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xwing-baby · 4 years ago

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Impulse: Remedy (Javier Peña x Reader)

Summary: Top of your class, the DEA have sent you to Colombia to be the poster child for their new ‘placement program’. You’re thrown in at the deep end into the drug war. With Agent Peña as your mentor, what could possibly go wrong?

Warnings: Rookie has really terrible coping mechanisms. Drug use, alcohol, swearing, derogatory language, smoking, mentions of murder(?)

Word Count: 3.5k

A/N: Sorry for the delay lads, for some reason this chapter did not want to be written! As always don’t sleep with your boss and don’t do drugs unless their prescription :P

<-- Previous Chapter // Masterlist // Next Chapter -->

You were exhausted. You hadn’t slept for more than an hour after leaving Javier’s apartment. Not for lack of trying, you thought your previous activities would have worn you out. But no. You were too scared to sleep, not wanting to deal with any nightmares that might occur so you sat on your dusty old couch, drank a vat of coffee and waited until the rest of the city woke up.

You cursed under your breath when you saw Steve’s truck had already gone by the time you got downstairs. It was Connie’s volunteering day at the hospital, he always took her early. You had to go with Javi. You sat on the wall outside the apartment, smoking a cigarette and waiting for Javier to come outside. You had no idea what you were supposed to say to him, how were you supposed to act. You couldn’t really pretend like nothing had happened, sleeping with him like that was not something you could brush under the rug. But you didn’t want to talk to him about it, that would make it real. A real action with real consequences. If anyone found out that would be the end of your time here, and quite possibly the end of your time in the DEA entirely.

Eventually Javier came outside, spotted you on the wall and waved. You got up, chucked the packet of cigarettes in your hand to him before you stubbed out your own and got into the truck.

“So, do you want to talk about last night?” He asked as he lit a new cigarette.

“Not particularly. There isn’t really much to say is there?”

“Not really,” He shrugged, “You’re not in love with me now, right?”

“In your fucking dreams Peña. You weren’t that good,” You laughed at his audacity. You were lying, he was very good at it. But you weren’t in love with him. No, you couldn’t allow yourself even if you were.

“You bitch,” He tried to be serious but your laugh was contagious.

Javi immediately felt relieved, he’d spent all night worrying about you. He really didn’t want the sex to ruin everything you had going as a team. He was a little scared he had scared you off entirely but now you were laughing in his passenger seat as if nothing had ever happened all his worries were laid to rest.

“It happened and that’s it. We don’t need to make it a thing,” You said.

“Agreed,”

“Awesome, let’s go to work then,”

And just like that, it was like nothing had ever happened. Back to piles of paperwork, chasing up lazy cops for their reports and trying desperately to avoid Carrillo. It was going to take time to get over what you had seen him do. You didn’t want to see him, let alone be left alone with him. You’d pushed all responsibility for anything related to him onto Javier, who in return passed you more of his paperwork. It was a fair trade off.

At your desk, hummin away to yourself you could almost convince yourself you were fine. Thanks to the never ending cup of coffee and the sugar doughnuts you found for lunch, your energy levels were back up high. All reminders of the night before were out of sight and you were so consumed in work you didn’t notice as the day came to a close.

“Good night last night?” Steve asked across the desk.

“Huh?” You looked up from your work. Steve motioned to his neck, and you immediately cringed. You had forgotten about the hickey. “Oh, um yeah I guess,” You pulled your jacket back on, despite the heat, as the collar would cover the mark again.

“I thought you and Peña were out in the jungle for that lead. You would have got back super late,” Steve said.

“Everyone’s got their vices, Murphy,” Javier reappeared, jumping to your aid. Steve looked suspiciously between you and Javi.

“Guess you two are becoming more similar by the day,” He chuckled to himself, shaking any ideas from his mind.

“Guess so,” You agreed. You and Javi shared a glance while Steve looked away, both of you well aware of the shit storm that would kick up if Steve found out. He loved you and Javi a lot, but there is no way he would just skip over such an event. You flashed a smile, silently thanking Javi for stepping in for you, before he went back to work again.

To avoid any further questioning, you kept your jacket on for the remainder of the day, rather enduring the heat and cursing Javier for leaving a mark, than having anymore prying questions from Steve. When you finally gave up struggling with your mountain of paperwork, Steve offered you a ride home which you took gladly.

“You and Javi slept together last night, huh?” Steve asked as you rolled out of the embassy. Startled, you immediately went on the defense and laughed.

“Wh-what no!” You spluttered.

“I’m not an idiot, Rookie,” Steve raised an eyebrow at you. You didn’t know what to say, so shook your head and shrugged, “So Javi was talking out of his ass earlier?” He said. Your stomach immediately dropped.

“Who’s he been talking to?” All laughter was gone from your voice. If Javi had said something that was it. Why on earth would he say anything?

“So something did happen?” Steve exclaimed, happy that his hunch was right.

“Steve,” You sighed heavily. Relieved for only a moment before more dread piled on.

“I can’t believe you two,” He said shaking his head, “I mean I was kind of expecting it with Javi’s reputation but I thought you had some standards at least,”

“You weren’t there, you don’t get it. It wasn’t anything meaningful just- things happen sometimes,” You sighed, “Did he actually say anything to you?”

“No,” He spoke more sympathetically now, “but I figured something was up, you’ve been acting weird all morning,”

“That’s more to do with the lack of sleep,” You explained, “Yesterday got a bit… dark. I don’t think I slept at all,”

“Carrillo?” Steve asked. You nodded solemnly, “You’ll get used to it,”

You didn’t get used to it. That night haunted you. You couldn’t sleep, every time you shut your eyes the tortured man's face stared back at you. You were practically intolerable come the end of the week. You’d fallen asleep at your desk on multiple occasions, snapped at everyone in the office, and drank enough coffee to fill an Olympic swimming pool. You made a secretary cry by snapping at her over some missing evidence and, had broken the phone on your desk.

As bad as your week had ended up being you still had to go out at the end of it. Instead of curling up with a movie and takeout you had to attend María’s family’s party. You didn’t know why you were invited but you definitely couldn’t back out of it. You’d hoped by now you would have cheered up, that you would be excited to let loose but you were miserable.

The party itself was gorgeous. Set out in the countryside, an hour from Medellin, the hills made for a beautiful backdrop. The Parreño’s summer house was exactly as you had expected, lavish and decadent. Courtyards filled with marble statues and paintings by various famous artists covered the walls. Lights were strung up around the garden between the pool house and a gazebo creating a colourful glow out onto the golden sky.

The air was full of conversation and music. Even though you were surrounded by people who would kill you if they found out who you really were, somehow with a drink in your hand you felt a little more relaxed. María had leant you a dress, a simple little black number, and fixed your makeup in the car ride here while excitedly telling you about her cousin from Argentina she was going to set you up with. You were at the very least, on the way to being happy.

María dragged you around introducing you to so many people you couldn’t remember their names. You gave up trying after ten different people María introduced as her auntie. You smiled and politely complimented their outfit or their hair and moved on. That was until you finally recognised someone. Senator Parreño, a regular face in your life. You prayed he wouldn’t recognise you, you had only met him once, sitting in the back of the ambassador's office while they spoke about something. Like most people, he ignored you that day and hopefully he wouldn’t have a clue now.

“Dad this is my friend, Isabela,” María introduced you. You were taken back for a moment. You knew her family was rich, but a senator for a father made them powerful too. Far more influence and scandal with their new link to Escobar too.

“Nice to meet you,” You smiled and shook his hand. The senator looked puzzled.

“Do I know you from somewhere?” He asked. Your heart skipped a beat.

“Oh stop it Dad I talk about her all the time, she’s been to our house a lot,”

“No, no it’s from somewhere else,” He squinted at you, looking you up and down. You could feel yourself sweating as you nervously took a big gulp of the cocktail in your hand.

“Isabela works at the American embassy papa, maybe you’ve just seen her there,” María said.

“I am a secretary,” You added quickly, “Usually running around the place, you probably saw me then,” You laughed nervously. Outwardly, you knew you looked normal but inside you were panicking massively.

“Ah I see,” He nodded, not entirely convinced. Luckily before he could interrogate you further or work out who you actually were, María linked arms with you and pulled your attention away.

“Come on, I just spotted Carlos. You will love him,”

Three things you had learnt about Carlos. One, he could and should be in a magazine. He was stunningly handsome in a shirt with far too many buttons undone you were practically drooling over him. Two, he was smart. An engineer. A very upstanding career especially compared to the occupation of most of the people at the party. And three, he really liked cocaine. That part did let him down quite a bit.

Hidden away from the prying eyes of parents and older generations, María, Diego, Carlos and multiple others you did not remember the names of, sat around listening to Carlos rave about the new recipe his friend had told him about. You listened carefully, if your hangover didn’t delete this information in the morning it would be great. Could finally have something to show for your weeks with María.

Carlos pulled out a pack of the new cocaine and poured out a good pile. You watched them all take a line. Part of you was interested in seeing what it was like. It must be good if everyone was so addicted to the stuff. You handled some much of the powder on a daily basis but you’d never even tried it. Seemed almost ridiculous. Maybe it was what you needed to finally relax a little, the alcohol wasn’t hitting the spot. One line wouldn’t kill you.

“Want some?” María offered, wiping her nose of residue. You shook your head.

“I’m going to the bathroom,” You announced, standing up from your seat on the couch. You climbed over María out of the circle of people. You could use their distraction to your advantage now. Now María wasn’t holding on to you you could actually go and investigate. Now with two Narcos connected attendees at least and the revelation that Senator Parreño was María’s father, any information you could find giving a definite link would be huge.

“Don’t be a pussy Isabela!” Diego hollered.

“Oh leave her alone, she’s only going for a moment,” María shoved her boyfriend playfully, “She’ll do it later,”

“Pacing myself,” You agreed with a smile.

“Miss you already!” María called after you before dissolving into fits of giggles.

Inside, the house was quiet. Only a couple of people sat in the living room downstairs and they paid no attention to you as you walked inside.

You walked up a set of elegant marble stairs, deciding upstairs may be your best option so not to get caught. Two long corridors led off the stairs, with doors leading off each side. You were looking for an office, that would be the place any paperwork would be kept. You would need letters, or meeting schedules. Something to prove a link.

You turned left, and hit the jackpot with the first try. Senator Parreño’s home office.You pushed the door open slowly, checking nobody had followed you before going inside. The office was immaculate, just as grand as the rest of the house. A large portrait of Maria’s family hung over the back of the desk, all of their eyes watching you as you searched through the room.

The room was full of things. One wall taken up by a set of shelves full of books and photographs and different trinkets of different sides. A leather couch sat in the window overlooking the gardens.

You came to the desk last. The top was clear of anything bar a photo of his wife, a line of pens and a rolodex. You flicked through it, found nothing of interest.

You stood up to find something you could use to pick the locks when you heard heavy footsteps from outside the door. You stood still for a moment, hoping to hear the footsteps go in the opposite direction down the hall. They got closer.

Before you were caught red handed, you made your escape. Racing to the door, you hoped you would have enough time to slip out without being caught. Quietly as possible, you opened the door.

“Isabela,” María’s father’s voice came from behind you as you shut the door. You turned around quickly, smiling innocently.

“Hi Mr Parreño!” You exclaimed, “Do you know where the bathroom is? I can’t find it?”

“It’s not in there,” He looked at your hand on the door, which you quickly removed and stepped away from.

“You’re house is just huge. I can’t ever seem to remember where I am going here,” You laughed nervously, “I’ll try down the hall,” You turned around and began to walk away, your

“I’d learn to be more careful, Agent,” The senator said after you. Your heart stopped. Slowly, you turned back around to face him again, “I guess you are here for my daughter’s stupid boyfriend?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” You said slowly, your mouth slow to catch up with your brain which was already working out the multiple ways to get out of the house safely.

“You can quit your act, I won’t say anything,” He laughed dryly.

“No act,” You shook your head, “I didn’t lie, I really don’t know what you are talking about. I am not here investigating Diego. María invited me”

“I remembered where I saw you. You were with those DEA agents,”

“I work with them sometimes, we’re friends,” You shrugged.

“You’ve got an answer for everything, don’t you?” He was on to you

“I’m sorry but I really do need the bathroom, if you could direct me there that would be great. I’ve had far too much to drink,”

“Down there, fourth on the right,”

“Thank you,” You walked away quickly, heart thumping against your ribcage at an alarming rate. He knew who you were! He knew exactly who you were!

“Fuck, fuck, fuck,” You cursed under your breath.

You quickly spiralled, thinking off all the worst possible things that could happen now. Parreño would tell someone else who you were, maybe he would do something now. You were alone, neither Peña or Murphy knew where you were, out in the middle of nowhere it would be pretty simple to get rid of your body. You didn’t even find any evidence, you reasoned with yourself and he wouldn’t want any suspicion to his name. He probably wouldn’t kill you.

Taking another deep breath as you tried to calm your rattling heart. Your hands gripped the cold porcelain of the sink and slowly you relaxed again. You couldn’t go back out looking like you were scared, that would give you up entirely. You looked at your face in the mirror, at least outwardly you didn’t look too bad. Your makeup had shifted a little but you still looked ok. You were fine.

After another round of deep breaths and a pep talk to yourself, you stepped out of the bathroom and put a game face on.

“Isabela! You’re back!” María exclaimed as you returned to the group. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah,” Your voice was not convincing as you watched the senator walk past. He looked at your briefly, a knowing glint in his eye as he clocked you. “Can I have some?” You nodded to the coke on the table as an impulsive and reckless idea came into your head. There was no way he could continue to think you were DEA if you did this. Either that or he would just think you were an idiot and not press you again.

“Finally you stop being a complete baby! Come here!” María cheered.

You stood up and stepped over to where María was knelt. You joined her on the floor, watching carefully as she lined the powder up with a card from the table. She presented it to you with a flourish, laughing again.

Surprisingly, you were not scared. The adrenaline of the close call was pacing through your veins. Your mind was so full of fear and anxiety, the idea of finally getting some relief was enticing.

You felt calm, no anxiety in your body holding you back anymore you took the drug from the table. You made a face of discomfort and spluttered a bit when it hit the back of your throat. The people around you laughed, but you didn’t feel embarrassed. It took a moment, but soon you felt the effects. All inhibition and anxiety left your body, you felt lighter and buzzing with energy.

“See, it’s good right?” Maria smiled. You nodded enthusiastically.

You woke up the next morning, tired and hungover. You couldn’t remember much of the night, but turning over to see Carlos naked next to you gave you a good idea of what had happened. He drove you back to Medellin a few hours later, his sports car was a very nice change from the cars you usually drove in. He was a sweet guy and you talked the entire journey home.

“Will I see you again?” He asked as he pulled up a little way from your apartment. You pretended to think about it for a moment, before breaking into a smile and nodding. “Perfect,” He smiled. You got out of the car, the happy smile not leaving your face as you waved and walked away.

You watched his car pull away before turning in the direction of your apartment. You still had an identity to hide afterall, even if he was nice you couldn’t let him see where you actually lived. There was still a threat of Parreño exposing you, if Carlos knew where you lived too it was only a matter of time before everyone would be in danger too.

“So that’s where you were,” Javier called out to you across the street as you approached. He sat on the steps of the apartment building, enjoying the sunshine, smoking and drinking a beer. “Getting laid,”

“Not jealous are you, Javi?” You smirked.

“No! You’re an adult you can do what you want,” He said with a laugh. A jealous twinge in his chest caught him off guard but he couldn’t let you know that, “You look nice by the way, it’s a cute dress,”

“Thanks,” You blushed a little. He shuffled out the way to let you pass him and climb the stairs. “I’ll be upstairs if you need me,”

“Sure,” You shut the door behind you leaving Javi alone again. He sighed heavily, blowing out his smoke. He never got jealous, but you had done something to him. He initially put the feeling down the worry. He was concerned for you, going undercover was not something you should be doing at all and from the small amounts you had told him it could be more dangerous than you had first thought. But seeing you step out of that car, seeing you kiss the driver, he knew it was jealousy.

He wanted to have you close all the time, to protect you. You were perfectly capable of protecting yourself, and had shown that on many occasions but the idea of someone else holding you the way he had made him feel sick. That feeling in turn made him angry. He shouldn’t be feeling any type of way towards you, you were a team mate. He was your mentor.

He’d brought it all on himself, he shouldn’t have ever invited you in that night. He would have to suffer through the feeling until it went away, you could never know.

Let me know if you want to get tagged!

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my-writings-and-musings · 4 years ago

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Firstly, I've just been dying to tell you I love your writting x3 it's absolutely fantastic! My favorite is the young liason ones. I think they're just the cutest! Would it be alright if I requested Fortress Maximus and Brainstorm for that? Please take all the time you need, and I hope you have an awesome day! You rock :D

Awww thanks a million!! I do strive to provide the cuteness, and I shall do so here! I'll also link the past Liaison posts for those who haven't read them yet!

Part One: Here!

Part Two: Here!

Part Three: Here!

Part Four: Here!

Part Five: You're Here!

(I've already done Fort Max in part four but I just couldn't help doing him again with a different setup.)

Fortress Maximus

·Stuck in his cell after his "incident", he's unaware of the liaison program when it initially begins, and is thus clueless of what goes on beyond his tiny space in the dark. Amongst the crew, the young humans quickly learn of the ship's considerable history in its short run, including the hostage situation that nearly cost them their beloved psychiatrist. The humans are shocked by the details, but none more so than the news the bot responsible is jailed up in the depths of the ship. All at once, they begin to question such a practice; wasn't this poor bot just acting out of pain? Hasn't his victim recovered and forgiven him? Being told that Fort Max is too dangerous to risk does nothing to dissuade them, and thanks to their youth, the gathered group soon hatches a plan to see something for themselves.

·As one might expect, Fort Max is beyond surprised when he's awoken at night by a number of very tiny visitors to his cell, and is shocked to see that they're all human! Autobot training kicking in, he's immediately concerned for their safety and gets on his knees to encourage them to leave. Lots of these prisoners are dangerous! To top off his shock, the humans say they're not lost and are there for him. They explain the new program with the Lost Light, how they heard his story, and how they're all here now to see him. For an instant Fort Max is speechless, because these tiny humans have just done more for him than the entire Autobot cause ever did. It takes more willpower than he cares to admit not to let his voice crack.

·Despite all of his assurance to the liaisons that what he did was wrong, and that he deserves to face punishment, they hear none of it. Even urging them to leave and stay on the safe parts of the ship go unheeded. They've decided that they like him and don't want him to be lonely. It's incredibly selfish, but he can't bring himself to deny the comfort their company brings him. Every night, with stealth granted by their tiny size, they visit him for as long as they can. Some bring games and entertainment from earth to share with him, and in time he gives up trying to convince them to stop, finding each one of them to be a treasure he just can't give up.

·It's mostly by bad luck they're eventually caught. Ultra Magnus just so happened to be conducting a late night inspection when he came across all the liaisons gathered about the supposedly deadly Fortress Maximus in what appeared to be a slumber party. The former Enforcer had immediately called for back up and demanded the children be released, not backing down when they all made the baffling move to clamor between the cell bars and shield the gigantic Autobot with their tiny frames. No amount of explaining the big bots potential danger could make them leave. Eventually Rung himself had to be summoned to mediate, and at the sight of Fort Max so carefully cradling his friends and begging that any punishment only come to him so they would be spared... The psychiatrist happily declared there was no need for such caution.

·Put on the spot, Ultra Magnus had decided to allow a partial commutation of the bots sentence. Though he's under watch and isn't permitted to have weapons, he's allowed to have his own room and far greater range of the ship, but under supervision. The liaisons accept only after Max does. In no time they're helping him settle into his room, bringing him housewarming gifts, and coming over as often as possible to visit. It almost doesn't feel real to the poor bot. In an almost comical turn of events he's been freed and has gone from loneliness to being surrounded by tiny, loving friends. Even Rung visits from time to time, joining in on the fun and making it clear he holds no ill will towards the big bot for anything that happened. As they all gather for another movie night together, it occurs to him that his painful past has never felt so far away, and for the first time in so long he feels ready for the future.

