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lilytakeharryandgo · 5 years ago

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STOP ROMANTICISING SEVERUS SNAPE - A MANIFESTO

“Albus Severus Potter, you were named after two headmasters of Hogwarts. One of them was a great strategist, the other one was a racist, hateful, bitter, scary bastard. Voldemort must have damaged some brain cells when killing the Horcrux inside of me.”

Now that I have Snape fans raging and screaming for blood, here’s my show of evidence:

If the boring, same argument brought up by Marauders stans is Snape being a Death Eater, I know it’s basic, but it’s basic for a reason: it’s true. Supporting Voldemort doesn’t mean you support his ideas? I’m sorry, what did he support? The Dark Lord’s contouring skills? It is a truth universally acknowledged that joining a group of racists and following them in perpetrating crimes does make you a racist and a criminal.

JK Rowling herself said that Death Eaters are an analogy to Nazis, Marauders stans are not making this up. Are you questioning what JK ROWLING said? Because you know, she is JK ROWLING.

We know it was Snivellus that created the Levicorpus. He must have used it against the Marauders in order for them to learn it. And let’s just remember that “Snape’s worst memory” takes place after the Shrieking Shack’s incident, when dear, lovely Severus tried to unmask Remus so that he could be expelled for being a Werewolf. He went down to the Whomping Willow of his own free will, no one forced him, and he supposedly knew what was happening there: he risked his own life only to get Remus expelled. Yes, it was Sirius who thought it would have been funny to lure him to the Shrieking Shack where Lupin was due for his transformation, and that was wrong. However, why did he do that? Because Snape was constantly spying on them. Was it wrong? Definitely, no one is trying to get Sirius out of this one. Still, James saved Snape in time. Did James do that just because he wanted to protect Remus? Most likely: James gave them all a family and he loved his friends and would have done everything for them, and he did. But also, he wouldn’t have let an “innocent” (if we want to call him that) die. So James saved Snape’s life, which dear Half Blood Price seemed deeply ungrateful for later, and yet, Snape constantly tried to get the Marauders expelled from Hogwarts time and time again while using Dark Magic and creating his own dark spells (see the irony?). Stop saying that the Marauders’ actions pushed him to become a Death Eater. As if “Snape never missed an opportunity to curse James” was a lie. As if Snape wasn’t on his way to being a buddying Death Eater by his 5th year. As if Snape hadn’t came up with a curse that slices your body open by his 6th year. As if the Marauders had nothing to do but ruthlessly bully Snape all day and all night, when they actually are described as the brightest as some of the brightest students of their year despite being engaged in loads of other things like the creation of the Marauders Map, becoming Animagus, dealing with Remus’ monthly transformations (because those demonic guys didn’t leave him alone and didn’t report him to get him expelled as someone else was willing to do), James and Remus being responsible enough to be Head Boy and Prefect. Oh, and training for a war and joining the Order once they graduated. Minor things, right? Things they were busy doing in their personal lives such as surviving, living and being happy? Nah, that never happened, their entire life consisted of bullying innocent, poor service teenagers, that was their goal. Snape experienced one side of the Marauders (and we read that from his own pov, so it’s a little biased too): that is not a deciding factor of whether or not they (and especially James) are good people. He was so fascinated with the Dark Arts, even after Lily’s death and hence his presumed redemption, that Dumbledore did not appoint him as Defence Against the Dark Arts professor. Snape’s apologetics make it sound like the Marauders made Snape’s life hell every minute of everyday and he was the poor victim who was not capable of standing up to himself against those horrible demonic creatures, but he was the one inventing the Sectumsempra and using it against James, against George. Only a truly tormented person could have invented such a bloody spell.

So now let’s talk about Remus. Remus, a hero who fought against Voldemort and joined an anti-terrorist resistance organisation when he was just 18 years old, who fought alongside Frank and Alice Longbottom in the Order, is about to start his first class with the third years. Neville is there, of course, Remus knows his parents’ fate, how they were tortured into madness, and probably guessed that Neville’s biggest fear would be similar to what he guessed Harry’s would be. He’s probably planning on stepping in before Bellatrix Lestrange shows up, but then it’s not her, it’s Snape. Snape who insults him in front of his class, Snape who tries to shame him. Can you imagine how he must have felt? Yes, they bullied him, but his best friend James grew up, and what did he get in return? Death. Instead, Snape hasn’t gotten over himself a little and most importantly he does not realise that being a teacher also means being responsible for those children. Snape never changes: he is the same petty, angry, bitter child that he had been in school, except now he’s bullying children half his age instead of yelling racial slurs at his classmates. While Snape is one of his students’ greatest fear, Remus starts off the year by letting his pupils confront their biggest fears. Remus truly, deeply cared about his students, and wait… what did Snape do? He got him fired! But even most achingly than that, just imagine… it’s 1993, Remus is coming back after a rough full moon. He’s feeling down, he’s weak, both physically and emotionally, he’s one more time without his friends by his side, one more time alone as he was before the Marauders became Animaguses to be alongside him to support him during the roughest times (horrible people, isn’t it?). So Remus is coming back to his class of Defense Against the Dark Arts, and his best friend’s son is writing an essay on how to kill him. But Snape didn’t stop there, no, he told the whole Wizarding World that a man who had struggled to keep his condition secret all his life was a Werewolf. He had to withdraw from his position as a professor because of that, and straight after that the Ministry issued a law against Werewolves which made it impossible for Remus to have a job. So, to sum it up, not only he exposed him as a Werewolf, he also condemned him to live in poverty and be persecuted for that reason. Also, quoting, when Remus was trying to explain things in PoA he attacked him and said “I’ll drag the Werewolf, perhaps the Dementors will have a kiss for him too.” James and Sirius were the kind of persons, the kind of friends and brothers, who risked their own life every month for one of his best friends. Think about this: they found out about Remus’ situation when they were just boys in their first years of school, and they didn’t leave him, they decided to help him embarking in something much bigger than themselves. Whereas dear lovely 33 year old Necrophilus told everyone about Remus’ secret and basically had him fired. Sounds angelic, why haven’t I thought about doing something like that before? That would most certainly secure me a spot in heaven!

Do we want to talk about an abusive person? Well, Snape was not just abusive as a person, he abused and took advantage of his position as a teacher (and Head of House too, to reward extra points from the other Houses) to bully his own students (even after his presumed “redemption”). He told Neville he would have given his failed potion to his toad, Trevor, so that the fatal effects of the potion would teach him a lesson. He bullied Neville to the point that he was literally his greatest fear - Neville’s parents were tortured to the point of insanity by Bellatrix, yet Snape was his greatest fear. He also condoned and took part in bullying when Draco cursed Hermione’s teeth to grow. He said he didn’t see any difference, then watched as she ran off crying. From the very start he starts bullying Harry: he perfectly knew he was raised by muggles, he knew how Petunia was and still went on to ask questions that he wouldn’t be able to answer. And after calling Neville and idiot for a mistake that anyone could have made he took points from Gryffindor because Harry didn’t tell him how to do it right - great teaching strategy, let’s nominate him for Most Valuable Teacher. Harry had nothing to do with what went on during Snape’s school years, but he physically resembled James and he was his son, so let’s bully him from the very first second! And honestly, asking an 11 years old Muggle-raised kid the difference between monskshood and wolfsbane in front of everyone on the first day? There is no difference! They are colloquial terms for the same plant. He just wanted the intellectual upper hand over a goddamn little kid. But he didn’t stop there: that resentful git always tried to blame Harry for something even without proof (as most of the time), and he physically abused Harry because he was angry (“Snape threw Harry from him with all his might. Harry fell hard onto the dungeon floor.”). He knew how important it was for Harry to learn Occlumency and he stopped giving him classes and later ignored when Lupin asked him to start them again even when he knew how poorly Harry’s progressed. And he was cruel: he knew Harry was sad about Sirius’ death, and gave him a detention in which he was going to see his and his father’s names multiple times while copying out old detention records. Yes, Harry’s deeds should have called for expulsion, as McGonagall states, but Snape chose something more painful than that. Not only he punished Harry (don’t get me wrong, he almost killed Draco, he deserved detention if not expulsion), but he chose to inflict him more pain and at the same time tried to ruin the memory of Harry’s father figures. Ordinarily, copying out old detention records wouldn’t be worse than writing lines, but Snape vindictively tailored that detention to inflict pain. In addition to this, he could have been an awesome teacher if he wasn’t a disgusting waste of a human being. He knew from his teen years that the instructions that the textbooks were giving were not as goos as they could be so he improved the potions and recorded his own methods at 16. Harry himself states what an amazing teacher “the Prince” is. If Snape were not such a horrible person, he could have either written the entire textbooks himself, or taught his students his own alternate methods. Instead he spent his time bullying children. He could have been great and become everything a Slytherin should have been

Snape also saw his friends perform Dark Magic on Mary Macdonald and when confronted by Lily, literally didn’t see any problem with it and compared it with the Marauders’ pranks.

He called Lily, his supposed best friend, a Mudblood. Then he tried to get away with it by saying he didn’t mean it and that she (and only she) was different from the other Muggleborns. And Lily tried, she tried to tell him he was not on the right path, she tried, and she got called a racial slur from the person she trusted the most at the time. And, for the extremist Snape apologetics in the back, who even hate Lily (how can they hate on Lily I don’t know, but apparently these people exist too): Lily Evans did not owe anyone anything. She had the right to cut ties with her friends for any reason she pleased, whatever that’s because she was sick of them or because they were hanging out with a group of terrorists wannabe. She did not owe anyone her love, loyalty or energy. She tried to be Snape’s friend despite his other group of friends (“but Mulciber’s and Avery’s idea of humor is just evil. Evil, Sev. I don’t understand how you can be friends with them”), but there’s canon evidence that Snape chose his Death Eaters friends over Lily’s friendship and safety. It was her choice to cut ties with him after what he and his friends had done (and the racial slur of course, truly a touch of class), and it’s not like he was a good friend to begin with: he called all other Muggleborns “Mudblood” and was canon friends with the people who wanted Lily and other Muggleborns killed, and he even still wanted to be a Death Eater while being her friend. Like, wait here while I go out and slaughter your people, Lils! And if Snape stans are still arguing that he was suffering because he got dumped, that’s another no: he did not get dumped, she just didn’t have romantic feelings for him but was trying so hard to be his friend and he was just a whiny baby about it. Is that a crime? No, it isn’t. Is not getting over it and taking it out on countless kids who weren’t even born instead a crime? Yes, it is.

Also, from the get-go we see him drop a tree branch on Petunia. That shows that he didn’t see a problem in hurting the people Lily loved (seen later in a larger proportion, that’s his tag line). Lily loved her sister, but Petunia was an obstacle between her and Snape, hence, Snape hurt her. And no, that was not accidental underage magic, just as Lily performs magic on the flower, Snape uses magic to cause a tree branch to fall on Petunia. Even as a child he had no qualms about hurting someone Lily loved, this really serves to underscore the idea that Snape, with his so called love for Lily, was not invested in her happiness or wellbeing because he didn’t care about the people she loved. As a child he didn’t care about hurting her sister and at 20 he didn’t care about the imminent deaths of her husband and son. If he truly loved and cared for her, he would have wanted to see her happy. Not even considering how crushed she would have been if her husband and only child were dead, and she was left alone and pregnant in the middle of a war.

Okay so now let’s talk about James. Yes, James was a spoiled brat, and Lily hated him for that, then guess what? He matured, he started protecting the weaker ones and joined the Order along with Sirius, Remus and Lily to fight for a better world. He didn’t hold it against her nor did he sulk for days, he grew up and matured because he was a well adjusted human, unlike some. James Potter was many things other than an “arrogant bullying toerag” (hey, also, well done for trying to destroy a 15-year-old orphan’s memory of his heroic father): he was a friend who risked his life every month for Remus’s safety and comfort. A brother who took Sirius in and was “the best friend he ever had.” An adored friend of half-giant Hagrid, in an age when all “half-breeds” were looked upon with suspicion during the war. An all time “favourite student” of Minerva McGonagall, so much that she waited all day at his son’s future home and wept at his death. A savior of his enemies even when they were trying to expose his friends’ secrets. An activist protecting the right of existence for Muggles, Muggleborns and hybrids right out of school. A soldier who faced Voldemort three times and lived to tell about it. A caring father who went into hiding to protect his son. A loving husband who sacrificed his life for his family. A faded trace of magic still trying to guide his son when the man that killed him returned to life. A young man that inspired so much loyalty in his friends that Remus Lupin, who so feared the idea of harming people because of his condition, was 100% willing to abandon those morals to avenge his death, and would have done so, had Harry not reminded him and Sirius that James would not have wanted them to murder anyone for him. A Patronus helping Harry through his darkest moments until the very end. James had a friend facing bigotry and he became an illegal animagus to help make that friend’s life better. Snape had a friend facing bigotry and he joined up with the bigots. No one is trying to pretend that James was an angel, but he got better and better until his last breath. And again, that spoiled brat and the love of his life joined the resistance and were martyrs. James, Lily, Sirius and Remus all died for Harry. Are you trying to blame James and Lily for sacrificing their own lives to save their infant son? What terrible parents they were! Their sacrifice was an act of love and wait… actually ended up saving the Wizarding World. The only thing James and Snape had in common was that they would have both sacrificed James’s life in order to save Lily’s. James was the hero, he was the one who faced Voldemort without his wand (pretty dumb thing but he was a Gryffindor, hence no surprise) in order to give his wife and son more time to flee. When he opened that door on Halloween, he thought he was sacrificing his life so that they could live. He literally died wandless perfectly knowing he wouldn’t survive, but facing death for those he loved, hoping he would be able to stall enough time so they could escape. He was never more dedicated in anything in his short life than he was to the loves of his life: he died for Lily and Harry, and would have happily died for Sirius, Remus and Peter. And this is absolutely canon, of course it is: we might not have some explicit description of him but all we know comes from the lives he touched, how they talked / not talked about him, the pain they felt - the seven books are a testament of James and Lily’s love. James Potter was the kind of person that would have been happy to die for love, he would have taken pride in that. How do we know that? Are we making this up? No, we are not: all we have are the words of people who knew him, from his best friends to McGonagall, and who remembered him as a hero. This, albeit indirectly, speaks volume about the kind of person he was. He might have been obnoxious and arrogant as a teenager, but at 21 he died a hero - wandless, alone, betrayed, hopeless, but also bravely and out of love - and nothing can change either of those. Yes, he bullied Snape (let’s be clear here even though I highly doubt Snape did not retaliate) and that is a disgusting attitude. But how can you forgive a 31 year old man for bullying his kids and not a 15 year old boy who bullied one of his definitely not innocent classmates? Who matured and who later died, at the young age of 21, for his wife and son? How can you hate James Potter when as soon as he graduated, he was ready to fight a war against the most powerful wizard of his age? Yes, he had a big head and I am fairly certain he did actually strut - and let’s just take a moment to remember why Harry doesn’t know anything about him… oh, right, Snape went to Voldemort and told him about the prophecy - but he was a caring person, who stood up to what he thought and stood up for his friends and his family. The spoilt boy Snape’s apologetics hate, who grew up to be a great man, who died fighting and protecting, not some emo with a crush and an ego the size of the Great Lake! Wait, I hear somebody trying to bring up the “we have no real evidence of him becoming a better person” thing. Let me get this straight: James was mentioned to have jinxed other students, not to have bullied them. He did not pick out targets, it was implied to be done at random as it is explicitly stated that he jinxed random people in the corridors. Fred and George pranked other students in the same way, and they would have often have more disastrous effects, but no one calls them bullies. We know that on one known occasion attacks Snape with Sirius at his side and almost pantsed him with a spell of Snape’s own invention. James and Snape had a rivalry, and it was two-sided. It wasn’t James relentlessly hexing poor, innocent Snape, so if you still want to call James Potter a bully, okay, do it, he was a bully bullying a bully. The evidence speaks for itself: he was Head Boy in 7th year (hence I don’t think Dumbledore despised him that much), he was unapologetically a blood traitor, he dated Lily Evans (who hated him for how he was and would have never fallen in love with such a brat, so it’s pretty evident he did actually change), he joined the Order of the Phoenix (an anti-terrorist organisation, at the peak of the war, as a teenager, whereas someone else joins a racist dark cult), he died protecting his wife and child! And if we really, really want to bring the ‘evidence’ thing up… well, we have no evidence he bullied Snape, except for one little incident - I’m fairly certain he did, but let’s play it literally now. And since we are there, we may not have been blessed with more about the Marauders, but Sirius and Remus both tell Harry Lily changed his mind about James because he became a better person, why don’t Snape stans consider that an evidence pro James but “Snape’s worst memory” is their pro Snape pamphlet? That chapter showed us an incident where both Sirius and James were assholes but everyone that was there supported it but Lily. All the other Students supported it because of what the fandom conveniently forgets that Snape loved Dark Arts, disparagingly called Lily a Muggle twice, tried to expose Remus and run around with a group of Death Eater wannabes tormenting Muggleborns all through his school years (he literally says that torturing Mary Macdonald was funny - “That was nothing, it was a laugh, that’s all”), to the point where Lily’s friends and herself questioned their friendship: “none of my friends can understand why I even talk to you. I’ve made excuses for you for years.” And eventually, when questioned by Lily if he wanted to join Voldemort, he couldn’t find any way to lie to her: “you and your precious little Death Eater friends— you see, you don’t even deny it! You don’t even deny that’s what you’re all aiming to be! You can’t wait to join You Know Who can you?”. He literally didn’t find anything wrong with Voldemort’s political position (only the fact that he wanted to kill his obsession, he only had that so called change of heart when it personally affected him as his beloved Dark Lord wanted to kill the object of his lust). So yes, he did join the Death Eaters because he wanted to and was everything he’d always desired. Does this make him a bad person? HELL YES.

And wait, can somebody remind me why the Potters were forced to hide? Wow, it must have been because Snivellus dearest spilled the tea to his master. So basically it went like this: “Hey Dark Lord! Our adorable group of racists kills Mudbloods for fun, but there’s this filthy Muggle born I fancy, can you please kill her husband and baby so that I can have her?” How the hell could he think Lily could have ever forgiven him? He was totally fine with Dumbledore saving Lily but not her husband and infant son (see how deeply he cared about Lily’s happiness?) and only cared for him being the rebound. James and Harry were totally expendable but hey, bravest man ever known!

So yes, he protected Harry (in his very own and questionable way, he did), but I’m sorry, that’s not enough. However, before someone says “in the end he cared about Harry” let me say a big, important fact: NAH HE DIDN’T. And not only he didn’t, but he also openly states that: in the Deathly Hallows chapter with the Pensieve, Snape describes Harry as selfish, self-important and arrogant - does it matter than all the other teachers like him and see none of those things? Of course not. And he’s not talking about sassy 4th-6th year Harry (who I really thank for that “there's no need to call me "sir" Professor” gem): Snape is tasing about an 11 year old who was picked on his whole life, who never had a family of his own and who lived in a cupboard under the stairs. He’s a child, an orphan (now tell me what’s that heroic about tormenting an orphan). However, Snape had decided that Harry must be bad news from the start, so he reasonably spends six years making his life as difficult as possible. That’s a great way to honour Lily’s memory, right? Do Snape stans remember what their hero answered when Dumbledore asked if he had grown to care for the boy, after all? He literally shouted “for him?” before casting a Patronus (a little over obsessive too). He felt he owed it to Lily to make sure Harry survives, and for Merlin’s sake, he did! He went to Voldemort and basically condemned the Potters. I’m not saying he is THE reason why they died, that honour goes to the lurid latrine rat, but he is one of them. Protecting Harry was the least he could do. Switching allegiances doesn’t cancel the awful actions before Lily’s death, as much as taking advantage of his position can’t be justified by his loyalty to Dumbledore. And most importantly, he cannot be redeemed by his stalkerish obsession for Lily (or by the creepy ‘look at me I want to die looking into your mother’s eyes,’ ew). All he did was made out of selfishness, even in his quest to redeem himself. Snape had a chance to honour Lily's memory, and disregarded it every single day. He claimed to regret his past, yet his cruelty to Harry was persistent and immature. Plus, loving someone doesn’t redeem terrible deeds. He aligned himself with a terrorist organisation who murdered for sport entirely of his own volition, endorsed the torture of Muggleborns, but of course, what a hero! I will never understand how people continue to use Snape’s obsession with Lily and ‘protecting’ Harry thing as an excuse for all the pain and terror that he inflicted upon small children. Does that mean you’ll excuse a father who continuously hit and emotionally abused his child and made their life a living hell if his excuse was “well I was still protecting them they had their dead mother’s eyes”? This is SICK.

And if you can still argue that “he had a terrible childhood,” that is inarguable, however, it just cannot justify him. Remus was bitten when he was 4, he had no friends until he was 11, lived in constant fear that he was going to be outed as a Werewolf, was forced to turn into a monster every month, lost everyone he loved and lived in poverty for 14 years and still managed to be a decent person. Luna watched her mother die, was picked on by almost everyone, was treated as a freak and only had one friend until she was 14 and still managed to be a decent person. Ginny was literally possessed by Voldemort himself for almost a year, guess what? Decent person too. Neville was constantly told how worthless he was, lived knowing his parents were tortured to insanity and was bullied and belittled by everyone. Decent person? Yes, right again. And do we want to talk about THE lonely kid who was abused his entire life? Sirius was raised and abused by blood supremacists, was disowned by his family, framed for murder (of his best friends, for Merlin’s sake!) and literally lost almost everyone he loved and still managed to be a decent person. He couldn't help the way he was? The environment around him conditioned him to be that way? If I remember correctly, Harry was raised by neglectful relatives, wore ill-fitting clothes, felt inadequate among his peers… Harry is proof that a terrible childhood doesn’t excuse despicable behaviour.

