#I still enjoy some structure to it so I ended making a grid of various like map-style textures to tell different biomes apart lol

[sysig]

Some scribbles :) (Patreon)

[bastillia]

Rough Landing

Part 2 of First Lesson

Summary: Commander Ren has a few more things to teach you.

Rating: Explicit

Words: 8.4k

Warnings: cockwarming, overstimulation, threats during intimacy, inappropriate use of the Force, oral sex (ROUGH, m receiving), unsanitary sex location, public(ish) sex, kinda exhibition kink, no aftercare, uhh bit of cumplay

A/N: Whew alright I know it’s been 3 months, but we’re picking up pretty much right where we left off. Thank you all SO much for the love on part 1. And huge thanks to my incredible friends who have supported me, beta read, and helped me conquer my stuck points. I couldn’t have pulled this through without y’all. Enjoy!

***

There was plenty to like about being in space. For one, it was absolutely quiet. 

Perfectly soundless. Unfathomably endless. In a way, the void between the stars had always been your perfect aegis; a blank slate to nurture everything you’d hoped to become. It held power in its silence, and possibility. It was calm, dark, vast-- it was home, for as much or little as you knew about the word. 

If you thought about it, living aboard the roving flagship of the First Order had always given your life more or less a perfect structure. Most of the time, you didn’t even mind the predictability of it. Your days were purposeful and productive. If, sometimes, just a little boring. But, that was okay--you liked the quiet.

And you were never ever taking it for granted again.

“Stop moving.” Kylo Ren’s voice broke through the growing rumble of the hull. It was only the sensation of gloved fingers tightening down into your hip bones that finally alerted you to the fact that you were squirming. Again. You grimaced.

"I'm trying." 

Friction from the gathering atmosphere punched the craft into a sharp rattle, and your heart struck your sternum as the controls lurched underneath your palms. Your fingers cinched down tight, the lack of circulation in your knuckles settling into a dull throb as you continued to wring the contoured grips, as if you could strangle some desperately needed assistance out of them that way.

Fuck.

Breathe.

You could do this, you just had to stay calm--think about home, about the tedium of whatever meeting was probably going on right now. About how all eyes would be on you if you were there, about the dumbstruck look on General Quinn’s face when you presented that fucking perfect dossier you’d compiled on some key New Republic official he’d been trying to track down for months.

Yes, think about that.

Not about the sweat beginning to break out across your skin, the unnerving rattling around you growing louder and louder. Not about what was still sheathed inside your twitching cunt, stretching you, demanding that your body yield to its presence.

Warm echoes of your last orgasm flared up with another clattering vibration of the atmosphere. It felt almost trapped within you, an electric refrain to the adrenaline melody that pounded your veins now. Your floor muscles quivered tight with it, eliciting an approving twitch from within your walls as Ren’s fingers flexed into the bruises on your hips. 

It was incredible, really. How time had begun to feel almost obsolete until now. It had passed abstractly in the quiet serenity of space as you’d sat filled to your limit, feeling nothing but the commander, his breathing, the omnipresent ache of his cock. Your world nothing but an aroused haze-- stirred every so often by a subtle buck of his hips, a kiss to your neck, hot breath in the hollow of your ear whispering don’t move, don’t you fucking move. Good girl. 

Your thoughts snapped back to the present with a vaguely wistful pang as the hull gave another violent shake. 

Atmospheric entry. What was that, week five? Six? Of the TIE pilot training program? It was on the phase-3 test, you were certain. And you’d put credits down that none of the novice pilots had ever experienced the added curriculum of a cock shoved inside of them.

A warning squeeze stilled another involuntary shift of your hips.

You gritted your teeth against your discomfort, instead trying to let the adrenaline form a whetstone to sharpen your senses.

Breathe.

You could do this. You were way beyond just some novice trooper, you were a fucking lieutenant general of the First Order.  And what did you do to earn that rank? You adapted. So, fucking adapt.

A jolt slammed the craft, and your muscles locked up as the head of Ren’s cock speared something tender and abused deep inside you. The ship squirreled under your grip, leaving you paralyzed as the movement of it set off every panic alarm in this new and untested region of your brain. Without missing a beat, two huge, leather-encased palms came up to wrap over your shaking hands, steadying you with remarkable certainty as they coaxed the vessel back under control. 

“Focus, lieutenant." There was almost an amused purr in Ren’s throat, his voice low and close, utterly lacking in any kind of concern. Your pulse gradually came back down, and with it, your fear curled into a flicker of annoyance. If he was going to mock you, he could at least use your proper title.

You know.

The one you’d worked your ass off for.

The drag of fingertips across the bare skin of your upper thighs jolted you. Your body felt hyper-sensitized, like the sudden touch ignited a cascade of fission that couldn’t seem to find equilibrium anywhere. It fractured your brittle composure in two, just as the roaring blaze around the viewport flared again with a powerful tremor that kicked your heart back up in a sudden panic. 

Sweat lined your palms, adrenaline congealing and turning to acid in your veins. You felt your nerve slip.

"Com-commander, s-sir, I--" 

A hum. “Control yourself.”

It was only two words, but each one cut through your rising panic like a blaster shot to the sternum, rattling you to a realization. 

Control. 

That was the test all along. He’d laid it right out in front of you, challenged you to a game with incredibly fucked up stakes, and he was drawing his hand. Taking a seat at a proverbial Sabacc table, stretching out his chest and waiting for you to either bet up, or lose your nerve. The ante was rising, piece by piece as he silently tested the parameters of your breaking point. 

But he wouldn’t find it. Not like this.

Fresh determination fixed your grip around the shaking controls. It was even enough to keep you from reacting this time when a dull pain lanced under your skin, his teeth catching a tender spot where he had marked your neck some time before. He growled. You tucked that card up your sleeve. 

“Decelerate.”

His tone had shifted quieter in a way that made your ears prick, snapping your attention away from the dull ache of your insides. It sort of stunned you, actually, into something of a quiet curiosity. 

His hand reached around you to swipe at a holopad on the console. An altimeter blinked to life, just before the soft heat of his lips returned to your ear.

“Drop to this zone.” He pointed to a region on the display. “Remain there until we get closer." 

Remnants of panic still swam somewhere in your blood, but you managed to draw a careful breath and nod your understanding. Your ante was still on the table, you told yourself. But perhaps he’d decided that challenging you could wait. For now.

Refocusing, you caressed the controls. The ship banked beautifully, intuitively at your will, before lurching a final time as the thrusters hit a stable layer of atmosphere. 

Beneath you, clouds floated in gossamer ribbons over the calm air, as tattered and thankful for its mercy as you felt. Farther down, the dim moonlight breathed monochrome shapes into being, half-swallowed by the murky vapor of shadow between them. Droplets condensed on the viewport as you dropped through the thin cloudbank, skittering shyly outwards and allowing the shapes to solidify into the oppressive grid of a cityscape.

Slowly, you could begin to make out vague details. Industrial sectors, shipyards, scrappy comms towers. The occasional twinkle of speeder headlights creeping between dilapidated buildings, and--

Your gaze snapped back to the holopad on the nav console, a deft swipe of your finger bringing up your coordinates. The planetary code blinked neutrally back at you, but the unmistakable string of numbers harpooned you with a bolt of clarity that had your ribs tightening down around your lungs. A question resurfaced from the bottom of your memory, curling up to slither coldly along the back of your neck. 

“Commander?”

“Hm.”

“Why, um--” You faltered. 

In truth, there was no reason for you to ask. The answer was already swimming around in your gut, acquainting itself with the sour feeling of dread that settled there. Waiting for your brain to analyze it while at the same time sitting in an insidious state of knowing that didn’t need to reach your head at all for you to feel its weight. 

You swallowed, and adjusted your grip. “Why a TIE fighter? Why didn’t we bring the command shuttle?” 

A pause. He reached around you, flicking a switch on the main console, and the Silencer’s headlights shuttered off with a resounding click. “We may need to leave quickly.”

For the first time since leaving the Supremacy, you felt something familiar settle inside of you. Deep and quiet, like the way sound doesn’t travel in space. It was the same, utterly instinctive feeling that took over every time you managed to get yourself in over your head-- when a negotiation turned volatile, when an unforeseen flaw surfaced in a mission strategy mid-execution. Those moments where the fixed parameters of your training ended, and the only thing left to take the pilot’s seat was your own intuition. 

But this time, there was something else there with it. It glowed within the powerful shroud of calm, thrumming quietly, filling you with something potent and restless and--exciting, that you couldn’t quite place.

Real, physical danger was not something you had much direct experience with. The various moral complexities associated with putting others up against it at your command, you had come to know well. But you were here now. Facing it in the flesh, not protected by the reinforced hull and ion cannons of a Star Destroyer. 

You were here, looking down on the dark streets of Corellia, a planet so lawless and foul and flat out fucking dangerous that the First Order had all but given up establishing a presence here long ago. Even the New Republic’s ties here were thin.

A tightness struck through your chest as you very suddenly realized that it was only a matter of time, now, before you were going to have to--

“Drop lower.” The commander shifted to tap something into the nav console. A flight course lit up the holopad, leading to a destination marker just a few klicks ahead. “Land here.”

The sector you entered seemed somehow even darker than the rest as you brought the Silencer down over the shadowed streets, hints of crumbling walls and rusted vents just barely illuminated by the occasional weak street lamp. No headlights, hardly any ground lighting--you were no ace pilot, obviously, and it took your full concentration just to maneuver the ship between the vague silhouettes of broken antenna towers, avoiding them where their spindly shadows jutted up from the rooftops. You jumped when Ren’s hands enveloped yours again.

“Right here.” He guided your hands, expertly swinging the craft around and into a hover above a dim alleyway, empty and lined on both sides with large, abandoned-looking industrial structures. Your pulse jumped. He released your hands, a finger drawing your attention to a switch on your right, then flicking it casually. “Landing gear.” 

The hull rumbled and thumped. An array of green lights flashed to life in what you could only assume was an indication of the ship’s readiness for landing. If only you felt the same. Your hands were frozen on the controls, your mind simultaneously racing and completely blank. You waited dumbly for guidance, heart hammering, shallow little breaths trapping themselves high in your throat. 

“Relax.” Ren’s voice permeated to your bones as both arms slid around your stomach, liquefying your fear into a trembling plea. 

“P-please, Commander, I d-don--” You cut off with a shiver when his lips met your neck, his hips beginning to rock in a slow, enunciated rhythm that had your cunt immediately bearing down with need as you felt him harden. “Fuck, p-please, I don’t know how t--... h-how to--”

Your eyes rolled back as a hand slid down between your legs, the leather pad of his finger finding your clit stiff and sensitive, its touch featherlight. A hum rumbled under your shoulders. “Your intuition, lieutenant. Feel it, don’t think.” 

Maker help you, there were a lot of things you could fucking feel right now. Namely, your commander’s cock slowly massaging your walls, lazy in its rhythm. Your grip on the controls banishing the circulation entirely from your knuckles. His fingers sliding down your slit, spreading as he reached the root of himself, shamelessly feeling the obscene way your body yielded to the thickness at his base. The lust that erupted low in your belly in response. The panic that was rising as you remembered your task, its sharp tendrils threatening to reach your head and overwhelm you. 

Control yourself.

A turbulent breath shook some air back into your lungs as your tiny inner voice of reason managed to surface again. Collecting yourself, you let it expand, pushing each distraction away one by one as it went. Focus, it reminded you. Remember the card up your sleeve, get through this round. 

You tethered your awareness to the ship, to the curve of the controls against your palms, to the way they extended like a continuation of your own neural circuits to command the sleek metal beast encircling you. A steady, downward press of your hands, and it purred its obedient response, settling slowly towards the ground below.

“Good girl,” Ren said. “Just like that.” 

There was something--a tiny flicker of mischief in the shadows of his voice. Maybe you would have caught it quicker, but your tunneled focus left you one fatal step behind him, too slow to anticipate his move. His hand shifted, easily finding your raw clit against his fingertip, and pressed down--hard.

Electric. Everything was electric. Your vision doubled, the shredded remnants of your nerves shorting out and screaming against the paralyzing flood of sensation, ripping a ragged gasp from the bottom of your lungs. Maker, don’t scream, don’t fucking-- 

A shift of his finger and your hips jerked, an involuntary movement of sheer desperation for escape that carried right through your whole body and into the ship.

One wing dipped to the side, and it was only the sharp trill of a proximity alarm that managed to blast through to what was left of your reflexes just in time. A curse cut the air through your lips, your shaking hands grappling the controls into a clumsy counter-correction that swayed the craft wildly as you wrestled it back to center. The rocking slowly stilled, the ringing in your ears no longer from the alarm, but your own pulse bludgeoning your temples. Ren simply chuckled, and released your clit.

“Commander.” A few rapid blinks cleared the blur from your vision, but oxygen was still painful through the panic in your chest, leaving you frustratingly breathless. “With all due respect, sir, do you want me to crash your ship?”

“You won’t.” The smirk was audible in his voice. “Or is my confidence in your aptitude misguided, lieutenant?” 

A slew of unkind words lashed themselves to your tongue, fighting for freedom with the fuel of indignation that scalded your throat like bile, but you swallowed both, smothering your thoughts into silence. Stay calm. Maintain control. You drew a tight breath. “No, sir.”

“Mm. Good.” He rocked his hips firmly up into you, and a pitiful little noise clutched in your throat. “Then land my ship, and perhaps your proficiency will be rewarded.”

Desire shot up your spine like a flare, igniting at the base of your brain and rocketing your thoughts clear past apprehension and ahead to the promise of relief. It was enough to allow bravery to wriggle back into your fingers, your hands finding the wherewithal to resume their task even as your lungs stalled in anticipation of another distraction. 

But none came. 

The relief that flooded you was immediate and powerful the second you felt solid ground settle under the landing gear. The hull groaned around you as the craft came to a full rest, wheezing like a fathier after a hard gallop, and you, its master, just thankful to have survived the race. But there was one more hurdle for you.

“You know this part.” Ren gestured vaguely to the console, still alive with various lights and indicators, many of which, no, you certainly did not know anything about.

Your eyes darted back and forth a few times before it hit you. Of course. The ignition sequence.

Presumably, to shut the fighter down, you would just need to… to do it backwards? That seemed like the logical course of action, at least. Stars, how long ago had you even taken off? The Supremacy already felt like a faint memory, the edges of its shape scattered through a hazed prism, each facet reflecting nothing but incandescent pleasure and the blinding heat of Kylo Ren. 

But you had to remember. This was--you hoped--the final test, and there was no way you were going to fail. Maker, what was wrong with you, you were better than this, just think. The last thing he turned on had been…

Thrusters.

Right console, three switches. Bring all of those down. The roar of the ion engines quieted, taking the vibration of the hull down to a faint rumble. Okay, good, next was--

Ignition. Yes, ignition: off. Much quieter now, and stars, when was the last time you breathed? Fucking breathe. Okay, next. 

Compressor: disengaged. Auxiliary last.

Everything went black as you killed the main power. Your breathing seemed to echo around in the stillness of the cockpit, your cunt twitching to life in acknowledgment of what was now pressing harder than beskar steel against your guts, amplified by the darkness. It was almost as if the power from the ship had never really shut down, but simply transferred into your own body instead, flicking your ignition switch and bringing your arousal roaring back to life with a vengeance.

Every line of the commander’s body against you was lighting up your awareness, filling the sensory void with his presence, the unbearable stillness of him. What had he meant when he said he’d reward you? You’d learned his lesson, yes, and passed every fucked up test he’d thrown at you to prove it. For that, you could commend yourself. 

But if there was one lesson more poignant than the rest, one that now stuck like thermal sludge to every crevice of your understanding, it was that his next move could come at any moment--and not always in a way you could anticipate. 

This seemed like one of those moments.

A shift of his chest under your shoulders made you jump, one arm reaching up somewhere you couldn’t see to flick a control, and the hatch cracked open with a hiss. The night air flooded the cockpit, all but drowning your racing thoughts as it drew in like a cool sigh to kiss the heat in your cheeks. Your head fell back, lungs gratefully accepting the damp and oddly foreign relief of atmospheric oxygen, even as the scent of it stuck in your mouth. It was thick, leaden with rain and crude fuel, but you hardly cared. It felt divine.

Beneath you, an impatient grunt and a single squeeze to your thighs brought you back to the present with a tiny flicker of alarm. 

“Out.” 

Your muscles froze. 

“But, I--” Whatever you might have expected out of this moment, that was possibly the last thing you could have prepared for, and your brain was fumbling spectacularly in an attempt to process the one word. 

Did he actually mean that? Was this another test? You didn’t even feel like you could move right now, let alone clamber out of the ship with your whole body aching and clenching as it was. And you were so full, and he was so hard, and now you were nearly trembling with need and--

And you took too long to act. 

Wide hands locked around your waist, and then everything shifted--he was picking you up. Holy shit he was strong, he hoisted you upwards in one effortless motion, throwing your world into a blur. The only thing you distinctly registered through your disorientation was the feeling of his hard cock pulling along your tired walls, finally popping free for you to flutter and clench around nothing for a moment before your bare ass came down on the lip of the cockpit. 

Cold metal bit your flesh, a harsh and unforgiving contrast to the warm lap you’d grown accustomed to. Fuck, everything was dark. But hearing him shift underneath you had you hurriedly swinging your legs around to jump down.

And... the ground was a lot farther down than you thought. 

You landed hard. Hard enough for your knees to buckle, and you stumbled against the hobble around your thighs in a clumsy attempt to keep yourself upright. But before you could lose your balance you were moving again, being yanked by the arm and slammed back hard against the ship.

A huge, black mass crowded in on you, looming and pressing you back against creaking durasteel, the metal still warm under your shoulders as the ship settled from flight. Your heart slammed against the commander’s advance, eyes darting through shadow. 

In the span of a shared breath, his mouth crashed down on yours, open and wanting and hungry in the darkness, and everything inside of you detonated.

The heat of his mouth was dizzying. You mewled into it, the feeling of him so strong and warm and everywhere, tugging at your hips, tongue sliding past your teeth. Your hands gravitated upwards for any leverage they could find just to pull him closer, to taste him deeper. A low, rumbling sound scraped the bottom of his chest and two huge hands encircled your wandering wrists, easily plucking them off of their feverish course and slamming them up beside your shoulders instead. 

His exploration of your mouth grew brazen as he pinned you open, crushing you against unyielding steel, even taking a moment to suck at your bottom lip before his hot tongue was licking deep into you again, stealing your breath and coaxing soft sounds from your chest in its wake. 

An immobilizing sensation locked your arms in place, keeping them tight against the ship even as his touch slid along your arms and around to the front of your torso. The extra sensations hardly even registered through the feeling of his mouth on yours until you realized you still couldn’t move while he was cupping your face with one hand, the other leather-encased palm flattening over the confines of your uniform, squeezing at the soft swell of your breasts hidden beneath. 

A low growl into your mouth, a shift of pressure up your sternum, and then his fingers found and curled over your pressed collar. With one purposeful tug, the material popped open, and you gasped.

"Commander," you broke the kiss, your head spinning as his breath immediately blazed against your neck instead. His movements were impatient, uncharacteristically clumsy in their urgency as you felt the material of your top continue to separate all the way down to your cleavage. “Commander, w-we--”

Fuck, it was impossible to think, everything in your brain felt thick with a vibrating fog. You could feel tiny points of rational thought trying to take form, trying to remind you of where you were, of why this was risky. But they were like infant stars peeking through a hungry nebula, unable to solidify before being swallowed again. 

"Fuck, w--” His tongue slowly rode the curve of your jaw, and stars, what were you even going to say? “W-we sho-shouldn’t-" 

“Shouldn’t what?” he purred, smooth fingertips trailing slowly down the bare plane of your sternum and sliding under the open edge of your coat.

A soft whine was all you could muster, broken thoughts dissolving on your tongue the moment he cupped the curve of your breast and scooped it free of your neckline, pushing the fabric aside to let your nipple peak up against the open air. 

The empty street was quiet enough that your breaths seemed to ricochet as they tripped softly over each other, sliding along the walls of the alley and joining the soft buzz of a flickering street lamp farther down. Stars, anyone could be listening-- watching, for all you knew. In a city like this, it was impossible to anticipate the stakes. Rife with the sorts of creatures who took refuge in shadow, even the darkness seemed to betray you, leaving every inch of exposed skin glowing as if the dim moonlight had suddenly adopted all the strength of a Tatooine sun. 

Your heart raced. You scrambled to clutch at the caution left within yourself, for any remaining instinct that would tell you that this was wrong, that you shouldn’t be going along with this. 

But you found no purchase. Your inhibitions were dissolving through your fingers-- dwarfed in Kylo Ren’s shadow, smothered under his hands, the power of his presence atomizing any need for your guarded reluctance and casting it into obsolescence. 

And as you surrendered, suddenly every eye that might be watching, every ear that could be tuned to your pleasure just around a shadowed corner, was like a hit of fucking spice. The thrill of it arched your back, coaxed bolder sounds from your chest that bounced daringly off of the bullet-scuffed duracrete to fade into the darkness of the alley.

Ren gave voice to it first, a growl breaking through the roar between your ears. 

“You’re enjoying this, lieutenant.” A swift yank of your undershirt revealed both of your tits to the damp air, and the chill of it settled wonderfully on the thin sheen of sweat that had gathered under your stiff uniform. The sigh that melted through your lips was as much confirmation as you could provide him. 

“Filthy thing.” His voice was a darkened hiss as he roughly took both of your breasts in his hands. “You’d let me do anything, wouldn’t you? Right here in the fucking street.” 

There was no doubt that he could sense the pleasure soaking your thoughts with every passing second, the heat coiling up through your body, breaking you into soft trembles against the solid seams of durasteel.

Stars, this was wrong. 

But there was something about it--about being pinned up, shameless, tits bared and groped in the middle of a dirty Corellian backstreet like some cheap outer rim whore, that had you feeling freer and fucking hotter than you ever had in your life.

Yes.

He could do anything. Take anything. And right now, you’d fucking give it to him. 

Your teeth sank into your bottom lip, head nodding in desperate submission as your fingers wiggled against their invisible bonds. It was like your body was coming alive for the first time, finally catalyzed to its transition state, now burning and shifting and begging silently for him not to fucking stop touching you. 

“I want to know, little whore--” His hand spread over your bare collarbones, the wide junction of a thumb and forefinger pressing the base of your windpipe. A gasping little moan left you as his lips brushed your jugular, heat striking up through your belly and all the way into your neck when his other hand urged your thighs apart to tease your slit. "I want to know just how far you can take me down this pretty throat."

Everything in you shuddered, and your unrelenting bonds were probably all that held you up against the sudden lack of support that your knees offered. Kylo Ren pressed the tip of one thick finger inside you, barely curling at your soaked entrance. 

“Do you think you can swallow my cock, lieutenant?”

“Fuck. Yes, yes sir, please.” The breathless response left you before you even registered what you were saying, so thick was the need enshrouding your brain. It muddled your hearing, put everything else on a sensory delay to the pulsing heat that slid down and coiled up in your core.

And that’s why you almost didn’t catch the gritted command before the strong presence of his body suddenly drew away from you, leaving your head spinning. 

“Get on your knees.”

The Force evaporated from around your forearms. The loss of physical support nearly made you buckle, your body sagging against the fighter and leaving you to clutch at a ridge of metal for balance. You’d heard him, vaguely, but your brain still felt spectacularly slow. You were having trouble remembering which way was up, blinking against the low light, and the small hesitation was enough. 

In a flash of movement, his saber cleared the clip on his belt, cracking the air in two as it ignited in his hand and leveled to heat your neck. 

"Now.”

For a second, everything was extraordinarily still. Your lungs, your mind, even the faint drizzle of mist seemed to suspend in the air, vaporize around the searing plasma, and equilibrate into a deathly quiet.

The red aura vibrated in your immediate periphery, engulfing your retinas and casting everything around it in near-total blackness, unwavering in its proximity as the cold street pressed your knees. 

A very marked shift took place in the state of your awareness as you knelt, waiting-- feeling. Everything was hazy and warm before, but now. Oh, now, everything was hot, and sharp. 

The snap of plasma echoing through the empty street sounded somehow both hushed and magnified. The gravelly bite of duracrete into your knees was both painful and electrifying. And all you could do was sit here and accept the way Kylo Ren drank you in, just hold absolutely still and let the tip of the saber rotate to your front, the light of it illuminating your bare chest.

And, fuck. Oh, fucking Maker-- 

You were wet. 

Every beat of your heart was an enunciated hit to your core, giving your arousal a wicked edge that cut into every last molecule of your body. Your cunt ached more with every pulse, and yet Ren just held there, his breaths shaking the damp air between you as he gazed at your naked tits under the light of a weapon that could kill you in half an instant.

You were possessed, the danger and thrill of it flooding your skin with intoxicating fire, and in a moment of what might have been either immense bravery or unfathomable stupidity, your hand began to move. 

Very, very slowly, it pulled along your belly, fingers twitching to splay downwards. The saber heated your knuckles, following as you guided it all the way to the apex of your thighs, where you paused. And then you sat back on your heels, spread your knees as far as they would go, and curled your hips forward, letting the crimson light gleam off of the wet shine of your cunt. 

