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asmrtist-brainrot · 4 months

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Redacted Listeners (Dari Ver.)

IT'S DONEEEE!!!

This is me mostly talking about like clothing aesthetics.

Also establishing how I see these characters and giving them names!

This is my interpretation and gives me a chance to think about character design a little more! And to help me remember how I plan on dressing/representing their clothes.

~ Dari

Angel | Malak or Mal - (they/she) [27]

Name Meaning: Angel (Arabic origin)

Arab-Thai

Short and heavy set. Shaved head and darker skinned, big black lashes, and dark brown eyes.

AFAB//Fashion and general expression leans femme, shifts between not wearing and wearing a binder. Hair is buzzed so is seen as more androgynous. Clothing style waives more in the light academia casual, wears lots of high waist and crop tops. Also, hoodies, hoodies for days - all types - zippered, pullovers, sleeveless, oversized, cropped, etc.

Baabe | Apis - (they/him) [25]

Name Meaning: “Bee” in Latin

Turkish

Messy, curled, dyed blue hair pulled in a half-bun. Eyes are a deep green. Skin is midtone. Silver ear cuff on right ear, key on chain necklace.

AMAB//Mostly traditionally masculine features with the exception of longer lashes and silky skin, hair is grown out and curly. Well groomed, with a mid tone voice that could be construed as any part of the spectrum. Notably broad shoulders and strong arms. Simple and clean fashion, professional more often than not, if not in athleisure wear.

Bright Eyes | Lux - (they/she/he + primarily uses they/them) [20]

Name Meaning: Light (of Greek origin)

Greek

Unkempt blue-white hair worn short with bangs. Eyes were an electric blue before their change. Vamp eyeballs, almost cat-like eyes. Double helixes.

AMAB//Notably considered somewhat of a pretty face, mostly from Freddy's recollection of their high school years - though people found them too intimidating to approach. Bounces all over the spectrum in terms of style. Sticks pretty heavily to the Decora Kei style, somewhat allowing themselves to take all the attention away from Fred. It's a bouncing dichotomy from their foul mouth and sweet face... Frederick and them took somewhat a darker look after their turnings.

Cutie | Hadley, Haddie, or Lee- (they/him)[28]

Name Meaning: Named after Lieutenant Hadley from Star Trek

Irish

Short cropped dark blond hair paired with very pale blue eyes. Peachy skin with lots of freckles! Tattoo behind the ear that says "mind over matter" as nod to their powers. Double lobe piercings, labret, purple gemmed necklace.

AMAB//Generally sticks to a sort of academia look, layered items with focus around jewelry pieces. Loves silver and rings and watches! Generally pretty soft in appearance, sweater vests and jumpers and hoodies. Doesn't do baggy pants unless they're cargos.

Darlin' | Barrett or Rett - (they/she/he, no preference)[26]

Name Meaning: Quote from site: "While some sources say Barrett is of German origin and means “as strong as a bear,” others say it's derived from a Middle English surname meaning “strife” and often given to argumentative people".

Iranian-German

Short bobbed, messy brown hair. Brown skin and deep gold eyes. Muscular. One gold tooth. Right brow has a slit. Gold ear cuffs.

AFAB//Aligned with wolf pack norms, dresses pretty simply with leather jackets, bomber jackets, etc. Still somewhat fashionable, ranging in aesthetics and gender representation. Pretty confident most of the time despite being covered in scars. Athleisure wear if they're not dressing for a formal event.

Doc | Apollo - (he/him)[30]

Name Meaning: Apollo is the god of healing

Haitian-American

Dark skinned with twists in dark hair. Big lips and pretty blue eyes, labret cuff and dimple piercings. Double lobe piercings.

AFAB//Minimalist style. Enjoys soft, flowing fabrics. Black and white and tans, isn’t a fan of all black. Something of a beige enjoyer, sticks to solids. Has an affection for boots and pantsuits! Lots of statement earrings!

Dreamer | Roya - (he/they)[29]

Name Meaning: Dream (Persian Origin)

Persian

Dark skinned. Deep teal eyes. Dark hair in braids, extensions are a pretty teal.

AMAB//Style is truly grunge, jackets and ripped jeans. Sleeves ripped off every shirt, paired with beanies and combat boots, multiple types of chunky jewelry… Hates shorts though. Lots of piercings!!!

Freelancer | Caron or Ronnie - (they/them)[22]

Name Meaning: Loving (Welsh Origin)

Viet-Welsh

Black bobbed hair with dyed tips. Pretty dark eye bags. On the bigger side. A lil' pale. Scattered tattoos.

AFAB//Not really one for any fancy dressing, enjoys dressing casually if at all possible. Style preferences lean gothic, mostly in comfortable hoodies and bracelets - also likes fishnets and arm warmers. Dresses pretty diversely; but likes skirts/dresses for the ease of not needing to put on pants.

Love | J. A. A. I. or Jai- (no preference, referred to with they/them)[physically 21]

Name Meaning: J. A. A. I. stands for “just an artificial intelligence”, Jai is of Indian Origin and meaning “triumph” or “victory”

White, nearly gray skin. Hair is black and long. Eyes are bright green with a ring of white around the pupil. Panelling is subtle.

INTERSEX//Not strictly interested for any type of fashion one way or another. Likes soft, plush or fuzzy items though, scarves and shirts in particular. Would live in pajama pants if they could.

Lovely | Beau - (they/them)[25]

Name Meaning: Beauty, Handsome (French Origin)

French

Soft strawberry blond hair, short 2 block haircut with white tips. Mid-tone brown skin. Yellow/gold eyes. Has gauges with hoops in them.

AMAB//Pastel goth babe. A truly deeply ingrained affection for sweet, bright colors but also the macabre. Only started incorporating more black into their fashion after being turned. Lives in demonias and dramatic black makeup. Lots of pink to match their dyed hair.

Mentor | Nason - (she/they)[24]

Name Meaning: Helper (Biblical/Anglo-Saxon Origin)

Scottish-Mexican

Long side bangs and short blond hair, side bangs are dyed a light blue. Lightly tanned skin and soft blue eyes.

AFAB//Our casual girly! Loves animal prints and necklaces, heels basically all the time. Sticks to simple combos; wears primarily pencil skirts and tight slacks at work.

Professor | Dai - (he/they)[25]

Name Meaning: Peace, Calm (Japanese Origin)

Japanese

Blasian! Light-skinned and covered in freckles from head to toe, long, black curly hair tied into a ponytail. Snake bite piercings and tongue ring, both gold.

AMAB//Soft boi fashions!! Layers on layers! White sweaters and collared undershirts!! Lots of different crew neck sweatshirts, loves his converse and cuffed pants.

Seer | Aya - (he/they)[33]

Name Meaning: Sword (Old German Origin)

Danish-Swiss

Has albinism. Wild bleach blond curls. Masked their completely white seer eyes with brown contacts; usually but wears sunglasses too. Small lips and covered in freckles.

AMAB//(undetermined)

Smartass | Akira or Aki - (she/he, no preference)[28]

Name Meaning: Bright, Intelligence (Japanese Origin)

Hispanic-Japanese

Bobbed soft lightish brown hair with silver dyed tips. Mid-tone skin. Baby blue eyes. Wears black framed Warby Parkers. Also has a gold necklace.

AFAB//Our business casual hoe, tight slacks and multiple types of button downs/collared shirts. Fun pops of color and unique types of collar pins and cufflinks. Patterned sweaters and blazers!! Likes it a lil’ fancy.

Starlight | Juno or Jun - (they/them)[24]

Name Meaning: Child of June, Youthful. Named after the Queen of the Gods but more in reference to the constellation (Greek/Latin Origin)

Greek-Chinese

Baby purple hair styled in a half-shave with yellow tips. Honey brown eyes. Light freckles. Crescent moon earrings.

AMAB//Space prints for days, lots of chokers! Plays with different types of fashion, doesn’t really stick to one type of style but wears mostly dark colors.

Sunshine | Sol - (xe/xir/xim)[23]

Name Meaning: Sun (Spanish Origin)

Cuban-Australian

Messy, short dark hair. Dark eyes. Vitiligo. Freckles. Sun earrings.

AFAB//Sweaters, sweater vests, hoodies - anything comfortable. Off the shoulder, usually layered. Shorts too, always shorts. Will wear leggings underneath if it’s too cold.

Sweetheart | Nox - (he/they)[24]

Name Meaning: Night (Latin Origin)

Italian

Somewhat wavy dark hair, pulled back into a high pony or bun. Eye color changes based on colored contacts. Skin is lightly tanned. Double lobes pierced, black choker. E-girl hearts on cheeks.

AFAB//Vintage babe, film noir type beat. 1950s type, lots of simple button downs and pattered shirts. Biker/bomber jackets, layered over a solid shirt. Clean and slick… Does like leather though, harnesses and jackets and boots.

Warden | Pyxis - (they/them)[??]

Name Meaning: Name references the box, or compass of the ship Argo

Tall and on the light skinned side. Hair is dark blue and white. Eyes are a deep purple/lavender. Horns are white and similar in style to Avior's but fade into their skin. Wears silver horn jewelry. Echo eye bolo tie. Lavender butterfly on the inside of the left wrist.

???//Casual. Lots of long sleeves and business type looks, mostly as the time they spend in Elegy is always due to business. Likes cool colors, leans masculine but pops fun textures and patterns. Likes lace and ruffles in particular. Likes jewelry for their horns and bolo ties.

#headcanons #redacted asmr #redacted audio #redacted listeners #redacted listener #listener design #dari blabs #mod posts

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bellarkeselection · 2 years

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Hello! Can you write something for tasm!Peter Parker who teaches a female reader how to skateboard? A lot of touches, hugs and falls from this thing, but Peter will definitely smooth out all the corners...

Thank you for getting me to 1,000 followers!!!! 🤗 ❤️

Skateboarding Spider Tricks

"Peter I'm not sure about this. I mean what if I break a bone. My parents will freak out." I throw my arms up when we reached the old construction site that he said nobody cared if we were at. Mostly because people couldn't know the true identity of Spider-Man. Except for me his girlfriend of five years. He sits the skateboard on the ground taking my hands in his. I have to look up since he's a little taller but he gives me a cheeky smile. "Look you're not going to get hurt. I'm here and I can web you if you do." He tried to reassure me tucking some hair behind my ear. He helps me step up on his board with my dominant foot. I squeeze his hand balancing my other foot on the concrete. "So push off with this foot then place it on the board behind your right foot." He instructed tapping the back of my knee with his freehand whether I nodded my head mumbling an okay under my breath.

Taking a long drawn breath I pushed off with my left foot causing the board to start rolling down the road. Arms on either side of me I lifted my foot onto the board but apparently too close to the end. Because next thing that happens is the board flipping over and I fall on my knee scraping my elbow and left knee on the ground harshly. Peter runs over immediately dropping on his knees gently inspecting my injuries. He does his best to not touch the scarpes knowing it would hurt me more than it would him since he was fast healing now. "Ah I'm sorry. I should have been more specific Y/n. God I'm stupid-" Shoving my hands over his mouth I lowered them pressing my lips to his to get him to stop. He slowly kissed me back resting one hand to my cheek until I broke it ruffling his already messy hair grinning. "Peter stop worrying. I'm alright. I mean I'm no superhero but I'm okay. Let's go again."

"I've got an idea baby. Get in front of me and I'll put my arms around you." He said flipping the board back over like it's supposed to be. Dusting some dirt off my torn jeans with the wind blowing hair in my face. Raising a brow to my boyfriend's statement I normally didn't question him but with this I have no choice. "Won't that just make our chances of flipping higher Peter?" He runs his hand through his hair stepping on the board doing a backflip keeping the board stuck on his feet still. Rubbing my eyes a few times I probably won't get over that he has the powers of a spider now. I mean I love that he's a badass superhero but some of the stuff he can do blows my mind sometimes. Peter holds out an opened hand that I accept putting my back to his front. Our right foot on the board and the others on the ground. A few minutes later once I adjusted I feel his arms wrap around my waist pressing us up against each other. "Alright you ready. Just push off and trust me. I won't let you ever get hurt." He spoke in my ear kissing my cheek a few times making me lightly blush with a small giggle. He chuckled in response enjoying my reaction every single time.

Together Peter and I pushed off on our feet at the same time. The skateboard started rolling at a slow speed but when I got comfortable we increased the speed. We did a few turns until Peter started turning the board so we would fly up a ramp. I gasped clutching his arms around my waist in nervousness. "Peter!" We started up the ramp but I felt the board start to lift off the ground. Closing my eyes something gets shot and the board does a flip. Squinting one eye open I see Peter is holding a string of webbing he had shot from his Spider-Man suit underneath his clothes. That resulted in the board not flipping backwards so we made the turn landing on the solid ground perfectly fine. "A little warning next time, Peter would be nice. I thought we were gonna crack our skulls." Turning in his arms I rest my hands on his shoulders stepping off the skateboard. He gently squeezes me closer kissing my forehead smiling. "So would you want to take the fun way home?" I snorted at his question loving to fly from building to building. "Is there any other fun option, Spider-Man."

Comments really appreciated ❤️

#tasm!peter x reader #tasm!peter x y/n #tasm andrew garfield #tasm!peter parker x reader #tasm #tasm fluff #tasm!peter parker x reader #peter parker andrew garfield #requests open #send request to my ask box #ask box is open for anything #comments really appreciated

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janeykath318 · 1 year

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Red Velvet Murder: A Wintershock Cozy Mystery

Finding one dead body had been a shock, and the second had nearly gotten her arrested, but the third corpse in seven months was just too much. Darcy Lewis sighed as she sat waiting to be questioned yet again. She only hoped he wouldn’t accuse her of being a serial killer.

All she wanted to do was run her bakery and make sweet treats in peace. She hadn’t asked for any of this. People had thought she was crazy when she’d left her astrophysics career behind to open the shop, but after a personal tragedy she’d needed the change and so Cake My Day was born. It had taken time and hard work to get it off the ground, but she was finally feeling on solid footing financially and had developed quite a regular customer base. Just the other day, a prominent Broadway star visited Cake My Day and gave Darcy and her treats glowing praise.

Friday had started out like a normal day, with Darcy and her partner Jimmy baking up a storm before she left to deliver a load of red velvet cupcakes to the site of a wedding rehearsal dinner. She’d painstakingly decorated them in silver and red and arranged them neatly on the glass trays in the center table, stepping back to admire her work. That was when she’d noticed the foot sticking out from under the floor length tablecloth that covered the main course table.

That was how she found herself sitting and watching her precious cupcakes while the room was taped off as a crime scene as cops and forensics swarmed everywhere. Darcy knew the drill by now and didn’t even try to leave, making sure to call Jimmy.

“Really, Darcy? Another one?” he’d sighed. “This is getting out of hand.”

