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naalbinder · 3 years ago

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phoebe bridgers // elliott smith parallels

https://open.spotify.com/playlist/4BEfu6YZ7XbdHFZBXthIpN?si=6bf8fc460eba4d33

E - Riot Coming - “Sat down in jail with this friend of mine/Who'd never close both his eyes/But one was shut all the time/To cover the thing he was scared of”

E - Stupidity Tries “To sail across the sea of trash”

E - Going nowhere - “The old records are sitting on the floor/The ones I can’t put on anymore”

E - Clementine - “Anything to pass the time/And keep that song out of your mind”

P - Smoke Signals - “One of your eyes is always half-shut/Something happened when you were a kid” - “burning trash out on the beach” - “You said that song'll creep you out until you're dead”

E - Miss Misery - (music videos on the same street)

E - Easy way out - “While I watch you making mistakes/I wish you luck I really do” “I heard you found another audience to bore”

E - Looking Over My Shoulder - “Another sick rock ‘n’ roller acting like a dick”

E - Placeholder - “I'm the person you'll never need/The biggest loser on sixteenth street” - “Just like my favourite song/Some pretty words that didn't last that long”

P - Motion Sickness - “I'll be glad that I made it out/And sorry that it all went down like it did” “You said when you met me, you were bored” - “Hey, why do you sing with an English accent?/I guess it's too late to change it now”

E - Some Song - “Help me kill my time cause I'll never be fine”

P - Funeral - “Jesus Christ i'm so blue all the time/And that's just how i feel/Always have and i always will ”

E - Bled White - “Happy and sad come in quick succession/I’m never going to become what you became”

P - Demi Moore - “I got a good feeling/It doesn't happen very often”

E - St Ides Heaven - “With an open container from 7/11”

E - A Fond Farewell - “A fond farewell to a friend”

P - Scott Street - “With an open heart, open container” - “Anyway, don’t be a stranger / don’t be a stranger”

E - Last Call - “And I think I’m all done, you can switch me off safely/While i’m lying here for sleep to overtake me”

E - Roman Candle - “I’m a roman candle/My head is full of flames ”

P - Killer - “But when I’m sick and tired/And when my mind is barely there/When a machine keeps me alive/And I’m losing all my hair/I hope you kiss my rotten head/And pull the plug” - “Tame the fire in you”

E - Georgia Georgia

P - Georgia - “Georgia, Georgia, I love your son”

E - Twilight - “That you are already somebody’s baby”

E - See you later - “Made out of a night train”

E - King’s Crossing - “Instruments shine on a silver tray”

P - Chelsea - “You are somebody’s baby” - “For a chemical imbalance/You sure know how to ride a train” - “With a needle on a tray”

E - Christian Brothers - “No bad dream fucker's gonna boss me around/Christian brothers gonna take him down”

P - Would you rather - “Quarantined in a bad dream/He's half the man and you're twice as tall”

E - Son of Sam - “Son of Sam, son of a doctors love a nurses touch/Acting under orders from above”

P - You Missed My Heart - “A feeling of relief came over my soul/I couldn't take it any longer, and I lost control”

E - Bye - (instrumental)

E - New Monkey (Instrumental)

P - DVD Menu - (instrumental)

E - Coming up roses - “And you're coming up roses everywhere you go/Red roses follow”

E - Rose Parade - “Said, Won't you follow me down to the Rose Parade?”

P - Garden Song “They're gluing roses on a flatbed/You should see it, I mean thousands”

E - Condor Ave - “I don’t know what to do with your clothes or your letters”

E - Baby Britain - “Fights problems with bigger problems/Sees the ocean fall and rise/Counts the waves that somehow didn’t hit her/Water pouring from her eyes/Alcoholic and very bitter”

E - Say Yes - “I'm in love with the world/Through the eyes of a girl/Who's still around the morning after”

E - Seen How Things Are Hard - “You just didn't care/You were off getting drunk instead”

E - The Biggest Lie - "Oh, I just told the biggest lie/ I just told the biggest lie/The biggest lie"

P - Kyoto - “And you wrote me a letter/But I don't have to read it” - “I wanted to see the world/Then I flew over the ocean/And I changed my mind” - “I wanted to see the world/Through your eyes until it happened/Then I changed my mind” - “I'm gonna kill you/If you don't beat me to it” - "Guess I lied/I'm a liar/Who lies/'Cause I'm a liar"

E - Memory Lane - “Your little house on memory lane ”

E - Angel in the Snow - “Angel in the snow/all crushed out on the way you are”

E - Last Call - “And I wanted her to tell me that she would never wake me”

E - New Monkey - “For the millions of fans ignoring the bands”

E - Waltz #2 - “I'm never gonna know you now/But I'm gonna love you anyhow”

E - Amity - “I'm a neon sign and I stay open all the time”

P - Punisher - “The house where you lived with Snow White” - “But never not sweet to the trust funds and punishers” - “What if I told you/I feel like I know you?/But we never met” - “The drugstores are open all night/The only real reason I moved to the east side”

E - Some Song - “Yeah it's halloween tonight and every night”

E - Pitseleh - “I got a joke I've been dying to tell you/A silent kid is looking down the barrel/To make the noise that I kept so quiet”

P - Halloween - “Baby, it's Halloween” - “I hate living by the hospital/The sirens go all night/I used to joke that if they woke you up/Somebody better be dying”

E - Shooting Star - “So bad, so far/You made me sad/Shooting star/You're distant and cold/And a sight to behold/Everybody just sighs”

E - Satellite - “When they call it a lover's moon, the satellite/'Cause it acts just like lovers do, the satellite/A burned-out world you know/Staying up all night/The satellite”

E - Everything Reminds Me of Her - “Why are you staring into outer space, crying?/Just because you came across it and lost it”

P - Chinese Satellite - “Took a tour to see the stars/But they weren't out tonight/So I wished hard on a Chinese satellite” - “Sometimes, when I can't sleep/It's just a matter of time before I'm hearing things” b- “Instead, I look at the sky and I feel nothing/You know I hate to be alone/I want to be wrong”

E - Coast to Coast - “Still you're keeping me around/'Til I finally drag us both down (Gonna drag us both down)”

E - Little one - “The moonlight tonight/Seems to belong to me” - “One more/Little one, I love you”

E - Coming up Roses - “The moon is a sickle cell/It'll kill you in time” “While the moon does its division/You're buried below”

E - Everything Means Nothing to Me - “At attention, looking backward in a pool of water/Wishes with a blue songbird on his shoulder/Who keeps singing over everything”

E - Pretty Mary K (Other Version) - “oh Mary K, I can see your face/down there in the waves, painted and erased/but I know it's just a reflection of the moon”

P - Moon song - (52) “You asked to walk me home/But I had to carry you” - (53) “And if I could give you the moon/I would give you the moon” - (54) “You are sick and you're married/And you might be dying” - (55/56) “And you pushed me in/And now my feet can't touch the bottom of you” “But you're holding me like water in your hands/When you saw the dead little bird”

E - New Disaster - “Everybody is the same in this long no-win game/Where every new blood/Gets time to become resigned” - “Until everyone knows that your smile is just a ghost/The ghost of your smile was seen on a body in the park”

P - Savior Complex - “Baby, you're a vampire/You want blood and I promised” - “All the bad dreams that you hide/Show me yours, I'll show you mine”

E - Oh well, Ok - “If you get a feeling next time you see me/Do me a favor and let me know/Cause it's hard to tell, it's hard to say 'oh well, Ok'”

E - Last Call - “You're a tongueless talker/You don't care what you say”

E - Angel in the Snow - “Only a cold still life/ that fell down here to lay beside you”

P - ICU - (58) “But I feel something when I see you now/I feel something when I see you” - (59) “I hate your mom/I hate it when she opens her mouth/It's amazing to me/How much you can say/When you don't know what you're talking about” - “laying down on the lawn” “if you’re a work of art/I’m standing too close/I can see the brush strokes”

E - Happiness / The Gondola Man - “What I used to be/Will pass away and then you'll see/That all I want now/Is happiness for you and me”

E - Whatever (Folk Song in C) - “Whatever you're doing now would probably suit me fine/If you're all done, like you said you'd be/What are you doing hanging out with me?”

E - Big Ballad of Nothing - “You can do what you want to whenever you want to/You can do what you want to there's no one to stop you”

P - Graceland too - “Said she knows she lived through it to get to this moment” - “Whatever she wants (Whatever you want)”

E - Bottle up and Explode “Bottle up and go/I can make it outside”

E - A Distorted Reality is Now a Necessity to be Free - “God knows why my country don't give a fuck” - “Shine on me baby, because it's raining in my heart”

E - Alphabet Town - “Alphabet City is haunted”

P - I Know The End - “There's no place like my room” - “To some America First rap country song” “Driving out into the sun/Let the ultraviolet cover me up”- “I'll find a new place to be from/A haunted house with a picket fence”

#phoebe bridgers #elliott smith #playlist

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corvus--rex · 3 years ago

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So, to start off with, these are a little rough. Mostly cleaned up for spelling/grammar, but there are things that are more like placeholder notes in exposition form that would be written out if I went back to it.

This one's working title is Quantum Fracture, is "in universe" non-canon compliant, and is set both near the end of s.2 after ep.9, and a few years post s.8. It's also only semi-abandoned. I like it and want to keep going with it, but I've hit a wall and just can't do anything with it right now. It has (sort-of) time travel and "Galra genetics are weird" resulting in Klance kids. It does also switch between times, but those sections have punctuation separators.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“Lance, Pidge, keep watch on the area. Keith, Hunk, and I will go down to check it out,” Shiro said over the comms.

“Got it.”

“Copy that.”

Green and Blue split off from the V-formation, flying over the asteroid while Black, Red, and Yellow landed on its surface. Lance and Pidge kept a visual track on their friends while keeping their scanners active for anything in the area. Team Voltron had been on their way back to the Castle after liberating another planet from the Galra Empire when Pidge’s more finely-tuned scanners picked up on what looked like an abandoned Galra base embedded in an asteroid. Shiro made the call to check it out and let Allura and Coran know what was going on, keeping Lance and Pidge on watch. The Black Paladin took point, with Keith right behind him. Hunk brought up the rear, man-portable cannon ready for whatever might try to sneak up on them. The facility was powered down, a layer of dust on every surface.

“Looks like it really is abandoned,” Keith said, “I don’t think there’s anyone or anything left here.”

“Agreed, but I want to complete a sweep of the facility. Never know what might have been left behind,” Shiro replied.

They continued on, not making any real effort at stealth, but only made it about another 20 feet before a side door creaked and flew open, Keith finding himself blown out into space, despite Hunk’s effort to prevent it. Keith tried to use his jetpack to redirect himself and head back to the facility, but there was just enough gravity generated by the density of the asteroid field to pull him toward the nearest surface. He bounced off the next asteroid, damaging his jetpack in the process. It sent him away from the asteroid field and into open space.

This isn’t how this was supposed to go, Keith thought as he floated in the void, then realized just how much Lance was rubbing off on him. His back hit a second, smaller asteroid, and he bounced off into the nothingness. Come on, Red. Where are you?

He felt the shift in the vacuum an instant before the sensors in his armor picked it up. The short chirp announced the sensors’ findings, bringing it up on the HUD. The display’s minimal capabilities showed the slight variant, a faint ripple in the fabric of space.

“The fuck is that?” he asked the void of space.

He hadn’t expected an answer, and didn’t get one. What he did get was the familiar mental pressure of the red Lion, immediately followed by the equally familiar golden glow of the robotic cat’s eyes. Red swallowed the paladin’s free-floating body, and he rolled through the slowly pressurizing corridor before the artificial gravity activated. He had only just taken his seat in the cockpit when he heard Pidge shouting across the comms.

“Keith! Are you ok? There was a spatial-temporal fluctuation right next to you.”

“Yeah, I felt it, but I'm ok,” he answered, exhausted from the mission and subsequent launch into space.

Green came up alongside Red, guiding them back to the Castle, Blue right behind them. Once the three Paladins were back aboard the Castle of Lions, Pidge insisted that Keith go to the medical deck, just in case.

“Ok, fine, Pidge. But I'm fine. Really,” Keith protested while simultaneously giving in.

She didn’t trust him to really go, but she was also concerned with the anomaly she found, so didn’t question it when Lance volunteered to make sure Keith went.

“Keith, what were you thinking?” Lance asked when they were alone.

“I don’t know what happened. It wasn’t anything I did and Hunk and Shiro will figure it out. Pidge is more worried about the space-time ripple we encountered. But I'm fine. Really.”

Blue’s Paladin stopped in the middle of the empty corridor. “You scared me, cuervo. I saw you get ejected into empty space without Red or any of us nearby. Pidge said she was going after you, but still…it scared me.”

“I don’t think we should hide anymore. I think it’s time to let the team in on our secret.”

The pair had been dating secretly for a month at that point, intentionally keeping their relationship from the rest of the team. Keith didn’t think they would have been taken seriously to begin with, and Lance agreed. After a late-night talk, they both decided to give it time and let themselves settle into their budding relationship. But it was beginning to make them behave differently, especially on missions. They became focused on where the other was and it was causing mistakes. This last mistake could have been deadly, although Keith was right, he hadn’t done or not done anything that led to the deserted Galra base’s small side door opening and pulling the Red Paladin into the cold vacuum of space.

“Yeah, I think you might be right,” Lance admitted.

Keith took his boyfriend’s hand, linking their fingers together, and headed toward the medical deck. Coran met them there, no doubt having been called by Pidge. Keith was thoroughly checked over by way of the Castle’s scanners, and as far as they could tell, not a molecule was out of place. After finding out that Keith was at least partly Galra, Pidge and Hunk had thrown themselves into a reprograming project to the medical deck’s scanners, integrating human biological standards. They were surprised to find that the scanners were already programmed with Galra standards, and that was when Coran told the entire team about the original Paladins, Zarkon included.

Instead of the lounge or one of their bedrooms, Lance and Keith instead went to one of the Castle’s many observation balconies. Once they were alone, Keith let himself crumble, wrapping his arms around his boyfriend and holding on as tightly as he could. Lance gently returned the physical connection, understanding that the events of the morning had affected him more than he would let on in front of anyone else. He waited until he could feel the tension drain and knew that Keith was just sneaking middle of the day snuggling.

“You better now?” Lance asked.

Keith sighed softly against Lance’s neck. “Yeah, I think so. We should probably go see what Pidge found before anyone wonders where we went.”

“I don’t wanna,” he protested, holding on tighter.

Keith laughed and pulled away. “Well, if we stop keeping all this a secret, we won’t have to worry about where and when anymore.”

“Ugh. I guess.” Lance’s tone was overdramatic as usual, but his blue eyes sparkled with excitement at the idea of being open about his relationship.

Stepping backward out the door, Keith led the way toward the Lions’ hangars and Pidge’s lab. Halfway down the second to last corridor, Keith tripped over the smooth floor. He caught himself mid-stumble and stopped completely.

“Keith?” Lance asked, “Mi cuervo, you ok?”

_~*~_~*~_~*~_

“Keith! What the fuck was that?” Lance called over the comm.

“Dunno, but my speeder’s sensors caught it. Heading back now,” Keith answered from inside his modified speeder.

Modified, that was, by Pidge, who had retrofitted all of the Lions’ speeders to be able to fly in space. They were still fairly short-range, not capable of straying far from the Lions. It meant that Keith was still in visual range of Red when the Lion’s sensors spiked with the anomaly’s fluctuation.

Lance was waiting at the door to the cockpit when Keith came in. The tail of the raised French braid that normally ran halfway down his back was draped over his shoulder. Lance had insisted on braiding his husband’s hair that morning. Keith had groaned and asked why, seeing as it was just a simple recon mission. “Because you’re pretty, the twins are at school, we have time, and I felt like it,” was the list of reasons Lance rattled off as he made Keith sit. He didn’t mind it, but they usually saved more complex braids for diplomatic missions, not “drive down the street for space readings” missions.

Keith had had his second puberty while in the Quantum Abyss with Krolia, and it ended up being a good thing she was there. Alone, he would have assumed that the abdominal cramping, chills, fever, nausea, and full-body pain meant that he was dying. Krolia, however, recognized the symptoms of the shift in her son’s body to that of a Carrier and becoming physically capable of conceiving and carrying a baby. She told him that his half-human status may well have rendered him infertile, but they didn’t have the resources to look into it at the time, and the middle of a war wasn’t the time to worry about it. So it surprised both Keith and Lance when he found himself pregnant not long after the war ended, and they welcomed their twins Andra and Ori five and a half months later after a normal Galra-length pregnancy. The twins birth records had their names down as Andromeda Artemis and Orion Fenris Kogane-McClain, names that were called with increasing frequency now that the twins were five.

Keith sat himself in the pilot’s seat, pulling up the sensor readings from both Red and the speeder. They looked the same to both himself and Lance, but Pidge would be able to make better sense of them. But something about the anomaly was bothering Keith. It took a good minute of staring at the readings to realize that it was similar to how spacetime behaved near the core of the Quantum Abyss. And something about thatbothered him even more.

“You ok, cuervo?” Lance asked, leaning against the edge of the display panel.

“Yeah,” Keith sighed, “Just something about that anomaly reminds me of the Quantum Abyss. We’ll get it to Pidge and figure it out.”

The trip back to the new Castle was short, Red bypassing the reconfigured IGF-Atlas and heading directly for his hangar on the original Castle of Lions. After the end of the Galra War and the brief, but intense, war with Honerva, the Voltron Coalition needed a permanent – and mobile – base. The Atlas reshaped itself, wrapping around the Castle like the defensive walls of an ancient castle around its keep. Its completed size rivaled that of Galra Central Command, now the seat of the newly-formed Galra Collective.

Team Voltron’s power couple – beating out Shiro’s marriage to Adam – crossed the distance to Green’s hangar, where Pidge still maintained her personal lab. They found her buried in her multi-screen setup, one screen dedicated to the call she was on with her long-distance Olkari girlfriend Malyn, the others covered in technical readouts, diagrams, and blueprints.

“We’re back,” Keith announced when they walked in.

“Oh good. Anything weird happen out there?” Pidge said, taking Keith’s comm.

“The anomaly is behaving like the core of the Quantum Abyss.”

Pidge shoved the device into her computer a little harder than she intended. Except for her ongoing call, she wiped everything off the other screens, replacing what was on them with the readouts from both Red and the speeder. Her amber eyes flicked from screen to screen, already analyzing.

“I’m really sorry, Malyn. I have to call you later.”

“Of course. Is everything all right?” Malyn asked, concern laced in her voice.

“I’m not sure yet. We found a spatial-temporal anomaly, but it’s behaving differently from anything similar I’ve seen. Maybe…there was one…nah, that was different…”

Malyn laughed, she always found her girlfriend’s analytical mind adorable. “I’ll let you get to that. We’ll talk later.”

“Hm? Oh, yeah. I'm sorry, Malyn. We’ll talk again later, promise,” Pidge apologized again, but Malyn waved her off, still laughing, and cut the call.

“So, you'll let us know when you’ve found something?” Lance prompted.

“What? Yeah. Right. This is weirder than anything I've ever seen like this…”

Lance and Keith shared a look, knowing that Pidge was fully invested in the data and that she wouldn’t leave her computer unless she was physically removed. Deciding on the tactical retreat, they left her to it, heading back to their apartment on the Castle.

The Atlas hadn’t been the only thing to be reconfigured. The Castle of Lions had undergone its own renovations, the old single rooms turned into apartment-like suites. Shiro and Adam maintained Garrison positions onboard the Atlas, but retired to the Castle at the end of every day. Lance and Keith settled into their apartment after their two month long honeymoon. Hunk was splitting his time between the Castle and Balmera, sharing his space with Shay when they were there. Pidge mostly used hers as an excuse for more tech and a separate workspace, but Malyn stayed there with her when she could get time away from rebuilding Olkarion under Ryner’s guidance. Coran had decided to keep his old room the way it was, and Allura felt that her own rooms didn’t need the upgrade. The rest of the rooms stayed the same for the new Altean crew running the ship at a proper capacity.

