#well i did some research about the copy of a .. thing so here's the second thing i found

[copperbadge]

Feeling a little overly perceived by Dr. Dodson right now, not gonna lie.

I'll throw a transcript under the cut, but both reading the transcript and listening to the video can be difficult as it's quite long, so here's some highlights. As always, these are the opinions of a specialist but only one specialist, so take with a grain of salt, and if you have research to add to this, please feel free to comment or reblog with it. I believe this presentation is from sometime in 2022.

ADHD appears to derive from issues in the corpus striatum in the brain. In most people, the corpus striatum filters out all but the most important input AND output; with ADHD, the things normally handled "outside of awareness" must be handled consciously.

People with ADHD don't see their emotions coming. Emotion is immediate, intense, and unfiltered, making therapies like CBT or ACT difficult, because you can learn the technique but you won't have time to employ it. Because people with ADHD have impulse control issues, expressing emotions "inappropriately" is common, leading people with ADHD to believe they can't trust themselves.

One function of ADHD-typical dysregulation is Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria, which nobody understands even a little. People who have it can't even adequately describe it to people who want to study it. It is intense, painful, and apparently impossible to control. Prevention is based in maladaptive behaviors designed to avoid it entirely (perfectionism, people pleasing, generalized withdrawal). The only currently known treatment is alpha agonist medication.

Lastly, by the age of twelve, a child with ADHD has likely received twenty thousand more "negative or corrective" messages than their neurotypical peers. (This isn't relevant to the rest, I just found it sufficiently horrifying to warrant inclusion. Fortunately for me, if I got 20,000 negative or corrective messages, I wasn't paying attention for most of them.)

Anyway, here's the transcript of the first half. I did this by copying and cleaning up the auto-transcript on YouTube, but I stopped at Question Time, so this is only the first half (the presentation). Transcription of the second half is available at YouTube.

There is suddenly a very large interest in the whole subject of emotional dysregulation and ADHD. That has been driven oddly enough by the Food and Drug Administration, which has just opened up several pathways that drug companies can study emotional dysregulation and whether or not their medications can get an FDA indication for emotional dysregulation. So it's sort of follow the money. Up until then, there was not a great deal of interest for ADHD emotional dysregulation.

We have to understand that the ADHD diagnostic criteria were not made for people like you and me, either practitioners or people who have ADHD or their families. They were designed for and made by people who do research and pretty much that's it. People who do research have to have criteria that they can physically see and count. "Little Johnny was up and out of his chair three times in the last hour," and you can write a three on your clipboard. Things which are invisible, not always there, hard to count, or even hidden by the patient, don't lend themselves to research very easily and so tend to be ignored. And so consequently this is one of the main reasons why emotional dysregulation -- until there was some other motive provided -- was pretty much ignored and disregarded.

Consequently ADHD right now, if you look at the 18 diagnostic criteria, are almost entirely behavioral criteria. What is the person doing? Not how is the person thinking, what is the patient feeling, how are they controlling their emotions, how are they sleeping. Things that are all very, very important to the person who has ADHD but which is essentially ignored by the diagnostic criteria.

Why should you care? Who really cares about this? Well, the definition of what ADHD is and isn't defines who and what will be studied. It defines who will actually get into a study and what questions will be asked. It defines who will be diagnosed with ADHD and who will not. One of the most common problems I get is with a secondary referral to me -- somebody clearly has ADHD but they're not pinging off the walls, they can sit and do their work, especially when they get into a hyperfocus, and so they're told they couldn't possibly have ADHD. When really they just have the inattentive subtype and they're not being driven by their behavior, their overt behavior. Therefore it defines who will get treatment, who will get insurance coverage for that treatment, and who will get accommodations in school when they're young and at the workplace when they're older.

Consequently we should also care because the other major components of ADHD get ignored. These are the ones that if you really stand back and look at it cause the greatest amount of impairment, the greatest amount of embarrassment, the greatest amount of just…problems in general. We're talking about cognition and thinking, that people with ADHD fundamentally think in a different way than do neurotypical people. They are able to engage with the tasks of their lives in a totally different way. Their ability to control their emotions and their behavior, control their emotional responses, tremendously affects their self-esteem and their self-definition. Who am I? What am I worth? What am I valued? Why am I valued in a certain way? What do other people think of me?

It affects tremendously the nature and healthiness of relationships. How you respond emotionally to the people in your realm makes a great deal of difference about the healthiness and gratification you get from your relationships. Being highly dysregulated in terms of your energy and emotions also affects deeply how well you sleep, how easy it is to fall asleep and awake refreshed, and of course it affects emotional dysregulation.

And this is probably, when you look at it in the long term and especially with adults, probably the most impairing part of the ADHD syndrome. The vast majority of people with ADHD have found ways around their academic and work performance, but they haven't found their way around their emotional reactions to the people and events of their lives.

At all points in the life cycle -- child, adolescent, adult, and elderly -- people who have ADHD nervous systems lead intense, passionate lives. Their highs are higher, their lows are lower, all of their emotions are much more intense. And that really is what we're talking about: not really the quality of the emotions -- people who have ADHD have the same types of emotions for the same reasons that everybody else does. What we're talking here, in terms of dysregulation, is two things: one, the expression of emotions, being able to choose whether or not you let an emotion out. And then, when you do decide to express it, how intensely that emotion is experienced and expressed by you as a unique individual.

Consequently just about everybody with ADHD, but especially little children, are always at some sort of risk of being overwhelmed by their own emotions from within themselves. This is something that needs to be really emphasized: a lot of people with ADHD grow up not being able to trust themselves.

So why is this happening, especially to people with ADHD? I think that just about everybody now would agree that ADHD is primarily a problem of insufficient inhibition, being able to slow down and keep things from happening. If you look at the mass of the human brain, 85% of all the nerves in your brain and out in your nervous system are inhibitory in function. We happen to be aware of the other 15% because we can see what happens when those nerves are used: they create movement, they create emotions, they create our experience and memory. We have to remember they are a minority of the actual mass of the human brain.

Most of what happens inside the brain occurs outside of awareness. What happens is the brain starts something, it gets it moving, and then uses inhibition to guide that toward the destination it wants. It's like shooting off a rocket -- shooting it off is the easy part, guiding it to where you want it to go is the hard part.

When you look at where stimulant class medications work, they work solely in the deep areas of the brain down in the basal ganglia, and especially in an area called the corpus striatum, which is just Latin for a "striped body". That's how it looks when you look at it -- it's got many very fine stripes in it. This area, the corpus striatum, is almost entirely inhibitory in function. What it does is that it inhibits neurological input and output to just the one piece of information or one action that happens to be most important at that time. Everything else gets handled, but it gets handled out of awareness.

Probably the easiest place to see this in action is when we're driving a car. Driving a car is the most difficult thing that the average human being ever has to learn how to do. It's a very difficult process, if anybody has ever had an adolescent learning to drive. But once we learn how to drive a car we do it largely outside of our own conscious awareness. We can drive along, talk to the person on the seat next to us, think about what we're going to have for dinner, sing along to the radio, and not really pay attention, conscious attention, to what's going on around us. But if suddenly something is out in front of the car, even before our conscious brain can process what that thing is, our corpus striatum has already handled it. Slam on the brakes, swerve to miss it, start to question that person's parentage, in the twinkling of an eye. The corpus striatum has been scanning everything, handling everything.

So basically what ADHD is, is that relative lack of inhibition that should be there. Inattention, which is a cardinal feature of ADHD, is the relative lack of the inhibition of other inputs or distractions. When we look at physiologically what's happening, we don't actually pay attention to one thing. Neurologically, we suppress every other thing we might engage with except the one thing that we want. It is maximally inefficient in that way.

Impulsivity is a relative lack of inhibition, of the expression of actions and emotions before you can think about them and make decisions about that expression. Hyperactivity is the relative lack of inhibition of physical and mental activity. When the physical activity of the hyperactive little boy who's pinging off a wall goes away in adolescence, they're still very much mentally active in their own brains.

So what? The “so what” for most of us is that when this area of the brain is not working as it should, people cannot regulate the experience and expression of their emotions. Emotions are experienced as completely unmodified and unscreened. The word that most people use is that they are raw. They come out without any modification at all, they go in without any modification at all. People can see this in hyperacusis, where somebody chewing or the conversation across the restaurant comes in loud and clear because it can't be screened out.

All this is tremendously overwhelming. We get overwhelmed by entirely too much input, and the impulse to have entirely too much output. It's exhausting, and when it does get inappropriately expressed it's embarrassing, so consequently people with ADHD must always be vigilant of themselves.

Now, when we look at the traditional therapies that have been used, or tried to be used, with ADHD, they have had very very poor track records. They're largely ineffective in helping people control the expression of what they think and feel. The reason for this is that people with ADHD don't see their own emotions, their own actions, coming. They find out about their emotions and actions the same way everybody else does: it's already out there before they even know that it's coming. Consequently they don't have the time and the warning to use the techniques and new skills that they may have learned in behavior modification therapy, or in cognitive therapy. They learned them, learned them perfectly well, but the cat’s out of the bag before they can make use of them.

Right now, as we sit here today, medications are the only thing we have to offer that have a proven track record, because they're there all the time. We have two basic groups: we have the stimulant class medications which are amphetamine, methylphenidate, et cetera, which help directly with inhibition. They help slow things down, they help inhibit both input that would distract us and output. It gives you the same two seconds that everybody else has, to see an emotion or an action coming up, to play it out in your mind. “If this happens then this will happen, then that'll happen. Oh, I don't want that to happen, I'll redirect it.”

The alpha agonist, of which we have two -- guanfacine and clonidine -- inhibit the energy driving the speed and intensity of response. Interesting enough, when we look at just clean effectiveness, when we measure how effective is this treatment, the alpha agonists are significantly more effective than are the stimulants. Usually that's kind of a false choice, because most people end up taking both classes of medication.

A very special type, I think, of emotional dysregulation is -- again a terrible technical term -- what's called Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria. We actually don't know what it is. It's much too early to tell. But it does seem to be a thing with which many people with ADHD identify. There was a brief article from ADDitude that got posted on Reddit, on their subreddit on ADHD; that particular posting got twice as many responses, in less than a month, than any other posting that had ever been put on that subreddit. It really touched a lot of people in a strong way.

In my own checklist, when I'm asking about Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria, the question I have is: “For your entire life, in other words going all the way back into childhood, have you always been much more sensitive than other people you know to rejection, teasing, criticism, or your own perception that you’ve failed or fallen short?” This is directly from a psychiatric textbook, an old one, and it's the definition of a technical term, for psychiatrists called Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria.

It's important to note, this is all a matter of degree. No one likes being rejected or criticized. Everybody hates it when we fail, we fall short, especially in front of other people. Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria is much more intense, and is much more than this universal discomfort.

When they were originally doing the research on this particular idea, 45 years ago, they wanted to get that intensity right up there in the name, and so they chose the word dysphoria -- which unfortunately happens to be Greek -- but it means “unbearable”. Because that was the description they were getting from people over and over and over again. Again, for reasons unknown, people with rejection sensitivity have trouble describing what the intense emotion is all about. They can describe its intensity -- “it's awful, it's terrible, it's catastrophic,” -- but not the quality of the mood. And so, over and over again, these research subjects would finally just tell the researcher, “Look, man, back off. I can't find words to tell you what this awful feeling feels like, but I want you to know I can hardly stand it.” And so that's where the word dysphoria came from. A researcher at Harvard who decided to put it into Greek, but that unbearable quality is very much a part of what's going on, a part of the experience of Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria.

It's extremely common in people with ADHD; my guess is that about 95% of my patients report it as a significant impairment, and about a third of my patients say that it is by far the most impairing part of their ADHD. For the majority of people, and most occurrences, it is not that particularly disruptive, but when it hits, it turns your life upside down.

So how is rejection sensitivity experienced? There's no warning. It hits out of the blue; there's no way to protect yourself from it. It happens all at once, it goes from zero to a hundred percent instantaneously. It is commonly experienced as being physically painful, as if someone just punched you in the chest or punched you in the stomach -- there's an aching in the core of your being.

Once it gets started it seems to be largely uncontrollable until it's run its course, whatever it is. The quality of the mood is indescribable. Most people struggle to find any words at all to describe this feeling, even though it's massively intense. The duration can be a few minutes to several months. It's a very potent experience and can make it very difficult to risk ever being rejected or criticized again.

If this very intense emotional reaction is internalized, it looks for all the world like an instantaneous major depression, complete with suicidal thinking. And so a lot of times people do get a diagnosis of major depression, because the clinician they're working with fails to pick up the triggered, instantaneous nature of the onset of that depressive-looking syndrome. If it's externalized, it presents as a rage that is directed at the person or situation that wounded them so terribly. In fact, being “wounded” is is a very common description. This sort of sudden trigger change, with an intense emotional response, not uncommonly leads to a misdiagnosis of borderline character organization.

So if you can't see it coming, and you can't do anything once it's happened, how do people try and protect themselves from episodes of rejection sensitivity happening in the first place? Some people use perfectionism; they try to be above reproach. They feel driven to be the very best at everything they do. These are the penultimate overachievers. It works, but it's also an absolutely terrible, driven way in which to live.

By far the most common response is that people become people pleasers. They are constantly scanning everybody around them and trying to figure out what that person wants or would approve of, and that's what they give them, so much so that it is the to the exclusion of what they want for their own lives. These are people who take care of others, please others, to the exclusion of any sort of gratification in their own lives.

Another very common way that people try to deal with this is that they give up trying anything new, giving up anything in which they might fail or be embarrassed. I have hundreds of patients who have never been able to apply for a job or ask someone of the opposite sex out for a date. Just the imagination of being told no is so frightening, so devastating, that they just say, “No, I'm not going there. I'll sit this one out.”

One of the most effective ways of dealing with this are the alpha agonist medications, and when they work they can be almost completely effective. Alpha agonist again is a tongue twisting name, but it's not as tongue-twisting as the full name, which is alpha-2 selective adrenergic agonists. So you can see why we shorten it a bit. They were originally blood pressure medications that came on the market in the early 1980s. They worked very poorly -- when they did work, at most they lowered blood pressure about 10%, which was measurable but it still required other things that needed to be done in order to get most people's blood pressure down into a therapeutic range.

We have two of them, guanfacine which was marketed both as immediate release and extended release under the name of Intuniv, and clonidine, which was marketed under the trade name of Kapvay, both as an immediate release product and as a delayed release product. They have been used as a treatment of the hyperactive component of ADHD for more than 30 years, so these are not new medications for the field of ADHD. They're very much the treatment of choice for the “hyperactive, disruptive, and obnoxious little boy” that is what most people have in their minds when they consider the notion of “What does a person with ADHD look like?”

The exact mechanism of action of these medications both in ADHD and especially in rejection sensitivity is highly unclear. We really don't know -- we have a couple of ideas but they are very definitely theoretical. The only thing that we know for sure is that the stimulants don't work by stimulating anything, and that the alpha agonists don't work by being alpha agonists. How they do work is completely unknown.

We have two medications, they seem to work equally well, so there's nothing that would lead you to choose one over the other. The problem is that the robust response that we're looking for that really changes people's lives, is disappointingly low -- at about 30% to either molecule. Luckily that 30% is a different 30% of people, so that 30% of people get a good response to guanfacine but it's largely a different 30% that get a response to clonidine. So if the first medication tried does not work, it makes good clinical sense that that one should be stopped and the other one tried. There was an unfortunately worded sentence in an article I wrote for ADDitude several years ago that gave the impression that you could use the two medications together; they should not be used together. You try one, if that doesn't work you try the other.

The typical dose of either one is in the range of three milligrams of guanfacine per day or about three tenths of a milligram of clonidine per day. If you take all the people who get a good robust response to either one of these medications, about 80% are going to end up at these doses, so it's by far the most common dose.

There are of course side effects. Anything that's going to adjust the adrenaline system of the body is going to have the potential for sedation as a side effect, and this does occur for about 25% of people. It's usually mild and it does go away -- over a period of several months. So a person has to be fairly patient with that. It can cause dry mouth, and it's by a different mechanism then the stimulants can cause dry mouth, so the two of them together can really make your mouth cottony dry. And the third one is an accentuation of a universal experience we've all had, when we stand up quickly and suddenly and we get dizzy, get kind of a head rush, vision goes a bit gray. The technical term for it is orthostasis. And this can happen more frequently when you take the alpha agonist medications.

The benefits of the alpha agonist medications take a while to develop. When you change the dose it takes five days for the benefits to develop, so once again they're not like the stimulants where what you see is what you get at one hour. It takes a while for these medications to work and to see all that they can do.

Now just as a side note, Strattera has been looked at in two studies for emotional dysregulation and the results have been what they call mixed. If they did work it was only to a very minimal degree, almost undetectable, so Strattera does not seem to be a medication one could use and expect to have it help with emotional dysregulation.

So in summary, emotional dysregulation is a basic feature of ADHD, is almost universal in ADHD, and it should be considered as a core symptom of ADHD that ought to be evaluated in every initial evaluation. Rejection sensitivity…it's unclear yet -- this is an old concept that has only been brought up in the last couple of years. Its exact nature is still unclear. It does seem to be a specific form of emotional dysregulation, especially in regard that it does respond very well to medication. But again, how it fits into emotional dysregulation is completely unclear at this point. It does seem to be something that's really important, though. It is a thing that resonates with a large number of people with ADHD.

#adhd #sam has adhd #rejection sensitive dysphoria #RSD #emotional dysregulation #Youtube

[hauntedwitch04]

You can call me Daddy

Rockstar! Remus Lupin x Reader

Words: about 1.8k words

Warnings: smutty remmy, sexy rockstar, dirty talk and remus fucking lupin that is alreadya a warning himself.

Author's note: I'm writing something like five fanfiction at the same time, but I had this idea and I couldn't not write this down. I love the idea if the Maraurders as a band (like I think they are preatty much the copy of the Maneskin that I LOVE so...) and I LOVE BASSIST REMUS, so here for you our sexy Moony

Requests are open I Ask

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You still don't know how the with your friend managed to get into this party, but you know for sure that this is a night to remember.

