#Oregon College Freshman

[mzminola]

Because something superhero comics, noir, and fanfic all have in common is leaning into soap opera convolutedness, @alexmaybe & I have come up with the Bruce Wayne Spawn Shell Game AU, in which the middle kids are all biologically Bruce’s.

(Dick really is John & Mary Grayson’s, and Damian is Talia’s direct clone.)

No one finds this out until Batman!Bruce & Robin!Damian are fighting a magic user who has heard rumors that Robin is Batman’s son (rumors started by Damian’s not so quiet comments about being The Blood Son). The mage gloats that they’re going to use a “teleport everyone with X trait to me” spell to yank Robin over, and use the disorientation of teleportation to take him hostage. “I will summon Batman’s direct blood descendents! Mwa ha ha ha!”

Cue Damian staying firmly at Bruce’s side, while Cass in street wear with bubble tea, Jason doing gear maintenance, a random college student studying for exams, and Tim in his pajamas pop out of the ether all within a yard of the mage.

The mage regrets their life choices.

~

Now, how did we get here?

Firstly, during the years Bruce is doing his world tour of Learning Batman Skills while still swinging in and out of Gotham, Bruce is seeking physical activity to make his brain shut up, and also seeking intimacy but keeping too many secrets to let himself actually get close to people, so he is sleeping with Even More People Than In His Batman Years. He remembers condoms but always doesn’t use them perfectly.

Bruce meets Sandra & Carolyn Wu-San at their dojo in Brooklyn. Some time later when David Cain coerces Sandra into reproductive sex, she seeks out every male martial artist she vaguely respected or thought had potential to sleep with them too as a Fuck You to undermine Cain’s scheme without openly breaking their deal.

Bruce has a one-night stand with pre-transition Willis Todd, both of them just giving their first (legal) name, no contact info. Figuring out several months later that he’s pregnant but no clue how to find the other father, Willis, who does want kids someday, weighs the pros and cons of “having trouble making ends meet right now, can I support a kid?” with “everyone says pregnancy would be harder later in transition,” and opts to have Jason now.

Sheila Haywood is either a friend or a bribable hospital worker (or both) who agrees to put her name down as the mom so Willis can legally be his kid’s dad without any complicated paperwork. Willis and Catherine never got around to telling Jason before both of them died. When Jason showed up at the camp thinking Sheila was his bio-mom she rolled with it, figuring she could get details of why he thought that later, and then unfortunately [canon ensued].

It won’t be until the spell incident happens that Bruce puts together one night stand Wilhelmina with Why do the pictures of Willis Todd look kinda familiar? Because he definitely never slept with Catherine or Sheila.

Bruce meets, befriends and sleeps with Janet Drake while going on an archaeological research binge. He’s also still having a lot of random bar and nightclub hook-ups.

Some months later, while Jack is out of town on a business trip, Janet complains to Bruce that Jack really wants a son, but the latest ultrasound shows a female fetus. Janet really doesn’t want to deal with pregnancy ever again, but Jack isn’t open to adoption, and ugh if only Janet could just swap this one for a male infant. It would be so easy to nudge Jack into an archeology dig closer to the due date, he’d never have to know!

(No, neither Bruce nor Janet have thought maybe Bruce got Janet pregnant instead of Jack.)

“You’ve got this knack for finding odd things at just the right moment, Brucie…”

Janet knows it’s a long shot, and dubiously ethical because adoption records exist for good reason, and if they can’t find a baby that works she’ll just have to dig her heels in with Jack against trying for a son, but if Bruce could find a baby…

Bruce makes no promises other than keeping an eye and ear out.

Anyway, Bruce isn’t Batman yet, but he’s home between tutors on his World Tour and venturing into the city in various disguises to learn more about Gotham’s underworld, and getting into trouble. So it is Bruce Wayne with a fresh concussion, not a drunk Brucie, who stumbles into an alley to vomit and finds a baby in a dumpster.

It’s a very full dumpster, one half of the lid broken off. An orange cat (who may or may not be Teekl returning a future favor) is curled around the newborn baby boy. The infant has a shock of hair as dark as Janet’s.

Concussed Bruce walks all the way to the Drake townhouse marveling at the tiny hand gripping his finger so tight.

Janet schedules a C-section. Bruce forges Timothy Jackson Drake’s birth certificate and arranges the adoption of Janet’s daughter by a family in Oregon. He keeps tabs on them over the years, preparing a Wayne Foundation scholarship to the college of her choice someday.

~

Back to the magic incident: Nightwing and Batwoman were on their way there as back-up when the mage cast the summoning spell, so Dick is able to hug Damian as the kid bluescreens about Not Being The Blood Son.

Bruce awkwardly explains that yes, he ran Damian’s DNA when Talia dropped him off, but when he realized Damian was Talia’s direct clone, he also realized Talia was taking steps to ensure her child escaped the League of Assassins, by attaching him to one of the few people on the planet who can go toe to toe with (and even defeat) her father. Bruce opted to go along with Talia’s choice.

Kate has gotten popcorn from somewhere, munching on it while Bruce desperately thinks back to his Mega Ho Years to figure out how everyone else happened.

Cass is feeling a vindictive sort of smugness about not being David Cain’s bio-kid. He’s still her dad, but he only got part of what he wanted from Shiva.

Jason is pissed at Bruce for not figuring it out earlier, but kinda relieved that Sheila wasn't actually his mom.

The freshman college student from Oregon is really annoyed, she was at study group and she CANNOT fail this class!!! Now she’s on the entire opposite coast???

Tim is having some feelings about how fucking soap opera his origins turn out to be. Bruce slept with his mom Janet, but also she wasn’t his birth mom, he was adopted and no one told him??? Who the heck is his other birth parent??? What were the odds of his apparent bio-parent Bruce being the one to find him??? Wait, was finding baby Tim in a dumpster why younger!Bruce suddenly had Wayne Enterprises put money into improving and proliferating Safe Drop-Off Sites in Gotham???

(He is Not Thinking About his complicated relationship with Jack.)

~

Tim, when things are just starting to quiet down: “Wait, so does Talia have XY chromosomes, or does Damian have XX? Because I’ve done a lot of of cloning lab work, and—”

Damian: “Don’t talk about my mother’s chromosomes, dumpster baby.”

Tim: >:(

Bruce, very tired: “Damian, don’t call your brother a dumpster baby.”

Damian, indignant: “But you just told us you found him in a dumpster as an infant!”

Freshman college student: “Dude, it’s still fucking rude? Like how would you like being called a test tube baby?”

Damian: /draws sword/

Dick, pushing sword back into sheath: “No drawing weapons on civilians. Or calling Tim rude things. Tim, I think any chromosome questions are Talia and Damian’s personal medical business, so please don’t speculate on them.”

Tim, sarcastically: “Sorry, I forgot medical privacy exists after how you all reacted to the spleen thing.”

Freshman college student: “Spleen thing?”

Tim: “Don’t worry, it’s not genetic. Speaking of, B, you’re gonna have to update, like, all our medical history now.”

Bruce, even more tired: "Hn."

[azzifudd]

An old article right before Azzi moved into her summer as a Freshman at UConn. Talks a lot about recruitment and her decision making which honestly is very revealing on why she didn't pick west coast schools + this bonus section:

"About halfway through Fudd’s workout, one of her friends slowly makes her way into the gym on crutches.

Most of the dozen or so people in the gym at least steal a glance, but Fudd barely acknowledges Paige Bueckers as she moves along the baseline and sits down on a nearby bench.

The young face of women’s college basketball, the first freshman to win national player of the year, Bueckers met Fudd years ago through Team USA. They have grown close in the time each has grown famous.

“We just sort of get each other,” Bueckers said.

Bueckers had been spending more time at the Fudds’ house on her summer break. The girls were at a sleepover the night before and woke up early to go to Bueckers’s physical therapy. (She had surgery on her right ankle in April.) Fudd did virtual school on a laptop in the car as they bounced around town, stopping at Starbucks before heading to the nail salon.

They will see plenty more of each other in college. Bueckers had been lobbying hard for Fudd to join her in Storrs, despite visits to schools all over the country: Maryland, Louisville, Oregon and Texas, among others. In the fall, the Fudds told Bueckers they had exciting news and had some fun at her expense by dragging out the reveal.

