#I feel almost functional enough to consider getting a starter job

[thedemisapphic]

Thinking about the comic I want to make —> :D

Planning the comic amidst everything else —> D:

[bffhreprise]

Best Friend For Hire Reprise, 382

 “Slow down!” exclaimed Iris.  “Turn left just up ahead.”

 I nodded and complied.  She knew where her boss lived better than any of us, having never visited this suburb befored.  I probably would have missed the break in the endless fence had she not warned me, especially when I was trying to guess the cost of having a large amount of land next to a park in a pricey suburb.  To my surprise, the gate opened for us immediately.

 “He doesn’t care much for security, does he?” I teased, looking around to see if there was some sort of guard who would have opened the gate for us.

 “Mila watches everything, so there’s no need.  There are sensors and cameras all over the yard that let her know if anything is disturbed.” explained Iris matter-of-factly.

 I nodded, but my eyes were locked on our destination in the distance, barely visible through all of the rain.  I had considerably underestimated the size of this place.  I very much doubted that I could even afford to maintain the yard for very many years and could only guess that the property tax had to be immense.

 As my sons grew excited about the bushes, I looked over and stared for several seconds.  Every single bush along the long driveway had been carefully sculpted into characters that I recognized from video games my kids enjoyed.  I could only imagine the amount of time and number of people involved in such artwork, leading me to believe James spent even more on his yard annually than I originally had guessed.  Even the fountain—an immense, two-story affair that was very elaborately sculpted—was immaculate, showing no signs of wear or neglect.  James certainly knew how to make an impression.

 When we stepped inside, passing past two sets of double doors that opened for us, James was descending down one of the staircases which curved up to a balcony on the second floor.  “James!  Thank you for having us.  This is quite a place you’ve got here.  Sorry if we brought the storm.” I told him, gesturing to the weather outside.

 “There’s plenty to see.” he politely agreed.  “Thank you for accepting the invitation.  I thought you might be interested in seeing a little more about my company than most, since you seemed curious during the game.  Mick was supposed to stop by a while ago but apparently didn’t get the time.”

 “This place is awesome!” exclaimed Matt.

 “Sorry, James.” muttered Mick.

 “No need to apologize.  We’ll just review with your family today what I wanted to tell you before.” replied James, smiling at us.

 I suddenly found myself floating as a soft breeze blew at me from inside the mansion.  Looking to my sides, I saw that my family, save for my daughter, were also floating.

 Before I could do more than exclaim in surprise, James spoke up, telling us, “Magic is real, and your family can use it.”

 I stared at them, my mind trying to figure out how he was doing this.  Was this some elaborate prank using a new technology?  “Wh-What…” was all I managed to say before we were gently lowered to the ground.

 “You wanted to know what I was feeding my employees.  I train them physically, mentally, and in magical arts.  We didn’t use spells at the baseball game, but we have numerous advantages that are completely unfair.” explained James.  “For example, I can physically lift your family’s van, though using spells is easier to ensure I don’t compromise the frame.”

 I swore, feeling like I had been had, before my better judgement kicked in.  My family was currently at this boy’s mercy.

 James’ smile broadened as he said, “If you don’t mind coming out back, I’ll ask the wonderful gardener to demonstrate something people tend to grasp more easily.”  Not hearing any argument from us, he motioned for us to follow him and started telling us  “Mirabella and Mike can’t create the electrical discharges like the rest of you.  She has a different heritage, and Mike took after his mother.”

 “How could you possibly know that?” asked Mike in surprise.

 “My secretary ran a background check on Iris prior to her being hired, and she’s so thorough that I feel like she knows everything.  You wouldn’t believe how long she takes to brief me on things.” explained James as he glanced back at my son.  “My concern with Mick is that he and Iris tended to play games with their ability, which caught enough notice for my secretary to file it in the report.  There are some out there who prey on those with abilities such as yours, so being a little more cautious tends to be wise.”

 That sounded far too believable.  I probably should have chewed those two out more often, but I had never believed anyone would have noticed their antics.  “You claim you can lift cars, and you can obviously lift us.  What else can you do, James?” I asked, wanting a firmer handle on whom I was dealing with.

 “So many things, Dad.  James is like a wizard combined with an overly strong fighter from some fantasy novel.” insisted Iris from behind me.

 I glanced back at her, surprised at how serious she looked.

 “I’ve also learned to make a great cup of tea.  My wife can be picky.” insisted James.

 “What’s that smell..?” questioned Mike longingly.

 Now that he mentioned it, I didn’t recognize the smell either, though I was certain it was food.  My mouth was already watering.

 “We’re almost to the kitchen, and Marco’s making you quite the treat.  I’m sure he won’t mind us passing through.  Just be prepared for a few samples.” encouraged James.

 The kitchen was as large as was fitting a house this size, and even there the fanciful engravings didn’t yield.  Every cabinet was beautifully carved, as were the very large table and chairs.

 Marco, the chef, was extraordinarily eager for us to sample “a few things” before we moved onward, despite assuring us that dinner would be ready soon.  Only when James pointed out there was more for us to see before dinner did Marco give way, giving us permission to pass through his kitchen into the garden beyond.

 The rain didn’t reach us as we followed James outside, hitting some invisible barrier and sliding away.

 “I don’t suppose you worry about getting struck by lightning.” I commented as I watched the sky.

 “Worried, no, but I didn’t find that to be pleasant either.” he told me sincerely.

 I stared at him, my eyes searching for any sign that he had ever been struck, but I found nothing, save for how confident he seemed.  

 “If your magic were stronger, you’d actually be able to guide a lightning bolt around you.  Iris has practiced enough that she could knock an assailant down with just the shock.” he commented, making me glance back at my daughter.

 “You can?” questioned Mick excitedly.

 She nodded, grinned, and said, “Yep, though I could take you in a fight without one.”  

 “All trained up now, are you?” questioned Mark, my eldest son.

 Iris laughed, shaking her head.  “You wouldn’t believe the standards here.”

 “I take it that James is the strongest, being the boss.” suggested Mike.

 James shook his head and said, “Not even close.”  Then he pointed to a fortress in the distance and asked “Do you see the keep over there?”

 I nodded along with a couple of my sons.

 “The strongest best friend created that with a stray thought.” claimed James.

 “What!?  No way!” exclaimed Mike.

 Nodding, James said, “She showed up in my office to tell me that she ‘oopsed’ a second after.  She’s been training recently to avoid that type of mistake.  I imagine she’ll be capable of creating a large city in a day on a whim within a few years.  I’d probably spend at least a week on a small town, and that’s if I collected the resources ahead of time.”

 I found the idea mind-boggling.  James seemed humble as he claimed that he could create a small town in a week.

 “You’d take at least a month, man-sla-... er… boss?” announced Emma, turning the statement into a question at the end.  “You get too distracted.  I could handle a village in an hour!”  She was soaked, but grinning.

 Before my eyes, the water soaking her clothes drifted away to join the rain outside.

 “Emma, I’m sure you remember Iris’ father, Grayson.  This is her mother, Mirabella.  From oldest to youngest, her brothers are Mark, Mick, Mike, and Matt.  Everyone, this is my gardener, Emma.”

 “Shouldn’t I be your favorite gardener?” she asked teasingly.

 “Sure.” he conceded.

 “Hear that?  I’m his favorite!” she exclaimed proudly.

 “Do you create villages with a stray thought?” questioned Mike.

 “Nah.  I do this.” she replied, watching us all.  After a couple seconds, wooden buildings rose out of the ground between the garden and the keep.

 “Mine would have functional electricity, plumbing, and the other luxuries people expect these days.” argued James with a smile.

 She stuck her tongue out at him.  Then she said, “My plumbing would work if I created a water tower.  Plants can be very good at guiding water.  As for electricity, I’ve been talking with Jarod about ways to generate a current with plants.  We have plans and stuff!”

 “You mean he had a crazy idea and chatted your ear off.” suggested James.

 “I thought the idea was cool and agreed to try eventually!” she insisted.

 “The idea was actually Maxine’s.  She has some experience with bioengineering from when she considered creating a cyborg army.” corrected Mila, who had discretely joined us without me noticing.

 “You can create cyborgs!?’ questioned Matt excitedly.

 “There has been some tech created here which could be used toward that end, but we’re not experimenting on people.” explained James.

 “I didn’t know you were in the tech industry.” commented my wife.

 James smiled at her and diplomatically told her “My company dabbles in many things to help prepare our best friends for a very large variety of jobs.”

 Grinning, Emma said, “He means to say ‘Yes.  Yes, we are.’  Mua ha ha ha ha!”  She drummed her fingers together while obviously attempting to look like some comic book villain.

James sighed and said, “Emma, mind getting rid of your starter village and showing the Storms how you help the kitchen?”

 “Fiiiine,” she begrudgingly told him, “but I might use some buildings to compliment the topiary when I change things up again.”

 “Sounds fun.” he agreed.

 From there, she started demonstrating how she could make the plants grow, revert to seeds, or provide as much food as she wanted.  She could also force plants to grow beyond their normal proportions and control them as easily as she controlled her own limbs, which led her into demonstrating how she had produced the bats her team had used for our baseball game.  Before she seemed remotely ready to quit demonstrating her abilities, Mila announced that food was ready.

 Instead of eating at the long table in the kitchen, we were taken to a large dining hall with an even more elaborate table.  There were already carts of food waiting nearby, and Mila urged us to help ourselves, since no one here would hesitate when they arrived.

 As we ate, we were entertained with more demonstrations of magic from those who had joined us.  James’ wife, Alma, created elaborate displays of fire and ice.  Ai and Mai created a sort of play with tiny figures made of water acting out their parts just above the table.  Jemal fetched more food for the particularly hungry using nothing but his magic, causing whatever was requested to float through the air.  James himself demonstrated illusions, making us see whatever he wanted while assuring us the magic the others had used was real.  Whether because I had felt myself being lifted earlier or because he had no reason to lie, I believed him.  Iris’ boss was the most interesting, and perhaps the most dangerous, man I had ever met.

[itmighthavebeenintentional]

Shackled - Ch 12

Summary: After nearly ten years, Sam Winchester calls Miriam Bard to collect on a life debt. Unfortunately for Miriam, Sam leaves out a few important details.

WARNINGS CHANGE EACH CHAPTER, PLEASE CHECK EACH TIME. 

Warning: implied loss of family, grieving, depression, cursing, mention of emotional manipulation/mind fuckery/psychological manipulation, emotional exhaustion, depression

Word Count: 2945

Author’s Note: You made it this far; thanks for sticking with me! I can’t tell you how lovely everyone has been throughout posting this story. I’m going to hopefully start posting my next story “Walk Me Home” sometime within the next week, so if you’d like a tag, let me know. I’ll be posting the preview again tonight. Thank you all for lovely words and flailing, and here’s hoping I’ll see you again at the next story. 

Thanks to @fangirlxwritesx67​ for all the flailing. It means so much to me, I don’t have enough or proper words. @cracksinthewalls​​ , you kept me going, you kept this story going. Like. Babe. Seriously. @thoughtslikeaminefield​ , I would have no Dean stories without you, probably would not have even entered the fandom without you. This story was first and foremost for you, and it’s only right the last thanks on it be for you. 

I love you all.

Please read/heed the warnings. 18+ ONLY. 

In case you missed it:

Ch 1 | Ch 2 | Ch 3 | Ch 4 | Ch 5 | Ch 6 | Ch 7 | Ch 8 | Ch 9 | Ch 10 | Ch 11

Masterlist

Chapter 12

Miriam swam back to consciousness as gentle fingers probed her face. The pain flared once, a bright flame that consumed every cell of her body before extinguishing all at once. She gasped, her lungs unrestricted and easy, and grabbed at the closest thing she could reach. Her wrists were whole again, functional, and she sat bolt upright, her eyes wide and wild as fear shot through her gut. Strong arms, for some reason clad in a tan trench coat, supported her as her head swam crazily. 

“Miriam, I presume. I’ve got you, everything’s alright now. Dean is cured. You’re safe.” She looked into his eyes and saw the sincerity and strength there. She nodded slowly, willing her heart rate to calm. She took slow, measured breaths until the spinning stopped. 

“Miriam!” Then Sam was in the doorway, rushing over to help her up, Dean following closely behind. What with Sam and the other man already pulling Miriam to her feet, Dean stood a safe distance away, unsure of his reception. 

Miriam thought this wise of him. 

She wobbled unsteadily long enough that Sam insisted on taking her back to her room to rest. She was too wiped out to argue and gladly accepted his support. She glanced back at Dean as Sam led her from the room, and she was startled at the depth of sorrow and pain she saw there. 

Then she turned the corner with Sam and realized the pull she felt from Dean, that insatiable hunger for the darkness, was almost completely gone. 

Almost.

…

Miriam lay on the bed, staring up at the ceiling, resolutely ignoring Sam’s instructions to sleep. Though she doubted she’d have any new visits from the demon, she could feel her other nightmares waiting at the edge of her consciousness, with a few new additions from her recent misadventures with the Winchesters to add a little spice to the mix.

A soft knock on her door pulled her out of her miserable reverie, and she sat up slowly. She wasn’t in pain, the angel (Castiel, Sam had explained) had healed her completely, but she was unsteady with exhaustion and shock.

“Come in, Dean,”

He entered hesitantly, still unsure of his welcome. He’d showered, shaved, and changed into a t-shirt, sweats, and a gray bathrobe. She had to admit he looked a lot better for it. Considering how appealing she thought he’d looked before, that was saying something. 

They studied each other for a long moment, seeing each other as they really were for the first time in nearly a decade. Dean still stood tall and firm, wearing his “comfy clothes” better than most models wore a suit, but she could see the weight of the world dragging at his shoulders, staining his expression with grief and regret. 

But there was less ferocity to him now. He’d lost the feral hunger, the malevolence of his earlier presence that had drawn her in so strongly. She’d never call Dean Winchester soft, not in a thousand years, but this Dean, the real human Dean, was appealing to her in a way she hadn’t expected. Despite everything that had happened, he still exuded a sense of strength and confidence that had little to do with his appearance and more to do with a natural gravity that spoke of protection and safety rather than danger and oblivion.

Then again, she thought, maybe I can just see the light on the other side of the darkness now. Maybe that said something good for the both of them.

But it hurt, looking into that light. Looking away from the darkness without shielding herself meant admitting that life without Aaron wasn’t just possible, that it was necessary. 

She’d taken care of him for so long, leaned on him without realizing she was doing so. Now her universe was off-balance in the worst way, vertigo without promise of reprieve. Every day felt like freefall, and she hated that swooping sensation that tore through her gut whenever she opened her eyes and realized he wasn’t just one bed over.

But he was gone. And she wasn’t. 

And now she had to decide what she was going to do with those facts, because she couldn’t continue her dim, half-existence anymore, no matter how much easier it was than facing an Aaron-less life.

And right now, in this moment, that meant addressing her own personal ex-demon.

Miriam offered him a half-smile and indicated the chair by her bedside. He wavered, his jaw working as his frown deepened, but she let him have his internal debate without interruption. After a moment, he made up his mind and sat heavily in the chair, elbows resting on the arms, hands dangling over his lap. He glared down at his socked feet as if angry they weren’t supplying him with the right conversation starter.

“How are you feeling?”

He started at her question and turned incredulous eyes on her, mouth gaping.

“How am I feeling? I nearly killed you, and you’re worried about...Miriam, god, I...I…”

“I know,” she said. He dropped his face into his palms, fingers digging hard into his forehead. His hands strained, veins standing out starkly under his skin, and her heart broke for him.

Dean was a good hunter, a good brother, a good man. He’d been seized by a literal demon, and if anyone besides possession victims could understand that, maybe even forgive it, it was Miriam. And, miracle of miracles, for once she knew the right thing to do.

She arranged her pillow behind her and reclined. Then she lifted the covers, opened her arms, and cleared her throat.