Through some friends of hers, she managed to find out that there was going to be a birthday party of some super-rich celebrity at a mansion in Los Angeles, and after some research and figuring out where it was, we managed to get in, making believe that we were up-and-coming Versace models and that we had been invited to the party at the last minute and had not been put on the list. The guard looked at us carefully and then let us through, and you couldn't help but breathe a sigh of relief. As soon as you walked in you looked around and couldn't hold back your astonishment.

The mansion is beautiful, huge and full of lights and smoke machines that create a magical and surreal atmosphere. Music and people fill the room until you almost burst, but you can't help but move in time to the music as the alcohol flows through your veins. You down drink after drink, without realizing it, the important thing is to have a good time.You find yourself dancing back to back with actors or singing songs at the top of your lungs with important TV hosts, before you realize that all this crowd and the air heavy with smoke, sweat and alcohol is suffocating you, so you nod to your friend that you would go outside for a moment to get some air.

You walk over to the nearest French door, which overlooks a hidden part of the garden. As soon as you are outside, you lean against the wall and can't help but breathe a sigh of relief. You stay a few seconds in the silence of the night, taking advantage of the cold that seems to surround you after the incredible heat that the bodies inside that room were causing. You smile, thinking that at least here you can find a moment of peace, until you hear a voice.

"Did you run away too?" A boy asks, and you suddenly turn around and see him there, a little further away from you, also leaning against the wall, a cigarette between his lips. You can't really see his face, but you can tell he's a good-looking guy, tall and muscular as thin as he may look. He's wearing skinny jean pants, a Pink Floyd T-shirt, and a black leather jacket, with stupidly overdressed shoes.

"Yeah, the situation was becoming too suffocating." I shyly confess to the faceless boy.

"I understand you. I hate these stupid parties full of people, the situation always gets out of hand, and before long someone will get hurt, if it hasn't happened already." He complains.

"How come so if here?" You ask curiously, aided by the courage that alcohol brings.

"My friends dragged me along. If it were up to me, I would have spent this evening in a completely different way." He confesses, throwing his cigarette to the ground after taking one last drag. The smoke comes sensually out of his mouth, and you can't help but tighten your legs at that gesture, praying that he hasn't noticed.

"And how would you have spent the evening?" You whisper in a sensual tone, not knowing where all that brazenness really came from. You're not usually such a straightforward girl, especially when it comes to flirting with strangers.

"Well sweetheart, I would for example have a couple of ideas on how to spend a night with you, but they are too vulgar for an angel like you." He says moving closer, but still remaining in the half-light. I feel his breath close to my face and can't help but hold back a groan at the impure things those fingers could do on me.

"Do you really think I am an angel?" You ask as you move closer in turn, so close that your lips are almost touching. For a moment you think about how impossibly beautiful this situation is, a few hours earlier you were lying on the couch at your house eating chips and watching your favorite show and now you're at a party full of celebrities and now you're flirting with a guy definitely out of your range, and he's playing along with you. Life is truly full of surprises.

"Oh no you darling look like the purest of all angels, and I love girls who look innocent but are real demons in bed." He continues, moving closer , kissing your neck gently, leaving you the time and space to say no, but you don't want to say no, you want him and you want nothing more than to drag him to the nearest surface to fuck until you are voiceless with all the moans you will emit.

"Well I could always give you a demonstration." You answer as he continues his attack on your neck, and you run your hands through his disheveled hair.

"How can I say no to such a beautiful girl." He says pulling away from you. "But not here honey, there are too many people who would hear you shout my name, and that is a pleasure that is granted only to me." He continues, leading you toward the exit. In a sobering moment you manage to remember your friend and tell him you were going inside to warn her. He nods and tells you he would be waiting for you by the gate. Quickly you go inside and immediately find your friend intent on making out with a fairly tall blond girl. You quickly approach her and tell her that you would not be going home with her this evening. She looks at you and smiles before yelling at you to be careful and use a condom, but you are already far away and in response you raise your middle finger at her.

You see him at the gate on a blazing black motorcycle with a helmet for you in his hand. You put it on and cling to him as you get on the bike, as your excitement about what is about to happen rises and you can't help but get wet.

A few minutes pass before we find ourselves in front of the doors of a huge building. Quickly he gets out of the vehicle, having parked there in front, and we run to the entrance. The boy, still wearing his helmet, waves to the doorman, who waves back, and quickly we get on the first elevator we see. He crushes the twenty-first floor as you take off your helmet and realize something.

"My name is Y/N." You say confidently, looking at his face still covered by the black helmet. "I never told you my name." You go on laughing.

"You don't know mine either." He counter laughs as well, patting my arm, and you can't help but laugh at the situation.

"Of course fate is strange I went from lying on my couch in my pajamas to getting drunk with my friend to fucking a stranger." You say as you move closer to him, kissing him on the neck, gripped by a jolt of courage.

"And do you regret it?" He asks with a half groan.

"Not by a single second." You whisper, continuing to leave marks on his neck, as he had done to you at the party.

As soon as the elevator stops you realize you are already in his apartment. You quickly get out and he drags you toward the bedroom, taking off his helmet and throwing yours on the couch in the hall you pass as well. As soon as you reach the room his lips glue themselves to yours and a power struggle begins between the two of you. Clothes fall off like autumn leaves and suddenly you both find yourselves naked lying on the soft sheets of the bed.

"Remus, my name is Remus." He says panting as he kisses your breasts, reaching down. "But you can call me Daddy, angel." At those words you can't help but let out another moan, which you would be ashamed of if you were sober enough, but your mind is too clouded with pleasure.

His lips find the most delicate spot on your body and attack it like a child sucking on a lollipop, and the moans that seemed too loud before seem like whispers compared to those coming from your lips now. His fingers enter your vagina not too gently, and instinctively you cling to his hair, pushing his face between your legs.

"I knew that behind that angel look was the most beautiful demon." He says, returning to kiss your lips after making you orgasm, with still your taste on his lips. "What do you want honey, you have to tell me or I don't know how to help you."

"I want you, all of you." You say panting, while still recovering from the pleasure you just received. " I want you to fuck me so hard I can't walk straight tomorrow."

"Your every wish is an order princess." He says in a whisper before entering me with his huge cock. The pleasure you feel right now, you thought did not exist.

You continue fucking until dawn, rolling up on yourself and in the blankets, orgasm after orgasm. You fall asleep at sunrise in the arms of the unknown boy.

You wake up after a few hours, alone in bed, hearing the sound of a shower running in the next room, realizing that your lover has gone to take a shower. Still sleepy and sore from all that sex you reach for your phone in your jacket pocket and see thirty missed calls from your friend and at least fifty texts always from her.

Immediately you call her, thinking something serious has happened, but as soon as the phone stops ringing you hear her screaming in your ear.

"Do you realize what happened last night?!?!" She shouts like a squawking hen.

"I thought you didn't mind, you said you were okay with it." Confused reply.

"I didn't resent it, but do you realize who you slept with?"

"With...Remus?" You say, unconvinced by your answer.

"Yeah with Remus freaking Lupin! The fucking bassist of the Maraurders!" Your friend says excitedly, but you're already no longer listening as she goes on to tell how she found out, all your mind can process are just two words: oh fuck.

#remus lupin smut #remus lupin au #remus lupin x reader fluff #remus lupin x reader #bassist!remus #rockstar!au #band!marauders #remus lupin imagine #remus x reader

[agendabymooner]

Pookie bear how are yaaaa 😭 hope your research is going well, mine is... *side eyes empty doc* well.

Ours is supposed to be a product development of some sort of food that doesn't exist yet, so my group is exploring the use of pinipig as oatmeal replacement in food bars. Revolutionary ✨

Anyway HOW ARE YOU that is my first question

My second one is: why are you so amazing??

And my last one: which among the Dad Drivers do you see would be the dad that would eat whatever their kids set in front of them, even if it looks inedible 😭

Love you so much ❤️✨

it's 1 am here and i have no intention of going to sleep~

imma answer the last question first: which dad!f1 driver would eat whatever food their kids would set in front of them?

now i have like a thought in mind: which dad!f1 driver would eat whatever food because of a reason? just hear me out~

daniel ricciardo's kid (say beau ricciardo) would think that he's so clever when it comes to pranking his dad (mind you, he would be as young as six - but he's a fucking menace bc he's literally danny's copy). beau would say that, "daddy i made food with mummy!" then daniel would get excited, but beau would hand him a plate of those plastic food and veggies you get from those sets of grocery store toys. beau would be laughing and would say, "hah! i got you!" then daniel would fuck around a little bit and actually put a plastic carrot in his mouth with a nonchalant shrug. beau would look at daniel like, "oh my god my dad is batshit 😟"

charles leclerc's eldest twins, hervé and jules, would attempt to bake chocolate cookies from scratch - uncle estie is so freaking good at baking cookies - and charles was their guinea pig. they'd proudly present it to him and he would be so freaking hungry that he just put a chunk of it in his mouth. the cookie he ate was salty but he wanted to appease his kids so bad that he just smiled and nodded as if it was good (he eventually spat it out and jules and hervé pretty much accepted that their cookies were shit because it was their first try).

sebastian vettel would genuinely eat the food his kids made for him and would even critique it. he did that with his foster daughter barbie when she first cooked the cuisine that she was taught before and he actually loved it- though he did ask if barbie could add more chicken into the adobo.

yuki tsunoda and his daughter hana would make a bento together so she can have some for her lunch in school. well, yuki would of course make her food because her lunch needs to be edible but hana, who was just preschool age, would be messing around with the rice and the meat for the rice and even mix in some sauce into it and would tell yuki, "papa, eat breakfast!" with the proudest grin on her face. yuki would eat it and would actually love the food- though he was kind of worried what she had put into it because he wasn't looking.

note: to answer your first questions 1) i am ✨on my seasonal depression shit and i actually am going to a clinic for a check up tomorrow✨ and 2) if i was amazing i would not be sad and frustrated rn 😆

i do hope that your research goes well! why is product development a big thing in filipino curriculums tho- i coulda sworn that i've heard at least some of my filo peers (friends) talk to me about product development. but i hope you're doing alright bb! 💓

#formula one imagine #formula one headcanon #f1 headcanons #charles leclerc #yuki tsunoda #sebastian vettel #daniel ricciardo #f1 scenario #formula one dad

[nanowrimo]

How to Write Through Second Book Syndrome

Second Book Syndrome is a unique experience that can affect any writer. Today, author Uju Asika talks about what she learned while tackling Second Book Syndrome and gives advice on navigating it.  There’s something immensely powerful about completing your first book. For a brief moment, you feel invincible. After all, pretty much everyone you meet thinks they have a book in them, but not many people actually sit down to write it.

I wrote my first book, Bringing Up Race, in the midst of a global pandemic. Writing my next book, a picture book for younger readers, was a much less stressful experience. So it was actually with my third book, aimed at grownups again, that Second Book Syndrome kicked in.

You’ve probably heard of sophomore album syndrome (see Lauryn Hill, The Stone Roses) aka the sophomore slump that, apparently, can happen to anyone from athletes to second year college students.

Second Book Syndrome isn’t talked about as much and yet it affects almost every author on some level. Whether you’re a million-copy seller, a mid-list author or a relative newbie, you grapple with the same insecurities and nightmare scenarios. How do I write something as good as or better than my last book? If my first book did well, was it just a fluke? If my first book sold poorly, is this book my last shot? Will it meet my readers’ expectations or am I going to get troll-bombed on Goodreads? Am I establishing an author brand or have I niched myself into a corner? Can I experiment with voice or will I get laughed at by critics? Do I even have it in me to write a WHOLE OTHER BOOK?

Now that you’ve finished at least one book, you might feel like you’ve got this shit nailed. But the tricky thing about writing is that every time you open a blank page, you are starting from scratch. And every time you face a blank page, you are forced to meet yourself there, again and again. No matter whether you’re writing fiction or nonfiction. There’s no escaping yourself and that’s what makes it so hard, so vulnerable and potentially, so transformative.

My latest book, Raising Boys Who Do Better: A Hopeful Guide for a New Generation, came out last month. Foolishly, I had it in the back of my mind that writing this book would be a relative breeze. In some ways, it was harder. I had so much Resistance — the negative force that pushes back when you try to do something that matters, as Steve Pressfield talks about in The War of Art.

I also had to deal with the impostor syndrome (a close cousin of Second Book Syndrome) that whispered in my ear that I didn’t have another book in me. That I had used up all my smart ideas and pretty words. That I should stick to short form content and leave the real writing to the professionals.

So how did I get over this? What can you do when you’re in the throes of Second Book Syndrome and feeling like you’ll never write another sentence again? Here are a few things that helped me:

Make a Plan

If you identify as a ‘pantser’ rather than a ‘plotter’, you’re probably shaking your head at this. But it doesn’t have to be a full proposal or outline. Your plan can be as simple as a journal entry, a short mission statement, a sentence describing your premise, or a note to self about what you’d like your reader to learn, feel and experience. Making a plan and reviewing it from time to time can help keep your project alive when you’re suffering from self-doubt, comparisonitis and other symptoms of Second Book Syndrome.

Give Yourself Permission

The only way to release yourself from the pressure of writing your next book is to liberate yourself. Give yourself permission to write badly. I mean, really really badly. Permission to write something that sounds nothing like what you wrote before. Permission to play, to dream, to procrastinate. Permission to research until your head is bursting. For every project, I always keep a notebook so I can write by hand and make a mess and scribble pages of absolute drivel. I can spend hours writing around the edges of what I’m actually trying to explore. I encourage you to start every new project by writing yourself a permission slip. When you give yourself permission, the words might stick and splutter for a while but eventually, they flow. After that, the magic is in the edit.

Drown Out the Noise

We’re surrounded by noise all day, from social media traffic to our own mental chatter to those Amazon reviews (gulp). It’s hugely distracting and can be a drain on your creativity and confidence. Look for ways to drown this out, whether that’s through meditation, writing retreats, long nature walks or journalling. My simplest trick is to put on some noise-cancelling headphones and turn the music up. This might sound counterintuitive but listening to music puts me in a headspace for writing without any filters. Also, as a mother who writes around her family life (the kitchen table is my office), I’ve used headphones for years to signal that I’m at work and to keep the cacophony of my kids at bay.

Get Drunk

When you have another book to write, it’s easy to feel lost at the beginning. What to write and how to say it? When this happens, I immerse myself in storytelling. The poet Charles Baudelaire famously said one should ‘Always Be Drunk’ and it’s a quote that I live by. I don’t mean Hemingway-style binges, I mean being drunk on stories. I consume books, podcasts, films, TV shows, songs, art shows, conversations, eavesdropping, everyday life. I feed my habit and my habit feeds my writing.

Focus on What You Can Control

Creativity is mostly trial and error. Art is subjective and you can’t control how your work will be received by an audience or by critics. Often, success hinges on an indefinable mix of luck, talent, hard work, timing, money, network, reputation and… did I mention luck? Through all this, the only thing you can control is how you show up. I do my best to show up for my readers in a way that’s engaging, impactful and entertaining — both on the page and in real life. Other than that, the rest is not up to me. All I can do is keep showing up.

Track Changes

When you’re editing a piece of work, it can be helpful to track changes on a document. But this isn’t what I’m talking about here. What I mean is keeping track of the changes that happen because you had the courage to put your work into the world. I screenshot comments from readers on social media who tell me my books have changed the way they think about race and identity. I save a file of testimonials from parents who say I’ve shaped how they talk to their children about these tricky topics. I also keep notes on what I’ve learned and how I’ve grown while writing a book. All this is a reminder that so much of writing (and reading) isn’t just about the product or the story but about who we are becoming through the process.

Lean On Your People

Probably the most useful thing you can do as a writer is to find your people and lean on them. Obviously your closest friend/partner/family member who enjoys your writing or offers great advice can be invaluable. But as a writer, your people are other writers and it’s essential that you seek them out. Follow #writercommunity hashtags on social media, join a writers’ group or membership, befriend other newbie authors when your book comes out. You need to be in community with other writers who get it. Especially when Third Book Syndrome comes knocking…

NaNoWriMo Writers Board member Uju Asika is a multi-award nominated blogger, former journalist and TV screenwriter. She is the author of Bringing Up Race: How to Raise a Kind Child in a Prejudiced World and the picture book A World for Me and You (Where Everyone Is Welcome). Her new book Raising Boys Who Do Better: A Hopeful Guide for a New Generation came out on June 1. You can order the book for free worldwide delivery on Wordery: https://wordery.com/raising-boys-who-do-better-uju-asika-9780241608418

Uju is launching a creative writing service for developing and aspiring writers, learn more here!

#nanowrimo #writing #writing advice #second book syndrome #inspiration #writer's life #by nano guest #uju asika

[rays-of-fire-and-ice]

The Music Goes On and On

Rating: K/General

Setting: in the decade before the main story.

Synopsis: Shinji is going about his daily life at his job in a music store, until he sees an old face from the past.

AN: the winner of my first poll! This was fun to write, so thank you to everyone who voted for it!

I hope I did Shinji justice here. He's a character I love, and I've always wanted to know what he and Visoreds did after escaping the the Living world and before they introduced themselves to Ichigo. I've broached the topic before in As Months Go By, As Season Change part II, but I wanted to write a specific instance of his life in the World of the Living. I had intended this to be more comedic, but well...it's me, and it ended up more angsty with one sappy moment.

In terms of research, I looked into Japanese 1990’s music and the workforce during the 1970’s. I'll briefly go over it here, but if you want to skip it and get to the fic, continue to the line break before the story begins.

For music, I mainly used information from this article about Japanese jazz bands, doing Youtube searches for 1990s Japanese music, and searching for what records stores in Japan typically look like.