“She had to pull up the receipts and show me the proof for me to actually believe her,” Bueckers said."

https://www.phillytrib.com/sports/basketball/azzi-fudd-one-of-the-most-celebrated-high-school-players-ever-prepares-for-a-new/article_461fcdbb-f0e8-5a7b-b8b6-84a400935906.html

'“We just sort of get each other,” Bueckers said.' Yeah.

[blood-loving-leech]

i need to leave the country but also like….

this college in oregon has epic architecture, cool ass traditions, is the safest lgbtq college in the state, and has a whole dorm building for queer people to live in if they want to together

also they allow small pets in shared housing which means i could have a rat as a FRESHMAN

also the cafeteria not only serves homemade food, you can get ingredients to cook back at your house block for you and your dorm mates and it’s giving like, every movie about high school students at a boarding school being besties living together and i WANT TO GO THERE SOOOO BAD

but also

i need to leave the country

[boredcoldandhungry]

Teacher AU pt 2

prev part

Nico decided, right then and there as he stood in front of the entire freshman class during their orientation assembly, that he needed to start saying no to his students.

It started way back in May, right before the school year ended, when Nico was eating lunch with Will in Will's classroom. A few kids sat at the desks eating and chatting amongst themselves while Nico and Will sat at the teacher's desk.

Then Calvin Douglas strutted into the room.

"Ah! There are my favorite teachers!" Calvin loudly exclaimed, scaring the freshmen in the corner of the room.

"Hello Calvin! What can I do for you?" Will asked politely.

"Mr. Di Angelo-Solace... es, woah you guys need a nick name or something. Anyway, as you know I'm going to be senior president of the student council next year," he said, pulling a desk closer to where they were sitting and sitting on top of it.

"Yes I heard, congratulations," Nico replied, giving the student a weary look.

"Yeah thanks, so, I was thinking, for freshman orientation next year, we have them play a game," he brought his hands up to make a dramatic gesture in front of his face, "match the class to the Di Angelo-Solace!"

And after a few harassing emails, Nico ended up standing next to his husband in front of the whole incoming freshman class.

"Okay freshman!" Calvin's voice boomed out of the sound system as he yelled into a microphone standing next to Nico. "Now that you've learned our school chants, we have a game for you guys! The two wonderful teachers standing next to me are both Mr. Di Angelo-Solace. Now they have the same name but they teach wildly different classes and your job is to figure out which is which, okay?"

The freshmen let out a confused cheer. Nico smirked at the visible wheels turning in their heads. The favorite guess as to why they have the same last name Nico had gotten so far was 'Are you guys cousins? Or is one of you adopted and you're brothers?' They lived in Oregon for god sakes you'd think the kids would be able to figure it out.

Nico was brought back to the present by Calvin's voice screaming through the speakers again. "Okay, between the two of them they teach... History! English! Italian! Art history! andddd Journalism!!"

This kid could easily become a demagogue if he ever rose to power. Nico would still probably vote him for president.

"Okay I have these necklaces with the names of the classes on the lanyard, when I point to a teacher cheer if you think that's their class, whoever gets more cheers will get the necklace! Everyone got it?"

Cheers of approval filled the gymnasium and Nico felt Will shift closer to him.

Calvin went through all five classes while simultaneously causing Nico and Will severe hearing loss.

Will ended up with the English lanyard, which was pretty obvious. He was wearing a cardigan for god sakes. He also ended up with art history which made Nico giggle considering the only thing Will knew about art is whatever he picked up from Nico's rants during his college art finals.

The kids almost got Nico right giving him history, Italian, and Journalism. Nico was far too dyslexic to be in charge of the school paper, but everything else was right.

The kids seemed pretty proud of themselves to have gotten most of their guesses right.

"Alrighty give them a big round of applause guys!! We'll start our next game in a second!"

Nico and Will sat down in the teachers section. Will grabbed Nico's hand and gave it a gentle squeeze.

It was gonna be a good school year.

next part

[dadvans]

missing language.

if livejournal posts were still real. this would be it.

i started learning japanese when i was 11 years old, around early summer 2000, from my aunt from okinawa. she would practice with me in the gazebo when she and my uncle would come to visit for family reunions in the midwest, and would continue to buy me tapes, movies, CDs to start learning the language.

my school district was one of the lowest in the country growing up. we had a prestigious japanese immersion charter school, and after a disastrous middle school year, i ended up applying and being accepted. grades four to twelve. each year we were in different (sometimes abandoned or condemned) buildings up until halfway through my freshman year. despite occupying abandoned churches and gymnasiums, we had the highest test scores, and most exclusive college acceptance rates in oregon. it was either that good or that bad. we all hated each other the way family hates each other.

i won my division three years running for the oregon japanese speech contest through my ninth grade year.

i moved to japan two days after my sixteenth birthday. the year and a half that followed was not easy. i had a host family for a period of time that constantly kicked me out, starved me, and found other families for me to live with. i had another family where the host dad tried to molest me twice by taking me to remote locations. when i became fluent, really fluent, around the 6 to 8 month mark (long after i passed the JLPT 3 at the time, which is now closer to JLPT 2), after months of isolating myself in the computers at class to speak english to abroad friends for an hour a day, i told my japanese school friends, and they were horrified. they stepped up in ways i never knew. it wasn't usual for someone to be so forthcoming, and yet they all recognized it as an extreme circumstance, invited me into their inner circle. my home room teachers took notice and would take me out for lunch. my host family situation was codename ONI BABA, and even another family that eventually took me in would refer to her as such, when i asked if i could borrow her koto for a public concert (yeah, the one instrument it turns out i'm a prodigy at is okoto. Played my first concert at a local Obon festival within a week of starting. Talk to me about how Hana Kage is a fucking bitch. this version of 回転木馬 was what i was performing after a year. if you can find my old livejournal account, i guarantee there is a really terrible version recorded on my motorola razr still live).

by the time i was seventeen i was allowed to be on payroll to act as a translator for a month-long "jan-term" project with my mom in japan, where we took about 13 students across the main land. back at my american school i was writing all my essays in japanese, in the style i had been taught in japan (it was WILD to relearn how to rewrite english essays when living abroad-- that shit does NOT translate sometimes).

i went to college. i was immediately accepted into the higher ed programs my school provided. they were working toward offering a major, but only had a minor present. i signed on for level 300 with 8 other students.

the professor hated me. that is the nicest word for it. she would have typos on her quizzes. she would make fun of my hokkaido accent. but the worst part was when i was sexually assaulted by one of the other 8 students in the class, went to her during office hours to request that she not pair me with that student out of fear, and then she proceeded to exclusively pair me with that student on projects.

i was also learning i had a learning disability, but the student union health center refused to directly prescribe me medication for my disability, or refer my outwards--what happened instead was i was put on a prescription that had not been recommended outside of extreme epilepsy (carbamezapine), and when i expressed my fear that it was resurfacing suicidal tendencies, the doctor in charge doubled the dosage and encourage me to kill myself.

it was an ordeal. it was an ordeal that i documented. it was an ordeal that by spring 2008, i was accused of cheating on a test i got less than 30% on because i was so fucking out of it by a woman who would only partner me with a man who had sexually abused me. and when i confronted her about it on tape, with a medical transcript of what i had endured for the past year, i have a recording of her saying, "I don't need a piece of paper to tell me that you have problems."

Anyway, she went on sabbatical to adopt a kid the next year. Idiot sex pest remained in my classes, but god, he really sucked. I had to leave through most of my 400-level classes because I was working a lot. Most of my classes were essentially unpaid labor where we were translating books and providing subtitles for movies that were ready for American distribution. Half of my classmates my second year were born in Japan and spoke Japanese better than English but were able to cop out a foreign language credit, and they were honestly my favorite friends in the class, even if that's a steep fucking grading curve. Asshole teacher appeared once my spring semester, but knowing she took the year off, I actually completed my minor degree my sophomore year in early 2009.

And then I never really spoke Japanese again.

