well the practiced act does the trick.

“Tch,”he rolls his eyes. Only throwing himself on the couch. “Sit here, idiot,” he pats the spot beside him in a soft manner, indicating he’s about to start a sensitive conversation.

Gracefully, Y/n places herself on the couch, placing he r head on Katsuki’s broad shoulder. His arm wraps around her waist like it always does, scooting her closer as it finds rest on her thigh ((stfu-)).

“This morning you were... crying?” He spoke softly, unable to find the perfect way to speak in this specific situation.

Y/n takes a deep breath, fingers fidgeting with Katsuki’s fingers. “Nightmares,” she admits. “The same one?” “I think,” she shrugs, gulping. “I can only remember the faces of.. you know.”

By the way her fingers slightly squeezed his, Bakugou knew he should stop the conversation there.

“Don’t worry,” his voice was so, very low she could barely hear him. He presses a tender kiss on the top of her head, letting his lips take the weight of her whole head, finding rest at that spot. “No one will harm you as long as I’m here,” his voice sent slight vibrations through her head, as he inhales the familiar scent of her hair. “And you know I’m too stubborn to die, anyway.”

“Wow, very comforting, Katsuki,” she chuckles, pressing a kiss on his shoulder. “Shut up,” he blurts, flustered. “I love you too, Katsu,” She held his hand with both hers, printing continuous pecks on it.

His hand grips her cheek, the other gripping the opposite. Fixing his seating, he pulls her face upwards, planting a firm and fiery kiss that’s too short for her liking on her soft lips.

Unlike the rest of the shapeshifters, and unlike most of the the population she lives amongst in this country, Y/n’s a soft, curious soul. Not made for a harsh living or to be put against anything. Yet, the fire in her only ever lured people, the difference in her. Of all people, the heir to the dragon throne, Katsuki Bkugou.

“Fuck you for being like this,” his ruby eyes bore into hers, unable to find a single flaw.

Both the kids’ hearts raced in their chests.

He learnt to never touch her wrists, instead, he touched her soul to anchor her

#bakugou #bakugou katsuki #katsuki #bakugo fluff #katsuki fluff #bakugou fluff #bakugou x reader fluff #bakugou katsuki x reader fluff #katsuki x reader #katsuki x reader fluff #bakugo #bKUGOU X READER #bnha fluff #bnha x reader #bnha x reader fluff #fantasy au #bakugou au #bnha au

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rpgsandbox · 3 years

Link

Sapience is a Tabletop Roleplaying Game set in a distant cluster of stars that has been populated by huge sleeper ships fleeing system-wide wars back at Earth. Humans are the dominant species; along with them are the Gorillas, Orangutans, Dolphins, and Octopuses they genetically uplifted to intelligence, plus the only sapient alien species ever encountered (who mysteriously look a lot like old Earth legends of Goblins!)

The cluster has been embroiled in a Cold War very like the American Civil War for more than a century now, between one side who treat the uplift species as servants and slaves, and the other who treat them as equals.

There are many colonisable (and colonised) planets and systems in the Cluster, terraformed by a long vanished species who left behind enigmatic ruins and mysteries, and a very strange plant that only rarely fruits, but those who eat the fruit, well, it changes them...

Characters can involve themselves in the war, in trade or piracy, in treasure hunting and Indiana Jones type escapades, in espionage or politics, in scientific research, or simply explore the cluster and the many cultures that have sprung up since the arrival from Earth.

We believe that the best fiction (and especially science fiction) holds up a mirror, so that we can explore facets of our own lives safe behind the allegory of "make believe".

Star Wars was really about the Vietnam War. Godzilla was about the atom bomb. The Battlestar Galactica remake was an answer to 9/11. And, of course, there’s The Planet of the Apes - its message was about the hubris of man, and how people use science and religion to prop up inequality.

Sapience was designed in-part as a way of exploring the increasingly rampant discrimination, racism, privilege, and inequality in our own society. Throughout much of the setting, non-humans are treated as second-class citizens at best (and often, much worse). The game asks the question "I'm sapient now, shouldn't that mean I have autonomy and the right to self-determinization?". Further complicating this is the very recent development of AI, raising further questions about whether biological sapience is more important than mechanical - should we still own machines if we've allowed them to think?

Of course, these themes wont be for everyone, and there's certainly no rule that says the game must be played that way. Take out the darker aspects, and it's a Space Opera where you can travel through space meeting new emerging cultures, trading and exploring, treasure hunting, solving mysteries, wooing great beasts and battling women. Or should that be the other way around?

Sapience uses a brand new die system known as the Focus Engine. Characters build a die pool with three different colors of D6 dice based on their Mental, Physical, and Social attributes. When a skill check is made, a number of dice equal to the skill level are drawn from the die pool and rolled. The dice then generate two completely different results at the same time - Effort and Focus.

Your Effort is the number of dice that roll 4 or greater, and they determine your level of success (or failure) at your skill check, compared against a static difficulty or an opponents' Effort.

Your Focus is the number of dice you pulled that match the color of the Attribute your skill is keyed to. It is used to modify your skill through what are effectively adverbs - you might use Focus to perform your skill Quietly (making it hard for people to hear you doing it), or Quickly (improving the speed it's performed at) and so on. In combat? Focus adds to damage, because you did it Violently. Various uses of Focus are described in the book, but players and GM's are encouraged to come up with new ways to modify skill usage with Focus.

Wounds add other dice into your die pool. Any wound dice drawn during a skill check don't add to Effort or Focus, so the more wounded you are, the less likely you are to succeed at a skill. Better get some healing to remove those bad dice from your pool!

The Sapience rulebook has all of the rules you need to play the game, including:

Rules for creating and advancing your character, with 6 playable species' and a "guided freeform" method of skill and trait selection and development.

A detailed timeline of the history of the colonization of this new region of space, and all you need to know about the current state of the Cluster, its politics, many of its colony worlds and asteroid settlements, the factions and guilds involved in the cold war, and much much more.

Rules for creating and crewing your own spaceship.

Melee and starship combat

A discussion on the darker themes of the game, how to incorporate them into your own stories and campaigns, and how to not use them when all you want is a fun space opera where you're a talking Ape whose best friend is an Octopus.

A whole bunch of starship battlemaps (which you could even use in other sci-fi games, I don't mind), a Cluster Map, Personal and Starship character sheets, quick guides, and much more. You'll also gain access to a webpage where you can download all of those things in PDF form in color and text-free and printer friendly, to print out and use at the gaming table (and they're high res, so you can use a VTT)

And so much more!

Kickstarter campaign ends: Thu, July 1 2021 7:00 PM BST

Website: [Sapience RPG] [facebook] [twitter]

#RPG #kickstarter #Sapience

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denimbex1986 · 9 months

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'Oppenheimer, the movie about J. Robert Oppenheimer and the Manhattan Project, is a great film, extraordinary, as most movie reviews are accurately saying, and so, so important.

Causing the formation of the Manhattan Project was a letter from Long Island, New York to President Franklin D. Roosevelt. It was signed by Albert Einstein who spent summers in New Suffolk on Long Island, New York.

It was 1939 and the splitting of the atom—fission—had been done the year before in Germany. The Einstein letter said: “This phenomenon would also lead to the construction of bombs, and it is conceivable—though much less certain—that extremely powerful bombs of this type may thus be constructed.”

The aim of the Manhattan Project was to fight fire with fire—to use fission to create an atom bomb before Hitler and the Nazis did.

Einstein in the end regretted the letter. “If I had known that the Germans would not succeed in constructing the atom bomb, I never would have moved a finger,” he wrote in his 1950 book Out of My Later Years.

I first saw the two-page letter as a boy on a family trip to the Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library, next to what was FDR’s home, in upstate Hyde Park. It was there in a glass display cabinet. My sense: what an important letter!

Written on its upper right: “Albert Einstein, Old Grove Road, Nassau Point, Peconic, Long Island, August 2nd, 1939.” Below and to the left was to whom it was addressed: “F.D. Roosevelt, President of the United States, White House, Washington, D.C.”

On a personal note, Nassau Point is seven air miles from where my wife and I have lived for nearly 50 years, a hamlet called Noyac on Long Island’s South Fork, across Little Peconic Bay from New Suffolk.