The songs, albums, and bands mentioned in this fic are:

B'z: a Japanese rock duo who sold millions of albums during the 1990's. They're one of Japan's best-selling artists even to this day, having sold over 80 million albums. Sasori ni sasa reta by Kimidori Review by Glay: this was one of the best-selling albums in Japan for 1997, and sold over 2 million copies in it's first week. Casiopea: a Japanese jazz fusion band who have created over 40 albums as of the time of writing this fic. They've been active since the 1970's, and have gone through four phases with different band members; in this story, they're in their second phase. Light and Shadow by Casiopea Casiopea by Casiopea Yasuko Agawa: a Japanese jazz and blues singer. Before releasing her debut album, Love-Bird, in 1978, she starred in movies in the early 1970’s. This included the Bloodthirst Trilogy, a Japanese horror film trilogy that involves unconnected stories about vampires. Agawa starred in Chi o suu bara, which is the final film in the trilogy and it's title has been translated to Evil of Dracula in English. Love-Bird by Yasuko Agawa All Right by Me by Yasuko Agawa Scenery by Ryo Fuuki (also mentioned in As Months Go By, As Season Change part II)

In terms of the workforce research, I had to change the timeline in light of what I found. Rather than seeing a coworker Shinji knew from 30 years ago, it's now 21 years. This is because the store they worked at together, Yodobashi Camera, opened it's first store in 1975, and in this fic Shinji got a job with the company a year later. In it's early years, the stores primarily sold cameras and photography equipment, but eventually branched off into other technology and home electronics such as TVs and PCs. Nowadays it's online version is incredibly popular and one of Japan's most visited online shopping platforms. Why a camera store? I can't explain why, but I have this weird feeling that Shinji might've worked in a camera store at some point. Maybe because old camera's used to have inverted lenses, meaning they could be upside down (and we all know how Shinji feels about things that are inverted).

Finally, there's a slight joke with the name Shinji chooses to use here. From what I saw in my research, ‘Mako’ can use the same Kanji characters as ‘Shinji’, (which are ‘真子‘ and if I’m not mistaken have the same meanings of ‘truth’/’sincerity’ and ‘children’) but both names can also be spelled using other Kanji characters too (but it changes the meaning of the name). While ‘Mako’ tends to be primarily a girl's name, it seems it can also be a boy’s name too, and from what I can see, the spelling of it can be same for both boys and girls when using the same characters as ‘Shinji’. If I got any of this wrong, please let me know so I can change it. My sources for all of this were here and here.

Anyway, I hope you all enjoy this!

______________________________________

The bell above the music store’s entrance rings as the latest customer leaves. Shinji doesn’t glance their way, taking and unfurling a poster of B’z from his cart. After pinning it to the wall, he lifts out a box of CDs to restock the ‘New Releases’ display rack at the front.

 Karakura Beats Records Store is empty save for him and Kana, who resumes pricing the latest shipment of vinyls behind the cash register. The morning sunlight pours in through the many posters and notices stuck to the windows facing out on to the quiet street, casting blocks of shadow over the many vinyls and CDs.

From the speakers high up on the walls, a tune he’s never heard before begins to play quietly through the air. Shinji drums his fingers on the CD rack to the tune in between stacking in copies of ‘Review’ – which will no doubt be gone by the end of the week if the hype around the album and the sales figures from other music stores are to be believed.

Eventually, he’s swaying his body to the beat too. “Yo, Kana-san!”

She looks up, her bright, dyed hair falling over one shoulder. “Yeah?”

“Which track is this?” he asks, still swaying as he tops up the rack the. “It’s a good one, I might buy the album if the rest is any good.”

“ ‘Sasori ni sasa reta’ by Kimidori.” She grins. “I knew I could get you to like something I like.”

“Didn’t think you’d like hip hop.”

“Not much of it, but I heard this one when I was in my last year of high school.”

Done with the CDs, Shinji returns to his cart and rolls it behind the cash register. “Ya done with those?” he says, pointing at the vinyls.

Sticking a price on the top one, Kana picks up the pile and drops them into the cardboard box that just had 'Review' in it. “Done now.”

He goes to pick it up, but blinks down at the cover. There’s three shadows on a white surface, and above them with is a de-saturated sky, and running along the middle is a dark lake and the silhouettes of hills and houses. The album’s title is in English, as is the band name. Even so, he recognises the name without having to read the blue slip on the vinyl’s side with a translation. “Huh, when did this come out?”

“In September. The old drummer came back, apparently.”

“Ya mean Jimbo Akira?”

“Yeah, but it’s got a guest drummer too.” Kana cocks an eyebrow at him. “I’m surprised you don’t know. You like Casiopea, right?”

Shinji shrugs. “Some of their stuff, sure. I can take ‘em or leave them, just surprised I didn’t know about this one.”

“They release something every year, right?” Kana says, moving on to the next stacks of vinyls and CDs to price. “Shouldn’t be too surprising.”

No, it shouldn’t. He’d been listening to their music since their self-titled debut album in 1979, and even though he’d lost some interest in their music by the late 1980’s, he still kept tabs on them. But then, even after being in the world for as long as he has, the passage of time is so different it sometimes escapes him.

Resisting the urge to shake his head, Shinji puts two other boxes of CDs and vinyls Kana had prepared into his cart, and rolls it down the right-side aisle.

Hecomes to a stop at his favorite section. Written above the display racks and cupboards is ‘Jazz’. When he’d started here three months ago, while he'd been impressed the store's collection was better than others he'd come across, the section had been smaller and in desperate need to of a wider range of artists. After showing his extensive knowledge about jazz and blues music had been one of the reason’s he’d been hired by he and Kana’s manager.

Aside from the usual roles in customer services, he’d been tasked with refurbished the store a little, putting up posters for bands and music artists on the walls and redoing the titles over each genre section. While doing the latter task, he had to withhold the temptation to write every genre name upside down – he’d tried to argue it would make them stand out from other stores, but backed down when Kana protested against the idea, saying ti would confuse customers.

The jazz section was his unofficial space in the whole store, the one where he got to arrange it as he wanted. The entire row against the wall has a wide variety of artists, from the famous to the up and coming to local talent. He goes to the where the rest of Casiopea’s discography is and clears a space for the vinyls.

The bell rings again. Kana greets their new customer from the counter and offers assistance. Judging from the voice that thanks her, the person is elderly.

Shinji doesn’t listen to the rest, but as he makes his way down the middle aisle to stack some vinyls and CDs in the ‘Rock’ section, the older man remains in his peripheral. He takes out the box, balancing it on the rack with his arm over the top, and unloads the vinyls two at a time into an empty space with the others. He frowns at the sensation in the back of his mind; something nags in the back of his mind, begging him to look at the man.

The bell rings again. This time by the sounds of it, it’s one of their regulars, a young woman who’s name doesn’t remember. She and Kana chatter away, discussing the weather and family. It’s so ordinary, so far away from all of the worlds he’s ever known. He hasn’t been in the Soul Society for decades, and yet there are times like now when it feels like only yesterday he was a captain.

With all the vinyls stacked in, he begins to lift the almost empty box back into the cart. However, his arm bumps into someone, clattering the records inside. Shinji turns to apologize, but his throat closes up involuntarily when he sees it’s the older man from before.

“Oh, sorry, please excuse…” The old man trails off.

Shinji frowns, that nagging sensation getting stronger now that he has a closer look at the man. He’s not as old as he thought. His hair is greying, but there’s still some dark hair on the top of his head and in his thick eyebrows. Wrinkles ring around his eyes and the ends of his mouth, but they aren’t deep, only just beginning to show more prominently. Behind his glasses, the man’s eyes are dark brown, and widened with probably the same strange feeling of familiarity as Shinji is experiencing.

Then, when the man tries to speak again, and his brows furrow into a frown, it hits Shinji.

He nearly has to bite his tongue from saying the man’s name aloud. “No harm done,” he somehow manages to say without any of the spiking nerves thrumming through him.

He tries to remain calm as he continues stacking the vinyls in, but he can feel the man’s – Keiji Mimura’s -- lingering gaze on him, even as he turns and pretends to browse the albums in front of him.

He has to get out of this fast. He can hear the cash register going; Kana must be ringing up the regular, which means she’ll be free any second now. He hoists the box back into the cart, planning to head back to the counter, then offer to take over the register for Kana. She’d go out on to floor, probably keep Keiji distracted and try to sell him some obscure rock album she likes. If he ends up buying the album, Kana will likely keep the conversation going all the way to register, get Shinji to move aside so she can ring Keiji up, and then he’ll be gone from the store, and Shinji’s life again.

Shinji doesn’t even make it three steps when Keiji speaks up behind him. “…Hirako-san?”

Shinji has no choice but to stop and turn around. In the face of the man’s shocked expression, Shinji somehow manages a smile. “Excuse me? Did you say something.” It sounds lame even to his own ears.

The man shakes his head. “Forgive me, it’s just…you look and sound like someone I used to know.”

It takes everything in Shinji to not drop the smile, but even then, the corners of his mouth twitch. How to get out of this?

He and the other Visoreds had managed to keeps their identities a secret up until now, switching jobs every few years, never getting close to any coworkers and never revealing anything about their personal lives. They mostly find work outside of Karakura Town in the major cities, countryside towns, and to a smaller extent the towns that surrounded Karakura. The commutes were a pain, but they needed to make a living and not expose themselves as being ‘ageless’ to local residents. This was his first job in Karakura Town, and it had partly been out of desperation when he couldn’t get another anywhere else.

He can dismiss Keiji, just treat this as an awkward encounter with an elderly man who had a case of mistaken identity. It happens, more often than he realized before being forced into the World of the Living.

It’s what he should do.

Later, as he's walking back to the warehouse and then while being lectured by the other Visoreds after telling them about his day, he will reflect on this moment where he chose to do something far more troublesome for himself.

Shinji’s widens his eyes, pretending to come to a realisation. “Ah! Wait. I think I understand your confusion.” He chuckles and shakes his head to himself for effect, leaving the older man bewildered. “I’m terribly sorry, sir,” Shinji continues. “Did you used to work with Hirako Shinji?”

“Y-Yes!” Keiji stammers out.

“Ah, ya see, he’s my father. I’m his son.”

The older man blinks, briefly scanning Shinji from head to toe. “He never said anything about children,” he murmurs under his breath.

Shinji pretends he didn’t hear it, remaining rooted in place, grin plastered wide over his face and a fisted hand on his hip. Seeing the man’s unfaltering skepticism, he bows slightly and holds his hand out to him. “I’m Hirako…Mako.”

Of all the names! He purses his lips and continues to stare at the ground, hard, as he inwardly begs, Please don’t think too much on it, please don’t think to much on it, Keiji-san, don’t think --

After a beat, the older man bows and shakes Shinji’s hand. “I’m Mimura Keiji. Forgive me for before, it’s just that you look so much like Hirako Shinji – your father, I meant.”

“That’s fine. I’ve gotten that quite a bit, actually. Everyone’s always saying I look like my old man.”

That gets a huff of a chuckle out Keiji; Shinji can’t tell whether it’s due to the comment, how informally he’d spoken, or how the way he spoke was identical to his 'father'. It's probably the latter.

Keiji lets go of Shinji’s hand and they both straighten back up. The store bell rings, briefly drawing Shinji’s attention to Kana. To his chagrin she doesn’t look his way, instead continuing her chat with their regular as she makes her purchases.

“I worked with your father a long time ago.” Keiji explains. “We were coworkers”

Shinji keeps his grin small as he returns his focus back to his old coworker. “Where did you work with him? The old man’s had a lot of jobs across his life.”

Keiji smiles. “So he said. We used to work at Yodobashi Camera together.”

“Ah yeah! He was a sales clerk there. He barely knew a thing about camera’s when he started, huh?”

Another huff of a chuckle broadens the old man's smile. “He learned on the job. I was no expert at the time by any means, but he even had to learn which button to press to take a picture.”

Shinji chortles, both from the memory and the embarrassment of those years. He’d been the World of the Living for several decades by that point. He’d known about cameras but was so concerned with training to control his Visored abilities and stay afloat money-wise he hadn’t ever learned about some of the most basic things for humans.

“He was all right with the other technology of course,” Keiji continues. “We often had shifts together. Every now and then we went for drinks at ‘The Golden Cup’ with everyone else.”

Despite himself, Shinji can’t help but grin wider as nostalgia flutters in his chest. He and the other Visoreds tried to maintain a certain distance between themselves and the cowrokers in whatever job they worked in. Regardless, on rare occasions, he’d indulge himself and go drinking with his coworkers. He did it more often with the employees of Yodobashi Camera than in any other job, and he’d never had a bad night out with them. They were a good bunch of hard workers who knew how to party even harder afterwards -- or at least as much as they could given that they all needed to wake up and go to work the next day.

“I -- He mentioned that too,” Shinji eventually says. “He always came home in a good mood after those nights, tripping over his feet."

Keiji gives a nervous snort. "I must admit, I did worry about how much he drank sometimes."

Shinji did too. He recalls the concerned pinch of Keiji's brows when he was about to leave, wobbling on his feet. He rarely got drunk, and he didn't always understand why he chose to get drunk with those guys.

"Nah, he was always sharp," Shinji says, "even when drunk. Heck, he could even play mahjong while drunk and still win." He let's Keiji's chuckle fill in the air for a pause. "He used to play that game with his coworkers too, right?”

“Ah, yes! I used to enjoy our games.” Keiji sighs. “It’s been a long time since then, and Yodobashi Camera has certainly grown bigger and bigger over the years.”

“Ya can’t escape them these days, huh? Feels like they’re at every railway station in the major cities.” Shinji leans back against the vinyls racks, trying to appear casual. “So, do you live in Karakura Town now?”

“Oh, no. My wife and I are visiting our daughter. I assume you live here?”

“Yeah, I moved here about a year ago.” A lie, so natural sounding from years of saying many more like it before.

He can sense the next question coming – something to effect of ‘Do your parents live here as well?’ – so he quickly continues, “It’s a small town, but there’s a few places I can recommend for visitors if your daughter hasn’t taken you to them already.”

“We only arrived two days ago. We visited one of the shrines with her yesterday. My wife and daughter are having breakfast at a cafe nearby. We’re planning to walk around the shopping district this afternoon.”

“All good ideas. There’s also Tsubakidai Park, it’s always nice to walk around there. There’s also a music performance happening there two days from now, local bands mostly.”

“Is there now?”

Shinji points to the most recent poster taped up next to the store’s entrance. He briefly glances at Kana, who had gone back to pricing the vinyls, but she’d stopped at some point, staring at their exchange. She eyes him with a raised brow. Her expression is asking him ‘Is everything okay?’

“See that there?” Shinji says, keeping Keiji distracted long enough to wink at Kana in reassurance. “It’s got the details for it if you’re interested.”

With a shrug and a good-natured roll of her eyes, she returns to her task.

Keiji nods. “I’ll be sure to look at it on my way out.” Turning back, he looks over Shinji shoulder. “Speaking of, I came here to get an album I was told would be here. I believe it will be under jazz.”

“Yeah? Which one?” Shinji asks as he leads Keiji to the ‘Jazz’ section.

“It’s often hard to find, but Umei -- oh, she's my daughter -- thought I should try my luck here. She said this store often sells music from older artists. ‘Retro’, she calls it.”

“She ain’t wrong.”

Keiji frowns thoughtfully when they stop in front of the rows of CDs and vinyls. He let’s out a sudden, ironic laugh. “Actually, now that I think about it, it’s from a singer your father introduced me to.”

Shinji already knew, and his heart squeezed for a moment. “Oh, yeah? Which one?”

“Agawa Yasuko.”

The memory comes to him. He’d gone drinking with Keiji and his coworkers, and they ended up discussing films they love. When the topic of The Bloodthirsty Trilogy came up, Shinji brought up how Yasuko Agawa had gone on to make music since then. Only Keiji was interested, and took up Shinji’s suggestion to go buy her debut album. He hadn’t seen someone as smitten with a jazz album as Keiji (and apparently his wife) was. They discussed her singing the next day during lulls at work, and for the first time in a while, Shinji felt relaxed, briefly forgetting the troubles that always weigh on his mind.

“Well, her albums are just here,” Shinji says, gesturing to the left-side display racks. “Were you after CD or vinyl?”

“CD,” Keiji says while steps around him. He bends over the CDs and thumbs through them. “You have most of her albums here.”

“It’s like your daughter said, we’re retro here.”

He takes out a copy of ‘All Right With Me’ with a grin. “This is the one! I listened to it last year, but haven’t been able to find a copy of it until today.”

“It’s a good one, she’s always had a great voice. I can recommend any of her albums, they're all good.”

“Ah, are you a fan of jazz music too? Just like your father?”

“Yeah, like my old man, jazz is one of my favourite genres. It never gets old.”

“He said the same thing.”

Then, because one of half of him is now stuck in the past, Shinji says, “My father mentioned you had a wife, a daughter, and a son. They doing okay?”

Keiji hums in ascent. “Yes, very well. I’m not sure if your father told you, but my wife, Kyoko, works in a bakery. She has worked in the same place for over twenty years now, and got promoted to manager five years in.”

“That’s incredible!”

Keiji nods firmly and returns to flicking through the albums. “She’s always been determined. Umei is a newspaper reporter for the local news here, and my son, Naoya, is an accountant in Tokyo.” He grins. “He’ll be having our first grandchild soon. My wife is eager to be there in the weeks before the baby is born, she already has gifts planned for him. He’s a lot like his mother, determined and hard-working. I have no doubt he’ll be a good father.”

Shinji has the sudden urge to reminisce with this man. To talk about their days in the store, where Shinji learned how to use a camera, and about their regular customers. To show he remembered the little details Keiji had told him about his life outside of work – how Kyoko would come to visit them with baked goods when she knew her husband hadn’t packed a lunch, or how happy he was about Umei’s first day of school, or when he was pleasantly surprised by Naoya’s sudden obsession with the new ‘Astro Boy’ anime. To talk about the music from that time, and see if he’d taken on other jazz and blues recommendations he’d made.

At Shinji’s silence, Keiji’s grin transforms into a bashful smile. “You’ll have to forgive me. I must seem like an old man rambling about my family and reminiscing about the past.”

“Nah, it’s fine. I get it. My old man worked at Yodobashi Camera over twenty years ago, and if I saw an old coworker, even if it was their kid, I’d want to talk about it.”

"Well, thank you then," Keiji says, “How is your father these days? I probably should've asked that first.”

Shinji knew it was coming, hovering over them from the moment Keiji recognised him without realising. Even so, the pit of his stomach plummets along with his grin. He’s at another crossroads.

He takes in the man’s features again. How the wrinkles gather deeper around his eyes and around his mouth as he speaks. The fact he wears glasses now, resting over the faint scar on his nose he got when he broke it during a high school baseball game – he’d tumbled after getting homebase and cracked it on the ground, Shinji recalls; it'd been a drunken confession made on one of the night he'd gone out with the coworkers.