“Come here.”

He looked up at her with red, confused eyes. He straightened up and opened his mouth, and she knew he was about to refuse, say something manly or defensive, or both. She beat him to the punch.

“We are both done, Dean. I’ve got nothing left. I hurt you, you hurt me, we both did horrible things. Now is not the time to make comparison lists of sins. We’ve got tomorrow to tear ourselves new ones. Answer me one question right now, and you’d damned well better tell me the truth.”

He nodded slowly, watching her with wary eyes. 

“Aren’t you tired, Dean?”

He stared hard at her, waiting for something else, maybe a rebuke or an insult, but when he realized she was finished, he sat for a moment, thinking. Then his shoulders slumped, and he scrubbed his fingers through his hair.

“Exhausted,” he finally answered. 

She nodded.

“Then take your damned robe off and get over here. And keep your hands where I can see them, sir.”

Turns out, Dean Winchester wasn’t too bad at following directions, once properly motivated. 

Dean fit into her shoulder with the perfection of a worn-out child cradled in trusted arms. As his face relaxed, Miriam thought she saw the briefest glimpse of that sweet, carefree little boy in his smiling mother’s arms. 

Something tugged loose in her chest, and she knew then she’d done the right thing by coming here, no matter the damage she’d sustained. She glanced across the room to see Aaron staring back from the mirror. A tiny smile lifted the corner of his mouth. 

“I love you,” she said. She meant so much more, and she knew Aaron understood that. 

Dean shifted in her arms, murmuring something on the edge of dozing, and his frown returned. She moved automatically to smooth her thumb over his furrowed brow, massage the anxious crease that had formed between his eyes. Still drowsing, he nuzzled closer, his freshly shaven cheek sliding over her collarbone. Unable to resist, she pressed her nose to the crown of his head, inhaling softly.

Miriam had done a few hunting jobs in the Northwest, near the coast, and she’d fallen in love with the forests there. Unbelievably tall trees, disappearing upwards until you almost fell over backwards trying to see the tops. Damp and lush, there was a green, mossy smell that hung in the air and mingled with traces of fresh earth and mist.

Dean smelled as if he’d just stepped out from under those trees. Clean, a hint of cedar, and something warm and spicy. She hesitated, a new kind of want blooming in her chest as she held him close, reveling in his solid heat. She pressed a kiss to his temple and smiled when he curled tighter into her embrace.

“Hands where I can see ‘em, missy,” he murmured, eyes still closed. His arm slid under hers until it curled protectively around her back. “Sleep, Miri. I’ve got you.”

She took a deep breath, and settled into the exhale, resting her cheek against his damp hair.

Yeah, she thought, a welcome lethargy spreading through her thoughts. You do.

…

“Sure you don’t want to rest another day or two?” Sam asked. She didn’t have to look up from her packing to know his face was lined with concern. Dean leaned in the doorway, arms crossed, pretending he didn’t want to say the exact same thing.

“Sorry, Sam, another day of rabbit food, and I might starve. Gotta get some meat before I waste away. Dean, you’re welcome to come with if you aren’t worried about ruining your girlish figure.”

Dean barked a laugh from the doorway, and Miriam straightened up in time to see him wipe the smile off his face under the heat of Sam’s stern glare. She grinned, and Dean winked.

“Gonna go pull your car around. Meet you out front?” Without waiting for an answer, Dean straightened and nodded, disappearing from view.

“You really could stay a little longer,” Sam repeated, his voice low and earnest. For the first time since she’d met him, he seemed small, diminished by worry and uncertainty. Dark circles stood out starkly under his eyes, and his entreating smile was probably the weakest she’d ever seen it.

“Sam, I-” she paused, hesitating, then closed the space between them, reached up, and pulled him into a full hug. After a moment, Sam’s good arm wrapped around her shoulders, pulling her tight against his chest as his head bent down, his nose resting on top of her head. She held him close, waiting for Sam to pull away when he was ready.

“I can’t,” she murmured into his hair. “Not right now. It’s too fresh. I need to...deal with it. Actually deal with it,” she added as he leaned back far enough to give her a sharp look. She noticed he didn’t pull completely away from their embrace, though.

“I’m going to figure some things out, I promise. Again, you strong, heroic men didn’t magically fix my issues. But maybe you gave me the push I needed to do that for myself.”

“You’re welcome back here anytime,” Sam said. He pressed a chaste kiss to her forehead and stepped back, releasing her. He gazed down at her face for a moment, and she could see he was choosing his next words carefully. 

“I’m glad you’re going to...deal with it. I get what you’re working through. Not that I’m a paragon of mental health, but I’ve been there. A couple of times. If you ever want or need to talk about everything that happened, about anything at all, you can call me.”

Miriam felt a mischievous smile stretching across her face. “Everything? Well, Sam, when you were gone, there was this one thing that Dean did in one of my nightmares that-”

“Not everything!” Sam yelped, and she laughed, feeling the ever-present knot in her chest loosen just a little more. He chuckled, shaking his head, and squeezed her hand. 

“Don’t lose my number, Miriam. I’ve...We’ve got your back.”

…

“Sure you don’t want to stay for another round of Sam’s ‘queen-wah’ salad?” Dean smirked. His green eyes sparkled in the sunlight, and she was surprised at the pleasurable twinge she felt upon receiving that smile. 

“Get your ass off my car, Winchester,” she ordered, feigning exasperation. He pushed up from the hood and opened the back door, lifting the duffel from her hands and tossing it in the back seat.

“Where ya headed?” Dean asked, sticking his hands in his pockets and rocking back on his heels. He stared at the ground between them, and she couldn’t help but smile. After all they’d been through, even after chastely sharing a bed for the last three nights, she felt awkward around him, too, though both were too stubborn to admit it aloud.

“Maybe Washington state or Oregon, check out some of the rainforests. The couple of times we had jobs over that way, walking around under all those giant trees made my issues seem pretty small. Could help me put some things in perspective. Anyway, I’ve got some time off saved up. I think I’ve earned a real vacation.”

He finally met her eyes, and the corner of his mouth turned up. He took a step closer.

“Yeah? Sounds pretty...majestic.” He dodged her blow easily, grinning. “I’m kidding. Some time off sounds pretty damn good, come to think of it. Don’t really remember what that’s like. It’s one disaster after another around here.”

“I kinda got that feeling,” Miriam said, pushing the back door shut. She stepped up to him, holding her arms open in invitation. Though he still hesitated, in the end, he relented and allowed her to pull him into a close hug that sent little flutters through her stomach. Just as she started to pull back, Dean’s arms tightened, holding her against his chest.

“We both need to take some time,” she said quietly. He nodded, turning his face inwards, pressing his lips to her temple. “We’ve got a lot of baggage to sort through and shit to deal with and other metaphors about mentally healing. Darkness to yank out by the roots and all that.”

He pulled back, his face drawn with concern. “Miriam, I need you to know. Those dreams you had, I didn’t...I could see them all whenever you came inside the trap.” His complexion darkened, and if she didn’t know better, Miriam would have thought Dean was actually blushing.

“But I didn’t send them to you. When you were outside the dungeon, outside the devil’s trap, I couldn’t do that.”

She nodded slowly, feeling some of the sunlight's warmth leeching away. She’d come to that conclusion herself, after listening to some conversations over the last couple of days between the boys and their guardian angel. 

“I know. And that’s something I’m going to have to work through. There’s darkness in me, and it really, really liked the darkness I found in you.”

They both glanced significantly down at his right arm, their eyes drawn to the dark, ugly mark, before looking up again.

“I just...wanted it to be easy, like you, the demon you, said. I was, I am so tired, and I just wanted to be done.” She could say the words now, as she couldn’t say them only days ago. 

Such a simple thing to say, she thought, and I had to nearly die to admit it.

“Awfully strong drug for any hunter,” Dean agreed, and though she hated that he knew the feeling well enough to understand, part of her was not-so-secretly glad that for the first time in months, she no longer felt alone in her pain.

“But I can work through it. And I think you can, too. I have no clue how, for either of us, but I’m willing to work on it if you are.”

He nodded slowly, and his eyes flicked to her lips for just a moment before his eyebrows raised questioningly. He looked ready to be rejected, braced for her dismissal, but for the life of her, she couldn’t think of a single decent reason to do so.

This time, the only pull she felt was Dean’s arms drawing her closer.

The kiss was soft, simple, and sweet. His hands, scarred and so gentle, slid over her jaw, threading into her hair. He tilted her face to the side, finding a better angle for both of them, and her hands found their way to his waist, tugging him further into her space. After a moment, they broke apart. Dean’s eyes were still closed as she stretched up to kiss his forehead.

“We can work on that, too,” Miriam said. Dean licked his lips, swallowed, and nodded as he straightened. They released their hold on each other reluctantly, and Miriam slid into the driver’s seat before she did something irrational like change her mind.

She cranked the car, stared out the windshield, and sighed. She had to go, needed some time and space to work through her thankfully no-longer-literal demons, but…

She really wanted to come back.

“Hey, Dean,” she said suddenly. He dropped a hand to the hood of her car, leaning down so he could see her through the open window. “You like cowboy movies?”

“Yeah, why?”

“You ever seen The Quick and the Dead?”

His face transformed from sad to wondering to glee in less than a second. “Wild West shootout, Sharon Stone at her hottest, Gene Hackman at his bad ass-est?”

Miriam giggled. “That’s not a word, but yeah. Got a copy?”

“No, but I can get one.”

She smiled, feeling warm and light down to her toes. “Give me a month or two, try to take some time off yourself. Call me when you’ve got a copy of the movie, and maybe we can have a movie night. I’ll bring the popcorn.”

The warmth of the kiss he brushed across her cheek lingered for hours.

[masterbeta29]

My review of Pokemon SwSh!!!! (or just Shield, cuz it was the version I play, LOL)

Finally, after finishing the game (including the Post game) and fully exploring the region, I think it’s time for me to say what I think of this 8 gen…

I know it’s obvious, but I mention it just in case: This is MY OPINION!!!, if someone disagrees with me its totally valid, I just ask for respect.

ALSO, English is not my first language so I might have certain lack/erros of spelling out there, or I repeat many words, hehe.

It is important to clarify that this review is based on SwSh base, everything that refers to DLC will NOT be included here, my opinion of the game is already done, the rest is extra content.

I wanted to give this review a more ‘’silly’’ tone, since giving negative opinions on the internet can be quite delicate and I wanted to relax the mood. Do not take this seriously, I still have my CONS with the game, but it is still genuinely enjoyable, which for me is the most important thing in a game.  I will talk about everything in general, so I will try to summarize certain points.

LET’S GO!!!

NEW FEATURES

Poke Camp, Curry Dex, Boxes and more

It’s like a dream come true for me, visiting other camps, seeing my whole party next to each other in the screen playing, discussing, running, is something really magical helps, me connect with them and know their personalities better, although I admit that I miss petting them lol and the minigames like in Gen 6. I also really liked the concept of curry as an alternative way to cure your Pokémon maybe I just wish there was a simpler way to know how to create new recipes (ALSO TMs).

Access to boxes anywhere is wonderful especially when you are breeding, just like, changing the name of trade Pokémon and the move reminder.

Rotomphone

It is not used as much as a phone, more than in the post Game (I can be wrong tho) but it serves as Dex and that’s what’s important really, the new feature is that now it includes the bicycle, that can ride both on land and water and in my opinion it is a degradation of what the concept of  “Poke Ride” was, but as I said before, it fulfill the function it should.

Trainer Cards

The concept of being able to share and customize them with other players is super entertaining, although it is a bit annoying that you always have to make a new code for each small modification. As for the cards of the main characters of the game, I will talk with a little more detail later. 

Dynamax

At the beginning it was fun and exciting, but in the end it just became a gimmick that sometimes I had to use by obligation in raids. It is not as epic as the Megas and does not have the weight of the lore and cultural/regional connection like the Z-moves.

The Giga forms, although some are great, and I am happy that they gave Pokémon like Garbodor love, I also think that there were many missed opportunities, starting with the starters of the region or in giving forms to Pokémon that in previous generations already had like Gengar and Charizard.

Raids

They are incredibly fun, it is an activity that you can spend hours and hours enjoying, especially with friends but if we talk about NPCs… OOF, I understand that the purpose of Pokemon is that we all make friends and work as a team, but DAMN, if it is stressful when you lose a raid with 3 friends and an NPC, because the Pokémon only killed the NPC, it is almost impossible to defeat a 5 star raid with only NPCs, and as I said before I understand why they do them weaker, but there are some that are completely useless, I see you Martin Solrock lol.

Poke Jobs and Rotom Rally

I  will be honest, I have not used these features enough to have a solid judgment on these lol.

CHARACTERS

Magnolia

OK, I need to get this off my chest: I am incredibly disappointed and sad with this character, especially since she is/was our first old female professor, to be simply pulled into forgettable land.

It started pretty well, but then it just disappeared until almost the end of the game to give the role of professor to Sonia … REALLY ?! I hate to say this, but she felt more like a device to give character development to Sonia, when she could have been used in scenes with Rose or repeatedly going into further detail about Dynamax for the MC (you know because she’s an expert about that topic…), before give the paper to Sonia. At least I am grateful that I had a little more screen time in the post game, although not even as a professor.

Sonia

Thank you Sonia, for allowing us to discover and know the story with you, honestly she was the one who saved mostly my interest in the story. 

But speaking of the character, I like her, I like her dedication to get out of the shadow of Leon’s achievement and to show her grandmother that she is capable, which she finally manages to fulfill, she still has certain insecurities, but that makes her more human, she’s the real professor (I’m still salty for Magnolia tho)

Leon

Everyone knows from the posts on my PT on Twitter that I constantly bullying the character, but I really like him a lot, he is an excellent guide/brother through the game, charismatic, EXTRA, but very involved in his role as champion, in the sense that he is always aware of what is going on and helping in the process, in addition to being strong (one of the most difficult battles in the game). Definitely among my fav champions with Cynthia, Steven and Kukui (I count him as champion, SU!)

Gym Leaders

I love them, their designs, personalities, the animations, they are all incredibly memorable, my favorites are Opal, Kabu and Piers. 

But even so, I wish I had more to go on besides the lore on the back of their cards and their battle animations, I would have liked to see them more integrated in the story, and I feel that it lack a little more interaction with some of them, especially Allister and Melony in my case, but at least the trainer cards were a good addition to know them a little more, outside of being a Gym Leader.

RIVALS

OK, I’m prepared for everyone to hate me, *sigh*:

I… I DONT LIKE BEDE AND MARNIE THAT MUCH?… I mean, I don’t hate them, and they are both far from being the worst rivals, but I did expect a little more from both…

Bede

I am one of the few of the fandom that does not like rivals flat jerks, because for me, that is not a character but rather  a trait.

But I wanted to give it a try, and when I was just beginning to gain interest in him, they force his backstory in my face… And as I said, I like trainer cards…but more in characters, like G.leaders because these are characters that we don’t see much around the trip, but in the case of rivals, that appear several times and develop in the story, I personally like to get to know them little by little, discover their story and understand them in the course, here I felt it more as an excuse for me, to feel bad for him, especially at the moment he gives you his card.

His relationship with Rose is not explored enough imo. 

And a complete turn-around that happens offscreen, like no joke, the MC literally didn’t see any of it, he just disappears after the Opal scene (but to give him credit, that scene is one of my favorites in the game).

But you know, I understood that he was just a lost boy, and I’m happy that he found a better place, and I admire his effort to want to change, so in the end I ended up liking him a little more.

Marnie

Marnie is interesting, because although I agree with many people that she would have benefited from having more screen time, I consider that a good character does not need all the screen time in the world, is about what but what they do with it, and the problem I have with her is that her time was not well spent.

I like her dream and I really like her relationship with her brother, however there was no moment when I really connected with her. I feel partly, that I don’t know her character, like her various personality facets. 