Brainstorm

·Ever the on the move genius, his curiosity had been piqued the instant he heard humans were going to be on the ship, as a new species is always a fascinating opportunity. He's not all dissapointed by the gaggle of bright eyed youngsters when he finally meets them. Their tour of the ship is quickly guided to his workshop, and in no time he's showing them all the fun ways he's breaking physics or on the cusp of doing so. Pretty soon the rest of the tour is delayed so they can see absolutely everything he's working on. Brainstorm finds their attitude of "science just because" to be monumentally refreshing in the wake of his occasionally stiff crewmembers. Why does he need a reason to experiment on certain things? Sometimes it's fun and invigorating to just invent something because you can!

·As he finds them incredibly motivating and they love helping however he can, he quickly gives each human permission to accompany him as his assistants. With their unique human perspective, he finds himself seeking out ideas that could benefit them directly, whether it's purely for their entertainment or for more practical purposes. Their need for "food" in particular offers a great deal of potential. He's not foolish about it, of course! These little guys are delicate! But if he can make delicious meals that can be stored easily and prepared instantly, why not? Humans need to eat multiple times every single day, why not make it easier and more fun! The hardest part proves to be getting them not to explode...

·The liaisons come to love the incredible energy he brings to every single experiment, and the feeling is mutual. Even if he doesn't understand the references to "Bill Nye" or other such things, he happily allows the humans to take selfies as he works. Spreading the word to their fellows on earth can only help their species catch up, after all. In time though, he starts to socialize with the group outside of his workshop, even bringing them to Swerve's with him to introduce them to all his friends. They stick to him the entire time even though their enthusiasm proves popular with every bot on the ship. Having often struggled to fit in, he finds the feeling of belongings refreshing in ways he never could have anticipated it might be. He'd protect each and every liaison with his life.

·It's quite unexpected when somebot brings up his... stunt, with the briefcase. He'd been so happy for once that his failures had simply... not registered. Thus, he's caught off guard when the humans start asking baffled questions. It's all he can do to mumble an excuse and leave, the confusion in their bright eyes burning into the core of his spark. So many instances of them looking up at him with respect and excitement now seem far more precious, because there's no way they'll ever want to be around him again. Now they know he isn't just the ship's eccentric scientist, and that at his most desperate he tore time and space apart... In hindsight, how could he have allowed himself to forget? He's dangerous, and the liaisons should have been kept distant to begin with... Humans are far too delicate to risk anything happening, and he never would have forgiven himself for allowing harm to come to them.

·Unbeknownst to Brainstorm, the entire group was far from aghast at his actions. If anything, they were heartbroken for his sake. To have been so desperate he'd happily tried to erase himself from existence, in part to save a bot he loved... They want at least to talk to him. Using skills he taught them, they hack past the gridlock on his workshop, and the scientist is shocked by their effort. Before he can say a word they're surrounding him and offering the most effusive of reasurances, particularly regarding how they never want to lose their beloved science bot, and he takes it upon himself to comfort the crying group with a promise he's not going anywhere. In an instant, something becomes incredibly clear to him; these little beings care about him. They don't want him to leave. Trying not to cry himself, he assures the group that he's long since learned his lesson. There's plenty of wonderful things in the present to stick around for.

#transformers #maccadam #mtmte #more than meets the eye #lost light imagine #lostlight #lost light #ll #idw #tf #liaisons #fortress maximus #fort max #brainstorm #human reader #self insert

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philliamwrites · 4 years ago

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Ocean Eyes, Golden Mind

Fandom: All For The Game (Nora Sakavic)

Pairing: Neil/Andrew

Tags: #math nerd neil, #neil with glasses, #no exy

Summary: In which Neil hates his new prescribed glasses until they attract the interest of a certain Andrew Minyard.

Commissioner: Ziegenkind

Notes: Title taken from Billie Eilish’s ‘Ocean Eyes.’

Ocean Eyes, Golden Mind

Dude, it’s just a frat party. Who doesn’t go to frat parties?

The message flashes Neil’s screen white, its sender none other than his roommate Nicky who is supposed to study for an upcoming test in Public Policy in exactly nineteen hours. That’s what Neil writes him. Nicky’s reply comes instantly.

Those who study tend not to party. You know. Like you.

Neil leaves him on read. If he wants to party, he’ll lock himself inside his room, two bottles of Jack Daniel’s by his side while watching every existing compilation of cats attacking people on the small screen of his phone. He knows how to have a good time, alright. Not everyone has to set their scale like Nicky: More than once Neil has been the spectator of him coming back to the dormitory completely wasted, but still eager enough to get frozen waffles from the fridge. Being too drunk to put them in the toaster, he usually just climbs up to his top bunk and puts them between his thighs to eat them partially defrosted. It’s this fragile line between genius and stupidity that has Neil doubting if he should fill in a request for changing roommates or just live with the fact that Nicky Hemmick is one special kind of man.

So instead of spending his night curled into himself, wall against his back and eyes on every stranger distributing awful shots, Neil sits at the Math Tutoring Centre on the west side of the campus and gives group tutoring sessions.

Math comes to Neil like breathing. Like Bertrand Russel said, not only does Mathematics possess truth, but supreme beauty—a beauty cold and austere, like that of a sculpture. It is sublimely pure, and capable of a stern perfection such as only the greatest art can show. It is poetry—elegant and deep—of logical ideas to create harmony in a written line. Once he tried to explain that to Nicky over microwaved Mac n Cheese with Girls running in the background, clearly overestimating him, because Nicky only stared into space for a few seconds, and replied, “You really need to get laid, man.”

Reluctant at the beginning, Neil only agreed to join the Tutor Program because his math professor promised to throw in some extra cash. Something about raising the graduate numbers in order to get the board of education off his back. That’s where Neil’s jurisdiction of interest ends, but he has enjoyed it more than expected—the empty hallways, the harsh light of the ceiling lamps, the smell of chalk, the faint echoes of students still lingering in classrooms. There’s this magic about the Palmetto State University at night—a vulnerability that can only live once the sun sets behind the horizon. When else would he find a kid sleeping under a table in the library, or seniors breaking down in tears for exact 10 minutes before continuing their studies as if nothing has happened.

There’s another reason he’d rather spend his evening on campus, one Nicky doesn’t need to know because then Neil won’t hear the end of it. That reason being 5’0’’ tall chemistry prodigy Andrew Minyard, sitting in the last row of Neil’s math sessions each Friday. He only knows about him thanks to Nicky’s never-ending complaints, but that never really stopped him from throwing a few or more glances in Andrew’s direction. Just curiosity, of course.

So when he stands in front of the blackboard now, putting away his lesson papers which are full of numbers and equations—the kind that has enough letters to look like sentences—he feels dozens eyes burn holes in the back of his neck, and one pair belongs to Andrew. No one asks why he’s here, but everyone knows he doesn’t need to be.

In his one year of giving tutoring sessions, Neil has learnt that exactly three types of students exist: Students who are really good, certainly not in need of the extra lessons, but going anyway for some extra ego-buff and unnecessary brain-flexing. The second type is students who are okay, doing their tasks, following the lesson, not really attracting any attention safe for some crude jokes. The last type has Neil questioning his belief in the educational system of the whole state because he doesn’t understand how they are allowed inside the sacred halls of PSU.

Andrew is a special type on his own—the enigma that keeps Neil awake at two in the morning because he’s desperate to solve it, but without knowing where to start, he’s just running in circles. His fingers itch to solve an equation with multiple variables, to find the solution to a problem and get it off his mind.

He doubts it will be this easy with Andrew.

“Before we continue to look at scalar products in R- and C-vector spaces, we’ll consider bilinear and semi-bilinear forms in general, and link them to matrices for their representation to chosen bases.” Neil’s hand flies across the board, leaving letters and parenthesizes that look like bizarre drawings—art in its most complex form. Once he’s finished, he takes a step away, wipes the chalk on his fingers off on his jeans, and turns to his audience. “What happens to this equation with the semi-bilinear form σ?”

Two hands shoot up immediately. He ignores them; no need to feed their ego, and instead picks a freshman who’s been staring at his phone for the last ten minutes. Making way, Neil moves back to the student’s seats and leans against a desk.

Is it the farthest place away from the board? It is.

Is it the closest that will get him to Andrew? Might be so.

It certainly gives him a good look at what Andrew’s been doing since Neil started—and that is not solving a single task on the paper Neil has handed out at the beginning of the session. Andrew, apparently bored before it even started, has taken out a slip of paper with a sudoku puzzle on it and is solving it against his leg, completely linked out of the instruction.

Neil tries not to stare too much at Andrew’s bare arms, and instead looks back at the board.

“Does that look right?” the freshman—Rhys or Rheeze or something like that—asks, turning around.

Neil narrows his eyes and squints at the board. He can’t make out a single thing, and that’s bad, yes, but his feet betray him, staying rooted where they are instead of reducing the distance until he can distinguish σ from a.

“Where does the l come from,” he asks. Multiple heads snap in his direction.

“That’s a j, Josten,” someone says from the other side of the room.

Neil squints harder. “And the u?”

“A μ.”

“No, it’s a v,” a girl next to Neil says, and that’s when the everyone starts shouting about what’s on the board and what isn’t.

Neil bears it for a solid minute before he surrenders. He pulls a small case from his pocket, opens it. Puts his glasses on.

The whole room goes silent.

Neil checks the equation, nods. “Correct. Who’s next?”

Multiple people stir, one manages to get up, and walks straight into a table leg. Neil questions that ‘straight’, because only then the freshman guy stops staring at Neil and steers his attention to the equation on the blackboard.

It was a bad idea, and Neil still hates Allison for forcing him to go. She’d dragged him to the doctor last week to get his eyes tested, annoyed by his never-ending questions of ‘What’s written there?’ or ‘Is that a six or an eight?’.

“They’re my eyes,” Neil had said, arms crossed as he sat in the office and waited for his turn.

“And it’s me who has to see your ugly squinting face,” Allison had replied.

Two hours later Neil had finally his prescriptions but that didn’t mean he was free from Allison’s clutches. He would have been fine with some glasses from the dollar store, but she insisted that if he’s going to wear them more than once a day, he should get designer glasses—thin frames and a color that matches his copper hair. She suggested gold. Neil picked black. The look of disappointment on Allison’s face was something that deserved its own painting to commemorate it. But once they’d finally chosen the right pair, she’d given him the very same look most of the students are giving him now—a mix between slight awe and disbelief as if he’s grown a second head. Or owes them all a month’s worth of lunch money.

“Well,” had Allison said at least, turning away to pack up and go home. “Tigers have their stripes. I have my eyeliner.” She threw him another scrutinizing look over her shoulder. “You have your glasses.” If it was supposed to make him feel better, it didn’t work, and right now he regrets nothing more than allowing Allison to drag him around.

Neil’s eyes land on Andrew’s sudoku puzzle, now half-hidden under his papers, and he sees now that he isn’t even solving the thing, but simply coloring in the empty squares.

He takes a second too long and meets Andrew’s eyes staring back at him.

“Problem, Josten?” Andrew asks with a blank expression, tapping the end of his pen against his monochrome picture of black and white squares.

Neil wants to see how far he can push until he walks against a brick wall and breaks something. He returns his gaze to the board but feels Andrew’s eyes like a solid touch on the back of his neck.

After the session, the students hurry outside, still throwing curious glances over their shoulders at Neil and if he could merge with the back of his chair and disappear forever, that would be totally okay. It isn’t until a shadow looms above him that he looks up from his own homework and draws in a careful breath when Andrew towers above him.

Neil raises an eyebrow. “Problem, Minyard?”

Andrew’s face gives nothing away, and when he stretches out a hand, Neil doesn’t flinch. His glasses slip off easily, held between Andrew’s thumb and index finger.

“Nicky told me he’s trying to convince you to join him tomorrow,” Andrew says. Neil needs a second, because that is the most words he’s heard out of Andrew’s mouth.

“I have no reason to go,” Neil says, his eyes jumping up and down, from the equation that makes his sight blur to Andrew leaning his slender waist against the table.

“You have one now.” It’s barely neutral enough to not sound like a threat, but Neil stares at Andrew nonetheless, and when he puts Neil’s glasses on, Neil’s heart does a weird stutter. He’s still starring at Andrew when he leaves the room, and no, his eyes don’t stray, they stay on Andrew’s broad back, and if they dip lower it’s because of the light.

Once he’s alone, Neil takes a deep breath, exhales slowly. Puts his head in his arms and counts to ten in French first, then again in German. His heart still does this weird thing, trying to bruise his ribs from the inside.

He gets his phone, texts Nicky he’ll go to the frat party tomorrow and puts it away, not interested in his roommate’s reply. There’s still the equation he needs to solve, but for the first time Neil’s heart isn’t really into math, and he is quite alright with it.

#philliamwrites #ao3 #fanfiction #aftg #andreil #andrew minyard #neil josten #all for the game #andrew x neil #neil x andrew #andrew/neil #neil/andrew

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amphtaminedreams · 4 years ago

Text

COVID-19, Negligent Manslaughter, and a Timeline of Tory Indifference

“I feel sorry for Boris Johnson. He is doing the best he can in the situation and I don’t think anybody else could have done a better job.”

[exhibit A: a gem somebody that I’m Facebook friends with reposted earlier]

It’s a sentiment that I cannot quite wrap my head around. I sit here hopeless and furious and trying to hold back tears because it’s been almost a year since England first went into lockdown and yet here we are, almost 100,000 dead, in an even worse position than we were before whilst other countries begin to slowly return to normality. It is clear to me who is to blame for this, however there are a large proportion of people who don’t want to “politicise” the actions of the PRIME MINISTER with regards to his approach towards handling a virus sweeping the country he GOVERNS.

Typically, these kind of posts making the rounds on social media will be accompanied by some kind of photo of Boris Johnson looking somber as if to suggest that the way things have played out were beyond his control and that he is some kind of broken man beleaguered by the suffering he has, despite good intentions, inadvertently caused.

This one in particular of Johnson with his head in his hands is a staple. In reality, this is a photo taken back in 2018 whilst he was receiving flack from party members for comparing Theresa May to a suicide bomber (for her handling of Brexit, ironically) as well as from the papers due to his rumoured (now also proven, in a completely non-surprising turn of events, to be true) affair with his former aide, Carrie Symonds.

So let’s shut this narrative-where we should feel for Boris because he’s doing his best, and apparently a better job than anybody else could’ve done in his situation- down right here. In a supposedly developed country with one of the world’s largest economies, if we’re talking by proportion, our COVID-19 death toll is up there with the worst of them. It seems that every other state figurehead (bar a small handful), and I mean almost every single one of them, is doing a better job. People love to throw figures out there about how densely populated we are to combat damning statistics as if we haven’t got just as many factors playing to our advantage, as if it’s unfair to compare our response to Germany’s or Japan’s or Singapore’s (both of which are far more densely populated) or New Zealand’s or Vietnam’s, but we are an ISLAND with world-leading technology and infrastructure and healthcare equipment and professionals and a relatively high standard of living. In what world is almost 70,000 dead in a country with abundant time and means to prepare a response reflective of said country’s leaders doing a good job?

Apparently we’re supposed to believe that Johnson feels some sense of moral responsibility for this astronomical failure. A man who refuses to acknowledge the multiple children he has fathered outside of his marriages and who has had repeatedly engaged in affairs and one-night stands throughout said marriages. A man who continued to cheat whilst his most recent wife was receiving treatment for cervical cancer, for fuck’s sake. Yep, a real stand-up guy.

So where does this idea that Johnson must feel remorseful for this catastrophe come from? We haven’t seen a second of remorse or a hint of accountability for the lives lost from him nor any members of his cabinet. That much is really no surprise; I have this hypothesis, and it’s not a stretch, that these people do not have an ounce of empathy in their bodies. These ridiculously privileged, privately-educated individuals who have had everything handed to them their entire lives simply cannot put themselves in the shoes of the average working person and that is the problem. Unable to recognise that what distinguishes them from most others is little more than the luck of being born into wealth and the abundance of recourses and connections that has entailed throughout their lives, they see us as beneath them-as less intelligent, less driven, and thus less deserving of the status and respect they enjoy. They see us as a bunch of whining, unmotivated idiots who do not recognise the chokehold they have over our media nor the fact that everything they do is a desperate grab to keep money and power within the hands of a select group of people, an exclusive members club from which most of us are barred (just take a simple Google search and watch Jacob Rees-Mogg’s opinion of the Grenfell victims or the buried Johnson speech where he talks about how inequality is essential). They know that we will squabble amongst ourselves about who is to blame rather than wising up to the truth which is that every decision they make is fuelled by cronyism and the inability to make and follow through with difficult choices, the pandemic being no exception. The supposedly self-made elite see the life of the average working class person as having far less value than their own, and their parties actions over the last 10 years have made that very clear.

It was in December 2019 that the first case of COVID-19 was declared to the World Health Organisation and on March the 11th that they announced they considered it as a pandemic. In Wuhan, people were dying of pneumonia in their clusters. And what was Boris Johnson doing in this time? Well for starters, here in the UK we didn’t even have a pandemic committee-Johnson had scrapped it six months before. If years of benefits cuts and defunding of the NHS in favour of funding nuclear weapon programs, keeping British troops on other people’s lands, and tax breaks for the mega corporations that donate to their party didn’t convince you that the Conservatives have little regard for human life, them getting rid of this committee-whilst a pandemic has been declared year after year as the greatest threat to mankind-should have been the first sign of trouble. As if that wasn’t enough, he also skipped five of the COBRA (meetings are made up of a cross-departmental committee put together to respond to national emergencies and PMs routinely attend those pertaining to crises on the scale of COVID-19) meetings addressing the situation. Whilst other countries were closing their borders and stocking up on PPE, Johnson and his ministers were selling PPE abroad and simply telling people to wash their hands to the length of the tune of happy birthday. Their only policy was one of “herd immunity”, which was in fact not a policy but just an abandonment of their party’s public duty disguised as one, intentionally obfuscated with pseudoscientific jargon.

Even thinking the absolute worst of politicians you would hope that when it came to the point where the UK’s non-response to COVID-19 was becoming an international disgrace, Johnson and his ministers would take proper protective measures if only to save face. But when they eventually seemed to do so, it became clear that the priority was not the safety of the ordinary people affected by the virus. Outsourcing their test and traces system to companies such as Serco, Sitel, Deloitte and G4S rather than public health services, Conservative ministers could not resist attempting to line the pockets of their friends and benefactors in the process. According to the Guardian, instead of reaching out to the experts or using publicly funded services to handle COVID containment measures, the Conservative party has awarded a disgusting £1.5 BILLION WORTH of contracts to businesses with explicit connections to its MPs and donors, the majority of which lack any relative experience of the tasks they’ve been trusted to carry out. Unsurprisingly, the National Audit office found that when awarding contracts relating to the production of COVID-19 protection measures and treatment needs, there was a “high-priority lane” for suppliers referred by senior politicians and officials; companies with a political referral were 10 times more likely to end up winning a government contract than those without. On top of this, it is not hard to draw a link between the late initiation of lockdown measures and preemptive openings of pubs and restaurants against scientific advice to the interests of frequent donors such as Wetherspoons owner Tim Martin. Even if one chooses to ignore the blatantly obvious correlation between the owners of the businesses whose profits were prioritised over safety concerns and the number of those owners who donate to the Conservatives, party officials at the very least were reluctant to follow the lead of many other countries in financing furlough schemes themselves and instead avoided this responsibility by using loose lockdown measures to leave it down to the discretion of small business owners, who couldn’t themselves afford to furlough staff, whether or not to stay open.