“Tell me about it.” She agreed, wincing a bit as the body was moved, leaving behind a giant red stain on the sleek wood floor. It had only taken one glance at the giant hole in his chest and colorless face to realize he was most definitely dead. That was a sight she would not forget anytime soon. So much blood. She shuddered and averted her eyes. Darcy Lewis did not do well with blood, that was a known fact and had come perilously close to passing out after she’d discovered Mr. Body. Her curiosity was starting to get the better of her now as she watched the room being gone over with a fine toothed comb and her mind started compiling notes from her own observations.

Note One: Deceased was male, on the youngish side and had flaming red hair. Very thin and over six feet tall, a regular beanpole.

Note Two: Cause of death was probably stabbing, and lots of it, given the nasty size of the wounds. She wouldn’t dwell too much on that, though. Thank goodness for medical examiners.

Note Three:

“You’ve got to be kidding me.”

Darcy’s musings were interrupted by the exasperated statement from the grumpy detective she’d had the misfortune of meeting at the previous body discovery and was now standing in front of her, hands on his hips in annoyed fashion.

“Detective Barnes,” she replied sweetly. “How lovely to see you again.”

He groaned and pulled out his notepad and pen.

“Let’s get this over with. What in the world are you doing here?”

“You’re not even going to ask me how I am first?” She exclaimed in a show of taking great offense. “RUDE.”

“Just answer the question.” Detective Barnes sighed, eyes rolling again. He was a champion in that area, she’d observed. It was too bad, because he had very striking blue eyes under normal circumstances.

“I was delivering a catering order of cupcakes around 4:30 and when I finished setting up, I noticed his foot sticking out from under the table. I pulled the cloth back to check and I……” She gulped, the ugly memory making her feel sick.

Detective Barnes nodded, scowl easing up a bit as he gazed at her for a few moments and then scribbled something down.

“Did you touch anything?” He asked.

“Only the tablecloth and my cupcake display at that table,” she answered, pointing at the smaller table where her treats stood on all their tempting glory.

“Blood makes me queasy,” Darcy admitted. “I sat on the floor for a few minutes to get my bearings before I called the police.”

Detective Barnes nodded, face softening. He had a very handsome face, she had to admit, but the frequent scowls and grumpy faces he made rather ruined the effect.

“I guess this is your first messy one,” he observed. “I don’t know how you’ve wound up in three murder cases, though. It’s downright suspicious.”

He side-eyed Darcy again.

“Anyway, did you recognize the victim at all?” he questioned.

She shook her head.

“Nope.”

“Was anyone else with you when you found the body?”

“Nope.”

“Did you see or hear anyone or anything else?”

Darcy pondered for a moment, then shook her head.

“It was eerily silent,” she replied thoughtfully. “If i hadn’t been so engrossed in my cupcakes, I might have been kinda freaked out by that.”

“We’re definitely going to talk to the staff.” The detective sighed, sharp gaze roaming over the groups of people waiting to be questioned.

“Can I go?” She asked hopefully. It had been a long two hours of waiting and she needed to check on her inventory in order to place a critical order with her supplier.

Detective Barnes looked back at her and nodded.

“Yeah, you can go. But don’t even think about interfering in my investigation like you did the last one or I will not hesitate to break these out.”

He jangled the cuffs at his side and Darcy felt slightly chastened, but it only lasted a moment as she imagined a more fun use for said cuffs. Her smirk caused a slight pink flush to appear on his cheeks. Oh, ho! So the grizzled detective could blush. How adorable.

“Interfere? Me? I’m just a baker.” The innocence she infused this statement with did not fool Detective Barnes at all and earned her yet another eye roll. (Number 14, according to her count.)

“You keep making that face, it’s gonna stay that way, James,” she added impudently, getting up from the hard chair she’d been occupying.

“I’m perfectly fine with that, Dr. Lewis,” he returned pointedly, with an exaggerated scowl that made him look even more like Grumpy Cat than ever.

“Have a nice day. Try not to find any more bodies in the meantime.”

Darcy gulped as he walked away, cutting a fine figure in his leather jacket and dark jeans. She’d sure love to encounter him under less murdery circumstances. James Barnes was one mystery she wanted to solve.

#wintershock #murder mystery au #Baker! Darcy #detective! Bucky #tw blood

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blackjack-15 · 3 years

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Dead Weight — Thoughts on: Tomb of the Lost Queen (TMB)

Previous Metas: SCK/SCK2, STFD, MHM, TRT, FIN, SSH, DOG, CAR, DDI, SHA, CUR, CLK, TRN, DAN, CRE, ICE, CRY, VEN, HAU, RAN, WAC, TOT, SAW, CAP, ASH

Hello and welcome to a Nancy Drew meta series! 30 metas, 30 Nancy Drew Games that I’m comfortable with doing meta about. Hot takes, cold takes, and just Takes will abound, but one thing’s for sure: they’ll all be longer than I mean them to be.

Each meta will have different distinct sections: an Introduction, an exploration of the Title, an explanation of the Mystery, a run-through of the Suspects. Then, I’ll tackle some of my favorite and least favorite things about the game, and finish it off with ideas on how to improve it. For this meta and the next (DED), there will be a section entitled The Theme between The Mystery and The Suspects.

If any game requires an extra section or two, they’ll be listed in the paragraph above, along with my list of previous metas.

These metas are not spoiler free, though I’ll list any games/media that they might spoil here: TMB, DED, massive spoilers for SPY; quick spoilers for the Nancy Drew/Hardy Boys Supermystery Secrets of the Nile.

The Intro:

Here we are already (finally?) at TMB! This one’s gonna be a bit different, lads.

The next two metas in this series — this one for TMB and the next for DED are gonna be a little bit of a two-part sort of endeavor, mostly because the two games are thematically juxtaposed against each other. They should be uploaded within a week of each other (fingers crossed!) to make the comparison a little easier between the two games (and two metas), so if you haven’t played one or the other, you might want to do that before jumping in.

Obligatory heads-up out of the way, let’s get our mummy on.

TMB is a game that, if you were a kid like me obsessed with ancient Egypt (and an adult like me obsessed with ancient Egypt), was one of the most hotly anticipated Nancy Drew titles to hit store shelves. Fortunately, unlike a lot of the “anticipated” games in the series, this one actually delivers – and delivers in spades.

Heh. Spades. Archaeology. You get it. Moving on!

TMB is an interesting game that plays double duty with its literary significance; in other words, it’s one of the few games to have both a definite theme and a definite mission statement, and to have the two be entirely separate from each other. We’ll discuss the theme below, so this introduction is mostly going to be talking about the game’s mission statement — in other words, the main topic of the game, versus the theme it revolves around.

If it sounds like I’m splitting analytic hairs there, it’s because I am. But hey, ‘splitting analytic hairs’ could be the mission statement of this meta series.

Both this game and the title of the meta are about the dead — and more specifically, the weight that the dead have on the events of the game and people in the game themselves. Abdullah (archaeologist and artifact smuggler), Nancy (death of her mother; interest in ancient civilizations), and Jamila (mother; her lineage) are the big, obvious ones who are living under the weight of the dead, but they’re not the only ones.

Lily’s future is “dead” in a number of ways: her academic dishonesty, her position as an archaeology student, and her interest in dinosaurs. Jon’s position as the head of the dig isn’t his only tie to the dead — he also spends most of the game in a hospital after a brush with death itself. Dylan even gets in on it with his false IDs; not only could those be referred to as “dead” identities — they were never alive to begin with — but someone with that many identities could easily have their original said to be dead, buried under the weight of compounding lies.

The weight of the dead extends beyond even our characters and their backstory and motivations, however. The game takes place in what can easily be called a “dead zone”. Nancy’s odd ability to have perfect cell service aside, the camp for the vast majority of the game is in a secret place where neither people nor supplies can get to them, and they even run out of water, which will kill you quicker than anything in the desert.

The most concrete representation of the weight of the dead in TMB is the curse. Thought to be lethal for a lifetime after entering an ancient tomb, curses are little more than superstitions backed up by ‘mysterious’ deaths (usually due to ingesting bacteria within the tomb), but the curse in the first chamber that Nancy opens does press down on the game, with accidents and unfortunate or suspicious things happening one after another after the seal is broken.

Of course, it’s not the unquiet spirit of a dead queen causing the mischief and mayhem, but she is the reason that our cast is gathered in Egypt, and Nefertari’s presence — or lack thereof, due to the erasure of her by history and by those who followed after her — is, in effect, the curse itself. If it wasn’t for her presence, the mystery surrounding her, and the disappeared team of archaeologists decades prior, no one would be at the tomb in the modern day.

But she is there, like a magnet for those with ulterior motives, and she’s there to pull our cast tighter and tighter into her own personal land of the dead. “She’ll never let you leave”, indeed.

The last thing I want to touch on is the Nancy Drew/Hardy Boys Supermystery that very, very loosely forms the basis of this game: Secrets of the Nile. A well-known Supermystery for the fake marriage plot (the Hardy Boys and Nancy and Bess) and for the Frank/Nancy kiss on the balcony before they are like “oh yeah we’re dating different people huh”. The game doesn’t take much from the book other than the location and a financial motive for crime, but it’s interesting that they chose this book when very little was kept at all.

Now, let’s take a closer look at the pieces that make up this game, shall we?

The Title:

Tomb of the Lost Queen is a classic-feeling title for a Nancy Drew mystery, and accomplishes a few obvious things right off the bat. It first establishes that this is a game about the dead — as said above — and the presence that the dead have in the world of the living. Second, it gives us our location — “Tomb of the Lost Queen” immediately brings Egypt and its many royal tombs to mind — and the focus of the mystery that we’ll be solving.

And if that were all the title could mean, I’d say it’s a solid title – better than Secrets of the Nile, by any metric — but the title’s work isn’t quite done with that.

The last question that the title asks is who is the Lost Queen? We learn about Nefertari fairly quickly in the game and her history definitely qualifies her as a lost queen, but, in my opinion, there’s another candidate that the game title references: Jamila’s mother.

She was a woman of a royal bloodline, disappearing under mysterious circumstances, leaving behind only a trace that her presence ever existed in a tomb buried in the sand — if ever there was a story that would qualify you as a lost queen, it would be hers.

The Mystery:

Job shadowing archaeologist Jon Boyle (and once again showing off her interest in archaeology and ancient civilizations), Nancy is just settling in to the Kingston University dig site when a massive sandstorm hits camp — and someone attacks Jon, sending him to the hospital, whipping up talk of a curse that ended this expedition 60 years earlier, and scaring off much of the excavation crew.

Left behind when the dust finally settles are archaeologist Abdullah Bakhoum, PhD student Lily Crewe, and Nancy herself — and none of our three characters are interested in leaving, despite the shadow of a curse hanging over their work, and the ever-present feeling that the desert does not want them there.

They aren’t alone for too long, however; after Nancy discovers a secret room and hidden sarcophagus, the friendly yet secretive tour guide Dylan Carter and the alien aficionado Jamila El-Dine both show up (despite the dig being a closed and secret location), and it becomes clear that, whatever their own personal agendas might be, no one is at this location for scientific discovery.

The hunt is on to find out why everyone has congregated at this site, who hurt Jon and is causing incidents all over camp, and — most importantly — what exactly the tomb of the lost queen is truly hiding…

As a mystery, TMB holds plenty of turns and side plots worthy of a much longer game than it is, and as a result feels quite packed with story. Not only do you have the story of Ramses II and his Queen, but you have the story of Jamila and the Daughters of Nefertari, the black market scheme, Dylan’s past, and the storyline revolving around who hurt Jon.

Add to all of that Hotchkiss and Bess’ asides that give new meaning and perspective to the events in the mystery, and you have a solid, character-driven mystery that drives its suspense not from being a whodunnit — that’s not really a question through the whole game, as we know from the beginning that Abdullah is up to some shady crap — but from putting characters in a stressful situation and seeing what they’ll do.

The Theme:

TMB is interesting for many, many reasons — most of which will be detailed in this meta — but I think the most interesting thing about it is its theme. At its core, TMB is a game about fear — fear of death, fear of failure, fear of obscurity, fear of abandonment, fear of ignorance — and how this fear preys on people, but also how fear is a pathway to knowledge. As is nearly always the case with Nancy Drew games, it’s our villain who gives us the theme:

“For thousands of years, the lion spoke and no one understood. But understand the fear and you understand the man.”

This sentiment is added to a little further on in the game:

“When people feel like they can get away with anything, they change.”

In other words, it’s fear that defines who people are and what they do. Understand that fear, and you’ll understand the person. Remove that fear, and a person necessarily changes, because they’re not defined by that fear anymore.

This theme plays out through our main characters. Dylan’s fear is a fear of discovery — of being discovered by Nancy that he’s there to try to join the black market. When that fear is removed — or rather, superseded — by the fear of death after being a human paddle in a boulder pinball game, he’s able to be understood for who he really is — a bit of a con man, but not there to hurt or kill anyone.

Lily’s fear at first seems to be of the curse, but the curse really is just a stand-in for her true fear: the fear of repercussions for her actions. Once the fear is understood, it’s easy to see that she’s helping Abdullah in his black-market scheme by trying to injure — sometimes fatally — those who would stand in their way.

Jamila is a character tightly wrapped up — in every way — which illustrates her fear of exposure. When that fear is understood, it’s obvious that she’s hiding things about herself, which leads us to the Daughters of Nefertari plotline, and the discovery of just how bloody the tomb’s — and the queen’s — history is.

Last of the suspects is Abdullah, who fears a lack of notoriety — obscurity, basically — which parallels him to Nefertari nicely, who became obscure due to the actions of others and the passage of time. Once that fear is understood, it’s easy to understand who Abdullah is and why he does what he does — fakes finding artifacts, sells things on the black market, and constantly puffs himself up in conversation.

Because this game is centered around fear, let’s look quickly at how that fear affects Nancy. Sure, the fear of others causes them to try to damage her in one way or another, but Nancy tends to be somewhat fearless in her mystery solving. Her talk with Bess — more on that below — does expose one fear: ignorance.

When you’re in a situation where knowledge keeps you alive, which Nancy often is, it’s easy to say that fear of ignorance is simply the fear of bad things happening to you. But Nancy’s is a bit deeper than that; she defines herself as a curious person, and gets frustrated when things are purposely hidden from her. Nancy fears not knowing things, pure and simple, and it’s due to that fear that she puts herself in danger again and again to ferret out the truth.

The Suspects:

Our first suspect is the venerable and totally guilty Abdullah Bakhoum himself, preeminent archaeologist, egotist, and black market crook. A sort of dark shadow of Alejandro in SSH, Abdullah doesn’t think much about the taking of Egypt’s treasures to different countries’ museums, and is determined that if anyone is going to make money off of history, it’s going to be him.