Oppenheimer takes place largely in Los Alamos, New Mexico where the main work of the World War II crash program was done. Why then was it called the Manhattan Project? Its initial headquarters in 1942 was in Manhattan at the North Atlantic Division of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. General Leslie Groves, its director, was in the Corps.

The story of how several scientists, like Einstein refugees from the Nazis, found Einstein on the North Fork of eastern Long Island is amazing. It has been told by the late British journalist Alistair Cooke. Cooke gave this account over BBC radio as part of his “Letter from America” series. (Cooke incidentally had a home in Cutchogue on the North Fork.)

“Well, it began, on a drenching hot day in midsummer 1939 with two men, two refugees getting up in the morning and getting out a map and deciding to drive to the end of Long Island,” Cooke related. He said these “these two refugees, both Hungarians who had been run out of their labs in Germany, heard through the underground of their old friends who’d fled to various countries of Europe, two things. One was that there had been a secret meeting of German physicists, in Berlin, and that Germany had, quite suddenly and secretly, forbidden all exports of a certain kind of ore from the occupied country of Czechoslovakia.”

The ”ore” was uranium.

“These two refugees wondered, if the American State Department had any notion what the coincidence of these two items could signify.” But they were concerned that “if they had gone in person to the State Department or the White House they would quite likely have been waved away, or locked up as nuts.”

One of the scientists “remembered the old man, another refugee, but better known.”

This was Einstein.

“He might carry a little weight,” Cooke went on. “That was it, get to the old man, tell him what was meant by the equation: one secret meeting plus one export ban. But where was the old man? Well, one of them had heard that he was down at the end of Long Island, summering in a cottage rented from a local doctor. Doctor... doctor... wait a minute, Moore that was it? But now the place.”

One of the scientists “remembered all this, but couldn’t recall the name of the nearest village,” said Cooke. “Now Long Island is 120 miles long and full of place names. And the English names might be forgettable enough to a couple of Hungarians, but how about the Indian names? Aquebogue and Noyac and Mattituck and Ronkonkoma…and the like.”

One scientist said it was spelled “with a ‘P.’ They saw a name 90 miles down the island on the map in red letters, ‘Patchogue, that's it, that's the one.’ So they drove off. And they got out, and they asked in stores and petrol stations, ‘Anybody know the whereabouts of Doctor Moore's cottage?’ Nobody had ever heard of him. They got into the car again and sweated over the map.” Then still driving they neared a bay—Peconic Bay—and one scientist said: “Could it be Peconic?”

“’That’s it,’ cried the other, ‘now I remember.’”

And they drove on. “Less than two miles from Peconic” they came to Cutchogue and “saw a boy…standing on a corner with a fishing rod in his hand. The old man [Einstein] was a great fisherman. ‘Sure, said the little boy,’ he lives in Doctor Moore’s cottage.’” The boy “climbed” into the scientists’ “car and he led them there. The old man [Einstein] came out in his slippers and they told him their news. And they had a hot hour explaining to him what it all [the splitting of the atom in Germany] meant or could mean.”

There was a second visit, Cooke related, by Leo Szilard, one of the scientists on the first trip, and this time Szilard was with Edward Teller, yet another refugee.

A ”bold and simple letter” had been drafted, noted Cooke. Einstein signed it. “The president got the letter.” And that led to the Manhattan Project.

To listen to the full broadcast, go to https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00fks6t.

In a book I wrote, Cover Up; What You Are Not Supposed to Know About Nuclear Power, published in 1980, I present a facsimile of much of the Einstein letter and discuss it and the Manhattan Project. Through the years since, nuclear technology has been a focus of mine and I’ve written more than a thousand articles and additional books and have been the presenter of many TV programs on the subject.

In 1999 I went to Los Alamos for an event in which the Nuclear Free Future Awards for that year were presented. I had been invited to be a member of a panel of judges for the award given to people involved in education about and also challenging nuclear technology.

The setting of the awards ceremony was right out of the Manhattan Project, literally.

Claus Biegert, head of the Nuclear Free Future Awards program, arranged for it to be held in Fuller Lodge, a main building among the original structures used by the Manhattan Project in Los Alamos. Among those present was Peter Oppenheimer, son of J. Robert Oppenheimer and an opponent of nuclear weapons who warmly welcomed Biegert to Fuller Lodge. There are several scenes in Oppenheimer filmed in the Fuller Lodge.

I stayed at a motel in Los Alamos a few blocks aways—a motel the halls of which were lined with photographs of nuclear bombs exploding with their mushroom clouds.

The morning after the ceremony, I had breakfast at the motel at a table with Arlo Guthrie, involved in the awards program and long a musical advocate of peace. And here we were in a building glorifying nuclear bombs. But glorification of nuclear weapons has been and is still going on especially in places like Los Alamos that are involved in their production, thus having a vested interest

Not only did Einstein regret his signing the letter—he called it, too, “one great mistake in my life”—but Szilard was also left with deep concerns about a future in which nuclear weapons would proliferate.

Szilard in 1945 put together a petition to President Truman signed by 70 other Manhattan Project scientist asking the president not to use the atomic bomb on Japan without first giving Japan the opportunity to surrender and further declaring: “The development of atomic power will provide the nations with new means of destruction. The atomic bombs at our disposal represent only the first step in this direction, and there is almost no limit to the destructive power which will become available…”

Truman never saw the letter before the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki with accounts saying its delivery to him was blocked by Groves and Secretary of State James Byrnes.

Meanwhile, Teller then and through his life believed nuclear war was feasible and winnable. He led the development of an even more powerful nuclear weapon than the atomic bomb—what he called the “super,” the hydrogen bomb. His conflict with Oppenheimer over this is repeated throughout the Oppenheimer film.

I had a run-in with Teller in requesting the use in Cover Up of passages from one of his books that claimed “we can survive” nuclear war. I was told no. I quoted from it anyway.

Go see the brilliant Oppenheimer film.

Can the nuclear weapons genie be put back in the bottle? Chemical weapons were outlawed—put back in the bottle—through a set of international treaties after World War I in which their terrible consequences were demonstrated. The vehicle today for eliminating nuclear weapons is the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, passed at the United Nations by a vote of 122 nations in 2017. It is now backed by two-thirds of the world’s nations and is international law.

The treaty bans the use, development, testing and production of nuclear weapons and also prohibits threats to use them. However, the nine countries that now possess nuclear weapons—which include the U.S., Russia and China—are not supporting the treaty.'

#Oppenheimer #The Manhattan Project #Albert Einstein #Cover Up; What You Are Not Supposed to Know About Nuclear Power #Leslie Groves #Peter Oppenheimer #Fuller Lodge #Los Alamos #President Truman #Edward Teller

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shadow-cooper · 3 years

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Tales of the Peculiar facts from Ransom’s livestream:

•Ransom’s favorite Tale is the Splendid Cannibals.

•The paperback edition of TotP has an extra story, which is about an Icelandic man who has the same peculiarity as Noor.

•The peculiar children have parts of Ransom’s personality. Millard is the nerd obsessed with facts. Enoch loves horror movies. Emma is quick to anger, but fiercely protective. Bronwyn is the mamma bear.

•Ransom said Millard is a lovable know-it-all, and the type of person who can bore others at parties by rattling off random knowledge and facts he has.

•In the series, the Tales are three volumes, but Millard created a pocket version that he edited and annotated.

•Millard collected and annotated the Tales about 10 years before Jacob arrived. (*In Hollow City, however, Millard finds out there’s more to the Tales than them just being simple children’s stories. This fascinates him, and he states he wants to look more into their hidden secrets).

•The Tales are mostly folklore, but they do have some historical aspects, like the Tale of the First Ymbryne. While they serve as moral tales, there’s some hidden knowledge behind them.

•The Tales are universally beloved by peculiar children and are an important part of peculiar culture.

•The Tales of the Peculiar are read for fun, but also serve as textbooks. When older, children start to analyze them as a piece of literature in their academic and peculiar studies.

•Millard, due to his age and his love for knowledge, had accumulated a lot of information about the Tales. He probably also used reference books and did a lot of research too.

•Ymbrynes can only speak in the bird language of their species. They do have a basic command over all birds, but can’t hold an extensive conversation with them. (*For example, Miss Wren would be able to speak to wild wrens with no issue, but probably wouldn’t be able to understand much from a wild Eagle or Peregrine).