And it's hard. Whenever I'm introduced to media, I'm like, god, I forgot that. I remember that. I knew that, once upon a time. I remember conversations in English that weren't in English. And I remember when I was in my senior year of High School, I would be speaking Japanese and forget that I was speaking Japanese, that sometimes no one else except my teacher or friend who were equally fluent understood too. I miss that feeling. I feel shame, sometimes, at letting it go. I know I still have the pronunciation and local dialect, but it's hard to be reminded of how much I forgot.

When I started learning first, very close to when I was still fluent, Indonesian, and more recently, French, my backup language in my head has always been Japanese instead of English. My wife used to tell me I had a Japanese accent when I would try to speak French (fun fact: one of my friends in Japan was learning French and spoke zero English, and only then did I understand the horror of French phonetics), and it took me literally over a month of quietly practicing my R's in my car when I would get home from work for her to be like, oh you sound like a regular Anglo (read: white boy trying so hard and yet).

Whenever I get back into the mindset of becoming fluent in French (mandatory!), and restart the journey from where I left off these past years, I ache something fierce and weird for my Japanese. It is, surface level, a sense of failure. I couldn't hold onto you, I wouldn't have known how to try. There were obstacles. There were so many bad memories. And yet, sometimes I will be in bed with my wife, and she will be watching a Japanese show, and I will be like, "Did he really say that?" and she will say, "Oh God, I forgot that you knew Japanese."

Some things are bone deep and will probably never go away. I guess I'm still in mourning for the language that I lost as I continue to learn a new language. I want to be better, I know I can be better this time! And yet, I'm afraid that every step forward, I'll lose what I have of my second language identity. I have already lost so much.

[atinylittlepain]

Of Saints and Sinners - Chapter 4

Joel Miller x f!reader/f!oc

masterlist

warnings | 18+ dark themes, angst, canon-typical violence

a/n | this one is tough, y'all. we find out how our girl got all those scars...

It’s been five days since the men left Jackson. There’s been no sign of anything, no clickers, no bandits. They’ve made it through the mountain pass and are left in the eerie silence of the crumbling highway, on the edge of Idaho crossing into Oregon. Steve has taken some of the steel out of his attitude, becoming at least civil with Joel. Alex is much kinder, much more open, and he and Joel often make decent conversation.

Alex and Steve have both been slowly providing Joel with information about her, about this group called the Washington Liberation Front. A militia that was able to overthrow FEDRA, claiming Seattle first as its own and slowly spreading outposts across the state of Washington. Way before that happened, when everything went down, she had been at Whitman College, quickly shuttled into the Seattle QZ. Steve had shared a freshman seminar class with her, a passing acquaintance, so when she saw him in the triage center in Seattle, they both grabbed onto each other and never let go. They were both young, and smart, and had easily inserted themselves into the growing resistance that became the WLF, securing minor leadership positions as FEDRA fell in Washington state. 

“I still remember when we figured out that she was immune. We were out on a raid mission, got completely swamped by clickers. Our team got split up, I lost track of her. Got back to base and when I found out she hadn’t returned, I figured she was gone, another devastation.” They’ve set up camp for the night in a shelled-out gas station as Steve whispers these memories, hanging his arms over his knees as he sits against a wall. 

“Imagine my surprise, my relief, when she comes stumbling back to the gates four days later. They had to hold me back from hugging her while they tested her for infection, it felt like my heart exploded when the scanner went red.” He takes a deep breath, “but she swore up and down that she had been bit that first day she was out there, and she still hadn’t turned three days later. She showed us the bite on her shoulder and it was unlike anything we’d ever seen. It was healing.”

Joel thinks of the scars she had shown him, the glaring evidence of violence endured and rejected.

“They put her in solitary immediately, under observation. The Front had cobbled together a de facto medical team, former doctors and scientists. They kept her there, in the hospital, for two weeks. No one would tell me what was going on, just that she was still her but that they couldn’t let me see her, couldn’t let her back out among us.” 

Steve stops, shudders. Alex dips his head towards his chest, closing his eyes.

“And then, at the end of those two weeks, they let me in to see her. She was fine, the bite was fully scabbed over, no infection. She told me they were gonna release her the next day so she could get back to work, that they’d bring her in for more testing later on.”

“They didn’t release her though. When I didn’t see her at breakfast or lunch, I went to the hospital looking for answers. They hadn’t released her, they had moved her. Said that her body was too valuable, that she needed to be placed under full medical observation. Not that she was too valuable, her body was too valuable.” Joel feels sick to his stomach hearing this all too familiar story.

“They told me it wasn’t my place to be asking these questions, that I needed to remember my position before they reminded me themselves. Those were still early days for the Front. Someone said the wrong thing and suddenly you’d never see them again. I was terrified, I didn’t fucking know what to do. I figured she was too valuable a fighter, too valuable a soldier for them to kill her. That they’d get whatever they wanted from her and release her.”

Steve’s hands are shaking as he huffs out an exhale. “Months went by. They knew that I was worried, that I hadn’t just dropped it. I’d get a message every few weeks from a higher up, letting me know she was safe, that they still needed to keep her under observation. It had been ten months when I finally started to lose it. I couldn’t keep my head down any longer.”

“There had been a raid by the Seraphites, at the hospital. My team had been sent to pacify the situation. I was by myself, clearing out the top floor and I found a doctor, one of the doctors, bleeding out.” Steve’s staring straight ahead as he tells this story, fists clenched now, voice resolute.

“He had a gunshot wound in his left side. I dug my thumb into the puncture, twisting the bullet deeper, and I told him to tell me where they were keeping her. And he sang. I shot him in the head.”

“It was easy to get people to help me find her. She was well-liked by most, a natural leader and a good friend. They were keeping her in an enclosure in the old Woodland Park Zoo. The fucking zoo. It was an off-limits area for civilians.”

Steve pauses, wringing his hands, glancing at Joel beside him. “It wasn’t hard getting her out. I had the best of the best with me when it came to fighting, but when the others saw what had been done to her, they abandoned us. I guess they were scared of her, or scared for her, I don’t really know. But I had a car ready, packed up. I hid her in the back and we got the hell out of Seattle before anyone was the wiser. Never looked back.”

“I remember I stopped the car the minute we crossed state lines, asked her to let me treat her wounds. I think it had finally sunk in, what I had seen. When we found her, she was chained at the ankle in a plexiglass cage –” Steve hiccups and Joel can see he’s now silently crying, shaking in both sadness and rage. “N-naked from the waist up, a-and all over her back–” he takes a sharp inhale, “well, she showed you the scars. That’s nothing compared to what it looked like fresh.” 

“All these years, I’ve thought about it, and I still can’t figure out what they were trying to do with her, why they did that. Were they just trying to see how many infections it’d take before she succumbed to it? Trying to figure out how her body fought the infection by exposing her to it over and over and over? Or were they just using her as some sort of perverse entertainment? The miracle woman who gets back up everytime.” Steve takes a shuddering inhale, letting his shoulders slump.

“She was fucking terrified. Didn’t even really trust me, kept asking me if I was gonna have to take her back soon.” He scoffs, “I guess I understood that, after she’d been betrayed by so many. I just kept promising her and promising her that I’d– that I’d never let her get taken back there again.” Steve’s taking shuddering breaths, eyes squeezed shut.

Silence descends. Alex is crying. Joel is speechless. Steve mumbles, “I don’t wanna say anymore right now. I can’t.”

Joel tentatively rests his hand on Steve’s forearm. The younger man squints at him through the dim light. “We’re gonna find her. We’re not gonna let it happen again.”

He’s not sure where those words come from. He’s not sure if they’re even true. But it’s all that he can offer this shivering man. 

“We gotta get to them before they’re back in Washington. The minute they hit home turf, we’re screwed.” Alex wipes his nose with his shirt sleeve, looking at Joel, “we’ve got all of Oregon to find them then.”

The three men resolve themselves to silence in the aftermath of these words, each stuck in his own mind, replaying what’s been said, what’s been lived.

Little do they know about two miles further up the highway, she’s waking up after having been drugged endlessly for the last week, and she has no intention of going back under anytime soon.

[klaineccfanficlibrary]

do you guys know of any fics where kurt or blaine likes being called pet names a lot? or when they begin to try them out and one admits they like it and want to continue using them?

I know that in most of her fics, @gleefulpoppet uses pet names. Here is one example, but check out the rest.