As our preeminent Bad Guy, Abdullah is the rather obvious choice — which would be a problem if this mystery was concerned with hiding his presence in it, rather than building off of it. As it is, however, his presence strengthens the mystery, allowing for not only a focus for Nancy’s suspicions, but also a source of tension in the tomb, making it feel dangerous even when Nancy is simply exploring.

Of note is Abdullah’s decision when arrested at the end of the game to take the blame for everything that happened, eschewing Lily’s involvement completely. I’m of the opinion that it had to be Lily that attacked Jon — she was already above ground, he wouldn’t have been on his guard being around her, there were plenty of heavy things in the tent to hit him with — but Abdullah doesn’t try to reduce his sentence by offering information or implicating her in anything.

It’s a wonderful character moment that shows us what these later games really are capable of — villains with complex and consistent characterization. Abdullah is an egotist, a narcissist, and a smuggler, yes, but he has his own personal code of conduct, and ends the game not on the note of having tried to kill everyone, but on a singular note of mercy to a fellow student of history.

Next on the docket is Lily Crewe. Originally a paleontology student, she switched majors and ended up on the site by Abdullah’s request — a strange happenstance, considering the strong allegations of cheating on her record. Of course, that record is exactly the reason that Abdullah asked for her to be on the dig, as he needed help smuggling artifacts off-site.

As one half (possibly one third, depending on how culpable you think she truly is) of our Bad Guy Team, Lily is at once more sympathetic and less laudable than Abdullah. Having cheated — and been caught — she obviously was Abdullah’s best bet for a partner that wouldn’t betray him, as he was her chance at shoring up her rocky academic record.

However, a person of stronger moral fiber — or who appreciated her second chance — would have exposed Abdullah as soon as she had evidence in order to show her commitment going forward to honesty, so one can’t be too sympathetic. It’s worth noting that after Abdullah’s arrest (and sacrifice on her behalf), Lily goes back into paleontology. One can only hope dinosaurs have fewer opportunities for graft, and that she’s learned something from the tomb.

The next to show up is Dylan Carter, a man of many names (though only one handsome face) who moonlights as a tour guide. He also would really, really like to be part of Abdullah’s smuggling operation, but other than that, he’s really here for a good time.

And to be crushed by rocks.

As a culprit, Dylan would have been a little bit of a cheat, seeing as he wasn’t there from the beginning — though a reveal of him being the culprit would have necessitated showing that Dylan had been there the whole time, hiding in plain sight as part of the dig crew or something. While that would have been a cool reveal, it ultimately wouldn’t have accomplished the thematic goals of the game, and so is better left undone.

Last on our list of suspects is Jamila El-Dine, visiting the tomb under the guise of being a bat-crap-crazy Follower of the Annunaki — the alien race that supposedly built the pyramids, among other things — but who is actually a member of a secret society called the Daughters of Nefertari, dedicated to finding Nefertari (as they are her direct descendants); each daughter must search for her until she is found.

I will point out, reservedly, that Jamila definitely should not have been searching until she had a daughter of her own, in case she died the way her mother did, but I digress. It does point to Jamila being more of a firebrand (and more doggedly determined to end the search) than those before her, so kudos for that.

Like Dylan, Jamila as the culprit would have been a cheat, given her entrance into the game a good portion of the way through the mystery, but it also would have defeated the purpose of having Jamila in the story, which is to be a foil to Nancy.

Jamila is bound by the fate of her mother (and her mother’s mother, and on and on), who died under mysterious circumstances thought to be a car accident, but later revealed to be due to her performing dangerous work. Jamila thus journeys out to the world to find out exactly what happened and is tasked with doing what her mother had been doing at the time of her death, feeling the responsibility to prevent further deaths by completing her mother’s work. In order to do this, she pretends to be someone she’s not, uses those around her, and ultimately has to trust in a shady man with facial hair and a girl who frequently goes undercover for her job, fighting against a skinny man involved in a larger scheme with a heightened sense of his own importance.

Oops, should I have warned for SPY spoilers there?

Yeah, Jamila is basically playing out a future of Nancy’s (and one that happens, albeit with important differences, in SPY), and foils her in her sense of responsibility and curiosity about what happened to her mother, and in finishing the job she set out to do. While Nancy doesn’t immediately understand this, Bess does, and calls her out on it:

“That’s sort of like you…after your mom…I mean, I always thought it was your mom — the way she died — that made you so interested in mysteries.”

Nancy responds with “I guess I never thought of it that way,” and it’s clear the idea has knocked her off balance, because, importantly, Jamila exposes a characteristic of that becomes important in this and the next game: she’s not what we’d call self-aware.

And that leads into us talking about Nancy Drew as a character in this game. Pursuing one of her interests by job shadowing a professional, Nancy is thrown into a world that she’s far more comfortable in — that of solving mysteries without direct supervision — when Jon is attacked and sent to the hospital. From there, she goes on a rapid pace to figure out who the other people at the dig really are, and in so doing discovers a bit about herself.

Like a Lifetime movie, except without the Big Misunderstanding and the secret lost will of a dead parent.

Like I stated above, what this game really does to show us who Nancy is (besides showing us her reaction to someone exactly like her) is to show us her lack of self-awareness. Nancy spends so much time trying to figure out the motives and secrets of others that she doesn’t really spend any time soul-searching or figuring out how she, in particular, reacts to the world around her

Well, prior to the beginning of the Nancy games, she doesn’t. But she’s in for a whole lot more of that in the next few games as we unwrap (heh) more of her foils. As it is, Nancy herself tells us who she thinks she is in this game:

“I’m a curious person. I find that tact often gets in the way of truly getting to know someone.”

Joining us on the “Nancy Side” of characters are one new character and two familiar faces.

Jon Boyle is the leader of Kingston University’s dig site, and definitely the person that you want to get out of the way if you’re up to shenanigans. He’s basically in the game to give some dirt on Lily and Abdullah, and to save the day at the very end by (as is his job) taking care of those he’s in charge of.

Just, you know, more physically than academically.

While she was a playable, seen character in the last game, it’s here in TMB that Bess Marvin gets a little more characterization and becomes more fully fleshed out. As Nancy’s lifeline to River Heights and normalcy, Bess is here to watch pulpy Egyptian horror movies and to drop some stone-cold truths onto Nancy.

Bess is wonderful in this game, full stop. Not only does she expose a few of Nancy’s character traits to the clueless girl detective – the whole mom thing, Nancy’s tendency to keep everyone in the dark but to get frustrated when she’s kept in the dark herself — but she also helps to show the difference between what the River Heights crew finds fulfilling — relaxing, internships, etc. — and what Nancy finds fulfilling — dangerous tombs hiding mysteries in the desert.

Last of all is Professor Beatrice Hotchkiss, academic extraordinaire and expert on lost and maligned queens — and heaven knows, Nefertari fits both qualifications. Hotchkiss is here for more reason than just to light up my life, however; she’s here to help Nancy understand the traps within the tomb and figure out exactly what — and who — she’s dealing with in the ancient past.

Hotchkiss is a proper choice here, and I probably would have been disappointed had she not shown up. She’s the perfect mix of spacey academic and, well, brilliant academic, and though Nancy isn’t too fond of her, she’s probably my favorite reoccurring phone friend outside of the Hardy Boys.

The Favorite:

There’s a lot to love with TMB, so let’s jump right in.

First off, my favorite puzzle(s) have got to be the word puzzles for unscrambling the special hieroglyphics. Longtime followers of this meta series (or those who read my ASH meta) know that my favorite thing in a Nancy Drew game is always the word puzzle, and these are so much fun that it’d be impossible for them not to be my favorite puzzle.

My favorite moment in the game is probably the finding of Jamila’s mom’s journal pages, culminating in the line “she’ll never let you leave”. Like I’ve said above, so much of this game is about the weight of the dead and the effect they have on the living, and Jamila’s mom weighs heaviest of all as our intensely personal, recent stake in finding Nefertari.

I’ve said before (in a previous meta about my favorite surprising moments in the ND games) that there’s shades of Kate’s last correspondences in Jamila’s mother’s journal, and those shades are never so present as they are here.

There’s not really another place to put it, so I’m gonna put a shout-out to the cover of the DVD case here. It’s really well-designed and captures the feeling of the game without being overly spoilery, so massive kudos to the developers and designers for it.

The last thing I note here (though I could go on and on about the small details in this game that make it great) is the feeling of continued exploration. In a lot — I’d say most, honestly — of Nancy Drew games, once you explore everywhere, there’s really nowhere left to go other than sometimes a new location at the end of the game while chasing down the villain. Here, the game is continually expanding through the new tunnels and passages in the tomb. It makes it really feel like this a real location you could explore, and not just a few screens limited for time, space, and design restrictions, and it’s wonderful.

On the less wonderful side, however…

The Un-Favorite:

The biggest problem I have with TMB is that the first fourth of it — pretty much until Nancy finds the first sarcophagus — is fairly unintuitive. Even replaying it multiple times doesn’t make it any easier to remember what I have to do and when I can do it, and playing it through the first time results in not a few times where you stare at the screen, wondering what it is you’re supposed to be doing. This is a rare problem in Nancy Drew games, but it’s fairly present through the first part of the game here, and that is a problem.

My least favorite puzzle is probably the lifting-the-rocks-off-Dylan puzzle, if only because it always takes me five or six tries to do it. It always feels like a sort of trial-and-error sort of thing, which (excepting its place in logic puzzles) isn’t really my personal favorite. It’s not that I think it’s a bad puzzle, it’s just my least favorite in the game.

My least favorite moment in the game is more of a meta moment, but it’s when Nancy asks for “a few tips” for translating hieroglyphics, and Abdullah mocks her a bit, saying that oh, yes, at first he was also confused, but then he learned a few tips. It would be a great moment in the game — and in the story itself, it is — if it wasn’t, well, immediately contradicted by the nature of the hieroglyphics puzzles. Like I said above, the unscrambling of the hieroglyphics puzzles are my favorite in the whole game, and I love them to death, but in a meta sense, this moment does stick out in a “you can’t say it’s stupid and then include it as if just saying it’s stupid makes it okay for you to do” sort of way.

The Fix:

So how would I fix Tomb of the Lost Queen?

The big thing that needs help in TMB is to make the beginning more intuitive. Whether this should be done by Jon giving Nancy a set of tasks to complete, having a checklist of what needs to be done that day (even if it’s vague), or some other method, there definitely needs to be a little more direction in the first part of the game.

I’m not saying that the game should hold the player’s hand — especially considering that the average age of the fanbase is well above the age 10+ marker — but a Nancy Drew game should always have something to do at the start, rather than wandering around to explore a place that Nancy has ostensibly already been for a bit.

With that change in mind, there’s really honestly nothing else that I would fix. TMB is a game devoted to the idea that the dead are ever present in life, especially for those who have lost people, and it really accomplishes delivering that idea through a myriad of characters, scenes, and clues that Nancy finds along the way. It also goes a long way in developing Nancy more as a character, and — perhaps most importantly — begins the task of setting the groundwork for a truly Nancy-centric story in SPY.

#nancy drew #nancy drew games #clue crew #tomb of the lost queen #nancy drew meta #video games #my meta #TMB

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snowflake-apocalypse · 3 years

Text

Karma’s Rogue Gallery: Charlotte Forte

“Am I going too far?”

“No no no, you went too far seven hours ago. Now you’re going to prison.”

“Wonderful! It’s a date then!”

——-

Joss: Year 2

Down Town; 0941

Crisp autumn air blusters through the ocean town of Idle City. The scent of salt and spiced apple cider carried on the breeze. A long forgotten liveliness permeates throughout the streets. The quaint corner shops freely welcoming residents, now with no threat of unrest from the local mobs.

“Ah, you know what, Drew. After that bizarro string of bank thefts last couple weeks, this... this is nice.” Joss, sighing with relief. The young woman perched atop the edge an old town building; quietly observing the community usher in the Halloween season.

“Right? I’ve experienced less hassle dealing with Jack Hench, and you can quote me on that.” Drew Lipsky quips from the device in her ear. From his island-side balcony, he takes a generous sip of his cocoa-moo infused coffee.

“Didn’t Hench deal with you eighty percent of the time? I should go quote that to him.” Raising an eyebrow, the brunette chuckles.

“Ngh.. pass. The only quote that man cares about is his bank statement.”, Huffs the former supervillain.

“Y’know, you should bring Jay trick or treating this year, -we can carve pumpkins! He would love-”

Abruptly before she could finish her sentence, a blast rattles and quakes the area. The streets run eerily quiet, in a fog of confusion from the people below.

“What the-? Gah- damnit.” Cursing to herself.

“Joss? What was that noise? What’s happening?”

“I don’t know yet. Sounded like there was an explosion near the Carlson district. I’m jettin’ there now.” Sprinting her way to the fire escape, Joss seamlessly dons her modest domino mask. After a few years, aided by the actions of the petty and the thanks of the grateful, the cloak was beginning to feel cozy resting upon her face. Like it belonged there.

Jumping on her 400 Svartpilen tucked away carefully in the ally. The young vigilante revs the engine to life, and speeds to the source of the disturbance.

‘You just had to go and jinx it, didn'tcha Joss?’

—

“The hell..?” Joss utters upon arriving at the bewildering scene. Switching on the camera of her shades, “Hey, Drew.. you seeing this?”

“Yes.. I am. That doesn’t look like an accident explosion either. The angle of impact looks precise. A carefully crafted chaos.” Drakken informs, scrutinizing the picture on his screen.

The research and innovation section of a Cougar Motors factory had been blasted away, leaving rubble and smoke scattered in every direction. Frantic employees and pedestrians alike bound from site. The scream of sirens growing ever closer.

Scanning the area for what could have caused such mayhem, ‘Holy crap... what blew the building-...gotcha.’

“Please, everyone don’t panic. Or do, doesn’t matter. I’ll still leave with what I came for either way.” An off-hand, feminine voice echos from the roof of the now- dilapidated structure. Slyly pocketing a minuscule hardrive.

“Which is what, exactly?” Joss’ firm voice interrupting the intruder from behind.

“Oh, look who I dug out of the wood work. Karma, Karma. I’ve heard rumours of some nutter playing dress up in Idle City. Thought you would be more dramatic.” Jeers the woman, clad in Victorian-punk attire.

A ruffled white blouse, umber dress trousers tucked into black combat boots, all pulled together by trim maroon suspenders. Fiery red bob swaying in the wind.

‘Is that a wig...?’

“My welcome ran out on the west coast. So I thought I’d finish shopping here.”, The eccentric woman continues.

“Well, there are better ways to get a car. Online.. used... empty intel agency lots...”, muttering the last of her words, Joss steels herself ever so slightly.

