#I’ve been walking around with like 0 iron stores

[bekkathyst]

In other news, I’m still working on setting up the jewelry space in my work space and I’m really excited to start working on jewelry again 💜 there is sooo much that’s been swimming around in my head for months that I want to make into reality but man everything else is so time consuming

[shinydelirium]

MLQC Season 2 Chapter 21 (Kiro) Part 1 [Gold Card] & [Subtle Changes] Translation [CN]

***SPOILERS*** THIS POST CONTAINS HEAVY SPOILERS FOR CONTENT NOT YET RELEASED ON EN SERVER!!! READ AT YOUR OWN RISK!!!***

Chapter 21 is relatively short so there won’t be as many parts as I will be combining multiple sections. 

Without further ado, enjoy reading!

[Gold Card]

I sat up on the bed in a daze and stared at the cardboard boxes piled up on the ground.

The sunlight fell on them, making the dust in the air visible.

Two days have passed since I moved here. Apart from tidying up the bed and taking out some basic necessities, the rest of the belongings are still in the same state as I left them after I moved.

I couldn’t help taking a deep breath, trying to get that indifferent face out of my mind.

MC: MC, get yourself together. You still have a lot to do.

Endless fatigue wrapped me in its silent vortex. I struggled hard to prevent myself from being swallowed by those negative black mists.

I splashed cold water on my cheeks, turning my head constantly, thinking about the message Zehn left me during my absence.

Zehn: “Boss, you asked me to investigate the Evolver who was taken away from the Wish Club, but I haven’t found anything for the time being.”

Zehn: “However, I found a place called Wish Hotel.”

Zehn: “It also has financial support from the charity foundation. I don’t know if there will be any connections.”

I wiped my face clean with a towel and walked out of the bathroom. I took out the card I received at the Wish Club from my backpack and later returned by Lucien—

“Wish Hotel”—dedicated to only serving Evolvers.

There is probably no such coincidence in the world.

My eyes wandered to the phone number at the bottom right, and after giving it some thought, I grabbed my bag and walked out the door.

The feeling of autumn is getting stronger and the cool wind blows over me making me tighten the hem of my clothes.

These few days I’ve been constantly thinking.

The world seems to be swept by a torrent. Anything at this moment has the possibility of being magnified. It may be the fuse that makes the world move into a different future.

And I’m so small and insignificant in comparison.

What I see and what I believe seems to be particularly vague as the world moves forward.

But I always believed that this new journey and the memories I carry has a purpose.

“Remember to get back what you lost.”

That strange and distant voice still echoes in my ears from time to time.

If CORE is the key to this world, then I must find it.

In this search and competition about CORE, I must learn more.

I walked into an unmanned telephone booth, inserted some coins, and dialed the number on the card.

Electronic voice: Hello, thank you for calling Wish Hotel.

MC: ….Hello, I want to check in.

Electronic voice: Thanks for calling, bye.

Hearing the beep from the receiver, I was stunned.

I dialed again and the result is still the same.

MC: It said “thank you for calling Wish Hotel” so it should be correct…

I looked front and back of the small card in my hand, searching for important information points that I had overlooked.

Except for the name, number, and the slogan “Only for Evolvers”, there is no other information on the card.

MC: Is there a hidden secret code that needs a kind of UV light to see it?

I held up the card against the light but still unable to see anything. I couldn’t help but frown at the slogan.

MC: Maybe it needs special keywords?

Thinking about this, I tentatively dialed the number again.

Electronic voice: Hello, thank you for calling Wish Hotel.

MC: I’m an Evolver and I want to check in!

After the dead silence, I heard a “beep” along with faint white noise—

Electronic voice: Wish Hotel will serve you wholeheartedly.

Success!

Electronic voice: Dear guest, hello.

Electronic voice: Please press 1 for “Wish Hotel”, press 2 for related services, press 3 for check-in, or press 0 for manual service.

***If you choose 1***

Electronic voice: Wish Hotel is a high-end hotel dedicated to Evolvers.

Electronic voice: Here, you can not only enjoy our service in peace, but also store Evol for free.

Electronic voice: Whether you want to try an unprecedented experience or relive the life of ordinary people, we will do our best to serve you.

***If you choose 2***

Electronic voice: Free storage of Evol is the most distinctive service of Wish Hotel.

Electronic voice: This service has no side effects. It is safe, fast, and effective.

Electronic voice: There is no limit for storage time.

Electronic voice: You are always welcome to experience it.

***If you choose 3***

Electronic voice: Please provide your name and contact address after the “di” sound and we will arrange a special car for pick-up.

Taking into account the necessary identification for the hotel to stay-in and on the premise that a perfect fake identity cannot be forged in a short time, I reported my name in order to avoid drawing suspicion.

Then I looked at the street sign at the road junction and said the name of the street.

Electronic voice: The information has been entered.

Electronic voice: Dear [MC], we will send a special car to arrive at [Fortune. Fu-Lu-2-2-2] in 30 minutes. We will contact you by phone at that time.

Electronic voice: Thank you for your call. Wish Hotel will serve you wholeheartedly.

Thirty minutes later, a black luxury car smoothly drove up in my peripheral vision.

The back seat door stopped precisely in front of me and slowly opened. At the same time, I heard a faint “dripping” sound.

??: Greetings, Miss MC.

I followed the sound. The driver’s seat was completely blocked off and the driver’s appearance was not visible.

I took a deep breath, got into the car, and found an inconspicuous instrument hidden in the corner facing the car door.

It looks exactly like a camera and seemed very familiar—

It’s almost exactly the same as the Evol detector I got from the black fan who exposed Kiro’s Evolver identity and framed him for hurting others.

My heart tightened and I looked carefully towards the driver’s seat.

It’s not surprising that there are detectors here. After all, they claim to be only for Evolvers.

But what does this extremely similar device doing here mean?

The car was very quiet and I looked out through the car window.

Perhaps this Wish Hotel can bring me more information than I imagined.

I don’t know how long it took. The car drove into a garden-like iron gate.

Along the flowery path, through the secret and prosperous bushes, a small and exquisite dark wood building gradually appeared in front of me.

After the car came to a slow stop, I walked towards the gate.

The wind chime on the door rang and someone happened to walk out carrying a suitcase and passed right by me.

The person didn’t seem like anyone special and I was shocked by the scene in front of me as I stepped through the door—

The hotel is much bigger than it looks on the surface and the ceiling is indiscernible. I could estimate it to be at least twenty or thirty stories high.

MC: Did this building look that high from the outside…?

As I mumbled, I looked around. Guests in twos and threes were sitting in the lobby just like in an ordinary hotel lobby.

The waiter on the side came over and greeted me.

Waiter: Hello, please come with me to check-in.

The check-in procedure is simpler than expected. After filling in the basic information, I got my room key.

Waiter: The fifth floor is the restaurant, the 16th floor is the fitness area, and the 18th floor is the beverage bar.

Waiter: The top floor of the 23rd floor is the office area which is not open to the public. There are no restrictions for the rest of the public areas so you can go freely according to your needs.

After nodding and thanking him, I walked into the elevator and looked at the 23rd floor in deep thought.

Acting now would be a bit conspicuous so I’ll wait till nightfall.

The room is no different from any other hotel room. I walked around in the public area again. Apart from confirming that it’s a very luxurious hotel, I didn’t gain anything new.

MC: Is this really an ordinary hotel…?

In doubt, the sky finally ushered in the night.

Taking advantage of the shift time, I walked from the fire exit to the 23rd floor and gently opened the door.

The corridor was dim and there was no sign of movement.

I lowered my body and as I was about to step forward, a fierce force grabbed my waist.

Almost instinctively, I took out the anesthesia gun and lifted my leg backwards to kick—

Only that person is more powerful and faster than me.

His hand went around my neck and bound my wrists tightly. His right leg lifted slightly. He quickly and dexterously pinned my legs. His warm breath brushed over my ears.

??: Stop messing around.

[Subtle Changes]

The voice is very soft and close to my ear like the faint moonlight in the night.

My movements are frozen in place. I felt the temperature near my back slowly seeping through the placket of my clothes.

Only quiet breathing remained in the air.

Meanwhile, two or three waiters walked into the room at the end of the corridor.

??: There is nothing you want here.

??: Follow me.

With that said, the hand that was holding me slowly loosened, but in the next second, he took my hand and walked towards the door of a warehouse.

Although I was puzzled, I still followed behind that dark figure without question.

He seemed to be familiar with the place as if he had been here for a long time.

We entered the equipment room from the back door of the warehouse and from the side door of the equipment room to the garbage sorting office in the corridor, he pressed the freight elevator button on the side.

The waiting time is long and quiet. I lowered my head subtly and secretly looked at our held palms.

We haven’t seen each other since we separated on the bridge last time.

Except for the “I’m safe, don’t worry” message from a strange phone number, I didn’t receive any news about him.

I faintly felt that it was probably from Helios, but I still couldn’t dial his number.

So I had to wipe away the worries in my heart, silently thinking about our agreement.

He promised me that he would come back safely so he would definitely be able to do it.

Only when I saw him again, my heart still surged uncontrollably.

He didn’t seem to be injured.

Following the position of my hand, my gaze secretly moved upwards until I met a gaze that seemed to have been waiting for me there.

In the dim light, Helios’ eyes were bright.

I didn’t know what to say for a while. Too many words stuck in my throat making me subconsciously want to rub my fingertips but I squeezed his hand tightly.

Helios pursed the corners of his lips. His eyes dimmed.

The elevator door opened slowly and we walked out in silence, pushed open an iron gate and came to an open-air staircase.

Helios: It’s okay to talk now.

The soft dusk startled me and I blinked my eyes vigorously, thinking it was an illusion.

I heard a chuckle coming from the side, and Helios raised his mouth slightly, leaning his back against the railing, looking at me gently.

In this impermanent landscape, the soft and warm yellow sunlight washed over his body. The light breeze blew his hair, exposing the small instruments in his ears.

His distinct silver hair seemed to be immersed in the clouds behind him, glowing with golden light and making feel like I was in a trance.

Not so soft, but not so far away.

Helios: Don’t keep looking at me like at.

In the gaze that I kept staring at, Helios seemed to be uncomfortable, pressing the corners of his mouth hard and turning his head to the side.

MC: I, I just wanted to make sure whether your injury has fully recovered.

I pursed my lips and tried not to let my myself be too happy.

This person who has always kept himself in his shell now seems to be slowly exploring his own way to show his true self to me.

Somewhat rough and very clumsy.

Helios: I have not forgotten the agreement with you.

MC: …I know.

He turned his head back to me when I said that.

MC: “I’m safe, don’t worry.” You sent this text message, right?

MC: But I think if you were actually safe, you would appear in front of me.

He lowered his eyes, seeming to be tacitly acquiescing.

Quietly, I took a step towards Helios.

MC: Aren’t you going to call me Narcissus this time?

Helios was stunned. Seeing me tilt my head with a smile at him, he seemed to pause for a moment. The burning red color of the clouds behind him sneaked onto the tips of his ears.

Helios: Are you vengeful?

MC: A little bit.

Helios: Then save it for later.

He stretched out his index finger and lightly tapped my forehead and turned the conversation back to the topic at hand.

Helios: Before explaining why you’re here.

Helios: Do you have anything to ask?

MC: ….Are your ears okay?

I watched him as I asked this question that was constantly occupying my heart, causing his pupils to shrink unconsciously.

Helios: I don’t know how to answer your question.

His hand touched the instrument in his ear. Fragmented light fell on us wildly with the wind.

Helios: But…I can hear your voice.

Helios: As for the rest, don’t ask.

MC: Okay.

Even though he was reluctant, he did not evade this question either.

Faced with such an answer, I feel happy from the bottom of my heart.

MC: So what happened after you went to the lighthouse with Joker last time? Why are you here?

MC: What’s going on with this hotel? It’s obviously nighttime so why did it become dusk again?

Helios: ….

I fired off my questions at him one after the other. Helios frowned and finally sighed.

Helios: Nothing happened.

Helios: Joker trapped me here.

Helios: This hotel only looks normal.

Helios: It’s dusk here because there is a problem.

Helios responded to my question word for word but it drew even more questions from me.

MC: Ho-hold a minute. Let’s take it one at a time.

MC: You said you were trapped here by Joker. Does that mean you can’t leave?

Helios: There are ways, but I don’t want to cause any trouble for the time being.

Helios: There are also things I want to investigate here.

MC: But how can this hotel have anything to do with Joker?

Hearing my question, Helios frowned slightly.

Helios: What do you mean?

MC: I thought this hotel was only related to the Wish Club.

I briefly explained the existence of the Wish Club and those who were taken away from there.

MC: Both of these places seem to have received investment from the Fulcrum Charity Foundation. I met the founder of this foundation some time ago.

MC: He seems to have benefited from an organization called GRAY RHINO and he’s doing things for them.

MC: But is it also related to Joker?

Helios: Who is this founder?

MC: He’s an ordinary man in his forties using a wheelchair and his name is Du Wen.

Helios’ eyes lowered as if he had figured it out and raised a slightly prickly smile.

Helios: A foundation that only serves ordinary people but why invest in a place that serves Evolvers?

MC: ….Right!

Hearing what he said, I came to a subtle conclusion of what I have been feeling.

Helios: Remember, be careful of that Du Wen.

Helios: As for your question about this hotel….

While talking, he took my hand again.

Helios: Explaining is too troublesome. I’ll show you directly.

[End of Part 1]

-Continue to Part 2-

[timextoxhajima]

Grounded: Level 0

Level 1

Member: Minho (Lee Know)

Genre: idol minho x idol trainee reader, angst cause is it a dana fic if there is no angst

Taglist: @valeriee-h​

A/N: Thank you for 400 followers. You all have been nothing but exceptional. 

[F E B R U A R Y 2 0 1 6]

The metallic taste seeping into your mouth was starting to annoy you, and on top of that, the tears that were running down your cheeks and between your lips were stinging the wounds you managed to inflict on yourself with your teeth.

You can hear the laughter and the sound of the bass against the flooring from where you were, though you were a good distance away from the practicing hall. The room smelled like dust and must due to the hose reel box being unused for such a long time, you wouldn't know. Your hands were probably messed up from all the accidental touching of the walls and the floor -- and great, now you've gone ahead and wiped away your tears with your hands.

Your teeth are gritted so hard against each other that you can feel your temples tightening, and all you want to do was to pack up and go home and call it quits--

"I know you're in there."

Silence. Then a shadow comes to block the bars of light coming through the slits of the door.

Choosing to keep quiet, you don't know why you thought he'd go away. He was the vice-captain of the dance crew and he obviously wasn't going to let you go without getting you out of the hose reel storeroom.

"I'm not going to force you out. But I need to know just one thing."

A pause.

"Do you still like dancing?"

Out of shame, you look down to your knees, now curled up into your chest. The tears continue to fall because you both know your answer. It’s just the physical pain and lack of resistance that’s keeping you from going further.

You can hear him sigh when he leans against the door, the wood creaking just the slightest with his weight against it. It was almost completely dark, now that he’s covered most of the slits in the door. The sweat trailing down the sides of your forehead and down your cheek gets mistaken for tears, urging you to wipe them away with the back of your hand. 

“I know you’re tired, but if you stop here, then there’s no way you can improve.”

You gulp, your throat feeling dry from the continuous days of air-conditioned practice hall and then the crying did nothing but further aggravate it. 

“...What makes you think I can still improve? What if this is the furthest I can go?”

“I thought like that once,” A small thud. He probably leaned his head backwards. “But I signed up for this because I like it. And frankly, I don’t know what else I’d do if I don’t do this for myself. So, now my question is: who are you doing this for, and if you’re willing to continue doing it for yourself?”

Your head is empty. There’s nothing but the want to start moving again, it’s the reflection in the mirror you’re afraid to see. 

The music from the practise hall starts again. By now, the song is more than annoying, but the adrenaline always manages to push you through anyway. The door creaks and more light floods in when he shifts away. 

“Come talk to me if you need to after practise. But for now, just come back and finish for today, okay? I’ll see you inside.”

He stays still for a few moments, before the sound of his shoes shuffle away from the storage room. Leaning your head back against the wall, you let the humidity coat your face like a layer of warmth. 

Why’d he have to give me that stupid pep-talk?

Shutting your eyes tightly, you recall the amount of effort you took to audition for this. A stage where BTS would perform on, and they were looking for a small group of girls in the back-up dancers’ team. The chances were ten to... hundreds. 

You shuffle to your feet, eyelids heavy from the physical activity but heart still full of hope. Your fingers wrap around the cold handle of the door and push it open, greeting the bright lights that illuminate the corridor down to the practice hall.

“Where is-- Oh! There you are!” The choreographer nearly yells into the mic when you rush through the door, some of your other dance crew mates jokingly yells at you for taking your own sweet time. 

“Sorry, bathroom.”

“Okay, okay. GIve us a head up if you’re going to do a number 2 next time, would you?”

Some of the dancers chuckle at the choreographer’s teasing, nudging you or ruffling your hair before they return to their positions. And as you do, you cannot help but to lock eyes with the vice-captain in the front row. He had the tiniest smile you’ve ever seen, the kind that if you didn’t stare hard enough... or if you didn’t pay enough attention... you’d miss it. 

A small nods finds you, eyes of encouragement welling up in his brown orbs under the lighting, and then the choreographer asks for the music. It thrums through you like an Earthquake, but instead of conjuring magma and ash and gas, it sucks the passion out of you and motivates you to move your feet again. 

The practise session ends fast, only because you realised you had been enjoying it. So when the choreographer thanks the dance crew and jumps off to speak to the captain, you take your time to grab a drink for yourself and let some other crew members chat you up. 

That is, until you noticed the vice-captain strutting out of the practise hall quietly. Excusing yourself, you grab your belongings and rush out behind him, just missing the lift that he was in. 

He’s about twenty metres ahead when you run out of the stairs lobby, the cool end-of-winter wind kissing your sweaty skin.

“Minho!” 

The boy stops in his tracks, taking awhile to look up from his phone as he slowly turns his head around. He watches with intent eyes as you catch up to him, gently huffing from the hurrying after he quietly left the practice hall.

“It’s a good thing you didn’t disappoint me,” Minho looks back down at his phone before locking it. “I was beginning to worry you wouldn’t come back.” 

Once you’ve aligned your footing with him, he shoves his phone into his pocket and waits for you to calm your breathing. The sky was dark now, but the streets were still bustling from all the night market activities - fried seafood, crackers, cotton candy. 

Minho turns his head back to the streets where waves of people were walking past, taking a first step to tell you he’s going to start walking. 

“I just wanted to thank you for that little pep-talk.”

“Pep-talk?” Minho chuckles under his breath. “Oh, you don’t know what a pep-talk sounds like.”

The crowd washes the both of you in some direction, the scent of food wafting in the air coupled with the overlapping conversations and loud music from some stands made you feel like you’ve just entered some amusement park. Smoke was prancing in the air against the night sky and people chewing loudly on food brought you some strange sense of nostalgia -- though you’ve walked this exact road for some months now. It just so happened that the night market only came round every Lunar New Year. 

“I just... I hope you know how much that means to me. It’s the first time I’ve done something of this scale so... it seems easier for me to lose faith.”

Minho stops at a particular store selling some honey-glazed apples and orders two. It’s like he didn’t hear you. 

Standing awkwardly next to him, the store owner carelessly hands Minho the two sticks with the stabbed apple on the top, and he doesn’t hesitate to hand her a five dollar bill. Just enough.

“Thank you,” He turns around, the store owner barely acknowledging his business. “People lose faith all the time. You just need to know when to force yourself to have it again.” 

Handing you one stick, Minho doesn’t wait for you to process the offer and his words simultaneously before he’s off again. By the time you’ve walked the length of the night market and reach the main streets of the city, Minho has cleared every drop of honey and apple on the stick, and you were just busy finishing up the last one-eighth of it, the bite nearly touching your fingers. 

At the bus stop, Minho drops himself on the bench, scrolling through his phone as you are occupied with licking the honey off your fingers while you find the nearest trashcan. Ironically, out here along the main road, there were fewer people. More traffic on the road, definitely. But it’s like everybody was so busy living their lives, you’ve forgotten to live yours. 

You’ve spent more than half your time in the last three months coming to this same practise hall, dancing the same steps over and over and over again until every cell in your blood and body knows it by heart. 

But what worth is it? For a performance that you wouldn’t even be seen?

You sigh, eyes darting downwards naturally to see what he’s been staring at on his phone-- then you see it. 

NEW EMAIL: CUBE AUDITION RESULTS

Your eyes widen, lips somehow still stuck together despite the overwhelming excitement in your lungs. Sucking your lips in between your teeth, you watch in anticipation as he clicks the notification and it directs him to his email. Poor boy doesn’t know you’re watching, but it’s a good thing, because the first two sentences were enough to tell you what his reaction could be. 

Dear Lee Minho, we’ve received your audition tape and reviewed it carefully. Unfortunately, we are unable to accept you as a trainee. We wish you the best in all your future endeavors. 

Regards,

Cube Audition Management

Biting down on your bottom lip, your eyes quickly flit away when he closes the app and keeps his phone. Standing next to him, it’s a wonder how he’s managed to hold himself together. If it had been you who was rejected, you’d be on the floor bawling by now. But Minho’s strength is subtly concrete when he only watches his bus arrive, standing up and only turning around to ask, “Are you taking the same bus?”

“Um, yeah but my dad’s coming to get me, so I’m waiting here.”

Minho nods, the bus stopping right at the foot of the bus stop. Other passengers waiting for the bus start to crowd, but Minho doesn’t bust an inch just yet. 

“I’ll see you tomorrow then?”

You hum in response. They’ve started boarding, so Minho’s taking small steps towards the vehicle. 

“If you don’t come, believe me when I say I’ll whoop your ass.”

You can’t help the small scoff that bursts through your lips when he says it, that tiny smile of his emerging shyly on his face for a split second. Reducing the amount of time you get to admire that strength in him, he turns and gets on the bus. 

[D E C E M B E R 2 0 1 6]

At this point, half the dance crew was probably crying their hearts out back stage. BTS’ Fire and Not Today performance at the KBS Song Festival was the last official time you would be performing as one unit with this dance crew. Any Fire or Not Today performances in the future would call for a renewed or changed dance crew line-up, which meant you’ll never see the same group of people on stage again. 

Heck, even your captain was sobbing his eyes out, mercilessly pulling everybody he could find into a hug and muttering some incoherent words of gratitude in their ears. You were laughing and wiping away the droplets on your face, unsure if they were tears or sweat, when he came to you and pulled you into a bear hug. 

Everybody hears the heavy backstage door close and BTS shows up just steps from you, and the group of idols know very well that this was the last performance with the current line-up of crew members. 

“Dul, set, Bang! Tan!” More people are crying now, and Namjoon just looks prouder than he was sad. “Annyeong haseyo, Bangtansonyeondan ibnida.”

The captain literally starts wining, not hesitating to go up and hug Hoseok tightly. The members embrace him in the hug, offering him words of praise and compliment as Namjoon urges them to keep their volume down. The leader thanks the crew for the enduring hardwork for the past year - from when the track was first released, to the first choreography reviewing and then the constant performances on all kinds of stages. 

Blinking away your tears, you manage to catch Minho standing at the far end of the first row, and if you weren’t mistaken, you could catch Jimin showing him two thumbs up. 

“I hope to see all of you around, and once again, BTS thanks you for your hardwork for the last year. Take care everybody!” 

Everybody erupts into loud yells of ‘thanks’ and ‘bye’s, but before you can the other crew members in shaking their hands as they return to their dressing room, one of BTS’ assistant managers approach you.

“Hi, can I check if you’re y/n?”

“Uh--” Minho catches your frantic glancing behind the assistant manager. “Yes.”

“Great, so...” The assistant manager fumbles in his back pocket, your eyes darting down to notice him pulling out a name card. Your peripheral vision presents you with Minho looking at you from behind the assistant manager, eyes and ears peeled. “We’ve been monitoring the dance unit and... we think you might have potential.”

He hands you the name card, and your hands are trembling when you process the carbon printing on it.

BIGHIT CASTING

Anxious, you look back up at the assistant manager. Yet, he offers you a mere smile before walking away, leaving you and Minho behind as the rest of the crew pushes themselves nearer to the back of the staff area. 

The restaurant had been booked for the sole purpose of the dance unit celebrating your final performance there, and while the card was being bent in all sorts of different ways in your back pocket, all you cared about was being in a moment.

BigHit casting? Why would you even subject yourself to that kind of torment? A solid 7 to 8 years of no privacy, probably no dating, and if you were caught outside with someone of the opposite gender, you’d be royally screwed over.

“You’re going to get drunk.”

“No, I’m not.”

“You’re not even legal to drink, and it sucks, honestly.”

“Pfft,” Rolling your eyes, you collect the shot of Soju from one of the older crew members. “I’ll take like five shots. I’ll be fine.”

Minho glares at his captain, thoughtlessly pushing the shot across the smooth surface of the table to you. 

“You know she’s like, 16 right?”

“I know, but it wouldn’t hurt to let her try some. Besides, we all did a great job this past year. I think we all deserve a little break.”

Minho huffs, the air pushing his fringe upwards for a split second. He watches you down the shot, the burning alcohol forcing a look of slight disgust on your face. 

“Told you you wouldn’t like it.”

“Ugh,” Sticking your tongue out, you reach for your glass of water and take a huge gulp. “I’ll get used to it.”

Nah.

“My God, why are you so heavy?” Minho grunts, struggling to keep your arm over his shoulders. He looks behind him, busking in some slight satisfaction when he had managed to get the captain completely wasted by playing some stupid game with him, the kind that he would never win. The other vice-captain and another crew member were channeling all that effort into keeping the big-sized boy on his feet. You remember hearing Minho’s hearty (or evil) laughter when the captain plops to the floor, completely blacking out. 

“Okay, he’s your responsibility now!” He yells at the top of his lungs, dragging you towards the nearest bus stop in his knowledge.

“Go fuck yourself, Minho! Have some mercy next time, would you?!” HIs co-vice captain shouts back.

“I’ll think about it!” Minho laughs, trying really hard not to drop you as he waves back. 

“Bye, see you soon!”

Minho returns his attention to you, half your body already leaning a good ninety degrees towards the floor. 

“Free bows for the floor, huh?” He grunts as he gives up on holding just one of your arms. Afraid that he was going to dislocate something, he pulls you onto his back. Your head is pressed into his shoulder when he turns round the corner, eyes looking up to gauge the distance to the bus stop. “Oi.”