It wasn’t until they got back that Keith realized Pidge still had his comm. “Well, shit. I’ll be back,” he said, heading for the door.

Lance decided to follow him out into the corridor.

“Why?”

“Because,” Lance answered, “I have nothing better to do and I can watch you walk away all day.”

“What the fuck, Lance?” Keith groaned in mock frustration.

“No, that’s after we get your comm.”

Keith turned, intending to call Lance out on exposing him like that, but stumbled, relieved that Lance was close enough to catch him.

“You alright, cuervo?”

“Yeah, I'm fine. Just tripped,” he said, but stopped. Something was wrong. He could feel the braid hanging over his shoulder from when he stumbled, felt the strength in Lance’s arms. No, this was wrong. He looked up. There was a small scar he didn’t remember being there, and the blue Altean marks were definitely new. His own body felt foreign. It was shaped differently, taller and broader than it should be. His voice was different, a little deeper, a little huskier than it should be. “Lance?”

“Keith, love, are you really ok?”

“I…I don’t know.”

Lance helped him to stand, leading him back to their apartment. Once inside, he sat Keith on the couch. “What happened? Exactly,” he asked.

“What does – is this about the anomaly? I told you before that I'm fine. We had Coran check me out. There was nothing wrong. Where are we anyway?”

“We didn’t have Coran check you out. There’s an entire medical crew for that anyway. We’re home, on the Castle. What do you remember from this morning?” Lance’s entire tone was cautious. Something was very wrong with his husband, but he wanted to have at least some answers before bringing it up with anyone else.

“We were coming back from a mission and stopped to check out an abandoned Galra base in an asteroid field. One of the side doors opened and I got blown out. There was a ripple in space-time, and I got close to it in nothing but my armor before Red came to get me. But I'm fine. I told both you and Pidge that.”

Lance remembered that mission. Overall, it was unremarkable. The base didn’t have anything useful. But there hadn’t been any temporal fluctuations. Yes, Keith had ended up floating through the void, but nothing happened other than that. The only reason he remembered that mission in particular was because that was when they decided to tell the team that they were together. It had been ten years since that mission.

“Ok. I do remember that. But, that was ten years ago. That was when we decided to tell the team that we’d been dating for a month.”

Keith’s face flickered between shock, bewilderment, and terror. Ten years? There was no way that could be right. But the evidence was right there. His own body and voice were different. He could see and feel how long his hair had gotten. And then there was Lance. He was beautiful as ever, and it certainly seemed that they were still together, but he was different. The scar, the Altean marks – how and when the fuck did that happen, and why? – and there was the fact that he was broader, more muscled, not slender and willowy like he had been. He processed everything in real time, not saying a word in that time. It had apparently been longer than he thought, because Lance was looking up at him from where he’d tilted his head to the side.

“Keith? Mi cuervo? What is going on?”

“You…you still call me that? It really has been ten years?”

“This has to be related to that anomaly,” he muttered. “Yeah, it’s really been ten years. And, yeah, I do still call you that. A lot’s changed in ten years, but not that. Stay here. I need to show you something. It might help.” Lance stood, leaving the room for their bedroom, coming back in less than a minute. He extended his free hand, bringing Keith over to the table where they both sat. Lance placed a ring of smoothly twisted and woven silver metal and carved crystal that shifted between blood red, cobalt, and vibrant violet on the table between them. “Do you remember this?” he asked softly, “Do you remember when I gave you that?”

Keith stared at it like if he could untwist it mentally, he could remember what it was. But he couldn’t, because Lance had never given him anything like it. It was definitely something he could see Lance picking for him, but as far as Keith knew, he never had.

“No, I don’t,” he had to admit.

Lance sighed, a tinge of sadness to it. “Ok. Something happened with the temporal anomaly we found earlier and that Pidge is still analyzing. I know you’re really Keith, but I don’t think you're my Keith. What you said happened this morning happened ten years ago for me. We need to go check in with Pidge and see if she’s figured anything out yet.”

“Ok,” Keith agreed, rising to follow Lance, “I shouldn’t know anything else. Not yet. But at least I know we’re still together.”

“We certainly are,” Lance agreed, taking Keith’s hand, “We’ll figure this out. That anomaly might have fucked with your memories somehow, but we’ll figure it out.”

_~*~_~*~_~*~_

“Yeah, fine.” Keith stood on his own, suddenly realizing that they shouldn’t have been a corridor and a half away from Green’s hangar, they should have been close to their apartment in a completely different part of the castle. Everything seemed ever so slightly bigger, except for himself and Lance. His braid was gone, and he was wearing clothes he hadn’t seen in years. And Lance looked so young. This was the thin, wiry boy he’d fallen in love with more than ten years before. The one without the Altean marks he’d gotten when Allura revived him after saving her from an energy blast. But he heard Lance call him by that familiar pet name. That alone left Keith with more questions.

“We need to see if Pidge’s gotten anywhere with that anomaly,” Lance said.

“Yeah,” Keith agreed. When had his voice gotten higher?

Keith stopped when they walked into Pidge’s lab. It wasn’t what he was expecting. This was the lab of a decade earlier. The one with the laptop she’d brought from Earth along with the equipment she had either repurposed or built from scratch. It startled him, and he froze in place.

“Keith, seriously, are you ok?”

“I…I don’t know anymore. Everything is wrong. Where is everyone else?”

“Hunk and Shiro are heading back from the abandoned base now. That door just malfunctioned after going so long without maintenance. And there was absolutely nothing important there,” Pidge answered, still focused on her computer screen. She realized part of what he said and turned around. “Wait, what do you mean ‘everything is wrong’?”

“You’re looking at a spatial-temporal anomaly, but it didn’t happen now. There shouldn’t have been one here. I…I think I might be from your future. Or, at least, sort of. I don’t look any different to you, do I?”

“No. You don’t. Get back to the part where you think you're from the future.”

“I don’t know how much I should tell you. I don’t know if it could upset the timeline. But I know when I am now.” He turned to Lance. “It’s been about a month now, right? And we had that talk?”

Lance nodded, trying to understand just what his boyfriend was saying about the future. “Yeah, and we did talk about it. Just a few minutes ago. But if you're from the future, I don’t know if talking about that now will help. It also doesn’t answer the question of if you’re Future Keith, what happened to Present Keith?”

“I don’t know. Best case, he switched places with me. He’ll be confused and probably a little scared, but I know he’s in good hands there. Fuck it feels weird talking about myself in the third person. Have you found out anything about the anomaly here?” he asked Pidge.

“Well, I think so, but I've never seen anything like this before.”

Keith came up behind her, looking over their temporal disruption. It was identical to the one he’d found in his time. He had no question now that he had switched bodies with his 18-year-old self. But at least there were a few things he didn’t need to worry about hiding. He knew he was at least partly Galra at this point. He wouldn’t meet Krolia for a little while, so he would have to keep that one to himself. But it also meant that he hadn’t been through the Quantum Abyss yet. There was no way he could tell them about that without explaining everything. He would have to be subtle with asking about the war.

“I have, but I can’t tell you anything specific. Like where, why, or how. And even knowing what it is, I don’t have your science brain, Pidgey. I have no idea how it works.”

Both Pidge and Lance were staring at him. Not because of what he said, but how he said it. He’d picked up a lot of linguistic quirks from Lance over the years, and no longer gave it any thought at all.

“You sound like Lance,” Pidge said finally.

“We’ve all spent a lot of time together over ten years,” Keith replied, avoiding the real question.

“Sure. What canyou tell me about this?”

Keith pulled Hunk’s usual seat over, sitting beside her. Lance perched on an empty spot of desk space, suddenly wanting to be closer to his boyfriend, or whatever he was at that point.

“It’s specific to a single point in space, but not this one. But that’s the problem. I can’t tell you anything about where it is or what it is because you haven’t gotten there yet. All I can say is that space and time work very differently there due to massive fluctuations in gravity, which is why this doesn’t make any sense.”

“Because there’s something there that affects the gravity in a way that it doesn’t where we found it.”

“Basically. It’s more like what affects gravity there doesn’t exist anywhere else, especially where this anomaly was found. It’s also far smaller here than it should be. Like the difference in scorch marks between Lance’s rifle and Hunk’s autocannon.”

“So, this anomaly is a precise shot, and where it should be is a huge mess,” Lance said.

“Pretty much,” Keith agreed, “But I really can’t tell you about it because there’s something vital to the war there and I don’t know how it would change things if you found out about it now. It wouldn’t be good. There are other players you don’t know about yet.”

Pidge continued typing away at her laptop, the 3D render of the anomaly rotating on the screen. Lance wanted to watch the progress, but he couldn’t focus on it. His attention was solely on Keith. Except for his earlier phrasing, he didn’t think Pidge had picked up on just how different he was. Body language, mannerisms, almost everything had changed in some way except for his physical appearance. And there was one thing Lance had noticed almost immediately after Keith started talking about the anomaly. He was pretty sure Keith wasn’t aware of it, but he had been running his left thumb across the ring finger of the same hand, like there was something missing. Lance thought about bringing it up, but decided not to, heavily suspecting Keith would just say that it was something else he couldn’t talk about.

~*~*~*~

Links to the rest of the series:

1 | 2 | 3* | 4 | 5* | 6* | 7 | 8 | 9* | 10 | 11 | 12* | 13 | 14 | 15* | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19*

#my writing #abandoned wips #Klance #vld #voltron #omegaverse #sort of #keith x lance #keith kogane #lance mcclain

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entropy-game-dev · 5 years ago

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Project code anatomy

It’s been ages since I’ve done one of these discussion-focused posts, and I really only do them when I have something (relatively) interesting I’ve been thinking about! Well, that time has come, and today I’d like to talk about trade-offs between code quality and speed of development.

Limitless time? I wish! While I would love to keep this post short and say - hey, you know your project? Make every single bit of code watertight, modular, extensible, and well-documented! Unfortunately, we live in the real world where time is a very real and very limited resource. Budgeting your time (and therefore efforts) is a whole other blog which I’d love to write about at some point!

Classifying code

Anyway, the main point is, due to these constraints, some code will be better written and more bug-free than others! How can you determine where best to focus your efforts to ensure your project doesn’t fall over in a smoking heap when you realise key code has been incorrectly implemented? Well, the first step is to determine what your project looks like. I’ve done up a quick image of what I see in my mind’s eye:

I classify my code into one of 4 main groups. Here’s where the anatomy part of the blog title comes into play!

Universal code which is called/applicable throughout the entire codebase (the blood)

State managers which affect the main game flow for the player (the brain and spine)

Scene components which are manipulated/used throughout certain game states (The limbs)

Miscellanous, single-purpose helper objects/code (the hair, eyes, nails, fingers, toes, and importantly, belly button)

With this sort of analogy, one can perhaps start to see what parts of code are more important than others. It might hurt if you stub your toe, but that’s something that can be recovered from. So, here are my rules for how much effort I focus into each area.

Universal code

Starting with universal code, I feel this should be the most flexible type of code, as it will be used in a multitude of situations. The addition of easy to use and remember arguments to functions that can affect behaviour of these objects is essential - things like start and stop delays, depth, colour, speed, whether or not to follow an object, start/end animations, alignment, and so on.

This code should be lightweight, well-documented, and modular in order to add functionality to it as needed. I might spend about 25% of my development time here, because this code is fairly simple, although needs to be well-programmed. I would also argue this code should also be robust if you are working in a team, as other members may not know the quirks associated with the various functions, but working solo, I feel it is permissable to not program edge cases if they are documented and you keep these in mind when using them.

Of course, any universal code that deals directly with the player (e.g. textbox inputs, draggable windows, menus) MUST be 100% watertight, as there is no telling what the user will do, nor what their system specifications will be. All edge cases need to be accounted for because the player doesn’t know the quirks of your code, nor should they be expected to!

State managers

These are the main controllers of everything that happens within a general game phase, and control is passed from one manager to the next in a highly controlled and structured manner. This is core code - the game is highly dependent on the framework that you will be setting up here, and as such should be thoroughly developed, tested, and organised. As the state managers will be calling the bulk of the game’s code, it is imperative they are structured in a sensible and modular manner.

An example would be the overall battle manager object in my game. This determines the flow of the battle - things like what menu you’re choosing from, what the enemy is doing, whether attacks should be executed, recruiting, fleeing, and so on. About 40% of bugs in my code will stem from incorrect logic within these managers. Thus, a good portion of my time is spent here writing code that manages other code!

Scene components

Scene components are objects that are very active but in a limited context, and are otherwise ignored/removed when not needed. For example, field objects, which are interactive features found during exploration need to do two things - check if the player has interacted with them, and if so, execute the thing that they’re supposed to do (a ore vein will give out materials, a healing machine will ask for a fee, a trap will blow up).

As a result, scene components get enough attention that they do their jobs, but are not as rigorously programmed as the state managers unless they are complex objects (like players and enemies). These objects are often in a state of limbo during development - they are functional but often incomplete, as they are all interdependent within a particular state. I’ll probably spend about 30% of my development time here.

Thus there is usually a lot of placeholder code that I tend to go back and refactor at some point. It’s kind of like a road where you alternate between building it and driving down it one meter at a time, and then once you’re done you go over the whole thing with a road roller.

Miscellaneous

These are ultra-specialised bits of code/objects that do one thing and do it well. More often than not I use these when an object is getting too complex, and I need to separate unrelated bits of code from one another. I’ll admit it, most of this code is programmed hastily and poorly. Once I check that it does what I want it to do without any bugs, it’s left alone and I move on to other things. I tend not to revise or refactor this code at all, and I try to mitigate the large amount of single-use scripts and objects by having a nice folder structure so the code can be tucked away and I don’t have to wade through it looking for other bits of code. I estimate a very modest 5% of development time is spent on these functions.

Summing up

So, there you go, this is the unspoken thought processes that are going on while I program. I’ve never actually formally written any of this out until today, so my apologies if it doesn’t totally make sense or match your own experiences!

Oh, and while I’ve broken my code down in this way, it’s not like I say, ok, today I’ll work on all the state managers. Game development is a much more organic process than that, and generally I write whatever I need at the moment, which will be code from all 4 categories that are all related to each other in whatever I’m developing at the moment.

Nevertheless when I’m writing/developing, I keep in mind what sort of code this is going to be, and where it fits into the big picture of the project. This way I try my best to monitor and manage my time. The last thing I want is for the the game to be stuck in a permanent state of development, undergoing endless changes and iterations! In fact, it’s quite the opposite - I want to finish the game so you guys can all play and (hopefully) enjoy it!!

#game #videogame #devblog #gamedev #scifi #spacegame #dungeon crawler #rpg #entropy #gamemaker #programming #pixel art #robot #indiedev

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creek-cryptid-deluxe · 3 years ago

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Guys, I might have a problem.

So, awhile back I mentioned feeling vindicated in cutting ties a little over 2 years ago with a friend who was... honestly awful. Her husband (soon to be ex) reached out because he couldn’t think of anyone else to turn to. She had isolated him from most of his friends and he needed someone to be bluntly honest with him and needed someone who knew her from before they met. He remembered what my personality was like and that I had expressed sadness about the fact that in cutting ties with her, I’d also had to cut ties with him and their daughter, who I had babysat A LOT the first year of her life, and he knew that if I was willing to talk, I was the person for the job since everyone else who had known her previously was too scared of incurring her wrath to even talk to him at all.

We will call him... Lou and her... Lena. (obviously not real names because I never use real names up in this bitch. i do what i want and what i want is to be fairly anonymous.)

So Lou and I have been talking for about 2 weeks, maybe 3. He’s been telling me things and asking my opinion or perspective or just asking things about who she was during the 3 or 4 years I knew her prior to him being around. It’s honestly been eye opening on both sides. More so for him because he’s getting a look into her mind and motivations without the filter of love making it fuzzy or unclear. For me, I’m just learning about things that were happening when I wasn’t around that pertained to me. I feel for the guy because he’s realizing that he didn’t really know or see a lot of who she was, and a lot of it is really horrifying. He’s also been asking me for advice on how to handle certain situations because she is an extremely manipulative narcissist, who resorts to bullying/strong arming people into getting her way when manipulation doesn’t work. He’s basically been her doormat for the last 4 or 5 years, so he has no idea how to defend himself against that, especially since she’s going full nuclear because I think this is one of the VERY few situations in her 31 or 32 years of life where she has to actually face the consequences of her actions and that she can’t manipulate, bully, or get her rich parents to bail her out.

And I’ve always enjoyed this dude’s company. We have a lot in common, and actually he and the kid are the only reason I put up with her bullshit for as long as I did. Well, night before last, he told me that Lena has actually been extremely jealous of me. Anytime I came over, for DAYS afterward she would just constantly shit all over whatever I had said. I get why she did that. She has a tendency to state her opinion as absolute fact, and in her mind she knows more than literally everyone. So when people disagree with her, she basically brow beats them into submission so that they get sick of debating or arguing with her, so they kind of just said “Fine.” and dip on the conversation, which she saw as a win and confirmation that she’s right. I, however, THRIVE on spontaneous debates and finding supporting facts, so she couldn’t brow beat me. I would debate her for HOURS, with supporting facts/documents, but often she’d get annoyed that I would stand my ground so it would end with her sarcastically saying “Yeah, ok, whatever. We’ll see.” while rolling her eyes. Then apparently dwell on it for DAYS. Apparently so much so that a chunk of the reason she got her masters in what she did is because I had a masters in a related field and she was going to “use it to prove Dr.M wrong with my theories.” (Which is BONKERS to me.)

Apparently she was also incredibly jealous of the fact that Lou and I got along and had stuff in common. In private she frequently told him to stay away from me, just be civil not friendly. So to appease her, he swung the opposite way being straight up mean to me (in his mind). That’s how this came up, he was apologizing for how he treated me and was explaining why. I told him that I honestly never took offense and just thought it was that like friend level shit talking banter. It did explain some of her actions on my end, though. However, Lou said a few things about having developed feels for me and stuff like that simply because we get on so well and have so much in common. With him being in a vulnerable place, and me not looking for anything, I kindly discouraged him, saying that I don’t ever plan on getting into anything again, he needs to kinda learn to be on his own for a bit, and also that with the nature of my relationship with J, it wouldn’t be fair.

This is where we come to my problem. He was asking about how that relationship is and I was... more honest in that moment than I’ve even been with myself. There is the problem. I was forced to be honest with myself about it... and it hurt. I was talking about how Lena pushing me toward one of Lou’s friends that hung out with all of us a lot didn’t make sense because...

“anyone who knows anything about me knows that any dude after about 2016 was merely a placeholder and attempt to get over the fact that I’ve been in love with J for about that long, despite having quickly accepting that it wouldn’t ever be a thing.” I quickly realized how pathetic that sounded... but is true. He said something about not being upset about that situation because J is the one missing out. My reply...

“I’m not upset about it. I am very aware of what it is and why. I just realized how long it’s been and how absolutely pathetic it sounds. It boils down to being around him isn’t a drain or work. We never fight, even if we disagree. I can be bluntly honest with him about how horrific my health is and how bleak my future looks, and he can deal with it and be comforting without pity. I know what his flaws are, and I’m ok with them. We are so alike that The Spawn calls him “Mom but if she had a dick.” At this point we know each other better than anyone else does, and have a level of trust that we don’t have with anyone else. He’s never mean to me or makes me feel bad about myself, even if he’s shitfaced and angry about whatever. He’s incredibly kind to me. I’ve very literally saved his life more times than I can count over the last 1.5 years. But at the end of the day, all that gets pushed aside to a degree because I know it won’t ever be reciprocated outside of platonically and I feel like that’s better than not having him at all. And a small part of me stupidly hopes that one day he will see the forest for the trees and things will be different, but I regularly tell that part to shut the fuck up because she’s being unrealistic. If I let myself believe even a little that there’s a chance of it being different, I will drive myself insane, and it will hurt so so much more than it does now.”