•There are other books written by peculiars, like the Codex Peculiaris. It was written by a mad hermit. He was walled up by a nasty nobleman and was told to create a compendium of peculiar knowledge, or else he would never be let out of his walled space. He did 20 years worth of illustrations in a night. When the nobleman read it, he went insane and jumped off the top of his tower.

•The Map of Days is a later incarnation of the Codex. Its creation was led by Sir Perplexus Anomalous.

•Other Peculiar Authors:

Horace: two cookbooks, one called “Teaching your Soup to Talk” and the other “Carrots and other Popular Orange Vegetables.”

Olive: “How to Lose Weight the Peculiar Way.”

“The Proceedings of the Second International Committee on Nude Invisibles” by Members of the Second International Committee of Nude Invisibles.

Miss Wren: Bomb-Proof your Chicken Coop: A Husbandry of Explosive Poultry

T. Leatherback: (a super smart tortoise who writes with the help of a secretary because he doesn’t have opposable thumbs) wrote various romance novels.

#mphfpc #mphfpc facts #the tales of the peculiar #totp #emma bloom #horace somnusson #millard nullings #bronwyn bruntley #enoch oconnor #olive elephanta

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wastelandlovingscenarios · 4 years

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Yey! New fallout blog. I'm so glad, it's honey on my heart! :D Do you have a lot of requests? I have two questions-ideas that you may like. 1: I like to think that Nick has memories that allow him to dance pre-war swing dances. But what about the rest of the companions? How do they react to Sole dancing lindy-hop (it's such fun and energy!) and/or blues-dancing (so slow, lazy, smooth and sexy). Do they know how to dance, do they want to learn from Sole, or do they very strongly refuse to dance?

yes, i have a lot of requests but i love it! keeps me occupied. i have taught ballroom dancing for a good four years of my life and i know about 10 dances. i’m absolutely in love with it! thank you for requesting this. <3

can you imagine the boys in an slightly unbuttoned, loose collared shirt with slacks and a belt.... 🤩

please enjoy! i will make it crushing companions because who doesn’t like a little romance in their life?

Danse:

danse is a killjoy, he doesn’t understand the joy of dancing and what impact it has on people. whenever he caught the sight of people doing it, he stood on his opinion that it was nothing but a waste of time. well, that was until he saw sole dance themselves. they had been dragged onto the floor by a friend of theirs and began lindy hopping as if they were suddently recharged and full of energy. even if he tried to deem it as a distraction later in the day, he knew he couldn’t pry his eyes away no matter how hard he tried. he had seen many people dance in his lifetime at brotherhood gatherings and such, but had never seen anyone do it like sole had. danse isn’t a dancer and will probably never be one. this man has spent his entire life in a tin can and is probably already built like one. he is horribly stiff and cannot move for the life of him. even if you were to hold him at gun point, he’d still harshly refuse to do so. after all, danse couldn’t even do the macarena even if he tried. he knows that he is incapable of dancing, which is why he absolutely avoids doing it at all costs. even if he was utterly in love with sole, he’d still reject the offer of learning their hobby and instead watch them dance from afar, secretly gushing over the smile their plastered their face whenever they did so.

Deacon:

he would think it’s absolutely amazing how sole could still remember fragments of their dancing 200 years later. hell, he can’t even remember what he ate last night for dinner, so it’s easy to say he’s impressed by their hobby and how physically demanding it is. the minute he saw sole and perform such an energetic dance, showcasing various fancy twirls and skills on the dance floor, he’d be completely bought, no further questions asked. deacon knows how to dance just for his disguises and such, but had never went beyond the basic steps of it. now that he had seen everything beyond what he’s ever known, he’d become very fascinated by it. he’d practically tackle sole on the floor, nearly begging them to teach him how to lindy hop and he definitely was not gonna accept no as an answer. the more sole had taught him, the more he became passionate about it, pressing sole to teach him more. in the end, he’d be more than willing to learn and even go as far as performing it with sole in different disguises while on their missions. after all, there’s no one he’d rather do it with besides the star themselves- the sole survivor.

Maccready:

maccready is instantly absorbed into soles talent of lindy hopping and although he doesn’t cheer out loud like everyone else does in the bar, he’s smiling proudly while leaning back in his seat. the sight of sole happy and energetic while doing what they love brings a warm feeling to his chest and he hopes that one day he’s able to make them smile the same way. after a few performances, mac would confront sole about it and ask about their history with dancing, curiousity eventually catching up to him. mac would try to listen as they spoke passionately about their hobby but their words would eventually turn into static as he instead admired their face like a middle school crush. he’d blush when sole snapped him out of it and would just reply with a simple, “that’s good.” as if he listened to them in the first place. although mac is engrossed by their talent, he will not dance no matter the circumstances. it wasn’t like mac was stiff or anything when moving his body, it was more of the fact that he was embarrassed to even attempt to dance in front of anyone, especially in front of the only person he has a crush on. mac naturally doesn’t favor any attention on him, so he refuses to learn how to dance for his sanity and don’t even get me started on creating physical contact with sole if he did choose to learn from them. if he were to accept their offer, his crush would be obvious to everyone within a 5 feet range. the thought of sole even linking their hand with his automatically gives him a heart attack, so for that to happen in real time would be an absolutely different story he wasn’t going to find out. he’d support them completely with their dancing but would wave off the idea of him doing the same for personal reasons no one should know.

Hancock:

oh man, the sight of his crush blues dancing on the floor in front of everyone was so sexy in his eyes. the way their hips swayed and how slow and sensual their movements were drove him crazy. especially the way their confidence shone throughout the room made him fall in love with them even more. although he didn’t like the idea of them dancing with someone else, he sure liked the scene right in front of him. his whiskey would be completely neglected as he smirked, watching them dance passionately. hancock is a dancer, but more specifically, a slow dancer. before he had met sole formerly, he had picked up various individuals through different tactics and there’s no doubt that he’s used slow dancing as one. it always won the women over somehow, so he often did it. now that the mayor had his eyes on someone after countless years of avoiding love, he’d be utterly determined to impress sole with dance skills of his own that he had mastered. hopefully, he’d win their heart in the process of doing so. hancock would even try to sharpen them more before he built up the courage to ask sole for a dance. once he did so, it was simple to assume that sole was anything but disappointed.

Nick Valentine:

he’s thrilled to know that sole still contained their memories of prewar dances like he had. he always disliked the fact that prewar dances in the commonwealth were completely disregarded to rot slowly as time passed. it was such a unique hobby and talent nowadays and nick assumed he was going to rust away before he could find another person who could dance as good as anyone back in the prewar era. when sole had presented various dances, such as lindy hop and blues dancing, to a crowd in sanctuary, he’d become automatically ecstatic, a large grin forming on his face. he’d immediately walk over to sole, politely asking for their hand for permission to join in. though nick wasn’t the greatest anymore at dancing and was a bit rusty at it due to his body limiting him, they’d still catch the attention of the crowd who cheered them on happily. he had forgotten how good it felt to be doing something he once enjoyed doing in his past life. obviously by now, you can assume nick is an excellent dancer amongst all the companions and would be the closest to soles level of dancing. he is a very romantic guy, signalling that he prefers much more slower dances and in this case, blues dancing. the fact that he’s in love with sole only proves this more and whenever they’re in private and he has the chance to ask for a dance alone, he does without hesitation. after a while, they’d come up with routines of their own and it was become a nightly habit to dance with each other, whether slowly or with energy.

Preston:

he’d be one of the many companions that would be cheering on for sole as they blues danced or lindy hopped on the floor, saying things like, ‘that’s my general!’ or ‘woohoo! go sole!’. secretly, he’d enjoy the small blush that would appear on their face whenever prestons voice boomed amongst the noisy crowd. he wanted to make sure that sole knew he was watching and that he was their biggest supporter, regardless of the abundance of people watching them. he’s absolutely supportive with soles habit of dancing and often asks them about it, knowing that it was one of their passions that still continued to stick with them even after the bombs dropped. preston would be happy to learn from sole, accepting their offer before they could say another word. it wouldn’t hurt to try something new and if he didn’t like it, he could always just stop after all. luckily for sole, he would immediately find himself liking every dance they taught him, whether it was slow or fast, and would enjoy practicing every once in a while to take his mind off the stress. the feeling of soles hands against his shoulder blade and his hand was more than enough to brighten up any bad day. preston is the type of dancer where he’d prefer to perform and practice in private rather than showcasing to a crowd. he was definitely very shy about it and a little insecure of his skills, but with time, he would eventually attempt to dance in public with sole. maybe not everytime, but it would happen occasionally.