He thought noticing age couldn’t affect him anymore. But seeing someone from his past, someone who he got along well with and truly wished the best for, it strikes something in him. He’d been a Shinigami for centuries, ferrying hundreds of Souls like him to the Soul Society. One day, Keiji will be met by a Shinigami when he passes on, and forget the life he’d lived by the time he gets to the Soul Society.

It’s then SHinji realises he's been living in this world for too long. That detachment, that knowledge that he was not like humans, has eroded over time, crumbling bit by bit, leaving only a thin slab behind. Hiyori was right; he should’ve left his job at Yodobashi Camera sooner. It's been one of the longer jobs he'd had, and he recalls trying to stuff down the bitterness of leaving it behind when he left on his last day.

It hadn't been right to drag Keiji along like this, for his own selfish whims of wanting to relieve the past. So he does the right thing this time.

Shinji looks off to the side. “He’s gone. So is my mother.”

In the pause, Keiji remains frozen in place, lost for words. “Oh, I…I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to bring up…I had no idea.”

“It was three years ago. He and my mother were involved in a car accident.” Like all his lies, it comes out smooth and natural, like he is the son reflecting on grief he's only just overcome. He hates it.

Keiji shakes his head in disbelief. “That's awful, truly. I really am sorry.”

“Thank you, but you don’t have to be. I’m sorry you found out this way.”

Keiji is silent again, staring at the ground for a long moment before raising his head. There’s a faint mist across his eyes. “Your father and I only knew each other at work, and on the occasions he came to drink with the rest of us. Even so, I could always tell he was a good man. He worked hard, but he always had time to help others around the store too. Not just his coworkers, but also the customers.” His smile faintly returns. “I always wondered what happened to him after he left the store. I always thought, though, that wherever he went, he’d do good work.”

Keiji always saw the good in others, and in a time where Shinji still hadn’t fully processed Aizen’s betrayal, he’d been wary of the man at first. He'd reminded him of his seated officer Genji Isawa: a hard worker who could bring a smile and laugh to anyone who met him. Maybe this is why he'd eventually came around to being a little less guarded with him.

In his last year with the store, it was only then he’d begun to take an interest in his personal life and the lives of his coworkers, whether it was the rowdy Takahiro, or the quiet but hard working Kaneshiro. In some ways, now that he thought about it, Keiji might’ve been the closest thing he’d had to a friend in many years. Still kept at a distance, still lied to, but still an echo of a friend, one he probably would've had in another life.

He can't tell him any of this, not without it sounding like he truly knew him rather than a son telling a father's old coworker what his old man thought of him.

He'd put what little detachment he still had between him and his past, but now it came bleeding through like a bruise. If only he knew he was speaking these words directly to him and not to the son he thought he was.

“Thank you,” Shinji says quietly, still unable to meet Keiji’s eyes completely. “He’d have appreciated your words a lot.”

A sombre awkwardness settles over them, only broken when the store bell rings. A young couple come in, with the woman goig straight to the ‘New Releases’ rack. Shinji looks to Kana, who now unabashedly just stared at the scene unfolding in the corner of the shop. She’s only distracted away when the man who just entered asks for assistance.

Keiji bows. “Thank you for your assistance and for listening to my ramblings today, Hirako-san. I’ll go purchase this now.” He rises, but doesn’t move to the counter. He hesitates to say something else, lips parting and closing. "And I'm truly sorry for your loss. You have my condolences."

Shinji can only nod. This will be the last time he ever sees Keiji. It’s just as well, given the emotions and reactions he’d undergone today. Who knew how he’d react to meeting some of his other old coworkers from his other jobs. If nothing, this has reiterated why he shouldn’t get close to any of the humans, not even asking them about or taking an interest in their personal lives.

But some part of him, a wistful part that he’d thought was buried under the cynicism and hurt of Aizen’s betrayal, urges him to do one last thing. His detachment tries to block it, but it shine through, clutching at his heart.

“Did my father ever tell you what his favorite record was?” Shinji asks.

Keiji frowns slightly and shakes his head. “He might have, but I’m sorry, I can’t remember.”

“Well, to be more accurate, it’s one of his favorite records.” Shinji takes a step backwards and scans the lines of CDs until he finds the one he needs. He fishes it out of the rack and presents it to Keiji. A copy of ‘Scenery’. “He loved it from the moment he heard it. I still have his vinyl copy of it.”

Keiji is slow to take the CD. “I’ve always been more into pop music, really. Agawa Yasuko is the only jazz singer I liked.”

“It came out in 1976, the same year he started working for Yodobashi Camera. He said that while listening to it, it’d remind of his life at the time, including his work and his coworkers. He always associated it with good memories.”

Keiji nods, and his smile returns, albeit with a sadder edge to it. “I’m glad, then.” As Shinji holds his hand out, planning to take the album and put it back, Keiji raises his gaze back to him. “In that case, I’ll be buying this too.”

Shinji let out a chocked chuckle. “Whoa, hey, I wasn’t trying to make a sale –”

“I know, but I want to buy this now.”

Keiji had to be guided by his sentimentality right now, this isn’t fair. Did he feel the need to listen to this to honor him? “Hey, look, it’s really not –”

“If you recommend it, and if your father would’ve recommend it to me, then I have no doubt I will enjoy it. I’m sure my wife would too. She also likes Agawa-san’s music, and a few of the other recommendations your father made.”

Somehow, that lightens the load on his heart. He even manages a grin. “Then in that case, it’s on me.”

“What? Oh, no, please, there’s no need –”

Shinji holds up a hand to silence him. “It’s no trouble. Think of it as a gift.”

Even as they walked to the counter, Keiji fretted about the idea. Kana is ringing up the couple, but as the woman counts out the money, she eyes Shinji and Keiji as they approach.

After serving the couple, Keiji comes up the counter and Shinji digs his wallet out of his pants pocket.

“He’s buying the Agawa album, the Fuuki Ryo one is on me.”

“Really, you don’t have to do this,” Keiji insists.

Kana only shrugs as she takes Shinji’s money. “If you’re sure.” She turns to Keiji with a smile. “Good choices by the way.”

Keiji hands her the albums and his money. While waiting for Kana to count up his change, Keiji reads the poster for the upcoming music festival. “I’ll tell Kyoko and Umei about this. I have a feeling they’ll be interested.”

“It’s looking to be a good line up this year,” Kana says while handing him his change and bagging his purchases. “They have a lot more local acts. It’s always good to support them.”

“Yes, it is.” He bows to her after taking the bag from her. “Thank you very much.”

She bows in return. “Have a good day, sir.”

Keiji then bows to Shinji. “And thank you so much, Hirako-san. I’m glad I got to meet you. Please, pay my respects when you next see your father and mother.”

Shinji bows in return. “Likewise, Mimura-san. I’m sure my old man would’ve been happy to see you today.”

Both rising, Keiji smiles broadly, before turning and leaving the store. There’s a still silence after the bell above the door rings. A few heartbeats later, Kana finally speaks. “What was that about?”

“One of my dad’s old coworkers,” Shinji says, ungluing himself from his spot and going back to get his cart. From across the store, he says. “My old man and I look a lot alike, so he thought I was him.”

“Huh,” Kana huffs. “That sounds like it’s be awkward.”

“It was, but…I’m glad I got to see him.”

Kana’s brows frown slightly, but she doesn’t say anything about him ‘seeing’ rather than ‘meeting’ him. “So long as you’re feeling okay about it.”

“Yeah, I am.”

The rest of the day continues as usual until closing time. The sky has turned to amber, with the last of the sun peaking out over the horizon, by the time Shinji and Kana steps out of the store.

After locking the front door, Kana spins to him and hitches her bag over her shoulder. She jerks a thumb in the direction of Karakura’s main shopping districts. “You want to go for a drink?”

She always offers, and just like every other time, Shinji shakes his head. “Nah, gotta get home.”

Kana shrugs. “Suit yourself.” Unlike other times, concern flickers across her expression. He’d tried to hide the sombreness that’d settled into him after Keiji left, but maybe he hadn't been convincing. Maybe he's losing his tough.

Kana bows. “Thanks for your hard work today. See you tomorrow.”

Shinji does the same in return. “See you tomorrow.”

They part ways, going in opposite directions.

Autumn is in the air, crispy in the wind that brushes against him as he walks the quiet streets of Karakura Town. The streetlight pop on, beaming down over him and the those either returning home or heading for a night on the town in the shopping district. He can blend in with everyone, dressed like them and walking like them, but never be one of them.

He never wanted to be, still doesn't, but like them, he'd let that small part of him, that sentimental part of him, get the better of him.

As he comes to the quieter part of town, getting closer to the warehouse, he contemplates quitting his current job. It's only a passing thought, one that he dismisses when he considers his and the Visoreds financial situation. Kisuke had been generous over the years for someone struggling almost just as much as them, but they can't rely on him.

They needed to make their own path back to the Soul Society. Back to Aizen, to take him down once and for all. The old fire returns in Shinji's, a determination he'd used to fuel his detachment form humans.

But he's been here for so long, more than a century now. He's been alive for too long, and been around humans for too long.

Their lives are so short; one moment they're here, and the next, they're meeting a Shinigami or another agent of death. Yet, he'd come to like some of the human's he'd interacted with over the decades. Keiji is clearly one of them, and for all of the grief today had caused him, he still can't deny he'd been glad to see him. But now he'd another person in his past, one he'll never see again.

And one day Kana will have to be one of those people too. He could still visit the store for next few years and get away with it, but there will come a time where he’ll have to stop visiting. And even then, he’ll have to watch himself more in public; Karakura is a big place, but there’s still a decent chance he’d run into her on the streets in the years to come.

When that time comes, she might wonder where he went, what he’s up to, or maybe she won’t. Maybe she’ll unintentionally spare him and move away, going back further north to be closer to her family and finally confess to that one highschool friend she sometimes calls on her breaks and still lives in her hometown. Maybe she’ll use the money she’s saved over the year for singing and guitar lessons, then start that rock band she’s always dreamed of and leave Karakura to go touring.

And maybe none of that happens, and she stays here until the end.

It’ll be a shame when it happens. Despite how small the store’s original jazz section had been, he always loved the store’s collection. He hadn’t found another like it in all his time in the World of the Living.

#shinji hirako #sosuke aizen #mentioned only #Visoreds #genji isawa #yes he makes a cameo here! #bleach #fanfiction #angst #on a side note #I'd like to think this was Shinji's last job while he lived in the World of the Living #that he stays at this job for the longest of any of his jobs #maybe even up until the year before the start of BLEACH's main story #he tells his manager he has to leave #and then several months later BOOM he meets Ichigo #and yes #I think Kana would wonder about him long after either she or Shinji leave the store

[the-grindhouse-basement]

Dr.Gore aka The Body shop (1973)

It has been a long time since my last review, So lets kick this comeback off with a bang. 1973's Dr.Gore aka The Body Shop aka Shrieks in the night (This movie has way to many retitles to count) This movie caught my attention while I was on the Phone with my Boyfriend randomly perusing the VHS sections of Ebay as one does, What Caught my eye was the price tag, 110 dollars USD for a fucking VHS tape and the words RARE 80s GORE in big bold letters I could not resist. But I wasn't going to pay that much for a singular VHS tape so I did some research and came to find that not only is this movie really actually a pain in the ass to find on VHS but also a pain in the ass to find online to watch, I finally found a copy of the movie under a different retitle called "Shrieks in the Night" for 35 dollars plus shipping and I bought it immediately. (I then ended up finding the movie online as well on Archive.org but that's neither here nor there I already bought the damn thing for my collection haha. Enough spouting off about everything surrounding my search and lets talk about the actual film. First I would like to say I adored this movie, Me and my Boyfriend were both enamored with the horrible acting Cheesy practical effects Strange musical and audio choices and terrible set designs but one thing that I think both me and him really didn't like was the pacing and story structure of the film itself. At one point in the film the Doctor in question ends up in prison and you don't even know why, Nothing is ever explained he just kind of ends up there and you are just sat scratching your head like WTF???? Overall I would say this movie is very strange, very endearing, terrible, but also extremely enjoyable and has now spawned a sort of routine where ill find a random VHS tape on Ebay that I have never heard of buy it and watch it with my Boyfriend just to see what kind of wacky shit we can find. (if you wanna watch it for yourself just find it on archive.org ;> ) ((The Second Picture is the copy of the movie That I bought along with another movie that I am very excited to have acquired considering Destiny was directed by Fritz Lang who Directed Metropolis and Considering I have like 7 copies of Metropolis its fair to say its one of my favorite movies of all time :3))

#films #cinema #movies #film #horror #film frames #cinematography #film stills #cinephile #screencaps #horror films #cult cinema #cult movie #horror movie review #movie review #horror movie recommendations #movie recommendation #Dr.Gore #70s horror #cult classic #cult movies #cult film #horror film #horror movie

[auxiliarydetective]

Strings of Fate

Here she is! Animanga!Cora in color!!!

Once again, huge thanks to Hevis-Swan on DeviantArt for the base!

The left outfit is Cora's outfit at her introduction - as also depicted in my fic! The second is a bit later in the storyline, as shown by the earring and anklet she's wearing - gifts from Zoro and Sanji respectively.

Alright, analysis time:

I'll be going top to bottom, left to right.

I didn't originally plan for Cora's hair to be that "messy", but I think it's one of the happiest accidents ever.

There it is, the iconic Akaito clan needle. Also the one singular reason that I have three variants of Cora's face here - I wanted the needle to be clearly shown off, so I added the copy of the head with the ponytail first, and then I decided that I wanted a side view too because I wanted to show off how the needle is actually pierced through her ear.

Yes, the earring is Zoro's, as depicted in my fic. I had a bit of a heard time scaling it because Cora is significantly smaller than Zoro.

I actually did some research on why buttons are on opposite sides in women's compared to men's clothes, and, apparently, it's because men would usually put their clothes on themselves and women had others help them. People are most commonly right-handed, so buttons were placed on the right side of the person doing them up. That's why buttons are usually on the left for women and on the right for men. Since Cora definitely does not have people helping her put on her clothes and she most likely makes all of her clothes herself, I decided she would place the buttons on her right side, and thus the left flap would be on top.

Fun story about the wrapped top: I found the reference image on Pinterest, then used it as reference for my description of Cora's outfit in my fic, and then I based my drawing off of both the original image and the fic. Metamorphosis.

YES, the vest. The vest, keeping with Cora's tailoring profession, is based on an actual sewing pattern. I knew I would need a pattern with panels do to OP women's unique body type. One of those panels is clearly visible, and imagine another would have to be beneath the boobs or something, but... since when is OP logical when it comes to clothes? Just look at every instance of a woman wearing a button-up.

Those black lace thingies are sleeve garters! I imagine Cora would probably wear them for practicality reasons. It's pretty much the only really practical thing she wears.

I wanted to draw a reference for the holster for the rapier as well, but there was no more space on the right side and I didn't wanna put it on the left. Also, after drawing that rapier not once but twice, I did NOT wanna do it again. Seriously, drawing that thing is so tedious.

I didn't originally plan for Cora's hair to be that "messy", but I think it's one of the happiest accidents ever.

There it is, the iconic Akaito clan needle. Also the one singular reason that I have three variants of Cora's face here - I wanted the needle to be clearly shown off, so I added the copy of the head with the ponytail first, and then I decided that I wanted a side view too because I wanted to show off how the needle is actually pierced through her ear.

Yes, the earring is Zoro's, as depicted in my fic. I had a bit of a heard time scaling it because Cora is significantly smaller than Zoro.

I actually did some research on why buttons are on opposite sides in women's compared to men's clothes, and, apparently, it's because men would usually put their clothes on themselves and women had others help them. People are most commonly right-handed, so buttons were placed on the right side of the person doing them up. That's why buttons are usually on the left for women and on the right for men. Since Cora definitely does not have people helping her put on her clothes and she most likely makes all of her clothes herself, I decided she would place the buttons on her right side, and thus the left flap would be on top.

Fun story about the wrapped top: I found the reference image on Pinterest, then used it as reference for my description of Cora's outfit in my fic, and then I based my drawing off of both the original image and the fic. Metamorphosis.

YES, the vest. The vest, keeping with Cora's tailoring profession, is based on an actual sewing pattern. I knew I would need a pattern with panels do to OP women's unique body type. One of those panels is clearly visible, and imagine another would have to be beneath the boobs or something, but... since when is OP logical when it comes to clothes? Just look at every instance of a woman wearing a button-up.

Those black lace thingies are sleeve garters! I imagine Cora would probably wear them for practicality reasons. It's pretty much the only really practical thing she wears.

I wanted to draw a reference for the holster for the rapier as well, but there was no more space on the right side and I didn't wanna put it on the left. Also, after drawing that rapier not once but twice, I did NOT wanna do it again. Seriously, drawing that thing is so tedious.

The pouch is honestly a little small, but she keeps a few spare needles and thread in it

The rapier is based off of a REALLY useful swept-hilt rapier reference sheet I found which I'm also gonna use for writing because it has the names for the various parts.

The dark line around the sheath is supposed to be very dark fuchsia thread, aka thread dyed with Cora's blood. I'll get into it in my fic next season of OPLA :)

The embroidery on the scissors holster has a simple stitch pattern, some vines, and the Akaito Clan's family crest

The boot covers are, as I said in my last post, removable. They stitch into the heels. Zoro hates them with a passion because they take so long to button up and you even need a special tool to do it.

The anklet is a gift from Sanji - see the blue glass beads, blue is his color. It features an infinity symbol as a symbol for eternal love and perserverance and a needle as a reference to Cora's profession.

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Taglist: @starcrossedjedis @oneirataxia-girl @daughter-of-melpomene @supermarine-silvally - let me know if you’d like to be added or removed!

#one piece #one piece oc #opla oc #oc: akaito coraline #au: animanga!cora #fyeahonepieceocs #artsy

[ciaotoska]

Coming in hot (three days later than I’d hoped) with the conclusion to Bret’s investigative efforts:

(part 1) (AO3)

Bret got a call from Shawn early the next morning asking to meet him at the morgue.

Shawn was right: He did see Hunter next week. Only it wasn’t at home with an apology and an expensive gift; it was on a metal slab in a government building.