Untapped opportunities: fight with her more times or with her…would have helped the character a lot imo.

Hop

Hop is the best rival of the three hands down, his trainer card contains the right and necessary information to make us have an interest in the character, but also the story lets us know him more: a competitive boy, but who has insecurities, fears of failure, that is reflected not only by the dialogue but also in his Pokemon team (no really, it broke my heart when I realized that he didn’t have his Wooloo in his team), that he is frustrated and suffers, but he gets up, discovers other tastes and with these finds a new path, ugh perfect, I adore him.

Forcing the player to defeat him is torture, it is like defeating Hau in USUM and Wally in ORAS breaks my heart.

Rose

In short: ok character, decent /meh antagonist, and a horrible villain. 

Like the climax of the story, Rose is forced in the end to be the villain, when he worked best as an antagonist, his plan makes no sense, his battle is disappointing, although his battle theme is awesome, but it just does not fit the character, the plan, nor the situation at all.

But the character has a certain charisma, especially in his ‘’suit especially in his incognito suit.”

Oleana

Interesting character, with a potential backstory, with motives and characterization, who is underused in the story * sigh *… I LIKE HER THO

Overall, I would have liked to see much more of the relationship between Rose, Oleana and Bede, I think it would have benefited the 3 characters…

Team Yell

They are … ok, it is cool to have a team that is not villain, that bother the player from time to time even for good reasons, I admire his dedication and loyalty.

THE REGION

The region is aesthetically beautiful, the details, the structure, the contrast for example between Hammerlocke and Ballonlea, and despite not living in the UK or having had the opportunity to travel to the destination, according to my friends the region in which the games are based is very well related, which I think is excellent. However, despite the visual beauty, when it comes to routes and exploration it feels a bit limited, there are really some towns, where the most interesting thing to do is complete the Gym, there are almost no reasons to return to the previous town after having passed them…

But, what I missed the most was the lack of exploration, discovery, the charm of the NPCs…

Many have told me: what about the Wild Area? Because of the ability to explore in an open area, it is probably the best in the franchise! and yes, the Wild Area is a very attractive part of these games (I will talk a little bit about this, later), but as I said, everything that is considered part of the capacity of the new console, I will not take it into account, it is unfair, because a portable console can NOT stand a concept such as the Wild Area although the developers had the idea before, not at least at SwSh scale.

And as I said before and again, the T.Cards are an incredible idea, but for me NOTHING compares to getting to know the characters through the world, dialogue, interaction… I’m going to use pokemon Moon as an example to make me understand better: (because it was the last main pokemon game I played before SwSh and that’s why I have it more fresh lol) Where you can enter Olivia’s shop, buy jewelry and visit her room and discover that she is a desperate single woman, or enter Gladion’s room and talk to the receptionist and that she tells you part of his story, that kind of things…

Let’s see for example Melony, we know she has more children besides Gordie, but only for concept art, and yes, probably do unique models would take a while, but I honestly wouldn’t have be bothered  if they use generic NPCS, they did it with Lana’s sisters, then the anime can dedicated to giving them unique designs.

Speaking of NPCs (mainly of those inside the houses), many lost the charm and authenticity they had… I mean, where is the lady who told us the story of her husband’s accident or the men of the coffee shop, who every time he prepares us a drink told us the story of where such a drink came from, ect… the NPCS on that side are boring…

EXCEPT BALL GUY, he / she is awesome!

I know this look like extra or unimportant things, but these little details really give life to the region, personality to characters that are secondary, it makes everything feel more united and also makes the main characters feel more inside the world, and honestly that is why on this hand, some cities felt empty for me…

But the other hand, I really liked what they did with the NPCs fans, see how the number increasing every time the MC wins a gym battle, makes the trip to become a champion feel more rewarding, It really helps you feel like a true champion when you got it. 

Other examples like the girl NPC who is going to support  you in the Gyms while their pokemon is evolving, or how the NPCS react and change their dialogue corresponding to what is happening… beautiful, for this part the worldbulding is 10/10.

The wild Area

Probably the closest we have for now of an open space area in a Pokemon game, I have to admit that I get lost at least 1 half an hour trying to find the next destination (I understand you Leon), it was hilarious lol, at the beginning of the game it turns out to be a fairly limited area, and you really can enjoy it in its entirety when you finish the main story, but I don’t see so much trouble with that, since it’s partly the point, for balance. In general, it is a fantastic idea although I feel that it is necessary to polish it in certain parts, and NO, I don’t mean THE TREE, but I don’t want to be so hard on GF at this moment, because is the first time they experiment with such concept…

Pokemon and Music

I put these two together because they both share a very curious characteristic: EXPERIMENTAL. 

The pokedex is super solid, I love how these last generations, GF is doing its homework and is striving to make the pokemon belong to the region, as for animals, myths, culture…muah I LOVE IT, BRAVO.

For me a good OST movie or video game not only has to be for the piece n yes, but how it is composed to accompany the events that occur on the screen, how it adapts and fits a certain scene of the story or character, and although I admit that in general it is not my favorite compared to other gens, there are tracks that have become part of my favorites:

The crowd, the screams, the build up as you gradually approach the last pokemon, ugh. Dynamax is cool and everything, but THIS is the basis for me, of why these battles feel so energetic and exciting.

That mystical atmosphere that catches you, is beautiful but at the same time mysterious, and perhaps many disagree with me, but the addition of the howls of the legendaries… I love it.

STORY

I think the game started extremely well, the introduction to the characters, the exploration, the introduction to the starters, the mystery of the legendary, everything is on track to me to enjoy this adventure to the fullest, but later I felt like it began to fall.

I understand that this is Pokémon and sometimes Pokémon does not need a complex story to make it enjoyable, as long as it makes sense and is entertaining, the problem I have mainly with the story is how they constantly get you out of it. I understand the concept they wanted to do: to take a more realistic point of view, in which adults take responsibility or in this case the champion and that later when you become champion you now can do what the champion did, and I like this concept, but the phrase of “you focus on the gym, we take care of the problems ” they say and they repeat it several times in the game like, I understood the first time!!! 

Indirectly I felt like they were trying to took me out, and in consequence I lost interest in the story of the game, if it hadn’t been because Sonia bothered to explain to me the lore and a little of what was happening. 

It’s more like “tell us” and not “show us”

and that’s the risk of this concept: you play as a main character, because you want to be a main character or share the role.

The climax feels incredibly forced and confusing, I felt that there was no build out, almost no foreshadowing for what was happening at the moment, everything comes out of nowhere, and thats why, I started making Okami jokes with Eternatus, because I don’t felt that emotion of the ‘’Climax’’.

Definitely in the part where the game shine was in the gym Challenge, as I said before, the gyms, the leaders, the atmosphere within them, the scale, the music that changing every time, until reaching the final pokémon, the challenges that we have to do before, the fans, becoming the champion, all this really is the identity of the game. 

Pokémon returned to its roots, where this story is the story of us again, and becoming the champion here is everything, it is one of the most exciting and most satisfying Gym challenge in all generations with gyms.

ADDITIONAL

Here I want to give opinions according to the experiences I had with certain things within the game, which I think are quite PERSONAL, because each person plays different Pokémon, by the team of Pokémon, because he decided to level up more or stay at a lower level or how you decided to follow the story of the game.

Difficulty

Decent, by the standards of Pokemon of course, I try not to leveling to much, and if I do, there are maximum 3 levels and only one pokemon… So, gyms were easy in general, perhaps a pair that were difficult (Allister and Melony), but I never did black screen as in other games, but definitely the most difficult battle in the game is Leon, which I think is appropriate.

Online

Its horrible lol, There were not only once but several times in which I lasted like 1 hour trying to connect with a person, it is ridiculous.The signal falling every so often. But in general the biggest problem I have is connecting with very specific people, not even with the infamous Festival Plaza had so many problems.

Gameplay / Pacing

It is normal the same as always which is fine, some drop of frames out there in certain scenes but nothing serious, some cuts and lack of scenarios / designs that if you should in when they took me a little at the time, but absolutely nothing compared as the haters make it look, the game is still incredibly enjoyable, and it can be played perfectly.

The pacing started pretty well/decently, but from the fourth gym onwards, everything became very very fast, and not to mention the climax and the Pokemon League, honestly all this last arc felt super stuck….

So my opinion in general is: I enjoy the game like any other Pokémon game, it has its entity, it has new and interesting things that I would like it to expand more in future generations and it has personality. Is it my favorite game or my favorite generation? No, I definitely enjoyed other generations more, there were many missed opportunities that they could take more advantage, and I feel bad for GF for making them release this game for this year and these dates, because unfortunately some cuts are very noticeable. But the generation just starting ,so we will have to wait and see what we have for the future. For now, Thanks Pokémon SwSh, for another adventure…

[cryptid-bloodhound]

Legends Crime AU

After some great suggestions from: @daughterofthewinedude, @sunflower-key, @ajays-lullaby, and @unsightedjoker​ I decided to expand upon the Crime AU and fill in the blanks thanks to them! If there are more suggestions, let me know! I’m always open to them (:

 So, again thank you for the suggestions, they’re a huuuge help!

Basic Roles

under the cut bcus I rambled again, oops. If yall want to know more, just hmu! I might make individual character ‘profiles’ if there’s interest. Also, if anyone wants to use this for their own crime setting/au then feel free! (i’d totally love to be tagged in stuff bcus im a hoe for crime aus)

Bloodhound - Unknown Assassin -  They're independent and usually can’t be hired as they seem to be working down some sort of list. They aren’t in it for the money, clearly. However, if you plead your case and it’s a good one (in their eyes) the person you’re targeting might just disappear one day. Occasionally they’ll play the silent, scary backup if one of their associates/friends needs it. Nobody knows who they are, where they came from, how to contact them, or what the hell is up with them. It’s been noted that whenever they stop by a city, notoriously nasty criminals happen to go missing. All that’s known about them is that nobody escapes Bloodhound once they start their hunt.

Lifeline - Ex-Mob Princess/Mob Doc - Ajay Che would have been considered a Mob Princess if she had stayed within her Family Ranks. Her parents made very little effort to hide the truth of their profits from her. Disgusted, she left as soon as she could and swore to never join the life. Instead, she became a doctor in an effort to help people and make up for what her family has done. However, her childhood friend Octavio drug her back into the life unintentionally. He’d get hurt and show up at her doorstep again and again. Soon enough, other mobsters and criminals started arriving, earning her the unspoken title of Mob Doc. Now it’s not uncommon to find random Family members just lounging around her place. She decided to just say ‘to hell with it’ and try to act as some sort of Moral Compass for the crew.

Octane - Ex-Mob Prince/Demolitionist/Arsonist - His family and Ajay’s are closely intertwined. They grew up together thanks to the meetings between his parents and hers. However, unlike Ajay, he didn’t feel a moral repulsion at what their families were doing. If anything, he was bored. They weren’t extreme enough. It was almost all Blue Collar crimes, nothing explosive or violent. So, in typical Octavio fashion, he jumped ship and looked for something faster, flashier, more dangerous. It landed him in the ranks of his current Family as their Demolitions and Arson guy. He managed to drag Ajay back into their lifestyle after blowing off his own legs when he blew up the building of someone who pissed him off. He may not be the smartest or most level-headed member, but there’s no one more willing to jump into a fight or play with explosives than him.

Mirage - Jack of Trades - runs the ‘Cosa Nostra’-esque bar called the Paradise Lounge. It’s a neutral meeting grounds for the varying Families and it is an unwritten rule that nobody is allowed to fight in its premise. It’s the only ‘safe spot’ in the city. He has several different jobs for the Family. Aside from running the bar and helping to launder money, he is a document forger, a con artist, tech expert and is capable of talking people out of trouble one way or another. Basically, if someone needs to ‘disappear’ or get out of trouble, they come to ‘Mirage’. 

Bangalore - Ground Enforcer/Collector -  An ex-spec ops soldier who left the service after the mysterious ‘disappearance’ of her brother when he was on leave. She is certain it was a rival gang who did something to him. So, she’s started a crusade to find out what happened to him and avenge him one way or another. She joined the Family after crossing paths with them on more than one occasion. After witnessing her impressive skills, they offered her whatever resources she needed to finish her quest in exchange for her services leading and training their ‘troops’. She also isn’t shy on collecting the debts owed to the family.

Gibraltar - Allied Boss - Makoa Gibraltar isn’t your typical Crime Lord. For starters, he doesn’t actively harm innocent people. If anything, he is closer to a vigilante than an evil mobster. He started his biker gang after witnessing one too many hate crimes and seeing too many horrible people walk free from a corrupt system. He protects victims from their attackers during tenuous things like court trials and breaks up hate crimes he sees in progress. He’s become affectionately noted throughout the city by its citizens and even the police like to turn a blind eye when they can when he’s seen protecting someone (or beating the ever-loving shit out of some asshole). He has a shaky alliance with The Family. At the moment, they haven’t done anything notably horrible and have helped fund his growing group. They even slip him some info every now and again about places and people who might need a ‘meeting’ with Gibraltar.

Crypto - Double Agent Hacker - Tae Joon Park is technically ‘dead’. After being framed by The Family for the murder of his adopted sister Mila, he decided it was best to stick with the idea of being dead and created a new identity for himself. Filled with a searing need for revenge, he’s entered into the Family under the guise of being their expert Hacker and pro at Espionage. There’s no code he can’t crack and no information he can’t find. He’s capable of bringing empires down from behind his keyboard and screen. That’s exactly what he plans on doing to The Family. Only, he’s starting to notice a very strange pattern. Not everyone in the Family seems to be aware of the shady business going on. Some appear to be victims themselves that are being played. Now, he also has to decide who is guilty and who’s just like him - a pawn.

Caustic - Wild Card Killer - Considered an Associate as he refuses to formally join The Family as a Made Man. Alexander Nox is also technically ‘dead’. After a run-in with the law (and a subsequent escape from prison), he had the local forger Mirage falsify evidence of his death and craft him a new identity. He functions as an interrogator and a cleaner when he feels the fancy. He’s made it very clear that he is, under no circumstance, beholden to what the Boss wants. He helps because the Boss offers him a practically endless supply of test subjects in exchange for extracting information from the people and disposing of the bodies. He also mentors Wattson in the ways of proper disposal. What his end goals are, nobody really knows and nobody wants to ask. 

Wraith - Shadow Broker/Assassin - Renee Blasey is something of an enigma. Few people know her name beyond ‘Wraith’ and fewer still know what she looks like. She hides in the shadows, gathering information and eliminating targets with precision. There’s a rumor that she’s the one who brought the newcomer Crypto into the fold and that they’ve worked together in the past. Perhaps he was the one who freed her from a rival gang’s clutches. Due to her apparent connections all over the place and an almost unending supply of information, she was held captive and tortured for information. After her violent and bloody escape, she stumbled across the Family and they welcomed the notable information broker with open arms. How she gets the information she does, no one knows. She is always elusive about it. ‘A little birdy told me.’ ‘The voices knew’.  

Pathfinder - Transport Expert - A ‘defective’ MRVN unit because he was too free-thinking and asked too many questions, namely: ‘what happened to my creator?’ He was going to be decommissioned and shut down permanently when a group of strangers broke into the facility and ransacked the place. After they saved him from being decommissioned, he followed them around like a puppy and unintentionally joined the Family. He functions somewhere between ‘getaway/transport expert’ and ‘team mascot’. It’s thought that he might have witnessed some damning things and that’s why he was going to be decommissioned. In the process, his memories were corrupted so it’s almost impossible to truly tell. They’ve begun proper work on restoring his memories now that the technical geniuses Wattson and Crypto have joined up alongside Mirage.