Sturges:

boy, oh boy, lemme tell you right now. sturges is in love with prewar history, so once sole presented their skills of dancing, he’d be practically bombarding them with compliments and questions. he wouldn’t hide the fact at all that he was impressed by their set of skills and would even give them a cute ass nickname like, “my little dancer,” to which he laughed at whenever sole blushed madly. as much as the lindy hopping caught his eye, he liked the movements of blue dancing and the music that came along with it. it was much more of his style, really. the day sole came up to him and asked if he wanted to learn, he had agreed, knowing that he couldn’t say no to such a charming individual. sadly though, sturges has done nothing similar to dancing in his life and is as stiff as a rock when sole first teaches him, often stepping on their foot or stumbling over nothing. he’d blush in embarrassment, apologizing profusely whenever an error was made. he’s a mechanic- he fixes, repairs, tinkers and builds. it was something he enjoys doing and something he was great at. now this- this was something definitely new in his life and something he was absolutely horrible at. although he can’t dance for shit, he’s willing to bite back the hesitation so he could take advantage of whatever time he has with sole.

Gage:

he wouldn’t really have a high opinion of soles dancing but wouldn’t deny the fact that he was slightly impressed by their talent. never has he once seen anyone in nuka world dance the same as sole did and he definitely wasn’t gonna push away the fact that it was something unique and interesting to watch. even if he didn’t tell that to sole out loud, the way his eyes followed their every movement spoke louder than any words he could’ve pulled out of his ass. from time to time, he’d compliment them in his own way, saying things, such as, ‘nice footwork you got there, boss’ or ‘don’t see much of that these days’. sole would eventually taunt him by accusing gage that he liked the performance to which gage playfully snickered at it while rolling his eyes. you never put gage and dancing in the same sentence. he’s absolutely against himself doing so and would rather jump off a cliff willingly than to be caught doing such a thing. there’s nothing you can do to make him dance or even attempt to bribe him into learning- he just won’t do it at all costs. gage has his own set of hobbies and he likes to stick within that area, so the topic of dancing doesn’t appeal to him at all and immediately shuts the idea down the second it leaves soles mouth. as much as he loved sole, there was just no way in hell that he was gonna be forced into this. it just wasn’t him.

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dragonflymage · 3 years

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I have various levels to my dreams and it depends on the level as to how often I have that type of dream. I’m not sure if overthinking causes them. But I do know having the dreams causes me to think more after I wake.

Here are my personal dream types:

💙 Normal dreams - 💙 This is a dream that revolves around one or two subjects or symbols. It’s a pretty simple dream. It may or may not make sense. I’ll most likely forget about it when I wake, or by the end of the day. These probably occur at least once a night, if not more.

💙 Weird dreams - 💙 These are similar to Normal dreams except they are truly strange. It’ll mix symbols that make no sense. I’ll wake up wondering what the hell I just dreamed about. These aren’t as common as the Normal dreams. Those that I remember may occur about once a week or two.

💙 Story dreams - 💙 These are dreams that are like I’m watching a movie. I’m either within the mind of the ‘main character’ or I’m an invisible watcher to the events. These can be ordinary stories or can also fall into the Nightmare category. I don’t have these sorts of dreams as often as I used to.

💙 Dreamwalker dreams - 💙 For me, a dreamwalker is someone who can travel in their dreams. I have at least 5 regular locations I visit while I sleep. These are places I know so well that if I ever found them while awake, I’d know exactly where to go to get around. These dreams occur maybe once or twice a month.

💙 Stress dreams - 💙 This is a dream where I wake feeling anxious. The themes usually involve being teased and emotionally tormented. As though I’ve been picked on all night. These dreams occur more often when I’m already feeling stressed about something while awake.

💙 Disaster dreams - 💙 These are dreams about some sort of natural disaster, post-apocalyptic events, or something that is supposed to end the world. Usually, they involve weather or geological events, bombs, or (haha) zombies. I’ve had these fairly regularly my whole life.

💙 Creepy AF dreams - 💙 Similar to a Story dream, but these dreams are one step above a full nightmare. They involve all the scary elements of a nightmare, but I’m not fully interacting with it, nor it with me. Like I’m walking through a created haunted house in someone else’s mind where nothing can touch me. It’s creepy, but overall, not dangerous. I don’t have these dreams very often, maybe once or twice a year, depending on waking situations.

💙 Nightmares - 💙 The worst. These are dreams that are realistic and frightening, leaving me feeling quite traumatized. They are usually a Story dream taken to the extreme. I’ve often wondered if I was trapped inside various random people’s bad memories. I am fully interacting and stuck in the scenario until it unfolds to the end. Though, I have learned how to wake myself up right before I (or the person in the dream) is supposed to die. I used to have Nightmares more often in the past. I rarely have these now.

Here are examples from my dream journal for each of the above types I listed.

💤 **Please know that some of the content below might be SCARY** 💤

⭐ Normal dream - ⭐ I was with a group of people. One of them I know was male. He was a priest or holy man. We were walking together on a dirt road and there were trees around us. There was a clearing where I could see through the trees and I saw mountains way off in the distance. I thought it was so pretty so I took my out camera and snapped pictures. Off to the left of the mountains, I saw a bay. On the bay was a huge bridge that reminded me of the golden gate but it was bigger. Something about the bridge scared me.

I took more pictures. Trees blocked my view so I moved around to try and find a clearer view. The holy man with me said, "you're seeing what you're meant to see. Let it become clear on its own". When I looked back at the bridge it was covered in fog and I couldn't see it anymore.

⭐ Weird dream - ⭐ I was in an old building. It looked like a stone temple. It was dusty. Someone was with me and he was trying to get a spell or a machine to work. There was a big egg-shaped container with a line going longways through it so it could open. It reminded me of a coffin except it was egg-shaped.

I went over to the egg coffin and opened it. Inside was a little boy. I was wondering what a little boy is doing inside the coffin? I touched him and he woke up and I was glad that he wasn't dead. I helped him out of the coffin and he followed me around. He said, "I'm supposed to visit you soon". I said, "but you're visiting me now". He shook his head and said, "no not like this". That's all I remember.

⭐ Story dream - ⭐ The dream went through an entire sequence of events in someone else’s life that spanned about a year. I lived alone in a house that had no lights. I was pregnant and nobody to talk with about it. Two or three older women came to my house to keep me company. They said that they would explain things to me and answer any questions I had. They answered basic questions because I was too afraid to ask what I was really thinking. They offered to stay with me but I told them that I would be fine, so they left. I spent a great deal of time alone and crying.

When I was in the hospital to have the baby, I felt detached from everything. I was pregnant, and then I had a baby. He was a boy and I named him Delancey. I brought him home and in my heart, I was happy he was here, yet there was a sadness in my heart. When it came time to introduce Delancey to other people I knew, I put him in a small stroller. I went to a workplace where I knew some people. They came out and fawned over the baby and were excited about him being there. Again I felt detached and put on a happy face.

There was an office or room inside the workplace that I went into. It was empty and I knew it was the room that belonged to my baby's father. My thoughts lingered on him and how he died before he knew I was even pregnant. I started crying, holding Delancey to my chest, trying to talk out loud to the baby's father that he had a son, and I was so sorry that he wasn't here to share in his life with me. My heart hurt so badly for this woman I shared life with in my dream.

⭐ Dreamwalker dream - ⭐ In this dream, I returned to a dream location I've been in before. The place always feels like India, yet it also feels other-worldly. In past dreams, I'm walking through a marketplace during different stages of prosperity. Sometimes the marketplace is active and thriving, and other times it's desolate with people sitting on the ground as if they're starving.

Last night the location felt desperate. In the dream, I remembered being here before, so I took a good look around to gather my sense of direction. I always entered the marketplace from a path in the near center, and the marketplace extended off to the right and left of me. The ground is not paved. It's covered with red-orange dirt. I always seem to know someone in this location and I went looking for them.

Near the marketplace stood a small hut with a blanket for a door. I stared at it for a long time, but I don't recall why I hesitated to go in. Outside of the hut, a small boy came over to me. His skin was deep brown and his hair was short and black. Indian or Arabic features. I recognized him as he asked, "do you want to buy some?" He had jewelry in his hand.