“Hmm?” Your head of messy hair perks up from his shoulder, your eyelids feeling too heavy to keep open. 

“Are you going for it? The audition I mean.”

You groan, throwing your head back into his shoulder. Tightening your arms around his collar, you grit your teeth and swallow the burning sensation of alcohol in your throat. 

“I don’t think I want to think about that now. I have school to worry about.”

“You’ll just be put into SOPA.”

“What about university?”

“That’s like 3 years away for you. And studying can wait if you’re chasing your dream,” A pause as he sets you down at the bus stop, grabbing your bag and searching for your wallet to take out your bus card. “Of course, only if you want it.”

Your head hangs low, the Soju zipping through your blood like hamsters do in their tunnels. Minho turns, spotting the bus nearing.

“Do me a favour and swallow your vomit if you need to, don’t make a mess in the bus.”

[O C T O B E R 2 0 1 7]

Do you know the feeling of your lungs collapsing in on themselves when you can’t breathe? When your heart is palpitating so fast, it feels like it’s stopped? 

“I don’t know why you guys are treating it like it’s a huge thing-- I might not even make it.”

“Shut the fuck up, would you? You signed up for it, shouldn’t you put your 100% and go as far as you can?”

The words can’t find their way out of your mouth. Minho was sitting in his sofa, petting Soon-ie, with a huge duffel bag at his feet. You were sitting in Minho’s living room, with Doongie curled up in your lap and the dance captain from BTS’ Fire and Not Today performance dance unit about to swing a fist in Minho’s face. 

An awkward silence fell upon the three of you, knowing that this could be the start of a friendship with a changed dynamic. You were one foot into BigHit because you’ve passed the first audition, Minho was going on JYP’s Stray Kids survival show and your dance-captain was being scouted into Yuehua’s waters.

The morning sun gushes down onto your faces when Minho’s father rushes to get the car ready, leaving the three of you at the entrance of the carpark. Your dance captain had an audition appointment with Yuehua soon, so he pulls Minho into a tight hug and provides him a harsh pat on the back.

“Make us proud.”

Minho doesn’t respond, only nodding subtly before sending him off. 

But you? You are reluctant to even look at him. If he wins that show, he’d be gone for more days and months than you can count. No longer would he spend his Christmases and New Years with you, but with his group members. His cats wouldn’t be meowing for his attention, because he’s not at home anymore.

What’s worse, if you get through BigHit’s third audition, you’ll be thrown into a girl group. 

And Godforsake a girl group member being seen with a boy group member, right?

“You could be a little more enthusiastic, y’know.”

“How can I be enthusiastic when I’m watching you strut your ass off into unchartered territory?”

Minho smiles, his bunny teeth unafraid to expose themselves. You can see his father’s car coming out, the ache in your heart getting harder and harder to ignore. 

“I’ll come back to find you, or maybe BigHit, I don’t know,” Minho gently pulls you into a hug, careful to keep his hands on your upper back and shoulders. “But I will always come back to you.”

[saiilorstars]

Cards on the Table (One-shot)

Fandom: Nancy Drew

Pairing: Ace x OFC

Summary: Ace has more than one enemy at the library but at least this enemy is more willing to help him and his friends solve a couple mysteries. The only issue he can't resolve is why he keeps coming back to the library when he doesn't have to. Agatha Rhodes isn't nice at all. Then again, she would say the same thing about him.

Taglist: @ocfairygodmother​​ @anotherunreadblog​​​ @maaaaarveeeeel​​​ @stareyedplanet​​ @perfectlystiles​​ 

[If you’d like to be part of this OC’s taglist, let me know!]

[Masterlist to other OCs]

Now that he looked back at it, the first time they met he could've been a little less competitive. If he had, maybe they wouldn't have started off on a bad note. Maybe his other enemy wouldn't have had such an easy time making an ally out of her.

But it was too late.

Agatha Rhodes was the bane of his existence.

Maybe she wasn't that bad but he sure as hell wasn't going to let her get away with her jabs. Ironically, that's what she said about him. Their communication wasn't the best.

At the very least, now that they were adults, they didn't have to see each other very often. She avoided the Claw and he avoided the library. Unspoken rules they set up and followed through.

Until homicide mysteries arose and Nancy Drew required assistance from both sides.

"Your arch enemy is the library's children's reader?" Nancy couldn't believe her ears when she heard the story.

With a straight face, Ace nodded. "Don't be fooled," he said as they both watched a brunette woman reading to a small group of children, "Underneath that smile, she's dangerous."

The only reason Nancy wouldn't snort on the spot was because of the reading session. They waited patiently for the session to end but even before it did, the brunette woman had already seen them. There was a glint in her eyes that didn't go unnoticed by Nancy. When she looked over at Ace, she found the same glint in his eyes too.

As soon as the reading session was done, they pulled the woman to the side to make their very much needed request.

"Well, well, well, so you need my help now?"

"I don't specifically need your help, Agatha," Ace corrected, "We need someone in general."

That didn't lessen her smirk. Agatha led them to the checking out desk and moved behind it to take a seat. "Well, you're here asking for help sooo...it sounds like you need little ole me." Her eyes flickered to Nancy beside him. "To be clear, the reason he doesn't like me is because I beat him at a competition a couple years back. I'm actually a very helpful person."

It took Nancy several seconds to realize that the odd noise she'd heard had been Ace snorting. She'd never heard him do that.

Agatha, however, deadpanned him for it. "You're annoying," she spat.

"And you're cocky," he returned within the second.

"And I still need help," Nancy awkwardly said as she rocked back and forth on her feet.

Agatha cleared her throat to reel herself back. "Sorry," she flashed Nancy an honest smile. "Whatever you need from me, I'm here to help."

"Thanks," Nancy said, briefly glancing at Ace to see if he was okay. He was engaging Agatha in a silent glare-off. Agatha could multi-task so she pulled up the security feed that they'd requested all while upholding her own glare for Ace.

"You're lucky we store all of our security footage for a year..." she remarked as she turned the computer around for them to see.

"Actually, my Mom implemented that policy on my suggestion," Ace was quick to remind, flashing her a small smug smile.

Agatha raised an eyebrow at him. "Does she know why?" She made a brief nod to Nancy.

Nancy, of course, didn't know but she suspected it was not for a glorious reason judging by Ace's face.

"First season of Serial really shook me..." He eventually confessed.

Agatha chuckled. "So Mama listened to her boy, of course."

Nancy pursed her lips together to prevent a laugh from getting out. Agatha spoke so smoothly with the right touch of sarcasm. She was like a George but more upbeat.

"Anyways, because of Ace's connections here, you guys can look through the footage on your own." Agatha pushed her long brown hair behind her shoulders and put on her best, sweet smile (for Nancy). "If you need anymore help, let me know."

"Thank you," Nancy said, feeling like Agatha was being honest.

Agatha's eyes flickered to Ace again, "And if you need anymore help..." Her sweet smile widened impossibly, "Don't."

"Yeah, don't worry," Ace called after her then soon heard Nancy snickering beside him. "It's not funny—she's not funny."

"This whole thing is funny," she corrected. "How did this happen again?"

Ace crossed his arms tightly. "It's complicated," he muttered. He would much rather focus on their homicide mystery than keep talking about Agatha.

~ 0 ~

The next time they crossed paths seemed just too close to their last encounter. Again, looking back at it, Ace supposed that he could've just gone the other way and that would be that. Agatha carried a big box in her arms, heavy by the sound of her grunts, and was struggling to reach the library's front doors. He could've gone the other way, the back door for all he cared, but then...it was also a priceless opportunity to mess with her a bit.

"Need some help there?" He asked after a book spilled from the box, landing with its spine up.

Agatha groaned. "Not from you."

"You'd let everything in that box drop rather than let me help you?"

"Noo, I'd rather let everything in this box drop just so you won't touch anything."

Alright, he may have set himself up for that answer but dammit it was a good answer that he would've used too if roles were reversed. "Agatha, let me take the box."

"How about you just disappear so this can get easier?"

"If you really think that'll help with the weight of the box, I will be deeply concerned with your intelligence."

Agatha shot him a wry smile. "Why Ace, I didn't know you could ever be concerned about me."

He rolled his eyes at her. "Alright, give me the box!"

"No!" In her attempt to turn away, a couple things actually fell from the box. She groaned. "Now look what you did!"

"Me? I wasn't the one holding the box." Ace shot her a smirk.

"I really hate you." Agatha shoved the box to his chest, ignoring his grunt from the sudden weight. "What the hell are you doing here anyways?" She picked up the two books and, if Ace was seeing correctly, a pack of playing cards.

"I'm here to see my mother, what else? You think I came for you?"

Agatha snorted. "If you had, I'd be crying because who would want to see you?" She dropped the books into the box and the deck of cards after a moment's hesitation.

"Now tell me what on Earth a library could gain from a deck of cards?" Ace had to ask. As annoying as Agatha was, he was well aware of her apt skills for organization when it came to the library.

"It accidentally fell in when I was putting things into the box," Agatha said.

"These are your things?" Ace sent the collection of books a disdainful look. "The poor souls of Horseshoe Bay don't know what they're about to check out." Agatha could've turned red if she didn't know the rile it would cause him. He looked up with a big, and proud, grin as he waited for Agatha to respond.

"I will never understand how the hell your amazingly kind mother could produce you." She turned away and headed for the doors. She pulled them open for Ace to walk on in.

"You have had that kind of talk, right?" He smirked at her again. Agatha could almost let the door shut on his face. "Hey, could I keep that deck of cards?" He suddenly asked her.

"What!?"

"The deck of cards. I like playing."

"What? No! I said they're not supposed to be in there!"

"I bet you don't even know how to use them."

"I do know how!"

"Then how about a game—winner gets the deck?"

Agatha took in a deep breath because she most certainly didn't want to yell in front of the library. "You know what?" She reached inside the box to pull out the deck of cards. She opened them up and went skimming through them until she pulled out one card. "You can have this one!"

Ace almost laughed at her, almost. Laughing would mean he enjoyed the conversation and this wasn't it. "Funny," he instead remarked. She would, of course, hold the ace card. She was smirking proudly of herself as she put the rest of the cards back into its box. "It's definitely the first time I've seen that joke. But if you know anything about playing cards, you'll know that the ace is one of the honor cards. One of the highest."

"And also one of the lowest," Agatha reminded him. "It can have a value of one which is what you are to me on a scale of 1 to 10."

"Ever so sweet, Agatha." Ace deposited the box back into Agatha's arms, swiping the card from her hand before it would fall. As a courtesy, he took the deck of cards as well and dumped it into the box. "I'll take it." He tucked the card into his back pocket and held the door for her.

"What? You said you wanted to help—"

"I'm only a one," he shrugged innocently.

Agatha glared at him. "I really hate you," she declared and walked into the library with her heavy box.

~ 0 ~

"Oh god, not again," Agatha mumbled under her breath when she caught sight of who walked into the library. Maybe if she pretended to be focused on her journal God would take pity on her and make her invisible.

That idea went out the window when a bright red ace card was slipped over her journal. She sighed internally and put her pen down. She looked up to see Ace smiling much too innocently. At least he wasn't alone which meant that whatever he wanted—or whatever the pair of them wanted—wouldn't involve a lot of talking.

"It's your favorite number one," he decided to start the conversation that way, thinking it would either irritate or at least be funny.

Agatha slid the card back to him. "Anything you touch, I don't want," she said with a polite smile. Her eyes flickered to Nancy beside him. "Hey Drew, what do you need today?"

"It'll be quick," Nancy said, about to add more when Agatha cut her off.

"Is that a promise?" Agatha sent a brief glare in Ace's direction. "Cos your friend's kind of annoying."

"I just...I need the computer," Nancy came out with it.

"For the security feed again?"

"Not exactly, we need to see who checked out a certain book that it's, um, of special interest."

"I can't tell you that information," Agatha shook her head.

"We know genius," Ace said, ignoring her second glare, "Which is why you should go take a walk or something..."

Agatha tilted her head at him, glares and sourness gone to be replaced by seriousness. "Listen, I know we share a tetchy type of relationship but you're really crossing a line here asking me to put my job on the line. I need this job."

For her honesty, Ace would pay her back with the same coin. "I get it but this is really serious. You won't get into trouble if anything happens. I don't mess with people's jobs."

Agatha glanced at Nancy. The ginger seemed anxious as she waited to hear whether or not Agatha would help them. "I don't know..."

"We'll be quick," Nancy said. "And like Ace said, you won't get in trouble for anything. It's really important."

"Really?"

"It is," Ace promised. "C'mon Atty, do us a solid."

It was hard not get incensed with that name. "I told you not to call me that!" Agatha hissed. "My name is Agatha and you know it."

"I just thought it'd be a step up from the old lady name," Ace shrugged. Beside him, Nancy was glaring at him. This was not the way to get Agatha on their side. He knew that but he just couldn't help himself.

"It's a family name you moron!"

"Hey!" Nancy decided to take her chances and cut into what would no doubt turn out to be a spectacular bickering. "Agatha, will you help me please?" Agatha commended her for being smart and saying 'help me'. "Ten minutes top is what I'll take."

"You're lucky I like you, Nancy," Agatha said with a sigh. "But only ten minutes, okay?"

"Done!"

Agatha moved around the desk after double checking that no one was looking. She was only a few steps away when Ace called her back. "What?" she hissed as she returned.

"Nothing, just forgot this." He made a gesture to her notebook still on the desk. "Thought you could doodle or something, whatever you do on the job." As soon as he started looking at the pages, she swiped the notebook into her arms, but it was too late. "What's beat reporting?" He made a face.

"None of your business!" Agatha snapped. "It's a college course that you're not enrolled in and thank God or else I'd go insane!" She turned around on her heels and hurried off.

"Why do you enjoy pissing her off so much?" Nancy asked as soon as it was just her and Ace. She'd managed to work through the computer pretty easily, though it could've been because Agatha left the screen right where they would need it.

Ace shrugged for the answer. "I don't know. We fell into that pattern and who am I to break it?"

"It would make your lives easier. You already like each other, might as well make it official and just be friends."

"I don't like her in any sense."

"Oh please, you're not the type to hate anybody."

Ace huffed. He and Agatha started off on the wrong foot and it would continue to be like that until the end of time.

~ 0 ~

The intention was to thank Agatha for helping the group out with their investigation. Nancy told Ace it would be better if he went in person to say it along with a miniature gift basket crafted by Bess. It was the least they could do for putting Agatha in a tight situation. As much as Ace tried persuading Nancy to do it herself, he lost the battle and went sent to the library with a damn basket He didn't even know what the gift was but it needed to be handed over to Agatha no later than today.

So, he trudged on to the library to find Agatha. He came directly up to the desk where Dominique sat. He internally groaned. No matter the relationship he had with Agatha, he would always prefer dealing with her instead of Dominique.

"Hey Dominique," he greeted in a mutter.

The woman didn't even do the same reactions that Agatha did, nothing to work with. "What do you want, Ace?" she demanded.

"I'm looking for Agatha. Is she in the back?"

"She's not in today. She won't be in for a while."

Now that was unusual. Agatha prided herself on her perfect attendance.

"Why not?" Ace asked.

Dominique rolled her eyes at him. "Car accident."

Oh. Ace didn't really know what to do with himself for a couple seconds. He wasn't really sure what he was feeling. It might be...concern? He almost shuddered had it not been for the voice inside his head telling him not to be that type of rude. He didn't detest Agatha to the point he wanted her hurt. That was just...too far and not his type of thing. "Is she okay? Was she hurt badly?"

The ever so helpful Dominique shrugged her shoulders. "Don't know. I think she had a broken leg or something."

"Is she in the hospital?"

"At home, I think." Dominique's eyes soon fell over the gift in his hand. "Don't tell me that's for her?" she almost laughed.

Ace rolled his eyes at her. "Well it's definitely not for you," he said and turned to leave.

He returned to the Claw to inform the others of what he learned and this time, no matter how much Nancy insisted that he drop the gift off at Agatha's house, she didn't get him to budge. He visiting Agatha at her house was beyond the question. He tolerated Nancy's disapproving stares for the rest of that day. She didn't understand that he just couldn't do it. He and Agatha made it publicly known how much they disliked each other. What proof did he have that her parents would even let him into the house?

So, Nancy and an equally disappointed Bess, got together to visit Agatha themselves and give her the gift in person.

Agatha hadn't been expecting them but she was grateful for their concern and their uneeded gift. She sat on her bed with her left leg enveloped in a cast. "This is too sweet, thank you," she smiled at the girls.

"We sent Ace to the library to give you the gift but that's when we learned...about that..." Nancy made a gesture to the cast, making Agatha chuckle.

"I'll be fine with time," Agatha said as she undid the knot of the gift. "Bess, you have really good basket searching skills," she said as she started going through the things inside.

Bess beamed. "Thanks! Hair products are a girl's best friend! And of course the chocolates!"

"Yeah," Agatha agreed with a laugh that was cut short for some reason.

"You okay?" Nancy asked, wondering if she was feeling some pain.

"Uh, yeah, yeah," Agatha cleared her throat. She put on a smile for the pair. "Thank you so much for dropping this by. You didn't really need to. I don't know what Ace has told you about me but I do like to help once in a while. But if you tell him that to his face, I will be very upset with you two."

Nancy smiled. "We won't." She and Bess decided to leave shortly afterwards. Agatha was still on medication that required her to rest, after all.

But instead of resting, Agatha went through her gift basket again until she found what she'd discreetly hidden at the bottom. She picked up the ace card from the basket and stared at it until she found herself snorting a laugh.

"You idiot," she shook her head. No doubt he had refused to come to her house. Smart move. She couldn't blame him.

~ 0 ~

Two months later would have Agatha pushing the doors of the Claw open to walk in.

"We're closing!" she heard a young woman exclaim.

"Not here to order anything!" Agatha called back. "Here to see a...person." She struggled to find the right word so she settled with the one that couldn't be argued with at all. The young woman walked over and Agatha saw 'George' on her name tag. "You're the owner of this place, aren't you?"

"Yeah," George set her hands on her hips. "And who are you?"

"Agatha Rhodes." As soon as she said her name, she saw the recognition flicker across George's eyes.

"Ooh, so you're the famous Agatha," George looked her over.

"He talks about me," Agatha sarcastically 'awwd'.

It amused George. "You're looking good to me now."

"Yes," Agatha gave a light clap to her left leg now perfectly healed. "By any chance, could I talk to Ace for just a second? Annoy him a little?"

"Who would I be to stand in your way," George gestured her towards the counter.

Agatha laughed. She liked George already. She headed for the counter and, without missing a beat, yelled: "Order up!" She sat on a stool and glanced back at George. "If he drops any plates, I'm going to laugh so hard."

George was already there. "Stop by anytime, please."

Agatha readied herself when Ace finally came around. Two months without taking jabs at each other meant he had to have come up with good things to say. She was fairly interested to learn what they were.

"You're walking again," he says instead. He was even surprised and big time, something that Agatha wasn't expecting.

"Uuh, yeah," she said, even looking down as if she'd forgotten the fact her leg was healed.

"Are you good?" He came up on the other side of the counter. Agatha had the faint feeling he wanted to peek down to see for himself that her leg was better. Maybe he did. It was very hard weeding out information out of Dominique when she cared very little about her co-worker. He couldn't well ask his mother about Agatha's state lest he was interested in getting a series of questions about it. He resigned to simply waiting and as it turned out, he was not good at waiting.

"Perfectly fine," Agatha answered him. "But you...you look like hell."

The familiarity was too much for Ace. He laughed shortly. "Right."

Agatha was right back to what she was used to do with him. The pattern, their law, their way of being was back on track. She just needed his usual responses from him which, for some reason, she wasn't getting so easily. "I'll be back at the library starting Tuesday so if you could do me the favor of not showing your face around there, that'd be great."

"I'll be sure to use the back door," Ace said, earning a sarcastic beam from her in return. It was odd to admit that he missed that. Really odd.

"Oh, and I almost forgot..." Agatha reached inside her cardigan's pocket and placed the ace card down on the counter. "You seemed to have misplaced this in the beautiful basket your friend Bess made for me."

Ace's eyebrows raised at the sight of the card. He was so grateful that it was just George in the place because if it were Nancy around, he would not hear the end of it. "Yeah..."

Agatha ducked her head to meet his gaze. "Hello? Has the insane hair of yours finally taken all the oxygen supply to your brain?"

Ace rolled his eyes. "Give me that," he took back his card. "I will be sure to see you on Tuesday, Atty."

She straightened in her stool to glare at him. "I told you to stop calling me that!"

Ace tucked the card into his pocket. "What was that, Atty?"

"Stop it!"

"Never."

Agatha groaned and slid of her stool. "I really hate you!"

Yup, they were back to their usual antics now.

"Before you go, I have something for you," Ace raised a finger, effectively stopping her out of sheer curiosity for what he was going to do next.

She narrowed her eyes at him. "What?"

When he pulled out a playing card, she thought it was the same one she had just returned but when she inched closer to the counter, she saw it was different. And it was not funny at all.

"A joker card? Seriously?"

"Well, I just figured since I was lucky enough to get one from you..."

"I really hate you," Agatha rolled her eyes but, she did swipe the card off the counter anyways.

If someone asked her why, she wouldn't be able to answer. And if someone asked Ace why he was so elated, he wouldn't be able to answer either.

~ 0 ~

The next couple of times they met, whether it was casual or for mystery-related things, the cards somehow became a mode of introduction. Agatha felt a bubbling annoyance start as soon as Ace would slide his stupid card over the library counter (or sometimes just make it appear between his fingers like some magic trick). He enjoyed it too much.

"One of these days, I'm going to rip that card up," Agatha warned after handing a book over to him. She wouldn't even question what the hell kind of mystery he and Nancy had going on now. It was too hard to keep up.

"No you're not," Ace said with a heavy certainty that just made Agatha want to prove him wrong. But, of course, all she did was slide the ace card over the counter so he could take it back. She could easily just pick it up and tear it in two. In truth—maybe—she may have come to like their stupid game.

"Just take the damn book and go," she raised her hands in front of her. "And whatever you and your little crew is trying to solve, try not to come back and involve me."

"You wish, Atty."

"Stop calling me that!"

Ace smirked and mocked a salute for her. He grabbed his playing card, slipping it into the book as a bookmark, and headed off. Agatha was barely able to exhale when she heard her co-worker's remark.

"God, just get a room already." Dominique shooed her away from the computer to take up the spot.

Agatha stumbled back a few steps with widened eyes. "Gross! How dare you say something like that?"

Dominique rolled her eyes. "Drop it, Rhodes. I fear for my future around you two."

"Fear nothing because that's utter nonsense." With a huff, Agatha walked away from the desk. The nerve of that woman—no wonder Ace hated her too!

~ 0 ~

The moment Agatha learned the news of Ace's car crash, she felt like she was missing air. If she was being technical, she should say that she didn't believe it. It was a joke...except that it wasn't a joke. It was very, very real and she was...panicking. There she was at the library, in the middle of her shift, panicking at the spot. She wasn't focusing on anything, much less people coming up to check out books or to just ask questions. She couldn't focus on anything at all.

"Sheesh, for someone who doesn't care a lot, you look like hell," Dominique said.

Agatha didn't even have the energy to fight her this time. "It's a car crash. Of course I'm going to be concerned."

"That much?"

"This may come as a surprise to you, but I don't actually wish death upon anyone. Plus, we work with his mother. Can you imagine what she must be feeling right now?"

"Well I know what you're feeling right now." Dominique's smirk made Agatha wish she could throw a book at her right there.

But, Agatha kept to her menial tasks to avoid thinking so much. She had a couple of hours to go in her shift and she couldn't dream of asking for an early leave. She would never hear the end of it from Dominique anyways. She confined herself to waiting. Waiting, waiting, waiting.

At five o'clock sharp, she clocked out and hurried over to the hospital. Unsurprisingly, it was swarming with police officers. She could at least be certain that if the car accident hadn't been an accident, they would figure it out.

"Agatha?" she heard a familiar voice. Agatha looked around until she spotted Nancy and her friends on a set of chairs. Nancy was already getting up to greet her. "What are you doing here?"

"I, uh, I heard about the accident," Agatha bit on her bottom lip. "What the hell happened?"

"Just...an accident," Nancy replied. She would leave it at that for Agatha's sake. "It's unfortunate but, yeah..."

"Is he going to be okay?" Agatha kept glancing in the receptionist's direction. She very much wanted to go over there and ask direct questions there, but she was a fool to think she could get anything out of the woman. She was nothing of Ace's.

"He's in a coma but we're hoping for the best." Nancy watched the color drain from Agatha's face at the news. Clearly, she had not known about that.

"Coma," Agatha repeated in a shaky voice. "He's-he's in a coma? Oh my God!"

The last thing Nancy wanted was for Agatha to full-blown panic but because she was nearly there, Nancy decided to pull Agatha to the side to talk more in private. "You gotta listen to me, he's going to be okay."

"You just said he's in a coma, Nancy!" Agatha's yell was enough to pull the attention of some of the officers.

Nancy was quick to shush her again. "Listen to me, nobody else knows this but we sort of did a thing—"

"Oh I know! You guys always do 'a thing' which is why you're always at the library!"

"It was a thing to help him get out of his coma but you want to know something, Agatha? We don't need to go to the library. We choose to go to the library. Or, rather, Ace does."

"What?" Agatha couldn't, and didn't have the mindset to, decipher Nancy's vague statement.

"Agatha, a lot of what we need is online nowadays but we come to the library anyways."

"What the hell for!?" The question slipped out on automatic with all the sharpness in the world.

Nancy stared at her until Agatha would hopefully answer her own question. Agatha didn't. "Are you serious?" Nancy shook her head. "For you! Ace 'subtly' suggests the library because it'll have more concrete information. But we all know he just wants to see you!"

Agatha looked at Nancy in disbelief. "You're starting to sound like Dominique and that is a terrible thing to say, you know? But I had to do it."

Nancy rolled her eyes. "Don't play dumb, please. You're far from that. You know that I'm saying the truth. I wouldn't lie to you."

"Yeah?" Agatha scoffed. "You barely know me. You lie your way around to solve mysteries."

"I wouldn't lie to you because it involves my friend and because he likes you so much, I would never lie to you. You're important to him."