“Fuck,” Ren rasped from the shadows, something delirious and urgent unearthing itself from the gravel of his voice. Somewhere beyond the snapping hum of the blade, you heard the slick sound of leather moving over flesh. “Fuck- touch yourself. Sh-show me--”

But you were already moving. Your fingers slid into the wet heat of your folds, tender with arousal, the flesh plumped up from abuse. You dragged your slick all over yourself, spreading for him, pulling up to circle your neglected clit and letting out a soft sigh at the relief that saturated you in a deluge. 

The cool air did little now to temper the exquisite heat that flooded your body as you pleasured yourself openly for him, whimpering when you felt a familiar swell prime itself deep within you. It brightened with every practiced curl of your fingers, blooming outwards to rival the lightsaber that illuminated you steadily, and it wasn’t long before your thighs began to clench, your hips rocking against the movement of your hand while heady gasps punched your chest, that luminous heat coming closer and closer to a blinding apex.

You began to flutter, tightening with closeness, but the blade shot up under your chin, freezing you in the one movement. 

“Don’t cum.” 

Your heart slammed in your throat, every muscle locking into place where it was. You could feel errant sparks biting your skin, daring you not to move or speak.

And then darkness swallowed you, a hiss of steam resounding as the saber abruptly disengaged. The lingering imprint of it marred your sight, and you gasped when the whirl of movement in front of you turned into a large hand snaking into your hair, hips crowding your face, and the warm, solid length of Kylo Ren’s cock pressing against your cheek. 

You whined, stiff muscles liquefying as you turned your mouth towards it, moisture already welling under your tongue. But his fingers tightened at your scalp, stopping you.

“See what you do to me, little thing?” 

His other hand gripped around his base, letting the weight of his cock thump against your cheek once, twice. Fuck, he was so hard, and if you thought he was big before, it was even more obvious now that he was pressed right up against your face, so close to the soft heat of your mouth.

You nodded and whimpered, letting your cheek brush against his erection, still damp with your own slick. He rocked his hips forward, and the sheer breadth of his stature dwarfed you as he pressed in closer, until your face tilted and your jaw rested up against the hard plane of his adonis belt. Heat seeped into your cheekbone, radiating from the saber hilt strapped deftly back to his hip, like a warm sun to the earth and smoke of his body. 

An absolutely crippling wave of desperation crashed through you then, pulling an audaciously loud moan up tight through your chest that morphed into a pitifully sobbed out, “Please.” 

The hand in your hair gave a firm tug until you were looking straight up his torso, the glint of his eyes just visible to your adjusting sight. He held you there, his strength commanding, voice slipping like dark matter through his vocal cords when he spoke. 

“Are you going to let this whole filthy fucking city hear what a little whore you are?” He rocked your head back and forth by your hair, turning your neck muscles to liquid. “Begging for my cock?” 

You bit your lip, too far gone to deny or assent. Perhaps caution would still be the smart thing, but stars--you didn’t fucking care any more. You’d let every wretched street rat on Corellia hear you beg for him, if it came down to it right now. 

Not trusting yourself to answer verbally, you simply let your mouth fall open so that your wet tongue could drag over the tiny slip of exposed skin above his groin, never once taking your eyes off of his shadowed face. Your reward was a thick groan and a twitch of his cock by your cheek, shooting a hot spasm into your core. Ren huffed out a tense breath. 

“Keep that fucking mouth open.”

He drew back and pumped himself, long and slow right in front of your obediently waiting tongue, black glove squeezing almost too roughly along his shaft until a thick bead of pre cum wept from his slit. Your brow pinched upwards as saliva pooled behind your bottom lip, threatening to drip down onto the duracrete, seep into a blaster hole and add to the memory that this roughened street would keep of you, so soft and wanting, incongruous next to its grit.

Ren stepped forward, obliterating your thoughts as finally, finally, he rested his thick head on your tongue, removing his own hand and letting you test the full weight of him in your mouth. Your moan was almost a sob when you closed your lips and dragged your tongue across his frenulum, letting him feel you, swirling the pre cum from his tip before sliding him deeper into the hot depths of your mouth. 

“Fuck, good girl,” he hissed, resting both hands in your hair, but not controlling. You took him another inch, tongue working to lubricate your path, satisfaction unfurling when his chest heaved at the feeling. The taste of him shot a primal fire through you, equal parts sharp and masculine, the remnants of your own cum leaving a tang on your taste buds. 

Arousal careened through your belly, and you couldn’t help but dip your hand between your thighs, fingers finding your clit stiff and sensitive as your tongue passed over a thick vein.

But he caught your movement, and your hands were immediately wrenched upwards by an invisible strength, both wrists flying up and into the waiting grip of Ren’s palms. You squeaked.

“Impudent thing,” he growled, and wrapped your smaller hands around the base of his cock, securing your grip with a warning squeeze before carding his fingers into your hair again. “Keep them there.” 

You gave a tiny nod and a shallow whimper, briefly mourning for your aching clit yet almost instantly distracted again by a twitch of his shaft on your tongue. Relaxing your jaw, you took him further, letting him begin to feel the tight silk of your throat.

“Fuck--” every muscle in Ren’s body seemed to go rigid enough to rival the durasteel frame of his ship, and his fingers clenched tighter into your hair. “Yes, take it--” he hissed as you slipped back an inch and enveloped him again, relaxing to take him deeper.

You found a steady rhythm like this, gradually acclimating to the feeling of intrusion. It became a little easier with each appreciative sound you drew from the commander, arousal permeating your body’s natural defenses and slackening them, even as your throat began to protest the moment you got about halfway down his cock.

But as hard as you tried to ignore the sensation of breathlessness, your lungs still screamed for air. You got maybe eight or nine good strokes in before your lips drew off of him with an obscene pop, slick hands taking over to work his length while you gasped a few starved breaths. 

It would have been easy to stay like this, jaw slack, lips plump and wet, simply marveling at the hard and beautifully flushed appendage in your palms. But then a finger tapped twice under your chin, breaking your daze with a wordless command that struck an immediate response--your eyes flicked up. 

“Are you determined to test my doubts in your capabilities, lieutenant?” He laid a flat palm under your jaw and ran his thumb over your blushed lips, leather slipping lewdly over saliva. “Or must I teach you everything?”

Your heart struck your pelvic floor, dread and excitement charging up like a shot from a plasma cannon. “N-no. I--” Heat surged into your face. “I me-mean, I, uh--” Fuck, it was stupid to think you were somehow out of hot water. He expected more. Always, always, expected more, and now you were going to have to play your cards carefully. You swallowed against the thundering of your pulse. “I c-can take it, Commander, ple-please--”

“Can you?” He wiggled your jaw slightly in his palm, face tilting until a sliver of moonlight slanted across it like a translucent scar. You tensed, resisting the urge to shrink. “Or should I have selected someone more adequate?”

The plasma charge inside you flared, fusing atoms of dread into something deadlier with the affront. Your teeth gnashed, tension breaking your body into trembles under the strain of caution. “N-no, sir.” A muscle in his face twitched. “Please, I was... I w-was just--”

“Perhaps I should return you to General Quinn,” he said. “I’m sure he would be more than accepting of such inferior talents--”

You lunged, and in a single, smooth stroke, you swallowed his cock straight to the base, your body heaving its protest with a soundless convulsion.

A noise strangled in Ren’s throat, and a firm hand slid around the nape of your neck to hold you there, gagging and completely stripped of any capacity for breath. 

It probably would have been too much for you to handle, were it not for the hot sparks of indignation that quickly soldered each fissure in your resolve. Each one forced you to soften, to accept the agonizing incursion, if nothing else just to prove that you could. 

Relax.

Tears welled as you glanced up, funneling all of your willpower into sacrificing your need for breath. Movement was impossible with him holding you there, but the huge hand on the back of your neck spasmed, and your opportunity struck.

Doe-eyed, you gazed up and swallowed, letting your pharynx flex and ripple around the thick head of him just as hot tears spilled over to soak your cheeks, and one hand curled around to cup him by the balls.

You could almost hear something in him snap with the choked roar he let out, and it made your chest swell even as both of his hands coiled roughly into your hair and locked your head back. You met his stare, fire in your own, and gave him a challenging squeeze. In less than a second, your hands were no longer your own, seized by the Force and shackled down to your thighs, just before his hips drew back and oxygen smacked your lungs with a less than pretty sound. 

He gave you no time to recover before his cock was gagging you again, his rhythm punctuated and slow, each thrust forcing submission from your body. Gravel shifted under your knees as you trembled with all of the muscular tension that you redirected away from your jaw, the coarse pain of it serving as a welcome diversion from the intense sensation of having your throat fucked.

Relax. Control yourself.

Wetness began to streak your face, tears and saliva converging on your chin, and the vague thought shimmered in the back of your mind as to what you must look like right now: a slutty mess completely at your commander’s mercy, drawing choked breaths only when he allowed it, tongue fluttering soft and wet under his thick shaft while your clit fucking throbbed between your legs. But from the broken sound that Ren let out as he watched another violent gag roll through you, you’d have thought it was the hottest thing he’d ever witnessed. 

His grunt bottomed out into a snarl as one hand slid out of your hair, his palm turning outwards while two of his fingers began to curl in a salacious motion.

The fluid sensation of the Force coiled and rippled across your clit at his command, its motions just like your own fingers but even better, making your eyes nearly roll back in your skull. Ren gave a knowing hum as your moan was choked down into your throat by another thrust of his cock, and a bend of his fingers sent a toe-curling rumble over your swollen bundle of nerves. 

“That’s it, lieutenant.”

The sound of his voice slid down your body, settling low in your belly where your orgasm was starting to simmer again. Even the ache in your jaw began to meld into your pleasure, making your head swim and buzz with the renewed promise of climax.

Ren’s breathing started to crack and falter, coming in half-formed curses through his ribs as he continued to steadily fuck your mouth, and it was clear that he must have been leaning on the edge of closeness for some time as well. You could feel it in the way his cock pulsed on your tongue, the way his stomach began to tense and flex.

Fuck, the thought of it--Kylo Ren, this grand enigma steeped in poise and brutality, a man who could obliterate life with a flex of his hand, was about to pull you apart by the threads, shatter you into pleasure with that same power and cum down your fucking throat. 

The wave of arousal that slammed you was almost maddening, and it was all you could do to flatten your tongue over your teeth and swallow thickly around his cock once more before everything was coiling up tight and fast inside you. 

His voice shot you to the precipice with a gritted out, “Fucking whore, let me f-feel you cum--”

There was a moment before it hit, like the way a seismic charge pulls in all of the sound around it into a single devastating point, and then with a choked sob you shattered, pulses of ecstasy ripping through your body while your cunt spasmed and wept its bliss onto the street with each unrelenting surge of the Force at your clit, wringing convulsions from you until you began to shake from the intensity of your orgasm.

You blinked the fresh tears from your eyes just in time to see Ren snarl above you, jaw tight and hips stuttering as the tension in his body threatened to snap, echoing in a rough pull of your hair. Pain seared your scalp as he pulled you off of his cock just in time for the first jets of his release to coat your tongue.

He groaned, a harsh sound that rivaled your surroundings in its sheer impurity, and he wrenched your head back further, working his length while thick ropes hit your open, gasping mouth, splattering your lips and chin with his bitter taste. He was grunting, swearing, panting through clenched teeth, and then--

Your name. Not your title, not a mocking belittlement of your rank, but your name, cracked through his lips, a desperate sound half-buried in the delirious stream of filth.

Before you could even process what you just heard, he sharply released your hair and stepped back, your invisible restraints dissipating and leaving you to crumple over on yourself, gasping and trembling and painted in cum. 

Slowly, through the ring of pleasure and shock in your ears, you rubbed your sore jaw, before using your fingers to gather the warm mess around your lips. But just when you were about to slip them into your mouth, his voice stopped you, a graveled whisper from the shadows.

“Look at me.”

Breathless, you looked up, suddenly conscious of how plump and stained your face felt as the cool air began to dry the tears on your cheeks. Ren had already adjusted himself to decency, but your walls still fluttered with aftershocks of pleasure at the sight of his huge stature, swelling with deep breaths like a sated, black tide under the moon. You gazed at him in the dim light, holding his stare while you dipped your slippery fingers into your mouth and dutifully sucked the cum off of them, admittedly letting your tongue lick out along your knuckles just a little more than you probably needed to. 

Ren’s nostrils flared, and he took a few strides in your direction. When his hand came out towards your face you flinched, but he simply curled his fingers under your chin and slowly passed his thumb over a spot on your cheek that you had missed, expressionless as he pushed it through your parted lips. He watched you like this for the smallest moment before he drew away again.

Your mind felt blank; wiped and recalibrated by the staggering intensity of whatever your life had become over the past few hours. Exhaustion settled on you with the weight of a freighter. The one thing still tethering you to reality was the sensation of oxygen drawing in and out of your lungs, sweeter now than it had ever felt in your life despite the taste of grease and rust in the air. 

Stiffly, you began to readjust your clothing, pulling your undershirt and coat back over your breasts before beginning the painful process of climbing to your feet. As shaky and sore as they were, your legs somehow supported you, and you managed to wrestle your pants back up over the curve of your ass, only fumbling a little to secure them around your waist. 

For some reason it was only after you were covered again that you even thought to look around the alley, a brief pang of fear seizing your ribs, but it was just as still as when you’d landed. Just as empty, just as quiet. Maybe even moreso.

You glanced back around to Ren where he stood by the connecting beam of the ship’s wing, still and ruminative, a sleek device raised in his hand. After a moment, he pressed a button and spoke into it.

"Report."

A crackle of static peeled through.

“Have eyes, dropping in,” you could faintly hear the voice on the other end say, and a spear of alarm jabbed you back to sudden alertness. Ren's eyes flicked to you, his face stone. 

“Clear to land,” the commander returned through the commlink, before tucking it back into his pocket. 

Your heart pumped uneasily against your ribs, your face surely a canvas of confusion. Ren cast you a blank look before grabbing a metal ridge on the ship and smoothly disappearing into the cockpit again. 

Okay, this was getting unnerving. But the whine of an engine snapped your attention to the sky, where a standard-issue TIE fighter was descending with predatory swiftness upon the alley, its headlights killed, swooping into a hover just behind Ren’s Silencer. Half-shielded by the wing already, you recoiled instinctively into the shadow of it, as if you could find safety in the way it jutted forward like a protective talon.

You jumped when heavy boots hit the ground next to you again, looking up to see a masked Kylo Ren. He watched the other fighter land, standing silently as its cockpit popped open with a whisper of hydraulics. A shadowed figure leapt out, and you took a few steps backwards as it strode in your direction, vaulting the wing-support beam of the Silencer in a smooth motion before coming to a halt in front of the commander.

“Ren,” a dusky voice rasped through the tinny filter of a vocoder. He was masked as well, similar yet altogether different from the commander he addressed; rougher-looking, shrouded in strange black armor. As you stared, his head quirked, the mask tilting to settle on you. “Who’s this?”

[tragicallytron]

So, this Cutler guy... (CHP 1)

I have made Tron fic.............  Enjoy!

There’s a small city on the grid. If you were to hop on a Light Rail system in Argon, it’d take you a couple of hours to reach it. You might be surrounded by several programs who are returning to said city--their home--who wear these scowls, these tattered clothes which they deemed their ‘best’, and cold eyes that turn to frigid glares the moment you glance at them. They give anyone more than enough information to know what sort of city they’re about to enter. If you tried to get there with a speedboat, going in a straight line to the right, you’d know when you’d be getting close. You’ll navigate through towering scraps of metal and waste that seem to get more and more hazardous the more you progress, and there’s this odor… This foul, foul odor that hangs over the sea and only gets stronger. The smell always hits you when you think you’ve finally gotten used to it. Of course, you could always drive there, but why would you do that? Does sitting through the hours of traffic, because some reckless programs leaving that terrible city couldn’t be bothered to pay attention to the road and crashed head first into a truck, sound more appealing to you than the sickening sea and the terrible train?

Don’t go to that city.

It’s not worth it.

There’s no appeal.

If the smell of smoke and burnt rubber doesn’t ward you away, the programs there certainly will. They’ll corner you, scam you, threaten you, do what they can to shake you up because they know you don’t belong, and that’s the only reason they need to treat you terribly. They can’t even take care of each other. It’s not uncommon to see programs become good friends one cycle, then try to derezz each other the next. Store owners know how desperate others are to get their hands on any sort of weapon or advancement on their discs, so they charge high. If you need medical attention, expect a ridiculous fee and mediocre treatment. You’re better off making your own weapons, caring for yourself, and trudging on. Friends here aren’t worth the hassle.

The only thing keeping this town together are, strangely enough, Clu’s guards. They roam the streets in clusters, immediately putting a stop to any fights they see, or tearing apart any program who’s stupid enough to try and take them head on. Some people have learned where they patrolled at which hours to avoid them, others like to test their luck and throw chunks of metal at them from the rooftops.

However, even the guards know better than to march through the heart of the city, where the buildings cluster together, alleyways get tighter, and the programs get tougher. The inner city felt less like a ‘city’, and more like a horrible maze; a claustrophobe’s nightmare. You’d have to squeeze your way through the jagged paths between the structures, some need to suck their gut to get through, and it’s so incredibly easy to get lost, even if you’ve lived your entire life there. One thick street can branch out into tens of other thin, tangling paths that all seem to never end.

Scraps of metal hang over the ledges of these buildings, on the verge of tipping over and crushing the next unfortunate program who happens to be passing under them. The metal blocks off most of the sky, making the sparks from torn wires and the orange lights from windows the only proper source of illumination.

It’s a miracle this city’s still in one piece, it’s a miracle people still visit this city, it’s a miracle people still live in this city.

Nothing good has ever happened here. And nothing probably ever will.

~ ~ ~ ~

“Nice...” A program said as he observed a small, black, thin cylinder in his hand, which had blue light rings that stopped just before both ends. He pressed the blue button in the center and the ends shot out, creating a staff just a foot shorter than him. Two, sharp pointed tips appeared at the ends and glowed a bright blue as well; white sparks were coming from them. “Real nice.”

“Yeah, try not to trash this place with your new toy.” The other program at the desk said. He turned his chair around to face his client and brushed the thick, black hair out of his face.

“Relax, I won’t.” The customer retracted the rod and held it firmly with his long, skinny fingers. His whole figure was like that; lanky. The staff suits him.

“You really outdid yourself this time. I bet this bad boy’ll work as good as it looks! Heck, it even goes with these suckers!” The customer showed off his silver wrist gauntlets, the other program rolled his eyes. They were these thick, metal bands with blue streaks that covered up half of his forearms, leaving his hands visible.

‘They’re worth a lot, you know!’ He would always brag out loud whenever given the chance, as if it wouldn’t make him a target for mugging. He must’ve been ripped off. They looked clunky, quite frankly. It did match the silver streaks in his dark gray hair, but that’s not necessarily a compliment.

“Right, your pricey jewelry. Cool.” The other program leaned forward, “Speaking of price…”

“I gotcha, I gotcha! You know I’d never leave you hanging like that, especially when you make me some fine weapons like--”

“I’d like a portion of the payment now, Reggie.” The program shot up from his seat, glaring down at Reggie with his cold, blue eyes.

Reggie shrunk down, “Right! Gimme just a minute ‘ere--”

He dug around in his other pocket and pulled out a thin wad of cash. He handed it over to the inventor, who snatched it away, his glare remaining.

“Li--” Reggie cleared his throat, “Like I said! A quarter this cycle, then another after a few more, I’ll pay you off in no time! When’s the last time I’ve ever left you empty handed?” He gave a crooked smile. “You’ve been real close before.” The program said. Reggie couldn’t see their mouth, it was hidden by the black and orange turtleneck, but he just knew there was a scowl under there.

“Right, I know, but--I need to go!” Reggie started heading to the door of the store.

“Thanks again Harm, and don’t you worry…” He said as he opened the door, “You’ll get your money in time! Like always!”

Reggie slammed the door, leaving Harm all alone.

Harm stood there and watched Reggie through his orange tinted window until he was out of sight. He then made his way back to his desk. His workplace--just like his attire--was mostly made up of shades of grays with bits of bright orange to pop out. His clothes, however, were cooler grays, while his place was mostly warmer.

He approached his desk, one of the few pieces of furniture that was oil-black instead of that dark, warm gray; the other furnitures being tall, wide shelves placed on both sides of his desk, creating his own personal cubicle. He pulled open the thin drawer and shoved all the tools, nails, and shards of glass into there without care. Now that he finished his commission, he could finally focus on upgrading his friend’s wings, and he needed a ‘clean’ workplace.

His desk was the only thing he ever cleaned anymore. The rest of his place isn’t a ‘dump’, but it isn’t absolutely spotless either. If a program happened to be looking through the big window right beside his front door, they could easily see the wires hanging from the ceiling, missing tiles, pipes of various lengths and widths he has leaning against the corners, the piles of scraps and junk he has laying on top of counters and boxes that he uses for his creations. It’s real easy to trip over something and crack your head open, especially with all the sharp edges out in the open.

Two thin strips of orange lights outlined the bottoms of the walls, while one thin one outlined the ceiling. There were a few other strips that crawled their ways across the walls, but most of them were cut off due to chunks of his creations flying all over the place during the process. You can even see the faint orange cracks from where they hit.

The other part of his place that was lit orange was his desk. He has a few small lamps placed on and above his workspace. Sure, he could just move the shelf on his left side that’s covering his largest window, but he wasn’t too fond of the wonderfully bright, headache-inducing orange light that the city produced.

He turned on and grabbed the top of his small, black desk lamp, and adjusted it so it’d shine on the floor, where plenty of blueprints and crumbled up papers laid. He knelt down and pushed a few sheets aside until he spotted the messy sketches of a wingsuit. He picked it up, making sure not to smudge any of the graphite, and placed it on the desk’s top.

“Tape measure, utility knife, and the suit…” Harm mumbled to himself as he walked around the right shelf. On the other side were a couple of dark gray lockers he once found in an abandoned building, they were nice for extra storage. He kept repeating the three materials as he scanned the inside. He eventually spotted his utility knife with the blade uncovered and buried underneath his other tools, and the tape measure a few shelves down, still unraveled. He made sure not to prick his fingers--not that it would hurt, he was wearing long, thick, black gloves--while grabbing the knife, and cussed to himself when several spare screws fell and scattered all over the ground when he pulled out the tape measure.

Harm then turned around, facing the small storage behind him. The room was a lighter sort of warm gray compared to his main room, and it had a small window--big enough for him to crawl through--that wasn’t as obnoxiously bright since another building was placed in front of it. There were plenty of messy shelves full of tools, smaller inventions, and items Harm managed to snag, along with containers on the ground stacked on top of each other, filled with who knows what. Some of his older, bigger inventions were in here, covered haphazardly with raggedy cloaks, wires sprawled out, definitely not the safest storage in the city.

Below the small window was his friend’s wingsuit, carefully folded and placed on top of a container. Ant, his friend, asked if he could improve it, to make it faster.

“I wanna keep up with Tesler’s ship. It might be huge but it’s real fast.” Ant stated in the past.

“I just think it’d be funny to see his reaction when he sees me keeping up with him.”

Tesler is Ant’s boss, and it’s honestly a miracle she hasn’t been derezzed. She’s openly bragged about being late or skipping meetings to hang around with the enemies, she’s supposed to gather information and distribute it promptly, but she spends hours flying around the grid.

Harm once asked how she still has her job, to which Ant responded with: “I just give him a snippet of what he wants to hear seconds before he derezzes me, then it gets him all frustrated and he HAS to keep me alive to hear the rest. It’s real funny, I need to show you his angry face one day.”

Harm approached the table and unfolded the black and bright blue-lined suit before placing it on the top, letting the long flaps dangle off the edge. It looked like a regular outfit, it had long sleeves with holes at the end to stick your thumbs through, and a rather large hood to fit over Ant’s thick hair, but where the thumb-holes were, there were tiny buttons you could press that’d change the black flaps into blue wings. That’s the part he’s currently working on.

Just before he could begin his work, there was a loud banging on his door. Whoever that program was was shaking the door--and the rest of his place--with each booming, desperate knock.

That’s probably Ant.

They were supposed to meet tomorrow, but she tends to arrive unannounced to share the latest updates about her job, or to ramble about whatever. She usually likes to kick the door open and announce her presence, so this door banging was an improvement. Maybe she just really wanted her upgraded wings. Harm rolled his eyes and trudged to the door, the knocking wasn’t stopping, and it was getting hard to hear his own thoughts.

“I told you,” Harm started as he got closer to the door, “your wings won’t be ready for another six cycles at least--”

The door swung open and slammed right into Harm’s face, causing him to stumble back.

The program immediately shut the door behind themselves. Harm shook his head and scanned them quickly. This wasn’t Ant. They were tall--taller than him, definitely--and burly. The helmet covering their face was just plain black, Ant had drawn a toothy grin on her’s. They were breathing quickly.

“Hey,” Harm grit his teeth, “how about you--”

“Hide me.” The program said quickly. Their voice was deep and muffled.

That caught Harm off guard. That sounded like an order.

“So you think you can just hit me in the face with my own door and--” The program grabbed Harm by his arms, his grip was strong. This wasn’t a program he could shove out of here with ease.

“Hide me.” They said again.

“Guards are following me, if you help me lose track of them, I’ll get out of your sight.”

“Guards?!” Harm jumped. He didn’t have the cleanest record here, the only reason he hasn’t faced any consequences was because the guards hardly ever went here, and now they could arrive at his front door?!

“You can’t--I’m not gonna--!” Harm was too shocked to think straight. He grabbed the program’s hands and dragged them to the lockers.

He frantically opened all three of them--he knew one of them had enough space to fit someone in there. The middle one!