I looked in my hand and saw that I carried an amulet in the shape of the eye of Horus. It was new and shiny and felt out of place in my surroundings. The boy looked at it and said, "I can give you something better". I asked him, "why are you selling jewelry away from the marketplace?" He looked at me in silence, but his eyes looked very sad. He hurried away before I could say anything more.

I finally went inside the hut. Before I went inside, I knew that something was wrong. Several people were huddled together on the dirt floor. One person cradled the head of a child on his lap. I knew the child was sick, and possibly the others were too. I felt as though I had the capability to heal them but I think I knew I was too late to do any serious help. They pleaded to me to please try. It hurt to look at them, and I knew that my efforts wouldn't save them, but I knelt down and attempted to soothe their pain. The child weakly held my hand and such an overwhelming feeling of helplessness went through me that it pulled me right out of the dream.

⭐ Stress dream - ⭐ In my dream, I saw people outside. One man said to a woman there "I'll buy you ice cream with a cone". The woman looked happy about the ice cream at first. But then she was upset when he mentioned a cone. She walked away. The man didn't know what upset her.

Then I saw a memory inside the woman's thoughts. I shared space with her. The woman was a 5-year-old little girl. She sat in-between her parents on a bench. The girl had won a prize and her prize was an ice cream cone. Her father said he would test the ice cream to see if it was OK. He ate the ice cream and didn't give it back to the girl.

The girl kept saying "can I have some now?" But he wouldn't give it back. He said, "this tastes so good". The girl got upset and started to cry. She looked at her mother and said: "he won't give me my ice cream". Her mother made faces at the girl and repeated what the girl said, repeating it in a teasing voice. The girl cried and the father kept eating the cone until it was gone. The girl didn't get any of the ice cream that was her prize for winning something. I knew she felt very upset because she never had special ice cream like that before.

⭐ Disaster dream - ⭐ In this dream, I was at a beach. I walked in the water out pretty far because the water was shallow. I went out and the water was only at my waist. Then I noticed a disturbance in the water and a large whirlpool appeared. In a short amount of time, all the water in the ocean drained down through a large crack in the ocean floor. I knew that a larger disaster was coming, that an earthquake was going to happen. I went around the beach to all the people who were standing there staring at the empty ocean, trying to warn them that a big earthquake was coming, but no one seemed to hear me or care. I decided to leave the beach and hurried back home. I ran into the house to grab my pets. I had only one cat and two small dogs. I put them into my jeep and called my brother on a cell phone to warn him. He seemed too tired to care. I drove someplace safer.

⭐ Creepy AF dream - ⭐ I was inside a room that was supposed to be my bedroom. There was a man in my room, but I wasn't sure if he was there or not. He stood in the corner of the room watching me and said nothing. I had a creepy feeling so I went to the window. I was on the second floor. Looking down, I saw another man standing there. He wore white and stood very still. He looked right up at me and stared. He didn't move and kept staring at me. I was afraid so I left that window and looked out the other window. Another man wearing white stood very still and stared up at me.

I hurried away and turned to look at the man in my room. He said, "so you can see us, can you?" I wanted to get out of the room, but couldn't find the door. The man walked closer to me and said, "I was going to wait until later. But since you can see me I'm going to kill you now." He had something in his hand and he came closer to me. I sat on the floor and I pushed myself against the wall using my feet. He stood over me and stared at me for a long time. I was still sitting on the floor, but my dead body was laying on the floor in front of me. It scared me so much to see that. The man leaned over my body and talked.

A woman and another person came into the room. She saw my body on the floor and was angry. She picked the man up and took a dagger and stabbed him in the chest many times. Then she threw him on the floor. She looked right at me sitting on the floor and stepped over my body. She told me to follow her and she would find a safe place for me. I was very scared. But I followed her.

⭐ Nightmare - ⭐ I was inside someone's house. Other people were living in this house with me and they were my family. Another stranger lived in the house too. He was very dangerous, but I was the only one who could see him. He took each of my family one at a time and sliced their throats with a long razor. He forced me to watch him doing this. I could see this happening, but the other family members didn't seem to realize what was going on. I tried to tell them they needed to leave the house, but they didn't understand me. He grabbed another person and sliced them too. I saw the razor going into their skin and I saw blood everywhere. He kept doing this until they were all dead.

Then he said he was going to do the same to me. He grabbed me and showed me the razor knife and moved it over my skin. He wasn't cutting me at first. I tried to get away from him. He said he was very sorry and there was no one else left so I was next. Then the other person I shared the dream-thoughts with began talking to him. She was screaming and saying she didn't want to die. I think she was a she. I don't know for sure. I could still see through her eyes and I tried to close my eyes. But I couldn't because her eyes weren't closed. Then the telephone woke me up.

— Those are some of my dreams from over the years. It took me forever to go through them and pick these. I have so many that could’ve worked for each category.

And to answer the original question, there were times when I’ve had nightmares very often and times when they were rare. The frequency seems to depend on what’s taking place in my life. 💗

Thanks for the question. 😊

#infp #infp thoughts #mbti #mbti thoughts #myers-briggs #dream #introvert #nightmare #hsp #emotions #emotional #sensitivity

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minuteminx · 3 years

Text

Revolutionary

Pairing: Preston Garvey/ Female Sole Survivor

Summary: In the aftermath of personal tragedies, Preston and Charlie both seek to make a difference in the Commonwealth and those around them. They could never anticipate the impact that they will have on eachother in the process.

Chapter Five: Old Appalachia

Chapter Summary: Charlie's not sure she's cut out for the Commonwealth, but fate thinks otherwise.

[First Chapter]

[Previous Chapter]

[AO3 Link]

“By being natural and sincere, one often can create revolutions without having sought them.” ― Christian Dior

Outskirts of Concord, December 2287

Charlie had always been somewhat of an idealist. She had to be, growing up in bumfuck Appalachia in a family just high enough above the poverty line that the government wasn’t legally required to offer financial assistance. Her dad was an overworked, underpaid line worker in some automotive factory, and despite never once stepping foot in a coal mine, he carried his ancestors’ resentment toward anything and everything “nucular,” as he called it. He’d always pop off with these wild conspiracy theories about atom bombs and the end of times. It seemed laughably prophetic now.

Her mom had stayed at home, reading books to her and her little brother, and promising them they could change the world if they wanted to. It was those words that kept Charlie going, pushed her towards that Ph.D. that had seemed so monumental back then, so important. Now, as she stomped around an irradiated wasteland, caked in blood and aching from head to toe, she realized how fruitless it had all been. All those years training to help other people only to spend over two centuries in cryostasis and wake up unable to even help herself.

Thank God for Preston. She didn’t know what would have happened to her if she hadn’t almost died trying to help him at Concord. She really had no business in a suit of power armor or holding a minigun and fighting a fifteen-foot tall lizard. Even nearly two months later, she couldn’t come up with a single logical reason why she volunteered so readily. Was she now going to throw her life away just because a friendly face asked her to? She laughed at herself. Probably.

Charlie found herself doing a lot of things simply because Preston asked her to. Grueling, difficult tasks like “eating enough,” “staying hydrated,” and “getting a good night’s sleep.” He drove a hard bargain, that Garvey. What did he take her for anyway? Someone stable?

In the past month, he’d been taking time away from the laundry list of other things he had on his plate, just to teach her some excruciatingly basic Commonwealth survival skills. She’d learned the names of all the things that could possibly kill her: Raiders, Gunners, zombie-like creatures called feral ghouls, supermutants, various types of wildlife threats, and radiation. Everything was irradiated, from the food to the water to the thunderstorms . At this rate, she just figured she was either going to die or grow an extra ear on her forehead. It was a tossup.

She’d also asked Preston to help her learn to protect herself. She didn’t like the idea of guns or violence or any of it, but it was foolish to walk through Hell defenseless. He tried so hard to teach her to shoot one of those god awful laser muskets, but it took too long to ready a shot that she was inevitably going to miss anyway. He had eventually given up on trying, and instead placed a 10mm in her hand. It was nicer than the one she’d used in Concord, with glow sights and an extended mag. Apparently Sturges had fixed it up for her. She was beginning to believe there was nothing that man couldn’t do with a roll of duct tape and half an hour.