He said he was actually really sad for me in a way that he couldn’t explain because I deserve more than that.

The problem is that because I was actually honest for once rather than laughing off the comments about our relationship basically being a weird marriage, I’ve been forced to admit that I am deeply fucking in love with him and that affliction has only gotten more significant over the years. 5 years ago is when I admitted to myself that I loved him, but like I said, I stuffed that shit down quickly so I could still have him, even if not exactly in the way I prefer. Even so, it’s grown and until now I’ve not acknowledged how much it’s grown. It has become a very serious thing that I need to figure out how to shut back down so that I can continue onward as it has been.

fuck.

Don’t fucking steal my stuff. just fucking don’t.

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justonedir · 6 years ago

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Transcript of Instagram Livestream hosted by Armstrong Martins on November 2, 2018:

(user names are best guess, some words were hard to understand and a line serves as a placeholder, several time stamps to allow for others to verify)

Armstrong (abbreviated to Arm later on):

I have a very busy evening tonight, yeah, and I just wanted to chat to you guys about - so I posted a picture on my Instagram, my latest post, yeah, and I posted a picture of myself, just putting a good message there and I got responses because I tagged Eleanor in it.

And the thing is yeah, what I wanted to share with you today is do you know what the equivalent of gossip is? Who - Do you know what the equivalent of gossip is? Do you know what gossip actually is? And the reason why I’m talking to you like this is because I’ve decided that I’m not gonna allow the media and people, general public as well, to shape what I do. Because what I - wow, Emily, that’s perfect ‘s’il bien’ ‘s’il bien’ that’s, that’s perfect. I love that.

The reason why I’m speaking to you, yeah, like this is because I need you guys to understand who I am and, listen to me, everyone is free to unfollow me and not support me at all but I’m really really a neutral person. You know someone’s experience and I’m not saying that everyone should have my opinion about a person but my opinion about this specific person in question Eleanor, yeah, she’s been an absolute queen to me, yeah, she really really helped me and supported me a lot behind closed doors and that’s not what everyone’s gonna see, yeah, and so really, she does mean a lot to me because alongside Louis and the show and other people, like she really was involved in getting me to a place where I needed to be, yeah, and I wasn’t always this (mumbled)_______ to come and speak to you guys about that, yeah. Guys, but I really really want you to understand who this person is, she’s such a nice person, she’s such a, such a nice person and there’s so many bad comments about her and do you know what the equivalent of gossip is? The equivalent of gossip is murder. If you’re gonna speak about someone’s name, yes, someone’s name, imagine if someone was saying your name, imagine if someone was speaking bad of your name? Someone was saying, let’s pick one for example, “kissie Athena”. What if someone was saying Athena, yeah, she is that, she’s this, and so many people are doing that yeah, they’re just getting behind each other where, um, um, just because of like how everyone has joined up to talk about a person, yeah, that is ripping someone’s whole life apart because, think about it, this is actually real life, she’s really hearing what you’re saying. It’s actually a person, why are we talking about people like this, why are we going this? Why do we, why do – people will say ‘well that’s the world we live in” yeah, but it’s not the world we live in. It’s not. It’s just the world that we create.

You know what – “jerry dodger” – they could be jealous, yeah, and I get what you’re saying, yeh, but the thing is, yeh, the thing is, like, slandering someone’s name is BAD. Because like, you know what I’m saying, between us, like between myself and all of you, yeah, like we see when we do our chats and stuff, yeah, that we have people coming out of depression, and you know all of us were helping out what Jasmine, Connor, like we’re having a conversation and brining people out of the situation, but we’re still trying to put people in depression, we can’t do that. And I love of all you guys, yeah, and I’m gonna back you all the way, yeah, but there’s certain things that I want you to know about myself, yeah, I don’t cross that line. We’ve got to respect people. We’ve got to love people. We have to love each other cause otherwise there’s no point in all this.

Does someone disagree? And it you disagree, can you tell me why?

Comment:

“They don’t believe she’s Louis’ girlfriend”. She’s a front, that Louis’ not with her. (Armstrong scratches his head.)

Armstrong:

Look, believe me, I can assure you that Louis’ with her. Ok? Believe me, I can assure you that, yeah. So if you have any respect for the person that you’re trying to support, why would you slander his partner? That’s OUT OF ORDER. It’s OUT OF ORDER. It’s not – Georgia – do you know what? I want someone to join me that has an opposite opinion to me. Let’s join, let’s have a conversation cause I want to pick your brains, I want to literally ask you questions, yeah? I wanna pick your brain, yeah, and find like whether, let’s deem it, let’s deem it like, let’s talk about it and see whether we can come to a common ground.

You guys, you don’t understand, imagine like, no one, you can’t see what happens behind closed doors. Do you know, do you know what, first of all, yeah, do you know what it takes to be a woman? Do you know what? I want to give a round of applause, yeah, to every single lady that’s on this chat right now. I want to give a round of applause to all of you women. You girls, yeah, are the strongest thing I’ve ever seen on this earth. I’ve no idea how you guys find your strength. You guys can have kids, droppings, you guys can just endure so much, I don’t how you guys do it. I mean, I’m inspired by you women, I’m inspired by you guys. I’m actually inspired by you guys, genuinely, yeah, I don’t know how you lot can really really, the things that you guys like endure, sorry about that (camera fell). The things that you women can take. There’s certain things, patience, that we, as a guy, we can’t take, we can’t take.

You know I’m saying like – guys! – I want you to get in your head, yeah, that we aren’t gonna make a better world, yeah, if we keep on doing this. Guys! This is someone! Just because she don’t come on social media, yeah, and chat back to people, don’t mean that she’s not – look – I want. This is what I want from you guys, yeah. I want the ones that really – my phone keeps on wanting to die - (6 min 40 sec) my phone keeps on wanting to die, my charge isn’t working, it don’t seem like,

Comment:

Many people say she’s only a person that doesn’t love Lou or things like that but she’s a beautiful soul and I can imagine –

Armstrong:

Guys! This is what I’m saying. These are the conversations that you guys need to have between yourselves and stop, like, like, HOW do you come to a conclusion about something? How do you come to a conclusion? Have you ever met her before? Have you? You haven’t. And look, the biggest crime in life is assumption. Assumption is the biggest crime in life. Everyone’s just making assumptions, yeah about –

Comment:

– “veil raymus” “Let’s talk about you. Armstrong, let’s talk about you. “

Armstrong:

Let’s talk about me. I’d love that. I don’t really want to come on here talking about other people. Really. Cuz –

Comment:

“She, she made racist comments and body shamed. That’s how I come to my conclusion. We shouldn’t hate nor should we praise.

Armstrong:

I like that to be honest. I like that answer. I like that answer. But you obviously see something special about a person yeah if you’re just chatting about them but you still follow them. That makes sense, doesn’t it. Whether you follow them on Instagram, whether, you still follow them. Cause you still talk about them.

Comment: Pixel box

Armtrong: Pixel box – what you sorry for? Yeah, you can, put your word across, Georgia. Guys, this is what, (reading another comment) “but this is none of anyone’s business, I get what you’re saying but this is none of anyone’s business” Ok, I like that answer as well. But why does my picture have to have these comments then? You know, listen, guys, guys, we are gonna to a family, yeah, and we’re gonna have to set some rules. I need you guys to, in my, anything concerning Armstrong, whatever you want to do in the world, that’s great, but anything that says Armstrong, I need love, I need there to be love on all of the comments, I need love there. Anyone’s being negative, blow them out of the water because they’re trying to bring everyone down. What’s the point of being negative? Listen, I’ve laid down on a hospital bed for 3 months, yeah, and you never know what tomorrow looks like. Like, until someone’s been to that place, yeah, where you’re on your deathbed, yeah, and you don’t, like, until you’ve been in that place, you don’t really understand how short life is.

Guys, do you know what I do what I do? To open the door for you guys. To open the door for something you want to do. Yeah? Look –

Comment: “Anna guitar covers”

Armstrong:

Yeah, I get what, I get what you’re saying about Let’s talk about something positive and stuff like that, but really I’m literally talking to Strong nation, yeah, like I’m a speaker to my people, yeah, I’m a speaker to my people, then we’ll move on to something more interesting. I’ve gotta go, I really ain’t got time, I’m sorry for coming on late, I was supposed to come on at 4:00, but look guys, (10 minutes 24 seconds)

Reading: “you can’t control every comment or you’ll ……”

Armstrong: Ok, I get what you’re saying, yeah, I get what you’re saying. You can’t control every comment, great, but I’m saying, I can try and get through to you guys, cause you guys are the only people I care about, people that really want something good to happen in life, you know what I’m saying?

Thank you! Reading: People are constantly hating on Eleanor without any reasons and I don’t get it…….”

Guys, anyways, the truth is, yeah, from day dot, you guys know me to be a real dude, yeah. I’m a real dude. I’m just a ____________(mumble) I follow her and that’s it. People don’t follow her, that’s still it. But let’s not – do you know how many – listen – do you know how many people done wrong to me here, so much wrong. You think I’m going to go on twitter and Instagram and start slandering someone. No, that’s bad. I’d rather knock someone out, yeah, than slander them. You’ve gotta, it’s better that you have a fight, have a proper full on fight, yeah, than just go slandering because you know what? Do you know what you actually look like? You look like, you look like a bunch of letters, yeah, that won’t back it up in real life, you know what I mean. That’s it, like, it’s not really - let’s – you know what (12 minutes 1 second)

Reading “Let’s quickly” Armstrong: Yeah! Jasmine – Let’s spread love, not hate. Reading: Let’s do this quickly so that – Let’s do this quickly so that I can get on with what I’ve got to do. Let’s do this quickly

(12 minutes 42 seconds) _________ First video chat (didn’t get name)

Girl: “Oh my god. This is not happening”

Arm: Yeah baby.

Girl: Oh my god. I literally just woke up. I look so bad. I’m so sorry. Can you hear me?

Arm: Yeah darling, alright?

Girl: Yeah. Oh my god. I’m freaking out. Sorry.

Arm: Don’t freak out.

Girl: How you been?

Arm: Me? I been great. I been great. I been great.

Girl: That’s good.

Arm: So what do you think about all what’s going on then?

Girl: I just literally just woke up and went online and I think you guys are talking about Eleanor. But, um, you want my opinion on that? Her or?

Arm: I want your honest opinion, your honest opinion.

Girl: Um, I respect her, you know. I’ve never really - I’m a Larry shipper but I respect Eleanor, you know? I love her – but, no I don’t, I just respect her a person. I don’t follow her and I just let her be, you know? I do not go on her stuff or hate on her. You know, it’s just, I don’t care what she does, it’s whatever, she’s her own person, I’m my own person, I’m a do me, and that’s it.

Arm: do you know the reason why I made this – do you know the reason why I’m even speaking about this?

Girl: I think a lot of people just bring it up to you and its like, I feel like its when people talk about Larry or Eleanor on here, I think it’s disrespectful because we’re here to support you, you know? Talk about –

Arm: Thank, what, – owww! (big smile) Oh my god! Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! You know what? You’ve made my night. You’ve made my night. You’ve actually made my night.

Girl: Oh my god. I’m just, I’m literally shaking, I don’t even know what I’m saying, I do, but I don’t, you know?

Arm: You’ve actually made my night. Can we, can we like? Like. Guys, like, look at this, yeah? Guys, support me, yeah, push me. Push me! Guys, believe in me, forget the music and stuff like that. I’ll get at singing, I’m the best at singing, you know what I’m saying, but just push me, yeah, get me, I, listen, I’m telling you, I’m like, see me, I’m the Tupac Shakur of this generation, yeah?

Girl: Yeah, I believe in you.

Arm: I’m gonna break into the lives of all of you, yeah, and I’m gonna fix everything that needs fixing. And do you know why? Because this is what I want to do, this is what I care about, this is why I can’t say, oh yeah, screw all of that and support everything you’re saying just to pull your guys legs and stuff like that. I can’t agree with things that are wrong, so that guys, I want some of you, whoever who is humble enough to send Eleanor a DM saying, look, just send some love, spread love. Just spread love. Just spread love. What is you was in a relationship with let’s say, um, nescafe, yeah? You girls are in a relationship with nescafe yeah? Imagine everyone “awh, she’s not nescafe’s girlfriend” (Armstrong snaps fingers) Jammie Dodgers (?) just taught me how to do this with my hands today, Jasmine. (Snaps gingers) Ah, she’s not, she’s not going with nescafe, alright darling, xoxo y space believe that” “She is a not going out with nescafe” “nescafe is actually going out with cup of tea” yeah?

Girl: yeah. So like Harry said, treat people with kindness, and that’s what I do.

Arm: Treat people with kindness, treat people with kindness. Treat people with love.

“Jerry Dodger”, you’ve taught me all the moves, I can see you right there, I wanna talk all of this stuff, alright. Am I doing it right Jerry? Yeah, darling, thank you for your opinion on that yeah, I’m gonna have a chat

Girl: Thank you so much.

Arm: I’m gonna have a chat with one more person and then I’ve got to literally go, I’m so late for everything.

Girl: Ok, I love you, ok?

Arm: I love you more than food. (laugh)

Girl: (Laugh) Ok, bye, Have a nice day.

Arm: Nice one babe

Girl: Alright, bye.

(17 minutes 21 seconds)

Arm: Let’s see what’s going on here. Doing one more and then I got to go. But guys, someone, send love, let someone feel love, why do they have to hate each other….. Let’s go, let’s have a look at, let’s have a look at. Alright, one more, then I got to go. Guys, the thing is send love.

Mum: Hellooo

Arm: Yeah baby, what’s happening?

Mum: I can’t hear, why can’t I hear it. I’ve got a crying baby. Hold on.

Arm: I reckon your wifi’s on like

Mum: Have I got it plugged in right? It’s really really quiet.

Arm: Calita, you need to spill some tea, ok cool!

Mum: I can’t hear

Arm: You can’t hear? Hang on a sec Yeaaah, Calita, splill the tea. We want to hear the tea. We want to see where your tea at. Spill the tea, girl. Spill the tea girl. Calita, spill the tea now. Can you hear now?

Mum: Now, I can, a little bit.

Arm: Claps

Mum: I can hear now, I don’t what happened

Arm: The claps, it’s like magic.

Mum: What is, what is this beef ? Can you fill me in?

Arm: You know what I’m saying?

Mum: I don’t, I don’t!

Arm: Beef, you get me, beef.

Mum: what is happening? What is going on?

Arm: The beef is not. ??

Mum: Come on now

Arm: Alright, let me show you something, these hand gestures, and stuff like that, jammie dodger taught me how to do it. It helps you explain stuff yeah? Ok listen, lol, wyz space bar 127 send that message, happened yet. Ok basically in English, yeah?

Mum: What happened? Can you just fill me in?

Arm: I’ll fill you in but it’s hard to describe it without bouncing around. (Armstrong is doing all kinds or hand signals and sounds)

Mum: Right, ok.

Arm: Jammie dodger this is your fault, jammie dodger. Alright look, yeah, I put up a picture, yeah, on Instagram, yeah,

Mum: Alright

Arm: then, yeah, I woke up the next morning, and guess what I saw?

Mum: What did you see?

Arm: Messages on the comments boxes, yeah, ….

Mum: Saying…

Arm: Like, why are you uploading Eleanor, I mean they said that, like why are you tagging Eleanor on your picture. We love your selfie but don’t support Eleanor. You hear what I’m saying?

Mum: What, is this Louis’ missus?

Arm: Yeah!

Mum: Why are people saying that for?

Arm: I don’t know yet, but like next thing you know yeah, all of my social media appreciators came up with some crazy to get me love yeah, and were like, if anyone talks mad on Armstrongs’s media, madwoman’s maddening it

Mum: So you’ve got love, but they’re being too much.

Arm: I had Jasmine, Jasmine was right there, Jasmine was on my case. She was like don’t be talking mad about Armstrong’s friend cause the thing goes “pop” you know what I’m saying?

Mum: I think so.

Arm: I’m just trying to say to them, like, why do we have to be so negative?

Mum: I don’t know.

Arm: You don’t have to like a person, you don’t have to let everyone know you don’t like a person (imitates typing)

Mum: Keyboard warrioring

Arm: I’m just saying –

Mum: That’s the world we live in now, unfortunately. You’re going to have people that say nasty things. There’s actual accounts of people that troll, like they make an account to specifically troll people, but they don’t know the effects it has on others

Arm: You know what –

Mum – It always happens no matter what the generation we live in now, you look at people like my mum and dad, like they married 35 years, you’ll never get that now. It’s so easy to cheat, it’s so easy to divorce, it’s so easy to bully, that’s the world we live in now, and it’s sad it’s sad.

Arm: Do you know what, yeah, I do understand what you’re saying and I agree with you totally. But do you know what, my gripe is this yeah, and by the way, I’m speaking to every single troll that’s - hello darling (mum just picked up little girl), hi darling, you’re so cute!! You look like a cupcake. Bebe, Bebe, you look like a cupcake!

Mum/little girl: Hi! Hi!

Arm: I just want to talk to you sweetheart. I love you’re pink top and your smile right now.

Mum: Awwww

Arm: Ok, I’m just saying, whoever is a troll right now, who’s on it now –

Mum: – Yeah

Arm: I’m telling you, we always doubt, we always doubt the effects of what we do yeah,

Mum:(whilst walking around with child) – uh huh

Arm: we always think that is cool, we always think that is, we always think like it doesn’t make, like it’s not going to come back on us, but I’m saying yeah, when it comes close to us, that’s when we know to start calming it down. Guys I’m saying, if you’re a troll, it will come back to you,

Mum: Yeah, no one deserves (child crying, she walks to go pick her up)

Arm: I promise you it will come back on you, but it might not come back on the way you think.

Mum: Yeah (now holding child)

Arm: Stop slandering, because you’re no one to be slandered. No one even knows you, you’re a fake account. The karma will come back.

(24 minutes 28 seconds)

Mum: And no one understands what that one comment will do to someone. Like you hear, you hear so many things now about people committing suicide because of that one person made that one last comment and tipped them over the edge and it’s not right. It makes me scared to have a family in case someone bullied my children or bullied someone that I loved.

Arm: Oh, hell no!

Mum: I have a bad side to me and I don’t want to have to bring that bad side out to someone else.

Arm: (doing more arm movements and trills)

Mum: You have to keep your cool.

Arm: I have two kids yeah, if it was like a ting like that, all I know is that the ting will go scrap, cap, cap, everyday.

Mum: It’s so hard. It’s so hard.

Arm: I’m not a person who’s like, oh they’re talking about me, let me just be humble and stuff, no I’m coming, I’m coming, me and you will have it out today. But listen, the other thing, yeah, the other thing is this – so

Mum: You lost it! Your lost it! (laughing)

Arm: The other thing is like the karma of doing that troll stuff is coming back to you.

Mum: Oh yeah.

Arm: And it’s like, I agree with what you’re saying, yeah, but it’s like you see there’s a couple hundred people on this chat right now yeah, I reckon you that from here, we can spread something that’s just gonna dead it all. Like, we don’t, like we know yeah that negativity makes money, that’s the truth.

Mum: Yeah, like, it’s like publicity isn’t it? Like bad publicity is still publicity. You can’t, you can’t get away from it, but you have a platform now where you can send certain messages to people and spread the word kind of thing because you’ve got that form of support now.