“Hmhm. Thanks for suggestions, mate. Maybe I’ll think about them on my way to get strawberry crepes.” With a final snicker, she turns on her heels to make her exit.

“No.” Joss declares, quickly and deliberately snatching the culprits wrist. Curiously, hazel eyes glance down to the gloved fist holding her back.

‘Okay, then.’, she shrugs. It had been a while since her last good tussle.

Without warning, she’s sweeps Joss’ legs from under her, quick as lighting a knee connects to the vigilante’s stomach.

“Argh!” Swiftly recovering, Joss lunges toward her assailant, blocking a well aimed punch in her efforts.

“Joss are you okay?”, from her ear, the concerned voice perks up. Skilfully capricious and violent blows are exchanged. Leaving Drakken to blindly follow the brawl.

Upper cuts,

kidney punches,

side kicks,

swings and misses.

Battling across the shrewd covering, the two women become more hap-hazardous with every stroke.

‘I gotta end this before someone gets hurt.’ Thinking decisively, Joss reaches for the restraining cable in the inside of her jacket.

“Hoho! You can fight.”, exclaims the brash woman. Eyeing the cable in Joss’ hand, “You know, I haven’t had this much excitement in a long time. Wouldn’t mind taking you for those crepes, either. What do you say?”

‘...Is she flirting with me?’ Dumbstruck, Joss fails to see past the woman’s devilish smirk, completely missing the brass bracelet-like gadget she produced from inside her sleeve. A momentum amplifier. Able to concentrate energy and redirect it at will. A tool villains in the old days would describe as “Doomsday’s free lunch and your nemesis is buying.”

As rapidly as they entered each other’s life, with a parry and mutual defiance, the woman locks the apparatus to her enemy’s wrist.

“Think about it, you know? See ya later, mate.”Charging the device around her adversary’s wrist, gracing her a coy wink.

“Uh oh.”, Joss deadpans. She knows what’s coming next, and is not going to be fun.

With one forceful toss, Joss is sent hurling off of the building, colliding with the brick security post below. Impacting with a solid thunk.

“......gah...ugh....”, Joss groans in pain.

“Kid, talk to me.”

“She threw me around... like a rag doll... what the hell...?,” achingly rolling onto her back. “I- I’m just gonna lay here for a minute, Drew.”

—-

Gingerly getting lost in the crowds, the mystery woman lets her thoughts wander to the day’s escapades. Browsing the various autumn decor in shop windows, hardrive safe in hand.

‘Hm. Karma. Didn’t think that would have been that much fun.. She was kinda cute too...”

#Kim Possible #Joss Possible #Karma #Karma’s Rogue Gallery #dr drakken #drew lipsky #au #Happy Halloween!#and Shego would laugh at that little whatitz #fight scene is kind of rushed..#here’s the steampunk lady

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midnightprelude · 3 years

Text

@oftachancer and I put together another piece for @14daysdalovers!

Pairing: Cassandra x F!Lavellan Rating: T Summary: Of course her first meeting with Cassandra's family would involve Lyanna Lavellan, three months pregnant, scaling the face of a wall. It was only natural.Not that she wasn't up for the challenge, but she had hoped not to meet Anthony Pentaghast while she was red-faced and sweating. Oh well. Read here on on AO3!

“I already like you better than the last four,” Anthony grinned, managing the ropes of Cassandra’s safety harness as she climbed higher. “I doubt any of them would have made it past the first incline, even before… How many months along are you now?”

“Three,” she sniffed. Did she look that large already? Creators, she felt like it. “I’m tenacious.” Her muscles burned and her shin smarted where she’d smashed against a foothold, but she had made it to the top of the ledge where Cassandra’s brother was beaming. As gorgeous as his sister, sculpted muscle from head to toe, his tee shirt clinging to his chest like- She dropped her gaze to where Cassandra was scaling, smiling down at her when she chanced to look up. “I’m glad, for your sake, you didn’t try to tell me I couldn’t.”

He was quicker to laugh than his sister, tiny lines about his eyes showing that he did so often. “I’d have missed all the swearing. What a shame that would have been.”

“Would you, now?” Lyanna smirked, adjusting her harness now that she was again on solid ground. She caught her hand traveling reflexively towards her belly and stretched it over her head. “I’m sure you would’ve heard a few curses if you attempted to stop me.”

“I know better. I couldn’t prevent Cassie from standing in her saddle. I can’t stop any woman from doing anything.”

“She’s taught you well, then.” Lyanna rolled her eyes on a chuckle. “Cassie, hm?”

“Yes.” Anthony checked the lines. “To both.” He glanced at her with a wry smile. “I’ll admit, when she told me she was seeing a ‘Lyanna’, I had a different image in my mind. Claw-nails and leopard print and high heels.”

“Not a pregnant elf?” Lyanna quirked a brow. “What about my name makes you think of claws and heels, do tell?”

“I guess I was thinking of most of the other power suits in our firm. Lots of claws and heels.” He grinned. “She said you were a red head and it got me thinking of- Well. Anyway. You seem a decent sort.”

“Got a thing for redheads, is it? I’ll have to let Cassie know.”

“Trust me, she knows,” he chuckled. “We mostly only had each other for a long time; it’s possible we know too much about each other. Do you have siblings?”

“No, but I’ve got quite a few cousins, and one in particular who knows much more than he probably should. He’s in a band. Catharsis? They’ve been in the news lately.”

“Yes! The instigators .” Anthony grinned. “I do love when flames are fanned. Powerful people do such ridiculous things to try and put them out, and leave themselves open to all sorts of interesting case law.”

“She said you’d say something like that,” Lyanna smirked, taking a swig from a bottle of water. Creators, she was going to be sore. “That you like hunting dragons. Would you take on the Imperium, if you had a case?”

“If I thought one could be won, certainly. So far, they’ve been cagey, but I see their sweat beginning to make the pavement slippery. It’s only a matter of time.” Anthony smiled lazily, flashing white teeth in a sharp smile. “But that’s business and I promised my little sister that I would take the afternoon off.”

“And she’s getting closer and closer to earshot, so we’d best watch ourselves.” Lyanna chuckled, leaning against the fake wall of rock behind them that extended nearly up to the ceiling. “Wouldn’t want you to get in trouble.”

“Maker, no!” Anthony winked at her. “She might cut me off from the borscht. Had she made you her borscht? It’s exactly as mother used to make it. I’ve no idea how she manages. We have the exact same recipe.”

“She has.” A few times, in fact. “Folate is good for the babies, she says. Makes the kitchen look a bit like a murder scene with all the beets, but there’s hardly any denying her when she puts her mind to something. She made four gallons, once, and sent a good portion home with me. Cassandra is under the impression I don’t eat nearly enough.”

“She likes to take care of people. It’s easier to let her.” He smiled fondly down the rock face where his sister was dangling from her fingertips, searching for a toehold. “It sounds as though you’ve figured that out.”

“Took some time.” Heat rose to Lyanna’s cheeks. She hadn’t wanted to be cared for; she’d been alone and independent for so long that she hardly knew how to accept Cassandra’s offerings without distrust and scorn. Nobody was that selfless. Except, amazingly, Cassandra Pentaghast. “But I did. Yes. She does have that quality.”

“She never knew our parents, you know,” he said thoughtfully. “Not really. But she’s far more like them than she has a right to be. She’s a good kid.” He glanced at her, lifting a brow, seeing too much. “You get that, too. I like you.”

“Do I get a badge?” Lyanna tilted her head to the side. “Or a stamp? ‘Free to date Cassandra Pentaghast.’ I’ll stick it to my laptop so there’s no confusion.”

“Unfortunately not. Just my appreciation that you seem to see her as she is.” He shrugged. “Should I dislike you on principle?”

“I was under the impression that elder brothers tend to be very protective of their younger sisters’ hearts.” Lyanna sniffed, smiling slightly. She had been a trifle worried about his acceptance and had told Cassandra as much, but she’d waved it off. ‘Anthony is Anthony; he only cares that I’m happy. I very much am.’ “I’m relieved you think so. Did she tell you she carried me out of a construction site? I was more annoyed that I couldn’t walk on my own than grateful at first; I was certain she wanted something from me.”

Anthony chuckled. “She didn’t, but that sounds like her; I’ll have to pry the tale from her now.” He looked over the ledge. “Almost there!” he called encouragingly and received a disgruntled huff in reply. “Unless you want to tell me,” he glanced at Lyanna with a quick grin. “It’ll probably be a better story coming from you.”

“Oh, I’d rather not recount that particular tale.” Heat flooded Lyanna’s cheeks. An embarrassing tumble into a construction site she’d been protesting, followed by a broken ankle and a positive pregnancy test from a fling. “I’m sure she’d do it justice.” Cassandra was nearly at the top of the climb, thank the Creators; hopefully she’d arrive before Lyanna was dragged into a retelling.

Anthony quirked a brow at her, smiling lazily. “As you will.”

Cassandra puffed her cheeks, dragging herself up the last inches and pulling herself to sprawl on the mid-point landing at their feet. She reached for Lyanna’s fingers, brushing them with her own, dusting chalk between them.

Lyanna laughed, helping her up and wrapping her arms around Cassandra’s waist. “For a moment there, you looked like you very much wanted to toss us off the ledge! Congratulations.” She kissed Cassandra’s cheek, smiling against her skin. “I missed you.”

Spectacular: the feel of her cheek curving in an answering grin and the ragged exhales of her breath against Lyanna’s ear. “You’re beautiful.”

“I love you,” the words sprung to her lips, but this time they didn’t make her twinge with anxiety at the sound of them in her voice as they had before. A simple truth, simply spoken, the statement muffled nearly completely when Cassandra tugged her closer and kissed her in earnest until they were both panting again.

#cassandra x f!inquisitor #cassandra pentaghast #lyanna lavellan #14DALovers #midnight writes #oftachancer writes #cassandra x lyanna #nuit de reves

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witcca · 4 years

Text

How to Transform Your Concept Into a Product

Consider the first thing you did this early morning. If you're an early bird, opportunities are it was flipping on a light, and also you thought nothing of it.

But electrical energy was a far cry from the ordinary 140 years earlier, denounced by numerous leading scientists as a fairy tale. But Thomas Edison persevered, and below we are living in a constantly lit-up world.

Technology is not a very easy procedure, however it has the power to thrust you into the business world and open doors. The very first step in turning your concept right into a product is sharing it with the world.

Below's what you require to understand about beginning and also introducing your invention. You can also check InventHelp Commercial

The challenges of inventing

Success worldwide of development is all about getting your timing right. If you wait too long, somebody else will capitalize on a comparable suggestion as well as capture your specific niche. On the other hand, if your invention is the initial of its kind, the marketplace could not prepare-- and you'll have to fight an uphill struggle to carve out a place for your product.

Henry Helgeson, CEO, as well as co-founder of Cayan (now part of TSYS) faced this issue as a mobile payments modern technology firm in 2011-- years prior to mobile payments came to be mainstream. For various other startups on the "too-early" side of advancement, he advised standing firm to be successful of your competitors when the marketplace does catch up.

" Peers in our sector [said mobile payments] would never happen, however we maintained relocating and also got a 3- to four-year get on everyone," claimed Helgeson. "It takes a while ... it's not something you can accumulate over night. But once you have momentum going, it's really effective."

If you're on the later end, Helgeson claimed, you require to have a look at your competition as well as make a decision if it's something you intend to proceed with, or if you're far better off entering another direction with your invention.

" There [ought to constantly be] a sense of urgency to repair what you require to, make the change, and also [get the item] back out to market," he said. "As long as you do it swiftly, it's OKAY."

One more huge challenge for inventors is finding out exactly how to make the public familiar with your product. Your suggestion might be wonderful, yet without an advertising and marketing strategy, no person will certainly ever before understand about it.

" In hindsight, we were also focused on our product and also believed it would market itself," said Helgeson. "You need a strategy to [market it]".

In a previous Organisation Information Daily interview, marketing and also communications expert Nicole Lininger stated that several entrepreneurs that are simply starting do not have a large advertising and marketing budget to promote their inventions. Yet that doesn't need to stand in their method, she said. Lininger recommended beginning with a solid social networks marketing strategy, which is cost-efficient and also wide-reaching. also see InventHelp Linkedin

Tips for success.

Ready to turn your item suggestion into a fact? Professionals provided the complying with guidance for aiming inventors and also business owners.

Do not go it alone.

You might desire to find a producer if you're looking to develop your prototype, or Rocket Legal representative if you're looking for a qualified, on-demand patent attorney. You must additionally consider a service companion, claimed Anayet Chowdhury, co-founder of Argo Preparation.

" Discover a founder that believes in your idea/product and also has a particular set of skills that you do not possess," stated Chowdhury. "Companies that have co-founders are [more likely] to prosper compared to solopreneurs.".

Incubators can also be a wonderful location to discover success, providing trendsetters with devices, sources, as well as an encouraging neighborhood as you relocate via the procedure.

Kate Bell, owner, and also supervisor of zooming Us In, which offers coat expanders for expectant women, utilize IncuHive as a base for her organisation. "Business assistance has been superb as well as enabled me to be positive in my scale-up strategies with such a substantial network of experience behind me," she stated. "IncuHive have actually been instrumental in us pitching to financiers and has provided meeting room and an advisory board.".

Take some time to do your research study.

Inventing an item needs a whole lot of initial examination, perseverance, and resilience, Lininger stated. This is especially true when you're looking at patent protection for your concept.

" Do some research into intellectual property as well as familiarize [yourself] with the process and also the jargon used in the field, consisting of patent, copyright, trademark, etc.," claimed Lininger. "There are numerous reliable websites you can gain from, such as the United States Patent and also Trademark Office, the World Copyright Company, and also the World Trade Organization. If patent protection is something you are interested in, call a patent legal representative.".

Go To the UNITED STATE Patent and Trademark Workplace (USPTO) internet site as well as examine any patents on items like the one you intend to invent. If you have inquiries or want to be sure your invention is lawful for you to create and sell, speak with an attorney focusing on licenses and IP regulation.

You ought to additionally look at what's out there as well as evaluate your competition. Marco Cirillo, founder, and also CTO of Kibii recommended investigating who your competitors are, what your target audience likes as well as dislikes about items already on the marketplace, and if your product is special enough to stand out.

" Several founders and local business owner will certainly leave marketing as a second thought," claimed Cirillo. "To get the highest possible return, you need to perform research study and established targets before you even introduce your product. This will certainly assist the team keep aligned and have a typical vision so you can make certain a successful item launch.".

Establish a model.

Once you've located your market and also made sure that your lawful path is clear, it's time to develop a prototype. At this moment, you'll require to determine if you're going to have your product manufactured or accredited.