“MS. CHARLOTTE!”

Charlie jumped as Codsworth abruptly hovered in front of her face. She’d almost forgotten the Mr. Handy unit had accompanied her on an assignment for Preston, out in Lexington. Once she’d shown some proficiency with a weapon, he thought it would be good practice for her to take out a “small” band of Raiders who were troubling a nearby settlement. It was not small, and while she dealt with the issue and convinced the Tenpines settlers to throw their lot in with the Minutemen, Codsworth knew she’d not gotten out of the ordeal unscathed.

“What, Codsworth,” she asked, more annoyed than he deserved.

“Mum! Oh thank goodness you responded,” the robot exclaimed giddily floating about in front of her, “You have been staring off into nothing for the past hour of our journey despite my efforts to entertain you with conversation.”

She had not noticed him speaking once, well, at least not since he’d mentioned Nate and Shaun when they’d passed by the rusty remains of a playground. Maybe she’d tuned him out after that. “Sorry Codsworth. I have a lot on my mind.”

“Are you aware that you are bleeding?”

“What?” Charlie glanced down to the large tear in her vault suit, and the blood pouring from a bullet wound in her thigh. She hadn’t even felt it since she used one of those stimpak syringes. She’d almost forgotten she had it. “ Shit. ”

“Such language, mum! Hardly befitting of a lady of your stature.”

“Find me a lady of any stature who doesn’t curse when she’s been shot in the leg,” Charlie quipped, grunting as she sat down to redress the wound, “Do you still have that gauze you picked up at the plant?”

“Yes, of course,” came his quick reply as he produced a bundle of cleanish gauze in one of his metal arms, and handed it to her.

“Thanks,” Charlie said, taking the cloth from him and beginning to work, wrapping it tightly around her leg. She just needed something to stop the bleeding until they made it back to Sanctuary. They weren’t too far now, maybe a mile or so from the bridge.

Once she found her amateur wound dressing to be suitable, Charlie continued on back to the settlement, Codsworth prattling on endlessly about the bliss of pre-war life. She understood where he was coming from. That didn’t mean she wanted to hear it.

She stopped suddenly in her tracks when she spotted movement ahead of them, off to the side of the dirt road. It looked like a man in raider leathers, digging for something.

“What is it, Ms. Charlotte,” Codsworth asked loudly and without an ounce of tact.

Charlie shushed him, but it was too late, the man had already heard them, rising to his feet and moving his hand to draw his weapon. She didn’t let him have the chance, firing several rounds into his chest before he could. She hated that she was getting good at that.

She approached the body, prone and lifeless, and knelt down, beginning to rifle through his pockets for anything useful: ammo, stimpaks, caps . Yes, caps . If anyone had told her that in the future the formal currency would be Nuka Cola bottle caps, she wouldn’t have tossed so many of them in the recycling bin.

It wasn’t until she looked up that she noticed that there was another body, a young woman lying in a shallow grave also donning the signature raider attire. Her arms were crossed ceremoniously across her chest, hubflowers scattered across and around her body. Charlie looked down at the man she’d just killed and remembered that he had been digging.

She felt sick. In her mind, she conjured an entire tragic scene in which a poor, mourning raider had simply been trying to bury a loved one and was startled by the obnoxious shouting British robot. When he reached for his gun, just a reflex, he’d been shot in the chest by some cagey redhead with an itchy trigger finger. If she’d only paid more attention, she might have noticed sooner and she and Codsworth could have taken a wider arc around the man. He wouldn’t have had to die.

Pocketing her looted items, she holstered her gun and bent down to pick up the shovel, starting first by filling in the grave of the lady raider. It was the least she could do.

“Pardon me, Ms. Charlotte,” Codsworth asked, attempting to be gentle, “What are you doing?”

She sniffed her nose, fighting back the tears she wanted to cry, and pointed the shovel at the woman. “He was just trying to bury her.”

Charlie swore she could hear the gears in Codsworth’s massive metal head clicking and smoking as he tried to make sense of her behavior. After a moment, he spoke. “Need I remind you that these scoundrels would have murdered us on sight?”

She shook her head and stuck the shovel into the dirt. “Doesn’t matter.”

As she worked, her memory was flooded with painful, frozen flashes from the vault. Images of the callous man who killed Nate and stole her baby, of Nate’s stiff, frozen body that still lay in the cryochamber, perfectly preserved with the exception of the fatal gunshot wound in his chest. Charlie had opened the chamber, hoping she could save him, or at the very least say goodbye, but he was already gone. She’d slipped the wedding ring from his finger and left him there, entombed along with the rest of her neighbors who unwittingly signed themselves up for a sick science project. When Preston learned what had happened in 111, he offered to help her lay everyone to rest properly, but she couldn’t bring herself to do it. She couldn’t stomach the idea of walking back into that frozen hell.

She could, however, offer some absolution to this Raider.

“I’m going to bury him next to her,” she announced, looking at Codsworth before moving over several feet and beginning to dig a new plot.

The robot protested with an exasperated huff. “I applaud your sentimentality, mum, but it is getting quite late. At this rate it will be completely dark before we return to Sanctuary Hills.

“If you want to go on ahead, you can,” Charlie said with a dismissive wave up the road, “Tell Preston I’ll be along shortly.” “Perish the thought,” Codsworth retorted, properly offended. “I will not abandon you to the wasteland at night. Just… do please hurry.”

Charlie worked as fast as she could, but her body was weary from her days of journeying and fighting, so digging and filling in the grave had taken longer than it should have. When she finally finished, the clock on her PipBoy read “23:00,” and the sky was completely dark, well except for the stars. They, at least, had survived the apocalypse.

It was after midnight before Charlie hobbled across the bridge and into Sanctuary Hills, Codsworth zooming past her, a cacophony of buzzing and whirring and shouting for Preston. At this rate he was going to wake up the entire settlement. She managed to make it over to the home where Sturges had set up his workshop, and flopped herself down on the concrete with a grunt. The effects of the stimpak had worn off, and with the bullet still lodged firmly in her leg, it hadn’t healed entirely and it throbbed like a bitch.

There was a hurried rustle of footsteps, accompanied by Codsworth’s voice complaining about how she’d “foolishly buried some raiders against all good judgement.” If anyone needed a chill pill, it was that robot.

“Thank you for taking care of her, Codsworth,” Preston said, a gentle laugh falling off the ends of his words, “I’ll handle it from here.”

“You’re most welcome, Mr. Garvey. I apologize for my mistress’ recklessness.” His words were pointed and Charlie couldn’t believe she was being tattled on by her own Mr. Handy. He zoomed off to busy himself with the fruitless task of trying to restore their old home.

Preston shook his head, and continued to laugh as he approached Charlie, “Man, that machine is something else.”

“No joke,” came Charlie’s weak reply, as she attempted to adjust herself to sit more comfortably.

“Whoa,” Preston exclaimed and rushed to her side. “You okay?

He hadn’t noticed the wound, and for whatever reason Charlie didn’t want him to. “Yeah. I’m fine.”

He frowned, warm brown eyes flicking down to the blood seeping through the gauze on her leg, and then looked back up at her. He smiled, but she could tell he was worried. “That’s funny, ‘cause you don’t look too fine.”

“I beg your pardon,” she bantered. Deflection. She couldn’t stand the way his concerned expression made her feel. “I know I’m not a supermodel or anything but--”

“Charlie.”

She faltered under his gaze, tears immediately bubbling up in her eyes. She took a deep breath and fought them back before speaking. “There were more Raiders than we thought. Codsworth and I got overwhelmed and I got shot in the leg, but I’m fine. People get shot around here all the time, right?”

“We try to avoid getting shot,” he remarked, his exasperation not quite as shrill as Codsworth’s, “How many raiders were there?”

“Fifteen, maybe twenty.”

“Jesus.” He rose to his feet and walked over to the metal cabinets just past one of the workbenches. He knelt and opened one of the doors, reaching far back inside. He emerged with a full fifth of Old Appalachia and a medical kit that was, like everything else in the world, held together by duct tape. He returned to his previous position at Charlie’ side and sat down making an almost concerted effort to make eye contact. “You know I wouldn’t have sent you out by yourself if I’d--”

“This isn’t your fault, Preston.” She lay a hand on his arm, and offered him a smile. “If anything it’s mine for rolling in the front entrance, guns blazing.”