Arm: Calita, calita, I’ve got to go. Tell me, tell me, when should we do a live again, when should we do a live again? Cause I’ve got to go. I can’t stay here for too long guys. When should we do a live again?

Mum: ummm, whenever you want?

Arm: Let’s do a live, same time tomorrow.

Mum: Ok, Cool.

Arm: Yeah, we’ll get on this, we’ll get on this. There’s another topic I want to talk about but I need people to like really really really like think about their answers.

Mum: Ok

Arm: So guys, today, we’ve finished the madness with Eleanor. I trust some of you lot, some of you, I can’t speak for all of you, yeah, but I know some of you are going to go and send her messages of love, Spread love. Spread some love.

Mum: Literally

Arm: Starts singing “everything’s going to be alight”

(28 minutes 11 seconds)

Arm: Hang on a minute, hang on a minute, (reading) “no you haven’t, trust me, this is going to get worse, you’re making it worse. Let me tell you something, let me tell you something, who is this? “god’s honest truth”

Mum: I’m going now.

Arm: You off yeah! Go on then babe, I’ll speak to you soon.

Mum; Byeee

Arm: God’s honest truth. Guys, you see that negative person right there yeah? That’s gotta go. That has got to go. That has got to go. Where’s the link? Strong nation. Reading: Stop putting all of us in the same bag.

Arm: Listen, you don’t have to be in this bag. You certainly don’t. But, only positive people are my friends to be honest with you (bit mumbled though) Only positive people are my friends, mate.

New video chat starts (29 minutes 44 seconds)

Arm: Hello Carlita

Carlita: Hi, sorry for being so annoying, I’m so sorry –

Arm: You’re not annoying.

Carlita: but I’m _______(represent?) Larry point of view, like, sorry for that, but this is getting so big, that I need to clarify.

Arm: Yeah

Carlita: You know Louis _____, Eleanor and the antis, like we call the people who doesn’t believe in Larry, but we have our reasons that but if someone is disrespecting us because its _________, like we are here for Louis and his music, and for you, I like you so much, honestly I was so upset when you left because you are so talented and stuff, but –

Arm: Thank you, thank you

Carlita: You’re welcome. It’s sad that. It’s annoying every day getting hate because of shipping who we ship, like Louis and Harry but we have to deal with it, like I know, but that’s it.

Arm. The thing is yeah, you, do you know what, and I respect you, yeah, for being just so stand up, getting in front of my face, and saying your true opinion, and I get what you’re saying, but the thing is there is a difference between something that we want to happen and slander. It’s RUDE. It’s just so rude.

Carlita: Yeah, but, they’re not rude. Like some of us are, but me for example, and some of the _____ that I follow, like 28 the Spanish Larry (?) and some stuff like that, we are good people and we like defend their love because we think they are ____________ . I don’t ship them. I think they are truly couple but _____ with bad things.

Arm: But obviously you guys want the idea of him being with

Carlita: If Larry isn’t real, I would respect Eleanor and I respect Eleanor, and I will respect Louis and Harry as well but like I truly believe they are in a relationship.

Arm: Can I ask, can I ask you lot a question?

Carlita: Yeah, of course.

Arm: Would you do this to me, yeah, if I got into a relationship?

Carlita: Um no, but it’s not like that, its not that easy for understand. Like, there are a lot of videos that truly proves that they at least were in a relationship. Like seriously, there are, because I didn’t believe in their love last year, and I’ve been a one Direction fan for 5 years. But when you look through the videos, you see their looks, you just know, that’s it. I’m reading the comments and it’s getting annoying, the theme of Larry and Eleanor, we are here for Louis and that’s it.

Arm: Great. Well, you’re seeing me, do you know who I’m there for ?

Carlita: Yes, for Louis

Arm: Do you who I’m there for? I’m there for everyone.

Carlita: Yes,

Arm: So, I’m just saying, yeah, this is literally about two things. Can there not be negativity about people on my Instagram page and stuff and can there just, can we just love a bit more, because that’s what I believe, and you know what I’m saying. If someone doesn’t believe in love, I don’t think that the person is a normal person.

Carlita: Yes, I know, but

Arm: Someone called Tracy – Miss, - someone called Tracy tweeted “was that shhhht really necessary? No, don’t think so.” Why? Why are you tweeting me that?

Carlita: Uh, some of us are like so childish, so so childish.

Arm: Someone just said, “Armstrong you started it.” Started what?

Carlita: No, it’s like everything happens the same. It’s a lot of drama. Always the drama and it’s not good for us to talk about this because yeah, its true that it is Louis’ private life.

Arm: Reading comment _________ Robinson

Carlita: What? Well, that’s it. Let’s forget about Larry and all the drama and focus on Louis and your career. You are so so good. Really.

Arm: Alright, listen, we’re gonna stop talking about this now. Yeah?

Carlita: Yes

Arm: But, I need you to tell me, yeah, and I’m not speaking to everyone, I’m speaking to some people when I say, send her some love. Send her some love. I don’t care if anyone don’t like me, I don’t give a damn about that. I don’t care if people don’t like what I’m saying. I care about people that are listening to what I’m saying. Like – (reading) Lucia – Like why would you say, “Please shut up.” Why? Why would you be rude to me?” Why? Why? Why? That’s not very nice.

Carlita: No

Arm: Look, like, I’m not interested in ignorant people that aren’t listening to what I’m saying, I care about people that are listening, whether they have their opinions or not, but they’re listening to what I’m saying. I don’t like negativity, Listen, have you ever seen someone die in front on your face.

Carlita: No.

Arm: I’ve seen someone lose their life in front of my face. Do you know how short life is? Listen, I’m just trying to teach you guys cause you guys really want to be social media people forever. You guys can be something that’s what I’m saying, you guys can go out and do something for yourselves. You guys can, you guys can actually, like guys, I’m promising you guys yeah, you know what I’m like, you know what I’m like, babe so you know what I’m like?

Carlita: What?

Arm: I’m like someone that wants to be the president of this industry. I want to be, I want to bring, I want to bring everyone together, yeah, and I want to stand in the gap. I want to be like a politician musician.

Carlita: Yeah, that’s great. Well, the point was, like, we should stop talking about this, because I’m reading all the comments, and they are sending hate.

Arm: Yeah, and the thing is, the thing is, I don’t mind hate. That’s the thing.

Carlita: I don’t mind either. I have to do with hate all of the day, every day for what I believe, for what I am doing, things like that, but I don’t care. Really.

Arm: Someone said, someone said, (reading) stop talking about Louis’ private life. Ok. So why did you have to put his private life on my page?

Carlita: No, no _______. I just need to clarify a pair of things but that’s it. I didn’t want to talk about Louis’ private life.

Arm: Oh my god! (looking at comments) This is actually so real. This is so real, you know. This is actually real. This is, this is, this is interesting.

Carlita: Hmm, well, this is interesting. This started in 2011.

Arm: 2011? Yeah? Great, fantastic. Alright, cool, I’m done with it. I’m done with it. So now guys (laughs), I need, I want everyone to like – look – understand the person I am, and I mean well and I’m not like, I’m not against (trying to make out comments 37 minutes 53 seconds) Reading: “Larry is stupid and so are all of you” Listen palomo or whatever your name is, just delete yourself from this chat. Why would you say that? You’re about to get stormed by everyone. Everyone I permit you to storm that person. I’m joking, don’t storm that person. Send her love. Listen, yeah, I’m gonna - I’ve got a lot of plans yeah music wise and future wise and stuff like that I just want everyone yeah, to just really really keep their eyes on what I’m doing. Guys, I’m promising you yeah, you know that I can’t say exactly what it is yet, but I’m promising you I’m coming with some fire. Do you understand?

Carlita: Well you are so talented so I’m going outside. I’m so proud of you and what you are doing.

Arm: Well the boss has said end that convo (text at 38 minutes 35 seconds) so that’s what I’ve got to do, yeah. Alright, I’ve got to go, yeah, but we’re going this live tomorrow and there’s something I want to chat to you guys about but this chat is about to go all -

Carlita: Bye

Arm: Guys, the chats about to go off tomorrow, yeah, the chat’s about to go off tomorrow. Guys, listen, guys, when we have a chat, I need to find out about something, yeah, and I’m going to ask all of you this, so you guys have to, I need you guys, yeah, all things. Listen, I want to have so many people on this chat, and I want to have so many conversations, but I’ve got to go. Reading: Gay um Gaya, yeah, I’ve already finished talking about that situation. I’m not even going there. Guys, we’re talking about better things, yeah, and it’s about to go off. Listen, all I’m saying is, yeah, I need your strength, I need you guys. I’m going to speak to you guys tomorrow about something. Yeah, I’ve got to go yeah. Love you all, love you all, love you all, love you all. I’ll check my DMs as well. (Reads comments), guys you’re talking about old news. Be happy, love you all. I’ve got to go, I know, I can’t stay longer, I’ve literally, I’ve got to go.

Let’s see who is calling me on snapchat. (answers snapchat) You alright? What’s happening? Person on snapchat – “we’re at fireworks”. ____ at fireworks. Oh my god, Oh, I’ve got to go. Come on the line tomorrow, come on Instagram tomorrow yeah? I’ve got to go, I’ve got to go, I’ve got to go. (reading comment) Smiley Louis Tomlinson Love you all, love you all, love you all, love you all. I’ll check my DMs as well. Bye

END

#i don't engage like other blogs but i can do this #there were so many misquotings and its such a long video #my contribution #larry needs to end

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pass-the-bechdel · 6 years ago

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Marvel Cinematic Universe: Thor: The Dark World (2013)

Does it pass the Bechdel Test?

Yes, at least four times.

How many female characters (with names and lines) are there?

Four (23.52% of cast).

How many male characters (with names and lines) are there?

Thirteen.

Positive Content Rating:

Three.

General Film Quality:

Surprisingly dull.

MORE INFO (and potential spoilers) UNDER THE CUT:

Passing the Bechdel:

Darcy tells Jane about the scientific anomaly. They check it out together. They pass when Jane reappears. Frigga instructs Jane. To be honest, I forgot to notice if they actually passed once Jane came back to Earth, but it’s ok because we already confirmed that the film achieved multiple passes anyway. There were definitely some.

Female characters:

Sif.

Jane Foster.

Darcy Lewis.

Frigga.

Male characters:

Malekith.

Bor.

Loki.

Odin.

Thor.

Fandral.

Hogun.

Volstagg.

Richard.

Ian.

Heimdall.

Algrim.

Erik Selvig.

OTHER NOTES:

Odin is encouraging Thor to have a relationship with Sif, aka his One Female Friend. What a cliche. It comes to nothing in any direction and I don’t know why they bothered to even mention it.

They bother to give Frigga something to do (ever-so-briefly) in this movie, just in time to kill her off. Nice.

They spent so much time having Thor and Loki trade quips while they’re escaping Asgard, I straight-up forgot that Jane was there. Bad editing, y’all.

Erik is ~crazy~ and then he sees the convergence is happening and he’s spontaneously better and it’s all just very...poor.

Thor’s whole take-the-aether-to-Svartalfheim plan goes astronomically badly and I feel like they kinda...gloss over that. He and his buddies all commit treason, they deliver the aether straight to Malekith, and Loki DIES (as far as Thor knows, anyway). It’s just kinda weird that they don’t take a moment to be like ‘wow, really fucked that one up’, y’know, lean in to the emotion a bit, give it some weight? I feel like they played Frigga’s death like it was the more desolate moment, which is nonsense from both a narrative perspective, and in terms of character (since the audience is three films in with fan-favourite Loki, as opposed to this being Frigga’s second appearance but the first in which she actually did anything (recall in the first film she was not actually given a name, let alone anything to do)). Whatever.

I’m not gonna linger overlong with this one, because there’s really not a lot worth saying. For the ladies, I will say this: I think all four of them have more utility in this film than they did in the first Thor. Jane is less prominent than last time, but she gets to do more than just talk excitedly about science this time (though for the middle portion of the film, she is rendered a damsel and spends a lot of time either unconscious or just weirdly silent and being totally forgotten by narrative and audience alike (pro tip: reaction shots of all involved parties are important. No one is ever just hanging on the sidelines of a major action event doing and thinking and responding to nothing). Nevertheless, she gets to actively participate in science-ing a way to win the day at the climax of the film (using Selvig’s tech, admittedly - I can’t give points to any aspect of Jane’s handling in this film without also adding a caveat), and at least that’s better than standing around yelling and wringing her hands over Thor? It’s something.

When I say Sif had more utility this time, that’s...maybe an exaggeration. She had about the same amount as last film, really: she does at least one (1) thing in her function as ‘one of Thor’s group of friends’, and she gets at least one (1) scene where she has a personal conversation of some description with Thor so that the film can play with the possibility of using Sif as a love interest. It’s not a thrilling effort, and I can’t pretend that there’s any real evidence of a character there, just a placeholder standing in until someone with an actual personality shows up to take over (it doesn’t happen). Darcy continues to be that mix of fun and annoying that only sometimes works as comic relief, but at least this movie gives her some minor action to perform (getting Selvig out of the psychiatric facility) as opposed to just tagging along being chatty for the sake of it all movie long. It’s not much - and frankly, Selvig’s whole storyline is useless - but at least it allows anything at all to be happening on Earth while Jane and Thor are away. It’s...something.

And then there’s Frigga, who, as noted, is briefly given something to do so that the film can shore up some meagre emotional capital in order to buy a fancy funeral scene and some tasty manpain for our Asgardian royals. Yippee. An inordinate amount of attention is given to the death of a relatively minor character with whom the audience has been given little opportunity to forge an attachment, and while it works fine enough at that point in the film, the fact that the movie never reaches that same tempo again is egregious. Normally, the primary emotional intensifier in the film is the event which prompts the final act, but this movie misplaces that event way early with Frigga’s death and then Thor’s treason-plan which ensues; there’s a whole other action set-piece on Svartalfheim and ANOTHER (much more major) character death, and THAT is what spurs the final act of the film, but it is handled in a much more low-key (pun not intended) fashion, with very little response from the characters past the immediate moment. After Loki’s death, there’s no evidence that Thor is particularly bothered, there’s no indication that he’s emotionally driven to avenge his brother (or his mother, now, because we already spent that arc) by defeating Malekith at last, and there’s no hatching of a reckless Hail-Mary ploy to beat the bad guy, they just kinda...go and plant some gravitation rod thingies. Wowzer. The primary emotional intensifier of the film happens at the half-way point with Frigga’s fridging, and there’s not nearly enough fuel in that to keep the story running to the end.

Essentially, this is the problem with the entire film: it has no emotional cohesion, and that renders events that should feel compelling/exciting/original perfunctory and empty instead. It also has the same problem as the first Thor in that the majority of the characters feel flat and fairly meaningless as individuals, existing more as plot devices than anything else, but unlike the first film this one doesn’t even muster a good villain plot (Christopher Eccleston’s Malekith has presence, but he isn’t given anything dynamic to work with, he’s literally ‘evil, because’. Also, I’m annoyed that they had Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje as Malekith’s lieutenant and failed to do anything cool with him as a character, he’s just The Muscle (who is also ‘evil, because’)). The adventure to Svartalfheim is the best part of the film because it has the sense of escalating stakes that the actual final act lacks, so it’s the only time that the tone of the film feels like it’s on-track, plus it is notably the only time that the narrative utilises Loki (fan-favourite character and easily the best asset from the first film: you kinda want to lean in to that - the other best character from the first movie, Heimdall, remains woefully underused this time around). Once Loki is out of the picture and Thor’s not real worried about it and the characters on Earth are fooling around with planting a handful of itty flimsy spikes in Greenwich to disrupt the cosmic alignment of the nine realms (who knew it was that easy?), the film lapses into the same old predictable beats with no emotional core, and while there’s some basic fun in the portal-hopping of the film’s climax, there’s no sense of any genuine jeopardy for any of the characters, nor is there a clear idea of what they actually have to do to beat Malekith or how that can be achieved, so the action isn’t building toward anything more defined than ‘super-powered aliens whaling on each other’. As the MCU already learned (but evidently, failed to internalise) after The Incredible Hulk, just having rubber characters bounce around breaking stuff and being invulnerable until it becomes convenient for them to stop does not a good finale make. Well. At least this movie isn’t as ridiculously contrived as Iron Man 2? It’s less fun, though, and for all its spectacle, it’s not even as good as the first Thor movie, and considering how very generic that film was? That’s a dire conclusion. The MCU track record for sequels is presently, not good. Just you wait, though - we’re about to have an exception to the rule.

#Marvel Cinematic Universe #MCU #Thor: The Dark World #Bechdel Test #female representation

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yukithesnowman314 · 6 years ago

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“Be your true mind.” -Revelations: Persona Japanese tagline.

Starring into the screen of the gaming P.C. I brought off my friend during the 2018 Holiday season, I noticed that there was something missing: A wallpaper – a good one. I was using fanart of Yugiri from Zombieland Saga as a placeholder until I could find wallpaper that I wouldn’t mind always seeing. Don’t get me wrong: Zombieland Saga is an awesome anime and Yugiri is best undead girl, but I needed something better. A wallpaper to serve as a reminder to do whatever the fuck I want to do throughout the year 2019

I hooked up an old external hard drive containing over ten years’ worth of anime and manga fanart, screenshots, manga panels, and memes; most of them were perfect to use as wallpaper, but I desire one that would be my mantra for 2019. As I browsed through the drive, there was a certain image with a manga panel snapshot that spoke to my soul. It was of Kyoko from Puella Magi Madoka Magica with a pocky stick in her mouth offering a box full of them to somebody off-screen. As she chew on the snack, she says the following:

“Who cares what anyone else thinks? It’s your life – do whatever you want to do. That’s the right way to live.”

There was no hesitation. Instantly, that became my wallpaper; vowing to never change it until January 1st, 2020. Throughout my life (until I got into my 20s), I was concern about what others thought about me. Wanting to not offend my friends, family members, and bosses (surprising, right?); I followed their suggestions, putting my own thoughts to the side.

I believed that if I put myself first, it would paint me as a hard-headed selfish asshole. I should had been an asshole.

“To be quiet and do as you’re told, that’s the cowardly choice.”

-Gearless Joe, Megalo Box

Go to church because the rest of the family were going; despite the fact I’m secretly don’t follow religion. Enroll in a community college my parents wanted me to go; regardless if I wanted to go to one outside the Midwest (my home region). Hang out with friends even though I actually wanted to stay and relax at home. Go into work on my off day when I knew I wanted to tell my boss to fuck off.

Deep within my soul, my “easy-going” public persona was clashing with my true feelings. I truly didn’t want to do what people told me to do, but I didn’t have the balls to admit it.

This went on until I turned 23.

I dropped out of college. Smartest move of my life. I stopped going to church. I don’t need Jesus to be a good person. I ignored my boss’s phone calls for me to come into work. He got the point soon after. I cut off friends who didn’t respect the fact I didn’t feel like hanging out with them when I was tired. They were fake friends – I didn’t need them around.

It was liberating.

Soon after I selected the image of Kyoko as my wallpaper, I got a reminder from My Anime List that Mob Pyscho 100 Season 2 was starting soon. Fitting. Mob (the hero of the Mob Pyscho 100 series) is a kid who decided to follow his own path in life; as opposed to listen to others people’s suggestions for his life. For example: when the supernatural club at his school tried to get him to join (because of his psychic powers), he rejected their offer. He joined the athletic club instead to build muscle.

The anime is one of the ultimate showcases of being your true self. But, Mob may have appeared to have forgotten about this.

Wanting to impress his crush Tsubomi, Ichi (who catches Mob sneaking a peek at Tsubomi) comes up with a plan for Mob to court her attention: Have him run for the recently vacant student council president position (it was a ploy for Ichi to have Mob gain popularity so she could have him as the new leader of the recently dismantled (LOL) cult). She even went as far as writing a speech for Mob, in her own words. Despite not caring for school politics and social structure, Mob agrees to Ichi’s self-centered plot – reluctantly.