Agatha shook her head, wanting to push away all those words that were bringing up some weird feelings. "You're crazy, we hate each other. It's our thing. I like the way our thing is. Leave our thing alone.

"All I'm saying is to look where we are," Nancy gestured to the place, "I have faith that Ace will get out of this but this is a reminder that we don't have a guarantee of anything in this life."

It was scary how real this was getting. Agatha shook her fervently as if that would rid her ears of Nancy's words. "You know what? I have to go." She turned to leave, hearing Nancy's heavy sigh behind her, but she stopped a couple steps away. "Actually..." She turned back and though she deliberated her next move, she eventually pulled something out of her bag. "Could you give this to him?"

Nancy eyed the joker card in Agatha's hand. "What...what's that for?"

"He'll know," Agatha assured. He would know that she wasn't a terrible person and that she'd come to the hospital. It was important to her that he knew that.

"Yeah, okay," Nancy eventually said. She had no idea what the hell the card meant but she supposed this time it wasn't something for her to figure out. She took the card from Agatha, promising her that Ace would have the card as soon as he was lucid.

"Thanks," Agatha whispered. She turned to leave without looking back. She knew she couldn't come back and for some reason, it hurt. Once again, she would have to confine herself to the library and find out what happens through other means.

~ 0 ~

As the weeks went by, Agatha had to learn how to live without certainty. She once made the mistake of asking Ace's mother how things were going and Dominique overheard. She was lucky that Dominique had the decency not to blurt out any of her stupid comments but it was the last time Agatha took the risk. She didn't want to risk going through another awkward conversation with Nancy, so Agatha didn't even bother showing up at the Claw. She just...worked. She worked and did anything she could do to forget.

In a means to get away from Dominique (she'd been getting a little too cocky with feelings she thought she knew), Agatha decided to organize the returned books back to their right shelves. She found it was a lot better seeing book covers than have go's with her colleague.

"Hey there Atty."

Agatha nearly dropped her book out of a sheer startle. Once she had her bearings, she realized who had just called her that stupid nickname. Her head flipped to her right and met Ace's smug face. He stood nice and tall with no visible injuries. It was so relieving for Agatha that she had no idea what to do with all the feelings now stirring in her stomach.

"You...survived," she said, immediately regretting it because, really, that's what she could come up with? "Good." She grabbed a few more books and turned in the opposite direction. An insane heat worked itself up her neck and face. Why!?

"That's all you have to say?" At least Ace sounded like he was amused with her. He was definitely back to normal. "And here I thought I'd get a huge welcome back party." He hurried after her and caught up at the end of the aisle.

"You wish," Agatha said. She was only looking at her books and where they needed to go. "Actually, if you ask Dominique, she might be holding back a cake or something."

A short laugh came out of Ace. "I wouldn't be that stupid to try anything she made."

Agatha half smiled. "And here I thought you didn't have any brains."

"I got the hospital records to prove that I do." Ace thought he had delivered quite a clever response but it had just made Agatha's already small smile disappear.

She was just about to put a book away on a shelf when she paused. She met his gaze for the first time since he arrived. All jokes and snappy responses aside, she spoke earnestly. "It's good to see you're doing well again. Your parents must be very happy."

"Thanks," Ace paid her with the same honesty coin.

Agatha offered him one tiny smile then finished putting the rest of the books in her arms back in their appropriate spots. "Your mother's in the back," she said to him on her way past him to the cart.

"Yeah, actually, I was here to see you." Ace turned with her and walked behind her.

But we all know he just wants to see you!

Agatha cursed Nancy for ever saying that to her. Now she had to work hard to play dumb and act like this meeting was nothing but casual. "Yeah, what for?" She went through the cart for the next set of books she needed. "New mystery for the Scooby-Doo gang?"

"I came back to return this," Ace produced the joker card Agatha had left with Nancy.

Agatha felt like her face was on fire again. "Is that mine?"

"Obviously it's not mine. You, uh, left it..."

"Did I?"

As much fun as it would be to make jokes, Ace kept it serious. He thought long and hard about why he was coming to see her and why he even admitted it to her in the first place. "You came to the hospital," he said. It was a good place to start. Neutral.

It still seemed like a lot for Agatha. She hummed. "I did," she admitted. "As surprising as it is, I wouldn't want you to die on me. I'm not actually evil, you know."

"Oh, I know exactly what you are," Ace said.

Agatha deadpanned him for whatever comment was about to come out of his mouth. It never came. She left the books and the book cart to go retrieve her card from him. "I'll take that back now. I'll have to sanitize it, of course." She reached a hand for the card only to have Ace raise it high. "Seriously?" Agatha frowned. She was not about to jump for the damn thing. "I thought this is what you came here for. To give me my card back."

"I thought of a better place to give it back in," he said. She didn't quite care for his whimsical tone.

"Really?" she folded her arms. "And where would that be?"

"On a date with me this Saturday."

"What? I don't appreciate these types of jokes—"

"It's not a joke, Agatha, and you know it. That's not my style."

"You don't have a style."

Ace smiled. She just couldn't help her comments sometimes and it was fine, because sometimes he couldn't help them either. They came out like an instinct, especially when things seemed to get too close to...this. Maybe this is where they were always headed but because they were both stubborn, neither could ever admit to it.

After waking up from his coma, it was difficult for Ace to put together what happened. It was hard trying to make sense of anything for a while. Little by little, he started remembering more of what led to the accident and what he had been doing before. Once he started working again, things started falling into place again. It was only then that Nancy gave him Agatha's joker card. He was pretty upset that it took her that long to tell him Agatha had actually went to the hospital to visit him.

At that point, Nancy made him aware of just how upset he was and why he was. He wasn't a screamer, not even when he was angry, but he was a lot more upset after that. How dare she say something like that again?

'How dare you be upset that she didn't come see you yet?' was the clever response he got from Nancy. It startled him how true that was. He was upset that Agatha didn't show any sign of concern for his accident. Even when he realized that he failed to do the same for her during her accident, it still upset him. It hurt him.

He didn't like not having her around, even if it was just to bicker with. Then he started to wonder what it would be like to spend more time with her, more than their usual few minutes of bickering and taking jabs at each other. It sounded really nice. A fuzzy feeling, really that amplified each time he took out her joker card. He needed to stop being stupid and just admit to himself that he liked Agatha. So he did.

And now here he was, trying to put all of those thoughts into coherent sentences.

"Any restaurant you like, Agatha. Just you and me," he said. "And the card."

Agatha stared long and hard at him trying to search his face for any clue of what he was up to. "You can't...you can't be asking me out on a date," she said, her expression twisting with incredulity. "You hate me!"

"I don't hate anybody, Agatha," Ace shook his head. "It takes too much energy to do that."

"You hate Dominique!"

"Have you met Dominique?"

As much as she didn't want to, a smile broke across her face. He deserved a point for that one. "Ace..." She laughed a little, just a tiny bit.

"Agatha, I'm being very serious here. Do you want to go on a date?" He lowered himself to her height to meet her gaze.

She was reluctant to meet his eyes, especially when she was sure her blush was highly visible. "This is weird," she admitted.

"Yeah, but I'm hoping it might be a good weird...is it?"

Agatha started chewing on her bottom lip the more self conscious she got about her appearance. He was too close to her to not see the red of her blush, her shifty stance, and worst of all hear her speedy heartbeats. And yet, even with all of that, she knew what she preferred. "Yeah, it is a little."

"A little?" Ace scrunched his face. "I guess I'll take it. I can definitely change your mind."

Agatha scoffed. "Don't get cocky. In fact, don't get 'anything' on me."

"Yeah, alright, so that date...?"

"I guess...it wouldn't be that bad..." She was lying. It actually sounded very fun and possibly nerve-wrecking being alone with him for a whole date, but she decided that she wanted to be there. "Yeah, let's go on a date."

Ace found it was truly hard not to outright beam. He wanted to be cool about it. "Great! I'll pick you up Saturday at eight?"

Agatha slowly nodded at him. Things felt a little too surreal. "I'm...I'll be waiting." All nicely dressed and with a nice hair-do and maybe some make up.

"Sounds good, I'll be sure to bring your card along," Ace patted his side pocket.

"Well now wait a minute," Agatha said, raising a finger as a new thought came to mind, "You should give me your card in the meantime. Can't expect me to show up empty handed, right?"

Ace chuckled. "That sounds fair." He reached into his other pocket to pull out the ace card.

She reached to take it but, like the last time, he raised high above his head. "Would you stop doing that!?"

"I couldn't help it," he shrugged. "So, Saturday?" He handed her the card and let his fingers gingerly brush over her hand.

She swallowed hard. "Mhm," she nodded. She held onto his card tightly.

"We can, uh, put the cards on the table then." He flashed her a smile that widened when she laughed.

"I guess so," she agreed.

"See you then, Atty!" He expected the scowl on her face and as much as he fought it, he couldn't hold his laugh in.

"I really hate you," she tried to spat but this time it sounded like she was close to laughing too.

"Apparently, you don't!"

[afictionaladventure16]

Upon The Sweetest Flower (Chris Evans x Daughter!Reader)

Chapter 3

Upon The Sweetest Flower Masterlist

Previously on Upon the Sweetest Flower...

Warnings: mentions of kidnapping and creepy old guys

Word Count: 1,013

It was a bright and sunny day in Boston. It was a nice day for a park day, as Chris liked to call it. He watched as young children ran around the playground, smiling in content at where his life was at the moment. 

“Daddy!” He heard a small voice yell, he quickly turned to where he heard the voice. He quickly smiled as his eyes landed on you. 

“There she is!” He said as you walked over to him, arms crossed, a pout forming on your face, “what’s wrong?” 

You looked over to some older kids who were riding bikes, without helmets or knee pads, “why do I have to wear a helmet or knee pad and they don’t?” 

Chris looked over to the kids you were looking at. He sighed and bent down to your level, “they should be wearing them,” he said softly as he began to check if your riding gear was on correctly. “The helmet and knee pad is for your safety, Y/N.” You still had a pout, you were only six years old. You didn’t quite understand why everything worked the way it did. “Come on, Kiddo,” your dad said as he grabbed your bike. 

You sighed as you walked over to your bike, “maybe we should keep the training wheels on for another week?” you suggested. 

Your dad chuckled, “you’ve been begging me to take them off for the past two weeks.” You felt the bike wobble as you tried to balance it, “don’t worry, I won’t let go,” your dad reassured as he placed his hand behind the seat giving it some balance. You nod, “Alright, now start peddling,” you began to peddle, trying your best to keep the bike straight, “you’re doing great!” Chris said with a smile, something about the moment was bittersweet to him. The fact that you were growing up so fast, taking off the little girl, training wheels and taking a leap too big girl things. He sighed to himself, letting go of the seat and slowing down behind you, hoping you wouldn’t notice. 

You were doing well without him for a few seconds, that was until you looked back and saw that he wasn’t there. You quickly lost balance and fell to the ground, “shit!” Chris muttered to himself as he raced towards you. 

Tears formed in your eyes, your shin was stinging from the scrap you managed to get from the fall, “you said you wouldn’t let go!” you yelled. 

Chris sighed as looked over the scrap, “I know, I know,” he said softly. “I’m sorry,” he whispered as he picked you up, carrying you with one arm while pushing the bike with the other. He set you in the back of the truck bed, before going to get the first aid kit from inside of the truck. 

“Why did you let go?” you asked as you wiped away your tears. 

He already felt bad for letting go, but you were doing so well, he just thought it was the right time, “you were doing good without me for a few seconds,” he began to say as he wiped the scrape with an alcohol wipe, causing you to hiss in pain, “sorry,” he mumbled. 

“You didn’t even notice I had let go until you looked back…” he let out a dry chuckle, “One day when you’re older, you’re going to be living life and then you’ll back and you’ll see that I’ve let go. That I’ve let you do your own thing and you might fall and get hurt or you might keep going. The thing is,” He placed Neosporin on your scrape, “it’s all about how you get back up in life, that’s what matters.” He held out two bandaids, an Iron Man bandaid and Captain America bandaid, you pointed towards the Captain America bandaid causing your dad to smile. “What also matters is that you know, if you ever look back in life, that you will always have your me and your mom there to help you through whatever challenges you may go through.” 

You watched as he placed the bandaid on your scrape, “What if I don’t want you to let go?” 

Chris smiled, “when you’re older, I doubt you’ll want me to hold on. You’re going to be begging me to let go.” He sighed at the thought, “ready to get back on that bike?”

“But what if I’m not ready when you do let go?” You didn’t quite understand what your dad was talking about, but you knew, one day you would. 

“Trust me, you’re ready,” he said softly, you remained quiet, staring at the Captain America bandaid that was on your leg. “Do you trust me?” You nod, “Then let’s get back on that bike.” 

You sighed as your dad helped you off the truck, “But what if-” 

“No what if’s,” he said sternly, “you can do this, Y/N, you just need to stop overthinking it and believe in yourself.” 

You groaned as you got back on the wipe, “don’t let go until I say so?” Chris was about to protest, “please?” 

He sighed, “Alright, hon.” 

“Promise?” you asked as you stuck out your pinky finger, “Pinky promise?” 

He chuckled, connecting his pinky with yours, “I pinky promise.” You smiled, feeling more at ease with the promise, “now, come on!” He said as he placed his hand on the back of the seat once again. “Peddle,” he guided you down the sidewalk, you were beginning to pick up your speed. 

“Let go!” You said with confidence.

“Are you sure?” 

“Let go!!” Chris let go of the seat, he watched as you peddled your way around the playground without his help. Tears of joy filled his eyes at the sight, “that’s my girl!” He cheered. You were growing up and soon enough he was going to have to make that hard decision and let go and let you learn the hardships of life. But for now, he was trying his best to prepare you for whatever life had in store for all of you.

A/N: Strikethroughs mean that it wouldn’t let me tag you. 

Chris Evans Taglist:  @icegirl2772 @livi-lu @mpc0411 @acalmandquietplace @sleepylunarwolf @alicat-life @captaiinameriicasass @edgyhargreeves @noobmaster63 @pleasantlysecretdream @xiumin-girl99 @thejourneyneverendsx @peachacracy  @thewintersoldier1124 @booksarebae2000 @sebastiansmadden @dyckvindyck @amessybitxh @dumblani @vapingisntmything @viarogers @Sophieelizabeth-01 @supermoonchildbroski @maddie-laufeyson @beep_beep_marie @patzammit  @the-lady-cersei-lannister @notice-me-tc

Upon the Sweetest Flower Taglist: @willowbowie @dropdeadlex  @cautiouscalum  @mercurybarnes @bellero @blancastans @straightfowardly @cocomel0613 @sunnyshoes @rathersuspiciousbumblebee @jupiterspoet @feminist-fan-girl @endgameendsme @fabinaforever11  @lilya-petrichor @beep_beep_marie @becauseilovebooks @alwaysbandslut @griff1ndor @snowangle1994 @fandomdestroyer

Permanent Taglist (CLOSED): @unapologeticallymimi   @glitterquadricorn @lady-of-lies  @cassmoreiraxo @just4muggles @mellorine-paprika  @agirlruinedbybands @yougottalovefandoms @avngrsinitiative @lizlil @otomefan @dejaazaro @culturebay @kpopishilarious @fireproof-heaven @iloveyouthreethousand-o6  @weappreciatepower @whereyoustand  @white-wolf-buckaroo @spider-woman22 @coffee-habit @supernaturallover2002 @barnes-parker @therealmrshale @myinternetissoslow @myhippiehopes @celyndavies @xzowiex @ximaginx @wooshytooshy @ellaorelizabeth @rororo06  @chloe-geoghegan1 @hdthdthdt @sophie-barnes26 @thamuddagirl @scarletmeii @ssebstann @fangirl31415 @thepeggyann @lauren-novak @reerrrrskillz

[theslythertrash]

So whenever I see superheroes I always freak out over small impractical costume things but I have never been angrier at show’s costumes than at bnha and this has been on my chest for several months now and it’s midnight and I’m half asleep so it’s the perfect time to write an essay about it on Tumblr. 

Here are my ranking for the bnha costumes for all of 1-A:

I’m fully prepared to be slammed for this. (Also I’m supposed to be an artist so if I ever find some free time I’ll actually draw my babies some proper costumes.)

Midoriya’s is 9.5/10.  It has an aesthetic, good color scheme and it compliments his quirk with iron soles and leg/arm enforcements. Has a nice belt, a mask for gas (hopefully) and facial protection. The only stupid thing is his bunny ears mask but it looks good when it’s down like a hood. My only correction would be to make his mask an actual hood. 

Bakugo is 8/10 Kacchan also has an aesthetic. His mask is a little ridiculous but I’m fond of it. He also has practical shoes and stuff. HIS GAUNTLET IS SO STUPID. HAS THE MANGA ARTIST EVER WORN LARGE BRACELETS? DOES HE KNOW HOW ANNOYING THEY ARE? YOU CANT WRITE. OR SCRATCH YOUR HAND. OR REACH INTO TIGHT SPACES. I know they’re for storing sweat but sweat is a liquid and if people can invent Aizawa’s magic scarf they can invent smaller gauntlets. Jesus. But his winter costume makes them smaller I think (idk I don’t read the manga but I’ve seen fanart) so 8/10.

Uraraka is 5/10  Uraraka has a cool aesthetic. I enjoy the space theme and colors. A helmet is good since she’s flying around (though I don’t understand why it doesn’t cover her entire head? Protect the back of your head! Also her mouth- that should help against gas and things but I also know she vomits a lot so it’s probably better without one). 

However, she’s sexualized too. Even outside of it being skin tight, she has a camel toe? Literally no one mentions it ever and it drives me crazyyyy. Look at her- why does she have that line there? Why? And why is her belt so bulky. How is she supposed to squeeze into tight spaces? AND ONCE AGAIN UNNECESSARY LARGE BRACELETS OH MY GOD. The manga explains her bulky heels and bracelets are to help with nausea but I refuse to believe they can’t invent smaller ones. And also boots without heels. Who is gonna run over debris on heels? 5/10

Iida is 7/10 He is too bulky. Why are they all so bulky.  He looks like when he walks down the street he clanks as he walks. Way to be stealthy dude, smh. 

Todoroki is fine I guess. Little boring but it’s passable. I wish it had more stuff for his quirk. Like maybe thermal fabric so he can cool down faster? Idk. 7.5/10

Tsuyu is a much bigger improvement over Uraraka. She’s got big ass bracelets again but they look like soft fabric so it’s probably easy to ignore. Her outfit has a wet suit aesthetic so that’s practical. Her goggles look a little bulky again but they are practical.  WHY IS SHE IN HEELS.  8/10

Mineta looks like he has a diaper kink and it’s not even there to help his quirk. -10/10

Kirishima. Baby. Put on a shirt. Also what the fuck are those gears. Why are you wearing bulky shit that’s unrelated to your quirk? How are you gonna lie down comfortably when you have large ass rings on your shoulders.  Why are you wearing a muzzle thing? How is that related to your quirk? If your gonna put something on your face wear something to protect your mouth from dust and gas.  His bottom half is fine ig. I’ve got mixed feels on his cape/skirt thing but at least it’s an aesthetic.  6/10

Don’t get me started on Yaoyorozu. God Almighty. Even outside of the perversion, why does she have a whole ass bookshelf on her butt instead of an iPad for easy access? And not only is it AN ENTIRE BOOKSHELF, its HORIZONTAL. Why do you have a horizontal ass shelf when it can be vertical at the very least? She needs tech with Siri so she can ask what chemicals are in stuff into an earpiece. And also some pants. And a bra.  -10/10

Idk what Tokoyami is doing. Being edgy I guess.  6/10 it’s fine.

Kaminari is fine I guess? He’s got the same problem as Tokoyami and Todoroki where it’s just an outfit and doesn’t actually help his quirk in any way.  He could include metal bits on his gloves so punches have an extra shock to them. Or maybe a rubber helmet or something to protect his brain from his own shocks...would that work? I’m not a scientist. Maybe carry around extra shock-resistant fabric in a belt or something so he can protect bystanders before releasing a full attack.  I REALLY like his added equipment for long-range attacks and I think he could go further with the idea- maybe add cords in the style of bows and arrows?  Basically very boring but fine ig. 7.5/10 (solely adding the .5 for his new equipment)

Aoyama looks like he has the same bulky and loud problem as Iida but it’s toned down and I’m low key very amused by it so it’s fine. 9/10 for my flamboyant boy.

Jirou looks like she is going to the mall. She has no aesthetic and looks super boring. I like that her outfit actually helps her quirk with her speaker boots but she should carry around some weapons too. And wear a padded suit for hits. Actually they all should have padding. Goggles and mask would be helpful too.  It’s fine I guess. Boring. 6.5/10

Okay, I’ve seen a lot of people complain that Ashido’s is really ugly. I’m actually amused by it so I don’t mind too much. The fur is ridiculous and the colors are loud but they are as loud as her personality so at least it has an aesthetic.  I’m more bothered that it’s impractical. It doesn’t help with her quirk. She should have gauntlets similar to Kacchan’s so she can store acid (don’t make them bulky though, please). Padding too. Her shoes can have an extra retractable surface for gliding on acid. It would also probably be helpful to carry around a similar blanket to the hypothetical one Kaminari would have so she can shield civilians from her acid.  It’s fine ig. At least she’s not sexualized. 7/10

Shoji looks like he has multiple nipples.  At least it’s kinda practical tho.  6/10

Ojiro looks like he was on his way from karate class when a cat died on his shoulder.  Once again he’s boring and doesn’t have anything interesting to compliment his quirk. He’s a good fighter so maybe he can also carry around a staff or nunchucks or something. He should pad his tail so the hits are extra hard.  Boring but passable if he removes the stupid fur. It looks like it’ll tickle his cheek when he runs.7/10

I actually really like Sero’s. It fits his aesthetics and is practical. His helmet and shoulders could be a tad less bulky but whatever. It would be cool if he had like suction cups on his shoes or something to make it easier to stick to walls but I imagine that would be hard to walk in so it’s fine.  8.5/10

Tooru is naked.  She has no costume.  She’s 15- that’s so gross. Also she’s probably constantly cold and extremely vulnerable. I can’t imagine all the scraps she gets just from running around. And her sensitive parts are exposed to disease- she’s going to get a yeast infection. And not to be gross on main or whatever but what does she do when she’s on her period? ALSO, how can she feel comfortable running around without a bra?  If Mirio can have a costume made of his hair so can Tooru. 0/10

Sato looks like a banana.  Very boring with no aesthetic but at least he has pockets to carry sugar in so that’s practical. Some padding would be nice.  6/10 boring

Why the fuck is Koda in shorts. He’s gonna get scraps on his knees. What is that ugly ass symbol on his chest? At least he’s practical with his mask to hide when he’s talking to animals. Personally, I think it’s ugly but at least it’s useful 6/10

Woo I'm done. Thank you for coming to my TedTalk/ midnight essay.  Winners: Deku, Kacchan, Sero, maybe Tsuyu. Maybe Aoyama.  Absolute losers: Mineta, Momo, Tooru, Uraraka.  Everyone else is varying levels of average

Also, I know I said I would only do 1-A but I have a special little place of hate in my heart for Aizawa’s costume so here’s my rant on him too:

JESUS CHRIST MAN CUT YOUR FUCKING HAIR YOU DINGUS. I know you're trying to have a hoboTM aesthetic and you have stubble and blah blah blah- I get it. We got it. (I lowkey think you’re hot) you wanna have dramatic hair. Noted.  But you're entire personality is about being practical and not wanting attention. That’s why you disliked All Might. Set an example for your kids PLEASE.  Why are you even bothering with goggles to hide when you blink WHEN YOUR HAIR IS A BIGGER TELL. I PROMISE I’M MORE LIKELY TO NOTICE YOUR HAIR DROP THAN YOUR EYES BLINKING YOU DUMB DUMB IDIOT. 

Either cut it, put it in a bun (best option imo) or get a hood. 

[chrystening]

Coming To Terms - Peter Parker/Male Reader

Title: Coming To Terms Fandom: Spider-Man Homecoming (2017), MCU Rating: T Words: 3.7k Summary: Peter brings you closer until your foreheads touch, and his hands are dangerously settled on your waist. To anyone else—literally anyone else in the world—it’s beyond a friendly gesture. Or, in other words, what you thought was naiveté was just… not knowing. Warnings: coming out, jealousy, teens being teens, Peter is a Bi

a/n: reupload from my ao3 :^0 i think it’s my fave fic i’ve written lololol

also my commissions are open!

Iron Man — the Iron Man — is dropping you off at your house.

In fact, the sentence bears repeating.

Iron Man is dropping you off at your house right now.

He lowered you onto your roof, the propulsion from his boots causing the shingles of your roof to rattle, dangerously close to becoming loose altogether. He had one arm wrapped around you as the other helped him steer through air. You gripped the hand on your side tighter, titanium almost cutting into your skin.

“Easy, kid,” came billionaire Tony Stark’s voice, slightly tinny. “Easy,” he basically cooed, as he settled finally. You both released your hold on each other. Breathing deeply, you were pleased to meet solid ground – or rather, solid roof.

Spider-Man was here as well; you saw him pacing back and forth prior to your descent. He stood tensely. His ‘eyes’, wide white lenses, widened with relief as he let out a choked sigh. You couldn’t see his face, but you could feel that he was looking at you in disbelief.

Spider-Man tore his mask from his face, and you were graced with Peter’s painfully worried face. His eyes glisten. You smiled, eyes wet as well, as happy to see him as he was you.

Iron Man was slightly taken aback, looking from you to him. “Um, kid, I don’t think you get the whole secret identity thing–” His complaints fell on deaf ears as Peter crushed you into a hug. You returned it with just as much fervor immediately, trying to ignore his very skin tight suit and the body under it, instead trying to focus on platonic things like his soft hair, his sweet scent.

Peter let you go only after he had his fill, but even then kept hold of you at arm’s length, looking you up and down for damage. You shook your head, still a bit too choked to speak. I’m okay, the gesture said.

Suddenly remembering you two aren’t alone, Peter whipped to his mentor and started stumbling over his words. “Oh, God– thank you, Mr. Stark, seriously– I won’t let it happen again–” Stark held a hand up, his iron mask sliding away like a visor, revealing the face you’d only ever seen on a screen or in a magazine.

He looked stern, eyebrows furrowed. “I–” he started, but sighed when he saw you both hold each other protectively. He pinched the bridge of his nose. “Just—God—look out for him next time, okay?” Peter nodded so fast you feared his head would fall off as Stark pointed an accusatory finger at his protégé. “It’s your job to keep track of civilians.”