So, Snape hated Neville because he could have been the Chosen One instead of Harry (but it’s definitely on him for going to Voldemort and condemning the Potters), he hated Harry because he was James’s copy and he hated Hermione because she was a Mudblood and brilliant as Lily was. Makes sense, again, and again, it stresses how much of a beautiful person and teacher he was, don’t you think so? Also, had Voldemort picked Neville to kill instead of Harry, Snape would still be a Death Eater. It’s not like he thought being part of a group of supremacists and terrorists was wrong. It wasn’t until something directly affected him that he turned his back to his master - so brave, right? Snape may have done some good for the Wizarding World when he joined the Order, but while he was alive, he was horrible. He wasn't fighting the good fight because he couldn't possibly imagine a world where Voldemort was in charge (honestly, he couldn't have cared less), he was doing it to spare Lily’s life and get her for himself. James and Lily fought for the light because they believed in the light. Snape fought against the dark because the dark had offended him. Had Voldemort gone after the Longbottoms instead, Snape would have lived and died as the most loyal Death Eater in history.

Wait, I hear a “there’s no evidence that Snape voluntarily murdered anyone in his entire life” over there! He joined a group whose aim was genocide and was actually one of the few members which were part of the inner circle of Death Eaters, he didn’t get there by throwing kisses and rose petals around. It is explicitly said that not all Death Eaters actually bore the mark. Only selected wizards can be part of Voldemort’s circle, and not only Snape was part of that circle during the First Wizarding War, but it is also heavily implied that he passed messages from Voldemort more than once. Plus, he was also able to speak directly to Voldemort and even ask him to spare Lily’s life. Voldemort actually told Lily to move over three times before killing her, and he didn’t do that because he had such a kind heart and wanted to spare a Muggleborn’s life, he did that because Snape begged him. And maybe we haven’t read the same books, but it’s not like Voldemort strolled along Diagon Alley offering favours to random people. In addition to this, Snape did most certainly kill someone since Dumbledore compares Draco’s soul to his, meaning he has done remorseless acts of great evil before, hence his soul was already damaged, unlike Draco’s. So please, stop saying Snape was somehow influenced into joining the Death Eaters and never committed any crime: he fully believed in what they pledged and actually longed about being one of them for years (according to Lily). No one manipulated him into joining said group nor into perpetrating crimes. And no one manipulated him into being a horrible person even after he “switched sides.” He’s the one who willingly decides to be a terrorist, he’s the one who willingly decides to abuse children half his age, and he’s the one having the nerve to be awful to Harry when he’s the reason why Harry doesn’t have any parents.

And he was so childish and cruel! He threw a tantrum after discovered he was getting an Order of Merlin and wasn’t going to see Remus and Sirius in jail (even though he knew they were innocent).

There we go: HE KNEW SIRIUS WAS INNOCENT (don’t try to deny it, he was part of the inner circle of Death Eaters, he perfectly knew Sirius was not the one selling the Potters to Voldemort)! Did this matter for him? Of course not! And was Snape cruel and abusive to Harry because he blamed himself for Lily’s death and Harry was a constant reminder of his guilt? Yes, he was. But you know who else blamed himself for the Potters’ deaths and also was constantly reminded of them by Harry, and yet, did not abuse him because of his guilt? That’s right, Sirius. Sirius whose death was indirectly caused by Snape who kept making fun of him for being locked in Grimmauld Place. Sirius who had no problems breaking out of Azkaban, all he had to do was turn into a dog and leave. He could have left anytime he wanted to over those twelve years but he didn’t. You know why? Because he thought he deserved to be there. It was his fault his friends were dead. Everyone could blame him all they wanted with false accusations and it didn’t matter, since to him, changing Peter to the Secret Keeper, he was guilty for his friends’ death and deserved to be in Azkaban. He only broke out when he knew Harry was in danger after seeing that filthy rat on the newspaper. And when he broke into Hogwarts? Do people remember those lines: Hermione said “It’s very lucky he picked tonight, you know,” to which Ron responded “I reckon he’s lost track of time, being on the run. Didn’t realise it was Halloween.” Please, of course he realised it was Halloween, he perfectly knew that. He went after Peter on the anniversary of James and Lily’s death to revenge them and to save his godson. Sirius might have strut as much as James during his teens but again, he turned out to be a decent person.

And think about Harry, a 17-year-old grown up in an abused “family” (and still managed to be a decent person too): he has no memories of his parents, the only thing remained is a photograph. A photograph of a happy little family, showing James and Lily in love with the fruit of their love. Snape found it and ripped off and stole the half with Lily smiling so he could pretend her happiness and love were directed at him and not at her husband and son (yes, people, that disgusting moment actually existed, and it was so creepy Yates couldn’t put it in the movies). He stole Lily’s picture and Lily’s last words from Sirius, a friend she loved, the Potters’ best man, James’ brother. How nasty. What can I say, at least he waited until after Sirius’ death to go to Grimmauld Place and raid his bedroom?

Lovely Snivellus, such a cupcake, also laughed and mocked Tonks when her Patronus changed when she fell in love with Remus (let’s also remember that Tonks’s one was not the same as Remus’s, as stated by Rowling, before Snape stans can accuse me of applying double standards: Remus’s Patronus was a regular wolf, and okay Harry is oblivious at times, but he would have recognised a regular wolf) despite the fact that his own changed to match Lily’s - let’s just remember that THIS is obsessive behaviour, whilst James and Lily’s Patroni represent them being soulmates. Snape’s Patronus does not honour Lily, stop considering this the greatest romantic moment of all times, it does not show virtue nor morality, it’s just the representation of his creepy fascination with necrophilia. It’s disgusting, not noble. His so called love for Lily is creepy. She found happiness with another man, yet Snape was possessive, manipulative, and inarguably obsessive. And let’s remember that J.K. Rowling said that “he thought Lily would find him impressive if he became a real Death Eater”… was he really her best friend or was he just completely blinded by his attraction to the dark side? This is not a redemptive love, this is problematic, toxic, abusive, emotionally-stunted, obsessive.

This is because there was never a love triangle and that’s why there is simply NO Team Snape! Not winning at the genetic lottery doesn’t justify being such an awful person! Also, THIS is why the tag line should be changed from “always” to “Lily, take Harry and go! It's him! I'll hold him off!” or to “until the very end” because a father’s eternal love for his son is much more important than a racist’s obsession of a dead woman (dead because he contributed to her death, to be precise). His always and doe patrons can’t get him out of this one. Eventually, let’s remember J.K. Rowling’s dedication in Deathly Hallows: “[…] to you, if you have stuck with Harry until the very end.” Not “always” nor creepy moaning, just the pure words of a hero, of a loving father who died protecting the ones he loved most.

Now, I don’t get why we should celebrate Snivellus as the hero of Slytherin and an example of the “not all Slytherins are evil” when Regulus Black died in a cave, drowned by reanimated corpses to bring about the downfall of Voldemort, and Narcissa Black straight up lied to Voldemort because she’s first and foremost a mother, ruthless in doing whatever it took to save her beloved son. Regulus and Narcissa were brave: despite their flaws they knew what mattered the most and they were two big key factor in Harry’s survival and Voldemort’s demise. Sure, Snape was among the three that deceived the Dark Lord, but whilst Regulus did it because he realised what was right and what wasn’t, and Narcissa did it because of love, putting her family first (plus, she wasn’t even a Death Eater, and this tells a lot about her, as her loyalties solely lie with her family), Snape did it because resentfulness. Sure, Regulus joined the Dark Eaters of his own free will and Narcissa did what she did only after having her family threatened, but since one of Snape stans’ major point in his defence is his family being abused, let’s take their family into consideration too. The Blacks were pureblood supremacist, they grew up within that establishment and yes, some members of the family rejected those arguable ‘values’ but not everyone has the courage to do that (also, every Black family member is indisputably a badass, don’t get me started on that). On the contrary, Snape was a half-blood, and still, ended up hating muggleborns - yes, don’t try to say he didn’t, he joined the Death Eaters because he believed in Voldemort’s cause. He disparages mud bloods, he joins in on their massacre as a Death Eater after having idolised them for years in school before actually joining them. Read this again: he idolised a group of pureblood supremacist, he actively helps orchestrate genocide against the muggleborns. And what is his Freudian excuse? He believed that, in so far as Halfblood, he had to ‘prove’ that he was magical and capable enough (does this remind you of somebody else who hated muggles albeit being a half-blood and eradicates his whole Muggle family?), you can see that in how he strived to highlight his maternal Prince lineage in his stupid nickname. And no, now don’t try to blame the Marauders’ behaviour for this: Severus Snape, the man you glorify, hated muggleborns and went out of his way to commit genocide against them. So, in the end, if you still deny that, despite it being clear in the books, you are being dishonest. If, on the contrary, you fully realise it and still glamorise Snape despite how horrible of a person he was, well Snape stans, you have sunk to a new low. I’m not trying to justify anyone who supported said supremacist beliefs, but at least Regulus and Narcissa were born and bred within one of the Sacred 28, those beliefs were instilled in them from the very beginning, Snape reached them all on his own (well done for embracing your nazi self Snivellus). Regulus turned his back on Voldemort as soon as he realised how wrong he had been: at age 18, he literally sacrificed himself to try and stop his master. Narcissa, on the other hand, never sworn loyalty to Voldemort: she was a pureblood elitist, yes, she was guided by pride, but she was also calm, rational and restrained where her sister was crazed and her husband was reckless. So… Regulus faced death in the hope that when when the time had come, Voldemort would have met his match and would have been mortal once more, and Cissy only wanted best for her family and did everything she could to protect her son. She perfectly knew that Voldemort could have easily killed her in a second, but she wanted to find Draco, kept a straight face as the strong woman she was and fooled the Dark Lord. And why did Snape deceive Voldemort? Oh, right, he told him the prophecy that eventually led to the killing of the woman he was obsessed with (and no, again, he did not care at all about her husband and baby), this, of course after asking him to spare her life so that he could have had her (so this is, once again, classic Snivellus holding grudges). Regulus and Narcissa are pretty much the epitome of Slytherin, and still, let’s celebrate Snape! As a Slytherin myself, I am utterly disgusted by Snape’s behaviour. He could have been an amazing teacher, he had the talent to be one of the greatest Potions masters ever, and he willingly chose to throw it away in favour of being awful for the sake of bullying his own pupils. If we have to pick characters who proved that not all Slytherins are evil, let’s look at Regulus, let’s look at Narcissa, let’s look at Slughorn and Andromeda. Slughorn fought against Voldemort during the Battle of Hogwarts and refused to become a Death Eater, Andromeda married a Muggleborn. And guess what? None of them bullied children for 15 years.

Then, for the “I sometimes think we Sort too soon” thing… no, just no. Before you can start yelling at me, I am not, I repeat, I am absolutely not saying this because I endorse the whole Gryffindor being saints thing. I am a Slytherin, and a proud one. I just don’t agree that Snape was brave. Is being a resentful, childish and abusive man being brave? Wow, I’ll have to refresh my vocabulary! It is not brave to bully your pupils for years because you lost your loved one, it is not brave to refuse to accept a woman loves somebody else and moves on, it is not brave to keep a childhood grudge against that someone because they ‘stole’ the so called love of your life, it is not brave to try to destroy an orphan’s image of their heroic father. Snape was burned Lily had chosen James over him, so burned that, fuelled by jealousy and envy (and by his pretty questionable ideals too, because it’s too convenient to forget he is 100% a Death Eater and hence a supporter of Voldemort’s lovely view for the Wizarding World), he struck out and ended up getting Lily killed. I don’t consider playing the martyr by “teaching” (if we really want to call that teaching instead of child abuse) and being an occasional spy being brave. I call it feeling guilty, I call it ‘I deserve to suffer for hurting Lily but I still choose to bully her own son instead of honouring her,’ I call it ‘I keep on tormenting an orphan because I hated his father and he looks too much like him, plus, he has his mother’s eyes so I’m constantly remembered of 1) Lily choosing James over me and 2) Lily dying because of me telling my beloved Dark Lord the prophecy.’ Any protection Snape offered Harry, he did it because of his penance, not because protecting him (and hence stopping Voldemort) was the right choice. Wow, how brave of him. I don’t think Snape could have been a Gryffindor at all, and I hated how David Yates (again, very conveniently for his martyr business) placed the Gryffindor scarf hanging up in the background in Snape’s death scene as a nod to his supposed bravery. Like, really?! Even if you really want to call him brave, he’s still an awful person who shouldn’t have been allowed to teach because of how abusive he was, an awful person who was a member and supporter of a supremacist, racist and violent sect, an awful person who caused the death of innocent people - and I could go on and on. You can’t let a few good deeds outweigh all the bad! It’s not like some potion or Imperius Curse made him join the Death Eaters, spill the tea about the prophecy and terrorise those children. He willingly chooses to do that because he was an awful person until the very end. And still, Snape apologists be like “the conclusion of his arc is that abusing your position of power over children is forgivable if you stalked one of their parents when you were a teen.” Again, sick.

Snape’s portrayal in the movies is entirely fan-service throughout the whole series of films, but especially in DH part 2: they never showed Sirius arriving at the Potters the night Lily and James died, they never showed the moment his whole world collapsed when he saw the corpses of his best friends, the moment he blamed himself for what had happened. No, we got an entirely made-up (and creepy) scene of Snape getting there, holding Lily’s body and crying when that never happened! We also never got a scene with Sirius and Remus evidently struggling to hold it together while they tell Harry about James, how he changed and how Lily fell in love with him. Their pain would have shown how much James had an impact on their lives, for the better, but of course, we only got a partial rendition of Snape’s worst memory, with careful cuts of course, they couldn’t say he didn’t find anything wrong with the torture of Muggleborns, right?

You can like Snape, sure, he’s a flawed character with an interesting past, but he’s not a hero, stop portraying him as such instead of what he really was: an abusive, creepy, racist man. You are allowed to like villains (who doesn’t?) but stop praising him! You don’t have to justify his actions because you like him: he was awful, recognise it.

Do we (still) need to talk about double standards? Well, there we go: people hate Lavender Brown and Cho Chang. Fair enough, pretty annoying girls if you want to hear me, but why do they get hate? They get hate for how they handle their feelings: Lavender gets hate for how she handles her unrequited romantic feelings, and Cho gets hate for crying and grieving over the death of her boyfriend. Does this sound like a thread to you? With the sole difference that they get more hate than Snape and this is disturbing and honestly just sick. He is a terrorist, he literally moans the entire series and abuses and terrorises children because he couldn’t have Lily but hey, misunderstood hero!

Stop romanticising Snape: the only reason why people love him is Alan Rickman, and all of this hatred is just a pathetic way of trying to cover up that James grew up while Snape didn’t. How can people glorify and stand up for a man who canonically is a vindictive bully? To be honest, I’m genuinely concerned for people who over romanticise such a man. Correct me if I’m wrong: do you see anyone sticking up for the Dursley’s or Umbridge, when they do basically the same stuff to Harry as Snape? How is Necrophilus any different? I will never regard him as a hero for as long as I am alive, however, the movies conveniently cut those parts where Snivellus was the half princey of baddies, right? Also, I really wish Sirius could have found out about this lovely nickname Snape gave himself as a teenager, that alone would have cured his depression, post traumatic stress disorder and alcoholism, this is a real tragedy.

Severus Snape did not die for love. He died because Voldemort thought hew was the true Elder Wand owner. I repeat: he did not die for love. Period.

He raised a wand to McGonagall!

Avada

Kedavra

#jamespotter #marauders #lilypotter #severussnape #snivellus #hp #hogwarts #harry potter #jily

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thesunnyshow · 4 years ago

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Name: Juliet

Writing Blog URL(s): @wonderlustlucas

Nationality: American

Languages: English, beginner level French, teeny tiny bit of Korean

Star Sign: Virgo

MBTI: ISFJ-T

Favorite color: Pastel yellow

Favorite food: My mom’s Sunday gravy

Favorite movie: Howl’s Moving Castle (The Lion King is a close second though)

Favorite ice cream flavor: Specifically Turkey Hill’s Double Dunker (get it— it’s so good)

Favorite animal: Humpback whale

Go-to karaoke song: She’s Kinda Hot by 5 Seconds of Summer

Dream job (whether you have a job or not): Neurosurgeon! Or a Twitch streamer HAHA

Coffee or tea? What are you ordering? Ahhh probably coffee, I love tea but I need my coffee </3

If you could have one superpower, what would you choose? Shapeshifting! Clearly the superior superpower I don’t take constructive criticism.

If you could visit a historical era, which would you choose? This is weirdly specific, but I would love to be in Scotland during the 1700’s. Alternatively, the 1980’s.

If you could restart your life, knowing what you do now, would you? 100%. I know everything happens for a reason but getting a redo and being able to fix all the big mistakes I made would be pretty nice.

Would you rather fight 100 chicken-sized horses or one horse-sized chicken? One horse-sized chicken! 100 tiny horses would be crazy tiring.

If you were a trope in a teen high school movie, what would you have been? I would probably be the gay side character that gives good emotional advice but is hella lonely LMAO

Do you believe in aliens/supernatural creatures? Yes, both!

What are some small things that make your day better? Driving with the windows down and music blasting, picking up coffee, playing video games, & talking to my internet friends on Discord.

Fun fact about yourself that not everyone would know? I discovered my love for writing through Warrior Cats roleplay😭

What fandom(s) do you write for? Right now, only Kpop, but I wouldn’t mind writing for 5SOS or some of my other fandoms!

When did you post your first piece? On WattPad, December 2015. On Tumblr, April 2018 :)

Do you write fluff/angst/crack/general/smut, combo, etc? Why? I write everything! Fluff/smut/crack is my favorite and slight angst (usually just slow burn though cus I’m soft).

Do you write OCs, X Readers, Ships...etc? Again, I write anything and everything! Currently, second or third person reader inserts are my main style, but I also do ships and would love to write more OCs.

Why did you decide to write for Tumblr? Before Tumblr, I was on WattPad for different fandoms but eventually fell off. Then, when I got into Kpop in 2017, I found that urge to write again and decided to move to Tumblr since WattPad was becoming… weird. Plus Tumblr was a better fit for me!

What inspires you to write? To be completely honest, it’s the little things throughout the day that inspire me. For example, “Honey” was inspired by me not being able to open my locker in high school. “I Hemoglobin You” was based off my friend giving me a head rub while I was donating blood. Kpop idols just so happen to be my muses that I like to put into random moments of inspiration!

What genres/AUs do you enjoy writing the most? High school or college AUs are my favorite, along with some good ol’ friends to lovers slow burn. Angst isn’t my forte so I usually just stick to fluff, smut, and some crack. I haven’t written any but fantasy AUs are some of my favorites too! (RIP to my League of Legends AU that I started and haven’t touched in months.)

What do you hope your readers take away from your work? Just like other fanfiction authors inspire me, I hope some of my work inspires others. Considering fanfiction is free, there is so much out there to read and when I find a good story that inspires ME to write better, I’d love for my writing to do the same.

What do you do when you hit a rough spot creatively? 3 options: 1) Skip that scene and jump ahead to one I’m excited to write; 2) Erase what part I’m on and completely redo it; or 3) Drop it. The majority of my works usually take a few months to write as I will completely stop working on it until I find the right inspiration again.

What is your favorite work and why? Your most successful? “Four” is definitely my favorite work. It’s one of my longer pieces and there was a lot of raw emotion in there on my end. I love the relationship between Hyunjin and the reader and especially love the ending. “Greatest Gift” for Chanyeol is my most successful, and one of my other favorites!

Who is your favorite person to write about? Easily Hwang Hyunjin. It’s so easy to place him in any of my works, and sometimes it’s a struggle to NOT write him. It sounds stupid but sometimes I really feel like I “know” him so being able to describe him physically and mentally is easy for me.

Do you think there’s a difference between writing fanfiction vs. completely original prose? Yes and no. Yes, because most of the time, fanfiction is totally original as well and requires just as much thought as a 400,000 word novel. No, because fanfiction uses a specific person as a muse.

What do you think makes a good story? Detail and realistic dialogue! Of course, everyone has their own style of writing, but detail is especially important to me. Sure, you can have a great plot, but having concise, detailed writing to get immersed into makes a story so much better. I also find realistic dialogue to be a big deal— I hate when teenage characters are speaking in deep analogies because, if we’re being honest, my daily language is 95% just “Bruh.” If you’re like me, I’d actually prefer realistic dialogue over anything else.

What is your writing process like? Process… yikes. Sometimes… I have a random thought and then I’m like… hell yeah let’s write that. I actually have no process. I don’t outline, I just start writing and keep writing until I’m finished. Then I’ll read it all over to make edits, then I’ll use the Read Aloud feature to catch any mistakes I missed, then I’ll run it through Grammarly before posting!

Would you ever repurpose a fic into a completely original story? Hm, maybe? In the future, possibly, but as of right now I wouldn’t use any of my fics to do so.

What tropes do you love, and what tropes can’t you stand? Oh, gosh, tropes. Gotta love them. Friends to lovers, enemies to lovers, stuck together (AKA forced to share a bed), and fake relationships are my favorites. They may be corny, but I also love truth or dare or 7 minutes in heaven games in fics cus… they’re just classics. Also love fics with a popular x shy pairing. I can’t say I dislike many tropes, but I definitely have a love/hate relationship with vampire and werewolf tropes because of how romanticized they are.

How much would you say audience feedback/engagement means to you? Hm, to be completely honest, only a little bit? I mainly write for myself, it’s like a guilty pleasure to just get all my thoughts and desires out, and then I just so happen to make it public on Tumblr. Nevertheless, receiving comments and asks actually make my day, and sometimes I still struggle to wrap my mind around people enjoying my writing! So, thank you to everyone who has ever left me a kind message, I truly appreciate it ♥

What has been one of the biggest factors of your success (of any size)? Getting involved! I think one of the best ways to grow is to join networks, which not only gives you the opportunity to share your work on a greater scale, but also allows you to make connections. Like real life, making connections and making friendships with other writers can play a huge role in growing as a writer and growing your account.

Do you think fanfic writers get unfairly judged? Yes :( As someone who’s involved with other fandoms, I’ve heard the way some people think of fanfiction and it’s really sad. People do not know how much goes into writing and just see it as cringey and disgusting when it’s just… not.

Do you think art can be a medium for change? Yes! In all its forms, art is something a creator can use to influence their audience (in a good way, hopefully).