Bret had made to leave the room and give Shawn time alone — as much as he did want to gauge Shawn’s reaction — but stayed when he felt his fingers digging into his wrist.

The sheet was barely up before he’d thrown his arms around Bret’s neck and broken into a sob.

He rushed out of the room as soon as he could and Bret turned to follow, but he was out of sight before Bret made it down the hallway. He went back to the morgue hoping to swipe a copy of the report but found the door ajar.

“Real shame, huh?” A voice he’d been hearing a lot of in the last few days: Jannetty.

“Sure. Always is when someone dies so young.”

Bret could just barely see them through the crack in the door, but he could still make out Jannetty eyeing the report while the coroner slid Helmsley back into the freezer.

“I guess we were partying a little too hard. Had too much to drink and went overboard.”

“You were there?”

“Oh, yeah. We’re good friends.” Bret watched Jannetty put his head in his hands. “Were good friends, I should say.���

Bret rolled his eyes.

“I never took Helmsley for a big drinker. Surprising that he had enough to go overboard.”

Bret had twigged this, too — and the fact that Jannetty was apparently the lead investigator for something he’d witnessed.

“Kind of a lightweight, yeah. Upset about Shawn.” Marty flipped through the files with a finger. “They’d been having some money troubles — reckless spending, that kind of stuff. And then there was the cheating.”

“Hmm.” The coroner sounded barely interested —Bret figured the people in his office didn’t normally talk as much as Jannetty did — but Bret had heard more than enough to make him want a second look.

If Bret felt any shock yesterday about finding Shawn — the one this one was pretending to be — it had worn off a little after this Shawn cried into his shoulder. Faking an identity didn’t make you a murder suspect, but it did make you suspicious.

Especially if one died in the same way as your husband.

Bret didn’t talk to him again until the next day, but his hand had hovered near the phone several times.

Shawn made the first move.

“Did you forget I was paying you, detective?” Shawn didn’t sound teary, but he could hear a sniffle on the line.

Bret wasn’t sure what to say, so he said the only thing he could think. “I’m not a detective.”

“You used to be. Detective emeritus, then.”

Bret had at least a hundred questions he wanted to ask him — about his real identity, about the “reckless spending,” why Jannetty had answered the phone the other day to talk about Helmsley — but he couldn’t do that over the phone. “What now?”

“Well, my husband is dead and I’d like to know why.”

They agreed to meet at the county records office later that day. It had been Bret’s suggestion, wanting to follow the money and look over property trust information. Shawn hadn’t been so sure and wanted to tell Bret exactly that while they stood outside the records room.

“Well, can’t you just tell them you’re my attorney? It’ll look suspicious for me to come in here looking for will information when the body hasn’t even left the morgue yet.”

“I could, if I didn’t come in here regularly in my official capacity as a PI,” Bret said.

“Official.” Shawn smiled. “Right.”

The clerk led them into the records room, and, as it turned out, barely gave them — or Bret’s PI license, which he’d also been sure so show Shawn — a second glance while they filled in the sign in.

Bret had been here before, so he wasn’t surprised by the rows of books and white-gloved amateur researchers lined around them.

“Like a library in here.” Shawn scowled at an old man who shushed them, dropping to a whisper. “Same kind of assholes.”

“I take it you weren’t the valedictorian.” Bret waved Shawn to the front end of the room. “That’s where they keep everything, but there’s no way they’ll let us in.”

“I would’ve thought paying you double would’ve given you a little more inspiration.” Shawn reached into his coat pocket and pulled out a key ring. “Maybe I did pay you to be my friend.”

The records room — the useful one — was a maze of metal shelves under dingy lighting stacked with records boxes that would’ve taken a year to browse, let alone look through.

“This was monetary, I’m assuming.” Bret looked at Shawn, trying to read his face. “If you think this is suspicious.”

Shawn blinked. “Well, I’m sure he didn’t just fall off the boat —” No. And Bret was sure the other Shawn — the real oil heir — hadn’t just fallen off a boat either.

“Right. So we should be looking for money moving. Obviously, the will hasn’t been filed yet, but we can look at the trusts.” Bret watched Shawn again for any hesitation. None.

He’d paused, but it seemed to Bret more like he was thinking than anything else. “Well, there was, uh, the Greenwich Trust.”

The Greenwich Trust. The same one that had paid Bret for his tail job on Shawn. But Bret and Shawn both knew Helmsley wasn’t the one who’s organized that, so who?

After being redirected through five different boxes, they finally found the collection of files with the Greenwich Trust — including a freshly-labeled overflow box that Bret volunteered to look through.

It was mostly newly-reallocated smaller trusts, all moved within the past few months.

They’d now been in here for maybe half an hour and without anyone catching them, to Bret’s surprise. But he couldn’t help but be tense; the clock was ticking.

He nodded his chin in the direction of the clerk’s office. “I’m surprised he’s not trying to supervise us in that other room.”

“You think we need a chaperone?” Shawn gave him that catlike smile. “I told him I was terribly upset, especially since my attorney made me come look at the records myself. I think he’s going to leave us alone.”

Bret watched Shawn leaf through his own box. “So you knew about the trust? You weren’t worried about getting in the way of things?”

Shawn glanced at him. “What things?”

Bret waved a hand. “Something like this. Something unfortunate.”

“The trust has always been there. I’ve never known much about it. His family liked me, but —” Shawn hesitated.

“They suspected something?”

Shawn raised his eyebrows, but Bret didn’t get the question he was expecting. Suspected what?

“Nothing like that. They think it’s unseemly to work for your money.” Shawn waved his hand. “Mayflower types.”

Bret hadn’t spent much time around the incredibly wealthy — his choice — but he was surprised to hear that living in a mansion near an oil field was considered work. At least, that’s what they thought this Shawn was up to.

Bret turned back to his own box and noticed a small card stuffed at the front — a newly updated trustee contact. The trustee name was still vague, but the phone number was different — and familiar.

He showed it to Shawn. “This your lawyer’s number?”

Shawn peered over his shoulder and went silent. “Marty.”

“Jannetty?”

Bret had known the Helmsley and Jannetty had a close enough relationship, considering the bribery — and the boat cruise, according to Jannetty — but not close enough to add him to a trust.

Bret was about to question him on this when they heard the man himself — and not alone, by the sound of it — in the clerk’s office.

“Let’s go.”

They ducked around the shelves, watching Jannetty and another detective Bret didn’t recognize enter. He was headed straight for their shelf — he knew exactly where he was going.

Bret pulled Shawn’s arm next to him and they edged around the shelves on the opposite side. Every scuff and squeak of their shoes felt impossibly loud and when they made it near the front of the room, they ran.

Bret needed time to think about what they ought to do next, but he knew the place to do it wasn’t at Shawn’s house — not with Jannetty making a move on the trust and already intending to pin Helmsley’s death on Shawn, from what Bret heard in the coroner’s office. And not with the police now on their tail.

But Shawn had other ideas. Shawn pushed the door of Bret’s apartment closed over his shoulder.

“What —”

Shawn ran his hand up Bret’s arm, then leaned in to kiss him. “Thank you.”

Shawn lingered down by his wrist, glancing up at him once from beneath his eyelashes, then pulled him back, guiding him into the bedroom. Unlike with most things in this case, Bret wasn’t surprised by it, but he knew expecting it would make him look like an asshole.

Bret had only known Shawn for a few days, but he’d now seen him in as many bathrobes as regular outfits. Shawn pulled the shoulder of Bret’s robe up where it had slipped down, now deciding for some modesty.

They’d both been quiet for a long time and the only sound in the room was the tinkling of Shawn’s spoon against his mug.

Bret broke the silence.

“I, uh, have some stuff to show you. Back at my office. I thought we could look at it later, but —”

Bret pulled out the newspaper photo he’d taken from the archives and slid it in front of Shawn. He hadn’t meant to set this up like a police interrogation — him standing behind the table, Shawn sitting in front of it — but old habits died hard.

“Do you know who this is?”

If Bret was looking for a big reaction, he didn’t get it.

Instead, Shawn ran his pinky over the caption. “Sure. Could probably name all of ‘em if you want.”

“Well, Shawn Michaels — a different one — died in a boating accident. Like your husband.”

Shawn laughed. A bitter, hollow one. “You’re really unbelievable.”

“I am?”

“Yes. You are. You get me into bed and then turn around and accuse me of killing some guy!” Shawn pointed his spoon at him. “Can’t help but notice you got fully dressed, by the way.”

Bret leaned on the table. “Hang on. Some guy?”

“Yeah. ‘Oh, Bob Smith died. Let’s round up all the Bob Smiths and see which one did it.’”

Shawn left the table, and Bret followed him to where he was picking up his clothes from Bret’s floor.

“Yeah, maybe if one Bob Smith came out of the woodwork and decided to start pretending to be an oil heir, it would be cause for investigation.”

“You couldn’t think of anything better than a one-to-one example?”

“Shawn —”

Shawn was already halfway into his jeans.

“Listen: I’ll see you later, okay?”

And before the door slammed: “Prick.”

At a certain point, Bret had known he was hired just for show — mostly after Shawn had told him as much at that Mexican joint. What he didn’t know was why.

But one thing had bugged him out of all of it: why the hell Jannetty had even been on the boat in the first place.

If Shawn hadn’t been so shocked by the death, as real and genuine a reaction as Bret had ever seen, he would’ve written it off in the obvious way: Shawn and Jannetty killing Helmsley and taking the funds.

But with the way Shawn never seemed concerned about Helmsley’s disappearance, and the way Jannetty was desperate to tell anyone who would listen that Shawn was at the root of it — maybe they were all in on it. Especially with all of the funds siphoned into the Greenwich Trust months before Helmsley’s untimely demise.

Bret had seen things like this before. When you were that rich, you always owed money to the wrong people and sometimes the easiest thing to do was disappear. At least, that’s what had happened in the last case he’d ever worked with Jannetty on the LAPD.

Bret showed up to his office to find the window broken out and Shawn leaning against the wall next to it, cigarette burned to the filter in his mouth.

Bret stopped to watch him. It didn’t even seem like he knew Bret was there.

Bret nudged some glass into a pile with his foot. “Did you hate the Hart & Associates thing that much?”

Shawn looked down at the glass like he was noticing it for the first time. “Like that when I got here.”

Bret put his hear to the door — what was left of it — and shined his penlight through the window. Whoever had done it had left, but not without doing some more damage.

Bret’s desk was flipped in his office, covered in scratches from a crowbar and the dents of more than one frustrated kick.

“Pretty impatient, whoever it was.” Bret reached into his coat and pulled out something he knew would interest Shawn: the autopsy report he’d found in the archival box.

Bret pulled the desk back up and Shawn fell into the desk chair and ran his fingers over the page, reading and re-reading what seemed like dozens of times.

Bret locked the door and leaned against it. In case Jannetty made his way back. Or Shawn tried to make his way out.

Bret gave him a minute then crossed his arms, back in interrogation mode. “This wasn’t part of the plan, then.”

Shawn barely glanced up from the page. He knew the jig was up.

“No.” He leaned back in Bret’s chair. “The plan was for him to call me when he got there. I’d play the grieving widower for a couple of months. Sell the house, act like I was going back home. Then go meet him.”

Bret didn’t bother to ask where ‘there’ was. Probably not the bottom of the bay.

Shawn spread out the pages on the desk. “Isn’t it funny? Seeing the coroner’s report made it more real than seeing his body. Didn’t even look like him.”

There was a squeak in the hall. They both looked at each other, both suspecting the same thing. Bret cracked the door to look out but found nothing out of the ordinary. Outside of the break-in that’s happened earlier tonight, the worst thing that happened on this floor was kids breaking into the dentist’s office next door to swipe Novocain.

But Bret didn’t have time to police them tonight. He still had questions for Shawn. “Who was the divorce lawyer who called me that first day?”

Shawn drew his mouth into a hard line. “Marty, I’m sure. Didn’t he say something about blackmail?”

“Yes.”

“He knew about the blackmail because he was the one doing it.”

“About your identity?” Bret asked.

Shawn cleared his throat. “We were —” He made a vague gesture. Bret nodded. He’d remembered that brief announcement in the paper.

“Were you in love?”

“We were engaged. Only kind of thing to do in that place: be a ranch hand or marry one.” Bret could tell he was glossing over a lot, but Bret didn’t need the nitty gritty right now. “He found out I married Hunter and turned up here.”

Bret hummed. “He was getting a cut to help you two out? Smooth things over with the LAPD? I’m assuming.”

“Yes. A cut. Obviously, that wasn’t enough.” Shawn scoffed, putting his head in his hand. “I told him it should’ve been Kevin.” The last part was more to himself than Bret.

Bret watched him. “Being awfully forthcoming now. Called me a prick earlier.”

Shawn’s head snapped up. “You were being a prick earlier. But you’re not a detective, remember? Not like you can arrest me.” Then his face softened. “When did you know?”

Bret had always known Shawn would be up to something; he just looked like the kind of man who was.

“I had my suspicions when you showed up. I’m sure you know honest people don’t offer to pay double.”

“Not a lot of honest people can afford to.” He smiled weakly.

“How’d you two even meet? You and, uh, Hunter.”

Shawn brightened at the mention of Hunter. At their past.

“In New York. I talked my way into some party or another. He recognized my name — as the other Shawn, obviously, and he said ‘Oh, I think our families used to do business together.’” Shawn laughed. “I didn’t know what the fuck he was talking about, but I wanted to see where it would go.”

“And the rest is history.”

“Not quite. Marty had started doing some work for that family. Total coincidence — well, I thought it was at the time.” Shawn looked at him. “But when I told him about it, he said maybe we should start using the kid’s name, if it’s that easy. Like, to get into clubs and restaurants. But then he started wanting to do bigger and bigger stuff. I didn’t even know what that Shawn looked like.” Shawn nodded at the photo. “Not like me, obviously.”

As ridiculous as it seemed — they really didn’t look alike — Bret didn’t think it would’ve been hard to pull off. How many people know what an oil baron’s kid looks like?

“Let me guess: Jannetty started hanging out with that Shawn — like he did with Hunter —”

“I didn’t kill him. As far as I know, he fell off a boat.” Shawn sounded more defeated than defiant. Like he was just tired of talking about it.

“I don’t think you committed that crime. I do wonder if you knew about it. I think you didn’t see what you didn’t want to see.”

Shawn scoffed. “What is that? A fucking riddle?” He took a breath. “Obviously I don’t see what I don’t want to see. If I think somebody killed somebody else, I’m not going to hang around and find out. I’m not stupid.”

Bret already had what he wanted — he was sure Shawn hadn’t killed anyone on a boat at this point — but he wanted what he could get while he had him.

“So?” Bret asked.

“So, I had Hunter’s number and told him I’d meet him in LA.”

“That easy?”

“He had some fiancée he was ducking. I guess I seemed a lot more appealing.” Shawn looked at him from under his eyelashes. “I did love him. I didn’t do this.”

“Well, listen —” Bret pulled a key from his coat and yanked open his drawer, now off its rails thanks to his desk being tipped on its side. “He inadvertently gave you an alibi.”

Bret pulled out the pictures. The more private ones, still present and accounted for. Shawn gave him a knowing look.

“You were doing this with a witness —”

“And a photographer.”

“— when Hunter died.” Bret pointed at the estimated time of death on the coroner’s report.

“Impulsive son of a bitch.” Shawn laughed. “He set everything up and couldn’t even wait for it to pay off.”

“What do you mean? Set what up?”

“‘Oh, Shawn was spending all this money. Couldn’t wait for his husband to die so he could get more.’”

Bret remembered Jannetty had mentioned that to the coroner, but he hadn’t known what he’d meant. Then he thought back to what Shawn had said about a new rug.

“The what — oh, the rug?” He’d never heard of a court case hanging in the balance over a rug.

“Obviously, it wasn’t just the rug. Around the time Hunter left, all this stuff started showing up at the house.” Shawn looked him in the eye. “Stuff I didn’t buy. Like, in the hundreds of thousands.”

“He wanted to make you look reckless.”

“That’s what he would turn around and prove in court when it came to split things up. Or have the trust’s lawyer prove in court. Obviously.”

And Jannetty hadn’t even waited until court to start saying it. He was already spilling everything to the coroner.

After a beat, Shawn put his feet up on the desk, like he worked there.

“Well, I think I just solved your mystery. So what’re you wondering about?”

Bret thought through his list of questions, getting shorter by the minute now that Shawn had decided to talk.

“Why you decided to play Prince and the Pauper with a rich guy.”

“I think in that story they looked alike, they didn’t have the same name —”

“Whatever.”

“I was living in Middle-of-Nowhere, Texas, engaged to a guy who has now tried to ruin my life, what? A half dozen times? Why do you think?”

That was true, Bret conceded.

“But you didn’t know about this?”

“I knew about the fleeing the country thing, I didn’t know about the boat murders.”

“I’m starting to think you should stay away from boats.”

“They concocted their little scheme together. He basically had Marty on the payroll, but he thought it was because Marty was such a fun, cool guy.”

“I am a fun, cool guy.” Jannetty leaned in the doorframe. Bret had practically invited him in when he forgot to lock the door back. “I remember you used to think so, Shawn.”

Bret rubbed his hand on one of the crowbar marks marring the desk. “I’m guessing you figured out you gave him an alibi.”

He sat on the desk, blocking Shawn from Jannetty.

“Wouldn’t have mattered if you got to the pictures anyway because he had two witnesses.”

Jannetty stepped around him. “Yeah, one he was sleeping with and one who was fired from the LAPD.”

Jannetty didn’t need to know now that the former now also applied to Bret. “I left. You know that.”

Jannetty shrugged. “What I do know is that it looks a little suspicious.”

Shawn stood up, putting his hand in Bret’s shoulder in front of him.

“Marty, what is this?”

“What’re you talking about?”

“I know now the random expenses, the tail taking pictures of me and Kevin — that was all you. Are you telling me now that hiring him was a part of it, too?”

Bret had the same suspicions, but Jannetty probably wasn’t here to lay out his grand plan.

“I’ll need to requisition everything in this office, Hart. Police evidence.” He flashed his badge. “You know you’re not a cop, right?”

Bret stepped back around his desk. “Could be police evidence with a warrant. You have a warrant?”

He slid his fingers under the edge of the desk but only found an empty space.