Wattson - Security/Business Front/Cleaner- Daughter of an Associate. She didn’t know her dad worked with the mob until she was older. After the initial surprise, she joined in on the business, going so far as to becoming Made. She runs the security service front known as ‘Apex Protection’ that also doubles as their money laundering business. Nobody gets past her defenses to get to Family. (It helps that her dad was rather close with the notoriously effective cleaner Caustic. She’s picked up a few tips from him and now helps with the cleaning when needed)

[prorevenge]

Underpay me, lie to derail a competing job offer and then try to humiliate me in front of the entire department? Say goodbye to your dignity and (eventually) job/business!

I'm going to leave out specific details about the company and people in question here, as some people also know about this story and I don't want to be identified.

TL;dr:

Company I'm loyal to takes advantage of my delayed graduation to underpay me

They lie to me so that I don't take a better job offer

They then claim my performance is an issue as an excuse to delay my pay raise

When I finally resign, my supervisor tries and spectacularly fails to make me look bad, and instead looks like a horrible, volatile boss.

Her department rapidly bleeds its experts in the months following my departure (I like to think this is in part because of my publicly awful treatment).

Chapter 1: The Good Years

BoringCorp hired me as an intern in the second year of my six year nightmare of college (long story). I was installed as a low-level support technician in the internal IT department, as I was a "wild card" hire, based on a recommendation and didn't have the usual qualifications.

In the three years I worked in the IT department (part time), I reimagined large aspects of how internal IT managed a plethora of internal services at the company. I designed and built several complex software systems to automate inter-department processes, systems management, security and compliance auditing and the like. Over those years I built a significant reputation for myself across many departments, including HR, the security team, engineering, marketing, etc. as someone who could not just "get stuff done", but also improve lots of other things in the process.

Chapter 2: The Downward Turn

Upon graduating, I was encouraged by my team lead (who is an awesome person) to look for a role better aligned to my skill set, and secured a role in the engineering department's systems engineering/automation team. I was offered a graduate salary, something I was unhappy with, as while technically a graduate, I had almost four years' experience in the industry at that point, and had demonstrated significant technical ability. Engineers from other departments often asked me to troubleshoot their code, so it wasn't like I was an unknown at this stage. Regardless, I accepted on the condition that I would be rapidly advanced.

As soon as I started with my new team, it was apparent that the company's engineering department was in some serious strife. Our single team of less than 10 people maintained a mostly undocumented codebase, supporting the deployment and automation of tens of millions of dollars of live customer sites... And stuff was always breaking.

Being the perfectionist and pathological problem solver I am, I immediately started looking for root causes. Most of the rest of the team, who were principally software engineers with no IT or systems background, or otherwise very inexperienced (grads with no work experience and first time interns), continued to chip away at the surface, without considering the source of our problems. This caused some friction with management, but I managed to convince them of the value of my work.

Six months in, I had identified major issues with our documentation, written up some basic (and easy-to-use) documentation standards, and even documented a large chunk of our projects. I had set up an incident logging process, and tried to pare back on our alerting/pager system to reduce "alert fatigue" and get more prompt responses from on-call team members during outages. No pay raise or even any acknowledgement of my efforts.

Chapter 3: The Struggles Begin

No one was interested in my work. No one documented anything, despite my making it as easy as possible. People kept adding bad code to fix short term problems, and despite my repeated pleas (literally every day at standup) this problem continued. Eventually I became pretty despondent about the whole thing and just started chipping away like everyone else, and commiserating with another new hire (senior engineer) who had significantly more experience than me and was equally horrified at the state of things.

I was then contacted by a recruiter for another company. Now at this point, note that I was still feeling a degree of allegiance to BoringCorp - they had treated me very well in years gone by, and I wanted to do right by them, despite their current struggles. So I kept my manager (who we shall call 'Z') in the loop about interviewing, and when I was offered a job with almost double my "graduate" salary, I told her first and gave her plenty of time for a counter offer. She assured me that they would match the offered salary within a month, and that the process was actually already underway (more on this later).

I turned down the job offer, which resulted in getting my ear chewed off by the recruiter and a very uncomfortable phone call from the CTO of the other company, almost begging me to join.

... Three weeks later, no news. I followed up. "We are looking into it, but I want you to communicate to the team why you haven't been around as much." Well, for starters the company had flexible working arrangements, and I had made it clear on multiple occasions that I was working from home. In addition, the reason I worked from home so much, is that my teammates, all of whom bar two were paid much more than me, would pester me with basic technical questions. I was sick of having my work disrupted so I could give first-year college tutorials on computer networking.

I explained this to my manager as diplomatically as possible (I avoided ripping into her about the ridiculous and offensive pay difference), and she asked me to "communicate more". Yeah, okay. I did that.

Chapter 4: The Last Straw+Camel

Three more weeks. Two past the deadline. No news. I follow up again - and hear basically the same complaint, despite having communicated very clearly and (grudgingly) worked from home less.

I started looking for a new job, again. Within three weeks I was five interviews deep in the process for an overseas company, and had a salary offer of four times my original salary. This was based not just on spoken interviews but also technical testing and work samples, so it wasn't just me overselling myself. At this point I became very angry at the degree to which BoringCorp was undervaluing me. I accepted the competing offer on the spot and started making plans to move. I also went back to working from home when I felt like it.

Fast forward two weeks, and I'm ready to put in my notice. I do so, and almost immediately I get an aggravated-sounding text message on my personal phone stating "we haven't seen you much this week and I expect you to be in for a meeting tomorrow." Clearly this set alarm bells ringing that it was a termination meeting and they were going to try to cheat me of my final pay.

Having worked in IT (and in fact having automated a significant chunk of HR processing), I was very familiar with the company's user offboarding processes. I looked for a work ticket logging my departure... And there wasn't one. Strange - policy dictates that one must be created. It occurred to me that in the past, handling dismissals, these tickets were raised with very restricted access permissions, so that the soon-to-be ex-employee had no prior warning.

Of course, I still happened to have some admin credentials in my password safe (used for automation, and which I had thankfully forgotten to delete). Upon logging in with those, sure enough, I found my very own ticket! Turns out they weren't trying to fire me, instead my supervisor (Z) wanted to put me on "involuntary paid leave" for the duration of my notice period. She also wanted me to clear out my desk during the daytime, in front of my colleagues, and deny my the chance to say proper farewells, etc.

Well, knowledge is power here. I spent the first hour backing up all of my personal data off my work laptop. I then wiped the disk clean and rotated the disk encryption keys, to ensure none of my data or personal project work could be recovered. I drove to work at 2am, cleaned out my desk and took everything home in complete privacy, and then went to sleep.

The next day, I walked in at 7:30am, dropped my wiped laptop with my old team and said my farewells. Also took the time to explain why I was basically getting booted out of the building. There was a lot of unhappiness - towards Z.

Then I went and said farewell to my current team. They were horrified by the situation and also were rather displeased with Z. I caught up with some of my closer friends that I'd worked with over the years and said my goodbyes to them as well. We had a nice, relaxed morning chatting about the good ole times and drinking coffee.

Then the meeting came along... Well, suffice to say, Z was rather disappointed that I had already handed in my laptop and cleared my desk. She grudgingly said I could stay for the rest of the day, seeing as I had already done everything I needed to do, and left in a huff.

Epilogue: The Aftermath

A few months had gone by, and I was now happily settled into my new job. I learned through contacts at the company that since my very rude expulsion, many senior engineers have left. They'd had to restructure the department to try to fix their product delivery issues, and were still unable to fix anything because all of the people who knew the functionality of the system (myself because of my documentation push, and the other engineers who built it) had left in disgust at the poor morale and working environment.

Last I heard, Z was still in her current role, but the company was bleeding cash and constantly downsizing. I don't imagine management was too chuffed with her performance.

(source) (story by Throwawayyyyyyy11235)

[etherian-affairs]

For a fic prompt: Pygmalion/Galatea-ish concept where Entraptra finds Hordak (severely damaged cybernetics, powered down/sleep mode) & decides to rebuild him into the perfect Lab Partner (her umpteenth attempt at building one) w/o knowing what she’s going to end up with. Hordak wakes up to exquisitely repaired/partly rebuilt body, b/c Entraptra uses First One’s tech in the rebuild, so it’s that aesthetic blended w/Horde design (think Alita/Gally’s 2nd rebuild “angel” body in Battle Angel Alita).

HERE WE GO KIDDOS. I hope you like it friend.

This actually gets to be a crossposted with Ao3 because it’s long enough to meet my requirements for Ao3 posting.

Story under the read more.

Red across the board. Matching the state of the ship crumbling around Hordak. The would be Lord stumbles through collapsing metal corridors, barely able to keep his balance. The crash was devastating. He had tried everything to soften it but with so much crew already lost there was almost nothing to be done. Now it seemed the rest were gone too.

Soon Hordak would be as well.

He manages to get into the sanctum, the lab. A last ditch effort for survival keeping him moving. His body is ravaged. Beyond what even his species biology and his many augmentations can handle. As he steps into the sanctum his broken leg finally gives, the bone cracking and snapping. He howls in pain. So close to his goal. Slowly he drags himself with his one good arm to the secondary maintenance bay in the sanctum. 

He grabs at one of the dangling data cables and slams it into the port at the base of his neck, issuing commands quickly. Hoping the computers can still decipher them. As sparking damaged manipulators extend Hordak feels himself going under. His last moment of consciousness nothing but his diagnostic feed.

-WRNG: TTL_SYS_FAIL\\Fallback To Core Function Mode.\\Life Support Priority.\\Nanocyte Protocols Engaging.

…

The Fright Zone was dangerous they said. A lifeless land destroyed by the Dark Comet. A place that makes the Crimson Wastes look downright fertile! Hah! How wrong they were! You just had to know where to look.

Entrapta had been curious about this place her whole life. Years and years and years ago the Dark Comet fell out of the sky. It nearly wiped out the scorpion people entirely. They’re still a refugee people to this day in fact, with no land to call their own. The black Garnet Runestone was lost, presumed destroyed, at the time too. The Dark Comet’s crashing had changed Etheria a lot.

And from a distance it looked like it was made of metal. Refined metal. 

For decades it had been too dangerous to even approach the comet. People would get sick at the fringes. Further in burns and things would start to mysteriously appear! Even bots would fizz out and fail! but as time went on it appeared that the exclusion radius around it was shrinking.

Entrapta has been keeping track of the dissipation rate her entire life. 

Now her time had come! The energies that hurt people seemed to be mostly gone! And she had some extra protection she had developed just in case there were stray energies left on site! So Entrapta journeyed to the Fright Zone to be the first to see the Comet up close and live to tell about it.

It was wonderful.

Her theories were right. It’s metal. Not just that it’s constructed. Some sort of vast vessel! Larger than any person made structure she’s ever seen! She spends hours alone exploring the exterior. Falling back only as the light begins to recede from the world in order to rest, set up camp, and make sure she’s not getting sick. 

The next day she actually makes her way inside, and it is even more incredible than the exterior. It’s tech all the way through. Corridors apparently made for humanoid habitation. Dead terminals at regular intervals. Piled up robots of strange designs that seem to have run out of power years ago.

And the bodies.

It isn’t Entrapta’s first run in with the dead, in fact she has done her fair share of dissection and anatomy studies, but it’s still not a common occurrence and there are many here. That is unnerving even for the normally unflappable Princess of Dryl. Most of the dead are in armor or uniforms of different kinds. Their bodies eerily well preserved considering their age. Perhaps the energies that until recently made this place impossible to enter also stopped decay? That would be odd but anything is possible here. 

Entrapta takes her audio recorded notes and then tries to largely ignore the bodies that litter the Comet. They are admittedly interesting in many ways. They are yet more confirmation that the comet is some sort of vessel, and that many appear to be from species she has seen on Etheria. They are not something she likes very much though.

Inevitably Entrapta’s exploration leads her into a large throne chamber. An interesting place to be sure. The room off to the side is much more interesting however. The door is open and even from a distance she can see the many containment tubes within, some broken, others still standing with strange murky figures held within. Tools littering the floor. Bolted down tables some of which have items still on them somehow. This side room is a lab. She would know a lab anywhere.

It does not take long for her to see the body in here. It’s different from all the others in many ways. For starters this one is not like anything she’s seen on Etheria. Its species is completely unknown, some sort of batlike humanoid? It also clearly has tech integrated directly into its body! In fact there is a cable connecting it to… well the vessel itself Entrapta supposes. The cable leads into a mass of them up above and she can’t track where exactly it all goes.

The body is heavily damaged. The limbs are all in various states of destruction, there are what are clearly large gashes on the creatures torso. She suspects that numerous bones must be broken. Yet at each open break there is an unnatural silvery film. Like a sealant. It’s strangely jagged and irregular and seems to move around itself like a liquid. It’s kind of like something Entrapta has seen from some first ones tech experiments she has performed, trying to make self repairing robots. 

Except this isn’t repairing, more like it’s just trying to keep things from getting any worse. Could this person have been a scientist? Trying to integrate first ones tech into the body to save their own life?

That’s when Entrapta sees the nearly imperceptible movement. This isn’t a corpse. This one’s alive. Whatever they did worked.

The Princesses entire plan for this journey changes immediately. 

She spends hours examining every nook and cranny of the lab. Gathering everything she can. Making trips in and out of the Comet to her little camp. Her work extends out from there, picking apart and salvaging from other parts of the ship. She needs tech, their tech. 

She journeys to and from Dryl more than once. Readying herself for what might be her greatest experiment, and what will definitely be her most harrowing. On the final trip she disconnects the lab entity from the cable attached to its spine. It took her awhile to be sure that would not hurt it, and she waited until it was the last thing to do even when she was sure. It’s also just not a pleasant thing to move this creature as the barely held together limbs start to really come apart at the slightest jostle.

It does not wake from whatever stasis it is in.

The final journey to Dryl is slow and careful, but once safely in her own lab the work begins in earnest. 

This lab creature is probably a scientist as she has previously noted to her recorder, at the very least it is more intelligent than the others aboard the ship. It’s alive. Entrapta can repair it, she’s sure she can. Secretly, deep down, she hopes that maybe she’ll finally have that lab partner she keeps trying to create. They never turn out how she wants, she just doesn’t have the skills in making true thinking machines from scratch.

With that secret hope, and the theory that this thing must be a scientist, Entrapta decides on her repair strategy. She will give it the best science body she can! Which given that this is Princess Entrapta also means it will probably be a great body for warfare too! She seems to just make weapons on accident a lot of the time.

Initial exploration of the flesh is promising. There’s tech woven all throughout the body that she can piggyback off of. She has this creatures salvaged tech from the ship to make use of too. Thus the broken limbs are tossed aside, unneeded. Internal biological organs are atrophied and weak. Whatever is keeping this thing alive is focusing on the brain. Entrapta will lean in to that. Don’t need most of those then.

Still most of this will be original work and integration will be difficult. The Princess soon decides on a radical solution. She will use First Ones tech as a bridge, and an enhancement. Some of what’s going on with the lab creature looks very similar to First Ones tech anyway! So it will almost definitely probably work! 

At first Entrapta worries the creature will suddenly awaken, giving her a big startle, but that soon doesn’t appear to be likely as it just lays there half dead even as she digs into its body with knife and power tools. There’s a joke about being a heavy sleeper there somewhere.

Limbs, organs, and flesh are all replaced with tech and metal. The more she works, the more she realizes she needs to remake or else she won’t be able to integrate it all. The only reason she can do this at all is that the silvery film and the First ones crystal she has chosen as a base seem to be able to attach to each other. Soon enough though a repair job becomes a total rebuilding of the creatures body with First Ones tech at its core. The initial synthetic components within being almost all she can keep. 

It’s exciting. Princess Entrapta is pushing the boundaries of known science. She is combining First Ones, Etherian, and Alien technologies all together with biology she barely comprehends. She has no idea what the end result of this will be yet even that unknown is too fascinating to ever let her stop and think about the potential consequences of her radical actions.