And by reluctantly, I mean that Mob completely froze during his speech. On stage. In front of the entire student body – his crush in the crowd included.

It’s goofy that a guy like Mob, who was always dead set on doing his own thing, decided to follow the path of another person. Sure, it was to impress his crush, but the plot wasn’t from his own driven nature and ideas. Despite the public embarrassment, Mob “won” the heart of a female classmate: Emi. She was “impressed” by his courage to stand on stage in front of the school, which spurred her into confessing her “feelings” to him. The two started dating soon after.

Obviously, their relationship is rooted in compete bullshit.

Emi

When Emi asks what type of work he does, Mob is about to tell her about his supernatural works and adventures but feared that she’d be creep out. He comes up with a bold-face lie; claiming he works for a bookstore. This excites Emi as she’s an active and avid reader and is writing her own novel. She even offers Mob to read it, which he agrees to.

Later on, as Mob reads Emi’s novel, she confronts him. She asks why he still walks her home from school after he rejected her. Furthermore, she reveals that she knew Mob was going back to his club after he had walked her back home; thinking that Mob was afraid that he would upset her if he stop.

She also makes the connection that Mob only ran for class president because somebody told him to do it, since it was clear that he didn’t write his own speech. Then she bluntly asks if he has trouble making up his own mind and following his own feelings, which Mob confirms.

Finally, she reveals a secret about herself: She too struggles with being her own person – like Mob himself. She only asked Mob out on a dare and was pressured by her “friends” to do so (based on Mob’s pitiful performance during the elections). She was scared of being rejected and seen as a laughing stock by her “friends”, so she followed through with their cruel prank.

They agree to end their “relationship and part ways soon after – only to meet up again.

The “friends” Emi worked hard to impress and not offend? They weren’t truly her friends.

Emi regroups with her friends after receiving a text message from them. She decides to show her “friends” the novel that she was working on. One girl snatches it from her hands and started to laugh and belittle her work along with the rest. Another girl, while trying to hold in her laughter, ask Emi if she was being serious about it. Emi (clearly upset and defensive), gives off a weak chuckle and replies she was only doing it for fun. The girls starts to laugh cruelly as they destroy her novel.

Emi became the thing she feared the most: a laughing stock among her friends. Not because she didn’t “date” Mob, but because she had a passion for writing. If they were truly her friends, not only would they not pressured her into dating Mob (something she never wanted to do), they would have encouraged her to keep writing.

As Mob walks back home, he sees the girls destroying Emi’s novel. He confronts them, telling them how wrong they were to do that to her and her hard work. He starts collecting the pieces off the ground. Confused, yet feeling appreciated, Emi helps Mob out and her fake friends leave the duo to be. The two try their best to recover the novel but the reminding pieces are blown into the wind. Emi gets discourage and decides that they should call the novel a total lost.

At this point, Mob decides to be honest with Emi (as she did with him) and reveal his true self: The fact that he’s a gifted esper. He uses his powers to completely restore the torn novel; which impresses Emi (as well as Tsubomi – who was watching the events from afar). Perhaps it was because that Emi was honest with Mob about her feelings, fears, and insecurities that led Mob into helping her. Maybe Mob was happy that he knew somebody who too was scared to be their true self and wanted to help them.

Regardless, at the end of the episode, both Mob and Emi was able to embrace who they truly are without fear.

***

I believe there’s a lesson to be learned from the first episode of season two of Mob Pyscho 100 2.

The lesson? Put yourself first, be honest with who you are, and never fear about what others may think about you. Once you can do all that, you have truly become free. People may call you selfish or self-centered for being you, but in reality, humans are selfish by nature. Some humans are braver with their selfish nature than others. If somebody complains about your egocentric nature , don’t take it personal. They more than likely are projecting their anger of not having the courage to be selfish.

Right now, there are people who are completely unhappy with their lives. Why? Because they were controlled into following somebody else’s path. They never had the courage to stray off the path that wasn’t design for them. There are doctors, lawyers, and dentists in those positions who are completely miserable because they decided to listen to their parents’ wishes. They feared to bring “shame” to their family and enter a career field they hate. If only they would have follow their heart instead, perhaps they wouldn’t be miserable.

Remember this: You have the freedom to be your own person. It’s your life. Who cares if anyone gets upset?

“Your life is your own, ok? It’s OK to run away! If you’re capable of it, it won’t be a mistake.” -The Mob Choir

“Who cares what anyone else thinks? It’s your life – do whatever you want to do. That’s the right way to live.” -Kyoko, Puella Magi Madoka Magica “Be your true mind.” -Revelations: Persona Japanese tagline. Starring into the screen of the gaming P.C. I brought off my friend during the 2018 Holiday season, I noticed that there was something missing: A wallpaper – a good one.

#2019 anime #anime #manga #mob pyscho 100 #Mob Pyscho 100 S2 #Mob Pyscho 100 Season 2 #Pyscho Mob 100 #winter 2019 anime

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edactually · 2 years ago

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Ed POV - 10.7

Ed had to admit, the photo evidence made for a very strong case.

No! No, it was too soon! He wasn’t, he couldn’t be.

Could he?

Not the time. Other things to deal with first.

Ed knocked on the bathroom door. “Stede? You ok in there?”

He was met with silence and Ed pressed his ear up against the door to try and catch the slightest sound. “They’ve gone, we’re going to regroup after breakfast and come up with a plan.”

Still no answer.

And now Ed was desperate. “Baby, please open the door before I knacker my shoulder trying to break it down.”

And after he said that, he heard shuffling. He already knew one of Stede’s key weaknesses - he never wanted Ed to get hurt for his sake.

When the door opened, he was met with the sight of his boyfriend’s red eyes and tear-stained cheeks. The realisation that Stede had been in here while they were arguing, probably with his hand clamped over his mouth to muffle his sobs… it just broke Ed’s heart.

“Oh Stede,” He was on the verge of tears himself. “Sweetheart. Come here.”

Stede didn’t so much walk as fall into Ed’s arms. He wept openly against his shoulder and Ed let him, even as the silk became soaked and clung to his skin, he let Stede cry as much as he needed to. Nothing better than a good cry.

When the sobs turned into hiccuping sounds, Ed guided Stede over to the bed and set him down. “Cup of tea?”

He felt Stede nod.

“Nice earl grey?”

Stede nodded again and his arms unlatched to release Ed. He hated leaving him like this, but the kettle was in the other room, so Ed gathered up the yellow blanket and bundled it tightly around Stede until he looked like a burrito. Just a placeholder until Ed came back.

He rummaged through the hotel’s welcome basket as he waited for the kettle to boil and found a couple of packets of biscuits that would suffice until he could get a proper breakfast for Stede.

He returned as quickly as he could with the cup of tea in one hand and the biscuits in the other to find Stede exactly where he’d left him, still sniffling. Ed unfurled a corner of the blanket to hand Stede his tea and then joined him on the bed, tugging the blanket over his own shoulders so they were huddled together underneath it. He let Stede sip his tea, a thrum of satisfaction coursing through him as Stede’s eyes closed and Ed knew he’d got it just right.

He unwrapped one of the biscuits and dunked it into the tea before offering it to him and Stede looked at him like Ed was a pet cat who had brought in a dead bird as a gift. “That’s sacrilege.”

“Dunking a biscuit in a cup of tea? Nah, it’s nice.” Ed offered it to him again, but this time Stede took it with a wary bite. Ed could tell by his expression that Stede knew Ed was right but he didn’t want to admit it.

Ed let Stede finish his tea, and didn’t tease when Stede dunked another biscuit, even though he very much wanted to bleat ‘told you so’ at him.

Stede was down to the last dregs of his tea when he sighed deeply. “Why does it have to be so complicated?”

“What?” Ed asked, as if he didn’t already know the answer.

“Us.”

And now Ed was spiralling. This had been exactly what he’d feared might happen. “Doesn’t have to be complicated.” He rushed, fixing a silly grin on his face like he wasn’t absolutely terrified that Stede was about to end things. “I like you, you like me - we’re boyfriends. Easy peasy, pudding and pie.”

Stede sighed again. “It’s not easy though, is it? You saw what people were saying about us. About me.” He shook his head. “Once again, your reputation and your career are suffering just by association with me.”

“Stede, please.” Ed grabbed the cup and moved it onto the bedside table so he could clasp Stede’s hands. “It’s not your fault.”

“But it is my fault–”

“No. No, no, no. Don’t do that. Please.” Ed clutched at him desperately. He’d only just got Stede, he wasn’t about to give him up. “We’ll figure something out.”

“Ed, you can’t risk everything you’ve built for me.”

“Yes I can!” Ed was frantic. “I can do whatever I like, fuck what anyone else thinks. I don’t want to go back to how it was before. I just want you. Stede, I’m begging you, don’t let this end us. Please .” His voice cracked on the final word and now tears were spilling hot down his cheeks.

Stede looked alarmed and reached out on instinct to brush them away, but Ed didn’t loosen his grip and their hands lifted in the air together. “Darling, I–”

“No one’s ever wanted me except you. Not the real me. I don’t care if we haven’t known each other that long, I know what makes me happy and it’s you. I–”

His rambling was cut off by Stede’s lips crashing against his. It was artless and messy but Ed sunk into the kiss like Stede was breathing life back into him. His shoulders slumped, relaxing, and Stede pulled back. “I would have clapped my hand over your mouth but you wouldn’t let go.” Just as well, in Ed’s opinion. He much preferred the kissing method of Stede getting him to shut up. “Just breathe for a moment, darling.”

Ed did as he was told, over-exaggerating the deep breath so Stede could hear it.

“That’s it.” Stede smiled softly and bumped their noses together. “I’m not breaking up with you.”

Ed sagged with relief. “You’re not?”

“You think I came this far to fall at the first hurdle?” Stede tutted. “Yes, I was worried. I’m still worried, in fact, and very panicked about what our next move is, but I have no intention of breaking up with you. I won’t give Iggy the satisfaction of thinking he can control your life like that.”

Ed winced. “You heard.”

“I did. I also heard you didn’t hesitate to say no when he asked you to end things. I’m proud of you.” Ed glowed at the praise but Stede wasn’t finished. “But I don’t think he’s going to just let this one go. It’ll cause too much friction.”

Stede was right about that. Now that he knew about them, Izzy would do everything in his power to break them up.

“How would you feel about a spot of acting, my dear? A grand fuckery, if you will.”

Now this was intriguing. Just what idea did Stede have in mind?

“Iggy won’t be satisfied unless he thinks we’ve broken up, so why don’t we let him think that?” Fear rose in Ed’s chest again until Stede kissed his cheek. “Not for real, treasure. We just pretend, and we keep dating in secret. As long as we’re not spotted in public together then the fans don’t need to know. There hasn’t been any official confirmation anyway, they’re all just speculating. If they don’t see any more evidence of us together then the rumour will die.”

Ed wanted to be loud and open about his relationship, not hide it away like it didn’t deserve to see the light. “Stede, I’m not ashamed of you. I don’t want to hide our relationship.”

“I know, darling, but what choice do we have? At least this way we can still be together. Besides,” Stede winked. “Maybe it’ll be fun, me being your sexy little secret and all.”

Ed did like the sound of that. What he didn’t like the sound of was keeping Stede hidden from everyone else. They hadn’t even had their first proper date yet. Ed wanted to be seen with him, wanted to drape himself all over Stede in public and say ‘you see this man? He’s all mine. Stede Bonnet is mine and no one else can have him.’

But Ed remembered what the fans had been like the last time they had been made aware of Stede. Some of the things that had been said were disgusting and cruel, and he didn’t want to put Stede through the turmoil of dealing with that again.

They might even be angrier now - there were some people out there who couldn’t stand it when a favourite celebrity of theirs was no longer single. Ed had known multiple friends in the industry whose relationships had suffered because of the hate thrown at them. He was confident that himself and Stede could get through that, but Stede shouldn’t have to suffer online abuse just to date him. There was also the fact that dating in secret would get Izzy off their backs and it meant they would still be together…

“We’re already going to be long distance,” Stede added “So it shouldn’t be too difficult to avoid being seen in public together.”

Shit. Long distance.

Ed had been so wrapped up in everything, all cosy and warm in the little relationship bubble they’d built around them that he hadn’t even thought about what dating meant for them long-term. Stede had kids and a job to get back to, and Ed had a tour he needed to slog through.

The bubble burst.

“And you’re ok with it?” Ed tried to sound casual, nonchalant. He didn’t want to let on that he was still absolutely terrified that any long period of separation would make Stede start doubting them again. “With the long distance, the secrecy, all of it?”

Stede leaned in and kissed the corner of his mouth. “If it means I get to have you, then it’s all worth it.”

And Ed’s heart fluttered, but he couldn’t quite shake that nagging sense of dread. “If you’re sure.”

Stede smiled. “Positive. Now,” His expression turned mischievous. “My flight home is this afternoon and I still have to pack, but I would very much like to say a proper goodbye to my boyfriend and make sure he has something to remember me by.”

“Stede Bonnet, as if I could ever forget you.”

“Hmm, if I do this right then you definitely won’t.”

And then Stede had one hand firmly planted on Ed’s chest, pushing him back down against the mattress. He went willingly, gazing up at Stede with eyes that still glimmered with tears. The hand on Ed’s chest tugged gently at the V of his pyjama shirt, warm fingertips brushing over the ink on his bare chest. Ed shuddered and closed his eyes.

“No, no, darling. I want you to look at me.”

Ed’s eyes snapped open again.

Stede’s voice was calm, gentle even, but there was an underlying command in his tone. He smiled down at Ed with all the affection in the world. “There’s something new I’d like to try.”

Again? It hadn’t even been three full days and they had already ticked multiple things off of Stede’s sexual bucket list. Ed supposed he was making up for lost time, making up for years wasted, and Ed was only too happy to assist. “What are you thinking?”

Stede unbuttoned the top button of Ed’s pyjama shirt. “You don’t have to agree to it. I’m more than happy to do something else if you’re not into it.”

Ed suppressed a second shiver as Stede’s nimble fingers started to unfasten the rest of the buttons on his shirt. He had done a lot of stuff, he knew what he liked and what he didn’t, and he was comfortable telling Stede no if he wasn’t into it. “Try me.”

It was only then that he noticed the anxiety in Stede’s expression. He was doing his best to conceal it and maintain the confident facade, but Ed could tell he was really nervous about voicing a desire that could be rejected. Even if it wasn’t something that Ed wanted to do, he wanted Stede to feel comfortable asking him for anything. He would never laugh or mock Stede for it, they could just discuss a compromise.

“I’d like to taste you.” Stede said, finally.

Now Ed was confused. “You’ve done that before.”

Stede shook his head and slid the pyjama shirt off of Ed’s shoulders, throwing it over the side of the bed to land in a puddle of silk on the floor. Stede was normally so careful with fine fabrics. “I don’t mean like that.”

Stede’s hands went to the waistband of Ed’s pyjama trousers but it took Ed squirming against the bed for Stede to tug the trousers down and cast them aside to join the shirt on the floor. Ed was left naked, but rather than pay attention to his cock (which was becoming rather quickly interested in these proceedings), Stede nudged Ed’s legs apart to kneel between them and slid his hands underneath Ed’s backside.

The lightbulb switched on above Ed’s head.

Holy fuck.

Yes.

He couldn’t believe Stede was so nervous about asking.

“Came across rimming in your research then?” Ed asked with a smirk.

Stede’s nose scrunched. “A lot of the terms are so vulgar, aren’t they? You’d think people would come up with nicer names.”

“So I’m right.” Ed slowly drew his legs up the bed so they were bent at the knees. “You’re asking if you can eat me out.”

All the faux confidence had melted away and Stede was as bashful as a rose. “I’d like to try at least. We don’t have to if you’re not interested.”

“I’m very interested.” Ed reassured him. “But you know this goes both ways, right? If you want to try something then realise you’re not into it, we can stop.”

“I know, you’ve said before.”

“Well it bears repeating. Maybe we should come up with a safe word.”

“How about chamomile?”

“Works for me.”

Stede’s hands had moved around to press against Ed’s hips, glide over his thighs. Ed let his legs fall further apart and Stede eyed him carefully. “You won’t hurt your knee?”

Now that he knew Stede’s plans, Ed’s cock was hardening rapidly at the thought of what was to come, so keeping the strain from his voice was tricky. “It’ll be fine, now would you–”

“How about a pillow? I think a pillow under your lower back is a good idea.”

“Stede, it’s–” He didn’t even bother finishing his sentence, Stede was already fussing trying to make a selection from the pillows on their bed. Whether he was stalling for time due to nerves or genuinely trying to plan for Ed’s comfort, Ed didn’t know.

Pillow selected, Stede helped Ed to angle his hips up so he could slide it beneath him, and he did have to begrudgingly admit that it was more comfortable, but he still would have opted to lie on a bed of nails if it meant Stede would put his mouth on him. But apparently Stede’s fussing was born from genuine care as he looked rather pleased with himself and leaned forward to press a kiss to Ed’s lips.

Stede still smelled like the lavender from their bath last night and Ed drank in the floral, herbaceous scent as Stede’s mouth moved from his lips to his chest and worked slowly down Ed’s body. There was a pause every now and then for Stede to flick his tongue over a nipple or suck at the flesh beneath his ribs or bite gently at his hip, but Stede’s journey down Ed’s body continued and Ed felt himself becoming more aroused with every second that passed.

Ed was impatient - had he been asked, he would have told Stede to just dive right in, but Stede somehow knew what he needed better than Ed did himself. Ed felt worshipped, treasured, absolutely adored as Stede paid attention to every part of him within reach as he made his descent.

His cock was no longer ignored as Stede managed to caress it with his tongue like he wanted to wrap it in an embrace. But it was only light and teasing, a prelude to the main event. Stede sank lower, and now his hands were braced against the backs of Ed’s thighs as he placed wet open-mouthed kisses over Ed’s balls. Ed found his legs pressed back without warning, raised in the air but supported by Stede’s hands as they tucked in against Ed’s chest.

Now Stede looked up. “Everything ok so far, darling?”

“Yep, yep. A-OK, green light, good to go.”

Stede chuckled and Ed flinched at the warm exhale of air against his sensitive skin. “Are you able to keep your legs up comfortably?”

Ed’s hands moved swiftly to grip at the backs of his own knees and parted his legs wider. Was it the most comfortable position he’d ever been in? Not exactly, but he was pretty confident Stede could take his mind off it. “All good.”

Ed had to crane his neck a little to get a proper look at the golden head smiling up at him from between his legs, but it was well worth it for Stede’s smile. “Look at you spreading so wonderfully for me, Ed.” He felt warm hands pressing against his cheeks, pulling him apart just that bit further. “I hardly need to do any work at all, you’re so good.”

He waited with bated breath for the first touch of Stede’s tongue, but it didn’t come. At least not where Ed was expecting it. Stede pressed kisses along each thigh, biting occasionally and then soothing over them with his tongue. The bastard knew exactly what he was doing as he traced patterns into Ed’s skin with his tongue, and Ed was a quivering mess. “Stede, please …”

“I’ve got a little game for you, darling.” Fuck, Stede’s hands were still clamped onto his arse and keeping Ed spread apart as he chatted. “I’ll draw something with my tongue on your thigh. Guess correctly and you can have my mouth wherever you like.”

“Fine, fine, whatever!” Ed would agree to a game of fucking I spy if it meant Stede would do as he promised.

Stede’s tongue began to trace another pattern on the back of Ed’s thigh, and he closed his eyes to try and concentrate. One big round sweep… two little darts of his tongue… a curved line…

“Any guesses yet?”

“Fucking hell, Stede! A bee? I don’t know!”