Do you ever feel there are times when you’re writing for others, rather than yourself? Like I said in #40, I mainly write for myself. Even when I’m writing a request, chances are if I like the request enough I’m going to create a story out of it that fits my personal desires the most.

Do you ever feel like people have misunderstood you or your writing at times? No! However, I’d still consider myself a small account and do not have TOO many works posted. But so far, I don’t think I’ve faced this problem :)

Do your offline friends/loved ones know you write for Tumblr? Only a few! My best friend Maggie is on Tumblr with me and only 2 of my other pals know I write fanfiction.

What is one thing you wish you could tell your followers? How much I love each and every one of them for supporting me and sticking around even when I won’t post for months🥺❤️

Do you have any advice for aspiring writers who might be too scared to put themselves out there? Don’t psych yourself out! In the time I’ve spent on Tumblr, I’ve never received any substantial hate. My main advice is don’t write fanfiction to get popular on the app, write fanfiction because you love to write and love your muses!

Are there any times when you regret joining Tumblr? No, as much as Tumblr can be annoying at times, I love the people I’ve met and the content I’ve found and wouldn’t have wanted to use any other platform.

Do you have any mutuals who have been particularly formative/supportive in your Tumblr journey? @pinktea99 — Mo, you’ve been around since the beginning honestly, and without you I wouldn’t have been able to come out of my shell! Thank you for all your love & support & for being my SF9 buddy❤️

Pick a quote to end your interview with:

“Like mate, stop procrastinating.” — 3RACHA

BONUS ROUND: K-POP CONFIDENTIAL

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winterknight1087 · 5 years ago

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Painted Perfect Future

Summary: Virgil’s parents are homophobic meanies, especially his dad, but don’t worry. Virgil has three amazing boyfriends and there’s always Disney to distract him from his anxiety and past trauma.

Word Count: 6,023

Warnings: Anxiety attacks; hit and run; hospitalization; homophobic parent; self-esteem issues; implied/referenced suicide (but of an off-screen OC); injury; emotional/psychological abuse; alcohol mention; angst with a happy ending; failing a class mention; food; mention of kidnapping in a Disney movie; warnings sound worse than really is (but better safe than sorry!)

Pairings: Romantic LAMP with a dash of Moxiety, Prinxiety, and Analogical

AO3 Link My Writing

Well the Sanders Secret Santa has given all permission to reveal, so surprise @ironwoman359! I’m the weirdo who got to write your secret Santa! I hope you had a great winter holiday! 💜💜💜💜💜

“Oh! I want to go first! Can I go first? RoRo, pleeeease!” Patton begged, bouncing in his seat.

“Uuuuugh, fine,” Roman moaned. “I get to go next, then!”

“I have no quarrels with this. Virgil?” Lo asked, rolling his eyes at the two energetic men.

Virgil looked up from the gifts he was desperately clinging onto. “Huh? What?”

Pat gave the anxious figure a pouty look. “Do you have a problem with me first then RoRo? Unless you want to go first.”

“No, it’s fine Pat. I would like to go last, if that’s alright with you, Lo.”

Logan looked him over but answered. “It may relieve some of your anxiety if you hand your gifts out sooner, Virgil. There is very little chance you got any of us something we will not enjoy.”

“Don’t you mean… infinitesimal?” Patton giggled.

“THAT WAS ONE TIME!”

Virgil winced, “Geez, L. I knew I was going to lose my hearing, but I figured it would be from those two, not you.”

“I-uh” he cleared his throat, hands automatically trying to adjust the fake tie on his sleep shirt. “I apologize, Virgil.”

“Also, I want to go last. I’m nervous about my gifts, but also, I’ve rationalized it out that if you all hate it, I can go hide in my room. Less awkwardness if it’s hated.”

Logan and Patton shared an uncertain look, which did not go unnoticed by the anxious one. They seemed to agree on something and let the decision stand. Patton started giggling again as he dove straight into the pile of gifts sitting beneath the Christmas tree. For a full minute, Virgil counted the seconds, all that could be seen of the man was the cat tail to his onesie.

****

5 Years Ago: Virgil and Logan’s freshmen dorm room

“Little Shadowling?”

You’re just a disappointment. You can’t even keep your grades up in the few classes you actually like. You have an F in Art 101! Who fails Art 101?!?

“Kiddo?”

They don’t care about you. Why should they? Who would be proud of an anxious mess like you?

“Verge, please answer me.”

Next thing you know, they’ll somehow find out that you’re gay. They’ll blame college for ‘turning you’ gay and force you to drop out. You’ll lose what little you’ve gained.

“Virgil, come on buddy. Breathe with me. There we go.”

Virgil wasn’t sure how long he’d been spiraling. What mattered was the warmth surrounding him and the steady rhythmic tapping on his back. At least, that was what mattered until he remembered that Logan was in class until much later. A lightning bolt might as well have struck him for how badly he jumped away, frantically throwing his hands out for anything that could work as a weapon.

“Whoa there, kiddo!” A familiar voice said. “It’s just your happy-pappy Patton!”

As Virgil’s mind finally started to work again, he saw Patton sitting next to him. Virgil looked down and saw that the vicious weapon he had sought turned out to be only a spare paint brush. He set it aside before awkwardly looking at Pat. The other seemed to understand and opened his arms, inviting Virgil into a hug.

“Do you want to talk about it, Virge?”

All Virgil could manage was a shake of his head.

“What about we watch a movie and I make us some yummy hot cocoa? You know what, I’m feeling dangerous, let’s eat the box of cookies I was saving! Does that sound good, my bestest mostest dynamicist duoist duo partner!”

Too many words so soon after an anxiety attack. “I… umm… Sure Pat. Whatever you want to watch.”

With Virgil’s agreement, Patton was off to work. He shocked the anxious one by easily picking him up and placing him in his bed. Next, he was peeking at what was already in the DVD player. He smiled seeing that Roman had been forcing Logan to watch Lilo and Stitch. That would work perfectly for his anxious little baby. With that, he threw some popcorn into the microwave and started working on their hot cocoa.

Virgil watched Pat move about for a moment before deciding that it would relieve some anxiety for him to also do something–anything. He climbed out of bed and started collecting all the spare blankets (and not so spare, though he doubted Logan would mind too much that he stole his bedding). By the time Patton was bringing the snacks and drinks over, Virgil’s bed was about two feet taller with Vee in the middle, making the pile into a sensible nest for them.

Pat and Virge cuddled through the movie. It was exactly what Virgil needed after what happened this afternoon. They joked and threw popcorn at meanie heads. When Lilo had told Stitch that he couldn’t have any more caffeine, Virgil couldn’t help but poke Patton.

“Hey, look! You’re on TV!”

“DOES THIS MEAN YOU ARE THE STITCH TO MY LILO!”

“Uhh… Sure?”

Unbeknownst to the two on the bed, Logan had walked in only to hear screeching about Ohana and family. He had already started to set his bag down, muscle memory doing so automatically. Yet, as the chemical engineering student managed to take everything in, he only blinked and scooped up the bag to leave once again. Though, the pictures he snagged of the two best friends would later prove he had seen the pair.

****

Present

“Here they are!” Patton’s voice yanked Virgil’s mind from that small dorm room. “Alright, here we go! One for LoLo! VeeVee! And RoRo!”

Each accepted their gift and waited for Patton to sit down. Each took their tern unwrapping the (miserably) wrapped gifts. Roman went first to find a prince costume PJ set. Princey screeched when he pulled out a stuffed animal horse. It took Virgil a moment to realize it was horse from Tangled. Mick? No… Maxwell? Max- yes, -well no. Maximillian? Closer, but still wrong. Oh Maximus, right. Maybe Virgil should re-watch Tangled if he couldn’t remember something as simple as the horse’s name.

“I LOVE THEM PATTON!”

Patton didn’t have a chance to respond before Roman was running into the closest room to change into his new PJs. Once he came back, he showed the three others the PJs from every angle, making sure his boyfriends got a good look at his muscles while doing so as well. Patton was giggling whereas Logan and Virgil were smirking at his antics, all three used to the dramatic prince.

Next was Logan. He took his time unwrapping the gift before pulling out his own set of items. He picked up a tie that listed different elements from the periodic table. Virgil was sure there had to be some sort of pun in the tie’s design, but he wasn’t well versed in… well, science in general. There was a groan from the tie-clad man which was proof enough for Virgil to know the pun existed. There were also socks, a galaxy pen, a ‘tears of my students’ mug, and even a mug warmer.

“While I loathe to finding a joke on the tie, I do enjoy these gifts. Thank you, Patton.”

“What’s the joke!” Roman squealed.

“Iodine. Lithium. Uranium. Vanadium. Cobalt. Fluorine. Iron”

“In English, Microsoft Nerd!”

Patton was giggling as he answered. “I luv coffe(e)! The symbols spell I luv coffee!”

Virgil was last. He ripped open the gift to find a giant blanket. It was designed just like his patch-work jacket and Virgil could have sworn that this was the softest thing to ever exist... alright, second softest as Patton was without a doubt the softest and sweetest. Patton was watching him worriedly as the anxious man ran his hand over the blanket. Without a word, Virgil swung the giant blanket around himself and just seemed to vanish into the mass of fluff, sending the other men in the room into a fit of laughter.

“Prepare yourselves, my beloved royalty!”

****

2 Years Ago: The shared apartment living room

“You fiend! Why do you besmirch the name of Disney every time we watch something!”

“Not my fault you started this marathon and it is definitely not my fault that you started the argument with Cinderella, claiming that you only need to believe in your dreams for them to come true instead of trying to actively attain them. Either stop screaming about arguable statements and put in The Lion King or sit here letting me ruin Disney for you.”

Roman grumbled but did get up from the couch to change DVD’s. It was a relatively calm evening in their apartment, at least it was for the two of them alone. Logan and Patton were at the library. Patton was with a study group and Logan, who didn’t want Patton coming home on his own, was studying on his own until the study group were done. That left Roman and Virgil with the apartment for the evening, and they’d used it to binge-watch Disney movies.

Riiiiiiiiing. Riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiing.

“Tell the nerds to pick up pizza, Count Woelaf!” Roman called as Virgil automatically answered his phone.

“Did you really think I won’t find out! Virgil, the homosexual beast!”

With some strange sound escaping his throat, Virgil threw his phone across the living room as his body forgot how to breathe. He could hear a voice screaming his name and that only made breathing harder to achieve. His thoughts were spiraling and his world collapsing.

“Vee, please!”

They knew! They knew he was gay! He knew it was only a matter of time before they found out, but he had been so careful to keep that day from coming yet!

“Oh, what was it Logan said to do?”

How long did he have until everything changed? How long until what little love they had for him was gone?

“Virgil, can you… uhh… name five things you hear? No, see! Five things you can see?”

Some words spilled out of Virgil’s mouth, momentarily pausing the spiral before it came back. They are going to cut him off. Everyone would know by the end of the day. Whoever was trying to get him to list things would be gone just like them!

“Yikes, alright. Umm… Oh! Virgil, you have to agree with me now that Prince Charming kissing Snow White was sweet and an incredible moment, right?”

They knew, so some comment about a movie shouldn’t bother him right now! “No.”

“But it was a farewell kiss! What is more romantic than that!”

This doesn’t matter right now! “Consent! Not kissing dead people!”

Slowly, the bickering about Disney managed to knock Virgil out of his spiral. Roman looked desperate but also happy? Since when did Princey like hearing the dark side of Disney? Later, Virgil would admit that, though an unusual approach, Roman’s way did help him ground himself. Right now, though, they argued until Rafiki started to mess around with Simba.

“Wait, I didn’t realize Patton was in this movie.” Virgil offered as a weak joke.

“I can see PatDad as Rafiki. What about Lo-bot? Who do you think he’d be?”

“Zazu. And before you ask, you are a combination of Timon and Pumbaa”

Roman gave a huge, mock gasp. “Excuse me! Why would you not make me the King of Pride Rock!?”

“Because Mufasa is too kind and humble for you and honestly? I can see you 100% dressing in drag and doing the hula like Timon as a distraction. As it is, you did storm Pat and my history class dressed as Aladdin and started singing ‘I Can Show You the World’ to Pat all because Pat was having an off day. Then, when our professor became furious, you started belting out ‘Proud of Your Boy’–which I remind you again is from the musical not the original Disney film!”

“OK fine, what the that make you then?”

“Simba, of course. He ran from his problems, blamed himself for everything when it was really Scar’s fault, and randomly joined some bug-eating hippies in the jungle. Simba is me just as The Lion King is Hamlet.”

“You have gone too far! How dare you equate Timon and Pumbaa to hippies!”

“Really, that’s where you draw the line?

“Guess who brought home Chinese Take-Out!” a voice called as Lo and Pat appeared, bringing a couple of bags over to the coffee table.

Their appearance threw Roman into La La Land for a moment, but he promptly wailed out once he realized what they were having for dinner. “But pizzzzzzzzzzza!”

“What about pizza?” Logan asked as Roman promptly collected his share of food.

“Nooooooooooooooo! We forgot to call you!” Roman sounded like he was close to crying, though he was already raising a bite of rice to his mouth.

Patton giggled. “Sorry, we apparently didn’t get your telepathic message, RoRo. I did get you pot stickers though.”

An actual tear escaped the dramatic man’s face as he wailed. “I foooorgive yoooooooooooooooooooooooooou!”

****

Present

“Alright, Puffball first!”

Roman handed Patton a bag. Pat was wiggling with excitement as he opened the bag and pulled out the paper stuffing. Inside were four stuffed animals, each one dressed like each of them. A dog with its tongue sticking out had Pat’s glasses, light blue polo shirt and a little gray cardigan around its shoulders. A lion had a crown, prince costume, and even a fake little sword. A normal looking teddy bear had Logan’s black polo with a tie, glasses, and tiny watch. The final one was a kitten with a black hoodie and headphones.

“Press the kitten’s paw, Patty-Cake!”

Virgil was not amused to hear his own voice hissing come out of the kitten. Patton, on the other hand, absolutely loved it. Roman admitted that the others weren’t as convincing as the hiss, but Patton didn’t care; the four stuffed animals were in his arms and probably weren’t going to leave for the next several hours.

“OK, I’m actually proud of this one, Nerd.” He announced handing Logan a highly decorated box.

Logan opened it and made a small sound of appreciation at the books. “Bill Nye and Neil deGrasse Tyson. Thank you- “

“Look inside at the title pages, Lo!”

The man blinked but did as told. He froze after seeing the first one for a moment. Quickly, he checked the second one before just sitting there in shock. Roman was watching him in excitement.

“Well?”

“Did you really have Bill Nye and Neil deGrasse Tyson sign each other’s book?”

“What.”

Without another word, Logan showed the rest of the room the front page of the Tyson book where Bill Nye’s signature proudly sat. Roman looked like someone had slapped him with a fish. Virgil emerged from his blanket, laughing so hard, he didn’t even notice he’d emerged from his soft lair. Patton had a huge smile as soft giggles escaped from him.

“Regardless, I will enjoy reading these. Thank you, Roman. The signatures are also greatly appreciated.”

“Vee’s turn!” Pat called out.

Roman passed Virgil another bag, his mind running around in circles in disbelief of his mistake. Virgil accepted the bag and found a small wooden music box and a small metal container. Inside the container were extra tune things for the music box. The one already inside the music box was ‘Hakuna Matata,’ so Virgil had a suspicion that the other ones were also Disney.

Once again, he vanished into his giant blanket without a word, but the other three could hear the little music box playing from the blanket mound, with a soft voice singing along.

****

1 year ago: Their living room.

“Uhh… Virgil, might I have a word with you?”

Virgil paused the movie he was watching. “What’s up, L?”

Logan shifted uncertainly before clearing his throat. “I happened to have found a stack of unopened letters, addressed to you. They were almost covering an opened one in the trash.”

“They are in the trash for a reason, Logan. Throw them back.”

“I was merely wondering if you would like to talk…”

“If I wanted to talk about it, I would have said something. I’m dealing with it.”

Without letting Logan say another word, Virgil turned the movie back on. Logan tried to say something else but ultimately decided to shut his mouth and join Virgil on the couch. The tension between the two men slowly eased as Rapunzel celebrated with the villagers and stood up for herself to Gothel.

Logan cleared his throat, which instantly made Virgil go tense again. “What is that inconsequential game Roman and you insistently play? Which film character each of you are? If you would not mind, I would like to partake in this fatuous game for this film.”

Of all the things that had suddenly started racing through Virgil’s mind, this was not remotely what he expected. “Umm… Sure, Lo? Let’s hear your character study.”

“While I do not see simple correlations between the characters and the rest of us, I do see a lot of you in Rapunzel.”

“What, because I like hitting people with frying pans? I would have thought you’d say Patton for her. She is a bit too trusting of people and yet draws out the best in them. She even got a pub full of hardened criminals to sing about their dreams with her.”

Logan tilted his head, considering this. “That is in fact true, but she did not know any better. That puts her in stark contrast to Patton, who has at least admitted that he knows that they may be dangerous, but he gives the benefit of the doubt as some people just need kindness shown to them. No, I believe you are most like Rapunzel. Gothel has psychologically abused Rapunzel, presumably since kidnapping her, in a similar way to how they… I mean society has attempted to do towards you. If I am not mistaken, earlier in this film, she in essence has a break down whether she should have stayed within the tower or was right to leave. Has this not been a similar dilemma you have faced, having left your hometown?”

Virgil considered it for a moment. “Well…”

“Gothel has taught Rapunzel that she could be nothing and especially nothing more than what Gothel said she could be. Gothel is wrong though. Rapunzel is more than just her magic hair and has to leave to be able to full learn this.” Virgil could almost hear Logan’s mind piecing together movie points to what he really wanted to say to Virgil. “Yes, she could have been a bit naïve with her actions, not realizing any better due to Gothel’s strict hold over her views. Yet, that nativity in the end is what helps her realize the ways Gothel was an abusive parent because she came to see what kindness and what true love were supposed to feel like. She was miserable when she returned to the tower and could see through Gothel’s perfunctory love. Rapunzel had to learn to develop her own views and beliefs independent of her abusive adopted mother.”

Quietly, Virgil picked at his jacket, thinking over what Logan was saying. “I guess.”

“Well, I guess I concede and allow you to voice your view points on who is who.” Logan commented, his voice attempting to hold enthusiasm, but failing.

“Oh, that’s easy. Patton and I already assigned everyone years ago. Princey is Flynn Rider for the sole quote of ‘here comes the smolder’ along with essentially a pouty face. Patton agrees with you on me being Rapunzel. Something about him never being able to beat people up with anything, much less something as useful as a frying pan. Meanwhile, Patty-cake is Pascal, who does what he can to cheer Rapunzel on and threatens Flynn and Maximus when they are fighting. You are Maximus, dedicated to your work but also willing to bend the rules for a good reason.”

“Well then... I do not understand this film enough to refute those points, so I shall concede to your points. However, I will say this, about the letters, before leaving it alone. Please, if nothing else, do not leave us on read. We only wish to help you yeet your unwanted tea. We Stan you, Virgil. I hope you are woke to this.”

“Logan, I swear, if you have those note cards out and ever attempt to use that much slang in one sentence again…”

“I am merely only collecting receipts and flexing. Is this not how it goes?”

“Stooooooooooop” but the smile sitting on Virgil’s face showed Logan that he was doing something right on this comforting thing.

****

Present

“I suppose that it is now my turn.” Logan commented.

He moved and collected a neat stack of presents, wrapped in shimmering navy wrapping paper. Once Logan hand handed each of the boyfriends their present, he sat down. Virgil wasn’t sure how Logan even knew which gift was whose as there seemed to be no difference or name written on the package now in his lap compared to the others.

Pat was once again giggling as he tore open the gift. A book and kitchen apron were ripped out of the box by the squealing man. He announced the book title of some healthy-eating cookbook before unfolding the apron and giving out another squeal. He flipped the apron to show the words ‘Many have eaten here, few have died. Whichever it is tonight, I’ll see you on the flipside!’.

Once the excited man had finally calmed down, Roman destroyed the wrappings on his gift to reveal a nice suit and an additional envelope. Ro was confused as he opened the envelope before letting out a squeal that could have put up a decent fight with Patton’s squeals.

“TICKETS TO SEE HAMILTON! HOW DID YOU EVEN GET THESE? WHEN IS IT? ARE WE ALL GOING?”

Logan chuckled. “One of my coworkers has a cousin who performs in Hamilton and they owed me for something at work. Unless you wish to take others with you, I had assumed it would be the four of us. I am sorry to say that you will have to wait a month as everything will be cheaper once the holidays are over.”

“A weekend getaway with my three amazing boyfriends to Broadway!” Roman screeched looking ready to shoot through the roof in excitement. "YAAAAS!"

“Ohhhh. What did you get, Vee?” Patton asked excitedly.

All eyes turned towards the wrapped-up man. He let out a laugh before opening his present. Inside were a set of headphones and a gift card. Virgil glanced at the gift card, pleased to see it was for his favorite art supplies store. The headphones were everything Virgil could have wished for and more. They were sound-canceling. They had a good sound frequency, sensitivity, and resistance, which were all important for sound. They were wireless but with an optional wired-in line. Virgil did not know where Logan found what was essentially the epitome of headphones, but Virgil found himself falling even more in love with the nerd.

“I love them, thank you, Lo.”

“Your turn, VeeVee!” Patton announced excitedly.

****

3 months ago: leaving a movie theater

“I cannot believe you, My Chemical Romance! You are already plotting with Specs to ruin the masterpiece we just saw!” Roman announced, turning his phone onto the two following him.

“We are not plotting, merely discussing the inconsistencies and flaws within the film, unlike you and Patton, who are discussing the adorable-ness of the animal companion to the princess.” Logan calmly answered.

“OK, not to intrude or anything, but PUPPY!” Patton screeched before yanking Roman after him as Pat ran across the street to pet the dog.

Roman’s arm waved his phone as he was dragged off to the dog. Virgil could only laugh at how the video he was recording would turn out, knowing full well what the Prince was attempting to do. Not that recording their discussion would prepare the Prince for all the darker messages Virgil had scribbled into a tiny notebook just to taunt him with during the movie.