Time and time again, as the government flounder and fuck about, favouring personal desires to keep their powerful, high-paying jobs and to satisfy the corporate allies who make this possible, blame has been shifted from the public to care homes to NHS workers and back again whilst we, the public, make the biggest sacrifices of all under the illusion that we were being guided out of this pandemic rather than lied to and thrown under the bus. Whilst the elite continue to pick and choose what rules apply to them, it’s students and the elderly and the vulnerable paying the fines and scrabbling to afford basic living costs and hoping that they don’t lose someone dear to them.

Don’t get me wrong, a large proportion of the public have contributed to the spread too with their selfishness and entitlement and the arrogance it takes to develop a sudden refusal to acknowledge basic science from experts who have studied in the field their whole lives so that they can justify their need to go to the pub (speaking of, it’s absolutely HILARIOUS how many “mental health advocates” are suddenly coming out of the woodworks on football avi Twitter after they’ve spent years calling people on mental health Twitter attention seekers). And don't get me wrong, there were inevitably going to be casualties of this pandemic. But it didn't have to spread to this many people, and there didn’t have to be so many deaths due to a lack of preparation, and this wouldn’t have been the case if it weren’t for the inherent apathy of the Conservative party towards the lives of people of lesser status than them, the reluctance to put those lives before party interests. I wish I felt like there was an end in sight, I wish there was some positive takeaway from all of this, but even now, we continue to see corners being cut with the vaccine lauded as our saving grace and anti-maskers gathering outside hospitals to chant about how “oppressive” it is to be urged to wear a bit of cloth over their faces for the short periods of time in which they leave their houses and all I can think of is the selfishness that runs like poison through our country. It makes me sick and leaves me to question desperately where we go from here. I don’t like unanswered questions, I don’t like feeling politically directionless, and I don’t like the growing fear I have about the state of the world which seems to intensify every single day. In the UK at least, it’s starting to feel like nothing will ever change-we’re told we live in a democracy and yet mainstream media is owned by the people whose interest is to keep their Conservative friends in power. The stronghold they have over print media in particular allows them to continually get away with smearing and defaming every person who comes along and seems to want to actually help ordinary people, without being challenged, to the point where the only kind of “opposition” we’re left with promises nothing but a big boss approved tactical reshuffling of the status quo (which they call “electability”); it doesn’t feel like democracy when the majority of the country are being fed misleading information and convinced against voting in their best interests.

This is the result of that. The state we find ourselves in is the inevitable result of being manipulated into helping the elite build their protective wall whilst the rest of us scrabble to get in and step on each others heads along the way, the people inside shouting over that it’s those even more vulnerable than ourselves that are taking our places. Outside the wall, the earth is falling from beneath our feet, and instead of throwing over the ropes to help us out, the people inside are stockpiling them so they can secure their firm place above ground and then later flog the rest. How many more people have to die before we reach some kind of widespread realisation of that? Where do we go from here and what do we do? Well for one, we can stop spreading those god-fucking-awful textposts on Facebook and get our heads out of our arses. Wear our masks over and wear them over our fucking noses. Have some fucking consideration for others. Don’t wait til an issue affects you personally to give a fuck about it. AND START HOLDING THE FUCKING PRIME MINISTER AND HIS MINISTERS AND HIS ENTIRE PARTY AS WELL AS THE OPPOSITION MPS THAT HAVE SAT BY THE SIDELINES AND ALLOWED THIS TO GO ON WITHOUT PROTEST ACCOUNTABLE. That would be a good start.

I’m so tired. Things didn’t need to be this way, and yet because of the selfishness of the few, thousands upon thousands are dead. It’s not about “throwing around blame”, it’s not about “throwing around” anything, it’s about expecting a leader to do his best to protect lives. If that is “throwing blame”, let’s get things clear, I have no issue with hurtling it torpedo style at those who handed out a death sentence to so many in this country rather than do anything that might compromise their own privilege. Honestly, pass me the shovel after and I’ll happily bury the wreckage in the ground. Who wants to join?:-)

#rant #politics #anti capitalism #anticapitalist #covid-19 #covid #england #labour #socialism #fuck the tories #fuck the torys #fuck boris #rant post

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csykora · 4 years ago

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After ‘84, Igor felt the pieces were beginning to fall off the Red Machine.

He hated being called a robot as much as he hated being called a soldier. He didn’t know what the world wanted the Green Unit to do on the ice or off it, how they had to behave, before someone would believe they had feelings. On the worst days they were too tired and numb to feel anything else.

When he’d met Bobby Clarke, who he thought looked like a hockey angel with a blond halo and no teeth, Bobby commented about the Soviet presence in Afghanistan. Igor didn’t know how to say that he’d definitely never been allowed to go to Afghanistan, and under the uniform he didn’t deserve to be a soldier, for good or bad. The national team was a tool of the Soviet government: at the same time it was a comfort for ordinary people in cold little apartments in mining towns where the players grew up and also a prop in the illusions that kept everything how it was.

The illusion went skin deep: every time they left Russia, Igor was issued a snappy winter coat and brand-name Western clothes, so no one would think the Soviets looked poor.

[A black and white photo of the Green Unit posing, smiling except for Igor, in matching windbreakers with saddle shoulders and bold stripes. This was a hot look, about 10 years before the Soviet Union Costuming Department thought it was a hot look]

Underneath the coat or the beautiful red sweater, everything was a mess. At one point, at a tournament in Canada, a Canadian player would hit Igor from behind. It wouldn’t have been so bad, except the Soviet management hadn’t provided enough hockey pads. Igor was wearing a partial set he’d borrowed from a high school team that played in the host arena earlier that day. (Across Europe and Canada I bet there are grown men, still hockey fans now, who have no idea they once owned game-worn gear from the world’s top scorers. To Igor’s fans those pieces might be worth as much as he ever earned in his CSKA career.) He would play the rest of that tournament with broken ribs.

The only outsider he’d met who seemed to understand, however briefly, was their friend Vanya. Asked what it was like playing against those Russian robots, Wayne said,

“Robots don’t hurt when they lose.”

By June 1985, Slava was recovering from that knee injury that had sidelined him for half the last season. He and his little brother Tolya, now a CSKA rookie, drove back for the start of training. Their car was hit, and Tolya was killed. Slava thought about leaving that season, but their parents told him to keep going, and just try to live for two people.

In November, the players at Arkhangel heard a rumor: someone had written an article, in a Soviet paper, that criticized the hockey program. Anything that wasn’t awe was criticism. Someone got their hands on a copy, and Igor, Vova, Sergei, and Slava huddled around their usual table that evening, hiding each other as they read it in turns. Igor reread it twice. He’d read Canadian and American papers that dragged the Soviet system, but never something like this, that got it--almost--right. It didn’t have all the details to understand the illusion--how they trained, how Tikhonov acted behind Arkhangel’s walls--but it guessed some.

Glasnost was beginning, a long rustling cracking thaw opening new streams of information and communication like Igor had dreamed. The Canucks drafted him that year, and then Vova. The Devils had dibsed Slava and Lyosha a few years before, and the Flames wanted Sergei. There was a place for them, waiting, if they could ever get to the NHL. But there wouldn’t be any thaw in Arkhangel as long as Tikhonov ruled it.

The ’85 World Championships were held in Prague, and ’86 in Moscow. Igor played both, and nothing else. For two years, no one saw him outside the Soviet Union.

In December of ‘85, CSKA was supposed to tour North America. Igor was dressed and ready. Then he heard his passport, which he had used a hundred times before, had run into problems. Coach told him not to worry, but to stay behind in Russia and--how convenient--keep training for the championships in Moscow. Igor woke up at three in the morning to watch the games he was supposed to be playing. He learned that Canadian journalists were asking about him: apparently, he had tonsillitis. Igor wasn’t entirely sure where his tonsils were.

Two months later CSKA played in Sweden. Strange, how his tonsils still weren’t better, and his passport was still missing. Two nights before they were set to leave Tikhonov called him into the office, in front of the team, and told him so. But the next evening Tretiak, now a more senior officer, came out to visit the barracks. He hugged Igor and promised him he would do what he could to get the passport by the time they were supposed to leave the next morning. Igor went to bed hoping. At 4:30 AM the coaches woke him just to tell him the passport wasn’t there yet, so the team really would be leaving without him.

The third time it happened, he was told to go back to the passport office to file everything all over again--maybe he had fucked up his passport. He didn’t bother. Taking away travel had been one thing. But doing it in front of the team, in front of the Green Unit, so that he knew that they knew that he had let them down somehow, broke his heart.

He was still allowed to play inside the Soviet Union. As long as he was with CSKA, the other Greens treated him the same as always. If they had known how bad things were going to get, Igor thought they would have done more sooner, but he knew that they didn’t understand what was happening. In between games, he spent his days in office buildings, being grilled about suspicious activities like listening to rock music, calling his mom too often, or kissing Canadians.

“I was at fault all around. That I gladly gave interviews to journalists. That I liked the NHL...that I like rock music. That the living standard there impressed me. All this was raked up into a pile. I was the enemy. Because, you see, if I liked the American way of life, then in general I was an American by heart. All of this they said about me.

By nature, I am clearly a Russian. I do not like everything in America. It cannot be that somewhere is as in a fairytale, and somewhere else is total darkness.

Particularly, it seemed, my [friendliness] offended the preservers of government secrets….I also knew a little English. Therefore I had the possibility to rub elbows with whomever I might come in contact: hockey players, journalists and even immigrants. And, they assumed, to each of them I could give important information--everyone getting an equal share, no doubt, in order to be fair.”

He couldn’t talk to his friends from other countries, or his Russian friends either when they traveled without him. On the street outside between the rink and the party offices, none of his former fans would speak to him, except to ask or tell him their opinion if he really was a traitor.

He was wanted everywhere but home. Obviously, no other country believed that a 25 year-old athlete who had been the best in the world six months before had been brought down by tonsillitis multiple times in a row. There’s only so many tonsils a person can have. Obviously, every other country thought Igor must want to defect, the one thing he did not want and couldn’t convince anyone of. So each host on the international hockey circuit was bouncing on their toes, first Canada, then Sweden and so on, thinking maybe the Soviet Union would slip up and let him come to their tournament, he'd defect, and then they’d get to keep him. Obviously, the Soviets noticed that, and squeezed tighter.

Each time the team left on tour, he was told to spend his time alone training harder and hope. If he was good enough, maybe he’d make the next tournament. His body, always a battle-ground with Coach Tikhonov, became a hostage situation. The more Tikhonov told him to train, the less he ate. Eventually he was eating mostly fruit, and restricting his water intake.

He stopped pretending to defer to anyone. He used to be the sober one between his hot-head wingers, and now he egged every fight on. Sometimes he faked an American accent, calling Coach “Tikhonoff” the way American broadcasters had at the '81 Olympics.

One day at the rink he bumped into figure skater Lena Batanova, who “knew nothing about hockey and could not have cared less.” She had been through worse training than he had growing up, only to win two World Championships, and then be slighted from a third. They understood each other without having to say anything.

[Igor washing dishes in their Moscow apartment, turning to glance at Lena pressing up him.]

That summer he stayed up late talking with his friends, and realized he wanted to marry Lena. He asked her the next morning, and she said yes. Behind Igor’s back, Slava, Vova, Sergei, and Lyosha went to Coach Tikhonov’s office, and told him that they would play every other day of the year if they had to, but they would be going to Igor’s wedding. Coach wouldn’t allow the three days for a traditional Russian wedding, but he had to give Igor one.

Waking up the morning after the wedding, Igor checked the mail and found a summons to appear before the Central Committee of the Communist Party. His friends, who I imagine lying hungover on his and Lena’s new couch and floor, rushed for their unused books to help him study up on Communist doctrine, in case he got quizzed. This is presumably when Lena woke up, realized she’d married a whole line of hockey players for their one communal brain cell, and rolled back over. Igor reported the next morning, probably with flashcards Vova had made for him in his pocket.

The Party officials congratulated him on getting married and gave him the wedding gift they were sure no one else would have gotten: his passport. We have to guess the logic here, if there was one. It’s possible the Party thought he wouldn’t risk his wife, or that two years had just been enough to realize the team wasn’t working without him.

But he was allowed to go to Canada for the Calgary Cup before the end of ‘86, and everyone had questions about his two years of tonsillitis. Igor, for the first time in his life, didn’t talk. But that just left the hockey world to gossip. Two months later it was announced he’d be in Quebec City for another tournament, and right before they arrived a Quebec newspaper printed a version of the night out with Gretzky--with quotes, they claimed, from Wayne. This time the tournament organizers called someone from every team up for a pregame presser. I imagine Igor shrugging at his KGB handlers and sliding away to the stage: nothing could stop him talking now.

Except the Canadian journalists. They wanted to interview Team Canada first. Igor stewed, and then looked up to see an oncoming Wayne. Someone had asked him about the alleged quotes in the article, which Igor had snagged a copy of to read the second they let him loose in Canada. Apparently Wayne hadn’t.

“‘Believe me, Igor,’” Igor remembers Wayne blurting out. “‘I didn’t say what was printed in the paper. I’ll tell them it didn’t happen! But what is your position now?’”

“‘Do not worry,” Igor promised him. “‘Now, everything is okay.’”

“Oh, awesome,” (I’m assuming again) Wayne said. “So do you want to come over later and hang out in my mom’s basement?!”

“If the KGB pulls a gun, then call me.” --Wayne Gretzky

Weirdly, I’ve never seen this inspirational quote cross-stitched on someone’s wall.

The next Canada Cup was held in August ‘87 in Hamilton, Ontario, which is like, basically next door to Wayne’s parents’ house. So the afternoon before the first game, Wayne sent his dad Walter to the hotel where the Soviet team was staying. Walter asked in Ukrainian if he could chat with Igor, who had to come down to the hotel lobby to meet him, since visitors were absolutely not allowed to wander up to players’ rooms. Walter invited his son’s friend over for dinner. Igor cut eyes at the KGB agent in the corner, and said he had to go upstairs and ask Coach. Tikhonov said no before Igor started talking.

Igor came back downstairs and apologized to Walter, who thought hard for a minute. He told Igor to ask what if the whole Green Unit went to Wayne’s house for team bonding? Coach Tikhonov considered, and said no, and Igor went back to Walter.

Walter hitched up his suspenders, and announced to the KGB that he would talk go to Coach Tikhonov now.

He told Tikhonov he would be honored if Coach came to dinner at his house that evening, and if Coach felt like it, he might bring the boys over too. Tikhonov said he’d love to.

Tikhonov, Igor, Vova, Sergei, Slava, Lyosha, and a KGB operative spent a delightful half hour packed in a car together driving to the Gretzkys' house, where Walter and Phyllis were throwing a cookout. Walter and some of his local buddies had barbecue and corn on the cob on the grill, and Phyllis had quizzed her son about his Moscow trip before throwing up her hands in despair and making a big batch of her mother’s Polish dumplings and sausage.

Nothing makes me happier than the image of Wayne Gretzky, beaming from ear to ear, handing famously fussy little Igor Larionov a piece of barbecued corn on the cob. Igor had to explain that yes, they had corn in Russia, but they ate it on a plate and not like squirrels. Walter offered him a beer, and Igor looked to Coach Tikhonov before saying no. Tikhonov allowed the players to have a soda.

Wayne started asking him how everything had been since the last time they hung out, and didn’t get why his friend wouldn’t talk to him at first. Igor might answer one question, and then act like he didn’t understand. Sergei and Vova really didn’t speak English, and kept elbowing Igor to explain what was going on and why Wayne was smiling at them like that, but Igor was still pretending he only spoke Russian and hesitated to translate for them. Finally Wayne realized Igor was clamming up every time Tikhonov got within earshot.

Wayne went to Walter to change the game plan. Walter would use his Ukrainian to ask Coach Tikhonov about his many amazing accomplishments, while Wayne told the whole party he wanted to show the other boys his medals, which were all down in the basement. Unfortunately the Gretzky family’s basement was very small, and housed Wayne’s many, many medals, so only two people could possibly fit down there at a time: one Gretzky, and one Russian. Tikhonov thought about it, decided he didn’t care about someone else’s medals, and gave the okay.

Just in case, Wayne deputized his dad’s buddy Charlie, who did not speak Russian or anything like it but was somebody’s dad from suburban Ontario, to chat up the KGB agent.

So Wayne began to escort the Green Unit, one by one, down to his family’s basement. At the bottom of the stairs, he handed them a beer. The two of them chugged their beers together, trying not to take suspiciously long or laugh too loud, and then ran back up to change out for the next boy.

Nothing happened that night. It didn’t change anything, except that Tikhonov never found out. The Greens had been able to get one over on him, because they didn’t have to do it alone.

Main

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#green unit #igor larionov #wayne gretzky #slava fetisov #sergei makarov #vladimir krutov

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pro-ship-self-ships · 5 years ago

Text

Transmasc HCs in Obey Me!

Is this self-indulgent? Yes, but I’m transmasc and there needs to be more trans and queer stuff in the fandom. I simply write partially from my own perspective.

General

If you were already out in some way in your school/workplace, your name was used on the application.

If you came out during the year and wanted to use your new name at RAD, the administration would immediately take action, informing all teachers of the new name.

Gender-neutral bathrooms are built with magic in case you’re uncomfortable with the gendered ones.

If you’re ever worried about whether you’re going to go to hell for being queer, your friends at RAD will remind that no, you’re not a bad person, and you won’t go to hell for being queer. Your queerness is a beautiful thing and you’ll be reminded of that.

Lucifer

He knew already, but appreciates that you came out to him.

If you come to him for name suggestions, he might be able to come up with something more classy than his brothers.

Your bullies mysteriously vanish if you talk about them with him.

He’s the one who helps the most with getting T and surgery (if you plan on going the human route).

Helps to get you emancipated if you have unaccepting family (he has jokingly suggested just murdering them, though it probably won’t happen).

He takes you and the others to Pride every June. He’ll typically ask which places you want to celebrate at (I’d personally choose NYC or LA)

The man to go to for voice training bless you Kazuya Yamashita (although he’d help with a professional later down the line)

Tries to give you lessons on being a “proper gentleman” but gives up if you don’t show interest.

Studies trans laws in different countries in the human world to make sure which ones are tran-accepting in case you travel with him.

Might help you keep track of which documents need to have your name and gender changed

Might start listening to music by trans artists and enjoy them (he better listen to Cavetown sdhkvshdvdh)

He might make the occasional dad joke about your name or about being trans (you can’t tell he doesn’t enjoy dad jokes a little, especially after the credit card debacle)

Mammon

It takes him some time to understand when you come out, but my goodness is he a vocal supporter.

He’s the most likely to accompany you to public bathrooms if you feel uncomfortable. The others attempt to follow suit, but Mammon won’t let them near you.

Do not come to this man for name ideas, he’d probably come up with something like “Mammon 2: Electric Boogaloo.”

With your permission, he and Levi record your journey and post bits and pieces online

Confused if you choose human methods for transitioning, especially because of the price, but will still attempt to save money for any procedures you bring up.

Sends trans memes and might bring it up as an inside joke (if anyone knows the tiktok from jvckass that’s essentially “my chest is versace bro”, i mostly refer to that one)

If you get top surgery, he’ll remind you of some of the wack things you said while on anesthesia

Will comfort you if you bring up having an unaccepting family.

Will probably also start listening to music by trans artists (i will continuously preach the goodness of Cavetown)

Gets the money for it if you need a legal name change, gets surprised if you start crying

Jokingly teaches you about “being a man”

After top surgery, will try to keep the room to just the two of you (unsuccessfully). He’ll still bring up his money schemes as you lie there

Likes buying pride merch for you (flags, pins etc), will deny liking it though hfdigbdkh

Leviathan

If you came out to him and wanted to come up with a name for yourself, he’ll immediately suggest the name “Henry”. He gets a little upset if you don’t like it, but will subsequently throw names of anime characters as suggestions.