Pressed against the Glass by @gleefulpoppet

Is it possible that the most extraordinary love story ever told starts on a chilly October morning in New York with an impromptu twirl and an elbow to a stranger’s face? Kurt wouldn’t have thought so, but when it happens, his heart stops. It’s just one touch, but is that all it takes to believe? Should he take a chance and never look back? But what happens when the stranger runs away, even though he finally feels complete and brought to life? Is it just a dream—or will he let his walls come down? Will they live with regrets or find the love that will make them feel young forever?

AKA: The one about soulmates (by choice) and the italicized Oh.

~~~~~

In this one< Blaine calls him "babe" or "Baby" a lot, and at first Kurt isn't sure.

Go your own way by zavacado

Kurt Hummel just wants to get through his Junior Year at McKinley in one piece. But when the new guy from Dalton Academy Reform School for Boys takes an alarming interest in him, he's certain he's going to be in for a wild ride. Badboy!Blaine, Klaine, AU

~~~~~

From a previous ask - check out these:

The Symphony Verse by shandyall

Blaine has spent most of his life feeling like the only thing people notice about him is that he stutters. He’s working hard to overcome his (mostly self created) roadblocks when he meets Kurt in an online class the summer after his freshman year of college.

~~~~~

Glory Series by  Cleverboots (Amberlovesocean)

Kurt is assaulted after singing at a school dance and is left for dead, thrown aboard an empty train car at the railroad freight yard to hide the crime.

He wakes up to find he’s been tossed off the car somewhere in an Oregon logging camp, 2500 miles from home. A curly-haired kid named Blaine finds Kurt and protects him by hiding him in his cabin and teaching him how to survive.

~~~~~

When The Time Is Right by @fictionallylost

Kurt is 25, successful, handsome and sought after by all, but still looking for more, Bar Owner Blaine 10 years his senior is on the exact same journey of looking for love and life. A/U

~~~~~

Westerville Abbey Verse by @hkvoyage

Blaine is the second son of the earl of Westerville, and is considered the spare heir. After his 18th birthday, he attends the London Season to fulfill his duty of finding a wife. He soon realizes he is more attracted to the new footman. Kurt, who has just arrived at Westerville Abbey to work alongside his father, becomes equally as smitten with the earl’s youngest son. Will Blaine and Kurt be able to overcome their class differences in 1910s England? Will their forbidden love survive WW1? A Downton Abbey inspired historical Klaine AU.

~~~~~

Let us know anymore! ~Jen

[painfullymeta]

Warning: I'm Gonna Be Earnest Now

I am deep in my feels right at the moment so I am actually making a post of my own on this, the deep in my feels hellsite.

I am late GenX.  (Not quite what gets called Xennial IMO but definitely in what gets called the Oregon Trail (Micro)Generation.)  And for all you young whippersnappers, you have to understand "The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there.” ( - L. P. Hartley)

I am old enough to remember when AIDS was named GRID.  ("Gay-related immune deficiency.”)  I am old enough to remember ACT-UP, the Reagans’ abandonment, “If I die of AIDS just leave me on the steps of the FDA”, all those things that tired older people on tumblr try to remind people of when the TERFs come around to tell us to stop saying “queer” as if Queer Nation was a goddamn hallucination I had when I was a kid.

On the last day of high school, after the last exam, when none of us would have to ever see each other again if we so chose – that was the day that one of my friends, someone I had eaten lunch near every day since partway through freshman year, said to me “I have something to tell you.  I’m gay.”  And then he followed it up with “Is that okay?”

I hugged him.  He broke my goddamn heart and I hugged him.  "Is that okay," he asked me. Is it okay to be who I am, near you.

I was in college before I met someone who identified herself as a lesbian — and I went to a women’s college until I lost my shit and dropped out, and I expect that if I hadn’t done that I might have gone longer.

(Of course at the same time as I was clueless and not meaningfully connected with any sort of queer culture I somehow wound up with a friendgroup who, if we got bored and couldn’t come up with anything else to do, would watch the Rocky Horror Picture Show together.  This is what we did instead of going to Homecoming.)

By 2000, I was vaguely aware of trans things existing, and in fact met my first trans person while at Brighton Pride that year, though we didn’t really speak (I was there as the guest of some people in his extended social group) and I was vaguely confused and too awkward to try to do more than ‘observe and try not to fuck this up’.  I met a nonbinary person for the first time around then as well, and zie was the only one I knew of for nearly a decade.

By the mid-oughts I was with it enough to ask someone what pronouns she wanted me to use for her before sharing something about her on a message board.

(I am also old enough to have spent time on multiple message boards.  I’m old enough to resent the internet going through the world wide web instead of email and usenet actually.)

Sometime in the early oughts I guess I was at the subcommittee hearing in the Boston State House that was discussing, among other things, whether we might consider possibly condescending to allow same-sex couples to marry.  I was even going to testify!  (Please be impressed with my early twenties autistic ass I was terrified.)  There was a guy there - a senator on the committee - who was asking every person who came up if they were going to force his church to marry the gays.  Catholic, y’know, this being Massachusetts.  I revised my speech in my head to note that if we weren’t forcing the Catholic churches to marry divorcees yet he didn’t need to worry about it.

(Then my nose decided to haemhorrage all over my entire life and I couldn’t get it to stop bleeding so rather than testify while looking like an entire murder victim I went home.)

I was in my thirties when pregnancy-induced dysphoria made me start seriously thinking about my own sense of gender.

I was in my forties before I bought a binder.

I am from another fucking planet.  (The past is a foreign country.)

I know kids - multiple kids - who knew enough to identify as lesbians at an age younger than I think I knew that word.  (And I am one of those humans of freakish and unreasonable vocabulary and always have been.)

I crack jokes with one of my kids about the Queer Kids Stairs at their school, because that’s where the GSA kids hang out together after activities get out.  (While GSAs were around while I was a kid, they started in Massachusetts according to Wikipedia and that is not where I was when I was a kid, and to my best recollection I didn’t hear about them existing at all until I was an adult.)

I live in a world where my social circles include queer people of my generation, of older generations, of younger generations, and oh my gods, I look at the kids and my heart tries to explode.

My oldest knows more than one trans kid.  More than one *affirmed* trans kid.  (And we’ve talked a bit about the social dynamics that might make it more likely for the trans boys to be out than the trans girls, even now.)

And I’m writing this because of one of those trans boys, who is in the Coming of Age group at our church, and who is, apparently, in his credo, citing that thing I’ve seen on the tumblrs more than once, about how being trans means being a participant in the holy, divine process of creation, coming into being as himself.

And guys?

I’m not from the same planet as that kid.

Because I’m in my forties and I don’t even know what I’m creating.  And I’m terrified.

And here’s this kid coming out there with that as a core statement of belief that he’s prepared to stand up in front of, as the phrase goes ‘God and everyone’, to claim.

(I need to remember to talk to him about how in my Craft tradition there’s a canonically transmasc god.)

I know I’ve got at least two teenagers reading me and I just.  Y’all got this.  I know it’s hard and the world is scary and it’s fucking coming for us all but you are amazing and I am so full of inarticulate alexithymic feelings about all of you. The ones I know and the ones I don't.

We've come a long way from "Is that okay?" and you heal my broken heart.

[deatherella]

Gettin' Schooled @ SSU

Poppycock offspring M-V have started their college careers. Here's a few sets of them at Sim State University.

Mayhem, Nancy, and Oregon are in a dorm. They've finished their freshman year.

Pippi and Tippi have rented a small house. They've finished their freshman year.

Since Verily cant' get along with half her siblings, she's renting a house with the Student Housing family from the Sim Bin. So far, no bickering with her room-mates but the rest of campus seems fair game to her. No, she's never happy, but they did all complete their Freshman year.

Quinlinn and Rani share a house with a couple Sim Bin stragglers - Erik Swain and Jimmy Phoenix.

They've been busy with school and play. It's hard for them to study with all the campus townies coming over all the time. Erik skipped his assignment one time too many and got expelled. I'll have to see about getting them another roomie. They've gotten through their Sophomore year.