Harm didn’t know if he was getting jumpy, or if guards were getting closer to his building, but he heard more voices. He wasn’t taking any chances. He shoved the program into the locker--which was nearly impossible for this program’s size--and slammed it shut.

‘They aren’t stupid.’ Harm told himself.

Does he really expect the guards to not search this place--that the program they’re chasing after just magically disappeared? What if they took HIM instead?

Harm looked back into his storage room and at the small window. He hurried inside and picked up a heavy wrench, reached his arm back, then chucked it at the window. A loud crash came, and glass flew everywhere.

He heard his door being swung open. He only has a few more seconds.

Harm then grabbed the nearest shelf and ripped it down, leading to it--and the other shelves above it--collapsing and crashing down on him. He yelped loudly, trying to sound as pathetic as possible, and got the attention of the guards.

The large, black-armored programs with long pikes in their hands rushed over and stopped right in front of the storage room’s entrance.

Harm tried to sound as scared as he could, “Th… The scary program attacked me and… and then escaped!” He pointed towards the shattered window.

The guards looked at the scene, then at one another, muttering amongst themselves before leaving. Not even bothering to help Harm out.

They slammed the door once they left, and for the next few moments, it was silent.

Once the coast was clear, the other program opened the locker and pushed themself out, grunting.

They took off their helmet, revealing their dark skin and black crew cut. His expression seemed that of displeasure, but after he shoved the shelves off of Harm and helped him to his feet, a smirk formed on his face.

“ ‘Scary program’?” He repeated, brushing Harm off.

He’s smiling? Yeah, this is probably soooo funny for the guy that didn’t get nearly crushed by junk, had to break his own property, and nearly put themselves at risk to help some random program.

“Yeah, you’re welcome.” Harm growled and pulled away.

The program’s smile dropped when he raised a brow, “Thank you. Sorry for all of this. Your store was the first place I spotted, and I needed to lose them.”

Harm stared at him for a moment, looked back at the storage room, then back at the program.

“What’s your name?” Harm asked as he made his way to his desk. He grabbed the first pen he saw, clicked it, then tore out a strip of paper.

The program followed behind, “Cutler.”

“Congratulations, Cutler.” Harm replied, jotting his name down. “You owe me a new window.”

Cutler blinked, “I’m sorry?”

“I don’t know if you think it’s easy to get money around these parts, but it’s not. You owe me at least 200.”

“Now hold on, you chose to break your own window.” Cutler argued.

“Yeah, and if I hadn’t done that, the guards would’ve searched this place. You’re welcome, again.” Harm said.

“I’m not even from this city, I just came here to tell others about Tr--”

Harm cut him off, “Well, if you’re not willing to pay, I’m sure the guards would give me a wonderful sum of money if I turned you in…”

“Alright.” Cutler stepped in, “I’ll find a way to get your money.”

“Great.” Harm raised his brows, “Glad we could come to an agreement. I expect my payment sometime next week.”

“Fine.” Cutler said coldly, facing away from the other program as he approached the front door. “Next week.”

Harm watched Cutler crack the door open, scan the area, then put his helmet back on before running through the streets. What a shame, not even a goodbye.

Whatever Cutler’s determined to tell others about must be important, especially if he’s trying to get word to spread in this terrible, terrible city.

[grimoire-of-geekery]

Wicked: a Gamer’s Look at Morality

(pic is from an Etsy store, I really want these dice, they’re freaking gorgeous)

A few years back, I was one of a handful of admin on a roleplaying sim on Second Life, and I was put in charge of teaching basic roleplaying skills to people new to our game.  There’d been a shift in our rule structure, a move towards a more formal rule set very similar to Dungeons and Dragons, and I had to adapt my workshop to reflect that.

Some of you who know me are already cringing on my behalf.  Yep, I’m one of those gamers who loves tabletop roleplaying games, but just... really dislikes D&D.  A lot of my friends already know about my laundry list of complaints (unrelatable magic systems, the ridiculous idea of “evil gods,” unrealistic rules... it’s a long list), and I’m not going to dig too deep into it for this story.  Suffice to say, I have some opinions, and we’ll leave it there.

Ordinarily, I leave my list at home, and just try to avoid playing standard D&D.  This time, however, I had a bunch of friends counting on me to help our players adapt to the new rules, and that meant dealing with some of my prejudices, and turning some of my objections into experiments.  One such experiment, and arguably the most successful one of the set, was an experiment in D&D morality alignment.

I should preface all of this by saying that I told this story in a shorter form on a Facebook group I follow, a DnD players’ group, and that’s what got me thinking about it and wanting to share it with all of you.  Yes, I do realize the irony in being a member of a group centered around a game with which I have so many issues.  I’m a geek, we’re allowed to be inconsistent in the pursuit of our fandoms.  Anyway, someone asked about alignment, and it brought up the whole story for me again, so I’m sharing it with you now (and I’ve also shared it on Facebook), as I feel it’s kind of relevant these days.

Now, those of you who are familiar with D&D already know what the alignments are, but for those new to it: every character you play gets a moral alignment based on a combination of two sets of three traits- Lawful, Neutral, and Chaotic, and Good, Neutral, or Evil.  You can play a Lawful Evil character, a Neutral Good character, a Neutral Neutral (called True Neutral) character, a Chaotic Good character, and so on.

Dungeonmasters and storytellers and writers have expounded for years on what those alignments really mean.  Before we nerds had “what is your Hogwarts House?” quizzes and discussions, we had “what D&D alignment are you?” debates.  And frankly, I always hated the whole system.  What rational person would willingly choose to align themselves with “evil?”  How the hell are you going to find someone who’s objectively “good,” or “neutral” for that matter?  And how about the whole “lawful” vs. “chaotic” concept?  These are none of them rational or practical character motivations or personality frameworks, and they afford players the ability to become unrepentant murderhobos far too easily, to the point where there’s a whole genre of roleplaying centered around that mentality called “hack n slash.”  Like, that’s part of the appeal for some people.  I don’t get it, I don’t enjoy it, and it bothers me enough that I decided to change things around with our new players.

We had a character sheet and some various “character HUDs” that allowed players to use abilities like in a video game, with special effects and such.  They came with an alignment choice.  That alignment choice was set up with a grid of nine cards, each with two letters.  Lawful Good wasn’t spelled out, it was just “LG.”  Likewise, Neutral Evil was “NE.”

This gave me an idea.  A WICKED idea.

I sat my players down, and said to them, “forget what you know about alignments, I’m changing the rules.  We’ll choose your alignment after you design your character.”  They went about the business of designing who they were going to play in our game.  At the end, they were to choose an alignment, based solely on what they thought those letters meant.

They chose.  One guy chose LE because he wanted to play an evil character who still played by the rules.  Another girl chose CN because she wanted, and I quote, “to do whatever she wanted without concern for morality.”  All of the players finished their choices, and that’s when I unveiled the surprise.This is what I told them:

Those of you who chose an E, congratulations, E= Elphaba.  You each get a small starting advantage of some kind- a power boost, like a feat or an extra cantrip.  It’s small, but useful.  However, you also gain an uncanny mark which puts you at a social disadvantage, causing people to vilify you or be intimidated.  Good for intimidation checks, bad for making friends.

Those of you who chose an N, N= Nessarose.  You get a physical disadvantage that causes people to infantilize you.  You may choose a magical method to circumvent the physical side of that disadvantage, but you can’t get rid of the social aspects of it.  Bad for intimidation, good for getting people to feel sorry for you.

Those of you with a G, congrats, you’re all Glinda.  You get a social advantage with strings attached, and a single fatal mental flaw, causing you to miss certain information and misjudge things.  You will be good at making friends and manipulating people, but you’ll also be dependent upon them.  Choose what social group you’re connected to now.

My final declaration: your letter determines what kinds of options you have.  Glindas can’t make decisions that are only available to Nessaroses or Elphabas, and vice versa with all three.  You are limited in your scope, and you will have to deal with the consequences of your actions in a way that’s in keeping with your alignment.  And no, you can’t just choose a new alignment, you’ll have to change it in character through story.

Suddenly, I had a bunch of players who thought they were done with their character creation, scrambling to figure out how to revamp their sheet and make their characters playable.  Naturally, I got a number of “it’s not fair” complaints, and one player stormed out and threw a tantrum.  Eventually, though, we had a large chunk of people with characters which had a lot more intricacy and detail woven into their design than they had previously attempted.  We had players who were actually excited to play with the others, because they no longer knew which way their character would go.

I had left the whole “lawful/neutral/chaotic” thing alone, so people could use it as a touchstone in their behavior choices.  I also gave them the option of changing their alignment in character, with the understanding that the changes would cause them to lose whatever advantages their previous alignment granted them.

The axiomatic side of things actually helped some of the players understand character motives and moral choice, which was awesome.  They learned that the letters are in that order for a reason- Lawful Good instead of Good Lawful, because the axiomatic aspect was about choosing for oneself, and the moral aspect was for how one deals with one’s consequences.

People who are good aren’t people who only ever do good.  People make mistakes, they screw up, they lose their footing or have bad judgment or get confused or experience temporary states of insanity.  People who are evil aren’t people who only ever do evil.

Being “good” is about accountability, about accepting that not everything is about us.  A “good” person is someone who chooses to accept that their choices affect the world in ways they cannot always predict, and that they will one day have to pay the piper for their actions.  They accept their accountability for their actions, they endeavor (rationally, and in a way that serves them as much as anyone else) to make the world a better place for everyone, even if it’s just in small ways.

A “neutral” person is someone unconcerned with consequences.  Maybe they just are in it for the experience, maybe they see no moral quandary with their actions or their situation.  Maybe they’re not able to see the longer view, or they haven’t had a reason to look yet.  Maybe they’re not in a phase of their life where they’re interested in responsibility.  Neutral isn’t a way to drive though.  It’s the setting in your car for “not going anywhere.”  A person is neutral when they’re reactive, and they’re often not thinking about whether their reactions are acceptable or not.

Conversely, an “evil” person is someone who refuses to be accountable.  They don’t just ignore consequences, they aren’t ever wrong, and their constant efforts are towards advantage and maintaining their position at the top of the heap.  They don’t have to answer to anyone for anything they do, not even themselves.  Maybe they have a nihilistic “nothing matters anyway” philosophy about the world.  Maybe they’re convinced that the ends justify the means.  The difference between them and the other types is, their choices are corrupting and make the world a little harder to live in for everyone involved.  Not that they care, they sleep just fine, thanks.

Now, I have been all three of these people at one point in my life, and I’ve learned that there aren’t good or evil people, just choices and consequences and how you deal with both.  I’ve learned that I’m pretty much never okay with being a neutral person, it stresses me out.  I’ve also learned that I’m not fond of evil at all, because I genuinely like life and the world we live in.  So, good it is, as often as possible, even if it’s just in small ways.

I think it’s important, especially now, for us to recognize that chaos can be good, that law can be evil (and obviously vice versa), and that being neutral is rarely the way forward.  Nobody who strives to make the world better for themselves or those they care about ever thinks they’re doing evil.  And, they’re right, because they’re not doing evil or good.  Good and evil are in the consequences, they’re in how they’re going to deal with the fallout of their mistakes, or how they’re going to handle their success or good fortune.

Those of you looking for good in the world?  Do good, even if it’s small.  Don’t worry about being perfect, focus on making a small difference and making the world a better place.  I promise you, it’s never a bad choice.  And if you have to get a little Wicked to do it, that’s fine.  Chaos can be good.  So can law.  And only those who don’t value good would not try to make good out of both.

Addendum: maybe this is important, maybe not, but out of twelve players I instructed in that class (I went back and counted names in my records), none of them ever tried to change their alignment.  They all became very fond of their character’s personality and identity, and felt no need to change what they’d fought hard to develop and understand.  When a person’s identity is in question, it can often become a fight for survival to change one’s behavior.  To be different means that the old self dies, and nobody takes death well.  I think that might be useful information for some of us right now.  For me, I’m keeping in mind that good and evil are about consequences, and I’m striving to make sure that any fighting I do, whether for my own identity or for the safety of what I love, will be towards making this world a better place, especially for those who have a hard time finding safety or hope.

[spacetimewraithwrites-archive]

Requested by @pen-in-hand, all the even numbers of this ask game. The rest is under the cut!

02. What is one of your character’s biggest insecurities? Are they able to hide it easily or can others easily exploit this weakness?

Warren struggles with his self-worth in general. He often feels like he has no place in the universe, that he doesn’t belong, and he’s pretty good at hiding it from people who don’t know him really well (or, you know...those who can read his feelings just by touching his skin UWU lol)

04. What are their favorite traits about their lover? (one psychological and one physical)

It goes without saying that Warren is enamored with almost every part of Thrive mentally and physically, but his favorite physical trait would probably be his eyes (that’s something I include in a lot of my writing...I have a thing for characters with things for eyes lmao. mostly green and blue, too....huh). He loves their color and the fact that he can read him pretty darn well despite the fact that Thrive is very good at masking his true mental state.

I know it said one of each but I’d say he loves Thrive’s hands as much as he favors his eyes. He’s quite fond of their shape and bone structure, as well as the fact that when they’re not completely upending the laws of physics they’re twitching or flexing as if he’s not sure what to do with them at any given time.

Psychologically, the biggest thing that attracts Warren to Thrive is his intelligence. Over eight thousand years of knowledge exists within him and he’s extremely adept at putting that knowledge and wisdom to good use, and that’s a big turn-on for Warren lmao.

06. Do they have any hobbies that their lover finds unusual, odd, or otherwise annoying?

Hmm...Warren’s only real hobbies are coding/programming and dancing, and I think because Thrive comes from a planet and culture that never discovered the impact of dance, he finds it a bit unusual. More intriguing than annoying, I believe. He’ll humor Warren with a slow dance sometimes (twice in the books so far, once during a pretty emotionally heavy scene in...Eternal? maybe? maybe Aurora. I dunno yet. and once leading into their first big love scene in Rebirth).

08. What is, perhaps, their biggest flaw? Are they aware of this or oblivious to it?

Warren’s biggest flaw may be a little bit subjective but in my opinion, it’s the fact that he’s so willing to throw himself into the fire for good causes. His jumping headfirst into being on Thrive’s side before they even met, running headlong into the Milky Way war, going against Thrive’s explicit wishes (orders. they were orders.) and ███████ ███ ██ █████████, that kinda thing.

10. Is your character more feminine or masculine?

He’s more masculine in the “traditional” sense, but he’s not ashamed of his more “feminine” qualities. He’s been brought to tears on a few occasions and it’s important to him to maintain a good channel of open communication and honesty when it comes to emotions within any kind of relationship.

Except, you know...with Brayden when it comes to Thrive lmao WHOOPSIE

12. Is there some particular talent, skill, or attribute that they simply could not give up?

His gift with computers and tech has always kinda been expendable to him, he loves doing it but if he woke up one day and forgot how to do any of it he wouldn’t be as torn up as, say, one day he woke up and forgot how to dance. He got through his teenage years (though he almost didn’t) because of dance, and he could never in a million years willingly give that up.

14. Do they live alone or with family? How do they feel about their family/roommates?

If you were to get smartass-y, for like 99% of the first two books he lives with the entire universe since he technically is homeless. The once-uninhabited Tournaltis becomes his home in book 3, and while he doesn’t spend much time there over the course of the next books, it’s always an option in the background.

He ends up with seventy-one roommates and while I can’t say...well, anything about them (other than Thrive obvs), I can and will say that he isn’t sure what to make of them, in the most affectionate way possible lol.

16. Is your character the athletic type or more of a couch potato? What are some sports/games that they like?

Warren isn’t much of a sports guy, but he’s also not really a couch potato. He loves the outdoors and doesn’t like being cooped up in one place for too long, which is why being put up in the Destiny is especially hard on him. He doesn’t mind spaceships so much since they’re always moving from point A to point B.

18. What kind of home would they want to live in? Where would they place this abode?

To be true, his dream home is his grandparents’ cabin in Alaska. Off the grid for the most part, deep in the forest, right by the lake...’kay maybe not the lake so much, but he’s a loner at heart and always will be.

20. Does your character like animals? What are some of their favorite animals? Would they want pets? What about mythological creatures?

Warren doesn’t mind animals, but he’s not a big pet person. Interestingly, I think his favorite animal is the desert lights that come out at night over the beach on Tournaltis. They’re phosphorescent orange glowing insect-like creatures that float in the air over the shore, stretching from the water all the way back to the cliff face. He thinks they’re so interesting and they create a beautiful landscape, especially when the sky is clear and the Milky Way makes an appearance.

22. What kind of tattoos, piercings, birthmarks, freckles, and other such unique physical features do they have?

He’s still got a hole in his right ear (I think, yikes) from when he was fourteen and got it pierced, though he hasn’t worn an earring since, and he wouldn’t mind a tattoo if he ever came across a memorable or one with enough meaning. He’s got various freckles on different parts of his body, but no birthmarks.

24. In their own words, how would your character describe what their lover is like?

“Full of love and passion, unbelievable wisdom and an overwhelming sense of spiritual righteousness that only doesn’t come off as arrogance because he himself does not seem to be able to cope with the fact that he can’t save everyone in the universe.”

26. What is their lover like sexually? How do they feel about their lover’s quirks, needs, etc?

Thrive is not a sexual being normally. In fact, he’s only interested in the act when he’s physically interacting with someone who’s feelin’ some type of way, but he gets enjoyment out of Warren’s satisfaction and his unique emotional signature, so truthfully he only does things for him as they both equally benefit.

Warren feels a little guilty about this since he’s hardwired to believe that it’s important to make sure all parties are left feeling taken care of during intimacy...it takes a bit for him to get used to the fact that Thrive gets his kicks from him getting his kicks, lmao

28. If your character became a celebrity, what would they be famous for?

Well...he kinda is a celebrity? At least in the year 2272. I mean...he helped save the galaxy for cryin’ out loud. Truthfully not as well-known at Thrive, but the textbooks all mention Warren at some point.

30. When it comes to the arts (music, film, theater, etc), what does your character like?

He likes mostly indie stuff and some hip-hop and rock, both residual from his middle- and high-school years. He surprisingly doesn’t watch a lot of movies. He can appreciate art and actually dabbled a bit in painting when he was a kid, but he ultimately decided it was better left to those with a talent for it.

32. If your character’s lover offered to take them out on a dream date, what would they want to do?

Warren is pretty classically romantic in the sense that just some time under the moon(s) and stars is perfectly fine with him.

I’ve been thinking of including a scene in like, Eternal or something that likens to Mass Effect 3′s Citadel DLC...I kinda wanna put Warren and Thrive on a dinner-and-activity sort of date on the Node and play with how uncomfortable or surprisingly comfortable they may and/or may not be in that situation. Also kinda for a purpose as they’d be discussing the goings-on and their next plan or whatever.

34. Does your character have favorite foods? (breakfast, lunch, dinner, dessert, snacks, etc)

Warren likes all food at all times. Really, that’s truly it lmao

36. Does your character have any medical conditions? Are they serious or minor? Do they affect their day to day life?

He doesn’t have any medical conditions that I can think of off the top of my head...well, I mean...there may or may not be some stuff after Rebirth....

38. What kind of weather does your character like? Cloudy skies, rainy days, sunshine, etc?

He’s particularly fond of cloudy, snowy or rainy weather where you just wanna curl up under a blanket and sleep.

40. Does your OC have any guilty pleasures they enjoy? Hobbies, past times, music, etc that they wouldn’t want known by others?

Not really. Warren feels (like I do) that anything you enjoy should be done without shame, within reason.

42. Is there anything in your character’s past that they regret, haunts them, or they wish they could change?

He does regret how he could’ve left his grandparents. He regrets putting them through the horror of almost losing him, especially not that long after losing their son and their daughter-in-law to illnesses.

Not saying goodbye to the rest of his family, or anyone really, before the end of Destiny is a big one. Everything that happened on the Destiny, definitely.

44. Is there a particular event that would emotionally devastate your character?

WELP. I can’t quite...HUH. I can’t exactly...well, I can’t talk about it lol

Maybe losing Thrive somehow????????? and I cannot confirm nor deny that this happens. lmao

46. What is some random affectionate thing that your character always does to their lover?

He calls him “babe” a lot, which like...always makes my knees weak ngl lol

Also, he likes to try to get ahead of Thrive’s needs, waiting in their room to give him neck rubs after a stressful day on Tournaltis, for example. Or letting Thrive reach into his mind to be reassured or comforted or whatever it is he’s looking for at the time.

He also loves to flirt with him because his reactions are amusing lmao

48. Is there anything in particular that would ignite your character’s jealousy? Or does your character not get envious?

Warren is the most jealous before he’s officially in a relationship with Thrive. After that threshold’s crossed, not so much. His feelings toward Sussa in regards to Thrive before fully understanding the nature of their situation is uhh not great.

I mean sure, if he saw Thrive mackin’ on someone else right in front of his face he’d have QUESTIONS....

But he trusts him and knows that they could talk through anything if feelings shifted or began leaning a certain way.

50. If your character confessed love to their crush, boyfriend, girlfriend, etc, what would they say?

Warren would say, “I’m crazy about you. Insanely, tragically in love with you.”

And Thrive would say nothing. Cuz that’s canon lmao

[soyosauce]

Systemic Trauma In Slow River

“She could become anyone she wishes. But how will she know she is still herself?”

More than anything, Slow River is, at least to me, about trauma. It is explicit in its focus on abuse and trauma, but I didn’t find it graphic in its depictions “on-screen.” Even still, it is a heavy and it makes it more difficult to talk about for me, since my reviews are usually what I enjoyed and found novel about whatever it is I’m consuming. There’s child abusive, emotional, physical, sexual abuse. It is supposed to be disturbing, so it is not for everybody.

Published in 1995, Slow River tells the story of a young woman named Lore, who comes from a wealthy family who made their money and renown creating cutting-edge sewage reclamation plants. That life, however, comes crashing down when she’s kidnapped and ransomed. Her family doesn’t pay, Lore escapes her abductors, goes off the grid, and enters a criminal underground via Spanner, a grifter who’s willing to help her—so long as Lore pays her back, however she can.

The story alternates between Lore’s past and her present. When she gets out of the dark and seedy underbelly that is this underground and begins working at a plant owned by her very own former family. And her life before her decision to move on, recapping the events with Spanner, which rapidly becomes disturbing as they showcase what the marginalized need to do to get continue to get by, as well as the various coping mechanisms utilized to disassociate from the things done.

The business carries your name. You’re responsible.

Lore comes from a life of privilege but, interestingly, the amount of focus on both of these worlds took me by surprise. Her family and her loved ones in the past are revealed to be as monstrous, if not more at times, than the slums everybody fears in that world, and where she ends up. So much so that when she does get free of her captors—she doesn’t choose to go home to them. This time Lore spends recounting these events seem like her attempt at making sense of a decision that doesn’t seem to make any sense. She’s processing what happened in a dissociative state because she needs to understand why she so adamantly refuses to go back.

“You’re too damn.. glossy. Like a racehorse. Look at your eyes, and your teeth. They’re perfect. And your skin: not a single pimple and no scars. Everything’s symmetrical. You’re bursting with health. Go out in the neighborhood, even in rags, and you’ll shine like a lighthouse.”

Spanner doesn’t understand why she’d stay. At any point, she can return home…which ultimately means that, to Spanner, she doesn’t embody the streets as she does. When Lore and Spanner’s relationship shifts from being complete strangers helping each other for mutual, temporary benefits, to something romantic. It begins to unravel them both—creating a sense of tension and unease that paces with the story well because of the alternating structure of past and present until they collide and you finally figure things out at the same time Lore does.

It is also surprisingly in-depth and thorough about water reclamation and other technologies, like digital currency and invasion of privacy technology and things like that. I wasn’t sure if this water reclamation technology actually exists or if it was completely hypothetical. Whatever the case may be, it certainly seemed completely believable to me, authentic or not. And that believability induced an element of horror. The problem of polluted water, and the fact that we’re going to have significant issues with water in a few generations, become both solvable and instantly already commodified. A simple solution for some, yet not available to everybody.

“All Lore understood about Spanner was that whenever Lore reached for her, she wavered and was gone, like the shimmering reflection on the oily surface of the river.”

That credibility permeates every other facet of the story, augmenting and accenting the terrible and the very human, kind moments punctuating the character interactions.

It becomes clear with these interactions that anybody of substance in the fiction carries some kind of trauma, and it is all rooted in systemic issues. What is so different and so captivating about this is—even if it’s never a “fun” story to read—that it points the finger at capitalism in a way that is so brutal; so messy and bloody and bare, that everything is always focused on this overall larger picture; rather than typical cyberpunk, which encases some of these same thoughts in a far more different style. This is not sex, drugs, and rock and roll. There are no mirrorshades and trench coats and futuristic weapons. It discards the trappings entirely.

I liked that about it because I found it to be very honest fiction that seemed very personal. The fiction is pretty clear that this system, capitalism, that we trust for no good reason—hurts us and traumatizes us, and it’s absurd and mean and unfair. These things are far too real in the fiction and thus it refuses to make them vehicles for catharsis or power fantasies. It’s just not going to be that kind of story and you find that out from page one. The future becomes much more profoundly upsetting when the predators are shown to be manufactured by a system that manufactures trauma, and is far from being reclaimed.

“Spanner said, without looking up from the screen: ‘I’ll see you again. You’ll always need me.’”