“Incorrect. What a shame, I thought you might be better at this since you’re the artist and all.”

The painting class. The painting class where Stede had been furious to discover that Ed wasn’t a beginner at all. Stede had waited until now for petty revenge?

The little fucker.

Stede traced the same pattern with his tongue again and Ed squeezed his eyes shut tight. He could get this, he could get this, he could–

“Oh you bastard!” Ed cried out. “It’s a fucking smiley face!”

Stede lifted his head, smiling smugly up at him. “Got it in two guesses. I’m proud of you.”

“Yeah, I’m a fucking genius.” Ed growled. “Now are you eating me out or what?”

Stede hummed, as if pretending to consider it. “I suppose I did promise.”

And before Ed could make another complaint, Stede’s tongue flicked out and dragged over his entrance.

Fucking finally .

He must have let out a groan that he wasn’t aware of, as he felt Stede chuckle against him, but Stede was done with his teasing it seemed. His tongue ran in circles around Ed’s hole, just exploring in the way that Ed had learned Stede liked to do. He had no complaints about that, he was just thrilled to finally feel Stede’s tongue lapping away at him. Stede switched between quick flicks, long strokes and the swirling of his tongue, apparently determined to try out a multitude of techniques and discover which he liked best.

Any one of them would have worked for Ed, but the constant switching kept him on high alert, never sure of what Stede would try next. He could feel himself relaxing under the constant attention though, and when the tip of Stede’s tongue entered him, the hold on one of his legs slipped and it landed with a thud over Stede’s shoulder.

Stede didn’t seem to mind, but then he was concentrating on other things. Ed was aware of his own pants and moans, but every now and then he caught soft noises falling from Stede. One even sounded like a whimper, like Ed was an altar Stede worshipped at and he was overcome with its blessing.

Stede’s tongue delved deeper, more than welcomed inside by Ed as he huffed and groaned and tried to think of more creative things to say besides ‘ yes, fuck yes, right there ’ and then…

Oh dear god.

Stede was fucking him with his tongue.

If Ed had managed to conjure any words, they all flew out of his brain at the sensation. Fucking hell, Stede made up for every ounce of inexperience with unbridled enthusiasm. For a brief flicker of a moment, Ed wondered if Stede was so enthusiastic because he was desperate to prove himself. If that were the case then Ed would need to have a proper discussion with him about there being no need for it.

Not right now though.

Right now Stede’s enthusiasm was making his toes curl and his chest rise and fall heavily and Ed was squirming against the bed because keeping still was not an option. It was so fucking good, but he wanted more, he needed more.

“Stede…” He gasped. “More.”

And he knew he should have articulated it better - ‘more’ wasn’t exactly a lot to go on, but Stede was nothing if not inventive. Ed had been leaking steadily since he had first felt Stede’s tongue against him and Stede used that to his advantage now. Ed spotted a brief flash of his hazel eyes gazing up at him as Stede used Ed’s pre-come to slick his palm and glide it over his cock. It wasn’t a perfectly smooth stroke, but the friction alone was enough and Ed moaned loudly enough that he could have sworn the bed reverberated.

Stede handled both tasks simultaneously like he was well versed in the matter - his tongue delved repeatedly inside Ed as his hand worked over his cock, the movements in tandem with each other. Ed’s hips jerked and he knew he wasn’t going to last much longer.

“Oh fuck… Stede! Keep going, just like that, oh fuck yes !”

And then when Ed was right on the brink, his body shaking and trembling as his vision started to fuzz, Stede removed his tongue. Ed could have cried at the loss, were it not for Stede’s mouth closing over the head of his cock instead, his hand still sliding up and down the shaft as Stede sucked at the rest of him and fucked Ed’s release into his mouth.

Ed barely noticed Stede swallowing as he erupted into his boyfriend’s mouth. He was overwhelmed with sensation and on the verge of tears as Stede’s hand and mouth continued to work on him. A couple of tears did leak from the corners of his eyes at the overstimulation, but Stede recognised it and let Ed’s cock fall from his mouth with an obscene sound.

“Well then, Edward Teach,” He remarked casually as if he hadn’t just tongued Ed into oblivion. “Do you think that’s enough to remember me by?”

Ed had to take a few moments before he could dredge words from his throat. “I’m glad you just reminded me of my own name,” He managed to laugh “Because I couldn’t remember anything but yours.”

First Post

#edactuallysmau

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moved-to--mysticandskepticmuses · 6 years ago

Photo

beneath the cut is a copy paste version of harley’s timeline as i’ve sorted for this blog and my rp purposes - it is super choppy and unfinished, it was delivered over discord while i was doing like five other things and brain dead; this is just a placeholder of it until i can write up something more cohesive / established.

she just didn’t want, didn’t need any reminders of the way things had been before her father had been creamed by one of many fat cats in their expensive cars and their diamond pink rings. wrong place, wrong time, her ASS. she’d never been any under delusions her father had been a saint. what she’d found when cleaning and packing to move from one shit hole to another had done nothing but clarify that some people in this world just had it coming. SHE WANTED TO THINK SHE WAS DITCHING THE BOARD GAMES, THE BARBIES, THE WHATEVER ELSE HE’D GIVEN HER BECAUSE SHE DIDN’T WANT TO KEEP THINGS BOUGHT WITH DIRTY MONEY…THE TRUTH WAS SHE JUST DIDN’T WANT ANYTHING AT ALL THAT WOULD REMIND HER OF THE FACT THAT HE’D BE MISSING FROM THIS YEAR’S CHRISTMAS DINNER. AND EVERY ONE AFTER.

mmmhmokay so, she was a gymnast, like, super super super good, she was actually on the team to go to the olympics like a year or two after that too ugh im sorry all of this is going to be so fucking sporadic my brain is a mess

okay let me roll this back a pace

\so she grew up in a mostly normal two parent decent white collar life her mom was kind of distant and off putting but eh that's just the way it washer dad was an accountant / worked for the mob etc though she didn't find that out til later / it was mostly only suspicions no hard proof etc.they weren't rich they weren't poor she didn't have the best shit but she didn't go hungry either etc she did gymnastics and ballet and track and such she was really really good at gymnastics that ws where most of the free money and time went then her dad gets killed in a hit and run when she's like 12 ish her mom goes super stiff and just basically retreats from life as a whole, she gets super short tempered and any warmth there was just kinda fizzles out, she starts putting more and more pressure on harleen they don't have a nest egg, the mom didn't work, now she has to have an office job, they move to a shitty apartment in the wrong side of town, things are hard and rough and gritty at 14/15 harleen ends up on the team for the olympic gymnastics and blows out her right knee in the second event of the competition

needless to say she's a wreck and she's devastated and there goes everything she's ever worked for meanwhile her mom loses her shit and is like how am i supposed to pay for this how are we supposed to survive now because that was supposed to be their golden ticket so harleen kinda just has an inner mental breakdown and shuts down but just acts like it's no big deal its fine and just kind of self isolates and pushes herself with her recovery and therapy and ends up causing more damage in the long run but she wants to get better faster // which is all really moot because she's never going to be back to that level of competitiveness again and definitely not w/in that limited time frame that is the peak for gymanstics aka she was borderline too old by the time she made it to the olympics the first time so she pretty much ends up just having to rely on herself to take care of herself from that point on because her mom just basically likes to pretend she doesn't exist she throws herself into her schoolwork which -- she was always smart and liked books and school anyway but she really just sort of skimmed along with bare minimum because she was throwing herself into her gymnastics for so long she ends up graduating near the top of her high school class and between her gpa and her 'personal triumph / recovery' story whatever she ends up getting scholarships and grants for college she's always been very hyper sensitive / needy when it came to attention and praise / rewards she always had a lot of trouble with self-worth / needed external validation if she wasn't the best, or at the top of whatever she was doing, she doesn't feel like she's doing good enough / she's always always pushing herself

she finishes her degree early bc she just works her fucking ass off and ends up interning during her doctorate at arkham there's a lot of other misc shit in there of course i mean she has trouble with relationships she needs too much validation and she has too high of expectations for realistic anything she also keeps people at arms length bc she knows they're going to leave / end up disappointing her / end up being disappointed in her she's very obsessive / very orderly and proper with her life everything has its place she files her reports, everything is on schedule or ahead of it, everything is neat and clean, folded, put away, organized, so on because the more she can control it all the better she feels

like everything in her apartment is white or black everything is in cubbies and boxesher cabinet doors are glass etc. etc.neat, organized, tidy very sleek and modern her books are organized by size i mean just like epitome of obsessive she has schedules for everything she schedules time for reading and for her baths and studying and cooking and eating and she schedules the time she has to go out and socialize and and she's super fucking smart and she's really good at her job too, like, in the comics it's indicated that she successfully ( i mean as much as anybody can ever successfully treat) treats / rehabilitates two face and a couple others of the super whacked out bad guys -- at least temporarily -- during her time with them at arkham etc

SO then enters the joker and ???????he's literally the epitome of everything she isn't / everything she can't stand in anyone else ever?i mean he's literally chaos personified ok but he's this MYSTERY and he's chaotic and he's charming and he's enigmatic and he's SO FUCKING SMART even when he's trying to dumb himself down for the fun of it and he's just ? he's this huge fucking puzzle

and she becomes so obsessed with trying to figure it out trying to figure him outhow he works what made him this way who he is and he's so slippery and she gets so frustrated because what's real? what isn't? what's a game? what part is truth and what is lies?and she wants to figure him out / she wants to fix it / she wants to unravel it all and put it all back together

but he's just this tangled web of things that drive her crazy and it hits her obsessiveness so hard and he's so good at manipulation and playing people and he's so good at reading people and using people so he just knows how to push her buttons BUT this all ties back in because in the comics etc you remember that line from the blurb about the fat cats with their diamond pinky rings etc ?

at some point while he's luring her in etc.they're talking about things and i have always headcanoned that he did a lot of push and pull like hannibal lecter did with clarice like i'll show you mine if you show me yours type thing so he ends up learning stuff about her along the way too and one of their sessions, i figure it would be not too long before he convinces her to help him escape he's got a present for her too and it's the mob boss' pinky finger w/ the diamond ring, in the guy's embroidered handkerchief the one that killed her dad that he had killed or at least that's the implication

so yeah it's a really long explanation but that's the connection between that first blurb and the whole point of it being yeah he gives her the guy's pinky i headcanon that she wears that ring on her middle finger or thumb pretty much all the time after he's finally done with making her bonkers

#TIMELINE.#BIO.#WORK IN PROGRESS.#SEPTEMBER 2018.

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dramallamadingdang · 7 years ago

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By sort-of request, I present to you an updated-with-the-latest-technology tutorial on how to build a garage that's attached to a house that's on foundation, like the shell-of-a-house in the pic above. It's also incidentally going to cover building a side-entry garage -- motorcourt style, in this case -- because that's really easy to do now thanks to a couple of relatively recent mods by Mootilda and @hugelunatic. And hey, I threw in a sunken living area while I was at it because why not? You're already making a "sunken" garage, so you might as well make a sunken living area while you're at it. And there's a tip here and there about building from a real-world floor plan, even. So, something for everybody! Or whatever.

It’s very long and picture-ful, so yay cut...

Before you begin, you need some stuff. That would be:

This mod that makes driveway pieces rotatable in 45-degree increments (Note: This mod conflicts with MogHughson's one here, which you can use to make parking lots on community lots where random cars will come and go. So far as I know (I don’t use Mog’s mod, myself, so I haven’t been paying close attention), the conflict was never resolved either by Mootilda before she passed away or by anyone else. If you have Mog’s mod and won't give it up, and you want a side- or rear-entry garage then you'll have to go about turning your driveway pieces the old-fashioned and pain-in-the-butt way. How to do that is linked a few paragraphs down. Or, you can just stick with standard front-entry garages.)

This mod that makes garage doors similarly rotatable.

The "constrainfloorelevation" cheat. But not in a scary way. It's really very easy.

Some idea of the house you're going to build. A floor plan you find online, a sketch you make, whatever. It's possible to do this totally on the fly, sure, but it's much easier if you're not completely winging it. In this tutorial, I'm going to show you how to build the footprint and the garage structure of this floor plan here:

...Which translated into the house in the "title pic" above, but I'm not going to show you how to build the whole thing here. The green areas on that floor plan are not going to have foundation. The red areas are. (Hey, it was the wee hours of Xmas Day when I started writing this up. Sue me.)

It used to be that when you wanted to build a side- or rear-entry garage, whether or not the rest of the house was on foundation, it was a pain in the butt. You had to remove sidewalk tiles from the lot which would then force the driveway pieces to turn, as detailed in this little tutorial here. Trouble was, the direction that the driveway turned was not easy to predict, so there was lots of trial and error involved until you found a lot that would do what you wanted it to do. Now that we can simply rotate driveways/garage doors just like any other build object, you don't have to screw around with that anymore.

Note, however, that no matter how you go about turning your driveway pieces, the car movements will no longer be animated. Cars will just teleport between the garage and the street. (The garage door animation/sound still runs, though.)

I'm going to assume that you're going to be using the mods for this tutorial because that's the whole point of this tutorial. :) If you want to/have to do it the old-fashioned way, you're on your own with getting your driveway piece(s) to turn if you want to build a side-entry garage.

OK, here we go!

First, you need to pick your lot. If you're building from a sketch/floor plan/firm idea in your head of what you're going to build, you can count the tiles you'll need to build the thing and then determine what size lot that it'll fit on. Make sure you allow for at least two tiles on each side of the building because you can't build walls/foundations on those tiles. Me, I'll often start on a much-bigger-than-needed lot and then resize it with the Lot Adjuster to a reasonable size when I'm done building. I especially do that if I'm winging it and don't have a clear idea of what I'm building from the get-go. But in this case I'm working from a floor plan, and I've counted the tiles, and a 3x3 lot will give this plan a good amount of space left over for yards and stuff.

(IMO, the easiest way to guess-timate the footprint size when working from a real-life floor plan is to keep in mind that single windows and doors take up one wall tile and then use that “scale” to estimate the size of the rooms from there. Some people have come up with arcane mathematical formulas to do the "conversion," but...I hate math. I just eyeball.)

One relevant note about tile-counting, though: The driveway piece that the car sits on is 5x8 tiles in size, so all garages in-game have to be at least that big -- if you want them to be functional, that is -- regardless of the size it might be on the floor plan. However, for a garage attached to a house on foundation, you'll also need space to build a little "porch" and some stairs so that Sims can get into the house from inside the garage. So, if I'm building a typical front-entry garage where the rest of the house sits behind the garage, I'll make it 7x10 tiles. That way, there is one extra tile on each side of the garage door (which just looks better, IMO) and two rows of tiles across the back that I can use to build a little "porch."

For this house, which isn't a standard layout, I'm going to make the garage 8 tiles wide (when viewed from the front of the house) and 11 tiles deep. That'll butt the end of the turned-sideways driveway piece against the side wall of the garage, but there'll be space on either side for Sims to move around the parked car and to build a little porch.

OK, so now you can fire up your game, if you don't already have it running. Plop down your lot in a neighborhood. Here's mine:

The first thing you want to do is plan where the garage is going to be. Bear in mind that you need to leave appropriate space for the rest of the house around it, with at least two tiles free on on all sides of the lot, since you can't build walls/foundation closer to the lot edges than that. When you've picked the spot where your garage will be, "draw" that space with floor tiles. Doesn't matter what one; it's just a placeholder. Here's my 8x11-tile garage space that I planned:

Now, place a driveway extension piece, which will define the spot where the car will sit in the garage. With the rotatable mod in, you can put it anywhere you want and turn it in whatever direction you want. Place it so that the arrows point to the back of what will be the garage, according to the finished orientation of the garage. Mine is side-entry, so it goes like this:

I then place wall tiles along the "front" edge of the driveway piece, where the garage door will eventually be. You don't have to do this, but it can be a good reminder (especially if you cover it in an obnoxious wall covering) if you're doing something complex or building multi-bay garages or a more incorporated-into the house garage, to remind yourself of the space you can't block with other stuff until you put in the garage door(s). Anyway, here's mine:

Next, you're going to build the rest of the foundation for your house. You can just build the outline of it or you can do the whole thing. At the very least, you need the part(s) of the foundation that will butt up against the foundation-less area(s) of the house. For this, I'm just going to go ahead and do the whole thing, according to the floor plan above. Remember to include porches, particularly if any part of the porch is going to butt up against the garage. Here's my foundation:

The following step is skippable, if you're uninterested in having "sunken" space(s) in your house. But if you do want that, we need to cut that space out of the foundation and put down some placeholder floor tiles instead. Bear in mind when you're planning this space that you'll need steps down into it, which take up a tile of space. So plan accordingly. Here's where my sunken living area will be:

(If this was an actual house I'd play, then I'd probably make the sunken space a wee bit bigger, to accommodate the necessary stairs, but since this is just a tute? Eh. :) )

Next, build exterior walls around the edges of the foundation. All of it. Even the porch. (You can delete any extra walls later.) If you want to, you can go ahead and build all the interior walls, too, and any upper floors and all that, as well...but I'm not going to do that here, for less visual confusion. Here's mine:

Now it's time to build some walls around the foundation-less area(s). Go ahead and build all of the walls around the foundation-less area(s) of the house EXCEPT for the tiles that will actually touch foundation. For those wall tiles, we'll need to turn off floor elevation constraints first to get them to connect. Mine looks like this when I'm done:

Note the four gaps I circled. To fill in those gaps, we'll need to turn off floor elevation constraints so that the game will allow walls to connect directly to foundation. Do that by opening your cheat window (Ctrl+Shift+C) and typing "boolprop constrainfloorelevation false" (without the quotes). With the cheat turned on, you can now draw the wall tiles that connect to the foundation. There will be warping like this:

...but we will fix that in the next step, don't worry. Go ahead and fill in any and all gaps in your walls now. When I'm done, my lot looks like this with the walls up:

Now we will fix those weird warped walls/foundations and at the same time cut the walls around the foundation-less areas down to four clicks tall. This creates a pseudo-foundation to match the height of the actual foundation. To do that, we need the level tool, which is under the terrain tools here:

and then here:

The next step is best done in top-down view, so you'll be looking at something like this:

To chop down the walls not on foundation, with the level tool selected, click anywhere on the foundation and then drag across the foundation-less areas, like so:

If anything turns red, there is something wrong, but otherwise release your mouse button and the target walls will be chopped down to foundation height and any warped foundation and the walls attached to them that were in the path of the level tool will be flattened down again, like so:

Repeat this leveling, if necessary, until all foundation-less areas have shortened walls and any warping has been fixed. My lot now looks like this:

The next step is to build walls on top of the chopped-down ones, like so, to match the height of the walls that are on foundation:

At this point, your sunken living area(s), if any, is/are now done. They'll just need windows and such. All that's left is to finish the garage. So, place your garage door of choice on the shortened wall (NOT on the full-height wall above it) along the front edge of the driveway piece that's inside the garage. Cunningly, I neglected to take a pic of what this looks like from the front. *headdesk*...but you can see it from "behind" in the next pic.

Basically, since you have the floor-elevation constraints turned off, placing the garage door on the shortened wall warps the shortened wall, making the tiles that the door sits on full-height again and, as a result, pushing up the wall you drew on top of the shortened wall. This is OK. In fact, you want this to happen because doors won't function on anything less than a full-height wall. Placing the garage door with the cheat turned on makes that happen. And, again, we will fix the warping. That's the next step, even. :)

Turn your camera so that you can see behind the warped wall, like so:

To chop down the warped wall, place a couple of floor tiles (doesn't matter which one, because you're just going to delete them right away) as close as you can get them to the warped wall. When you do so, the warpage will be chopped off, like so:

Then use the Sledgehammer tool:

...to delete those floor tiles, and you will have this:

And at this point, you are all done with the special part of the structure. Now "all" you have to do is 1) Turn off the floor-constraint cheat by typing "boolprop constrainfloorelevation true" into the cheat window and 2) Finish the house. :)

Be aware that the walls around the garage door are warped. You won't be able to use wall coverings with a noticeable pattern on it unless that pattern is vertically-oriented, like the vertical siding in the title pic above.