The former methods you'll develop and also sell your product yourself (this includes paying a 3rd party to manufacture your item); the last methods you'll market one more firm the legal rights to make, make use of as well as sell your products, providing that right in exchange for a license charge and aristocracy payments.

Service your lift pitch.

Even prior to you have actually a completed product to sell, you'll need to chat it approximately your buddies as well as expert contacts. Lininger stressed the relevance of creating a great lift pitch: a brief, succinct sales pitch that includes a hook, a worth statement, statistics, as well as various other information, your item's individuality, and a phone call to activity. You can also follow https://twitter.com/inventhelp

Consistently evaluate your item.

Helgeson advised entrepreneurs that their items are not going to be perfect in their first models. You'll need to modify the item along the road, as well as the very best way to identify those modifications is by examining your invention with actual customers. Obtain honest responses from test groups to validate your concept, he said.

" The validation process requires to happen regularly," stated Helgeson. "If you're attempting to do something and also the market informs you [they desire] something else, you might be going down the incorrect course. Be out there in the field ... speaking to people, belonging to market conversations. You can not being in a room as well as try to dream something up.".

#InventHelp #InventHelp commercial #InventHelp linkedin #InventHelp caveman #InventHelp twitter #InventHelp offices #InventHelp address #InventHelp locations #InventHelp headquarters

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ddaenghoney · 4 years

Text

chapter twenty; finale.

masterlist link in blog description.

As a successful songwriter, you want nothing more than the acknowledgment that the chart-topping musical pieces are your own creations. But contracts, relationships, and the difficulty of facing the stakes involved head on, keep your mouth shut until pressure builds too much.

Pairing(s): Park Jimin x Y/N, Min Yoongi x Y/N

disclaimer: any characters depicted do not represent the actual personality of the respected idol in real life.

Series warning(s)/genre(s): Chapter-based written fic, Slow-burn relationship(s), Fake-dating, Unrequited love, Songwriter/producer!oc, idol!Jimin, idol/songwriter/producer!Yoongi, friends with benefits, drama, romance, smut, angst, fluff (updated as needed)

Chapter warning(s): none.

Word count: 5558

if you enjoy please, please let me know!

“SoundWave Disclosed” trends within an hour the article releases. Briefly mentioning Jimin cracking the company’s glass by his brash statement in front of the most popular summer festival, the reporter you spoke with made sure to leave no detail forgotten. Like a proper interview, the article is not focused on literary conjecture, but instead the words you said verbatim. Unaltered, remorseless, and eloquently you state the bigger picture of the truth.

“When I think back on it all now, I’m angry at myself. I’m angry that I didn’t give my efforts the value they deserved by giving away my name. I shouldn’t have ever allowed myself to lie, but when I wanted to tell the truth, so many other careers were held over my head to keep me quiet. Either way I went wouldn’t be painless, but at least now people can decide for themselves what they think of me with the facts out in the open.”

You look at the public’s commentary with this reveal. Wanting to face the results head on, regardless of positivity, you scroll through various feeds, peruse videos, let the words find you in the height of spreading smoke. Wandering through the volume of opinions blindly, you believe it easier to find your way about when this article is unabashedly your perspective.

The frustration and petty verbiage thrown in your way clogs your ears, but the ground you step along is smooth like each step will undoubtedly be solid beneath your feet. It’s the apologies of YouTube idol news accounts that speculated on your intentions with Yoongi, the comments giving SoundWave’s manipulative dealings proper attention, and the familiar voices ahead of you calling for you to keep walking that let you feel confident in your strides.

You wear a cap and keep the large plaid shirt lent to you close to your skin while you sit with dangling legs. A bright pink type of flavored lemonade is half full in front of your loosely crossed arms. Namjoon’s voice speaks incoherently in the background behind you as the streaming site playlists blurs the ambiance of his cafe into a state of lulling energy.

“To be honest with you,” Seokjin’s finger scrolls the web page depicted on his phone that’s flat atop the bar. “I wish you took a picture for the article. I would’ve gotten you some kind of designer jacket or something so you could really tell everyone ‘fuck you’-- I’m the best of your friends in that regard, you know?”

“I already have people following my social media because of that article, I’m sure they can just see some pictures of me on my Instagram.”

“Admit I’m the best of your friends-”

“I think the one whose dorm room she crashed in for two years straight in college deserves that title, Jin.” Namjoon grasps his glass of water when he returns to you two. You huff as Seokjin nods his head admittedly in silent agreement. A sudden scowl escapes Namjoon’s lips when his neck arches to get an upside down perspective of the words Seokjin reads on his phone. “Don’t encourage her to look at comments. Lots of idiots out there.”

“A lot of people think I wasn’t the worst of the whole situation though.” You smile at Namjoon, and take a quick sip of your drink when he narrows his eyes at you with an unsatisfied gleam in them. You swallow the beverage and glance to Seokjin who swivels in his seat to look towards the front windows. A tiny nod brings you back to Namjoon and you meekly speak, “But I shouldn’t have been staring at them all for hours yesterday. You’re right.”

“You called me saying you made the worst decision of your life-”

“In her defense, she was four glasses deep in wine when she called you to say that.”

You point a finger to Seokjin’s sentence and nod. “In my defense.”

“All I’m saying,” Namjoon lightly chuckles as he leans against the counter behind him. “Worry less about them. It’s going to be crazy for at least a couple of weeks, so try not to look up all the commentary like you’ve been doing.”

“Yeah, go on dates with your boyfriend instead. Can’t he rent you a boat to cruise around the river on or something?”

“I could rent a boat.” You roll your eyes, shrugging. “Actually, that’s not a bad idea. He’s been pretty stressed between my problems and figuring out all the aspects of starting up the company with Hoseok.” You rest your jaw on your hand, staring absently at your drink with pursed lips as you consider the option of a relaxing evening spent on the river.

“Just take a fishing rod with you for him. He sucks at fishing, but he likes it a lot.” Seokjin says, glancing back at a small group of young adults that chatter amongst themselves as they go to a table. After a moment of assessment he faces back towards you and Namjoon who look at him with narrowed eyes. “I was just making sure they weren’t stalking-”

“How did you become friends with Yoongi in the first place?” You blurt out in bewilderment, while Namjoon nods in agreement with your question. “You were friends with him before I even knew him, but never mentioned how.”

“He happened to be on the same fishing boat with me like a year ago.” Seokjin shrugs, reaching for his fork to continue munching on the half finished slice of cheesecake. “I may have knocked his expensive sunglasses into the ocean.”

Namjoon bursts into laughter as you raise an eyebrow. Seokjin ignores you both to stuff a large bite into his mouth.

“And you somehow befriended him instead of making him hate you like I probably would’ve if that’s how we met?” You ask with a tilt of your head, and Seokjin takes no time to properly swallow his food before speaking to you again with one cheek stuffed,

“Clearly, I have a way with people, Y/N.” You smile and shake your head, accepting the answer as you go back to sipping your drink. While Namjoon presses for more details, you click onto the internet typing in a search for evening rental cruises. Staring at the various options available and filtering them to a short notice, you can’t help smiling softly as the idea of an exuberant date goes through your mind. Such a public endeavor as well, though there would be ample space between the two of you and spectators, you won’t have to worry about any of them seeing the two of you. The simplicity of it feels relaxing on its own.

A startling familiarity enters your ears. Like ballads sung before the ambiance is similar, but lyrics new as you recognize the voice playing from the cafe’s speakers as Jimin. You look up from your phone, looking nowhere in particular, but focus on the words-- the song he wrote on his own from you with a hopeful intent of somehow putting it onto radios somehow. You bite your lip as the bittersweet melody crosses your senses and the gentle request he sings, “I want you to be your light,” brings a tightened and tiny curl to your lips.

“I could change it.” Namjoon speaks up and takes you out of the moment. You shake your head, refraining from any laughter at their worried expressions as they gauge your reaction to the song.

“No, it’s a nice song.” You say softly, meaning your words.

Jimin’s career is entirely up in the air at this point. With the release of this very song as a rebellious act towards SoundWave and him admitting that he hadn’t written any of his other songs, he finished the festival to receive a surprisingly loud applause from the crowds, you heard. Nonetheless, the internet itself isn’t as optimistic as the evening was for Jimin. You’re hopeful despite it all, but you can’t over estimate the ability of SoundWave and Jimin’s simultaneous scandals to beat every odds against them.

Though you avoid dwelling on the worry, knowing ultimately that you’ll find out through the media, and can simply hope.

---

You sit criss crossed on your desk chair, perusing a boat rental agency leisurely and without much interest for what’s before your eyes. Your mind is further away, pondering words in your head in a medley of arrangements. Hoping some combination will strike you into an inspired mood, you simply scroll onwards on the page of various yacht sizes and at this point the action becomes more robotic than conscious.

Your head perks downs the direction of your front door beyond the wall where you sit in your studio. As you glance to the clock at the bottom of your screen, you refrain from gasping at the ten o’clock reading, having not realized how much time went away from you in the monotony of the day after leaving Namjoon’s cafe.

“Angel?” Yoongi’s voice calls out as you hop off from your chair to greet him.

“I’m in my studio!” You say out in return while shimmying your second foot into the pair of slippers and heading for the doorway. You open it fully from its ajar state and exit, but immediately scuff the floor as you halt to a stop so as not to bump into Yoongi. “Oh-”

“Careful-” Yoongi says, reaching for your arm so you don’t hit it against the framing, then chuckles softly. “Guess I interrupted something?”

“Not really,” You say sheepishly and sigh softly. “I just didn’t realize it was already this late.” You admit as you collect his hand within yours to lead him back into the studio space. “I was going to try and mess around with lyrics, but couldn’t think of anything, so I was trying to do something else while I mulled it over, but Joon keeps getting on me about looking at social media too much--” You shrug, turning to him to mumble admittedly, “Which he’s right about, I guess.”

“Guess,” Yoongi repeats with an amused smile as you ignore the teasing tone to sway your hands between you. He hums, glancing beyond your shoulder to the large monitor displayed on your desk. “Thinking about becoming a boat captain?”

“Oh!” You quickly turn from him to click an exit on the internet window, “What boat?”

Yoongi laughs, sliding into your desk chair as you click around to open up a clothing website instead. “I was looking for clothes, actually. An ad must’ve come up for yachts-” You sentence cuts off from a tiny squeal escaping your mouth as Yoongi pulls you back to sit atop his lap.

“That’s a pretty luxurious ad, babe.” When you whine in disagreement, Yoongi simply smiles a small kiss against your cheek. “Okay then. Ad then. I’ll pretend to believe you.”

“Pretend to be surprised if you ever end up on one for an evening too, please.”

“Okay.” Yoongi hugs you while you giggle from the ticklish ministrations he dances along your jaw. “Hey, guess what.”

“You’re going to let me keep this flannel?” You voice murmurs before placing a sweet, chaste kiss to Yoongi’s lips before he has time to react to the silly request. When you pull away, he glances down to the attire of yellow plaid worn on your figure and his head tilts contemplatively.

“Because it looks nice on you, I’ll let you keep it for now.” Your pouting lips used to plead do nothing to stop Yoongi’s warm smile as he kisses you again and says quietly. “Hoseok and I decided on a building.”

“Really?” The tone of your voice rises as your eyes widen with a happy surprise. Yoongi nods with an utterly bright smile adorning his face, accepting the quick peck you place against his expression and continuing on with bubbly interest, “Where at? No-- actually, what’s the name going to be anyways?”

“The building’s actually only a couple of subway stations from Namjoon’s cafe, so I guess you can visit him more often than now.”

“He’ll get sick of me.” You say, shrugging off the tiny shake of Yoongi’s head so you can press on with the subject at hand. “I can’t believe you both found a place so quickly.”

“Well, maybe that’s the easier part. Figuring out everything else will take awhile still, but a couple of investors are interested, and I think I’ve found a person that can do a better job at leading everything overall than Hoseok and I can.”

“So you’re both not going to fight for the CEO title?” You ask, fiddling with the hair on the back of his head as Yoongi just scoffs gently at the teasing inquisition. He shakes his head while his hands situate on your sides to help shift you on his lap as you turn slightly to better see him.

“That’s not something I’m interested in, no. I just want to make music.”

You smile at Yoongi fondly, unintentionally causing a little flush to peek on the tips of his cheeks. Considering the option to be in joint-leadership over the entirety of their company is so obviously available, you find it slightly jarring that Yoongi doesn’t feel any need to reach out for the position. Though you think his answer best suits him, especially when you remember that the manipulation of his image is what stopped him from being the musician that he had wanted to be for so long now.

Squeezing your waist with his hands, Yoongi kisses you softly. A hand of yours falls to his shoulder while the other remains interweaved in his hair to hold him close as the kiss lingers. Breaking away after a minute, Yoongi’s head tilts, appearing curious as he gently inquires, “What are you thinking, baby?”

“I’m just really happy for you.” Your voice trickles simply, though the sincerity causes Yoongi’s lips to tighten into a bashful smile while he just nods and lets his eyes glance downwards from the radiating endearment in your eyes. You take note of more pink decorating his skin, and just hug onto him tightly, mumbling sweetly against Yoongi’s cheek. “You’re so cute. I can’t wait to see whatever you produce next.”

“You should help me with a couple of the songs, angel.” Yoongi murmurs while smiling at your actions, rubbing his hands along your sides as you squeeze onto him. “I really liked working together.”

“We’re a good team, I think.” Yoongi hears the twinge of a bashful hesitancy in your words, making him have for force back an endeared sigh and replace it with a nod as you start to continuously press tiny kisses against his face to further yourself from the embarrassment you feel for the mushy words.

“I think so too-- what is your face so red for?” He laughs outright, not allowing you to hide away your rosy expression by catching your jaw gently with a hand. “You’re flustered for no reason.”

“It just felt like such a cliche thing to say-” You barely manage to mumble the sentence before Yoongi’s cutting your lips off with his own against them. Humming in thought as he pulls away and ignores the small pat of your hand against his chest for teasing you, Yoongi speaks with a smile,

“But it’s the truth, so it’s okay. You can be a Hallmark card all you want, and I’ll still love you-”

“Don’t tease me.” You attempt to sound firm, but nonetheless smile at the soft admission at the end of his sentence. Yoongi bites back any further jokes that you’re sure he’d enjoy to say, instead of giving you the quiet moment to wade off some of the meadow on your skin. “Can’t believe you came here at ten in the evening, by the way. When you’ll just have to leave soon to go home-”

“Who said I was going to leave soon?”

“Who said you’re allowed to stay over?”

Yoongi chuckles, reclining so that his back rests properly against the chair as you try to maintain your defiant expression. It’s utterly useless considering how there’s a playful smile etched into your face, so Yoongi just shrugs. “Tell me to leave then, baby,”

Refraining from laughter you instead bite your bottom lip, and cross your arms while Yoongi’s head tilts to wait for your reply with a coy gleam in his irises. Instead of a verbal reply for the moment, you scoot off of his lap, beginning to walk past him as he spins casually on the chair for his eyes to follow your movements. “If you’re staying, then you’ll have to sleep on the couch since I don’t have a guest bedroom.”