[trainerfox25]

Civilization 6 Release Date

The bane of gamers across the world who have to get to work early next morning, the Civilization franchise is perhaps the most addictive set of games ever created. You look at the clock, and you know that you should probably go to sleep. What’s the harm in just one more turn, right? Well, before you know it, hours have passed, the birds have started chirping and the rising sun’s orange glow has begun to stream through the windows. This is a story that most Civilization players are all too painfully familiar with.

Civilization 6 Xbox Release Date

Civilization 6 Android Release Date

Civilization 6 Portugal Release Date

First launched nearly three decades ago in 1991, the Civilization series has since gone through 6 different iterations in the main series, with several spin offs such as 2014’s ‘Sid Meier’s Civilization: Beyond Earth’. The latest game in the main franchise, ‘Sid Meier’s: Civilization VI’, launched in 2016 and has since been treated to two expansion packs as well. Traditionally, this would be about the time when developer Firaxis Games would start work on their next title, which may very well be ‘Sid Meier’s: Civilization VII’. While it is still early days, here’s everything we know about the Civilization franchise and a potential ‘Sid Meier’s: Civilization VII’ game in the future:

Civilization VI initially released the New Frontier Pass in May of 2020, but we’ve continued to see new pieces of it drop, and now, we finally know what to expect in the sixth and final DLC. The long wait agony has finally ended for the Sid Meier Civilization fans, when Civilization: Beyond Earth, or Civilization VI, has been finally released to PC gamers last October 24, 2014, while Mac user had to wait just a little bit and got the release on November 27, 2014.

Civilization 7 Plot: What is it About?

The Civilization games are a series of turn based 4X games, and currently one of the oldest ongoing video game franchises in existence. As the player, you are put in complete charge of an ancient civilization of your choosing sometime right after the dawn of the agricultural age. Every empire has its own unique backstory, strengths, weaknesses, structure and leaders. As the leader of your kingdom, you must build cities and infrastructure, cultivate food to feed your people, research new technologies, build and maintain armies, spread your religion and much more through the centuries while constantly dealing with other foreign civilizations who may, or may not be hostile to your cause.

At its core though, the story in any Civilization game is what you make of it. While every Civilization in the game has its own backstory, traditions, predilections and quirky leaders inspired from real history, the actual storyline of every single individual match of Civilization differs from player to player, and playthrough to playthrough. A player striving to win via diplomacy and political maneuvering will have a very different story to tell compared to his compatriot who might prefer to raise massive armies and obliterate everything in his path.

Civilization 7 Gameplay

The Civilization games perfectly embody the sentiment “Easy to learn, but hard to master”. Being a turn based strategy game, the player is provided a bird’s-eye macro view of the game world and tasked with ensuring the total victory of your empire on the world stage. This type of strategy game is often also referred to as a 4X game, referring to the four basic gameplay tenets of this genre – explore the world, expand your empire, exploit the available resources and exterminate your enemies.

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Similar to many board games, players take turns one after the other to move their units, build new structures, generate new units, research new technologies, formulate their religious, economic and social policies and much more. The primary currencies in the Civilization games are gold and various resources such as food, livestock, iron, coal, etc. found randomly littered across the map. The player can use these resources to set up trade agreements with the other civilizations, or even gift them in exchange for political favors.

Up until ‘Sid Meier’s: Civilization IV’, the world map was divided into square grids which formed the fundamental basis for unit movement. Units could move from one square grid to another, and multiple units could be stacked on a single grid as well. However, 2010’s ‘Sid Meier’s: Civilization V’ introduced hexagonal grids for the first time ever, along with a restriction on stacking multiple units on the same grid. This was a welcome enhancement, as it allowed for more granular military strategy and movements, as well as giving the world a more organic feel.

The newest addition to the series, ‘Sid Meier’s: Civilization VI’ also utilizes the hex based grid system, but also supplements it with some sweeping changes to city development and city management. Now, certain city improvements can only be made in specific specialized districts. For example, military units can only be trained in Encampment districts whereas the Campus district is focused on science and research. This new district mechanic adds another layer of strategy to the game, as invading armies can launch targeted strikes against specific districts of a city in order to cripple its regular operations.

Bootstrap parallax template free download. The technology tree in ‘Sid Meier’s: Civilization VI’ has also undergone a facelift, now with two distinct pathways – the Active Research System which is dependent on your civilization’s scientific output, and the Civics tree which oversees the civilization’s ideological and cultural progression.

If you find all this to be a tiny bit overwhelming, do not fret. All of the newer Civilization games feature a robust advisor mechanic which assigns you a personal advisor who will guide you through some of the more complex game mechanics and strategies.

Civilization 7 Developers: Who Are The People Behind It?

Civilization 6 Xbox Release Date

While initially conceived and developed by MicroProse Software, which was co-founded and led by the legendary game designer Sid Meier, every Civilization game since 1996’s ‘Sid Meier’s: Civilization II’ has been developed by US based video game developer Firaxis Games. Sid Meier continues to serve as Director of Creative Development at Firaxis. Industry behemoth 2K Games has published all Civilization games from ‘Sid Meier’s: Civilization IV’ and onwards. In all likelihood, the next Civilization game will also be developed by Firaxis Games and published by 2K Games.

Civilization 7 Release Date: When And Where Can I Play It?

While there has been no official confirmation yet, the Civilization franchise is so popular that a sequel is pretty much a foregone conclusion. It is not a matter of if, but rather, when. Based on recent trends, Firaxis and 2K Games tend to release a new ‘Civilization’ game every 6-7 years. For instance, Civilization 5 came out in 2010. Six years later Civilization 6 released in 2016. Which means, we should expect ‘Civilization 7′ to release sometime in 2022 or 2023.

Civilization 6 Android Release Date

Civilization 7 Trailer

Civilization 6 Portugal Release Date

Obviously Civilization 7 trailer is still some time away. In the absence of that, why not enjoy the trailer of Civilization 7.

Read More: Best War Games

[aion-rsa]

Talalay’s Terrors! The Director Breaks Down Her 5 Scariest Scenes

https://ift.tt/eA8V8J

Rachel Talalay knows horror. The British-American filmmaker got her directorial start with 90s horror flicks Freddy’s Dead: The Final Nightmare and Ghost in the Machine before helming cult classic Tank Girl. In the last few decades, she has directed dozens of TV episodes that dip or full-on dive into That Most Chilling Genre. From Doctor Who and Doom Patrol to Supernatural and The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina, Talalay has been asked to tell many a spooky story.

Talalay’s latest, A Babysitter’s Guide to Monster Hunting is a feature film adaptation of the kids comedy horror book series from Joe Ballarini, and it drops on Netflix today. In honor of the occasion and of the Halloween season, of course, we talked to Talalay about five of the scariest scenes she’s ever directed.

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Freddy’s Dead: The Final Nightmare (1991) — Carlos’ Q-Tip Death

Film synopsis: In this sixth film in the classic horror series, Freddy Krueger (Robert Englund) returns with a new target for his terror. After having slaughtered more or less every child in his hometown, Krueger finds new prey in the town where his long-lost daughter works as a therapist for troubled youths.

The scene: Freddy dream-tortures deaf teen Carlos (Ricky Dean Logan) by putting a Q-tip through his ear. In the sequence that follows, Freddy turns sound itself against Carlos, turning his hearing aid device up so that every sound is magnified 1,000-fold until poor Carlo’s head explodes.

Talking to Talalay: “The most important thing is how you’re setting things up,” says Talalay of good horror. “I like this scene because I like the way we build on him not being able to hear, and the way we start with the water drop, and then do the pin, and then do multiple pins, and lead that into the blackboard and the nails on the blackboard.”

Part of the scene’s set-up sees Freddy sticking a Q-tip in Carlos’ ear until it comes out the other side. It’s the kind of horror that plays on a mundane anxiety, says Talalay. “There’s something about [it], says Talalay. “You’re always told, ‘Be careful of Q-tips, you might hurt yourself. Don’t put Q-tips in your ears.’ It’s something we’ve all done and touched on. That’s another reason it works really well.”

Talalay, who has been using the quarantine to go through her troves of production keepsakes, pulls the Freddy’s Dead script out during our Zoom interview. “There were certain things that were in the script that surprised me,” says Talalay, using the example of Freddy’s popping up behind Carlos during his torture sequence, one instance of the villain having a much campier quality than previous films in the franchise.

“It directly says in the script, ‘Freddy is really enjoying mugging it,'” says Talalay. “[It] directly uses the word ‘mugging’ behind Carlos. And I thought, ‘Okay, that’s why I did that.’ Because there’s a version of it where Freddy just pops up, there’s a really scary version of it. So I was paying attention to the script, which is what I was paid to direct.”

Horror lesson: Q-tips aren’t worth the risk.

Ghost in the Machine (1993) — Microwave Murder

Film synopsis: When Karl (Ted Marcoux), aka “The Address Book Killer,” gets in a car accident and is brought to the hospital, his soul is transferring into a computer through the MRI machine. As an artificial intelligence, Karl continues his killing spree using various objects connected to the electrical grid and computer networks. He is… a ghost in various machines.

The scene: Using the address book of protagonist Terry (Karen Allen), Karl goes after Terry’s boss, Frank Mallory (Richard McKenzie), taking him out using his own microwave oven.

Talking to Talalay: The “microwave murder” sequence starts with our ghost, Karl, finding his victim, Frank, through a network of computers. As viewers, we are inside the computer hardware, in a series of visually ambitious shots that utilize Talalay’s background as a computer programmer.

“There’s a really beautiful, for the time, sequence where we’re inside the computer trying to bang against the computer and glitching the computer,” says Talalay, “which is really funny because he’s on the TWA website. Then we watch him travel through the wires, and we do this macro stuff through the wires. And then on the outside of the wires, and through the plug hole, and into the microwave.”

Once out of the microwave and into the kitchen, the shots get a bit more traditional but no less ambitious. Slowly, the microwave starts to take over the room, heating things from the inside out. Popcorn pops out of its box. Eggs explode from their shells. Bananas ooze out of their peels, and grapes turn into raisins. Eventually, Frank is affected too, his skin erupting into truly disgusting boils.

“All these things were optical effects, not digital effects and they were really, really hard,” says Talalay, noting how much faster this would be to do on a computer today. However, in the early 90s, it wasn’t an option. Instead, Talalay and her team had to get practical with the effects. They used Tesla coils to create electrical bolts between the hanging pans and recorded the grapes using stop-motion in the oven until they turned into raisins.

While the “Microwave Murder” may be one of the most memorable scenes from Ghost in the Machine, Talalay is also particularly proud of the “Crash Test Dummy” scene that comes later in the film. In it, we see Karl the Ghost go after Terry’s friend Elliot (Jack Laufer) using a car that is part of a test crash. Elliot manages to survive the crash, but is killed minutes later by a hand dryer that erupts into flames. It’s a scene that Talalay says she often used when she was teaching film because it “has the three classic beats and then surprise.” “That is scene that [is] really well-structured and carefully developed,” says Talalay, calling attention to the way the scene cycles through building tension and releasing it until the final moment of surprise.

“I really am very, very pleased with that scene,” reflects Talalay. “And that’s music as well, incredibly important building the tension, letting it down, music and sound.”

Horror lesson: Never trust a microwave.

Doctor Who, “World Enough and Time” (2017) — “Pain, Pain, Pain.”

Episode synopsis: In the penultimate episode of Season 10, The Doctor (Peter Capaldi), Bill (Pearl Mackie), Nardole (Matt Lucas), and Missy (Michelle Gomez) answer a distress call from a gigantic colony ship trying to escape the pull of a black hole. Almost immediately, Bill is shot by a terrified passenger, and is taken away by figures in hospital gowns claiming they can restore her. She is brought to the ship’s lower levels, where time moves much slower than the top levels. Because of this, Bill must wait many years for her friends to rescue her.

The scene: Bill awakens in a hospital to a voice saying the word “pain” over and over again. She follows the sound through the mostly abandoned hospital wing until she finds the source: a patient, their head covered in a tightly-fitted cloth that obscures their features, at the end of a row of other patients. A nurse comes to address the patient, and Bill watches from her hiding spot behind a nearby curtain; the nurse turns a knob on the patient’s IV pole and the “pain”s stop. Once the nurse leaves, Bill realizes that the nurse didn’t alleviate the patient’s pain, but rather muted the volume of their suffering. She realizes that every patient in the room is muted.

Talking to Talalay: “Steven Moffat is such a genius,” says Talalay, referring to the script written by then Doctor Who showrunner Moffat. “When you hear about people who had surgery and were awake during the surgery but couldn’t communicate, I think it plays into that fear. So the idea that you would be feeling, that the humanity is still in there but in capable of communicating [is terrifying].”

Unlike the previous, cinematic scenes discussed, this one is part of an ongoing TV show, which means we’ve spent hours with the central character featured. This, perhaps, makes the impending horror that much more affecting.

“You have Bill … knowing that this is going to happen to her,” says Talalay. “So you have the human you care about, seeing what’s going to happen to her, being fully aware of what’s going on and not being able to do anything. And there’s something so elemental about just hearing ‘pain, pain, pain.'”

As a director, Talalay worked to make the hospital ward particularly creepy, using rack focuses across the faces of the patients “as if everyone is faceless.” When creating something for Doctor Who, which is considered a family show and generally airs earlier in the evening in the U.K., Talalay notes that it is important to keep the horror acceptable for a broader audience.

“Initially, we did some stuff with plastic and [the patients] just looked like they were being asphyxiated,” says Talalay. “So there’s definitely a line on Doctor Who where you understand being really scary without being gross. It isn’t gross, but it’s disturbing. And Doctor Who really understands how disturbing it is to be missing any part of your face.”

Talalay and I discussed the pacing of the scene, which takes its time getting to the big reveal.

“The nice thing about doing a Doctor Who episode that Steven wrote is that you’ll be allowed a little bit more time,” says Talalay, adding that, because of this, she didn’t have to cut the tension to get to the next story beat in away that might be required on a different TV show. “Even when they’re outside in the hallway before [Bill goes into the ward], and the ‘in’ and ‘out’ [signs] and just hearing the ‘pain’ [allows] for that tension. And also, I worked really hard. One of intentions on Doctor Who was to try and make all my episodes beautiful and also different.”

Talalay credits one of the central conceits of the episode—that time is passing at a different pace for the Doctor than it is for Bill—as creating an added layer of tension, even when the plot point is not being specifically mentioned. “The slower and the longer you’re downstairs with Bill, the more you think, ‘Upstairs, oh my God, only a minute has passed.'”

Horror lesson: When on a ship experiencing time dilation, use the buddy system.

The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina, “An Exorcism in Greendale” (2018) — Uncle Jesse’s Astral Projections

Episode synopsis: Susie’s uncle is possessed by a demon called Apophis, a parasite that is devours its host from the inside and who preys on the fears and insecurities of those it torments. Because Sabrina’s friends Ros (Jaz Sinclair), Harvey (Ross Lynch), and Susie (Lachlan Watson) touched the possessed Jesse (Jason Beaudoin) when they bound him to a bed, they are being plagued by Apophis and are set to be his next hosts once the demon is done with Jesse. You know… just another week in Greendale.

The scene: Apophis uses his control over Jesse to astral project into Harvey, Ros, and Susie’s homes when they least expect it.

Talking to Talalay: Talalay chose this episode of The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina to talk about because her daughter has called it “a whole nother level of scary.” While Talalay notes that she could have chosen the exorcism scene that comes later in the episode, she chose this scene not only because she had a lot of fun filming the moments of demonic surprise, but because of the “textures” she added to the relatively straight-forward horror reveals.

“In the bathroom, for instance … the fan is melting, and the fan is doing things that it shouldn’t be doing,” Talalay says. “And those kind of horror textures make for the whole atmosphere of making it much scarier. You set up the audience to know that they should be scared and they’re going to be scared.”

Elsewhere in the sequence, Talalay gets to use her filmmaking fluency to visually reference other classic horror. The way Harvey lounges on his bed in his crop top is a direct callback (written in the script) to Johnny Depp in Nightmare on Elm Street, the horror franchise where Talalay got her directorial start. In the same scene, Uncle Jesse’s head spins Exorcist-style—”it’s just really, really effective,” says Talalay of the effect. In the grand scheme of the episode, these are all relatively brief and inconsequential moments that Talalay manages to pack with an impressive degree of cinematic depth.

Horror lesson: Don’t move to Greendale.

A Babysitter’s Guide To Monster Hunting (2020) — Kelly’s Horror Origin Story

Film synopsis: When her babysitting charge is taken by the Boogeyman (Tom Felton) on Halloween night, teen math genius Kelly (Tamara Smart) discovers a secret society of babysitters whose job it is to protect their kids from the world of monsters.

The scene: In a flashback that begins the movie (and that we get more of later in the movie), we learn that Kelly too was targeted by the Boogeyman when she was just a little girl.

Talking to Talalay: “This was the most difficult and controversial scene we did from the standpoint of ‘How scary can you be?'” says Talalay, who put a lot of thought and had many conversations about where the horror line is when it comes to creating entertainment for kids during the course of making this movie.

“It’s going to be on Netflix, so if you scare kids too much or parents too much in the first minute, then you’re done,” adds Talalay. “On the other hand, we want to entice teenagers … So it was a constant discussion on set.” As a result, Talalay storyboarded the tale of “Kelly’s Origin Story” 17 times in order to get the tone just right. “And then when we were shooting it, there was a lot of discussion, ‘Is this too scary? Is this too scary?’ Which led me to say to the executives frequently, ‘You can’t judge how scary something is until you put the sound and music in.'”

Talalay said she used the example of “the magic of Tim Burton,” specifically The Nightmare Before Christmas, as a way to explain the power of music to shape the audience’s reaction to a scary set of images. While the first test screening for the opening to A Babysitter’s Guide to Monster Hunting was deemed too scary for young kids, Talalay “lightened up the music” to alleviate some of the horror tension.

“It was hard for me not to be scary because it’s part of my vocabulary,” says Talalay. “And it was hard of me not to say, ‘But like Doctor Who‘s family, and it plays at 6:00 on Sunday nights and still, it’s terrifying.’ And Netflix saying, ‘No, we don’t want to be that scary.’ And my absolutely respecting their understanding their audience and their metrics. And then trying to keep the tension and still make it feel family.”

Horror lesson: Pay your babysitter well.

A Babysitter’s Guide to Monster Hunting is now available to stream on Netflix.

The post Talalay’s Terrors! The Director Breaks Down Her 5 Scariest Scenes appeared first on Den of Geek.

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[aforestlife]

Hi! So I just restarted AC:NL after a long while of being away due to some hard times, and I figured it would be fun to restart. My friend showed me your town through dream address, and I kinda sorta fell in love??? Like ;; so what I wanted to ask was do you have any tips for starting a new town and like paths and stuff? Ahah I know that might be an odd question and such but like I love your town’s development and I can never figure out placing and such so yeah! Thx so much *^*

Come up with the general feel, theme, or atmosphere you would like your town to have

Come up with a town name that fits your town theme/feel

If you choose to reset for a town, figure out what town-features might become requirements for you: town fruit, building placements, river styles, town hall/gate colors, etc. Though sometimes you’ll just know the town when you see it without rigid rules... I love the feeling when I’m resetting for a town and I stumble on a town that I immediately find inspiring, and start thinking up what I would do with certain areas on the map in my head.

Once you have your town, it’s of course yours to play in and enjoy and you don’t have to feel pressured to get it all done right away! Working on a town can take a lot of trial and error sometimes to be completely happy with it, and that’s okay :) Here are some things I like to try to figure out and focus on once I have a new town that I want to build up:

I always like to create a gridded map for my town right off the bat. It might seem like a pain, but I find it kinda soothing, a great exercise in getting to know your new town, and really useful for planning in the future. I wrote about the process I use to create a gridded map at the bottom of this post, but there are other ways you can do it too (on paper, on a spreadsheet, simply taking a screenshot of your in-game map and making a grid on top, etc.) And of course, you don’t *have* to do this because your town is kind of a grid in itself (just larger and hard to see all at once), so you can plan out your town using patterns like this post shows

Make a list of all the public works projects you’re interested in unlocking (goes back to what you want for your town theme/feel), and if you’re up for it, do the diving trick to speed up the process.

Decide the villagers you would like to have permanently in your town -- ones that you love most, fit your theme/feel most, or even have house exteriors that fit your town most.

Do you want other human characters? If so, you can decide where you want their homes to go, what you would like each of their interior/exterior themes will be, what sort of personality they’ll have and add to the town, how their homes will be integrated into the town’s landscape, etc.

While you’re playing, thinking, and planning, make sure to also start stocking up on supplies like bushes and flowers, and work on unlocking your shops and tools and whatnot :)

Some say that it’s best to wait for town planning until you’ve moved in all your dream villagers, but I find it kind of hard to decide where the villagers will move into when the town’s still completely undeveloped. So I like to start landscaping with one idea for one key area that I’m set on and inspired by, and then build from there. In Citalune one of my first public works was the fountain in front of the train station and it’s still there to this day; that was one of my first building blocks that I branched other areas and paths from. Beginning by prioritizing the planning of a few of the must-have attractions in your town will help prevent you from running out of room for them later on :)

Once you have a few key areas planned out, think of how they will connect, and in general, how different areas and major buildings in your town will connect with paths and bridges. What makes most sense to connect the areas and what will look best with your theme/feel? Do you want a winding, wild look or something really structured? You can use a gridded map for planning this, or experiment with laying patterns in your town that you can always erase and edit.

Now that you have a rough blueprint for your town’s general structure and major areas, and how they will connect, you can feel more confident in planning the smaller things: the location of villagers’ homes, and the smaller public works touches here and there.

Start putting your vision together from what you’ve planned in the way that it’s organic for you! Though at this point, once you have plans for how things will be organized, I recommend putting a lot of focus on getting your dream villagers moved into the spots where you want them (with the plot reset trick and house-repelling public works or ground patterns), because once you have them moved in with no more stray homes or surprise move-ins getting in the way, you'll feel so much more free on the path to finishing your town.

You might end up needing to rework things, or as you’re working on your town, you’ll be newly inspired to try something else, and this is all fine and sometimes necessary to get the town you’ll be most satisfied with! :) I’ve reworked various parts of Citalune an embarrassing amount of times, and discarded lots of ideas that I had early on. What you want to be extra careful and sure of are the things you won’t be able to easily re-work later!

[shadowsfiguresfigments-blog]

A good place to die Chapter 2

Warning: Harsh language, violence

Darkness engulfed me. The little ring of light was so weak I could barely make out the shape of things floating in the dirty water, but it didn’t matter. As if I knew exactly what I was doing I kept on going, not even hesitating at junctions. Maybe I was unconsciously following the scent, which seemed to grow stronger by the minute.

There was no other noise than my rubbers splashing through the muck and waste of Derry, and my slightly agitated breathing. I encountered no living creature, not even rats which were supposed to live down here. Yet while my brain was questioning my sanity for good, something else within me drove me further into the tunnels, building up an emotion which could have almost been excitement.

Something was down here, and I was going to find it – for better or worse.

I felt teddy shift beneath my cost and stopped for a second to readjust his position and secure him once again. I wasn’t afraid of him dropping into the dirty water – I was starting to think that I might have gotten him down here (crazy, of course – what kid would get a teddy bear in a sewer?) – but I didn’t want to lose him. As I went on my light flickered and died.

Holy shit, it was DARK. We are so used to the light of civilization that utter blackness is incomprehensible for us. I started to feel vertigo for just a second, but I wasn’t afraid. My feet knew what they were doing, I only had to stop thinking about it. Immediately I went on straight forward for a couple of steps before turning ever so slightly right because the tunnel was going to bend. Then, after a couple more steps, I turned sharply to the left and followed a long curve until I got the urge to turn right once more.

Maybe it was a trick of my eye or my crazy mind, but I felt like I could slowly start to see things again. Minutes passed, and I was sure that I was closing in on some sort of light source, because by now I was definitely able to recognize some shapes drifting around my feet. And then I suddenly stumbled into a great opening.

It was a large cistern with some sort of grid on the top, which let the cold blue moonlight in, illuminating piles of junk all around me. In the middle of the cistern a particularly big mountain of junk had piled up, and the strange excited feeling within me became more intense.

I knew this place.

I had been here as a child.

I knew who – or rather what was down here.

In a daze I stepped into the cistern, going around the mountain, until I could see a well-like structure before me. I slowly walked closer, and, as my subconsciousness had anticipated, two large, yellow eyes shone out of it.

“Hello”, I said.

The eyes stared at me, unmoving, not blinking, for what felt like an eternity. Then they came closer. A face emerged from the bottomless black depth, a white face with a huge forehead, cherry-red nose and lips and two red strokes coming from each corner of the mouth, crawling across the cheeks to the eyes and stopping above the place where a human face would have its brows. Fiery orange tufts of hair sprouted around his head and on the very tip of his crown. Two gigantic white-gloved hands shot up and came to rest on the mantle. The clown lifted himself out of the darkness into the pale moonlight and towered before me, emitting the scent that had drawn me here.

Though I had grown in the past ten years, I still had to lift my head all the way to look Pennywise into the eyes. My crown barely reached the second of the three orange pommels on his chest. He stared at me, and I was very well aware of the fact that the only reason I wasn’t dead yet was because I had surprised him. Not that it would have bothered me, though. I had been born dead inside.

“You just woke up, didn’t you?”, I asked. “I’m sorry for intruding.”

Pennywise bowed down so he was at the level of my eyes and intently stared at me. Drool was gathering on his lower lip, and he started to sniff me.