Mr. Stark’s attempt to turn the weak scolding into a lesson worked like a charm. Peter stored the lesson retentively in his mind. “I’m not always going to be around to find your friend in the aftermath.” Then Stark turned his attention to you, and you flinched.

“And you,” he jabbed a finger, “need to stop snooping around where you shouldn’t.” You looked away bashfully, scratching your head.

“Yeah, yeah, I know...” you muttered, blushing. In your defense, you didn’t know you were going to stumble across super villains in that alley. You had just been trying to test out your new powers—powers still a secret from Peter.

Satisfied, Mr. Stark’s visor mechanically snapped into place.

“See you sometime, kid.”

He stepped off the roof, and you waited to hear the thud of a landing, but there wasn’t one. Instead, you heard the roar of his thrusters, and in an instant Iron Man was ripping through the night sky.

You stood there gawking after him, eyes following the faint blue trail he left behind, star struck. You blinked dumbly, turning to your friend.

He turned to you at the same time, eyes flickering with exhaustion, relief. He placed his hands gently on your shoulder, eyes furrowed at how subtly you’re shaking. You still feel the crippling fear of being caught by men you’d never want to be caught by, chased down and hunted just for having walked by at the wrong time.

“I was so scared,” he said lowly, the weight of his fatigue clear in his voice.

Peter brought you closer until your foreheads touched, and his hands were dangerously settled on your waist. He closed his eyes, breathing deeply. To anyone else—literally anyone else in the world—it was beyond a friendly gesture. It was too intimate, the air too quiet, you both too close – but you doubt Peter even noticed. In fact, when had he ever noticed?

After all, we’re just friends, you thought spitefully. Just friends that hold hands together, sleep on each other’s beds together, take turns feeding each other together, lay on each other together, stare into each other’s eyes together–do everything short of bathing together.

“Thank God you’re okay,” he rushed out, bringing you out of your thoughts with the sincerity flooding his tone.

“Thank Mr. Stark I’m okay, technically,” you said cheekily. “Though, he kind of is your god, huh?”

Peter’s cheeks were pink. His hands on your waist pinched you in protest. “He is totally not God to me.”

“He totally is,” you snickered. You shove Peter playfully, and he feigned injury. “Please,” you snorted. “That did not hurt.”

“Things like that hurt me emotionally,” he returned, clutching his heart.

“I’ve seen you stop trains with your bare hands. You’ll live.” You stepped closer into Peter’s chest and linked your arms around his neck. “Now get me down from here.” Peter wrapped his arms around you and hopped down effortlessly to the ground, dark grass crushed under his feet.

As soon as you could, you slipped out of his grip before you could get lost in it. You smiled at him, hoping you didn’t look as sad as you felt.

“Thanks, Pete.” He nodded and took a step forward, opening his mouth to speak. You knew he was about to ask to sleep over, but you just couldn’t. You couldn’t deal with another night of him so close yet so far, couldn’t deal with another night of pretending. And you definitely couldn’t deal with another night of seeing him strip in front of you to change into pajamas.

“See you tomorrow?” you asked, effectively shutting it down.

Sheepish, Peter nodded. “Err, yeah, okay. Yeah, you should… get some rest. See you.” You nodded and waved weakly before entering your home without a second look.

Shaking your head, you thought about how you also couldn’t deal with the crestfallen look on his face.

You heard the rustle of grass, the thwip of a web, the whistle of air, and you knew he was gone.

-

“… Bro, no—“ you begin, about to firmly but gently fucking school Peter on just who exactly was the strongest character in the comics you both were reading. Peter’s brow furrows, and he’s about to interrupt you when someone else does.

“Are you two… dating?” a classmate asks, clear apprehension and disgust on his face.

You both turn around.

It’s the passing period before second period. Students file out their classrooms and into the halls, and the air is alive with conversations overlapping over each other. You and Peter’s lockers are right next to each other, contrasting with his filled with books and science notes and yours with your favorite bands, but both containing the same copy of a picture of you two from a photo booth.

You shift your weight onto your other leg, smirking. You knew it was only a matter of time before someone asked.

You say coyly, “And if we are? So what?” You turn to Peter, whose eyes look at you with approval. You smile widely, enamored with him.

You snorted mentally. Was this dude blind? Of course you two were dating. It had happened seamlessly—neither of you truly said the words, but neither of you had to. You both were just on the same wavelength.

Your cheeks heated and you hoped it didn’t show as you bit your lip, looking at Peter. You wondered what he was doing tonight…

“… Gross,” your peer utters, walking away.

“Fuck off,” you spit after him. You turn to Peter, “Who cares about his shitty opinion?” Beside you, Peter is nodding fervently, seemingly empowered.

You grin as Peter turns to where your classmate had walked, shouting after him, “Yeah, what he said!” Then in words that made you freeze, he added:

“Besides, we’re just friends!”

-

You blinked, looking down at your book but not seeing. The words are little more than alphabet soup before your eyes. Your mind reeled back from the memory of last week. It seethed, whined, whimpered – just friends?

“… just friends! … just friends! … just friends!” It played on repeat in your head.

You shook your head, turning a bit to the right.

At his desk, Peter was tinkering with the Lego Death Star that Ned had dropped. His eyebrows were furrowed in deep focus as you marveled at the tendons and muscles that shifted under his skin. He bit his lip at one part, pausing to see where it would fit best. He looked great like that, hair in a casual quiff. Realizing you were staring, you huffed. Only Peter could make assembling Legos look good.

Suddenly, an idea niggled its evil way into your head.

There was no way Peter doesn’t feel anything for you, you mentally resolved. At least, there had to be no way, because the alternative was something you didn’t think you were mentally strong enough to consider.

You raised your book up to your face, bringing your knees to your chest as you sit on his bed.

“Mr. Stark’s pretty hot, right?”

Peter looks befuddled, first at the silence being broken, and then in registry of what you actually just said.

“I… What?” You smirked, hiding it behind the book you pretend to be invested in.

“I’m just saying,” you began nonchalantly. “After last night—I just realized he was kind of attractive, is all.” You didn’t hear anything but silence, so you spared Peter a glance. He was still looking at you in abhorrence, but ducked his head down, back to his toy.

“Well, not to me,” he said, clipped and bothered. Was that the slightest hint of bitterness? You wondered if it was wrong to feel giddy. You hated to play with Peter like this, but you had to. You couldn’t handle things continuing the way they had.

“Really?”

Peter let out a breath, trying to squeeze a Lego block where it clearly didn’t belong. “I—yeah, I just don’t think he’s like, all that.”

“Really?” you said. “He’s totally attractive, and funny, and he’s a superhero, and he’s rich. That makes him even hotter.” You feigned gushing over Peter’s mentor, even though Peter was at least three of those four things and so much more. You looked at Peter, wishing he knew that, as he didn’t look at you. His shoulders tensed, bunched up near his ears. “It’s not wonder he has so many people falling at his feet. I don’t blame them.”

He didn’t respond. You put your book down in your lap, eyeing your frustrated friend. You had to fight a smug grin from your face in lieu of oblivious concern. “Pete? Why’re you so angry?”

He shrugged, not looking up. “I’m not… angry.”

You rolled your eyes. “Fine, whatever—upset.”

Peter raised his hands in defense. “I’m not upset either.”

“Then what’s wrong?”

“Nothing’s wrong. I just…” Peter’s jaw shifted.

No, we’re having this breakthrough, damn it. “You just…?” You tried to bring him to speak.

“I just never knew you… liked him like that.” Peter looked… sad. A pang of guilt rushed your heart. Knocking over his self esteem was not in the plan.

“I mean, I don’t really,” you disclaimed, blurting it out before Peter could feel anymore sorry for himself. “I just… think he’s cool. You think he’s cool, too.”

Peter looked offended at the possible insinuations you hadn’t even made yet. “Yeah but not like that!”

“Like what?” You feigned ignorance.

“Like…” He gestured widely with his hands as if they’d do the talking for him. “Like a boyfriend—”

“I don’t want him to be my boyfriend,” you said truthfully, leaning so far towards his direction you’re about to fall off the bed. “I don’t want him to be my boyfriend,” you reasserted, hoping to send some telepathic message to Peter.

But like all the time you’ve known him, despite his intelligence and acute observational skills, he was utterly blind to the matter of your ‘friendship.’

Peter’s shoulders relaxed, and he no longer bristled. It seemed he no longer cared to finish the conversation, having gotten the confirmation he didn’t know he needed. You, on the other hand, were dissatisfied. You sighed and stood, knowing you couldn’t be subtle about it anymore.

You treaded to Peter in a steady pace, not too fast, not too slow. You didn’t want to scare him.

When you were a small distance away, he turned, looking up to you.

You stopped in front of him, frowning but eyes hard with iron resolve. You leaned down, and you could see the question form in his eyes. You put your hands lightly on his shoulders, hoping the contact would calm him down. You were an inch from his nose when you could see him finally realize what the fuck was going on.

Then you stopped thinking of all thoughts—all thoughts besides how soft his lips were, even though they were chapped. You didn’t think of how he stiffened under you, of how it was quite possible he really didn’t like you, or of how you’d have to face the consequences of this kiss in a few seconds. Instead, you just pressed harder against his lips. Your body felt hot and your tongue wanted to do nothing but slip past your lips and past his own. But you knew you had to keep it tame. It was no doubt his first time.

Just as it was yours, you thought with a blush.

After a time that was both seconds and years, you stopped. You didn’t stand to your full height, instead squatting to meet Peter eye to eye. Your leg muscles whined, but you ignored them. You opened your eyes, and had to stop yourself from laughing in his face.

Peter looked petrified.

You would’ve grinned, if not for the sudden bolt of fear that reduced all your resolve to ash. Oh god, what if he really doesn’t feel the same—I’ve ruined it. I’ve ruined it—

You terror-fueled thoughts eased to a stop once you saw the telltale red darken his cheeks, ears, and spread down his neck. Your breath hitched and you dared to hope.

“I… like you, Peter,” you confessed. A bit belated, perhaps, but better than never. He gawked at you as if he was seeing you for the first time. “I like you a lot.”

He opened his mouth to speak, but you shook your head.

“No—I have stayed silent for forever, so please let me speak.” You didn’t wait for a nod before continuing. “I… I kind of thought we were already together but—hey, do you remember last week that one guy walked up to us and asked if we were dating?” His eyes lowered as he tried to remember, but you kept going. “And then I told him to fuck off and you said ‘Yeah, what he said! But we’re just friends!’?” At your leg muscles' crying, you pulled up the chair right behind you. You felt only physical relief as you sat down.

“That…” You swallowed thickly, still not brave enough to tell him what it had felt like. Just at the thought, tears stung, warning you to not wander too closely to the topic. “That … really sucked,” you finished lamely.

You both stared at each other, silent.

You had thought of this moment forever, and everything you’d say and tell him so he’d know—but now, you realized you had little to say at all. Or rather, you wanted to listen. What was Peter thinking?

Peter wasn’t as shell-shocked as he had been moments before, but he was clearly just gathering his bearings. Once you saw gears turn in his head, he blinked rapidly and averted his eyes from the eye contact.

“I…” he started. “I… did just think we were just friends.” It should’ve discouraged you, but the uncertainty in his tone made you feel as if there was hope. He then looked confused with himself. “I mean… I think I did.”

You sat back in your seat, sighing.

“Hugging,” you said after a while. He looked to you, expecting elaboration. “Holding hands.” You let one of your hands trail down to his, fingers resting on his with a feather-light touch. “Wearing each other’s clothes all the time. Sharing beds. Hell, we cuddled to sleep once,” you finished, exasperated. “Do you do that with all your friends?”

“I—“ he started. You paled, a scary thought you hadn’t considered coming to mind.

“Do you do things like that with Ned?”

“What, no! I,” he sputtered. “No,” he admitted, looking down. Then his eyes whipped back up to you as he exclaimed, “I mean, he’s… Ned! He’s not you—and us…” He looked embarrassed, but as if he was trying to articulate something. He tried to make sense of it with his hands, gesturing anxiously.

“We’re just… like that.”

Like what? Your mind screamed, before you saw his expression. You recognized that look of bewilderment, having made it before. It had been years since, though.

His expression and last words connected a pair of threads in your head, and you felt a wave of what you could only call ‘… oh’ wash over you. You thought he was oblivious, that he was frustratingly naïve but… Peter didn’t even know. Hearing him explain, or rather, fail to, you smiled weakly. It was a tired one, but a smile nonetheless. Because after all this time, you had your answer, even if he didn’t know it himself yet.

“I think,” you started, slowly, “you like me, too.” He looked to you, eyes wide, confused, scared, and eager all at once. I do? His expression asked. You breathed deeply. “I think you’re just…confused.” He looked at you with an unamused expression, one you laughed at.

Laughter dying, you elaborated, “I mean, yeah, obviously. But like… confused about being g…” You chose your words carefully, not trying to scare him. “… liking guys.” He sat straight in his chair, as if the thought had never crossed his mind. Well, you were sure it hadn’t.

Between the demands of school, being an anxious teenager, and being a superhero, when did he have time to think about anything?

You felt any irritation at him ebb away. When did he have time to think about anything… especially something as confusing to come to terms with like this.

“… I like guys?” He looked to you for an answer. You smiled.

“That’s something only you could know the answer to.” But yeah, you probably do, you thought. “And sometimes,” you trailed, looking far away. “It takes a while to even know. Some people never do.”

You paused to let him think, patient.

His eyes then filled with surety, and you smiled even wider. Had he come to an answer?

“I… I don’t know.” You raised an eyebrow, spirits falling. Then he looked at you. “But I do know I like you.” Your heart filled to the brim with an emotion inexplicable. You could only describe it as light, warm, pink, and lifting.

“I like you, too,” you smiled, refusing to let your eyes glisten. You could’ve laughed at the pitiful croak of your voice if you didn’t see Peter lean in.

“I think… I want to date,” he said in a whisper. You nodded fervently, leaning closer to him like you were drawn by strings.

You two met in the middle, eyes closing and heads tilted so you both would fit perfectly. His newfound revelation was evident in his kiss. He was a bit hesitant, testing the waters. But he didn’t stop.

Not separating, you gave him an encouraging nod, lips curling into his own as your cheeks warmed. You allowed one eye to peek open, and you saw his hands were suspended in air, not knowing what to do with themselves. You took them and placed them on your waist and the small of your back. Though to do so, you had to hop from your seat onto a new one—his lap. You let out a muffled chuckle at his reddening face.

With movements a little clumsy, it dawned on you that neither of you knew what you were doing. But somehow, that was all the fun of it. You both could figure it out together. You could help Peter figure himself out as well. That is, if you were alive to. Peter wasn’t letting up at all, only growing more fevered as time went on.

You tried to draw the kiss to a close, but he only pressed further. You tapped on his shoulders, but he only tightened the grip he had on you. You stirred hotly and decided the moment needed to end before it got too far.

You ripped yourself from his lips, gasping deeply. Peter looked at you in confusion, oblivious.

Coughing, you asked, “Do spiders have extreme breath-holding skills?”

Peter’s chest heaved with deep breaths, mirroring your own. He looked winded, but by no means uneager to begin again.

“I... don't think so,” he panted. He huffed some more, his lip quirking. He looked at you like you were the sun. You beamed down at him, kicking your feet childishly. You both settled into a comfortable silence, your arms locked behind his neck and around his shoulders.

“But, I’ve got to ask this time,” you said slowly. Your expression grew soft. You wished you could sound more confident, or even be so confident to not even ask, but you were still fearful of being blindsided. “If … someone asks if we’re dating—“

“We’ll both say yes,” he finished, looking to you for confirmation.

You were more than happy to reassure him with a warm gaze.

His hands on your waist, his eyes meeting yours, the air still and quiet—you grinned, marinating in the moment.

Anyone—anyone in the world—would be able to tell you both were more than just friends.

[drtanstravels]

It’s been a while since I’ve checked in because we’ve had a relatively quiet two months, until now that is. We had been anticipating our first venture back to mainland USA since we left New York three years ago for quite a while, but for slightly different reasons than the usual excitement that comes with a big trip; the bulk of our stay was going to be in the state of Wyoming for another one of Anna’s conferences, this time the Midwest Ocular Angiography Conference being held in the small town of Jackson. We were going to be in a white, working class state that voted overwhelmingly for Donald Trump and one where a licence isn’t required to carry a concealed weapon so we figured the two of us together might draw a bit of attention. Then there was the fact that Wyoming is the least populous state in the United States so when we were looking for information about where we’d be staying, among the endless memes such as these, we also found a lot of people, mostly ironically, even calling into question the state’s existence:

Our plan was to fly out on the night of Friday, July 5, taking a 15-hour direct flight to Los Angeles, California, but due to the time difference, landing around the same time we left. We would then stay a night in LA, fly out to Jackson, Wyoming where we would spend the following four nights before spending a similar amount of time traveling around both the Great Teton and Yellowstone National Parks. Let’s get this show on the road!

I think someone wanted to come with us

Friday, July 5, 2019 I had a lot of loose ends to tie up during the day, then Anna returned from work and we began to pack. This was no easy task as the temperature in Wyoming is a little scattered. With the exception of a couple of colder outliers that were in the mid-teens, most days were going to be between 27°C (80.6°F) and 31°C (87.8°F), however, the nights would be quite cool, every evening in single digits, sometimes dropping to 0°C (32°F). This meant we would have to pack for both summer and winter, especially due to the fact that Anna had also planned to spend two nights “glamping” in a tent. Anyway, we went through our boxes of winter clothes, got everything packed, dropped the dog off at Brownie Buddies, and made our way to the airport.

There’s been a recent trend of disasters occurring around the same time we are in, or not long after we leave, a country:

We were in Honolulu, Hawaii (I realise it’s not a county in itself, but part of the US) for an ophthalmology conference from April 29 – May 2, 2018. The Kilauea volcano erupted the day we left, followed by several earthquakes including one at a magnitude of 6.9, as well as multiple lava flows. 700 houses were destroyed.

We then stayed in Tokyo, Japan from May 2 – May 7 on the way back from the Hawaiian conference. Two months later Western Japan suffered its worst natural disaster since the 2011 earthquake and the worst weather-related disaster in 36 years with flooding and landslides killing around 200 people and two million more evacuated after July 5. Another two months after the typhoon, an earthquake with a magnitude of 6.7 occured in Hokkaido, killing at least 39.

We visited Chiang Mai, Thailand for another conference from June 27, 2018, I returned on June 30 and Anna on July 2. In what was only a relatively small story when it broke, 12 teenage soccer players and their coach became trapped in a cave in neighbouring Chiang Rai on June 23, not being rescued until 18 days later, one volunteer rescuer suffocating in the process.

We were in Hangzhou, China from September 12 – 15, 2018, with Anna arriving on the 13th from Hong Kong. The day I landed in Hangzhou, Hong Kong, also technically a “special administrative region of China”, was hit by Typhoon Mangkhut, leaving 400 seeking medical care and 1,500 taking refuge in temporary shelters.

Later in the month we had a holiday in Turkey from September 24 – 29 and they didn’t escape lightly, either. Not only was there a hurricane warning for Turkey on the day we left to return to Singapore, but Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi was murdered in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul by his own government just two days later as well.

This year we spent February 1 – 5 in Sri Lanka, a mere two months before a series of bombings in churches and hotels in Colombo killed 257 people.

So, what does all of this have to do with our trip to Wyoming? Well, we had a one-day layover in Los Angeles and a 6.4 magnitude earthquake hit about 240 km (150 miles) north of LA just before we departed from Singapore, that’s all.

We caught our flight, landed, and it is alway amusing people-watching at Los Angeles International Airport, including the middle-aged woman we encountered resembling Lolo Ferrari who wouldn’t be able to sleep on her back for fear of being crushed under the weight of her own ridiculous breast implants. Once through immigration we caught a shuttle from our terminal to our hotel at the airport and an extremely strong female driver who appeared to have just returned from the manicurist picked up our exceptionally heavy suitcases like they were nothing and loaded them onto the shuttle. When we got to the hotel we grabbed our bags and I asked her how she managed to do that and keep a full set. She just gave me a cheeky smile, winked, and drove off. We checked into the hotel before making our way downstairs to a bar where we pulled up a seat for a few drinks, but the staff all seemed a little freaked out, talking about the earthquake. It seemed a little fresh in them all until I looked up at a screen showing CNN and the numbers didn’t quite add up. It turned out that another 7.1 magnitude quake with several aftershocks hit about an hour before we landed at LAX. They weren’t dwelling on the previous day’s occurrence, this stronger quake that everyone was nervous about had only just occurred. The staff just wanted to get out of there and check that their homes were still intact, plus we were pretty tired so we just had a couple of drinks and went back up to our room.

Saturday, July 6, 2019 You never get a great sleep when you make a flight as long as the one we had, constantly waking up during the night, struggling to get back to sleep, then waking up early again. This left us a fair bit of time to kill in LA before we had to fly out later that night so we decided to catch a cab to a nearby shopping mall, but first we grabbed some breakfast in the hotel cafe. One thing we were aware of, but to the degree of which we had completely forgotten, was the portion sizes in the US. Case in point, we got a breakfast burrito each and probably wouldn’t need anything else until dinner! Time to walk this one off in Westfield Culver City.

Add “NBA record most missed shots in NBA history” to that list

This mall had a ton of sporting goods stores selling NBA jerseys, caps, and other stuff, predominately Lakers gear. I’ve mentioned before that I loathe, hate, and despise the Lakers, think Kobe Bryant (left) is the most overrated player to ever lace them up, and believe that LeBron James’ spoilt, overprivileged attitude is ruining the league. This offseason the Lakers traded for Anthony Davis of the New Orleans Pelicans, a deal that could ruin the franchise for years to come if it doesn’t work out and left them wanting to sign another star player Their eyes were set firmly on free agent Kawhi Leonard, whom had just led the Toronto Raptors to the NBA championship. Instead, Leonard announced that very morning that he intended to sign with the Lakers’ crosstown rival L.A. Clippers, a team that also managed to trade for Oklahoma City Thunder star Paul George, and Lakers fans were PISSED! There was a guy who ran one of the stores, an overweight dude in a Kobe Bryant throwback jersey and all other Lakers attire who was close to tears. “If only we still had Kobe, man,” he said longingly of a player that retired three years ago. “He’d be 41, but we’d still have a chance, with Kobe you always had a chance.” He’s talking about a guy who couldn’t stay healthy toward the end of his career, playing a grand total of  107 of a possible 244 games over his final three seasons, the Lakers’ three worst regular seasons in franchise history for that matter, all while pulling in a cool US$78,953,000 in salary over that time. Yeah, he’d get it done today.

We spent the bulk of the afternoon wandering around Westfield, finding quirky objects such as Twix chocolate bar packets that claimed to contain four of only the left-side bars. We are attending Anna’s cousin’s wedding in Vancouver, Canada in September so I managed to pick up a three-piece Calvin Klein suit plus a shirt from JC Penney for a grand total of only US$355.88 (AU$506.49) plus tax, well under half-price and it actually fits. This isn’t boasting, but the price will make a bit of sense when I use it as a comparison later in this post. Anyway, take a look at some photos from our less than one day in Los Angeles:

The TV while we were in the bar on Friday night

Breakfast is served

These things were enormous

For those who believe the right Twix bar is unlucky and need twice as many in total

And vice versa

Anna had a weird craving for In-N-Out Burger, but we didn’t have time and before long we were back in the airport, ready to take a short flight from LA to Jackson, Wyoming. There is only one flight per day to Jackson and I was beginning to think there may be some truth to the conspiracy that Wyoming may not even exist when we boarded the plane and there were a grand total of 12 passengers onboard. Anyway, a bit of background information on our alleged destination:

Jackson is a small city in the Jackson Hole valley of Teton County, Wyoming, United States. The population was 9,577 at the 2010 census, up from 8,647 in 2000. It is the county seat of Teton County and is its largest town.

The town gained significant fame when a livestream of the town square went viral on YouTube in 2016, leading to much fascination with the town’s elk antler arch, its law enforcement, and its prevalence of red trucks.

As of the census of 2010, there were 9,577 people, 3,964 households, and 1,858 families residing in the town. The racial makeup of the town was 79.8% White, 0.4% African American, 0.8% Native American, 1.4% Asian, 0.1% Pacific Islander, 15.2% from other races, and 2.3% from two or more races. Hispanic or Latino of any race were 27.2% of the population.