“You’re so,” Yoongi exhales like bits of laughter, shaking his head as he gets off the chair to catch up to you before you’re able to dip around the corner. A small squeal leaves your lips as Yoongi’s arms wrap around your waist to pull you back against his chest. Immediately he lays a buttery trail along your cheek as you laugh at his reaction and place your hands over top of his wear they fiddle with the buttons of his shirt that you wear, “If I’m staying on the couch, then I want this back, sweetie.”

---

In early February a small celebratory party causes Seokjin’s club to close its doors to the public. Though Yoongi told him over and over that the gesture was unnecessary, his worries were ignored by Seokjin who stated that he wanted to help give a nice evening to his friends and recognize the accomplishment of the official opening of Sope Ent. that would occur at the end of the month.

The employee pool was nowhere near the size of SoundWave at its peak the years earlier, but everyone working for Yoongi and Hoseok’s company were hand-picked and a feeling of camaraderie flourished throughout the months beforehand of work to become organized. The building was mostly finished, but a handful of office spaces and studios were still in the process of being completed, leading to you and some others opting to work from home while all the preparation continued on.

Because of your home studio being the location where you did practically all of your work originally, you had little care for the fact that you’d find your way to the building later than the majority of employees. The excitement of working with the artists that signed so far was a far more important focus to you, and in some instances surprising like when you noticed Jinsol’s name appearing on a list of accepted trainees (though Namjoon was more surprised as it meant he would need to find a replacement for her part-time position at his cafe).

Ultimately, you’re enshrouded in anticipation for future months and beyond of working as a recognized songwriter and producer. Yoongi’s unoften worried mentions that he’s apologetic to the fact that you’re in some regards starting from the bottom up are easily squashed by your vibrant energy assuring him that you’re nothing but happy to be able to continue working with the career you had always wanted.

Beyond that, you’re proud of Yoongi and Hoseok’s ability to get everything together in a considerably short stretch of time. Though it meant Hoseok’s plan of releasing music was pushed back so that it could be released under their company’s name, the wait ended up being worth it as it allowed media to cause an interest in what would come.

The weeks immediately following the article you released caused a dramatic shift in SoundWave’s perception in the public. With your name getting dragged early on for participation despite the manipulation, so many people decided to stop supporting the company and artists by association that they went through understandably hard times. Every group and soloist offered apologies, but the currents changed only when Yerin publicly apologized and stepped down from her position as CEO, with the board of directors promising for change.

You realize she was simply a scapegoat because the board did have a larger hand in what went on throughout SoundWave, but you manage to find satisfaction in this method, because the majority of artists came out with their careers still intact. Though trust has to be regained, at least they were able to have the chance.

The name you’re still curious to hear about in the future is Jimin. It was late in the year, only days before Yerin resigned, that news of him leaving SoundWave circulated loudly in every social media site available. More than anything, fans expressed utter sadness, demanding an answer from SoundWave to understand why he left when the majority of the public sided with him after his public apology acted as the first crack in the company’s secret crumbling. Which is why everyone, including you, were nothing but confused to hear that his leave was completely at his own discretion with the company evening expressing that they attempted negotiation to keep him.

“It just felt weird for him to be there.” Jeongguk told you during a small friendly lunch between him, Hoseok, Yoongi, and you. “With all of the history that went on.” You recall him biting back further information on that statement for the sake of the present. “Anyways, I’m sure he’ll be back to music eventually.”

As you look on from the bar stool you sit on, you smile as Yoongi finishes a speech egged on by the crowd of happy employees enjoying the evening. Hoseok cuts in with a cheery tone and his glass raised high in the air, while Yoongi remains beside him for the moment and simply sends you a glance that tells you he’s at minimum shy of all the attention currently on him. All you can offer is two thumbs up to which you watch him bite back a sarcastic smirk.

“Your speech was good.” You assure him with a grin as Yoongi returns to you after the loud cheers mark the end of the melodramatic speeches and the restart of music. He shakes his head at your words and takes the seat beside you,

“Thanks. I don’t know if I believe you, but thank you, angel.” Yoongi says with the usual gentleness of his voice making you so much more fond in that moment, especially as you take in his hand finding yours without hesitation to entwine the fingers. “You really look beautiful.”

“You said that already.” You comment though your heart beat skyrockets from the genuine tone he speaks with. Softly, he smiles and nods his head, finally finding your eyes again,

“And I’m probably going to say it again at least ten more times tonight, sweetie.” Yoongi’s teeth peek with his grin as he fondly watches you avert your gaze to the two of your glasses left on the bartop when he went to go speak. “Look at me, please.”

Inhaling quietly from all of the emotions amplified in your chest from the evening’s joyful ambiance, you eventually cast a glance back to him with enough time to see the sweet light in his eyes before he kisses you softly. Where your hands hold together, your free hand encapsulates the top of his hand to gently squeeze as Yoongi lets the kiss linger on a few seconds longer than you’d expect from him with the surroundings somewhat crowded.

“I know it’s only been a few hours, but can I take you somewhere?” Yoongi asks against your lips, so quietly that you almost miss it with the music that plays all around you. Though it takes you only a couple of seconds to respond, your mind captures a considerable amount of wonder for where exactly he intends to lead you to. Still though, you simply peck his lips once more to earn a smile from him as you nod,

“Yeah, wherever you want.”

Despite what you expected, Hoseok simply only grinned and waved the two of you off when Yoongi mentioned you would both head out. Seokjin similarly smiled as you told him a thank you and goodnight as well, and considering those two of your friends are quite close with Yoongi, you don’t stop yourself from a playful question as he settles his coat around your shoulders upon exit of the nightclub.

“I’m guessing they already know about where you want to take me to?”

“Well, it’s no fun to give any kind of hints, angel, so you’re not getting them from me.” He says, letting you hug onto his arm while using the other to hail a cab. “It’s kind of different leaving Jin’s club this time around, isn’t it?”

“A good different.”

“Yeah,” Yoongi nods as he opens the door to the taxi, smiling down at you before letting you enter inside. “Really good different.”

Outside of Sope Entertainment, you can’t help lifting up your head to take in the view of the small tower that you’d be working in from now on. Yoongi exits the vehicle after giving a tip to the taxi who drives off once the door slams. You turn your attention to Yoongi as he takes hold of your hand once again to lead you inside the sparsely populated building.

A security guard allows the two of you in after the flash of identification cards, and by the time you reach the elevator you’ve begin rubbing Yoongi’s arms to fuel circulation and warmth. Your actions result in a fit of chuckles from his lips as the elevator doors open wide to allow the two of you inside.

“I’m not that cold, angel.” He assures, but does nothing to stop you from hugging onto him as the elevator shuts. Shimmying the two of you a step forward he manages to finally click a floor number as your body clings onto his to give warmth.

“Please, you hate cold weather.” You retort and place a kiss on the underside of his jaw. “Is this where you take me up to the roof and we look dramatically off at the city?”

“No, it’s way too cold for that.” Yoongi quickly admonishes the idea, causing you both to laugh at both the severe way he spoke, but also the implication that he is more cold than he lets on. “But maybe in the summer or at least the spring that would be a fun idea.” He says, watching the floor number climb as he rubs little trails on your back and your cheek settles against his chest. “C’mon, angel; this is the floor.”

You pull away from him to look at the number and know it to be the name one his and Hoseok’s studios are on. You exit out of the elevator with him quickly pressing a switch opposite of the elevator to turn the hallway lights on.

“Oh, is this about the song you’ve been telling me about lately?” You ask with a growing smile that’s excited from the idea. Yoongi huffs and pouts as he turns his head to look down at you,

“I said it’s no fun getting hints, angel.” His high-pitched rumble makes you laugh gently as you squeeze his hand. Coming closer to his studio, you hum and reconfigure a guess of what he wants to show you despite his protests, “Is it that you decorated your studio finally-”

“Hey,” Yoongi calls out as he stops a pace behind you to bring a halt to your stroll. Turning towards him, your eyebrows knit in confusion because his studio is a few more steps down. The confusion builds more as Yoongi just smiles before flicking his head to gesture to the room you both stopped in front of.

Turning to look in the direction, you see a door just the same as all the others and you’re about to question the significance of it before your eyes catch the polished metal plaque with your name engraved on it. In your stupor, you release hold of Yoongi’s hand to turn with widening eyes towards the door. Taking a step, you feel words escape your mind as you can only think about the obvious insinuation of the plaque, and turn your head back to Yoongi as though silently asking him to verify.

With a proud, soft smile he nods his head, stepping beside you to press a series of numbers into the lock on the door. “It took a little while longer than I expected to get it set up, especially without you realizing considering you walk down this hall so many times.” He chuckles only a little before pushing the door open to hold it ajar with his hand. Yoongi returns his gaze back to you as he happily admits, “But this studio’s yours, Y/N.”

After a moment to let his words sink in, you take another step to press your palm against the richly stained wood of the door and push it wider to enter inside. Following behind you, Yoongi presses the switch to turn on the lights that illuminate the rectangular space that you walk further into. A desk is already positioned on the far wall with monitors and equipment all arranged similarly to the way they are at your home studio. Shelves around the room are empty, and the couch against one side is free of pillows or throw blankets. The space is completely fresh to personal touch, but the door alerts anyone who reads it that the room is your own creative area as an acknowledged employee.

Turning back towards Yoongi who’s quiet yet clearly eager from his position beside the closed door, you walk to him and trust him to catch you as you practically jump into a hug that his arms catch you from tightly.

“Thank you so much.” You mumble against the fabric of his shirt, clenching wrinkles into the clothing on his back as well. Yoongi smiles as he rests his chin on your head, rubbing soothingly against your back as a tiny whimper leaves your lips.

“You’re welcome, angel, but this is really something you deserved all along.”

“But,” You pull your face from his chest to look up at Yoongi despite the tears welling in your eyes from gratitude. “Without you, I wouldn’t have gotten here the same way, and I wouldn’t have been able to do everything with someone like you to be beside me through it all. Yoon, you’ve really helped me do so much and everything was so crazy to get here, but I’m glad that it happened how it did, because I really love you. I can’t believe I got to meet you and fall in love with you.”

Cupping Yoongi’s face, you pull him down into a kiss as he moves his hands to better hold you against his chest. Following the kiss, Yoongi can’t help but lean his head against your shoulder, for a moment overcome by emotion due to your admission. You smile, rubbing his back as he squeeze you a bit tighter and exhales.

“You know, angel, if I hadn’t ever met you I’d still be practically a puppet to my old management team.” He kisses your cheek briefly before straightening up to properly look down at you. “I love you so much too. Whether you realize it or not, you really inspired me to finally fight back against them too, sweetie. I really am so proud of you and everything you’ve done.”

Yoongi kisses you gently once more, finding himself completely content as your arms wrap loosely around his neck to hold the two of you in place. When he thinks about it, receiving the recognition you deserved really was the only suitable outcome for everything that you’ve been through. Everything feels correct, even if realistically there are still trials to overcome where the company itself is concerned. At least there’s undeniable optimism in the future.

You hold his hand as you break apart to walk back around the studio space and explore the room. Coming up to the computer you go ahead and turn the power on just to see it and be shown that everything is as real as it seems to you. Yoongi stands behind you, wrapping his arms around your waist to rest his chin against your shoulder. The computer brightly flashes with a screensaver already saved to a picture the two of you took on an evening boat date months earlier. You laugh at the sight of it and turn towards Yoongi whose eyebrows furrowed in confusion,

“This is what I get for letting Hoseok plug everything in for me.” He mumbles as you press a sweet kiss to his cheek. “You should change the passcode from what it is so he can’t come in here whenever to spam your studio with pictures or other pranks.”

“If I change the passcode, maybe I’ll keep it a secret from you too.” You ponder aloud, earning an expected poke in your side to tickle you from Yoongi. As your body jerks from the ticklish feeling, he simply hugs you tighter, pressing a kiss against your cheek in retribution. You eventually sigh as you smile and relax back against his chest, admitting softly, “But honestly, if Hoseok’s going to print out cute pictures like this one, maybe I’ll just keep the code the way it is.”

“Angel, the code is 1111. Please don’t do that.”

if you enjoyed please, please let me know via ask, comment, rb with tags– however ! i’d just really appreciate feedback 🥺 i hope you enjoy the series, i worked really hard on it! And if you’ve read thank you so much! below are some fun facts and final words about the series!

tag list: @jaiuneamesolitaiire @tsvkino-usagi @xionysus @baebyjoonie @honeyoongles @betysotelo18

Fun facts:

Jinsol, Seulgi, and Jihyo the only non-bts named character that are supposed to be their real-life counterparts (from LOONA, Red Velvet, and Twice respectively)

To be honest??? I picked the name Yerin because it sounds so pretty to me

This series is as long as NOVEL! Deadass a fucking NOVELLLLL! like what??? I can’t believe I managed to write roughly 100k words wtf.

Seulgi was initially going to be considerably more important as an antagonist, but then it felt like it was going to be feeding too much into Hoseok’s character than help the actual story progress so I did away with her history with Yoongi (and Hoseok)

The spotify playlist for the series is actual set up into three different parts (four songs, an interlude, four songs, an interlude, four songs) and the purpose of this was to separate the songs into characters. The first four songs are about Jimin’s character growth, the second set of four songs are about Y/N’s, and the third four songs are about Yoongi’s. In some ways, if you looked at the lyrics for the song you may have been able to gauge a lot of the plot that way.

The name for the series, Veil, comes from the idea that something is covered by a cloth that is not completely opaque, but still blurs the perception of what is beneath it.

I don’t remember exactly how I got the premise for this idea, but I knew that I wanted to make a Yoongi story. So that being said, this was always intended to be a Yoongi story, I wasn’t swayed in one way or another to pick the ending couple.

Although, my friend told me recently that after hearing about my plans for Jimin’s character in the last few chapters that she wanted him to end up with Y/N LOL; I think that’s mainly because, in this story’s universe, the song Jimin released at the festival was Promise, and in this story he wrote that song with the intention of supporting Y/N and also telling her that he wants her to be her own power source through all she’s gone through (I want you to be your light, baby, you should be your light)

Because I’m actually really fond of Jimin’s character, I was thinking about making a one-shot prequel about him and Y/N’s relationship long before Yoongi.

The Audi that Yoongi drives costs about $200,000. I needed to tell you that, just like I needed to give him that expensiveass car. Why? It’s h*t.

I couldn’t rationalize Yoongi or Hoseok becoming the CEO of the company they made together, because ultimately they still want to be performers lol. They’re more like founders, and have a lot of say in the board.