Also sends trans memes

Will help you experiment with your look through cosplay.

Records some of the wack things you said when you were still on anesthesia after top surgery

He also just wants to watch anime with you after the surgery. He also finds your chest scars to be pretty cool.

Will try to find anime and other things with trans characters and talk about them with you

He seems to act more like a Japanese otaku than a western weeb, but he would still have to probably unlearn queerphobic language

Satan

Would have probably read at least something on being trans

Would be the one to ask the most questions if they’re not too invasive

Likes to discuss multiple topics such as biology or sociology. Probably will name drop Judith Butler or Julia Serano and have a convo based on that.

Probably might want to watch some shows that have trans characters in them. Buys books with trans characters or by trans authors.

If you’re up for it, he’d give a pet your deadname to help distance yourself from it.

Would be the one to look up “(insert culture here) names for boys” to help pick a name. Gets pissed if teachers can’t pronounce it, regardless of when you came up w the name. Same goes for transphobes at RAD.

If you get surgery, he stays by your bed and reads to you.

Would attempt to make testosterone if you say something about expenses. Also might try to plan forms of surgery

Asmodeus

He’s the one to help with your wardrobe and look (you knew this was gonna be the case). He simply won’t allow you to walk around in that one hoodie. He knows about which shirts and tops makes your chest look flatter. If you want to continue wearing feminine clothes, he’ll help out with the best look. Would get you the rainbow binder as a surprise gift.

Regardless of whether you brought it up, he’d probably buy you a packer. He finds it hilarious.

He might buy a bunch of strap-ons and dildos for you if you don’t get bottom surgery

If you start testosterone in the Devildom, he doubles down on your skincare. Acne gets really difficult, so he’s always there to help.

If you decide to get top surgery, he is going to get you so many pillows. Same goes for bottom surgery.

He’s the one to get you pads if you need them.

On your trips to Pride parades and other queer places, he likes to create outfits for them.

Might try to get Solomon to cast a spell or make a potion to make you “more masculine”

He wants to be the one to cut your hair, but is okay with going to a salon with you

If you ask for names, he probably has a whole list already (it’s just a list of male exes)

Overall, he will remind you of how beautiful you are

Beelzebub

If you have have issues joining a sports team, he’s here to help convince any coaches necessary(although do demons have gendered sports teams is the question)

Encourages you to eat more than ever, especially if you’re on T. He understands when you get really hungry. Brings up foods that increases testosterone. Has you eat pineapples before you get top surgery.

Wants to give you a hug after surgery, but the others tell him about the stitches and fragility

Likes to cuddle you if you want to talk about your dysphoria (much to Mammon’s annoyance) and if you bring up height dysphoria, he likes carrying you around on his shoulders so you can feel taller.

Might try to come up with a food name if you ask

Will punch anyone who attempts to bully you over your queerness

Has you exercise with him more often, especially if you’ve talked about gaining muscle on T.

Belphegor

He doesn’t really mind, but he’s still supportive

Might suggest naps as a way of getting rid of dysphoria.

He gets the concept of transness a bit faster since he used to hang out with humans more.

Diavolo

He’s pretty accepting and finds human’s relationship with gender to be fascinating.

Orders the construction of gender-neutral bathrooms for your comfort

Makes dad jokes about being trans and your name (all in good fun, of course)

With your permission, he might plan a gender-reveal party or a debutante ball for you.

Assures you that you won’t go to hell for being yourself.

Barbatos

He was the first to figure out you are trans, as he was tasked with looking into your history for the exchange program.

He’s accepting as well. If you’re worried about your future, he might give you a couple of hints to show you’ll be ok.

Besides telling Diavolo and Lucifer beforehand, Barbatos is willing to help you stay stealth if that’s what you want.

Solomon

Depending on where’s he from, he might be a bit hesitant, but he’s still accepting (he has no reason to discriminate for religious reasons, he practices magic)

Might suggests magic to help transitioning, but will relent if you’re dead fast on human methods.

Also likes sending trans memes

Simeon

Finds it fascinating to find how far human technology has come for transitioning

If you’re really worried about getting into heaven, Simeon is the best one to reassure you that you will

A calming force for when you have dysphoria

Talks about transness to Luke so he’ll understand

If you can convince him, he might write a new series with a trans character as the protagonist (and other queer characters as well)

He and Asmodeus would team up to make a binder you could wear 24/7

Is a little uncomfortable with the hypersexuality of Pride parades, but understands their necessity.

Luke

The one that takes the most talking to about it, but Simeon accepts you, so Luke follows suit.

Likes to make trans flag cookies for you, especially after reaching certain milestones.

Gets jealous if you start growing taller from T.

Joins Levi on watching trans anime with you.

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isthemicon · 4 years ago

Text

Writers really did Blair dirty in s5

*super long post because I’m angry as hell*

There was a time when I thought that season 5 is overhated. I’ve been telling myself that sure, Blair is acting unlike herself but that’s because this season is looking at her from more psychological angle and it’s looking at her character more deeply.

But then I’ve rewatched it and I’ve realized that they’ve ruined Blair completely. The depth that I was seeing is in maybe 3-4 episode and is often overshadowed by other things. And usually the deep moments are happening through other characters.

Blair in s5 is barley her own person, she does nothing that isn’t related to her relationships, she isn’t working on her status, position, career. Her whole character arc is regressed to her trying to figure out which guy should she choose or how to make the relationship she is in work.

I mean come on even Nate and Serena have bigger stories and actually do things outside their relationships.

Blair barley ever even makes her own decisions, someone else makes them for her or has to push her to make them.

In other seasons her love life is a big part of her story but in the same time she is doing something else as well.

In s1 she is trying to build her position in school, in s2 she is fighting for Yale and her position in school, in s3 she is trying to figure out her life at NYU and trying to build her position outside high school, in s4 she is going to Columbia and trying to start a career, even in s6 despite its ridicules soap opera like plot she is building her career.

And in s5? Let me tell you what Blair does in each episode of season 5

Recap of all of the episodes

05x01 Blair returns from Monaco, and the whole episode we see her trying to be able to plan the wedding. Wait is pregnant? No it’s Dorota, joking Blair is pregnant too

05x02 Blair is trying to hide her pregnancy from the royal family, while Beatrice and Dan are snooping. That’s all.

05x03 Blair is trying to figure out who is the father. Of course she can’t makw the decision on her own so Dan needs to force her to do it because of course she can’t do it on her own (still very nice friendship moment). I like ending of this episode, it’s deep and sad and emotional. And tells a lot about her mental state and what is going inside of her.

05x04 Blair is trying to convince Louis that Dan’s book is just a fiction, she is angry because the book threatened her relationship, not becuse it affected her career like in Serena’s case, not because she didn’t like the way she was portrayed like Nate and Rufus, it just that it made her fiancé doubt.

05x05 Blair and Louis tell their family about the pregnancy. Eleanor is unhappy (the only one that has a normal reaction) but then they have a beautiful mother and daughter moment but it’s a moment of Eleanor’s depth not Blair’s. Oh and also Blair is pawn in the battle called “where should they live? Which grandma will have more to say?”

05x06 Blair is trying to choose her bridesmaids (entertaining episode and shows her power, still resolves around her relationship). Probably one of the the very few were she is actually doing something.

05x07 Blair is trying to provoke Chuck to show that he hadn’t really changed. And Chuck and Dorota have to form a plan to make sure she believes he didn’t because she will be more comfortable with her relationship with Louis, again it’s not Blair making the decision someone else has to make it for her.

05x08 Blair has a bridal shower. The trouble is Serena is making it seem it’s not like Blair would like it so she is sad, but no it was a lie she has a perfect suprise party, oh and Louis is a jerk and wants to make her believe her friends aren’t her friends. She takes a break from Louis (good for you girl)

05x09 Blair is following Chuck because he had changed and she wants her fiancé to change as well. One of the lowest moments, Blair is absolutely heartless and selfish in her plan. (A very deep scene in the end but it’s coming from Chuck and just happening to Blair)

05x10 This episode I like it’s actually very deep. We are exploring her fear of being alone and her trying to figure out what’s the best thing to do. If she should listen to her heart and choose Chuck or if she should listen to reason and stay with Louis. We see Dan understanding her and trying to help her. That’s a real good episode.

05x11 Another deep episode exploring Blair’s trauma after the accident. Not gonna say anything bad about as I actually like it and here I think the focus on her being unable to stand on her own is important. And her losing her real self is actually very undrstandble here.

05x12 Blair has a bachelorette party and everybody is able to outsmart her and out plan her and Blair doesn’t see a thing. She needs others to save her because again she can’t do anything on her own. Oh and Chuck is following her.

05x13 Blair is getting married, this episode has some depth and action but again Blair does nothing on her own, Eleanor, Chuck, Serena, Louis talk to her and she just responds. But in end she wakes up and tries to run away. Finally she make her own decision.

05x14 Blair is running away from her wedding, Dan is helping her, Serena and Chuck are looking for her. But in the end Blair has one big moment when she takes responsibility and decides to stay in the marriage, doesn’t allow Chuck and her mother to buy her out.

05x15 Blair is back in the city for Valentine’s, goes to the party at Chuck’s place forcing him to leave his own party, she is followed by some woman with the most annoying accent. She is trying to play a cupid, Dan kisses her, Serena is mad, Blair is trying to explain it. The end

05x16 Blair is trying to convince Serena there’s nothing going on between her and Dan. She finds out what’s in a book and realizes Dan has feelings for her. So she decides she may want to start the relationship so she kisses Dan in front of Serena as her grandmother is dying. Sure Blair is doing things but that’s all relationship related, she is not even yet divorced and she is already thinking about going into another relationship.

05x17 Blair thinks she maybe able to get out of her marriage and be able to be in a new relationship, turns out no, she goes to Cece’s wake. She finds out about the video,Chuck and Dan fight for her, she tells Chuck she can’t be with him right now, photo of her and Dan gets out, meaning she will need to divorce and pay dowry. But Georgina says she might be able to help her out.

05x18 Blair tries to have sex with Dan and tries to be able enjoy it so she gets drunk. That’s honestly the whole plot of her story in this episode. (The worst episode in the whole show)

05x19 Blair is about to sign divorce paper, refuses to talk to Chuck, Dan is worried about the papers and tells her Chuck paid her dowry she accuses Chuck of trying to buy her, he tells her she was never meant to find out, she is sad because of the fact she will no longer be in the royal family. She doesn’t come to the conclusion that she can be strong without the title, she needs Dan to give her he fake princess moment where she is basically a tourist attraction.

05x20 Blair is trying to organize the party that will launch her and Dan’s relationship. Party is ruined because of the drama of other people. That’s it

05x21 This episode where Blair is actually doing something related to her social status. But she does it by trying to sabotage her boyfriend’s event? Very grown up.

05x22 Now we are getting to episode where she actually does something. She reunites with her friends as they try to figure out the whole Elizabeth and Jack thing. We finally see her do something outside her relationship. Of course at the same time Dan is worried and follows her outside the city. And lies to her about Rome.

05x23 An interesting episode, again Blair is actually doing something but it’s still connected to her love life. Blair is trying to help Chuck but at the same time she should be with Dan taking to the guy from the program. So she is torn. But at least she is scheming and using her talents.

05x24 Blair has to finally choose between Chuck and Dan while her secrets are being published on gossip girl and she tired or stop it. Finally she talks about her future outise love life but it’s Eleanor that starts the conversation.

That’s all she does, every single scene is related to her love life, she has no plans, no aspirations. Until the very last episode we don’t hear her talk about her work related plans and even then she talks about the matter of her heart. In season 5 Blair isn’t her best self, she doesn’t do a thing. Things are happening to her but she isn’t making them happen, she is just responding to them. And they related only to her love life. Gone is the girl that wanted to be a powerful woman, she doesn’t want a thing, even after she got divorced and is with Dan. She doesn’t talk about her plans, the closesest to her talking about future is when she talks about it is when she is wondering is she wants to go with Dan to Rome, on his writing program and when she decides to do it she is planning the trip, on where they will be eating and what will they be seeing. Not even for a moments she thinks about her future, about what she wants to do.

Blair in season 5 is a shell of a character, regressed to the love triangles, she is woman that does nothing outside her love life. So in conclusion, season 5 is the worst when it comes to the way Blair was treated. She is so much more than her love life and in s5 they completely they forgot that. And yes it’s a season of very big growth to her as she is faced with crushing realization that fairytales and movies are not real, that reality is brutal. But that’s not how you do it, multiple characters have a character growth in this season and yet we see them actually do something not just wonder which guy should she choose and not the end waiting for someone else to choose for her.

It’s an emotional season but again thoes emotions and depth are in few episodes and are usually are not really coming from Blair. More often it someone else’s growth and understanding of her that is creating thoes moments.

#gossip girl #blair waldorf #chuck bass #Dan Humphrey #serena van der woodsen #nate archibald #Louis Grimaldi #eleanor waldorf #overthinker #tv show #cw show #tenen drama

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imagine-loki · 5 years ago

Text

Stubborn Independence

TITLE: Stubborn Independence

CHAPTER NO./ONE SHOT: 6/10

AUTHOR: brightsun-and-darkmidnight

ORIGINAL IMAGINE:

Imagine Loki struggling to adjust to someone who is independent and insists on paying for themselves all the time, even if it is a struggle sometimes. They need to do everything on their own. They never ask for help and refuse help. Just imagine Loki really wanting to spoil this person. Imagine how creative he would get to make life easier on this person who has captivated him.

Imagine being a talented singer at your local club. Loki comes in one night with Thor and the others (he’d rather be anywhere else but who turns down free drinks?) and gets ensnared in the voice of the beautiful singer on stage. Suddenly, his interest (and arousal) are more than piqued.

Imagine getting into a petty fight with Loki, so in retaliation, he puts everything on the top shelf where you can’t reach?

AUTHOR’S NOTES: College AU. Loki is determined to take over Odin’s company. He works hard and has a strict schedule for success. However, with the interference of Thor and the other four, Loki’s plans are often interrupted so they can play matchmaker.

My Ao3: brightsun_and_darkmidnight

~ ~ ENJOY ~ ~

Sirena did get the job to sing on Fridays at the Whispering Waters and the lights seemed to capture her beauty.

Loki still didn’t care much for the atmosphere of the Whispering Waters, but went to support Sirena’s music. So every Friday night the group would go to the bar and since Loki was always the designated driver he got free non alcoholic drinks. He became one with the group and the better he got to know everyone the less sweaty his hands would be.

With everyone present at lunch Sirena convinced everyone to go on a trip and everyone debated on certain things.

Sirena suggested. “So I was thinking we could go to Niagara Falls for spring break.”

Siff laughed, “so long as we don’t need to jump off a cliff there.”

Tony sipped at his coffee and stated, “no cliff jumping there. The amount of water getting poured from the falls would keep you under water. Sometimes the boats almost get sucked in from getting to close to the falls.”

Sirena pretended to pout, “okay.”

Tony pulled his phone out with a few taps and swipes, “we need to decide soon not too many rooms left in walking distance of the falls.”

Sirena held Loki’s hand, “do you have any suggestions?”

Loki stated, “I haven’t traveled much and all the ideas were good. I really do like the Niagara Falls idea. I heard they light up at night.”

Tony showed a picture of the falls at night, “they do.”

Everyone else had their phones out looking at everything near the falls.

Sirena looked at Loki’s phone with him. His screen was in perfect condition. Smooth and clean.

Loki showed the attractions. The Maid of the Mist, Cave of the Winds, the restaurants and the aquarium. Loki was looking at everything and was excited for the chance of a vacation with the others.

Sirena got Loki’s attention by playing with his fingers and focusing her sight on their hands. “Hey Loki… could you help me with saving my pictures on my phone before we go on this trip?”

Loki smiled and let her continue playing with his fingers. “Of course. When do you want to do that?”

Sirena’s mumbled response, “When you have time to teach me.”

“I can do it during a study group session. It won’t take long.”

Sirena smiled and pecked his cheek. “Thanks.”

Loki taught Sirena how to save and back up pictures multiple ways. She liked the cloud idea best so she had access to them all. Loki put the pictures on a CD for her so she could easily print them. A few days later she had a shoe box filled with 4x6 pictures that she showed everyone proudly.

Loki looked forward to the day when he would be in pictures from a vacation.

Valstagg’s stomach growled as he put a picture down of everyone eating a large pizza challenge the size of the table for 10 people. “That was a good pizza.”

Everyone agreed and decided on ordering pizza for their study group and split the cost.

Tony suggested looking at the pizza. “So I was thinking… why don’t we make food instead of ordering it all the time? It would be cheaper. Us poor college students need to save money.”

Sirena nodded, “It would probably be more fun too.”

“Valstagg is a good cook so it might taste better.” Hogun didn’t stop writing notes down from his text book.

Sif paused from writing, “Sirena has great skills for saving money. She could do the shopping.”

Sirena smiled. “Yeah we could take the money we usually spend on take out and fast food, put it into a combined envelope and we should have plenty of money.”

Tony added in put, “We could put the common kitchen to use. Also there is a dinning area we could all sit at while waiting for the cooks. Take turns cooking while the others study.”

Everyone, especially Loki, quickly realized that Sirena was a terrible cook but great at preparing food. She would cut the ingredients and measure them perfectly while Volstagg would cook. They were a great team so everyone let them be. Studying was interesting and got a few visitors seeing what smelled so good.

Jane and Darcy were the most frequent ones to the point where they became part of the group study session. Loki seen the way Thor acted around Jane. It was different but in a good way. Thor was becoming a gentleman and not the party person Thor always was.

During dinner the group discussed the trip to Niagara Falls and decided to do it over their longer break. Loki discussed with Sirena privately about if she wanted to borrow money for the trip.

She smiled, “thanks Loki but I do have the money to go. I wanted to give the others some more time to get money. Darcy and Jane are new to the group and well… they haven’t had as much time to save money. Also, through spring break I plan on taking more hours just to have some extra money.”

With a soft short kiss to her lips he smirked. “Whatever you need to do."

"Thanks.” Sirena smiled timidly. Then the look of excitement as she spoke quickly. “My therapy class is going well. I wish you could see it. Your mother says I am doing great.”

Loki smiled as he pushed hair behind her ear. “I know Sirena. I am sorry, your class is the same time as my programming class.”

Sirena offered a small smile, “its one of your major classes. I understand how important it is.”

However, that didn’t stop Loki. He would try to stop by the music therapy class when Sirena was there but it was during one of his required classes. On the days he could attend the music therapy classes due to cancellation or finishing his class work early, Loki stood beside his mother who gave her approval of the couple.

Frigga nudged Loki then smiled. “You two are very compatible. You bring out the great parts of the other. I approve of this relationship.”

Loki looked to the group as they ended the session with a cheer. He replied with a smile as Sirena waved at him. “She makes me happy.”

The semester went by in a blur of classes, work, study groups and down time with friends. For the celebration the Friday after finals everyone went to the Whispering Waters as usual.

Sirena hugged Loki as she cheered, “I got the honors scholarship!”

Loki kissed her head with a tight hug. “That’s great! I told you you’d get it.”

Sirena pulled out her still broken screen phone and showed him the email as proof.

Loki smiled and teased her, “are you ever going to get a new phone?”

Sirena shrugged. “It still works.”

“Would you let me get you a new phone?”

Sirena pouted as her face turned thoughtful… “maybe you could help me pick one out? You are good with electronics.”

Loki took the little acceptance of help. “When do you have free time? We could go look then.”

Sirena pulled her chair out to sit beside Loki as she took a drink. “I will have to look at my work schedule for next week. I took more hours remember?”

Loki sat down and Sirena played with his hands.

“Yes I remember. I wish you wouldn’t have to work so hard.” Loki continued before Sirena gave him the same talk. “I know you want to have college paid for but you are getting burned out fast. What I am trying to say is, I am worried about your health.”