When she’s finally done she realized that she has no idea how to wake the being up. It’s actually kind of funny. Still the creature remains alive, if non-functional, and isn’t going anywhere. She has time to figure out how to boot it back up.

…

-SYS_CHK-STS_UPDT\\Foreign Hardware Detected.\\Initializing Integration Stack.\\Compiling System Profile.

The diagnostic feed was all Hordak knew of the world beyond his own mental prison, and it was not much. A quiet eternity of his consciousness being occasionally fed an array of error messages and warnings he could do nothing about.

When one of the system checks finally detected a change he had a brief nanosecond of shock before his consciousness returned to the black box dreams that kept him sane.

-STS_UPDT\\Hardware Profiling Complete.\\Compatibility Registration Underway.

Profiling and Compatibility Registration?  Whoever was working on him wasn’t Horde. The checks wouldn’t be taking multiple stages to complete with approved replacement parts.

Again his mind falls away before he gets a chance to really ponder what is happening to him.

-STS_UPDT-SYS_RBT\\Compatibility Registration Complete.\\Rebooting Core Functions.\\Rebooting Extended Functions.\\All Systems Online.\\Re-initializing Higher Brain Function.

Hordak gasps as his senses return, as his mind can touch a world outside of the blackbox keeping it alive. His fingers curl and claw into the metal table he’s on. They literally dig into it. That’s not quite right. He raises his arm to look at it and finds an alien limb there. A completely synthetic arm and hand. Impeccably machined metal and tuned actuators. It looks like Horde tech, yet not. There’s foreign influence, clean lines and coiled strength. Gleaming chromium metal that glints in the light of wherever he is. 

Then he realizes that the rest of him is the same. Looking down he finds his body largely replaced. Metal plates interlocking and familiar combined with what seems to be some sort of memory alloy to create flexibility. He has seen nothing quite like this in all of his years. How did any of this integrate?

Before he can pull the hardware profile up and begint to try to decipher what has been done to him he notices he’s not alone. A short woman with ridiculously long hair is staring at him in surprise from near a large display. He’s about to speak when she gets the first word in. 

“WOW! I was looking in to how to wake you up but you just did it yourself! How? Why? Did you know you were being repaired? Did you know I was done? How though? Oh! Sorry! Welcome to Dryl! I’m Princess Entrapta I rebuilt you! What’s your name?”

Hordak is taken aback by the loud spunky attitude before him. There’s a lot to process here. Inevitably he decides to simply answer her questions. “Hordak. My name is Hordak." 

There is much for both of them to learn.

[kichimiangra]

For poor artists...

Okay so weeks ago I came across a post (That I can’t seem to find now...) that roughly went like this: “All you tumblrites with depression need some hobbies to help with depression because hobbies help.”

“Not everyone has the privilege of being able to afford hobbies!  Hobbies cost money!”

“You don’t need expensive stuff to draw!!!  Draw on scrap paper!  Napkins!  Go to the dollar store!”

Now for weeks since seeing that post it keeps coming back to me... almost hauntingly.  It’s not that I can’t comprehend that people can’t afford expensive art supplies, on the contrary I very much remember being like that!  But today you poor artists have access to something wonderful that I didn’t growing up:

Under the cut let me tell you a tale about a wonderful place that could have granted my wish for art supplies growing up!

And that place is called Wish.com!

(Disclaimer #1: Almost everything I’m talking about here are supplies that I myself have personally purchased and tried using AND STILL DO!)

(Disclaimer #2:  I don’t believe that good supplies make a good artist, but good supplies can help make a good artist better/ make their life easier!)

Now growing up I did not come from a wealthy family.  I had 3 siblings, all of us close in age so we were kids/ teens together.  My father worked in a warehouse and my mother was a stay at home mom because it was impossible to find an affordable babysitter considering that My older sister had trouble in school with bullies and a reading disorder, I was an un-diagnosed autistic devil-child, my younger sister had severe asthma and was always sick, and my younger brother was deaf.  We all kinda needed special attention.  As you can imagine we didn’t have a lot of money, and as I got older and more Artish meant I had to make due with what I could get.  That didn’t mean I went without, just often had to save and wait for what I could use, which followed me to adulthood.  Had Wish.com been around in my teens it would have been a godsend and I’m patient enough to wait a few weeks to get my order!

God I love these things!  These ball point pens with 10 colors are what I use for story boarding comics and note taking!  I used something like these when I was in college because notes were much easier to organize and read when color coded!

“But KC!  I like to sketch with blue/red pencil first!” Lookie here!  Colored pencil lead refills in all sorts of colors!  Cyan works great and so does the red!

Now I didn’t know they came this small until recently but I LOVE this 0.3mm Mechanical pencil!!!  The lines are so thin and small!!!  I have literally never seen anything smaller than a 0.5mm in a store!

Now I like mechanical pencils for their consistent lead size as you draw! They’re just a click away from being back to sharpness!  But you may want a 0.5mm and a 0.7mm and this 3pc set is soo sleek looking!  It’s good to have a 0.9mm too! I used to have a spongebob .16mm pencil I stole from my brother but it went missing!  I have never found another one that HUGE again! T_T

Speaking of pencils this nice little set comes with a mechanical pencil+lead+a white plastic eraser.  They work great though the eraser is not my personal fav...

THESE are my favorite erasers to use!!!  Not only are they cute colors but they’re a good consistency!  They’re softer than a plastic eraser but a bit harder than a gum eraser so they feel really good to erase with and do a good job!!!

If you really like working with Pencil you can prolly just get a cheap #2 pencil at a dollar store or a box of them at Walmart, but I Really like the feel of a 2B pencil!  This lead holder comes with some replacement lead too so you don’t have to worry about sharpening it to nothing!!

This set of Graphite sticks are a little messy but it comes with all kinds of lead hardness and you can use an x-acto blade to sharpen them to different size points!!!

This is a pretty basic but nice sketch set and has a lot of size options to pick and buy from!!  I’ve used the small 32 set and it has everything you need if you love pencil art!

FINE LINERS!!!  I have a story about Fine liners! Internet shopping hadn’t quite taken off yet for my family and the only store I knew that sold Microns/Fabercastelle fine liners was a local store.  They didn’t sell them in singles so the cheapest set you could buy was a $15 Faber Castelle set with 5 pens (Sm/Med/Lrg/Brush/Chisel).  Now $15 doesn’t sound too bad until you remember my family was poor.  How poor?  Poor enough where my sister and I would each get one of these sets for Christmas and store one away while sharing the other set in hopes of getting them both to last until June where I could get another for my birthday that will hopefully last BOTH of us until next Christmas.  I noticed when you buy Microns off of Wish.com you have a 50/50 chance of getting a knock off brand but these ones here worked pretty good for their price!

“But KC!  Not only am I a poor artist... I’m a poor HIPSTER artist! I wanna kick it OLD SCHOOL!” WELL This is a nice cheap little set of dip pen nib holders and nibs!  The pink one is cute but I have the black one.  I personally love my Cork nib holder more but for plastic this one is decently comfortable to hold and a good price!  I find Nibs are a bit of “You get what you pay for” but if I was displaced into an apartment somewhere without any of my stuff and I wanted some dip pens this set would do just fine!  Dip pens take some skill to get used to so even if you want to just cheaply try some this is a good set to start with!  And if you want better nibs later on they fit right in these holders!

I also have a very decorative (but functional) glass dip pen!  Unlike the metal nib dip pens above the glass one doesn’t really allow for a lot of variation in line weight, but if you want the line work to stay a consistent size then this one is pretty good for that, though depending on your paper it can bleed a bit... once again takes some practice to get used to it.

Now you’re gonna need some ink for those dip pens!  I haven’t really gotten to try any black ink from Wish.com because I have a few bottles of black ink that I keep getting for birthdays and Christmas and such, so I haven’t run out and gotten to try a new brand.  COLOR ink on the other hand...  These little 5oz bottles have gold sparkles in it!! And they look nice to boot!  They can get a little expensive because on THIS particular order you can only order them one at a time (And pay shipping for each bottle) but you really don’t need all 24 bottles as a lot of the colors look similar to each other.

Here’s a sketch of Keira Hagai from Jak and Daxter along with the supplies used to draw it (Notice the ink, glass and black nib pens and the 0.3mm pencil.  The only thing used not from Wish.com is the feather sweeper I made from sculpey and chicken feathers.)

The ink doesn’t work great as paint though but you know what does?

PAINTS!  I didn’t buy this one but it’s a nice little affordable starter set with pallet and brushes!

Now I’m a bit snooty, I prefer to buy watercolor paints in tubes and an empty paint pallet.  The paint pallet I have isn’t THIS one specifically but this one is a bit nicer than the one I DO have and a bit cheaper as well!  (Mine doesn’t have a lid the folds out into a paint mixing area)(Now I wish I had this one!)(Maybe when my current pallet runs out of paint...)

If you use watercolor paints you’re gonna need some brushes!  This is a pretty good deal!  You get 12 brushes and get to pick either flat or round tip brushes!  They’re also not too shabby!

I use a set like this though!  They has a water reservoir in the handle so you squeeze the water out and onto the paint!  The reason I prefer these is I have a lot of pets and they like to get into mischief, so having a pallet that can be closed if I get up for a bathroom break or water that can’t be knocked over is a must for me!!

“But KC I like more... dry mediums...” Lucky for you colored pencils are all over the place on Wish.com!  You can get all kinds of different sets and sizes and some even have nice carrying cases too!  I haven’t bought any because I own a LOT of colored pencil sets already and don’t use them frequently...  I’ve also tried some chalk pastels from Wish that worked well enough on their own but the way I use them is grinding them into a fine powder and brushing them onto paper and that didn’t grind well...

And What’s art without PAPER!?!?  Wish.com is tripping paper!  Whatever is in your price range look around!  I can promise you you’ll find a sketch book or two within your budget!  Some even name brand sketch pads!

And now some miscellaneous stuff:

I LOVE binder clips!  Great way to keep all my paper together and in some places hang stuff up so I can stare at it a bit before continuing working on it!

I like art markers and not many truly can fill in the shoes left by Copic brand markers.  I have tried a handful of copic alternatives (And watched even MORE comparison videos by other people who own said markers.)  I feel like there is no such thing as a GOOD CHEAP QUALITY art marker.  There are lots of sets on Wish.com that (For their prices) are what I consider “Cheap enough to tinker with”  When I was in highschool back in 2007-9 I really really really wanted Copics and was resentful that I was poor and couldn’t get any.  I would get so angry when I saw 14 year olds on deviantart who drew like ‘14 year olds on devintart’ but had no less that two 72 sets of copics. I know, it was rather petty of me to be resentful of younger more fortunate artists... The trade off with my parents was that I would settle for Prismacolor markers, bought 1 per week with a 40% off coupon provided I did all my chores and kept my grades above failing.  That was the closest I ever had to an allowance.  Throughout the years I’ve settled with ‘Tinker Markers’ (Cheapish alternative markers) and Ohuhu, Prismacolor, and Touch New seem to be the better alternatives.  Just don’t go looking for a brush nib >.<!

MASKING TAPE!  Always good for taping things to other things!!  Unfortunately I feel like Walmart gives you bigger rolls for better deals so if it’s going cheap I’d say you don’t need tape from Wish...

Aaaah!  A light board!  And another long trip down memory lane!  Last October going into Inktober I noticed there were people throwing little fits about Inktober itself and if it’s okay to do it with a digital medium.  One persons comment stuck out (And echo’d in my brain) where they said (And I’m paraphrasing): “How am I supposed to focus on my ‘self improvement’ with traditional art if I just can’t draw from the anxiety of knowing that every pen stroke is permanent and I could completely ruin my drawing at any second without the CTRL+Z and layers!?!?!?!” To which my first knee-jerk reaction was: “Wow kid... I think you have waaaay more problems than inktober if your anxiety levels are THAT high that you can’t just accept an oopsie doodle and try again...” But then I do remember a time when I was like that.  In college I scheduled a really bad semester with too many classes, mostly art classes.  One was a classic Pen and Ink class which I did fear screwing up, not because of anxiety of failure but because I would have to start over on my homework, and that would take time from all my other homework.  Time I didn’t have.  I found a large sum of money on the ground ($100.00) one day, waited a month (Nobody claimed it), donated half to my local animal shelter (As is a karma thing in my family with ‘found money’) and used the other half to buy a light board (With a 40% off coupon.)  It was the size of a shoe box, thick and clunky, and didn’t get very bright, but it did what I needed it to.  If I screwed up on ink homework I’d throw a new paper over it and start again.  You can be cheap and use a window on a sunny day, but light boxes (or light boards now) are so affordable and sleek and thin and wish has a lot of them!  I have a cheapish but large A-Line tracing board that sits on my drawing table and fits well and honestly saves 40% of what anxiety I would have putting pen to paper (If I hadn’t been drawing freehand so long that I just don’t get that kind of anxiety over it)

If Wish.com was around when I was a teenager art supplies would have never been THAT big of a deal and I wouldn’t have had to ‘Carpool’ 3 fine liner sets per year with my sister!

Really, I know there will still be people out there who still can’t afford some of the things listed above, but if you have an inclination to try art whether it’s with pencils, paints, markers, pastels, ink, dip pens, fine liners, whatever you lean towards, Wish.com has a cheap affordable version that may not be the best quality out there on the market, but thinking back 15 years ago little KC would have loved to save up some money, order some new supplies, and wait a month for them to arrive so she could use them.

Once again most of the supplies listed above have been bought and used by myself.  There are some great materials at mostly affordable prices on Wish.com so if you are poor like Little KC was you probably know the patience of putting aside a dollar here and there and having to wait, or if you are well off but don’t want to spend too much on a hobby you haven’t tried yet and don’t know if you’d like Wish.com has you covered!

And if you’d like to, Reblog this for other poor artists so they know they don’t have to share their fine liners!

[studiobeebo]

Upside Down (Izuku Midoriya x Fem! Reader)

As a summary, basically I just sort of wanted to write something about pro hero Izuku coming to terms with the fact that he miiight still have a thing for his old high school crush and he decides to go out of his way to do something about it! I have an idea for a second part but it just depends on how well this one’s received, so just let me know and if people seem interested I’ll do a continuation!

Part 2

Part 3

In Izuku’s experience, it seemed like every time he settled into a routine or train of thought, life decided to throw a stone at him and flip his world upside down.

At first it happened when he was a child, finding out that he was quirkless and seemingly unable to ever fulfill his dream of becoming a hero. Then some years passed and he got used to his dreams being just that, something that was completely unreachable but still nice to daydream about from time to time. Of course he got lucky on that fateful day meeting All Might and yet again, his life was significantly changed. He was finally able to begin his journey of becoming a hero after enrolling and being accepted to UA with his newly gifted quirk, but yet another stone was thrown his way in the form of a girl, and a beautiful one at that.

At first he was the same with you as he was with any pretty girl: almost completely unable to function. He didn’t get the chance to know you terribly well at the beginning since you were in one of the general studies classes, but he had to admit that you had struck something in his poor easily influenced teenage heart that day you’d accidentally ran into him in the hallway. Weirdly enough, he was the one who ended up apologizing even though it was totally your fault, bowing almost to his feet while spewing a list of apologies with reddened cheeks. You thought he was sweet, and adorable at that, and he thought you were an angel.

From then on you’d have occasional meetings here or there, stopping to chat a bit in the hallways or running into each other during your lunches. Slowly he got a bit less awkward around you which led you to find out that he was just as cute without being a rambling mess. The way he spoke about his interests so passionately was inspiring and he was easily one of the sweetest boys you had ever met, leading you to wish you were in his class so you could continue to get to know him. You were both somehow distant but close, often going even weeks without seeing each other yet being able to talk like you were old friends in the chances that you did get. Of course through those meetings your feelings began to grow along with his, but unfortunately time was not on either of your sides.