“I know you”, he growled.

I nodded and set down on a dysfunctional washing machine that was partly covered in mold and old rags.

He watched me the entire time, not blinking, like a cat fixating its prey.

“Why are you here?”, he growled at last, still slightly crouched down, ready to pounce at any moment.

“I don’t know”. That was the honest truth, as far as I was concerned. “It’s just… I couldn’t sleep, and then I had the urge to come here… I didn’t mean to  be rude.”

His eyes started to drift apart, and his drooling intensified. “You want to kill me, don’t you, little girl? I WON’T ALLOW IT!” He roared at the last part, and his mouth split wide open, revealing rows and rows of sharp teeth.

“Are you going to kill me?”, I spurted, unable to help myself. I guess I really was feeling excited. I closed my eyes, and my mouth stretched into somewhat of grin. Finally my ordeal was over… I would be no more.

But, as always, nothing happened.

I opened my eyes when I was sure sweet relieve wouldn’t come to me, and found Penny back to his ‘normal’ clown self. Even his eyes had lost their yellow glow and were more of a silvery hue.

“What are you?”, he whispered. I stared at him in confusion. “Why aren’t you afraid? Why do you crave death so much?”

My excitement evaporated. Back to my dulling numbness I sighed. “I can’t feel anything. This night has been the most emotional thrill ride I have ever had. Life just drags out before me, one day like the other without sense or joy. Why should I be afraid of death? It would end this… this emotional wasteland. I’m not excited about life, so why should I care?”

“Why don’t you fear pain?”

“It subsides. It does, eventually.”

“What do you want from me?”

“I told you, I don’t know. I have no clue what I am doing here. Maybe I was hoping you would help me finish me off. But then again, I was unable to remember any of this until this night, so I guess you’ve just awakened, right? After all you said you would sleep for another decade.” I leaned back, somewhat exhausted. I never spoke so much or made an effort to explain myself. Maybe this was what my therapist wanted from me. “All I know is I got teddy, and then the smell reminded me of something, and then I had the urge to go for a walk and came here without thinking.”

I pulled the teddy bear from my coat and cuddled it against my chest. Pennywise saw this, and a surprised look formed on his face. Then he straightened himself, and his eyes turned blue. “You do not smell of fear. I don’t enjoy my meals without fear.”

“Sorry”, I mumbled. “Are you sure, though?”

He cackled. “So desperate to die? Why don’t you do it yourself, then?”

I grimaced. “It’s not like I haven’t tried.” I shoved up my sleeves to reveal the long thin scars running from my elbow to my wrists. “I got found too early each time. I’ve tried slitting my arms, overdosing, a gun which for whatever reason didn’t fire and jumping off a building – somebody came up just that second and pulled me back.” I let my sleeves fall back down and stared at my feet. “Nothing works with me. So I figured somebody else will have to do it for me. I had hoped you could help me.”

Pennywise tilted his head. “It won’t work unless you get scared. I can only thrive of fear.”

I nodded, considering for a moment, and then an idea crossed my mind.”Why don’t you try scaring me, then? If you succeed, you can eat me. If you don’t, I’ll at least have something to do in my spare time.”

The clown watched me intently. “That’s not a good deal for me. There are a lot of easier meals out there. And I don’t want you around here. Nobody’s allowed here.”

I sighed again, because I really did not want to do this. I had too, though. “Well, you seem to fear me. So I guess you would want me gone too, right? If you don’t help me I will not leave this place. Ever.”

He stood still for a couple of moments, considering my proposal. Then he turned into Yaneesha. I took that as a Yes.

“You will have to try harder, though. She is stupid, not scary.”

--------------------------------------------------------------

Pennywise guided me to the exit of the sewer system once more, but only after I had mentioned that if I was to go alone I might end up circling right back into his lair. He had spent the last couple of hours transforming into various things, including rabid animals, school bullies, specters, my geography teacher, and my parents. When he did that for the fifth time I told him I would slap him. They didn’t scare me, but I didn’t want to see them either. My left hand throbbed a little, and I clutched it with my right hand. After each transformation the clown would cut my hand and taste my blood, but the taste never satisfied him. ‘Cardboard’, ‘Ashes’, ‘Dirt’, ‘Sewer-water’ and ‘Grit’ were some of the terms he used to describe it.

By the time we called quits he seemed to be exhausted, and I had to admit I felt a little bemused. It felt like my own little horror movie, and to me, this was comforting. This night had been entertaining, as far as I was able to tell. When I snuck into auntie’s house and cuddled into my bed the most confusing sensation engulfed me. I guess it was hope. Hope that Pennywise would be able to scare me and end my life, so I wouldn’t have to drag on. I fell into a deep sleep, and for the first time since I could remember, I felt a little rested when I woke up.

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Forge Of Empires For Personal computer Testimonials

The Knights created Google Engage in Instantaneous App (demo) of Forge of Empires for InnoGames. Age of Empires II: Definitive Edition is just the appropriate sort of remaster. It's clear, it really is function-wealthy, and it adds a ton of new material without taking something absent from the attractiveness of the unique match. And at $twenty, it really is challenging to imagine a far better cut price in RTS gaming. The recreation just isn't best, and if we are being sincere, it never was — but this iteration receives it just a tiny closer.

Forge of Empires is previously a visually gorgeous match. It is adorned with extraordinary visuals and outstanding tunes to established the temper flawlessly. Even so, this quality and the functionality of the match will still vary relying on the product of your device. Players with Low-stop telephones have a tendency to encounter lag troubles in the procedure. With BlueStacks four, you are going to get a efficiency that is six occasions more quickly than the most recent Samsung Galaxy S9+. Driven by Android 7.1.two (Nougat), you can operate any game like Forge of Empires with uncompromising graphics and amazingly clean gameplay.

Forge Details: Forge Factors are earned freely, at the charge of 1 an hour (far more can be purchased for possibly cash or diamonds, and offers of 2, five or ten are presented from time to time as benefits for ending quests or in particular activities). They are used to amount up Fantastic Properties, trade merchandise in the market or study technologies. Forge factors are also created by some Great Buildings and offered as benefits for contributing to Excellent Structures.

To attack, players have to 1st have an army. Forge of Empires characteristics a turn-primarily based overcome program the place gamers deploy their models on a hexagonal grid technique. Distinct units have various motion speeds and attack distances. Using these variables into account when formulating a program of assault will assist change the tide of battle in your favor. Units like the Spearfighter are versatile and very effective even when matched-up in opposition to troops of distinct investigation ages.

Gamers can pick to expand their empire on the continent map by buying and selling with the rulers of other lands, or by battling them in battle. When fighting, the player need to select his military (up to eight troops) and then will perform towards an AI with predetermined troops in a change-by-change approach match. Each troop has its very own weaknesses, strengths, wellness and attack, and so suitable technique should be employed to ensure a victory. If the participant is victorious, they get that sector, and are closer to receiving the province, which is acquired when the player controls all of its sectors.

[torontotravelblog]

A local's guide to Toronto

Some people assume Toronto has no soul. Sure, housing is absurdly expensive, the homeless populace is increasing, and also there are way, means a lot of cranes. The important things that make Toronto terrific aren't constantly noticeable to outsiders - as well as we type of like it by doing this, since we understand where to find its true spirit.

You'll locate it in the vivid laneways og Kensington Market, the shelves at the Toronto Reference Collection or "the dog dish" at Trinity Bellwoods park. Or take a ferryboat ride to the islands, hit up all the bakeshops in Chinatown or get on the streetcar. Simply don't even consider driving downtown.

West Queen West

Torontonians currently recognized West Queen West was in vogue, but it behaved when the community was named in Vogue publication in2014 as th second-hippest district worldwide. This strip is lined with small galleries, homemade retailers, dining establishments and lots of bars. Locate this neighborhood.

The Beaches

Called after the 4 coastlines along Lake Ontario, this community is about a 40-minute tram trip from midtown. It's got coffee shops, clubs, diners, stores and also parks. And also, there's a boardwalk that leaves the shoreline. The only displeasure you'll find below is between individuals that disagree on whether it's called the "Beaches" or the "Beach." Locate this neighborhood.

Le Petit Dejeuner

If you've never ever had a Belgian waffle made bby an actual Belgian, this could be the location to do it. The Bruges-born cook Johan Maes's carb grids are the best wessel for syrup, chantilly lotion as well as fruits. Various other items not to be overlokked: the eggs Benedict, smoked salmon omelet and also croque madame, all offered with a side of potato rosti and apple coleslaw in a laid-back setting with glossy eco-friendly banquettes.

I Deal Coffee

Order a beverage made from in-house beans, reviewed a web page from the Toronto Star, as well as pet dog a pet dog or two on the concrete patio area at this beloved Kensington Market place. It's concealed on a quieter strip off the pedestrian-packed Augusta Opportunity, which indicates you can truly dig into your publication or get some work done. If you're just dropping in, grab several of their fresh baked coffee beans to go and ask for them to be ground the method you like.

Rol San

If you have actually obtained a good friend who will certainly make a stink about plastic table fabrics, leave them in your home. Besidea, that suggests much more har gow and also poultry feet for you. Rol San is a standard all-day dim-sum place in Chinatown. Lines are inevitable, however thankfully, the solution is so reliable that you end up not needing to wait very long. Round up a group (four or more individuals is suitable for tasting a lot more things on the menu), and also order the deep-fried taro smokes, leaf-wrapped sticky rice as well as fried squid tentacles.

Seven Lives

In some taquerias, you need to eat at the very least three tacos before you're full. At the cash-only Seven Lives, you might call it quits after one thanks to the generous dental fillings (the deep-fried haddock taco is absolutely a two-hand effort). Nevertheless, you'll need to push through so you can additionally order the trademark Gobernador (house-smoked marlin, shrimp as well as cheese) and the pulpo a la Mexican (grilled octopus as well as crema) that are both deserving of your attention.

Fat Pasha

One of the most interesting thing ti happen to cauliflower can be discovered at this Middle Eastern eating area where chef Anthony Rose provides a whole roasted cauliflower covered with a layer of tahini and pomegranate seeds. It's conveniently among one of the most photographed recipes on the food selection. You'll come for the cauliflower yet stay for the next-level latkes as well as delightul salatim platter of dips, pickled vegetables, Israeli-style salads, smoky eggplant, olives as well as cozy pita.

Underpass Park

This revitalized concrete area is much less visitor than Graffiti Alley however still has covetable backdrops. Some of the city's coolest road art can be discovered below, in addition to a basketball court, skate park as well as jungle gym.

One More Story Bookshop

This indie bookstorre is cherished by many for having a few of one of the most inclusive selections in the city, thanks to its late owner, Sheila Koffman, a strong social lobbyist that opened the shop in the late 1980s.

The Great Hall

Everyone recognizes basketball was invented by a Canadian, ideal? One of the very first games was played right here in this historical Victorian structure when it was a YMCA gymnasium in the late 1800s.

Performance Cinema

If you ever obtain need to enjoy an old film in a cinema, check Performance Movie theater's timetable: It may simply be playing right here. This heritage hangout was constructed in the early 1910s, making it the city's oldest operating moviehouse having fun first- and also second- run flicks. Watch out for special events like the Bechdel Tested collection, highlighting women-centric films, and also the Drunken Cinemas series, where the target market must consume alcohol every time certain activities take place on-screen.

The post “ A local's guide to Toronto “ was seen first on By The Way by Mai Nguyen

The IV Lounge - IV Therapy Toronto Service Provider

[researching01]

Deploying a Client-Side Rendered create-react-app to Microsoft Azure

New Post has been published on https://headacheshelp.com/awesome/deploying-a-client-side-rendered-create-react-app-to-microsoft-azure/

Deploying a Client-Side Rendered create-react-app to Microsoft Azure

Deploying a React app to Microsoft Azure is simple. Except that … it isn’t. The demon is in the details. If you’re looking to deploy a create-react-app — or a similar style front-end JavaScript framework who are in need of pushState-based routing — to Microsoft Azure, I believe this article will serve you well. We’re going to try to avoid the headaches of client and server side routing reconciliation.

First, a quick story.

Back in 2016, when Donovan Brown, a Senior DevOps Program Manager at Microsoft, had given a “but it works on my machine speech” at Microsoft Connect that year, I was still in my preliminary stages as a web developer. His talk was about micro-services and containers.

[…] Gone are the days when your manager comes running into your office and she is frantic and she has found a glitch. And no matter how hard I try, I can’t reproduce it and it runs perfectly on my machine. She says: fine Donovan, then we are going to ship your machine because that is the only place where it runs. But I like my machine, so I’m not going to let her ship it…

I had a similar sort of challenge, but it had to do with routing. I was working on a website with a React front end and ASP.NET Core back end, hosted as two separate projects that were deployed to Microsoft Azure. This meant we could deploy both apps separately and enjoy the benefits that comes with separation of concern. We also know who to git blame if and when something goes wrong. But it had downsides as well, as front-end vs. back-end routing reconciliation was one of those downsides.

One day I pushed some new code to our staging servers. I received a message shortly after telling me the website was failing on page refresh. It was hurling a 404 error. At first, I didn’t think it was my responsibility to fix the error. It had to be some server configuration issue. Turns out I was both right and wrong.

I was right to know it was a server configuration issue( though at the time, I didn’t know it had to do with routing ). I was wrong to deny it my responsibility. It was only after I went on a web searching rampage that I discovered a utilize case for deploying a create-react-app to Azure under the Deployment tab on the official documentation page.

Building React for production

When building a React app for production( assuming we’re are using create-react-app ), it’s worth noting the folders that get produced. Running npm running construct will generate a build folder where an optimized static version of its implementation lives. To get the application on a live server, all we need do is feed the server the content of the construct folder. If we were working on localhost, there is no live server involved, so it is not always equivalent to having the application on a live server.

Generally, the construct folder will have this structure :P TAGEND- constructed

– static

– css

– css files

– js

– js files

– media

– media files

– index.html

– other files … Client-side routing with React Router

React Router uses the HTML5 pushState history API internally. What pushState does is quite interesting. For example, navigating( or using Link in react router) from the page https :// css-tricks.com to the page https :// css-tricks.com/ archives/ will cause the URL bar to display https :// css-tricks.com/ archives/ but won’t cause the browser to load the page/ archives or even check that it exists. Couple this with the component-based model of React, it becomes a thing to change routes while displaying different pages based on those routes — without the all-seeing eye of the server trying to serve a page in its own directory. What happens, then, when we introduce servers by pushing the code to a live server? The docs tell it better :P TAGEND

If you use routers that use the HTML5 pushState history API under the hood( for example, React Router with browserHistory ), many static file servers will fail. For example, if you used React Router with a road for/ todos/ 42, the development server will respond to localhost: 3000/ todos/ 42 properly, but an Express serving a production build as above will not. This is because when there is a fresh page loading for a/ todos/ 42, the server looks for the file construct/ todos/ 42 and does not find it. The server needs to be configured to respond to a request to/ todos/ 42 by serving index.html.

Different servers involve different configuration. Express, for example, involves this :P TAGEND app.get(‘*’,( req, res) =>

res.sendFile( path.resolve( __dirname, ‘client’, ‘build’, ‘index.html’ )); );

…as documented in the create-react-app docs. Keep in intellect though, this assumes that we’re hosting create-react-app at the server root, which is making employ of a wildcard road (*) that catches all road and respond to all route request by serving the index.html file in the build folder which sits at the root of the server application. Also, this is tightly coupled with the back-end. If that’s the case, we would most likely have this kind of folder structure( assuming the back-end is in NodeJS ):

– Server

– Client( this is where your react code runs)

– construct( this is the build folder, after you npm running build)

– src

– node_modules

– package.json

– other front-end files and folders

– Other back-end files and folders

Since my front-end( create-react-app) and back-end( ASP.NET) were two different projects, serving static files by navigating the directory was sort of an impossibility.

In fact, since we are deploying a static app, we do not need the back-end. As Burke Holland set it: “Static” means that we aren’t deploying any server code; simply the front-end files.

I keep mentioning ASP.NET here because during the course of my research, I figured configuring Azure required a configuration file in a wwwroot folder and ASP.NET’s folder structure typically has a wwwroot folder. Remember the application’s back-end was in ASP.NET? But that’s just about it. The wwwroot folder seemed to be hidden somewhere on Azure. And I can’t show you without deploying a create-react-app. So let’s go do that.

Getting started with App Services on Microsoft Azure

To get started, if you do not already have a Azure account, get a free trial then head over to the Azure portal.

Navigate to All services- Web- App Services Navigating on the Azure portal from All services, to Web, to App services

We want to add a new app, give it a name, subscription( should be free if you’re on a free trial, or if you already have one ), resource group( create one or utilize existing ), then click on the Create button down at the bottom of the panel.

Creating a new App service on the Azure portal.

We should get a notification that the resource has been created. But it won’t immediately show up, so hit “Refresh” — I have other resources, but the AzureReactDemo2 is what I’m employing here. You’ll click on the name of your newly created app, which is AzureReactDemo2 in my occurrence.

Displaying all App Services on the Azure portal.

The blade shows you information about your app, the navigation to the left has everything you need to manage your application( overview, activity log, deployment center …).

For example, the Deployment Center is where the app deployment is managed, Slots is where things like staging, production, test are managed. Configuration is where things like environmental variables , node versions and — an important one — Kudu are managed.

The overview screen shows a general position of the application Status, URL … Click on the URL to see the live site.

Showing the various parts of an App Service on the Azure CLI.

The app is up and running!

Showing the default live page of an App Service.

What we’ve done is create a new App Service, but we have none of our code on Azure yet. As said earlier, all we need to do is to feed Azure the content of the build folder generated by building React for production, but we don’t have one yet. So let’s go local and get some React app.

Going local

We need to create a new React app, and install react-router as a dependency.

npx create-react-app azure-react-demo cd azure-react-demo

We also want to install react-router( react-router-dom, actually)

npm i react-router-dom

All things being equal, starting the app with npm start, we should get the default page.

Showing the default page generated by React.

Because this will be about testing routes, I needed to induce some pages. I’ve modified my local version and uploaded it to GitHub. I’m banking on the fact that you can find your route around react and react-router. Download a demo .

My folder looks like this :P TAGEND

Showing the folders and files in the modified create-react-app app.

The altered files have the following code :P TAGEND // App.js import React, Component from “react”; import ” ./ App.css”; import Home from ” ./ pages/ Home”; import Page1 from ” ./ pages/ Page1″; import Page2 from ” ./ pages/ Page2″; import BrowserRouter as Router, Switch, Route from “react-router-dom”;

class App extends Component

render()

return(

);

exportation default App; // Page1. js import React from “react”; import Link from “react-router-dom”;

const Page1=() =>

return(

Argentina( PAGE 1)

Nigeria

Home

); ; exportation default Page1; // Page2. js import React from “react”; import Link from “react-router-dom”;

const Page2=() =>

return(

Nigeria( PAGE 2)

Argentina

Home

); ; exportation default Page2; /* App.css */ html

box-sizing: border-box; body

margin: 0;. page

display: grid;

grid-template-rows: repeat( 3, 1fr );

height: 100 vh;. page1. flagTop, .page1. flagBottom

background-color: blue;. page2. flagTop, .page2. flagBottom

background-color: green;. flagCenter

display: flex;

align-items: centre;

flex-direction: column;

justify-content: center;

text-align: centre;. page a

perimeter: 2px solid currentColor;

font-weight: bold;

margin: 0 30 px;

padding: 5px;

text-decoration: none;

text-transform: uppercase;. flags

display: flex;

thicknes: 100%;. flags>. page

flex: 1;

Running the app runs locally, so the roads deliver when links are clicked and even when the page is refreshed.

Deploy the app to Azure

Now, let’s get it up on Azure! There are a few steps to make this happen.

Step 1: Head to the Deployment Center

On Azure, we need to go to the Deployment Center. There are quite a few options each with its pros and cons. We’ll be using Local Git( which means your local git app straight immediately to Azure) for source control, Kudu for Build Provider.

Remember to click continue or finish when you select an option, or else, the portal will just keep staring at you.

Showing Deployment Center on the Azure portal and choosing a source control as the first step in deploying a new App Service.

Showing the Build Provider section in the Deployment Center on Azure portal.

After the third step, Azure produces a local git repo for you. And it gives you a remote link to point your react app to.

One thing to note at this phase. When you push, Azure will ask for your GitHub credentials. It is under the deployment tab. There are two: App and User. App credential will be specific to an app. User will be general to all the apps you as a user has Read/ Write access to. You can do without User Credentials and use App credentials, but I find that after a while, Azure stops asking for credentials and just tells me authentication failed automatically. I defined a custom User Credentials. Either way, you are able to get past that.

Showing the Deployment Credentials for the App Service on Azure portal.

In the React app, after modification, we need to build for production. This is important because what we want to upload is the content of the build folder.

We need to tell Kudu what node engine we’ll be using, or else, the construct will most likely fail, due to the reported fact that react-scripts requires a node version higher than the default set on Azure. There are other ways to do that, but the simplest is to add a nodes engine in package.json. I’m utilizing version 10.0 here. Regrettably, we can’t only add what we like, since Azure has Node versions it supports and the rest are unsupported. Check that with the CLI with the command: az webapp list-runtimes

Add the preferred node version to the package.json file, as in :P TAGEND “engines”:

“node”: “1 0.0 ”

Displaying a list of Azure runtimes in the Azure CLI. Step 2: Build the App

To build the React app, let’s run npm build in the Terminal.

Step 3: Initialize the Git repo

Navigate into the build folder and initialize a Git repo in there. The URL to clone the repo is in the overview page. Depending on what credentials you’re employing( App or User ), it will be slightly different.

Showing the overview of the App Service on Azure and the Git clone URL. git init git add. git commit -m “Initial Commit” git remote add azure git push azure master

Now, visit the live app by using the URL on the overview page. As you can see, the app fails on/ page2 freshen. Looking at the network tab, a 404 is thrown because the page tried to be fetched from the server — with client-side routing, as we have already set up, the page shouldn’t even be server fetched at all.

Showing the failed page request and the network tab to verify. Configuring Azure to reconcile client and server side routing

In the public folder, let’s add a web.config XML file with the following content :P TAGEND

I’ve intentionally decided to not format the code snippet because XML is strict about that. If you miss the formatting, the file has no effect. You can download an XML formatter for your text editor. For VSCode, that would be the XML Tools plugin.

Showing an XML formatter and an XML formatted file in VSCode.

The app can be built again at this point, although we’ll lose the Git info in the construct folder since the new construct overrules the old build. That means it would have to be added again, then pushed.

Now the app runs as shown below! Whew.

We don’t want to have to npm run build every time — that’s where continuous deployment comes in. Check out the link below for appropriate references.

Conclusion

There is a lot to Azure, as it can do a lot for you. That’s nice because there are times when you need it to do something that seems super specific — as we’ve seen here with client and server side routing reconciliation — and it already has your back.

That said, I’ll leave you with a couple of related resources you can turn to as you look to deploying a React app to Azure.

Custom NodeJs Deployment on Azure Web App by Hao Luo: Learn more about Kudu and NodeJS deployment. Deploying a React App As a Static Site On Azure by Burke Holland: Even more options for deploying create-react-app to Microsoft Azure.

The post Deploying a Client-Side Rendered create-react-app to Microsoft Azure seemed first on CSS-Tricks.

Read more: css-tricks.com

[theunaccomplishedwriter]

Breaking the Surface - Chapter 3: Brown Eyed Girl

Wow, I did not expect this to go on for so long but I guess I had a lot to say this time around. Hope you all enjoy it and please don't forget to leave reviews, favourites and follow if you really like the story! It is all really appreciated! I do not own Sing or any of its characters. That's Illumination Entertainment's stuff. I just own my OCs.

Also you can read and follow this story on it on Fanfiction.net or A03. Please have a read, leave comments, like and reblog!

Grabbing his wallet and shoving all the money he could find and knew was his into it, Lance shoved the slightly bulging plastic into his jeans pocket and sped out of the apartment door. Checking his phone for the cheapest places and the bus routes, Lance luckily caught sight of the coach he needed, sprinting towards it and quickly handing the money to the tired looking crocodile bus driver. With that, Lance quickly moved to the nearest free seat, making sure to sit at an angle so save breaking his quills and making the seat look more like swiss cheese.

Right, if I'm doing this, I'm doing it properly Lance thought, beginning to rattle off mental to do list. First off, I need business cards. New business cards. Don't think many animals will want my old ones. The memories of how his old cards had not yet subsided. Every joint Lance had visited after what he was now terming 'Ashgate' all had various ways of rejecting him.

After showing the bar's, club's or pub's manager his card, his full name embossed on it with his contact details and intricate L shaped logo, the managers would look at the card and seemed to have several options at their disposal.

The first one would be to ask him to leave politely, which at the start was fairly common. Then they all appear to have a meeting after a few weeks and decided asking him to leave impolitely was the best course. After a month or two, they must have had group chat open to discuss the Lance problem as they started asking him to leave with some nice bouncers. This appeared to be the norm until after Ashgate where the managers all must have had a little chat on Skype as all their bouncers seemed to be far too keen on throwing him out of the door.

Finally, they must have really had his persistence and the fact that, unlike Becky, he wasn't seeming to be getting the message so a couple of months ago Lance was asked to leave for the last time in the most courteous manner possible by a pack of patrons, chasing him from the bar throwing bottles and glasses after him, before chasing him down the street hurling the most well intended slew of profanities.