“Well, the light has changed, so I guess we will have to wait to follow them.” Logan commented, simply.

“Guess we have a chance to continue our conversation without a nosey prince berating us for analyzing the movie. So, the princess: guilable victim or mastermind genius?”

Logan considered it. “Well, I would say somewhere in the middle, especially with Disney’s attempts to create more realistic characters.”

They talked while waiting for the light. Logan only paused as he stepped off the curb before continuing with his analysis. Virgil could tell that the nerd was only getting started and was excited to see how the Noble Prince Whines A Lot took it while they ate dinner. Yet, he wasn’t so excited that he wasn’t aware of his surroundings.

“LOGAN!” the scream was ripped from his lips as he shoved the nerd back towards the curl they had left.

Then, the world went dark.

Virgil awoke to a persistent beeping, sniffles, and the smell of alcohol. His eyes focused on a plain white ceiling as his memories slammed into him, much like that car. He shut his eyes for a moment, before opening them to find the source of the sniffles.

“’at?” his throat was scratchy but the man in the chair next to him wasn’t looking at him.

The sobbing man jumped as if shocked by electricity. “VIRGIL!”

“’at’s mah ‘ame.”

More sobs escaped the man as he threw himself onto Virgil, forgetting about the anxious man’s injuries, lines attached to him, or even Virgil’s need to breathe. Patton was a sobbing mess as he held onto Virgil, blabbering about everything and nothing all at once. Virgil was tempted to point out that he was the one hurt, but he knew that his boyfriends would have had to suffer seeing him hurt, so he kept his mouth shut.

“Patton, the nurses are becoming irate with you. Please keep it down or they’ll kick all of us out.” Logan’s voice came from somewhere to Virgil’s left.

“Uh… Padre, we’re all upset, but you shouldn’t be laying on top of Vee. Not if we want him to wake up.” Roman’s voice commented.

Another shock of electricity ran through Patton. “OH! I’m so so so sorry, VeeVee! I didn’t hurt you, did I?”

“Pat…”

“‘m OK.” Virgil answered.

He heard something drop before Logan and Roman were now surrounding his bed, shock and hope on their faces. Virgil looked at each of them before offering a weak smile. Each went to work ensuring that he was alright and not in any drastic pain or anything like that. For his part, Virgil just continued smiling at them, knowing that he may hate their babying soon enough, but appreciating their concern and worry nonetheless.

Eventually, a police officer came to question him about what he remembered. The officer wound up having Logan and Roman go with him as they had more of the story than Virgil–who had been unconscious– and Patton–who had been absorbed by the dog until the hit and run was essentially over, only having looked up after Virgil had screamed Logan’s name.

Other than the officer, there was little other than the distractions from the three other men. Occasionally, a doctor or nurse would come by, but otherwise nothing else really happened. And that stayed true for three whole days. Virgil loved Lo, Pat, and Ro, but he was starting to need a small break, even from them.

For their part, the three boyfriends were just relieved Virgil was going to be alright. They’d barely slept or eaten since the accident. Logan was constantly in a near panic attack, knowing that Virgil had saved his life at the cost of bodily harm. Roman felt as though he had failed his Dark Prince. What good was a knight to his lover if he couldn’t keep his lover from harm? And Patton… Patton was just a wreck. He felt guilty as if he were the one to hit Virgil. So, if the three of them asked if Virgil needed anything every few minutes or asked if he was in pain or everything else they’ve been doing, while who could blame them?

A voice that had only appeared in Virgil’s nightmares for the past two years tore through the air when the four boyfriends were relaxing after the latest news that Virgil should be ready to head home soon. “Pity. You’re still alive.”

Virgil promptly curled in on himself once he registered the speaker. “What are you doing here?”

“Had to see for myself the damage done to the disgrace that became of my son.” The man commented. “By the way, did you know that your disgrace was the final straw for my wife? Couldn’t handle having something like you as a child, I suppose.”

The three uninjured boyfriends glanced at each other, the same message written on each of their faces: this is Virgil’s abusive father? Without a thought, each moved between the man and their fourth partner, not caring what relation this man was to Virgil. Virgil seemed to be terrified of him, and that was enough. Though being fair, Lo and Ro were already mentally planning the best ways to punish him for the abuse they knew of.

“How did you even know I was hurt?” Virgil’s voice suddenly demanded.

“Wait, it was you who drove straight into Virgil!” Logan’s voice was ice.

The man hummed before commenting. “I was looking to kill two disgraces in one hit, but we don’t get what we want, I guess.”

“I think this is a new one for me.”

The man spun around and slammed right into the officer. The officer was coming back to tell the injured man that there was some success in running a plate captured by mere coincidence by Roman. Yet, a confession in an open place? Works for them, the officer supposed.

“You are under arrest for attempted murder.” The officer clipped some handcuffs onto the man.

Once things were protocol-fulfilled, the officer grinned at the boyfriends. “I don’t think I’ve ever had a criminal gloating to his victim as I happen to be visiting with updates.”

The officer and the man were gone before Virgil had actually processed the timing miracle he had just witnessed. Maybe fate was finally throwing him a small sliver of a bone. He wasn’t going to question it. He wasn’t going to poke it with a fifty-foot stick. He would just accept this one thing and happily not look the gift horse in the mouth… Though Logan would definitely look into the literal meaning of that phrase and point out everything confusing and wrong with a confused look on his face. This mental image of a confused Logan with the other two giggling at his confusion was enough to shock Virgil back into himself and start to weakly laugh.

The three other boyfriends looked at him in a terrified confusion before joining in his weak laughter, believing that this was from relief that he would never be harmed again by his horrid parents rather than love of his partners.

Once he was released, the three boyfriends went to work on ‘Plan Take Care of VeeVee’. He wasn’t even allowed to go to the kitchen without one of them insistently helping or trying to take care of it for him. Like he expected, Virgil became tired of their babying of him, but it was alright.

Everything would be alright.

****

Present

Virgil gulped as he pulled the three gifts closer to his chest. “Before I hand them over, I would like to ask that you three open them at the same time, OK?”

Each nodded and accepted the gift he handed each. They instantly could tell their gift was on some sort of canvas, but other than that, they were unsure what each would be. Virgil didn’t sit back down in his spot but stood before the three of them. He was shaking but was not going to let his fear drag him down any longer.

“Alright, you can open them.”

Each opened their gifts to find a painting in them. Patton’s painting was an image of Lilo and Stitch performing a hula dance. The Ohana quote was decoratively hidden in the ocean waters as they danced. For Roman, it was a picture of Pride Rock with Simba letting out a roar while his friends stood behind him. Then, for Logan, it was a painting of the lanterns lifting into the sky, lanterns that held not the sun symbol but rather a brain with glasses.

Logan looked up to compliment the painting he had received when something on the back of Patton’s canvas caught his eye. “Patton, place your painting down, backside up! You too, Roman!”

The other two looked confused until they noticed the words carefully written on the back of each of them.

Patton’s: Will you

Roman’s: marry

Logan’s: me?

The three of them looked up to Virgil, who had sunk to one knee while they examined the paintings. He was holding a box open before them with four rings inside: a ring in each of their favorite colors. Virgil was trembling so bad, some small part in the back of his mind worried he was about to pass out, but he had to do this.

“I love all three of you more than I thought possible to love anyone. We’ve spent an amazing four years dating and I want to have more. So, will the three of you marry me?”

The room was silent for what felt like eternity before Roman let out a miserable wail. “Nooooooooo!”

Something in Virgil shattered but Roman was already on his feet. “Noooooooooooo! I can’t believe this! I was going to propose on Valentine’s Day! It was supposed to be the perfect proposal too! Dinner and flowers and everything. But you beat me! How could you do this to me, Virgil!”

Patton let out a small giggle. “Sorry to disappoint you, Ro, but if VeeVee hadn’t beaten you to it, I would have. I was planning on asking after dinner tonight, right before dessert.”

Logan fixed his glassed. “And I, at risk of appearing sentimental, had planned on asking at midnight on New Year’s Eve.”

“So,” Virgil’s voice was barely more than a scared whisper. “Is that actually a yes from you three?”

“Of course, my dashing and noble prince! Why would you have assumed otherwise!” Roman announced.

“Because the moment after I asked, you screamed no but then started ranting about something while I attempted to pull myself together in time to hear about Pat’s plans��

“Oh,” Princey went pale realizing that was not the time for dramatics. “Sorry, my Dark Prince, I did not mean that. Yes, of course I will marry you! It is a thousand yesses from me! Nay, a million! A billion! An infinitive amount of yesses!”

“The usage of yesses sounds incorrect but I cannot think of the proper plural for yes. In answer to your proposal, Virgil, I also say yes, though will refrain from the absurdity Roman is going on about.”

Rather than give an answer, Paton yanked Roman and Logan with him as he threw himself at Virgil. They collapsed into a giant cuddle pile as Patton started singsongingly screaming “We’re getting married! We’re getting married!”

Virgil could only smile and cuddle with his fiancés. Later, Roman would screech about hanging the paintings in proper order of the secret words on the back. Patton and Logan would both sheepishly bring out their own boxes of rings, making Roman wail about having not gotten them their rings yet. They would celebrate their engagement and begin planning wedding details and whatever else. They may not have been the family who gave Virgil life, but they were the family he chose, and he would probably admit it to them once Roman had put enough alcohol in him in celebration of their engagement. But, in this moment, Virgil just clung to the three men who showed him what love was.

#romantic lamp #moxiety #prinxiety #Analogical #tw abusive parent #tw food #tw hit an run #tw anxiety attack #angst with a happy ending #tw implied suicide of off-screen OC #tw homophobic parent #tw alcohol mention #Sage writes

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ivyanderscn · 5 years ago

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COURTNEY EATON , CIS FEMALE , SHE/HER → according to the school records , IVY HAEATA ANDERSON has been attending sacred heart for the past three years . i last saw them hanging around the john bracken library ; i think they were writing poetry in a leather-bound notebook . at twenty one years old , ivy has been studying english literature and get this , i heard that she roams the tunnels when plagued by insomnia in the dead of night — figure it’s true ? everyone around here always associates them with faded photographs with illegible writing on the back, shaky hands clutching a bouquet of wilted flowers, and the soft sound of rain hitting the roof . in the time since these strange happenings , they have encountered unexplained occurrences . ( written by rose , 23 , she/her , est )

hello lovelies!! my name is rose and apparently i like plant names because this is ivy! i’m super excited to be here. like this and i’ll hit you up to plot!! (or you can dm me, my discord is scoops troops#4933)

tw for death, bullying

- ivy grew up in kaikoura, new zealand. her mother was also raised in kaikoura, while her father was from england. they met as students at the university of canterbury. they had always known that after they graduated, he would go back to the uk, but what they hadn’t planned on was her mother becoming pregnant with ivy. (it was very scandalous, especially given that this was 1952). he had a promising job offer back in england so he left, leaving ivy’s mother and grandmother to raise her. she had a happy childhood in a beautiful beachside town, raised by two women she loved and admired. ivy did go to england every year to spend the summer with her father, and while she didn’t have the best relationship with him, she knew he loved her in his own way.

- when ivy was 11, her mom died. it was extremely devastating for both her and her grandmother. ivy had always been shy, but the loss made her retreat even further into herself. she had always loved reading, and after her mother’s death books became her best friends. she began reading at an advanced level and always had her nose in a book. it wasn’t long before she started writing, too, mostly journaling but also short stories and poetry (the kind of stuff she looks back on now and cringes, but was decent for an 11 year old). a couple years after her mother died, ivy found a box filled with dozens of her mother’s journals. she’s read every page at least five times, and sometimes will look through them to see what her mother was doing on that day however many years ago. they helped ivy feel close to her mom, and the profound impact that they had on her inspired her to become a writer.

- ivy’s shyness made her kind of an easy target in terms of bullying, a seemingly never-ending stream of insults and name calling, and for a long time she just took it because she didn’t think there was any other way to deal with it. but one day when she was in high school, some boys said some… less than savory things about her mom (small town, young single mother, people suck, etc. etc.) and she flipped out. like all of this anger that even ivy didn’t know was bubbling under the surface just kind of exploded. it was so shocking to people, for this sweet, quiet girl to become so loud and angry, that they found it amusing and the bullying got worse.

- her grandmother was her rock, but she decided she wanted to get as far away from there as she could, and her father suggested she look at universities in the uk. ivy wasn’t sure what drew her to sacred heart, but it just felt like the place she was supposed to be.

- given how shy ivy is, she’s not always the easiest to get to know and she doesn’t have a lot of friends. she’s definitely a wallflower type (wow my subconscious really named this wallflower after a plant that grows on walls, idk how to feel about this lsakdjfhsldkfjhsd) and she typically lets other people take the lead in conversations. she comes across as mousy, in a sweet sort of way. but for the people who actually do get to know her, she’s an extremely kind and loyal person. she’s really passionate about literature and art and music and history and if you’re talking about any of that? all of a sudden she won’t shut up. she doesn’t handle strong emotions well, like she definitely happy cries. and angry cries. and tired cries. basically she cries a lot. her anger is a lot more in check than it was when she was a teenager, but if she feels like someone or something she cares about has been disrespected she will lash out quite suddenly. (and then go cry about it). she’s kind of a mess, emotionally speaking, the one thing that really helps her handle that is writing about her feelings, and she journals religiously.

- a few quick headcanons: she listens to music like 92% of the time and you can thank her dad for a deep love of britpop and jazz. she loves baking and if she has access to an oven she’ll probably give you cookies on a regular basis. she’s left handed and the side of her hand is always covered in ink smudges. she’ll do stupid things because she thinks it will be good inspiration for a story, when in reality, she’s just being stupid. she has terrible insomnia and sometimes reads encyclopedias to try to fall asleep. she likes to hide behind a camera and take pictures of other people to avoid having pictures taken of her. cannot sing to save her life. loves black coffee and cigarettes and is in denial that beatniks aren’t cool anymore. is pretty much always carrying around a book. scribbles in the margins of everything. her new zealand accent is noticeable but not thick, and is gradually fading the longer she’s in the uk.

and more aesthetics because it was really hard to narrow down to three: dirt underneath your fingernails, tear-stained cheeks, getting lost in a museum, messy hair, always being cold, stargazing, oversized wool sweaters, preferring to listen rather than speak, homesickness.

wanted connections:

ride or die!!, fairly self-explanatory, someone she can be 100% herself around and in exchange for their love and friendship she’d, you know, die for them

close friends, pretty much the same thing??

someone she knew from her summers in england!! (i’m pretending that new zealand has their extended school break during the northern hemisphere summer ok)

roommate, i don’t know which would be better, them getting along or them hating each other

enemy/annoyance, it’s not exactly easy to piss her off but once you do she is pissed

writing buddies?? like they share their work with each other and give notes and stuff, maybe in some sort of club?

some sort of mentor? a lit professor would be great but really anyone who teaches the arts/humanities, bonus points for cultists

a professor who hates her, she’s such a goody goody that would really kill her

bad boy meets good girl, honestly i’m a sucker for this trope, i love mess what can i say

really any kind of opposites attract situation, romantic or platonic

flirtationship, she’s really not good at being upfront about how she feels but maybe she’ll write something that’s the poetry version of subtweeting about them, she’s angsty as fuck

exes, just more mess and angst please and thank you

idk if this is too sadistic but maybe the wrong corner of a love triangle? like, the corner that gets left behind when the triangle becomes a line (i can’t do geometry analogies i’m sorry) just a thought because...mess

literally anything, i’m not picky, i want it all

#heretics:intro

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madscientistjournal · 5 years ago

Text

Fiction: Tempo Rubato

An essay by an unnamed musician, as provided by Jonathan Danz Art by Errow Collens

Tonight, backstage is too hot, too dark, too much like some high-ceilinged mausoleum straight out of one of those old Friday night TV horror shows. The strap of my dinged-up Telecaster bites into my shoulder. Tonight, like most nights in recent memory, this guitar is like my very own stone of Sisyphus. Truth be told, I don’t know if I can roll it up the mountain one more fucking time. I don’t know if I can go out on stage yet again and pretend I’m me.

Vegas–swarm cams, drinkbots, holo-betting, omni-feeds, every last bit of it–can go to hell. The guy on stage now, the Buddy Holly impersonator, even with his bitglam in effect, comes off more like an impersonator of a Buddy Holly impersonator. He’s opening with “Peggy Sue.” Poor bastard. There’s nowhere to go from there but downhill.

Everyone’s an entertainer these days, what with voice plugins, appearance modifiers, movement enhancer neuro-mods, and every other trick. There’s no work at the art anymore, just show up and let the tech do the work.

Me and my new band, we’re the only completely analog performers in Vegas. Re-Invaded And It Feels So Good, that’s our act. Real clever stuff. The crowds eat it up. It’s fresh, in a manner of speaking, especially after seeing a hundred enhanced shows in a hundred casinos. After a while, it all blurs together.

I know, I know, that’s what they said when we were all flooding into the U.S. during the British Invasion. I’m a connoisseur of irony. But when something stands out from the pop-star one-offs and Rat Pack 3.0 crooners, people take notice. People don’t know they’re craving something different until they get it.

These Vegas performers could stand a lesson in “less is more,” but instead they’re all in on everything. All that tech must seem like magic to these fools, but tech ain’t magic. Believe me, I know from magic. Not like this Buddy Holly guy.

Look, I liked Buddy Holly back in the day–we all did–but that sound aged about as well as a bottle of piss. When you hear it, you know exactly when it came out. It never evolved. Sometimes I wonder what would’ve happened if his plane hadn’t crashed.

Sometimes I wonder if Buddy wasn’t the lucky one.

It was the 1960s, and the Beatles exploded out of Liverpool with us right on their heels, and the British Invasion was on. The money began rolling in free and easy like juice through a Marshall stack. In a move that would become the hallmark of making it in rock and roll, I bought a posh estate in the English countryside.

That’s where we were between tours in ’70. One night, December 11–Christ, you’d think I’d forget after so long, but the memory is like tough old scar tissue that’ll never go away–anyway, we were in the studio, turning a three minute song into something epic. I dove into my solo, weaving amplified heat through drums and base and rhythm guitar, stitching it all together at first. Then I began teasing strands out into the dark corners of sound. My fingers slipped and slid high on the fretboard. My guitar wailed and moaned with an urgency I could feel. I raced out ahead of the rhythm, then eased back into the mix by turns. I scooped time from some measures and poured it into others. The world around me wobbled and shimmered.

By the time the cops barged in, I was fully lost in the solo. It was as if someone had accidentally stuck a needle in my artery and my life was spraying out everywhere. It wasn’t blood, though, dig? I swear it was life itself flowing from me, streaming into my mates. Everyone was higher than an old vicar’s waistband. The cops’ shouting tore it all down and the music collapsed. I was wasted, could barely stand.

The cops’ arrival probably saved me, but all they saw was some weed, some pills, and whatever, and that’s all they needed to know. They grabbed their headlines for busting some punk kids who’ve risen far too high, and I grabbed some jail time. Prison was no great shakes, but there was something about the monotony of the routine. It freed up time to think. And I had a lot to think about.

Vegas Buddy Holly slides smoothly into “Rollercoaster.” It’s a checklist for him: hit this note, do that hiccup thing, take three steps. Technically, it’s perfect, but there’s no love for the music, no heat. Choosing to impersonate Buddy Holly is purely mercenary. He’s found a niche and it pays. It’s calculated. And I’ve got to tell you, hearing exactly the same thing done exactly the same way night after night gets tiresome.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s not the music itself; I feel like I could play forever. It’s everything else. Some might say the world has passed me by, but I’d argue it’s the people who flock to this place on the regular who are being passed by. Was a time when people would spend hours parsing song lyrics or album cover art. Now everything wheels by like startled birds, gone in an instant, replaced by the latest streaming shows or VR episode or vending machine stimdrugs. We’re so fixated on what’s coming next, we can’t enjoy whatever it is we’re consuming right then and there.

The marketers’ll tell you their latest con expands the mind and taps into unexplored landscapes of the imagination. Rubbish. It’s about making money. It’s always about making money. Just ask ol’ Buddy Holly on stage there.

The guys in my band are no different. Sure, they tolerate the analog sets, occasionally even enjoy themselves when they’re not thinking about it. But they’re just gigging with me to pay the bills while they seek online stardom. That’s where the real money is, even if the odds are so long they stretch well beyond the horizon. They just need one video to virus out, and they’ll have it made.

I hear you, telling me to fuck right the hell off. I made my money, so why shouldn’t they make theirs, right? I say, have at it. There’s no magic there. You want magic? Strip it all down, get rid of the enhancements. Focus on the music, the guitar strings beneath your fingers, the vibrations of your vocal cords, the buzz of a packed venue. If you let yourself fall deep enough, you’ll find the space between it all.

You’d think songs almost a hundred years old would lose their luster, but that ain’t so. There’s that quote about not being the same person who crossed the river the first time or some shit. There’s truth there. Songs are like rivers, always changing, waiting to show you something new, if you’re willing to look. That’s why I hang around, every single day and twice on Saturdays.

After the bust, I couldn’t stop thinking about what had happened at that rehearsal. I needed to know what that was. As a band, we were looking forward, working on new songs, planning new tours, finding new ways to spend our windfall. But as an individual, I’d decided to look backwards as well.

I searched for answers in the deep, slippery roots of music, looking for the faintest whiff of anything even remotely like what happened the night of the bust. Whenever we hit a new city, I scoured libraries and bookstores and pored over rare tomes, letters, and sheet music for something like magic.

Then I found tempo rubato.

Now, I know you’re thinking of that Styx song about the robot. That was Japanese. Tempo rubato is Italian, mate.

The definition of tempo rubato in music texts refers to, and I quote, “the slight speeding up and then slowing down of the tempo of a piece at the discretion of the soloist or the conductor to be more expressive.”

But here’s the thing, Tempo rubato isn’t just an Italian term on some sheet music like sotto voce or fortissimo or any of that lot. Now I had no idea if the concept originated in Italy or not, but the Italians nailed the naming of whatever this phenomenon is.

In Italian, tempo rubato means stolen time.