He laughed. “Man, you’ve got to be more careful.”

“No promises.” Charlie lifted her hand from his arm and pointed to the bottle of whiskey. “What’s that for?”

“You,” Preston answered, picking it up and handing it to her, “We have to get this bullet out of you before it gets infected, and you’re going to want something to dull the pain. So, start drinking.”

“Say no more.” Popping open the bottle, she kicked back a long, burning swig. The whiskey tasted like home and two-hundred years ago. She watched as he opened up the medical kit and dug through the items inside. “Have you ever done this before?”

“What? Dug out a bullet,” he asked, bitter smirk on his lips, “Yeah. More times than I would have liked. Like you said, people get shot around here all the time.”

Charlie took another drink and swallowed hard, the alcohol not working fast enough to keep her pulse from jumping at the sight of metal tweezers and rubbing alcohol. “How bad does it hurt?”

Preston laughed again, glancing over at her this time. “Bad.”

“Well… that’s comforting.”

“I’m just being honest,” he explained, positioning himself so that he had a good look at her affected leg. He took his gloves off and looked up at her, “May I?” She nodded nervously, and watched as he unwound the bandage and cut away the remaining pieces of vault suit. She hadn’t gotten a good look at the injury until now, and she was thankful that the bullet seemed to be of a small caliber, like those that turrets fired, and wasn’t lodged too deeply. Under the bright lamplight, she could see it’s dull metal reflection. Preston sighed in relief, most likely noticing the same thing.

That it would hurt “bad” had been an honest understatement. Even after several shots worth of whiskey, the sharp burning pain of alcohol and tweezers pulling the bullet from her thigh was enough to make her light headed. Even Preston’s gentleness couldn’t spare her that much, and she squirmed and held her breath just to keep from screaming and waking up the others. When it was all said and done, she was trembling, out of breath, and sobbing like a child.

“Congratulations,” Preston said softly as he began to dress the now clean wound, “You survived your first Commonwealth surgery.”

Charlie let out a weary laugh and let her head fall back against the wall behind her, looking up at the ceiling, eyes unfocused. “Thanks, doc.”

“Don’t mention it.”

There was a long pause in which she heard him inhale as if he were going to say something, and then exhale as if he thought better of it. She brought her eyes down to him, effects of the alcohol really hitting her, along with the endorphin high. “Something on your mind?”

He stopped what he was doing to meet her gaze. “Why’d you go to all that trouble to bury those raiders?”

“I…” She began, but hesitated, worried that he’d disapprove of her compassion for members of a group that’d terrorized him for days on end at Concord, who killed some of his friends. “I thought it was the right thing to do. When we walked up on him he was in the middle of burying a comrade. He’d spread flowers over her and everything…”

She choked on the last words and trailed off, but Preston seemed to understand, as he nodded and went back to dressing her wound.

“I feel sorry for them sometimes too,” he admitted, as he tied a neat knot in the bandage, “They might be messed up, but they’re still people.”

“Right.” Charlie nodded.

“You’re a good person,” he stated, eyes fixing on hers. “I’m… I’m glad you decided to stick around.”

Her face became hot. It must have been the whiskey finally getting to her, she told herself. After all, it wouldn’t make sense for her to get all flustered over a compliment. She carelessly let her hand fall on his arm again. “Me too.”

Charlie awoke the next day, more afternoon than morning, tucked neatly into a bed that she could scarcely remember crawling into. In fact, everything from the time Preston had finished dressing her wound was blurry and she made a mental note to avoid the Old Appalachia from now on, or at least to refrain from drinking half a fifth in one sitting. She crawled out from beneath the thin blanket and sat up, leg aching more than it had since she’d gotten shot. Damn.

Glancing down, she noticed she was wearing a pair of faded jeans that were too short for her and an old white tee that exposed her navel when she raised her arms to stretch and yawn. They were not her clothes, and she’d no idea whose clothes they were, or how she got out of her vault suit and into them. She snorted out a laugh at the thought of poor Preston fumbling around in the dark trying to help her change. She doubted that’s what happened, but her memory was too fuzzy to say it hadn’t.

Across the room, folded neatly atop her dresser was a familiar blue and yellow fabric, and she hopped up-- too quickly, wincing at the pain in her leg-- and limped over to take a look. Picking it up and unfolding it, it took her a moment to realize that it wasn’t her whole vault suit anymore, missing an entire bottom half, and split open down the front. She also noticed that there were neatly stitched seams along the edges. A jacket? Someone had gone to the effort of making a jacket from her vault suit and she didn’t even know who to thank.

She slipped one arm in and then the other. It fit like a glove, a much more comfortable, less skin-tight glove than it had previously. A quiet knock on the doorframe nearby drew Charlie’s attention and she darted her head up to see Marcy standing in the doorway, smirk in place of her signature scowl. Suddenly, Charlie remembered.

“I’m glad it fits,” Marcy said as she looked Charlie up and down. Preston had woken the other woman up the night before to ask if she had anything Charlie could wear. Marcy had cursed and complained, but ended up shooing him away and helped her get changed and into bed. Apparently she was also the culprit behind Charlie’s new jacket. “Couldn’t salvage the whole thing.”

“You did this,” Charlie asked, examining the sleeves.

“Yep,” Marcy stated, looking down at the ground as if she was embarrassed, “Couldn’t get back to sleep after Garvey woke me up, and figured it might be good to have. Considering none of my clothes are quite long enough for your beanpole ass.”

Charlie laughed, and tugged at the bottom of the t-shirt. “Thanks, Marcy.”

“Yeah, well don’t get used to it. I still think you’re useless,” Marcy retorted with a huff, but it was clear she didn’t mean what she said. “And I want my clothes back as soon as you find something else to wear.”

Charlie nodded, and Marcy turned to walk away, but stopped and pivoted back around on her heel, pointing an index finger at her. “Mama’s been waiting for you to wake up. She found some Jet this morning and is off her rocker talking about some bright glowing heart shit. Just a heads up.”

Before Charlie could even say her thanks, Marcy was gone. Turning her attention back to herself, she realized she had no clue where she’d left her PipBoy. She scanned the room, and saw it sat on the floor near her boots. Picking it up and examining it for damage, she fastened it to her wrist and then slipped on her boots before heading out into the hallway.

It was a bit disorienting at first. She wasn’t in the place where she normally slept, instead she stood in the house that had become the common area for all of the settlers. She must’ve been too woozy and injured to make it farther into the cul de sac. She turned to her left and spied Mama Murphy in the open living room, sitting in her specially crafted chair, feet dangling happily just a few inches from the ground.

“Hey kid,” she hollered, motioning for Charlie to come closer, and Charlie obliged, secretly hoping that her doped up insight would give more answers about where Shaun had been taken.

“Mornin’ Mama,” Charlie answered and made her tedious way over to the old woman and sat down on the sofa near her.

“The Sight,” Mama croned, “It’s shown me more about your boy, your sweet boy.”

Charlie winced, unsure if she wanted to know now, but leaned forward and took the old woman’s outstretched, weathered hand. “What is it,” she pleaded.

Just as Marcy said, Mama Murphy recited a prophecy about Diamond City, and people with chained up hearts refusing to provide Charlie with answers about her son’s whereabouts. With the exception of one. One heart that would lead her way, “so bright against the dark alleys it walks.” It didn’t make sense, but she’d never been to Diamond City, didn’t have enough information to even begin to decipher it.

“What does that mean,” she asked clumsily

Mama smiled, and shook her head. “Beats me, Kid. I only know what the Sight shows me. Maybe you get me some mentats, maybe I--”

“Now, Mama,” grumbled a familiar voice nearby, Charlie followed the old woman’s gaze to where it had been preemptively fixed on the door Sturges had just entered, face covered with smudges of oil, “You know Ms. Charlie’s not gonna fall for any of that nonsense.”

She shrugged. “Meh, you never know, Sturge. Seems like she wants to find her boy.”

“Not sure the boss would like it too much if he knew you were abusin’ her good graces,” Sturges scolded her playfully as he popped open a bottle of Nuka Cola, and sat the cap in a pile with others on the counter.

“Preston's not my boss,” Mama scoffed, and then turned back to Charlie, “He’s waiting for you though, kid.”

“Preston?” Charlie asked, taken aback by the sudden change in topic. “Me? Why?