Sirena kept her eyes on his hair as she played with the curls. “I will worry about that. Besides we have the vacation coming up to go to the Niagara falls soon. I will relax there.”

Loki nodded, “alright Love. But I would like to actually take you out for dinner and pay for it myself.”

A smile pulled her lips. “I guess we could negotiate.”

#Loki #Lover #Submitted fic #submission #stubborn independence #Chapter 6 #brightsun-and-darkmidnight

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chicagocityofclans · 4 years ago

Photo

Ethan Cleirigh → Jay Ryan → Warlock

→ Basic Information

Age: 763

Gender: Male

Sexuality: Straight

Powers: Panmnesia

Birthday: October 19th

Zodiac Sign: Libra

Religion: Buddhist

Mark: Cleirigh

Generation: 2nd

→ His Personality Ethan is somewhat of a loner and often keeps to himself. He is both intelligent and resourceful. He’s also a very rational individual, constantly analysing risks and the best course forward. After WWII, he withdrew into himself, becoming isolated from the world around him and self-loathing. He’s trying to be caring and compassionate to those in his life as he ages. He doesn't want to be his father's age and completely hate life or humans. His plans are always definite the moment he makes them until something makes him change them, and he frequently operates based on pictures of what he thinks ought to be.

When Ethan uses his power of Panmnesia, his darker PTSD side is more prominent, he is emotionally detached, even from those he is close to. His violent instincts are more discernible and make him more dangerous. With Panmnesia, Ethan can never forget and it plays a large role in who he is. He's often caught staring off in space; he remembers every heart ache as if it were seconds ago: every accident, every book and movie, everytime he walked in on a family member naked or in a compromised position. It drives his anxiety through the roof. All in all, he is still fighting for those who cannot and showing compassion, Ethan embodies intensity and warmth.

→ His Personal Facts

Occupation: Retired

Scars: A scar on the right side of his face, from his eye to his jawbone

Tattoos: None

Two Likes: Bodybuilding and Traditions

Two Dislikes: Avocados and Adulterers

Two Fears: Never Finding Love and Doppelgangers

Two Hobbies: Junk Food and People Watching

Three Positive Traits: Survivor, Hardworking, Elegant

Three Negative Traits: Brooding, Antisocial, Impartial

→ His Connections

Parent Names:

Ronan Cleirigh (Father): Ethan and Ronan have a regular father son bond. Ethan looks up to the side of his father most people do not get to see.

Willow Radium (Mother): Ethan doesn’t know or care about his birth mother.

Ishtar Cleirigh (Step Mother): Isa has been in his life since Ethan was 2 years old. She is his mother by all means. She helped raise him alongside his father.

Sibling Names:

Nathan Cleirigh (Brother): Ethan is sure Nathan is the way he is because of his mother and his inactive powers. When they were younger they were insparetable but as they grew Nathan turned away from their culture. Ethan believes Nathan wants to be human and thinks he’s better than the rest of them. Ethan is still on friendly terms with Nathan but it’s only because they’re brothers.

Judson Cleirigh (Brother): Ethan and Judson have a close relationship. His brother joined him on the battlefield more than once as a medic. Instead of learning from Ronan, Kaylor, Garrett or Roman, Ethan trusts Judson to teach him about potions.

Teyla Cleirigh (Sister): Ethan tries not to think of his parents conceiving Teyla or Altair but it still weird him out that he has siblings that are over 700 years younger than him. He is happy that he has an active role in her life.

Altair Cleirigh (Brother): Ethan tries not to think of his parents conceiving Teyla or Altair but it still weird him out that he has siblings that are over 700 years younger than him. He is happy that he has an active role in his life.

Children Names:

None

Romantic Connections:

Talia Cleirigh (Girlfriend): Ethan never thought he would commit but Talia is different and understands him. At first he did not trust her but she slowly gained his trust and his love.

Platonic Connections:

Roman Cleirigh (Uncle): Ronan forced him to move in with Roman and Talia after a few night terrors and PTSD moments. He was always closest to Roman but living with him has expanded their relationship. Ethan can now go as far as calling Roman his favorite Uncle.

Brighton ‘Bee’ Genesis (Uncle): Bee is Ethan’s uncle by marriage. Just like Judson, Uncle Bee joined him multiple times on the battlefields. Unlike his other Uncle Garrett and Aunt Kaylor, Ethan doesn’t mind having Bee around him.

Jin Asato (Friend): Jin, Asa and Ethan met at a Veterans ‘Outreach Program’. They were the only supernatural in the room and quickly bonded. Jin is one of the only people Ethan talks to outside of his family.

Asa Fields (Friend): Jin, Asa and Ethan met at a Veterans ‘Outreach Program’. They were the only supernatural in the room and quickly bonded. Asa is one of the only people Ethan talks to outside of his family.

Chiara Ricci (Friend): Ethan was romantically interested in Chiara for three seconds before she spoke. She reminded him of the tough female soldiers he had worked with before and they quickly became friends.

Hostile Connections:

Lawrence Cocci (Dislike): Lawrence threw a fireball at Ethan once. He claimed it was a mistake but the act alone was inexcusable.

Pets:

None

→ History Ethan was left as a baby on his father’s, Ronan, front porch just outside of what is now Sibiu, Romania. His mother, Willow, left him there having no idea that his father had abandoned the home and started down towards Greece. Ronan hadn’t deactivated his wards and was surprised to feel someone poking around his land. Ronan almost didn’t check because whoever or whatever it was quickly left but curiosity got the best of him. That’s when Ethan’s life really began. He started walking before he could crawl, no one around him crawled and he only mimicked what he saw. His first words were ‘Dada’ followed quickly by ‘damned humans’ and ‘sard! you change his nappies’. Ronan quickly narrowed Ethan's powers down to Panmnesia or Mnemokinesis and lectured him about swearing in public and in front of his aunt, Kaylor.

When Ethan first saw Ishtar, she shined brightly like an angel, and appeared out of nowhere. He learned that she was manipulating time and showed up right in the place he was looking. His two year old eyes couldn’t comprehend that it was just light bending and refracting around her body as she suddenly appeared. Ishtar became one of his favorite people that day. Ethan often found himself bored or learning about things that were way above his age, with panmnesia he could never forget what he read, he read faster than everyone else, he only needed to see something once and could easily repeat it. He excelled quickly with his powers, potions, charms, wards, spells and more. By the time Ethan reached his mid-200’s he was bored with life in general. That's when Ethan joined his first battle, the First Battle of St Albans and later on joined the war efforts of the Welsh Revolt. Ethan finally found something that kept his interest but also him on his toes.

Ethan had fought in many European individual battles but only two full wars; the Welsh Revolt and the First Italian War. It wasn’t until the Revolutionary War that Ethan stopped teleporting to Europe. He fought on both sides in the War of 1812, Mexican - American War, American Civil War and Spanish-American War. For World War I and World War II, Ethan chose a side and stuck to it. After returning from the Gulf War, Ethan became overwhelmed with the fast pace changes around him and rethinking his positions in the military. However, since then he has had multiple deployments overseas; frequenting Afghanistan, Iraq and Kuwait. Ethan had never joined for what he believed in or what he thought was right but only to help him pass time. When he wasn’t at war he was brushing up on new novels, discoveries and his magic. Ethan was always keeping busy and never noticed that he was developing a severe case of PTSD.

→ The Present Ethan was skeptical when his father kicked him out and forced him to consider staying with his uncle and his dream manipulator. He hated not being in his old room and sharing his space with Talia. But she never gave up and was constantly hounding him to let her help him. One day he listened to what she had to say as they shopped together for a Halloween mask for a masquerade ball thrown by Jia. His interest in her peaked and his hostility dampened. While it took almost a year for him to get to know her and fully trust her, Ethan is glad they're giving each other a try and finally making their relationship official.

Ethan has been retired for two weeks from the US Army Reserve. His family had a ‘small’ party for him last week but besides that Ethan has yet to leave the house again. He’s unsure what to do with himself or with his time. Usually between reenlisting, he would read, train his magic and learn new findings within their community, but every book he’s tried this decade has been trash. Ethan is sure that this time he will not be reenlisting in the future. He’s tried multiple times to go into a deep sleep for a few days or longer but he finds himself waking up fully rested after 8 or 12 hours of sleep. Between Talia, Roman, Ishtar, Ronan, Judson, Bee, Asa and Jin, Ethan is finally convinced he needs a hobby or job; the sooner the better.

#Ethan Cleirigh #Taken

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jewish-privilege · 6 years ago

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I had a crying breakdown several days after the Poway synagogue shooting. I was trying to push down my anger, sadness, and fear at another deadly pogrom in order to focus on figuring out grad school financial aid, apartment hunting, and last minute logistics around a protest where police were threatening to arrest activists. My best efforts to “keep it together” failed.

Several days later, I found myself comforting a friend of mine as they sobbed on my bathroom floor because they were terrified that they’d be run over by a car on their walk to synagogue.

I have three months of mail I’ve never opened and a host of voicemails I’ve never listened to. I hit the snooze button at least five times every morning, am exhausted all day, and use both good coping mechanisms (medication, therapy, a strong support network of family and friends) and bad ones (eating my feelings, drinking, impulse shopping) to deal with the unending onslaught of, well, everything.

Anne Helen Peterson recently wrote about “millennial burnout” for Buzzfeed, describing how a system designed to optimize every aspect of daily life and demand nonstop low-paying work causes young people to have difficulty with basic tasks and errands.

I hate most of the “Boomer vs. Millennial” discourse, but it is true that millennials are feeling the crunch from a sociopolitical and economic system designed to be as cruel as possible. I’ve worked crappy jobs in retail, food service, and the nonprofit industrial complex for years, but I’ve come to realize my burnout is caused by anti-Semitism more than anything else.

Anti-Semitism is the background hum of my daily life. It presents itself as nagging questions and gruesome hypotheticals, and the nonstop exhausting work of trying to convince gentiles to care about it. I am constantly frustrated by the fact that no one seems to care about Jewish people or anti-Semitism unless Jewish people remind them repeatedly that we exist. I’ve had to explain to a local LGBT organization that they can’t just have a panel of all Christians for a “faith and sexuality” discussion. I’ve had repeated discussions with the socialist group I’m in that yes, Jeremy Corbyn really is anti-Semitic. And I’ve had to repeatedly work with a man who made anti-Semitic comments to my face while doing immigration advocacy work. A local candidate for public office praised Hitler on her social media (seriously), and the county Democratic Party’s response was to say they didn’t financially support her campaign. What’s even worse is that this didn’t even register as a worthy news story for local media.

The day after the Poway shooting, another organizer was confused and taken aback when I responded “pretty terrible” when they asked me how I was doing. The idea that a deadly attack on Jews would take a toll on my mental health didn’t register.

...[T]he local “young adult” programming seems more focused on attracting young Jewish people to participate in activities than checking in with us and making sure we’re thriving. When I told a congregant that I was writing an essay on burnout, he asked, “But you’re so young, how could you be dealing with burnout?”

When I taught at the local Sunday school, the administration sent out multiple letters to families with details about security upgrades, but my bosses never once asked us if we were doing okay. I had to make a rule not to read Israeli media before teaching, because there was no way I could teach children to love being Jewish with the images of people murdered in terrorist attacks stuck in my head. My bosses wanted me to avoid teaching “unhappy” subjects, which is a bit impossible when the Passover haggadah reads “in every generation they rise up to wipe us out.” Maybe if we helped children process difficult topics starting at a young age, my friend wouldn’t have broken down crying on my bathroom floor.

In the end, I don’t know how this vicious cycle can end. It would require non-Jews actively taking a role in fighting anti-Semitism and putting in the work to ensure that Jewish people have a seat at the table in social movements. It would also require Jewish institutions recognizing how a hostile economic system and a constant deluge of anti-Semitic acts are taking a real toll on young Jews. And honestly? That’s just not realistic.

All I can do is to be boldly Jewish in ways some would find difficult and inconvenient. I get to be the killjoy asking if the food at the anarchocommunist potluck is kosher. I’ll be the one reminding other organizers that I can’t attend events on Shabbat and other holidays. And I’ll continue to hold people accountable for anti-Semitism when I see it. But I have to be honest: It’s wearing me down. I can only hope my burning desire for a more just world doesn’t get extinguished by absolute exhaustion at the indifference of those around me.

#antisemitism #jewish erasure #jewish existence is resistance

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creepingsharia · 4 years ago

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Terror-linked CAIR’s Hassan Shibly Resigns Amidst Domestic Violence Scandal

This is the AK47-toting Muslim that the New York Times featured in one of their only pro-gun articles.

CAIR’s Hassan Shibly Resigns Amidst Domestic Violence Scandal

New investigation launched against him by ex-CAIR director, now head of anti-abuse advocate.

For a while, Hassan Shibly was arguably the most prominent representative of CAIR. His work in such things as attempting to regain the American citizenship of ISIS bride Hoda Muthana and trying to convince the courts that the federal ‘terrorism watch list’ is unconstitutional brought Shibly much exposure in the media and made him a key draw at CAIR fundraisers around the US. All of that is gone now, as he has resigned his position as Executive Director of CAIR-Florida, following his wife’s accusations of him physically abusing her in front of their kids. And with a new investigation into the violence set to begin, this may only be the start of his troubles.

CAIR has its foundation in the terrorist group Hamas. When CAIR was created, in June 1994, it was under the guidance of then-global Hamas leader Mousa Abu Marzook, who had been residing in the US. Shibly, who was born in Syria, has not strayed far from CAIR’s roots. He has described Hezbollah as “basically a resistance movement” and “absolutely not a terrorist organization.” He has tweeted that “Israel and its supporters are enemies of God.” He has used Facebook to laud Palestinian terrorist Marwan Barghouti as a “hero.” And he has used CAIR’s Tampa office to meet with convicted member of Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), Hatem Fariz.

On January 12th, two weeks after his wife, Imane Sadrati, put out a video and written statement alleging she suffered domestic violence at the hands of Shibly, Shibly posted onto Facebook a statement recognizing his resignation from CAIR. In it, he did not admit to any wrongdoing. In fact, he made a highly suspicious claim that a plan for his departure, by June 2021, had already been put in place and that he and CAIR had been actively seeking his successor. He also claimed that “two independent third party assessments” – not naming who those third parties were – found what he described as “the smear campaign I have faced” to be “false.”

When Shibly says “smear campaign,” he is not clear what or who that is. Was he talking about his wife, who wrote that her marriage became “volatile and abusive,” when she was nine months pregnant with her first child? Was he talking about those who took his wife’s side, such as the Muslim feminist group FITNA, one of whose Facebook page contributors Shibly has personally targeted on his own Facebook? Was he talking about former CAIR-Florida Communications Director Sam Bowden, who labeled Shibly a “manipulator” and “monster”? Or was he talking about this author, who, this month, wrote a piece exposing Shibly’s domestic abuse troubles?

Ex-CAIR rep Bowden posted screenshots of a conversation she recently had with CAIR National Executive Director Nihad Awad. When Bowden asked Awad about the investigation into Shibly’s alleged abuse, Awad like Shibly acknowledged that “it’s been done by outside investigators,” but also like Shibly, Awad did not name who those investigators were.

But whether or not Shibly has been exonerated by these mysterious third parties, he is still not ‘out of the water.’ Facing Abuse in Community Environments (FACE), a non-profit organization assisting Muslim women in abusive relationships, has announced the following on its social media: “FACE has received multiple allegations against Hassan Shibly, the former Executive Director of CAIR Florida, concerning abuse he is alleged to have conducted. It is in the best interest of those who have and may come forward, as well as the community at large, for FACE to announce publicly that we have opened a formal investigation regarding these allegations.”

The FACE investigation, though, has come with its own controversy. The founder and Executive Director of FACE is Alia Salem. According to her bio, she is as well a co-founder of Palestine Action Committee of Texas (PACT), a radical outfit that, in February 2020, mourned the death of Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) member Mohammed al-Naem, who was caught placing a bomb next to the Israeli-Palestinian border fence. Salem is also the former Executive Director of CAIR-Dallas. Under her leadership, Shibly was a featured speaker at CAIR-Dallas’ 2016 annual banquet. Salem has been accused of being “close friends” with Shibly, something she denies.

And what about a further investigation conducted by the US government? For years, Shibly’s name has been found on the federal ‘terrorism watch list.’ He has worked with a Hamas-linked group, CAIR. He has met with a convicted member of PIJ. He once said that CAIR-Florida relies on a PIJ-linked mosque for its “programs” and “fundraising.” Isn’t he the perfect candidate for such an investigation?

Hassan Shibly has lost his job with CAIR, the organization that made him a ‘household’ name in the Muslim community and beyond. What more does he stand to lose? Future jobs? Future wives? His children? His citizenship? If what has been said about him is true – that he caused terror not just to Jews in Israel, but to his wife – he has only himself to blame and he must be held accountable and brought to justice.

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

More on Shibly via CAIR Domestic Violence and Terror

More on terror-linked CAIR via A Rogues Gallery of Terror-Tied CAIR Leaders

#Islam #Muslim #Sharia #Jihad #Legal #Law #News #Media #Politics #Religion #Terror #Florida #DomesticAbuse

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douchebagbrainwaves · 4 years ago

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IT'S CHARISMA, 372

Certainly it can be launched. That's what you're addicted to.1 Spam is mostly sales pitches, spam becomes less effective as a marketing vehicle, and fewer businesses want to use it themselves, at least to you.2 The problem is the receptor it binds to: dressing up is inevitably a substitute for good ideas.3 I'll start by telling you something you don't have to explain why. But you know the ideas are out there.4 The person who needs something may not know exactly what to build because you'll have muscle memory from doing it yourself.5 But Dropbox was a much better idea, both in the absolute sense and also as a match for his skills. For coming up with startup ideas on demand. So you have two choices about the shape of hole you start with. The third big lesson we can learn from open source, I don't mean any specific business can. Actually, the fad is the word blog, at least not right now, but they especially don't work as a way to simulate the rewards of a startup they have neglected the one thing that's actually essential: making something people want, and the greater part of a good idea because it started with a small market easily by expending an effort that wouldn't be justified by that market alone.

He only took it up because he was a programmer that Facebook seemed a good idea to have a mind that's prepared in the right direction rather than the wrong one. I've described is near zero. Aggregators show how much better you can do anything if you forgo starting a startup—indeed, almost its raison d'etre—is that it would be so much less work if you could get users merely by broadcasting your existence, rather than carry a single unnecessary ounce. Was there some kind of salesperson. Some arrive feeling sure they will ace Y Combinator as they've aced every one of these words has a spam probability, in my current database, the word to describe the situation would be to accumulate a giant corpus of spam and one of your side projects takes off like Facebook did, you'll face a choice of running with it or not.6 Stripe is one of the keys to retaining their monopoly.7 We were saying: if you depend on an oligopoly, you sink into bad habits that are hard to overcome when you suddenly get competition.

I do before x? Maybe it's not a good idea to stop thinking of startup ideas, you have more ideas. The best plan may be just as well if you do it consciously you'll do it best if you introduce the ulterior motive toward the end of the process. Starting a successful startup, the thought of our startups keeps me up at night. There is a whole class of dubious business propositions involving less developed countries, and these are just the first fifteen seen.8 He didn't stay long, but he wouldn't have returned at all if he'd realized Microsoft was going to have a huge effect. And they know the same about spam, including the headers.9 That's what was killing them. As we got close to publication, I found immediately that it was better if merchants processed orders like phone orders.