As a musical cue, that was all fine and well, but I was positive there was more to it than that. Slowing down, speeding up, everything I’d been doing that night, it was all there.

I began playing around on stage, messing around in subtle ways with what almost killed me the night of the bust, learning, refining. I did it carefully until I unpacked tempo rubato and put it to work for me. I pilfered small bits of time so as not to cause harm and, as much as we played, the stolen time accumulated like the juice on a mob loan.

We’re a long way from Vegas, now, aren’t we? What does this have fuckall to do with tech enhancements and swarm bots and flash androgynous technicians? Well, hang tight, bruv, I’m getting to that. Besides, Buddy Holly’s got one more song yet.

He launches into “That’ll Be the Day.” When he hits the chorus, like he does every night, I can’t help but think that maybe in some alternate universe I’m dead, and he’s here in Vegas in real life, the original watching some mercenary performer imitate me.

“That’ll be the day that I die,” Buddy sings. Well, the real Buddy Holly boarded a plane that flew him right into his grave at the tender age of 22. And, despite the booze, the drugs, and other depredations of the body, here I am still going strong well beyond my expiration date. Is it fair? That’s not for me to say, but I’m fully aware of the irony.

The ubiquitous “they” insist everything that’s old is new again and I’m inclined to agree. Maybe that’s true, but it’s a cycle, ain’t it, which bloody well means everything that’s new becomes old again as well.

I think about all those musicians who hung around too long. I’d need more fingers than I’ve got to count everyone who couldn’t let it go, guys who wished they headed out at the top of their game, leaving the fans wanting more.

But damn if every time I hit that first chord on stage, I’m not transported back to our first live gig in Coogan’s Pub in Dartford. Now there’s a magic all its own, you know? Throw in the fans and the applause, and small wonder musicians can’t let it go.

What I miss, though, what has me in this funk, is that I’ve got no one to share any of this with. Everyone’s gone. What’s the use of hanging around as long as I have if you can’t share the honest-to-god artistry?

There are days I’m aware the only person I’m really playing for is myself, searching the music for ghosts of the long-gone boys who crossed the Atlantic and got rich with me. There are days I wonder if stealing time during all those tours with them might have hastened their respective ends. Shit, we were all getting older. People just age differently, right?

I search through the music. Maybe some combination of sound will bring them back, but inevitably the ghosts are always just out of reach. I’ve seen musicians wind up searching elsewhere, the needle or the booze or something just as deadly even though we know whatever it is we need isn’t there at all. And sometimes you don’t even know you need anything at all until you’re shown otherwise.

Inside some nondescript sound studio in Memphis in the late ’20s, I was waiting to record an interview for some classic rock retrospective podcast. At least I think they were still calling what we did way back when “classic.” The host was explaining to an angsty lad on the sound crew what vibe he needed and who I was.

But damn if every time I hit that first chord on stage, I’m not transported back to our first live gig in Coogan’s Pub in Dartford.

“Seriously?” the angsty lad asked. “I thought that guy died years ago.” No embarrassment. No apology. Just a statement of fact with perhaps the smallest hint of a question or accusation in his tone. That’s when I realized I couldn’t keep on as myself forever. No matter how good I felt, no matter how I looked, someone would do the math and start asking questions I had no intention of answering.

And so I did the only thing that made sense: I disappeared to sort things out. For a few decades, I traveled to places where people had no idea who I was. For a while, it wasn’t so bad, the newness of it, you know. I tried out things I couldn’t do when we were touring, things like gardening and painting and woodworking, whatever struck my fancy.

Even as I did these things, in the need was always there, waiting. I told myself it was just the music I needed, just the feel of the guitar in my hands, the heat of the stage lights, the cheering crowds. I mean, the music was definitely part of it, but I missed what I was able to do with the music even more. I needed tempo rubato.

What better place to resurface than Vegas, the impersonator capital of the world? If I couldn’t be me, at least I could pretend to be me. I mean, I had me down pretty good.

Buddy Holly wraps up with a deep cut, one of his b-sides that has surprising layers. Something about this song appeals to Buddy. I can tell, because he loses himself in it. He’s so close to touching the music and doesn’t even know. The crowd applauds just enough to encourage Buddy Holly to do an encore.

Buddy Holly launches into a respectable version of “Not Fade Away.” Huh. Normally he trots out a tired medley of songs that roll into that other song that’s not by Buddy Holly but about Buddy Holly, when his plane crashed, and the music died, and all that. Tonight, Buddy Holly’s veering off script.

I let out a breath I didn’t know I was holding.

One more song to figure out how I’m going to break it to the band. Since I returned to Vegas–what has it been, 30, 40 years?–I’ve asked myself why I keep going so many times it feels like a vocation unto itself. If there’s an answer to that question, I’ll be damned if I know what it is. Now’s as good a time as any to call it quits.

“Hey, Billy,” I say to my bassist.

He turns to me and raises his eyebrows in question.

Time to tell the crew tonight is the night I stop, but the words die in my throat just as Buddy Holly strums the last chord of his encore.

The applause for Buddy Holly packs more punch this time around, there’s real enthusiasm behind it. Buddy comes off stage. His bitglam distorts and winks off. Bruv looks tired, but he’s smiling.

We nod at each other.

That simple gesture is like a smack upside my head. It’s straight out of those days right before the British Invasion, back when we were just one of a hundred bands were trying to make it. Yeah, we hated each other, but there was some measure of respect for the fact we were all chasing the same thing. There’s a camaraderie that comes from mutual suffering.

Maybe I’ve been too hard on ol’ Buddy.

Then the host is announcing us to the crowd. Cheers and stomping feet shake the building. The crowd is as amped as I’ve ever heard it. That sound … that sweet, goddamned sound washes over us. The hair on my arms and the back of my neck stands at attention, expectant. My heart thrills and prances inside my chest. A smile spreads of its own accord across my face.

Billy smiles the same me. He’s feeling it too. “What were you going to say?”

My guitar feels lighter, and the only thing on my mind is strumming that first chord. “Forget it,” I say.

Billy’s no longer the fresh-faced kid I brought in to hold down the beat a few months ago, but that’s what the business does to a musician, isn’t it? The pull of the stage and the lights are like an old friend’s arm around my shoulder, warm and comforting.

A British Invasion musician learns the secret to rock on for evermore, but after outliving his mates and winding up as an impersonator of himself in Vegas, he wonders if it’s time to hang it up.

Jonathan Danz is a speculative fiction writer living in West Virginia with his wife, daughter, and cat, all of whom are artists in their own right. He attended Viable Paradise 21 and narrates for various science fiction, fantasy, and horror podcasts. He likes books, bikes, and beer.

Errow is a comic artist and illustrator with a predilection towards mashing the surreal with the familiar. They pay their time to developing worlds not quite like our own with their fiancee and pushing the queer agenda. They probably left a candle burning somewhere. More of their work can be found at errowcollins.wix.com/portfolio.

Fiction: Tempo Rubato was originally published on Mad Scientist Journal

#Errow Collins #Jonathan Danz #Science of Music #Time Travel #Unnamed Musician

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howdowormsreproduce · 6 years ago

Text

Working Overtime-Chapter 2

Word Count: 5900 words

Trigger warnings: ??? I don't think there is any but please tell me if there is!

Tags: @weirdsthenewnormal , @the-incedible-sulk , @em-be-lievable, @whatwashernameagain ... let me know if you wanna be added or removed from the tiny tag list

Notes: So uh yea enjoy this piece of trash

Pairings: Platonic moxiety, platonic analogical, romantic logicality

After finishing filing all the adoption papers, Logan and Patton were waiting for the day when the foster home would call them and tell them it was time for them to pick Virgil up.

Virgil had been packing for most of the day and he was finally ready to leave. After double checking about a million times, he was sure he hadn't forgotten anything. He sighed quietly and pinched himself just to make sure this wasn't a dream. He'd wanted to leave this dump for so long, it just felt so surreal. He sighed once more and picked up his duffel bag. He was ready. He had to be ready. So, after a couple of deep breaths, he finally walked out of his room to go wait for Logan and Patton to come. No, wait that wasn't right. He waited for his new dads to come. Oh god. That was going to take some getting used to.

Meanwhile, Logan was anxiously hurrying Patton up back at their house. He didn't want to be late. This was the biggest day of his life (besides marrying Patton, of course) and he couldn't be late. "Patton! Hurry up....please." Logan yelled up the stairs, adding the last word a couple seconds later. He had to be more polite. Especially if he was going to have a child on his hands. Patton didn't answer but instead skipped (and tripped) down the stairs happily. "I'm readyyy" Patton said in a singsong voice. "Okay then let's go," Logan said hurriedly, even though they technically were 5 minutes early. "Are you okay honey? You look a little anxious..." Patton asked Logan, looking at him with worry showing in his hazel eyes. "I'm fine Patton. I'm just a little... Nervous. That's all. Just nervous." Logan repeated, talking as if he was reassuring himself more than Patton. "Well okay... C'mon let's go get our son!" Patton said cheerfully, only taking one more glance towards Logan before he skipped happily out the front door and into the car. Logan sighed. Why was he so nervous? Ever since the first time they met with Virgil about a month ago, they had just clicked. It was like finding that one missing piece of the puzzle. Metaphorically of course. Virgil had been that one missing piece. And boy, did Logan like finding that one missing piece for puzzles. "Logan! You are taking forever! Come on! We gotta go!" Logan suddenly heard Patton yell from the car. Logan had been spacing out! He quickly checked his watch. Oh god! He was two minutes late! Logan gasped and hurried out the door. He quickly locked the door and got into the driver's seat. "Apologies. Let's go." Logan said as soon as he turned on the ignition. And, they were off to go pick up their new son, Virgil.

Patton had been waiting for this moment forever! He had been waiting since before they'd met Virgil. Since before he and Logan had even begun to talk about adopting. For puppy's sakes, he had wanted t since he was a kid (coincidentally enough)! He just loved the idea of it. Taking care of someone, making sure they feel loved. His parents hadn't exactly done that for Patton and he wanted to be the complete opposite of them. He would give him all the love he had to offer! Soon, Patton was daydreaming about all the fun times they would have as a family. All the theme parks and museums. Oh and baking, lots of baking! Aww, he could just imagine Logan getting ever so slightly stressed out with the mess in the kitchen and going into the living room to go do a puzzle. He could imagine Virgil going to Logan to help him with the puzzle, after seeing how stressed he was. Logan would smile and they'd finish the puzzle. Right? Virgil seemed like puzzle type of guy. Anyways, then they would clean up the kitchen together. Logan always helped clean up anyways because he was usually the one who finished the cookies (much to Patton's dismay). Patton sighed dreamily. He couldn't wait to be a dad! After about 10 more minutes of daydreaming, Patton felt someone lightly shake his shoulder. He immediately perked up and heard Logan calling him. "Patton? Patton! We're here already. Patton?!" Patton shook himself slightly, getting himself back to normal and quickly got out of the car. "Gee, are you must be a star, cause I sure was spacing out!" Patton said cheerfully, laughing at his own joke. "That was terrible. Absolutely terrible." Logan said with a blank expression. If Patton hadn't known Logan for so long, he would have believed that the man in front of him really thought the joke sucked. But, Patton had known him for a long enough time to easily spot his lips curling into an ever so tiny smile, his eyes glinting with amusement. "Okay, I'll agree, not my best. Now C'mon, let's go get our son!" Patton said excitedly, almost exploding with happiness. Patton and Logan walked through the front door, and there he was, sitting on the couch with his headphones on, Patton and Logan's new son, Virgil.

Virgil looked up from his MP3 player as he heard the front door creak open. Patton and Logan-no, his new dads were right there. They were looking at him so fondly. Virgil simply froze in place. He didn't know what to do. Should he greet them? Should he run up to hug them as he had before? He had no idea what to do. He was running various scenarios through his head when he heard a warm voice. "Hiya Virgil! You remember me? I'm Patton. And this is Logan." Patton gestured towards his husband, who was not only slightly sweating, but his eyes are darting in every direction except Virgil's. He had his hands shoved in his pockets and looked like he was ready to bolt at any second. Logan nodded his head and breathed in deeply. He wiped the small beads of sweat that were forming on his forehead away. He made eye contact with Virgil and took his hands out of his pockets. "Salutations. I'm Logan. I mean we've already met so I suppose this is quite useless... And I absolutely hate giving useless information... But my information is never useless... Until now... But that's not the point... What I'm trying to say is...I um... Well... You S-see.." Logan went on, trying to start over when his Patton slightly nudged his arm. "Logan, honey, you're rambling. Why don't I speak okay?" Patton asked gently. Logan almost immediately nodded and shut his mouth. "So, we're here to take you home! Do you have everything packed?" Patton asked giddily, but also somehow with a tinge of softness. "Oh uh yeah, everything's packed," Virgil replied quietly, holding up his small duffel bag to show he had packed. Immediately, Patton frowned. "That's all you have?! Well, we'll fix that later. For now, I'll put it in the car." Patton said, gesturing for Virgil to hand him the duffel bag. "Oh no, I can take it easy. Really, it's fine." Virgil said, looking slightly scared. "I don't want to bother you. Really. I can carry it." Patton was extremely worried. Why was Virgil acting this way? "What's wrong? Think good ol' Patton can't handle a duffel bag?" Patton asked jokingly. "Of course not sir, I'm sure your very strong and I'm sorry for offending you, I really just meant to stay out of your way. Of course, you can carry the duffel bag if you wish, sir." Virgil said hurriedly, looking as if he was waiting to be smacked. Patton was dumbfounded. Why was he acting like this? It was simply a joke. "Virgil, it was only a joke. And you don't have to call me sir. Pat or Dad is just fine. Its okay if you're not ready for Dad, though. Pat or Patton will work just fine." Patton said gently. "Are you okay?" "Of course I am si- I mean Patton. I just... I..." Virgil trailed off. "It's okay. You don't have to tell me anything you don't want to or aren't ready for. Okay? Now, let's get you home." Patton told him softly. Once they had everything checked out, they got into the car. Even though this was the foster home that Virgil had been at was the nearest to Logan and Patton's house, it was still a good 15 minutes away. It was silent for about 5 minutes before Logan said something. "So, Virgil, what are your interests?" Logan asked quietly. "Uh oh well I don't know.", said Virgil extremely interested in his shoes suddenly. "Oh come on buddy! There has to be something. Any hobbies. You know, music, sports, art etc. Something?" Patton said eagerly, hoping to know something new about his new son. "Patton, let him breathe for Newton's sake! Perhaps he-" but Logan was cut off by Virgil's ever so quiet voice. "I know how to play guitar. I also like to draw sometimes and people say I'm really fast at running. I also ..." Virgil said, mumbling the last part into the sleeve of his hoodie. "Wow, guitar! And drawing? Neat! I never really was good at drawing. You know, Logan's really fast too. He goes on morning runs all the time! Maybe you guys can go on morning runs together! I'm more of a skipping kinda guy myself." Patton went on, getting more excited by the second. "And what was that last part?" "Oh I uh, I ...." Virgil said once again mumbling into his sleeve. "Come on buddy, you can do it. You know we would never make fun of you." Patton said tenderly. "Well I uh, iliketowritepoemssometimes," Virgil said quickly, all at once. It took Patton a couple seconds to process it all, but after he did he gushed happily. "You do? Wow, that's sooooooo cool! Maybe you could teach me how to write!? Hey, did you know that Virgil was a Roman poet? And your name is Virgil! And you're a poet! Woooow! What a coinkydink! Hey hey, I have a poem joke for you! You ready? Here goes. Where do poems come from? Poe-trees! Do you get it? Like a poet... But trees! And also poetry you know? Poe-trees!" Patton chattered. "First of all, Patton that was absolutely appalling." Logan finally spoke up but he wasn't fooling anyone, you could see the amusement in Logan's eyes and his lips slightly curling into a smile. "Second of all, you write poems, Virgil? I used to, all the way back in high school I believe. Even though I haven't written a poem in a while, I still enjoy reading them quite a lot." Logan said calmly. "You like poems too?!" Virgil said in surprise. But before Logan could answer, Patton chimed in. "You betcha! He has shelves full of poems. He has soo much! You guys could read 'em together! I don't usually understand poetry, but there is a certain poet that I do like." Patton said with a smirk. Logan suddenly looked very serious. "Patton doesn't you dare.." but he was cut off by a mischievous Patton. "Actually, now that I think of it, I still have a couple of his poems nice and safe. In fact, I think I have them up in the attic. Not all of them. Only a couple, mmm twenty, I think?" Patton said, clearly enjoying seeing Logan so nervous. "And I believe the name of this special poet was Logan Sanders? Yup, I think that's what it was. Logan Sanders. And boy, did he write some sappy love poems." Logan's cheeks flushed red and Virgil just sat in back, trying to muffle an ongoing laugh by smothering his mouth into his hoodie. "Now, Patton, I don't think you have the share this information with uh Virgil," Logan said nervously. "You're right. I don't have to share this information with Virgil. And yet, I want to so badly." Patton said happily. "Oh, would you look at that. I think I have one of those poems saved on my phone. Hmm, this one seems real sappy, too. To share or not to share?" Patton said, almost unable to contain his giddy. "Patton.... Please..." Logan said suddenly, softly. Immediately, Patton's expression softened. His mischievous grin disappeared. His playful tone was replaced with a gentle one. "Yea yea, you're right. This material is more to keep in private." Patton said quietly. It was silent for a couple seconds before Logan said again,"That joke of yours really was horrible. The one about poems." Suddenly, Virgil cracked. He broke out in gut-wrenching laughter. He was gasping for air, but every time he stopped, he would start all over again. He was holding his stomach while tears streamed down his cheeks. It was the most beautiful thing Patton had ever heard. Virgil's laugh was the kind of thing you had to earn. And once you had earned it, you wouldn't wanna stop hearing it. Patton smiled fondly at Virgil. He already loved his son beyond belief.