[justforbooks]

It is easily arguable that the most significant technique change in athletics was high jumping’s “Fosbury flop”. Dick Fosbury, who has died aged 76, invented the eponymous unconventional way of getting over the bar. In the words of the American coach John Tansley, “he literally turned his event upside down”, but besides the sport, the flop’s impact as a paradigm change was even more remarkable.

For millennia, humans had proceeded over obstacles in their paths one foot at a time. Even as the sport of athletics was refined, high jumpers basically followed the techniques of hurdlers and steeplechasers without considering that they, unlike those runners, did not have to continue to propel themselves forward after their jumps. The early “scissors” technique was essentially a hurdle of the bar; the later techniques, the “straddle” and various rolls, looked the way their names implied. High jumpers preceding Fosbury were tall but strong, like sprinters, in the upper body.

The “flop” – which you can see hints of in the twisting rolls of great jumpers who preceded him, Charlie Dumas, John Thomas or Valeriy Brumel – did not come to Fosbury in a “eureka” moment, but as he tinkered with his traditional technique while still at high school in the early 1960s. He found himself moving his body more and more sideways, until finally he was jumping with his back to the bar, body parallel to the ground, and legs perpendicular to it. As his head and torso went over, he would kick his legs high, landing face up on his shoulders. The jump began to describe a parabola.

Despite his coach’s scepticism, the results were evident, and when a photo in the local paper was captioned “Fosbury Flops Over Bar”, the jump had acquired its name. Finishing second in the 1965 Oregon state championships as a senior, he jumped 6ft 5 ½in, fractionally under two metres.

There were others out there developing their own versions, notably the Canadian Debbie Brill, who, aged 17, won Commonwealth Games gold in 1970 at 17 using the “Brill bend”. Those innovators were aided by a small but significant development: high jumpers had always landed, on their feet or on hands and one foot, in pits of sand or sawdust; during the 60s, mats filled with foam rubber started to replace pits. As Dumas, who in 1956 became the first man to clear 7ft, explained in a 1986 interview, “I couldn’t have mastered [the flop]; I just didn’t have the range of motion. On the other hand, the floppers could never have jumped 7ft 8 or 9in and landed in sawdust pits like we did; they could break their necks.”

At Oregon State University, Fosbury’s college coach tried to switch him back to the “western roll”, but agreed to let him use the flop in his freshman team meets. In 1967, he broke the school record with a 6ft 10in (2.08m) leap; all talk of western rolls disappeared. The next year, he won his first of two national college titles clearing 7ft 2½in, then won the US Olympic trials in Los Angeles. But Olympic officials, afraid the flop would not work in the altitude of Mexico City, where the summer 1968 Games were to be held, scheduled a second trial above sea level. He scraped in as the third of three qualifiers, all clearing 2.20m, but Fosbury having more misses.

In Mexico City, he won his gold medal, the only jumper to clear an Olympic record 2.24m after a gruelling competition; he failed at three attempts to break Brumel’s world record of 2.28m. The Olympics introduced the Fosbury flop to the world, and showed fellow jumpers film of the style; previously most had seen only photos. By the time Munich staged the games in 1972, 28 of the 40 jumpers were “flopping”.

Born in Portland, Oregon, Fosbury grew up in Medford, where his father, Doug, drove a lumber truck and his mother, Helen (nee Childers), worked as a secretary and was a concert pianist. Fosbury grew tall (6ft 4in) but was not strong, weighing only around 13 stone throughout his career, and had been cut from his high school’s basketball and gridiron teams before finding his way into athletics.

He never equalled his performance in Mexico City and never broke the world record; Brumel’s mark fell to the American Pat Matzdorf, who cleared 2.29m, still using the straddle. But in 1973, Dwight Stones, who had watched Fosbury in Mexico as a 14-year-old, became the first world record-holding flopper at 2.30m, and virtually all jumpers since have flopped. The current world record is 2.45m, set by Cuba’s Javier Sotomayor in 1993.

Following Mexico, Fosbury returned to Oregon State, won his second NCAA title in 1969 and finished his civil engineering degree while competing on the amateur circuit. As more athletic jumpers adopted his technique, he failed to make the US team for the 1972 Munich Olympics. He joined the short-lived professional international track association tour in 1973, then retired and moved to Ketcham, Idaho, and set up a firm specialising in bike and running trails. He became a motivational speaker and author of books such as The Fosbury Flop: A New Philosophy for Success, and Leap of Faith: Overcoming Obstacles and Achieving Success.

He was also a vice-president of the US Olympic Association, served as a county commissioner, and ran unsuccessfully for Congress as a Democrat in conservative Idaho.

In 2008 he was diagnosed with lymphoma in his lower vertebrae; after spinal surgery and chemotherapy, the cancer went into remission. From 2011 to 2019 he served as president of the non-profit World Olympians Association.

With his third wife, Robin Tomasi, whom he met in a swing-dancing class, Fosbury ran a horse farm in Bellevue, Idaho. His first marriage, to Janet Jarvis, and second, to Karen Thomas, both ended in divorce; he is survived by Robin, by a son, Erich, and two stepdaughters, Stephanie and Kristen, from his second marriage, and by a sister, Gail.

🔔 Dick (Richard Douglas) Fosbury, high jumper, born 6 March 1947; died 12 March 2023

Daily inspiration. Discover more photos at http://justforbooks.tumblr.com

[theflashjaygarrick]

Stanuary week 1: Mystery

This is my fic for week one of @stanuary. It's set after the portal incident when someone comes knocking on the murder hut's door with some questions about Stanley.

I don't have ao3 so I'm just posting it here. Hope you enjoy!

Stan Pines was snapped out of his math-fuelled haze by a knocking at the door. 

Who could that be? 

He and Ford had no friends in town as far as he knew. No neighbours either, no matter what that Dan guy kept claiming. As  a city boy there was no way he was going  count people who lived twenty minutes away as neighbours. The Manotaurs hadn’t come knocking since he chased one off with a bat, an ultimate shame for their kind. And what tourist would visit at six on a January evening? 

The mystery visitor knocked again, firmer this time. His stomach dropped. 

No. It couldn’t be. There was no way Rico would have been able to track him down to an Oregon town so backwater that it didn’t make it onto roadmaps. But still…

Stan shoved the freshman textbook away. He reached for his baseball bat before deciding against it. The bat was a trusty old thing but would be nothing compared to Rico and his goons with their guns. Besides, the bat would be an immediate giveaway of who he was. Same with his brass knuckles.

He briefly toyed with the virtue of answering with both a weapon and his best approximation of Poindexter. Just put on a mustard coloured sweater vest and start rambling about algebra and parallel dimensions and Area 51. If needed he could, with puzzled and owlish expression, tell Rico that Stanley Pines was dead. Car crash. Very tragic. Or it would be if he cared enough to miss him. 

Rico might even fall for that con. For all the disguises Stan had assumed over the years, he had never managed to settle into one so painfully nerdy. But if Rico still saw straight through it Stan would be just another John Doe tossed into a dumpster to rot. Ford would have no one to bring him back. His family would have another twin to grieve, and this time it would be the good one. The golden child. 

He almost considered leaving it unanswered. But if it was some confused tourist? Stan could never resist a sale. 

So he came to the door as Mr. Mystery. A loveable rouge of a showman with a broad smile and a garish yellow shirt littered with question marks. His weapon? A 'magical’ staff that was in reality a magic 8 ball duct taped onto a cue stick with the mystical ability to shut annoying people up with one good whack. 

He could not be Stanford Pines — the genius whose life he stole. Neither could he stomach being Stanley Pines anymore — the failure who had burnt everyone foolish enough to get close. Mr Mystery was a compromise.

“Welcome to the murder hut!” He said with the voice of a chain-smoking carnival barker. “What kind of spooky mysteries and weird — ah, weirdness are you after?” 

It was a woman. Long coat. Navy turtleneck jumper. Tortoise shell glasses. She looked like a nerd, and a short one too. Relief washed over him that he had not come out screaming with a bat.

“Uh, hello, Dr. Pines, can I ask you a few questions?” 

She must have been one of Ford’s old colleagues. Perhaps someone from whatever not-quite-West-Coast-Tech college Stan had condemned him to. Ford had been given some grant. And while it had become null a year or so ago they still may have sent this woman to follow up on that. 