“Are you reaching for a gun?”

He had been reaching for his gun — discreetly, just to have — and figured Jannetty had taken it in his earlier sweep.

Jannetty made for his holster, but not before Bret leapt at him. He wasn’t going to die in this office, and certainly not because Jannetty shot him. He didn’t even have the dignity of having a secretary for the cops to interview.

He heard a gunshot — but not next to his head, where he’d been expecting it.

It was from across the office. Shawn had pulled Bret’s desk gun out of his coat and grazed Jannetty’s arm. Bret couldn’t help but smile.

Jannetty gritted his teeth and used Bret’s distraction to flip them over. Bret — normally a very proficient grappler, if his award from the Army had anything to say for it — was simply caught off guard.

He wished he hadn’t been when he felt the crunch of his shin splitting under Jannetty’s weight.

He was off of Bret and wheeling on Shawn again, but not before Bret heard glass breaking.

The searing pain made it hard to hear — or even see — but Bret blinked around it and could make out Shawn at the phone on the wall. In a haze, he watched Shawn come to kneel next to him.

“Ambulance is on its way.” Shawn looked him over. “You blacked out for a minute.”

Bret gritted his teeth and let Shawn help him lean against the desk. “Leg breaking is not an emergency.”

“Well, you’re acting like a lot more than that happened. Anyway, ambulance is probably more for Marty.”

Bret sat up as much as he could and realized the other man was gone. “Where is he?”

“He came at me and I knocked him out the window.” Shawn stopped him from trying to get up. He could’ve done it a little more nicely than with a boot to the shoulder. “He’s fine. Fell in a bush. I saw him moving around down there.”

Bret leaned against the desk and smiled.

“Thanks. You know —”

“For saving your life?”

Bret laughed.

“I was sick of his ass. Don’t flatter yourself.” Bret stopped, until Shawn looked at him and smiled back.

“This was kinda fun, huh?” Shawn looked at him dead on again. “I mean, unless you’re gonna have the cops haul me off when they get here.”

“I think your secret’ll be safe with me.”

Almost forgot to add my author’s note:

- I initially envisioned this as a one-off, but then I was like, “What if I just made Bret and Shawn Nick and Nora Charles but in dingy 1970s LA? And they solve mysteries and get on each other’s nerves and fall in love?” So…

- Also, this takes place in the 70s and I made absolutely no mention of it in this entire story lol

#bretshawn #hartbreak #shawn michaels #bret hart #triple h #dividers once again courtesy of @saradika

[vergess]

What's covered by "prose editing"? Do you mean editor's services for articles and original work, SPAG for school work, beta-reading fanfiction, workshopping shitposts, what kind of services are we talking here?

I've edited for each of those media (primary and secondary school; fandom; shitposting), as well as the following:

Technical manuals (Chicago and Microsoft styles)

Newspapers, including strict character limits (AP style)

Copy and editing for research journal submissions (style provided by journal)

Print and digital magazines (style provided by publisher)

University level creative writing composition for short stories and novellas

Novel editing for slush submissions and indie publishing

The specific skills I have on offer include:

Spelling, punctuation and grammar (English-US and English-UK)

Developmental and structural edits

Content editing only for styles or fandoms with which I am already familiar, or for which a style guide is provided.

Redlining and line edits, with fact checks only for non-technical writing

Proofing, including print and digital proofing

Now, for readers who stared at "SPAG" for a second like "wtf does that even mean," here's some extra clarification on what those services are.

SPAG (spelling, punctuation, and grammar) is the most basic type of editing. It can usually be done by a computer automatically, though MS Word's grammar checker is notoriously bad.

Developmental edits are focused on helping the author decide their audience, conform to or break genre expectations, and develop the broad order of story elements.

Structural edits are focused on achieving the goals from development as effectively as possible. In fiction, this is the point at which cuts tend to start, with smaller characters being merged into single, more prominent characters. In technical writing, this is the point at which you determine things like the order in which data will be presented, what needs to be in the introduction rather than methodologies, etc. For writing manuals and documentation, this is the point at which you determine the specific categories and organization you will be using.

Content edits are what most people think of when they think "editor." This is the point at which the finished draft has been organized to the author's satisfaction, and the editor proceeds to go through it looking for style and factual errors. A style error varies based on the medium: something correct for a software manual in MSWG would be wildly wrong for a school essay in MLA or for a fanfic about Supernatural.

I consider informal manuals like Britpickers' Guides to be sufficient for most things in fandom, so if you have anything like that, then I'm happy to do content edits for unfamiliar fandoms too. However, if I am not familiar with a fandoms' canon, I cannot fact check the piece for canon compliance.

Line edits are sometimes called "punch ups" or "redlining." It is not related to the art technique or financial racism law. Line edit is the more common name. This is the point at which an editor goes line by line or paragraph by paragraph through a completed piece to adjust phrasing for maximum impact. If you've never seen a redline for text, here's an example of a redline I did last year:

None still living know what once sat where Refinement now rises from the Bismuth sea. > None alive yet know what once sat where Refinement rises from the Bismuth Sea. Rumors and speculation abound, but the one accepted fact is that the city sprang from the singular will and vision of one woman: the Founder. > Rumors abound, but only one truth is known universally: the city sprang from the will and vision of their singular Founder. No other figure in Refinement commands the same admiration and reverence. > No other figure in Refinement’s history commands more admiration and reverence. Though her name, age, and even species are argued over to this day, some details of her origins and mastery of the stuff of the Bismuth Sea are yet agreed upon. > Her name, age, and even species are as lost as whatever came before the city. Two pale shadows of her legacy remain: the myth of her origin, and the legend of her mastery over the chaotic tides of the Bismuth Sea.

Proofing is the last possible stage in editing, and occurs immediately before printing (traditional media) or publication (digital media). It's your opportunity to double check the piece for minor typos you missed before.

For print media in particular, it's extremely important to proof thoroughly. Once the book is printed, it cannot be changed. And worse, the process of composing a draft into a printable format can introduce errors, with hanging words on blank pages, or words cut off entirely!

For digital media, this is a less mission critical stage, as you can always correct the piece after it is live. There are two major exceptions to this: news writing, and school work. In both these cases, because the damage done by incorrect proofing is high and the opportunity to issue a correction is low, you should always proof schoolwork and news, even if it is submitted/published digitally.

So!

That's all of the editorial services I can offer!

Honestly, seeing it laid out like this, I think $10/1k words is a steal.

#answered asks #honestlyvan #editing

[airlock]

y'know, I've been hearing about the new Zelda's $70 pricetag a lot -- but I've also been enduring a rough patch at uni, so I haven't been able to do any of the thinking or researching that I'd want to do before throwing my lot in there. regardless, there are two... fragments of points that I've had bouncing around in my head for a while, and I never see anyone getting close to them, so I figured I might as well lob them out to the internet to see if they'll bounce around enough to inspire some completed thoughts in anyone

the first thing: while Nintendo was the one that decided to take the first shot here and now, with a very highly anticipated title in one of its absolute flagship franchises, the matter of fact is that bumping up the Standard AAA Game Pricetag -- and to $70 exactly, even -- has been a talk in the industry for many, many years now. it's not a coincidence, or even just the industry's typical unparodiably vulture-like behavior, that as soon as Nintendo took the first shot, other studios were tripping over themselves to pin their next big releases at $70 as well.

(if you ask someone speaking for the studios, they'll probably tell you that $60 has been a downright generous pricetag for a long while now given how much production costs have soared in that time, and even $70 is still a steal all things considered. a less charitable point of view would invite you to consider why production costs are increasing so much anyway, despite that consumer satisfaction has long stopped increasing proportionally to that metric. is it an oversight, or a decision in the service of someone besides the consumer? that's not a rhetoric question, incidentally -- I did say these aren't finished thoughts.)

the second thing: first worlders have been much worried about what a price hike in games would mean for children, and to that I say: you may have more insight on the present situation if you look to countries where this sort of thing already has or still does happen.

I can say at the very least that, for a solid while here in Brazil -- that solid while having peaked around the 00s -- economic factors made the seemingly reasonable pricetag worldwide an oft-unthinkable one for most consumers (and the few that could actually afford videogames straight-up were still a stingy lot regardless). and what we did about it was... rampant piracy. and I don't just mean downloading shit, I mean that parents were buying their kids the sketchiest disks you can imagine to pop into their PS2s at home that probably weren't 100% the legit article either. owning a completely legitimate copy of any game was seen as some sort of Collector's Edition kind of rarity, even. anyway, I'm not exactly making predictions about how your first-world markets are going to adapt when/if videogames seriously slip out of the average consumer's grasp -- again, unfinished thoughts here -- but if you've been thinking about it, then this kind of thing may be worth studying up on.

#my stupid text posts #and in case anyone's wondering how the situation developed since that peak: #the local economy was steadily improving right up until certain foul political developments of the mid-2010s #and with some delay this trickled down to the consumer base -- although whether this will perdure or improve or reverse... depends a lot #anyway the intl gaming industry also started to realize that this country is absolutely chock full of people who want to and will buy games #just so long as they can be reached with anything remotely resembling sane prices #(not to mention other possible adjustments; more and more games are starting to include Portuguese language options to name another thing) #and last but not least the people who can actually afford legal games have also been growing too Gentry for the Sketchy CD Stand #so all put together our days of rampant piracy in broad daylight are past us now #but y'know. we still never became TOO loyal to the idea of paying full price. #so it's going to be real interesting seeing how the industry decides to play it next around here #one wrong price hike and I bet a lot of us still know a guy who knows a guy.

[superespresso]

Leaving Your Mark On A Genre: The Lost Artisans of Vocaloid

If you've been around me for more than 5 seconds you're aware that I am an avid enjoyer of Project Diva games. Learning this week about every single producer who was associated with the music that has passed has made it extremely difficult to play. I keep missing buttons in every song I play because I'll suddenly remember I'm playing a song by wowaka, or while scrolling past samfree in the menu have a moment of sadness that doesn't clear up.

There's been a strange sense of melancholy playing certain songs. Even before this research project and learning about the people who had passed just watching the Viva Happy PV or Odds & Ends left me strangely.. empty feeling.

I didn't know about any of these producers passing on. I work in news media and frankly I don't go looking for news when off the clock because it's a job that sucks the soul out of you. When I'm home I'm content to enjoy things as they are. Imagine my surprise to see a tweet of unrelated context alluding to wowaka's passing. How insane it was to me to learn of this. Moments later after commenting such I'd learned of Samfree, and Powapowa-P. After giving it some time I decided to do my due diligence, especially since others in the same thread stated "They weren't aware of any others."

This is only 6 of 40 listed on the VocaDB under deceased. Please add to this if you have anything else to share about any of these producers or others you know of. I'd love to hear more. What was special about their music to you?

Perhaps others are like me and don't know of these passings. Maybe you've played a Vocaloid game, but the names are unfamiliar. Or, you just know the songs by cover-artists. I'd never done any digging on these people, but I've been melancholy. I wanted to know more about who they were.

As an aside before the cut-- this is expanded from an X thread I started. Less space on X to work with, and less comfort using Blue expansion. If you see anything blatantly copied from X, it's probably from here.

The 6 Big Names:

Powapowa-P.

Samfree.

Otsu-P.

Wowaka.

Brother-P.

SHIKI.

It feels incredibly impersonal to just list names. So for each one lets talk about what they did. I'm not going to go into detail about their passing, or their families. If you want to do that you're welcome to go search that. I want to celebrate their life and accomplishments. As stated above; any others whom I may have missed (I don't have the most vast knowledge about this subject) I humbly invite others to include. I welcome additions. It would please me to hear others celebrate the lives of the people who made the music I still enjoy from high-school.

PowaPowa-P (ぽわぽわP)/siinamota (椎名もた) or Mizoguchi Ryou (溝���遼)

In 2012 he joined GINGA; performed live performances and was extremely popular on a worldwide stage. He was beloved on Niconico for his compositions as well as the arrangements and lyrics in many songs self-produced. He was also talented with the piano, and utilized this skill for quite a few songs and albums Today on TikTok, Young Girl A is still getting a massive number of views and features in videos as backing. The song features strong themes of depression and unhappy mentality. It's themes are shared by "Alive" which ranked #1 in 30 different countries on Apple music.

He mostly used Miku & Rin for Vocalsynth, with many, many album releases-- including Best-Of tracks.

Some of his most notable works are:

Young Girl A

Alive

Q

Sayonara Remember-san

Strobe Hello

Hello Strobe

Strobe Last

Strobe Light

Please Give Me a Red Pen

samfree or Sano Takayuki (佐野貴幸)

You know who samfree is if you've ever picked up a Vocaloid game. The picture may not be familiar. The name may not jar your memory, but the music will.

His songs were hits from conception. On this list he is one of the most well known just from his notoriety. He was more than just a Vocaloid composer. He was also an Utaite himself, being in "Nanario no Nico Nico Douga" and prompting a flood of response. He released 6 albums himself between 2008-2011.

His songs have been in more than just Vocaloid though, having credit in "The Sound of SEINS;GATE Complete" from March of 2016 as the arranger, "TOHO Eurobeat" Volumes 1, 3, and 4. As well as "The Best Of Non-Stop TOHO Eurobeat 2011" and "The Revival Mix 2" (TOHO Eurobeat) albums as a mix of an arranger and lyricist.

His significant works in the Vocaloid franchise include:

Luka Luka★Night Fever

Neko Neko★Super Fever Night

Megu Megu☆Fire Endless Night

miki miki★Romantic Night

Piko Piko☆Legend of the Night

Tako Luka★ Maguro Fever

Lily Lily ★ Burning Night

Many other "Night" Credits in the same series.

Missing

Promise

Bye-Bye Lover

Rainbow

Otsu-P (乙P)

Otsu-P released fewer songs than others on this list due to the year of their sudden passing being 2013. It's easy to tell from fan reactions still in circulation that they have no shortage of affection still. Their music lives on within compilations and re-releases, keeping his memory fresh.

Producers released the "Pandoras Box" album after their passing-- including songs that had final touches placed post-mortem so that those who enjoyed their work could enjoy everything they had to offer. There is very, very little about Otsu-P available. That's okay. If you have anything to share, or any kind of memory you'd like to include-- please do.

The works included on their most notable are:

chord line

Oman Ko

Innovation

Mythologist

Pandora's Box

Stick With You

wowaka (ヲワカ)/Genjitsutouhi-P (現実逃避P)

This is the hardest one to cover for me. It's very strange. For a while now SPiCA has made me very, very sad. I wasn't sure why. I didn't know about wowaka until this week. The song isn't meant to be sad at all. The musical undertone though leaves me feeling empty. Now I can't even play the song. It really did leave a deep mark. Even choosing a picture, I went through about 20 of them, just to find one where he looked content.

Wowaka heard about Vocaloid after hearing "Last Night, Good Night," enjoying and being shocked by the ability of the program-- as well as the ability of a single user to do so much production. Debuting in 2009 and exploding soon after, wowaka formed the band "hitorie" in 2011, establishing BALLOOM. Under the BALOOM umbrella, artists would be able to publish music worldwide.. from the internet. Following this "Rolling Girl" saw an international release.

In 2011 after this release, wowaka worked mostly with his band and label instead of the Vocaloid software. During this time he'd composed and worked on the lyrics for "And I'm Home," featured as the ending theme song of Puella Magi Madoka Magica. The type to stay busy, he'd always had a project. Eventually he would be back with a bang in 2017, releasing the Vocaloid track: "Unknown Mother-Goose."

Not only did he get used to the software though, he was personal with the developers. Wowaka was friends with Hachi (Yonezu Kenshi) at one point describing their relationship as "close."

The associations list for wowaka are almost endless. From Toku, Oster Project and onward. If you look at any Project Diva game or best-of discography for Vocaloid you will see at least one wowaka song. If you play the games you know of his songs as almost always being the ones to get you stuck for a bit on the harder difficulties. They're so catchy that no one seems to mind.

Here's some of the ones picked from an extremely long list:

Rolling Girl

Two Faced Lovers

World's End Dancehall

SPiCA -nopq remix-

Romeo & Cinderella

Unhappy Refrain

Prism Cube

Reversible Doll

Brother-P (ブラザーP)

Unlike the others on this list; Brother-P was not a musician, and a bit more recent. His specialization was the animations associated with some of our favorite songs. It's likely you've seen at least one of them, with Sony having his work included in a DVD release for Vocaloid content.

A few of these Music Video compilations have been released over the years, with many making it to Youtube. With inclusion of 2DMV's, his work has been included in everything from DVD to Video Games. Modders especially have used his content in Megamix+ to bring life to songs.

Like wowaka, I've had a deep feeling of sadness when playing certain songs. Namely Viva Happy and Odds & Ends. Today actually, I had to pause playing Odds & Ends. (using the Brother-P MV actually.) Before I had learned of this information this had happened with me sitting at my desk feeling oddly empty. That's when I had started working on this, as I felt like I had to work on something important to me. It lead me to this information. I feel strange about it. Especially with how odd the timing is. But, It shows how deeply the PV's do make a difference.

Some of the ones I specifically want to pick out:

Change Me

Viva Happy

Mr.wonderboy

Odds & Ends (fanmade, but brilliant)

SHIKI

Already popular before working with Vocaloid2, SHIKI crossed over into composing and arrangement on the new platform with Harmonia in 2008. It only took two songs for him to grab attention. You'll find him on the 2010 Sony DVD ~memories~, as well as the September 2010 Exit Tunes Presents Vocaloanthems album.

SHIKI lead and worked with a Visual Rock group "GILDA" until his departure in 2016. Before this he worked with Be-Music Source files (BMS) form 2002 until his passing in 2021. His legacy includes tracks for DJMAX, Sega's maimai, and オンゲキ series, and Albums for any kind of enjoyment type. He really was prolific.

HIs credits also included Lapis, Air, Ruby, and Setsuna. Love went into his creations at every step and it showed.

Some of his memorable credits include:

Triangle☆Girl's Heart

Prism Door

Endless Dream

Blue Ray

MEMORIES

Saturation

So, with all due respect.. I did find the deceased page while re-checking things. I did look at it. It's much longer than I originally thought it would be. Again, I implore others to add to this. Pay respects to those they enjoy the works of. Include the artists they care about. Drama in Vocaloid has been happening for such a long time. Let's turn that around. Make it a more hospitable group to be a part of.