The further along the two of you got into your schooling, the more focused you both had to be. You didn’t have much leisure time, even being able to stop and catch up for five minutes became rare, and by the time you were third years there were multiple month long gaps that separated your meetings and hang outs.

Slowly your lives drifted apart with him finally graduating and starting the next step in reaching his goal of becoming the number one pro hero and you moving on to find your niche in your career of choice as well. You were doing well for yourself after graduating, finding yourself a steady job and moving out of your parents house around the age of twenty. You had built a nice life for yourself and you were damn proud of your achievements and the new and old friends that helped you along the way, but every once in a while your mind would drift from your current success back to your messy haired high school crush. Sometimes you’d start thinking about how you wished you had made more of an effort to keep your connection and maybe even ask him out, especially when you began seeing him on the tv here or there clearly gaining popularity, but at the end of the day you’d stuff your daydreams back into the closet of your mind and get back to the real world, knowing, or thinking, that your chances were long gone.

He of course had enough on his own plate as well, but despite his excitement to see his own progress as he began to move up in the hero world, his thoughts would often mimic your own because looking back, he realized just how bad he had it for you in high school. The smallest things would make him think of you; a woman with a similar hairstyle, a dress in a shop window he’d pass that would remind him of your style, even certain foods or scents would bring back memories of laughing over lunch together with you. He was unbelievably lovestruck back then, but lately...he’d been starting to realize that his recent thoughts were less than normal for an ‘old’ crush. He’d jokingly bring up the conversation of old crushes to his friends only to realize that how they viewed their old loves was different from how he still felt about you even after not seeing you for almost four years. For them it seemed like a funny little joke and they would just laugh at their young naive hearts before changing the subject, but he didn’t see you that way. It was frustrating that now, when he needed to be focusing the most, was when thoughts of a girl, or now woman, he hadn’t seen in years would be plaguing his mind almost daily.

It was like an itch he couldn’t scratch and he just couldn’t figure it out. He kept telling himself there was no way he could still have feelings for you, it had been so long after all, and that if he did really have feelings for you that he needed to bury it. For starters, he needed to put a lot of effort into his career since he had been getting noticed a bit but was still relatively small in the hero world. Secondly, while he had gotten better with his nerves and anxiety, he still dealt with issues of self confidence and that part of him immediately told him that there was no chance in hell you’d be interested in him now. You were successful even in high school so he was sure you had your own issues and life to lead, plus you probably had a partner anyways considering how gorgeous and endearing you were. Still, despite the almost constant beat down from his brain trying to set his heart back on track, he had nearly jumped at the opportunity to get even a glimpse of his old unrecognized flame the moment he got it.

It wasn’t a big deal, the agency he had been working at had simply changed districts so they now had a few different areas they were responsible for patrolling and the second he saw the area where he remembered you had been living pop up on the briefing screen he immediately asked to be transferred there. While he was approved to do patrols there a few times a week, however, at the end of the day he was starting to regret his choice.

The area you lived in wasn’t really notorious for much villainy action so this was definitely not the place for him to be if he wanted to be noticed and put his hard earned skill to good use. Plus, he didn’t even know if you actually still lived in that same house, and if you did, what would he say? ‘Sorry I haven’t talked to you in four years but I’ve been realizing I still love you!’? It was a ridiculous situation that he as an adult shouldn’t have put himself in, yet the next morning there he was, beginning his walk through that same district.

As he had expected, there wasn’t a single noteworthy thing in sight and no one who needed him, but his hopeful brain kept telling him to just ‘go a bit further just in case’ when in reality he was just waiting until he came upon your house. When he did so it was strange, he even ended up just standing outside and staring for a good couple minutes. He had only been there a handful of times, luckily there were some subjects that general studies and hero course students shared so back then he had the excuse of hanging out with you to study. He could practically hear your music softly playing in the background while the two of you munched on junk food and went over notes together, occasionally getting distracted by a long winded conversation about your favorite heroes. Those were good times, and he would have killed to have a chance at such times one more time, so with a deep breath he pushed past the small gate before confidently making his way up to the front door and reaching a hand out to see if a few knocks would open up yet another door in his life and turn his life upside down one more time.

[luxuriousfamilylife-blog]

The best way to quit smoking

THE BEST WAY TO QUIT SMOKING

How To Quit smoking | The Herbal Remedy timeline

It will take you just a week to start noticing your cigarette addiction cease. If you can afford to buy yourself a pair of shoes, then, that is the price that will cost you to quit smoking. With perfect quit smoking timeline, i therefore share with you the best way to quit smoking.

This well known miracle anti smoking patch has outstanding results. You just place the patch on your skin and you are set. To prove the patch works, Feel of Gold has a starter anti-smoking pack that is comprised of 30 patches. One anti-smoking patch can kill your craving for 4 hours. Therefore, the starter anti-smoking pack can last you 120 hours, equivalent to 5 days.

When you pick a method to quit smoking, you need to consider a product  that kills your craving to smoke without causing any adverse effects. Nicotine replacement therapies are used to stop smoking but they come with withdrawal effects. This is the reason why you should start using the herbal anti-smoking patch alternative to stop your smoking desires. You can call it the ‘miracle anti smoking patch’, the common term known to many.

Why use the herbal anti smoking patch?

The herbal anti-smoking patch is now your partner to quit smoking because it has several benefits that outshine other methods.

No side effects.

Very much affordable

Sure way to get results

Video link description: https://youtu.be/iCyai44hBAw

Quit smoking timeline with the herbal patch

Almost immediately after finishing a cigarette, the heart rate and blood pressure slowly return to normal. The benefits are almost instant. As soon as a person stops smoking their body begins to recover and rejuvenate in the following ways:

After 60 minutes ≈ 1 hour

In as little as 20 minutes after the last cigarette is smoked and the anti smoke patch applied, the heart rate drops and returns to normal. Blood pressure begins to drop, and circulation may start to improve. These initial signs will tell you that this is the best way to quit smoking with the miracle anti smoking patch from feel of gold.

After 12 hours ≈ ½ day

Cigarettes contain a lot of known toxins including carbon monoxide, a gas present in cigarette smoke. This gas can be harmful or fatal in high doses and prevents oxygen from entering the lungs and blood. When inhaled in large doses in a short time, suffocation can occur from lack of oxygen.       

    After just 12 hours without a cigarette, the body cleanses itself of the excess carbon monoxide from the cigarettes. The carbon monoxide level returns to normal, increasing the body's oxygen levels and decreasing the bad and damaging effects of smoking to the body.

After 24 hours ≈ 1 day

Just 1 day after quitting smoking, the risk of heart attack begins to decrease. Smoking raises the risk of developing coronary heart disease by lowering good cholesterol, which makes heart-healthy exercise harder to do. Smoking also raises blood pressure and increases blood clots, increasing the risk of stroke.

In as little as 1 day after quitting smoking, a person's blood pressure begins to drop, decreasing the risk of heart disease from smoking-induced high blood pressure. In this short time, a person's oxygen levels will have risen, making physical activity and exercise easier to do, promoting heart-healthy habits.

After 48 hours ≈ 2 days

Smoking damages the nerve endings responsible for the senses of smell and taste. In as little as 2 days after quitting, a person may notice a heightened sense of smell and more vivid tastes as these nerves heal. With the anti smoking patch from feel of gold this how you respond on day 2 on your path to quit smoking.

After 72 hours ≈ 3 days

3 days after quitting smoking, the nicotine levels in a person's body are depleted. While it is healthier to have no nicotine in the body, this initial depletion can cause nicotine withdrawal. Around 3 days after quitting, most people will experience moodiness and irritability, severe headaches, and cravings as the body readjusts. This is a point where the herbal  miracle anti smoking patch from feel of gold plays a role to minimize the withdrawal.        

    After 30 days ≈ 1 month

In as little as 1 month, a person's lung function begins to improve. As the lungs heal and lung capacity improves, former smokers may notice less coughing and shortness of breath. Athletic endurance increases and former smokers may notice a renewed ability for cardiovascular activities, such as running and jumping.

After 1-3 months

For the next several months after quitting, circulation continues to improve.

After 9 months

Nine months after quitting, the lungs have significantly healed themselves. The delicate, hair-like structures inside the lungs known as cilia have recovered from the toll cigarette smoke took on them. These structures help push mucus out of the lungs and help fight infections.

Around this time, many former smokers notice a decrease in the frequency of lung infections because the healed cilia can do their job more easily.

After 1 year

The risk of heart disease will decrease by half after quitting smoking for 1 year, and arteries and blood vessels will begin to widen after 5 years. One year after quitting smoking, a person's risk for coronary heart disease decreases by half. This risk will continue to drop past the 1-year mark.

After 5 years

Cigarettes contain many known toxins that cause the arteries and blood vessels to narrow. These same toxins also increase the likelihood of developing blood clots.   

    After 5 years without smoking, the body has healed itself enough for the arteries and blood vessels to begin to widen again. This widening means the blood is less likely to clot, lowering the risk of stroke.

The risk of stroke will continue to reduce over the next 10 years as the body heals more and more.

After 10 years

After 10 years, a person's chances of developing lung cancer and dying from it are roughly cut in half compared with someone who continues to smoke. The likelihood of developing mouth, throat, or pancreatic cancer has significantly reduced.

After 15 years

After 15 years of having quit smoking, the likelihood of developing coronary heart disease is the equivalent of a non-smoker. Similarly, the risk of developing pancreatic cancer has reduced to the same level as a non-smoker.

After 20 years

After 20 years, the risk of death from smoking-related causes, including both lung disease and cancer, drops to the level of a person who has never smoked in their life. Also, the risk of developing pancreatic cancer has reduced to that of someone who has never smoked.

Bottom-line:

Quitting smoking is a personal decision. You need to take a step now. Feel of gold brings you a product that has no known side effects. If you are doing this for your loved one, family, a friend or even all of them, it’s time to take a step and get a pack here: Herbal anti-smoking patch.

[fetusdumpling-blog]

But first, I would like you to answer an easy question.

So why do you would like a larger cock?

The main reason I asked you that's because nearly all males have truly absurd reasons why they would like a larger schlong.

Could it be since you think less manly?

Could it be since you are embarrassed getting naked in front of a female in fear that she may laugh at you?

Or is it since you think females only date males with cocks bigger than eight inches?

In reality virtually all females choose men with standard sized dicks.

A few are more extreme compared to others, while a few are more effective compared to others, therefore I am going to cover all of them below.

A good number of males nowadays are choosing penis enlargement surgery. Nevertheless, there are issues related to this particular route.

For starters, these methods haven't been found to be secure, and consequently, pose severe health problems. Secondly, they don't guarantee precise and immediate results as expected.

For instance, you can wind up with a lumpy lifeless dick, if the therapy does not react well together with your little fella.

A number of studies which have been conducted in the past few years regarding medical procedures and they are not encouraging either. The European Urology analysis examined forty two males that had treatments to lengthen the penises of theirs by taking out the suspensory ligament.

Out of the number, only twenty five % had been happy with the outcomes. Once again, over 50 % needed to go back for more surgery. Other than the connected risk, this particular situation shows how ineffective this process could be.

The best part is that there's a multitude of non-surgical penis enlargement methods that you might use, and reach your desired results.

Foremost and first, nutrition needs to be an important component of your penis enlargement plan. The same as every other part of the body of yours, such as the muscles, the manhood of yours too, requires particular nutrition to nourish it.

These specific foods are able to help you accomplish the extra length, girth, and then sizing you have been craving for.

Unlike otc drugs, penis enlargement food items are fairly less expensive, safe and healthy.

Naturally, nutrients could be consumed in many types, either through dietary supplements, teas, pills, herbs or as foods that are whole.

Nutrients regularly enhance penile growth by boosting vasodilation and blood circulation, triggering the development factor and also the stress hormones, boosting the testosterone levels of yours, repairing mental condition and also supporting the general health of yours.

Here is a handful of herbs which have been noted to help improve development and blood circulation to the penis:

Ginseng

Entengo herb

Catuaba bark extract

Deer antler

Ginkgo biloba

Hawthorn berry

Maca

Damiana

At this particular moment in time, you can find a lot of pills on the marketplace and you must actually do the research of yours before picking out the best one.

It's obvious you have to completely consider the organization in addition to its manufacturing processes before purchasing anything.

Regarding penis oils & lotions, these items have proved their effectiveness and efficiency, with the components directly absorbed into the bloodstream of yours, offering immediate results.

It's also important to be aware that the parts contained in male enhancement lotions, oils and gels are produced from organic ingredients and secure for the consumption of yours.

Nevertheless, you need to realize that what works for you personally might not do the job for somebody else person, mainly since the bodies of ours (and penises) respond differently.

VACUUM DEVICES

These specific devices function by producing a vacuum around the penis of yours.

Because of the suppleness of the tissues within the penile area, there's always room for development. This can lead to an amazing rise in both the length and the girth of the penis of yours, and you will really feel as difficult as a rock!

The sole downside is the results are not long lasting.

The concept behind vacuum products is, obviously, very similar to exercises. Both methods are centered on growing and extending the erectile tissue therefore the penis can normally accommodate more blood.

Despite the effectiveness of theirs, there will always be injury risks connected with the normal utilization of penis pumps. Why?

As an outcome, the penile tissues steadily starve of oxygen.

This might result in long term nerve as well as tissue damage, instead of the expected penile development. Once again, most males make the error of applying unnecessary pressure or maybe pump for lengthy periods to accelerate the benefits. This could likely lead to harm to the penile cells.

You will find a few of penis vacuum available that're FDA sanctioned medical devices. Actually, several professionals have touted them actually to treat instances of erectile dysfunction.

Generally, there's no concrete motive to disregard penis pumps as inadequate with regards to improving the penis size.

As reported by a few extensive scientific studies, the non invasive method, particularly the usage of penile traction products shows plenty of promise.

The concept about exactly how these units function is straightforward; they steadily extend your penis by way of applied stress. There are lots of physiological processes required, but, the foremost one will be the influence on the penile ligaments, discovered at the foundation of the manhood of yours.

These ligaments, referred to as fundiform and also suspensory, anchor the penis to the body of yours. Additionally, they create the penis to attach upwards on the pubic bone.

Although this information is encouraging, it's suggested that before choosing this particular therapy, one should always look for guidance from a specialised physician.

PENIS EXERCISES

When done properly, penile exercises are able to make sure some very amazing outcomes, regardless of the poor press workouts have.

These workouts are broadly divided into 2 groups, namely; Girth and Length exercises.

Once again, they tear on the penile muscle tissue fibers, and at sleep, these fibers will probably grow larger if not stronger. Lastly, exercise boosts the circulation into the penis, resulting in an increased size.

Measurements EXERCISES

There are several workouts, that will likely enable you to increase the length of the penis of yours. By probably, I suggest that although they've been verified to work in several instances, a great deal of males

Let us look at a number of them

ROTATIONAL STRETCH

Some males often over do it when yanking and pulling their plonker.

This's a great method for gaining length. It's crucial to be aware that before doing any penis enlargement workout, you should do a good warm up.

You are able to use a warm cloth or just perform this particular exercise straight from the shower. This's crucial since it will make the skin much more adaptable as well as boosts the blood circulation to the penile tissues.You'll need to stay within the below steps strictly:

Withdraw the foreskin of yours and hold the phallus of yours with an O' hold behind its mind firmly, almost one inch up and below.

In case you're holding with the left hand of yours, begin the circle of yours on the right and also continue clockwise.

If stretching downwards, make sure your hand is close to the body of yours. An individual rotation should last for 30 seconds.

You might switch your hands after finishing the rotation of yours as required.

Take time that is enough and go by way of a a cool down session also.

If any discomfort is experienced by you, you do not proceed with the physical exercise.

THE BACKWARD PULLER

This's one more workout, ideal for boosting the length of the penis of yours. Take a look at the process below:

As always, allocate adequate time just for the warm up session.