"We're here," Logan said after Virgil had stopped laughing. Virgil gasped. Their house had two stories. Two! Virgil quickly got out of the car and took his duffel bag out. Patton unlocked the front door. "Welcome home, buddy." Patton beamed. Virgil shuffled past the threshold and into the house. "Wow! This place is.... Nice. I don't belong here..." Virgil thought, looking around. "I'll give you the tour of the place!" Patton declared excitedly. "Follow me!" Virgil obeyed and followed Patton as he began the tour. "Here's the kitchen. Nothing much here. Oh! Um here's the cabinet of snacks, feel free to grab as many as you like. Don't worry about breakfast, lunch or dinner. I'll take care of that. You'll probably find me in the kitchen most of the time since I love to bake. Uh, Yea. On to the next room!", Patton cheered. "So, this is the laundry room but you won't be going in here much. Logan usually does the laundry since there are so many creepy-crawly-death-dealers in here!" Patton visibly shuddered. "Creepy crawly death dealers?" Virgil said, slightly raising an eyebrow. "Spiders.", Patton explained. "Anyways, let me show you the living room." Patton walked on and Virgil followed him obediently. He didn't want to get in trouble. "So here's the living room. Nothing much. Just a couple couches and a TV." Virgil was surprised to see a couch that wasn't covered in stains. The kids at the foster home weren't exactly the cleanest. He also audibly gasped when he saw the size of the TV. "I know, I know, not the latest model but it'll do," Patton said sympathetically. "Huh? No! It's huge actually. It's great." Virgil said quickly. "Okay, glad you like it! Lemme show you the bathroom real quick and then we can go upstairs!" Patton said happily, grabbing Virgil's wrist to lead him towards the bathroom. Virgil almost automatically flinched and slightly backed away from Patton. Patton immediately let go of his wrist and gave him a worried look. "Sorry if I'm overstepping any boundaries..." Patton voiced softly, looking down at his shoes. "No, it's fine. I just.... don't like being touched. At all." Virgil mumbled. "Well, that's A-OK buddy! Logan isn't much for touching and I'm happy if you're happy. And if no touching makes you happy, then I won't touch you!" Patton replied, seeming unfazed by this news. Virgil was sorta surprised. Patton seemed like the type of guy that would give you a hug if you waved to him on the street. "Logan doesn't really like being touched either. I don't know how he puts up with me, seeing as I practically hug everything I see. Anyways, here's the bathroom, right next to the living room as you can see.", Patton indicated towards a simple white door a couple feet away from the living room. "I don't think I need to show you around in there. Patton giggled. "Okay, that's the first floor of the house, onto the next!" Patton gestured towards the stairs. "Come on!" As they walked up the stairs, Virgil was still trying to comprehend why Patton was being so nice to him. He had been rude to him and had even told him he didn't like being touched even though he had hugged Logan the last time they met. He had never hugged anyone before that and if he was being completely honest, he liked how it felt. He liked being hugged. But he couldn't make himself vulnerable. He simply couldn't. When they had finished walking up the stairs, Patton began to speak again. "Upstairs is where the bedrooms are. I'll show you around. Let's start with your bedroom!" Patton insisted, leading Virgil to a door. This door was different than the other simple, white doors. This door was painted a deep purple and had Virgil's name printed onto the front of the door. They had done that for him? "Do you like it?", Patton asked nervously, twiddling his thumbs. "Logan had said to leave the door plain but I couldn't help myself. I saw you wearing purple when we first met so I thought maybe you liked the color... And then, of course, your name is written on the door." Virgil simply gaped. Patton had actually taken the time to do this for him? "If you don't like it, I can change it back to white. I can take off the name too. It's okay I can change it." Patton offered. "What? N-no! It's perfect. Purple is my favorite color", Virgil admitted. Patton's face immediately lit up. "Great! Now, let me show you your room." Patton exclaimed excitedly. He opened the door and Virgil saw his room for the first time. It was a fairly large room with 2 windows. It had a queen size bed in the middle of the room that had black covers on it with purple rain clouds all over it and a couple pillows as well. There was a desk in the corner of the room with a simple black desk chair. On the other side of the room, there were double doors to what Virgil suspected was a closet and a bookshelf near the entrance of the room. Next, to his bed, there was a nightstand with a lamp on it. Even though the room was a bit bare, Virgil loved it. "I know it's a bit simple, but we'll go shopping this weekend. We didn't exactly know what you liked, so we did our best with what we knew." Patron explained. "Not much to show to you here, but there's the closet- Patton pointed to the double doors Virgil had noticed earlier- I think you'll be able to fit all your clothes in there, judging by your duffel bag. We'll have to get you more clothes than that. And then over there's your bathroom." Patton said gesturing towards another door near Virgil's bed that Virgil hadn't noticed. Virgil was left speechless. His room was so perfect! And they were going to go buy him even more stuff?! He loved everything about his room. The simple desk and bookshelf. His humongous bed and the bed covers. His nightstand with a small lamp on it. He loved every single bit of his room with all his heart. Finally, after admiring his room for a couple seconds, Virgil spoke. "It's amazing. I love it! Really. It's great. You don't have to buy me any more stuff. It's already so perfect!" Virgil said happily. He truly loved his room. "Nonsense! Of course, we'll buy you some more stuff!" Patton insisted. Now, let's move on to the next rooms" Patton ended up showing Virgil Patton and Logan's bedroom (and told him he was welcome in there as long he knocked), the guest bedroom and the upstairs bathroom. Virgil tried to pay attention, he really did..but his mind kept wandering back to his beloved room. He wanted to just unpack, lay on the bed and listen to music. After the tour of all of the upstairs, Patton led him down the stairs. "And that's it. That's our house. You can do whatever you please now. I'll be working on lunch and Logan will probably be in his study. I didn't show you that part of the house because it's secrettt" Patton said, whispering the last part. "He reads and writes poems there. The whole thing about him having stopped writing poems was a total lie. I caught him writing once. They're so sappy! But anyways, you can go watch TV or hang out in your room. You can even go outside and meet the kids in the neighborhood if you like. I believe there's a couple kid your age around here. I'll call you for lunch when it's ready." Patton informed Virgil. "Okay. Thank you, Patton. I can help with lunch if you want." Virgil offered. "It's fine buddy! But before you do anything, why don't you go unpack?" Patton asked. "Okay. After that, I think I'll just stay in my room." Virgil replied, feeling slightly more at ease near Patton than he had expected to that day. "Sounds good buddy!" Patton responded and ventured into the kitchen, humming a cheery tune. Virgil jogged up the stairs, his duffel bag still slung across his shoulder. Once he got to his room he began to unpack. Unpacking was easy when you didn't own a lot of items. Virgil opened the closet doors and gasped. It was a walk-in closet and boy, was it huge. Not only did it have a huge rack, but it also had shelves and drawers in there. Virgil only had 10 shirts and 2 hoodies which he hung with the provided hangers that were in the closet. He also had 10 pairs of jeans, 8 of which were black and the other 2 were dark blue (All of them were unintentionally ripped but they looked as if store bought that way) which he stored on the shelves. Finally, he had 15 pairs of socks and underwears which he put in one of the drawers and he was done unpacking his clothes. He then moved on to unpacking the one pillow he had which was black with a skull on it which looked as if it belonged on his bed. He also had a small throw blanket that was black with purple polka dots on it. He folded it and put it at the foot of his bed. Then he simply put his toothbrush and toothpaste in the bathroom and he was done unpacking he grabbed the last couple things that were in his duffel bag: his headphones and MP3 player. Virgil flopped on to his bed (which he found out was much comfier than the bed at the foster home) and listened to music until he heard Patton call him for lunch. Virgil got out of bed and opened the door and sighed happily as the smell of lunch came wafting from the kitchen. It smelled delicious. Virgil practically ran down the stairs and saw a smiling Patton serving food onto 3 plates. "We're having pasta today. Are you allergic?" Patton asked. "No...actually, pasta is my favorite food" Virgil replied taking a seat. "Wow! Me too!!" Patton beamed, handing Virgil his plate. "Thanks... Pat" Virgil muttered. Patton smiled happily. "No problemo! I better call Logan over or else he'll stay in his study for hours." Patton explained. "Logan! Honey! Lunch is ready!" Patton yelled. Logan came from his study and his usually emotionless face lit up ever so slightly. "Pasta? My favorite?" He asked softly, looking at the food happily. "Yup! Turns out it's Virgil's favorite too!" Patton replied cheerfully. Virgil looked up at being mentioned. "Huh? Oh yeah... I love pasta" Virgil muttered. "Then you'll fit right in" Logan smiled warmly. "Thank you for the food, Patton," Logan said, turning towards Patton. "No problem, Lo! Now, eat your food." Patton remarked, pointing at Logan's plate. Logan nodded and took a seat. It was silent for a couple minutes before Logan spoke. "So, Virgil do you like the school you go to?" "Uh not really I guess. I'm not complaining but...." Virgil trailed off. "Its okay if you don't like your school buddy... In fact, I and Logan were thinking of you may be switching schools... If you would like to, of course" Patton voiced quietly. "Indeed", Logan agreed. "If you want to. Patton works at a school not far from our house as a school counselor. The school is called Ryden Academy. He-" but Logan was cut off my Virgil's gasp. "-I'm guessing you've heard of the school, then?" Logan raised an eyebrow. "Heard of it? Of course, I've heard of it. Everyone's heard of it. I've always wanted to go there! Isn't it a school for the gifted. Like art, sports, writing, etc ?" Virgil said excitedly "Affirmative," Logan replied Immediately, Virgil's mood darkened. "So how am I supposed to get in? I'm no good at any of that stuff" Virgil mumbled, feeling sadder and sadder by the minute "On the contrary, Virgil. Mrs. Dylan allowed us to see one of your old notebooks to learn more about you and some of your poems were quite satisfactory. Apologies if reading your notebooks was a violation of your privacy." Logan stated "Oh.. but I'm still nowhere near good enough to get into there," Virgil mumbled "Well, why don't you just take the test and see, alright buddy? If you don't pass we can find another school. If you do, I'll sign you up and have you a student there by next week. You can take the test this Saturday. Does that sound good, kiddo?" Patton soothed softly. "I guess." Virgil sighed quietly. "Alright. Just put your plate in the sink and I'll take care of it. You can go to your room if you want, but I'd like you to meet some of the kids in the neighborhood sometime soon. Okay?" Patton asked tenderly "Yea... That sounds good I guess. Thanks for the food. I can wash my plate, though. Really." Virgil remarked. "Actually, I'll wash the dishes tonight," Logan chimed in. "I find washing dishes quite soothing." Logan grabbed the dirty dish from Patton's hand and reached out to grab Virgil's dish too. Virgil flinched and stumbled out of his seat as Logan's hand brushed with his own. Logan looked at him alarm and worry painted his face. "Are you alright Virgil? Did I do something wrong?" Logan asked cautiously. Before Virgil could say a word, Patton replied. "Oops! Silly me, I forgot to tell you, Lo. Virgil doesn't like to be touched. At all. Please forgive Logan, Virgil. He didn't know" Logan's face scrunched up with worry and confusion, but he almost immediately recovered. "Apologies, Virgil. I didn't know." He shot a look at Patton who wore a sheepish smile before continuing. "If no physical contact, is what you wish, then there shall be no physical contact. If you could just hand me the plate, then." Logan chose his words carefully, not wanting to upset Virgil even more. Virgil was still surprised. Why were these people being so nice to him? "It's totally fine you didn't know. Sorry for overreacting." Virgil mumbled and handed Logan his plate. "I should go..." Virgil said almost immediately after handing Logan his plate and ran up the stairs. Virgil got to the top and took a couple deep breaths before opening the door. He quickly entered his room and unintentionally slammed the door behind him. Shit. Virgil thought after hearing the door slam. Now they probably think I'm mad or something. Great. Do you have to ruin everything, Virgil? Virgil sighed before slipping on his headphones, pressing play to his playlist, and crawling into bed and under his covers. Virgil didn't mean to fall asleep, really he didn't. But the bed was so comfy and the covers were so warm. He simply couldn't help himself.

Patton was usually such a happy man. Many people thought that was all he was. Sunshine and rainbows. And he was. Most of the time. But when Patton gets really fired up, you do not want to be in his way. As soon, as Patton heard the door slam shut from upstairs, his smile faded. "Goddammit", Patton muttered under his breath. "What was that Patton?" Logan asked, sorta smugly because they had had a bet and Patton promised to never swear. But Patton wasn't happy. He gave Logan a glare that shut him right up. Patton sighed and put his head in his hands. "What are we going to do? I want to go comfort him, but how am I going to without angering him even more? We're supposed to be making him feel welcome." Patton wanted to cry. They had just gotten Virgil and he already hated them. "It's okay Patton." Logan cooed putting a hand on Patton's shoulder. Patton almost immediately shrugged it off. He knew he shouldn't be mad at Logan, he knew it was nobody's fault. And yet, he was overcome with irrational anger and frustration. Logan saw the look in Patton's eye and stepped back slightly. He knew Patton would never hurt him, but he was still really scary sometimes. Patton looked up and saw fear written on Logan's face. Instead of calming down and softening his look, as usual, Patton's irritation grew. He stormed off simply muttering a small "I need to calm down" before walking out the front door and going for a walk. Logan was now truly worried. Patton had never gotten this angry before. In fact, in all the years Logan had known Patton, he had never stormed off like that before. Even when someone wrecked their wedding. (a story for another time) How was Logan going to fix this? All he knew was that he had about 15 minutes till Patton comes back. That's usually how long Patton takes walks for. And whatever surprise he has better be good.

Logan had decided that, even though he had done nothing wrong, he had to go apologize to Virgil. He went upstairs formulating a apology with every step he took. He'd finally thought of a satisfactory apology by the time he knocked on Virgil's door. This had better work.

Virgil jumped as he heard a firm knock on the door. After recovering from his mini heart attack, he said "Come in" as best he could without breathing heavily. Logan walked into the room, his face had worry and stress all over it. Virgil began to say something but was interrupted by Logan. "Virgil, allow me to officially apologize for the uh incident. I didn't know you didn't like being touched and I'm.. I'm. I'm sorry. I'm sorry ok?" Logan sighed softly. "I just. I hope you accept my apology." Wow. That was unexpected. Usually, Virgil would nimbly accept the apology and there's where it ends. But Logan deserves better than that. He really tried with that apology. Virgil sighed and began his apology. "Listen, I'm so sorry. I overreacted. The truth is, I'm okay with being touched. I gave you a hug. It was my first hug and I loved it. But I can't make myself vulnerable. I barely know you guys and I can't just open up. Not yet at least. I'm really sorry. Can we just forget this?" Virgil said for once not mumbling. Logan's face showed many emotions. First, he looked as if he was trying to process everything that had just been said to him. Then there was his thoughtful face. Then Logan's face lit up and he grinned like an idiot. "Yes! Yes, I-" he stopped himself, cleared his throat and adjusted his glasses. "That sounds quite satisfactory Virgil. Quite satisfactory, indeed." Logan and Virgil just smiled at each other for a bit before Logan snapped out of it and repossessed his emotionless face. "Anyways, Patton got really upset when he found out you were upset. He isn't exactly very happy and I've never seen him like this before. I need to cheer him up. He'll be back in about 10 minutes. Perhaps you could be of assistance?" Virgil thought for a moment before an idea finally struck him. "I got it! He exclaimed. "So the plan is..." Virgil said whispering the plan into Logan's ear. "Wow, Virgil. That's a great idea. Let's get started right now. We don't have much time."

And so Logan and Virgil worked hard and just barely got finished in time. "Hey, guys! I'm home. Guys? I'm sorry for getting so upset.." Patton trailed off as he wondered why the lights were off. He turned on the lights and jumped with surprise at what he saw. There they were, Patton's two favorite people standing in the kitchen smiling. Virgil was holding a tray of snickerdoodles and Logan was holding an old, raggedy notebook. There was a banner hung up saying in cursive "Forgive us?". Patton gaped and then smiled. "What's all this? "Well, I wanted to apologize for upsetting you" Logan started. "And I'm sorry for being a brat." Virgil finished. "Oh guyssss. You shouldn't havee. I feel so stupid. Agh I love you guys" Patton exclaimed walking towards them. He looked at Virgil fondly "You weren't being a brat, buddy. We all have preferences and I should've told Logan. I was being ignorant. I'm sorry" "And you," he said turning to look at Logan. "You're too good for me, Lo" Patton said, kissing Logan's nose. "I-You-We" Logan stuttered, his face a bright red. "Okay, Logan. Okay." Patton said softly. Patton rubbed his hands together happily. "Now what have we got here?!" Logan seemed to have snapped out of it by then. "Oh! Right! Virgil is actually quite good at baking and made you some snickerdoodles. I, on the other hand, dug up a bunch of old poems from my study and am prepared to read a couple to you." Logan cleared his throat. "There are also a couple new ones in here." It was Patton's turn to blush. He threw his arms around Logan happily and flashed Virgil his most loving smile. "You guys are the best! I'm sorry for getting so mad, it was my fault Logan didn't know anyway." Patton said, his smile fading. "I'm such a fool! You guys shouldn't have to do any of this to make me happy. I'm sorry." "Pat, you've said sorry like a million times already. Metaphorically of course. It's okay. Shall we all just forgive each other?" Logan asked, softly rubbing Patton's shoulder. "Yuppers! That sounds great Lo." Patton said, cheering up. "Yea, uh that sounds good." Virgil agreed with putting down the pan of snickerdoodles. "So uh... Do you want some snickerdoodles?" Virgil asked quietly. "That sounds great bud!" Patton said happily. "Why don't we all just 'chill' for the rest of the day," Logan suggested, putting quotation marks around the word chill.

"That sounds just fine." Patton giggled

"Yea that sounds good..." Virgil said speaking up for once.

After that, there were, of course, many more mishaps and problems during the awkward time that Virgil was still just fitting into the household but in only a couple months, it seemed that everyone fit perfectly for one another. Just like a perfect puzzle.

Notes: oof I have NO idea why that took me so long to write I'm so sorry you've probably forgotten this au because of how long I took sorryy. Any criticism is welcomed because I sure do need some. Keep in mind that I wrote the first like 3/4 of it a while ago and I didn't really have time to edit it so sorry if it's really bad

#amwriting platonic analogical #platonic moxiety #logicality #romanitc logicality #sorry this took so long #working overtime

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triplet-vo · 7 years ago

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the underrated art of SHEER PANIC

DigiOTPWeek Day 6: Soulmate AU

Word Count: 1073

BROTP: Yagami Taichi, Ishida Yamato, Kido Jyou, Izumi Koushiro, Takaishi Takeru + special guest Gomamon

Jyou yelped and nearly fell off his chair. “What are you guys doing here! Gomamon!”

“I thought it would be rude to leave your friends outside,” said the sea Digimon reasonably. “Especially since it seems like you need their help.”

“Are you in trouble? If you are, we’ll do everything we can,” Taichi asked, uncharacteristically serious.

Yamato closed the door behind them. “Agreed. We all got worried when you didn’t show for lunch. Did something happen?”

“No, nothing happened! Everything’s fine here.” Jyou forced a nonchalant laugh that somehow came out sounding strangled instead. “Gomamon’s just overreacting – ”

Koushiro peered at the Digimon. “Are you overreacting?”

Gomamon shrugged. “I don’t think so. Is it normal for humans to act like their wrist is broken just because of a little mark that showed up overnight?”

All the boys froze. Then, all at once, they started talking:

“Wait…” “You mean –” “Is it…?” “That could only be – ”

Jyou threw his hands up. “All right, fine! I’ll admit it! I woke up this morning and I had this – this – this –”

“Soul mark?” Koushiro supplied knowingly when the older boy showed no signs of stopping his spluttering.

All at once, Jyou deflated. “Yes.”

Yamato eyed him. “I don’t understand why you’re acting like it’s the end of the world. It’s not a death sentence.”

Taichi patted Jyou on the shoulder. “Yeah, you should be happy! Not everyone is lucky enough to get one, you know. It’s a good thing.”

“Can I see it?” Takeru asked politely.

Jyou hesitated and then offered his wrist for examination. All the boys crowded around it and made noises of interest at the shimmering black tattoo of an abstract seal and whale.

Meanwhile, Gomamon scratched the back of his head. “What’s a ‘soul mark’? I’ve never heard of one before. We don’t have those in the Digital World.”

Surprising no one, it was Koushiro who answered, “A soul mark is a symbol, usually on the wrist, that appears on two people who are destined to be soul mates. No one is really sure of how it’s possible, when they’re supposed to appear, or where the magic to reveal a soul mark comes from, but it’s almost always a guarantee that they will be strongly bonded later in life.”

“Some Digimon are destined to be partners with a Chosen Child. We don’t know who chose us to be paired, it just is. So a soul mate… is a human partner for another human?”

“That’s a good analogy, Gomamon.” Takeru nodded. “Yeah, it’s exactly like that.”

“Huh.” The Digimon looked up at his partner. “Are you worried because you don’t want your human partner to be Chi –”

“Shh!” Jyou fell off his chair in his haste to cover Gomamon’s mouth. But it was too late.

Taichi started laughing. “You mean you already know who your soul mate is? How lucky can one guy be!”

The Chosen of Sincerity flushed so bright, a tomato would have looked pale in comparison. He covered his face. “Of course not! I don’t know… you have the wrong idea…”

Yamato elbowed Taichi in an attempt to get him to calm down. “We’re not making fun of you. We’re all happy for you getting a soul mark.” Takeru and Koushiro nodded, Taichi hastily joining in. Yamato went on, “So what’s the problem? If it’s because you don’t like who your soul mate is, well, you’re still young. People change when they grow older.”

Gomamon patted his partner on the knee. “Talk to us, Jyou. We all want to help you feel better.”

Jyou resisted for a moment longer before he capitulated to their concern. “I do know who my soul mate is. And the problem isn’t because I don’t like her.”

They waited for him to go on. When he seemed disinclined to, Takeru ventured, “Then… it’s because…?”

Miserably, Jyou confessed, “I like her too much. But she doesn’t even know I exist.”

Taichi shook his head. “You’re not making any sense. If she doesn’t know you exist, how are you so sure this girl is your soul mate?”

“I’ve seen it on her wrist before. And before you ask, I’m sure it’s a match. I’ve seen it multiple times.”

“Sounds like she knows you exist to me,” said Yamato shrewdly, “if you’re so familiar with her wrist. Who is this girl?”

Just when it seemed that Jyou was going to return to a normal color, he flushed darker once more. He glanced at Gomamon, who nodded encouragingly, before he took a deep breath. “… She’smycramschooltutor.”

It took them all a minute to parse out Jyou’s words. Then it clicked.

Taichi clapped Jyou on the shoulder. “Buddy, you are an inspiration to us all,” he declared solemnly. “I believe in you. I’m rooting for you. Just go for it!”

“But how can I?” The older boy’s face was the textbook definition of panic. “She’s totally out of my league! You guys don’t understand! She’s a college girl. She’s pretty and brilliant and I can never even pull together a coherent sentence in front of her, let alone talk to her! If she ever sees my wrist, she’ll laugh in my face!”

Koushiro opened his laptop and began typing. “I’m going to look up social and economic standing differences between known soul mark pairings in history. I’m pretty sure there was a prospective cohort study a few months back that concluded a vast majority of couples were able to overcome initial disparities between the two parties’ circumstances.”

“I heard the same thing,” Yamato acknowledged. “He’s right, it’s not impossible odds. Just… take it one step at a time. Don’t tell her that you have matching soul marks yet. Focus on trying to talk to her and get to know her as a real person first.”

Takeru nodded earnestly. “Yeah, and once you’re more comfortable talking to her, you can let her know about the soul mark. But tell her that you want to build up a friendship with her first. That’ll give you more time to feel confident about being on her level.”

“Yeah, forget about all the extra stuff. You’re definitely not out of her league,” Taichi exhorted. “Fate chose to give you her soul mark for a reason! That’s basically a guarantee that things will find a way to work out. Right, guys?”

Jyou buried his face in his hands. “I think I’m gonna be sick.”

<< Day 5: Profession AU | Day 6 | Day 7: Time Period AU >>

#digiOTPweek #digimon fic #digimon adventure #digimon adventure tri #soulmate au #writing prompt #yagami taichi #ishida yamato #kido jyou #izumi koushiro #takaishi takeru #gomamon #digimon #switching things up for today because I write what I want #totally imagining this happening between 02 and tri #or something #idk #I just feel reel bereft after watching tri and not seeing enough bonding time

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tocoworks · 7 years ago

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💰💦💪How To Make More $$$ With These Freelancer Apps + Websites w/ 208 Monkeys' Damian Alpizar

Episode Sponsors below** Damian Alpizar is a director, producer, writer, photographer, editor, podcast host of The Wrap Party, and owner of 208 Monkeys, a video, film and animation production company in Ybor City, Tampa, FL.