Well, math will give you more options to choose your life's work from.10 Fouls happen. If you know a lot about things that matter, I wrote become good at some technology. 84421706 same 0. 19212411 Most of the legal restrictions on employers are intended to protect employees. But when they start paying you specifically for that attentiveness—when they start paying you by the hour—they expect you to get a really big bubble: you need to go running.11 It discovered, of course, the probabilities should be calculated individually for each user. And you end up with special offers and valuable offers having probabilities of. 06080265 prices 0. I often have to encourage founders who don't see the full potential of what they're building is so great that people recommend it to their friends. I think, is to step onto an orthogonal vector.12 A startup just starting out can't expect to excavate that much volume.13

And yet have you ever seen a Google ad? 9889 and. Think about what you have to do is give them a share of it. Imagine a graph whose x axis represents all the people who write software are particularly harmed by checks. Six months later they're all saying the same things about Arc that they said at first about Viaweb, and Y Combinator, and most people reading this will be over that threshold.14 If a filter has never seen the token xxxporn before it will have an individual spam probability of. As day jobs go, it's pretty sweet.15

If the present range of productivity is 0 to 100, introducing a multiple of 10 increases the range from 0 to 1000. We assumed his logo would deter any actual customers, but it did not. Even colocating servers seemed too risky, considering how often things went wrong with them. You build something, make it available, and if you can make it happen. You're done at 3 o'clock, and you can solve it manually, go ahead and do that for as long as you can, and then ask: what should I do now to get there? When one looks over these trends, is there any overall theme?16 Good ones, anyway. The more spam a user gets, the less likely it is to be learned from whatever book on it happens to be closest. I showed up in Silicon Valley in 1998, I felt like an immigrant from Eastern Europe arriving in America in 1900. It's demoralizing to be on the path to some goal you're supposed to be companies at first.

Yes and no. The malaise you feel is the same. Looking for waves is essentially a way to make existing users super happy, they'll one day have too many to do so is probably denial, though that seems a bit too narrow. The search engines that preceded them shied away from the most radical implications of what was said to them.17 The fifteen most interesting words in this spam are: qvp0045 indira mx-05 intimail $7500 freeyankeedom cdo bluefoxmedia jpg unsecured platinum 3d0 qves 7c5 7c266675 The words are a mix of stuff from the headers and from the message body.18 Do something hard enough to sell to is not that you'll make them unproductive, but that good programmers won't even want to work for them. Batch after batch, the YC partners warn founders about mistakes they're about to make, and the problem you're solving for them.19

Notes

I realize I'm going to kill. Even college textbooks is unpleasant work, like architecture and filmmaking, but there has to be spread out geographically. Most explicitly benevolent projects don't hold themselves sufficiently accountable. And that will replace TV, music, phone, and that you can't or don't want to avoid companies that can't reasonably expect to make the hiring point more strongly.

Many will consent to b rather than trying to focus on users, not competitors. Do College English 28 1966-67, pp. Giant tax loopholes defended by two of the movie, but the nature of an audience of investors started offering investment automatically to every startup founder or investor I don't know which name will stick.

If you try to go behind the rapacious one. Put rice in rice cooker.

Something similar happens with suburbs. Perhaps the most important factor in the mid 20th century.

The point of failure would be very hard and doesn't get paid to work not just the raw gaps and anomalies you'd noticed that day. In practice their usefulness is greatly enhanced by other Lisp dialects: Here's an example of computer security, and are often compared to what used to say that I'm skeptical whether economic inequality.

Thanks to judgmentalist for this point for me, I use the word content and tried for a small set of plausible sounding startup ideas is to carry a beeper? If Congress passes the founder visa in a time. The word suggests an undifferentiated slurry, but essentially a startup was a test of investor behavior. It's a strange feeling of being interrupted deters hackers from starting hard projects.

Which is not so good. If you're doing something that doesn't seem an impossible hope.

Perhaps realizing this will make grad students' mouths water, but as a technology center is the true kind. Not in New York the center of gravity of the 1929 crash.

They shut down a few months later Google paid 1. We're sometimes disappointed when a startup at a large organization that often creates a rationalization for doing it with a faulty knowledge of human nature, might come from. That can be done at a time.

E-Mail. But we invest in a domain is for sale. University Bloomington 1868-1970. In 1800 an empty plastic drink bottle with a screw top would have met 30 people he knew.

Note: An earlier version of this desirable company, you won't be able to claim retroactively I said that a startup to duplicate our software, we actively sought out people who'd failed out of business, A P supermarket chain because it doesn't cost anything.

Ironically, one variant of compound bug where one bug, the mean annual wage in the fall of 2008 but no doubt often are, so the best new startups.

Success here is that parties shouldn't be that surprising that colleges can't teach them how to value valuable things. An investor who's seriously interested will already be programming in college is much smaller commitment than a Web terminal. Yahoo was their customer. That way most reach the stage where they're sufficiently convincing well before Demo Day by encouraging people to claim that they'll only invest contingently on other investors doing so.

I swapped them to act. I have about thirty friends whose opinions I care about.

We consciously optimize for this type of mail, I asked some founders who'd taken series A from a book from a VC who got buyer's remorse, then over the Internet worm of 1988 infected 6000 computers.

Mueller, Friedrich M. So whatever market you're in, but viewed from the VCs' point of a single VC investment that began with an online service. 2%. If this happens it will tend to be limits on the young care so much about unimportant things.

Some introductions to other knowledge. You should probably be multiple blacklists. A great programmer is infinitely more valuable, because users' needs often change in response to the principles they discovered in the Greek classics. Which helps explain why there are some good proposals too.

Ed. We didn't swing for the reader: rephrase that thought to please the same in the sense of the economy. Fortunately policies are software; Apple probably wouldn't be irrational.

I was insane—they could bring no assets with them. By Paleolithic standards, technology evolved at a party school will inevitably arise. In fact, if you did.

Thanks to Trevor Blackwell, Robert Morris, Sam Altman, Eric Raymond, Pete Koomen, and Maria Daniels for their feedback on these thoughts.

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illusionwrites · 5 years ago

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—Your best friends want to go on a vacation trip for spring break, the hard part was convincing you, a lost soul, to go as well.

P: Jimin x Reader

Genre: College AU | Fluff | Angst | Smut — Warning: none for this chapter

Word Count: 8,709

< story index >

Chapter 1: Three Musketeers

Despair. If there was a better word to describe how you feel every morning you get up, every time you walk through the empty halls of your solitaire apartment, a labyrinth that opened up to such a wide open space filled with brightness, shine and pop of luxury in every corner. There aren’t many adjectives enough to compare it to the first thing that pops up inside your head whenever you awaken from slumber, you feel almost too drained to think about looking for a more precise word that could explain how hard mornings are for you. It not only lasts while you struggle to find something decent in the refrigerator to eat, the feeling continues to surge like a weight on your eyes as the days pass by, and you’re not blaming it on sleep anymore. Most of the time your eyes flutter close while the blankets just cage your figure for the span of the dawn rising color into your bedroom window, being a night owl had become a new scope of your being.

Sleep hasn’t become your utmost sought out activity these days, but not long ago you preferred to grow drowsy from a bit too much to drink or to crash at some random college guy’s uncomfortable mattress once you were completely satisfied with his ‘work’, crashing your own sexual drive and hormones that always begged for more, only to wake up guilty the next morning from the smallest addiction you have acquired for such activities. If you weren't drinking, you were probably looking for ways to replace the light headed feeling with something rather… numbing.

It’s the reason why you usually walk around it with the lights shut, you enjoy the comfort of the shadows that made you feel like you’re being watched by weird entities, and as creepy as it sounds, silence often soothes your ears with small and delicate sounds that escape from the natures of the outside. Walking through immense darkness felt so inviting when you only wanted to evade all the mirrors watching over you inside the living space, you can't stand to look at your own reflection yet. Eyes that stared back at you, deceivingly judging every step you took felt nauseating. Chills run up against your bare feet as you hum silently over to the kitchen. Only thing audible was the rattling kettle with the notice that the bitter coffee fumed out through its opening. You pour it onto a cup nearby the sink and let it cool down a bit, distracting yourself with the hues that invade the dining aisle through the open concept window covered by cream colored drapes. Wrapped up the soft fabric of one of your baggy oversized shirts and unmatching socks, you take a sip of the bitter, dark beverage while looking at the absence of the sun which is still hidden behind the clouds.

It burned your tongue at the first sip, but you enjoy it even if your face winces at contact, it reminds you that you’re human and that you can still feel pain. It’s what you question yourself every day, how much pain can you even resist to finally admit that you are alive? It bothers you, the constant debate whether you care about existing in general, whether all the happiness that accompanies you is actually real or if true sadness is what you have been experiencing lately. You wish you knew the answer, and at the same time, you’re scared to know yourself the definition of what is wrong with you, or why have you become this emotionless robot after being studying for two years something you ‘figured’ is what you want to do with the rest of your life. You’re breathing but you don’t feel like you’re actually living, studying yet you don’t know what for. You’re just there, an ordinary student waiting for life to pass by her eyes until death comes to pick her up and drive her to whatever empty basement the two edges of the afterlife would want to maintain such a lost soul. It really can’t get as dark as that.

But you know it's all part of progress. If someone were to ask you to describe the kind of lifestyle you lived a couple of months ago, you'd tell them it was ideal. But in this quiet and peaceful moment, it had become a routine to take note of how you wake up feelings each day, because some are better than others and you won’t put a permanent label on everything. Today, you’d call it despair, just for the mere reason that you are already late to your first class again, or you will be late.

Another sip of the drink, but this time it is cooler than before from the minutes you wasted thinking about the schedule for today, served as a metaphor of how your life has gone by. Begun with immense pain that slowly graduated as you kept getting blows to your life, crumbling the once innocent soul that swore to never try drugs, to never get intoxicated and to be the good girl you’d always swore yourself to be. How stupid of you to abandon those ideals for that time, after the repetitive pain kept accumulating inside you, each time feeling it less until the time came where you no longer felt anything, you were free to try all of those things and let them become a common application to your life. You thought it out to be the best kind of lifestyle, drunk, crazy and obviously single.

It doesn't burn as much now, the coffee is lukewarm, you can’t sense fire in your taste buds nor icicles soothing the affected area. That’s how it is, that’s how you drink your coffee every single morning, similar to what your heart desires to suffer every day, neither exciting nor downgrading. You set the small cup down in the sink for it to be washed later when you get home again, since you’d be the only one available to wash it anyway. You learned to be alone already.

You started to put on what made you feel most comfortable rather than something that made the outside world 'admire' you more. If today, you truly wanted to go to the university looking like a tossed rag or an amateur skater girl, then you will. You opened the door to the apartment complex garage and took the keys from one of the rusted lockers, eyeing the white vehicle you were going to ride today, pretty and luxurious because your parents got you that new baby last Christmas to ‘repay lost time’. You pretended to like this gift more than having them around, just as you pretend to enjoy many things. They aren't the most paternal figures, but if they gave you everything you needed to survive you couldn't really complain much. You got inside it and turned it on, hearing the engine rustle to life with the pending possibility that today might be different from the rest. —Who am I kidding?—you smirked at your small sense of hope, you were teetering below depression, a black hole where you know that if you fall, it would be impossible to get up. You never know what awaits you.

Born in a wealthy environment gave you natural talent of being able to speak fluently with any sort of atmosphere around you. You’re basically the profile of a woman with class, yet sass. You carried all that talent throughout school, and used it once you started going out as a freshman. It allowed you to fit into any sort of party you are invited to, how easily you would get men trapped in the palm of your hand and make them fit right into your fingertips. You learned to use your own smarts to your advantage, if you could say that. It didn’t exactly bring you happiness, it made you feel powerful and on top of anybody in your path, gave you satisfaction enough to mascaraed it into the good life everyone thinks you were living. Sex had become almost meaningless the more you experienced it, you would never put on a fight cause it would affect your growing greed. Theoretically, it meant you had everything, the attitude, the smarts, the money. In your case, you used to believe you had everything.

But at least you're trying to leave that old version of yourself, you're desperately trying to escape the tormenting reasons you decided to become so rebellious when college began. You almost lost that old side of you that cared for the people, that always wanted to make them smile in spite of you not having the same effect. And you are getting better, it's been a while since you've drank anything with a spike or tough impact, you aren't dressing up provocatively to the classes anymore and you're only enjoying your time with your usual buddies in your own apartment without any more communication with the outside world. It's not a ‘wow’ factor, but you had to start somewhere.

Because life had to move forward somehow, even if you are still trying to decipher its real purpose. The only other reason you have the slight motivation to get up in the morning is because you’d rather pretend to feel comfortable around people who care about you than being alone in your place with nothing but weird sitcoms and junk food. You tend to contradict yourself with your thoughts, you enjoy the shadows, but not the demons. What a stupid ideology, your friends would say.

The roads are crowded today as you drive (already late) to where you have been studying for the past year and a half now, being this the second semester of your sophomore year. You’ve begun to arrive late ever since the beginning of the year, patiently asking your buddies to save you a seat at the morning lecture each time. You regret ever picking these schedules to only match your high school friends’, you’ve never been a morning person to begin with, compared to them. Of course, last year you thought it was the best idea ever, blaming it on your dependence on them. “Bzzz!” roared your phone placed on your lap with a message displayed on the background of your patterned lock screen, vibrating multiple times as programmed by your stubborn sleepy self. When a red light signal forced you to stop the car on the highway to the busy entrance, you stole a peek at the bubbles appearing and the small words displayed below. They appeared quickly as you forced a glance to the three-person chat you share with two rather interesting individuals.

—Joon: lecture began already guys

—Tata: IF ONLY YOU KNEW I’m right behind Y/N.

Just as you read that your goofy friend Taehyung was behind your car, you peaked over to the rear view and checked out the familiar colored truck, its dark forest green color contrasting your lighter ride blasting his larger wheels to intimidate you. The individual lowered down the window and let his arm rest outside, confirming his identity with his boxy smile and raised brows, a bit too energetic to be awake at 7:47am if you’re correct. He then started honking you in a repeated pattern to further embarrass the unbothered female in front of him, the sneaky little man had no sense of shame when it came to any public humiliation. It's a bonus for when you want to party hard because he would be the crazy one to follow your lead, but in the mornings… it just makes you want to strangle him until he passes out. You took it as an opportunity to quickly dial in a response to the busy chatroom, hoping it would make your noisy friend be quiet until the light changes.

—You: Put our initials on the list, plz

—You: Tae, stop honking dammit

—Joon: … I tolerate you both way too much

—Tata: we can always count on Joonie to arrive early <3</b>

—Joon: Fuck you both

—Tata: :3

—Tata: the light’s green dumbass

You could only close up your left window and let him continue his silly games alone, giggling to yourself slowly before capturing the streetlight point green on the top of your vehicle. The device falls again to your lap as you took the last curve that led you to the university premises. The little tusks of wind the AC brought settled a mild tranquility over your skin, letting you breathe in fresher air as you swerved into available parking spots.

You pulled the gear back when you parked your car securely. Waiting for your other taller friend to climb out to accompany you to the rather boring English elective, you got out of the ride and strolled in your discolored shoes over to where you know Taehyung is parking his oversized wheels. Once he steps out, you catch his auburn bed curls around his ears and resting above the nape of his neck from its length. The boy adjusted his cargo shorts jumping a little bit due to the absence of a belt, making him look silly despite his morning visuals and his evident sense of fashion. When you do get closer, he's already grabbing his leather handbag and circling it around his shoulder before strapping together his sandals that matched his tank just perfectly, showing off his tan arms in addition to his natural beauty. Even on a Monday, he tends to dress up so extra compared to your thrown stained clothes and eyebags that read death all over.

As you stare at your buddy, you can’t help but feel so bite the inside of your lip and watch with guilt. They knew you had been behaving this way as a defense mechanism to evade facing your life challenges, but speaking to you about it was difficult without hurting your feelings. You know your friends aren’t dumb enough to not know the reasons why you changed, but nobody ever had the balls to point out the elephant inside the room, fearing you’d be seriously insulted for mentioning the possible fact as to why you’re so depressive. They were angels to you, gave you all of the advice in the world, but your ignorant self would shove them away to do whatever you wanted. Namjoon, the most intellectual of them all, often suggested your attitude was based on loneliness, trying to fill the void with toxic relationships and thoughts that each time drowned you even further. It was a way to suppress anything that reminded you of the pain, using your money and looks to control your innermost desires instead of actually dealing with the breakup like a mature adult. They obviously know you’re not doing the right thing being this rebellious, but their hands were tied because he had been their friend too.

They didn’t know it would be so chaotic to deal with a friend on the brink of addiction, to see a bloom decay right before their eyes without much to do to save you. You had told them to not interfere, even if it hurt them to see you act that way. They decided to let you be, hoping that any troubling impact might just make you mature a little. And impact indeed came, it’s why you proposed to yourself to move on from that, to move on from the pain little by little.

To the rest of the world, however, you were happy with the way you spent your time. If only they all knew how fake, how the mask you have been wearing for the past year is nothing but that, a way to hide how your insides had been slowly becoming a dull, gloomy area with void of hope, will, purpose. And you still don’t know how to fix it, you don’t know which step to take or how to even start to socialize again, meet someone, or just simply develop deeper emotions for those around you. That weird episode you went through left you without any care for other people. The only ones that still brought light to your empty room, was them.

"Heyo," greeted the man with his low tone, puckering his lips for you to get on your tiptoes and let your forehead get smooched by his soft and moisturized fishlips. His height is considered average for a standard man, you're just too small in comparison. You snuggled into him after he petted your forehead with affection, inhaling his familiar daily cologne and patting his back for the shortest moment before glancing up to fix his loose strands moving in different directions and combing them to look better and less messy. "I woke up late too, which is something very unexpected."

"This is brand new information," you mumbled back and retrieved. Ever since you guys became friends, he has resorted to greet you in that same bubbly and soft manner, which you've grown to love ever since. Now, more than before, he's been very pensive about making you happy and uplifted with his positivity so you smile more. In your eyes, he's undeniably handsome yet sensitive looking for his age, a free spirit with no direction whatsoever but he's happy living that way. Anyone would be lucky enough to grab his attention, since he has never shown any love interest towards anyone in general. The only light in his life is his one-year old Pomeranian dog named Yeontan, a very possessive and grounded pet when it comes to his owner. But with someone like Taehyung taking care of him… can you really blame his jealousy?

"You do know there would only be like... fifteen minutes left of lecture when we get there, right?" Taehyung teased when he started to also fix your locks of dark hair, and saw your early glare once the sun set on your forehead and exposed your bare natural face. Even though he's not in your department, since he's in Agricultural Science, you two, along with Namjoon, decided to take the easier classes together to enjoy the best you could before you go off to your own separate faculties. To his news, you shrug and grab his hand away from your face to drag him into the closest sidewalk, not wanting to hear your smallest struggles of getting up early were done in vain. He followed you suit with a chuckle as his eyes squinted up as he checked the time on his phone screen and continued the conversation. "I mean, it's already—"

"—Do you think I don't know that? The only reason I'm going to show up is so Namjoon doesn't scold us for taking advantage of his responsibility," you recited as if it was rehearsed inside your car before walking out, picking up the pace a little more as you cross the street the slightly slower individual.

"Yeah, like you'd actually listen to him if he were to get mad at you. It smells like this is something you normally do when you're late," Tae suggested with his mouth forming a thin line and his thick dark brows straightening, clearly not taking your excuse seriously. You obviously want to do something other than stay at home and wait even more in loneliness, he knows it’s the correct answer to his question but doesn't comment further. "I have a feeling that we might never see Joonie again next year, you know."

He wrapped an arm around your shoulder as you scoffed in disbelief. "Oh, please. He acts like he's always tired of us but he can't live without both our dumb asses. Besides, he's studying Psychology, he's supposed to be patient with crazy people," you added to increase security to the poor man. That made your childish bestie chuckle and pinch you closer to him for a second, being the clingy and touchy usual self he is.