Do remember to build an inside-the-garage entry into the main house, because what's the point of an attached garage if you have to walk back outside to get into the house? :) Now that you have the floor-constraint cheat off, you can build some foundation squares and some stairs inside the garage, and a door into the house, like so:

(It's a good place to put the garbage can, if you want to prevent it being kicked/knocked over over by pissed off Sims and stray dogs. :) )

In my case, since this is just a shell, I didn't bother with finishing the house on the inside or the outside bits that you can't see in the title pic at the start of this thing. The "driveway" you see in the title pic is just floor tiles -- in this case one of the ceilings I made here; they're not just for ceilings, you know. :) -- but you can also use terrain paint, if you're good at using that. (I'm not, particularly, so I usually use floor tiles.) Also, If you want to have outside car-parking in addition to the inside-the-garage space, you'll need to put down another driveway extension piece somewhere along the "driveway." You can angle it in 45-degree increments if needed to fit. And you'll probably want to use an invisible recolor on it and the inside piece, unless you're matching floor tiles to the driveway pieces.

And that's pretty much it! If you have any questions, feel free to give me a buzz and I'll be happy to answer/help as needed, if I can.

#sims 2 #tutorials

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vinayv224 · 4 years ago

Text

Hunter Biden, the black sheep who got Trump impeached, explained

Hunter Biden, then the chair of the World Food Program USA, speaking at an organization event on April 12, 2016, in Washington, DC. | Teresa Kroeger/Getty Images for World Food Program USA

A troubled guy at the center of the fake scandal that became a real scandal.

Hunter is the younger of Joe Biden’s two sons. He never showed as much promise as his brother Beau, stumbling through life and often trading on his dad’s name and position for financial gain. He’s more or less operated in the background as something of a black sheep in the family, but he’s emerged to the forefront of American politics in recent weeks over work he did in Ukraine that fueled a bogus conspiracy theory at the heart of Trump’s decision to strong-arm the country’s president.

It’s not unusual for the children of successful politicians to trade on their family’s famous name and connections to get ahead in life. And when that happens, most political parents hope for a trajectory like the one enjoyed by Beau Biden until his life was cut short by cancer in 2015.

Beau followed in his father’s footsteps to Syracuse University for law school and then clerked for a US District Court judge. He got a job at the Justice Department and then became a federal prosecutor. He then dipped into the private sector briefly. But when Delaware’s attorney general, Jane Brady, resigned to take up a judicial post, the state’s governor appointed Carl Danberg to serve as a placeholder attorney general who wouldn’t run for reelection. Beau won the seat in the 2006 midterms, Danberg got appointed to serve as the head of Delaware’s Corrections Department, and all eyes were on Beau to run for governor in 2016 when Jack Markell’s term would be expiring.

Only an extremely naive person would see this as a career free of nepotism. But Beau, like a successful politician’s kid, had to actually do his work adequately each step of the way. As a candidate for attorney general, he clearly got a boost from his dad’s name, and it seems like the Delaware political establishment was working to open up an office for him to run for. But as a former federal prosecutor and Army JAG, he was qualified for the job and he won the election fair and square. And there’s nothing unusual at all about a two-term attorney general campaigning to win an open gubernatorial election in his home state.

This is more or less how the system is supposed to work for children of privilege — you get a consistent favorable tailwind at your back, but you still need to steer the plane. Hunter, by contrast, has been the guy who even into his 40s keeps needing dad to send the search—and-rescue party. And yet in a strange way, Hunter ended up being one of the most politically accomplished figures of our time since Trump’s efforts to smear Joe Biden over Hunter’s work in Ukraine ended up leading to his impeachment.

Hunter Biden’s whole career is being Joe Biden’s son

According to Adam Entous’s profile in the New Yorker, “it was clear to family and friends that Beau would follow his father into politics,” while Hunter was initially interested in more artistic pursuits “but, with a baby on the way, he decided to go straight to law school.”

The basic desire to make money is pretty commonplace. Hunter, after a year at Georgetown Law, was able to transfer to Yale and finish out at the country’s most prestigious law school. Yale Law grads don’t normally hurt for opportunities to earn a decent salary, but Hunter interestingly went to work right away for MBNA, a major Delaware-based bank (later purchased by Bank of America) that was also a big contributor to Biden’s campaigns.

This was part of a much larger coziness between Biden and the bank that the then-senator took flak for from conservatives like Byron York, who dubbed him “the senator from MBNA” in a 1998 American Spectator article. The nickname stuck in years to come as Biden became the leading Democratic advocate of a bankruptcy reform bill that most Democrats opposed but that major credit card issuers like MBNA strongly favored.

There’s no reason to think that Biden backed MBNA’s position because his son worked there — senators normally line up with their home state’s major employers’ policy priorities — it’s more like Hunter got the job due to his dad’s overall cozy relationship with the company.

Hunter’s career, however, never really seems to have quite launched as an independent entity. In 1998, he went to work for the US Department of Commerce and then left after the Clinton administration ended. He formed a lobbying firm with an old associate of his dad’s. By mutual agreement, Hunter avoided lobbying his father but did continue to collect consulting fees from MBNA through the 2005 passage of the bankruptcy bill the bank had long sought.

In 2006, President George W. Bush appointed him to the Amtrak board of directors as a gesture of bipartisanship. Here’s how Tom Carper, Delaware’s other senator, described his qualifications for the job (emphasis added):

Hunter Biden is a native Delawarian and I would go on to say that he’s also been nominated to serve on the Amtrak Board of Directors. When Hunter was unable to get into the University of Delaware, he instead went on to Georgetown and then to Yale Law School and managed to get through those OK. He’s ended up being Senior Vice President at MBNA one of the largest financial institutions in the country. He served as Executive Director of Economy Policy Coordination at the U.S. Department of Commerce. About 5 years ago he went off and formed a law firm here in Washington, D.C., and now they represent over 100 clients including a bunch of non-profit organizations and educational institutions.

More specifically, though, and for our purposes and for the purpose of this nomination, Hunter Biden has spent a lot of time on Amtrak trains. Like his father, like our Congressman, Mike Castle and myself, Hunter Biden has lived in Delaware while using Amtrak to commute to his job as we commute to our job in Washington almost every day of the week. You know, you learn a lot about what could work and what would work better at Amtrak by riding trains and talking to the passengers, the commuters, the passengers, the folks who work on the trains and make them work every day. You also have a chance to see the huge economic benefit the region receives from having a strong passenger rail corridor, something that should be available in a lot of other parts of our country.

It would obviously be a stretch to attribute any specific shortcoming of passenger rail in the United States to Hunter Biden’s service on the board. But the fact that the job is treated as a kind of patronage position to hand out to random senators’ kids who have no relevant knowledge beyond riding the train a lot helps explain why American passenger rail is low quality and exhibits little understanding of international best practices.

When his dad became vice president, Hunter left the Amtrak board and instead got involved with a series of investment companies. As detailed by Ben Schreckinger in Politico, a lot of this work seems to have hinged on Hunter and his uncle James Biden sort of hinting around that the family connection to the vice president could help get things done and then not delivering. The Obama administration generally regarded Hunter as a kind of embarrassing family black sheep rather than a real scandal.

Hunter Biden had a lot of problems in life

Stepping back from politics, the Hunter Biden story is basically sympathetic. His mom died in a car accident when he was a little kid, his dad was a loving but busy US senator, and his older brother was accomplished in ways he couldn’t quite match.

And the history of American presidential politics is littered with similar characters like Billy Carter, Tony Rodham, and Neil Bush, who try to capitalize financially on relatives in the White House and thereby succeed in embracing their family without really accomplishing much of anything.

In May 2013, Hunter joined the US Naval Reserve for which he required two waivers — one because at 42 years old he was above the normal age for a military recruit and the other due to a previous drug use incident. In August, his brother Beau received the initial diagnosis of the brain cancer that would eventually kill him.

By February of 2014, Hunter was discharged from the Navy for testing positive for cocaine. The next spring, Beau died. In October 2015, Hunter separated from his wife Kathleen. She filed for divorce in 2016, and in paperwork complained that Hunter had been “spending extravagantly on his own interests including drugs, alcohol, prostitutes, strip clubs, and gifts for women with whom he has sexual relations.”

Sometime in 2016, Hunter began dating Beau’s widow, which family members claimed to be supportive of, but that relationship unraveled by early 2019.

Hunter’s personal troubles were severe enough that he was for whatever reason unable to attend Joe Biden’s presidential campaign kickoff — an event that featured Hunter’s three daughters, the boyfriend of one of the daughters, Beau’s two kids, Hunter’s half-sister Ashley, and Ashley’s husband Howard Krein, along with an empty seat in the row with a piece of paper on it that said “reserved.”

And during the bulk of this troubled period in Hunter’s life, he was fortuitously on the board of a Ukrainian energy company — a stroke of good fortune that’s become the centerpiece of a bogus corruption allegation leveled at his dad.

Joe Biden didn’t do anything to help Hunter in Ukraine

Back in 2014 after a change of regime in Ukraine, Hunter Biden joined the board of a scandal-plagued Ukrainian natural gas company named Burisma. Hunter had no apparent qualifications for the job except that his father was the vice president and involved in the Obama administration’s Ukraine policy.

He got paid up to $50,000 per month for the job and the situation constituted the kind of conflict of interest that was normally considered inappropriate in Washington until the Trump era. These days, of course, the president of the United States regularly accepts payments from foreign sources to his company while in office, and so do the Trump children. The Obama administration probably should have done something about this at the time, but the White House couldn’t literally force Hunter not to accept the job. And given the larger family context, you can see why Joe might have been reluctant to confront his son about it.

This would all be a small footnote in history except that by 2016, officials throughout the Obama administration and in Western Europe had come to a consensus that Ukraine’s prosecutor general, Viktor Shokin, wasn’t doing enough to crack down on corruption. Biden, as he later colorfully recounted, delivered the message that the West wanted Shokin gone or else loan guarantees would be held up, and Shokin was, in turn, fired.

There was nothing remotely controversial about this at the time. No congressional Republicans complained about it, and the European Union hailed the decision to fire Shokin. The reason there is video footage of Biden touting his personal role in this is it was considered a foreign policy triumph that Biden wanted to claim credit for, not anything sordid or embarrassing.

But Shokin, of course, didn’t want to go down on the theory that he was corrupt or incompetent. So he started offering another theory: he was fired for going after Burisma by Joe Biden operating on behalf of Hunter Biden.

The question of whether Shokin was actually investigating Burisma at all is a matter of dispute (the relevant Ukrainian players have told inconsistent stories), but this is clearly not the reason he was fired. The desire to push him out was fully bipartisan in the United States and reflected a consensus across European governments, not than anything idiosyncratic to Biden.

The notion that firing Shokin was somehow problematic was not in the air until the New York Times ran a story co-bylined by Ken Vogel and a Ukrainian journalist named Iuliia Mendel (who a few weeks later would become Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s official spokesperson) highlighting Rudy Giuliani’s efforts at muckraking.

NEW: The BIDENS are entangled in a Ukrainian corruption scandal:@JoeBiden pushed Ukraine to fire a prosecutor seen as corrupt. BUT the prosecutor had opened a case into a company that was paying HUNTER BIDEN. The Bidens say they never discussed it. https://t.co/tblUPYPJMG

— Kenneth P. Vogel (@kenvogel) May 2, 2019

The worst you can say about any of this, however, was that Hunter’s position on the board was a standing conflict of interest that should have been avoided. There’s no evidence that Joe did anything wrong, specifically. But an examination of the life and times of Hunter Biden does provide a reminder that most Americans thought politics as usual was corrupt long before Trump arrived on the scene to make it more corrupt.

Hunter Biden is a product of an unloved system

While progressives find Trump’s promises to “drain the swamp” to be galling and hypocritical in light of his family’s massive financial conflicts of interest, the real direction of causation likely goes in the other direction. People who identify with Trump’s racial and cultural politics find progressive complaints about corruption to be hypocritical and unpersuasive because the whole system is corrupt.

As of 2014, Gallup found that 75 percent of voters felt corruption was “widespread” in American government.

And if you think about Biden’s role on the Obama ticket back in 2008, the whole point was that he was the reassuring insider to balance out the fresh-faced outsider reformer who was running for president. That’s a common formula in American politics, with an outsider (often a governor) promising to “fix the mess in Washington” with the assistance of a more seasoned vice president. That’s Jimmy Carter and Walter Mondale, Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton and Al Gore, and George W. Bush and Dick Cheney. The other formula — the political veteran balanced by a younger and more energetic vice president — is much rarer (H.W. Bush and Dan Quayle come to mind), even though in theory vice president is the junior job.

That’s no coincidence. Some aspects of Hunter Biden’s career and life story are a bit extreme (the Amtrak gig, dating his brother’s widow), but the kid who trades on family connections to make money is much more a case of business as usual than an extraordinary scandal. “Business as usual in Washington,” however, is normally the subject of scorn in American politics. Any focus on Joe Biden’s son is likely to remind people of at least some of what they don’t like about it.

Listen to Today, Explained

Ukraine finds itself at the center of the American impeachment drama, but President Trump is the least of the country’s worries.

Looking for a quick way to keep up with the never-ending news cycle? Host Sean Rameswaram will guide you through the most important stories at the end of each day.

Subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Overcast, or wherever you listen to podcasts.

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h-eckers · 8 years ago

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Cherry Queen

A/N: I love Cheryl so much, I can’t explain how much I love her and I loved writing this. It may not be Shakespearean level writing but it’s Cheryl and so that makes it important. Also, I combined three separate requests for this because they all followed a similar story and I didn’t think you’d want to see me write the same thing three times.

Request(s): Cheryl and the reader are secretly together but in school they act like total strangers. the readers tells Cheryl that she’s done with being her little secret so they break up but when Cheryl sees a random girl trying to flirt with the reader she loses it walks right over to the reader and kisses her in front of everyone + Cher is afraid of falling in love with the reader so she shuts her out and ignores her and the reader gets hurt and becomes reckless then Cher regrets it and tried to make up for it + reader falls in love with Cheryl only to have her heart played by her because Cher doesn’t want anyone to find out about them

Word Count:3,611

Warnings: Teen/Underage drinking, parties, angst, swearing, yelling, humiliation/embarrassment and I believe that’s about it.

The hallways were always crowded in the morning, it was an inescapable reality that every day hundreds of teenagers would cram themselves into the building, pushing and weaving past others to get to their lockers, or their friends, and even (on occasion) their actual classes. This morning was no different and Cheryl strode through the hall, parting students like the red sea, she was the only person that didn’t seem to have to push and shove to get around, her path cleared itself as people scurried out of the way to avoid being caught on the underside of her Louis Vuitton’s.

“I heard Shaun Callaghan has a thing for you.” Ginger scoffed slightly, striding quickly to keep up with the redhead on a mission towards her locker.

“Old news,” Cheryl sighed heavily, as she opened the door to said locker, examining her face carefully in the small mirror hung inside, “he’s been crushing on me since I wore that black dress to class last year, I don’t think he tore his eyes away from my legs at all that day.”

“Speaking of people leering where they shouldn’t be…” Ginger said, a smug judgement in her voice that made Cheryl glance at her friend in order to follow her eye line. Across the hall their eyes locked, Cheryl’s breath catching slightly in her throat at the sight of the other girl, standing by her locker, seemingly enraptured by the cheer captain.

“I don’t blame her.” Cheryl breathed out eventually, as naturally as possible as she tossed her hair back over her shoulder, averting her gaze back to Ginger, “After all, I do look incredible.” She shrugged and Ginger simply nodded slowly in agreement, still watching the girl across the hall, whose attention had turned back to her friends after herself and Cheryl had broken eye contact.

“Do we even know her?” Ginger asked, tilting her head slightly as the bell rang through the halls and people started shifting towards their respective classrooms,

“Never spoken to her in my life.” The response was simple and chaste with an implacable kind of frustration, Ginger simply put it down to Cheryl’s natural irritability and thus, shut her mouth and simply wait; even that wasn’t the correct course of action. “Are you going to class?” She asked, arching a perfectly sculpted brow in questioning.

“I, uh, yeah. I just figured I’d wait for you.” She stumbled slightly over her words but regained her poise as quickly as possible so as not to embarrass herself in front of Riverdale’s Queen Bee.

“I’m a big girl,” Cheryl said slowly, turning back to her mirror to adjust her hair carefully, “I’m sure I can make it to class on my own.”

Ginger hesitated for a moment, attempting to find some coherent words to say back and coming up completely short. She didn’t argue further, but simply nodded slowly and moved off to follow the flow of the quickly dissipating crowd towards her classroom. Cheryl waited another moment, until the hallways was empty bar one person scrambling in late, she tossed her hair and held her chin up proudly, strutting off in the complete opposite direction of her class.

The room at the back of the building was practically always empty, there was a class in there maybe once a week and both girls had those class times memorised, not because they took the lessons, but because this was their rendezvous point when they needed one and this morning Cheryl had decided that they needed one. She arrived first, never having gone to class in the first place, and when she had found herself alone in the room she texted the other girl:

‘Rendezvous point NOW’ – Cherry Queen🍒👑

The response was almost instantaneous,

‘On my way xx everything ok??’ – Honey Bee 🐝

Cheryl didn’t reply, she simply sat on one of the desks and waited impatiently, her foot tapping against the floor in a rhythm that ended up matching a song that was stuck in her head. She wasn’t waiting long before the door opened and the other girl slipped in, smiling slightly at the redhead who stood as the other entered. “Hey, babe, you alright?”

“No, it’s not.” Cheryl insisted, her arms folded across her chest delicately and in a manner that was somehow threatening, or would be threatening to someone else.

“What’s wrong, princess?” She asked, her eyes full of concern as she moved towards the redhead.

“Y/N, you have to stop staring at me.” Her voice came out harsh, maybe harsher than she’d intended but she needed to get her point across. Y/N stopped, the worry faded instantaneously to be replaced by exasperation, a frustration of her own.

“Nobody knows anything, Cheryl.” She said slowly, she felt as though she’d said those words to her a million and one times, and in all honesty she probably had. The two of them had been dating for nigh on five months now and no one else knew. Not a single soul outside the two of them knew they even spoke to each other, to the world they were strangers, and to each other they were the world. Unfortunately, this conversation was frequent and it got more and more frustrating for Y/N every single time.

“Well they will if you keep looking at me like that!” She hissed back, manicured fingers tapping against her folded arms nervously.

“Oh, for fuck’s sake… I can’t look at you, anymore?” Y/N asked, her hands clenching into fists to relive some of the tightness that was creeping into her body. It didn’t work.

“Not like that,” Cheryl answered stubbornly, raising an eyebrow, “no one can-”

“No one can know about us, I know, you’ve told me a million times and I still don’t understand why.” She sighed, her fingers raking through her hair and pulling at the strands desperately.

“It just can’t happen.” Cheryl pursed her lips slightly, looking at the floor for a second, a horrid knot forming in the pit of her stomach and twisting and constricting like it was trying to stop her breathing.

“God, that’s not an answer!” Y/N snapped back immediately, “I know you don’t have a real reason, Cheryl, otherwise you’d tell me, but this is just a game to your, or maybe you’re worried that going public with me will upset your adoring fans, or maybe I’m a placeholder until something better comes along, I don’t know but whatever that reason is, just fucking tell me because I’m so sick of being your dirty little secret.”