“Its Mr. Mystery to you, and Mr Mystery is saying nothing about his potential research or any money he may owe.” 

She huffed. “Look, Stanford don’t care about your research. Look, I want to ask you about your twin brother Stanley Pines.” 

Stan froze. 

Cold dribbled down his spine like snowmelt. 

On instinct his eyes looked at her shoes. Brown boots. They did not seem to be of the steel-toed vanity favoured by undercover-cops. Still, a healthy distrust in humanity had never hurt him so far. He crossed his arms and stood up straighter. 

“He’s been dead a while. What’d you want?”

“I’m Helena Cale, a reporter for The Oregon Weekly and I think you’re brother’s story deserves to be told.��� 

“Huh. Why don’t ya come in.” Stan said, just because he was sick of standing in the cold air. Nothing more. 

He took her to the kitchen. The half-packed away ‘exhibition’ and the cobweb-ridden gift shop felt far from the right place to discuss your ‘death'. Stan had gotten picky about that sort of thing since he got an actual house with different rooms in it. Imagine that? Stanley Pines paying off a mortgage. 

He plopped himself down on one of the old wooden chairs he had…acquired from a garage sale. Helena sat across from him. She pulled out a notebook and fountain pen out of her bag. Without asking a question she scribbled something down. Perhaps commenting on his charming personality or bold fashion sense. Still, the silence scared Stan. 

“What are you so interested in Stanley for? Sure the guy had personality but he’s hardly famous.”

“I’m actually curious about the circumstances of his death.” She responded.

Stan shifted in his seat. 

“He drove a car off the nearby cliff by accident. It wasn’t a suicide or anything.” 

The words escaped his mouth before he had time to consider how defensive they sounded. Stan Pines was a man who spoke before he thought. He refused to be ashamed about that even if it got him into many sticky situations.

“I never claimed it was. How much do you know about Stanley’s life after leaving home?” 

Stan barked a laugh. The wrong move. 

“Basically nothing. Stan didn’t call or make any effort to tell me what he was up to. Why, do you think he was penpals with some serial killers or something.” 

Helena glared at him —  her brow furrowed — before she recovered her previous unaffected persona. 

“According to the records your brother was homeless for most of his life and had an extensive criminal record. Including…” she rustled through her bag and pulled out a manilla folder “dealings with organised crime.”

He snatched the manilla folder from her and tipped it on its side. The pages tumbled out onto the kitchen table. He recognised most of them. Record after record about Stanley Pines, Steve Pinington, Eight-Ball Alcatraz; a loose spiderweb of mistakes and false identities he had spun throughout the Americas. And this was only a few of his aliases. 

“Who’s Eight-ball.” He said, plucking that sheet from the pile. “Looks like a piece of work.”

That eyepatch. That cut on his eyebrow which had since faded into a scar. Somehow, as he stared into the eyes of his younger self, the good memories flooded back. Late nights with Jimmy. Cheap beer and whiskey from the seediest of dive bars. Pride in being the slipperiest man in all of Arkansas — until he wasn’t. His fingers clenched into fists. 

“Well, he is believed to be one of Stanley’s many, many alibis.” She said. “Did you know he had fake identities?” 

“Figured he would have stopped after twenty-one. Heh.” His joke was met with silence. “But no, I didn’t. And what do you want to do about these? Stan Pines is dead.” 

“You don’t think it’s at all suspicious that a man who crossed so many shady figures just happened to die tragically young by ‘accidental’ circumstances.”   

Stan shrugged.  

“Fine. But even if there was a slight possibility of murder, wouldn’t you want to know for sure. He’s your brother. Hell, if my sister died I would not rest until I disproved any single possibility of foul play. And she’s a primary school teacher.” 

He got it. If Ford ended up dead then Stan would do anything to bring justice. But if Stan died? He wasn’t sure Ford would be bothered to schlep back to Jersey for his low-budget funeral. 

“This isn’t some Jim Thompson story. This is real life, and in real life sometimes no-good grifters die boring, stupid deaths. No mysteries required.” 

He tried to smooth out the tremble in his voice. His father had made clear enough that men should never cry, or really any vulnerability. At least if they knew what was good for them. Thankfully, his coarse voice often hid any emotion which forced its way in there despite his efforts. It had served him well on the streets.

“Jim Thompson?”  Helena asked. 

“Crime novelist.” He answered simply. 

Of course she was probably too much of a nerdy snob to read a pulp thriller. And if she was, Ford definitely was. He probably read those more intellectual books. What was that author Ford liked’s name? Agnes Christopher? 

He was so caught in his musings he missed her next question. “What did you say?” 

“I asked if you were the last person to see Stanley alive?” 

“Eh, yeah. Think so.” 

“Did he say anything suspicious?” 

What had he even told Ford? Had he mentioned Rico? Jimmy? Probably he had just complained about his stupid mullet. He shook his head. 

This hurt — no, it couldn’t hurt him. He was a Pines man, after all. Whatever. It was still a ridiculous waste of time. He needed it to end.

“Get. Out.” Stan said, rising to his full height. 

Helena dropped her pen, leaving blue ink pooling on the paper. But she did not leave, or at least thank him for humouring with what was likely a desperate attempt to capitalise on his brother’s — or really his own death — for clout. 

“Actually, I have a few more questions.” 

“Yeah? And I have one response. Leave.” 

“Your brother’s death is a mystery. Potentially the story of the decade. I need to get to the bottom of it.” 

How many damn times could he hear about a brother dying? See the fake pity of a woman who did not know what she was talking about?

“Well, maybe I don’t care about that good-for-nothing leach.” 

The words clattered in the silence. She leaned back in the seat, her eyes boring into his own. It was not anger that she had met him with, but rather a mixture of pity and disappointment. It was the same look that Mrs. Aylward had given him back in seventh grade when she realised that despite all the help she had given him, he had just copied off of his brother for the final assignment. Well, at least he had plenty of practice disappointing people. 

“You don’t really mean that.” Helena said. 

“Yeah. I do. You didn’t know that bastard like I did. He was a clingy, selfish liar who road on my coattails and when I told him to stop he ruined my life. Then when he finally left he couldn’t even make something of himself. Imagine that!” 

The words flowed from Stan’s mouth with the ease tears could never match. It was too easy to imagine all the terrible things Ford felt about him. Fed by the pure vitriol he felt about himself in his darkest moments.

“You know why he came to see me here in gravity falls? He came to beg for more money and a place to stay. He couldn’t even deal with the consequences of his actions as a grown man. Huh. Guess, my father was right about him. Dying was the most worthwhile thing he ever did. So, yeah, I don’t want some Sherlock Holmes messing around with what should be dead and buried.” 

His breathing was ragged and hoarse. Adrenaline coursed through his body. 

He might have been a bit harsh in his impression of Ford, but there was something cathartic about venting all of his guilt and fears and his anger towards his stupid genius brother who left him with a house and impossible debt. And his hatred at himself for being the one who had all but pushed him into the portal.  

He definitely was too harsh on this poor reporter looking for a scoop. He shrunk in on himself in a way he had not done in a while. His shoulders slumped, his hands clasped in front of him. Helena did not seem to notice his change in demeanour. 

“I understand, sir.” She said instead, grabbing her things and shoving them back into her bag. “I’ll leave you alone here. It seems you were not the kind of man I thought you were. Perhaps you were too…involved in this death.” 

“Look, I meant —”

Of course Stan had found another way to blow things. Helena thought he had killed his brother. And yes, he may have in a way, but it was an accident he would die to amend, not some coldblooded murder. And for all of his flaws he knew that Ford would never kill him.

The door slammed. He heard the rumbling of an engine revving to get out of this cursed patch of wood. Now all he had to do was wait for the howling of police sirens coming down Gopher Road. 

He had never been arrested for murder before. The thought was almost funny before he realised that meant his chance of getting Ford back was zero. North West Realty would come sniffing and the cabin in the woods would go to some random family of holidayers from California who had no idea what monstrous secrets lurked beneath the creaking floorboards. 

He couldn’t let that happen.

He had to fix this. He could talk his way out. He was Stanley Pines, the conman with a silver tongue. Images flashed back of Ford closing the curtains and of him being shoved in that trunk, being tied up in a warehouse, shanked in the side. He grimaced. 