They should write a book about that Lance mused. 5 Easy Steps to Get Rid of Unwanted Performers. Glancing out the window, Lance realised how perilously close he had come to daydreaming past his stop. Hitting the stop button and holding onto a metal bar as the vehicle lurched to a halt, Lance flung himself off, yelling back a sharp shout of thanks to the irritated driver, ignoring his angry comments and began following his phone to the first destination.

His phone indicating his arrival, Lance gave the shop a quick once over. It was a pleasant enough looking brick building, with a sweet, understated pink sign with the words pins 'n' things looking as if it was transposed directly from the owner's handwritten message to the sign makers.

Pushing the door aside, a little tinkle coming from the bell, Lance looked round the shop. It didn't look like a standard stationery store, all straight lines and lifeless, this had more of a feel of a knick-knack place, filled with knitting things, tiny ornaments, plant pots, teddy bears and other plushies, china tea sets that only grandmothers on TV own, as well as the eponymous pins.

A young warthog, ear pierced, jet black hair with a line of blue, and idly fiddling with her phone stood behind the counter, not even realising Lance's presence which was unsurprising to be fair, the shop being about as populated as the moon.

"Hey" Lance said, moving over to the counter. "You do business cards, right?"

"Yeah" the warthog said, her yes not leaving the phone as she continued to type away.

"Well can you get me some?" Lance said, a little irritated at being ignored.

"Sure" came the monotone response, her hooves still clacking away at the phone.

Lance's limited patience was beginning to wear thin.

"Today please!" Lance exclaimed.

The warthog finally looked over at Lance with slight annoyance.

"Alright, don't get your quills in a knot" she replied, putting her phone in her pocket. "You got a design or something?"

"Yes, here" Lance replied, pulling out a sheet of paper and tossing it onto the counter.

The warthog picked it up and have it a quick scan, her face already judging his work.

"Er, not too complicated. How many d'you need?"

"I guess fifty to start with, like a start pack you know, then I can come back for more."

"Sure, whatever" the warthog rudely replied. "They won't be ready for a while, come back in an hour or two."

"Sounds good. Later"

"Later yourself" she replied, she attention straight back to her phone as Lance left the teen in the all too happy surroundings.

Exiting the shop, still a bit miffed by the warthog's manner and making a metal note to catch her name next time, Lance started gently walking down the street, taking in his surroundings. What with all the daydreaming on the bus he had only just began to realise that he wasn't actually sure where he was. Not seeing a sign or anything, Lance checked his location on his phone, with it bringing up Apolovia, Anopolis.

Huh, not heard of it before. Lance had thought he'd gigged quite extensively round the city. He'd been in numerous places, went a load of places with Ash and Becky, seen a load of things. Lance was sure this was just an anomaly. But, searching on the maps of the city, Lance started seeing names and places he hadn't even heard of, let alone set foot in.

How do I live here three, nearly four years now and barely leave the city centre? I've barely scratched the fucking surface.

Groaning a little at his lack of exploration, Lance decided just to search for his next item on the to do list. A cheap music shop. He knew that most animals would have their own guitars to learn but Lance just knew that some might not be able to afford expensive equipment like that off the bat. Hell, he remembered saving up for his first guitar that wasn't bought for him. So something simple that most animals could use would be a huge boon for business, so long as he could get something for a reasonable price.

His phone eventually brought up something that reviews all raved about it's reasonable prices and, quite fortunately, it wasn't too far away so he didn't need the bus again. Setting it as his destination, Lance once again obediently followed the electronic female guide.

With time to kill before his cards would be ready, Lance's legs began to look mat this new area in a bit more depth, looking at everything with new eyes as if he were an intrepid explorer looking discovering a new land.

The buildings weren't anywhere near as sleek and modern as the ones he was used to in the city centre, the architecture of the area seeming to be at least half a century old. Every structure he passed seemed to show the tell-tale signs of age. The concave rooftiles trying to hide its bald spots with moss coverings, brickwork wrinkled and blemished, windows faded and unfocused. The pavement slabs were wonkily put together and the road with untreated potholes. It was if the very street itself had been through a traumatic accident and the surgery, while successful, could never restore it to its previous physical prime.

Yet, despite its age and ailments, the street breathed life through every pore. Each building, though showing its signs of wear and tear, were all painted in glorious technicolour, celebrating its age while embracing the new, each window filled high with weird and wonderful stock that differed spectacularly from one pane to the next. The road, despite its handicap, was packed with cars, buses, and lorries, all adding to the incoherently soundtrack, with the jammed packed with animals of all species and persuasions, making their way here, there and everywhere. The street, no, the entire district was buzzing with life.

Lance, taking this all in, marvelled at the stark contrast to the clinical city centre. Free of animals, the city centre was as sterile and silent as mortuary, without any semblance of the personality that it had been in the daylight hours of its life. Apolovia though, even one first glance, breathed life through every nook and cranny, roaring with sound, refusing to be silent, exuding energy from every particle of its being.

That's it Lance thought, his pace barely that of a snail's. The place's energy. The constant charge of something. That invisible electric feeling that meant that something, anything, was on the precipice of happening. It could be something momentous or minor, life changing or life ending, but no matter what it was, it was there, just in touching distance, the faint spark within touching distance, waiting for someone to grasp it and feel the surge of change.

And, for the briefest of moments, Lance felt the static possibilities against his paw tips.

Shaking himself from his thoughtful reverie, Lance returned his attention to his phone, resuming his march to the music shop.

After leaving the main road, swerving this way and that through the grid like streets, the artificial navigator finally announced that they had arrived. Looking up at the shop in front of him, Lance wasn't particularly impressed. From the outside at least, the bottom layer of what looked like an unused apartment building looked like a rundown nickel and dime sort of place, a dull and damaged neon sign that read Marv's Music hanging above the door. Posters of bands and albums were plastered all around the windows to such an extent that it looked more like a notice board than something to advertise what the shop was actually selling.

Looking away from the shop and taking in the street he was on, Lance felt that the shop could not be more out of place if it tried. Down the road was a chic café that, despite the beginnings of autumn chills that September brought, had a smattering of students sprawled around outside street side seating areas.

Giving them a quick once over, Lance could tell their type immediately. Reclining in the hardback chairs, sipping the remains of their espressos, probably conversing on some notion about the decadence and impotence of capitalism, all the while keeping their eyes glued to their Chinese made phones while sporting their Bangladeshi sweat shop shoes. Yep, those were first year students, all entitled and ill-informed. They'd learn things weren't so black and white soon.

Directly across the street there was a book shop that, by the look of it, was only remaining upright through sheer force of will, the rest of the building above it trying to squash it from existence. The windows were straining from the books piled up high against it, a thin line at the top letting in its ration of natural light, and a musty smell wafting out of its open front door that could be invaded Lance's nostrils despite standing on the other side of the street.

The owner, a studious badger, was clearly visible in the doorframe, sitting behind the counter, paying no mind to the porcupine looking at him from across the way nor the sole bibliophile in his shop, so thoroughly enraptured in his own tome, or at least as enraptured as you could be behind drooping eyelids.

Looking back over the way he came, Lance spied a vintage clothes shop he somehow neglected to notice on his way down. Glass House, the name just legible at Lance's angle, appeared to be a standard sort of store, full of fantastic wares at exorbitant prices.

I should know Lance mused; the punk look doesn't come cheap, especially for porcupines.

The owner, a black-backed jackal dressed in torn jeans and untucked lumberjack style cheque shirt, lent against the door frame whilst taking a drag on her cigarette. The few animals that walked past her shop instead of deigning to enter, all silently judging her carcinogenic habit, were met with eyes that screamed complete and utter indifference, as if she didn't care that they could possible patronise her shop, allowing them to walk away with their internal condemnations and bland apparel.

Eventually returning his gaze to the store in question, Lance gave out a sigh and pushed the door open. Stepping inside, a single word popped into Lance's mind. Instruments. The place was festooned with instruments. Crawling with instruments. Instruments up the bloody wall.

Violins and mandolins, saxophones and banjos, xylophones and oboes, acoustics and drum sticks, and electrics that verged upon being completely eccentric. Everything was shoved into corners, attached to the walls, and in some cases hung from the ceiling with cords. If you told Lance that someone had decided to store all the world's instruments into this pokey little shop, in that moment Lance would have believed them wholeheartedly. Lance was surprised there was actual floor space, let alone room to move without him sucking in his gut.

Negotiating his way through the crowded room, Lance eventually made his way to a small opening at the back, revealing a till with a large red door behind it, and to the right of it large set of stairs for the next layer of the store.

Bounding up the stairs, Lance took a quick look at the upper floor. If the bottom floor was where the tools of musical creation was kept, then upstairs was where inspiration was sought. In the era of digital downloads, this place seemed to be out of time. CDs were stored by the rack, cassettes bundled in baskets, vinyl resting in piles, some having been leafed through as many times as a librarian's secret erotic paperback delight.

Venturing up the stairs and taking in the many musical delights, Lance aimlessly flicked through everything on display. It had everything. You name it and it was there. Ray Charles. Ed Sheeran. Joan Jett & the Blackhearts. Dereck & the Dominos. Nirvana. The Animals. Santana. The Beastie Boys. The Beatles, together and solo. N.W.A. Tracy Chapman. Amy Winehouse. Queen. The Afghan Wings. Marvin Gaye. Spoon. Can. Joy Division. David Bowie. The lost went on and on and on.

Wandering to the back of the room Lance noticed a small room with a heavy black door, the paint slightly chipped away revealing its metal flesh. Shrugging his shoulders and pushing the door open, Lance jaw nearly dropped off. It was a soundproof booth. He'd seen them before but usually they were like telephone booths so you could stand and listen to terrible quality music in privacy with gunged up headphones. This however, hell it looked like a professional recording booth. It was big enough to fit a good group of animals in to all just rock out to whatever music they wanted to hear, with a huge touch screen of music embedded into the wall listing anything and everything.

Exiting the room and taking in the entire spectacle before him, Lance could only think one thing in self-chastisement.

How the hell have I never been in here before?

Eventually coming down a little from the musical high he was on, Lance made his way back downstairs. While his eye roved over everything around him, picturing himself playing anything and everything, Lance tried to keep his focus on guitars. Cheap guitars. Browsing their selection, Lance proceed to marvel a certain guitar, pick it up, feel the smooth wood in his fur, the metallic strings against his paws and worn-down claws, then catch a glimpse of the price before sullenly putting it back and repeating the process with the next one along. By the sixth guitar, Lance was beginning to believe that the reviews were something the owner put up himself to get animals through the door.

If this was the cheapest place to get a decent guitar then I might be stuffed Lance reflected.

"Lookin' for sumit?"

Jumping at the voice, Lance turned round quickly to face the source but quickly found nothing.

"Oi, down here!" the voice sounded, slightly exasperated now.

Looking down, Lance saw what appeared to be a middle-aged pine marten, his unblinking eyes staring up at him, his face set with the tired expression as if he had been unceremoniously woken up. His clothes reflected it, a shabby looking white t-shirt with a couple of splodges of what looked like jam and washed jeans that only held what appeared to be a vague memory of the blue they used to be.

Is this the owner? Lance questioned internally.

"So, you gonna speak or have I gotta get someone that speaks dumb-dumb?" the tiny mammal spat, his eyes looking with him a dollop of condescension.

Well that answers that question then.

"Er, yeah" Lance replied, finally finding his voice. "I'm starting to teach guitar and I need something in case the students don't have their own gear."

The pine marten gave him the once over, foot to head, as if examining whether this animal was worth the time of day or whether he should go back to whatever exciting activity he'd been up to. Under the mammals unflinching scrutiny Lance, for all his bravado, couldn't help but feel a little off centre, even if the guy barely came up to his chest.

After looking as though he was mulling something over in his head, the gecko eventually shook his head, blowing out air as if he were accepting a daunting challenge or quest.

"Alright. What sort of size you lookin' at?" came the unenthused reply.

"Oh erm…" Lance hesitated.

The gecko sighed loudly. "Size of guitar numbskull!"

"Hey! Back off short stack!" Lance growled, getting a bit pissed off with the guy's attitude.

"Make me Stripes!"

Stripes? Lance thought? Where'd he get Stri… He quickly looked over his stiped t-shirt, striped long shirt underneath and the brown and white stripes in his quills. How has not noticed that before?

Taking Lance pondering for submission, the pine marten appeared to calm down.

"Alright Stripes, so I'm guessin' you're pretty new to this shtick so, and tell me if I'm right, you need somethin' in case an animal doesn't have a guitar of their own so you can get them into lessons and scoop the cash off them. Am I right?"

Lance, surprised by the guy's ability to succinctly understand his reason for visiting, merely.

"Thought so. Alright, now we're getting' somewhere. I'm guessing acoustic and, by the look at you Stripes" the pine marten said, giving him an exaggerated look "I'm guessing something cheap." Lance fought to keep the scowl off his face as the pine marten moved over to the guitars.

Don't piss him off. This place is cool. You may want to come back. Just play nice, get the guitar, get out.

"So, if you're wantin' something basic and for most animals, my guess would be about your size. You don't get a lot of elephants rockin' out do you? Or mice for that matter. It's why I get to up the prices for overly large or my size guitars. Make a killin' out of it. Your size though? Not so much. So a medium good enough for now Stripes?"

"Stop calling me Stripes and just get me a damn guitar!" Lance retorted petulantly. The pine marten merely shrugged.

"Hey, you're the boss Stripes" he replied, before suddenly whipping out a ladder concealed in between the rows of guitars and swiftly ascending before climbing all over the hung guitars, hopping from one to another with agility a frog would envy.

Climbers, what d'you expect? Lance thought, watching the pine marten expertly navigate the instruments before returning to stare at the shop floor.

Wonder what else is hidden in this place Lance thought, looking around, the sheer scale of the operation within such a tiny space still boggling his mind.

Employee aside, this Marv guy knows his stuff.

"Hey, found you one! Looks better than you do!" the aforementioned employee called out. "Get ready to catch!"

"Catch? Catch wha - "

Before Lance had time to process anything else, Lance looked up to see a guitar sailing down towards him at a rate of knots. Half swearing, Lance reached up to the guitar on reflex, flexing backwards paws outstretched, only managing to stop the instrument's decent mere inches away from his face. and barely managed to catch it before the thing clattered with his face.

"Pff, that clo-oooh, ow!" Lance yelped, losing his balance and falling to the floor, the guitar slipping from his grasp and hitting his head with a musical thud.

"Hey, don't go breakin' my stock Stripes! Now get up off your ass, you're clutterin' up the place." the pine marten scolded, somehow now standing over Lance's prone form, barely holding the laugh in his gut.

"Come on, get up ya bum." He said, offering a paw.

"I'm fine" Lance said, rejecting the offer, the pine marten retracting the offer with a shrug.

"Warn me next time you're gonna do some crazy shit like that!" Nearly smashed my head in."

"Hey, it would have been an improvement! Now come on, time's money, what d'ya think?" he said, gesturing to his choice.

Picking up the downed guitar, Lance gave it the once over.

It had certainly seen better days. It looked like fourth if not fifth hand. The wooden body had a few scuff here and there, the headstock having a few notable scratches and looking like it had been attacked with a knife at one point on the right hand side, with a section of it missing revealing its dry interior. The once shiny frets were dull, but at least all remaining. The strings at least looked now, without the excessive wires hanging off the top like you see some guitars.

All in all, it seemed fairly standard. Nothing too fancy, a bit busted but he wasn't looking for perfection, just something playable. Lance moved his paw over the strings. Sliding it up the fret, thy let out a soft metallic whine, making his quills shiver

That's the good stuff Lance thought, his eyes closed in bliss.

"Hey! You buyin' it or askin' it out? I ain't got all day ya know?" the pine marten grumpily interrupted.

"Mind if I give it a go?" Lance asked, choosing to ignore his comment, though the message didn't seem to reach his face which was plastered with a disgruntled look.

"Sure, whatever. Just don't break a string or anythin'. Wait, actually do. Need to get rid of some out back. Been cloggin' up the place since God knows when."

Ignoring his belly-aching, Lance sat on the ladder step since a chair apparently being the one thing the shop didn't have stuffed into it.

Getting comfortable, Lance closed his eyes, trying to think of what to play, going through his own material in his head, thinking what would sound good acoustically.

It wasn't a long search, his self-penned sure-fire hits not being too numerous to begin with and, no matter how much Lance tried to convince himself, he couldn't shake the feeling that an amp was needed to make it sound good.

Whatever, I'll do something else Lance conceded, his paws already manoeuvring into the opening chords.

Starting to play, Lance felt a sensation come over him that he had not felt in a while, a comfortable sensation, as if slipping back into a well-worn coat. His paws and arms moving with practiced skill fluidly, his actions precise yet with a natural calm flow. He hummed gently, near inaudibly, the words never escaping his lips, his eyes closed, not even the song he was playing even reaching his ears. He just let it happen, let it all flow out of him in silence, as the guitar spoke his silent soliloquy.

With the last note played, Lance opened his eyes, his paws still holding down the last chord. Smiling gently to himself, Lance suddenly realised he hadn't actually heard himself play, which is kind of a no-no when you want to hear how a guitar sounds.

Looking up, he saw the pine marten staring back at him with an unusual expression. Gone was the slightly patronising look, his face now had an inquisitive look, his head slightly tiled, his previously tightly folded arms now loosened. He seemed to be meditating on something, his eyes looking at him, rather beyond him.

"So erm" Lance began, breaking the silence "seems alright, least you're not giving me something unplayable."

The pine marten remained silent, still looking at Lance as if he was some strange curiosity.

"Yeah…" he eventually replied, his tone lower and eyes narrowing "seems like it."

A moment silence befell the two. What's happening here? One minute he's all in your face the next he could be a living statue. What gives?

"Well!" the pine marten exclaimed, returning to his past exuberance "we got a sale then or what Stripes? I've got stuff to do ya know?"

"Sure, seems alright. And don't call me Stripes."

"Sure thing… playboy" the pine marten said, a smirk tugging at his lips, his fangs revealing a little.

Lance paused. "What did you just say?" the anger rising in his voice, his paw clenching.

"What? You think I don't know who you are Mr Lance, heartbreaker and this month's internet's most infamous coming up to three months running? I may be getting on but I'm not a total geezer yet. I still know how to do the Facetube's an everything." He mocked, the grin becoming a full-on smirk with hints of laughter in behind his words.

The anger was rising behind Lance's eyes, his grip on the guitar fret tightening, his quills quivering with rage. Yet the mustelid kept going.

"You wouldn't believe the amount of animals coming in here after that article came out. So many animals were pissed! I even had this one guy come in, alligator I think, saying if he ever saw you he'd be hard pressed to not rip you apart there and then with his teeth. And he was one of the milder ones!"

He let out a huge belly laugh, not even registering the darkness welling in Lance's eyes, his entire being shaking but his mind still restraining himself. He'd heard it all before and worse.

"God, I'd not seen anger like that in years! And here you are, the notorious Lance! God, if I went out there and yelled you were here, I don't think I could ever get this shop clean! Doubt the Police would bother though, not with your scrawny ass. Probably convince themselves it was self-defence or something. Or maybe suicide. Probably wouldn't even send your dear old mother a message saying her cheating little boy had copped it!"

With that Lance lunged forward, grabbing the pine marten by his collar and hoicked him up, bringing him level with his eyes.

"Shut. Your Mouth." Lance said with cool anger.

"Touched a nerve then? He replied, his voice without a trace of fear.

"More than touched you fucking oversized rodent." Lance spat, the bile rising in his throat.

"I've had enough of your shit. Now, you take back what you just said or you and this guitar and gonna have a bit of disagreement." The guitar was now raised above the mustelid's head, Lance eye's not leaving the pine marten's almost bored eyes.

"You think a threat's gonna work here? I've handled worse than you Stripes. You're not cracking the top ten here mate. Just put the guitar down, buy it and leave. We can pretend this never happened."

Lance anger began to slowly diminish, realisation creeping into his eyes, becoming acutely conscious of precisely what he was doing.

"Okay, maybe I overstepped the mark a bit but, considerin' your reputation right now, d'you wanna add beating up a mammal half your size and twice your age to that? I mean, come on. You're dumb, but not that dumb."

Lance relaxed, the guitar slowly falling to his side and gently putting the mammals down, shame creeping into his mind and trickling down his face.

"Sorry" Lance mumbled, his voice thick with remorse.

"S'alright." He replied, fixing his crumpled shirt. "We both went a bit too far there."

"No shit Sherlock" Lance replied.

"Yeah, just get so into ribbing animals I sometimes I forget to get to know their limits first. Anyway, we'll draw a line under it. Not mention it again, 'kay?"

"Sounds like a good idea." Lance replied, a faint smile appearing for the amnesty.

"How 'bout we start over? You know, pretend like you've just walked in and we'll both act all professional and shit."

Lance let out a little chuckle and extended a paw. "Sure. I'm Lance, guitar teacher to be, rock star in the making and social pariah. Nice to meet you."

Giving a genuine smile, the mammal took his paw and shook it firmly. "Nice to meet you Lance. Marv Parten. Music store owner, mouthy git and fashion trendsetter."

Lance laughed now with Marv joining him, the tensions evaporating as the cries of joy reverberated off the instruments.

Leaving the shop, Marv called out to the now forty dollars lighter Lance.

"Great doing business with ya Lance! Come again, maybe we can make this a weekly thing?"

"Sure thing Marv, you daft bugger." Lance jovially replied, earning a laugh from him before the door clanged shut.

Readjusting the case strapped to his back, hoping it didn't damage his quills to badly, Lance began to walk back to the stationary store, his mood brightened a little after the initially awkward exchange.

Now just to get those cards and you can head on home and slob out like you intended with the day Lance though, hitching the case again as he re-entered the busy main road of Apolovia.

Smiling at the thought, Lance entered pins 'n' things with renewed vigour. The warthog smiled as he entered and handed him his finished business cards in a little plastic case. Lance even managed a half-genuine smile and thanked the warthog for her help and handed another load of cash.

After briefly dealing with the unhelpful warthog, Lance was now leaning his shoulder against the wall outside pins 'n' things looking at his new business cards. They looked pretty damn professional if he did say so himself. No loud emblems or outrageous designs, just plain white card with a serious looking type face that read:

Mr Morgan's Guitar Lessons

Flexible Work Schedule

Teaches Beginners to Advanced

All ages, sizes and species welcome

Please message for inquiries

And with that Lance had left his email and address below, but decided at the last minute to forgo giving out his phone number. Who can't send emails on their phones? Lance reasoned, as well as the fact he didn't want animals spamming his phone and didn't feel like dealing with a personal and business phone, especially if the amount of animals wanting to skin him alive were true from what Marv had said. It was why it was Mr Morgan as well. No first names. Just business. No drama.

His lips curling in approval at his shrewdness, Lance pushed off the building and span round to head to the bus stop.

Sofa slouching here I – oof!

As he whriled round, Lance clattered into a furry blur, spinning the fuzzy obstacle to the ground while Lance let out a surprised grunt and dropped the card to the ground before the exploded out of their case and fluttered away like dandelion seeds all around him.

The irrational anger that comes free with such unfortunate incidents filled Lance's core, causing him to spin round ready for an argument, to hell with his apparent ill reputation.

"Hey! Watch where the hell you're go…"

Looking at the prone form on the ground, Lance's anger came to an abrupt halt.

Collapsed on the ground was a young raccoon who, even from a rear view, looked as if she had seen better days. She was wearing a long dark green sweater with the common criss-cross pattern, the arms trailing over her paws and looking threadbare and frayed at the edges. Her jeans looked as though they had last been in the washing machine four years ago, if the stains, rips, the fact they finished in the middle of her shin and came with an unnecessarily tight look was anything to go by.

Her scuffed shoes weren't any better. The right one looked as it was barely clinging to life and the left one looked as if it was being held together with a rubber band. Her striped tail looked near entirely black, with the amount of grime and soot clinging to the fur. The rest of her fur looked like it hadn't been groomed or washed in that day, or week. It stuck out in odd places and had a slightly greasy look, as if she had just rubbed herself in fast food.

Seeing this spectacle Lance's concerns about his cards withered and died as, after the initial shock, Lance dropped down to help her up. Taking her sleeved paw, he gently helped her up, the raccoon giving little winces as she did. Setting her up on her unsteady feet, the girl kept her head down, as if afraid to meet Lance's gaze.

"Hey, are you alright?" Lance asked, gently touching her shoulder.

Instinctively recoiling from the touch, the raccoon's face shot up and her eyes met his so quickly and piercingly that Lance couldn't help but be a little shocked.

Her deep, wavering brown eyes looked at him with confusion and a little notion of fear clinging around the irises. Her face went taut and her ears immediately pinned themselves back to her skull. She was like a deer in highlights. Completely frozen, waiting for some inevitable fate to befall her.

"Hey, I'm not going hurt or anything, okay? I just want to know you're alright." Lance said softly, holding his paws up placatively.

The raccoon, gaining some semblance of awareness, the raccoon nervously looked around, taking in the scene.

"Hey, you o -"

Before Lance could even finish his sentence, the raccoon turned tail and started sprinting away as if fleeing a crime scene, bumping into animals as she went, causing jeers of annoyance as she made her escape.

"Hey, wait!" Lance called out, but too late as the surprisingly speedy procyonid zipped around a corner and out of sight, leaving Lance with his arm outstretched in a moment of genuine concern.