Upon finding out those demographics, I immediately set myself the goal of getting a photo with one of those nine or 10 Pacific Islanders if Wyoming did indeed exist, especially if they drive a red truck. Failing that, a guy in a MAGA hat shouldn’t be too much of a stretch. I can honestly vouch for the existence of Wyoming as we landed in the Jackson Hole airport. No memories planted by the government, just real visions of a tiny airport decorated with discarded elk antlers. Anna had hired a car, but we wouldn’t be picking that up until the following day. Instead, we had a driver collecting us to take us to our motel about 10 minutes outside of town. When we arrived at the Flat Creek Inn at 8:30pm, sitting directly opposite the National Elk Refuge, the place had an appearance resembling kind of a much larger version of the motel where Earl and Randy lived in My Name Is Earl. In fact, if the motel were located in any major city in the US, it seemed almost inevitable that at least one hooker or backpacker would have been murdered there and stuffed into a wall cavity. Realistically though, it was a nice enough place and pretty much suited our needs. Our flight, the airport, and our home for the night:

Our packed flight

Flying over “Wyoming”

Anna out the front of the airport in Jackson Hole, Wyoming

Outside our room

The store where we’d be buying dinner

In our room

A little dingy, but it’ll be fine for the night

Anna sitting on the bed

Me trying to give the room a sexier vibe

After we had checked into our room it was time to try to find something to eat and that is where any semblance of normalcy ceased. This was truly an area where you couldn’t achieve anything without a car and, despite being only a 10-minute ride, a taxi into Jackson was US$40.00 (AU$57.00) each way so we were limited to the convenience store that was linked to our hotel, one that closed at midnight. Now, one thing that needs to be made clear here for anyone who hasn’t suffered from jet-lag before is that it is simply agony, especially when it is the result of an excruciatingly long flight from South-East Asia to North America. Traveling to the west coast of the US isn’t quite as bad as the east, but it’s still awful — You are unable to keep your eyes open at 4:00pm, it’s almost as if you suffer from narcolepsy and you have no problem falling asleep once you go to bed if you make it to what would be the time you would normally sleep back home, but then you find yourself wide awake a couple of hours later at 3:00am, unable to switch back off. The one upside of that late-afternoon and onward period where it’s tough to stay awake is that you are also a little delirious and anything can become absolutely hilarious. That is the position in which we found ourselves at this point. Anyway, we went down to the convenience store, but there wasn’t a lot of food options and no alcohol, however, there was a microwave and an electric coffee maker in our room so we bought two packets of instant noodles, a large frozen pizza, some jerky, and a small turkey pot pie, as well as some Tabasco sauce and two bottles of sparkling water. Dinner would soon be served. We took our instant foodstuffs back to the motel, I went to the bathroom while Anna heated some water in the coffee maker for our noodles and upon return was informed of some unpleasant news — Our room was devoid of all cutlery and crockery. Never mind, she came up with the brilliant idea of using two coffee stirrers for chopsticks. This method worked perfectly between her Kermit the Frog-like fingers, but wasn’t conducive to particularly successful eating in my massive mitts, although I eventually managed in the end, much to Anna’s amusement. But this was nothing, things were only getting started. It was time to prepare our second course, a large, frozen, pepperoni pizza. This one we did have the equipment for, or so we thought. Our pizza was vacuum-sealed so I had to tear the inner package open with my teeth. Once done I also discovered it was a little large for the microwave, but on the other hand the microwave had a button specifically for pizza. Our pizza spun and spun, smearing cheese and tomato paste all over the inside of the oven and then it occured to me; This was America and that button was for reheating cold pizza, not cooking a frozen one. This was not some dual convection oven, this was a basic microwave and if you’ve ever tried to cook an unbaked bread product in a microwave before, you’ll be more than aware that it essentially just steams it. Our microwave was getting cheesier and pastier as time went on so we had no choice but to remove the pizza and cut it in half, sans knife. Anna’s inner-MacGuyver kicked in and she thought cutting through our steamed pizza with the cardboard base upon which it had come would be the best approach. The only problem was that there were no plates to put the two halves on so Anna gnawed half of her portion of the floppy, steamed pizza from the cardboard, laughing to the point of crying at how ridiculous the situation was, while at the same time lamenting that her half wasn’t cooked properly and quitting halfway through. I started to eat my share of the pizza from the glass base of the microwave, but agreed that it needed further steaming. Nothing an extra minute of heating couldn’t fix, I even got the crust to rise a little. We gave up on the idea of even attempting to eat the pie so I cleaned the cheese and tomato paste from the inside of the microwave using makeup-removing wipes, followed by washing the microwave base in the bathroom sink, leaving an oily, red ring around the basin. What better way is there to follow a hilariously bad meal than with a hilariously bad film? RoboCop was on TV so it seemed that our night had just planned itself. Some of the offerings on hand that evening:

On the menu tonight

Easy for the daintier among us

Not so much for the larger of the species

We tried to make it fit

Pure ingenuity

Going…

Going…

Gone.

Nothing some medicated wipes couldn’t fix

My half turned out okay for a steamed pizza

Sunday, July 7, 2019 It was tough staying asleep again that night and we were awake early so we did a check of the room to make sure there were no lasting repercussions of the steamed pizza episode, checked out of the motel, and waited for our ride to take us into town to pick up our rental car, snapping a few pictures in the process. Anna had done a little research and found a cafe and bakery called Persephone so we drove down once we had our Toyota Carola and pulled up an outdoor seat for brunch. The cafe was run by hipsters so it would probably be one of the only places around to get a half-decent cup of coffee, plus we had learnt our lesson the previous day so we only ordered an appetiser each, instead of bloating ourselves on a enormous main meal when we don’t usually even eat breakfast.

Before long our brunch was finished, but it was too early to check into our new hotel so we decided to have a look around the shops. We had never been to this part of the US so I was expecting it to be a bit like Fargo, either the film or the series, but I was pleasantly surprised, however, one thing needs to be said — There is a ton of taxidermy around these parts! Go into almost any store and there is going to be anything from stuffed jackalope creations on a small table, to stuffed and mounted elk and bison heads on the wall, to full bearskin rugs with the head still attached. Add to that the wide variety of redneck t-shirts and and cowboy gear on offer, fossilised animals, and bear shit-shaped chocolates and we had an interesting afternoon ahead of us. Anna likes to find a ring for every place she visits and although there were mainly ones with ugly turquoise stones, she managed to find a unique, black gold ring in a jewellery store that has an ancient elk tooth that is actually a remnant of a tusk from when elk hadn’t fully evolved into the animal we have today. I picked up a Wyoming t-shirt with different regional animal turds on the back. Once done, before checking into our hotel, we went to a supermarket because we wanted to see what you would find in a small town US supermarket in a sparsely-populated state and we weren’t left disappointed; there was an entire bar of different flavoured fried chicken wings, you could get 80 fl.oz (2.36lt) jars of pickles, but I guess that’s because there isn’t a lot else to do in this town, especially in winter, but eat. We just bought a foam cooler for later in the trip, as well as some other supplies, but we were delayed on the way back to the car when a gust of wind came up and blew the lid off the cooler, hitting an older Mexican man in the head in the parking lot. He felt guilty for some reason and chased after it, returning the lid to us.

We then went back and checked into our home for the next three nights, the Four Seasons Resorts and Residence Jackson Hole. It was a really nice place, our room was massive, and there was food and drinks for Anna’s conference in one of the downstairs conference rooms, as well as outside by some fire pits, so we just spent the night snacking and drinking with old colleagues and some new friends. I didn’t get any pictures from the evening, but here’s the motel from the previous night, the vibe of some of the stores, and our new room:

Our motel from the previous night

The Elk Refuge across the road from the motel, sans elk

On the way into town

Hanging out with what was once a bison

This stuff was everywhere!

Anna was worried she wouldn’t see any bears on this trip so she wanted this taken

As soon as I saw this book my post had a title

One of the finer volumes ever published on the topic of wild faeces recognition

Seriously, almost all shops are like this inside

You could just settle for a fur

The perfect gift for your coprophiliac friends

Anna was a fan of this Dolly Parton picture

Fossils for sale

Some of the redneck attire available

Part of the wing bar inside the supermarket

More wings

I should’ve put something else with these pickles for perspective

Looking into a small portion of our bathroom at the Four Seasons

Part of the room

The view from the bed

Monday, July 8, 2019 Anna’s conference began early each morning and finished around 1:00pm, which wasn’t an issue for either of us because of the jet-lag and even if we did manage to nod off again after waking up in the wee hours, we’d be wide awake again about 7:00am, just in time for the conference. Anna would go about her business in the morning and we had a Nespresso machine in our room so I would drink coffee and watch the NBA Summer League until she returned, but today didn’t look like it was officially the third week of summer, it was one of those outliers I mentioned at the beginning of this post; cold outside, about 13°C (55.4°F), and pouring rain. When Anna returned the rain had stopped, but it was still cold. We went and had lunch in neighbouring Teton Village and then took the arial tram up the mountain into the Jackson Hole Mountain Resort:

The Jackson Hole Mountain Resort (JHMR) is a ski resort in the western United States, at Teton Village, Wyoming. In the Teton Range of the Rocky Mountains, it is located in Teton County, 12 miles (20 km) northwest of Jackson and due south of Grand Teton National Park. It is named after the historically significant Jackson Hole valley and is known for its steep terrain and a large continuous vertical drop of 4,139 ft (1,262 m).

Jackson Hole’s original aerial tram was closed to the public in the fall of 2006 and replaced with a new tram that opened in 2008. The tram’s vertical rise is 4,139 feet (1,262 m) to an elevation of 10,450 feet (3,185 m) above sea level.

That explains a whole lot, because the previous day we had both felt a bit out of breath at times, but we didn’t realise that we were at that elevation. Denver, Colorado is known as the “Mile High City” due to its elevation and I experienced a little bit of breathlessness when I was there, but nothing like this. However, it turns out that at 5280 feet (1609.3 meters) above sea level, Denver is barely half the elevation of the Mountain Resort and only about three quarters the average elevation of the entire Jackson Hole valley, something we definitely weren’t prepared for.

Once we were at the summit it became abundantly clear that I was glad we had come in summer. People were saying that it had been snowing as recently as a week prior and before we arrived the previous day there had been a storm of enormous hailstones out of a clear sky! There was still a bit of snow on the ground and a fair bit on the peaks so we went inside the cabin there to have a cup of awful coffee and then started to explore around the area. People around here are completely oblivious to the cold, as was proven to us time and time again on this journey, the first evidence of this was locals walking around near the snow in shorts and t-shirts! We were only out a short while when an announcement came over stating that everybody needed to get back on the tram or be stranded in the cabin for an unknown period of time, because there was a thunderstorm coming and if lightning struck the metal platform for the tram, everyone standing on it would be fried. Instead of packing onto the tram, we sat in the cabin, drank more shitty coffee, walked around and got a bit wet outside, and waited for the next opportunity to leave, embracing the lack of children in the cabin and the space in the tram, all the while the operator played classic rock on our descent and we spotted foxes and marmots on the mountain. Our day up until that point:

A little grim outside our hotel window that morning

A challange in the restaurant in our hotel. That’s almost a 1kg burger and a litre of beer

Heading into Teton Village

“Hey, let’s go up there!”

Beginning our ascent

A panoramic view of the summit

Anna was complaining that the wind was making her teeth hurt

These people are fearless

Coming over a bit bleak

Making the most of everyone else fleeing

It’s nicer up here alone

A fox running around

Now beginning our descent

Another fox in the snow

About halfway down

Most shops and restaurants in and around Jackson close at 10:00pm so we decided to take the opportunity to drive into town and get our outfits for the Western-themed dinner the following night. It was also essential that we remembered to refer to the clothing as our “outfits” and not “costumes,” because this is how a large portion of the local population actually dress every day, including some of those in attendance.

We found several stores selling what we needed and it soon became abundantly clear why cowboys used to rob banks and shoot people back in the day — It was so they could steal money to buy their clothes! The reason I mentioned the Calvin Klein suit that I had purchased in Los Angeles a couple of days earlier for US$355.00 was for a comparison. For my “outfit” for the dinner I figured I’d get a Western shirt, some boots maybe with a fringe running up the side, a hat, possibly some chaps, but those dreams were all shattered when I saw the prices. A shirt was at least US$100.00, most pushing US$200.00. It was impossible to get a pair of boots my sizes for much less than US$500.00. I even found the sweater The Dude wears in the film The Big Lobowski, marketed as such and it was US$239.00! For a zip-up woollen sweater! Fortunately, I was able to snag a shirt for US$59.00 on a post-fourth of July sale rack and when you see it you’ll realise why, plus a cheap hat for another US$39.00 (all plus tax, of course).

We looked around a few of the areas of town that we didn’t explore the previous day and soon it was time for dinner. We’re not used to this cooler weather, plus we both love cheese, so what better option could there possibly be than fondue? We found a place called Alpenhof Lodge that had fondue back in Teton village near our hotel, then settled into a bar claiming to be “World famous” called the Mangy Moose Steakhouse and Saloon for a few beers and some live country music, or “Farm Emo” as I like to call it, and it certainly wouldn’t be the last time we’d be listening to it on this journey. A pattern we would discover while in this part of the country was that bars close at 11:00pm no matter what day it is, but we still managed to have a good time that night before walking back to our place to try to get some much needed sleep. How the rest of the day looked:

In another arch made from discarded elk antlers. There are a few of these around

I see what they did there….

The main street of Jackson

I love ‘The Big Lobowski’, but I’m not paying that much

$567.00 is the sale price for a very small pair of boots

That’s the original!

All the cars here are enormous!

Someone’s excited for fondue

There was a ‘Galaga’ machine where we had dinner, too

Settling into the Mangy Moose

Our entertainment for the night

They inexplicably have an original 1950s Las Vegas showgirl costume framed on the wall near the toilets there…

…as well as what looks like the evolution of bear traps

Tuesday, July 9, 2019 It was our last full day in Jackson prior to moving on to the holiday leg of our stay and the weather was nice so we had to make the most of it before I made a complete fool of myself in front of a bunch of strangers that night. I did my usual routine — a coffee and NBA Summer League — before Anna returned home, we had a bite for lunch, and then she confirmed what she had been considering the previous day as a way to fill in today; we were going to go whitewater rafting on Snake River:

The Snake River is a major river of the greater Pacific Northwest region in the United States. At 1,078 miles (1,735 km) long, it is the largest tributary of the Columbia River, in turn the largest North American river that empties into the Pacific Ocean.

Formed by the confluence of three tiny streams on the southwest flank of Two Oceans Plateau in Yellowstone National Park, western Wyoming, the Snake starts out flowing west and south into Jackson Lake. Its first 50 miles (80 km) run through Jackson Hole, a wide valley between the Teton Range and the Gros Ventre Range. Below the tourist town of Jackson, the river turns west and flows through Snake River Canyon, cutting through the Snake River Range and into eastern Idaho.

When Anna gets her mind set on something her intent is always to do it properly, however, I didn’t have to worry about her inadvertently signing up to do the full length of the river, just a stretch of about eight miles (12.8km) through Snake River Canyon, an area known to have some of the best whitewater rafting in the US. There were several options regarding the size of rafts and the amounts of people thereon, but we wanted to keep it intimate so we opted for one with room for eight people plus our guide. Our journey down the river was going to consist of Anna and myself, as well as Adrian, one of Anna’s colleagues that works in Sydney, Australia, and Nicole, an ophthalmologist we had met at the conference that we got on well with from Chicago. The other four spots would be taken up by some randoms that wanted to join us, which ended up being a family of four from Oregon. We took a shuttle bus for about an hour to the point in the river where our journey would begin. For a few dollars extra you could rent a wetsuit, but it was a nice, warm day so everyone besides Adrian and Nicole decided they didn’t need one, a decision we would all regret in hindsight. We all put on some sunscreen, the combination with Adrian’s black wetsuit making him look a pale shade of blue, as if he had a vitamin-D deficiency or maybe it was just his first ever time in actual sunlight, but he would have the last laugh. Once we had donned our lifejackets we pushed the raft out into a calm part of the river, boarded, and Hunter, our guide who was also clearly a massive stoner that had his own radio show with his friend, gave us our instructions as we floated downstream, informing us on how to react to each command, what to do if we have an “out of boat experience,” that type of thing. You could tell from a million miles away that this dude spent the nine months of the year that weren’t summer completely baked in neighbouring Colorado, just punching decriminalised cones and snowboarding. One thing that he said, however, had me a little worried; he told me I was going to freeze in my cotton t-shirt. Should’ve opted for the wetsuit. After receiving our advice and instructions we started to hit some small rapids, but it was when the first wave sprayed over our boat that we truly realised that this river was formed from glacial runoff and was absolutely freezing. The four of us were seated in the back two rows of the boat, the family in the front two with the father and the teenaged son having volunteered to be at the very front of the boat. Every time we hit a rough patch that sent water over us the teenaged kid seemed to cop it the worst and from the very first time you could just see him perpetually shivering and his teeth audibly chattering the entire ride. It was a really great time, the scenery was stunning, and it was hilarious when we would see a capsized boat or people doing something stupid and a possibly still-stoned Hunter would make chicken noises and yell either “Utah” or “Florida” at them, the latter an obvious reference to the less than stunning track record people from that state have in the common sense department. Not all of the people in the water were in there accidentally, though. Some of them were swimming! I mentioned earlier about how these people are impervious to cold and some thought a dip in the frigid waters was rather refreshing, one group even turning their inflatable boat upside-down and used it as a slip-n-slide. Me? I was soaked in my t-shirt, probably shouldn’t have worn socks either, my hands and feet were wrinkled and completely devoid of any colour whatsoever. In my own defence, it wasn’t the kind of boat I was expecting and I didn’t think I would get quite so wet, but we had an absolute blast and I’m just thankful I didn’t have an “out of boat experience.” Here’s a few shots from inside the boat, some of our group, and a couple more of our beautiful surroundings:

Heading down to the water behind the family that would be joining us

Yup, we’ll be on a small one of those

All aboard!

And we’re off

Going to have to put the camera away and paddle soon

Adrian, Anna, Hunter, Nicole, and my saturated self

The upside-down boat is the slip-n-slide

It doesn’t look that rough, but it certainly was

Another area of the river

Looking back on from where we had come

We got back in the shuttle bus and made the one hour trip back to the hotel, trying to get the feeling back in our lower extremities the entire way, as the moment we had spent a large portion of the previous day shopping for was almost upon us; when we arrived back at the hotel it would be time for us to start getting ready for the Western-themed dinner. I was a little nervous about the dinner for the sole reason that when I purchased my cowboy shirt, it was one of those seemed-like-a-good-idea-at-the-time moments. You see, as I mentioned, the shirt was on a discount rack for fourth of July stock that the store now needed to get rid of, but this wasn’t just any old shirt — It was an extremely ugly shirt with a design based on the good ol’ stars ‘n’ bars. Yes, my shirt was a particularly patriotic-looking one that resembled the American flag and I was worried the irony would be lost on some at the event. Admittedly, it really was the cheapest shirt I could find, but my concern was that some people wouldn’t find it anywhere near as funny as we initially did. At least there would be others that would look just as stupid as I would, as Adrian had just ordered a generic cowboy costume online and this was his first time even trying it on, although we had to remind him to refrain from calling it a “costume,” because it closely resembled the wardrobes of some in attendance.

When we arrived there was a live country band churning out some more Farm Emo so Anna started to do the rounds, chatting to colleagues, friends, and acquaintances and I hit the bar, which had some really good local microbrews available. Soon it was time to sit down for dinner, but not long after we were seated some of the organisers wanted to get everybody up again to do line-dancing and they were relentless! They just wouldn’t take a “no” for an answer, but fortunately they also weren’t going to get a “yes” out of myself. It was a good thing too, because the end result wasn’t pretty:

As you can clearly see some people got a little more into the line dancing than others, possibly even enjoying themselves, as is also evident here:

The food started to come out and the line-dancing devolved into just regular dancing to country music for those that refused to give up the dance floor. Dinner was good, but there weren’t a whole lot of options and there was one woman on our table who had allergies to seafood and nuts, as well as being lactose intolerant, ruling out the bulk of what was served to her. The night continued on, but one thing that occurs when drinking at high altitudes is it takes you nowhere near as much to get drunk so the crowd started to peter out a little as people began to realise they were getting sleepy and went back to their rooms. As for Anna, Nicole, and myself, we decided to hit up the Mangy Moose again, joined by a cool pharmaceutical representative from Chicago we had met, Tony. We hung around in the Mangy Moose until they were going to close, the girls getting served special, albeit exceptionally strong, house Slurpee cocktails. When the Moose closed, we headed back to our rooms, myself content in the knowledge that I would never need to wear that shirt ever again. Or so I thought; one of our plans for this trip was to attend a rodeo and Anna was insistent that I wear it, fully aware that it could possibly get me killed. Anyway, here’s how the dinner and drinks looked:

This is what I’d be rocking

More Farm Emo

On the menu tonight

Some really got into the line-dancing

The table centrepiece

It was a fun night, but I couldn’t dress like this all the time

Back at the Mangy Moose

The next day we had lunch with Tony and then drove out to Grand Teton National Park to begin the holiday leg of our journey.

Stay tuned for the conclusion to this story to see us exploring the US Pacific Northwest and “glamping” in Grand Teton National Park, as well as staying in the world famous Yellowstone National Park, encountering more than our share of geysers and wildlife along the way. If that doesn’t interest you, at least check to see if I have my Borat moment at a rodeo:

via GIPHY

Hanging out in Wyoming, an American state that some don't even believe exists It's been a while since I've checked in because we've had a relatively quiet two months, until now that is.

[frasier-crane-style]

Black Panther

It was okay.

-Just about every post or review I’ve seen of this has started with some variant of “I’m a white guy, so I can’t imagine what this means to black people,” which I find a little patronizing. If it meant a lot to you, I’m not going to denigrate that--although part of me thinks that some of that’s due to a cynical marketing campaign positioning this as the first movie that’s ever had black people in it. Just know that I can’t speak to how important a movie is to the black experience, either for or against, I can only speak to how I enjoyed it and what I thought of its various elements. 

-I liked most of the cast, I thought a lot of the way they visualized Wakanda managed to pull off the “grass huts and forcefield” level of technology Jack Kirby envisioned without coming off as cheesy--even if it doesn’t quite fit to the Hudlin, Wakanda has always been advanced, backstory (in the comics, there are giant panther mecha. In the movie, there are... rhinos with frickin’ laser beams attached to their heads). I thought the Korea action sequence was good, as well as parts of the final battle--the action ranges from bad (the opening fight) to good, but I don’t think it’s ever as visceral as Cap and Bucky storming through a SWAT team, a throwaway moment that now comes across as a highwater mark in a genre of Homecomings and Ragnaroks.

-Some people have said that T’Challa was boring, I thought the character and the acting was fine in a story that didn’t give him a lot to do (see below). I’d rather have a quiet, Zen Black Panther then see Tacoma Whippits turn him into a joke machine, and the obligatory bits in the first half where he has to act like a dork so we in the audience “relate to him” or whatever are just the worst. You had Feige specifically comparing T’Challa to James Bond, but I don’t remember Sean Connery slipping on a banana peel to tell us viewers that he was a fun guy. Just make the guy a convincingly badass motherfucker, we’ll like him. It worked in Civil War. (This is half a petty nitpick since after the ‘Q’ scene, they knock it off, but still, first impressions are important.)

-Petty nitpick department: For a genius, you’d think Shuri would realize that it’d be a lot easier to launch jeep-disabling weapons from the jet instead of making them into tiny little beads that you have to throw as you fall out of a plane. Even Batman just goes ahead and puts a gun on the Batwing, you know.

-They make this big point of how advanced Wakanda is, but it really doesn’t seem that much more advanced than what SHIELD and Tony Stark have. Like, what’s the difference between a Quinjet and whatever Wakanda’s version of a Quinjet is? The Black Panther suit seems less advanced than Iron Man’s stuff. Yeah, you can store it in a necklace, but it can’t shoot repulsor beams, it can’t fly, you have to physically walk around in it instead of being able to pilot it by remote. And the heart-shaped herb is a good biomodification, but it seems on par with Captain America, and not really something that has a mark on the Hulk, Quicksilver, Extremis, or Spider-Man. Kinda seems like the whole country could be taken out by one of those advanced Helicarriers from Winter Soldier. I realize they don’t want to make these guys too op, otherwise the next Spider-Man would end with Peter calling in a Dora Milaje to take out Venom for him, but it makes the Wakandans come off as a bit sheltered. “My Vibranium armor makes me bulletproof!” “Yeah, we have this Luke Cage guy, his skin does that.”

-Half of the plot seemed kinda... pointless? This has been out three weeks, so I feel safe in discussing spoilers--why couldn’t Erik just show up in Wakanda and challenge T’Challa in the first five minutes? Hell, why didn’t he show up before Civil War and challenge T’Chaka’s old ass? Seems like that would’ve been easier, plus, that was the guy who actually killed his father. 

-I guess Killmonger’s plan was... and much of this wasn’t presented as such, so I’m just hypothesizing...

Phase 0: Wait for T’Chaka to die so Wakanda is vulnerable during the transition of power. Don’t, like, set out to assassinate him yourself, even though that seems perfectly doable. Just, you know, hope you get lucky.

Phase 1: Dangle Klaw in front of T’Challa’s face with a vibranium selling plot, then sabotage his attempt at capturing him to weaken T’Challa’s position within Wakanda. (No idea how T’Challa couldn’t find Klaw before when the Avengers and Ultron were able to do it with ease in AoU. I guess T’Chaka really was lying down on the job there.)

(-I’ve seen it suggested that T’Chaka let Klaw run free as a way of covering up N’Jobu’s death, but it seems like A. there’s no way Klaw could’ve known that much about it, B. it’d be far safer to just find him and kill him on the spot, and no Wakandan would question it.)

Phase 2: Kill Klaw himself to gain favor with the Wakandans, which will work, and cause T’Challa’s lifelong best bud to turn against him (even knowing that Erik was responsible for Phase 1).

Phase 3: Defeat T’Challa in battle. Phases 2 and 3 are now pointless since all of Wakanda is now honorbound to follow you.

-Speaking of, if you’re some superpowered guy in a supersuit, I should think you could pull off disarming some jabroni with a gun without stabbing him in the heart. I mean, Spider-Man does that five times a day, and he’s fifteen. I guess the implication was that they Jack Ruby’d him? But then Marvel doesn’t want to dirty up Wakanda that much, so...

-I get Erik’s dad smuggling vibranium out of Wakanda, but why would he partner with a racist psychopath like Klaw to do it? You’d think a prince pulling an inside job could set up something a little better. It’s the Marvel universe! There must be like fifty supervillains he could’ve called up.

-Didn’t like that T’Challa’s big fight with Klaw, his arch-nemesis, was Klaw getting in one hit that BP no-sold, then just winning. That’s John Cena bullshit.

-There’s no way in hell I buy that a week after her father is murdered in a terrorist bombing, the unbearable Shuri is making quips about her brother having a girlfriend, much less stopping a religious ceremony to crack wise. Imagine Princess Di interrupting a royal wedding to moon people. Now remember that Wakanda is supposed to be way more honorbound and traditionalist than Britain.

-The whole resurrection of T’Challa thing makes no sense. So, Erik has taken over Wakanda and burned all but one of the heart-shaped herbs. So, since only the royal family can take the herb and become a Black Panther, Shuri has to step up... no? She just kinda follows along while they take it to M’Baku to make him the new Black Panther? But conveniently he’s saved T’Challa so they can give him the herb and immediately repower him.

-And if M’Baku’s people are such Luddites, how come they’re able to take on the Vibranium weaponry of W’Kabi’s guys? Do they also have Vibranium weapons? If so, where exactly are they drawing the line? Is a sword that can cut through Iron Man okay, but not a flying car? (Yes, I know there’s an explanation about jabbari wood in the EU, but they could at least put in one line about it so we know how it works without reading the novelization.)

-For a country that’s apparently super committed to isolationism, Wakanda really easily gets on board with Plan Imperialism. I guess most of the Wakandan people are morally inferior to the Asgardians, since even in Ragnarok’s hatchet-job, most of them were depicted as either actively resisting Hela’s imperialism or being cowed by her army.