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EPISODE TRANSCRIPT VIA DRAGON DICTATE

Yes now you see the red light damage rely guys right I feel and get himself I like doing this little tease music and beginning now just before you really start to get a vibe going you know like foreplay if when are you today that yeah you play the role of my wife in a sitcom study that that set up just got done talking on them and let her we just got done talking about but we may have to get an apartment together because were nerdy out so much because were working so hard yeah yeah that's it but let's do no support the sponsors that support the show right back of like this if you like this podcast were trying to give you the pragmatic advice we stumbled upon via conversation or interview and so why not when I have a business line you know when I have a good app that is your business line not not don't go to Verizon go hey I need a second line added here's why did you get confused when it was on call it love it when idiots like that come in right in your call be like you do the joke I like to do you say no limit studios you know that's a funny answer quote unquote when someone when someone calls my personal line but now my business line so when people call business line we have say talk about your consulting no or we share the business line yeah you have the app you have the same line I do it's scalable so let's get some grasshopper action going on the virtual phone system you need to get for your business to eight monkeys.com let's get creative but our listeners get $50 off if they get a trygrasshopper.com/sweat let's TryGrasshopper.com/sweat and that's… Like Nelly Furtado in your favorite dude I don't remix like I'm not a good DJ but I am good at telling about good abs grasshopper the entrepreneurs phone Ray get this thing going and my dad is the thank you grasshopper hello we'll talk later a minute and a three and a two and a body chatty you love that love it I love it I love it why because I hated you I do I got there David yeah hey got new this thing will come in handy liberty do many episode today we've got some in the hopper coming up because I listen to a lot of podcasts and I hate when they just take the holidays office I do bake couple episodes so I was on my friend Krishna readies just tube which is science with a comedic kind of taste on it little approach to that Sweden's first one in here so it look very similar this set up when you see it if you want to watch a video and then we gotta do to two freebie shout outs to come to sponsors John Jacobs comedian buddy of our our program of cigar city comedy in this the Tampa Bay area he's got an album out called some Summers Southside we got a huge argument last night if you look up on iTunes I said he had to redo his album art because it has McDonald's logos as the atoms of what was the argument yeah it's like he doesn't want to change it so I was shot often to vehicles look at Jacobs do like this not an argument you have to do it he's here claiming parity law I said parity laws fine but Bill do a cease-and-desist and then by the time you figure it out it will be here at least that those that become like great marketing then because he's got like this to make it talk about so negative I will be to do that so I said if you have an organic audience and then you make it a big shade about it then yes that would be fine he doesn't have that you have a big enough audience for that to create like a crazy fervor on Twitter or whatever and then on the other side he does have the money for PRT and really execute that it's one of the other would come back from it so yeah just like because I feel like some of these PR like spats the really kinda calculated you know you were to do this on Tuesday morning because that's gonna be the album he dropped album on a Sunday Lord's day every album comes out on a Tuesday so I like that still exist yeah me anything about got drop bombs on Tuesday so you do on a Tuesday same it I think some people don't but same logic with movies so they did it on Fridays because you want the box office for the weekend they kept creeping back you want to get the midnight showing's accounts towards your first weekend all that stuff Tuesdays you do it so it has like a ripple effect throughout the week so a bunch of people bide on to say the big fans and then that'll have like a snowball fight for more people to hear about it more people to buy it Tuesday seem to be that's going to go away doesn't seem to me is that you still standard the right yeah but you know him say like it's not that you look at the physical CD copy but he does have some funny he does have some funny stuff and that's another interview we have banked that were to put on I go through Facebook I do like the music it's funny it's good it's really funny I I thought it was gonna be like really esoteric garbage and he did what I want to I don't like giving the confidence you do love you do love the very Tim and Eric that would be so yeah I would love to be Simon Rex turning into dirt nasty work be a rapper as a big show in a bisexual and right if this is what you know he is he is yeah sure no legislation so the other one hour another shot I will give is another comedian buddy Nick Cortes now will now check it out on Amazon and in iTunes as well give let give us a five star review give them a five star review all that should really help sets a cheat code like creep creep up the rankings so now that's out of the way yeah and half my body I used to tour with a love you know him and I will meet we get a lot of arguments but I still love him like a brother and he's opening for Foxworthy and Larry the cable guy over the country and cool which is cool but that is I see them big names but say what you I know I don't know say what you will about the those flavor of comedians by you know those guys have a crazy work ethic and you don't really get that good by being unfunny I think they chose a path of what yeah exactly latest decided they can just go right down that narrow little Foxworthy used to work at IBM smart noon that's Larry the cable guy from this area yeah yeah Hilda now cable guy surprises what yet when his accents fake to people it's an act I know that but I don't think everybody else does dude I was told some last night 1/3 of the country doesn't care about jokes feeling like no most the countries I am care but what's funny and so are just as like the other guys that is creative that's that's the property you know all that kind of stuff what what we want to get into we had some I told you to Cork until we started deeming outputs are what the net neutrality others mean there's that mean that that's a big thing right now especially a man much on a harp and be like oh no net neutrality is completely horrible I mean I understand why some corporations like hey look we need to you know what is it for about wondering what okay will net neutrality and and and and and I'm trying to existing not skip and jump all over the place I'm also directing over here because it's got some with me was got some weird angles that is trying to jump to the wife it is had to do it yourself well you know how it would please the showoffs yes director heads it's like picking want to keep talking people's heads it now it's the Meebo's fault now you claim in the I am or what I am I am you had I am totally annoyed by no no no you didn't I see nothing episodes and he just get head chopped off quite a bit so no so one of things what net neutrality in an in layman's terms is that originally the Internet was supposed to be like the information as long as you're going through an ISP it was all treated equally no matter what band with you so if you are going with streaming nine porn videos at one time if you streaming nine porn videos at one time or if you're just putting up some text you got equal pager you paid your ISP you got through it you you you you pay for your band with and you can use have been with as as needed the analogy that I saw on Forbes I believe was shelving on in a supermarket where you know you people in retail they pay for in a preferred shelving and pervert space in the supermarket to consumer preferences and consumer preferences pay more its dynamic pricing you pay more to be on the in At a grocery store I'm kind of obsessed with I like a lot of that stuff like will the serial killer existing to pay a lot more to be on the in because you impulsively get Cocoa crispies or whatever they remember the commercial where the guy was walking squatted down and there's trying to sell that bag cereal on the bottom of the shelf whole gimmick was that he was walking real short and that's alien pay extra for literary people don't want to bend over so that the loan literally they don't exist at all know that serial anywhere you and then a new answer and then they do the reverse one now were people now know to go down to the lower floor so this like the pen ultimate the one that's just off that I noticed that the other day the frosted flakes like on the bottom like the that will be going on on the bottom if there was a printed Lord of the frosted flakes on the bottom because kids can reach and grab it and put in the car they want to put those were dry it can grab it like I did grab the process of the worst box sometimes is the not the bottom but right above that and then ultimate the top because most people can't grab the stuff on the top so so you just cook is like I do that sometimes my I don't have I got like T Rex arms like the you know when you do this you do your wingspan does and how tall it mine site I be like a midget is essentially really worth excuse me little little human could to sell yourself short arms how much shorter are the now I don't know not much but it's alligator arms measure that and I always do the debate like I get someone from Publix over here now just get the thing I don't want to try to there house been what is never seen convenience be such a big part of business dynamics now because it used to be used to be price or uniqueness right does work on it right here and now convenience, in the middle of that yet convenience time time is to be the big thing but now it's now convenient as it is another big factor that's all was basically happening is that but you see stores have limited space they have square walls they have an area that they have to stay within so you can charge more for premium space and things of that nature but when you come to the Internet which doesn't have any limitations as to realistically does have a notation it and you can't say that oh you're running out of space on the Internet or speed on the Internet really you're not so what is happening is that now the ISPs can say hey you know what Netflix you've got a whole lot of people using your stuff were going to charge you more to access and push through intern human Netflix obviously being a corporation is going to just eat that cost are going to raise their price and that consumers will not have to for Netflix get more but here's the problem is that let's say Disney is getting ready to do their streaming service right and they strike a deal you already know the disease try to strike a deal by Fox what if they struck a deal with Verizon and say guess what will make sure that all of our streaming services only go through Verizon network so if you're on the spectrum or another network of any type now you can get the Disney streams of youth the log on to their that particular ISP provider to get that because now does he like okay well you can go with you guys versus because you guys giving us the better deal for the band with you giving us your giving us a better deal for Ben with will go you guys that that the blocks out the other guys now Netflix is only available in one versus it being neutral were all of them are treated the same and anyone and as a consumer we can pick and choose and just let the free market that neutrality I thought it was reverse of what you think it is by the name you want net neutrality want not want all you want to want to be neutral yet you want you want all the ISPs to treat all of the providers equally no matter how much popularity and that their business doing great you don't want them to say hey by the way you got a great service right to charge more for now the rock is a problem with that is that everybody says all man net neutrality site will note that the the law against it whatever that so that the problem is that whoever branded this did a really good job yeah fuses me every time I listen to it I hear it my lizard brain goes what should be neutral and then I think I don't know like what you want and I want it over the Internet will be free market and then like and I have to remember that it's not admit it's not at first blush what you think it is and if you like work in this world a little bit or a lot I'd say I feel like the generation older than us supercomputer I'm sure there's so many complaint letters that went in that said get rid of that neutrality and they think they're wanting one thing when there now well then yeah that means probably get it had to happen to his I hear it all the time and and and it could be confusing because you have to look at it and say okay why do I want all of my providers to be treated equally will you want them to be treated equally so that when it's up to their service to you that's going to determine how successful they are you want to be a matter of that they made a deal in the back in with somebody and now all of a sudden because they made a deal they blocked out competition and that's the problem that you're running into situation were now corporations are deciding what can be the better service for you to have and your internets can go out so we are to go up it's weird that in all, revolves around corporate consolidation because I do not feel so that John Oliver piece couple weeks ago is great iconic explain like every big business in the United States is all corporate consolidation like so therefore ISP there's a for Internet people you can choose from basically Google fiber tried to get in the market it you literally have to lay fiber down like there's fiber that goes from from the East Coast United States across to Europe like there's little I know it's crazy that's so crazy sitting on the ocean floor there's good Michael Lewis I was called flash boys about how these guys manipulated the market because they could get I have second faster from the Chicago trade to where the servers were so that Chicago's marketplace Star Trek stock marketplace Jesus Christ to New Jersey that so it's all about this guy like train the pipeline through Pennsylvania Mountains and stuff to get 1/2 second faster made boot two dollars because their Internet connections faster essentially airlines right it's all it's all an oligopoly I get a lecture from my good buddies because I went on a rant couple years goes like it's all godly man like preach price fix how many airlines are there the four right Southwest Delta American United maybe I think we only fly spirit because my wife is cheap that doesn't really count as that's like Greyhound that people bring on like Phil and Joe Stelzer L no not wearing shoes and chickens flying around inside then they charge you for like headphones that you brought so like what happens is with the net neutrality stuff this year for providers right it's like a double flock of us think about it so you only have for you we have most places you have one or two to pick from the United States Internet wise right and then from there now were seen the Disney fox probable no acquisition of Fox which they'll take Julio and it will be a juggernaut against Netflix both are huge sucks on on Internet bandwidth and then they now have their own kind of bottleneck on the entertainment stuff that everybody wants see I okay so these this could be a good thing just like your mom say yeah my mom would find a silver lining is so will you get every movie ever I don't remember what 20 but is there's a city that's they're gonna start treating broadband Internet like a utility where the city's organist start developing their own broadband system somehow and then providing it from there and then you also got I don't know if that's a good idea it's an option are more options I mean what we can only choose one electric provider right now I don't think that's a great great thing is manna because they bring our options because they lobby to block solar energy for long time which means were worth talking laggard state always here we also just go to make a get to the point where Elon musk puts all his Wi-Fi balloons in the space and then we all have Wi-Fi for free forever it will write our I'm trying to think of how this affects most people really on the ground level because while we can you know is it it's like the tax stuff that everybody's pitch about maybe seven days ago already forgot that's what's crazy about all the new cycle is like it is so ADD out that like I can want to write down what people are already in hysterics like put it on the wall remember that if we can go talk a month later bola and we look like were very thoughtful yeah well this is that I mean unfortunately it's it's you know people very forgetful and I think that definitely there and as it were in a teenage were all that was so tweeted you know five minutes ago but it will affect people long run there's a mic and harp on Amicus at them like oh no you all rise and and and they got people that are fighting against it there's going to be the must center actually sent me a letter saying sorry that that got those kind of messed up energy that are lower than ours online sorry RR Sen. right I didn't get anything well which Sen. Utah yeah other public figure usually Hoosiers not going to LaRose on most are you on the inside no way I read the thing is failure rather will have two senators already sorry I rep about this but let's let's dovetail this into some Moroccan out looking at because I'm certain of the tax stuff and that was affecting a lot of freelancers right because I've got 15 minutes until I got to get out here and that that affects on freelancer's of what they're some of the tax code that there is a change you can't get nearly the write-offs that you do now that was to be the big overall thing and what's crazy about that is you now you see New York City if your independent contractor now they kinda have laws to protect them a little bit like minimums and like and things things that higher rate people that are hired and freelancers have to do now which is good and bad at the same time with it for like it's good but it kind of defeats the purpose after while that gets to restrictive well the thing is with freelance in particular like for example and in our industry which is primarily the foreman and movie industry freelancers are essential to me they are the ones that projects are spaced out and so in order for you to if you are going to commit yourself to one particular job that's a sound guy and you got equipment and even all these things that you have to rewrite often the travel there's a lot of things that right that are involved with freelance work that should be expensed nicer restricting some of that and you start give making it so that it different more difficult for these independent workers to find work because let's face it it's not like videos being shot every day they have to go where the work is and throughout the state of Florida's perceived nonunion so you run into the situation where they have to get equipment update their stuff keep up with the gas to all the stuff you certainly start restricting some of those things that are in that our tax write offs and now they are in a position that it hurts them at the end of year this is good already have a cheat sheet for this because I wrote this down I was going to do a blog posting and I was five I broke this long I was on a flight route this like is towards my standup comedian brother and that I don't like when they pitch about life they can't make enough money because they can clearly do something on the side and this is good is appropriate for a podcast because it's a lot of people that might want to do their own thing or not doing it because they need a little bit more cash flow or while they're doing it they need to add some other income coming in and I will always tell the comedians of my you could be content writers you know you could be you write all the time you to be social media marketers to since I get to the side gig yeah why not abort the kick at current answer is just work harder not not to that but I'm saying like the it's kind of a separate thought are turning old white man you know will I feel like a low-sodium fire suit straddling and get your ship but I do feel like you can that can be a self fulfilling prophecy that it defeated some kind of attitude were you go let me I'm already doing this you know like I yeah like I've had three gigs going at all times for 10 years and yeah a little crazy but it's made me so good and send so many different ways that were doing meetings I'm not nervous to talk about certain the law stuff will I think I mean freelancers and again I'm only speaking about in particular in my industry freelancers in mind she can sometimes moonlight in other positions rats okay but when you're let's say you're in contracted guys right right your to like production stuff is like your contracted for months right I'm talking about like I was directing this more towards people who say they want to do something I wanted to start this but the goat man I don't have I have a job and you know like you like okay we have let's just break it down if you have a 50 hour week job call at all that put people on the on the defense of the cool want to prickle that down but way too busy to even do that right wool coat let's call it 9 to 5 job I don't know including like an hour like get there get back you know whenever Scott 50 hours right and then 60 just be conservative you got 20 other hours a week probably right depends if you have family kids mail it all depends what I say I know that's a really nice letter yes right but the yes here's a list of sites you can go on and you can do freelance work in this gig economy right so it's I think that's what it's coined as the gig economy you can go on up work with the lance and O desk merge together it's the biggest freelancer website this is also good for project manager to people that need other people to it that's probably the best marketplace for the soft skill stuff programmers graphic designers animators video editors I think I haven't done it on there but we need to get our agency account back up because the more you do on their you knocking started a high dollar per hour at first because you don't have any reviews yet you haven't done anything so what with all this stuff online decide to him to give out you going to start a low dollar per hour in the news creep it up the more jobs you do the more five-star reviews you have the better right so up work there's guru that's a 1.5 million freelancers on that with the time tracking system freelancer.com fiver which is kind one of my favorites yeah it in and then just because fiber don't think that you start off at five dollars and you can now offer a five dollars service but their people are starting off their you might hire Ira five Ron Tosh .0 when they used to pay five bucks for people to do silly stuff around the world and then I looked at it because I would do it for like a joke for fantasy football get some someone you don't know like that's worth five bucks yeah I said something and it's fun it's funny to me it's worth five dollars S what what I see Eric now going on five or me like I want people to snow just to silly stuff for me in Uganda is like that can go to fark is that YouTube guy puny pie he tried to do it any try to do like I Hitler joker some basically took him out of Disney's favor ruined up so don't hurt too far with your Hitler jokes is as a house if so fiber is a good one if you need like little things done you know I need to get the background out of this photo can you take that out in vector that out were can you do a jingle for me or voiceover sometimes those like little things that can just prolonged projects that you need sometimes you get that done pretty quickly let's see I you got a menu got over left you see a lot of that going on the rideshare stuff yeah you can do for each grub hub delivery all that were the other sets of that task rabbit in some cities for writers online writing jobs.com daily posts text broker journalism jobs.com and pinch me.org those are all good writer no losses he doesn't really prepare these pockets but he seems awfully prepared thank you for the ship this hope this was for this was for a blog post and research for nap for one of our clients had it I have in my Evernote ready to go and we start on about tax codons like yeah yeah yeah yeah visual exclude visual arts jobs you can put your creative's on be Hanse.net which I like because that's were like the kind of the best graphic designers are the Hants the Hanseatic that the heart part of Adobe now I figured is kind of prepping me for when you tell me to hit the bricks know so you listen to the podcast schedule… Talking with you as I write to give the fungi of the flipside of this is a second because it's not it people think that's easy like it's easy to screw over get freelancers a lot of what we do here is switchboard operator flock load of freelancers right yeah so you need you need good operating contracts independent contractor operating agreements need legal that's the other part say they say you get a logo made by graphic designer they just copy it from someone don't get the license don't tell you about it and then you pass it on company uses it now your indemnification just like the McDonald's and Jacobs iTunes art I told him I was like your signed contract from it help you because if I put ads out and it leads to iTunes album cover that has a McDonald's logo on it I can be I can control tubes can have a hard time making the song taken a big Mac big time for charities yeah what a mean-spirited I think I hear you say what everyone is like is a whole album about McDonald's is no title to food okay will when I made it home if it is a movie that pretty much bashed McDonald's entire times I'm pretty sure the king when the founder no no not not not not the founder that's good movies I like that the founder they you know McFadden's oversizing supersize me yeah so soon what were those chains were supersize out of it so so you can't and you can't tell freelancers as someone hiring when you can't tell him hey I need to be online this dated this the of these hours or I need you to do I need to be in office like you know 95 it doesn't work like that you have to give them due dates for everything so it is a pain in the ass to hire freelancers the beginning if you haven't really done it and you try do a lot of them to save money week on occult money bawling the best like teams best groups of people together because now everything so segmented out for the online world let us talk about that like there's 40 different kind of programmers there's 40 different styles of graphic design yeah things will we do more valuable oh right so why not pluck the best specialists out when they have time and you need a specialist to know you know because you can't just be like hell, to start a company and I don't anything about the sums going to go ahead and you know pulling a much freelancing traffic I need this you still need to vet those guys and look at their work and say yes worth it and yet not not worth it and so that takes professional life so that that is what we as switchboard operators would still need to operate in an in a show our expertise in that sense and the other went on to throughout there because I'll have a few minutes before I get a heart out is is LinkedIn's legit if you're looking I we was gonna save you bring up a can link to click and heat how do I don't understand the wording I will eventually sponsor the show hello it right now you do so for you for instance because you just got your profile on we need to add a bunch of stuff on there you've worked on a bunch of stuff in the last nine months so I need to write a recommendation for you so you need to go out and request some from people all he is so setting you up for for moving on into freelance world no online resume thing away into the make here is it all helps because your under our company account it says you you work here at took about a consulting so the better your profile the better our profile as a whole but at the same time all the connections are better to so the more user profile the better I can reach out to people to it just it built that social capital is a call it a dishy term but Pro finder you should be on LinkedIn Pro finder there's no reason both yell should be on their it's free to sign up I was at a meeting last night happy are just having beers on site just do this while you're sitting here it takes three minutes to fill out an application no you have thought that much and I've gotten for really high quality leads for proposals just from that and I haven't done anything it just like a Angie's list of business professionals essentially but it it just use your profile so people can look at it and I had like all over the board, thing like had some that were print consulting price consultant which I don't really push out there that much but I guess someone to put it in my skills endorsements I think prices are saying that I was like yeah I we can deftly help you that that is that is that it that's what this podcast for the time yet so look that's my advice those are the list of sites on it were to Dragon dictate this out and hopefully I don't have to do too much editing but will all the links of the places I just said should be in the transcript on our site will replace the blog post so real quick before you head up so we can wrap this up holiday in holiday planning special holiday plans are you yoga first why get this music going fine art no now like the end like not even trying out a family are you seeing anything, knowing that while my wife probably is I have no idea my in-laws are coming over think spending the night waiting for Santa and then that's it also do you have any kind like a holiday tradition that you normally do if you started a huddled under Francis I mean I think Christmas has enough traditions only to be make up my own well-known on on my talk about slaughter pressure will know sorry life example will are are were trying to start like my family had their holiday tradition and then were trying to start like me and my wife are trying to start a kind of a neurologist right now are the only thing we got so far is keeping each Christmas tree from each year to the to make an art piece out of it later on but I'm just saying like the only thing we thought it was like a reporter changing credit to reclaim what I was asked to go to the dump why don't we just save these every year until the we have enough until I decide to smooth a lot more work to save a minute if the people who had ratified I would've prefer to throw more but I see the man is behind the art and the history behind it so I understand what you're Cuban to do the notes what is it the no show the rail note of when I let you do you deny that she go to hang on a spit we don't especially since we had a pet pig for a long time so we don't put the guns but we do Panini but we don't ask to put the pig on a spit and there's a Tampa Bay times writer that was looking for someone to write an article so if you want to do what you got going on just ugly ugly Christmas where parties can have actually went because of my recent life changes wedding and now home possibly yours to buy my house can't take that back I said possibly you were actually doing will try to keep it easy for everybody and not worry about get the change just have a good gathering food in an ugly sweater party of the onesie party to look as good intentions will seal that plays out we get we wish you for that but we don't do it I haven't I don't think I've ever left for Christmas ever my family is one of the rare families it's been in Tampa for like four generations or something mind to witness they're all here yeah so it it kinda sucks when it's really hot to doesn't feel like Christmas on a night like Christmas 80° right now but you were three days is hang out I'm excited to see our little boy is about you mean your kids are right and the best age that well yet evident Tom Iverson so close five and five and 217 FF know you're the one great improper notice yes and yes and I have other kids that other different ages I know I said 70 but they it's a good age for them yet for sure there that's the best age the right there in the suites but I'm pretty sure my daughters onto it like she's not in ugliness and a ship next year she is already get to the bottom of things do show or cramp us I was looking that up the other day I think a pretty good movie yeah I thought I better highlights its name from you if it's a comedy horror it's actually really good movies as far as holiday movies are concerned and since I'm the movie guy here grandpa's jacket off yeah all right will let's let's play it out thanks for hanging out yeah man hey LLC guys between now and then I

#Net Neutrality #Independent Contractor Taxes

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neilmillerne · 7 years ago

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Train Like an NBA Player — With Tips from the Atlanta Hawks’ Kent Bazemore

The NBA season is 82 games long, spread over eight months. Add a month of preseason, plus another month for the postseason (and half the league makes the playoffs), and you’ve got 10 grueling months for a body to endure. That doesn’t factor in the travel schedule, or the reality that, in the 21st century, players are literally million-dollar assets, risking their careers with every jump shot, hard foul and awkward landing.