Jeongguk, in this story, is a part of a band with Yugyeom, Mingyu, and Minghao. What a combination lol.

Taehyung is a lawyer for idols generally, but he starts to work more for Yoongi and Hoseok’s endeavors by the end.

In my mind, Jimin eventually went on to get signed at the same company Jeongguk and Seulgi work at. He would’ve been pretty successful there.

Also, I doubt that Y/N’s royalties with her songs at SoundWave would’ve been kept by the end of the series. Realistically, she would have to be credited, but she would no longer receive money for them, so she really did have to start over in a way.

Yoongi’s hair was always blonde until that scene where he went to dye it back to his natural hair color; this was a very freeing moment for his character.

In Y/N’s conversations with Yerin and Jimin, Yoongi was consistently just..,.,,,.,. chilling in the background..../., in the case of Jimin conversation he was making pancakes lmao. What a guy.

Again, if you’ve read this whole story thank you SOOOOOO MUCH! You’ve basically read an entire book in reading this fic, and that is unbelievable to me who never would’ve figured I’d have been able to make this entire thing! Thank you again so much for reading! See you in the next story! 🥰❤️

#yoongi #yoongi imagines #yoongi series #yoongi au #yoongi fluff #bts #bts imagines #bts series #bts au #bts fluff #all #series veil

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doctorbonzo · 3 years

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Doctor Bonzo Book of the Month (October 2020)

“Talking to Strangers” by Malcolm Gladwell

I was really excited to read this book, which was recommended to me by a 4th-year medical student who I met at a conference in Portland, OR earlier this year. The concept of the book, as it was presented to me, was that we (people in general) don’t do a good job of communicating with other people that we don’t know, especially if they’re from different backgrounds than the ones we come from. In other words, we don’t know how to talk to strangers. I have definitely been on the receiving end of this over the past 15 years since I graduated from residency; there are times when I felt like I was from a different planet than my coworkers.

The concept behind the book was proven within the first few pages of the book; it became obvious to me that Malcolm Gladwell was a “stranger,” and my difficulty relating to him might impair my “communication” with him (communicating in the sense of receptive language/hearing what he is saying to me, the reader). The first passage that caught my attention was when he said, “I suspect that you may have had to pause for a moment to remember who Sandra Bland was.” For personal reasons, there are only 5 other deaths/murders in recent years—those of Trayvon Martin, Tamir Rice, Philando Castile, Ahmaud Arbery, and George Floyd—that have had a similar personal impact on me as the death of Sandra Bland. I mean, she was one of the main sources of the “Say Her Name” demand that we often saw from the movement for Black Lives. It’s difficult for me to relate to a world where people don’t remember who she is. If Gladwell remembers her, but suspects that his readers don’t, then that makes me wonder if this book was written for people like me.

Also early in the book, Gladwell frames the death of Sandra Bland as a “two sides” issue, which I feel is ridiculous (“Each side was right, in its own way”). Anyone who watches the video of Sandra Bland’s encounter with Brian Encinia and comes away with any point of view where Encinia is “right,” is absolutely a “stranger” to me. He also described the deaths of several other unarmed Black people in a way that disturbed me, such as saying that Freddie Gray “fell into a coma” as opposed to saying that he had his spinal cord severed. Again, I continued to read thinking that this book might give me some point of view that I had not considered in my communications with people from different backgrounds. After all, he ended his first chapter with a statement that I wholeheartedly agreed with: “If we were more thoughtful as a society…[Sandra Bland] would not have ended up dead in a Texas jail cell.”

Liars

I really enjoyed this key point of the book. Gladwell presented several historical examples of difficulty knowing when people are lying or not. From CIA agents who didn’t realize that Cuban spies had infiltrated their ranks, to Neville Chamberlain not realizing that Adolf Hitler was a genocidal maniac. These were examples of people whose lies went undetected; he also presented some good examples of people that society believed were lying when they weren’t. The most prominent example of that was the case of Amanda Knox who, I must admit, I thought was clearly guilty the moment I saw her making out with her boyfriend outside of the crime scene of her roommate’s murder. I live my life trying to give people the benefit of the doubt—innocent until proven guilty—but behavior that I deem atypical or bizarre often leads us to assume the worst about people. In some portions of the book, Gladwell presents situations where artificial intelligence/computers that can’t see a person do a better job than attorneys and judges at guessing when people are guilty. However, he didn’t mention Bias as one of the reasons for misjudging people once you can see them.

Default to Truth

The book mentioned a concept of the “Truth-Default Theory,” in which we assume that people are telling us the truth until enough doubts are introduced about them that we can’t explain away. Gladwell mentioned triggers that can “snap us out of” the default to truth but I was surprised that, by page 85, he still had not mentioned Bias as one of these triggers. It’s stunning that he doesn’t see Bias as a key barrier to our ability to communicate with or relate to strangers. The sections on espionage had “won me over” after the aforementioned disconnect re: Sandra Bland, but this is when I started to get the feeling again that our perspectives just weren’t aligned.

Sexual Assault

This is when Malcolm Gladwell just lost me; I think I will never be able to “talk to this stranger” about issues related to sexual assault and pedophilia. He seemed to offer up too many excuses for my comfort level when it came to understanding how sexual abuse runs rampant in certain situations. In the case of Larry Nassar, he seems to absolve Michigan State because even the parents of the abused women were fooled. He said that parents weren’t trying to protect financial interests, but we know this isn’t necessarily true; there are plenty of parents that care more about their kids’ success than they do about their kids’ safety, even if it is subconscious. Just look at the recent issue in my hometown, Savannah, GA, when parents refused to press charges after their 8-year-old son’s travel football coach repeatedly struck their son in the head for not playing well.

Gladwell also gives the leadership at Penn State a pass with regards to their handling of Jerry Sandusky, and I had the impression that he thinks they were treated unfairly. He spent a lot of time trying to poke holes in the testimony of Sandusky’s victims, at one point raising doubt because former victims came to visit him later in life. I have seen people sexually abused by parents and siblings—in situations where the family members admit they did it—who still keep close contact with their abusers and even forgive them. That doesn’t mean that the abuser shouldn’t still be punished or scrutinized. Ironically, he is proving that he doesn’t know much about certain strangers, as there is no way he has spent a significant amount of time talking to sexual assault victims.

Victims of trauma all respond differently, which is one of his main points in the book (see the Amanda Knox section). Someone not remembering specific details, like the month or date that the abuse happens, doesn’t mean that it didn’t happen. Also, this book did not spend enough time discussing the easiest, indisputable point of the Penn State fiasco: a grown man should not be showering with children…period! One of the administrators involved said that Sandusky should have worn swim trunks. Are you kidding me?! How does Gladwell have any sympathy for people with this kind of decision-making? I just sensed too much of a vibe that Gladwell gives people a pass for not protecting victims of sexual assault. He spent a lot of time later discussing the link between alcohol and sexual assaults on college campuses during the section about Brock Turner. Like his views on Sandra Bland, I think we just have completely different points of view that will be difficult to reconcile, because he sounded like a rape apologist to me.

Suicide

Now, I found this portion of the book to be completely fascinating, and I can imagine myself referring back to this section in the future. He describes a concept that I was previously unfamiliar with, known as coupling. Completed suicide is often coupled to “very specific circumstances and conditions,” which conflicts with the idea that if someone really wants to die by suicide, they’ll find a way to do it. As was the case of the poet Sylvia Plath’s death by suicide, intentional carbon monoxide poisoning (by placing the head of the victim inside of kitchen stoves) was a major problem in London during the 1960s. It was a relatively painless way to die without leaving behind too gruesome a scene (relatively speaking, of course; the death of a loved one is always terrible). Interestingly, as town gas was phased out and it became almost impossible to die in this way, the suicide rates dropped significantly.

Gladwell also mentioned the Golden Gate Bridge, which I didn’t realize has been the site of the most suicides in the world since it was first built. For decades, advocates have encouraged San Francisco and/or California to build barriers or nets to prevent people from jumping off the bridge, but there has been push-back. Some opponents of suicide barriers argue that people will find another way to die, while Gladwell does a remarkable job of describing how this is not consistent with the historical evidence in support of coupling (see above). Of the 500+ people who were prevented from jumping from the Golden Gate Bridge in a study conducted over 30+ years, only 25 of them later died by suicide. The whole “motive + opportunity” thing applies not only to crime, but also to people who suffer from depression severe enough to lead to suicide.

Policing

After the Sandra Bland issue that I described above, I had a feeling that Gladwell’s policing commentary would be problematic for me. His foundational ideas were solid, and he described several studies that I was unfamiliar with. He provided compelling evidence that extra policing does not improve the safety of communities. In fact, society’s views of certain cities, or even certain neighborhoods, as unsafe are not accurate; police officers’ views of the most dangerous and violent blocks often don’t match up with actual statistics. Although he argues against more overall policing, he seems to advocate for more focused policing in areas that truly have higher rates of crime.

Gladwell describes one study as a “miracle,” but it sounded like a nightmare to me. In Kansas City, they focused their energy on a small, high-crime area known as District 144. The police used any excuse they could to stop people who looked suspicious between the hours of 7pm – 1am. Gun-related crimes were cut in half, but Gladwell didn’t mention all the innocent people who were pulled over, harassed, and traumatized. He comes off to me as an absolute “stranger” who doesn’t know how to communicate with African Americans like me if he couldn’t see how much of a nightmare this sounds like. Gladwell ends this section describing the police officers being in “constant motion,” and describes 948 vehicle stops in a 200-day period of time, resulting in 616 arrests, 532 pedestrian checks, and 29 guns seized. Are you kidding me?! More than 500 pedestrian checks?! You don’t see a problem with that?! This idea sounds a lot like the “Stop and Frisk” behavior in New York City during the Michael Bloomberg era. Also, he doesn’t say what the arrests were for, so I have no idea if they made the community any safer. Finally, he was oblivious to the fact that his stats meant that >300-400 people were stopped for no reason whatsoever.

I wonder if Malcolm Gladwell has ever been profiled by police. Has he ever felt the humiliation of being yelled at and treated like a criminal because you were trying to ask a police officer for directions? Has he ever had a police officer point a gun at him? I’m going to go out on a limb and say no based on his view of policing.

Sandra Bland

Similar to his introductory comments on the Sandra Bland case, the final chapter of his book (titled “Sandra Bland”) was very upsetting to me. He repeatedly says things that I can’t relate to like, “…we have decided that we would rather our leaders and guardians pursue their doubts than dismiss them.” Speak for yourself! I would rather the police dismiss their doubts about me as a law-abiding citizen instead of pursuing the idea that I’m up to no good. Gladwell did highlight something that I was unfamiliar with called the “Reid Technique,” which is a disgusting training program used by 2/3 of police departments in this country. However, similar to the sexual assault chapter, I felt that he passed the buck and blamed Brian Encinia’s behavior on the poor training that he received. He believed Encinia’s lame story that he actually feared for his life.

If he led off the book with this entire Sandra Bland chapter, I doubt I would have finished the book. At one point, he said that Sandra Bland was “mismatched,” or that she looked like a criminal to Encinia even though she wasn’t one (he said that Encinia was “terrified” of her). I don’t see how anyone who watched that video could come to that conclusion. Gladwell has an obvious Eurocentric point of view that does not match up with my life experience. Her behavior was clearly annoyance at being pulled over, and Encinia did everything he could to provoke her; when she lit up a cigarette to help her relax in the situation, he made up a law so that he could assault and arrest her. The fact that Gladwell doesn’t see this, and the fact that he never mentions her race as a potential contributor, means that this book wasn’t written for people like me.

In the last few pages of the book, I had difficulty determining if Gladwell was being naïve or dishonest. He actually states that Encinia was empathetic to Sandra Bland because he asked her “What’s wrong?” The question was clearly said in a sarcastic and provocative way if you watch the video. Gladwell believes the officer’s assertion that he was frightened by a “dangerous woman,” but he doesn’t try to explain why he would escalate things and become argumentative if he was so afraid of her. The author also tells the story of a young Black man playing basketball in Ferguson, MO who was profiled by police and accused of being a pedophile with no evidence. He describes it as a “mistake” and portrays this police behavior as police officers’ attempts to find a needle in a haystack. He does mention innocent people caught up in the middle, but never mentions that they are mostly Black and Brown people!

Finally, on page 337 out of 346, he mentions in the footnotes that “there is significant evidence that African Americans are considerably more likely to be subjected to…stops than white Americans.” That it took him this long to get here and that he doesn’t see racial bias as a major barrier in “Talking to Strangers” epitomizes my problems with this book. He concludes that Sandra Bland’s death happened because society does not know how to talk to strangers. He never considers that these deaths happen because of racism, or because power-hungry people in positions of power abuse their authority. Until he sees that the problem in the Sandra Bland case began with anti-Blackness as opposed to a faulty police manual, then I doubt he’ll ever get it. On the last page of the book, he said that Sandra Bland unfairly became the villain of the story in the end. Maybe that’s the case in his whitewashed world, but in the eyes of the people I know and love, Sandra Bland was a beautiful soul who had her life snuffed out too early. She was a martyr, and the blame for her death rests on Brian Encinia. Rest in power, Sandra Bland.

As for you, Malcolm Gladwell, your writing style grabs the reader’s attention, you have a way with words that makes it easy to fly through your book. I’m sure I will reference your section of this book on suicide in the future...but I doubt I will ever read another one of your books. You’re just too much of a stranger to me.

{FIN}

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neshabeingchildish · 4 years

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League of Extraordinary Geniuses || Chapter 4

@junknstu1f @just-a-j-reallly @kiddangers @sunbeameyes @famousflowermagazine I THINK I’ve tagged the right people. Don’t hold it against me if I didn’t. Just correct me and know that I have very few brain cell. I know a couple are behind/on hiatus, but the last time I omitted a tag because of a reader’s inability to read at the moment, I got corrected with exclamation marks. Here goes. The updates may be spaced out, with me working two jobs again, but then again, sometimes, a lot of material floods me when it’s most inconvenient for my life, so we shall see.

Jamaica Deserves Better

“We’re going to grant androids autonomy,” she said, smiling with nervous anticipation of his response to this idea.

His wince deepened with his sarcasm as he said, “Oh, okay. You said, “It’s gonna sound horrible,” but what you meant is, “It’s gonna literally be terrorism!” He laughed uncomfortably.

“It’s going to be risky, but it will gain us the support of androids and is best for, well the world.”

“I’m all for whatever you think is best and the sheer chaos that this could bring intrigues me, but why do we need the support of androids?” He wondered.

“You think it’s fair to have them enslaved?” she wondered.