Let us look at the damp jelqing method.

Get a proper erection level.

Making use of the right hand, keep the foundation of the penis of yours between the list finger and the thumb of yours.

And so as to reduce unequal gains, set your grip closer to the pubic bone of yours.

Hold firmly and realise a pain-free trap of blood in the shaft of yours.

Gently slide the hand of yours up the glans, putting on plenty of pressure.

You need to stop sliding the hand of yours before it reaches the glans of yours since you will have accomplished one jelq.

While keeping your one hands below the glans, do the other hand to support the foundation of the penis of yours, with an A-OK' hold.

Launch the first hand that is holding right before the glans of yours.

Repeat the process until you get to the desired goal.

THE Main point here REGARDING NON SURGICAL TREATMENTS

In case you're searching for solutions to increase both the girth and the length of the manhood of yours, you've a lot of choices to select from.

The above described methods are already found to be helpful in a number of studies, and perhaps you will not fail giving any of them a shot. Nevertheless, you must always seek advice from a professional doctor before choosing a specific technique.

SURGICAL PENIS ENLARGEMENT TREATMENTS

Since that time, there have been huge improvements done in the area, however outcomes are relatively mixed.

If you're not familiar with this penis enlargement medical procedures, I am going to go through every option offered to you, which means you are able to see whether this path is best for you.

Oral treatments do not usually work for everybody. Nearly all males might be prescribed drugs that go directly, through injection, directly into the penis.

The injection is able to use using a single or maybe a blend of medications. It's essential to be aware that penis injections must just be administered by a skilled urologist.

Injection treatments usually involve the immediate injection of medicine to the foundation of the penis of yours, which refers to the component of the shaft furthest from top of your penis.

Apart from the potential side effects of the administered medication, there are also small side effects which could happen during penile injection. You can encounter mild bruising at the website of injection, penile discomfort and also possibly swelling (temporary lumps are) that is common, particularly if several of the medicine is discharged under the skin of yours.

The penis might be thickened and lengthened through extra fat transfer penis enlargement treatment. This kind of treatment is often known as fat grafting and also penile fat transfer. It requires 2 medical treatments, which you are able to finish in one hospital visit.

During the essential process, the weight is liposuctioned from the thighs of yours or maybe the abdomen. Afterward, similar fat is filtered, in an effort to isolate the cells along with other unwanted materials.

Since extra fat transfer cells come from the body of yours, the possible risks of allergic reactions are extremely minimal.

After the very first process, you are able to look to see a significant rise in penis girth. Obviously, the very first size is always increased through swelling, though gentle.

Perhaps one main drawback of this specific treatment is the fact that the believed survival rate of the body fat tissue transferred is a place around fifty % after several months.

Again, the following surgery for fat transfer is required to keep the desired outcomes. So it is not a permanent option as some people might make you think.

Penile surgery including the usage of grafts tremendously increases the girth or the circumference of the penis. Presently, there are 2 main procedures offered in the usage of grafts.

One) Dermal extra fat graft augmentation

This's a more sophisticated technique and that is extremely effective.

Since the grafted epidermis limits the underlying body fat layers from simply being reabsorbed, this particular strategy will cause far more steady and permanent results.

Nevertheless, the primary limitation of this method is the fact that significant incisions are usually made so as to get the grafts; every one aproximatelly 2 inches wide as well as an inch in length. Once again, it is difficult to determine just how these incisions heal.

Two) The Alloderm grafts

To be much more accurate, an Alloderm is usually a cadaver skin; skin from the dead people (yes, freaky I know), that's dealt with and freeze dried to clear away some diseases. Just love skin grafts, it's layered close to your penis to produce the desired girth.

The method results in significant and visible results, that is akin to the skin fat grafts, although, they include an additional advantage: The noticeable scarring is stayed away from. Nevertheless, the therapy is extremely pricey and some whacky.

A with everyman, component of the penis isn't visible and tends to lengthen inside the entire body. This hidden part is attached to the pubic bone with the so-called suspensory ligaments.

It's crucial to note the anticipated penile length is located in the wake on the penis being outside of the body of yours, particularly when in the flaccid status.

Nevertheless, you might stop this situation by implementing a penis extending machine. Again, cases of scarring are unavoidable, particularly in the spot addressed and also at the medical access points.

IMPORTANT: Based on the level of skill of the surgeon, the severity and the extent of the marks could be avoided. The other typical problem with penis lengthening will be the decrease in the penis perspective in an erection.

In reality, as additional ligaments are cut, the greater the penis will have a tendency to point on the floor during erection, an element which could allow it to be challenging keep your pecker up and also have sex properly.

PENILE IMPLANTS

In the recent past, the usage of penile implant products has received many worldwide recognition, not completely for the development of the penis of yours, but much more so a solution for erectile dysfunction.

With these sorts of implants, the penis is frequently semi rigid, thicker and longer as well as just requires being lifted into the erect place to begin intercourse.

The inflatable penile prosthesis includes 2 cylinders; a reservoir and a pump, which are put surgically in the body of yours. These plastic bottles are invest the penis of yours and linked by tubing to a standalone supply of fluid.

A pump likewise connects on the program and rests under the scrotal sac' epidermis, usually between the testicles of yours.

This means that in case you choose to eliminate them, you may never be in a position to have all natural erections once again that is pretty damn frightening.

THE Main point here REGARDING SURGICAL TREATMENTS

If the penis size of yours is an enormous concern, and really feel as you wish to improve its length and also the girth, you've a great deal of medical treatments to consider.

We've carefully describe every single process, and you are able to now choose wisely, dependent on the preference of yours, the effectiveness along with the associated risks associated with every process.

Most typical PENIS ENLARGEMENT ANSWERED

Indeed, you are able to enlarge the dimensions of your respective penis permanently. You will find numerous techniques to boost the length and both girth of the penis of yours, erection quality, and then libido.

Corpus covernosum is the component that really makes your penis more during an erection.

And so almost as it might be possible to completely improve the size of the penis of yours, some time is taken by it, patience and obviously the correct solutions. It is usually a lot easier to boost the quality of libido and erection than it's to completely increase penis size however.

What exactly are THE RISKS OF PENIS ENLARGEMENT SURGERY?

What's CONSIDERED An ordinary SIZED PENIS?

This's rather a standard worry a great deal of men have. Well, we have all heard the old saying that size does not matter; it is just how you utilize it and in a number of instances that is real.

Aside from individuals that are way below and above the regular penis size. However, what's the standard size?

The corresponding typical girth dimensions are 3.66 when flaccid as well as 4.59 when erect.

What's THE Best in MALE ENHANCEMENT METHOD?

Technology within the medical world is constantly progressing. Nowadays, you will find numerous methods that men are able to use to enhance the manhood of theirs.

Nevertheless, stay without the sensational devices and pills which may up the misery than pleasure to the sex life of yours.

DO PENIS ENLARGEMENT EXERCISES WORK?

But carrying out daily stretches using your weights or hand, stretches the tissue and also encourages new growth. Though it needs a good deal of dedication to accomplish any substantial increase in size.

There are some risks concerned though, these such as burst blood vessels, shredding of the cells, so on. This's whether you go insane with the workouts.

Your penis grows in girth and length during puberty. This's also time your body undergoes significant changes that change you starting from a boy to a male.

Puberty is at times that are different for everybody, but it usually falls between the ages of thirteen and eighteen.

Nope.

What is Probably THE SAFEST Method to ENLARGE MY PENIS?

Anything that does not require surgery will be considered the safest choice. In case you are consuming pills, and then as long as you are making sure they've secure ingredients then you ought to be good taking them.

It is suggested you speak with the doctor of yours before trying some sort of growth technique, be that non-surgical or surgical.

[pxgtails]

HAPPY NEW YEAR !!     it’s almost 2018 — for some of us, 2017′s already gone!! that means we made it, and that’s incredible. a whole year of dealing with this totally 100% perfectly functioning website, a year of tackling the ups and downs with style and grace, a year of... well. it’s certainly been quite a year, hasn’t it??

this is your girl BUTTS, and i’m about to get a little personal.

2017 was kind of rough for me — and for a while, even things that usually made me feel better just... didn’t. i wasn’t able to have fun doing the things that i loved, and so i spent a big portion of the year simply languishing. but you guys stuck with me through it all. you were patient and understanding and supportive, and really, i couldn’t have asked for anything more. now things are finally starting to look up again, and i just want to say: i’m so grateful that you guys  ( just about 2,000 of you — wow! )  interact with me! i’m grateful for every time someone asks about a headcanon, or shows interest in a worldbuilding concept, or comes into my inbox looking to plot or interact! writing — and especially writing kris — is such a huge pick-me-up for me, and i’m so glad that i’ve been able to write with all of you! thank you for going on this journey with me! thank you for being a part of this experience! really — THANKS FOR EVERYTHING!!

there are a few people i want to give a super special shout out to, either for being an inspiration, being a delight, or being my friend — sometimes even a combination of the three, wild!! they’re going to be under the cut, though, to keep this from getting too long. HAPPY NEW YEAR everyone — i hope it’ll be fantastic!  ♡

                                                                                  —  —  —  art cred.

THE DREAM TEAM, THE MEME TEAM!

@binarycolours​ ➝ how could i not start out with you?? touya, you are the best thing to ever happen to me and the absolute light of my life; you’re an absolute inspiration in everything you do and even though i just gushed super hard about you in that meme, i’m going to do it again!! i’ve told you time and time again how much i admire your writing, your characterizations, your storytelling, all of it — your threads have so much life that i can’t help but be positively starstruck!! you’re my very best friend and i love you with all of my heart, and i probably don’t say this nearly enough: it means so much that you’re here having fun with me. let’s have more fun in 2018, ok? ♡

@cosmonucleic​ ➝ or, you know, whatever blog you’re active on right now... I’M KIDDING I LOVE YOU PIDGE, can you believe we’ve been talking for close to two and a half years now?? do you remember when i’d come into your inbox and very politely ask questions with proper capitalization and punctuation? it feels like a lifetime ago, and it’s really wild to think that there was some point in my life that i didn’t know you?? that i didn’t talk to you?? it’s so wild to think that kris ever existed without yuri, without space crew?? i’m absolutely delighted whenever we talk, and i’m positively blessed to know you and talk with you as often as i do!!

@jingleburst​ ➝ my sweet sweet fishie-chan, you’re such a delightful and welcome presence in my life, even if no one would ever be able to tell based on how... kris treats luka... IT SURE IS A GOOD THING MUN =/= MUSE, RIGHT?? even though wow luka’s a complete sweetheart and so are you, the nights we got to goof off in call together are some of my fondest memories of this year, and i’ll be keeping my fingers crossed for more opportunities to do so come 2018!!

@soarleader​ ➝ (me voice) hey it might be a little weird gushing about sabs, considering she’s not on tumblr anymore... CATCH ME DOING IT ANYWAY ugh sabs, i feel like i don’t say this nearly enough: talking to you means so much to me, and the reason you’re on this list despite not being active in the rpc is because you’re such a big inspiration when it comes to my characters — you’ve helped push me further than i ever thought possible in terms of character development and familiarity, it just feels wrong to not have you on here.  i can’t even begin to express how much help you were in regards to my own self-confidence; you’re one of my best friends, and i’m so lucky to know you!!

@bledfed , @checkeredscarfs , @chesskilled , @corvidmagicae , @desbearer , @detecaive , @fukainoumi , @hakureimaiden , @inviai , @kyoukokiwigiri , @lamentis , @locksfate , @nightpined , @perceptivis , @picarexque​ , @rationalclover , @ratvenant , @ruinsation ➝ oh my god there’s like a billion of us. of course i need to include my amnesia famnesia on here — we’re closing in on a year since this chat was made, and the fact that you guys haven’t gotten sick of me yet is astounding!! you’ve seen me at my worst, and then you’ve seen me somehow go even worse than that, and you guys are always there to hear me out and cheer me up. some of you guys i’ve been chatting with just about every day this entire year,and some of you guys i’ve only just started talking with recently — in both cases though, you guys are some of the most kindhearted, creative, and wonderful people i’ve had the pleasure of knowing. you’re irreplaceable, and you know what that means?? you’re going to be stuck with me for a very long time. ♡

AND A WHOLE BUNCH OF OTHER COOL KIDS!

i have to give a shout-out to the people who make my dash feel so lively and incredible — writing is fun and all, but without A+++ quality partners, it doesn’t exactly work out! so i want to extend my most heartfelt thanks to all of you for everything that you do and everything that you put out into the world; even if we don’t talk much, i consider all of you guys incredible. let’s plot, let’s thread, let’s make something together in 2018!!

@asmayflies​ , @aspearbarry​ , @balsamina​ , @batomos​ , @bopnty​ , @carnivigorous​​ , @craniumaniac​ , @cxnstellaticns​ , @dragoncaper​ , @ekkusumoi​ , @elekron​ , @fabulance​ , @fxdelxs​ , @gcruden​ , @geoforza​ , @ghctsis​ , @hikaup​ , @hisflare​ , @hoeinhoenn​ , @hoennite​ , @kotoyin​ , @lionfanged​ , @make-it-trouble​ , @mercenaryrocket​ , @miseryluck​ , @normaliium​ , @oakmd​ , @ofpalletown​ , @plasmiisms​ , @ranseiuniter​ , @rcketbutcher​ , @rebelracket​ , @rocketbalor​ , @rocketbcss​ , @rocketrevelry​ , @rocketsecretary​ , @sangmer​ , @shadyxdealings​ , @shiirakeru​ , @simikami​ , @snaggerleo​ , @starmarkcd​ , @steeliis​ , @sterlingsilverchampion​ , @stewardoftheking​ , @telekinetiq​ , @timecapscle​ , @undinaes​

AND OF COURSE, ALL OF YOU!

every single last one of you. i really can’t stress enough how much you all mean to me — all of you who put up with me when my job rules my life, all of you personals who decide you want kris clarity on your dashboard. thank you to everyone who sends in memes and writes me starters and pops in my inbox just to say hi, and all-in-all makes this a fantastic place to be.

  & HERE’S TO ANOTHER YEAR!  ♡

[thelifetimechannel]

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[lesliepump]

Design Thinking for Lawyers

Let’s face it: lawyers have a pretty spotty track record where innovation is concerned. We tend toward the secure, the risk-free, the known…the precedential. We shy from things we view as risky. “New” means “untested” and “untested” means “fraught.” And fraught is a nonstarter.

This propensity toward risk aversion arguably serves our clients reasonably well in the actual delivery of legal services. But it is a two-edged sword. It can simultaneously cripple us and our ability to reimagine how we practice law or how we build our law businesses to meet our clients’ ever-evolving needs.

Design thinking for lawyers is how you intentionally craft your law business over time to deliver legal services simply, functionally, and beautifully.

Enter “design thinking.” Since (roughly) the early 2000s, design has infiltrated business strategy and snowballed into a pretty buzzy topic, both in the broader economy as a whole and—on the edges, anyway—the legal industry in particular. We probably have Steve Jobs and Harvard Business Review to thank for much of that. Even Airbnb is in on the game.

Apple’s long run of atmospheric success is married, they say, to its relentless idolization of simple, functional, and beautiful design. That is, Apple embraced design (and with it, “design thinking”), and that embrace is said to have catapulted the brand into the exosphere.

Here is (one of) law’s dirty little secrets: you have already designed how you deliver legal services. Problem is, you, like most of us, did it poorly. And that’s because most of us didn’t do it intentionally. So most of our clients suffer through an accidentally-mediocre user experience. That’s a shame. And, sadly, it has taken decades for design thinking to infiltrate the business of law. But it is finally here.

What is Design Thinking?