This time he could not afford to fail. 

He had to meet Helena again and try and plead his case that he was a grieving man who was dealing with it badly. He looked at the empty liquor bottles on the counter. Yeah, that story was believable. He could even throw in the fact that he was drunk. 

Heh, perhaps he should have thrown in some ramblings about those gnome jerks who were always going through his trash. That would have convinced her. 

But it had to wait to the morning. The last thing he wanted was to look like a stalker as well as a fratricidal monster. In the morning she would would probably be in Greasy’s Diner. It was the only place to eat in town after all. And she couldn’t cook a decent meal in whatever dinky hotel they had set her up in.

He poured himself a nip of Scot - ish Whiskey (the finest from Washington State!) to steady his shaking hands  and took a seat at his Easy Chair. He had a feeling that he was not going to get a lot of sleep that night. 

The sun had only just crested the mountains by the time Stan was out the door. He clambered into the front seat of the Stanleymobile and turned on the engine. That loud hum was more soothing than anything else in his life. Sitting in the driver’s seat made him feel powerful, like he was in control — sometimes to a dangerous extent. 

The drive to Greasy’s Diner had never felt this long. He wondered whether the mist around here had sort of time-slowing side effect. It would be far from the strangest thing he’d seen and while Ford had never written about it he had always had a flimsy grasp of the passage of time. Besides, that man didn’t know everything. No matter what he thought. 

He parked outside the log-shaped diner. As he got out some lady in a grey flannel jacket swore at him from her truck. So much for small town hospitality. And all because he had sped up at the last moment to take the last spot from her.

Ridiculous. 

Just like it was ridiculous that the place was bustling so early in the morning. Most of the tables were full of couples, and families with small children, and groups of friends. Gravity Falls was full of morning people. He scanned the place for any sign of Helena. She was no where to be seen. 

He considered leaving until that waitress — Susan he thought it was — asked him if he would like to get a table. He was going to decline but then she laughed at that cheesy joke he delivered with his trademarked--Stan-Pines grin so he said yes. He ordered pancakes and a black coffee. 

Then, by the time he was about to leave, Helena came in.   

“Hey, Helena! Can we talk?” 

She looked at him. Her eyes narrowed and she gave him a sheepish smile. 

“I’m sorry? Do I know you?” She said. 

She must have had a rough night. Her eyes seemed blank and her voice hollow, compared to that fiery spark he had seen in her last night. Her white blouse was muddied and her coat buttons were done up wrong. Her hair looked unbrushed.

“Uh, it’s Mr. Mystery. Or Stanford Pines. We talked about your story?”

“I thought that I came here to report on lumberjacks and you don’t look like a lumberjack. No offence.” 

“I just live near one. You came to the wrong house.” He lied.

Maybe she had amnesia? She could have fallen and hit her head. It was a ridiculous lucky coincidence but after years of terrible luck he supposed the universe owed him something. Besides, what else could have caused her to forget such a recent memory. It made no sense. But he supposed not much in the town did. 

Ford would ask a billion questions and chase down the answers until the mystery bit him back. Stan was nothing like him. He was a guy who was content to let what happened happen. He had learnt the hard way that messing in what didn’t concern you rarely ended well. It would keep him safe in this strange, old town.

“Well, welcome to Gravity Falls. It’s the kind of place you’ll never forget.”

[bongaboi]

Washington: 2022 Alamo Bowl Champions

No. 12 Washington knocked off No. 20 Texas 27-20 in the Alamo Bowl to get its first 11-win season since 2016.

The Huskies weren’t troubled by the Longhorns for much of the game. UW took a 17-point lead early in the fourth quarter thanks to a TD pass from Michael Penix Jr. to Jalen McMillan. Texas cut the lead to seven with 1:40 to go, and got the ball back with a chance for a potential game-winning TD and two-point conversion with 31 seconds left. But the last-ditch drive with no timeouts remaining didn't get a first down.

The win means Washington finishes the season at 11-2 in Kalen DeBoer’s first season as head coach. Washington fired Jimmy Lake nine games into a tumultuous 2021 season and finished the season at 4-8. It hired DeBoer from Fresno State and the former Indiana offensive coordinator quickly landed the former Indiana QB Penix as a transfer.

That move paid off as Penix was one of the nation’s most productive passers in 2022 and the Huskies won seven more games than they did a season ago. Washington made one of the biggest improvements of any team at the top level of college football in 2022 and is well-positioned to be a contender in the Pac-12 again next season.

Penix will be back in 2023 as the Pac-12 will boast one of the strongest quarterback groups in college football. Heisman winner Caleb Williams is returning for USC while Oregon’s Bo Nix is coming back along with Washington State’s Cam Ward. Oregon State landed Clemson QB D.J. Uiagalelei, former Notre Dame QB Drew Pyne is transferring to Arizona State and Kent State QB Collin Schlee is transferring to UCLA.

Texas, meanwhile, finishes the season 8-5. The Longhorns entered the game without running backs Bijan Robinson and Roschon Johnson among other transfers and NFL draft opt outs. That allowed players like freshman Jonathan Brooks to get playing time and Brooks scored two TDs.

The Alamo Bowl might have also been the last game of the pre-Arch Manning era at Texas. QB Quinn Ewers didn’t have a terrible game by any means — his stats would look a lot better if it wasn’t for drops on back-to-back plays in the third quarter by star receiver Xavier Worthy — but the Longhorns will have the highest-profile QB competition in college football over the spring and summer thanks to Manning’s presence.

Manning signed with Texas earlier in December and plans to be an early enrollee. That will allow him to practice this spring and potentially get the chance to start as a true freshman. Or if Ewers plays well like he has flashed at times in 2022, it’s very possible that he could keep the starting job for his second season with the Longhorns.

[northiowatoday]

College Volleyball: Iowa Hawkeyes knocked off by No. 11 Oregon

IOWA CITY – The University of Iowa volleyball team fell in four sets against Oregon on Sunday afternoon at Xtream Arena. Freshman Malu Garcia recorded a double-double with 12 kills and a career-high 10 digs. Senior Michelle Urquhart recorded ten kills and nine digs, while hitting at a .444 clip. Sophomore Gabby Deery tied her career high with three blocks tonight. The setter duo of freshman Jenna…

[felicitydekker]

!    *    ,    (grace van patten,  27,  cis female,  she & her)  !    *    ,      hey,  did  you  see  FELICITY DEKKER  unloading  their  boxes  from  the  moving  truck?  i  heard  they  are  THIRTY  years  old  and  work  as  a  BAKER   at   1924 BAKERY.  they  totally  remind  me  of  SHE USED TO BE MINE  by  WAITRESS THE MUSICAL,  HANDS COVERED IN FLOWER, BAKING WHEN SHE CAN'T SLEEP AT NIGHT  and  THE SOUND OF A RECORD CRACKLING ON AN EARLY SUNDY MORNING.  they’ll  probably  hang  out  at  FULL MOON BOOK SHOP  ON  WILMA  LANE  the  most  if  you  were  looking  for  them.

tw: teen pregnancy, tw: adoption

Madison Dekker who was an interior designer had welcomed her first and only child with her husband Anthony who was a lawyer back in March of 1994. They were happy and in love when the precious baby girl was placed in their arms for the first time. Deciding to name her Felicity Renee Dekker, it was soon a name that one was to remember. 

Felicity had a wonderful childhood, her parents gave her everything she wanted. Not spilling her to much though. She grew up loving to read, write, get her hands and knees dirty. A bit of a tomboy Felicity loved to play soccer and softball. She was mainly friends with boys. 

In high school , Felicity played Volleyball and Soccer and got mostly A’s. She ended up joining the dance team as a joke to her friends her Freshman year but ended up loving it. Doing it all four years, Felicity thought she was going to major in dance in College. 

Sophomore year of high school Felicity met and fell in love with Benjamin Wilkinson. He was on the basketball team and she’d dance for him, cheer him on during his games. They fell hard and they fell fast, spending every waking moment together. It wasn’t until Summer before their Junior year when things took a turn. A turn that changed their lives forever. 