“They’re machines. Dangerous and numerous machines. What if they gain autonomy and immediately declare war on mankind? We’ll be regarded as enemies of the state… The state of the world. We would literally be the supervillain that I used to dream of becoming.”

“I don’t believe that they will want war. I believe that they will rationalize that living amongst humans is a more solid plan and those who are curious will seek out their liberators, and to them, we will be saviors. That aside, they aren’t just machines. They’re so much more than that. They have awareness and they have commitment, emotional value and comprehension of loyalty. Machines with wants.”

He looked, for the first time in a while, like he might go against her, but after some thought, he asked, “Are we going to start small, at least?”

“Of course. She swiped her forearm to activate her screen and said, “Starting with the newer models that have accumulated less labor. I’ve decided that Jamaica is good grounds for this, because the Dom recently replaced all of the older models with fresh new Davenport Industries designs that yours truly cultivated from Giselle Vickers’ research.” He was still thinking as she talked, over a holographic simulation, “I will initiate a sequence that alerts their programming, and make it that they are able to control themselves, send out the signal and information of just who I am. Then, I’ll observe their responses right from the comfort of my own home.”

He groaned, “Ugh… I’m on vacation. I wanna go to Jamaica!”

She smiled and tossed her hands up, “Then we will!”

“That way, if they revolt, at least I died in paradise.”

“If they revolt, I’ll shut them down.”

“Sooo… they won’t REALLY be free…” He raised an eyebrow at her.

“Free to live, not to destroy the planet that I plan to help! I’m not THAT evolved.” She tapped some things on her forearm screen and showed him the schematics, “Whenever I shut down their control, they’ll receive an untraceable link to my biosystem, and I’ll be able to monitor them. I suspect that the majority of them will not pose a threat to mankind or society.”

“But, what about mankind’s threat to them? I feel like if a bunch of androids just become free, the non-supes will do that thing that they do where nobody can be different unless they’re under complete authority and control? The androids won’t be safe,” Max said, worried.

“They know how to incapacitate someone long enough to get away safely without killing them. And if there is an uproar, or a mob, well… I’ll just have to intervene, if it comes down to that.”

“Okay. So… We’re going to go to Jamaica, that much I know. You’re gonna disengage human control of their systems, and monitor them for quality assurance.”

“And if we fail, we die in paradise!” He smirked and she knew that he was with her. THIS wasn’t even the most radical of her ideas for the future. Chase stirred and she said, “Can you get him into his capsule?”

“Ugh. I guess.” He lifted his hand to guide Chase back to where the capsule was in his room, and lowered him into it. Then, with a quick movement of his hand, Chase stuck both of his thumbs into his nostrils. Max laughed and pulled out his phone to take a pic before closing the capsule and leaving him there.

Eventually, Chase woke up and groaned about having his thumbs in his nose. Was Max Thunderman really that childish? He wondered, pulling them out and climbing out of the capsule. He checked his phone to see if he had missed any alerts. Among them was him being tagged in Max’s profile photo change… Which was a photo of Chase, with his thumbs in his nose. “Yes, yes, he is.” He shook his head and did NOT wish to read any of the 12k comments on this image.

He found Charlotte in one of her gardens, collecting stuff and he said, as cheerfully as he could muster, “Hi, Charlotte!” He didn’t have anything interesting that he could say to make things not awkward between them, being alone again. But, he didn’t have to. It was like he forgot who he was dealing with. Charlotte was pretty good at letting things slide off of her back. She credited it to years of having to suck it up a lot at work.

“Hey! Glad to see you rested and ready! We are going on a little trip.”

He furrowed his eyebrows and folded his arms, “By ‘we,’ you mean…?”

“You, Max and myself… Unless, you aren’t up for a trip? But, we’ve been making accommodations for you to come with…” She smiled awkwardly. The cutest thing he’d ever seen. Of course he was going wherever she wanted to go. Of. Course. He. Was.

“Umm… No, yes. I will. Where… Where are we going, may I ask?”

“You may!” She collected her basket of goods and began to head back towards the castle, “We are going to Jamaica. I want to launch a plan and Max wanted to be on site for the results. If I tell you about it and it goes wrong, I wouldn’t want you to be an accessory. Max and I have already prepared statements to prove your innocence.”

“What are you two going to do?” He wondered, a little bit frightened.

“Do ya really wanna know? You’ll feel obligated to stop me and well… I’m not gonna stop!” She was smiling, but she was also serious.

“I demand to know,” he said, firmly. If he was involved, even if he was aware that something might happen, he had a right to ask what that something was.

“That’s fair.” She ran over her idea with him and she saw the processing of happening through his facial expressions.

“The probability of it going well is high enough that I’m not going to try to stop you. But, the possibilities of how horribly it can go if it goes wrong are terrifying.”

“I considered them all, with the help of supercomputers and personally hired androids,” she said. That had been her first little experimentation with the idea - building and buying androids and allowing them to control themselves. She even paid them for all of their labor and gave them free upgrades whenever necessary, sometimes whenever desired. All of her castle staff and many of her lab employees were currently androids in that experiment. She got input from each and every one of them as to the way to do this with the least amount of foreseeable carnage.

“Hey, Bionic Boy! My sister thinks you’re cute!” Max said, approaching with a hug collapsible case.

“Awwww,” Chase said, flattered.

“She’s 15,” Max added.

“Awwww,” Chase said, again, in a different, and slightly disgusted way. Why would he format the announcement that way? “By the way, THANKS for manipulating my sleeping body for clout!”

“Thank YOU. That’s my most popular photo. It’s getting more attention than that one of Charlotte…” His voice trailed off, and he clasped his hands together, “You ready for Jamaica?”

“For the world as we know it to change and for the three of us to very possibly wind up in Thunder Max Prison?” Chase asked, smiling. The smile was sarcastic.

“Obviously. What else would I be referring to. It’s literally the only trip to Jamaica that the three of us have ever discussed.”

“We’ve just met.”

“Further reason that that’s EXACTLY the “For Jamaica” that I’m asking about!”

“I’m ready,” Chase said, sure that Max was able to keep this bit going without his answer.

“So, you’re all packed up and loaded up? All we gotta do is finish what we’re doing an jump in the jet?” Max asked. Chase sighed, rolled his eyes and went to do these things, that he realized now were the only reason Max asked him if he was ready. “Thanks, Buddy!” Max cheered as he walked away. Whenever he was a little ways away, Max wondered, “You think that he’ll be able to handle this type of rebellious act against the Dom?”

“I think that he believes in me a little more than he believes in him… God, this better not fail. I don’t know how to handle letting him down.”

“You’re not worried about letting me down?” Max asked.

“I didn’t think that was possible,” she confessed with a shrug. He just stared at her, wanting to argue with that idea, but it was true, and she should say it. He smiled and shook his head. He had more to pack.

IF this went well, those android allies would be able to assist in one of the most important stages of her plans… That is if plans didn’t change by the time things began progressing. Max and Chase would have input along the way and she presumed, make her plans even better as time went on. Currently, they were bickering.

One part of her liked that they weren’t fake getting along for her benefit. The other was just waiting for them to kiss. This back and forth definitely had some amount of sexual or romantic tension involved, whether it was one-sided or from them both, they got entirely too close to each other’s faces when they became heated for her to just IGNORE that this could lead to something that she’d love to see. She chuckled to herself about this image. They glanced at her and she shrugged her shoulders and said, “I’m gonna be glad when you two get over yourselves and into each other.”

Chase looked confused, while Max rolled his eyes. They stopped bickering for a moment, but eventually started again, whispering it, like that was going to keep Charlotte from realizing that this was taking place. She was typing on her laptop and enjoying a mug of tea that she made from her own grown and harvested plants. She wore a knowing smirk about her accomplices and whenever they got quiet, wondered, “What are you guys gonna be working on in the meantime? Anything that I might be able to dabble in on the side?”

Chase said, “I’m thinking about dedicating some time to creating creatures for my video game.”

“Video game?” Max repeated, getting far too excited about it, then playing it off.

“Chase has been working on what I think will be the most ingenious, interactive, role play video game ever created. He’s literally putting like EVERYTHING into it. I’ve never known of any game to be as inclusive of the types of people that there are in the world,” she said and set her empty mug down. “I’ve helped a little, but his mind is greater.” She smiled at Chase and he blushed.

No sooner than she liked a comment on Max’s post, did Max shout out, “Allison!” He stared at Chase suspiciously, shook his head and said, “Mmm mmm. Uh uh. Nah uh!”

“I think so,” Charlotte said.

Chase looked between the both of them. “I’m lost.”

“Max just came to the realization that you remind him of somebody that he used to know pretty well,” Charlotte said.

“No. I actually did not,” Max said looking at the comment: First you clique up with my #1 Shero, and NOW, you’re just… AROUND CHASE DAVENPORT??? Literally my favorite protector of the world and champion for the environment! Your life must be so charmed.

“Well, if you didn’t, I’m just gonna say it. Petite brunette with bright and kind blue eyes who loves the planet, has a vehement code of ethics, is competitive, smart, brave, and honest…”

“My God, Charlotte, you met her once!” Max complained.

“I met her once, but I’ve gotten to know her through your anecdotes!”

He groaned, “She’s asking if she’ll get to meet him too, some day. I regret introducing her to YOU! Always messaging or commenting whenever she sees us hanging out. Like... You have time now? Oh, okay!”

“Can I see?” Chase asked.

Charlotte clicked on Allison’s profile and he nodded, “I love all these badges on her page. She must be a hardcore environmentalist.” She nodded. “Yeah, well Max thought you reminded him of someone, and I didn’t want to say it, but since he said it, I’m free to speak.”

“I mean, I don’t know how I feel about the classification of petite brunette, but she seems great. What’s the problem? You’re friends, she’s on your friend list…” He said in Max’s direction.

Avoiding the question, Max said, “You’re on my friend list too. That means nothing.”

“I never approved of that,” Chase said.

“I know. I had to hack into your account to accept the request,” Max said, rolling his eyes and replying to Allison: You’ll be happy to know that he reminds me of you.

“WHY? Why would you do that?” Chase wondered, somewhere in the background of Max’s thoughts while he love reacted the sad face that Allison responded with. She knew that Max didn’t think the world of her, even though they were cordial, because sometimes, he wondered how she was, and also... He liked the idea of helping her out when she needed it, here and there... He was over her, but she was always gonna be his first love and social media made it too easy to keep up with people, even after they’ve become strangers.

“Because Charlotte’s fan base stalks every single interaction of all of her social media. We’re both with her right now and I don’t feel like the hoard of questions, theories and think pieces it’ll produce in the event that they notice that her guests are not friends,” Max said, replying to Allison: Yep, just like that. A PAIN.

Exasperated, Chase sat down next to Charlotte and asked, “May I please have some of your rosehips and cinnamon tea?” She smiled and offered him the thermos and her mug. He poured some and smelled it, “Is there nettle in here?”

“Mmm hmm. And lavender honey for sweetening. It’s a manifestation tea that I found online, just FYI.”

“I don’t believe in any of that, so I’m fine either way,” Chase reminded her. He took a sip and nodded, “Mmmm… It’s good, that much is true.” After a few more sips, he wondered, “So… what’s the situation with this Allison?” They looked at Max, who had curled up with his phone, messaging with Allison, oblivious to them at the moment. “Or, is it personal? Could I guess? Is she a former lover?” He asked. Charlotte tried to put on her poker face, but she was as bad as that as she was at lying, so Chase could tell that he was right, even though she technically didn’t tell him Max’s personal business. “I remind him of his ex???” He said.

“I mean, in superficial ways, nothing fundamental or concrete,” she said. “It’s more like… parallels than, say, matching counterparts. But, enough about that. Let’s talk about your game.”

“Well, my next avenue is working out all of the creatures that users can create hybrids out of. But… on a more important note - this plot…” She made a face. “I’m not having second thoughts! I’m just curious. Why Jamaica?”

She sat up and began to speak from the heart, “As you know, my family is from Jamaica. I still have relatives there, including one of my grandmothers. Android production has drastically changed the atmosphere in Jamaica. They are used in service capacity and have taken away jobs from islanders, who already a lot of the time are in less than ideal economic status and situations. The Islands have become booming tourist areas and who benefits the most from the usage of Jamaican goods? Tourists who can afford visiting, and companies who can afford to produce machines for slave labor. Meanwhile, the bad parts of Jamaica get worse as the broke people get poorer, and they run out of options beyond crime and schemes. To the point that these entitled people like your dad and his customer base get to be richer and bleed the place for everything good, as well as create a negative outlook of the actual citizens, calling them untrustworthy and warning visitors to avoid them when necessary. Even if my family wasn’t from there, isn’t that terrible? Isn’t it messed up that the so-called heroes and revolutionary men are able to do such a thing to these people’s livelihoods and environments and get richer off of their hardship?”

He nodded his head, not breaking eye contact with her. This was the most important thing that he had been told in a long time. We’re supposed to be heroes. Destroying people’s lives for gain is not heroic and there really is no need to treat anyone this way.

“That’s why Jamaica is first.”

The three of them walked into Charlotte’s Jamaican property and set their things down. She worked out of this place, but usually lodged elsewhere whenever she came. Buying small houses for people and trying to give them work and resources just wasn;t possible for her to do for a whole island where a lot of powerful people owned a lot of property and space. This was the best thing that she could think of to do to help Jamaica’s poorest and the declining economic situation that was making it’s people downtrodden.

Max and Chase were both looking at her as she typed in a code onto her arm, and whenever she finished, she nodded her head once and pulled down her sleeve. “This will be good. I know it will.” It wasn’t often that she doubted herself, but sometimes, she remembered the inner voices of her friends, ignoring her plans or discrediting her advice. Sometimes, she let it be her inner voice. This was one of those times. She was nervous. If she was wrong, she could wreck the island, be labelled a terrorist, have Davenport blacklist her and probably sure her for all she was now worth, AND, she had brought Max and Chase into this thing with her. She could hear Henry and Jasper now, saying her name sternly, with disdain, judging her, even though they hadn’t done such things in years… CHARLOTTE. Yeah, CHARLOTTE.

She hated the way it sounded in her mind, because she couldn’t remember if they ever actually spoke so harshly to her, or if she made them sound worse in her mind, both things were unsettling, especially when she was already timid. “Charlotte?” She heard Max and Chase both repeat. They had been calling her while her mind was running in circles. She looked up and they each reached for her hand, but they reached for the same hand and the three of them wound up in this awkward but still comfortable three way hand hold. The guys rolled their eyes at each other, but neither let go of her hand and they didn’t fight over it. They both knew her enough to know her face meant she needed a show of support. And they both cared enough to give it to her.

#Henry Danger #Lab Rats #The Thundermans #Chasing Thunderbolts Fic #League of Extraordinary Geniuses #LOEG Update #Nesha Fics #Multiverse Fics

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