Design thinking is an ethos. An ideology. A worldview. It is also, ultimately, a perfectly replicable process aimed at applying long-established and fundamental design principles to the way we build businesses and the processes in them. It is a hands-on, user-focused way to relentlessly and incrementally innovate, sympathize, humanize, solve problems, and resolve issues. For our purposes, design thinking is how you intentionally craft your law business over time to deliver legal services simply, functionally, and beautifully.

Design thinking’s different adherents disagree slightly on its aesthetics, but virtually all agree that it is a systematic approach to innovation and problem-solving that is, fundamentally:

user-centered;

experimental;

responsive;

intentional; and

tolerant of failure.

If that almost burst an aneurysm deep in the recesses of your ample mind, rest assured that you are not alone.

Design thinking and law firms have traditionally gone together like Nutella and moderation. That’s paradoxical, though. Creative problem-solving falls squarely in a lawyer’s wheelhouse. So what happened?

Well, lawyers have largely abandoned problem-solving for their businesses and tend to set their myopic gazes instead only on the more predictable exercise of problem-solving for their clients. What is more, lawyers have an acquired tendency to seek perfection before releasing a project into the wild. That, of course, breeds a bias against action, creativity, curiosity, testing, iteration, and active learning. The results, at least according to the General Counsel at IDEO, Rochael Soper Adranly, are grave:

Even though law and legal processes are designed by humans for humans, the reality is that most interactions with legal professionals don’t feel very good. Interactions are often harsh, transactional, and bereft of transparency, emotion, or humanity. Touchpoints are filled with frustration, confusion, and disempowerment.

—Rochael Soper Adranly on Medium

Ouch.

What would it look like, though, if the bias was instead toward action, and what if lawyers instead chose to carefully, precisely, and without prejudgment identify their customers’ pain points in working with them?

What would it look like if they then strove to systematically (and incrementally) design an experience for their clients that is—gloriously and intentionally and precisely—free from those moments of friction?

What if they were able to deeply and personally empathize with what their clients want? What if they offered a modern web presence, fixed fees, collaboration and inclusion in the process, excellent customer service, and an onboarding experience that knocks every single customer’s socks off?

Here’s a hypothesis: They would unearth earth-shatteringly delightful experiences for their lawyers, their staff, and their clients alike.

A Six-Step Design Thinking Process.

The design thinking process is often described variously as a 3-step, 5-step, or 6-step process (or an iterative circle, or something else). But I like a 6-step process. Sounds simple, right? Well, it isn’t. You should try it anyway. You should pick a problem, complexity, or innovation that could make your clients’ experience with your business better. Then you should:

Step 1: Discover, Empathize, and Understand

At design thinking’s core sits its power to help you discern what your clients truly want and need. We know you’re already giving them great legal advice. That is a utilitarian, traditional value proposition, and it is necessary. But it is no longer sufficient. To unleash the true power of design, you’ll need to surface a user experience that makes your clients feel amazing about the process, too.

In this step, you’ll gather a bunch of information before you start problem-solving. For starters, you need to clearly define the problem you are trying to solve. Empathy is critical here. What motivates your clients? Why do they need or want the end result?

Identify the right people to talk to for your information gathering endeavor. Then set aside your own assumptions. Get out of your office and interview them. Get their perspective, understand their experience and their desires, and unpack your insights. Try to gather and contemplate their emotional responses—and, secondarily, their rational ones—to your brand. Next, you’ll define your project’s scope and its solution from this new-found, non-arbitrary human perspective.

Step 2: Synthesize and Define

Once you have done the work to understand your clients’ emotional experience with your brand, you need to scope your project. What, precisely, are you trying to evolve? This step is really challenging. It usually involves a crate full of Post-it Notes and all of the walls. You’ll make your data from Step 1 visual, get it out of your head, and move it onto paper. Then you can (literally) move ideas and concepts closer or further away from each other. You can physically cluster things around themes and recognize patterns. Question assumptions. And think unflinchingly about your end user and what they want. Then scope your project to meet their desires.

Step 3: Brainstorm and Ideate

This step is when you direct your laser’s focus on who your client is and how you can solve their problem beautifully. With your team, explore the question: “How can we help so-and-so client with the problem that we’ve identified?” Leave it broad enough so there is more than one possible solution. Get these solutions out on the table to consider, but don’t critique them (yet). Your opportunity here is to create an environment where you and your team can escape your comfort zones to reflect, explore, and learn. You’ll need to lead by example to show them that you can change your perceptions and goals. Experiment with brainstorming ideas and methods. (Yep, you can even approach how to brainstorm through the design-thinking lens). Then combine, refine, and augment ideas to find a plethora of possible solutions.

To be sure, some of these ideas will be unmitigated bus fires. But just as surely, some will be kernels of brilliance. So categorize ideas, give them names, and choose the best ones (for now) to move with. Then get some more whiteboards, some more Post-its, and some more mind maps. The goal here is quantity, not quality. Defer judgment. Don’t censor. Build off ideas, and encourage new and wild ones.

Step 4: Prototype

From there, you’ll choose one or (maybe) more ideas to carry forward. Thinking critically about your firm’s capacity for change and your innovation priorities, identify the one (or maybe two) brainstorm ideas you will pursue first. Then build a “prototype” of the solution by spending only as much time, effort, and investment you need to generate useful feedback and help evolve the idea.

Maybe your client onboarding process sucks. And maybe your design-thinking process drove you toward a solution that involves integrating a new TypeForm to capture new client data and a Zapier integration to dump that data into a spreadsheet somewhere. Build the prototype. You could build a blunt (but functional) system like that in an hour or two, including the time it will take you to sign up for your free accounts. Prototyping’s goal is not to finish the project. It is to learn about the solution’s strengths and weaknesses and to identify new directions that future prototypes might take.

Step 5: Test

Now, take your prototype solution back to your potential users and ask them for feedback. Get meaningful input from everyone you can: your team, your clients, your other stakeholders. Find easy ways to try your ideas, then turn an idea into something a user can interact with (your TypeForm, a wall of Post-it Notes, a presentation, a storyboard). And embrace all the feedback you uncover, including the negative.

You’re probably going to find new problems and issues here (which will, gloriously, lead to more iterations and refinements). Would the solution actually work? Does it meet your end-users’ emotional and rational needs? Be rigorous. Failures here are simply more opportunities to learn and progress. Eventually, all this work will bring you inexorably back to the discovery phase, where you’ll start all over again.

Step 6: Implement

Release it into the wild! SHIP IT! Think for a moment about your smartphone and the software that lives on it… if your phone is anything like mine, it downloads and installs updates for 10–15 apps on any given evening. Not infrequently, you can bank on an operating system upgrade, too.

Your law firm needs frequent updates. They can be small improvements on existing systems, or they can be wholesale launches of brand new tools and workflows. If you wait to launch until something is fully baked, you’re doing yourself and your clients a disservice. Like app developers and Apple’s vaunted design team, you should constantly be on the lookout for problems, then regularly fix ’em, iterate, and launch the update. Your first implementation doesn’t need to be the final one (in fact, it shouldn’t be). That’s why you shouldn’t wait to release a “perfect” thing. It is never perfect; there is always room for improvement. Communicate continually to evaluate, learn, innovate, and create, and join in the perpetual loop of design thinking and service upgrades.

In all of this, you’ll challenge yourself (and your team) and you’ll need to trust everyone in the room, including yourself, as a source of incrementally innovative solutions. Be honest, curious, and brave in considering your different options. Take time to do it right. Try multi-disciplinary teams to approach problems and solutions from all angles.

But When?

Historically, companies treated the design function as a downstream step in a product- or service-development workflow. A services provider—or an engineer in R&D—might do innovation’s substantive slog. Then, much later in the process (or, perhaps, never), a designer would finally be invited to put a beautiful wrapper on the thing.

But an effort to simply slap a beautiful wrapper on a crummy product or experience is sloppy at best or–worse and much more likely–completely tone deaf. Instead, lawyers should, relentlessly and incrementally, follow design thinking’s step-by-step process to unearth better ideas for how to meet their clients’ needs and desires before they design it in the first place.

Ultimately, a beautiful and perfectly-designed system that solves the wrong problem will crumble. And a process that solves the right problem with a terribly-designed experience will almost certainly share a similar fate.

Why Design Thinking?

Lawyers use design thinking because it is the most powerful tool we know to help them innovate in manageable ways. It helps lawyers step back and re-envision their accidentally-mediocre service delivery design using a client-centered process. That process starts with user data, creates or upgrades systems, tools, and processes that address real (not imaginary) needs, then provides a framework to test prototypes and launch solutions with real users. Design thinking creates leverage for your firm’s collective experience and expertise. And it establishes shared language and buy-in on the new innovations from your team.

Perhaps most importantly, design thinking encourages innovation by encouraging your whole team to systematically uncover many ways to fix the same problem.

How Do Lawyers “Do” Design Thinking?

What’s next? How do you even begin? First, don’t be scared off by your fears that to “do” design thinking, you need to go all in at first. Sure, effective design thinking has the potential to become an iterative, cyclical, culture-changing force in your life and business. But the key to any innovation is to start small.

So, start small. Set a goal to work through a design thinking cycle for one small problem this quarter. It is going to be clumsy and slow and uncomfortable at first. Be patient with yourself and your team, because this can definitely feel like chaos if you’re doing it for the first time.

Make sure you explicitly structure your process. If you have a team—and you plan to have its members join you on this maiden voyage—communicate your structure to them, together with your expectations for communication, collaboration, empathy, and iteration. And speak out loud your express directive that everyone involved in the process questions the prevailing orthodoxy.

Next, choose among your products, services, processes, organizational design, or your strategy. Use design thinking to incrementally (but relentlessly) make this one thing better, faster, and easier to deliver.

And as you cycle through and get more comfortable conceptually—as you take the training wheels off—you’ll begin to blend big and small projects and innovations. The beauty of design thinking is that it can be employed for macro innovations and for micro ones.

Fear not the headwinds. Finding, testing, developing, and selling new ideas is hard work for all kinds of reasons. Particularly in organizations. And—even more particularly—in law firms, where long-term, scalable, revenue-driving solutions and services are frequently sacrificed at the altar of short-term profits.

Well-implemented design thinking will create in your entire ecosystem a bias toward action through relentless incrementalism.

You’re on the road to a thorough and genuine understanding of what your clients want and need, and what they like and dislike about the way you have completed, packaged, marketed, sold, and supported a particular product or service. There is power in that. There is power in beginning the journey toward being intentional about how you’re doing all of the things.

A persistent myth about brilliant design is that great ideas are birthed fully formed from transcendent minds in feats of creativity a mere mortal could only dream about.

Leonardo da Vinci is credited with saying that “simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.” Simple, beautiful, client-focused design is sophistication that does not spring forth in an explosion. It is cultivated over time through hard work, a supportive environment, a client-centered development process, and iterative cycles of prototyping, testing, and refining, all fed, as always, by relentless incrementalism, curiosity, and a genuine desire to make life better for your clients.

Originally published 2019-07-29. Republished 2019-10-18.

The post Design Thinking for Lawyers appeared first on Lawyerist.

from Law and Politics https://lawyerist.com/blog/design-thinking-for-lawyers/ via http://www.rssmix.com/

[angelaannebaker-blog]

IR Ingersoll Rand 2235 Review

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Delivering as much as 1,350 foot-lbs . of nut-busting torque, the 2235TiMAX Generate Air Affect Wrench capably tackles the most demanding assembly and disassembly Employment. The finely tuned twin-hammer effect mechanism punishes challenging bolts and powers by weighty-obligation applications which include suspension get the job done and large tools restore.

Using the 4-situation power regulator, you could seamlessly switch between ability modes and regulate torque output to fit Just about every person undertaking. The one-handed ahead/reverse mechanism lets you modify way with an easy button force.

Compact and light-weight

Weighing just 4.six pounds, the 2235TiMAX Air Impact Wrench delivers the ideal electricity-to-weight ratio in its class. The ergonomic handle tends to make operating the wrench simple, whilst the light-weight however strong frame will help keep consumer exhaustion into a minimal. You can perform harder and more rapidly for for a longer time periods of time.

Rigorously Examined for Trustworthiness

Each element, system, and performance has been through arduous screening to make certain extended-Long lasting overall performance. The end result is a finely tuned workhorse that endures the hardest purposes.

Rugged Style Endures Tricky Use

Whether You use a garage or an industrial jobsite, it is possible to rely on the 2235TiMAX Impression Wrench to perform reliably in harsh Functioning disorders. With its titanium hammer case, steel don plate, and sturdy composite housing, this Device can sustain weighty-duty use.

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However, this Resource isn't without some critical ergonomic problems. When in reverse, the still left route modify button will dig into my hand at The bottom of my thumb when pulling the induce. This has triggered a really apparent blister and considerable irritation, mainly when using a torque stick.

I will start with almost everything I like. For starters It really is significantly lighter than an all-metallic effects such as the IR 231 C. And yet, It can be continue to quite durable. I have dropped mine from 5 toes persistently, and apart from a handful of scratches, every little thing however fits with each other restricted, such as the plastic buttons and knob within the back again. It really is absolutely effective far too as Absolutely everyone else has stated. And when the unmuffled Variation is a bit louder than your average impression, It can be surely not excessive.

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this influence guns ability to clear away a 33mm lug nut off on the rear conclusion dually wheels of a weighty duty truck. The impression gun seem to wrestle somewhat on some lug nuts but A great deal in the blame can be put on one/2" to three/4" adapter plus the operator utilizing just one hand to removed the lug nut. Employing a immediate one/2" socket without an adapter and applying both equally hands over the air gun will definitely minimize the overall length of time to get rid of Each and every lug nut.

All in all I'm really content with this acquire considering that this tool can perform the job that is necessary. If you want an effect gun in small package with many ability, the ingersol rand 2235timax is likely to be that Software.

[ofginjxints]

sorrybcby‌:

closed starter for @ofginjxints​

It had been a long day already, the girl eager to head back into her apartment and sleep. Dealing with grouchy customers who readily took advantage of customer service, she’s eager to finish off the remainder of her wine bottle and sleep it off. The slightly pissed off mood she’s in disintegrates as she approaches her door, only to find a familiar male seated in front of his. It’s none other than her cute neighbor, Freddie, who’s possibly one of the few people she actually likes.

“You comfortable down there?” she jokes, her own keys dangling in her hands as she prepares to unlock her door. However, she stops once she notices the expression on his face. “Let me guess - locked out?” She’s been through that one too many times, mostly when she’s drunk though. Which is, again, one too many times. She leans against her own door, contemplating for a moment what she should do. A part of her wants to forget all about it and just sleep but another part of her feels bad. “If you’re tired from sitting your butt on the hard floor, you could stay with me until something gets figured out.”

Freddie had worked a lot in the past week. Between his internship and his bartending gig what with Valentine’s weekend and all that nonsense, he’d barely had time to sleep never mind anything else. Thankfully he’d just had his day job to report to, drinking almost as much coffee as he did deliver to his higher ups. Still, he was so tired when he’d gotten home and went to unlock the door to his apartment when his stomach flipped. He went to his knees and searched through his bag and pockets properly when...nope. He texted his roomie, but annoyingly he was working ‘til late. He let out an audible groan and was tired enough to just fall asleep in front of his door. He rubbed his hair and considered for a moment before sitting with his back against it and looking up the number of a locksmith when he saw his neighbour - Gigi.

“Uh, yeah. I was just about to set up camp here.” He joked, though feeling lame the moment the words came out of his mouth, rubbing the nape of his neck. “Yeah, annoyingly. I know exactly where I’ve left ‘em too but Brad isn’t home ‘til later on. I’m gonna try a locksmith or something.” He shrugged, though his brows raised at her offer. He didn’t know if it was entirely obvious but he had a truly embarrassing school boy-esque crush on Gigi. “Yeah, that’d be really cool.” He went to his feet, bringing his backpack to his shoulder. “I’m sorry to be a bother, I’ve just been so tired, my brain’s physically incapable of just functioning day-to-day.”