She fell pregnant. Typical teen story, but it wasn’t. As soon as Felicity found out, Felicity told Ben and he took it well, they fought on what to do but Felicity had her mind set on adoption. They were young, seventeen year olds who had their whole lives ahead of them. Nine months had gone by and Felicity gave birth to a beautiful baby girl with Ben by her side. 

While she held her daughter for a moment, Ben asked once more if she was positive on adoption and Felicity said yes. They placed their daughter up for adoption with this wonderful couple. Felicity felt secure and thankful that their daughter was in good hands. 

Ben and Felicity eventually broke up during Senior year and the two graduated heading off to college. Felicity staying home in Oregon, ending up going to community college getting a degree in Culinary as she found herself loving to bake and college. After graduating, Felicity moved back home and is now one of the head bakers at 1924 Bakery. 

[nklansek]

The College Dropout album by Kanye West has always been one of my favorites. Can't believe it's been 20 years! It feels like yesterday, back in my college dorm room in Oregon, freshman year, sitting there with my iPod 1, listening to the album for the first time. I probably played it for 20 hours straight, just getting lost in the melodies, rhymes, and everything Kanye brought to the table. It was so different from what I had heard before—going from gangsta rap to pink polos overnight! I’ve been a fan ever since. Years later meeting Kanye at an after-party for a fashion show in NYC was surreal. 🔥 #TheCollegeDropout #KanyeWest #20YearsLater #OGFan #Throwback 

[kismetharborapps]

i'm just going to resubmit everything because i don't want to ask and keep feeling like a problem child before i'm even here lol

ooc information

name: jamie

preferred pronouns: she/her

age: 31

timezone: cst

activity level: 6-7/10.

triggers: none

anything else?: n/a

character information

name: nathaniel "nate" windsor

faceclaim: nicholas galitzine

gender & pronouns: cismale, he/him

age: 29

birthday: 4/27/95

place of birth: portland, oregon

occupation: owner of the last throw/little league coach

neighborhood: cresthill meadows

time since arriving in kismet harbor: since birth, left for a few years to pursue his baseball career, came back when that crashed and burned

filling a wanted connection?: no

biography: tw: drug use, infidelity, depression

For much of his life, the world was at Nate's fingertips. From the time he could walk, there was a bat and a baseball in his hand. If the stories were to be believed, no one pushed him towards that path, he was just born knowing he was meant to be a star. The youngest of three boys, Nate often was doted on, much to the annoyance of his older brothers. That divide only seemed to widen as Nate got older and more involved in sports.

It was very obvious from the beginning that was just born with the kind of talent you can't teach. He had a mind for it, he was lithe, and he had heart. His dad, a strict former-military, got very involved with baseball in a way he'd never gotten involved in his kids' lives before.

That was both a blessing and a curse. The Windsor patriarch was incredibly strict and would have Nate running through practices until he nearly puked from the effort. But it molded him into the athlete that he would become; varsity, the captain, and the pinnacle of a team player.

High school was not Nate's peak, but it was close. As a freshman, he made the varsity team as a starting player. He went on to lead his team to victory again and again and again. He made captain in his sophomore year to the chagrin of his older teammates. He was dating the most beautiful girl in school, and before he even started his junior year, he'd been soft recruited by a number of top performing schools. In the end, he chose to forgo college and straight into the major leagues— a choice that really pissed off his parents. But for Nate, it was an opportunity he couldn't turn down. It was the Seattle Mariners! He'd grown up watching them. Why did he need college when he had an open door right to his ultimate dream?

Things fell into place quickly. He married his high school sweetheart and they bought a house in Seattle together. His career took off quickly, his rookie year earning him a near-celebrity status in the baseball world.

For almost five years, he was on top of the world. He had everything he thought he could ever want. And then it all came crashing down.

A fall at just the right angle caused a catastrophic knee injury he simply couldn't heal from. Not in a way that would allow him to play ball anymore. And at only twenty-three years old, he was forced to retire.

Nate moved back home to Kismet Harbor and months and months of painful physical therapy followed, Nate falling deep into depression. He'd invested all of himself into baseball, and he simply didn't know who he was without it. He was back in his hometown, facing it like a failure rather than the hero he'd always imagined he'd be. His marriage began to suffer. His wife was clearly unhappy but so was he. He just didn't have it in him to try for her sake when he could hardly even get out of bed for his. He began to resent her needs. How could she expect anything out of him when he'd just lost everything? He didn't feel supported, he just felt... angry.

Eventually, the rough patch got a little better, though it never quite healed the same. Much like his knee. In desperate need of something to make the days seem worthwhile, Nate made an impulsive decision to buy the local axe throwing business. For a fleeting moment, it had felt like something. His wife was mad he hadn't let her in on his decision— "it should have been an 'us' decision!" she'd screamed at him— but as far as he was concerned, he'd earned the money. It was his to do with as he pleased. And if that meant buying up a business to give himself some purpose he'd been severely lacking, then she should have been happy for him.

He was twenty-seven when a simple misstep turned into a total knee replacement surgery. Laid up in bed to recover brought all the darkness back around. He sunk deep into it, finding himself relying more and more on the pain pills and less and less on his support system. He grew ever distant from his wife, convinced she couldn't or wouldn't understand him, and sought out connection online. First, he started in support groups, but then he found himself chatting one on one with anyone who would listen.

He didn't mean for it to happen the way it did, but she listened to him. She heard him. She understood him in a way it felt like no one else in his life had even tried. Their chats became meet ups. Their meet ups became hook ups. And now, Nate is just trying to balance his mess of a life the best way he knows how.

Avoiding his problems for as long as he can.

other: here & here - these blogs are current and have been active for two and a half years, but i can send more examples from the past if need be!

pets: Saoirse - 4 year old golden retriever

town activities: lake legion and open mic

draw of luck: yes

character information

name: dominic faris

faceclaim: taylor zakhar perez

gender & pronouns: cismale, he/him

age: 31

birthday: 10/31/92

place of birth: carson city, nevada

occupation: pilot

neighborhood: downtown

time since arriving in kismet harbor: 3 months

filling a wanted connection?: no

biography: tw: drinking, child neglect

When Dominic was young, his favorite movie was Peter Pan. It was the only VHS he owned and sometimes he'd have to wind it back himself because the VHS player could be fickle, but even if it hadn't been his only option, it still would have been his favorite. When his mom and whatever boyfriend of the week she had over on any given night would scream at each other through the paper thin walls, he would always imagine flying away. He tried to think happy thoughts, just like in the movie, but he never seemed to think them good enough because he always stayed exactly where he was.

He'd never known his father, but Dominic had to imagine he was better than his mother. She was a miserable woman who had a revolving door of men, a fiery temper, and a penchant for drinking and leaving her too-young son alone to fend for himself in a dilapidated double-wide. The roaches seemed more aware of his presence most times than his mom did.

Dominic learned how to be self-sufficient. He learned how to make himself meals, bathe and dress himself, and show up at school every single morning. He tried to pretend not to notice the kids snickering behind his back about his dirty, too-tight clothes.

Time hardened him against the judgments of his classmates and the neglect of his mom. He hustled his way into odd jobs by the time he was twelve, earning enough to buy clothes that fit and outfits that wouldn't have to be repeated more than once in a week. He worked himself to the bone just to be at the same starting point as everyone else. Eventually, he stopped trying to earn their affection, stopped trying to beg his mom to love him, and he put up walls instead.

He never stopped wishing he could fly away, though.

It just made sense, then, that he pursued becoming a pilot. He'd tell you now that it was the glory that came with being a man in uniform, but that childish desire never totally left him.

The day he turned eighteen, Dominic enlisted in the Air Force. It seemed like the best option with what little resources he had. And while basic was a bitch, he actually found he liked the structure. And the people that eventually became his family. Not that he'd ever admit that part out loud.

After thirteen years of service, Dominic left the Air Force. After more than a decade of living to the behest of someone else's orders, he wanted to see what civilian life was like. He accepted a job in Oregon, settling in a small town where he'd spent his summer several years prior. The place wasn't exactly the same as he'd left it, though. And little did he know that his days as a Lost Boy were quickly coming to an end.

pets: none

town activities: none. he's a snob that needs to be humbled

draw of luck: yes