#coffeetalk #vocaloid #Music #Project Diva #hatsune miku #Momentarily Real

[shigerussato]

Wip Wednesday 💌

– palletshipping day wip for day five ! / sickness !

Gary got ready for the tournament, he sighed getting up early sure wasn’t a problem at all but knowing he had to meet up good skills to be as good as Ash for this competition did make it hard to really think straight 

“okay you’re so not wearing that to a Pokemon tournament!” Ash pointed seeing Gary in his khaki pants and his knitted sweater vest with his long sleeve dress shirt under it 

“are you seriously a fashion expert all of a sudden?? you own like three shirts and jeans” Gary scoffed fixing his hair 

Ash scowled slightly “ouch! no I’m not saying it for fashion reasons. I’m saying it because you need something comfortable for battling in the sun and for a very long time of competition. we’re talking about twelve hours” Ash pointed seeing Gary roll his eyes 

“I forgot how long these competitions are” Gary muttered seeing Ash pull out some clothes from his suitcase 

Ash smiled “here” he handed them the researcher who changed into them already filled with anxiety and frustration 

“Ash these clothes look a little baggy and big on me” Gary muttered looking in the mirror wearing Ash’s black t-shirt and one of his pair of jeans 

“first off I’m so offended we’re both size medium and second they’re supposed to be feeling loose they’re comfort clothing. you need to stop wearing clothing that is for profession that’s why you’re not used to anything comfortable!” Ash lectured the researcher who sighed crossing his arms 

“here’s a jacket” Ash said taking out his journey jacket “can’t I just wear my vest??” Gary whined again receiving a sigh from Ash “no, you’re gonna get hot wearing something like that. trust me the adrenaline comes rushing when you’re battling!” Ash held his fist up in excitement watching how his partner looked at him unimpressed 

“maybe for you” Gary indicated 

“Gary you might not admit it, but I know you’ve missed battling and you still have a passion for it deep down” Ash gave him a knowingly smirk copying Gary’s crossed arms causing the researcher to uncross them and scoff 

“I do not!” he said turning away from Ash and adjusting the jacket 

Ash snorted in response “your grandpa once said you wanted to give up research and go back to battling and traveling” he said smiling seeing Gary roll his eyes at him 

“I only said that because I was frustrated by the fact I revived an Aerodactyl and couldn’t control it” Gary crossed his arms again and leaned on the dressed behind him looking down

“I wasn’t able to get far into battling as a trainer and I couldn’t even control my own problem in research so I basically had failed to do own thing and failed the next thing I tried out” Gary trailed off “and I couldn’t even keep up well in Sinnoh when it came to protecting Pokemon from poachers and Project Mew don’t even get me started” Gary rolled his eyes 

“so much for being Professor Oak’s grandson” Gary sighed again feeling Ash grip his shoulders tightly “Gary listen to me!” Ash said harshly almost scaring Gary “if you don’t stop comparing yourself to your grandpa then you’ll never see how great of a researcher you are!” Ash shook Gary making him tighten his lips

Gary then looked away from Ash who turned him to look at him “I don’t say it because we’re in a relationship I say it because it’s the truth. I’ve admired you all my life and it sure wasn’t because you were Professor Oak’s grandson, it was because you were always passionate about what you put your mind on” Ash looked at Gary deeply and let his right grip on his shoulders go, his grip becoming a lot softer 

“you’re gonna do amazing out there, you’re not me, but you have my knowledge practically implanted in your brain remember?” Ash cheerfully grinned letting Gary’s shoulders go completely 

“we don’t share the same brain Ash” Gary sweatdropped feeling Ash set a cap on his head 

Ash smiled when Gary made eye contact with him again “it’s my lucky hat, the hat I wore on my first journey, it’ll bring you twice the luck! you are my second good luck charm anyway” Ash grinned again making Gary feel his cheeks turn a bit pink at his words 

“Ash, stop it” he covered his mouth bashfully 

“I’m sorry I love you so much” Ash added purposefully wanting to make the researcher shy again 

#palletshipping #shigesato #palletshipping week #palletshipping week 2024 #shigesato week #shigesato week 2024 #wip #wip wednesday

[robneyer-blog]

Return of the TRACERS...

So, I’ve been investigating old, somewhat far-fetched baseball stories for 35 years.

That’s a long time, huh.

I began in 1989, shortly after I started working for Bill James. We didn’t have Retrosheet or Baseball-Reference.com in 1989. So I spent many dozens of hours with my nose buried in scratchy microfilm of old newspapers. Some years later I wrote a whole book of my own, tracking down a bunch more old stories. This was easier, since by then we did have Baseball-Reference.com and Retrosheet.

That book came out nearly 16 years ago, and I haven’t researched a single story since then (that I can recall, anyway). But there’s an endless supply of the things, and I do run across them during my recreational reading. I suppose it was just a matter of time until I got the yen, again.

Just recently I discovered that Ralph Terry wrote an autobiography, which was published in 2016 (Terry passed away in 2022). I pay fairly close attention to these things, but so many old ballplayers publish books with small publishers that it’s easy to miss them. Anyway, I found a cheap used copy and ordered it.

Terry’s book is pretty good, better than most in the genre. There’s a lot of padding—generous leading and a huge number of photos sprinkled throughout—and this 243-page book could have been easily formatted within 180 or so. So despite the page count, it’s a short book … and also engagingly written (presumably thanks to co-author John Wooley), so I finished reading the morning after I started.

In many ways, Ralph Terry was your typical MLB pitcher: blessed with tremendous athletic talent, excelled in multiple sports over the years, married a beautiful stewardess, and fought with management over money. But he also took college classes during his off-seasons for a number of years, and how many other ex-ballplayers have referenced Carl Jung and Alfred Adler in their memoirs?

Terry started his career with the Yankees, but before long was traded to the Kansas City A’s. That led him to off-season classes at University of Kansas City (soon to become University of Missouri—Kansas City). There, a couple of professors, Neil Warshay and Bob Neal, cut Terry some slack because … well, because he was a ballplayer and they were fans. Terry:

In 1960, after I was back with the Yankees, we were coming into Kansas City to play the A’s early in the season, and I told Casey about my two professors. “They’re big baseball fans,” I said, “and they’d love to meet you, especially since you’re one of their grads.” “Okay,” Casey told me. “Have them meet me up at the clubhouse about 4:30, before batting practice.” The visitor’s clubhouse at Municipal Stadium was over behind third base. So I got hold of the two professors, and we met before going in to see Casey. As it turned out, Dr. Warshay had put together a lineup he thought Casey might want to see. The major difference was that he had Mickey batting second instead of third, which was his usual spot. The idea was that maybe he’d get an extra at-bat that way. Gil McDougald, our usual second-place hitter at the time, dropped to seventh in Dr. Warshay’s scheme. The rest of his lineup was fairly orthodox. We went in, and Casey regaled us with tales of the old days for a while. Then, I said to Casey, “Case, Neil here’s got a lineup that he thinks you ought to use." Only Casey could see my face, and I rolled my eyes as I spoke. “Is that right?” he asked. “Well, let’s see what you’ve got there, Neil.” Dr. Warshay reached in his pocket and pulled out this little slip of paper like it was the secret to the atomic bomb. He passed it on to Casey, who studied it for a few moments. “Say, that’s a great lineup,” he said. “I’ll use it tonight.” He did, too. In fact, he had Mickey batting second not only in our two games in [Kansas City’s] Municipal Stadium, but also against the Tigers and Orioles and Senators. And even though Mickey started out in his new spot going 0 for 18, Casey didn’t move him back down to third for good until early June.

In all of that, there’s one verifiable fact. I’ll get to that in a minute.

First, though: Did Mantle bat second in 1960? And would this have been notable and unusual?

Yes, yes, and yes.

As a rookie in 1951, Mantle batted second 20 times, mostly in the latter half of May and then a few times in August and September after being recalled from Kansas City.

In 1952, he made eight scattered appearances as the #2 hitter in the lineup.

In 1953, none.

In 1954, once. With a .175 batting average in his first 11 games, Mantle batted second on the 1st of May. He singled once and struck out twice in four at-bats, the Yankees lost 10-2, and he batted almost exclusively third the rest of the season.

From 1955 through ’59, Mickey never batted second.

And then in 1960, he started 18 games in the #2 slot.

Did Mantle start batting second during a series in Kansas City?

He did not. He started batting second on May 12 in New York, against Cleveland.

Had the Yankees visited Kansas City before then, with Professor Warshay merely planting a seed in Stengel’s mind?

They had not. The Yankees had played only two road series, opening their season in Boston, and a bit later visiting Baltimore. The Yankees did host Kansas City just a few days before the Cleveland series, May 6 and 7. So it’s possible that Terry’s academic friends visited New York and met with Stengel then. It doesn’t match Terry’s recollection but it’s … possible.

Did Mantle start out 0 for 18 as the #2 hitter?

He did not. He started out 3 for 18 with five walks; the three hits were a triple and two home runs.

Overall, in 18 games as the Yankees’ #2 hitter, Mantle batted just .188 but his OBP (.388) and Slugging (.557) matched almost exactly his season percentages.

Okay, here’s the verifiable fact I promised before: as Terry recalled, Stengel did move Mantle back to third, for good, in early June.

In a doubleheader against Washington on the 30th, Hector López started both games in the #2 slot, with Mantle third. On May 31 and June 1 in Baltimore, Mantle again batted second. The Yankees lost both games. López went back in the second slot on June 2, and Mantle almost never batted second again in his career (not counting pinch-hitting jobs). From 1961 through ’63 he batted cleanup; Stengel was gone, of course, replaced by the far less creative Ralph Houk. In ’64 he batted fourth and third; in ’65, third and fourth; and from ’66 through ’68 he nearly always batted third.

Okay, this isn’t so tidy as all that. In the middle of the ’68 season, for some reason Mantle and Roy White swapped lineup slots for eight games, Mickey batting second and White third. In 33 plate appearances, Mantle’s output consisted of six walks and three singles, and that was the end of that experiment.

As I said, Mantle batting second was notable. Here's Joseph Sheehan writing in the Times the morning after Mickey was going to start batting second:

Before the washout was announced, Manager Casey Stengel caused a stir by posting a revised Yankee batting order that listed Mickey Mantle in second place. Any Yankee is likely to bob up anywhere in a Stengel batting order, but rarely has the slugging Mantle been located elsewhere than in the preferred “power” positions: third, fourth, or fifth. The complete order read as follows: Tony Kubek, Mantle, Yogi Berra, Roger Maris, Bill Skowron, Elston Howard, Gil McDougald, Bobby Richardson and [pitcher] Duke Maas. As usual, Stengel had a ready explanation. “I made these changes for three reasons, as follows,” he began—and proceeded to list about thirty-three. Boiled down, Casey’s idea was to move all his best hitters as high as possible to increase the chances of “them getting those extra times at bat that win close games like we’ve been losing too many of lately.”

At that moment, the Yankees were 10-7 on the season. They’d just lost two straight games, 8-3 and 5-1. A couple of weeks earlier, they’d lost three straight by a combined four runs. Which must have been frustrating for Stengel, but doesn’t seem like something that would motivate a notable lineup change two weeks later.

Nevertheless, on May 12 Stengel went with that new lineup and stuck with it for five games. Afterward he moved around the guys in the middle, but kept Kubek and Mantle at the top, McDougald and Richardson at the bottom for 16 straight games, through the 29th.

The idea of getting more plate appearances for your best hitters would not have been foreign to Stengel. Back in 1956, Pirates manager Bobby Bragan wrote down a lineup that “defied every known law of the game… Bragan reasoned baseball lineups have conformed to the tradition of the days of the dead ball and now are archaic in the modern era. He’s been thinking of using his power at the top of the order, putting some men with strength at the bottom and placing the pitcher seventh.”

“My idea,” Bragan said, “is to have the best batter leading off, since he comes to bat more often. Thus the second best batter is second, third best batter third, and so on. The pitcher bats seventh because the eighth and ninth batters have a better chance of getting on base when the top of the order comes up.”

Bragan’s creativity and daring was admirable. It’s not clear that he thought everything through, though. For example, he initially made Frank Thomas his leadoff man, and on balance Thomas was probably just his second best hitter (behind Dale Long; this was a couple of years before Clemente hit his stride). More to the point, making small adjustments to the lineup creates minute changes in run production, while moving the pitcher to #7 means a significant increase in the number of at-bats for the pitchers.

Which doesn’t mean it was a bad idea. But Bragan didn’t have the analytical tools to really test his theory. He was mostly guessing, and after two weeks of batting his pitchers seventh and Bill Mazeroski ninth, he went back to the old-fashioned way. A decade later, he managed the Milwaukee Braves and never batted his pitchers seventh or Henry Aaron leadoff. He did pencil Eddie Mathews into the leadoff slot for a few goodly chunks of the 1964 schedule. So at least part of the dream did survive. Later Bragan reportedly said, "My biggest fault was that I didn't experiment enough."

Finally, a few more words about Terry’s book. As I said, I enjoyed it. But there’s a story later in the book about his salary negotiations with the Yankees after his tremendous 1962 season, and the details are just outlandish. What I think happened was that Terry got his years mixed up, describing the negotiations for maybe his 1959 contract rather than 1963? There’s simply no way that he earned only $10,000 (as he reports) after a ’62 season in which he went 23-12 with a 3.19 ERA and won Game 7 of the World Series.

Which does make me wonder about the other stories in the book.

[factorialsotherfandoms]

(More Lucie lives OPQ au because fuck it I have the best copium.)

The director's computer is easy enough to find, situated at the big fancy desk instead on the rows below. Lucie is not quite sure why it is in the computer room and not his office but, well, the computers are all on an intranet so even if they are wrong, this will work, it will just take a little longer.

Getting in is easy enough - they found his password earlier - but the files they want... Protected, of course, and it needs cracking before she can copy them.

That's what her decryption software is for, at least.

A quick check and, while the employee computers have USB ports in the side of the screens, the main one requires actually accessing the tower.

Annoying, but doable.

She pulls the correct flash drive - orange - from her lanyard, and waves Jeffrey over.

"Plus this in for me?"

"Er, sure, any specific slot?"

"A USB one."

There's a momentary staring match which follows her sass, which she of course wins as Jeffrey ducks down, and plugs it in. The other three are off, somewhere, looking for evidence and making some distraction - the walkie talkie is silent, so they're either dead or safe.

The 'installing device driver software' alert pops up in the corner, and Lucie shakes the thought away.

A few seconds later, it's ready.

"Thanks." She navigates through to the command panel, and boots the hacking software up. As soon as it is going she pulls her arms back, letting her shoulders settle against the back of her wheelchair once more.

"Is it done?" Jeffrey asks, hands fiddling with his knife as he stands watch by the door.

"Ten minutes," Lucie replies. "It does not need me here while it works."

"Right..."

Jeffrey sticks his head into the corridor, looking quickly side to side before ducking back in, "can't see any trouble. We should wait here."

"Oui," Lucie maneuvers over to one of the other computers, wriggling the mouse in the hopes of finding anything interesting.

"Er, Lucie?" Jeffrey asks.

"It's fine," she finds nothing on the first, and moves on to a second. "We should gather information, no?"

"Sure, I guess."

Lucie catches him fiddling with something in his pocket, and can only pray it is not another hamster. How her boys survive these missions without her she honestly has no idea.

She leaves him be, and quickly flicks through the second computer. There are a few research reports and data tables - she grabs a second flash drive, and quickly copies those across - and then... An email alert pops up in the corner.

She would leave it - she should leave it - except that the subject line reads "Situation D'Urgence!" and is marked as important.

The text of the email is all in French. She skims over it quickly, expecting a security notification about a break in, and instead... Something about neonatal specimens escaping confinement, a hunt, all human workers to evacuate immediately as per containment breech protocol.

"Jeffrey?" she asks as she clicks it open. "What did the others say they were doing?"

"Looking for specimens," he replies. "More fetuses in jars. That sort of thing."

A thought occurs, and she starts searching the reports.

"I think they found them," she says. "Emergency all staff alert. Something escaped."

"Escaped? What do you mean escaped? This was supposed to be a safe mission!"

She ignores Jeffrey's panicked screeching, quickly searching the documents for the terms she saw. In one she finds photographs from a dissection of the creatures.

Babies her ass.

"Jeffrey," she cuts across him. "The babies are not babies."

"What do you- Oh."

Labeled as néonatal, the figures are still the size of an adult human. Maybe they were even human once; it is hard to tell, with the leathery skin of their chests pulled aside, so the workers might photograph their organs. The five inch long talons, the extended teeth, the scaled black wings - all of that is labelled in explicate detail, too. Lucie is a little thankful everything is in black and white, but adds the images folder on this computer onto her flash drive just in case the originals are still there. The photos looked old, distorted and grainy, though, so maybe not.

But then why not do better dissections themselves?

"Those? Those are the /babies/?" Jeffrey asks.

Lucie points to the labels, "yes."

"Fuck. Fuck, fuck, um," Jeffrey grabs his walkie talkie, clicking it to speak. "Um, guys?"

"Not fucking now, pizza boy," Benito sounds out of breath. "Wait, no, grab Lucie and get out of here."

In the background, Lucie can hear the distorted sounds of a fight.

"Doc?" he asks again.

"Not now!" Benito replies, and someone in the back screams.

Nothing else comes.

Lucie quickly turns back to the reports, skimming through them.

"Lucie? We... We should go," Jeffrey says, glancing at the door.

She turns her wheelchair to glance over at the main computer, checking the processing bar. It's less complete than it should have been. Merde, there must be something complicated about the encryption.

She pulls the flash drive from this computer, clipping it back onto the lanyard under her shirt.

She should go. A fight has broken out, and she is a liability to the team like this.

But, nobody else understands the decryption software - she's tried to teach them, but it just never sticks. And the French, nobody else speaks it, and all the documents here seem written in it. If they need a password finding...

Maybe they should have delayed the investigation until the Order could have found another hacker and another French speaker, leaving Lucie with her usual job as mission control. But... But people had been disappearing, and her boys had traced everything to here, and there /should not have been anything dangerous here at 3am on a Sunday/.