It’s why we love to watch, and it’s why the players are some of the fittest, most inspiring athletes out there. We asked Kent Bazemore — who, over the past six seasons worked his way from an undrafted rookie to a key member of the Atlanta Hawks’ starting lineup — and former Los Angeles Lakers trainer Tim DiFrancesco how they do it. Here’s what they told us, in the form of six tips on how to train like an NBA player:

A post shared by Kent Bazemore (@24baze) on Sep 26, 2016 at 6:38am PDT

TIP #1: REMEMBER YOU’RE NOT AN NBA PLAYER

We mean this in two ways. First, you’re probably not built like an NBA player — that is to say, you’re probably not extra-tall with especially long limbs. That affects how you work out. As DiFrancesco points out, he’ll teach a player to do side planks with their legs bent, just to avoid putting excessive impact on their long-levered bodies. (For you, even if you’re not 6-foot-9, this can be a way to go easier on your body when recovering from an injury.)

Second, your lifestyle, while busy with work, family and relationships, it probably differs from that of the average NBA player. Consider that aforementioned travel schedule. “When you shut off the TV at 10:30 p.m. when the game is over, the players are hitting the showers and then getting on the plane to get to the next city,” DeFrancesco says. “So it’s another three-hour minimum before a player will even think about going to bed.” (And, as Bazemore points out, flying is dehydrating.) The next day, a player will likely be up by 8 a.m. for a shootaround or practice.

Rest when — and where — you can. “I’ll fall asleep on planes, on buses, it doesn’t matter to me,” Bazemore says, adding he’s a nap enthusiast on game day. “I love sleep. It’s very vital for me. When I get tired, I get grumpy. And I hate getting grumpy.”

READ MORE > ATTENTION RUNNERS: YOU HAVE THE RIGHT TO RECOVER

One other thing: Remember NBA players aren’t all alike — just like we’re not all alike. DiFrancesco creates custom programs for each player he trains, and Bazemore prefers to keep his body in shape with Pilates, rather than the yoga some of his teammates prefer. So, by all means, train like an NBA player, but remember that your training may vary.

A post shared by Kent Bazemore (@24baze) on Jul 23, 2015 at 6:57pm PDT

TIP #2: SET YOUR GOALS AND PLAN ACCORDINGLY

Simply put, every NBA player has the same goal: winning the NBA championship. So as soon as last season’s NBA Finals ended in June 2017, each player began training with an eye on the next Finals in June 2018. For Bazemore, that means devoting the offseason to building strength. “Deadlifts. Kettlebell goblet squats. More total body,” as he puts it. And then during the season, they’re careful not to push too hard, lest they use up valuable energy needed for the game itself. As Bazemore puts it, “I wouldn’t go and do 3 sets of 8 bench presses and 12 squats two days before a game if I feel like my legs are dead.”

For you, maybe the goal is running a half-marathon. Or winning the championship in your rec league. Or just beating your buddies in a round of golf. Whatever it is, make a plan to get your body into shape and maintain that shape once you’re there — including, yes, giving yourself permission to rest when your body demands it.

A post shared by Kent Bazemore (@24baze) on Jun 22, 2017 at 6:05pm PDT

TIP #3: START WITH AN ASSESSMENT, AND THEN CHECK IN

As you’d probably expect, each NBA team has state-of-the-art technology at its disposal. But sometimes, analog works best. On the Hawks, Bazemore fills out a survey every day where he rates his soreness and fatigue on a scale of 1–5. After practices, he rates how hard the practice was on a scale of 1–10. All of this is designed to adjudicate his overall wellness on a day-to-day basis. (DiFrancesco did something similar during his Lakers days.) These check-ins guide a player as he endures a game, a season and a career — and so he knows taking it easy during an early season workout helps ensure he’s fresh for the playoffs.

For you, such check-ins (in tandem with using a fitness tracking app like ours) can keep you on the right path and help you connect actions and consequences. (Bad workout? Maybe you didn’t eat or sleep well the night before.)

These check-ins can also reveal when you’re pushing yourself too hard. Bazemore advises, “Learn when to rest. Learn when enough is enough. We’re all competitors at the end of the day, we all want a little bit more, to squeeze a little bit more out. But you gotta learn when enough is enough, and get your mind ready to get back after it. You don’t want to burn yourself out.”

More traction, more comfort, more control. Introducing the new Curry 4, designed for the ultimate gamebreaker.

TIP #4: DO THESE WORKOUTS

So what does an NBA player do to get and stay in shape? We’ll turn it over to Mr. Bazemore: “Over the summer is where you put in a ton of leg work and have the longer weight-room sessions — an hour and a half, two hours sometimes. Building the foundation. Cardio. Maybe two workouts a day. Three workouts a day. Not really touching a basketball as much. Maybe some spot shooting, some ballhandling.

<blockquote class=”instagram-media” data-instgrm-version=”7″ style=” background:#FFF; border:0; border-radius:3px; box-shadow:0 0 1px 0 rgba(0,0,0,0.5),0 1px 10px 0 rgba(0,0,0,0.15); margin: 1px; max-width:658px; padding:0; width:99.375%; width:-webkit-calc(100% – 2px); width:calc(100% – 2px);”><div style=”padding:8px;”> <div style=” background:#F8F8F8; line-height:0; margin-top:40px; padding:50.0% 0; text-align:center; width:100%;”> <div style=” background:url(data:image/png;base64,iVBORw0KGgoAAAANSUhEUgAAACwAAAAsCAMAAAApWqozAAAABGdBTUEAALGPC/xhBQAAAAFzUkdCAK7OHOkAAAAMUExURczMzPf399fX1+bm5mzY9AMAAADiSURBVDjLvZXbEsMgCES5/P8/t9FuRVCRmU73JWlzosgSIIZURCjo/ad+EQJJB4Hv8BFt+IDpQoCx1wjOSBFhh2XssxEIYn3ulI/6MNReE07UIWJEv8UEOWDS88LY97kqyTliJKKtuYBbruAyVh5wOHiXmpi5we58Ek028czwyuQdLKPG1Bkb4NnM+VeAnfHqn1k4+GPT6uGQcvu2h2OVuIf/gWUFyy8OWEpdyZSa3aVCqpVoVvzZZ2VTnn2wU8qzVjDDetO90GSy9mVLqtgYSy231MxrY6I2gGqjrTY0L8fxCxfCBbhWrsYYAAAAAElFTkSuQmCC); display:block; height:44px; margin:0 auto -44px; position:relative; top:-22px; width:44px;”></div></div><p style=” color:#c9c8cd; font-family:Arial,sans-serif; font-size:14px; line-height:17px; margin-bottom:0; margin-top:8px; overflow:hidden; padding:8px 0 7px; text-align:center; text-overflow:ellipsis; white-space:nowrap;”><a href=”http://ift.tt/2gNTxL7” style=” color:#c9c8cd; font-family:Arial,sans-serif; font-size:14px; font-style:normal; font-weight:normal; line-height:17px; text-decoration:none;” target=”_blank”>A post shared by Kent Bazemore (@24baze)</a> on <time style=” font-family:Arial,sans-serif; font-size:14px; line-height:17px;” datetime=”2017-07-14T15:18:58+00:00″>Jul 14, 2017 at 8:18am PDT</time></p></div></blockquote> <script async defer src=”//platform.instagram.com/en_US/embeds.js”></script>

A post shared by Kent Bazemore (@24baze) on Jul 14, 2017 at 8:18am PDT

“Then the season rolls around. You’re always about working on what works for you. For me, that’s mobility. I go to SculptHouse here in Atlanta, which is Pilates.”

For those of us who can’t afford the time or energy to work out this intensely, DiFrancesco puts it in a relatable context. “When you break the body down into its core building blocks — bones, ligaments, tendons, muscles — what you’re talking about is preparing those building blocks for an incredible pace and intensity of schedule. For a basketball player, what you need to think about is starting from the feet up.” In other words, lifting weights might help you grow big muscles, but if the underlying structure isn’t strong, you’re not going to be able to endure a long season — whether you’re in the NBA or training for a marathon.

For an NBA player, this approach means working on the mobility of the lower legs and doing anything that keeps the hips strong and mobile as well as keeping the core strong. Bazemore mentions his love of planks and side planks, which can impact the entire body. Both men mention goblet squats, which are basically a deep squat executed while holding a kettlebell. Both mention deadlifts (with DiFrancesco pointing out that quality of execution is more important than lifting a lot of weight). DiFrancesco also mentioned landmine exercises, which combine weightlifting with mobility and, for a long-levered NBA player, means reducing the impact of deep squats during weightlifting. (Lowering your body when you have long legs is harder than it is for the rest of us.)

A post shared by Kent Bazemore (@24baze) on Jun 25, 2017 at 9:42pm PDT

TIP #5: AIM TO RECOVER AND SLEEP LIKE AN NBA PLAYER, TOO (TOYS CAN HELP)

“I’m a very active person,” says Bazemore, referring to his off-court life. “I love doing things. Golf. Basketball. Walking the puppies. There was a time I was on my feet too much, and I was just so tired [all the time]. I try to shut down my night at 8:30 p.m. now, get in bed, try to get a good night’s sleep.” He knows it’s not easy, but emphasizes finding something to focus on. “It sucks sometimes, but I find things to do. I read. I let go with an old childhood toy of mine: Legos.”

“I love sleep. It’s very vital for me. When I get tired, I get grumpy. And I hate getting grumpy.”

Bazemore has another trick up his sleeve: Tom Brady’s line of Athlete Recovery Sleepwear for Under Armour. “I got it all, so I’ve definitely bought into Tom Brady’s movement. To be as good as he is, to play at his level, any athlete that does it that well, you gotta take note.” Thanks for noticing, Kent.

A post shared by Kent Bazemore (@24baze) on Oct 17, 2017 at 2:58pm PDT

TIP #6: HAVE SOME FUN

Here’s an understatement: Professional basketball players play a lot of basketball. To stay fit, many turn to another form of physical activity, including other sports. For Bazemore, hitting the links leaves him feeling energized — physically and mentally. “Golf challenges my perspective. It keeps me sharp, it’s not as impactful on the body [as basketball]. Nothing like hitting a good golf shot — it raises every aspect of your life. You come home to your wife with a big smile on your face.”

Speaking of, Bazemore has another way of unwinding. It’s his famous Baze Gaze — in which Bazemore videobombs his teammates’ postgame interviews by sneaking up on them and staring into the camera. Is it the end result of vigorous training? Yes and no. “It’s all about timing and the element of surprise,” Bazemore says. “It’s definitely instinctive. You gotta feel your way.” In other words, it’s about that moment where preparation meets opportunity. Which, in a way, is what training is all about.

GEAR UP FOR YOUR NEXT PICK-UP GAME

> Men’s Basketball Gear > Women’s Basketball Gear > Boys’ Basketball Gear > Girls’ Basketball Gear > All Basketball Shoes

The post Train Like an NBA Player — With Tips from the Atlanta Hawks’ Kent Bazemore appeared first on Under Armour.

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#Train Like an NBA Player — With Tips from the Atlanta Hawks’ Kent Bazemore

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albertcaldwellne · 7 years ago

Text

Train Like an NBA Player — With Tips from the Atlanta Hawks’ Kent Bazemore

A post shared by Kent Bazemore (@24baze) on Sep 26, 2016 at 6:38am PDT

TIP #1: REMEMBER YOU’RE NOT AN NBA PLAYER

READ MORE > ATTENTION RUNNERS: YOU HAVE THE RIGHT TO RECOVER

A post shared by Kent Bazemore (@24baze) on Jul 23, 2015 at 6:57pm PDT

TIP #2: SET YOUR GOALS AND PLAN ACCORDINGLY

A post shared by Kent Bazemore (@24baze) on Jun 22, 2017 at 6:05pm PDT

TIP #3: START WITH AN ASSESSMENT, AND THEN CHECK IN

More traction, more comfort, more control. Introducing the new Curry 4, designed for the ultimate gamebreaker.

TIP #4: DO THESE WORKOUTS

A post shared by Kent Bazemore (@24baze) on Jul 14, 2017 at 8:18am PDT

“Then the season rolls around. You’re always about working on what works for you. For me, that’s mobility. I go to SculptHouse here in Atlanta, which is Pilates.”

A post shared by Kent Bazemore (@24baze) on Jun 25, 2017 at 9:42pm PDT

TIP #5: AIM TO RECOVER AND SLEEP LIKE AN NBA PLAYER, TOO (TOYS CAN HELP)

“I love sleep. It’s very vital for me. When I get tired, I get grumpy. And I hate getting grumpy.”

A post shared by Kent Bazemore (@24baze) on Oct 17, 2017 at 2:58pm PDT

TIP #6: HAVE SOME FUN

GEAR UP FOR YOUR NEXT PICK-UP GAME

> Men’s Basketball Gear > Women’s Basketball Gear > Boys’ Basketball Gear > Girls’ Basketball Gear > All Basketball Shoes

The post Train Like an NBA Player — With Tips from the Atlanta Hawks’ Kent Bazemore appeared first on Under Armour.

http://ift.tt/2hi0RvE

#Train Like an NBA Player — With Tips from the Atlanta Hawks’ Kent Bazemore

0 notes

joshuabradleyn · 7 years ago

Text

Train Like an NBA Player — With Tips from the Atlanta Hawks’ Kent Bazemore

A post shared by Kent Bazemore (@24baze) on Sep 26, 2016 at 6:38am PDT

TIP #1: REMEMBER YOU’RE NOT AN NBA PLAYER

READ MORE > ATTENTION RUNNERS: YOU HAVE THE RIGHT TO RECOVER

A post shared by Kent Bazemore (@24baze) on Jul 23, 2015 at 6:57pm PDT

TIP #2: SET YOUR GOALS AND PLAN ACCORDINGLY

A post shared by Kent Bazemore (@24baze) on Jun 22, 2017 at 6:05pm PDT

TIP #3: START WITH AN ASSESSMENT, AND THEN CHECK IN

More traction, more comfort, more control. Introducing the new Curry 4, designed for the ultimate gamebreaker.

TIP #4: DO THESE WORKOUTS

A post shared by Kent Bazemore (@24baze) on Jul 14, 2017 at 8:18am PDT

“Then the season rolls around. You’re always about working on what works for you. For me, that’s mobility. I go to SculptHouse here in Atlanta, which is Pilates.”

A post shared by Kent Bazemore (@24baze) on Jun 25, 2017 at 9:42pm PDT

TIP #5: AIM TO RECOVER AND SLEEP LIKE AN NBA PLAYER, TOO (TOYS CAN HELP)

“I love sleep. It’s very vital for me. When I get tired, I get grumpy. And I hate getting grumpy.”

A post shared by Kent Bazemore (@24baze) on Oct 17, 2017 at 2:58pm PDT

TIP #6: HAVE SOME FUN

GEAR UP FOR YOUR NEXT PICK-UP GAME

> Men’s Basketball Gear > Women’s Basketball Gear > Boys’ Basketball Gear > Girls’ Basketball Gear > All Basketball Shoes

The post Train Like an NBA Player — With Tips from the Atlanta Hawks’ Kent Bazemore appeared first on Under Armour.

http://ift.tt/2hi0RvE

#Train Like an NBA Player — With Tips from the Atlanta Hawks’ Kent Bazemore

0 notes

ruthellisneda · 7 years ago

Text

Train Like an NBA Player — With Tips from the Atlanta Hawks’ Kent Bazemore

A post shared by Kent Bazemore (@24baze) on Sep 26, 2016 at 6:38am PDT

TIP #1: REMEMBER YOU’RE NOT AN NBA PLAYER

READ MORE > ATTENTION RUNNERS: YOU HAVE THE RIGHT TO RECOVER

A post shared by Kent Bazemore (@24baze) on Jul 23, 2015 at 6:57pm PDT

TIP #2: SET YOUR GOALS AND PLAN ACCORDINGLY

A post shared by Kent Bazemore (@24baze) on Jun 22, 2017 at 6:05pm PDT

TIP #3: START WITH AN ASSESSMENT, AND THEN CHECK IN

More traction, more comfort, more control. Introducing the new Curry 4, designed for the ultimate gamebreaker.

TIP #4: DO THESE WORKOUTS

A post shared by Kent Bazemore (@24baze) on Jul 14, 2017 at 8:18am PDT

“Then the season rolls around. You’re always about working on what works for you. For me, that’s mobility. I go to SculptHouse here in Atlanta, which is Pilates.”

A post shared by Kent Bazemore (@24baze) on Jun 25, 2017 at 9:42pm PDT

TIP #5: AIM TO RECOVER AND SLEEP LIKE AN NBA PLAYER, TOO (TOYS CAN HELP)

“I love sleep. It’s very vital for me. When I get tired, I get grumpy. And I hate getting grumpy.”

A post shared by Kent Bazemore (@24baze) on Oct 17, 2017 at 2:58pm PDT

TIP #6: HAVE SOME FUN

GEAR UP FOR YOUR NEXT PICK-UP GAME

> Men’s Basketball Gear > Women’s Basketball Gear > Boys’ Basketball Gear > Girls’ Basketball Gear > All Basketball Shoes

The post Train Like an NBA Player — With Tips from the Atlanta Hawks’ Kent Bazemore appeared first on Under Armour.

http://ift.tt/2hi0RvE

#Train Like an NBA Player — With Tips from the Atlanta Hawks’ Kent Bazemore

0 notes

johnclapperne · 7 years ago

Text

Train Like an NBA Player — With Tips from the Atlanta Hawks’ Kent Bazemore

A post shared by Kent Bazemore (@24baze) on Sep 26, 2016 at 6:38am PDT

TIP #1: REMEMBER YOU’RE NOT AN NBA PLAYER

READ MORE > ATTENTION RUNNERS: YOU HAVE THE RIGHT TO RECOVER

A post shared by Kent Bazemore (@24baze) on Jul 23, 2015 at 6:57pm PDT

TIP #2: SET YOUR GOALS AND PLAN ACCORDINGLY

A post shared by Kent Bazemore (@24baze) on Jun 22, 2017 at 6:05pm PDT

TIP #3: START WITH AN ASSESSMENT, AND THEN CHECK IN

More traction, more comfort, more control. Introducing the new Curry 4, designed for the ultimate gamebreaker.

TIP #4: DO THESE WORKOUTS

A post shared by Kent Bazemore (@24baze) on Jul 14, 2017 at 8:18am PDT

“Then the season rolls around. You’re always about working on what works for you. For me, that’s mobility. I go to SculptHouse here in Atlanta, which is Pilates.”

A post shared by Kent Bazemore (@24baze) on Jun 25, 2017 at 9:42pm PDT

TIP #5: AIM TO RECOVER AND SLEEP LIKE AN NBA PLAYER, TOO (TOYS CAN HELP)

“I love sleep. It’s very vital for me. When I get tired, I get grumpy. And I hate getting grumpy.”

A post shared by Kent Bazemore (@24baze) on Oct 17, 2017 at 2:58pm PDT

TIP #6: HAVE SOME FUN

GEAR UP FOR YOUR NEXT PICK-UP GAME

> Men’s Basketball Gear > Women’s Basketball Gear > Boys’ Basketball Gear > Girls’ Basketball Gear > All Basketball Shoes

The post Train Like an NBA Player — With Tips from the Atlanta Hawks’ Kent Bazemore appeared first on Under Armour.

http://ift.tt/2hi0RvE

#Train Like an NBA Player — With Tips from the Atlanta Hawks’ Kent Bazemore

0 notes

almajonesnjna · 7 years ago

Text

Train Like an NBA Player — With Tips from the Atlanta Hawks’ Kent Bazemore

A post shared by Kent Bazemore (@24baze) on Sep 26, 2016 at 6:38am PDT

TIP #1: REMEMBER YOU’RE NOT AN NBA PLAYER

READ MORE > ATTENTION RUNNERS: YOU HAVE THE RIGHT TO RECOVER

A post shared by Kent Bazemore (@24baze) on Jul 23, 2015 at 6:57pm PDT

TIP #2: SET YOUR GOALS AND PLAN ACCORDINGLY

A post shared by Kent Bazemore (@24baze) on Jun 22, 2017 at 6:05pm PDT

TIP #3: START WITH AN ASSESSMENT, AND THEN CHECK IN

More traction, more comfort, more control. Introducing the new Curry 4, designed for the ultimate gamebreaker.

TIP #4: DO THESE WORKOUTS

A post shared by Kent Bazemore (@24baze) on Jul 14, 2017 at 8:18am PDT

“Then the season rolls around. You’re always about working on what works for you. For me, that’s mobility. I go to SculptHouse here in Atlanta, which is Pilates.”

A post shared by Kent Bazemore (@24baze) on Jun 25, 2017 at 9:42pm PDT

TIP #5: AIM TO RECOVER AND SLEEP LIKE AN NBA PLAYER, TOO (TOYS CAN HELP)

“I love sleep. It’s very vital for me. When I get tired, I get grumpy. And I hate getting grumpy.”

A post shared by Kent Bazemore (@24baze) on Oct 17, 2017 at 2:58pm PDT

TIP #6: HAVE SOME FUN

GEAR UP FOR YOUR NEXT PICK-UP GAME

> Men’s Basketball Gear > Women’s Basketball Gear > Boys’ Basketball Gear > Girls’ Basketball Gear > All Basketball Shoes

The post Train Like an NBA Player — With Tips from the Atlanta Hawks’ Kent Bazemore appeared first on Under Armour.

http://ift.tt/2hi0RvE

#Train Like an NBA Player — With Tips from the Atlanta Hawks’ Kent Bazemore

0 notes