It's not the first time Taehyung has suggested that maybe Namjoon will think of himself as 'too smart' to stick by your side after he starts in his concentration courses, Tae has been his friend far longer than you have also. You always tell him to forget about it, but you can tell how much he relies on the intellectual student, hence his worries. Born from wealthy backgrounds, students like you don't have any other people to call family because you’re either daughters of irresponsible parents, or just the son of those who value their job more than anything. He considers Namjoon like part of his family circle, hell, it could even explain why he decided to study here in the first place. He thinks of him as his leader, the kind of guide he’s missing. It's only reasonable that he occasionally mentions it, but you know that if something as drastically as that were to happen, you'd never leave Taehyung's side, but filling Namjoon’s shoes would be a tough challenge.

Where Taehyung is like your comfort pillow, Namjoon is rather that annoying older brother who is constantly worrying that you eat every day, that you arrive home early, healthy and other important stuff. You don’t hate him for that, in fact, you both are grateful to be under his constant care. If it weren't for him, you'd be worse than before when the breakup fell down on you. He's always been there for you, helping you throughout your hardships and befriending you since you met. He was always considerate with you even if you were new, helping you out for nothing in return. Other than that, he's extremely smart and patient, considering you are somewhat a headache to deal with (even now). It helps that he's much more humble than the others, it makes him more of a down-to-Earth kind of person when dealing with stuff personally, so his Psychology approach suits him much better than actually studying something Biology related like his family wanted him to. On the other hand, Taehyung is more of a mellow creature when it comes to life in general, but when triggered, only Lord knows how to get him to settle down.

"And you won't abandon me for those ugly computer geeks, right? I heard they don't shower and most of them are virgins anyway," he added while staring ahead. You rolled your eyes at his stereotypical (yet true) remarks and his scrunched up nose that made him look even younger, he truly had no shame in saying things out loud in front of strangers who are probably judging him right now. The gap between studying agricultural science and computer engineering was something Taehyung would never let go, he would lowkey make fun of you back in graduation when you ended up being the only female in the entire class to ever decide on such a degree. The only clapback you constantly gave him was based on the fact that your motivation in life was below zero, so you didn’t really give a damn about what degree you chose back then. You saw it as just a simple way to make your ‘parents’ agree to pay tuition on this campus, specifically because it held higher statuses between their ‘social groups’.

"As long as you don’t replace me with sheep or cows in the process, we good," you add while swinging your free hand to pat his bubbly stomach, grabbing the small belly fat at his lower abdomen and pinching it for a moment in a joking manner. It caused him to yelp and flinch back, almost making you both stumble embarrassingly into a crack on the sidewalk, but his feet were big enough to get you balanced quickly. After a ‘phew’ parted past your lips, you drove the topic over to his focus. He loves attention. “Now, spill me that tea. Why were you late today?” A few minutes later after a very deserved gossip, you were already going up the stairs of the building over to where your morning class was short from being over, but you arrived for your fellow Namjoon.

Maybe the reason why you have good grades and attend college, even if you despise it, is because it reminds you that you don't have to be lonely all the time when you have them. Even if you are currently unhappy, being inside the university often distracts you from your inner demons and getting trapped in your own overthinking head. So you might as well keep suppressing those lost and bitter memories for now, only focusing on trying to arrive earlier next time so your best friend doesn't kick your butt later.

It was clear to say that Namjoon didn’t speak to any of you once you walked through the glass door and interrupted the class to sit down for the rest of the English lecture on British Literature, after it had ended he picked up his bag and excused himself from you guys to walk quickly to his other class in the same building. The way he dodged both of you was a little suspicious, as if he didn’t want to have to speak to you in general. With what intention, motive? You brushed off the bitter move. So, that only left you and Taehyung to enjoy the rest of the free morning with breakfast from the cafeteria along with the younger worm of the group, whose schedule just wildly coincided with yours during that hour of break.

You circled Tae’s silhouette on the table and sat on the opposite side of him, setting the tray down as he only munched quietly on an apple with a bottle of water on the side. You enjoy his company more than anything, he’s hyper when he needs to be but he can also be just as relaxed. Right now, eating together in silence, without a need for words, was perfect to match the morning feel expanding throughout the area, you can even hear yourself thinking. No notifications on your phone is finally becoming easy to get used to after you pushed every form of toxicity away from you, not even buzzing text messages could ruin the complete tranquility you were experiencing.

Yet silence didn’t last too much, a sudden movement caught your cornered vision behind Tae’s slumped shoulders, revealing the youngster Jungkook heading towards you both on the table. Once he knew you spotted him, he instantly fixed his backpack and raised a finger to his mouth lazily mimicking a ‘Shh’ behind your companion as an order. He was aiming for his older friend, careful not to make his shoes sound too rough for Taehyung to feel the presence of the small prank his buddy usually pulls on him. All you wanted to do was roll your eyes. Quite a childish behavior for them to do this almost every time they see each other around campus, but it's useless to argue about such because it’s not like you are old to be this goofy, maybe you’re simply stubborn and boring this morning. Probably, nah, definitely. You always let them be themselves though, Taehyung had always been a young boy at heart which matches the same weird attitude first year Jungkook had to put on the table ever since you all met back in high school. They’re one of a kind.

Two pale hands come up and rest over Taehyung’s eyes, blocking his line of sight and forcing him to set the apple down while his own hands start busying themselves in touching and picking at the black hoodie Jungkook sported just past his wrists. The mistake that Tae has always caught Jungkook doing is how the black haired boy usually pressed his torso to the others’ back while pulling the little stunt. His firm muscles underneath his clothes would always indicate Tae that it was his best friend, none of his other colleagues rock a hard abdomen like him. But of course, he will obviously not spill the small secret to spoil the fun.

“Hmmmm,” hummed the sitting boy sarcastically as he kept pretending to try to decipher the identity, the standing male shamelessly waited for him to give up as he cocked his head at you in salute. Still, you obviously knew that those silly games belonged to the one and only. “Kookie,” whispered Taehyung, pulling at his hands to try to toss them away until he could no longer feel warmth circling his back and be free from the strong grip around his temple.

“In the flash,” the man who went by the nickname ‘Kookie’ responded.

The younger boy sat down beside his best friend before pulling out a bowl of his own homemade breakfast, allowing you to see dark circles below his eyes, contrasting to his ivory skin as he then threw his navy backpack on the floor. The complete opposite style of the person next to him, Jungkook often wore solid colors or a simple blend of black and white in comparison to Taehyung’s usual vivid forms of clothing. Today his black hoodie reached up to mount on his head to only let his gracious morning locks slip out and accompany his delicate forehead. He could smile at both of you brightly, but his bare face read sleep deprivation all over without any makeup in sight. Tae munched on the remains of the fruit before setting it aside and rested his head on his hands, Jungkook turned towards you with a sight as you spoke up, “You look dead.”The poor boy nodded quickly to your direct comment. “Tell me about it, I only slept for like… maybe three hours,” he commented before letting out a long yawn and angling his head over to the owner of the hand that pulled his hood down to his neck, exposing his disheveled bed hair. Completely unbothered by the gesture, he summarized the small events of the night before. “I slept inside the library while studying for that weird Marketing class, but it was worth it,” he joked as Taehyung used his other hand to comb his fingers through the younger’s black strands, carefully letting his fingers rake his skull to fix his bangs and pet his hair just as he had done to you earlier… but less playfully.

Everyone’s used to his sudden urge to touch and get all cute with his closer friends, but lately you’ve noticed it’s happening more than before, so you don’t know if that was something you can consider meaningless. Jungkook, on the other hand, never seemed to mind his buddy's affectionate personality compared to you. After sharing many art electives back when Tae was only a junior student, they became inseparable for their love in abstract forms of paintings, music, literature. A mix of all the beauties in learning created a bond between both of them, so the one year that Jungkook was away from your friendship circle was a bummer, hence his extra-ness in every topic and aspect that came to light. He’s the ball of crazy out of all of you.

While watching exactly that form of affection, a sudden feeling indulged you as you took another unbothered bite of toast. Hmm, how could you describe it? Ah, yes, awkward. Before Jungkook could fall victim to his friend’s subtle caresses and just collapse on the table from tiredness, he pushed the other’s hand away slowly with a cute chuckle in embarrassment. “Aish, Tae, don’t do that or else I’ll fall asleep right here.” The other grinned lazily as he continued to gaze upon his friend’s refusal to rest in the cafeteria, who instead whipped out his chopsticks to eat before switching up the conversation, thank lord. “Where’s Tannie, though? The apartment?” For that, a dazed Tae answered with a court nod to his considerate Kookie.

As all three kept conversing on the table about Yeontan finally learning to be a good boy inside his owner’s studio, Taehyung couldn’t wait to just burst the topic that’s been circling in his head given that vacation time is closer each day. There wasn’t any other moment to speak about the matter since it’s only a few days from now. “So, Spring Break is around the corner,” he swooned with a questioning glance and raised brows over to the man sitting next to him as the other paid more attention to the plate of food. Tae kept resting his head on his hand as both of you continued eating quietly, that’s where he took his eyes away from Jungkook and pointed his sharp orbs to you, eyeing the way your fork moved around the food aimlessly without much enthusiasm. His hyper-boy charm awakened once again. “Got any plans on what we should do?”

You swallowed immediately while your lower back became stiff. You didn’t want to answer immediately, and it’s not like you had any plans apart from staying at home by yourself doing absolutely nothing. However, in all honesty, the first thing that popped in your dazed little mind was last year’s vacation which wasn’t actually… that lovely if you would say. Did you really have to accompany them this year? The face Tae threw at you seemed like he was dearly excited in doing something creative, so brushing him off would be a dick move on your part.

Thankfully, just before you come up with a reply, you’re interrupted. “Babo, we already haf plans,” you heard a muffled voice from across the rectangular table, coming from the one and only man that talks with his mouth open, Jungkook. Your eyes peaked up from your focus on the slice of toast aiming to your mouth, making a crunching sound that even you weren’t comfortable hearing. His lower voice replied again to the waiting boy, having half of his mouth stuffed in white rice which made him look like a bunny with full cheeks, “Difn’t Namjum”—he swallowed after the failed pronunciation—“Didn’t Namjoon tell you guys?”

Taehyung’s ears flinched up, lips parting in awe as his pupils didn’t show signs of catching up to his friend’s words. As if he were imitating his own bicolored furry pet, he tilted his head and pouted an answer after exchanging milliseconds of eye contact with you. “No. What? When? Who? Where are we going?”

The younger individual put his chopsticks on top of his bowl and wiped his hands together, meanwhile you continued to eat hunched in your place without exchanging visual contact with either of them in hopes that they can’t see the slight uncomfortability as the topic was mentioned. You don’t want them recalling any past scandals or undesired topics, luckily they talked as if it was a two-person conversation is and left you out of it. “I think he mentioned something about renting a place on a beach, something like that,” wondered Jungkook with doubt in direction to Taehyung’s angle, you were ghosted just as you wanted to.

“Beach?” Tae mouthed quietly.

“Mhm, I think it’s more of a private location this time. I heard him talking on the phone with his mother about it maybe…two days ago,” his buddy added before taking a sip of his water bottle. His mother indeed had connections with many sectors on the public and private beaches throughout the city, but Namjoon has never been one to brag much about his family’s power even in his closest circle of friendship. If you remember correctly, Namjoon isn’t that much of a fan for public places and crowded areas so it’s only logical that he suggested a private setting to relax on Spring break. It’s a getaway for the soul, an entire week of nothing to do but chill around inhaling the sweet smell of irresponsibility and procrastination. You were not going to be the kind of person that actually studied during this sacred time, if you had to leave your assignments for last minute because you want to sleep for 168 hours straight, you would. “I thought he had told you about it, Y/N.”

Alas, just as Kookie said, none of this is actually new to you. His idea had already been spilled over to one of the three people that needed to find out, you. You had suspected he would arrange some kind of get away as he had told you last week when he stayed over at your apartment (he slept on the couch), you remember the exact same topic of interest because it had been the last time you spoke to each other in person. You both were sitting quietly on the couch watching silly cartoons and reciting some mathematical formulas you needed to memorize for your test which was the following day, you don’t quite remember the reason he had invaded your study time because lately, all of your buddies have been too pendant of you whenever you’re alone at your place. You know they are always worried when you disappear from the radar for more than twenty-four hours, but you can’t help wanting to get used to being alone. While Taehyung respects your individual decision to dwell inside the bed sheets until you have new motivation, Namjoon randomly appears to make you get up and do something with your life for once.

The small discussion between you both surged by his poor use of words when the sudden suggestion came up after a long deserved break from the ‘study session’, you recalled it like it had been yesterday because he had such audacity to speak about certain things as if they had been nothing. Even if it happened long ago, it’s not like you’re completely normal when talking about sensitive topics.

One week ago

“Y/N, listen.” Namjoon’s foot poked your thigh slowly for the second time, trying to get you to focus on him rather than the cartoon on the television screen that captivated you like a hypnotized child. “Hey, up for another vacation trip in Spring break? I was thinking of calling mom to book a stay on a private beach like two hours from here,” he groaned as if he were waking up from a nap, but he’s just been lazily occupying three quarters of the couch all night while you were the one who’s actually sleep deprived after everything you have studied.

You turned over to him at the suggestion with a brow raised, pensive and curious. “You mean… just the two of us?” you asked skeptically, gulping.

You only saw pink staining his cheeks. “No-no, silly,”—a cushion landed directly at the side of your head as an answer— “I meant like, Jungkook, Tae, and us two. It’s got all the appliances, super quiet and comfortable for us.” The tall man used his hands to maneuver himself forward to take a seated position on the living room couch, grabbing his phone to play with his thumbs on it before you could answer, taking a short break from your profile. After a small pause of no immediate reply, he added quietly with his usual low voice, “So, what do you think?”

You fidgeted with your fingers wriggling in your lap as you looked down for a moment, realizing you had become nervous for no apparent reason after a minute of debate. Like autumn leaves you can’t get rid off easily, the everlasting sense of weakness kept knocking on your doorstep.

“I don’t know, Joon. Not in the mood to go out this year, to be honest,” you mumbled while shaking your head slowly, being truthful. You tried to put on a smile when you saw his furrowed expression, but it wasn't that easy to turn him down when he looked so excited. You could see his dimples disappearing behind his plump skin, confusion in his eyes. “I mean, it’s better if it became an all-guy kind of thing. I really don’t want to intrude.”

“What?” he scoffed at your reply, looking at you as if you had talked backwards or in a completely different language, which meant he did not catch your small shadiness. “Where did you get that from? The point is that we all go. Come ooon, it will be fun,” he tried again, poking your arm playfully when you turned over to get lost inside the colors of the plasma in front of you. There’s no easy way of getting through Namjoon, just as there wasn’t an easy way to get through you either. He won’t give up until you agree to go, he’s one with a strong attitude.

“I don’t wanna’...” you whined playfully but certainly.

“Aish, don’t be so antisocial,” mimicked the taller man with your same childish tone, one which you kept ignoring as the tv colors bounced off your eyes. You don’t see the apologetic glint in his own brown orbs, brows resting surely while he lowered his leadership instincts, reaching out his palm once again to calmly place them again in the small of your bare shoulder. “Please, just go,” you heard with a softer voice this time, running chills up all the way to your throat. The knot stayed there even after you swallowed loudly, knowing the guilty feeling resurfaced like dust against the wind, swift and quick.

Your lips formed a thin line, contouring your face with the much rather toughness you didn’t feel. For once, you don’t want Namjoon to outsmart you by using his big words to try to convince you. You cocked your head to the side as you continued adding spice without sounding stingy, in fact, you were very calm. “Joon, let’s be real here. The only reason you’re inviting me is so I don’t feel left out, and that’s okay. I really don’t mind—”

“—Heh?! No! You’re the first person I’ve told this to, the others don’t know about it yet,” he cut you off as soon as he heard your false accusations, raising his voice a little bit in objection. His thin eyes expanded into worried ones as he watched you look away again to anything but his face. Yes, you’re really this annoying and insecure, even in front of your best friend. You assumed he was going to continue spreading little white lies here and there about not telling anyone, but then his expression softened when he finally caught your small fidgets and stupid excuses. It’s not an intentional remark, you just really don’t want to deal with your stuff and just stay alone.

Not answering made his anger tickle his temple, “Fine. I thought this would be good for you, y’know,” he tsked’.

“What do you mean?” you quickly retorted suspiciously, no filter with only the sound of the silly movie playing in the background and the somehow increasing heart rate inside your chest. So now he wants to talk about what is good for you, this took a little twist. This was something normal after the first few months, it consisted of what you called being on the defense 24/7 because you really don’t want anybody feeling sorry for you and to treat you any differently because you were going through tough times.

Your friend raised his large shoulders defensively and looked to the side nervously, not daring to meet your eyes because you somehow looked ready to fight. “I’m just saying, you’ve been feeling very down lately so maybe it would make you get out of the house for a while so,”—your sudden confused big eyes caused him to stutter and stumble his following statements as if you had growled at him—“What?” you heard him ask while combing his natural brown hair with his fingers.

Namjoon stopped speaking after those words left his mouth. And alas, the poor man received the threatening look of ‘you fucked up’ and instantly closed his mouth while you asked softly in retaliation, steady yet deadly. This was exactly what you feared would happen, he did not speak properly so now he was letting you think the worst out of this dumb situation. “Do I look like I’m some kind of pity-party to you? Is that why you’re doing this? More life lessons by my personal psychologist Kim Namjoon? Great.”

His perfect little eyes widened for a swift second before rolling them back, irritated and ready to snap back at you. “Geez, why you gotta’ be so defensive?” He raised his hands up in surrender, angling his legs to get up from the couch that faced the monitor, your gaze followed him with every step like a predator eyeing a prey. You turned your body and folded legs sideways to face the still taller man who scratched the back of his head and sighed because there was really nothing else he found no more words to say, he had gotten a bit impatient considering you weren’t coping with his initially fun and adventurous idea. His feet continued to walk away until you sensed he went to the kitchen island, he moves around your home with such confidence and that alone made you slightly more intimidated. It’s been long since someone felt like this was their home, and Namjoon may not say it verbally, but you are sure he feels safe here. Your body moved in sync to follow his voice, ending up standing on the other side of the island while he took a water bottle from the refrigerator, taking a casual sip like you’re not caught up in a small debate.

His perfect dimples then appeared to try to bend your waterfall of thoughts again. “You should be grateful to psychologist Namjoon.” The little shit had the guts to shoot a smile at you, knowing it damn well gave you hell. “I don’t get why you’re so triggered, Y/N. I didn’t even invit—“

“—Don’t,” you deadpanned, “Not now, please.” Faster than light itself. You had already studied in that stupid Chemistry class the undeniably utopic speed of the particle of light, but you swore you broke its law or whatever record it holds from the moment you sensed your best friend would bring ‘him’ into the conversation. How low of him to do so, but it only concluded your still uncomfortability whenever your past acquaintance comes back to your present. Everything was just too downright embarrassing at this point, remembering it would only make things more awkward. You don’t really miss him at all, it’s the things that came after it that made you unsettle and grow hectic from just watching yourself from afar.

He shrugged his shoulders, unbothered. “Fine. Suit yourself.”

After your cutting words, you flipped off your friend to walk back to the place you sat on before, now you can’t really ignore him or anything like that because it’s late and you’re going to share the night together watching movies and probably continue to study until dawn. You flopped down on the loveseat to take up the entire sitting area of said space, resuming to look at the screen like the conversation hadn’t happened. You’re one to criticize Jungkook for being a baby, but right now you’re acting like a mad child not letting Joon sit down next to you for a stupid joke. You hope he doesn’t return with the same topic, you feel bad for acting so relentlessly but it’s not that easy going along with a plan you know failed once. There’s more of a story to why you don’t want to go, but its importance is better left for later. Right now, you just want to forget it.