“It’s none of your business why I don’t want to.” Cheryl huffed, her arms falling to her sides as her chest puffed out slightly in a display of what she hoped was dominance but honestly it happened when she held her breath.

“None of my business? It’s my life, Cheryl, and I love you and I want to be with you but this is asking too much. I’m not even allowed to look at you anymore? I can’t do that. I love you, and I can’t do that.” Y/N visibly deflated as she spoke, she was vulnerable, and suffering from everything she kept hidden, especially when she was so proud of her love.

‘I love you too.’ It could have been so easy. Those four words could have mended the divide, it could be the life raft that dragged them both to the surface and kept them both afloat to find a solution, but Cheryl was scared. She was terrified of loving this girl, this person who laid her bare and vulnerable and used her power over her to make her feel nothing but safe. This girl who would go to the ends of the earth to make her smile for even a fleeting second in a storm of thrashing tides. This girl who loved her back, unadulterated, uncensored and unconditionally. Being loved so wholly and so complete was foreign to her, and it set fear into the heaviness of her bones.

“Then maybe you shouldn’t do it.” The words left her lips before she could think more about it, before she could even consider otherwise, “We’re done.”

Y/N opened her mouth, to argue, or to plead, or to beg she didn’t know but it didn’t matter, the words didn’t come. All that came was a stinging at the back of her eyes and a pain in her chest like shed been shot at point blank range, she turned and left without a word. What was there to say?

The door slammed shut and Cheryl stood alone in an empty room, with an empty chest, and empty lungs as she forced out the pressure she’d been keeping in her chest, only to find in its hollowness that she could hear her own heart shattering inside of her, falling to pieces as the delicate fingers that had held it together walked away with the girl she’d hurt.

“I love you too.” She muttered into the empty room.

It could have been that easy.

It hurt. It hurt like nothing she’d ever felt and after a few weeks she’d expected it might fade but she stood in the crowded hallway with her head resting against the cool metal of her locker, her head throbbing violently every time she had a thought, heat flushing her skin so hot she was warm to the touch in such cold weather. This feeling had become familiar in the last few weeks, the feeling of a crushing hangover looming over her like a dark and oppressive personal rain cloud, but it was worth it, for the night before when the lights were so bright she could only see spots when her eyes closed, not Cheryl’s face, and the music was so loud that the redheads soft voice that stayed stuck in her head was drowned out, and the alcohol was so strong that the soft memories of Miss Blossom herself faded into oblivion, even if only for a few hours. Still, a few hours numb and swaying to bad music, was a relief from the hell she was living sober, memories of gentle touches and soft kisses still tingling her skin and taunting her cruelly.

The rest of the Riverdale High world buzzed around her like nothing had changed, because for them nothing had, and Y/N stood silently, with her head pressed against the cold metal to force away some of the unbearable heat in her face.

“What a mess.” Cassandra snickered softly, herself and the other vixens gathered around Cheryl at her locker, talking amongst themselves as they always did. Cheryl looked towards the girl for clarification and Cassandra simply nodded in Y/N’s direction.

“Don’t even start on her.” Kelsi scoffed slightly, the whole group turning to examine the girl apparently falling asleep on a row of lockers. “I heard she was at Lucas Brant’s party the other night.”

“The college guy?” Ginger asked disbelievingly and Kelsi nodded.

“Yeah, no one knows what happened but a few weeks ago she just stopped showing up to some of her classes, and as far as I know she’s been at like every single party since then.” She clarified, all of them staring at this hopeless girl across the hall who was barely even functional, let alone aware of their gawking.

“I heard she got kicked out of her biology lesson on Tuesday because she was still drunk from the night before.” Another girl piped up, all of them exchanging looks that sat somewhere between pity and superiority.

“What do you think, Cheryl?” Ginger asked, diverting the attention of all of the Vixens back towards their leader, “Are the rumours true?”

Cheryl gave a tight lipped smile, she hadn’t spoken to Y/N since the day she broke her own heart, and since then the two of them hadn’t even so much as looked at each other. Cheryl had actively ignored her, at first out of stubbornness, and then out of fear, and then simply because she had no idea how to reverse the damage she’d caused, now the only contact she had with the other girl was the stories that were relayed to her by her friends.

“Well let’s throw a party, and find out.” Her voice was commanding as always, and yet hidden and every day was destroying a girl she loved, and a girl she refused to look at. Now, as she finally stared at her, she was struggling to deny it. “This Saturday at Thornhill, invite everyone, including her, and we’ll see if the rumours are true for ourselves.”

“I’m not going.” Y/N sighed, looking up at her best friend from her position on her bed, half buried in blankets.

“You’ve been partying every single night for weeks and now you want to tell me that the one party I’m desperate to go to is the one you refuse to attend?” Kevin asked, jumping onto the bed beside her and crawling under the covers with his friend, snuggling up beside her.

“Will you kill me if I say yes?” She asked and Kevin laughed, wrapping his arms around her tightly.

“Yes, yes I will.” He smiled deviously and she groaned loudly, burying her face in his shirt, ironically enough to escape looking at him, his face softened when she relaxed into him and he let out a long sigh, stroking her hair gently, “Speaking of, when are you going to tell me why you’ve been so reckless lately?” He asked gently and she just shook her head.

“I can’t.” She hummed, “I can’t tell you why I can’t either.”

“You sound just as frustrated by that as I am.” He pointed out and she nodded.

“Trust me, I hate it more but there’s nothing I can do, I just really don’t want to go to this party, Kev.” Y/N said, pulling away to sit up, rubbing the tiredness away from her face, she’d been in bed all day after the night before had ended late, she was hungover or left over drunk, she hadn’t had much the night before, the alcohol had started to lose its effect and the redhead was even invading her attempts for numbness.

“Fine,” Kevin huffed, shuffling back out of bed and standing, his arms folded indignantly across his chest as he smiled deviously, “but, if you don’t come tonight then you have to tell me why you’ve been like this. If you do come, then I’ll let you off the hook for telling me, just this once.”

Y/N looked into his eyes, trying to gauge his seriousness and unfortunately he seemed resolute, she groaned loudly, holding her arms out towards him so he could help pull her up and out of bed. “Help me up so I can get ready then.”

“So that means I don’t get to find out.” He sighed wistfully, it wasn’t a question, he knew the answer but still he would give her little nudges in the hopes she might finally spill what had been up with her lately.

“Not tonight.” Y/N smiled, skulking off to the bathroom to get ready, despite the pain in her chest just screaming to crawl into bed and stay there. Nevertheless, she wasn’t about to fight over anything with Kevin right now, she couldn’t deal with losing more than one piece of her fractured heart this century.

Kevin let it go, as long as she wasn’t dead somewhere he didn’t care.

By ten o’clock the party was in full swing, people were dancing, drinking, and grinding all over each other and Y/N was sequestered over in a dark corner in an old leather chair that made her feel like a bitter queen, staring out at a sea of happy people that she couldn’t relate to, it was such a disconnected feeling but she didn’t exactly want to be connected at the moment. It just led to heartbreak. She didn’t want to drink here, it wouldn’t make a difference, how could she forget the girl whose home she sat in, who spun and socialised around the dance floor in front of her like flaunting what she couldn’t have. Drinking wouldn’t help her forget what was right in front of her and so she didn’t try, the best she could do was avoid the eyes of the fiery redhead who’d put her heart up in flames.

“She hasn’t touched a drink all night.” Ginger moved to Cheryl’s side, smirking slightly as she grabbed the redheads arm and pulled her away from the dancing bodies. Cheryl followed willingly, her eyes flicking back to Y/N in the corner momentarily.

“At all?” Cheryl asked, tilting her head, “I guess the rumours aren’t true.” She sighed heavily, what would have looked to her friend like disappointment, but the truth was relief flooded her body at the knowledge that Y/N wasn’t driving herself into the ground. Her relief was short lived.

“Oh they’re true,” Ginger said, pulling her phone out of her pocket and unlocking it, “Darcy sent me this, he said he too it himself last week.” She handed over the phone, presenting a video that Cheryl was afraid to watch, nevertheless she pressed play, holding her breath for what she was about to see.

It was Y/N there was no mistake about it, she was dancing to loud and angry music on a table top in a dimly lit room, clutching the neck of a whiskey bottle, and sounded by cheering teenagers that the redhead couldn’t even recognise. This wasn’t her, or at least it wasn’t the person Cheryl had been in love with, but it was something worse, it was the person Cheryl had turned hr into.

“I wonder what sent her off the edge…” Ginger mused quietly over Cheryl’s shoulder, watching the video herself for the millionth time, “she never really seemed the type for this.”

“She isn’t.” Cheryl’s chest was tight, and there was a rage burning in the pit of her stomach. How could she let herself get like this?! It made no sense to her, as much of a front as she put up, Cheryl wasn’t exactly sold on being loved. What little love she’d ever received had come from her brother, and he’d been taken away from her, the last thing she wanted was to see the same happen to Y/N and so she broke things off. It had backfired, obviously, the pain shed caused manifested in recklessness that Cheryl could not abide.

Without explanation, she turned on her heel to face the direction of Y/N, rearing her speech in her head, what she’d say to the girl she still loved once she dragged her away from the crowd. The things shed scream at her for daring to endanger herself but every word she conjured fell entirely short when she caught sight of her, sitting in her chair and finally smiling at a girl who sat on the arm of her chair, her hand on Y/N’s shoulder, her eyes undressing Cheryl’s girl. It was wrong, entirely and completely unacceptable.

Her mind went blank.

There was nothing in the world that she had ever thought could demolish her fears or reservations so quickly but she had found exactly that in a strange girl’s hand laying delicately on her girl’s shoulder, like claiming ownership over something that would never be hers.

Cheryl could swear on her heart that red clouded her vision as she stormed over, every single thought in her head being one of seething jealousy, of a burning necessity to make it clear to everyone that Y/N wasn’t free game. She wasn’t up for auction.

She was taken.

“Cheryl?” Y/N asked, confused and unsure as her heartbreaker stormed towards her with a fire in her eyes she had only ever seen in the redhead when they fought or when they made love.

“Excuse me.” She hissed at the girl beside hers, making the stranger flinch out of the way, before Y/n could stand, or ask what the hell was happening, Cheryl crawled onto her lap, straddling her hips in the middle of her party.

“Cher, what are you doing?” Y/N asked, desperate for clarification as her eyes darted around a party at a standstill, every single pair of eyes in the room trained on them in waiting. Cheryl’s hands rested on her cheeks and brought her full attention back to the girl on top of her. The redhead glanced back up at the very shocked party goer to her side, who had been forced away from Y/N.

“This one’s off limits.” She snarled, ducking her head and connecting her lips with Y/N’s in a kiss that certainly wasn’t what you’d class as appropriate for public. Eveything feel off the earth in that moment, they were alone in that room and safe in each others arms, Y/N’s hands coming to her waist to pull her in closer. It was love, and it was passion, and it was endless apology without a single word. When Cheryl pulled back slightly, her forehead resting against Y/N’s carefully, she sighed into a room holding its breath in shock and confusion. There was a second of silence before a familiar voice rose above the rest.

“THAT’S HOT!” Reggie screamed and as soon as the words left his mouth the room erupted in to cheers, and applause, and an understandable mess of people yelling numerous variations of ‘What the fuck?’ and yet somehow the two girls sat unmoving, staring at each other, really seeing each other for the first time in weeks.

“Everyone knows.” Y/N said breathlessly. Cheryl chuckled back, running her thumbs along Y/N’s cheek bones delicately, kissing her again softly and quickly.

“I don’t think I care.”

Everything tags: @gryffndor @itsjaynebird @vanessa-sanch-blog @lost-in-wonderland-x @annoyingsibling @bex09 @jugheadjonesatemyheart @iseestormyskiesahead @eliza-hamilton-helpless @jaithedragon @onceuponagladerhead @fragilefrances @ourlazydetectivekitten @onceitoowasinnocent @rivdale-jugg @latenightbooknerd @bottomsabrina

#cheryl #cheryl imagine #cheryl fic #cheryl blossom #cheryl blossom fic #cheryl blossom imagine #riverdale #riverdale fic #riverdale imagine #cheryl x reader #cheryl blossom x reader #riverdale x reader

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violetsystems · 6 years ago

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#personal

I didn’t really plan it but I woke up to a Lunar New Year parade full of lions and drums. If it sounds like I don’t plan anything when I travel, it’s mostly true. I have ideas in my head of why I want to go somewhere. Mostly it has been to get away from people back home. Both days I ended up hanging out with friends from Tumblr and real life I’ve known for years. I was sitting across from one of them when I got the call from the mayoral candidate. I felt like it was a huge relief to have this happening in front of a friend. I had been trying to explain what my life has become after all of this and there it was. Over Vietnamese noodles a block over from my hotel, I met up with another friend who works at Baohaus. I forgot he’d been following me for years on here and told me he had always gotten the impression I was a really genuine and kind person. My kindness has been used and abused over the years. Friday was my birthday. There’s more than enough years there for me to do the math. When I tell my friends why I came to New York, it’s fragmented in my mind. There’s almost too much drama to decompress from and every other minute somebody is trying to make me their own personal hero. Sometimes that can be ok. You would think that’s what I’d want to be to impress people. But most of what I’ve thought online and pondered over for years, I’ve put into practice for myself. People are always eager to see whatever magic show you perform on the daily. People don’t know what I go through in real time. That you can be sitting alone in a strange town on your birthday and the only person who cares is somebody running for mayor. That sounds bleak but it’s one hundred percent real. It seems like whatever invisible webs and tricks I play to prove some deeper point always gets hijacked. I could be writing on here for years and people have their own narrative of me. One day I’m problematic. The next my opinion on politics and Amazon is going to save the next economic crisis. All the while nobody ever asks me how I feel about all this. If I were to be true, deep down inside I’m not terrified. I’m exhausted. I came to New York because I am trapped. Trapped by everything I’ve done that nobody paid attention to for years. Trapped in some weird ban that nobody can explain on Instagram. Trapped in what looks to my friends here in New York in some sort of bizarre movie where I’m hunted every corner by some intricate spectacle. It is fashion week still. Street style is funny. Wearing undercover for years and nobody ever acknowledging why is bad too. The point of street wear was you wore it on the street and people would recognize what it meant. You could wear something by Rei Kawakubo and make a statement. Maybe you want to support great female designers who promote feminism without saying a word. Maybe you believed that people like Jun Takahashi actually cared that you’ve been harassed for years wearing his clothes. Maybe none of those people know you exist. The candidates for Chicago mayor seem to know.

I didn’t ask for anything when I started any of this. I desperately wanted to connect with someone. I spent days on end researching and reading about the clothes I felt comfortable in. Style is like that. Fashion is supposed to be a functional statement of your particular identity. Most people haven’t done anything to be seen. They walk around thinking people will pick up on the brand semiotics. That someone will talk to them like a human being due to sharing a common interest or manifesto. Most people just want to be seen and have no idea how to connect. Most people have nothing further to say. Nothing deeper to express. Which is why five hundred dollar non slip work shoes are probably so popular. When you think this deeply about everything it can make your brain hurt. Surrounded by people who see your talent for being genuine and want to use it. But are too weak to approach or acknowledge you. Or just plain overbearing and inconsiderate. For myself who has sat here in relative anonymity for years, I thought this was the performance. Years ago I had read that some of the assistants for Jun Takahashi were mistaken for homeless in London. They felt this meant the clothes were genuine. They had become something else. For me people mistake me for everything other than myself. For years people thought I was the police. People would talk shit about me and what they thought I was about no matter how much I would write on here. If you are always in the public eye, you can expect to be watching your back. I’ve never been a person who has been comfortable with fake sentiments. Never been one for placeholder relationships or social scenes where nobody listens and pretends that they care. People use other people so often without them being aware on either side. You can get caught up in the validation cycle and not know who you are outside of society or particular subcliques. No one has ever asked me what I do. Promoters from Russia still haunt my instagram. The Gramercy theatre likes my pictures of coffee at Blue Bottle that I still can’t comment on. None of my friends out here could understand why I’m in some literal cage. They just look on in disbelief and I look on in tedium. I keep saying that this is just the territory I have to get used to. I never wanted to be famous. I just didn’t want to be alone anymore. I felt like doing these things would help me connect with someone genuine who I could care for, love and trust. And day after day there is nothing but commentary. People talking about who they think I am instead of asking me. That’s pretty common. I’ve learned by now how to tell when people tune out or aren’t listening. You can’t survive in a country without English if you don’t listen carefully and plan your words. Some people don’t have to survive like me. Some people can just waltz through life and everything is set out for them. No matter how fake and unfulfilling that may be. I choose a different path.

I did actually talk about my personal life with my friends out here. It’s been something I can’t really elaborate on. Even when I talk about it I try to keep it vague. They always say don’t broadcast your moves. It’s hard when your account is completely hosed on Instagram. I found out I could check in places. That was safe enough for the community. But to this day I don’t know whether it’s retaliation for something I’ve done. I can’t imagine what I’ve done. What any of this is trying to prove. And why my life has been an increasing public hell since the summer. My friends agreed New York was a place you could remain somewhat anonymous. I don’t think it’s that simple at all. I feel like New York you can demonstrate your worth as a person. It’s the old “if you can make it here” shit. Except that out here it can be even worse. People think they know all about what you do. And the truth is nobody does except me. I know this because nobody ever approaches me with genuine care or concern about my feelings. And to be blunt my psychological state has been exhausted, frustrated and a constant assault of unfairness and hurt feelings. The world demands you to suck it up. Because better times will come. For me they just get worse. When I wander the streets here I like to think. I make connections to streets and paths to where I want to be. Every city has it’s own rhythm and speaks to everyone differently. I’ve been around the world for years and have the receipts to prove it. I don’t know that I feel good about it. That is until I really step back and understand where I’m at. I’m in a city that never sleeps by myself. I have friends here. More friends than I trust back home. And it’s hard to explain still to this day. If I came out here to be seen it was to be seen as normal. I don’t feel normal anymore. I wish I was. I wish it just wasn’t me fighting back all these prying eyes. People talking behind my back without any concern for my feelings. I feel completely alone sometimes. Exhausted by pushing the same boulder uphill for people who don’t appreciate it. And then there are moments. When I know it’s not just me in on this bizarre secret I can’t really explain. That secret is my fucking life at this point. And I’m faced with it every day for better or for worse. Maybe these days people think of me more as a Saint than what they used to think about me. I don’t know any Saints who are alive other than sports teams. I’m not an athlete. I train like one. I break down mentally on occasion from exhaustion. I’m the only one there picking myself up. People expect so much on top of that. I don’t even know what I’m doing anymore. Tonight I’m going to sleep. Tomorrow I fly back to Chicago. I just don’t know anymore. I don’t think I’ll know for awhile. And that is really something to cry about. They don’t want to see me crying on the street. It would break your fucking heart if you knew the truth behind those tears. Not a lot of people would have the strength to hold them back for this long. But a lot of people are nowhere near who I have become. They’d never put themselves through this much pain. They seem to rather watch me suffer. So maybe it puts it in perspective to suffer for no reason out in the open. If you can make it here, you can make it anywhere. I hope. I don’t know where else to turn. <3 Tim

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vinayv224 · 4 years ago

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Hunter Biden, then the chair of the World Food Program USA, speaking at an organization event on April 12, 2016, in Washington, DC. | Teresa Kroeger/Getty Images for World Food Program USA

A troubled guy at the center of the fake scandal that became a real scandal.

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Sometime in 2016, Hunter began dating Beau’s widow, which family members claimed to be supportive of, but that relationship unraveled by early 2019.

Joe Biden didn’t do anything to help Hunter in Ukraine

— Kenneth P. Vogel (@kenvogel) May 2, 2019

Hunter Biden is a product of an unloved system

As of 2014, Gallup found that 75 percent of voters felt corruption was “widespread” in American government.

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