Mama and Sturges exchanged a glance before Sturges spoke up. “Don’t really know to be honest. He doesn’t really say much about how he’s feelin’, but he’s been worried ever since you left.”

“He sees your promise,” Mama chimed in, “He sees what I see.”

Even with the analgesic effects of a newly injected stimpak, walking the length of the neighborhood had proven to be a slow, awkward process for Charlie. Her leg was weak, throbbing, and numb, but at least it still worked. At least she was still alive.

The more time she had to think about her escapade at Corvega, the more she realized how she’d survived on nothing but pure, unadulterated luck. She’d seen it in Preston’s eyes the night before, his bewilderment that she’d managed to take down a raider gang of that size. She’d also seen his guilt, as if he intended to blame himself for something that had not happened. For all she knew of him, that was normal. Whatever had happened before she ran into him and the others in Concord really did a number on the guy.

Charlie heard him before she saw him, humming and making an effort to tune a two hundred year-old guitar. A smile twitched on her lips, heart warming at the sight of him sat on a rusty patio chair, surrounded by an audience of lawn flamingos. He had his hat off and laying on the table. In her two months of knowing him, she’d never seen him so relaxed.

“Your G’s a little sharp there Garvey,” she called out to him playfully as she made her way over and sat down in the chair across from him, propping her good leg up on the table. He didn’t flinch or show any other signs of surprise at her approach, and continued to fiddle with the guitar.

“I know,” he answered, tearing his eyes away from the instrument to look up at her, “I can’t get the damn thing to cooperate.”

“It is at least a couple of centuries old.”

He sat the guitar down and turned to face her more squarely. It was the first time she could remember getting a good look at him with his hat off. Objectively, of course, he was handsome, with soft features and a smile that he definitely knew how to use to his benefit. Preston was nice. He wasn’t naive. How could he have been, growing up in a world like the one she’d woken up in? The scar that ran from temple to cheekbone on the left side of his face was more prominent than it had seemed before, masked in shadows. It looked like an old wound, and she wondered how he’d gotten it.

“Well,” he said, amusement plain on his face, “Being a couple centuries old hasn’t stopped you.”

“It certainly tried,” she replied, ignoring the knots in her stomach and back of her mind telling her it might have been better if it had stopped her. “Damn near got the better of me at that plant.”

Preston nodded and let out a breath. “About that… how are you feeling?”

Charlie looked down at her injured leg and then back up at him. “Like shit,” she stated, “But I suppose that’s better than the alternative.”

“That’s for sure,” he said, sort of absentmindedly, gaze seeming unfocused and off in the distance. There was a long, heavy pause before he spoke again. “I don’t think I ever got around to saying thank you last night. I really appreciate everything you’ve done for us since Concord. Without your help...well, I’m not sure we would have made it.”

“I…”Charlie began, but trailed off, “You’re welcome, Preston.”

There was another pause and he leaned forward and grabbed his hat, tracing his fingers across the brim. “I know that I told you I’m one of the last Minutemen, but I don’t think I ever mentioned how it ended up that way.”

She shrugged. “I figured you would tell me when you were ready to talk about it.”

“I’ve started calling it the Quincy Massacre,” he said somberly.

“Quincy. That’s where you and the others are from, right?”

“That’s right,” he answered, “Sturges, Mama Murphy, and the Longs all lived in Quincy when the Minutemen got a call for help dealing with some Gunners who’d been scouting the area. I went with Colonel Hollis, my commanding officer at the time, and several others to answer the call. It all went downhill after that.”

Unsteadily, Preston opened up to her, explaining how his contingent had been the only to arrive, and their numbers were too few to handle an assault by the much more heavily armed Gunners. Colonel Hollis had called for help, only for a traitorous Minutemen veteran named Clint to show up and lead the Gunners right through the gates. Preston told her how he had to watch settlers and his own comrades die, helpless and running through the streets. He’d made a knee jerk decision to evacuate, and take as many survivors with him as he could along the way. Apparently, that wasn’t where the trouble had ended though. He and his group traveled for over a month without finding anywhere safe to settle, facing disaster after disaster until finally getting trapped up in the museum at Concord.

The story was heartbreaking, but to watch Preston tell it was even more so. Charlie could tell that he blamed himself for each and every loss that happened under his leadership. He wore his guilt all over his face.

“I’m sorry that happened to you,” she said softly, “And I’m glad that I showed up when I did, although I really have no idea how I managed to do… all of that.”

“It’s almost like it’s fate... or something,” he muttered. His words were followed by an embarrassed laugh and a shake of his head as if he couldn’t believe his own mouth. “Sorry. I’ve been spending too much time around Mama.”

“Hey.” Charlie laughed, and slid her leg off the table, leaning forward to pat his shoulder reassuringly. “Hope’s addictive. Just like the chems.”

Preston sighed. “Damn it if that’s not the truth.”

“Also, I think the old loon might be onto something,” she added, tapping a finger to her temple, “The only reason I limped out to this end of the settlement to see you was because Mama said you wanted to talk to me, something about you seeing my promise?”

“Well I’ll be damned,” he said appearing genuinely surprised, as if Mama Murphy’s clairvoyance was something new, “She’s out here stealing all of my thunder.”

The way he looked at her, as if she held the entirety of his hope in her trembling hands, made her shift uncomfortably. The weight of Mama Murphy’s words now settled on her shoulders like a lead blanket. She had never been one to believe in coincidences, but it was hard to accept that any of this was her destiny.

She cleared her throat, attempting to be nonchalant. “So, what’s this promise of mine everyone is so certain of?”

“The Commonwealth desperately needs the Minutemen,” Preston explained, “Now more than ever, and I plan to rebuild them stronger and more organized, without all of the petty squabbles and infighting that have plagued our history.”

“Sounds like you just need to find a good leader,” Charlie remarked, feeling helpful.

Preston eyed her intently and she suddenly regretted her words. “Exactly,” he said with a grin.

“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” she protested, waving her hands in front of her in a panic, “You’re not suggesting that I should lead the Minutemen, are you?”

“I am.”

“On what qualifications?” She was nearly shrieking. “I know next to nothing about the organization, it’s history. I can barely hold my own in a fight. I--”

“Charlie,” Preston remarked, rather directly, “The Minutemen aren’t an army. We’re citizen soldiers, people of the Commonwealth banded together to protect ourselves and decide our own futures. We fell apart because our leadership forgot what we stood for, but you could bring us back together, bring the whole Commonwealth together.”

“Why me?” Charlie was flattered at his faith in her but so confused. “Why not you, or anyone else?”

“You helped us at Concord and every day since, without anything in it for you,” he explained, “You had your own problems to deal with and you helped us anyway. Hell, you even won Marcy over. That kind of compassion and selflessness has been in short supply around here for a long time.”

“Preston, I am flattered by all of this, but I’m not sure I can take on that kind of responsibility right now.”

“Listen,” he said, offering her a reassuring smile, “If you really don’t feel like you’re up to it, I’m not going to twist your arm. I get that it’s hard to deal with other people’s problems when you’ve got your own.”

Charlie pondered for a moment, and asked, “What would I have to do?”

“Just what you’ve been doing,” he answered as if it were obvious as day, “Help people. Recruit. Spread hope. And I’ll be behind you every step of the way.”

She couldn’t deny that it was tempting. As much of a mess as she was herself, she was compelled to help others. If anything, it could give her something to focus on, a sense of purpose, a way to use her skill set. She brought her eyes up to meet his, chased away the nagging doubts in her head, and nodded. “Okay. I’ll do it.”

“You’re sure?”

“As sure as I’ll ever be.”

“Well, the leader of the Minutemen has always held the title of General, and since I’m the last of the Minutemen, there’s no one here to argue with me when I say it belongs to you now.”

“So I’m General Smart now?” Charlie laughed at the complete absurdity of the situation. Leading a bunch of neo-colonials to resettle Massachusetts wasn’t exactly how she pictured her life turning out. “Does that mean I get a cute little hat?”

Preston returned her laughter, relief washing over his face at her decision. “If you want one, General, then absolutely.”

Perhaps her mother had been right all of those years ago. Maybe she really could change the world.

#preston garvey #fallout 4 #preston garvey x sole survivor #preston garvey x f!sole survivor #revolutionary #fanfic #my writing

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