-And no, don’t say the Wakandans were honorbound to follow Erik, because T’Challa specifically shows up in front of everyone and says that the duel isn’t finished, so a whole parcel of them are deliberately choosing Erik over T’Challa, despite Erik being this outsider, out-of-wedlock, blasphemous murderer they’ve never seen before... who is also obviously a psycho.

-It just seems like Wakanda goes really quickly from being one hundred percent behind T’Challa to going “You’re weak! Erik is strong! We need a strongman to lead us otherwise we’ll get our asses kicked!” I don’t buy that the Klaw fiasco is enough to totally torpedo T’Challa and make Erik untouchable.

-I mean, it’s the same basic plot as the first Thor, only there it works because the Asgardians don’t know just how much of a weasel Loki is, plus he goes to the trouble of setting Thor up first. 

-I got it, the issue is that this is based on the Don McGregor storyline where T’Challa had been away from Wakanda for a long time, serving on the Avengers and macking on gaijin Monica Lynne, so all of Wakanda was pissed at him and willing to hear this Killmonger guy out. But in the movie, he hasn’t done any of that, so it comes off as forced and contrived that all of a sudden, Wakanda is telling T’Challa to get to fuck.

-In fact, wouldn’t it make sense for Killmonger to factor M’Baku into his plans and take advantage of that tribe in some way? Since that’s one of the few things he could conceivably know about Wakanda (he really got lucky that W’Kabi was the first Wakandan he came across and totally sympathetic to a coup by a complete stranger).

-I guess the implication is that W’kabi and a lot of other Wakandans want to take over the world as some mix of maybe well-intentioned extremism, warrior pride, and garden-variety ambition, and they’re just following Killmonger because he can sign the papers. Which, when you think about it, makes Killmonger the black Donald Trump and his followers the Republican Party--”yeah, sure, he killed one priest, but he’s passing our tax bill, so...”--but I guess we’re going to skip straight from that take to him being a weeb?

-(That’s not really an issue with the film so much as a lot of the audience--not black people, but, like, Tumblr in general--deciding ahead of time exactly how they were going to feel about the movie and all its characters, which seems crazy to me. Like, why even go see the movie? But, not the movie’s fault, fanthings bein’ fanthing.)

-I thought the whole Okoye/W’kabi relationship was underdeveloped--at the end, when she stands up to him, I was like “oh, yeah, those two are A Thing.” I can’t imagine how much more forced taking the time to say Ayo--who is pretty much just the third Dora from the left here--is specifically in a lesbian relationship would be. So that’s a free pass from me for this stupid “gay representation controversy”. Even the T’Challa/Nakia thing felt pretty half-hearted and obligatory. The character of Nakia is alright, I was just never sure why these two in particular are into each other besides him being hot and her being hot (especially when the one thing we know about them is that their worldviews fundamentally disagree). Maybe she’s just the only woman T’Challa knows who A. has hair, B. isn’t related to him.

-In fact, it’s weird how the entire conflict in the movie is really between isolationism and outreach, yet there’s really no character representing or arguing for isolationism, not even any of the villains. T’Challa, I guess, but obviously he changes his mind. It seems like there should be a ‘devil on his shoulder’ type deal arguing for tradition. I think M’baku should’ve been that--the guy who slinks off into the shadows at the end, warning T’Challa that he’s coming for his ass because he opened up the borders and fucked with resurrection. (Five points to whoever gets that reference.) Instead, the conflict is lopsided because everyone seems to be against isolationism, they’re just differing in how.

-Actually, the whole thing of Wakanda following Killmonger just because he’s won this bullshit trial by combat because it’s tradition, and T’Challa urging them to follow him because it’s the right thing to do, could’ve been an okay take on that conflict, but instead apparently Wakanda legitimately wants to follow Erik and take over the world. And they just don’t spend enough time developing that.

-I also think they don’t spend enough time on T’Challa being depowered and kicked off the throne. It seems like there could be a really cool movie where, in the first fifteen or thirty minutes, Erik Killmonger shows up out of nowhere, kicks T’Challa’s ass, takes over Wakanda, and for the rest of the movie T’Challa is forced to rely on allies like Ross and M’baku who he can’t completely trust or rely on, and he has to fight his own people who are just trying to do the honorable thing, and he has to rethink being the Black Panther and earn that position instead of just having it handed to him. I’m pretty much describing the Don McGregor storyline this was adapted from. But, you know, why would you take that and add all this filler with Klaw and South Korea and such, and then skimp on the actual dramatic material? It’s like a version of Iron Man 3 where Tony’s house doesn’t get blown up until an hour and a half in, and then he immediately calls in the Iron Legion and goes to kick the Mandarin’s ass.

-Speaking of Korea, it seems a bit hypocritical to make this big production of being woke, then to throw in this inaccurate and ‘exotic’ side mission. It just seems like it’d be more thematic for this deal to be happening in Haiti or Jamaica or any other African country, somewhere where they could further comment on the story’s themes and develop them more. Maybe have the setting reflect what some of the characters want in terms of their goals, or fear happening to Wakanda? We kind of get that with the Boko Haram guys in the opening, but they’re dealt with so glibly (like muggers in a Batman movie) that it’s hard to see them as credibly a factor in any character’s thinking. Is T’Challa worried people like that will drag Wakanda down? Is Nakia determined to stop them? Seems like it was just something BP dealt with in ten seconds so he could hang out with this girl he likes.

-It’s funny that they follow in the steps of Ragnarok and Doctor Strange by dirtying up the heroes’ forebears--almost like that plot point is part of some formula 🤔 🤔 🤔 --yet still find time to white-wash a lot of Wakandan society. The Dora Milaje don’t have the underage, wives-in-training aspect. M’Baku and Nakia go from supervillains to frenemy and love interest, respectively. (Yeah, they turn W’kabi into a villain, but he beat his wife in the comics, so that’s not much of a stretch.) And yet, the plot relies on much of Wakanda being horrible people--willing to conquer the world, but not accept refugees. It’s a weird mix of utopianism and ‘uh, yeah, we still need to have a plot where the villain isn’t immediately dogpiled by all the average citizens who don’t like hyperwar.” Again, the Don McGregor storyline makes a point of Wakanda being a flawed, imperfect society, so it makes sense that Killmonger can take it over, but the movie is making the exact opposite point--Wakanda is so advanced and it’s so wonderful--and the plot doesn’t work anymore.

-To go into fanfic territory, it probably would’ve worked better if there were a significant amount of Wakandans who were pissed at T’Challa for letting Zemo live, because traditionally, someone who’d killed the King of Wakanda would be done, so it’s another divergence between what T’Challa finds moral and his country’s traditions. Just have M’baku say “you let your father’s killer live!” instead of “you failed to protect your dad!” 

-I’ve also seen it suggested that Killmonger’s master plan could’ve involved finding Zemo, springing him from American custody, and then delivering him to Wakanda. That sounds a lot stronger, but it would also result in Zemo necessarily being taken off the board, and even a bastardized Zemo seems too important to the Marvel Unnie for that. Maybe he could have a cousin who’s really into their family history?

-I think there were a few too many characters in this story. Most of the ‘strong female characters’ just seemed to spend the finale getting their asses kicked by Killmonger, while Ross’s Top Gun moment seemed pointless when--if T’Challa won--it seems like he could just order the transport to turn back... what, were they going to start World War 3 the moment they left Wakanda’s borders?

-Like, did Angela Bassett actually do anything in this movie? 

-Shuri, for instance, I think was so clearly intended to be ‘the meme one’ and just ended up ill-fitting in the MCU’s realistic milieu. I mean, this is a universe where Peter Parker isn’t much of a science nerd, he has a ‘guy at the computer’ to do his hacking for him and an AI to help him out and all that. Then over in Wakanda, you have a sixteen-year-old super-genius that’s the best scientist in the country and it clearly clashes with the grounded feel of the universe, but they just plow ahead with it anyway because “oh, it’ll get women interested in STEM, it’ll show black girls can do anything.” And she actually gets the better of T’Challa and razzes him with her ‘witty one-liners.’ I just find it really condescending. She’s basically a black female Wesley Crusher.

-Petty nitpick department: The first stinger is a dog. They end the movie SHOWING that T’Challa is revealing Wakanda to the world and using its technology and wealth to help out the underprivileged. Cool, got it, very clearly established all of that. Then after the first set of credits, we get a scene of... T’Challa going before the UN and TELLING that Wakanda is being revealed to the world and yadda yadda. It seems like the more natural scene would be him going up to Tony Stark or whatever and saying “hey, I’m joining the Avengers, and the next time there’s a problem, count me in!” But they cheaped out on getting RTD, so instead it’s just a less visually interesting presentation of a plot point we’ve already covered. This in a movie that was already very long and apparently left out crucial plot scenes.

-It’s also strange to have him give this big speech about how we’re all one tribe and we all have to come together, but a lot of his team seems at least casually racist? Like, you don’t see T’Challa saying “hey, M’baku, Ross was being pretty polite in addressing you, you didn’t need to bark at him like a dog just because he’s white” or “hey, sis, Ross is actually a buddy of mine and a pretty cool dude, maybe you shouldn’t greet him by calling him a racial slur?” I’m just saying, you wouldn’t see an X-Men movie where Jubilee is an unrepentant homophobe and all of the other mutants are cool with it.

-They set up that BP’s big special move is absorbing kinetic injury and then blasting it back out again, only it isn’t really clear how much he can take before it starts hurting him, if it ever hurts him. Like, could the Hulk punch him, then he gets up and walks it off, or would that break every bone in his body but leave his suit all glowy? I get that Captain America’s shield is unbreakable, so is BP walking around in an entire suit of that? And wouldn’t that make him invincible/boring? And for such a tactician of a character, they don’t really have him find any clever ways of using it, he just gets hit, uses the blast, moving on. You’d think there would be a scene where he does something counterintuitive or painful, but it’s just him thinking three steps ahead and charging up this power so he can use it at a crucial moment. 

-It also adds to the video game feeling of a lot of the already pixel-y action scenes that he literally has a rage meter limit break thing.

-Petty nitpick department: The movie characterizes both Klaw and Killmonger as Joker-style wisecrackers, which makes me wonder what they’ll do for villains in a sequel, since that’s Reverend Achebe’s thing and he’s about the last big villain in Black Panther canon who isn’t either dead in the MCU or adapted into an ally. And three evil Cockney jokesters in a row seems like a lot.

(-I’ve heard Dr. Doom suggested for a villain, but I kinda doubt Marvel would job out T’Challa/Wakanda to him, and Doom really needs a W if he’s going to be Doom.)

-I also don’t think the movie really engaged with its premise of depicting an African society that had never been colonized. In the real world, racial dynamics vary enormously from America to Europe to Japan, but Wakanda pretty much has the same viewpoints that African-Americans would have: resenting white people, using American idioms (”Guess who just popped up on the radar?”), even quoting American memes. It seems like in real life, Wakanda would be more concerned with the rest of Africa instead of being obsessed with America. I mean, in the comic books, you had Wakandans with this sense of jingoism, who resent all outsiders, no matter their skin color. Them making a distinction between white Americans and black Americans (for instance) comes off like pandering.

-Like, they start off the movie with BP fighting Nigerian slavers who have taken a number of women hostage and conscripted child soldiers, and obviously BP is against that, but how does Killmonger feel about those guys? Zuri? M’baku? Black people oppressing black people in Africa seems like a more immediate concern than police shootings all the way over in Oakland, but the whole idea seems too complex to factor into this white oppression dynamic, so they just use them as action scene fodder and move on to black people oppressed, white people mean. Maybe that’s supposed to be Killmonger being hypocritical and prioritizing stuff that reminds him of his own suffering over other issues, but that needs to be played out in the text.

-Because it seems like a really obvious counterpoint to Killmonger that there are political situations much more complex than “evil oppressors vs. innocent oppressed”--just look at the Middle East--and hence his simplistically violent philosophy is doomed to fail. Instead, the movie kinda concedes that his position is right, he’s just going about it in the wrong way. Which I think is intellectually dishonest.

-Petty nitpick department: They have an entire bit about how Shuri has designed these soundproof boots for T’Challa, but he never uses them. In accordance with the rule of Chekov’s Gun, which states that if you show a gun in the first act, then in the third act, it should turn out that it’s only purpose was to be a dumb joke.

-Petty nitpick department: So this takes place immediately after Civil War, and Civil War ended with Captain America in Wakanda, but then they never mention him in this and he doesn’t seem to be hanging around. I guess he’s off freeing all his buddies from the Raft during all this? But then the stinger of this is Bucky having been revived, and he was frozen again in the stinger to Civil War. So I guess it goes Civil War >>> Black Panther >>> the stinger of Civil War >>> the stinger of Black Panther? Usually when continuity is this convoluted, Han is still alive.

[365-money-diary]

DAYS 15-21

DAY FIFTEEN [JAN 15]

8:40 AM - Wake up feeling sore AF. I should’ve stretched after playing, but I obviously didn’t. I also feel like my stomach didn’t eat itself from the inside out while I was sleeping so that’s nice too. Make a chemex and get to work.

10:00 AM - eat plant yogurt.

11:00 AM - eat a few carrots and a clementine.

12:30 PM - make a greek salad for lunch with a La Croix - this is the last of the salad ingredients until Thursday essentially. Shed a singular tear.

3:00 PM - I am a tiny bit hungry. Eat a piece of rye toast.

4:14 PM - I wanted to start working out 45 minutes ago ugh. OK here we go. The hour goes by a lot faster than I expected which is nice. Rinse off and cook an early dinner – Reubens and potatoes.

8:00 PM - I wanted to drink alcohol but I’m too full from dinner to even enjoy it. Heat up chamomile tea instead. I want to work on my blog but K wants to hang instead and I’m in no position to deny the closeness. We play some Mario Kart, watch 30 for 30 about BC and the mob, and turn in early.

DAY FIFTEEN TOTAL: $0

DAY SIXTEEN

8:30 AM - Make chemex and eat a clementine. My sister (S) asked me and my brother (B) to listen to a 20 minute session on the app Mined about codependency. I take a stab at it and get some good notes. 

10:00 AM - Landscaper is going to show up any second so I move my car and pick up dog poop. Text with S more about my cousin’s virtual baby shower tomorrow and go in on some cute stuff from PBKids. Total is $64.05 and she venmos me $32. $32.05

11:15 AM - I actually have a lot of stuff I need to do this weekend though right now I’m too annoyed at my neighbor to focus. Long story short – he has been wanting our dead grapefruit tree for like 6 months and keeps asking if he can cut it down. I said sure. But then he asked our landscaper to do it for him? It’s weird. I mostly don’t care because it’s gone, but the nerve he had to insert himself is wild. $120

12:00 PM - Make Tofu tacos for breakfast and make a to-do list of stuff I want to accomplish today. (post cauliflower leek soup, put away records, barre throw away things my mom has forced me to take out of her house over the years, wipe doors)

6:00 PM - Eat 2 rice cakes. I only manage to get the cauliflower leek soup up, put away the records, and throw away the stuff mom gave me. I think today ended up being a little bit overwhelming emotionally with the landscaper plus the codependency session so I’m kind of burnt. 

7:00 PM - Make pad thai for dinner. Can’t stop snacking on Swedish fish. Drink an old fashioned while K and I watch Night Stalker. Realize part way through that the reason I keep eating Swedish Fish is because something feels off. I fall asleep around 11:30 knowing it’s my blood pressure and that if it doesn’t fix over night I’ll get right to it in the morning.

DAY SIXTEEN TOTAL: $152.35

DAY SEVENTEEN

8:00 AM - Wake up feeling like I’ve been hit by a bus. Ugh. I’ve been struggling with an iron deficiency for a while and have it mostly fixed but I still have occasional days where my blood pressure really gives me issues. 

9:00 AM - Peel myself out of bed and drink some soy sauce. Sounds disgusting but sodium is the only thing that truly helps AND it works fast. Drink a chemex and a boat load of water. Work on posting the cauliflower leek soup

10:00 AM - S calls and I take a walk to chat. I’m still feeling really down from the blood pressure but I know walking will help. It’s actually really nice to get outside. I should do this again later tonight.

11:00 AM - More soy sauce, more water, more coffee. Have a good direction for where I want to go today. Just taking it one task at a time based on how I feel and granting myself the grace.

12:30 PM - Feel good enough to start moving which is great because once I can get over the initial fog with this blood pressure stuff, moving is what keeps me feeling better. Wipe down the doors and then attend a virtual baby shower for my cousin E. 

3:00 PM - Make broccoli fried rice for lunch. I prefer the cauliflower but the store was out of it. I feel like this broccoli stuff would taste great with some kind of cilantro hummus situation but that’ll be for another day I suppose.

3:30 PM - Back to cleaning! The bathrooms are always terrible and today is no exception. It’s always hard to tell if I even make progress because everything is white and the grout is stained orange. Give up after an hour and a half.

6:30 PM - Tag team folding a couple loads of laundry with K while we watch NBA. This week ends bittersweet for my fantasy team. He beat me in one but I’m in first place in the other. Officially 3-1 and 4-0.

8:00 PM - Eat leftover pad thai for dinner.

DAY SEVENTEEN TOTAL: $0

DAY EIGHTEEN

8:30 AM - Wake up feeling like I was hit by a smartcar, so a little better! Today is MLK day and I’m grateful for the extra day off. Make a Chemex, drink some soy sauce, and watch an episode of The Challenge. Pure barre charge comes thru. $15

9:30 AM - Get started on dusting the entire house. It’s been a few weeks since I’ve done this due to lack of Swiffer 360 dusters. It takes forever but honestly our house hasn’t looked this good in years. Swap out the lightbulbs in the bathrooms and the bedroom, shower, and eat a plant yogurt.

11:30 AM - Have a sibling zoom call with S&B I walk while we chat and it’s honestly really nice to get outside. 

1:30 PM - Start shooting my recipe for lasagna rollups. Eat a cup of cauliflower leek soup and a few pretzel rods while I cook. It takes a while but I think they turn out great.

4:00 PM - Eat a lasagna roll and watch an episode of The Challenge. I haven’t worked out in 400 years (read: yesterday and the day before.) and it’s low key killing me, so I suit up and do the thing.

6:00 PM - That was mildly painful. Low cal burn, couldn’t focus to save my life - new moves so lots of pausing during transitions. Oh well. At least I did it.

7:00 PM - Eat two more lasagna rolls for dinner. K and I watch Terrorism Close Calls and I drink a vodka + vanilla seltzer + orange peel.

DAY EIGHTEEN TOTAL: $15

DAY NINETEEN

8:30 AM - It’s appraisal day. Ugh. So excited to get this over with. Make a chemex and open my work stuff. I have a lot to do but have a feeling I won’t be able to concentrate very well until after the appraisal is over. On a nice note - I am feeling leaps and bounds better from yesterday and the day before. 

10:00 AM - Eat a plant yogurt and finish out the rest of my coffee. Meet with my teammates about an outstanding task and then do the random stuff around the house to prep for my appointment.

12:00 PM - Here goes nothing! K and I leave the house with KP and walk her around the block a few times until the appraisal is done. As much as I feel like my anxiety should be gone, it’s not. I think particularly because today is really busy with work. K and I hang out outside on our laptops for a bit to let the house air out before going back inside.

1:00 PM - Eat broccoli fried rice for lunch with a Polar seltzer. Snack on a pretzel rod and some Swedish Fish while it heats.

3:00 PM - Eat the last of the cauliflower leek soup and a few carrots.

5:30 PM - Make a nuun and do a barre live stream. My focus today is so much better but my cal burn is abysmal again. Rinse off and heat up lasagna rolls for dinner. Snack on Swedish Fish while they heat. I really wish I had wine right now because I can feel my body could use the extra help blood pressure-wise but I won’t get my alcohol delivery until Thursday. Sigh.

8:00 PM - Idk whats up but my body is asking for more food so I eat tortilla crumbs and salsa and some dark chocolate. Make vegan ham brine for seitan. Realize I’m out of liquid smoke and buy a 6 pack from Amazon. $15.37

9:30 PM - It’s official, this iron thing is killing me. Ugh. Now I know. I’ll be more conscientious of my supplements, I promise! Finish editing photos of Thousand Island Dressing, watch The Challenge and call it a day.

DAY NINETEEN TOTAL: $15.37

DAY TWENTY

8:30 AM - Still feeling off from iron. This is seriously the worst it’s been in MONTHS. Worst part - it takes 4 weeks for you to produce new blood cells so I can only assume this will happen again since there was a substantial gap in my supplementing.

9:00 AM - Make a chemex, prep the seitan ham dough and bake. I chat with Google support for an account I’m having problems with. The person’s name is Swastika. Feels like a bad omen for inauguration day. Eat 2 clementines and pretzel rod.

12:20 PM - Starving. Decide on Lasagna roll ups for lunch with a Polar. 

2:00 PM - Finish my work for the day. I have on my list of things to do that I want to test this orange spice bread for the blog.

3:00 PM - Spice bread in the oven. Do a round of dishes to prep for tonight’s grocery run. It doesn’t come out great and I eat two slices.

5:15 PM - Do a barre live stream and it goes really well. Super focused, super strong, super sweaty. One more class to go for the challenge this month! Rinse off and continue prepping the kitchen and do the final bake on the ham. 

7:05 PM - Ensue grocery madness. Incoming of onions, bananas, lemons, limes, bell peppers, cucumbers, cheese, cheeze, tortilla chips, tomatoes, dark chocolate, green beans, broccoli, jalapeños, low carb tortillas, bread, oranges, potatoes, cilantro, chickpeas, romaine, celery, clementines, spring mix, frozen burritos, apples, oat milk, tofu, soyrizo, brussels sprouts, eggs, grapes, frozen peas, vegan sour cream, taco seasoning, tomato paste, chipotle peppers in adobo sauce, corn, black beans, avocados, mushrooms, snap peas, pineapple, vegan mayo, carrots, rice noodles, seltzer, beets, cauliflower, parsley, pumpkin seeds, thyme, plant yogurt, garlic, riced broccoli, white rice, gf pretzels, micro arugula, & black olives. $327.69

8:15 PM It takes over an hour, but everything is washed and put away! Make air fried broccoli with miso butter and veggie sandwiches for dinner. 

9:00 PM - Make a crappy drink with flavored vodka. The only thing I have in my house is shooters left over from my sister’s bachelorette party. She’s now divorced if that gives you any idea of how long this stuff has been sitting around. More alcohol comes tomorrow at least! Eat a few Swedish fish.

9:30 PM - Play Mario Kart, watch The Challenge, and call it a night.

DAY TWENTY TOTAL: $327.69

DAY TWENTY-ONE

8:30 AM - Chemex and work. Alcohol is coming sometime this AM from my friend J who has a wholesale hookup. Much like everything else in the pandemic, I just buy in bulk. It’s easier that way!

10:30 AM - Eat a slice of orange spice bread for breakfast. It’s definitely growing on me but I think I need to adjust a few things before shooting/posting. J drops off my booze order. I got 2 crates of wine (24 bottles total), a bottle of bourbon, rye, mezcal, rum, and st. germaine. She says it was $400 but I pay her more. $450

11:00 AM - Start prepping chile de arbol salsa & stuff for this week’s salad - spring mix, roasted tofu with taco seasoning, avo, chipotle ranch dressing, cilantro, green onion, black beans, tomatoes and corn. YUM. Eat salad with a La Croix. 

3:00 PM - I get the appraisal back! My house came in at $390k. (I bought it for $245k) OMG! Eat a celebratory slice of orange bread.

6:45 PM - Finish class 15/15 for the barre challenge. 11 more months to go. hah! Rinse off, roast potatoes for veggie sandwiches. Pour a celebratory glass of wine. 

8:30 PM - Pour another half glass. What a week! End up going on a walk with K & KP which was really nice. I need to get out more. This weekend I will. Stay tuned. ~*~*~

DAY TWENTY-ONE TOTAL: $450

[cecilspeaks]

Episode 119 - eGemony, Part 3: "Love, Among Other Things, Is All You Need"

The captain has turned off the seatbelt signs, and –has- turned on the ceaseless anxiety signs. Feel free to brood about the cabin.

Welcome to Night Vale.

Welcome, listeners. We have a new sponsor. Our show is now sponsored by – love. Uh definitely consider love when wanting to buy things, because… love conquers all, makes the world go round, and is all you need. This has been a message from love, conqueror of our former sponsor, money. It’s what makes a Subaru a Subaru. [awkward chuckle]

OK, I have returned from the distant cavelands of the Baristas, an arduous journey made easier by it being pretty much downhill for the whole mile and a half. While I was there, I learned that the dreaded eGemony corporate prize contest and sweepstakes buzz marketing street team long ago became baristas. Distributing Night Vale’s case of Canadian Club to the citizens of Night Vale itself, meaning that Night Vale has been consuming its own soul, thus making us an ouroboros of our own selves. I returned because I knew that the best way to fight against eGemony’s attempts to drink Night Vale’s soul – was science. And I’m very into science. Or at least I’m very into someone who is very into science.

Once a year, all the scientists in the world gather in Luzerne, Switzerland, to calibrate their instruments to the length of Carlos’ hair. That appraisal is occurring right now, so of course, Carlos isn’t in town. Um, I’m on my own. Because the cause of science is important, but so is defending Night Vale, and one of the best parts about being in a couple is that when each of you is good at one thing, it’s like the couple is good at two things. This message was brought to you by – love. It turns out. Huh.

More of my plans to defeat eGemony as I desperately figure out what they are. But first, some local news.

Night Vale Community College announced its new slate of winter semester continuing education course. Introduction to Gibbering, Conversational Gibbering, Intermediate Gibbering, Advanced Gibbering, and Ikebana – the Japanese Art of Flower Arrangement.

Community college professor Adriano Copiello, who teaches French Gibbering said, "Ouvrez vos livres à page 3 et criez avant de vous faire bouffer" (Open your books to page 3 and scream before getting devoured)*. Professor Copiello, once considered a failure in his field, has developed what he calls a “charisma ray”, and now everyone thinks he’s A-OK, an exciting thinker and excellent dancer, and an entirely inadequate human being. When asked for comment, Professor Copiello responded by listing everything he could think of that was not a type of gum. By the time he finished, his charisma ray had worn off, and everyone realized Professor Copiello is in fact a terrible person, who attemps to court the friendship of students whose attractive naïveté is subverted, ironically, by how they gradually accumulate the tools of critical analysis in his classes. Meaning they apply what he himself taught them to judge him harshly, ultimately growing to resent his falseness, thus leaving his charisma ray utterly useless in the face of a culturally awakened classroom. Professor Copiello denied this by stringing together a bunch of French verbs related to the behaviors of aquatic animals. Those interested in continuing education should read a book for once.