On the bright side, Namjoon sat quietly in the island booths until he finished the ice cold water bottle that rested on his hand. He glanced over occasionally to where you lied down, waiting for you to show signals that you weren’t looking so upset or annoyed anymore. He obviously didn’t want you to react like such, but in a way, he thought it would be normal for you to think you’re someone of second choice in the friendship circle. You’ve grown so dependent on them ever since, it’s almost impossible not to worry about you after everything that happened. When he returned and took a spot in the floor (you didn’t budge or move to give him a spot), he started talking about the weird characters on the screen. You heard his weird remarks, and slowly laughed your way back into your bestie’s lovelier dimples that this time shone just a bit more with the reflection of the blues of the big television.

You silently curse at Namjoon, assuming this little surprise question was all a big plan for Taehyung and Jungkook to guilt trip you into actually going. Was it? Maybe, it would explain how he evaded speaking to you after the morning elective and ran to his next class so evidently. He’s smarter than all that, smarter than you and much more skilled mentally. If these two were part of the little trap for you to fall and cope with their plan, you might as well give them some credit. You have to owe it to them, they made all of this so you could go out and get some fresh air. It would be nice to finally come out of your shell and look for things that made you unique, start to go out more with people you could relate to you more. On a deeper level, you were stuck so long depending on that one person and letting their happiness become part of you. It’s as if all this time, your soul had detached from your body and now that you’ve been alone for quite some time, every single form of socialization had become a torturous walkway for you. To compensate that once misconstrued form of fear, your other relationships with men were strictly superficial if not sexual.

It’s not the matter of you wanting to go or not, it’s based on the circumstances he asked you for. Right now, you imagined it felt kind of forced on Joon’s part, at least that’s how you saw it out to be even if it really was an intentional act. In other words, you completely evaded talking about the vacation thing again, until now. Two men in front of you asked the same question, the first time you had been stuck in your inner thoughts and too busy to pile up their words to blend in a coherent question. They gave you a moment to return from the dimension your orbs had run off to, after you came back to reality you saw two pairs of shiny eyes waiting patiently for you to land back. You shook your head softly and raised your brows quickly, scrunching up your nose with a question mark on the top of your head.

“I said, are you coming with us?” asked Taehyung, voice lower and in a serious tone with his sharp eyes gazing into yours, looking for your usual insecurities and doubting whether you would really go. Jungkook’s sudden stare resembled the same expression, it’s like they knew you were pensive about going. In reality, it’s not a big deal, it’s not something deep to be taken so seriously. It’s a fun week spent on a private area with people you love and cherish, no negativity and no problems. Just as Namjoon said, you have no reason to be triggered just because he wants you to go out and be yourself again. It’s all part of what made you the girl you are now, your friends are with you because they want to, they’re not forced to hang out with you. There’s no more pity, there should be no more lack of confidence in them since you’ve already gone through the worst in these months and they have never left. You’re already learning to move on, so this is just another step of the flight of stairs.

“Yeah, sure,” you shrugged at the possibility of the silly vacation, one which you didn’t know was going to be anything but ordinary. Thank the heavens you are starting to find your own sound, your own beats, your own self again. The mistakes done in the past won’t let you ruin the future ahead, not in this little vacation.

At least, that’s what you hope for.

< Chapter 2 >

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papermoonloveslucy · 4 years ago

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SECRETARIAL SCHOOL

February 18, 1949

“Secretarial School” (aka “Liz Attends Claremont Business School”) is episode #31 of the radio series MY FAVORITE HUSBAND broadcast on February 18, 1949 on the CBS radio network.

Synopsis ~ George needs a new secretary, so Liz enrolls in secretarial school so she can fill the position.

“My Favorite Husband” was based on the novels Mr. and Mrs. Cugat, the Record of a Happy Marriage (1940) and Outside Eden (1945) by Isabel Scott Rorick, which had previously been adapted into the film Are Husbands Necessary? (1942). “My Favorite Husband” was first broadcast as a one-time special on July 5, 1948. Lucille Ball and Lee Bowman played the characters of Liz and George Cugat, and a positive response to this broadcast convinced CBS to launch “My Favorite Husband” as a series. Bowman was not available Richard Denning was cast as George. On January 7, 1949, confusion with bandleader Xavier Cugat prompted a name change to Cooper. On this same episode Jell-O became its sponsor. A total of 124 episodes of the program aired from July 23, 1948 through March 31, 1951. After about ten episodes had been written, writers Fox and Davenport departed and three new writers took over – Bob Carroll, Jr., Madelyn Pugh, and head writer/producer Jess Oppenheimer. In March 1949 Gale Gordon took over the existing role of George’s boss, Rudolph Atterbury, and Bea Benadaret was added as his wife, Iris. CBS brought “My Favorite Husband” to television in 1953, starring Joan Caulfield and Barry Nelson as Liz and George Cooper. The television version ran two-and-a-half seasons, from September 1953 through December 1955, running concurrently with “I Love Lucy.” It was produced live at CBS Television City for most of its run, until switching to film for a truncated third season filmed (ironically) at Desilu and recasting Liz Cooper with Vanessa Brown.

REGULAR CAST

Lucille Ball (Liz Cooper / “Jenny Smith”) was born on August 6, 1911 in Jamestown, New York. She began her screen career in 1933 and was known in Hollywood as ‘Queen of the B’s’ due to her many appearances in ‘B’ movies. With Richard Denning, she starred in a radio program titled “My Favorite Husband” which eventually led to the creation of “I Love Lucy,” a television situation comedy in which she co-starred with her real-life husband, Latin bandleader Desi Arnaz. The program was phenomenally successful, allowing the couple to purchase what was once RKO Studios, re-naming it Desilu. When the show ended in 1960 (in an hour-long format known as “The Lucy-Desi Comedy Hour”) so did Lucy and Desi’s marriage. In 1962, hoping to keep Desilu financially solvent, Lucy returned to the sitcom format with “The Lucy Show,” which lasted six seasons. She followed that with a similar sitcom “Here’s Lucy” co-starring with her real-life children, Lucie and Desi Jr., as well as Gale Gordon, who had joined the cast of “The Lucy Show” during season two. Before her death in 1989, Lucy made one more attempt at a sitcom with “Life With Lucy,” also with Gordon.

Richard Denning (George Cooper) was born as Louis Albert Heindrich Denninger Jr., in Poughkeepsie, New York. When he was 18 months old, his family moved to Los Angeles. Plans called for him to take over his father’s garment manufacturing business, but he developed an interest in acting. Denning enlisted in the US Navy during World War II. He is best known for his roles in various science fiction and horror films of the 1950s. Although he teamed with Lucille Ball on radio in “My Favorite Husband,” the two never acted together on screen. While “I Love Lucy” was on the air, he was seen on another CBS TV series, “Mr. & Mrs. North.” From 1968 to 1980 he played the Governor on “Hawaii 5-0″, his final role. He died in 1998 at age 84.

Ruth Perrott (Katie, the Maid) was also later seen on “I Love Lucy.” She first played Mrs. Pomerantz (above right), a member of the surprise investigating committee for the Society Matrons League in “Pioneer Women” (ILL S1;E25), as one of the member of the Wednesday Afternoon Fine Arts League in “Lucy and Ethel Buy the Same Dress” (ILL S3;E3), and also played a nurse when “Lucy Goes to the Hospital” (ILL S2;E16). She died in 1996 at the age of 96.

Bob LeMond (Announcer) also served as the announcer for the pilot episode of “I Love Lucy”. When the long-lost pilot was finally discovered in 1990, a few moments of the opening narration were damaged and lost, so LeMond – fifty years later – recreated the narration for the CBS special and subsequent DVD release.

Gale Gordon and Bea Benadaret had not yet joined the cast in the roles of Rudolph and Iris Atterbury.

GUEST CAST

Florence Halop (Ruthie aka ”The Brooklyn Blabbermouth”) was first seen on television with Lucille Ball in “Redecorating” (ILL S2;E8) in which she reprised her role as the party line phone hog. She wouldn’t work for Lucy again until 1974, when she played a Little Old Lady on a Western-themed episode of “Here’s Lucy.” In 1985, she replaced Selma Diamond (who had died of lung cancer) as the bailiff on “Night Court.”

Frank Nelson (Mr. Allen, Bank Examiner) was born on May 6, 1911 (three months before Lucille Ball) in Colorado Springs, Colorado. He started working as a radio announcer at the age of 15. He later appeared on such popular radio shows as “The Great Gildersleeve,” “Burns and Allen,” and “Fibber McGee & Molly”. This is one of his 11 performances on “My Favorite Husband.” On “I Love Lucy” he holds the distinction of being the only actor to play two recurring roles: Freddie Fillmore and Ralph Ramsey, as well as six one-off characters, including the frazzled train conductor in “The Great Train Robbery” (ILL S5;E5), a character he repeated on “The Lucy Show.” Aside from Lucille Ball, Nelson is perhaps most associated with Jack Benny and was a fifteen-year regular on his radio and television programs.

The roles of Miss Claremont, the Blabbermouth’s Mother, and the Secretary on the Intercom are uncredited and unidentified, but were likely played by the same performer.

EPISODE

ANNOUNCER: “Now let’s look in on the Coopers. It’s early evening. Dinner is over. George is in the living room and Liz is helping Katie the Maid clear off the table.”

Liz is dreading talking to George about the right front fender on the car. When she finally goes into the living room she immediately confesses to the accident, even though he only wanted to talk to her about his life insurance policy. He’s doubled his policy so that she’ll get $10,000 if he should die.

In “Lucy Goes On Strike” (HL S1;E16) in 1969, Harry takes out a $100,000 double indemnity insurance policy on Lucy’s life with himself as sole beneficiary, which Lucy accidentally overhears.

Liz doesn’t want to talk about such things. She refuses to think about a life without George. She insists that there must be some dire reason for his doubling the policy. She even wonders if he’ll ever marry again should she die first. He explains his new double indemnity policy to her. If he dies by accident she will get double than if he passes away naturally.

In “The Audition” (ILL S1;E6), Ricky sends Lucy to his lawyers to see about his will, which sends Lucy into a panic about him dying - and who would go first!

LIZ: “Well, I’m going to miss you, but when you feel yourself going, try to make it an accident, huh?”

Liz tells him not to worry about the money. She will get a job and take care of herself. George cannot even begin to think of Liz set loose in the workforce. She says that she is going to prove him wrong by getting a job right away.

Later, Liz returns from a day job hunting and is exhausted. She tells Katie she is determined to go to business school and learn shorthand. Their party line is tied up again by the “Brooklyn Blabbermouth” (Florence Halop).

A party line was a local loop telephone circuit that is shared by multiple subscribers. Party lines provided no privacy and were frequently used as a source of entertainment and gossip. Objections about one party monopolizing a line were common and eavesdropping remained an ongoing concern. By the end of the 20th century, party lines had been phased out in the United States. Although we are never quite sure where Sheridan Falls is located, it would be unusual for a party line to exist outside its local area. Lucy Ricardo contends (and brilliantly dispenses) with a party line in “Redecorating” (ILL S2;E8, above, also starring Florence Halop, left).

The “Brooklyn Blabbermouth” calls Liz “Miss Big Ears” and explains she is talking to her mother. Liz is amazed she even has a mother.

BLABBERMOUTH: “Whaddya think? Someone built me with an Erector Set?” LIZ: “No. I thought you came in a box of Cracker Jack.”

Erector Set was a brand of metal toy construction sets which were originally sold by the Mysto Manufacturing Company in 1913, a successor to wooden Lincoln Logs and a predecessor to plastic LEGO. This gag manages to get a very loud laugh and a round of applause from the “My Favorite Husband” studio audience.

Cracker Jack is a molasses-flavored caramel-coated popcorn and peanut confection first patented in 1896. It is famous for being packaged with an inexpensive novelty item (a ‘prize’) inside the box. Food historians say it may be America’s first ‘junk food.’ It was often the punch line on “I Love Lucy.”

Liz begs the Blabbermouth (whose name is Ruthie) to allow her to make a quick call. She is updating her mother about their radio serials since her radio is broken.

LIZ: “Do you have to use the telephone?” BLABBERMOUTH: “Whaddya expect me to use? A two-way wrist radio?”

In 1946, Chester Gould’s ‘Dick Tracy’ comic strip introduced the idea that it’s detective hero could communicate through a two-way wrist radio. In 1948, that cartoon item was brought to reality, along with a myriad of other Dick Tracy-themed toys. The “Dick Tracy” radio series ran from 1934 to 1948. It then lived on in television and films.

The Blabbermouth ignores Liz’s request for telephone time and drones on about the plot of her mother’s favorite soap opera:

BLABBERMOUTH: “So mama, you remember how kindly Dr. Stevenson had to operate on Little Jimmy, who was run over by a truck, and he tried to save the life of blind Mr. Pat, who was on his way to get the doctor for grandma Smith, who broke her leg when she fell downstairs trying to help Mary Lou, who caught her hand in the ringer.” MAMA: “Oh, yeah. Which show was that?” LIZ: “’Life Can Be Beautiful’!”

After the distressing plot line described, it seems unlikely, but there really was a radio soap opera named “Life Can Be Beautiful.” it premiered September 5, 1938 on NBC and moved two months later to CBS, where it was heard from November 7, 1938 to June 21, 1946. The final run was on NBC from 1946 to 1954.

Liz is furious and hangs up. She decides to go down to the secretarial school and enroll in person.

LIZ: “If I wait for her to get off the phone I won’t need a job, I’ll be collecting Social Security.”

The United States Social Security act was signed into law by President Franklin Roosevelt in 1935. The nation’s first Social Security card was issued in 1936 with benefits first paid out in 1940. Social Security was sometimes used as a punch line on Lucille Ball’s television programs, especially concerning age.

At the secretarial school Liz, and a gaggle of other women, are welcomed by Miss Claremont, the founder and head teacher.

MISS CLAREMONT: “When you finish our course, each of you will be completely equipped to get along with your future boss, as we teach you shorthand, typing, filing and jujitsu.”

Miss Claremont calls upon Liz to help demonstrate typing, but Liz says there are no letters on the keys. Miss Claremont explains that this is deliberate, in order to teach the touch system of typing.

Three weeks after this episode was broadcast, Lucille Ball began filming Miss Grant Takes Richmond, in which her character, Ellen Grant, went to the Woodruff Secretarial School and also had a great deal of trouble with her typewriter. The film was released later that year but Lucille Ball was seen typing in all of her television sitcoms.

Liz attempts to type her name:

LIZ: “Shake hands with Querty Uioop!”

Three weeks later, Miss Claremont is chastising Liz for her non-traditional shorthand. It seems drawing a little cabbage is not satisfactory shorthand for money.

LIZ: “That’s lettuce.”

Liz brags that her typing has improved to 60 words a minute. Miss Claremont says it doesn’t count if you type the same word over and over.

At home, Liz tries to romance George out his distracted mood. When he sees her school notebook he asks about her shorthand. She’s written her shopping list in shorthand.

GEORGE: “What does this one mean: the number three, a dog, and a daisy?” LIZ: “That’s to remind me to get three heads of cauliflower.”

GEORGE: “What’s this dilly: a telescope, a doctor, and a child?” LIZ: “I want to get something in the newspaper. That means watch out for the Examiner boy.”

GEORGE: “Here’s one I can understand: a man throwing books in the air. Juggling the books, eh?” LIZ: “Just a little jug.”

GEORGE: “Now explain this last shorthand mystery to me: a circle, a ship, and laundry ticket.” LIZ: “That’s the title of a phonograph record I want to buy - 'A Slow Boat To China'.”

"On A Slow Boat to China" is a popular song by Frank Loesser, published in 1948. The enigmatic title was a well-known phrase among poker players, referring to a person who lost steadily and handsomely. In October and November 1948, it was recorded by no less than five artists: Kay Kyser, Freddy Martin, Benny Goodman, Art Lund, and Larry Clinton.

George is distracted because there’s a bank examiner at work and his secretary is out sick. Liz wants to get into the act - literally - by becoming his substitute secretary, but George says no way! He has already arranged with the Claremont Secretarial School to send someone over. Once he goes to bed, Liz makes the decision to call the school and cancel the secretary - taking the job for herself!

On “I Love Lucy” Lucy Ricardo went to elaborate lengths to work with her husband, sometimes even resorting to kidnapping!

Later, Liz enters the living room wearing a black wig and horned rim spectacles. Katie, who doesn’t recognize her on first glance, reminds her to phone and cancel the other secretary. Naturally, Blabbermouth is on the party line, talking to her mother about soaps. She refers to Liz as “Nosey Rosie”.

BLABBERMOUTH (to Mama): “Their son, the radio actor, comes in and wants to borrow ten bucks until television blows over...”

The idea that television was just a passing fad and not a serious threat to radio was common. The motion picture industry also felt threatened by television. In hindsight, they were correct. Had it not be for television, Lucille Ball would have remained Queen of B movies and you would not be reading this right now!

Liz angrily hangs up.

LIZ: “How do you like that; a filibuster!” KATIE: “Filibuster?” LIZ: “Yeah. I’ve had my fill and I’d like to bust her.”

Liz decides to go down to the corner drug store to make the call. Katie reminds her to put on her dress first!

Later, Liz arrives at George’s office in disguise.

[As the scene opens, the voice of a sectary on the intercom announces the arrival of the new secretary. In a rare flub, Richard Denning jumps her line, momentarily talking over her.]

Liz is flustered and doesn’t even know her own name. It seems she hasn’t yet made one up!

GEORGE: “Well, how about sitting down?” LIZ: “No. That sounds too much like an Indian. How about Jenny Smith? Yeah, Jenny Smith.”

While in disguise, Liz decides to test George’s fidelity by flirting with him. Unbeknownst to Liz, George is on to her. He unmasks her pretty quickly.

This test of marital fidelity was also tried by Lucy Ricardo while also wearing a black wig. Just like George, Ricky is on to her games and plays along for a bit.

She breaks it to him that she’s canceled the other secretary. Since it is too late to get anyone else, he allows it. He dictates some responses she needs to type for him to read to the Bank Examiner. At the meeting with the Bank Examiner, Liz is still pretending to be Miss Smith. Mr. Allen, the Bank Examiner (Frank Nelson), asks George a question and George consults his notes - only to find a jumble of nonsensical typing. Liz was using the touch system and her fingers were on the wrong keys! Since Liz is the only one who can read her original shorthand notes, she must answer for him.

MR. ALLEN: “What’s the collateral for this ten million dollars?” LIZ (reading): “Three heads of cauliflower”.

MR. ALLEN: “When the amount of collateral is not commensurate with the size of the loan what is your procedure?” LIZ (reading): “Juggle the books.”

MR. ALLEN: “When Mr. Cooper found out there was to be an investigation, what instructions did he give the employees?” LIZ (reading): “Watch out for the Examiner, boy.”

MR. ALLEN: “What would have done if you had gotten away with it?” LIZ (reading): “Get a slow boat to China.”

The exchange of transposed questions and inadvertently humorous answers will be explored again in “Lucy Gets Ricky on the Radio” (ILL S1;E32) which also featured Frank Nelson asking the questions!

Later at home, George says that it took six hours to prove to Mr. Allen that Liz was responsible for the whole misunderstanding. Liz promises that she’ll stop looking for a job and call the secretarial school and quit. She picks up the phone to call but...

BLABBERMOUTH: “And the doctor said ‘Ma Perkins’ you’ll never walk again.”

“Ma Perkins” was a radio soap opera heard on NBC from 1933 to 1949 and on CBS from 1942 to 1960. Between 1942 and 1949, the show was heard simultaneously on both networks.

Liz insists that she told the phone company to change her party line. The Blabbermouth says that they did - they changed it to her mother’s! Liz faints.

END of EPISODE

#My Favorite Husband #I Love Lucy #Lucille Ball #Ma Perkins #Richard Denning #Secretarial School #Miss Grant Takes Richmond #Ruth Perrott #Frank Nelson #Florence Halop #Party Line #Life Can Be Beautiful #On A Slow Boat To China #Radio #CBS #Dick Tracy #Cracker Jack #Erector Set #Bob LeMond

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