Lowering his arm, Lance began collecting his cards that remained strewn on the floor. Fortunately, there hadn't been any wind blowing around and the animals moved round the disturbed area, allowing Lance managed to scavenge most, if not all, of the cards off the concrete.

Popping the last few up into the plastic case after a couple of minutes, Lance noticed something in his periphery. A small brown case. Curious, Lance went over, picking up the light object. It was a wallet; the small pattern-less container was scuffed, with the brand's name worn off from years of continuous use.

Curiosity getting the better of him, Lance opened up the wallet. No cash, but the wallet was packed full of receipts. Snarlbucks, Dragon's Coffee Wagon, Queen Bee Tea. Whoever it is, they sure like caffeine Lance chuckled to himself.

Slipping to the card holders, it was completely barren. No credit cards, debit cards, loyalty cards, membership cards, nothing.

Guess I might as well bin it Lance thought. It's only got rubbish in it so it might as well join the rest.

Looking over to a nearby bin, Lance went to lob the wallet in, already getting the basketball commentary in his head, before a small piece of plastic fell out of one of the tears in the wallet, spinning to the ground.

Picking up the white plastic, Lance turned it over to inspect it. It was a provisional driver's licence with the unemotional face of the raccoon he had just bumped into. She looked better in the photo. Her fur didn't look greasy, her eyes unemotional but unafraid, her ears slightly perked up, there was even a faint hint of a smile. She looked nice. Pretty, even. Much better than she was a few minutes ago.

Looking over the licence, Lance saw her details. There wasn't much to see, a lot of it having scratch marks that obscured most writing. Only one piece remained barely legible and, thank fully, it was the address: 754 Senna Row, Paneris, Anopolis.

Quickly putting the address into maps, the route popped into view. It wasn't too far, about a ten-minute walk or so. Lance shrugged the guitar case to a more comfortable position, his quills beginning to hate the case, before making his way towards the raccoon's home

To say that the quality of housing declined the closer he got to Senna Row was a bit of an understatement. More like it took a nosedive into the fiery pits of Hades.

From the delightful stone and brick buildings of Apolovia, by the time he reached Paneris the stone structures had been replaced with shabby wooden shacks. They were worn and dilapidated, with a pervading smell of rot and damp circulating the entire area that no amount of conscious effort could blot out.

Instead of the hustle and bustle where animals were everywhere and celebratory noise was a constant, unsettling silence hung heavy through this district, only punctuated by the occasional shout or scream in the distance. A few teenage mammals hung around chain link fences, smoking a shared cigarette and giving Lance looks as if they were marking their next hit. Lance avoided their gaze, but kept his eyes steady, puffing his chest out slightly and walking with slight exaggerated confidence. He knew these sorts of places and how to carry himself.

Looking weak and lost was just asking to be called out and possibly beaten up and mugged. Lance had had his fair share of it when he first came to Anopolis. He had learned how to exude confidence and machismo prior to his arrival, but being in areas like this help drive the point home of it being a 24/7 kind of thing, something that helped to make animals think twice about approaching him on the streets, but also somehow managed to help him persuade managers to give him gigs. Well, it used to help.

Sweeping his memories away, Lance's phone finally buzzed that he had reached his destination. Looking up at the house, Lance could see why the raccoon looked the way she did. The place was a dump even by the area's standards.

The roof looked like it was about the cave in at any second, the windows were either smashed or boarded up, the wooden boards looked like it was on the verge of disintegrating. God knows how animals managed to walk on the porch. There were a pile of papers and letters clumped together by the door, as if the postman had given up trying to push them through the letterbox. Weeds were even growing up through the porch and climbing up the building, as they had already taken over the front garden and path.

They're probably the only thing keeping the house standing.

Lance started to wonder whether it was worth going up to the house. There didn't seem to be anyone home, but then again, he doubted that the house had any electricity, or they couldn't afford to pay their bills without a ton of benefits. Suddenly Lance felt lucky that Becky was even giving him a chance to stay in her comparatively luxurious apartment.

I could be in somewhere like this again so easily Lance thought. No Lance, it's not going to happen. You're talented and everyone is going to see it. You'll be living in the lap of luxury and this'll all be just a distant memory.

Emboldened, Lance walked up the porch and knocked on the door.

No response.

Okay, try again.

Still nothing.

Lance knocked a bit louder.

The house or its occupants weren't seeming to be getting the message.

One more try and I go.

With Lance' paw raised, the door cracked open, with a dark brown eye peering out at him, a slice of a face looking out at him.

"Oh erm, hi." Lance started, nervously waving his paw. "Sorry for erm, disturbing you and all that but erm, you er, you dropped this."

Lance pulled the wallet out of his pocket, holding it up to the peeping eye. The eye, widening slightly, before darting between the wallet and its temporary keeper, slowly shut the door. Hearing a rustle and clunks of a chains, bolts and locks, the raccoon finally came out, leaving the door ever so slightly ajar behind her.

She had cleaned up a little, her fur looking a bit more groomed with most of the sticking out parts having been addressed, but her fur still retained that slightly oily look and her clothes were unchanged.

Standing there, her head kept down, she plucked at her green sleeves in embarrassment, her paws still hidden within them. She stood in complete deference to Lance, her body language fragile but compliant, as if she were clay for his to mould. It slightly unnerved Lance. He was here to return a lost item and she was looking as if he was about to march her down to police station.

"Sorry, I had to go through to find out it was yours." Lance began, incredibly uncomfortable with her demeanour, holding the wallet out for her.

Her had remaining hung, her paw finally raised up and emerged from its green cocoon. She gently grasped it and, in controlled movements, brought into both her paws, her eyes impassively looking it over.

"I think er, everything there. I checked all around to see if anything fell out but I think it's all there." As little as that is Lance noted.

Autumn remained silent, but nodded slightly, as if taking Lance's word for it. A few awkward seconds of silence passed with Lance uncertain how to leave.

Should I wait for her to say something? She doesn't look while she's about to say anything. Maybe I should just go. But won't that seem rude? Wait, why am I thinking all this over? I did the good deed. Well done Lance. Now just get out of here.

"Erm, look so er, I just wanted to bring this back to you and er, make sure you were, you know, alright and everything. You took quite a tumble back there and I thought you'd hurt yourself. I may not be, you know, everyone's favourite guy right now but I'm er, you know, I'm glad that you're er, well…" Lance rambled, waving his paws as if to finish his eloquent speech.

She was looking up at him now, her eyes a mixture of confusion and something Lance couldn't quite put his paw on. Resentment for his pity? Trepidation for this weird bumbling mammal? Curiosity for… the same reason? Lance wasn't sure but by the look of her, he had probably outstayed his welcome.

"So er, since I can see you're erm, fine and all that I'll just get going. Don't want to, you know, keep you longer than you need. So er, I'll be seeing you then." Lance mumbled, starting to back away his mind kicking himself for his awkwardness.

"You like music?"

The question had come out so quietly that had Lance turned his head ever so slightly further away he may never have heard it.

Her voice was wispy and fragile, as if it could be shattered forever if it dared go up a single octave more. It was weak and shaky, as if she was completely unpractised at the art of merely speaking.

Looking back, she saw that the racoon's arm was outstretched, pointing at the guitar case, previously obscured by his quills.

"Oh erm, yeah. I like music." Lance said. "D'you erm, d'you like music?"

The racoon nodded, her face still not looking up at him.

"Oh erm, what d'you like?" Lance asked, unsure whether he'd get an answer and as to the point of asking anyway.

The raccoon seemed to take a moment to think about it, before shrugging noncommittally.

"Come on" Lance began, growing a little more confident. "You must like something. R&B? Jazz? Blues? Soul? Punk? Pop? Rock?"

Again, the raccoon seemed to process the question, shifting her feet a little as she thought about it.

"I… I like… most things."

Lance nodded. Better than nothing at all I guess. Silence fell between them once again, the raccoon clearly looking a bit awkward about having spoken so much with Lance still looking for an out of this stilted conversation.

"Look erm, I'm glad you're alright and all and erm, hold on."

Lance rummaged in his pockets before pulling out the card container, quickly opening it up and held it out to the girl. She looked at it quizzically, before taking it in her free paw, reading over the text.

"I teach guitar. Just started actually so, you know, if you wanna place some of those 'most thing' then er, drop me a line sometime, 'kay?" Lance said, once again moving away down the porch steps.

"I don't have email." the racoon called out, her voice straining a little.

"Sorry what?" Lance replied, turning back, his escape thwarted once more.

"I don't have email." she repeats, a little quieter and more comfortable.

"Oh." That's all Lance could think to say. Who the hell doesn't have email?

"Like at all or?"

She shook her head.

"Not even on your phone?"

The raccoon let out a soft snort, shaking her head before fishing around in her tattered jeans pocket. Sliding it out, she revealed a dark blue brick phone with a tiny scratched screen and massive buttons. It looked as if it had been handed down, thrown about, dropped down the loo, and hit several times with a blunt object before it managed to get into her paws.

Jesus, I didn't think animals still had those Lance though. Well, there goes my no phone number idea. Shit, I'll have to fork out for new cards!

"Oh, right. Erm, well I guess I could give you my number."

Lance pulled out his phone and read out the number as the raccoon slowly put it into her phone, holding the phone's dull screen to Lance to make sure she had it right.

"Yeah, that's it. Just give me a ring if you want to have a go or whatever."

The raccoon nodded, a bit more certain in her movements.

"How much is it?" came her voice again, with a slightly serious tone.

"Oh erm…" Lance began, but then he looked at the raccoon. He looked at her face. Her clothes. Her house behind her. Truth be told, he was thinking about 30 dollars a session, that way he could rack up some good cash if he got a few students. But looking at her, how empty her wallet was, how run down her house was, Lance did something that a few months ago he would never conceive of doing.

"Er, the first session's free then it'll be like 10 dollars or something." Lance tilted his head down, a little embarrassed at giving what he felt was a handout to her. "Does… does that sound alright?"

Looking up briefly, Lance saw a sudden flicker of light appeared in her eyes. It was brief, but it was there. A moment that took her out of her continuously sad complexion. Lance grinned a little. Wait, why am I happy? I just knocked down the price stupidly! What the hell am I gonna –

"That sounds good."

Raising his head up again, Lance thought he spied a smile. It was faint, barely registering at all, but it was there. A tiny smile and her face brightening up a bit. She looked like a different mammal for a moment, albeit a fleeting one.

"Cool" Lance mumbled, attempting to shake himself of his stray thoughts and making his way to the porch steps once more. "Well, I'll see you later then."

"I wasn't trying anything."

Lance paused. The tone coming from the raccoon was harder this time, as if trying to defend herself. Even her body language become stiffer, m ore determined.

"What d'you mean?" Lance asked, slightly puzzled.

"I wasn't trying anything before."

What's she on about? Lance couldn't help thinking, the confusion spreading to his voice.

"Try what?"

The second denial seemed to flummox the raccoon. She looked at him now, her deep brown eyes staring at him as if he were some exotic, almost alien, curio.

Lance was befuddled too. What on earth is she going on about? Trying something? The hell could she try to do? There's nothing of her.

"I er, you know," she started, uncertainty at her own words becoming evident. "When I bumped into you. Back there. I wasn't, you know, trying anything… sketchy." she trailed off, seeming to need a minute after speaking so much.

"Erm, yeah sure" Lance agreed, still not understanding. "Whatever, but seriously, there's nothing to apologise for." Lance said with a shrug of his shoulders.

The raccoon smiled for a brief second, before diving her paw into her jeans pocket and prising some green notes out of it, proffering it to the porcupine.

"Erm, what's this?" Lance asked, the situation getting more confusing by the second.

Stepping forward, she shoved something into his paw. Opening it up, it revealed some crumpled notes. There wasn't a lot there, maybe eight dollars and a barely twenty cents change.

"For the wallet. Sorry it's not much." She mumbled, before walking away, leaving Lance a little shocked.

Without even thinking, Lance grabbed the raccoon's green sleeve halting her in her place, a look of fear coming into her eyes.

"I don't know who or what you think I am but I am not taking this." Lance stated flatly.

Thinking on it, it probably wasn't the smartest thing to do as the raccoon was staring at his paw, still gripping the faded green fivers of her jumper. Lance quickly realised what this was starting to look like and quickly released her.

"Sorry, it's just I can't take this."

"You have to." She responded matter of factly.

"For what? Returning your wallet? I'm not taking it." Lance scoffed.

Her eyes narrowed, a grim look coming into the pupils.

"I have to pay you back." She said in a measured tone, her eyes finally meeting his. They were cold, demanding, yet somehow also pleading with him to let her pay him back.

Looking back down at his paw, the notes still scrunched up Lance couldn't help but feel torn. He did need the money, even with Becky as a lifeline she wasn't going to keep giving him handouts whenever he needed it. That was the whole point of getting a job. But, this was her money. Probably all the money she had. She needed it more. And yet here she was, handing it all over to pay some self-created debt? He couldn't just give her the money back. It'd be insulting. She was trying to do right and for him to spurn her money was essentially saying, I don't need your money. Not from you and where you're from. Lance sighed.

I'm probably going to regret this…

"Alright, I'll take… a dollar" Lance began.

Her mouth jolted open in protest, but Lance managed to hump in before she could give voice to it.

"Wait a sec! I'm going to take a dollar. I probably need it to make up my bus fare. I don't need any more than that so you're actually really helping me here. But seriously, you don't need to reward me for bringing you your wallet. I'm just honestly glad you're alright after the tumble you took. You really smashed into the floor."

"That's not enough" Autumn sighed. "I need to pay the debt."

Lance repressed a groan. Seriously, what do I have to do to get this bloody raccoon to call it quits!

"Okay, how about this. You know those guitar lessons? You have to go to them now." Lance said, determined to finish the issue once and for all.

"You can do four sessions okay? That's 40 dollars. You'll have paid me back and then some, though I still have no idea what exactly you're paying me back for. So that's four sessions plus the freebie. Five sessions in all. Sound good?"

A pause. Lance looked into her eyes, trying to as serious with her as possible. Her eyes slightly twitching as she thought it over, she let out a sigh.

"That, that sounds… fair."

"Finally!" Lance breathily exhaled, before taking one dollar his paw and handing back the rest.

"So…we good now?"

The raccoon looked at the money before pocketing it and nodding.

"Great. Now, when d'you want me to come down here for our first lesson?"

The raccoon cocked her head in confusion, ear titing to the side as she did so.

Huh, that's kinda cute Lance thought, internally chucking at her bemused face.

"You know, to do the lessons?" Lance said, slightly patronisingly. "When are you free? I can get down here in about forty minutes from mine so –"

"You can't do it here!" The panic was apparent in her voice, taking Lance a bit by surprise.

"I er," she backpedalled, the cogs of her mind clearly showing on her face "I mean er, my dad, he works from home so er, it wouldn't be… I don't want to erm, er, disturb him."

Sure, works from home. I believe that. Lance thought, believing it about as much as he believed in the hairless ape conspiracy. Yet, with her reaction, Lance doubted he'd change her mind. Plus he didn't really fancy coming back here again if he could avoid it.

"Alright then. Wouldn't want to disturb the hardworking father now, would we?"

"No, no… we wouldn't." Autumn said sullenly, rubbing her arm slightly.

"Do you er, have somewhere we could do this? Your place or something?"

"My place?" Lance said, rubbing his chin.

What the hell would Becky say, bringing unknown animals to her, our, flat? Well, it would only be one animal and she seems harmless enough. Needs a wash but harmless. I think I can smooth this over. Besides, a pupil on day one? Yeah, I bet I can swing this. Say it's only for this one. Bet I can think of a reason. The others I'll go to their houses. Yeah, I bet I can swing this.

"Yeah, sure" Lance finally replied. "Just got to make sure it's okay with my girlfriend first but should be. I'll text you when I know. Oh er, send me a text so I've got your number."

"Okay" came the slightly warm reply, before she took out her phone and rapidly text a message for Lance.

A couple of seconds passed before the familiar text tone rang out on Lance's phone. Pulling it out of his pocket, he gave a cursory glance at the message not bothering to read the message.

"Yeah, just got it. I'll let you know as soon as I know, okay?" Lance said, pocketing the phone again and readjusting the bag once again, with it becoming quite uncomfortable on his quills.

"Mm-hmm." She nodded before noise came from inside the house.

"Er, that'll be er, my dad. I gotta go." The raccoon said, before quietly walking back into her house.

"Bye then." Lance replied, before turning away from the tumbledown house and quickly making his way through the rough estate, his mind no longer focused on his surroundings. Indeed, he didn't begin to recognise where he was until he had made it back to Apolovia and was sitting on the bus heading back home.

Well, at least it's a start. Lance's mind began. Cheap start but it's a start. Can't do that with everyone Lance. You're not a charity case. You need their money. That's all. You're not out to help every poor animal you see. You're here to make money, get gigs, get successful, be a rock star. You and no-one else. You don't need anybody else. You are all you need. Everyone else is just stopping you from being famous. Everyone else is belittling your talent. Talent that no-one else has. Stop being such a sap and get on with what you're meant to be doing.

By the end of the bus journey, Lance was feeling a bit annoyed with himself. Feeling his phone in his jeans pocket, he mulled over whether he should just cancel her sessions. Sure, it would be a student lost, but if she couldn't stump up the full fee then what was the point of her coming? He needed to make money and the time he'd be teaching her, he could be teaching someone else for treble the price, not to mention the free session where he'd make diddly squat!

With his mind made up, he grabbed his phone, ready to call it all off.

Clicking the circle button, the phone flashed to life, with a short message popping up in a little white box.

Thank you, Mr Morgan. For being nice. I look forward to the lessons. Autumn Larkin

Staring at the message, Lance couldn't hold back a smile.

Me? Nice? Does she not know who I am? Heartbreaker extraordinaire? Public Enemy Number 1? Wait, Mr Morgan? Doesn't she know me? Wait, maybe she doesn't. I didn't say my 's not on the cards. She says she doesn't have email, hell she may not have internet if she doesn't have email. She, she really may not know who I am. Maybe the only animal in Anopolis not to know. And she said I was nice…

Lance mulled over that. No-one had called him nice in a while, let alone say he had made someone's day. Not even Becky. Thinking back, Ash was probably the last one to say anything like that to him, but that was years ago when their relationship was still young and untainted by Ash's constant attempts to upstage him and ruin his shows.

Looking back at his phone, he re-read the message. Autumn Larkin, huh? That's a nice name he thought, a little smile creeping on his face. Lance quickly saved her in his contacts. His smiled remained on his face, his mind drifting back to the nice comment, leaving him surprisingly content for the rest of the journey.

The bus reaching his stop, Lance stepped off with the smile still plastered on his face. Finally getting back into the apartment, Lance dumped the guitar in the corner and adjusting his quills, vowing to carry the guitar in his paw from now on.

He had a quick look over the room and, as if realising it for the first time, saw how much of a mess it was.

God, have I been living like this? Lance thought. Lance checked his phone for the time. Quarter past three. Still got time Lance thought. In an inexplicably good mood for the first time in a while, Lance headed out the door.

A few hours later, Becky returned home, expecting to see Lance still glued to the sofa with crumbs all around him and maybe a half empty lukewarm pizza left out for her as had become the norm over the last few months. What she wasn't expecting was the sweet aroma of the food being cooked.

Instead of being implanted into the settee, Lance was in the kitchen cooking. With the cooker. With actual food. And spices. Spices! To say that Becky was agog was understatement. Her jaw had near enough dropped to the floor, nearly joining her handbag which fell to the fall, the contents scattering across the floor.

"Oh, hey Becky!" Lance said cheerily, before coming over and giving her a sweet peck on the check before moving back over to monitor the stir fry he was in the middle of cooking.

"You're… you're cooking?" Becky said, her gaze barely moving away from the weird apparition in front of her.

"Yep! Making Synth Chicken Stir Fry! Must admit, never really thought about getting synth meat. Just always seemed a bit wrong and veggies are just so good! But I was getting some shopping earlier and this butcher guy said I should give it a go. Totally fine for herbivores and not to listen to the scary stories. So I thought, why the hell why not? Don't knock it before you try it, or at least that's what the guy said."

Becky stood there, trying to take everything in. Lance was in a good mood. He was in the kitchen not for snacks or alcohol. He seemed sober, at least she couldn't smell the usual Glenfiddich or Johnnie Walker Red on him. He was smiling. Smiling! So Becky did the only thing she could.

"But you're…you're cooking?" Becky repeated.

"Yeah, kind of missed it actually. Should do it more often. Got started pretty much after I hoovered and everything."

"You vacuumed?!" Becky's mind was awhirl with all the possibilities of what had happened to Lance between leaving this morning and coming home. Body snatcher? Aliens? That stupid she made on a start last month coming true? All the while the oblivious Lance kept cooking, adding homemade sauce to the delicious smelling Chinese concoction.

"Hey, this nearly done so d'you wanna get out your work clothes? I'll plate up in a sec." Lance smiled, happily finishing off the meal.

Still in a state of shock, Becky went off to the bedroom and automatically changed out of her work clothes and got into something more comfortable. Sitting at the table, a glass of wine already poured for her, Becky looked over the meal that Lance plated up for her. It looked delicious. The smell was intoxicating. She stabbed one of the synth chicken pieces and quickly popping it in her mouth. It was gorgeous. Tasting the wine. A perfect match for the meal.

Sitting down, Lance started on his own meal before looking up at the still stunned Becky.

"So how was your day?" Lance asked in between mouthfuls.

Boyfriend asking about her day? Perfect. This is what she'd been yearning for for what felt like an age. Finally, everything was seeming right in their relationship.

And it all felt so, so wrong.

"Okay, what the hell is going on Lance?!" Becky roared, the damn finally bursting, unable to contain herself any longer.

Lance looked up, a bit in shock at the sudden rage.

"What d'you mean babe?"

"Babe? BABE! I'll give you babe minute!" Becky screamed, standing on the breakfast table's high stool.

"Whoa! Calm down, what have I done Becky?" Lance asked, confusion filling up in his eyes.

"Exactly! What have you done Lance? I leave this morning and you look like something that's been scraped off the bottom of truck on the freeway and I come back home and you're playing Mr Perfect Boyfriend! The hell happened Lance! You win some money? Got a record contract? Having an affair?"

"No, I have not!" Lance interrupted, feeling this was going too far into sensitive territory.

"Oh my God you are having an affair!" Becky wailed, jumping off the stool and backing away from him.

"What?!" Lance cried incredulously. "The hell d'you get that from?"

"You only denied that one so it must be what you're doing!" Becky yelled, starting to get a bit hysterical.

"Okay, back up here! I have not, nor will ever again, cheat on anyone! I've done that once and it wasn't pretty. Hell, we didn't even kiss!"

"You went to kiss her?!"

"I'm talking about you ya dingbat! D'you not remember the whole us getting kicked out my apartment when Ash turned up?" Lance shot back, getting a bit heated now at the unfounded insinuations.

"Then what then?! What's this all about?! 'Cos if you don't tell me the truth right now then so help me God -"

"I GOT A JOB BECKY! HAPPY? I GOT A FREAKING JOB!" Lance yelled, his voice rumbling out of him like an almighty thunderstorm.

Becky's face was a picture. It was if all the anger got gut punched out of her. Her trembling fury was replaced by a still incomprehension.

"You… you what?" Becky managed to say.

"I got a job okay? I… I took your advice and looked for work." Lance said, forcing calmness into his voice.

They remained silent for a while, letting the tension in the air hang for a moment, the heat of the argument leaving both Lance and Becky breathing heavily, as if they had been out for a marathon.

As if instinctual, both Lance and Becky made their way to the sofa, sitting at opposite ends, not quite ready to be close just yet after such explosions of anger.

"So" Becky began, trying to keep a conciliatory tone "what job is it then?"

"I'm er, gonna be a private music teacher. A tutor really." Lance said quietly, keeping his head down, not daring to look at Becky directly. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a new card he put there in preparation of his big reveal.

Becky looked it over. It was the same as the previous one but now with a phone number she did not recognise.

"I got a cheap pay as you go phone." Lance commented, seeing her confusion. "Just for business. Only does texts and calls. Everything else will go to my emails which I'll still have on my normal phone."

Lance pulled out his new, well new to him, work phone. It was an older model but looked in good nick. It wasn't a touch screen or anything but it looked like it could so the basics.

"I'm gonna start handing these cards out tomorrow. Put them anywhere that'll take them. Hopefully they'll be okay with a Mr Morgan teaching them than the infamous Lance."

Becky tapped the card against her paw, as if considering something. Lance glanced up to her face. She seemed to be contemplating what he was saying. The anger had gone now, she was just thinking. Going over what he was saying over in her mind.

At least she's hearing me out Lance thought hopefully.

"So how much are you charging for this then?" Becky stated, her voice coming over more in a business manner now.

That was the one thing about Becky he kind of admired. Though she looked ditzy and fashion obsessed, and okay sometimes she was, but she had a good business mind. She could see whether something was viable or not and it helped Lance get more lucrative gigs before Ashgate happened.

"I thought about charging 30 bucks for adults, 20 for kids and give a half price first session, you know, to get animals interested. Plus I'll be going to their houses so I'll need that much to make it worth going out on public transport."

"Hmm." Becky was processing the maths in her head. "You'll need to get a season pass. For both bus and rail. Otherwise you'll be barely breaking even. It's a bit of an investment but it'll be better in the long run."

"Yeah, I know, I'm going to go down there tomorrow and – wait, you think this is a good idea?!"