OK, so earlier this morning, I walked across the street to get a two-pound bag of kiwis at Ralph’s, and had the most remarkable experience. Well, first I passed the same barista I always pass along the way, the one at the abattoire. But this time she gave me a friendly wink of recognition. And then another barista, the one in the produce aisle, he scalded my face with steam and said my mother was soo pungent, people thought she was an unroasted Sumerian bean, and I have never felt so welcome.

But the amazing thing was when I tried to pay for my fruit, the cashier said: “Don’t you love kiwis?” And I said I did and he said: “I love them too, and I love working here. So take the kiwis! Your love is your payment.” So I took the kiwis and later shared them with my brother-in-law, Steve Carlsberg, who said: “I love these!” Then he added: “I love you, brother!” and I nodded.

It seems that Night Vale is now a love-based economy. Oh, wait. This just in. Ralph’s would like to explain that the cashier made a mistake. It’s perfectly fine that he loves working there, and that I love the kiwis, but I do still have to pay for them. That makes more sense. But I’m a little disappointed. Still, because of the incredibly effective new sponsorship of our program, love is definitely in the air in Night Vale.

At Dark Owl Records, there is now a loudspeaker outside and store owner Michelle Nguyen is publicly playing the records she loves the most. Something she has never done. These albums aren’t vinyl but discs made of chalkboard slate, being spun underneath a needle and amplified through an outdoor speaker system. People who were strangers only moments ago are gazing into each other’s eyes with looks of admiration and hunger. That made it awkward to spy on them. Not impossible, of course, just awkward. Which has caused several members of the Vague Yet Menacing Government Agency, who sit outside our homes in dark sedans, to step out of their cars and offer hugs to anyone who would like to have a hug placed on their permanent record.

There are reports of unidentified citizens running by fountains, waving flowers and balloons and handing out otters. The Sheriff’s Secret Police have replaced their patrol car sirens with Whitney Houston’s “I Will Always Love You”. The hooded figures who stand in and around the forbidden Dog Park are still terrifying to look at, or even think about. But one of them is waving. That’s probably the most expressive form of love that they have.

Love is everywhere. But also there has been a subtle shift. As love has become more prevalent, its value has decreased significantly. The angel who is definitely former billionaire Marcus Vanston, who is now named Erika, said that they have drawn on a cocktail napkin an economic model for supplizied feelings, where those with the most feelings will them trickle down the love to those with the least.

Even here in our radio studio, I am feeling such love for you, right now. Listener, I love – this microphone. Aand this cable. And the mixing board! I love these blinking phone lines, oh! You know, maybe we should take some calls. Um hi, this is Cecil, you’re on the air.

Anonymous caller: I love you.

Cecil: Awww, I love you too! Next caller, you’re on the air with Cecil Palmer.

Same anon caller: I love you.

Cecil: Did you just call from the other line?

Anon caller: Oh uh, no. [lowers voice] I hmm, I love you.

Cecil: Ah, my mistake. You know, I love our community. Our Mayor, our angels, and even – our weather.

Anon caller: [whispers] I love you!

["Turn Into It" by Jamey Browning]

Listeners, I would like to thank our newest sponsors, love, for bringing us today’s show. But in all of my loving clamor, I lost sight of what was truly at stake. Our newest intern, Blake, brought back a familiar guest into our studio, thus reminding me of it. Blake then tried to use the three-hole punch without reading the safety manual first. Oh, quick aside: to the family of intern Blake, he was a reckless intern, and he will be missed.

But now, we welcome back to the radio station, Hugh Jackman of eGemony. Hugh, I’ve done some investigative journalism, and I’m going to have to ask you the tough questions. First, I know that you’re here to claim the case of Canadian Club, right?

Hugh Jackman: Oh no, don’t worry about that.

Cecil: Well I am worried about that, among the many different things I worry about. You were coming back to get the case, you wanted me to look under my desk and…

Hugh: Not anymore, that’s OK.

Cecil: But the Barista King said...

Hugh: Cecil, I know about the baristas. I know about how Night Vale drank its own soul.

Cecil: Oh. So does that mean that eGenomy is going to, I dunno, just leave us alone then?

Hugh: Funny you should say that. When I followed you to the baristas…

Cecil: You followed me?

Hugh: Sure. [chuckles] I was the one with the Admiral Tippet sideburns!

Cecil: Oh my god that was you? Those were so good!

Hugh: [laughs] Thank you, that took me hours to grow them. Anyway, after all that I was planning on telling my team leaders at eGemony we were too late and to abandon our plans.

Cecil: Whew! Well that’s good.

Hugh: And to buy all of Night Vale to help with eGemony’s debt acquisition.

Cecil: Oh, well that’s bad.

Hugh: There’s a glitch. I’ve fallen in love.

Cecil: Pardon?

Hugh: eGemony has highly secure communications, corporate demands that we only send messages on postcards from lakeside resorts…Oh, I shouldn’t have said that out loud. Siri, remind me to prostrate myself before HR at 4 PM today. [Siri sound] Anyway, I was at the post office standing in line behind – well, it was the strangest thing, you’ll never guess, I was standing in line behind…

Cecil: A dog with a man’s head, yeah, that guy’s always there.

Hugh: Um, spoiler! We don’t have quite so many folks like that back at the office, and it made me pay closer attention to – everything around me. The first thing I noticed was this particular post office was selling stamps. Then I noticed the stamps had no denomination on them, just the word “FOREVER”. I’ve worked in retail before, put myself through high school operating (--) [0:15:34] that sold decorative soaps and customers there, as you might well guess, can be mean or even cruel, saying things like, “Do you have anything vanilla-scented” or um, they’d also say things like, “I’d like to buy some soap.” It was awful! So I am always extraordinarily polite to clerks, sometimes even flirtatious. And when I got to the head of the line at the post office, I winked at the clerk, and seven of her eight eyes winked back, and then I said: “Forever stamps? That’s quite a promise.” And you know what she said?

Cecil: No.

Hugh: Nothing. It turns out she was a spider and didn’t care what I thought, but Cecil, it was the way she didn’t care! I had a (Mackinac) Island postcard to mail, and it was important because it’s my report back about how we’re going subsume Night Vale.

Cecil: OK, see this is what I was getting at.

Hugh: And I realized that she probably sent a dozen (Mackinac) Island postcards that day and mine was no different. She asked me if anything in my envelope was liquid, hazardous, insidious, shameful, or emotionally fragile and I said: “No more so than my heart.” And then a mosquito hawk got caught in her web and she raced over to wrap it into webbing and then dissolved its body with her venom so she could later drink its liquid corpse like a child with a juice box.

Cecil: Awwwwww!

Hugh: I know, it was so sweet! Now, I am not a poetic man, Cecil, but I was inspired. Have you noticed that love seems to be in the air right now? Like that Mariah Carey song: “I had a vision of love and it was this crazy dream where I was in a park, and trees were made entirely out of recycled aluminum cans, and you were there but you looked just like me, only with a nose bleed.”

Cecil: Oh, I love that song! My husband and I danced to that at our wedding!

Hugh: Anyway, I was close enough to smell her perfume and, well, I asked if I could have a book of the “Forever” stamps, and she asked which kind. And I said: [flirtily] “The Wonder Woman stamps”, and she said that they were out of them, so I said because I’ve worked in retail before, and I try to feel like all of us are in this together, that I was feeling shortchanged by the whole “Forever” business then. And I said it with a frown on my lips, but a smile in my eyes. Like this? See?

Cecil: Uh yes, please stop.

Hugh: Cecil, she handed me back my change and said: “Next human entity in line.” And I [voice breaks] love her, I love Night Vale, so I’m staying here until she loves me too.

Cecil: Wait, what?!

Hugh: See, Night Vale is in my heart now, and it’s in eGemony’s heart. We want to pivet our company mission, see. We don’t want to drink Night Vale’s soul, we want to cross-pollenate our startup model with Night Vale’s greatest asset: love. We want to take all of this love, such [chuckling] great content by the way, and program it into an app that users can just access from anywhere. I can get our street teams on this right now, to inspire the dreamfluencers to talk about love, it’s your station’s new sponsor, right? So let’s (value add) social media platform to..

Cecil: Oh look, it’s right here! It was under my desk after all.

Hugh: Sorry what?

Cecil: The case of whiskey. Yup, here it is! Look at it.

Hugh: I don’t understand…

Cecil: Open it.

Hugh: It’s a cardboard box with the Canadian Club logo on the side. There’s bottles of Canadian Club here, but I don’t get it, the town and the former street team drank this long ago. How was it under your desk?

Cecil: Um, have you ever heard of – science?

Hugh: I’ve watched a TED Talk, I know everything about science.

Cecil: Well there’s this thought experiment where a cat is in a box, but it’s unknown whether the cat is alive and peacefully sleeping, or in fact, alive and just clawing and vomiting on everything because, well, it’s a cat. Since both things could be true, both things are true.

Hugh: This isn’t sounding familiar.

Cecil: Well, your husband clearly isn’t a scientist.

Hugh: But how is it even possible?

Cecil: Hey, with love and science, anything is possible! Now go drink your whiskey.

Hugh: I… guess I completed my goals here then, and this fulfills my obligation to my lawyer, and I won’t be staying Night Vale to pursue my true love.

Cecil: Awwwwww. You need help carrying that to your car? Our newest intern, (Makani), can help you. Hey (Makani)!

Hugh: Is this for real? Wow! You’d think fulfilling a quest of 40 years like that would be an incredible feeling but – this is slightly disappointing.

Cecil: Mm. The realest thing is disappointment. Bye now!

OK, listeners. Mr Jackman is gone. So I can tell you how I managed this. I bought a new case of Canadian Club at the Ralph’s by using – money. [chuckles] Yeah, please welcome back a classic sponsor to the show – money. Money – it fixes all your problems. There are no drawbacks to acquiring it or using it to change the destiny of others. [very fast] Corruption, organized crime and economic inequality may occur. Ask your doctor if you can afford even a routine checkup.

So listeners, that’s all for our show tonight. Oh! I have just gotten a text from Lucerne and yes, all of the scientific instruments in the world are set properly. And all measuring will occur with precise – precision. Because of my husband, who is coming home. And he’s bringing fancy Swiss chocolate, the kind with a little flex of salmon skin? Awwwww! That’s so sweet!

OK, I know money is sponsoring this show, but just for a moment, I have to put a word in for love. Love – is pretty good! OK, done. Money – it momentarily defers desolation.

Stay tuned next for our exciting new game show, “What’s in the box? No, what’s in the f[bleep]ing box?”

And as always, Good night, Night Vale, Good night.

Today’s proverb: For softer bones and a tenuous smile, drink malk. Got malk? It’s here. Drink it. [sped up voice] Drink it! Drink this myilk, mm, maalmk. [sped up voice] Drink it!

* Thanks to everyone who helped me out. It seems like there might be (intentional?) mispronunciation of words, but the translation above makes the most sense. 

[arplis]

Arplis - News: My 22 Goals for 2019

Goal #1 — Spend More Time Doing What I Love Little Miss Lucy Goose met her new vet this week and absolutely loves her. The fact that they give Lucy little treats while she’s getting her mani/pedi has something to do with it. Also, she is having a blast running around the yard now that it’s all fenced in. And just in time too! Three days after we finished, the ground froze. Goal #2 — Garden, Garden, Garden The day before the ground froze we planted a row of arborvitae trees along one side of the fence and moved 6 peony bushes to the side of the house. I would have liked to have gotten more done before the weather turned, but I am so very much ready for winter and all the calmness it brings to life here in New England. Having 4 true seasons, rocks. And I am looking forward to a restful winter. Goal #3 — Plant an Orchard {Calling it Quits on this one.} We are almost there!!! The first harvest could be anyway now. I’m just waiting for the color to deepen a bit. Goal #4 — Gussy Up the Potting Shed Done! I gussied up the potting shed at our old house, but I would like to add some sort of “potting station” to the backyard here somewhere, but I’m not sure where I would put it yet. Goal #5 — Grow Enough Extra Vegetables, Eggs and Flowers to Earn $1500 at my little roadside vegetable stand. It was totally my intention to grow a ton of fruits and vegetables to sell at the farm-stand when I made my list of goals for 2019 last winter, but then we moved. So, that whole goal was sort of a bust. Goal #6 — Finish Every Single Unfinished Rug Hooking Project in My Pattern Bin + 10 Things from back Issues of Magazines/Books I’ve Been Meaning to Make.  This week I didn’t hook a single rug, but I did hand dye and put together about 100 bundles of wool for my Etsy shop. I still have a few more colors to do, but after that, my Etsy shop should be stocked well into next year and I’ll be able to start hooking in earnest again. 73 rugs in my pattern bin {now down to 27} 183 hooked flowers {finished 150, now down to 33} 10 “things” from back issues of magazines {finished 0} Goal #7 — Create 12 New Rug Hooking Patterns {with at least half of them being large ones} DONE! So far this year I’ve added 12 new rug hooking patterns and 13 beginner rug hooking kits to my Etsy shop. New rug hooking patterns I’ve created and added to My Etsy Shop this year: Tullia and Thomas Turkey Double Nantucket Whale Runner Miss Henny and Penny Miss Penny Simple Kitty Primitive Flowers 2 Fat Cats Annabell’s Big Day Old Fashioned Double Tulip Fat Brown Hen Busy Little Bee Queen Bee Rug Hooking Kits Busy Little Bee {in 2 different colors} Folk Art Heart Small Nantucket Whale Primitive Crow Miss Robin {in 2 different colors} Simple Kitty Primitive Flowers Sunflowers A Basket of Spring Posies Fat Brown Hen Chicky’s Garden Goal #8 — Split and Stack 2 Cords of Wood for Next Winter  All that firewood! We sold it. 😉 Goal #9 — Do Something with the 5,002 Photos on My Phone Down to 2867. Goal #10 –-Lose the Muffin Top Done! I’m declaring Muffy gone. Thanks to the stress of moving and just getting outside and walking around more and working in the yard, Muffy has melted away. Goal #11 — Run, Walk or Crawl a 5k, 10k, Half Marathon and Marathon You are not going to believe this. The Girl had to work on Saturday, and so I asked my husband if he would do the 5K with me and he said YES. I couldn’t believe it. Luckily I had chosen a 5k with a run or walk option and so with it being a whopping 28 degrees outside, we weren’t the only ones there in jeans. 😉 The proceeds of the race went to Honor Flight Maine {a non-profit organization created solely to honor America’s Veterans for all their service and sacrifices. Honor Flight Maine transport America’s heroes to Washington, D.C. to tour, experience and reflect at their memorials.} Now all that’s left is the Pastry and Tea Half Marathon before I can check this goal off my list. Goal #12 — Read or Listen to 26 New Books {21 down, 5 to go} Still listening to Maine by J. Courtney Sullivan. Books I’ve Read or Listened to So Far This Year: Marilla of Green Gables #1 Still my favorite The Great Alone #2 The Aviator’s Wife #3 Before We Were Yours #4 Secrets of a Charmed Life #5 Where’d You Go, Bernadette #6 Carnegie’s Maid #7 The Gown #8 Unbroken #9 Drama#10 The Alice Network #11 The Shape of Mercy #12 Will’s Red Coat #13 Big Little Lies #14 Mr. Churchill’s Secretary Born to Run I Feel Bad About My Neck Bunny Mellon  {Doesn’t count because it was my second time} On Writing {Doesn’t count because it was my third time} Walden Finder’s Keepers Delicious! Following Atticus Goal #13 — Try 52 New Recipes. 33 down, 19 recipes to go. Last week I shared a recipe for Turkey Salad. It’s the perfect recipe for using up those last pieces of turkey from Thanksgiving dinner. Goal #14 — Clean Up 52 Old Recipes on the Blog 9 down, 44 to go. I should get moving… because at this rate, I’ll be in the kitchen cooking the entire month of December. The poor bakeries. They’re going to suffer because I won’t be able to leave the house. Goal #15 — Fill 100 Canning Jars 48 down, 52 to go. No canning this past week and because I want to finish getting all that wool dyed, I won’t be canning anything this week either. Oddly enough though, I’m totally not even worried about reaching this goal. Peeps need their holiday jam, I’ll get it done. 🙂 So far this year I’ve I canned: 7 jars Peach Jam 7 jars of Strawberry Jam 15 jars of Carrot Cake Jam 15 jars of Spiced Pear Jam  4 jars of Almond Pears. Goal #16 — Finish Furnishing Our House I found a cadet blue vase at the thrift store this week {I found a pretty good one in town I like to pop in and check out every week} and brought it home. I’m not exactly sure what I’m going to do with it yet, but I like it and didn’t want someone else to snatch it up. We also hung a reproduction vintage map of Maine that was printed with the E.B. White quote “I would rather feel bad in Maine than feel good anywhere else” in a handmade barnwood frame on the wall in the family room. I am going for a coastal look in there and things are starting to come together. I still need to make the roman shades and find {create?} a few more things for the walls, but I’m on track to get the room completed by the end of the month. Goal #17 – 52 Dates with the HH {38 down, 14 to go} We went on a lunch date to The Cheese Iron and walked a 5k together. 🙂 Goal #18 — Take One Adult Education Class Done {I’ve taken 3!} Block Printing Class with my neighbor. Spoon Carving Class with Heather. Mini pottery lesson {I loved it! and now I want to sign up for a full class} Goal #19 — Secret Holiday Project{s} One of my secret holiday projects this year was block print towels and another was to make a few seed packet wreaths. I do have a couple more projects that would  be perfect for gift giving up my sleeve, and plan to share those on the blog soon. Goal #20 — Create 12 Wowie Zowie Party Platters 6 down, 6 to go. I need to get my game on. Seriously, I am running out of time. Goal #21 — Visit 12 General Stores 9 down 3 to go. The HH and I have plans to check out another one this week. 🙂 🙂 🙂 H.B. Provisions in Kennebunk, Maine Chase’s Daily {I think it should count} Squam Lake Marketplace Harrisville General Store Dodge’s Store in New Boston, New Hampshire Zeb’s General Store in North Conway, New Hampshire Dan and Whit’s in Norwich, Vermont Hussey’s General Store in Windsor, Maine Goal #22 — Compete with Carole….. Get on My Front Door Game On Much to the horror of my husband, I stood out on the front porch this morning in my pj’s wrapped in a blanket and puffy coat to take this photo. 🙂 🙂 🙂  The corn, along with the big pumpkins on the porch will stay until the day after Thanksgiving. Absolutely NO Christmas decorations until the day after Thanksgiving. Leg lamp included. Front Door Bling I’ve Made So Far This Year to Compete with Carole: Late January : Valentine Heart Late February : Shamrock Late March : Giant Carrot May: White wave petunia hanging basket June/July: Tin Star and Flag Bunting August : Sunflower September: Indian corn and pumpkins October: Pumpkins and spinner do hickeys November: Indian corn and big pumpkins ************** How about YOU? What are your goals for 2019? If you told us about them HERE, check in! We want to know how you are doing. Because seriously, it’s so much easier to get those goals checked off your list when you have people rooting for you! 🙂 Have a great day everyone, Mavis You can read more about my 22 goals for 2019 HERE. Have a Great Day! The post – Week 45 of 52 appeared first on One Hundred Dollars a Month. This content was original published at One Hundred Dollars a Month and is copyrighted material. If you are reading this on another website it is being published without consent.          Comments I read The Aviator ‘s Wife on your recommendation and almost ... by Janice It been a week or 'Sprucing up' the house at our place this ... by HollyG I finished sewing all the panels (6 panels with 11 pieces each) ... by Mel Related Stories – Week 44 of 52 – Week 43 of 52 – Week 42 of 52 #12GoalsForTheNewYear

Arplis - News source https://arplis.com/blogs/news/my-22-goals-for-2021

[oceangl1tter]

i see the sunset in a toilet bowl

10 MINUTE WORD VOMITS://

We stop at griffith park, the road block, a stinging rejection to our hopes of getting high at midnight under a starry sky surrounded by the deep lull of darkened pillars and their leaves (the type of escapade you'd read on the news about a group of teenagers being murdered by bears or tall trees or weird creepy men living in ditches). Weeks later I find out that there had been stories on twitter about strange people stalking park-goers. We opt for the "safer" alternative (ironically): smoking it up and then hitching back into the car to drive somewhere that won't get us killed. The pen had come to us as an exchange in the parking lot of a vons (i actually don't remember which store it was). We had waited an hour for it. The guy had been contacted on instagram who had the gusto to drive all the way from fullerton to drop it off. ____ passes it along to me mid-coughing his guts out.  I take several long huffs, letting cloud dust twirl out my facehole like a fucking sulfate zone. The smoke clenches around my lungs like some deathly hug; the burn, an itch I can't scratch.

10 MINUTE TO-DO LIST://

STOP MAKING THE MISTAKE OF TRAPPING PEOPLE IN YOUR WRITING.

REFUSE IT EVEN IF YOUR HEART YOU KNOW IT TO BE TRUE.

BE FINED FOR LOSS THOUGH EVERYTHING IS FINE FOR LOSS; A TEMPORARY BELONGING, SUCH AS A PHONE, A PENCIL BAG OF 4TH GRADE, A STUDENT ID, THINGS I HAVE TO PAY TO BE ME. (DAISY)

PICK APART LAYERS OF YOUR WRINKLY WONTON BRAIN, LOOKING INTO YOUR WONTON OF INSECURITIES.

FIND DIRECTION EVEN WHEN YOUR COMPASS STOPPED WORKING AGES AGO. BORN STUCK IN THE MIDDLE OF AN OCEAN; FOUND SOLACE IN GATHERING ITS GLITTER; BLINDED BY ITS SHINE;  AND UPON REACHING LAND, REALIZING YOUR FLABBY LEGS ARE TOO WRINKLED TO WALK; THE GLITTER WAS A FRAUD.

COMPLIVENTION: UPON RECEIVING NICE COMPLIMENTS, HOW TO RECIPROCATE WITHOUT FEELING LIKE A FRAUD?

SCATTER SMALL PAINS: I HAD A RUBBER BALL ONCE. WHERE DID ALL THE RUBBER BANDS GO?

FEED THE THING YOU HAVE INHABITED SOME EXPIRED BABY FOOD: OPEN WIDE! YOUR HEART!

10 MINUTE WRITE SOMETHING HAPPY FOR ONCE://

ARE YOUR THIGHS TIRED. MY HEAD IS VERY HEAVY. I’VE BEEN FEEDING IT MANY, MANY CANS OF THOUGHTS. THEY ARE FULL OF CALORIES. I CAN FEEL THE SUNBURNT CREEPING; IT'S COLD TOO BUT I DON'T MIND; MY TOES ARE IN A HOT POCKET OF SAND. RIGHT NOW FEELS TIMELESS; FOR ONCE, I STOP THINKING IN A KALEIDOSCOPE; AND EVERYTHING'S ALRIGHT.

10 MINUTES OF SCRATCHING THAT://

-- scratched

10 MINUTE RE-EVALUATE IT://

the first draft

novelty's foe watches us smoothen hands under the covers as if we were statues made of marble, molding into reality. novelty's foe chisels away at my mind, encased in contradictions

10 MINUTE INTERVIEW; TELL ME ABOUT YOURSELF://

TODAY I WILL PRESENT TO YOU AT LEAST 7/? OF MY FLAWS. I BELIEVE IN TOTAL TRANSPARENCY AND BELIEVE THIS MATCHES THE COMPANY’S VISION:

i. I AM SHOWN CARELESS EVEN WITH CAREFUL THOUGHT.

ii. I TOLERATE ONLY FAT-FREE MILK. I DESPISE ANY OTHER MILKS, THOUGH I MAY TRY SOME JUST TO REMIND MYSELF OF THEIR VAPID TASTE. I WILL THEN MAKE YOU TRY FAT-FREE MILK AND WILL NOT STOP UNTIL YOU DO SO.

iii. IF WE PLAY JUMP-ROPE I MAY LET GO OF THE ROPE SLAPPING AGAINST THE FLOOR AND YOU MAY OR MAY NOT TRIP AND FALL. I WILL RUSH TO YOUR RESCUE IF IT IS THE FORMER, EVEN IF I HAD DONE THE CRIME. I AM ALWAYS THE POLICE. I ENFORCE THE LAW.

iv. IF YOU FAINT AND NO ONE IS THERE TO HEAR IT, DOES IT HAPPEN? I HAVE POOR OBJECT PERMANENCE. I TURN AROUND AND THE SIGHT OF YOU IS GONE. ONLY WHEN I SEE YOUR SCRATCHED NOSE WILL I REMEMBER THAT COMFORT IS MY HOTEL’S SLOGAN.

v. I THINK I SHOULD MAKE THINGS PRETTY UNTIL I REALIZE UN-PRETTY THINGS LOOK PERFECTLY FINE. THE OPPOSITE PARTY MAY NOT FEEL THE SAME. I DISREGARD THEIR TASTE. I ONLY VET THE ESTEEMED.

vi. I WILL DO IT EVEN IF I DON’T BELIEVE IN IT. THIS CAN BE EITHER GOOD OR BAD. REGARDLESS, I WILL BE HARDWORKING. UNTIL I’M NOT.

vii. ONLY GOOD THINGS CAN TURN BAD. BAD THINGS CANNOT TURN TO GOOD. I TRASH THE FREE CUP OF COFFEE FROM THE RECEPTION ROOM. I LET THE LIQUID DRIP DOWN THE BAG.

——

[ladala99]

Spyro Reignited Countdown - Skylanders: Giants (Console)

I know a lot of Spyro fans consider the Skylanders titles after the first game to very definitely not be part of the series, but I do. They’re games in which you can play as Spyro, so they count.

And yes, that means I count Crash: Nitro Kart for the GBA and will be counting Crash Team Racing Nitro Fueled once the Spyro Grand Prix happens as part of the series, too. It’s a weird definition, and I generally wouldn’t apply it to other franchises, but it’s my definition nonetheless.

Anyways. Giants. The game that almost made me quit the series, and certainly changed my buying habits. Which is funny, because this is probably the fairest game in the series, money-wise, so long as you bought the first game.

Gameplay

Completely unchanged from its predecessor, just with new characters. Many of which are rehashes of older characters. And then there’s actual rehashes of older characters that have an amazing 1 new ability.