But, she had made her choice a week ago when they denied the assistance and set Emi up as mission control (well, agreed to leave her at their Order-supplied office with a phone, energy drinks, cand the coursework the now teenager has due Monday), and her choice was still her choice.

Lucie snatches Jeffrey's walkie talkie away.

"The software needs more time," she tells the other group. "I'm sending Jeffrey to you. Don't worry about me."

She then pulls the battery pack out of it - not wanting to hear the objections - and shoves both parts back.

"Run," she says. "They need you. I'll hide."

"But-"

Lucie makes sure to run over his toes as she turns and looks for a large enough cupboard.

"Come back here once you're done," she says. "I'll be fine. Don't get bit."

Jeffrey calls for her, but she ignores him. She sees him hesitate, but... Well she pulls open the door to the locker.

It's... Mostly equipment, but on a shelf is a bag of... blood?

The door slams as Jeffrey leaves; Lucie looks at the locker, pulls the blood bag off the shelf, tape and scissors from her bag, and takes a deep breath.

She has to be careful, and no matter how careful she is, it might fucking hurt.

She turns her wheelchair ninety degrees, until it faces another wall, and turns it off. With a huge amount of tape she forces the joystick to forwards, then lifts up the arm.

She undoes her seat-belt, and shifts her weight to the side.

Falling hurts, falling is noisy, she's pretty sure she slams her shoulder on the metal, but it is the best option she has. She drags herself about, cutting open the blood bag and pouring it all over her wheelchair - an obvious suggestion of what might have occurred here. The arm is a little high, but she manages to pull it down. A little more blood is smeared along it, but that is fine; she turns on the power, and lets it go.

Getting a replacement will be an ass, but dying would be worse.

With her wheelchair gone she can pull her remaining, useless leg into the locker with the rest of her.

She gives it one moment, then another, as agony shakes up her injured spine.

And then Lucie reaches out, and pulls shut the doors.

Some of the lab coats in the locker fall on her, but all the better. She curls up at the base as best she can, ear to the wood and one eye squinting through the crack under the door.

She keeps still, she keeps silent, she refuses to die.

It's harder, though, in the dark locker, without a radio or a headset or anyone nearby. Every creak is a monster, every echo is gunfire, every groaning pipe the death of one of her boys.

Every second is a memory of a time she would rather forget, of being hunted, quiet, a child at her side and a monster's claws through her spine.

She breathes only through her nose.

She watches, and waits.

And waits.

And waits.

Something drops from the ceiling, and she stifles a gasp. If she moves, if she makes even a sound, she is a sitting duck.

One, two, three of the creatures from the dissection photos are there, but thinner, warped, stretched out. They sniff the air, turning this way and that.

One looks dead at the locker.

Lucie stops breathing.

It turns away.

They are slow, they are smelling, until all at once they leap in to a frenzy. They leap on her wheelchair, ripping it apart with their claws and their teeth, sucking on the foam cushions where the blood has seeped in.

She thinks, somewhat manically, about how they're certainly helping look like she was eaten.

Slowly, slowly, slowly she inches up her hands, covering her ears so she does not have to listen to claws on steel.

Did she get blood on her hands?

Dear god, she hopes she did not get blood on her hands. From the frenzy, from the frenzy she thinks they can smell it..

The monsters howl, and anger seems to shake the very building itself.

She is going to die.

Lucie is absolutely certain that she is going to die as one, two, three monsters turn towards the cupboard.

(She is going to die, and she can only hope that her boys were not stupid enough to come back for her, that they took the paperwork the group found earlier and escaped.)

One steps closer.

(They needed her French and her computer skills, but they could have waited for the Order to send someone else to join the team. They could have waited, they should have waited.)

The others step closer.

(If Lucie dies now, she dies knowing she has saved someone, that her death gets the Order the information they need to save other people from her fate.)

All three move closer.

(It's a better death, she thinks, than the one she should have had in Greenland.)

And closer.

(It's a better death.)

And closer.

(She is still)

And closer.

(fucking)

And closer.

(terrified)

And closer...

One puts its hand on the locker door, and Lucie reminds herself not to breathe. It's the only thing she can think now - don't breathe, don't breathe, don't breathe -

Somewhere else in the facility, another monster screams. The three who remained straighten up, frozen for a moment, before scampering away.

Lucie still holds her breath until her vision turns black, only then letting it out as a slow sigh.

Alive, alive, alive.

Now stay hidden, stay safe, don't cause more problems than you are already being.

She knows, she knows her boys would not agree with that, that bringing someone they didn't know and trust here would have been worse, that if they delayed innocent people - more innocent than she has ever been - will die.

It doesn't stop her feeling like it curled up, and alone, in the bottom of a locker and hunted by monsters.

---

It feels like hours before Lucie hears another noise, though her careful count says only fifteen minutes.

It starts with the door creaking open, and a quiet whisper of "Lucie?"

She would sob in relief to hear Diego, if she was not so terrified, if she was not still waiting to die.

She screws up her eyes, and tries to remember how to breathe.

"Lucie!" Diego's next call is panicked, desperate. "No, no, no, no, Lucie? Lucie!"

He saw her wheelchair.

He must have seen her wheelchair.

How can she...

"Diego?" she manages to whisper.

It doesn't seem enough, and her mouth isn't working, so she slams her hand on the metal door.

It cuts Diego quiet.

"Lucie?" he whispers.

"Here," she whispers back.

She doesn't think he hears her, though, because he still moves carefully towards the locker. He seems hesitant as he opens it, creaking the door open so, so slowly...

Lucie throws off the lab coat she was hidden under, and reaches for him.

Diego kneels, and hugs her, and she clings as tightly back as she possibly can.

They stay like that for a moment, shaking and clinging and revelling in each other's presence, before Diego pulls a little away.

"I can't carry you far," Diego says. "Do you mind if-"

"Just call him," it's still hard to talk, fear still crushes her lungs, but Lucie tries.

Diego scoops her into his arms, and calls for Luis by name.

All three of her other boys poke their head around the door, though Luis is the only one who comes through. Jeffrey gives her a nervous wave, Lucie gives him a thumbs up back. Benito takes Luis' shotgun, and points it down the hallway.

Luis looks from Lucie in Diego's arms, to the wheelchair, and back again.

"You have need of a Super Mexican Lift?" he asks her, words joking but eyes serious.

"I just need my flash drive," she gestures to the main computer, where the software is finally, finally done.

Thank god she wrote it to decrypt then copy everything that had been in encrypted folders, rather than waiting for her to select folders herself. It does mean more shit porn to sort through later, but she doesn't want to wait.

Luis goes to the computer, and looks, "errr..."

"Diego?" Lucie sighs. "Could you-?"

Diego carries her over to the computer, just close enough to lean over and complete the last few operations herself. The twisting hurts, but she would never forgive herself if they failed only /now/.

"Go round the back, and pull out the orange thing," she says, once everything is properly closed.

"Yes, ma'am," Luis half-teases as he does what he's told. It takes him a moment to find the right one, but he unplugs it, flicks the extension back into the case, and hands it over.

Lucie clips it back onto her lanyard, and reaches out.

It's a little complicated to get her from Diego's arms to Luis' back, but together they manage it. She has to cling tight, and Luis has to hold her leg and her stump in place, but they manage.

"Right," Benito sees Lucie is still shaken, and so he takes control. "I want to get the fuck out of here before more of those shits get out. So /I/ am going to open doors for you two and call Emi to get us a cab, while you two can do a final sweep and meet us outside."

"Why us?" Jeffrey pouts as he says it. "You have the shotgun."

"I didn't see you making a plan. Are you going to make Lucie sweep the building?"

"Sure," Lucie leans her head a bit more to the side, just so she can glower at Benito. "Let me just find my legs. Oh, wait, the fuckers ate it."

She earns a small laugh from Diego, at least; it is enough.

Somehow they get outside unaccosted - probably because it is half past three on a Sunday morning, and Luis has already taken out the security team. Benito calls Emi, who they all know won't actually be working on her coursework no matter what she promised. They take burner phones on missions, yes, for emergencies, but cabs want payment details, and it is not worth the risk of their escapades being chased back to them; Emi receives the call on the office landline, then calls them a taxi from her mobile. At least they only need a taxi this time - easy enough to say her parents were out with friends and her mother's wheelchair broke and the repair company will get that in the morning but everyone needs home - not an ambulance.

Lucie remembers calling an ambulance for her boys. She wouldn't wish that fear on anyone, let alone her daughter.

The cab comes, and the driver's questions are easy enough to lie about. Diego ends up napping against the window on the short ride home, while Jeffrey may as well be a skin suit of bees for all his vibrating. It's interesting to see this side, how they stop, how they calm down.

Emi meets them near the Order with a transport chair, and Diego wakes up enough to help Lucie into it. Someone else has to push the stupid thing, but it is cheap, and it gives her a way out of bed until a new one can be delivered.

Luis ends up pushing it on their walk home, as Diego is still mostly asleep.

"What happened to your wheelchair anyway?" Emi asks.

"I used it as bait," Lucie replies, sounding more confident in her plan than she had been at the time. "I meant it to look like the monsters ate me already if they were clever, but maybe I used too much blood as they ate it instead. Oops."

Diego gives a slightly pained whine; Lucie reaches up, and takes one of his hands. She squeezes it, and he squeezes back.

"They ate your wheelchair," Emi frowns. "Gross."

For some reason, the comment makes Lucie giggle. Maybe its how late it is, maybe it's the adrenaline crash, but she giggles none the less.

"I told you throwing blood bags on the wall would work," Jeffrey complains. "But nobody ever listens to me."

"It's fine, nobody died," Benito shrugs. "Pretty sure the worst injury was pizza boy here running into a locked door."

"Hey! You ran into it too!"

"Yes, well, we all know Doc doesn't have a brain to concuss," Lucie offers.

It draws laughter from the rest of the group as well.

Success.

Abuelita is waiting for them at the house, hurrying everyone into the house with hot chocolate and blankets. Lucie is helped onto the significantly more comfortable couch, everyone knowing she will sleep there tonight if she sleeps at all. The boys stay around, in the chairs or on the floor, while Emi is shooed off to her actual bedroom.

Luis gets some hard looks about it, too, but Abuelita softens when Lucie reaches out to put a hand on his shoulder.

"Did you find what you needed?" is all she asks of the group.

They all look to Lucie.

"I'll check in the morning," she yawns, shuffling to find the most comfortable position. "Someone else can write the report."

She doesn't want to think about it just now. All she wants to think about is the sound of Abuelita putting on some late night game show and settling into /her/ armchair, of Emi putting music on upstairs and definitely not sleeping just yet, and of her idiot boys all safe and nearby.

#opq fanfic #opq lucie #opq ensemble #alternate universe #lucie lives au

[tuiyla]

Tuiyla’s Academic Paper Tips

Writing this because @md-drawz asked but I’m doing it in a post format hoping that someone else might also find it useful. Disclaimer, it’s been three years since I graduated university and have only been writing “essays” in the form of blorbo metas since, but during those three years where I had coursework I’d like to think I found a good rhythm that helped tackle papers. A lot of you are uni/college aged or are gonna be soon so this is for all of you, hope you find it helpful.

This whole post mainly boils down to note organizing tips and helping you create a structure, a skeleton you can then build on and write your essay. There are many different kinds of papers you could be expected to write in a tertiary education setting and I’m coming at this from a media/cultural studies perspective, but the core of it applies to all writing.

Organize notes

Okay but how. Depending on what you’re writing and how much reading and research goes into it, you can end up with notes that are longer than the actual essay you need to write. What I usually did, certainly in my last year, is break the notes down into parts but, crucially, do it in different documents. Say, you have your initial notes in a Word document or any other text file. Copy that document and start deleting and reorganizing - your original copy will always be there as backup if you need something deleted after all. Make several copies with several steps if you’d like. By the end it wasn’t unusual for me to have three notes docs, many more for my dissertation.

Basically:

The first document is everything, full quotes and all you could ever possibly need and refer to. Write out the full titles of books and articles so you can do your bibliography properly at the end but from now on just use the referencing you’ll actually need when writing. So in later versions of the notes I’ll just write Tuiyla, 2022 (if you do it Harvard style) instead of the full title of my source.

Streamline in the second doc: identify themes within a source, themes you already wanted to build your essay one. For example, I’m writing about women in noir and Tuiyla, 2022 has useful ideas and quotes about the very basics like definition of the genre and its history, as well as some more advanced stuff useful for my later arguments. I note those main areas down. Then, when I went through all my sources I group them together.

This can be done in the second doc but I like to have it in a third one. So now that I have the main themes in sources, I sort by themes and ideas rather than individual sources. It helps if you went into the research bit with a vision of what main points you want to touch on and you can use that as a structure and assign sources and their ideas to it. Within a main idea I include bullet point of what I’m gonna say and what sources talk about/support that claim.

Here’s an example of a third-year paper, first my research doc:

second, a structure doc that’s more organized and has several main sections, in order (a better more advanced version would streamline further and focus on themes first and sources second):

Have an arc

Now that you hopefully have your main building blocks of topics you want to touch on and sources to back all that up, you organize them so the paper has an arc. Forget about intro and conclusion for a second, focus on the main body of your paper. Start with the building block that best explains the basics and then try to find the best segues into other sections. This is more of a me thing, but I think a good essay flows seamlessly between paragraphs because you find a way for the topics to naturally progress into one another. Point A brings us to point B, point C presents and interesting counterargument, etc.

If there’s a topic that a source brings up but you can’t quite fit it anywhere, it might be time to say goodbye to that idea. Depending on how hardcore you are with your research and what your word count is, there’s gonna be a ton of stuff that just can’t fit. Again, all about streamlining until you get an actual skeleton you can follow when sitting down to write.

Ideally, you start with a thesis even before your research and that evolves as you start reading up on the subject so now that you have your building blocks and arc it’s a good idea to refine that thesis statement and write a few words of introduction/conclusion. It literally only has to be a few words, maybe a full sentence, just to see if you’re actually gonna say something with your paper. It’s a very initial draft that you’re gonna rewrite once you have your text’s body anyway.

Write summaries of sections

You have your sources, know where to bring up what, have an arc you can go on and you know what you’ll ultimately want to say. It’s still hard to get started on writing the damn thing and that’s perfectly okay. Going through all you have so many times is designed to help you focus but you also need to take a step back sometimes. So if you’re having difficulty starting, know that a) starting is the hardest thing to do for any writer anywhere and that b) you’re already doing so well when you have a structure and building blocks. Without those, it’s hard to stay on topic and within word counts and so organizing your talking points should also help with the flow of the writing itself. The thing is, as much as it can be a pain to do all this organizing and do it on as many levels as I recommend, it does help. It gives you constraints but within those you can get started.

The best tip I have for getting those first words out is yet another reworking of your structure, but this time around try to have as many complete sentences as possible. Write short summaries for each of the main arguments/paragraphs and have your sources and points ready in a bulleted list. After a while it really just becomes a matter of connecting those dots with a few extra words and it might even help you keep things concise.

Trust your notes

The most important lesson I can leave you with is that yes, writing an academic paper of any kind can be a pain because it’s strict in its structure and doesn’t allow you to sway too far from your point. But, use that limitation to your advantage and work through your notes as many times as you need to to get closer and closer to a proper first draft, after which every version gets easier. The good news is, if you go through the trouble of really getting your notes together you’ve basically started already without noticing. So trust those notes and trust the different stages you put them through to get a final product of a shiny and new paper.

As a final tip, it’s true in academia as much as with everything else: reading makes you a better writer. So your research is already half of your success when getting ready to write an academic paper because you’re already familiarising yourself with the terminology, style, structure, and types of ideas that you’ll also have to recreate.

I hope some or even all of this was helpful, feel free to ask me for more or even examples. And remember, writing is hard for everyone and no one gets it 100% right on first drafts.

#academic help #uni help #essay help

[b1mbodoll]

i keep getting asks regarding the blog that the anon questioned me about and i dont wanna flood my blog with this bc i feel bad so i’ll answer these here! and please don’t twist my words!!! i am allowed to feel some type of way abt this situation! at first i was giving them the benefit of the doubt bc i don’t wanna point fingers or seem like a mean person bc i wld hate to be thought of as a meanie T_T but im just gna reply to these real quick pls do not be rude or hateful to me, my nonies, or the writer!! thank you.

first: i do not know the writer at all, nonie! but i can understand why you would think that

second: i understand being upset for me, i’m also a bit bothered by this if m bein’ honest :( but i do not want anyone being rude to them or sending any hateful messages! i also noticed the emoticon and how they switched up the link titles so it wasnt exactly the same but :T there’s nothin i can do abt it T_T m too afraid of confrontation

third: i can understand why you’re upset about the “tone tags” thing! as someone who is audhd and relies on tone tags the majority of the time, it’s a little upsetting when people don’t do their research on the topic T_T but i’m not saying they didnt! i dont know them personally nor do i know if they’re nd! but i do see why you think it’s bothersome, nonie! blog tags are Not tone tags

fourth: idk if this was meant to be disrespectful to them bcz again i struggle with reading and processing tone, especially through text T_T but like i said earlier i understand being upset for me bc i am as well, considering i’ve spent so much time prettyin up my blog n making it a reflection of my personality n it makes me a lil sad when people jus’ take that from me without even asking :( it’s such a silly thing to be upset about, i know, but im rly proud of how my blog is set up n it sucks having it copied

fifth: i hate being bothered by something like this but i get where ur coming from anonie T_T this isn’t the first time i’ve noticed someone copying little bits of who i am -_- but i’ve never said anything bc like i said i hate (!!!!!!!) confrontation n i won’t say anything to this writer (and neither should you guys!!!!!!!) either :x but i have and i do notice when people take my lil phrases n terms of endearment nd blog related stuff like my tags n layout T_T n it bums me out so bad bc i try so hard to show my personality thru this account n ppl just take pieces n agh!!! idek what im sayin im jus a lil upset rn :T

anyway!!!!!! again guys please, please, please don’t be rude or mean or send hateful stuff to other creators!!!!! i choose kindness n it’d mean the world to me if you all did too <3 n sry if i seem silly for letting this bother me T_T i know it’s kinda stupid but i’m autistic and idk if anyone else struggles w this but i really really really get upset over stuff like this T_T anyway that’s all !!! rmb to be kind pls

#♡.gabi barks