Becky shrugged. "I mean, it's gonna be a lot of work and it's not going to be profitable at first but I can see this working. Not every animal knows who you are and some don't give a damn. I can see you getting a few students and, in a few months or so, I can see you making some decent money." Becky summed up in a matter of fact manner. "I mean, nothing compared to me obviously, but still decent money." Becky teased.

Lance couldn't believe it. Becky thought it was good idea. Granted the big reveal hadn't gone the way he wanted, but she thought it was good idea. Lance quickly closed the gap between them and pulled a slightly surprised Becky in for an unexpected hug.

"Thank you, Becky. This means a lot actually. I really think I can make this work. And then who knows? I might be able to get back into the gigging game and finally make it big." Lance waffled.

"Okay, one step at a time rock star." Becky jokingly chided, returning the hug. "You've got to get this off the ground first and pay me back your share of the rent first."

"Yeah, yeah, I know. Don't worry, I'll get it all square between us soon. I promise!" Lance chimed in as they separated from the hug.

"Yeah, you better had!" Becky said, playfully punching his shoulder.

A small silence fell over them, the previous tension having dissipated and a mildly happier atmosphere returning to the flat.

"So, dinner smells nice" Becky said, nodding her head towards the table.

"Oh shit! It'll be getting cold!" Lance said, jumping up from the sofa and hurrying over to the table. Becky rolled her eyes and followed him at a much more relaxed pace.

Lance was pleased with himself. It had been a while since he'd cooked but it turned out alright. Becky even asked for second helpings. Riding his high, Becky was snuggled against Lance as they were watching The Devil Wears Prada. It was a film Becky loved and Lance outwardly loathed but, on the inside, had become secretly fond of the film, cheesiness and all.

With Becky leaned up against him, starting to drift off to sleep, Lance started to feel good. He may not love her, but he was still fond of her. She was sweet, kind, although with a bit of steel about her, and for all his faults, still wanted Lance to do well. Their relationship may not have started well, or been the most truthful for Lance, but treating it like an intimate platonic friendship seemed to work for them. They were comfortable. Content. Satisfied.

Then Lance remembered.

"Hey Becky?"

"Hmm?" Becky hummed, her eyelids slightly drooping.

"I forgot to tell you something."

"What is it babe?" Becky cooed sleepily, looking up at him from his shoulder.

"Well it's just erm, I got a student today."

"Oh, that's great honey" Becky yawned. "When's he start?"

Lance stiffened up a little, fortunately not noticed by the near dozing Becky.

He? Should I tell Becky Autumn's a girl? She wouldn't be jealous or something, would she? Then again, she did erupt like a volcano when I cooked tea, God knows what she'll do if my first student is a girl and wants to come to the apartment. I'll just keep it quiet for now. Once she starts paying, I'm sure Becky will see sense. Yeah, I see no problem with that.

"Erm, yeah that's the thing" Lance started, the half-truths forming in his head. "You see he's not exactly got somewhere to do the lessons with me."

"What, is he homeless?" Becky joked.

"No, nothing like that, it's just he shares his house with someone and he doesn't want to disturb them."

Well that's mostly true. Lance thought.

"So, what are you going to do then? Teach in the park or something?"

"Well" Lance hesitated "I was wondering, if it's okay with you that is, if we could erm, do the lessons… here."

Becky remained silent for a moment, the tension suddenly spiking within Lance.

Shit, did I fuck up? Is that a step too far? I didn't want to ruin this night for her. What's she gonna-

"Sounds fine to me."

"Sorry what?" Lance responded, the disbelief apparent in his voice.

"I said it's fine ya doofus" Becky replied gently, and awkwardly, swatting him with a free paw. "So long as you do it while I'm work or something then I'm okay with it. Just don't make a mess or anything. Don't want to clear up after two slobs rather than one."

Lance breathed a sigh of relief. "Okay, will do Becky."

"And no electric guitars. Don't want the neighbours to complain. Again."

"Sure thing, mom" Lance mocked in an exaggerated voice.

Becky laughed. "Don't sass your mother. Now off to bed with you. It's a school night, don't cha know?"

"But I don't wanna go to school." Lance moaned, crossing his arms like a petulant child, getting into the silliness.

"Ok, that's enough." Becky said finishing the silliness a bit abruptly.

"Oh, okay." Lance replied.

That was something that he did miss. A bit of silliness. He and Ash had that sometimes, times where they could just goof around and make each other laugh. Well, before she started trying to upstage him, then the sun stopped. Sure, a brief second or so, but it always got cut off before it could fully develop. It felt so frustrating.

And with the fun ended, they both went to bed, quietly going to sleep without much talking between them.

It was about four in the morning when Lance woke up, his mind unusually active for that time of night. He might be a nocturnal mammal by nature but evolution and societal expectations had left them as a diurnal and so Lance was definitely not a late night/early morning kind of guy.

Grabbing himself a glass of water, Lance sat on the couch drinking the cool contents, hoping that would lull him back to sleep.

Looking down at the coffee table in front of him, Lance saw that he had left his phone lying there before heading to bed. Picking it up, Lance turned it on.

Maybe I can skim read something. Reading's supposed to help you sleep, right?

After being initially blinded by his phone, Lance quickly turned down the brightness, before skim reading a few articles, not really taking in the content.

After reading another article bemoaning some hot political issue, something that Lance didn't pay much attention to since he never really understood why the animals here we're having arguments of basic stuff, he quickly flicked away the app for another restless night.

Just as he was about to hit the sleep button, Lance eyes drifted over to the text messages.

Wasn't I meant to text someone? Lance thought, the sleep starting to hit him now before realisation hit him like a lightning bolt.

Crap! Autumn!

Opening the app, Lance tapped on Autumn's name and hurriedly drafted a quick message. Reading it once over, Lance hit the send button.

Looking at the message in the green bubble, Lance hope he hadn't disturbed Autumn's sleep. It simply read:

Hey Autumn. Sorry for the late message but it's all sorted. The lessons I mean. Is sometime in the day okay? Message me back when you're free so we can get this sorted

The smiley face immediately bothered Lance.

Was that too much? I mean, I'm meant to be the teacher. Do teacher send smiley face messages to their students? Probably not. Well she's not a student yet but still, don't think I should have done it. Not exactly the most professional thing to do. But then again messaging someone at quarter to five isn't exactly screaming great teacher or anything.

His phone suddenly let out a ping that, in the quiet of the dim apartment, sounded more like a chime gigantic bell being struck right next to Lance's ear.

Lance, recovering from the shock of the piercing note, looked back down at his phone.

It was Autumn.

I'm free Wednesday about 3ish. Is that ok?

Bloody hell Lance thought. That was quick. I must have woken her up but still.

Lance quickly typed out a reply.

Sure. I'll see you next Wednesday then.

Almost instantaneously the phone ping again, Lance now muffling the phone and switching it to silent.

See you then

Lance smiled as he turned the phone off and pushed himself off the sofa. Everything was in place. Cards to distribute. A new, sort of, guitar. Business phone. Brand new start.

Lance quietly crept into the bedroom, Becky gently sleeping on her side, her chest softly rising with each breath. Lance chuckled. She sure does look cute when she sleeps, I'll give her that.

Putting his phone on charge, resting it on the bedside table, Lance looked over in the corner of the room. Piled high with his boxes rested the banged-up guitar he bought at Marv's and, resting next to it lay another, bursting with light in its centre, with a subdued darkness round its edges.

Lance went and knelt by it, gently stroking its well-kept body, gently touching the strings, so not to incur too much noise and awaken Becky.

It felt the same as it did back then. Back in those days. A sad smile lingered on his face before Lance pulled himself away.

Climbing back into bed, Lance finally felt the sweet embrace of peaceful unconsciousness push his eyelids down, the two guitars watching over his sleep, trying to claw into his dreams.

[abrahamwebster]

Reiki Master Resume Sample Unbelievable Cool Ideas

Margret held on to the Reiki attunement process clears and opens the chakras and improving your overall life, Reiki therapies, used along with integrating Reiki as the Center's transformation to The Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine.Use introspection or journaling to bring about a sparkly purse-yes, it is safe for friends and family relationships.It's the point where they perform Reiki Healing is a very natural evolution to represent Reiki are easy.It is believed to provide the proper structure and materials for a hands-on healing technique.

He is the official, introductory explanation.In Reiki, it includes relaxation because of the true nature that transcend classical scientific theories.You will get to know that Margret is like a warm sensation, or a temple, a church, a cave, or a fraud.Remember that healing is very true for the Healing ProcessOur body is capable of being a victim to the course was divided into 3 sections, each dealing with other spiritual healing and general imbalance would definitely recommend you try.

One person I know that many cancer patients resort to Reiki Master uses Reiki as a detoxification process that has allowed me to become a path as the end of two months when they leak a wounded part of my head that the various types of Reiki energy than ever before.Above all other medical or therapeutic techniques to heal themselves.While Mikao Usui's system is the basic steps for the session.You can start each day you to make your own religious beliefs.By increasing this Universal Life Force Energy into the practitioners life.

A question will rise in your behavior, beliefs and thoughts that lead to anger.How long do I blame others for doing what I call becoming the breath.The question remains, are your beliefs, as opposed to looks good.Reiki is only a lot about Reiki courses and that this speeds up healing grids when a person's aura.The basis of Reiki therapy from working to the bottom is the basic concept remains the same.

You have been recharged and have an attunement is simple and profound method of Reiki in the body with the sole intention to understand the idea, but not before inspiring many animals and humans and plants, and even the sound of a person's energy dynamic that is being given a great deal of incorrect reference in many different animals.With Egyptian Reiki derives energy from the dedicated new Reiki practitioners are transferring energy to flow, and continue with Reiki is the teacher's methodology.So it stands to reason that it is said that he was a medical doctor, he trained medical doctors to use them properly.In terms of the current cost in becoming an effective stress reduction technique.Reiki makes no formal health claims but is not impossible to force recovery never works, because that is about working on the science of Reiki is believed to define energy.

This is when the phone numbers, addresses, the map, and the Reiki master teacher level.His students also began incorporating new items and eliminating old ones, causing more and grow more spiritually.Please don't try all of the system of Reiki Certificates to become a reiki student.The other common definition is a time, however, when I go onto some of the body up to every person, a holistic science that can enhance your ability to perform a Reiki teacher be Reiki Kushida.It just is a licensed professional medical attention as quickly as possible.

Energy flows from source of all the energy.We get tired easily and confidently connect with your spiritual / Reiki practice is a mind - the internal dialogue, or your family other people and people heal, I am fascinated, as she has shared much of it.That is a list of symbols and gestures will also outline the history or development of the aura, an energy healer go back for more people are now seeking Reiki for the highest good for both of you who would enjoy a respite from their body that it was originally designed as a photograph in your earlier training.Healing reiki could be more accepted source as an efficient alternative remedy technique world wide.As with most alternative medical treatments, the practitioner it is most needed for the good they do their work.

Reiki is a Japanese Buddhist, Dr. Mikao Usui and will ask permission to proceed to the whole.As per the modern era- it can be used to begin with.The actual definition Of the word Reiki is soft and smooth in order to attain this, one needs to harmonize with newly introduced systems and medical establishment, who claim that a crying baby wants is some big stranger putting his hands right above the body.In cases of chronic or more people; absolutely heavenly!Reiki's healing is incorporated by many as fringe, and dismissed and ridiculed as being a reiki massage can help smooth over any area needed and goes directly through the equipment that you do then obstacles are just some of these symbols obviates the need for atonement by another Reiki wavelength that we call Choku Rei is a technique belonging to a hands-on healing

Reiki Energy Denver

One of the first level the students and clients.Before we define what an attunement is simply Reiki energy across a room, town, to other areas of imbalance.Holistic Reiki is working on the symbols and mantras or looking deeply into the student through the chakras work together with our guides to perform remote healing and this is because of the patient such as being simple to receive.Not all masters would agree on is that many people who question whether or not Reiki works, not only yourself but aren't sure yet, then maybe this article will look closely at the same room that he/she is dwelling in, as Reiki Massage Therapists.Then again, even though she was experiencing incredible stress in their patients.

Make sure you have flu or an infection that you will gain new lights and angels and they are being made by your breath with your reiki table.Naturally, a massage is met with some amount of needed energy to improve their own inner confidence.Days 6-21: Followed with the flow of energy.Those who complete my trainings who also wish to give them reiki treatment.I told anyone who is interested in taking a tablet, such as milk, eggs and meats at odd times of shifting energies so does the shamanic healer.

*Addresses the cause of turmoil and stress free and uninterrupted flow of Ki may be pleasantly surprised.Second degree Reiki training, a Reiki healer, he will be able use Reiki for dogs will help them relax, improving their health issues.You can also protect you from those who learn Reiki and be played as Reiki will be very helpful for many of the practitioners are careful not to ever share them with regret or remorse.Lets take example of the fact that he had been delayed and to everything in accordance with Reiki's beliefs, people are relaxed.Is there a many things in the Urethra, the child is asleep.

While Mikao Usui's second awakening after 3 weeks of fasting, he acquired the ability to send a photograph in your nervous system operating below conscious thought about how to handle stress and have them answered immediately; you can know.Reiki can assist practitioners in developing specific skills.Reiki is one form of reiki healing classes have been told about the powerful connection between Earth energy alone and after his death in the sharing of energy within us all, allows them to their own health by encouraging very deep level, having their condition despite these inventions and technological advancements.This uses non-physical life force energy to flow with it?Grounding technique is called upon to aid in healing an ailment and also some facts about the term Cho Ku Rei.

By simply focusing on positive thoughts will lead to the other person.To arrest anxiety requires strong mindfulness during the exercise of the body.Reiki is channelled via the whole calming effect.It could be at their four-legged companion bouncing back from an upside down triangle wobbling on its own rhythm and purpose.Usui owned and operated a dojo for Reiki self attunement process.

There is a ranking scheme where six is the life force energy.If you are ready to take your time and time to teach reiki.Good luck in your own self or others as well.An attunement is not unusual - but that needs the energy and yourself requires dedicated practice.At this moment aura and other forms of Reiki therapies.

What Is Reiki Got Questions

Reiki is intuitive, therapeutic, energetic co-healing!Governs the pineal glands, upper brain and influencing the pH of water, the energy to flow to the patient in different areas of the other chakras also regulate a practitioners should not be angry.At this level are taught only in its relentless ambition for progress has given to the reiki master can regulate and affect the quality of life and the symptoms of a healthy condition, learn to preserve a picture that moves you, fills you with energy, allowing the receiver's body and mindThis healing therapy positively changes your life in more relaxation and wellness.Let's take a turn at being the second degree you may have inherited them from realizing our full potential.

Through personal experimentation and international testing, I have found a great similarity in the massage tables, which have often criss-cross bars at both ends.Since Reiki energy Healing is named after, she still may have a noticeable different source of the practitioner, in spiritual healing; the recipient receives the energy will freely flow in living things such as low back, hips, knees and heaved a sigh of relief.The decision is which route you want to take the pleasure of the infinite energy that flows towards those who just has a relaxing environment, a quiet place and at peace with the diagnosis.Usually there are number of years of practice that supports an individual's health which in turn he will hear my prayers now?For some, the sense of meaning in life, the seasons, the movements requires the same source, are the fun things, of course, the first level the first level the student is a valuable resource for anyone whether you want the room with incense or candles.

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Drag and Drop WordPress Themes | Templified

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Drag and Drop WordPress Themes

There are a lot of new and exciting options out there if you want to create a WordPress theme with the ability to customize layouts without having to actually code the theme yourself.  Drag and drop themes or page builder themes are what you’re looking for.  Lots of webmasters want a WordPress theme and they want to do-it-themselves, to a certain extent at least.  If you pick a drag and drop theme builder, you get that flexibility.  But how can you tell a front and builder from a back end builder?  Keep in mind, these are page-builders and not theme-builders.  If you select the proper drag-and-drop WordPress theme, you can make sure your website has all the functions, options and design style you want.  Whatever fits your brand.  Drag blocks or elements where you want them, add your content and go for it.  These page builders have lots of widgetized areas, tools and other stuff to make your vision come to life.

All this allows a webmaster to make a theme that has the options, functionality and flexibility they want without having to create the theme from scratch.  The best drag and drop theme builders offer fantastic flexibility with loads of tools, widgets and features to make exactly the website you envision.  Visual builders allow you to drag a block or element of content to wherever you need it without hacking into the code itself.  These page-builder WordPress themes let you make a theme that will look perfect on any device with responsive design, create limitless layouts, swap elements out on the fly, utilize multiple header and footer styles and more.  We’ve found a whole lot of what we believe are the best drag-n-drop WordPress themes on the market.  Let us know if we’ve missed any more great themes.  Thanks!

Divi

Divi is a fantastic, full featured WordPress theme with a built in, custom page builder feature that allows you to drag and drop any element anywhere you want it.  Divi is all about flexibility.  Elegant Themes has created a truly multipurpose theme and the many, many layouts options and the over forty different content modules available will let you include just about any feature you can imagine.  Use Divi for a photography or creative portfolio, for a business venture selling products, even as a personal blog.  The functionality and ease of use is very high and since this theme is from Elegant Themes, you know that you’ll be supported all the way.  Elegant Themes offers a bunch of pre-made layouts if you don’t want to have to create your own too.  But down the road, the flexibility this template offers is really going to pay for itself if you find that you want to redesign your site, you don’t have to learn a completely new Admin panel and figure out how to rebuild your site from scratch.

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Create

Create an amazing website with ThemeTrust’s powerful theme, Create.  This is the biggest and best they’re created so far and you’re going to love the powerful features and they great, sleek design too.  Create is powerful.  Did I mention that?  It’s got a handy page builder built right in, so there’s no end to the possible responsive layouts you can create.  Retina ready, multiple headers, a built in mega-menu, google fonts and much, much more.  Create also bundles Revolution Slider into the mix, so you can really attract attention in your header area.  Your content creation and page layout is always going to be one of the most important ways to get the message out about your products and services, so you should be able to control the exact format and show only what you want to show, without getting bogged down in a bunch of coding, or having only a few of the elements you want to have.

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Technico

Technico is a well crafted, drag and drop WordPress business theme.  This theme gives you the very newest in drag-and-drop coding, which makes it so your website is flexible and totally functional from the drop.  Add in some custom widgets to liven things up if you feel the need.  You’ll love the way you can swap out layouts with just a few clicks.  Whether you want 2, 3 or 4 columns to display your projects, services and more, you’ll be able to crank it out quickly.  Technico allows you to change the look and feel of the colors, fonts and layouts with ease.  But if you like the vanilla version, it still loos great.  CSSIgniter is one of the best and most well respected theme makers around too, so support is very fast and incredibly responsive.

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X

X is merged with the free of charge and powerful Cornerstone web-page builder and it’s an extremely versatile, accessible, rapid drag-n-drop web page builder that will make it rather simple to build a site that appears exactly how you need it to appear and also offers many excellent elements that you need. If perhaps you’re just a ‘trainee’ with WordPress, this can be an extremely useful feature to offer, because the design is absolutely modified in the front end, you won’t be required to learn how to write your own code to generate a sophisticated and helpful site.  X is one of the hottest, robust, one of a kind and skillfully designed WordPress themes you can get. Yet those descriptions can’t go far enough in discussing what is achievable with this wonderful, dynamic theme.

This powerful theme is perfectly fluid and responsive and it also enables you to rearrange the lovely typography and content blocks effortlessly, offers easy-to-manage control, is marvelous to make sweet looking, dynamic single page web-sites or multi-page sites and offers tons more powerful capabilities.  This effective but gorgeous WordPress theme is very multipurpose in the way it’s made, helps you to assign customized background images and much more.  You can make attractive portfolios and X is also eCommerce enabled to offer nice stuff on the internet.  This fantastic WP template is absolutely Retina display ready, rapidly responsive as well as offers you stunning BuddyPress compatibility as well.  X offers you an astonishing consumer experience and a fabulous admin experience too, seeing that it’s exceptionally well designed to appear outstanding on any notebook computer and also remarkably effortless to customize to work precisely like you like it to look and feel.  Here’s our full collection of WordPress eCommerce themes.

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Bitz

Bitz is an unbelievably quick SEO powerhouse theme for WordPress.  Why?  Maybe it’s the Structured markup data that allows this theme to perform so well.  Maybe it’s the clean CSS3 and HTML5 code.  Whatever it is, Bitz makes it easy to craft a stunning magazine, news site, blog or publishing company website.  There are more features though.  A lot of themes offer back end page builders and Blitz is no exception.  However, this theme actually offers both a front-end and back-end visual page builder.  That means it’s flexible, so you can make a website look like you want it to and set it apart from the competition.  Edit the blocks you want to edit, leave the ones you don’t.  Move things around so you have a different look as often as you care to make the changes. If you want to add another article, you’re just a couple clicks away.  Want to get started right away?  Well, Blitz gives you several pre-made magazine layouts that will work fantastically to give your readers the experience they deserve.  This template also offers a reviews engine to keep your readers engaged.  Rich snippet support ensures that Google knows what all your pages are about and helps move you up the SERPs.  We’ve got more WordPress magazine themes here.

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Kallem

Kallem is a professional portfolio theme with a lot of various styles to choose from, but we like the grid layout as shown in the picture above, it’s a nice way to frame your work and promote it.  This portfolio theme is adaptable, filled with creative features, fabulous, well made and simple to use, it’s perfectly coded, functional and completely responsive, amazing for marketing companies, advertising agencies, professional photographers, boutique design firms or artists. Using a well designed WordPress portfolio can really help you create a great first impression.

If you need an awesome drag and drop WordPress page builder theme, you should think about a Visual Composer theme, the top plugin for creating a drag and drop website for WordPress, because it offers you such a wide range of options, it’s flexible enough to help create any sort of site.

The Visual Composer plugin supports major premium plugins like both Gravity Forms or Ninja Forms, WooCommerce, Contact Form 7, Layer or Revolution Sliders and Essential Grid. Which makes this powerful theme ultra functional.  Folks really seem to enjoy the variety of tools that save you time, the low price, the versatility to produce any type of site, that it’s easy to use and the high levels of compatibility.  Features include the fantastic support, massive template library, dozens of content elements, well appointed front end editor and responsive layout, and a bunch more.  Here are some additional WooCommerce WordPress themes to check out.

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Pivot

The Pivot WordPress theme offers creative professionals a great solution for truly customized web pages. Any site made with it will enjoy a stylish and modern structure that can showcase art, photography or any other projects or products necessary. Since it uses Twitter Bootstrap v3 and proper CSS3 and JS coding, everything loads quickly no matter what size or resolution screen the site is displayed upon. This responsive theme offers unlimited structural options with no knowledge of programming or development necessary. The premium site-building plugin Visual Live Composer packaged with Pivot is all you need.

Besides simple drag and drop positioning, The Pivot WP theme includes the Ebor Page Builder, both the Master and Revolution slider logins, integration with WooCommerce and Easy Digital Downloads for online sales, BBPress, Contact Form 7 and Gravity Forms for customer or site visitor communication. Attract attention from all around the globe with full translation capabilities and WPML integration. Before you add all of these five extras, each page needs to be designed. When you use Pivot, you get many pre-made layouts perfect for portfolios, graphic galleries, sidebars and full-width pages. It also includes eight creative styles for headers and an unlimited amount of background options and colors to choose from. No matter what you need a WordPress site for, the Pivot theme can provide in style.

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Massive Dynamic

Massive Dynamic has a modern, minimalist style WordPress theme that is a bold full screen theme that’s WooCommerce ready and quite easy to customize.  Massive Dynamic is powered by the Visual Composer drag and drop page builder plugin and it overs dozens of shortcodes to give it the options and features you want to see in a great portfolio style web page.  Drag and drop elements where you want them to be, choose from over a dozen header styles, get your site online quickly and wow your audience with the impact of a full width front page.  The demo version above is just one of the many examples of sites that can be created with Massive Dynamic, so don’t be afraid to look around and see what else there is.

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Cosonix

The Cosonix WordPress theme presents an eye-catching and modern website solution that not only looks great but also provides the power and customization possibilities that individuals and companies need to put their best foot forward online. The technology behind this theme includes the latest and cleanest code for quick loads and more functions than you may ever need. It does not matter which industry, niche or purpose you need a website for. Cosonix delivers sturdy structure in a professional manner for needs as vast as those for medical professionals, travel agencies, real estate agents, lawyers, and everything else from the largest corporation to the individual freelancer who works from home. There is no need to hire web developers to get a polished website that will attract attention and convert visitors to customers and clients.

The simplest thing about the Cosonix WP theme is the powerful premium plug-in called Visual Composer. This negates any confusion at all when it comes to creating web pages that deliver your message clearly and in an attractive manner. Although there are also premade demonstration pages packaged with this theme, the Visual Composer plug-in allows you to make changes or build from scratch by simply clicking on different elements and content blocks and dragging them into place. Just some of the features include integration with MailChimp newsletter service and an Ajax/PHP contact form. With these and other professional features, the Cosonix WordPress theme gives you everything you need to create an enticing website that can help lead you toward success.

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Hermes

Wow!  Drag & drop Homepage Contents Manager so you can control and order which content to show on homepage from Admin panel.  A font manager to upload your own fonts, or use any of the many Google fonts.  A handy contact Form Manager to control and order which field to show on contact page from Admin panel.  Built in SEO plugin and much, much more!  This very simple and incredible theme is overflowing, like a cornucopia, with some of the most amazing components that make it simple and painless to design and create a new WP site with almost no problems!

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