Oh and Giants can hurt enemies just by walking near them. But that’s also the case for some of the upgrades of other characters so it’s not completely new.

Alternate Modes

In the previous game, these are only in the Adventure Packs and the occasional turret, but now we have actual minigames and other goals.

We’ve got the first instance of Skystones. It’s a game where you place tiles down and conquer opponents in the number of arrows pointing to the opponent is higher than the number of arrows the opponent has pointing at you. It’s pretty strategic in this game, as you build your own deck as you go along. To get more cards, you win against various opponents, and do it repeatedly to get them all. And Auric sells some, like the Moneybags-clone he is. I like Skystones - it’s a legitimately fun mode.

There’s also arena battles. They’re fun if you like the combat, but when I first got this game, I really did not. Later I gave it a second chance and had a blast. And then I gave The Eternal Night another go. So thank Skylanders Giants for letting me like The Legend of Spyro: The Eternal Night.

The Gates

The Elemental Gates work exactly as they did in the first game, which means if you have that game and enough figures to 100% that one, you can 100% this one. Aside from the fact that you need one Giant character for certain locations (called Feats of Strength), but the game literally comes with one so no additional purchases necessary.

So, if you have nothing and this is your first Skylanders game, then you need to buy 5 $10 characters to 100% complete it. If you 100% completed the first game, you need to buy 0 characters. This is, by far, my favorite way they handled it for the series. It gave value to your old figures and took nothing away from them. Of course, where’s the $$$ in that?

Old Figures Vs. New Figures

But the above is not to say that new figures have nothing to show for themselves. Oh no. So in the first game, each figure opened up a Heroic Challenge to complete. Each Skylander that completes that challenge gets a stat upgrade. The bigger your collection, the stronger it can become.

This game also has Heroic Challenges, but aside from a few that you unlock via Auric, they all require new characters. Your Spyro, Gill Grunt, and Trigger Happy from the first game will not unlock those challenges here - you need the new versions of the character, if they exist.

This means that your new characters cannot gain stats as high as your old characters if you do not buy a new collection just as large as your old one. And because your old characters can participate in the new challenges, overall the old characters can be stronger than the newer ones.

Except for the fact that Giants are in general stronger than anyone else. They also cost $5 more. And they’re slow, generally melee-based, and thus useless in Nightmare Mode.

Honestly, though, it’s fair. The stat difference isn’t that large, and Skylanders who have been at it longer should be more powerful.  But again, where’s the $$$ in that?

The Collectables

So, you’ve got the same stuff at the same frequency as the first game. Just instead of Legendary Treasures doing nothing, now you have parts you can use to customize the Dread Yacht, your hub. And there’s a couple of additional items.

Winged Sapphires make upgrades cheaper. They existed in the first game, too, but they were all located in the hub. Now they’re scattered around the levels since the hub is much smaller.

And a new feature: the Luck-o-Tron. It gives you various bonuses depending on which wheels you have equipped, and you can find those wheels scattered around the levels. They’re pretty well-hidden, like Legendary Treasures.

Bosses

I actually don’t recall any aside from Kaos.

Kaos’s fight in this game is a great spectacle, but isn’t nearly as difficult nor fun as in the first game. Also, he seems to have ceased being truly a Portal Master, because he doesn’t send minions at you. He fights you himself. As a giant robot. It’s not as hard as the first game’s final boss, but the difficulty of that game was not intentional.

Levels

Have some interesting twists and turns, with hidden items spread throughout. They’re pretty much like the first game, though: there’s stuff gated off everywhere so if you don’t have a full collection, you’ll feel it.

Story

The last game ended with you sending Kaos to Earth in ironic justice. Now, he’s found a store display of a portal and heads back to Skylands himself.

And there’s the Giants. They were the first Skylanders, but have long ago been buried as they saved the world from the Arkeyans. Nevermind the fact that two of the original cast are Arkeyans (Chop Chop and Drill Sergeant).

So Kaos finds out about this Lost Fist of Arkus that used to be used to rule the world, and he seeks it out. Also, he awakens an old Arkeyan robot that he uses as his ally.

So he goes out and gets all the things, and you follow him. You never actually catch up and stop him, just follow him, until the very end when he finds the fist and you fight him. You do pick up weapons of your own as you go, but really you don’t do much to stop him until the end.

It’s a decent expansion of the series, but I feel it really depowers Kaos. He’s supposed to be your arch-nemesis, not the arch-nemesis of the Skylanders. I liked the almost-equal-ground approach of the first game. Here you don’t see any of that.

Unique in the Series?

I don’t think we see the Luck-o-Tron again. Other than that, though, it’s mostly-identical to the first game, and the expansions are used again in later games.

Conclusion

You might be wondering why this game nearly made me quit the series when all I’ve talked about are positives.

Well, it just didn’t do enough to wow me. The first game was pretty boring up until the end, and this one wasn’t much different. No platforming, the minigames weren’t all that interesting, and it’s way too expensive for the enjoyment I got out of it.

I almost switched over to just getting the 3DS games, but uh... we’ll talk about that later.

In retrospect, though, judging it solely against its peers, this game is alright. It expands upon the first game, but plays it very safe. It’s a sequel that came out only a year after the original by the same developer - you can’t expect much more from it.

[magnuspenna]

One Nation above the Sky

1⁰

Those letters, the color of raven, wouldn’t stop dancing on his sight. Those black-dressed men he saw were just like the black spots inside his chest. His lips, white as if the blood had drained from his face. His hands couldn’t stop shaking while his feet were completely frozen. It was really hard for him to move, as if there were magnets beneath his shoes and the ground was made of iron. He lost his soul, he lost his spirit, he lost himself.

All that he’d got were lost.

-6⁰

“If there is only one nation above the sky, will we meet again?”

Daylight had gone, the night started to fall. The colorful lamps that were entwined on the trees started glowing phosphorescence light. Two people, a man with his adolescent spirit and a girl with her young adult soul walked on the narrow paved lane with tall trees on its sides. The cold late December breeze wouldn’t stop blowing on their cheeks and ears.

“Why do you ask such thing?” he asked her, just wanted to know why she did ask him about that.

She made noises as her shoes stepped on the fallen leaves. Her steps were just like the ticks of a hanging clock on his wall. Her hair was full of leave sheds but she didn’t seem to mind it. She was cold, but instead of tucking her hands in her pocket, she flung both of her arms in the air.

She shrugged, “I’m just curious,” she answered. Her accent made him giggle inside, “Imagine, if there is really one nation above the sky. Everything will be so much easier. There’s only one country, one language, one religion, one land, one currency. We can love anyone without being judged. We can meet anyone anywhere we want without people wanting to know our names, where we are from, or how old we are. Life will be beautiful up there.”

They kept on walking. They walked in silence—a comfortable silence—through the mounds of autumn leaves. Sometimes they kicked them with their feet. She made distance, a few steps away in front of him, then spun her body and jumped around the lane. He smiled unconsciously. He’d never thought this girl would be an important part of his life. Moving thousand miles away from his homeland to this city and arranging how he would spend his life there were all planned, but being in love with a local girl was not.

After she jumped and moved her body for a while, she walked back to him and took his hand in the pocket of her oversized sweater. Their fingers intertwined inside, embracing the warmth. He said nothing to her. His hand never left hers along the lane until they saw some cars passed by, which meant they were approaching the street. There were no more trees hovering over them, all they could see were old buildings: coffee shops, book stores, and some patisseries.

“Where are we going?”’ he asked.

“I’m not telling you.“

“Why?”

She answered him with a smile. Her grip on his hand tightened. They continued walking. None of them cared about the cold air. They just wanted to enjoy every breath they inhaled. They walked further until they reached the downtown, the busiest spot in the city where pedestrians waited for the green light to turn red and crossed the street together. They were getting closer to a familiar building across the street. Her smile widened as she strode faster. He looked confused, his brows were frowned.

“Are we going to my place?” he asked again.

She didn’t say a thing. Excitement lit up her face as they entered the lobby and headed straight to the elevator. He was getting more clueless when she didn’t press the number six, the floor where he lived.

The thing moved upwards to the top. They stepped off the elevator and headed outside. The cold wind brushed their faces and blew their hair. She pulled her hands off his and ran to the edge of the top. Her hands held on the palisade as she turned her head.

She shouted his name as she waved at him.

Once he reached the verge, he looked at her, smiling.

“Beautiful isn’t it? The city is glowing.” she said.

He felt bad for her sometimes. She was born and raised in one of the most beautiful city in the world but she didn’t get to see it properly, however, all he could manage was, "That’s why people call it the City of Light.”

“La Ville Lumiere” she looked around the landscape with her mouth open, “Look at it, it seems as if someone has committed arson.”

“Why do you think so?”

“I don’t know. Probably because its light makes me feel its warmth even though the air gives me chill,” she said.

He looked at her without a word.

“You’re so lucky to live here, you know. You can enjoy this beautiful scenery whenever you want. I wish I could move in,” she paused, “I wish I could show them how beautiful this place is,” she said as she stared blankly to the city lights down there.

He hated it when she talked about her parents. Three years ago, her brother died when he was only twenty four. He smoked crack all the time, like her father did. Her mother blamed him over their son’s death and they never stopped arguing ever since that day. He drank every night and almost never stayed at home.

The scar traces on her wrist told everything. She used to do it back then instead of crying because it helped her more to kill the pain in her heart. But she stopped—completely—since he kissed her wrist for the first time. She kind of had him at hello.

“I’ve been wondering, if they were here, seeing this beautiful night, would they hold their hands like us? Would they forget all the problems and the fights they had?”

“Stop that,” he caressed her wrist.

“I miss having a loving family,” a drop of tear started falling on her cheek.

“You have me,” he kissed her wrist for the hundred times, “Nobody deserves a single teardrop of an angel.”

She didn’t answer. He’d said that to her like a catchword so she chose to be quiet.

They spent the rest of the night in clarity. On the sixth floor, they sat on his couch, under the painted ceiling as he sang for her until his voice in her ears slowly faded away.

 -5⁰

“I’m scared.”

She was shivering on her bed, tried to close her eyes but she couldn’t. The dispute shouts wouldn’t stop buzzing in her ears. She bit her lower lip until she could taste her blood. She pressed her cell phone to her ears. She couldn’t cry. She was too tired and too scared to cry.

“Don’t be,” he answered on the line. ”Remember what I always say to you?”

“That I’m an angel and nobody deserves my tears?” she chuckled. Her parents’ shouts she heard didn’t seem to bother her anymore.

They talked on the phone—with the back sound of her parents yelling at each other as usual. She was too sick of them, sometimes she wished that she could kill them, or at least one of them so the bickering would stop. Of course she couldn’t. Her heart wasn’t made of rocks.

“If I weren’t an angel, what would I be?” she asked.

He sighed heavily that made a distortion on the line. Then he started to speak, “Fire.”

“Why?” she asked.

“It gives me heat, it gives me light. So do you. You light up my life, you make me warm, but…”

She furrowed her eyebrows, “But what?”

“But everytime I touch you, you make me weak.”

She smiled, even though she knew that he wouldn’t be able to see her smile. The noise got louder than before. She heard her father yelling and she heard her mother crying. “They’re getting worse,” she said.

So he decided to sing her a song on the phone. She tried to concentrate to the phone where he sang her favorite song: Fleetwood Mac’s Landslide. She tried her best to ignore the fight.

But this time, she couldn’t get distracted. This fight was different. Her father yelled louder than before, and her mother’s cry sounded like an endless grief.

Then she heard gunshot.

She knew it was gun even though she’d never heard one before. A sudden silent crept into the entire house. The silence shook her spines. It took a long time for her to realize, that her mother had stopped making any sound.

She held her cell phone against her chest and began to reach the door, walked out of the room. “Maman?”

He stopped singing. “Hello?”

Fear started to cover his mind. He kept calling her name but she didn’t answer, except a few seconds later, he heard her screaming. Long and painful.

Soon he hung up. He jumped off his bed and ran towards his car. He knew something was wrong. He drove like he was possessed and he couldn’t stop swearing because the ride seemed longer than usual. The jam almost got him screwed. Right after he reached her house, he hopped off the car before it even stopped.

He entered the unlocked house and called her name, but he got no answer. He went straight to her room, she wasn’t there. He began to panic because she wasn’t in the bathroom either. He braced himself to walk to the kitchen, and there was where he saw a dreadful sight.

Her mother sat on the floor with her back leaned against the drawer. Her body smeared with blood from her collarbone. Her head bowed and her eyes were shut, the floor was all red. Her father was nowhere to be found. However, what terrified him more was the one lying beside her. A girl sprawled on the floor near the sink. Her face was sweaty and her lips were pale. She choked up as her body shivered when she was aware of his presence. Fresh blood streamed down her wrist and she held a knife in the other hand.

0⁰

Right after he found her nearly suffocating in the kitchen floor that night, he called the police as fast as he could. He carried her body to his car and headed to the hospital. Her father was still missing.

“Why did you save me?”

She regretted her own thought that she wished she could kill her parents, or at least one of them. After what happened last night, that caused her mother’s death, she wished she could kill herself.

“Do you even need to ask?” It’s obvious, as cliché as it is, he didn’t want to lose her.

They were sitting on the rooftop of the hospital. She wore the bright blue hospital suit with her wrist bandaged. He couldn’t kiss it this time although he really wanted to.

“I… It hurts living than dying, you know. We’re all going to die, aren’t we?” she sighed.

“We’re all going to die in joy. We’re not going to die except we lie on a warm bed with our loved ones beside us.”

“Loved ones?” she laughed ironically, “They’re all gone. First my brother, then my mother. My father? He barely talks to me.”

“You have me,” he said unhesitatingly.

“If you had let me die yesterday, I would’ve died with my loved one beside me. You!” she yelled. Tears started falling to her cheeks. She couldn’t handle it this time, “I could’ve even died in your arms.”

“I don’t want you to die,” he gritted his teeth. They both were angry, they just didn’t know to whom they were angry to.

Her body was too weak for her to yell any harder because she had lost too much blood. She had got the blood transfusion, but she hadn’t fully recovered yet. “I’m sorry.”

“No, I’m sorry,” he said.

Then the unpleasant silence crept around them.

“It’s time for you to have lunch, isn’t it?” he broke the silence.

The girl stayed still. She could feel him walking away and disappeared behind the wall where the stairs led him to the lower floor. She was completely upset. It was a perfect mixture of disappointment, anger, and of course, her love to him. For her, the man was tired enough to be in her life.

She wanted to cry, even though she already did. But her tears wouldn’t change anything. Her tears would not make his life better. She didn’t want him to be the reason of her tears.

She stood up and tried hard to stand tall. She walked, slowly, step by step ahead. Then she stopped. Looking down at the beauty below her. She closed her eyes and felt the wind that blew from the city through her body. She realized that now was the time. She opened her eyes and turned her body around after she heard the sound of breaking glass.

There he stood still, looking at her. His face turned pale as hers. The bowl broke down to pieces near his shoes. His eyes widen when he saw his favorite girl in the world had stood on the edge of the rooftop with her hands spread in the air.

“Have you lost your mind?”

She shook her head, “One step to me, and I will take one step back.”

“It’s not funny,” he took one more step, “Please—”

“The closer you are to me, the closer I am to the edge!”

His lips were dry, “Listen—”.

“You’re the fire.”

“What?”

She let out a little laugh, “Remember our last conversation on the phone?” she chuckled, “It hit me. Now I realize something, I realize that you are the fire. You give me light, you keep me warm.”

“What are you talking about?“ he tried to take a step back, hoping she would take one step forward, but her feet didn’t move.

“But fire will always be fire,” she continued, “when fire touches things, they will burn, it won’t get out. Fire will turn it to ash and it will never get back to what it was. It will be trapped forever.”

He reached his hand but the girl didn’t take it. “Come on.”

“But when the fire burns, it will turn what it touches to smoke. Smoke dances in the air like the bird that just left its cage,” she took a deep breath, “You set me free, you are the fire.”

“I can’t lose you,” he said, still reaching his hand, “I can’t lose you, Angela, please don’t do this,” his voice was shaking like when someone banged two cymbals really hard.

Unexpectedly, she took his hand and pulled him closer. Her other hand touched his cheeks gently as she murmured something to his ears, “You won’t.”

“I hate seeing you crying,” he said.

“Don’t worry, you won’t see a crying angel all over again,” she pulled off slowly.

“Angela—“

“Angels got wings,” she whispered and jumped.

1⁰

Smile, my dear.

Your angel is where she belongs now. The world is not my place.

Love, A.

The fire had burnt his hopes. His inner side struggled to reach it, to join her, to jump in its scorching heat, to feel how the pain would be like when the fire separated a soul from one’s body. The fire went bigger that he could feel the heat in his bones. He could smell its smoke that now floated in the air like freedom.

The all-black figures around him seemed like statues.

Dark.

Cold.

Pathetic.

But he was just one of the statues he’d seen.

Slowly, the man squeezed the piece of paper he received from one of the nurse who took care of her yesterday. The nurse found it inside the pocket of her apparel when she arrived in the hospital. The handwriting was so messy and the paper was smeared with blood.

Blood and tears.

Angels got wings. He kept repeating the last words he heard from her. Her words broke his heart, his cheeks were wet and his sight was still blurry from the sheet of water. But when the burning fire died out slowly and she was no longer seen, his tears stopped falling as he realized that his angel had flown away.

His head lifted up facing the limitless sky, his gaze followed everywhere the smoke moved. A slight smile appeared on one corner of his lips as he whispered against the air, “If there is only one nation above the sky, will we meet again?”

 fin.

magnvs-penna

[faucetdouble51-blog]

72 Hours in Seattle

Hi, it’s Abby. My mom asked me to write an introduction for this post about our last-minute trip to Seattle a few weeks ago. I was invited to play in a soccer tournament there and this one was different than most because there was only one game a day, which means there was plenty of down time to explore a city. (That is how I convinced my mom to go.)  We flew out the morning after my last final and stayed with her college roommate, Jenn for three nights and three days. Mom already told you that the culinary highlight of our trip was eating a Dutch Baby with backyard raspberries in Jenn’s kitchen nook, but that doesn’t mean we didn’t pound some pavement in search of great food around town. Here, Mom and I take turns giving you a run-down of our packed 72 hours.

DAY 1: THURSDAY

1:00 [Jenny] I am forever in search of counter-service spots when I travel, especially for lunch, when you don’t want to spend an hour-plus lounging around while the sun shines on a brand new city that is calling for you. That’s why we dropped our bags at my friend Jenn’s house (in Ballard) at 12:45, then headed straight to The Fat Hen, a sweet, bright fast-casual spot that served avocado toasts, ricotta toasts, freshly squeezed juices, and good coffee. It killed us to forgo Frankie & Jo’s, the vegan ice cream shop sensation right across the street (they have multiple locations around the city) but we were saving room for dinner. FYI: Delancey — remember Delancey? — was right there, too. [Photo credit: Seattle Magazine]

2:30  [Abby] We walked from Fat Hen down 15th Street to Ballard Avenue, the main drag in Ballard, a neighborhood that reminded me of Brooklyn. There was a ton of stuff to do and a lot of fun shopping including a cool second-hand furniture store called Ballard Consignment, an aesthetically pleasing succulent store (I can’t remember the name, can someone help me?), and a trendy clothing place called Prism where my mom tried on a thousand dresses but ended up just buying my sister an iron-on patch for her jean jacket that said “Stay Wild Child.”

4:00 [Abby] We met up with my mom’s friend Jenn, who got out of work early for us, and headed to Golden Gardens Park for a walk. It was so beautiful! I got a virgin pina colada at Miri’s, a new cafe right on the beach. Also, even though everyone says Seattle weather is not so great, look at our sky! It was like that for most of the time we were there. (Here’s a tip to future travelers: Go there in late June, early July.)

5:30 [Jenny] I think the only reason why I agreed to take Abby to Seattle was so I could try to snag a table at The Walrus and the Carpenter, the original Renee Erickson French-style raw bar in Ballard that opened almost ten years ago and that I tried to get into during my last visit, only to be turned away by the long wait every time. This time I wasn’t messing around. At the very un-glamourous hour of 5:30, I dragged Abby, Jenn, and Jenn’s 15-year-old daughter Stella to dine on fried oysters and small plates in their bright happy space. FYI: Erickson has opened a bunch of other places in Capitol Hill, including a steakhouse Bateau, another oyster bar with the greatest electric mint color scheme (Bar Melusine), and stuffed doughnut mecca General Porpoise, which, for Abby, might’ve been more of a reason to go to Seattle than her soccer tournament. (More on that below.)

7:30 After dinner, we walked back up Ballard Avenue to get ice cream at Salt & Straw, the Portland-based makers who have won over legions of fans with their artisanal concoctions…think Fresh Sheep’s Cheese and Strawberries or Oregon Wasabi and Raspberry Sorbet. But the line was too long, and even though it was still early, we were on East Coast time, so we headed home to bed. (For those of you interested, here’s an interview with Salt & Straw founder Tyler Malek on the always awesome Bon Appetit’s Foodcast.)

DAY 2: FRIDAY

10:00 [Abby] I had a soccer game in Redmond (we won 4-0!) where the most exciting food moment of the morning was a pretzel that came with that fakey nacho cheese that is so delicious. We didn’t get to start exploring again until lunchtime and decided we wanted to spend the afternoon checking out Capitol Hill. First stop…

12:30…Rocket Taco for lunch, where we ate some of the best carnitas tacos I can remember.

1:45 It was Pride Month! We loved the rainbow crosswalks which made for especially good instagram posts. (That’s me with our friend Maylie. And this was at the intersection of East Pine and 10th Ave.)

2:30 [Abby] And of course, we had to hit Elliott Bay Books. My mom bought me a paperback copy of The Handmaid’s Tale — I’ve been watching the TV show and it’s very disturbing, but she said I’d like the book. (She wants me to tell you that for school I also had to read Hiroshima and Take the Cannoli)

3:01 [Abby] Then the funniest thing happened. I had been looking forward to going to the iconic General Porpoise Doughnuts from the moment we booked our flights — we practically planned our entire Capitol Hill outing around it — but when we got there at 3:01, we tried to open the door and it was locked. It closed at 3:00! For about ten seconds we were all super disappointed but then, out of nowhere, an employee walks outside and asked “Does anyone want a dozen free doughnuts?” I guess they like everything to be fresh, so at the end of the day, they give away what hasn’t sold instead of selling them the next day. That might’ve been the highlight of the trip. And those doughnuts were some of the best I’ve ever had– the vanilla stuffed ones especially!!

4:00 [Jenny] We hadn’t planned on it, but we decided to hit Pike Place Market (because: of course!) on our way home to Ballard from Capitol Hill. We bought fruit and a lovely flower arrangement for our lovely hosts, but for the most part we just walked up and down the long hallways and gaped at the offerings. Maybe the most amazing part was that I got a parking spot on Pike Place right in the middle of everything (across from the flagship Starbucks.) I kept looking at the spot and looking at the sign saying This is too good to be true (once a New Yorker always a New Yorker, I guess) but it was actually true. Over a month later, I’m still on a high from it.

6:30 [Jenny] I know this is hard to believe, but we still had more to eat. I’ve written about this before, but the way Abby and I go about planning where we want to eat in a new city is completely different. I go to tried-and-true sources like Bon Appetit City Guides or Eater’s Heat Maps. She goes right to instagram, searches by locations, then studies the grid until a particularly inspiring pastry or bowl of ramen shows up. That is how she landed on Fremont Bowl where we went with Jenn’s family. Abby’s review: “Crazy good Japanese bowls, with fish, chicken teriyaki, and so much more. I’m not really a tofu fan, but according to my mom she had the best tofu she’d ever had in her life at this place. Fremont’s a fun area to walk around, too.” She’s totally right, the fried house-made tofu that our friend Maylie ordered was off-the-hook delicious. I was psyched because right next door was Book Larder, a store that specializes in cookbooks and community culinary events, but sadly they were closed for a private event. I guess that’s as good an excuse as any to return to Seattle in the very near future.

DAY 3: SATURDAY 9:00 [Abby] Mom, Jenn, and Jenn’s husband, Ben went for an early run around Green Lake Park (about a 3-mile loop she says) then we all gorged on Jenn’s now legendary Dutch Babies and plotted the day. Ben pointed us in the direction of the giant Asian Market Uwajimaya which was awesome (Oh, before that, Mom stopped for another cup of coffee at Anchored Ship in Ballard) but we ended up eating around the corner at at Dough Zone due to some intense soup dumpling cravings, aka the best food in the world.  It’s a good thing my next soccer game wasn’t until 4:00 that afternoon. We pretty much rolled out of there. Those dumplings were amazing.

6:00 [Abby] After my soccer game (lost 2-1) we drove to Mulkiteo and caught a ferry to Whidbey Island, about 25 miles north of Seattle across the Puget Sound, where Jenn and Ben have the sweetest cabin. The ferry was only about 25 minutes, but involved spectacular views of islands and huge mountains in the distance.

7:30 We only had about 12 hours to hang on Whidbey, but we got a good taste of it, snacking on their porch (above), chilling out by the campfire for an epic sunset; Ben grilled some local salmon and hot dogs for dinner. The house only had two bedrooms so my mom and I got to sleep in a tent listening to the crackling campfire. 

. Side Note [Jenny] Those of you who follow me on instagram might remember this photo. Jenn and Ben were torturing themselves trying to decide what color to paint the cabin — they were going for a dark Scandinavian cottage look — so I conducted an insta poll asking which combo you all liked. Most of you were in favor of the navy/white palette, the third one down. Last week, she sent me this pic:

How beautiful is that?!?!?! They went with Sherwin Williams Inkwell for the house and Benjamin Moore Oxford White for the trim.

DAY 4 SUNDAY

8:30 [Abby] We had an early afternoon plane to catch, so didn’t have a ton of time to explore, but we did manage to squeeze in a walk on the beach and a quick trip to Langley, where we ate eggs and cinnamon rolls at Useless Bay Coffee, then took a walk to a dramatic sandbar called Seawall Park. The town was so charming! From there was a convenient shuttle from Whidbey to the Seattle Airport, and we were on our way home.

Boy you fed us well, Seattle. We miss you so much!

Related: 36 Hours in Austin; 36 Hours in Portland, Maine; 48 Hours in Montreal.

Source: http://www.dinneralovestory.com/72-hours-in-seattle/